decoded_text stringlengths 4.18k 47.6k |
|---|
to keep Mortimer by her side right up until she was outwitted in October 1330.
The queen’s forces landed at Orwell on 24 September. The fleet had been unchallenged, Edward’s navy failing to materialise. There, the army moved quickly to Bury St Edmunds and then on to Barnwell, Baldock in Hertfordshire, Dunstable in Bedfordshire and then west as Edward and the Despensers, along with Robert Baldock and others moved away from London for Wales. (8) Support for the queen and her son grew rapidly. Edward II’s remaining half-brother, the earl of Norfolk was the first to join Isabella and his brother the earl of Kent.(9) Henry of Lancaster, brother to the executed Thomas came to the queen at Dunstable.(10) Many of the bishops who had in recent years fallen foul of Edward II’s temper, quickly joined the rebels. These included the likes of Lincoln, Ely and Hereford, who was a long time supporter of Mortimer and who had lost his temporalities in 1325 when found guilty of colluding with the baron of Wigmore in 1321 during the Marcher lords rebellion.(11) All these men had in some way or another lost out at the hands of Despenser’s greed and manipulation over the king.
Edward’s support simply melted away. The king’s detailed plans to overcome the invasion had been well thought out and prepared and were fundamentally sound on paper. The exception however was that these plans relied on the support of the very men who now joined Isabella after her landing. The defection of his half brother Norfolk and his cousin Lancaster was a death knoll to Edward’s ability to counter the invasion.
The queen’s army moved swiftly. It was not long before they cornered their prey. On 15 October Isabella was at Wallingford castle, and there issued a joint proclamation with her son and the earl of Kent, again setting out the reasons for why she had arrived in England in a state of martial array. The queen claimed that the state of the church and the kingdom had been greatly diminished by the counsel of Hugh Despenser the younger; that he had seized royal power for himself; that widows and orphans had been deprived of their rights; that the great men of the kingdom had been dispossessed and put to death, but above all, Isabella claimed, Hugh Dispenser was a tyrant and an enemy of God, of the Holy Church and ‘our beloved king and the whole kingdom’.(12) The queen ended by asking the people to offer her every assistance and to be sure that the actions of the army were for the honour and profit of the Holy Church and the whole kingdom. With such sentiment, the people loved her. Any hope for Edward of even the slightest resistence from his subjects evaporated. He had been outmanoeuvred and fast. The game was up.
On 18 October Isabella and her army reached Bristol, where soon after the castle fell, its garrison having no appetite to back the loosing side. Behind it’s walls was Hugh Despenser the Elder. On 27 October, he was tried, found guilty of treason, robbery and acts against the church and promptly hung, drawn and beheaded. His body was then quartered and fed to the dogs. Only twelve days earlier London had erupted into anarchy. Many men associated with Edward and the Despensers were hunted down. Walter Stapledon, the former treasurer and a man Isabella held partly responsible for the loss of her lands and income in 1324, was caught by the London mob, dragged away from gaining sanctuary at St Paul’s, and beheaded with a bread knife along with two of his household. His butchered head was sent to the queen at Gloucester.(13) Isabella’s invasion had descended into bloody murder.(14) On the 16 November, Edward, Despenser the Younger and Robert Baldock were also captured at Llantrisant on their way back to the mighty fortress of Caerphilly castle by Henry of Lancaster and others.(15) Edward was taken to Monmouth castle and then onto Kenilworth castle in Warwickshire. Hugh Despenser the younger was taken to Hereford to await his ignominious end.
He did not have long to wait. Like his father before him, he was hauled before his peers including Mortimer, Lancaster, Kent and others. The outcome was a full gone conclusion. He was found guilty of extensive crimes, from tyranny, to usurping royal power and rather pointedly for Isabella, for leaving her at Tynemouth in 1322. He was also accused of sending vast sums of money abroad to bribe French nobles to bring about the queen’s destruction whilst at her brother’s court in 1325-6; of seizing her dower lands and causing discord between herself and her husband the king. The list goes on. In the end, despite his previous attempts to starve himself since his capture eight days earlier, he was condemned to death as a traitor. He was to be drawn and quartered and his various body parts sent to Carlisle, York, Bristol and Dover as a warning to other would-be renegades. He was to be beheaded for outlawry and disembowelled and his entrails burnt for promoting discord between the king and queen. His genitals were to be cut off in symbolic reference to him coming between the king and queen’s marriage. It was a brutal end for a brutal man.
The judge made good on his word. Dragged through the streets of Hereford wearing a crown of nettles and his tunic in reverse, Hugh Despenser was then partially asphyxiated with a piece of rope tied around his neck, but not to the point of death. He was then trussed up a 50ft ladder, his genitals cut off and burnt in front of him. After which he was cut open from chest to navel and his entrails pulled out which were also burnt in the fire. He had until this point been strangely quiet, but during the disembowelment he cried out in pain. The queen had won. Shortly after, he was beheaded. His head was then sent to London were he was particularly hated, arriving on 4 December. (16) Robert Baldock, as a member of the clergy was beyond the queen’s immediate reach, yet he was handed over the bishop of Hereford, Adam Orleton and was thrown into prison. There he was captured by a London mob, transferred instead into the Fleet prison and died shortly after, most likely from neglect or great violence.(17) The earl of Arundel, a longtime supporter of Edward II was also brutually beheaded on 17 November. It took twenty-two strokes of a blunt sword to sever his head. (18)
Isabella had her revenge.
But at what cost? Her marriage was effectively over and her husband was now being held in captivity at Kenilworth castle. Without the chance of reconciliation and against a backdrop of such bloodletting, the mood shifted amongst the rebels to the unprecedented action of deposition, something that had neither precedence nor legal procedure in January 1327. Nevertheless, unable to return to her husband, Isabella and Mortimer constructed an elaborate set piece of theatre to bring about the unthinkable. On 21 January 1327, Edward II was formally, albeit illegally forced to abdicate his throne; in short he was effectively deposed.(19) From here on in Isabella and Roger Mortimer became the defacto rulers of the kingdom until October 1330. On 2 February, 1327, Isabella stood in Westminster Abbey and watched as her eldest son, who was fifteen years old, crowned as Edward III. According to tradition, she was said to have wept throughout.
On the same day, Isabella granted herself enormous tracts of land and revenues. The sum was staggering; £13,333 (20,000 marks). Before her lands had been confiscated, the queen’s annual income was £4,500 in keeping with the dower lands of England’s previous queens. No magnate in England, with the exception of Thomas of Lancaster who had held five earldoms, could ever boast an income anywhere near as high as this; Lancaster’s yielded £11,000 at the peak of his power, but even this was highly unusual. Most earldoms generated between £2,000 – £5,000 a year. No person before or since, saving the king himself, ever claimed such an income in medieval England. Against the heady backdrop of 1326-7, the queen herself began to become tyrannical. Isabella and Mortimer kept the royal privy seal, the tool best used to exercise royal power. Edward III was reduced to nothing more than a puppet. In October 1328, the king, just shy of his sixteenth birthday, reluctantly agreed to grant Mortimer the newly created title of earl of March. This enforced ‘gift’ gave Mortimer more land, revenue and control over the marches of Wales than Hugh Despenser had ever amassed. In the same year, Isabella and Mortimer agreed to a permanent peace with Scotland, recognising Robert Bruce as king of an independent Scotland, something Edward II refused point blankly to do during his reign, even after Bannockburn. It is still known today as ‘The Shameful Peace’.
By 1330, the tyranny of Isabella and Mortimer collectively had driven nearly all their supporters who had stood with them in 1326 into opposition, rebellion or exile. The execution of the earl of Kent on 19 March 1330, who was Edward II’s half brother and uncle to Edward III, was a brutal affair and one that will be covered in a future blog post. His demise was the catalyst that forced Edward III to act. On the night of the 19 October 1330, Mortimer was taken by surprise whilst in conference with Isabella and a few intimate associates. He was dragged to London and executed at Tyburn on 29 November by hanging. Isabella was forced into temporary retirement.
After this date, the queen returned to the more traditional role of a Queen Dowager. Despite tradition, Isabella was not hauled up for years at Castle Rising, although the queen did spend a great deal of time there. Nor did she go mad either. In fact the queen continued to live on, dying in 1358. She was later buried in the Franciscan church in Newgate, London. Following the alleged death of Edward II on 21 September 1327, Isabella was given ‘his’ embalmed heart in a silver vase that cost Thomas Berkeley 37s 8d to commission. This vase was interred in the breast of the queen’s effigy, which has long since been lost after the Great Fire of London in 1666.(20) What is to be made of this gesture is open to the widest interpretation and debate and another future blog post.
Isabella’s life is a tale of great drama. Her marriage to Edward II at the young age of twelve in 1308 began reasonably successfully. By 1321, the queen had four children, the affection of her husband and position and power. However the rise of the Despensers, the younger in particular, directly threatened Isabella’s position and status. In the end, her stand in Paris would have a profound impact, and whilst initially designed to bring about the end of the Despenser regime, broadened out unwittingly into something far more sinister and far reaching. The collapse of her marriage, Edward II’s failure to give up his favourites despite all opposition, and the subsequent invasion that followed, led Isabella down a path she could not return. Certainly in a political alliance with Roger Mortimer, it is likely but by no means certain, that the two became lovers. After Edward II’s deposition, the queen tainted her reputation through her own show of avarice and overbearing control over her son. It made her look just as tyrannical as the Despensers. In the end, the last twenty-eight years of her life were traditional for that of a queen dowager, dying in her bed in 1358. The title therefore attributed to her of the ‘She-Wolf of France’ does her much injustice when her life as a whole is laid bare, but her character is not nevertheless without great blemish. In her lifetime, the queen was most certainly a wife, a queen and a rebel.
Notes
(1) Buck, 161. Phillips, 492
(2) Sardos, 177-9
(3) Sardos, 270 – mentions Isabella’s pilgrimage but does not mention Mortimer.
(4) Calendar of Papal Letters, 473
(5) Foedera, 623. CCR, 1323-27, 578
(6) Flores, 231
(7) Mortimer, Ian. The Greatest Traitor, 149
(8) Anonimalle, 127. Ann Paul, 315
(9) Le Baker, 31. Murimuth, 46
(10) Lanercost, 255. Murimuth, 46
(11) Foedera, 614
(12) Phillips, 509
(13) Brut, 237. Buck, 220
(14) Brut, 240
(15) Flores, 234. Ann Paul, 319. Anonimalle, 131. Murimuth, 49
(16) Le Bel, 28. Anonimalle, 131. Ann Paul, 320. Brut, 240. Knighton, 436. Holmes, The Judgement on the Despensers, 263-7
(17) Ann Paul, 320-1
(18) Anonimalle, 131. Ann Paul, 321
(19) Ibid, 324. Anonimalle, 133. Foedera, 650. Select Documents of Constitutional History, 38
(20) The Tomb of Isabella, wife of Edward II of England’, Bulletin of the International Society for the study of Church Monuments, viii (1983), 161-4
Images
Feature Image & Image Two: Isabella lands at Orwell, Suffolk. Jean Froissart. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Ms. Fr. 2643
Image One: Isabella enters the city of Paris, 1325. Jean Froissart. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Ms. Fr. 2643
Image Three: Execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger at Hereford. Jean Froissart. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Ms. Fr. 2643
Image Four: Coronation of Edward III, 1327. Jean Froissart. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, Ms. Fr. 2643
Image Five: A Queen
Facebook: Fourteenthcenturyfiend
Twitter: @SpinksstephenArticles
Unit Testing Lambda Expressions & Streams
Usually, when writing a unit test you call a method in your test code that gets called in your application. Given some inputs and possibly test doubles, you call these methods to test a certain behavior happening and then specify the changes you expect to result from this behavior.
Lambda expressions pose a slightly different challenge when unit testing code. Because they don’t have a name, it’s impossible to directly call them in your test code. You could choose to copy the body of the lambda expression into your test and then test that copy, but this approach has the unfortunate side effect of not actually testing the behavior of your implementation. If you change the implementation code, your test will still pass even though the implementation is performing a different task.
There are two viable solutions to this problem. The first is to view the lambda expression as a block of code within its surrounding method. If you take this approach, you should be testing the behavior of the surrounding method, not the lambda expression itself.
Here’s an example method for converting a list of strings into their uppercase equivalents.
public static List<String> allToUpperCase(List<String> words) { return words.stream().map(string -> string.toUpperCase()).collect(Collectors.toList()); }
The only thing that the lambda expression in this body of code does is directly call a core Java method. It’s really not worth the effort of testing this lambda expression as an independent unit of code at all, since the behavior is so simple.
If I were to unit test this code, I would focus on the behavior of the method. For example, here is a test that if there are multiple words in the stream, they are all converted to their uppercase equivalents.
@Test public void multipleWordsToUppercase() { List<String> input = Arrays.asList("a", "b", "hello"); List<String> result = allToUpperCase(input); assertEquals(asList("A", "B", "HELLO"), result); }
Sometimes you want to use a lambda expression that exhibits complex functionality. Perhaps it has a number of corner cases or a role involving calculating a highly important function in your domain. You really want to test for behavior specific to that body of code, but it’s in a lambda expression and you’ve got no way of referencing it.
As an example problem, let’s look at a method that is slightly more complex than con‐ verting a list of strings to uppercase. Instead, we’ll be converting the first character of a string to uppercase and leaving the rest as is. If we were to write this using streams and lambda expressions, we might write something like the following.
public static List<String> uppercaseFirstChar(List<String> words) { return words.stream().map(value -> { char firstChar = value.charAt(0); firstChar = toUpperCase(firstChar); return firstChar + value.substring(1); }).collect(Collectors.toList()); }
Should we want to test this, we’d need to fire in a list and test the output for every single example we wanted to test. The test below provides an example of how cumbersome this approach becomes. Don’t worry—there is a solution!
@Test public void twoLetterStringConvertedToUppercaseLambdas() { List<String> input = Arrays.asList("ab"); List<String> result = uppercaseFirstChar(input); assertEquals(Arrays.asList("Ab"), result); }
Don’t use a lambda expression! I know that might appear to be strange advice in an article about lambda expressions, but square pegs don’t fit into round holes very well. Having accepted this, we’re bound to ask how we can still unit test our code and have the benefit of lambda-enabled libraries.
Do use method references. Any method that would have been written as a lambda expression can also be written as a normal method and then directly referenced elsewhere in code using method references. In the code below I’ve refactored out the lambda expression into its own method. This is then used by the main method, which deals with converting the list of strings.
public static List<String> uppercaseFirstChar(List<String> words) { return words.stream().map(Testing::firstToUppercase).collect(Collectors.toList()); } public static String firstToUppercase(String value) { char firstChar = value.charAt(0); firstChar = toUpperCase(firstChar); return firstChar + value.substring(1); }
Having extracted the method that actually performs string processing, we can cover all the corner cases by testing that method on its own. The same test case in its new, simplified form is shown here:
@Test public void twoLetterStringConvertedToUppercase() { String input = "ab"; String result = uppercaseFirstChar(input); assertEquals("Ab", result); }
The key takeaway here is that if you want to unit test a lambda expression of serious complexity, extract it to a regular method first. You can then use method references to treat it like a first-class function.
If you want to learn more then please visit our sponsor: Iteratr Learning.
First Class Functions
Java 8 adds functions as a new form of value. What does this mean? Let’s look at a simple example.
Suppose you want to filter all the hidden files in a directory. You need to start writing a method that given a File will tell you whether it is hidden or not. Thankfully there’s such a method inside the File class called isHidden. It can be viewed as a function that takes a File and returns a boolean.
However, to use it you need to wrap it into a FileFilter object that you then pass to the File.listFiles method as follows:
File[] hiddenFiles = new File(".").listFiles(new FileFilter() { public boolean accept(File file) { return file.isHidden(); } });
Ouch, that’s pretty obscure! We already have a function isHidden that we could use, why do we have to wrap it up in a verbose FileFilter object?
In Java 8 you can rewrite that code as follows:
File[] hiddenFiles = new File(".").listFiles(File::isHidden);
Wow! Isn’t that cool? We already have the function isHidden available so we just “pass” it to the listFiles method. Our code now reads closer to the problem statement.
The use of File::isHidden is a rather special case of a new feature called method references in Java 8. Given that methods contain code (the executable body of a method), then using methods as values is like passing code around.The Washington Post is really starting to piss me off. And Politico. And (of course) CNN.
I thought of it when I read Politico's story about how Trump's efforts to catch leakers were having a "chilling effect" on the intelligence community. To which my reaction, of course, was to say "Freakin' A! What did you think it was supposed to do!"
Well, okay, I didn't say "freakin'".
This came out about the same time as the congressional report that there has been a damaging intelligence leak every damned day since Trump was inaugurated.
Some are more important than others, of course -- it was just embarrassing when it was leaked that the U.S. was wiretapping the Russian ambassador (no -- really!?) and a little frustrating when the press leaked that the 35 Russians expelled and the Russian diplomatic facilities closed by Obama were actually doing intelligence collection (gee, no kidding? Have you ever looked at the antenna farms on the roof of the Russian Consulate in San Francisco?).
Some of the leaks were far worse, like confirmation that the Obama administration had been listening to, unmasking, and distributing conversations with thousands of "U.S. Persons." In that case, the damage was to whatever remaining trust Americans might have that the NSA and CIA aren't being used as political arms of the administration; this is a subtle cancer on the legitimacy of either agency. The degree to which "Russian collusion" is still an issue, while this story is not, ought to be a major crisis for the credibility of American media, but I'm afraid that boat has already left the bus station.
The worst of it, though, is the Washington Post story a few days ago:
Obama secretly ordered cyberweapons planted in Russian networks. It will be up to Trump whether to use them. https://t.co/FUlcL79Uq0 — Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) June 23, 2017
Golly, folks at WaPo, does no one see the problem here?
The article starts out:
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Okay, look: if it's so sensitive that it can't be in the presidential daily brief but it's delivered "eyes only" to Obama and three aides, what is it doing in the Washington Post?!
Oh, and just in passing, we have Clapper, Obama, and three aides. Which three aides? You've just told us that someone revealed that information to you, and it pretty much has to be one of those five people. Unless there's a secret pardon for them, one of them just violated the Espionage Act.SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O) is investigating how to charge electric cars, talking to charging station companies and hiring engineers with expertise in the area, according to people familiar with the matter and a review of LinkedIn profiles.
FILE PHOTO - A battery charger sign for electric cars is painted on the ground of a parking ground near the soccer stadium in Wolfsburg, Germany, in this April 6, 2016 file photo. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo
For more than a year, Silicon Valley has been buzzing about Apple’s plan to build an electric car. Now the company appears to be laying the groundwork for the infrastructure and related software crucial to powering such a product.
The moves show Apple responding to a key shortcoming of electric vehicles: “filling up” the batteries. A shortage of public charging stations, and the hours wasted in charging a car, could be an opportunity for Apple, whose simple designs have transformed consumer electronics.
Apple, which has never publicly acknowledged a car project, declined to comment for this story. Neither the LinkedIn profiles nor sources said specifically that Apple was building charging stations for electric cars.
But automotive sources last year told Reuters that Apple was studying a self-driving electric vehicle (EV), as the Silicon Valley icon looks for new sources of revenue amid a maturing market for its iPhone.
Apple is now asking charging station companies about their underlying technology, one person with knowledge of the matter said. The talks, which have not been reported, do not concern charging for electric cars of Apple employees, a service the company already provides. They indicate that Apple is focused on a car, the person added.
Charging firms are treading carefully, the person added, wary of sharing too much with a company they view as a potential rival.
It is unclear whether Apple would want its own proprietary technology, such as Tesla Motors’ (TSLA.O) Supercharger network, or would design a system compatible with offerings from other market players.
Several charging station suppliers contacted by Reuters declined to comment about any dealings with Apple, which typically requires potential partners to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Arun Banskota, president of NRG Energy Inc’s (NRG.N) electric vehicle charging business, EVgo, did not respond directly to questions about Apple, but said repeatedly that his company was “in discussions with every manufacturer of today and every potential manufacturer of tomorrow.”
Apple has hired at least four electric vehicle charging specialists, including former BMW (BMWG.DE) employee Rónán Ó Braonáin, who worked on integrating charging infrastructure into home energy systems as well as communication between EVs, BMW and utilities, according to a LinkedIn review.
As recently as January Apple hired Nan Liu, an engineer who researched a form of wireless charging for electric vehicles, for instance. Quartz earlier this month reported that Apple had hired former Google (GOOGL.O) charging expert Kurt Adelberger.
Electric vehicle charging stations are manufactured, installed and operated under varying business models. Players in the space include Car Charging Group Inc CCGI.PK and privately held ChargePoint, SemaConnect and ClipperCreek, infrastructure companies such as Black & Veatch and AECOM (ACM.N) as well as General Electric (GE.N), Siemens (SIEGn.DE) and Delta Electronics Inc (2308.TW).
The three largest utilities in California also have plans to install charging stations.
CHARGER SHORTFALL
The electric car industry has faced a chicken-and-egg paradox with the installation of charging stations. Property owners have been reluctant to install the stations before EVs hit the road en masse, and drivers are wary of buying EVs until charging stations are widely available.
Apple’s home state of California by 2020 will need about 13 to 25 times the roughly 8,000 work and public chargers it currently has, to support a projected 1 million zero-emission vehicles on the road, according to an estimate by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Tesla recently goosed electric vehicle demand, unveiling its more affordable Model 3 sedan, generating hundreds of thousands of reservations from potential buyers and leading many experts to calculate the number of EVs will soon outstrip the charging station supply.
Slideshow (4 Images)
Tesla has led the way with a proprietary network for customers, who also can use public chargers. Tesla’s more than 600 “Supercharger” stations juice up a car in about 30 minutes, more than twice as fast as the standard “fast charger,” called Level 2.
One global engineering and construction firm already has reached out to Apple to offer its services, a person at the firm said.
“It would be natural to assume if Apple is going to have a full battery electric vehicle that creates a seamless consumer experience the way Apple does, the charging infrastructure and its availability would be of paramount importance,” the source said.A new record was set last week when the share of U.S. rigs drilling for natural gas fell to only 32%, which was the lowest percentage since Baker Hughes started keeping records of the oil/gas split in 1987 (see chart above). The previous record low share of rigs drilling for natural gas was 32.5% in September 1987. As natural gas prices keep falling to record lows at the same time that oil prices are rising, the industry has shifted drilling activities from gas to oil, bringing the share of rigs drilling for oil from below 20% as recently as May 2009 to a record high of 68% last week.This shift from gas to oil drilling illustrates how the price system transmits valuable information about relative scarcity, and brings about an automatic reallocation of productive resources by suppliers in response to price changes. The power of the market, the invisible hand, and the profit motive in action....It remains a possibility that Dempsey could return to action during one of the club's preseason matches, though general manager Garth Lagerwey stressed that he's not quite there yet.
Sounders forward Clint Dempsey has been medically cleared to return to training, participating in team drills during the opening morning of the club’s 2017 preseason on Tuesday at Starfire Sports in Tukwila.
Dempsey has been out since last August after an irregular heartbeat was detected following Seattle’s home win over rival Portland late that month. The 33-year-old temporarily returned to the practice field in September, having undergone an unspecified procedure in the meantime, only to get officially shut down for the season a few weeks later.
“We still have some steps to get through, but he’s continuing to progress,” Seattle general manager Garth Lagerwey said Tuesday. “We’re happy with his progression. We’re happy with his attitude. We’re happy with how far we’ve come. We’re excited about what the future may hold.”
Dempsey, the club’s highest paid and highest profile player, was spotted doing jogging and light drills throughout the team’s run to MLS Cup at the end of last season, but Tuesday marked the first time he’d returned to anything close to full participation.
It remains a possibility that Dempsey could return to action during one of the club’s preseason matches, though Lagerwey stressed that he’s not quite there yet.
“The doctors have said it’s OK for him to train,” Lagerwey said. “We’ll continue to check in with them as we continue to progress him back. He’s a veteran player. He hasn’t played a competitive match in six months. There are real fitness concerns around him getting back into form and sharpness and doing so in a healthy manner. That’s what we’re going to be monitoring.”
Seattle kicks off its regular season on March 4 at the Houston Dynamo, with its home opener following two weekends later against the New York Red Bulls. Also of note: the U.S. men’s national team continues its World Cup qualifying campaign on March 24 against Honduras, heading to Panama four days later.
“He is healthy enough to train,” Lagerwey said. “That has been determined. But as I said, we’ve still got some milestones to hit along the way as we continue to progress with him. I don’t want to set any expectations, because we either will hit them or we won’t. We aren’t prepared to put any more structure on it than that.”
The Sounders will continue to train locally through Friday before departing for the Desert Friendlies in Tucson, Ariz., on Sunday.
“(Dempsey) looked pretty good,” Seattle coach Brian Schmetzer said. “He’s on a timeline, on his program. As a coach, I’m just happy to have him out here and hope to still see it progress.
“It’s not up to me, but I will say to you that everybody here hopes to see that timeline trend in a positive direction. But you never know. We don’t want to set any realistic expectations.”A few weeks ago, NFL Network's Tom Pelissero reported that Andrew Luck was progressing in his throwing program. From offseason surgery, it has been a long grind to reformulate his throwing motion and increase the strength in his throwing shoulder.
During the team's Week 1 preseason game against the Lions, both owner Jim Irsay and general manager Chris Ballard confirmed that Luck was at least throwing in some capacity.
But as we sit here, less than two weeks before the Colts' season opener against the Los Angeles Rams, head coach Chuck Pagano has told reporters that he hasn't seen Luck throw a pass yet.
"No," Pagano said, via The Indianapolis Star. "Most of the time he's in the training room, we're in meetings, doing such. I kind of stay in my lane."
When told by a reporter from the Star that it was hard to believe Pagano had not seen his quarterback throw, the coach had this:
"You're entitled to whatever you want to believe."
Video of the exchange is here. Pagano is smiling nearly the entire time which complicates any interpretation. There's a good chance he's simply tired of the Luck questions, which have been relentless since the quarterback's surgery in January.
As difficult as it is for Colts fans to accept that they won't see Luck until they see him, that might be their only option at this point. What other way is there to ask someone when he'll be ready? As just about everyone around the organization has said publicly, this is about way more than the season opener, and when it comes to the muscles which your franchise quarterback uses to throw a football, one can never be too careful.Libertarian leader Jeffrey Tucker, CEO of Liberty.me and publisher of Laissez Faire Books, shared with Bitcoin Magazine his views on how Bitcoin is NOT a monetary system.
Bitcoin Is Not a Monetary System
By Jeffrey Tucker
Every since I started writing about cryptocurrency last Spring, my inbox has become a hub for Bitcoin questions. I completely understand – even to me it’s still the most implausible idea ever that some code-slinging, nameless geek somewhere could somehow invent a new currency made from 1s and 0s, throw it out there on an open forum, and (in a mere five years), it would obtain a market capitalization worth nearly $10 billion.
What does it all mean? Well, it took me some serious study to figure out how all the technologies hang together and why. Understanding Bitcoin requires knowledge of monetary theory, open-source programming, distributed networks, cryptography, and process-oriented software development — and that’s quite a big undertaking. This accounts for why people are so confused as to how a protocol could become the basis of a new global monetary order.
However, I actually don’t think that a lack of technical knowledge really accounts for why even some very smart people are having a hard time making sense of the success of Bitcoin. A hint towards the answer came in an email from a correspondent who asked me a particular question about how contracts and accounting will work once Bitcoin “is implemented as a currency.”
I got stuck on the word “implemented.” That’s the core of the fallacy; and, again, it is completely understandable. Hayek wrote in 1974 that governments have owned and managed monetary systems for many hundreds of years, even back to the ancient world: the coin of the realm has been seen as a government responsibility. In the 19th century, all governments were expected to implement a system that best met the needs of the population.
In the 20th century, government took this idea much further. It would not just print the money, it would not just oversee the system and determine what constituted money, no – it would use ‘science’ to find the optimal money-creation rate and cartelize the banking system to make sure that it was exactly as it should be. Every aspect of the money system — and we are talking about half of every economic transaction — would be overseen by the state in conjunction with private partners in industry.
And so it has been for all these years. No living person remembers a time when money had any existence outside public management. In effect, all governments of the world made money a socialistically owned good. And what happened? It became a tool of politics; it declined in quality, buying less and less in terms of goods and services; in effect, it became the main means of funding the expansion of power over liberty.
The emergence of cryptocurrency smashes that paradigm entirely. “Satoshi Nakamoto” never asked for anyone’s permission to release his code-based model for the ideal currency, he didn’t submit a working paper to the National Bureau of Economic Research, he didn’t meet with Federal Reserve economists, testify to the Senate Banking Committee, or get the ear of the chairman of the Fed. He went straight to the public.
He bypassed the entire structure of power and released it on a distributed network. He invited the world to participate. In other words, he was not proposing a system at all, it is not a top-down plan for monetary reform. We’ve seen scads of those — thousands upon thousands — emerge over the last hundred years. None of them have come to anything. You can talk about monetary rules, policy reforms, audits, and exchange rate fixes all you want, but here is the grim reality: government owns the money and it will use it to serve its ends.
That’s why a totally different approach was necessary: the free market. The free market is not a system, it is not a policy dictated by anyone in particular, it is not something that Washington implements, it does not exist in any legislation, law, bill, regulation, or book. It is what you get when people act on their own, entirely without central direction, and with their own property, and within human associations of their own creation and in their own interest. It is the beauty that emerges in absence of control.
Does that sound like anarchy? It struck Karl Marx that way. What he did not understand was the central insight of the liberal revolution of the 18th century: society can manage itself and create its own beautiful order without any central control. Bitcoin is a paradigmatic example, but only one of a million now emerging all over the world.
Who or what is chronicling these revolutionary developments and plotting to push them further as a means of achieving greater freedom in our own lives, and therefore in society as a whole |
drive homers, including a 2.7% homer rate on 100-105 mph liners. It will also yield some three-base hits, with a 145 triples PF to date this season.
Kansas City
A well-established pitchers’ park, Kaufmann Stadium has an 80 HR PF this season, and only its singles PF is above 100. Only 39.4% of 100-105 and 10.1% of 95-100 mph fly balls have left the building thus far.
Los Angeles of Anaheim
If you hit a fly ball over 100 mph, you have about an MLB average chance to ride it out of this yard. Angel Stadium gives away no cheapies, however: only 10.9% of 95-100 mph homers have left the building to date, driving its fairly typical 88 2B and 95 HR PF through 8/21.
Minnesota
Target Field is not an easy home-run park; only 38.7% of 100-105 and 13.1% of 95-100 mph fly balls through 8/21 cleared the wall. It does qualify as a slightly hitter-friendly park overall thanks to its penchant for giving up doubles (109 2B PF this far in 2016).
New York
Neither the Yankees nor their opponents have hit the ball very hard this season, but the usage of granular data to create park factors in this manner makes it clear that Yankee Stadium is still a hitters’ park. It’s all about the homers here, as singles, doubles and triples totals are deflated. The actual homer rates for 100-105 mph (55.3%), 95-100 mph (26.2%) — and even 90-95 mph (10.2%) — fly balls far outpace MLB norms. There are plenty of cheapies to be had down both lines.
Oakland
O.Co Coliseum is the only park in the AL that has deflated singles, doubles, triples and homers this season. Only 40.3% of 100-105 mph and 9.5% of 95-100 mph fly balls have cleared the wall there this season.
Seattle
A few years back, the fences were moved in fairly substantially at Safeco Field in an attempt to make the formerly extreme pitchers’ park more neutral. Mission accomplished. The homer rates on 100-105 mph (48.7%) and 95-100 mph (14.9%) fly balls are almost exactly league average. Interestingly, an underrated aspect of the park’s new configuration is the lowering of the left-field fence. Twelve line-drive homers have been hit this season, with unusually high homer rates on 105-110 mph (5.9%) and 100-105 mph liners (3.3%).
Tampa Bay
Tropicana Field is, on balance, a pitchers’ park, though it will give up some homers. Its singles, doubles and triples PFs are under 100 this season, with the HR PF narrowly above average at 101.
Texas
A tried-and-true hitters’ park due to its susceptibility to the home run. Its homer rates on 100-105 mph (56.4%) and 95-100 mph (18.5%) fly balls are both well above MLB average.
Toronto
Rogers Centre has a largely undeserved reputation as a hitters’ park. Yes, the park gives up plenty of homers, but that’s largely due to the cast of characters who play there. The hardest fly balls and the second-hardest set of BIP altogether have been hit in Toronto this season. The homer rates on 100-105 mph (45.4%) and 95-100 mph (14.1%) fly balls have both been unremarkable.Iron Edda
As part of the recent Kickstarter for Apotheosis Drive X, I pitched a setting idea - Bones of the Earth: Norse mythology meets giant mechs. The idea won't leave me alone. I decided to take the setting hack and make it into something more. It became Iron Edda.
And as part of Iron Edda, I'm writing this novel.
Sveidsdottir
Within Sigrid burns the spirit of the Valkyrie, Sveid. Sigrid travels to the ends of Midgard to protect what she holds dear. She learns from the women in her life what it means to carry the spirit of a Valkyrie, what it means to truly be called Sveidsdottir.
The novel is broken into nine vignettes, each focusing on Sigrid's interactions with a specific woman - friends, lover, mother, fellow warriors. Each one in some way reflects the spirit of Sveid and will teach Sigrid a vital lesson, if she's willing to listen.
The Vignettes
I. Sigird
The opening of the novel focuses on Sigrid's decision to leave her family and clan to become one of the Bonebonded. Sigrid feels that the only way to win in the war against the dwarves is to bond her spirit to the bones of a giant and fight.
Want a sample? Here are the first 1,000 words of this vignette!
II. Rin
Rin Hagrimsdottir is Sigrid's friend and lover. This vignette takes us back, through the tumultuous day before Sigrid's decision to become Bonebonded. Their love will be tested. Will it survive?
III. Sabina
An outlander held as a thrall by a warrior in Sigrid's new clan, Sabina struggles with the life she has in Midgard. She believes in nothing but her eventual freedom. She is determined to earn it, whatever the cost.
IV. Oddveig
Oddveig is a clan warrior fighting alongside Sigrid in the war against the dwarves. She has sacrificed much through the years. It is her fervent prayer that her final sacrifice will be enough to earn her a place in Valhalla.
V. Marsa
The wife of the Jarl, Marsa knows the meaning of the word duty better than most. Marsa will be tested when her duty to fight for the good of her people is matched against her duty to her husband.
VI. Freya, the Shipwright
This character was voted on by the backers when the campaign hit $2,500. As such she's not fleshed out yet, but this takes the novel in a direction that involves ships, assuredly. Sailing? Reaving? The patience it takes to craft a vessel? We'll find out! The point is, the backers, you made this choice and have had a direct impact on the novel. Thank you!
VII. Krelga Ravensdottir, the Seer
This was the second backer-voted character. It also means that the campaign is FUNDED! That's amazing. And as part of this character being unlocked, I decided this: The character for the 8th backer vote will be a trans* character. I think it's important to really be inclusive when I say inclusive.
Decide Sigrid's Fate
When you back this project, you get a say in how the novel develops. When we reach certain milestones, you'll have an opportunity to vote on the direction of the novel and the people that Sigrid will encounter in the final four vignettes. This is in addition to the backer tiers that allow you to work with me to include characters in the book.
I want this to be our project.
The Agenda
I feel that minorities of all types are underrepresented in fantasy literature, and I hope that Sveidsdottir can help change that in some small way. There are characters of various races, creeds, and sexual orientations represented, including Sigrid, who is gay. As well, this novel is a work of fantasy. It is influenced by Norse culture, but does not conform to all of the cultural norms of that time or place.
The Team
To make sure that this project meets the professional standards that I have come to expect in my work, I've gathered a team of talented individuals to help me make this novel a reality.
Me: My name is Tracy, and I'm a writer. I've successfully Kickstarted and funded two tabletop roleplaying games: The ENnie Award-winning School Daze and the vengeance-fueled One Shot. This project is an extension of my RPG work, but is taking my efforts in a new direction. I've always wanted to write a novel; with this setting, I've found the place to do it.
Editor: Amanda Valentine - Amanda's years of editing experience include several award winning roleplaying games. She has a discerning eye and an amazing willingness to work with an author to make each project exactly what it should be. In addition to helping me polish my words, she also understands my agenda with this novel.
Cover: Ravven - Ravven's work speaks for itself, as you can see above. She has a keen eye for detail, and she clearly understands both strength and femininity. That combination will be very important when it comes to representing what Sveidsdottir stands for. Her work, very simply, rocks.
World Map: Jonathan of Fantastic Maps - A beautiful map of the world is a valuable resource in a fantasy novel. For Sveidsdottir, I want a black & white, line drawn map, similar to the maps in Tolkien's and Jordan's novels. Jonathan does amazing work, including a full color series for Game of Thrones. He is precise, detailed, and I'm delighted to be working with him.
As well, the video you saw was produced by the amazing Jeremy Keller, with art by Lance MacCarty. I can't thank them enough for their work.
The (Stretch) Goal(s)
The funding goal for this project is $5,500. That covers all of the costs for Sveidsdottir to be produced in eBook form. During that process, as we meet funding milestones, the backers will get to vote on the direction of the novel. Once funding is met, a series of stretch goals will help this project climb ever higher.
$2,500: The First Vote
This is the first milestone for backer voting. Here, you will get to choose the focus character for the sixth vignette. UNLOCKED! The character is Freya, the Shipwright!
$5,500: FUNDED! The Second Vote
At this goal, the project will be released! As well, you get to choose the focus character for the seventh vignette. UNLOCKED! Survey has been sent out!
$7,500: The Third Vote
This is where the vote for the eighth vignette happens. As well, once we hit this mark, I'll commission brand-new art inspired by Iron Edda and Sveidsdottir. It will be suitable for computer wallpapers and will be used to promote Sveidsdottir once the book is published. All backers will get this art. UNLOCKED
$10,000: The Fourth Vote & Bones of the Earth!
Here, you get to vote on the focus character for the ninth and final vignette. When we reach this goal, every backer receives a PDF copy of the game supplement that started it all: Bones of the Earth. This alternate setting for Apotheosis Drive X uses Fate Core, which is pay-what-you-want on DriveThruRPG. Now you can weave your own stories in Midgard!According to a report out of Taiwan, HTC might be the next brand to jump into the Nexus arena with a brand new tablet scheduled for a Q3 2014 unveiling.
Despite rumors that suggest that the Nexus line could be discontinued, it seems strange to think that Google would end a product line that serves so many purposes. First, it provides pure Android devices for developers, tinkers and Android purists. Second, low pricing allows many of us to get our hands on a high-end Android experience at an affordable price. And lastly, it brings additional exposure to Android manufacturers.
If a new rumor from Taiwan proves correct, HTC will be the next brand to benefit from releasing a Nexus device.
The last point has been most important for brands like Asus and LG. The Nexus 7 line has been rather successful at getting Asus’ products out there onto the market, in a way its own tablets haven’t been able to do. For LG, the success of the Nexus 4 brought more attention to the company and we’ve seen quite a few solid devices from LG since then including the LG Optimus G Pro, LG G2 and the Nexus 5.
If a new rumor from Taiwan proves correct, HTC will be the next brand to benefit from releasing a Nexus device. According to Focus Taiwan, citing Commercial Times, HTC has won the bid for manufacturing a high-end Nexus tablet, which will ship sometime in Q3 2014. It’s unknown if HTC will be creating a successor to the Nexus 10, the Nexus 7 or perhaps something new altogether.
Considering HTC hasn’t been involved in the tablet game for years, this would certainly be an interesting move — if it’s true. Of course, there’s a strong possibility this rumor is bogus, and circumspection is highly advised. HTC declined to comment on the report, though that’s standard practice in this type of situation.
If the rumor is true, an HTC Nexus 10 or even an HTC Nexus 7 could go a long ways in helping HTC attract new fans. If such a tablet followed the design guidelines we’ve seen with the HTC One, this could also be one gorgeous looking device.
What do you think, would you like to see HTC take a stab at a new Nexus tablet? Is this what HTC needs in order to really jettison the company back into the spotlight?The ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee says that he is worried Republicans are planning to dissolve the committee's Russia probe at the end of the year, blasting Republicans for failing to issue subpoenas or schedule witness interviews in the new year.
Rep. Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffHouse Democrats file legislation to ensure Mueller report released Hannity echoes Bill Maher, invites Schiff to appear on show Curtain rises on 3 days of Cohen drama MORE (D-Calif.) tweeted Friday that he believes Republicans in House leadership are planning to shut down the investigation after holding just enough interviews to give the illusion of a full investigation.
"I’m increasingly worried Republicans will shut down the House Intelligence Committee investigation at the end of the month," Schiff tweeted. "Republicans have scheduled no witnesses after next Friday and none in 2017 [sic]. We have dozens of outstanding witnesses on key aspects of our investigation that they refuse to contact and many document requests they continue to sit on."
ADVERTISEMENT
The New York Times reported Friday that the committee is scheduling its final witnesses of the year to testify in New York, despite important votes coming up in Washington, D.C., and confirmed no additional witnesses are scheduled yet in 2018.
"It appears Republicans want to conduct just enough interviews to give the impression of a serious investigation," Schiff charged.
Rep. Trey Gowdy Harold (Trey) Watson GowdyThe family secret Bruce Ohr told Rod Rosenstein about Russia case Trey Gowdy joins Fox News as a contributor Congress must take the next steps on federal criminal justice reforms MORE (S.C.), a senior Republican on the committee, denied to the Times that the investigation is definitively over, saying it would wrap up naturally.
“I feel no need to apologize for concluding an investigation,” Gowdy told the Times.
I’m increasingly worried Republicans will shut down the House Intelligence Committee investigation at the end of the month.
Here’s why: — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 15, 2017
It appears Republicans want to conduct just enough interviews to give the impression of a serious investigation. — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 15, 2017
In subsequent tweets, Schiff warned that attacks on the integrity of Robert Mueller's special counsel office are a warning sign that could mean Republicans in Congress and the White House are planning on targeting that investigation as well.
The House Intelligence Committee, as well as Mueller, are conducting separate probes into Russian election interference and possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.
"Beyond our investigation, here’s what has me really concerned: The attacks on Mueller, [Justice Department] and FBI this week make it clear they plan to go after Mueller’s investigation," he tweeted. "Aggressively and soon."
"By shutting down the congressional investigations when they continue to discover new and important evidence, the White House can exert tremendous pressure to end or curtail Mueller’s investigation or cast doubt on it," Schiff concluded. "We cannot let that happen."
Schiff also blasted Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Davis RyanBrexit and exit: A transatlantic comparison Five takeaways from McCabe’s allegations against Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race MORE (R-Wis.), saying the responsibility to ensure the House conducts a thorough investigation ultimately falls on him.
The responsibility to conduct a thorough investigation, or to prevent one, ultimately falls on @SpeakerRyan. I’m concerned he's heeding the calls of Bannon and @POTUS to “DO SOMETHING” by closing down the Russia investigation & opening up another investigation of Hilary Clinton. — Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 15, 2017
Speculation has swirled for weeks over whether President Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE would fire Mueller as the special counsel investigation ensnares several former members of the Trump campaign.
In November, former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. The month before, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and a business associate were charged with money laundering and fraud under Mueller's probe.
Leadership on the House Intelligence Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.“Hiding in Plain Sight,” a first-of-its kind investigation in Vermont by the group Everytown for Gun Safety, monitored guns for sale on three primary websites by unlicensed sellers. (Photo: File photo)
A three-month undercover sting operation shows an estimated 126 firearms are being transferred annually to legally unauthorized persons in Vermont through unchecked Internet sales.
"Hiding in Plain Sight," a first-of-its kind investigation in Vermont by the group Everytown for Gun Safety, monitored guns for sale on three primary websites, according to a copy of the report.
The group also posted 24 guns for sale on Armslist.com between July 28 and Oct. 9 and developed a list of 169 potential buyers seeking guns online through unlicensed sales, the report notes.
Investigators hired by Everytown conducted criminal record cheeks by searching court records in the geographic area where the potential buyer voluntarily listed his or her address, the report said.
Seven of the 169 people were prohibited by law from possessing firearms.
"At this prevalence, gun sale transacted on just three websites put an estimated 126 guns into the hands of felons and domestic abusers in Vermont — and likely many more — in this year alone," the report said.
Subscribe to the Burlington Free Press
The investigation uncovered convicted drug dealers and domestic abusers that would be denied firearms if they attempted to buy them through a licensed gun dealer, the report shows. Investigators also were seeking domestic violence misdemeanors, protections orders or bench warrants, the report said.
The potential gun buyers ranged from 18 to 76 years old. Four percent (seven of 169 persons) were women.
The report also noted that nearly one-third (31.5 percent) of guns recovered by police at Vermont crime scenes had been purchased within the previous two years.
The disclosures come as the top Democratic Senate leadership is preparing Vermont legislation that would try to curtail guns from getting into the hands of criminals, domestic abusers and the seriously mentally ill without a background check.
President Pro Tempore John Campbell, D-Windsor, Majority Leader Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden and Assistant Leader Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison say the proposed state law would mirror some federal gun laws. It would allow the state to prosecute gun cases that sometimes cannot be handled by federal authorities.
Vermont cases
Everytown for Gun Safety said its review of Vermont court records shows among the attempted gun buyers uncovered in the sting were:
• A 27-year-old convicted drug trafficker in central Vermont with a history of making threats with firearms. He responded to an ad offering an AK-47 and also expressed interest in any handguns the seller had available.
He told an investigators that he had drugs ripped by another person and that he chased him around town, ramming his car, noting that "if he had a gun he would have shot the guy because he had nothing to lose."
• A 55-year-old Huntington man, who court records show brutally attacked his wife and repeatedly threatened to kill her by choking. The man responded between Aug. 7 and Oct. 10 to seven gun ads, including a Glock 40mm, a Ruger 9mm and a Kel-Tec.380.
• A twice-convicted cocaine dealer in Bennington with a history of exchanging guns for drugs. The 36 year-old man responded to five gun advertisements between July 29 and Oct. 21.
•A 32-year-old domestic abuser in St. Albans, who also was a fugitive from justice in Nebraska. The man, who has been in trouble with the law more than a dozen times, attempted to buy a Glock 30 semiautomatic handgun.
Everytown for Gun Safety said it believes that one in 24 people in Vermont trying to buy or trade for a gun online is prohibited from legally having a gun.
That is six times higher than the share of Vermonters that attempt to buy a gun through a licensed dealer and fail a background check.
Vermont has 366 federally licensed gun dealers as of Tuesday, according to Special Agent Christopher J. Arone of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Everytown, which had the numbers of licenses closer to 320, noted more than 991/ 2 percent of Vermonters live within 10 miles of a federally licensed dealer.
Since 1998 federal law has required licensed gun dealers to run background checks before completing the sale.
"But guns offered in unlicensed sales or trades — which account for the majority of transactions in Vermont's vast online market for firearms — do not require background checks," the report notes.
"This gives criminals an open door to evade the public safety measures designed to keep guns out of dangerous hands."
The Everytown report also notes that Vermont law does allow for private sales at guns shows without background checks. Some gun sale organizers say they do offer background checks as a service.
Everytown said licensed gun dealers in Vermont ran 371,564 background checks for proposed gun sales, but 3,034 were blocked because they had committed a felony, a domestic violence crime, or was otherwise prohibited from possessing guns, the group said.
Everytown for Gun Safety was formed in April 2013 in a marriage of two groups. Mayors Against Illegal Guns was founded by Mayors Michael Bloomberg of New York City and Thomas Menino of Boston in 2006. It grew into more than 1,000 current and former mayors.
The second group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America formed the day after the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut in December 2012.
The Everytown group did one other statewide sting last year in Washington.
The three Vermont senators said they have been working hard to get the wording right and to address the needs of Vermonters. The proposed bill could be made public as early as this week.
Campbell told the Free Press last week that the Democratic proposal will not set up any registry or collection of personal information.
Last week a Brattleboro-based group, Gun Sense Vermont held a news conference supporting many of the elements the Democratic leaders have proposed.
They delivered to state senators 1,000 personal letters in support of criminal background checks and a petition to Gov. Peter Shumlin with 12,000 signatures.
For more information check vermont.everytown.org
Read or Share this story: http://bfpne.ws/1JayqE7On Saturday, 40 police recruits had been returning to their homes, also in Waygal district, when they were kidnapped by Taliban insurgents as they crossed through Capa Dara district in the Pech Valley area, which is in Kunar Province close to the Nuristan border.
While the Taliban are present in a majority of districts in Afghanistan, the capture of administrative centers in the districts is relatively rare. Last year, the Taliban seized control of another mountainous district in northern Nuristan, Barg-e-Matal, and American troops had to be brought in to restore it to Afghan control.
Waygal district, mountainous and lightly populated with about 50,000 residents, is normally reached by traversing the Pech Valley, and has been under control of only the Afghan National Police. American troops began a two-month withdrawal from their hard-fought positions in the Pech Valley in February, to be replaced by an Afghan National Army corps as part of a counterinsurgency strategy to concentrate coalition troops in population centers.
Previously, however, the Pech Valley area was regarded as an important infiltration route from Pakistan for the Taliban and their allies from Al Qaeda, and has long been used as a redoubt for guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan. There have been concerns that withdrawing from it risked handing the insurgents propaganda opportunities and new havens.
“There have been no Afghan National Army or NATO forces present in the Waygal district for the past four years,” said General Zahid.
Photo
“This shows first of all the incompetence and inefficiency of the Afghan government,” said Parween Nuristani, a member of the Afghan Parliament from Waygal. “Because there are no security forces there, the armed opposition and foreign fighters including Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens have now overrun the district center.”
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Ms. Nuristani said her constituents had been calling her to report that many of the insurgents now in control were speaking foreign languages, suggesting they were members either of Al Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban.
Mr. Mujahid said the insurgents surrounded the district seat late Monday night, and by morning had subdued it, capturing 12 policemen and seizing 19 truckloads of equipment and supplies.
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.
“Recently the invaders’ big General Petraeus talked about improvements in Afghanistan, but our recent successful operation has shown that our mujahedeen can launch a big operation with high morale, and defeat the security forces of an entire district, which shows the falseness of General Petraeus’s claims,” Mr. Mujahid said, referring to the top United States and NATO commander, General David H. Petraeus.
“The Taliban still retain the ability to initiate attacks in isolated areas with short-term success,” said a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Lt. Col. John L. Dorrian. “However, their momentum has been reversed in key areas of the country, including what had been sanctuaries in Helmand and Kandahar.
“As the size and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces continue to grow, such ‘successes’ will be short-lived,” he added.Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York sent a letter to Speaker Boehner John Andrew BoehnerEx-GOP lawmaker joins marijuana trade group Crowley, Shuster moving to K Street On unilateral executive action, Mitch McConnell was right — in 2014 MORE on Thursday urging the House to pass immigration reform legislation by the end of the year.
“The House has a responsibility to debate and attempt to resolve public policy issues that challenge the nation. Immigration is a challenge that has confounded our nation for years, with little action from our federally elected officials. It is a matter of great moral urgency that cannot wait any longer for action,” Dolan wrote in the letter.
ADVERTISEMENT
Dolan serves as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has significant pull on Capitol Hill.
In the letter, Dolan wrote that the House should pass immigration reform “as soon as possible, ideally prior to the end of the calendar year."
President Obama pressed GOP lawmakers in a statement from the White House last month to do the same, and said he’s open to accepting any immigration legislation as long as it includes a path to citizenship.
Keeping undocumented workers as a permanent underclass, Dolan wrote, is a “stain on the soul of our nation."
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who is Catholic, has not indicated any intentions to move forward on any particular legislation that aims to overhaul the current system. He has repeatedly rejected calls to take up the Senate-passed Gang of Eight bill from June.
Outside groups are also ramping up pressure on Boehner and his Republican caucus. The AFL-CIO and SEIU launched TV ad blitzes on the issue this week, which are airing in D.C. and a number of congressional districts with vulnerable Republicans and large Hispanic populations.
Three House Republicans recently signed onto Democratic Rep. Joe Garcia’s (Fla.) immigration reform bill — Jeff Denham (Calif.), David Valadao (Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.).
In September, Dolan wrote in an op-ed for the New York Daily News that Congress had a “once-in-a-generation chance” to pass immigration reform and fix a broken system.
“Some politicians and policy makers continue to believe that a large number of immigrants who have built lives for themselves in our country nonetheless don't really wish to become a part of America,” Dolan wrote last week in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.
He argued immigrants would show their commitment to America, if they’re offered a way to become citizens.
“The church will keep pouring resources into helping immigrants demonstrate that commitment, something our leaders should keep in mind as they debate what will become of these Americans in the making.”compile c++ clang online Language: Ada Assembly Bash C# C++ (gcc) C++ (clang) C++ (vc++) C (gcc) C (clang) C (vc) Client Side Common Lisp D Elixir Erlang F# Fortran Go Haskell Java Javascript Kotlin Lua MySql Node.js Ocaml Octave Objective-C Oracle Pascal Perl Php PostgreSQL Prolog Python Python 3 R Ruby Scala Scheme Sql Server Swift Tcl Visual Basic Editor: CodeMirror EditArea Simple Layout: Vertical Horizontal #include <utility> #include <iterator> /* Demonstrates the synthesis of a reverse iterator while calling rbegin() on a container * that doesn't already define one. */ void deduce_reverse_iterator (...); template <typename C, typename ReverseItr = typename C::reverse_iterator> ReverseItr deduce_reverse_iterator (C&, ReverseItr* = 0); template <typename ReverseItr> struct reverse_iterator_traits { template <typename C> inline static auto get_rbegin (C& c) -> decltype (c.rbegin()) { return c.rbegin(); } }; template <> struct reverse_iterator_traits<void> { template <typename C> inline static auto get_rbegin (C& c) -> std::reverse_iterator<decltype (c.end())> { return std::reverse_iterator<decltype (c.end())>(c.end()); } }; template <typename C> inline auto rbegin (C& c) -> decltype (reverse_iterator_traits<decltype (deduce_reverse_iterator (c))> ::get_rbegin(c)) { return reverse_iterator_traits<decltype (deduce_reverse_iterator (c))> ::get_rbegin(c); } int hack[] = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}; struct A { int* end() { return hack + 5; } }; struct B { using reverse_iterator = int*; reverse_iterator rbegin() { return hack + 2; } int* end() { return hack + 5; } }; #include <iostream> #include <string> int main() { A ax; B bx; std::string s = "Hello world"; std::cout << *rbegin(s) << std::endl; std::cout << *rbegin(ax) << std::endl; /* Will utilise B::reverse_iterator (int*) and (deliberately) go the wrong way */ std::cout << *rbegin(bx) << std::endl; } clang++ Show compiler warnings [ + ] Compiler args [ + ] Show input Compilation time: 0.73 sec, absolute running time: 0.14 sec, cpu time: 0 sec, memory peak: 3 Mb, absolute service time: 0.88 sec edit mode | history d 5 3People who knew Don Van Vliet said he had strange gifts, and I’m not talking about his musical talents. Lester Bangs told this story:
Once in Detroit I walked into a theatre through the back door while he was onstage performing. At the precise moment I stepped to the edge of the curtains on stage right, where I could see him haranguing the audience, he said, very clearly, “Lester!” His back was to me at the time. Later he asked me if I had noticed it. I was a little shaken.
And the music historian and critic Robert Palmer reported:
Sitting in the Manhattan living room of the guitarist Gary Lucas, who is the Magic Band’s newest member, Don Van Vliet shut his eyes, squinted, and said, “It’s going to ring.” The telephone rang as if on cue. Mr. Lucas laughed nervously and said that sort of thing happens all the time.
Palmer was one of a number of journalists who met with Van Vliet at Lucas’ apartment in the autumn and winter of 1980. Van Vliet was giving interviews there on the night of December 8 when John Lennon was shot outside the Dakota. Lucas recalls :
In the middle of an interview, at eight or nine o’clock as I remember, Don said, “Wait a minute, man, did you hear that?’ He put his hand over his ear, but we didn’t hear anything. He said, “Something really heavy just went down. I can’t tell you what it is exactly, but you will read about it on the front page of the newspapers tomorrow.” We said, “Well, what?” and he said, “I dunno.” Then the guy left and another journalist came. We were in the middle of another interview and about eleven, the first guy called me and said, “Did you hear the news? Something just happened, John Lennon was shot.” And I couldn’t believe it. It really seemed like Don predicted this. So I told him and he just looked at me and went, “See? Didn’t I tell you?” That was really eerie.
Richard “Midnight Hatsize” Snyder, the Magic Band member who played bass, marimba and viola on Ice Cream for Crow, gave a similar account of that evening’s events in a 1996 interview:
While we were in New York, Don was being interviewed by some magazine on the night that John Lennon was killed. At one point during the interview, Don stopped speaking, closed his eyes and then opened them again, saying to the interviewer: “Something big is happening tonight—something horrible. You’ll read about it in your papers tomorrow.” Knowing full well that the doubting Thomases among you will say: “Ah, yes—but he wasn’t specific about the event. The way the world is, you could say something like that any day and still be right more times than not.” Nevertheless, it was the strangest coincidence—if indeed, that was all it was.
A Beefheart fan who was in the audience at the Captain’s Irving Plaza show the following night writes that Van Vliet opened the set with a soprano sax solo, which he dedicated to Sean Lennon: “That was from John, through Don, for Sean.”
For his part, Lennon was a fan of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s debut album, Safe As Milk. Note the “Safe As Milk” stickers prominently displayed on the cabinet doors in the sunroom of Kenwood, the house where Lennon lived from 1964 to 1968.
Below, video of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s set at the Mudd Club on December 10, 1980:Good evening, America.
We are living in grim times, ladies and gentlemen, grim times indeed. Our freedom as Americans is being threatened, and as usual, it is up to me, Jack Gelbe, to mobilize a force to fix this mess. The legalization of marijuana is an insult to this great country, and the thought that this plague may spread to our beautiful campus appalls me.
It’s incredibly simple: SAY NO TO DRUGS. Then again, if you’re talking to drugs, you’re probably on drugs.
Marijuana is literally the worst thing to happen to America since the socialist revolution, a.k.a ObamaCare. Some people trivialize the issue, saying that pot is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, but then again, I’m not the president. Marijuana is just as harmful as any drug out there, including cocaine, heroin and rubber cement.
Just one puff can ruin your life. One in 10 Gucci Manes have been imprisoned for pot possession marijuana. Do you know why the Beatles made that song, “Lucy in the Sky?” She was avoiding the pot users on earth.
Please, somebody think about the kids! First legalizing marijuana, then what? Letting our poor children stomp their cleats on each other’s faces? Teaching them to communicate through terrorist fist jabs instead of all-American high fives? I didn’t think so. That’s not the America that I want to live in.
The truth is that marijuana can devastate your perception of the world. I was once out with my friends at Moe’s when, suddenly, I felt the edges of my vision darkening. I couldn’t breathe, and I felt my legs give as I tumbled off my chair. I blacked out. It felt like I was an extra in Saving Private Ryan.
Two hours later, I woke up at the hospital. Apparently, I just choked on a big piece of a burrito, but I imagine that’s what drugs feel like.
If you really want to get down to the dirty details, let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. Anyone who supports the use of marijuana is in line with the devil. This vile drug is incompatible with our Christian values. Taking a quote directly from different sections of the Bible, it is clear that “[Pot]…[is]…[bad]” (Exodus 27:3, Genesis 2:4, Leviticus 27:33).
Finally, marijuana is a huge detriment to productivity. Last week was national Ganjajuana week, and none of the pot enthusiasts got anything done. They were almost all extremely high, and many activists claimed to be “tripping balls [sic].”
Some students, however, do deserve to |
just over 2 Wm-2 of the 4 Wm-2, where does the rest come from? Well, that would probably be the feedback response; mainly water vapour. So, there you go. That’s a simple explanation for why feedbacks are probably operating and are probably comparable in magnitude (between 1 and 2 Wm-2) to the anthropogenic forcings. Of course, if anyone thinks I’ve made a mistake or would like to correct anything, feel free to do so (bearing in mind that these were just ballpark numbers).
Having said the above, if people do want to argue that feedbacks are not operating or are small, they would seem seem to have 3 options.
They could argue that the measurements are wrong. This is possible, but I don’t really see how we can have sensible scientific discussions if some can simply assert that the measurements aren’t right. They could argue that the aerosol forcing is really small. If this were the case, then the change in anthropogenic forcings would be much larger than we currently think, and could produce most of the change in radiative forcing. This, however, seems unlikely as the best estimate for the aerosol forcing is around -1 Wm-2. They could argue that, coincidentally, some kind of internal variability has produced a change in radiative forcing that is unassociated with the change in anthropogenic forcing and that will simply go away at some point in the future. Well, there’s no real evidence for this and it would also make it difficult to explain the greenhouse effect and past climate variability.
So, that’s it. I’ve explained why feedbacks probably are operating and even give some arguments that could be made if one wants to assert that they’re not or are small. Of course, it’s possible I’ve made some kind of silly mistake or misunderstood something, so please point that out if so – ideally taking the comment and moderation policies into account.
AdvertisementsTimothy Zaal is a consultant and regular speaker at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Today, he works with former racists and helps them leave the far right and become happy and productive individuals.
When I was a skinhead, living in the Los Angeles area in the 1980s, I remember watching a favorite video with my fellow extremists. It was footage of the 1979 Greensboro massacre, when Ku Klux Klan members shot and killed five people at a workers’ demonstration in North Carolina. A group of cars pulled up. KKK members jumped out of the vehicles, killed a group of communists, then drove away.
We laughed at it.
Story Continued Below
This past weekend, the news from Charlottesville brought back that memory—of being surrounded by fellow white supremacists in my old house, watching our odd choice of Friday-night entertainment. Today, of course, you can find clips like these online. In those days, extremist groups had mail-order services where you could purchase VHS tapes. That was where we bought it.
I gave up being a skinhead years ago. But now, I’m getting uncomfortable feelings of déjà vu as I watch footage of the bloody events in Charlottesville. The white supremacist organizations of my day were different, but after researching these “alt-right” groups, and seeing the violence this weekend, I realize they’re all too similar. They hate the same minorities we did. They spew the same conspiracy theories. They consume the same kinds of propaganda.
But there’s one huge difference: These newer offshoots have been far more successful than we could ever have dreamed. When you see crowds of hundreds marching through the streets with their faces uncovered, when white supremacist leader Richard Spencer holds a news conference a few days after a woman was killed by one of his fellow travelers and hosts reporters in his home, it becomes clear just how much more terrifying this new generation of extremists is. They’re savvier than we were. Better connected.
I recognize so much of myself in those hate-filled faces from Charlottesville. Their innocuous-looking khaki pants, white polo shirts and blue blazers are sharper than the intimidating combat boots and red suspenders we wore, but I can see my old life in those images all the same. And if, in fact, their movement is growing, it’s not hard for me to understand how: I know how easy it is to slip into a racist group and become so passionate about the cause that it becomes unthinkable to leave.
A KKK group from North Carolina called the Loyal White Knights protested in Justice Park (formerly Jackson Park) in early July because they weren't happy with decisions being made by the city that will affect Civil War memorials in city parks. This KKK member gave a "White Power" salute to protestors who were giving him the one-finger salute. | Getty
I was not recruited into white supremacist groups. They didn’t have to—I sought them out. When a black man shot my brother when I was 10 years old (thankfully, he didn’t die), that trauma manifested itself in deep racial hatred. Later, when I was 17 years old, a few friends and I beat a young gay man and left him on the street to die. (He didn’t. His name is Matthew Boger, and we would meet years afterward when I was working at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, almost completely by chance.)
Initially, they resisted me, I suspect out of fear of infiltration by law enforcement, which was fairly common. I applied to join the military and was rejected for medical reasons. White supremacist organizations became my twisted way to fight for my country. So I drove almost 200 miles to the home of the national leader for the White Aryan Resistance. I looked him up in the phone book; he sent a guy to make sure I was who I said I was; and half an hour later, I was sitting in his parlor talking politics. He gave me the business card of a local group, and we met up a few weeks later. There was no initiation process; I had joined.
But what really radicalized me was jail. Several years after that near-fatal beating of Boger, a few fellow skinheads and I attacked an Iranian couple and a black man at a supermarket in La Verne, California. I was sentenced to a year at Los Angeles County Jail—today, thanks to more federal and state hate crime laws, my sentence would likely be significantly longer—and when I got out, I was even more obsessed with race. I felt more victimized by what I thought was the Jewish-controlled state and by the police—paranoid delusions I bought into because of the warped media I was consuming instead of the mainstream press.
My growing radicalization drove me further into the white nationalist movement. I toggled between two groups—the White Aryan Resistance and Hammerskin Nation—and because of the high-profile nature of my crime, I gained some notoriety. New recruits were an easy target.
I sank deeper and deeper in. At my day job in industrial construction, there were as many as 12 fellow skinheads, so I had few interactions with people outside racist circles. I no longer trusted mainstream news—I read organization-approved news only, so I didn’t realize how removed from reality my perception of the world was.
Tim Zaal in 2003. | Getty
In white supremacist and other domestic terror organizations, there’s a clear-cut division between those underground and those above-ground. The underground members are those more likely to commit acts of domestic terrorism; as an above-ground guy, I was seen as a kind of mouthpiece: I distributed leaflets at high schools and on college campuses and operated a phone hotline for my main group, White Aryan Resistance, for four counties. My friends and I took our organization’s newsletters, rolled them up and delivered them—each stamped with our phone number, just in case the recipient was curious. Because of this propagandist role, I was told to distance myself from the guys I knew who may have been making bombs and stockpiling weapons, because if I was found to have any connection with them, it would discredit the organization and the movement as a whole.
We failed to soften our image, but the alt-right groups have largely succeeded—which may help explain why people were so shocked to see the violence at Saturday’s rally. When I was associated with the older white supremacist groups, we were told to go to college, to grow our hair out, to not get tattoos, to join the military, to get into influential business and political roles if possible—to become embedded in respected parts of society. Today’s alt-right has done that, from Spencer’s “think tank” that calls itself the National Policy Institute to protests like the one on Saturday, which was organized under the inoffensive name Unite the Right, as if it had more to do with conservative politics than it did white supremacy.
I left the movement—eventually—but it was a long, slow process. It started when I was in a supermarket with my young son, who called a black man the N-word. To see him repeat my mistakes made me ashamed in a way that went deeper than my shame over my own choices.
This was in the early ’90s, and in my part of California, everyone knew about my past crimes. But I started traveling for work more, going to new places, particularly in the South, meeting new people. Often, these people weren’t white, and more importantly, they didn’t know who I was. When I came back and re-entered my insulated social network, where my friends were surrounded by the same conspiracy theories I had once bought into, the shared delusions were a shock to me. What are you talking about, a race war? I thought. We’re not at war.
Today, I look at the factors that kept me in the white supremacist movement, and I think they must be stronger than ever. My closed-off media sources and mail-order propaganda videos, music and literature were one thing in the early ’90s; today, anyone with a smartphone can go down rabbit holes watching hours and hours of YouTube videos with far-right personalities, from actual Hitler supporters to more lightweight figures like alt-right YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson, who peddle the same racial paranoia without the overt Nazi ideology, feeding viewers their sick spin on the news. On social media, it’s easy to find like minds halfway across the country who can affirm your worldview with likes and retweets. We had only our pamphlets and shoe leather, which made it harder to build a national following.
You don’t have to look much further than last weekend to understand what this more diffuse, more tech-savvy network of extremists has done to magnify and better organize the same hate that I once espoused.
Today, racist skinheads like the ones I knew are pretty much extinct in the United States. They’ve grown up and had families, and I know a few who have, like me, disavowed their past associations and dedicated their lives to combating the kind of hate that once consumed us. Just a few years after severing all my ties to my former white supremacist friends, I went on a date with a Jewish woman from Texas. We’ve been married for 18 years.
I wish I could be more hopeful. Instead, I’m watching a new generation of white nationalist and supremacist organizations flourish right in front of our eyes. And I’ve never been more frightened for the future of our country.
This article tagged under: Racism
Primary SourceAuston Matthews is frustrated, and he hasn’t been shy about it.
Almost a full month has passed since the 19-year-old last scored a goal. And after the Maple Leafs’ 2-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes at home on Tuesday night, he was answering a series of familiar questions. His goalless drought was a story, now stretching to 13 games.
“It’s kind of the same story I guess, you’ve been writing it for three weeks,” Matthews said with a smile. “We generated some chances like that one in mid-air, which just goes over the net. It’s just the way it’s going right now so there’s no excuse for that.”
He is still getting his shots, leading the Leafs with 71 through 19 games. His four shots on goal against the Hurricanes were a game high, tied with William Nylander. He has missed wide-open opportunities in two of the last three games.
There is a lot of pressure put on first overall picks. There’s an expectation that they are...This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, if President Obama were not re-elected, and it was a Republican in office, it was President Romney, do you think it would be any more extreme?
ROBERT REICH: Oh, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: In what way?
ROBERT REICH: Are you kidding? Well, I mean, look at—
AMY GOODMAN: Because the people on the outside, who you say got demobilized when President Obama was elected, and perhaps when President Clinton was elected, would be far more mobilized, because they would not expect to have a friend in the White House.
ROBERT REICH: Well, but the cost of a Romney White House, in terms of everything we believe. I mean, he has embraced Paul Ryan’s budget. He says it’s a marvelous budget, which means that we not only get a larger military and we not only get huge cuts in domestic discretionary, including education and Medicare, Medicaid, every safety net, every public investment, but we also at the same time get huge tax cuts for the very rich. We put the economy and our society on a track back to pre-New Deal. And think of the Supreme Court openings that are going to occur. I mean, I—you know, the most elderly judges—justices who are there have been appointed—were appointed by Democrats.
Now, I think the cost of a Romney administration is so huge, even if it would generate more public outrage, that I would say, let’s all get behind Obama for a second term; let’s make sure, to the extent possible, we have a Democratic Congress; but let’s understand that that’s just the beginning of our task. We’ve got to make them move in a progressive direction. It’s just like 1936, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for re-election and somebody said to him, “Mr. President, if you’re re-elected, I want you to do this and this and this and this.” And he said, “Ma’am, I want to do all these things, but if I am re-elected, you must make me do them.” You see, democracy—you know this. I mean, this is what Democracy Now! is all about. Democracy is a practice. It’s a living form of ongoing citizen engagement. And we cannot allow ourselves to be lulled into either complacency or cynicism. Cynicism is the worst form of cop out, because—
AMY GOODMAN: You were on the inside as secretary of labor. What did you feel was the most effective way for people on the outside to have an effect? As you said, you walked through the streets on the day that welfare reform is going to be signed, and you look and you see that no one is around. What makes the difference? And talk of today, about Occupy, as well.
ROBERT REICH: Well, yeah, I think, number one, it is very important for people to visibly demonstrate. Now, it’s hard to break through in the media, but visible demonstrations with a lot of people do help. They shift the media’s attention. The Occupy movements put inequality on the front page. The Occupy movement succeeded in changing the tenor and the shape of debate in this country about what was happening and allowed the President of the United States to say that the defining issue of the campaign is fairness, who gets what. The Occupy campaign—without the Occupy campaign, none of that would happen. Number two—
AMY GOODMAN: Were you surprised by it?
ROBERT REICH: I was surprised that in a relatively short time—you know, I’ve been around for a while—civil rights, Vietnam, anti-Vietnam, so on. I was surprised that in a matter of months the Occupy movement could claim so much attention and so effectively shape the debate around the concentration of wealth and power in this country. And that, to me, is an indication of how much can be accomplished.
But that’s not all. I mean, we have to go on. We’ve got to also get involved in electoral politics. In relatively safe Democratic districts, it’s important to put up progressives, so that the center of gravity doesn’t keep on moving to the right in this country. It’s important to get behind a plank of specific ideas, like resurrecting Glass-Steagall, like breaking up the big banks, like making sure that taxes are increased on the very wealthy and the earned income tax credit, which is basically a wage subsidy for the working poor, be expanded, and so on. Get behind six or seven major ideas that we all think are critically important to the future and push them, and push them dramatically. Get big money out of politics. You know, I’m the chairman, the national chairman, of Common Cause, an old organization. It’s been doing this work for years. But if we don’t get big money out of politics, everything else we want to do is hopeless. And that is a fundamental, fundamental, basic goal, reversing Citizens United. All of these things can be done.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about President Obama too much appeasing the Republicans, but isn’t it also the people who will fund his campaign, expected to raise more than a billion dollars?
ROBERT REICH: Yes, and we’ve got to have campaign finance reform and lift the lid on the amount of campaign finance, so no president or no would-be president is at a disadvantage in accepting public financing.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about the police crackdown on the Occupy movement, a level of militarization of the police in this country that we have rarely seen before?
ROBERT REICH: Yeah, and it’s ironic that, under the First Amendment, we now have a Supreme Court that says corporations are people and money is speech, and yet when the people really do mobilize under their First Amendment rights to free assembly, the police, in city after city, crack down and don’t allow the people to be heard. I mean, if corporations are people and if money is speech, then it becomes even more critical that we expand and enrich the definition of First Amendment—of the First Amendment to allow people to express themselves.
AMY GOODMAN: It would be interesting to see this militarized police force deal with corporations as people.
ROBERT REICH: Yes. I mean, I will—I’ve said before, I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes a corporation. I mean, once we go down the track of treating corporations as people and money as speech, there is really no end to the distorting effects of big money and corporate money in politics. That’s why it’s not just Citizens United. It’s also several Supreme Court precedents that have got to be changed—if necessary, by a constitutional amendment.
AMY GOODMAN: A constitutional amendment that would…?
ROBERT REICH: That would say, effectively, corporations are not people and money is not speech. And it is perfectly appropriate for Congress to regulate, especially in a major—in a presidential campaign, to regulate and restrict big money.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, the issue of austerity and what’s happening abroad and how it could affect what’s happening at home. In the headlines today, reading about German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejecting calls by the newly elected Socialist French president, François Hollande, to renegotiate the European fiscal pact that’s led to widespread austerity measures across continent—across the continent. What’s happening in France? What’s happening in Greece?
ROBERT REICH: Austerity doesn’t work. You know, there are two doctrines perpetrated by the right, in the United States and in Europe. One is supply-side, trickle-down economics. We know that doesn’t work. They keep on trying to convince us it does. We’ve seen, under Reagan, under George W. Bush, that when the taxes are cut on the rich and on corporations, nothing trickles down. The other, first cousin, is austerity economics. When you have high unemployment and a lot of underutilized capacity, the idea is you cut public budgets. That’s insane, because that leads to a shrinking of the entire economy, when the real problem is, to the extent that you’re worried about fiscal discipline, the ratio of debt to the size of the economy overall. If you shrink the economy, that ratio becomes worse and worse. That’s an austerity trap. That’s what happened to Spain. It’s what’s happening even to Britain. It’s what’s happening to Europe as a whole.
Angela Merkel is absolutely wrong. You need jobs and growth first, before you embrace austerity. Now, we’re going to come to exactly the same decision point in January, because we’ve got the sequestration cuts coming up. If nothing is done between now and then, we are going to be forced to embrace our own version of austerity economics at a time when there is still going to be high unemployment and still a lot of underutilized capacity here in the United States. We have got to understand, as Europe has got to understand, as I think François Hollande is going to push Germany to understand, that jobs and growth have to come first, before so-called fiscal austerity discipline.
AMY GOODMAN: So, finally, you think Occupy is the answer?
ROBERT REICH: I think Occupy is certainly part of the answer. You know, I would say we need to make a ruckus in this country. We also need to get very, very much more clever about politics. We need to get involved in electoral politics. We need to—wherever we see it, Amy, we need to fight cynicism. We need to understand that this is a long haul. You know, take civil rights, women’s suffrage, anything that we’ve got accomplished that expands the franchise and expands opportunity in this country, it did not happen in six months. It didn’t happen in four years. It happened over 20 years. I’m not saying we should be patient, but we’ve got to understand that mobilizing and changing the allocation of power in society is a serious and long-term and very difficult process. It’s necessary for our children and our grandchildren, but it is not going to happen overnight.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Reich, I want to thank you very much for being with us, professor of public policy at University of California, Berkeley, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written many books, among them, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future. His latest is an e-book called Beyond Outrage: What Has Gone Wrong with Our Economy and Our Democracy, and How to Fix [Them].
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to talk about Guantánamo and the military tribunals that are taking place right now. Why aren’t American civilian courts good enough? Stay with us.Thursday morning on NBC, Joe Scarborough continued his relentless campaign for more gun control by repeating the false propaganda of American-born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn.
From "Morning Joe":
Joe Scarborough: This is what al Qaeda has to say, yeah listen to this. Mika Brzezinski: Yeah, we’ll show you something and then we’ll let you talk. You know your background check system is weak when even al Qaeda makes a video pointing out how easily attainable guns are in the U.S. The website BuzzFeed pointed out this 2011 video by American-born al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, who is among the FBI’s most wanted terrorists. Take a look. Adam Gadahn: In the West you’ve got a lot at your disposal. Let’s take America as an example. America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?
Gadahn’s statement is, of course, completely false. But we shouldn’t be surprised that Scarborough and Brzezinski are passing off al Qaeda propaganda as truth. President Obama committed the same error when he was campaigning for gun control recently in California. Obama claimed that the Sandy Hook killer used an “automatic weapon” on his victims in Newton, Conn., in December. CNN‘s Jake Tapper then fact-checked Obama.
“That is not correct,” Tapper explained. “It was a semiautomatic weapon, not a fully automatic weapon. Most fully automatic weapons, machine guns, are essentially banned to the public. … This is not the first time a leading advocate for gun control has stumbled on the facts,” Tapper concluded.
Maybe Obama and Scarborough wouldn’t get so many facts about gun control wrong if they stopped getting their talking points from al Qaeda.Kirby Smart is going in a new direction with Georgia’s strength and conditioning program.
Scott Sinclair, who had led Marshall’s strength and conditioning program since 2013, has been hired to take the same job at Georgia. In addition, the school has also announced the hiring Ed Ellis, who ran the strength program at Central Florida, to be the senior associate director of strength and conditioning.
Although there has been no official announcement about Mark Hocke, this almost certainly means he has not been retained by Smart. Hocke just finished his first season as Georgia’s strength and conditioning coordinator after six years on the strength staff at Alabama.
Meanwhile, the fact Hocke is not being retained – or at least not keeping his job – is an outward surprise considering the fact that he and Smart worked on the same football staff for six years. But there were signs early.
Smart talked to Scott Cochran, Alabama’s longtime strength and conditioning coordinator, about joining him in Athens. But Alabama gave Cochran a raise and announced his return.
Early in December, after Smart’s hiring and before it was announced Cochran was staying at Alabama, Hocke alluded to his situation on social media.
“It’s in our uncomfortable times that we learn and grow most. The greater the challenge the greater the leader,” Hocke wrote.
It’s also not clear what will happen to other members of Georgia’s strength and conditioning program. That includes associate S&C coordinator John Thomas, who has been at Georgia since 2012, and prior to that was Joe Paterno’s S&C coordinator for two decades. It also includes Kelin Johnson, a former Georgia defensive back.
Sinclair was the associate director of strength and conditioning at UCF for nine years, where according to his Marshall bio he was “directly responsible for the speed and agility programs in addition to the program’s administrative duties.”
There’s an in-state connection for Sinclair: He was on Georgia Tech’s strength and conditioning staff from 2001-03. He was on Wake Forest’s strength staff from 1999-2001, after graduating from Guilford College.
(That means Georgia gains back a Guilford graduate, having lost John Lilly.)
Ellis was at UCF the past 13 seasons, where he ran the strength program, with Sinclair as his associate. (Now it appears Sinclair will be over Ellis.) Ellis was also at Georgia Tech, from 2001-04, and prior to that had stops at Ole Miss, Illinois State and Wake Forest.
Alabama is Ellis’ alma mater, where he got his bathelor’s degree in 1997.
Both Elllis and Sinclair have been certified as a master strength and conditioning coach.
Marshall finished 10-3 this season, knocking off UConn 16-10 in the St. Petersburg Bowl. The Thundering Herd ranked third in rushing offense in Conference USA, and sixth in rushing defense, third in sacks and fifth in least sacks allowed.Grooming is an essential part of existence, even for those of us with beards or mustaches. Companies like Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s and Dorco are offering men and women discounts on much needed grooming tools, offering a way to mitigate costs; and men’s grooming in particular is seeing an uptick. Even old-style ‘wet-shaving’ is reentering the spotlight these days among some enthusiasts.
As the world of shearing hair and smelling good becomes richer, some industrious entrepreneurs are designing products and launching enterprises to meet the needs of consumers, both in tools and supplies.
Here are a few:
Above The Tie
Not everyone is satisfied to get a few dollars knocked off the cost of the cartridge blades for their razors. Some reach to designs that harken back to what our grandparents and great grandparents used to scrape the hair from their bodies—tools that use blades that can be purchased for less than 20 cents apiece. They’re called safety razors: metal shaving implements that come in various forms and tend to last for generations, if cared for.
Among the upper echelon of safety razor producers is Above The Tie, a small Tennessee-based company founded by Stan Hickam in 2011. Hickam's customers better keep reminding themselves that, in the long run, they're saving money, because his personal designs command $185 each – several times the average cost of his competition. Regardless, he moves about 500 units per month. “It’s hard to make a cheap Lamborghini,” quips Hickam, who also works in the radiology department of a medical center in Tennessee.
Hickam, 55, began his journey in the shave world buying antique Gillette razors built earlier in the past century, restoring them and flipping them on Ebay for a profit. Along the way he tried them, discovered what he thought were winning design features and set out to design his own.
What he came up with was a rock-solid stainless steel shaving tool (most razors are made of cheaper chromed pot metals) that offers several lengths of handle and several levels of ‘aggression,’ or blade exposure. The mix and match system allows customers to choose what best suits them. “I wanted to make something more flexible,” says Hickam.
After connecting with a machine shop that used CNC-based computer technology to help him produce his design, Hickam launched Above The Tie. His son-in-law, Matt Cole, built him a website from which, today, most of his wares are sold. Hickam also moves product through several wholesalers in the U.S., Canada and one in Europe. “Our gross sales are basically doubling each year.” Those increases don’t come from any marketing push as Hickam doesn’t invest in such things, instead relying on word of mouth. “I get a lot of comments from people who say, ‘I want something made in America, I want something that’s going to last.’”
Catie's Bubbles
For most, shaving cream is a utilitarian concoction, found in a can, used to keep the irritation associated with hair removal to a minimum. For others it’s a luxurious, fragrant treat to be enjoyed on a regular basis; an uncomplicated regimen of self-pampering.
Chris Cullen, 37, has built a business catering to that latter cross section of shavers with his small company, Catie’s Bubbles; producing soaps, men’s fragrances and shaving creams that have been well received by barbers and tonsorial aficionados, i.e. ‘shave nerds’ (my phrase, not his). He produces between 2,200 and 2,500 8-ounce jars of his shaving cream per month – priced at $20 a jar – and sells out just about every new batch. That’s at least $44,000 a month in top line sales.
Cullen’s livelihood started out as a soap-making hobby he began in late 2011, and became an obsession with mixing the best recipe of raw materials to create unique products in the kitchen of his Forked River, New Jersey home. “I’ve always been a bit of a geek,” says Cullen, chuckling. “Chemistry was always the fun class in high school.” To fund his hobby he founded Caties’s Bubbles (named after his 7 year-old daughter) to sell his creations and pay for the manufacture of new ones.
Cullen’s side project became his main focus in late 2013, when he was laid off from his position as a retail manager with Sears, after a decade-long stint with the company. “My job disappeared and in a matter of two weeks I went from being recognized as one of the best in the company to applying for unemployment.”
So he decided he had to make Caties Bubbles work as his main source of income; turning his kitchen and home into a sort of factory, and setting up his online shop in early 2014. “I decided at that point that I didn’t want to put my family’s future in anybody else’s hands.” Cullen began to focus on his shaving creams, as they were products he knew would sell and pay the bills.
He was also very, very good at making them, combining just the right amounts of steric acid, coconut oil, water, glycerin and other materials. “I had been researching how to make shaving soap because there’s nothing out there that tells you how to pull that process off,” says Cullen. “Any soap maker that has figured it out, has figured it out on their own because it’s a closely guarded secret.”
Cullen’s shaving creams are very slick, reasonably priced and lather up extraordinarily quickly. They’re available in unique fragrances like Irish Coffee, Saturday Morning (smells like Fruit Loops), and Quatre Cent Vingt (supposedly smells like cannabis), as well as some more traditional scents. His most popular cream is Le Piment de la Vie, which means ‘the spice of life,’ and he’s also released a line of post-shave balms (alcohol-free aftershaves).
Cullen’s most ardent fans consist of a community of men who make a hobby of shaving; trying out different razors, soaps and fragrances and discussing them with one another online. Catie’s Bubbles’ popularity among these consumers makes the possibility of advertising a touchy affair. “The gentlemen that make up this community do not like being sold to,” says Cullen. “…They know what they like, they know what they want and they’re capable of making their own decisions.”
These days Cullen is looking to ramp up production to meet increasing demand, having converted his dining room into a lab and his garage into a production and storage area. “I’ve been looking at finding a retail or commercial location nearby.” He’s also adopting a snazzier new package design and creating new scents. “Once I’m able to get a larger facility, I plan to work with the ATF to get my specialty alcohol license so I can do alcohol-based after shaves and some small, niche-style perfumes.”
Beluga Shave Company
Zac Wertz is technically an out of work lawyer. He’s also a 29 year-old entrepreneur who is in the process of launching a company to sell a unique razor of his own design that combines the function of modern shaving tools and the low cost of blades used in the old-timey safety razors many of our grandfathers used.
New products start to matter when they’re embraced by customers or investors, preferably both. Wertz and his one-man enterprise, Beluga Shave Co., managed to raise capital on Kickstarter, raking in over $195,000 on a $100,000 campaign this past November.
Wertz, an Ohio native, developed the concept that would become the centerpiece for his company while studying for his bar exam. Having converted from a regular cartridge razor with their expensive blades to an archaic safety razor and its double-edged blades that cost pennies, it dawned on him that the only real difference was the way the razor head tilts to the contours of the face. “Why doesn’t somebody make this easy?” he said. “Just add a pivoting neck and I wouldn’t have to have the same kind of concentration and precision that’s required for a double-edge.”
Wertz sketched some designs for a newfangled razor that could accommodate the ultra-cheap blades then banged out a wooden prototype at the woodshop of his old high school. “I figured I couldn’t really develop this by myself, I needed to bring on someone with design experience to really finalize what this design will be like.”
Wertz hooked up with several design firms, each one providing a prototype that allowed him, over the course of a year, to get closer to his final product, which he hashed out with Priority Designs, in Columbus, Ohio. The final version is undoubtedly modern, but its solid stainless steel construction and old fashioned blades evoke a bygone generation. “I want to make products the way they used to be made; make them built to last,” says Wertz. He also wants to show shavers that his grooming tool can provide savings on blades that would make the Dollar Shave Club envious. It will have to—Wertz plans to charge $150 apiece for his creation.
Beluga’s Kickstarter campaign has allowed Wertz to make final tweaks to his design and tool up to produce a first batch to be sent to supporters. The search is underway to source components for production and Wertz is optimistically predicting he’ll have tooling set up this summer, and a first shipment in the winter. “We’ve spent the past six months in the dark, really trying to perfect this razor and give it the best presentation,” says Wertz. “So that when people finally get to try this they can really see that a single edge is superior to multiple blades.”I don't generally write reviews after a movie has been released. For films where I don't get around to a press screening and catch it on my own as a paying consumer, you usually have to check out the weekend box office posts to see what I think about them. But, if time allows, I may just write a review for Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird. First, it's one of my very favorite movies of the year, and (with just under $10 million by the end of the weekend) it's looking like a genuine Oscar season breakout in a season that thus far has been lacking in them. Second, I am a participant in Rotten Tomatoes, and the film needs just four more positive reviews to break the record for a 100% "fresh" winning streak.
Update: Well, that was fast. It just hit 164 reviews, all positive, with an average critic ranking of 8.9/10.
The Saoirse Ronan-Laurie Metcalf drama, about a lower middle-class high schooler and her mother coming to terms with each other as graduation nears, has earned a straight flush of "fresh" reviews from the popular Fandango-owned review aggregation site. That means every single participating critic has given the film at least the equivalent of a 6/10 rating. Of course, the average critic rating (a far more important metric than the binary Tomatometer score) is a whopping 8.9/10. That means every reviewer likes it and a lot outright love it. And as of this morning, the film has 164 positive reviews out of 164 total reviews. Not only is it batting 1.00, it is batting 1.00 with more |
a new Zelda game for the Game Boy Advance.[27] Work on the title was suspended to allow the teams to focus on Four Swords, but in February 2003 Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma announced that development of what would later be called The Minish Cap was "well underway".[27] Nintendo launched a Minish Cap website in September 2004, showing concepts of Link's shrinking ability.[28] The game had a cartoonish art style similar to The Wind Waker, as it has a fairy tale setting similar to said game, within "the world of tiny fairies, a universal fairytale story".[6]
A first in the Zelda series, the game was released in European territories before North America. The main cited reason for this was the Nintendo DS: with the European DS Launch scheduled for Spring 2005, Nintendo of Europe pushed to make Minish Cap its handheld Christmas "killer app". Conversely, Nintendo of America held back on its release so not to "cannibalize" the DS market.[29] The game is included in the list of Game Boy Advance games that is now available for download for the Nintendo 3DS's Virtual Console by Nintendo 3DS Ambassadors.[30]
Legend of Zelda Triforce Game Boy Advance SP [ edit ]
In Europe, the game was available either as a standalone packaged game, or as part of a special pack, which included one of only 25,000 limited edition, Zelda-themed Game Boy Advance SP. The Triforce SP is matte gold in color, with a Triforce logo stamped on the lid, and the Hyrule royal family crest printed on the lower right face.[31] As a launch promotion, Nintendo Europe also produced seven 24-carat gold plated Game Boy Advance SP consoles, with six given away to people who found a golden ticket inside their Triforce SP package, and a seventh as a magazine promotion.[32] Thirty were autographed by Miyamoto himself at the opening of the Nintendo World Store in New York.[33]
Reception and awards [ edit ]
The Minish Cap was the best-selling game in its debut week in Japan, selling 97,000 copies.[41] It became the 62nd best-selling game of 2004 with 196,477 copies,[42] and had a total of 350,000 copies overall in the country.[43] In North America, The Minish Cap sold 217,000 copies in its debut month of January 2005, being the fourth best-selling game of the month.[44] It remained among the five best-selling games in February and March.[45][46] The Minish Cap closed the year as the seventh best-selling game of 2005.[47] By March 2005, the game already had sold 1 million units worldwide.[48] In the United States alone, The Minish Cap sold 680,000 copies and earned $21 million by August 2006. During the period between January 2000 and August 2006, it was the 37th highest-selling game launched for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable in that country.[49]
The game received critical acclaim. IGN praised the game for continuing the legacy of the successful series, while GameSpot also praised the game for this aspect, saying "Classic Zelda gameplay and flavor will please fans".[15] The graphical style especially—which continues the whimsical style of Wind Waker—was welcomed by most reviewers. The music of the game was commended by most sites; GameSpy stated that "Even the music is outstanding, featuring some of the highest quality tunes to ever come out of the GBA's little speakers".[16] Despite the criticism of the dungeon lengths, 1UP.com praised the dungeon design, proclaiming it as superior to that of other Zelda games.[50]
The main criticism of the game among reviewers is the length of the game. Eurogamer says that "It's too short",[51] while RPGamer state that "The typical player can fly through the game's six relatively short dungeons in about ten hours".[52] There are also various other complaints from reviewers: IGN claims that the kinstone system is overly repetitive;[18] Nintendo World Report criticises the game's visuals on a Game Boy Player,[53] and RPGamer details the game's low difficulty level as a disadvantage.[52] Despite this, IGN's Craig Harris liked the way that the ability to become tiny had been incorporated to create fresh puzzles in the Zelda series. He continued to comment that "It's an idea that's so well-conceived that I'd love to see worked in the series' 3D designs somewhere down the line".[4]
The Minish Cap won the 'Best Game Boy Advance of 2005' by GameSpot over such finalists as Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and WarioWare: Twisted!; GameSpot labelled it as "the Game Boy Advance game we remember the most".[5] In March 2007, the game was ranked as the 20th best Game Boy Advance game by IGN. In the acknowledgement, IGN commented that "The inclusion of the ability to shrink and grow was explored to some really good results."[4] The game was ranked 47th in Official Nintendo Magazine's "100 Greatest Nintendo Games" feature.[54] Minish Cap received an average score of 90 percent from GameRankings, a site that compiles media ratings from several publishers to give an average score.[3]
References [ edit ]
Citations
NotesAround 30 Greenpeace activists were arrested on Monday after breaking into an EDF nuclear power plant in southern France, saying they wanted to expose security flaws and demanding its closure.
The activists, dressed in red, said they reached the walls of two reactors at the Tricastin plant, one of France's oldest. EDF denied they had got into any "sensitive areas" and said production was not affected.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls called for an investigation into the intrusion which raised questions about the security of France's 19 nuclear plants and 58 reactors.
The protesters who entered the plant at dawn unfurled a yellow and black banner on a wall above a picture of President Francois Hollande, marked with the words: "Tricastin, nuclear accident - President of the catastrophe?"
"With this action, Greenpeace is asking Francois Hollande to close the Tricastin plant, which is among the five most dangerous in France," Yannick Rousselet, in charge of nuclear issues for Greenpeace France, said in a statement.
"If being physically able to touch the reactors is not being in a sensitive place, I don't know what is," Rousselet told Reuters. "People with bad intentions could have posed a threat to the reactor's safety."
All 30 protesters were arrested by 7 a.m. ET after several hours spent rounding up activists clinging to metal structures and ladders, EDF said.
Plant not on safety list
France's nuclear safety agency ASN did not include Tricastin in a list released in April of six nuclear plants with the lowest safety performance in 2012.
The action echoed tensions between the Socialist government and ecologists, who accuse Hollande of not doing enough to reduce France's reliance on nuclear power and increase the use of renewable sources of energy.
Hollande sacked his energy and environment minister for publicly criticizing cuts to her budget earlier this month.
The president has pledged to cut the share of nuclear energy in the country's electricity mix to 50 per cent from 75 per cent by 2025. He has also said he wants to close the country's oldest plant at Fessenheim, near the German border, by 2017.
Greenpeace said to honour his promise, Hollande would have to close at least 10 reactors by 2017 and 20 by 2020. The campaign group said this ought to include Tricastin, which was built more than 30 years ago.
The dawn raid came less than a week after six female Greenpeace activists climbed London's Shard, the tallest building in Western Europe, in protest over plans by oil producer Royal Dutch Shell to carry out drilling in the Arctic circle.MIAMI - A Miami defense attorney is feeling the heat after his pants caught fire as he delivered closing arguments in an arson case.
Witnesses told the Miami Herald that Stephen Gutierrez, 28, was fiddling in his pocket Wednesday while he addressed jurors when smoke started to billow from his pants. He was arguing that his client's car spontaneously combusted and wasn't intentionally set on fire.
Gutierrez quickly left the courtroom. Jurors were also escorted out.
When Gutierrez returned unharmed, he insisted that it wasn't a staged defense gone wrong. The Herald reported that he blamed a faulty e-cigarette battery.
Miami-Dade police and prosecutors are investigating the incident. Investigators seized frayed e-cigarette batteries as evidence.
Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman could decide to hold Gutierrez in contempt of court.
Gutierrez represented Claudy Charles, 48, who was subsequently convicted of second-degree arson.
Copyright 2017 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.The next time the White House wants to make a credible defense of President Trump's actions, who should it send to the podium?
The answer is unclear, White House and Washington communications veterans say.
The president is notoriously unreliable. Many of his top aides have demonstrated a willingness to mislead the American people. Others, including Gen. H.R. McMaster and Vice President Mike Pence, have made statements in defense of the president that were later contradicted by the president himself.
The inability of Trump's own spokespeople to speak authoritatively on the president's thinking and actions -- a challenge even Trump himself has acknowledged -- has left the White House with an enormous credibility gap, and has tarnished the reputations of many of its most visible spokespeople.
Facing extraordinary pressure over recent missteps, Trump is now said to be irate with his communications team and considering a shakeup that would result in Spicer's ouster. Kimberly Guilfoyle, a Fox News host, has been telling colleagues (and now the press) that she is in talks to replace him.
Related: Sean Spicer under fire during crucial week for Trump
Such a shakeup would be unlikely to solve Trump's problem, the political communications veterans said, because Trump himself is the source of the problem.
"This White House as a whole has a major credibility problem, but it emanates from the top," said Rory Cooper, an adviser in the George W. Bush administration. "The buck literally stops there."
"Everyone who comes in contact with Trump is damaged or destroyed by him," said a veteran of the Bill Clinton White House.
Time and again, Trump has forced his aides to defend dubious claims. On other occasions, he has sent his spokespeople and surrogates out in front of cameras without the full details of his thinking.
On a few occasions, he has flatly contradicted them.
Last week, Trump told NBC's Lester Holt he had been planning to fire FBI Director James Comey with or without the advice of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. That was several hours after his vice president, his press secretary and other aides said he had fired Comey because of Rosenstein's advice.
In the wake of that mixed messaging, Trump tweeted the explanation: "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!"
At the end of the week, the White House sent out McMaster, Trump's national security advisor, to take questions at the daily press briefing. It was widely seen as an attempt to deflect attention from the Comey controversy and re-establish some authority at the briefing room podium.
But this week, Trump also contradicted McMaster. On Tuesday, one day after McMaster went before reporters to deny a Washington Post report that Trump had shared sensitive national security information with Russia, Trump tweeted that it was his right to share the information in question.
"I think everyone quite clearly sees that the President isn't serving his staff well, and is likely not open to honest counsel," Cooper said. "So who does that really fall on? Do people blame McMaster for saying something or for the President for putting him in that position?"“As he was hit, he said: ‘Allahu Akbar.'” But the primary coverage at the time revolved around a bystander who shouted “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv,” while Mire was stabbing people. The man who shouted was widely reported to be a “moderate” Muslim, but he turned out to be just another Infidel imam, a la John Kerry, Joe Biden, David Cameron, etc.
“Tube Knifeman ‘Had Lee Rigby Image On Phone,'” Sky News, June 1, 2016:
An image of murdered soldier Lee Rigby was found on the phone of a man who carried out a knife attack at a Tube station, a jury has heard.
Muhiddin Mire went on a rampage with the blade at Leytonstone station on 5 December last year, cutting the throat of musician Lyle Zimmerman so that his windpipe was exposed, the Old Bailey heard.
Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC told the court police found material linked to Islamic State on the 30-year-old’s phone, including images of the IS militant who became known as Jihadi John, as well as a picture of Fusilier Rigby.
Prosecutor Jonathan Rees QC said: “The contents of the defendant’s phone, when looked at alongside what he said during the course of the incident … provides an insight as to what motivated the defendant to do what he did, and what he was seeking to do, to Mr Zimmerman.”
The whole incident was captured on CCTV and by a member of the public on his phone.
The court was shown dramatic footage of police officers firing Tasers at Mire three times before he was brought to the floor.
As he was hit, he said: “Allahu Akbar” [“God is great”].
As Mire was led away by police, he said: “This is for Syria, for my Muslim brothers,” and explained that his actions were in response to the bombings of hospitals in the country, the jury was told.
At the time of the attack, Mr Zimmerman was on his way to a gig and was carrying a small amplifier, mandolin and electric guitar.
He suffered a “deep and ragged wound” to his neck which exposed his windpipe, the court was told.
Giving evidence from behind a screen, Mr Zimmerman said: “I remember that I started to yell for help. I remember being forced down, but I don’t remember whether I was punched or shoved.”
He told the court he got “into as near as a foetal position” as he could and tried to protect his head.
Mr Zimmerman said he was kicked around six times, and they were “very, very violent kicks”.
As well as the injuries to his neck, the attack caused a fault in his vision, a cracked tooth and bruising to his face.
Mr Zimmerman, who was helped by a doctor who happened to be at the station, added: “I feel I was very lucky with the junior doctor passing by and my medical care afterwards and I’m determined not to be … changed by it.”
Louise McGuinness, who witnessed the attack, said: “He pulled the blade in and out across the throat but no cut was made and no blood appeared.
“I watched as he began to saw through the man’s neck six or seven times. This time blood did come. I could literally hear the man’s skin ripping open. Blood began to flow.”
She said Mire pointed at her and said “you’re next” when she shouted “stop, you a*******” at him.
Mire was filmed outside the station by Daniel Bielinski, who can be heard screaming “call for police” in the five-minute clip….Bachelor in Paradise Episode 8 Season 2 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating 3 stars * * * * * « Previous Next » Mikey and Juelia are given an overnight date, and everyone couldn’t be happier. Photo: Rick Rowell/American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Well, that was a bit of a letdown, wasn’t it? I feel like Ashley I. because nothing will live up to how perfect Sunday’s episode was. Sunday’s episode was the Jared of episodes, but without the patchy beard, and it manages a better restaurant than the Providence Mollusk Depot. So, it was nothing like Jared. Last night’s episode was the Joshua of episodes. It was fine. This episode did feature Tenley and Carly doing synchronized swimming on their couch and their vaginas being blocked out with giant black boxes. Were their pussies out? Paradise, indeed!
We’ve got all the usual couples with the new additions of Nick and Ashley S. and Dan and Amber. Jared spends his days looking out from his widow’s walk as he watches the mists roll in from the sea. He is one melancholy dude. Bro, just go home. You’re not excited to be here. You had two girls throwing themselves at you, but you’re content to sit around like a world-weary fisherman. I guess the memory of all the oysters who gave their lives at the Providence Bivalve Factory is weighing heavy on your soul.
Ashley I. tries to bond with Joe hoping that they can commiserate over their misery together. (Someone check if that’s the title of an R&B album from the ’90s, because if it isn’t, I’m going back in time to record it with Babyface and Pebbles.) Joe says that Samantha did a total 180 because she couldn’t handle the drama, and he can’t absorb all day, and they had a wonderful two or three day—
HOLD THE PHONE. You’ve known her for three days, and you’re tripping this hard? Oof. Listen, I understand that you got a hand job in a hot tub, a HTHJ, but get it together, man. I was once a 16-year-old girl with an online journal where I pasted AIM conversations with boys I liked so I could save them, and I was not this thirsty. Yeesh. It doesn’t help that Samantha doesn’t seem to have a personality. Neither Jared nor Samantha has a personality, and they’ve become vessels for the affections of two gullible lonely weirdos: Ashley I. and Joe.
While Joe is trying to plot Samantha’s demise in a kind of terrifying way, Ashley I. is deep in a full-blown crying meltdown. Thinking about, talking about, seeing, or remembering the existence of Jared is all Ashley I. needs to start crying. Sometimes she can make it an hour or three without falling apart. Because there’s nothing imperfect about Jared, the fact that he doesn’t like her must be all Ashley I.’s fault, and she will compare every man she dates after this moment to Jared.
Ashley I.? Can I call you Ashley I.? I need you to gather up all those feelings you have about Jared and toss them into the sea because he is not worth it. He’s an appropriately nice man who looks like he’d be a background extra on Boy Meets World. He was kinda cool to you for like six hours and looks like he’d be modeling an ion bracelet in a Skymall catalogue. Hook up with someone else.
At breakfast, I think, how are their meals structured here? Carly brings Mikey a date card, and he asks Juelia. How amazing and messed up would it have been if he asked someone else? Juelia and Mikey’s date has too much pressure put on it from all the other blonde women. Carly just wants it to work out because Juelia needs to find someone who will be loyal to her and her daughter. Twelvely says that because Juelia is a single mother, the possibility of an overnight date is a big deal. Yeah, hi. Mikey and Juelia met like five days ago, but sure, he’s going to be her true love forever. “Out of everyone here, Juelia deserves to find love; if there’s not love out there for Juelia, the rest of us are screwed.” Ashley I.? Get it together. This is TOO MUCH PRESSURE.
We all cool? Everyone relaxed? Juelia, how are you feeling going into this?
“If I fall in love today, it will change my life and my daughter’s life forever.” OH MY GOD. EVERYBODY, SETTLE DOWN. You’re supposed to fall in love today?! Okay, well, Venus is in retrograde, so good luck with that!
Juelia and Mikey go to Guadalajara on a private plane, and she never puts on her seatbelt because she spend the whole flight in his lap making out. They go see a lucha libre wrestling match. Was this date a plant by my male co-workers and my brother, who are trying to get me into wrestling? Terrance? Matt? Jake? Did you do this? After the date, Host Chris sends them an envelope full of a bunch of keys, and if they want, they can bang.
They choose to bang … with the lucha libre masks on.
Meanwhile, back at the resort, Joe tries to confront Samantha, and her two choices are: get all lovey-dovey with him and eventually get engaged, or see her entire world burn down. Hi, women. These are your options when a man has perceived you’ve wronged him. You can have sex with him until he’s not mad anymore, or he will ruin your life. Apparently, Joe went to the Gamergate school of conflict-resolution.
Samantha is one of those girls who in high school would talk about you behind your back about how sensitive you are and how you always think people are out to get you, and she would say it to someone who she knew would report it back to you. And when you finally confronted her, she’d be all, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t tell Tabatha that you were kinda touchy because your boobs are asymmetrical while we were watching Blue Crush in her basement. You’re just starting all this drama for no reason. You love starting drama,” while the depth faded from her round eyes and they became more sharklike and bored through you. And you’re just sitting there like, “You guys rented Blue Crush without me?”
It’s a cliché, but people who say they hate drama secretly LOVE drama, and people who say that they don’t have drama in their lives ALWAYS HAVE DRAMA AROUND THEM. If a woman has a framed poster of Marilyn Monroe and says she hates drama, RUN.
Ashley I. gives Joe advice about the whole situation because Venus is in retrograde and she whines, “Why am I the only girl who understands you?” If you’re ever asking a man that, RUN.
At the Camp Paradise bonfire, Joe tries to reintroduce himself to Samantha, but she’s not interested because Faux Tom Hardy has arrived, and he’s got one thing on his mind. Samantha. What is it with this girl? Do these men have drama-blindness? Joe tries to do something close to warning him, but it doesn’t work and Samantha says yes.
TO BE CONTINUED …
Um … ABC, the strength of these cliff-hanger endings is diminished if you use them every week for situations that aren’t actually cliff-hangers. But hey, it’s your show.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said he hopes major countries agree to “aggressive enough targets” to cut carbon emissions at climate talks in Paris later this year, but he said any deal will fall short of what is needed to slow global warming.
U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 45th Annual Legislative Conference Phoenix Awards Dinner in Washington September 19, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
“I’m less concerned about the precise number, because let’s stipulate right now, whatever various country targets are, it’s still going to fall short of what the science requires,” Obama said in an interview published in Rolling Stone magazine.
Scientists say global warming needs to be limited to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to avoid devastating droughts and rising sea levels.
Countries are submitting pledges to cut emissions ahead of the UN summit. So far, those pledges are estimated to limit warming to 3 degrees Celsius.
Obama said “a percent here or a percent there” in pledged cuts “is not going to be a deal breaker,” but said it was critical to set up a system to require countries to review their pledges every five years and continue to make cuts after the Paris talks conclude.
“The key for Paris is just to make sure that everybody is locked in, saying, ‘We’re going to do this.’” Obama said in the interview, which was conducted on Sept. 1 in Kotzebue, Alaska, a small town north of the Arctic circle.
The article was released on Wednesday, coinciding with a visit to the White House by Pope Francis, who has urged the world to address climate change.
With only 16 months left in office, the Obama administration is pushing to make curbs on carbon emissions a key part of what Obama hopes will be his presidential legacy.
He tried early in his first term to legislate a market-based system to “cap and trade” emissions, but Congress failed to back the plan. “We hadn’t built enough of the consensus that was required to get that done,” Obama said in the interview.
Obama also recalled the “disorganized mess” in Copenhagen in December 2009, during the last UN summit on climate change, which failed to produce a deal.
“I still remember flying in that last day, and nothing was happening, and I literally had to rescue the entire enterprise by crashing a meeting of the BRIC countries [Brazil, Russia, India and China] and strong-arming them into coming up with at least a document that could build some consensus going into the future,” Obama said.Koko the gorilla, famed for sign language abilities, adopts two kittens for 44th birthday
Updated
Koko the gorilla, famed for the ability to use sign language to communicate, has become the adoptive mother of two kittens.
For her 44th birthday, the gorilla chose a grey kitten and a black-striped kitten — Ms Grey and Ms Black — to join her family, signing the words "cat" and "baby".
In the video, Koko is presented with a litter of kittens in a box and "immediately falls in love" with Ms Grey, picking it up and stroking its stomach.
Ms Black is seen attempting to climb out of the bag in which she is placed to reach Koko.
She later signs "put on head", indicating for Ms Grey to be placed on her head.
The gorilla's love of kittens is well known with the story of Koko and her first kitten, All Ball, documented in the award-winning book Koko's Kitten.
Trainer Francine Patterson, who has worked with Koko since 1971, says Koko is able to understand more than 1,000 signs.
Koko was also exposed to spoken English from an early age and can reportedly understand about 2,000 words of the spoken language.
Topics: animals, human-interest, offbeat, united-states
First postedIt is interesting yet appalling to know that the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s final words before his execution in December 30, 2006, were about a secret fear of Iran.
According to a report by Al Alam News Network, as translated by IFP, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s former National Security Adviser, said in an interview with Iraq’s Asia TV that Saddam was suffering from an illusion of Iranophobia.
Al-Rubaie, who was accompanying Saddam from the investigation and interrogation stages up until his final moments before execution, noted that, “When they handed over Saddam to me and I was taking him to the judge so that he would hear his charges, I heard Saddam reciting these words over and over again: down with Iran…down with the Magi Iranians.
“When Saddam was asked about why he prevented the progress of Iraq with war and bloodshed, he said he wanted it [Iraq’s progress], but Iran did not let that happen!”
According to al-Rubaie, Saddam had a fear even of Iran’s name inasmuch as he would blame Iran even if two fish had a fight in an aquarium. He believed that Iranians are the descendants of the magi and fire worshipers.
“Since he knew the execution ceremony was being videotaped and probably broadcasted after his death, he was repeatedly cursing Iran,” he stressed.
He said Saddam was a skilful actor as life was like a play in the theatre for him.
“Even in the final moments of his life, Saddam pretended to be brave so much so that when he entered the execution room, the moment he clapped eyes on the noose, turned to the doctor and said, ‘This is for a man!’”Just when you thought the “safe spaces” PC-plagued college campuses couldn’t get more ridiculous, Yale students step up to prove you wrong.
Yale’s Intercultural Affairs Council (yes, they have such a thing) sent out an email prior to Halloween asking that students be thoughtful in their costume selection so as not to offend others. They listed specific examples of costumes deemed offensive, “such as feathered headdresses, turbans, ‘war paint,’ and blackface as examples of inappropriate ‘cultural appropriation and/or misrepresentation’.”
Erika Christakis, Associate Master of Silliman College, responded to the email and defended students’ right to wear Halloween costumes of their choosing, even if said costumes might be considered outrageous, inappropriate, provocative, or even offensive.
Christakis further urged students “not to take offense at insensitive Halloween costumes,” and she told students, “‘If you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended. ‘Talk to each other. Free speech and the ability to tolerate offence are the hallmarks of a free and open society’.”
FIRE reports:
Christakis drew on her experiences as a child development specialist to question whether a university should dictate what students should and shouldn’t wear on Halloween: I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students. In addition to expressing concerns about how policing students’ costumes can limit the exercise of imagination, free speech, and free expression, Christakis asked: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.
Yale students, however, did not appreciate this attempt to loosen the university’s control over their Halloween costume choices nor the suggestion that they can control their own response to insensitive costume choices by choosing not to be offended or by the simple act of looking away. Indeed, they are now demanding Christakis resign for daring to suggest they should be free to make their own decisions... about Halloween costumes.
When her husband, Master of Silliman College, Nicholas Christakis defended his wife’s statements, students responded... well, as you might expect.
Watch (language warning):
The above student screams that her “home” is threatened by Christakis’s email and by her husband’s defense of it.
This concept of Yale as both “safe space” and “home” is illustrated by one student writing at The Yale Herald about her “hurt at home” (Edit, 11/10/15: this post has been taken down, but is cached here):
As a Silimander, I feel that my home is being threatened. Last week, Erika Christakis, the associate master of Silliman College, sent an email to the Silliman community that called an earlier entreaty for Yalies to be more sensitive about culturally appropriating Halloween costumes a threat to free speech..... Today, when a group of us, organized originally by the Black Student Alliance at Yale, spoke with Christakis in the Silliman Courtyard, his response once again disappointed many of us. When students tried to tell him about their painful personal experiences as students of color on campus, he responded by making more arguments for free speech. It’s unacceptable when the Master of your college is dismissive of your experiences. The Silliman Master’s role is not only to provide intellectual stimulation, but also to make Silliman a safe space that all students can come home to..... I have had to watch my friends defend their right to this institution. This email and the subsequent reaction to it have interrupted their lives. I have friends who are not going to class, who are not doing their homework, who are losing sleep, who are skipping meals, and who are having breakdowns. I feel drained. And through it all, Christakis has shown that he does not consider us a priority..... Christakis’ actions have not been aimed at healing a divided community. Instead, they continue to frame the issue in an “us against them” split. Christakis needs to stop instigating more debate. He needs to stop trying to argue with people who are hurting, regardless of his personal opinions. Being the Master of Silliman is a position of power. To use it to marginalize so much of the student body is deplorable.
Someone suggests they can (not that they must or even should, mind you) wear Halloween costumes (Halloween costumes!) that someone else might find offensive, and these students become unhinged and melt down; they’re not eating, sleeping, or doing homework, and some are having “breakdowns.” What is going to happen to these precious snowflakes when they leave college and face the real world? Their delicate sensibilities and sense of perpetual victimhood and entitlement will not serve them well.
Yale’s president, however, is fostering their extended adolescence of self-indulgence and stompy-footed temper tantrums. He’s not defending the faculty members but is instead expressing his sorrow that Yale administrators “failed” the students.
Yale’s president tells minority students: ‘We failed you’ https://t.co/I9x9OuB7ge What a wimp. You have to stand up to these thugs. — Stephen Bainbridge (@ProfBainbridge) November 7, 2015
The Washington Post reports:
“We failed you,” Peter Salovey, a psychologist, told more than 40 students gathered in the ornate room where the Yale Corporation meets, on the top floor of the president’s office. “I think we have to be a better university. I think we have to do a better job,” he said, according to several students in the room who were taking notes. The four-hour meeting concluded a dramatic day on this Ivy League campus, as students confronted administrators about a series of recent events that have laid bare long-simmering racial tensions at the elite school.
All of this is completely surreal to me, but perhaps Yale is trying to model itself on “Safe Space University“?
And woe betide the person who puts this entire incident in its proper perspective. Yale News reports:
After a comment that speaker Greg Lukianoff made during a private William F. Buckley, Jr. Program conference on free speech was posted on the Facebook group “Overheard at Yale” this afternoon, over 100 students gathered around Linsly-Chittenden Hall to voice their anger. “Looking at the reaction to Erika Christakis’s email, you would have thought someone wiped out an entire Indian village,” Lukianoff said, according to Gian-Paul Bergeron ’17, who was present at the event and posted the quotation online. According to seven other attendees interviewed, the remark was followed by some laughter in the crowd..... The online Facebook post led a group of Native American women, other students of color and their supporters to protest the conference in an impromptu gathering outside of LC 102, where the Buckley event was taking place. Officers from the Yale University Police Department stood in front of the entrance, announcing that the event was at full capacity and unregistered individuals were not allowed to enter. The situation escalated when President of the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program Zach Young ’17 came outside to offer food to the protestors. Students outside demanded that a representative be allowed to join the conference and voice their views. But another attendee engaged with the protesters, saying that unregistered students were not allowed into the room and adding that speakers within the conference were entitled to their views as well. The standoff quickly became confrontational, with both sides raising their voices.
Yale students are protesting a talk on free speech because someone exercised that right and said something they didn’t like.
You can’t make this stuff up.Some readers of my blog posts, readers of my column and listeners to my daily radio show have asked me why I spend a lot of my time pushing, critiquing, criticizing and generally talking about Democrats and the progressive movement and not Republicans and the conservative/Tea Party movement these days. My answer is fairly simple: Democrats and (thus theoretically) the progressive movement are in the policy driver's seat right now, and Republicans and the conservative/Tea Party movement are effectively locked out of power, at least at the national level.
Pretending this isn't true creates a reality that cannot exist without such manufactured illusion. Indeed, beyond the filibuster (which is circumventable in many cases), the only way Republicans and the conservative/Tea Party movement can wield power is through perception. The more the media -- and especially the progressive media -- pretends Republicans and the conservative/Tea Party movement is powerful, the more chance that wholly manufactured perception can become reality.
Four years ago, when millions of Americans took to the streets to support the human and civil rights of immigrants and, by association in the public mind, Latinos, the news media scarcely covered the marches -- even though they drew larger crowds than any other marches in the history of the nation, including the oft-dramatized culture-changing protests over the Vietnam War. Fast-forward four years, to the Tea Party Convention, which boasted all of 600 registrants and one "we-tahd" hand-scribbler from Wasilla, Alaska and the contrast in news coverage is astonishing. The news media, including progressive talk radio and blogs, have been crowing about the big Tea Party "movement" for days now. USA Today has taken a poll about a Tea Party candidate's viability in presidential elections. In short, what we are seeing is a mind-boggling double standard, and a wholehearted swallowing of right-wing propaganda as fact, in an American news media whose mathematics deem one Tea Party member to be greater than 4,000 human rights marchers.
There are two major reasons why this double standard exists |
ideas seem to come about. They can be pretty serendipitous, making themselves known in the most unexpected of situations. I kind of think sitting in front of your computer waiting for the right idea to present itself is an exercise in futility. No, more likely something will strike you while out on a run or something like that.
So anyway, I was speed-walking home through the Lincoln Center area of Manhattan in the bitter cold of an early winter in New York, my hands desperately seeking refuge from the cold in the deepest parts of my coat pockets, my eyes in a trance, fixed on the pavement ahead, and my mind entirely on the idea of wallpaper contrast and other related nerdy things. You can miss out on quite a lot if you don’t look up every once in a while—but read on.
I wanted to solve that pesky DashClock foreground color problem much more elegantly; I got stuck on the idea that it was the wallpaper’s fault, not mine. How could I fix the wallpaper?—How could I improve the legibility of not just DashClock but other widgets, home screen icon labels, and all the other meaty stuff on my home screen?
During that walk I recalled an abstract artwork I saw on Medium from the other day that was essentially a composition of well-chosen color gradients (the Design/UX collection’s background image). It seemed ideal for legibility, but wasn’t very personal, and it probably took the designer a great deal of time and effort to devise a palette that achieved the desired mood. I also remembered that Timely, one of my favorite apps, had an excellent theme designer that resulted in very effective backgrounds. Very few edges, and you could choose dark enough colors to ensure white foregrounds were legible.
Timely’s built-in themes; at the bottom-left is a button that lets you build your own theme
I got home and immediately threw together a mockup in Photoshop. How would these composed radial and linear gradients look as home screen wallpapers? Pretty quickly I realized that while the results looked okay, there were two issues. First, the amount of effort needed to choose great color combinations and gradient ramps was prohibitively large. Second, and more importantly, what about all those family photos and beautiful landscapes? Remember, these are deeply personal devices. A bunch of colors slapped together didn’t make for a very fun wallpaper. It wasn’t quite magical. So I gave up.
The walk home from work, redux
The next day, on that same way home from work, I decided to look up—to actively pay attention to my surroundings. And that’s when it hit me. There it was—the answer to the problem, happily awaiting me every day on the walk home.
65th & Broadway
New York, NY
On 65th St. between Broadway and Amsterdam, are 20 or so of these massive dynamic LED billboards. They cycle through photo ads for shows and events playing at Lincoln Center. The transitions vary, ranging from slide-ins to fade-ins to… blur-ins. Brilliant! Photos started out mysterious and blurry, but after a few seconds came into focus and were accompanied by text details. “This is how it should be on your home screen,” I thought. A blurred wallpaper conveyed enough of the original photo’s meaning while losing the sharp edges that stole your attention.
Blurred photos on your Android home screen
I raced home to further explore ways in which this relatively simple technique could be applied to the problem of home screen wallpapers. One approach could be to simply let you choose a photo, blur it, and set the result as your wallpaper (I later found out there’s a great app that does exactly that). That left something to be desired though; at some point (probably on a regular basis) you’re going to want to see the normal, unblurred photo of your kids or that beautiful landscape.
Enter Live Wallpapers. Since Android 2.1, apps have had the ability to expose dynamic wallpapers in place of the more static default backgrounds. These wallpapers could even intercept touch events, so something like temporarily focusing a photo could be achieved through a simple double-tap gesture. It was the perfect fit from a technical standpoint.
That night in November 2013, I began prototyping a proof-of-concept live wallpaper, appropriately named BlurTest. I soon realized blurring wasn’t quite enough, and decided to add a darkening filter for additional background protection. A couple hundred lines of code in Android Studio and a Ctrl+R later, my wallpaper would never be the same again.
On museums and inspiration
While working on BlurTest, I was thinking a lot about the concept of inspiration: what inspired me? New York City was a huge inspiration—that block on 65th St. and Lincoln Center in general are amazing feats of modern technology and architecture. The city is also known for its legendary museums like the MoMA, filled with imaginative installations and beautiful works of art that compelled thoughts not just of the art itself but of the artist in her environment and of even deeper notions like human history itself, the passage of time and the universe as we know it.
I realized that what I really wanted to do with this live wallpaper project was not only to improve my users’ home screens, but to inspire them. Just like a trip to the MoMA leaves me with countless questions and ideas, the technology in our pockets can strive for just as lofty a goal. We look at our home screens probably about a hundred times a day. What better way to be inspired than to immerse our devices in beautiful artifacts from human history?
The beginning of a journey
What followed was a four-month journey building Muzei Live Wallpaper, culminating in a stressful yet satisfying public launch in February 2014.
Muzei Live Wallpaper Promotional Video
During that four-month period, I learned about the amazing WikiPaintings project, recruited my wonderful art teacher fiancée to curate the paintings, learned a bit more about OpenGL ES 2.0 than I would’ve liked, added an API for external art sources (akin to DashClock extensions), built a tiny server-side artwork administration interface and image-serving system on the Google Cloud Platform, got a lot of great feedback from other Googlers, and of course, spent many a long night troubleshooting caching bugs.
The journey and its results have been incredibly rewarding. Kenton, a friend from London, recently shared this post with me on Google+:
A Google+ post from Kenton
“Muzei” is a transliteration of the Russian word музей, which means “museum,” and that’s a big part of what Muzei aims to be: a living museum for your Android home screen. But it also aims to be a subconscious nod in the direction of your nearest museum, where you can continue to be inspired by the world and its many wonders. Success.
Looking back
So, yeah, it’s definitely a funny thing, how ideas seem to come about. DashClock was born out of opportunity in the form of a new API that lended itself nicely to new lock screen personalization options. Muzei was envisioned as a solution to the problem of DashClock’s poor legibility on high-contrast wallpapers, but became a lot more. It became a way to motivate developers through open source code and extensibility. It became a celebration of the things I love most about Android and the amazing city I’m lucky enough to reside in. But most of all, it became a way to inspire people through beautiful artifacts of our species’ time on this planet.Land has been owned both collectively and privately. The evidence reveals that in earliest times, before men learned to establish cities, they laid claim to hunting and foraging territories, establishing a kind of collective control over the area. This is collective ownership, for it excludes the private owner and presumes that all items of value found in the claimed territory are to be used for the good of the group. Primitive tribes forbade private exclusiveness in land.
American Indians, at the time the first Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere, in the main practiced collective ownership of the land. The tribe claimed the territory. White men, seeking to make treaties with the Indians, purchased such territories from the Indians without completely conveying the meaning of their purchase to the aboriginals. Indian chiefs, swapping land for so many hatchets and glass beads, looked upon the property they were conveying as having existence only in those things they themselves valued. Thus, they were dismayed when they found white men clearing land, taking out the trees, and putting up permanent-type structures.
It is entirely reasonable to assume that many a chief, bartering away his land for so many trinkets, thought of the trinkets as a fair exchange for the game animals, fish, or water rights in the territory up for barter. Perhaps he was, in his own scale of values, conducting a shrewd trade in an area where most of the game animals had already been killed or run off. He may have thought he was giving the white man little if anything of value for these elaborate man-made items of cutlery and decoration, which the Indian could not possibly produce.
When the white man cultivated the earth and thus more fully utilized the hunting ground, the Indian may have belatedly awakened to the nature of the white man's intention. This could well have served to stimulate a number of Indian hostilities and uprisings.
In many places in the world, some land passed into private ownership or control while other territory was maintained as the basic collective property. In early Russia, under the mir system long in vogue, each young man as he reached maturity was ceded a certain number of acres for his own use and that of his family. These acres were taken from the collective mir and exploited privately. In a sense, this pre-czarist and czarist system has been reestablished by the Soviet system, which contends that all land is socialist property but permits each household of a collective farm to have a "subsidiary husbandry" on a plot of land between one-fourth and three-fourths acres in size.
This "husbandry" is generally viewed as "private" property and to date, in Russia, produces proportionately far more food crops than the huge collective farms. Since the household pays no taxes on this land, a degree of private ownership exists in Russia which is, in an economic sense, far more in harmony with laissez-faire ownership than our own system. Of course, the Russian government can confiscate this land at any time, but until it does so, the Russian peasant has an advantage over his American counterpart in this particular.
Currently in the United States, although we praise private ownership of the land as the bulwark of our system of land ownership, the taxes levied actually perpetuate a kind of collectivity in ownership. The social group — the city, county, or state — collects a fee for the use of the land. The governing body has a prior lien upon any property where the fee (tax) has not been collected. In this sense, all "privately" owned land in the United States is fundamentally owned by the collective. This practice, aided by the customs of eminent domain, central planning, and zoning, emphasizes that we still pay tribute to the primitive system of collective land ownership.
A curious phenomenon in which private ownership ran afoul of collective ownership concepts in this country relates to the early conflict between cattlemen and "nesters," or dirt farmers. The cattlemen, unable to conceive of private ownership of the vast grasslands of middle North America, apparently believed these huge territories would never be privately owned. Hence, they viewed the cattle as private property and appropriately slapped a brand on the quivering flank of horses, cows, and other animals, marking them as private property. The land was "open range" which anyone could use.
When the dirt farmers moved in, fenced off plots for agricultural purposes, and laid claim to the unclaimed prairies, the cattlemen took up their Winchesters to defend property which they had already indicated was not their own. In the exchange of hostilities, the permanent settlers won the argument for they demonstrated that a negative claim to non-ownership by anyone is inferior to a positive claim by someone. The cattlemen retaliated, belatedly, by fencing off hundreds of thousands of acres so that grazing lands could be preserved for themselves.
Had they done this originally, the prairies would probably not have been eroded by the plow, and the development of the central and western plains would have taken on an entirely different complexion than they wear today. It is reasonable to assume that in this case, the development of periodic dust bowls and the defoliation of the prairies might not have occurred, at least on the present scale.
Among ancient peoples, the idea of private ownership of land emerged as early as pre-Biblical times. There is considerable evidence that when cities were first developed, and possibly before, land was privately claimed for farming purposes in Egypt and the Middle East. Some of our earliest documents in the form of papyrus or clay tablets are deeds in land, privately conveyed by an owner to another owner. Land was also conveyed by will.
One of the earliest land transactions is recorded in the Book of Genesis (23:2-18), wherein Abraham bought a plot of land for the purpose of burying Sarah, his wife. The scriptures note a price of four hundred shekels of silver "current money" paid to Ephron, the son of Zohar, for the purchase of the cave of Machpelah, to be used as a crypt for the deceased Sarah.
F. de Coulanges, in developing the history of the gens, reveals how land was owned by families rather than by individuals. This formed a type of genetic private ownership in a familial collective. It was believed in India, Greece, and Rome that the boundaries of land were maintained by household gods, whose function was, at least in part, to preserve the sanctity of ownership.
Property boundaries were not contiguous, and spaces between properties were preserved for free passage. This system may have given rise to the idea of public roads. It was viewed as a fundamental affront to any household god to touch, or to trespass in any way, the boundary which a particular gen established through its familial religion.
Land, including the family hearth, could not be conveyed to another family regardless of circumstances. This ancient custom, perpetuated through the gens and phratries, may have led to the fear often evinced by modern socialists that those who own land become a privileged and perpetual landed aristocracy. While it is certainly true that during long ages the son inheriting property from his father under the rules of primogeniture could not divest himself of this property, this custom has long since vanished.
In a modern economy, land is freely conveyed in the open market. It is almost axiomatic among American real-estate brokers that any piece of land can be sold if the price is right. Manufacture and the development of industrial production have doomed ancient agrarian notions of the use of land.
Yet most theories relating to land use and land ownership are presently based upon ancient agrarian customs which no longer have application. If a free market is assumed, even though property in land remained in the ownership of a particular family line, no real problem could or would arise. If the property were utilized to its highest advantage, the entire economy would benefit irrespective of the name of the owner. If the property were not utilized according to its highest utility, market factors would arise in time, which would make it advantageous to alter utilization or to transfer ownership.
In those nations, such as Central and South America, where a landed aristocracy still holds sway, the requirement is an industrial revolution and development, not a political revolution employed to redistribute the land for agricultural purposes. Socialists frequently champion the cause of "agrarian reform" seeking to redistribute the land by force. Such forceful redistribution almost invariably leads to state collectivization of the land in place of private perpetuation of land tenure.
A precise example of this procedure is before us in the land history of Mexico. When the Díaz government of Mexico expired in 1911 and the revolution sired by Zapata, Villa, and Carranza called for land reform, the reason given was that the aristocratic landholders were preventing the peasants from owning the land. The revolutionaries were successful in establishing their particular form of land expropriation, and the large holdings of the landowners were confiscated. But this did not lead to the establishment of many small farms, as was fondly hoped. Rather, the state seized the land and then belatedly discovered that the peasant was poorly equipped to face up to the manifold problems of private farm management.
"Currently in the United States, although we praise private ownership of the land as the bulwark of our system of land ownership, the taxes levied actually perpetuate a kind of collectivity in ownership."
Thus, in Mexico today a system closely patterned after the Russian mir pertains. Individual peasants are granted tracts of land for their own use, so long as they work at the task. If the peasant does not use his land for a prescribed period of time, the land passes from him back into the collective state land, to be parceled out again when an apparently worthy peasant appears. Fortunately, in Mexico in recent years an industrial expansion has begun, and the Mexican government, essentially socialistic on a Marxist base, has adopted more lenient policies with respect to the private ownership and development of land by those willing to purchase and use the land.
There are still many who champion collective ownership of land. They apparently believe that owning land constitutes a monopoly, that since man does not labor to produce the land, he cannot rightfully own it privately. The anarchists believe that private ownership of land would not ensue except that government makes it possible, thereby protecting the landlord by means of law and political privilege.
But the collective ownership of land has these disadvantages:
When all land is owned and managed by the collective (government), no private point of view or interest can be maintained. This results in curtailment or abolition of those innovations and long-term developments, which flourish when land is independently and privately owned and managed. The charge that private ownership of land is a monopoly is certainly not offset by creating a governmental monopoly in place of private (and necessarily competing) transactions in land. It is self-evident that individual men do not labor to produce the land. By the same token, government does not labor to produce the land. The land is a natural resource and the origin of nearly all our natural resources. But one obvious fact emerges. When an individual owns land privately and knows himself to be the proprietor in fact, he will labor with enormous self-commitment to improve the land. On the contrary, when the individual is merely a tenant, either of a farm or a dwelling or a business site, his interest is in taking out all he can to compensate for the cost of the rent he pays. This is true whether his landlord is a private person or a government. Actually, in those cases where government has become the landlord, the evidence abounds that tenants are even less interested in improving or even maintaining the property they occupy. If a landlord-tenant relationship occurs privately, then the private owner of the land is in a position to keep up his own property and to influence the tenant against careless behavior or wanton destruction. But when the state is the only landlord, the supervision of the land by the state representative becomes parallel to that of ancient stewards who supervised the behavior of serfs. If the only land available is state land, then the entire human race will become nothing more than tenants, entirely at the mercy of state officials. If private ownership flourishes, the tenant has a remedy. He can always purchase land and thus remove himself from the renting class. The charge that private ownership of land could not exist except for government protection will not stand on the strength of the evidence. Government's role in respect to land has been aggressive rather than protective. Private holdings have been wrested from the hands of individuals or groups the government attacks, either in war or by legal decree. In both ancient Egypt and Assyria, as well as India, Greece, and the Roman provinces, private holdings of land were respected and held safe and sacred long before governments of any kind ever pretended to defend the ownership of land. The idea of the sacredness of a land boundary emerges from primitive religious beliefs and early tribal customs, and government, as such, is a latecomer to the field.
When land is privately owned and managed by the owner, or a manager responsible to the owner, sovereign control exists. The control of the owner is total. It is limited, however, by the boundaries, which mark the confines of his property. No owner has any authority over property other than his own.
For private ownership to exist, control must be total within the territory owned, and nonexistent beyond it. By this process, the dignity and the productivity of man can be upheld. Each man becomes the "lord" of his own domain, whether large or small. The early British view that a "man's home is his castle" is sustained. And only by this process can freedom of the individual endure.
Much of the uncertainty relating to land ownership and tenure today arises from the trend toward collectivizing the land. To support human liberty and to further the development of a vital, dynamic economy among men, private ownership of the land is the primary essential.
When land is collectively owned or collectively managed, a dispersion of rightful authority ensues. Consider a city park. It is claimed that "the city" owns the park. But what is "the city"? It is a word we have devised to indicate that a number of people live in a compact urban area.
To say that the city owns the park merely means that the residents within the urban area are forced to pay a tax in support of the park. They may not ever enter the park, but they are required to pay for its maintenance. The payments they make cannot be redeemed. Thus, the payments made do not constitute an investment which could be sold or transferred. If the resident moves from the area, no refund is made to him. Nor can he sell that portion of the park he has paid for to a latecomer.
The resident may use the park, provided the city "authorities" permit him. But he can be excluded from the park, in spite of the fact that he has paid for it in part. Additionally, while he is said to be one of the "owners," as all other city residents are identified, he has no authority over the park. He cannot be shown that particular portion of the park his money has purchased and maintained. He can evince no preference as to how his portion of the park is to be used.
The city officials, who have no more financial interest in the park than he has, can exert authority over the property, but he cannot. His only recourse in the event he is dissatisfied with the park management is to attempt to elect other officials.
Thus, the lines of authority, which properly run from the purchaser and owner, to encompass the boundaries of what is owned, are dispersed. The "owner" cannot exercise authority. Non-owners exercise authority. And use of the park falls to the decision of the authorities who are not owners.
This results in inevitable conflicts of interest. A man who, has paid "his share" in maintaining the park, decides he and his family will picnic in the park. He is told when he arrives that picnicking is forbidden. His "rights" to the park, which he has purchased (theoretically) with his money, are ruled nonexistent, in favor of those others who have also purchased "rights" but who do not want to picnic.
Whose rights are supreme? Only those of the politically sustained "authorities" and not those of the purchasers or owners. One is reminded of a news item which appeared in the Catholic Digest: "Sign in downtown square of a small Kansas town: 'No ball playing. No pets. No bicycle riding. No loitering. Remember, this is your park!'"
The same situation pertains to other institutions run by a collective. Consider the so-called public school. The taxpayers pay for the school. Can they decide what is to be taught and how the lessons are to be managed? No, they cannot. While some will approve of what the "authorities" (political) decide, others will be dissatisfied.
If the schools belong to the people, each taxpayer has an equal right to decide what shall be taught, who shall be admitted, and so on. Currently, and primarily in the South, enormous conflicts have arisen over this point. Taxpaying Negroes demand, and rightly, that their children be admitted to schools they have helped to buy and maintain with their taxes. Taxpaying white citizens demand the right to exclude Negroes. The political decision will positively rule against one group and in favor of another, since both policies cannot be followed at the same time in respect to the same school.
If schools were privately owned and managed, the individual wishing to educate his child could select the kind of school he desires in much the same way that each selects the kind of church pleasing to him. Each can support the church of his choice and refrain from supporting some other church. But in "public" (government-controlled) education, all are compelled to support schools, which in the final analysis, few if any really approve. Management is in the hands of politically elected or appointed "authorities" who enforce collective decisions upon all.
To maximize human well-being and to minimize disputes, private ownership and management of land and all appurtenances to land should be encouraged. Further, the land should be untaxed. The owner should own totally, once all encumbrances have been removed.Suddenly feeling tired, bored, listless? It could be a sign of iron deficiency.
For iron plays a vital role in energy metabolism and the transport of oxygen. According to the World Health Organization, iron deficiency is among the most common nutrient deficiencies, affecting about two billion people, or over 30% of the world’s population.
The bulk of the body’s iron, a trace mineral, is found in two proteins, haemoglobin in the red blood cells and myoglobin in the muscle cells.
On an average, women in the age group of 19-50 need 18mg of iron in their diet every day, and men and women above the age of 51, 8mg. This difference accounts for the additional loss of blood during the menstrual cycle, apart from the daily losses that are in excess of the required iron stores, from the faeces, skin, urine and sweat.
Among the symptoms of iron deficiency are weakness, apathy, lack of drive and stamina, feeling distracted, spoon- shaped nails that are flat but have flared outer edges, and reduced resistance to colds.
Understanding the iron equation
The body conserves iron; since it is difficult to excrete iron once it is in the body, balance is maintained mainly through absorption. More iron is absorbed when the body’s iron stores, primarily found in the liver as a protein called ferritin, empty, and less when the stores are full. This means that both too little and too much iron can be harmful..
Heme iron, which is derived from meat, poultry and fish, is best absorbed by the body, more so than non heme, which is derived from plant foods. It’s estimated that around 25% of all the heme iron consumed, and 10% of the non-heme iron, is absorbed by the body.
When it comes to non-heme iron, spinach is a rich source. Just a cup of raw spinach has 2.3mg of iron, but its bioavailability is 2-20%, depending on the iron stores in the body, while 100g of chicken breast has 2.1mg of iron and its bioavailability is 15-35%, depending on available body stores. Vegetarians can combine vitamin C-rich foods with their regular nutrition to improve iron absorption.
Here’s what you should do to keep a check on and regulate your blood iron levels:
■ Check with the doctor and take a blood iron profile test.
■ Ask your doctor if you need supplementation. However, keep in mind that the body absorbs iron from natural foods more efficiently than from supplements.
As far as diet is concerned, here are some useful tips:
■ If you are non-vegetarian, include poultry, fish, shrimp and eggs in your meals. One-two eggs, 100-150g of chicken and fish for the two main meals, depending on your activity levels, daily. For low activity, 100g; for higher activity, 150g. Include shrimp once a week if your blood cholesterol levels are in check.
■ If you are vegetarian, add lime juice to your meals and increase the intake of fresh tomato juice.
■ Potato skins, dried raisins, figs, spinach, nuts, legumes like kidney beans are good sources of iron.
Madhuri Ruia is a nutritionist, Pilates expert and author of Who Stole My Calories?. She runs InteGym in Mumbai, which advocates workouts with healthy diets.Phlannel Boxingday Name Phlannel Boxingday Sex Male Species Humanoid Occupation Monster hunter Introduced in Lemonhope Part 2" Voiced by Creed Bratton
Phlannel Boxingday is a monster hunter in Ooo, who rides around on a cloud in the sky.
Contents show]
Personality
Phlannel Boxingday helps Lemonhope after he runs away and is shipwrecked in the desert. Phlannel Boxingday is far less demanding of Lemonhope than Princess Bubblegum.
Phlannel asks Lemonhope what he wants to do, guiding him toward his decisions rather than making them for him. Even in their first encounter, Phlannel asks Lemonhope if he wants to hang with him in his cloud trawler to recover, not forcing the decision on him. However, Phlannel does tell Lemonhope that he will have to deal with the consequences of his decisions, as even in his ideal scenario as a monster hunter with Boxingday, Lemonhope will still be a prisoner of his own mind due to the nightmares he gets as a result of refusing to help the people of the Lemongrab Earldom when they helped him escape.
Boxingday advertises himself as a monster hunter and adventurer, collecting loot from fallen foes, and displays a good perception of how different monsters react to Lemonhope's music. He notices the scorpions run away from Lemonhope after playing Finn's flute. Boxingday encourages Lemonhope to use his musical skills to help him escape from the monster.
Despite his relationship with Lemonhope, Boxingday refuses to help Lemonhope beyond dropping him off at the earldom boundary.
Biography
When Lemonhope leaves the shipwreck in search of water, he takes note of a mysterious lone cloud above his head. After Lemonhope collapses, Phlannel Boxingday arrives on the vehicularized cloud, which he calls a cloud trawler, and hydrates him, asking him if he wants to have some help and live with him until he recovers enough to support himself.
When Lemonhope boards the trawler, Phlannel flies it into the sky, where they are attacked by the same birds that destroyed the pirate ship. Phlannel encourages Lemonhope to play his musical instruments to distract one of the birds. Initially, Lemonhope's flute agitates the bird, causing it to call its pack. Then Phlannel tells Lemonhope to play the harp, and this satisfies the bird enough so that it follows the trawler and does not notice when Phlannel directs the bird into a pillar of rock.
Upon Lemonhope's desperate request, Phlannel drives the vehicle to the fallen bird. It spouts gold and crowns, possibly taken from the pirate vessel. Phlannel Boxingday announces that he is a Monster Hunter who takes the loot from the monsters he takes down and offers Lemonhope an apprenticeship. Lemonhope calls this a "dream come true" and joins Phlannel.
Some time later, Lemonhope wakes up from a nightmare, which Phlannel says is the "third time this week." Phlannel gives Lemonhope advice, telling him that even though he is free to not deal with the Lemongrab Earldom, a debt is not easily forgotten, and Lemonhope will be a prisoner of his own mind until he repays it.
Lemonhope decides to intervene with the earldom and wants Phlannel Boxingday to help, but Boxingday says that he is bound by very tight treaties and cannot intervene with Lemongrab politics. Boxingday drops Lemonhope off at the Lemongrab Earldom boundary.
Trivia
Phlannel Boxingday bears a number of similarities to Princess Bubblegum: His initials (PB), number of letters in his first name (8), number of letters in his last name (9), and number of syllables in each word (2, 3), are all identical to Princess Bubblegum's. He uses similar slang to Princess Bubblegum. He speaks some German phrases. He has an understanding of zanoits suggesting scientific knowledge. His pink skin and humanoid shape is very similar to the bubblegum people. He rubs Lemonhope's head and calls him "dude" just in the exact same fashion Princess Bubblegum did in the previous episode before going in the field trip. He talks about pacts and treaties that prevent him from crossing Lemongrab territory, much like Princess Bubblegum. He then makes a comparison between keeping the treaty and disposing a broken science instrument.
If Phlannel Boxingday is indeed Princess Bubblegum, her disguise is very reminiscent to that of Davey (Finn's alter-ego), in both the moustache shape and tone of voice.
The speech where he says that no one is actually free, or "still a prisioner, in deinen kopf" is similar to the philosophical concept of "bad faith" by the existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Phlannel understands and respects the choices of others, as shown when he meets with Lemonhope, never pushing him to make a decision one way or another. Instead he helps guide others to find their own path.The parents of a 10-month-old boy who died in a hospital in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday allege that they were asked for bribes by every employee they encountered, including the man who was to administer a crucial injection to the infant.
The child died because the injection was delayed, said his mother Sumita Dutt, sobbing with his body in her arms outside the hospital in Bahraich, 130 km from state capital Lucknow.
The hospital has denied the allegations, but has ordered an inquiry and sacked one of the bribe-takers.
Sumita and Shiv Dutt, who live in a village near Bahraich, had brought their son Krishna to the children’s ward at the biggest government hospital in the town. The child had high fever and weakness.
After a doctor asked the couple to admit the child, a nurse was allegedly the first to demand extra money to get documents in order.
Next, alleges Sumita, it was the sweeper at the children’s ward who asked for a bribe to place the child on the bed that was allotted to them.
On Tuesday morning, Sumita says, a medical assistant came over and asked for money to fetch a crucial injection, even though the hospital doesn’t charge for it.
“I asked him to give me some time…I promised to give him whatever amount he asked for,” says Sumita.
After an argument, the assistant did fetch the injection, but it was too late to save the child, say the parents.
“Every staff member wanted a bribe. Only the doctors don’t ask because they have private practice. I think one should sell one’s land and go to a private hospital,” said Shiv Dutt, who works as a labourer.
The parents have not gone to the police after the hospital’s assurance that their complaint would be investigated.
“There was no delay in giving injections,” says OP Pandey, doctor in-charge at the Bahraich district hospital. “The main complaint was that bribes were asked for during admission by a nurse and sweeper. We have removed the sweeper and transferred the nurse and an inquiry is underway.”3DMAX Picks up Encore
The French eSports organization 3DMAX has announced that they will be picking up Finnish team Encore.
After announcing their return to the CS:GO scene by picking up French female team Ultimate Gaming, 3DMAX has now announced their new male CS:GO team, ENCORE.
The team was formed ealier this year by former ENCE player Joona "natu" Leppänen after the team disbanded following the departure of Aleksi "allu" Jalli, who decided to join mousesports.
ENCORE, which came in second at the ASUS ROG Summer in Helsinki, has proven to be strong contenders in the scene, beating other high-level teams such as nostalgie and flipsid3 tactics in a variety of tournaments. They have been looking for an organization ever since their formation.
The squad will be playing under the 3DMAX name as early as the upcoming Game Show League tournament, which will feature some of the best teams in the region. Team captain Joona "natu" Leppänen had this to say about the organization:
"We are delighted to have found a great partner in 3DMAX that enables us to compete to our maximum going further. We've taken our time evaluating our future plans and with this opportunity coming across made it an easy choice for us moving forward. We have built and will continue to build this lineup on good chemistry and hard work to bring Finland back on the map as one of the better sides in the Counter-Strike world."
3DMAX now has the following CS:GO team:
Taneli "disturbed" Veikkola
Jesse "KHRN" Grandell
Joona "natu" Leppänen
Timo "REFLEX" Rintala
Mikko "xartE" VälimaaDAVAO CITY—Despite coming from opposite sides of the political fence, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte is open to a “cordial working relationship” with Vice President-elect Leni Robredo, his spokesperson said on Thursday.
Designated presidential spokesperson Ernesto “Ernie” Abella expressed optimism that the country’s incoming top two officials would maintain a professional relationship even if they have yet to formally meet.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I don’t know about the exact date or plans (of a possible meeting), but I’m sure that the President, being President of the entire nation, is quite open to having a cordial relationship with the Vice President, or at least more than cordial, but at least they have a working relationship,” Abella said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel’s Dateline Philippines.
“But as to the nature of it, I cannot say so,” he added.
Duterte’s camp opted for a separate inauguration from Robredo, saying their decision to have an “austere” celebration in Malacañang would not allow the incoming Vice President to invite more guests. Abella said Duterte was “not a very pompous person and does not stand on ceremonies” but “appreciates order.”
READ: Rody tells Leni: I want a separate inauguration
The incoming Chief Executive previously said there was “no compelling reason” for him to give Robredo a Cabinet position as he did not want to offend his friend |
the bird too Information was given by locals to the squad.Infants whose fathers engage regularly with them during their first three months have very few behavioural problems when they reach their first birthday, according to a Wellcome Trust report.
The report, compiled by researchers from the University of Oxford and Imperial College London, also found that a father's influence is more pronounced with boys than girls in the first few weeks after birth.
The researchers conducted a study of 192 children, drawn from two UK maternity units. They studied the level of interaction each child had with their father at three months, and compared it with the child's behaviour after 12 months.
The study found that children with positively engaged fathers displayed markedly fewer behavioural problems than those who had little or no interaction with their dads.
Dr Paul Ramchandani, researcher at the Imperial College London, said: "We found that children whose fathers were more engaged in the interactions had better outcomes, with fewer subsequent behavioural problems. At the other end of the scale, children tended to have greater behavioural problems when their fathers were more remote and lost in their own thoughts, or when their fathers interacted less with them.
"This association tended to be stronger for boys than for girls, suggesting that perhaps boys are more susceptible to the influence of their father from a very early age."
The researchers conclude that the period from birth to three months is crucial for the psychological and physical development of the child - and fathers should be assisted wherever possible.
"As every parent knows, raising a child is not an easy task. Our research adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests that intervening early to help parents can make a positive impact on how their infant develops," Dr Ramchandani said.There are plenty of Arduino-based robots in the world, but actually building one is a bit tough if you're not familiar with Arduino programming. But a company called ArcBotics has created an Arduino-based robot called "Sparki" that can be used—and programmed—by anyone. You don't have to assemble it yourself; the little plastic robot will be ready to go out of the box with an included remote control. To let users create additional functionality, ArcBotics is preparing programming samples and tutorials for controlling the robot's sensors and actuators.
Sparki is a Kickstarter project (of course), one that has raised nearly $14,000 toward its minimum goal of $60,000, with 29 days left. The robot will be sold for $99 when it's available, and Kickstarter pledges of $99 or more will reserve you a robot with an estimated delivery of October 2013. The robot designs will be released publicly for those who want to build their own.
ArcBotics previously used Kickstarter to raise money for its "Hexy the Hexapod" robot kit, aimed at more advanced users. ArcBotics' stretch goals for Sparki of $100,000, $200,000, and $300,000 would allow it to build an Android app to control Sparki via Bluetooth, a wireless data radio for communicating with other Sparki robots, and a drag-and-drop block programming environment, respectively.
Sparki is mostly geared toward education, with a suggested age of 11 and up. But there's nothing stopping adults from using Sparki as an easy introduction to Arduino programming. "To write your own programs, just plug it in via USB, install the custom-enhanced Arduino software and try any of the dozens of example programs," ArcBotics wrote. "We have programs for every sensor and actuator on Sparki."
Sparki uses an ATMega32 processor and a custom bootloader to run Arduino functionality. It has a distance sensor to calculate the distance to walls and objects, an accelerometer, light-sensing phototransistors to seek out light or dark, edge detection sensors, infrared transmitters and receivers, a serial port for connection to an Arduino or Raspberry Pi, motors, a buzzer for making sounds, Bluetooth, a 128x64 LCD screen, and a marker holder that allows it to draw. Sparki is powered by 4 AA batteries.
Programming tutorials will start with "edge avoidance, line following, maze solving, wall avoidance, room navigation, object retrieval, follow/hide from light sources, shape drawing, computer input (make a keyboard/mouse using sensors), and games with other Sparkis." Users can also learn more advanced concepts like PID (proportional-integral-derivative) loops, path-finding algorithms, signal filtering, and heuristics.
To see more, check out this ArcBotics video:
UPDATE: I asked ArcBotics COO Connie Hu whether Sparki comes with a standard Arduino board and, if not, how someone might go about building one of their own. Here's her answer:FATE OF REMAINS UNCLEAR FATE OF REMAINS UNCLEAR The fate of Saddam Hussein's body remained unclear Saturday, with one Iraqi official saying it may eventually be handed over to his family. A member of his defense team, however, was concerned that Saddam's remains would be destined for an unmarked grave. National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie, who attended Saddam's execution told Iraqi state television that his body may be handed over to his family at some point, but that no decision had been made. The body, he said, was held by the government. Saddam's immediate family, including his three daughters, all live outside Iraq. Dubai-based al-Arabiya satellite TV quoted his daughter Raghad as having asked Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh to request Saddam's body for temporary burial in the country. She hoped to eventually take her father's remains to Tikrit, Saddam's hometown north of Baghdad. Issam Ghazzawi, a member of Saddam's defense team, said he was worried the body would be buried in an unmarked location. "We do not know what they will do with Saddam's body," he said from Amman, Jordan. "They will bury him in an unknown location so nobody could be able to pay respect to the president." Saddam's grave site could become a focus for the Sunni Arab insurgency that is particularly strong in the area near his hometown, where the former president was captured by American troops in December 2003. Iraqi officials have refused to disclose the burial place of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike on June 7. But Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay Hussein, were buried just outside Tikrit after they were killed in a July 2003 gunbattle with U.S. troops in Mosul. Saddam had feisty exchange at the gallows BAGHDAD (AP) Iraqis awoke to television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam Hussein's neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen. They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope. Saddam was buried shortly before dawn Sunday in a family plot in the cemetery in Ouja, the town of his birth. Few were present for the internment near Tikrit, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad. Saddam was captured in an underground hide-out near Ouja on Dec. 13, 2003, eight months after he fled Baghdad ahead of advancing American troops. The former Iraqi leader was buried near the graves of his sons Uday and Qusay in the main town cemetery. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the American forces in Mosul in July 2003. In Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City on Saturday, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets on Saturday to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country. There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare was not far off the daily average — 92 from bombings and death squads. Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, his hometown. Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death Nov. 5. By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge. "He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians," Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp. Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution." "I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans," Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times. "God damn you," the guard said. "God damn you," responded Saddam. New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam. Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood. Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a website. Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad. The floor dropped out of the gallows. "The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The video showed a close-up of Saddam's face as he swung from the rope. Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes." The responses within Iraq to Saddam's death echoed the larger reaction across the Middle East, with his enemies rejoicing and his defenders proclaiming him a martyr. While Iranians and Kuwaitis welcomed the death of the leader who led wars against each of their countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the execution prevented exposure of the secrets and crimes the former dictator committed during his brutal rule. Some Arab governments denounced the timing the 69-year-old former president's hanging just before the start of the most important holiday of the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha. Libya announced a three-day official mourning period and canceled all celebrations for Eid. Within Iraq and across the world, the airwaves were alive with pictures of Saddam in death, a bruise on his cheek, his neck elongated and twisted impossibly to the right — grisly proof that the man who had tormented and killed so many during a bloody quarter-century rule was truly dead. But some Iraqis — like 34-year-old Haider Hamed, a candy store owner in east Baghdad — wondered what would really change with the execution of Saddam, who was just four months shy of his 70th birthday. "He's gone, but our problems continue," said the Shiite Muslim, whose uncle was killed in one of Saddam's many brutal purges. "We brought problems on ourselves after Saddam because we began fighting Shiite on Sunni and Sunni on Shiite." At least 80 Iraqis died in bombings and other attacks Saturday, and police said 12 more tortured bodies were found dumped in Baghdad. The U.S. military announced six more servicemembers — three soldiers and three Marines — were killed. The execution took place on the penultimate day of the year's deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count. Um Abdullah, a Sunni and teacher in Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad, said she would wear black to mourn the city's favorite son. "Saddam will be a hero in our eyes," she said. "I have five kids and I will teach them to take revenge on Americans." Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took into the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance. Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 went into the streets to protest the execution. Among minority Sunnis there was deep anger, born not only of Saddam's execution but of the loss of their decades-long political and economic dominance that began with Saddam's ouster in the U.S. invasion nearly four years ago. "The president, the leader, Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs," said Yahya al-Attawi, who led prayer at a towering Sunni mosque constructed by Saddam in Tikrit. There were cheers at the cafeteria of a U.S. outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Saddam had been hanged. But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster — and therefore didn't make much difference. "Nothing really changes," said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30. "The militias run everything now, not Saddam." Staff Sgt. David Earp, who also fought in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, said the execution worried him. "In my opinion, something big is going to happen," said Earp, of Colorado. "There will be a response. Probably not today because they know we are looking for one, but soon." Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Enlarge Al-iraqia via Getty Images A video shows the moments leading up to the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as he is led in to the gallows room to be prepared for hanging. The former Iraqi president was executed in a secure facility in the Northern Baghdad suburb of Khadimeya.OAKLAND (CBS SF) — Two living Giant African snails, one of world’s most damaging snails, were found earlier this month at the Port of Oakland, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said Wednesday.
The live snails were among a pile of dead Giant African snail eggs found by agriculture specialists searching a wooden pallet shipment from American Samoa, customs officials said.
The snail eats at least 500 different types of plants, as well as paint, plaster and stucco. The snail also carries plant and human pathogens, which can cause diseases such as meningitis in humans, customs officials said.
“Once they get into the environment they’re hard to get rid of,” Customs and Border Protection spokesman Frank Falcon said.
An eradication of 18,000 snails in Florida that started in 1966 took 10 years and $1 million to complete, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
This is the second time in two months that specialists have found the snail in imports, according to customs officials.
Specialists found a snail in a commercial goods shipment from Asia in November, customs officials said.
In each case, specialists reloaded the shipments and safeguarded them until the shipments could be treated, according to customs officials.
The snails, which can grow to eight inches in length, were sent to a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection station and were officially identified by the USDA Systematic Entomology Laboratory.
© Copyright 2015 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Voting period: 1st February (00:00 CET) - 28th February (23:59 CET) 2019.
A person can only vote once using their personal e-mail address.
The voter always selects two candidates for the European Tree of the Year and confirms the vote.
Votes sent from disposable e-mail addresses are not allowed and will be cancelled.
Environmental Partnership Association reserves the privilege to check if an e-mail address is used in line with the rules of the competition and if it is not, to delete such a vote.
In case the server gets overloaded with fraudulent votes, Nadace Partnerství, the organizer of the contest, reserves the privilege to stop the votes.
Personal data (e-mail addresses) are only used to identify voters and will not be used for other purposes or disclose to third parties unless you have chosen to receive the newsletter.
Environmental Partnership Association, the organizer of the contest, reserves the right to stop voting or change the rules of voting.Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE added to her already significant lead in delegates over Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Bernie Sanders Town Hall finishes third in cable news race, draws 1.4 million viewers Woman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid MORE on Tuesday following a resounding victory in her home state of New York.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to The Associated Press count, the Democratic presidential front-runner entered the night with a lead of about 244 unpledged delegates over rival Sanders.As of Wednesday morning, Clinton expanded her lead to 277, picking up another 33 delegates. There were 247 delegates up for grabs in New York.Clinton finishes the primary with 1,428 pledged delegates, compared to 1,151 for Sanders.With the addition of superdelegates — party leaders who can support any candidate — Clinton’s total grows to 1,897 and Sanders's to 1,182, according to the AP.A candidate needs 2,383 to secure the Democratic nomination, putting Clinton about 80 percent of the way there. Sanders is only halfway there, with about 56 percent of unpledged delegates having already been awarded.With about 1,400 pledged delegates still up for grabs, Clinton would only need to win 35 percent of them to secure the nomination, even if she didn't gain another superdelegate.“The race for the Democratic nomination is in the homestretch, and victory is in sight,” Clinton said in New York City on Tuesday night.Sanders, meanwhile, has a near impossible path to 2,383.He would need to win about 1,200 of the remaining pledged delegates if he didn't gain another superdelegate, or more than 85 percent, to secure the nomination before the Democratic National Convention in July.There are about 200 superdelegates still up for grabs, according to several estimates, so getting them on board will be paramount for Sanders."I'm not saying this is impossible for Bernie Sanders, but when you are more than 200 pledged delegates behind at this point in the campaign, you have zero margin for error,” said MSNBC political anchor Steve Kornacki.
--Jesse Byrnes contributed to this report, which was updated on April 20 at 7:33 a.m.Speaking of Nokia – Engadget got their hands on what is supposedly an internal memo sent to Nokia employees by the company’s new CEO. It’s… Brutal. As in, brutally honest. There’s no sugar-coating here, no unicorns, no glitter. “Nokia, our platform is burning.” Update: Android is probably out of the question. Will it be Windows Phone 7, after all? Damn; Palm tonight, Nokia Friday – what a week for mobile! Update: The “Communities Dominate Brands” blog published an in-depth analysis of the memo, which claims with sound arguments that it might well be a hoax.
The authenticity of the memo is probably guaranteed (although not confirmed!) because parts of it have been quoted independently by other websites before Engadget got their hands on the whole thing. The memo is incredibly harsh about the company’s current position and performance in the recent past.
First, Elop identifies the two ‘explosions’ that set Nokia’s platform on fire. “Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range,” Elop details, “And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers.”
With the magic power of hindsight, Elop states that it is now more than apparent that Nokia made the wrong choices in the wake of the arrival of the iPhone and Android. Even after four years of the iPhone, Nokia still doesn’t have a comparable product, he states. Android came a’knockin’ only two years ago, and has now overtaken Nokia in smartphone shipments. “Unbelievable,” Elop responds.
While not saying it with as many words, it would appear Elop is sounding the death knell for MeeGo. “We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones,” he states, “However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.” In other words, MeeGo is not Nokia’s saviour.
He isn’t much more positive about Symbian. “It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms,” he explains, “As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.”
Elop believes Nokia’s failing is that it still approaches the market on a device-to-device basis, while in fact, they ought to focus on ecosystems. It’s no longer a battle of devices, but a battle of ecosystems, which includes not only hardware and software, but also developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications, and much more.
“Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem,” he clarifies, “This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.”
How did Nokia get here? In answering this question, Elop lobs his harshest criticism.
“I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia,” he explains, “We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.”
Much of what Elop explains in this memo are things websites and blogs have been saying for a while now. However, seeing it all nicely summarised by Nokia’s new CEO means massive changes are afoot. “A huge effort to transform [the] company” is under way, and Elop will share this strategy with the world February 11.When worlds collide: science or science fiction?
The discovery, reported this week, of a faster-than-light neutrino shows just how easily the line between science and science fiction can become blurred. Equally, to the uninitiated, the language of science can be indistinguishable from the language of science fiction. We all know, alas, that Superman does not really exist, but how about the kryptonite which is his Achilles heel? And did clones appear in science fiction before Dolly the sheep’s double came into existence?
To confuse matters even further, as the speculative fiction of yesterday inspires the new technologies of tomorrow, words that were coined to refer to something fictional can become part of everyday (real) life. But are you able to tell which words originated in science fiction and which in science fact? Take our interactive quiz and find out!Scottish full-back Stuart Hogg has admitted he is worried at being in charge of the British & Irish Lions mascot.
It is the responsibility of the youngest member of the squad to look after the mascot, a toy lion.
"It's tough, it is tough to be honest. I sometimes struggle to look after myself," said Hogg.
"It's gone missing a couple of times at training, so I'm going to need to keep an eye on it."
Hogg admitted that, as the youngest player on the tour, he was finding it strange playing alongside some of his rugby heroes.
"Brian O'Driscoll was my hero growing up and, to have an opportunity of playing with him is unbelievable, to be honest," he said.
Obviously the Scottish boys like myself have good banter, so we mingle easily Stuart Hogg British & Irish Lions
"It's just a dream come true. I'm hoping to learn a lot from him over the next few weeks."
Hogg added that being selected for the Lions was the pinnacle of his career so far, but his intention was to make it onto the pitch on the tour.
"To get picked is one thing, but to play is another thing, so the hard work starts now," he said.
Despite being outnumbered by the other nations in the squad, Hogg insists the three-man Scottish contingent is not finding it difficult to blend in.
"Obviously the Scottish boys like myself have good banter, so we mingle easily," he joked.
"It's been good to meet everybody and we're all mixing in really well."
Hogg insisted that the squad gelling well together was important for success in the tour of Australia.
"We're here representing the Lions now, we're not four countries," he added.
"Everybody's shaken hands and we're gelling well."By the time a prospective customer contacts your business, on average, they have already completed 57% of their decision making. This leaves your business little time to help influence their decision. In order to help influence these customers to purchase from you, they must have all of the necessary information available. If there is sufficient product or service information on the company website it will help the customer begin their decision making with your business in mind. This information is known as a buyer’s guide. A buyer’s guide can be particularly helpful with B2B businesses as many companies feel they need to go with the industry leader, but as a small business, you can show them how your product compares with a buyer’s guide.
A buyer’s guide allows the customers see all the relevant information and comparisons in one place. This will include product specifications, similar product comparisons and testimonials. It can be easy to create your own buyers guide as you already possess all the information on your product.
Step 1 – Introduction
The first step in creating a buyer’s guide is to introduce your product or service. This can be done by using a direct title, introductory statement and an outline as to how the buyer’s guide will be presented. This will help customers know exactly what it is you are trying to sell and understand how to use the buyer’s guide. This will make it easy for the customer to transition into viewing the guide and understand how to read it.
Step 2 – Product Information
In this step you will explain your product or service in detail. Here you can provide a definition of the product or service and explain how it will benefit them. This can be in a table form where all the specifications are laid out, or in a descriptive paragraph form. In this section you should also tell the customers when they will be needing your product, as they might now realize they need it sooner rather than later.
Step 3 – Evidence
After describing the products you need to have supporting evidence. This can come in the form of marketing research and/or testimonials. By including research and statistics on the market and your business you can provide the information they need on how much they need your product. By pairing that with testimonials, they can see how well your product works and feel that they need your product specifically.
Step 4 – Comparison
If you are able to find accurate information on competitors, creating a comparison chart can be beneficial. This will show where each product falls short and where they lead. From this chart you can place where you are in the market and show just how good your product is. By creating your own chart you are making it easier for customers to do a one stop shop on your website, and they do not have to look anywhere else.
Do you agree with these tips? Any others that you can recommend for newer online businesses? Please share in the comments below.
Based on the article “How B2B Marketers Can Create Buyer’s Guides to Control the Buying Process” By Samantha Mykyte From: http://blog.wishpond.com/post/107501644389/how-b2b-marketers-can-create-buyers-guides-toThere's no question about how talented is Brazilian soccer star Neymar. A sports prodigy in his own right, Neymar is not only the most celebrated athlete in Brazil these days, but he's also the country's hope of winning the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted by the South American nation.
Described by no less than Pele, arguably the greatest soccer player in history, as a "technical marvel, a wizard with magical feet," Neymar is, at the tender age of 20, at the top of his game. But Neymar's talents while playing don't seem to apply to his finances--he is certainly earning the kudos and piling in cash, but he's also blowing most of it.
Just in about two years, Neymar reportedly bought a $750,000 triplex and a $2 million mansion in a gated community, both located in the Northern Coast of the state of Sao Paulo; a $150,000 flat in Sao Paulo, capital district, and a Porsche Panamera Turbo, which came with a price tag ranging from $400,000 to $550,000. He also gave the 18-year-old mother of his only child a penthouse worth about $1 million in Santos, plus $15,000 per month in child support. But the icing of the cake was his purchase of a ridiculously expensive second-hand Italian yacht, which cost him a reported $8 million, not to mention its maintenance expenses of roughly $120,000 per year and an average decrease in value of 5% to 10% by year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Although he didn't place in the list of The World's Highest-Paid Soccer Players, released by Forbes in April and topped by David Beckham, Neymar is taking home a salary of about $4 million annually from Santos, the Brazilian club which has him under contract through 2014. Thanks to sponsorship deals with the likes of Nike (worth $1 million per year) and Red Bull, besides a handful of other Brazilian companies, Neymar banks another $4 million off the field, putting his total annual earnings at an estimated $8 million, according to Forbes' sports writer Christina Settimi. That's much less than the amount taken home by more established soccer stars such as Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and even Neymar's countryman Kaka, all of whom spend accordingly to their income (By the way, Beckham prefers to rent a yacht when he is on vacation.)
And in spite of certainly being a respectable sum, it's not anywhere as near as the $18 million in annual earnings that the Brazilian media has attributed to him recently*. Besides, Neymar only began to make that sort of money just a while ago, when he renegotiated his contract with Santos, and he is yet to achieve the level of bankability that would allow him to buy expensive toys such as a yacht.
"No doubt he's probably overspending," Settimi says, also noting that his club could have something to do with that. "I wouldn't put it past Santos to be supporting the behavior to keep him there. One of my UK sports sources says they want to keep him from going to Europe and have been bending rules to make him happy."
Forbes' senior editor Kurt Badenhausen agrees, but also points out that Neymar is just in the beginning of his career. "Neymar is on the upswing and will be making good money for another 10+ years," Badenhausen predicts. "It is still a little disconcerting though."
As disconcerting as it is, athletes and money has always been a bad mix. Between 1985, when Mike Tyson made his professional debut at age 18, to his retirement two decades later, the boxing star made somewhere between $300 million and $400 million.
At the height of his career, a single fight was worth $30 million. But during that time, Tyson bought mansions, cars and Bengal tigers. In late 2002, he walked into a Las Vegas jewelry store and bought a $174,000 gold chain with 80 carats in diamonds. Eight months later, Tyson filed for bankruptcy, accumulating debts of about $23 million.
Other prominent sports figures like NBA all-star Antoine Walker, who made more than $110 million while he was in the league, and Evander Holyfield, have all gone bankrupt as well.
To keep things at home for Neymar, former Brazilian soccer star Romario, who played a vital role in Brazil's winning of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, was arrested in 2009 in a child support case involving his first wife. At the time, Romario's debts totaled almost $5 million.
One exception to that rule is Ronaldo, another former Brazilian soccer star who holds a 45% stake at the 9ine Sports and Entertainment agency, a company with deals outside mainstream soccer, of which Neymar is a client. The UK-based WPP Group owns another 45% of the agency and Brazilian entrepreneur Marcus Buaiz has the remaining 10%.
Thanks to 9ine's strong presence in Brazil and other business ventures, Ronaldo's net worth has been estimated between $200 million and $250 million, and counting. Perhaps he can teach Neymar, who's expected to be motivated and play at his best by the time of the next World Cup, a thing or two about being financially responsible.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article cited the price of a Porsche Panamera Turbo bought by Neymar at $150,000. However, the actual price of such a luxury car in Brazil ranges from $400,000 to $550,000.
*There have been reports in the Brazilian press about this article suggesting that Forbes' estimate about Neymar's earnings is lagged, mostly due to recent reports in Brazil that put the soccer star's total earnings at about $18 million per year. We have crunched those numbers, and after talking to sources both in Brazil and in Europe we came to the conclusion that an $18 million annual salary for Neymar is way above reality (as it is mentioned in the fifth paragraph). We stick to our estimate about his earnings on and off field at around $8 million annually.1 Auto Loan Rates as low as 2.99% APR for up to 36 months. Maximum loan term will depend on the age of collateral and/or the size of the loan. The actual APR may vary based on the applicant’s credit history. Add 1% APR for used and refinanced vehicles with over 75,000 miles. 2Account opening is subject to approval. 3Rates and terms are based on individual credit worthiness. Rates are subject to change without prior notice. 4 Rates are subject to change after the account is opened. APY=Annual Percentage Yield. Fees may reduce earnings. 5Rates and yields are subject to change each Friday.
Gulf Winds uses third-party websites for services such as online banking, mortgage applications, loan applications and our Car Buying Service. When you click a link to access these services, you will leave gogulfwinds.com and be taken to the third-party website.Russia says it will not shoot down US missiles if Donald Trump orders another Syrian airstrike because they are 'there to fight terrorism, not external threats'.
America unleashed a wave of 59 Tomahawk strikes on one of Bashar al-Assad's airbases in the wake of a horrifying chemical attack on 87 Syrian civilians last week.
Russia - which has backed the Syrian dictator military - as well as Iran and its allies said the US had crossed a'red line' and warned they 'will respond to any aggression' in the future.
But today the head of the Russian Federation Council's Defense and Security Committee insisted Kremlin forces stationed in Syria will not try to intercept US missiles should Washington order further strikes.
Russia says it will not shoot down US missiles if Donald Trump orders another Syrian airstrike because they are 'there to fight terrorism, not external threats'. America unleashed a wave of 59 Tomahawk strikes (pictured) on one of Bashar al-Assad's airbases in the wake of a horrifying chemical attack on 87 Syrian civilians last week
Russia - which has backed the Syrian dictator military - as well as Iran and its allies said the US had crossed a'red line' and warned they 'will respond to any aggression' in the future. Russian President Vladimir Putin is pictured
Viktor Ozerov told the news agency Interfax: 'Our armed forces are in Syria to fight terrorism — not to defend against external threats. That’s not our mandate, and we’re not going to intercept anything.'
But he also warned that the Syrian military still had a 'legal right' to try to shoot down rockets.
Some 87 people, including children, are believed to have been killed in a suspected sarin nerve agent strike on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.
US president Donald Trump ordered a strike by 59 cruise missiles on the base in America's first direct attack against the Syrian government.
Last night, a senior US official said America had concluded Russia knew in advance of Syria's chemical weapons attack.
The official said a drone operated by Russians was flying over a hospital as victims of the attack were rushing to get treatment.
Hours after the drone left, a Russian-made fighter jet bombed the hospital in what American officials believe was an attempt to cover up the usage of chemical weapons.
Some 87 people, including children, are believed to have been killed in a suspected sarin nerve agent strike on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun
A devastated father was pictured cradling the bodies of his dead twins after they were killed during the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, in the rebel-held central province of Idlib, Syria
The official said the presence of the surveillance drone over the hospital couldn't have been a coincidence, and that Russia must have known the chemical weapons attack was coming and that victims were seeking treatment.
The official, who wasn't authorised to speak publicly on intelligence matters and |
drugs they use it against you.Correct.Victimizing the victim again — KAYA (@KayaJones) October 13, 2017
Pussycat Dolls founder Robin Antin told The Blast that Jones' allegations are "disgusting, ridiculous lies" and that the singer is "clearly looking for her 15 minutes [of fame]."
Antin claims Jones was just on trial and never an official member of the group.
The Pussycat Dolls began in 1995 as a Los Angeles burlesque troupe. With an ever-changing roster, the group grew in popularity thanks to occasional celebrity performers, such as actress Christina Applegate, and magazine photo shoots for Playboy and Maxim.
In 2003, Antin struck a deal with Interscope Records to develop the Dolls into a musical act, bringing in a completely separate group of performers to front the "girl group," which would go on to have Billboard Top 20 hits in "Don't Cha," "Stickwitu," "Beep" and "Buttons."
Scroll through the gallery above to see girl bands through the years.One of the joys of living in Ireland is the Irish Times. It doesn't reflect my politics but given that its main opposition is infinitely less sympathetic I can certainly put up with that.
I declare an interest in that occasionally, very occasionally, I write for the paper. That plays no part in my admiration for it, however.
It is an old-fashioned paper and I mean that as a compliment. It is comfortable, courteous, intelligent and readable. The Saturday issue is a particular joy.
As with all newspapers, it is finding current conditions challenging. Its last audited print sale, the average across 2011, was 96,450 copies a day, down 6.2% on the year before.
Its real problem, however, is revenue. In a country suffering from deep economic woes that's unsurprising.
And then there is the rise of the internet. That's making slower progress than in Britain, partly due to the patchy spread of broadband, but it is well on its way.
And it is the future, as the Irish Times's online editor, Hugh Linehan, said yesterday during a seminar at Limerick university on the future of journalism. "Print will die," he said.
Well, he didn't say it quite as baldly as that, so here's his full quote:
"My favourite line about this, if you're familiar with the movie Spinal Tap, is the point where the manager is asked why the band's most recent album didn't sell... 'it's just that their appeal is becoming more selective.' And, in a way, that is one of the things that is happening in newspapers. Our appeal is becoming more selective in print, and let me be really frank and lay my cards on the table: I think print will die. It may retain a place in people's affections in the same way as vinyl does for a certain niche in the music industry. There may be certain types of high-end products closer to magazines than to newspapers that will continue in the future. But anybody who subscribes to really quality products on tablet and iPad will be aware that a lot of things people say print does best, those are on borrowed time."
It is the way of the world, the digital world, in Ireland and everywhere, in the very near future.New Delhi: In a major development in Assam temple row, contrary to what Rahul Gandhi had claimed, local media reported that the reason was something else.
According to a report published in CNN-IBN, Rahul Gandhi didn't go to temple because he didn't want to violate the customs of taking a bath, wearing dhoti and then going in.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Monday alleged that he had been stopped from entering the Barpeta Satra by 'RSS' workers during his recent visit to Assam.
Also, the head of Barpeta Satra has dimissed Rahul Gandhi's claim that he was stopped from entering the Vaishanvite monastery and said there was no RSS agent in the religious place.
"There is no RSS agent in the Satra. It is a religious place and only religious activities are undertaken here. Where does politics come into the Satra"?," Barpeta Satra Bura Satriya (head) Bakhista Deba Sarma said while speaking to reporters.
"The women here are simple people and they come twice a day for participating in the community prayers in the Satra. They were only waiting at the Satra gate to see Rahul Gandhi. They do not know anything about politics", Sarma said.A security bug in popular music platform PledgeMusic let anyone log in to accounts without needing a password.
One of the site's users told ZDNet that he found the bug by mistake when he tried to log in on his phone. He was able to log in with just his email -- no password needed -- granting him full access to his account.
"I opened multiple browsers on my computer, cleared caches, and tried to replicate the problem," said the user who found the bug, but did not want to be named for the story.
"I discovered that as long as I used the correct email address, it didn't matter if I typed a wrong password or no password at all," he said.
ZDNet verified the bug by asking several users to log in to their own accounts without their password.
PledgeMusic is a popular music platform similar to Kickstarter and Patreon in that it allows musicians and artists to raise funds for projects. The company had about three million users as of a year ago, according to an interview with the site's chief executive, Dominic Pandiscia.
The site also has over 50,000 artists on the platform, including Macy Gray, Culture Club, Reverend and The Makers, and The Libertines.
Account profiles store only limited data, but because the site stores credit card data (which wasn't accessible except for the last four-digits of a registered card), a hacker could make unauthorized payments and pledges to artists without a user's consent.
The company said the issue has now been fixed and that it had "experienced no customer service concerns or inquiries relating to this issue."
An email seen by ZDNet shows the user had in fact sent PledgeMusic an email -- and a direct message on Twitter -- to which he only only "got a canned response."
The spokesperson said that "some users" were affected, but would not elaborate on how many users were affected or how the company came to that unknown figure.This beautiful futuristic house located in Gold Coast and was designed by Charles Wright Architects that inspired by white refined nautical lines and shells honed or chipped by ocean forces.
Architects: Charles Wright Architects
Location: Gold Coast, Australia
From the architects: Like beautiful shells rounded smoothly, bleached white, worn and cleanly chipped by ocean waves the building is reminiscent of mesmerising found objects of the beach.
Like cavernous openings carved by swell, curved edges frame vistas to the ocean and sky. The palate of the beach, clean, white washed debris, warm sand, and strong reflections informs the project’s finishes. Timber ceilings warm the crisp white spaces.
Edging away from neighbours on south side, the building advances towards the ocean, stature square to the rear street, defined from neighbouring houses.
Balconies and living areas open to the ocean front afford proximity and panoramic views while curved awnings act as visors making the house private.
>> Futuristic house concept by M Rad Architecture
or view more futuristic houseAVALANCHE at SHARKS
GAME 5 WESTERN CONFERENCE QUARTER-FINALS 4/22/10
FINAL
SHARKS-5, Avalanche-0
San Jose leads series 3-2
Game 6 Saturday 7pm Pacific at Pepsi Center
Three Stars
1. Nabokov (7th career Stanley Cup playoff shutout)
2. Couture (2 Goals, +2)
3. Setoguchi (2 Assists, +1)
3rd PERIOD
20:00 Nabokov records his 7th career playoff shutout (last: 4/10/08 vs Calgary) and second career against Colorado as the Sharks win Game 5 and take a 3-2 series lead. It is the largest margain of victory in a playoff game in San Jose franchise history. San Jose plays an outstanding sixty minutes of hockey and dominates the Avs for the home ice win; just a super performance by everyone with 11 different players registering points. Colorado outshoots the Sharks 17-8 in the third, but for the fourth straight game San Jose outshoots the Avs in a game (37-28).
18:46 Hendricks blasts a one-timer from the right circle off the crossbar, second clang of the night for the Avs.
18:00 Nichol heads back into the sin bin, this time for holding.
16:09 Nichol is out after the Sharks killed off the very brief power play of six seconds.
14:09 Nichol is called for slashing Yelle, ending the Sharks five minute power play.
13:24 Sharks get their second power play goal of the night and make it 5-0; Marleau gets his first of the playoffs and his 38th career Stanley Cup playoff goal (most in Sharks history). Marleau stationed at the right edge of the crease deflects a Heatley from between the circles shot top shelf.
SJ PP GOAL: Marleau (1) A: Heatley 2(3), Demers (1) at 13:24
11:04 McLeod is called for a major penalty, charging McGinn along the boards in the San Jose zone giving the Sharks a five minute power play. How Tucker did not get a penalty also is beyond me as he elbowed McGinn in the back of the head while McGinn was on his knees trying to get up. A big scrum immediately with Nichol getting in the face of Tucker. Joe Sacco pulls Anderson and puts Peter Budaj in goal.
10:37 Couture gets his second of the night as the Sharks make it 4-0. Couture knocked home a rebound from Clowe's shot from down low left with Anderson out of position because of the initial save. Setoguchi made the play by just staying onside at the left boards in front of the Avs bench.
SJ PP GOAL: Couture 2(2) A: Clowe (5), Setoguchi 2(3) at 10:37
8:27 Quincey comes out of the box as the Sharks had two shots on the power play.
6:27 Quincey called for interference on Heatley in the Colorado zone giving the Sharks their fifth power play of the night.
6:17 The NHL just announced that Game 6 of the series at the Pepsi Center on Saturday will begin at 7pm Pacific time and at 8pm in Denver.
2:45 Nabokov has made two key saves and maybe his best of the night when he stacked the pads at the left edge of the crease on Tucker.
2:22 Demers exits the box and the Sharks have killed off the penalty.
0:52 Tucker comes out of the penalty box and the Avs will have their first power play of the night; it will be a shorter one of 1:30.
0:22 Demers is called for hoding Stastny ending the Sharks power play and we'll skate four on four.
0:00 Sharks will start the period with :52 left on a power play that carries over from the second with Tucker serving the Hannan extra penalty.
2nd PERIOD
20:00 Second period ends and it's not soon enough for the Avs who surrender three goals in the period. Sharks outshoot the Avs 17-9 and lead for the game 29-11. It all begins on the draw as the Sharks are winning 64% of the face-offs with Malhotra winning eight of his ten and Pavelski seven of his ten, conversely Duchene was won only one of his seven. Sharks are sticking to the gameplan and taking it to the Avalanche.
18:52 Wild scrum and punches thrown behind Nabokov after a big collision at the Sharks net will result in another San Jose power play. Out of the pile, Hannan gets four minutes for roughing and McGinn ends up with two minutes. Nabby was shaken up momentarily but is okay after getting looked at by Sharks Athletic Trainer Ray Tufts; the San Jose goalie was run into by Murray who was cross-checked by McLeod. A vicious hit that should have been called, but was not, the Avs frustration is mounting.
15:30 Sharks score again and sends HP Pavilion into a frenzy; it's the energy line that gives a jolt. Nichol slammed a shot from the high slot off the boards to the left of Anderson that bounced in front and Helminen scored his first Stanley Cup playoff goal to make it 3-0. Nichol using the home ice advantage and capitalizing on the lively boards at The Tank.
SJ GOAL: Helminen (1) A: Nichol (1), Murray (2) at 15:30
15:00 The Sharks are really flying and taking it to the Avs, shots are now 24-7 San Jose.
11:37 Sharks goal is waved off and the score remains 2-0. Clowe with a slapshot driving up the left side is saved by Anderson, but then Setoguchi driving the net was knocked off balance, went crashing into the Colorado goalie and both went into the net with the puck.
10:21 Sharks don't waste anytime and record a power play goal. Off the draw, the Sharks win it back and it's Captain America for the Sharks tallying another goal. Pavelski with a blast from the high slot beats Anderson glove side to put the Sharks up 2-0. Boyle with the primary assist, fed the puck to Pavelski from the top of the right circle. Second goal for the Sharks in 1:56 and the Avs burn their time out.
SJ PP GOAL: Pavelski (3) A: Boyle (3), Setoguchi (2) at 10:21
10:15 Galiardi called for holding-the-stick giving the Sharks their third power play.
8:25 Couture with his first career playoff goal off a redirection in front. Marleau led the rush up the left boards, passed it cross-ice to Heatley at the top of the right circle and found Couture planted alone in front. Couture with some great stick work, actually tipped it through Anderson with his back toward the net and through his legs.
SJ GOAL: Couture (1) A: Heatley (2), Marleau (2) at 8:25
6:25 Helminen was denied on a hard charge pushing the puck up the right wing side and driving the net. Anderson kicked the attempt aside with the left pad as he was down in the butterfly.
6:03 Anderson pounces on a loose puck at the top of the crease for a face-off after a nifty play by Setoguchi. Setoguchi walked the blueline and fired a hard wrist shot toward the net that was knocked down by the blocker of Anderson and Helminen was trying to jam it home.
5:02 Avs are outshooting the Sharks 4-2 to begin the second; Colorado has picked up their play so far here in the period.
1:30 Svatos's chance driving down the slot was broken by a sliding Heatley in front of Nabokov, Avs were probably guilty of over passing.
0:40 Anderson kicks out a redirection from Mitchell in the slot with the right pad off a drive from Malhotra; really good chance for the Sharks to begin the second.
0:00 Thornton's line will start against Stastny's line to open up the second.
1st PERIOD
20:00 Scoreless at the end of the first and the Sharks controlling play in the period. San Jose outshot Colorado 12-2 in the period, plus the Avs blocked six more. San Jose wih an edge on draws, winning nine of the 15 as Thornton won both of his and Malhotra won four of the six he took. Blake led all skaters in ice time (8:07) and Heatley far and away led all forwards (7:46); former Shark Scott Hannan led the Avs in ice time (7:48).
18:15 Avs cycle the puck for about 30 seconds in the Sharks zone but unable to get a shot on goal. Vlasic with a huge hit on Duchene to help get the puck out of the zone.
16:56 Pace picking up and the action is end to end with chances both ways. Sharks had two as Marleau's wrist shot was bobbled by Anderson and nearly rolled in as it was behind Anderson, but Hannan knocked it out of harms way. The Avs raced to the other end and Boyle blocked a shot in a two on two situation.
14:36 Sharks outshooting the Avs 9-2 at this point, although Colorado's best chances have not been actual shots. The post Svatos hit and just about 15 seconds ago a shot from the point bounced off both Blake and Galiardi in front and slid wide of the net. So far the Sharks are getting some lucky bounces.
11:45 Could have been a miserable mistake for Anderson as he gives the puck right to Thornton in the right corner, but Joe misses the net from a very tough angle with the Colorado netminder out of position.
10:46 Sharks are awarded their second power play after Yip is called for cross-checking Couture.
8:50 Avs ring one off the post, from the right circle Svatos blistered a wrist shot off the pipe on Nabby's right.
8:05 Murray levels Duchene with a big hit at center ice which brings a huge cheer from the fans. Both teams are physical.
3:35 Nabokov with a good save on a wrist shot from Galiardi from the left circle, the Avs first shot.
2:42 Quincey comes out and the Avs kill the penalty with the Sharks firing three shots on the man advantage.
0:42 Quick penalty against the Avs as Mitchell is hooked by Quincey giving the Sharks an early power play. Similar start as Game 4, let's see if San Jose can similairly get an early power play tally.
0:00 Paul Devosrski drops the puck and the Sharks win the initial face-off.
PRE-GAME
7:35pm Sharks, wearing the teal, skate through the shark head and on to the ice with Nabokov leading the way with Metallica's "Seek and Destroy" blasting through The Tank to thunderous cheers and fans waving orange t-shirts and white pom-poms. It is playoff loud inside HP Pavilion.
7:29pm Thornton's line will start for the Sharks with Murray and Boyle on defense, while the Avs will start Stastny's line with Hannan and Quincey on the blueline.WASHINGTON — More than 32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and an additional 36 might have to close because of new federal air pollution regulations, according to an Associated Press survey.
Together, those plants — some of the oldest and dirtiest in the country — produce enough electricity for more than 22 million households, the AP survey found. But their demise probably won’t cause homes to go dark.
The fallout will be most acute for the towns where power plant smokestacks long have cast a shadow. Tax revenues and jobs will be lost, and investments in new power plants and pollution controls probably will raise electric bills.
The survey, based on interviews with 55 power plant operators and on the Environmental Protection Agency’s own prediction of power plant retirements, rebuts claims by critics of the regulations and some electric power producers.
They have predicted the EPA rules will kill coal as a power source and force blackouts, basing their argument on estimates from energy analysts, congressional offices, government regulators, unions and interest groups. Many of those studies inflate the number of plants retiring by counting those shutting down for reasons other than the two EPA rules.
The AP surveyed electricity-generating companies about what they plan to do and the effects on power supply and jobs. It was the first survey of its kind.
The estimate also was based in part on EPA computer models that predict which fossil-fuel generating units are likely to be retired early to comply with the rules, and which were likely to be retired anyway.
The agency has estimated that 14.7 gigawatts, enough power for more than 11 million households, will be retired from the power grid in the 2014-15 period when the two new rules take effect.
The first rule curbs air pollution in states downwind from dirty power plants. The second, expected to be announced Monday, would set the first standards for mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plant smokestacks.
Combined, the rules could do away with more than 8 percent of the coal-fired generation nationwide, the AP found. The average age of the plants that could be sacrificed is 51 years.
These plants have been allowed to run for decades without modern pollution controls because it was thought that they were on the verge of being shuttered by the utilities that own them. But that didn’t happen.
Other rules in the works, dealing with cooling water intakes at power plants and coal ash disposal, could cause the retirement of additional generating plants. Those rules weren’t included in the AP survey.
While the new rule heralds an incremental shift away from coal as a power source, it’s unlikely to break coal’s grip as the dominant domestic electricity source. Most of the lost power generation will be replaced, and the coal-fired plants that remain will have to be cleaner.
“In the industry we retire units. That is part of our business,” said John Moura, manager of reliability assessment at the North American Electric Reliability Corp. NERC represents the nation’s electrical grid operators, whose job is to weigh the effect a proposed retirement will have on reliability.
With so many retirements expected, that process could get rushed. “We are getting a little hammered here, because we see multiple requests,” Moura said.
NERC, along with some power plant operators, is pressing the Obama administration to give companies more time to comply with the rules to avoid too many plants shutting down at once.
In addition to anticipated retirements, about 500 or more units will need to be idled temporarily in the next few years to install pollution controls. Some of those units are at critical junctions on the grid and are essential to restarting the electrical network in case of a blackout, or making sure voltage doesn’t drain completely from electrical lines, like a hose that’s lost its water pressure.
“We can’t say there isn’t going be an issue. We know there will be some challenges,” Moura said. “But we don’t think the lights are going to turn off because of this issue.”
That hasn’t stopped some critics from sounding alarms.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in a letter to the White House this month that the EPA mercury rule could “unintentionally jeopardize the reliability of our electric grid.” At a speech in New Hampshire in November, GOP presidential candidate and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman predicted summer blackouts. A recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce ad said a single EPA regulation “could threaten America’s energy supply.”
Particularly at the older, less efficient plants most at risk, coal already was at a disadvantage because of low natural gas prices, demand from China and elsewhere that was driving up coal’s price, and weaker demand for electricity.
For many plant operators, the new regulations were the final blow. For others, the rules will speed retirements already planned to comply with state laws or to settle earlier enforcement cases with the EPA. In the AP’s survey, not a single plant operator said the EPA rules were solely to blame for a closure, although some said it left them with no other choice.
“The EPA regulation became a game changer and a deal changer for some of these units,” said Ryan Stensland, a spokesman for Alliant Energy, which has three units in Iowa and one in Minnesota that will be retired, and four in Iowa that are at risk of shutting down, depending on how the final rules look. “Absent the EPA regulations, I don’t think we would be seeing the transition that we are seeing today. It became a situation where EPA broke the back of coal.”
Some believe the change is long overdue. The two rules will cut toxic mercury emissions from power plants by 90 percent, smog-forming nitrogen oxide pollution by half, and soot-forming sulfur dioxide by more than 70 percent.
“Many of them are super old. They’ve either got to be brought up to code, fixed with the best available technology, or close them down,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “You can’t keep on going.”
The impact is greatest in the Midwest and in the coal belt — Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia — where dozens of units probably will be retired.
Coal “is the fuel that is local to this area,” said Leonard Hopkins, the fuel and compliance manager for the Southern Illinois Power Cooperative, which serves rural electric customers in 25 counties in the state. “We are scrambling to find ways to comply.”
His options: switch to a lower sulfur coal, install additional pollution controls or retire the oldest boiler and buy cheaper power from elsewhere.
For many of the country’s oldest coal-fired plants, retirement is the cheapest option.
“It is more expensive to retrofit these plants than retire them and build new generation,” said Chris Whelan, spokeswoman for Kentucky Utilities, which announced in September that it was retiring three coal-fired power plants in the state. The plants, which came on line in 1947, 1962 and 1950, employ 204 people.
Whelan said the company is “going to do everything we can to reallocate the work” by shifting employees to a new gas-fired power plant.
In some places, a job at the power plant is the best thing going.
Thirty people work at the Central Electric Power Cooperative plant in Chamois, Mo., where EPA regulations have put the plant in danger of shutting down. Some employees are looking to see if there are other power plants where they could find work.
“We always knew there was a chance we could get shut down,” said Robert Skaggs, who has worked at the 50-year-old power plant for 10 years and is also an alderman in the town of 400. “It’s pretty obvious. Our plant is an old plant.”
Chamois Mayor Jim Wright saw the sewing factory leave and doesn’t understand why coal has to do the same.
“Coal’s coal. If you are going to dig and ship it to China, you might as well burn it here,” he said.
Electricity bills are also a concern.
Kentucky Utilities expects its customers to see as much as a 14 percent rate increase to make up for the $800 million it is spending to replace what will be retired, and the $1.1 billion it plans to spend on anti-pollution upgrades. Other power companies have applied to recoup the cost of retrofits or of building new gas-fired power plants. The EPA estimates that industry will spend $11 billion complying with the two rules by 2016.
For others, the biggest issue with plant retirements is the loss of property taxes. As plants wind down and close, their assessed value drops, reducing what they pay to local governments.
In Salem, Mass., Dominion plans to retire two units at the Salem Harbor Station later this year, a move that could halve the plant’s workforce in a town famous for its 17th century witch trials and where the major business is tourism.
The loss of its 50-year-old power plant poses two dilemmas: how to replace its biggest taxpayer and what to do with the 60 acres of waterfront property when the plant is gone.
“It’s not like losing a Dunkin’ Donuts,” said Mayor Kim Driscoll, noting that attractions such as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor took decades to redevelop from abandoned industrial property.
For the next five years, Salem will make up for Dominion’s dwindling $4.75 million tax bill with state money, but after that the future is unclear.
“It’s a big chunk of change when you’re looking at we still have the same number of kids in school, we still have the same number of calls for police and fire, we have the same number of parks and resources that need to be maintained and kept up,” Driscoll said. “That’s not to say there aren’t folks locally that are happy with the fact that a coal-based plant won’t be here forever. There are certainly folks here that see it as a way for Salem to flourish in other ways.”
Plant name State County Year oldest unit being retired in service Capacity retiring (MW) Big Sandy Kentucky Lawrence 1963 255 Buck North Carolina Rowan 1941 256 Cane Run Kentucky Jefferson 1962 563 Cape Fear North Carolina Chatham 1956 316 Chesapeake Virginia Chesapeake (city) 1953 594 Clinch River Virginia Russell 1961 234 Dubuque Iowa Dubuque 1952 65 Fox Lake Minnesota Martin 1962 85 Glen Lyn Virginia Giles 1944 325 Green River Kentucky Muhlenberg 1954 163 Hutsonville Illinois Crawford 1953 153 Kammer West Virginia Marshall 1958 630 Kanawha River West Virginia Kanawha 1953 410 Meredosia Illinois Morgan 1960 389 Miami Fort Ohio Hamilton 1960 163 Muskingum River Ohio Washington 1953 790 H F Lee North Carolina Wayne 1951 391 Philip Sporn West Virginia Mason 1950 600 Picway Ohio Pickaway 1955 95 Potomac River Virginia Alexandria (city) 1949 482 Prairie Creek Iowa Linn 1958 42 Riverbend North Carolina Gaston 1952 454 Salem Harbor Massachusetts Essex 1951 742 State Line Indiana Lake 1955 490 Tanners Creek Indiana Dearborn 1951 489 Tyrone Kentucky Woodford 1953 71 Wabash River Indiana Vigo 1953 678 Walter C Beckjord Ohio Clermont 1952 862 Welsh Texas Titus 1980 524 Yorktown Virginia York 1957 159 Four Corners New Mexico San Juan 1963 560 L V Sutton North Carolina New Hanover 1954 600
At least one unit at the following power plants is at risk of retirement because of the two EPA rules:YUKON DELTA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska — The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages.
But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state.
Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter — plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.
Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities.
In Alaska, nowhere is permafrost more vulnerable than here, 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a vast, largely treeless landscape formed from sediment brought down by two of the state’s biggest rivers, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim. Temperatures three feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.
That, said Max Holmes, senior scientist and deputy director of the research center, “has all kinds of consequences both locally for this region, for the animals and the people who live here, as well as globally.”
“It’s sobering to think of this magnificent landscape and how fundamentally it can change over a relatively short time period,” he added.
But on this wide, flat tundra, it takes a practiced eye to see how Alaska is thawing from below.
At one of the countless small lakes that pepper the region, chunks of shoreline that include what had been permafrost have calved off toward the water.
Nearby, across a spongy bed of mosses and lichens, a small boggy depression most likely formed when the ice in the top layers of the permafrost below it melted to water.
In the field, Sarah Ludwig, a Woods Hole research assistant (left), and a student, Laura Jardine, extract a core of permafrost. In the lab, Ms. Jardine cuts the core with a saw. Stash Wislocki, except for last photo, by John Schade
In July, the Woods Hole scientists, along with 13 undergraduate and graduate students working on projects of their own, set up a temporary field station on a nameless lake 60 miles northwest of Bethel, which with a population of 6,000 is the largest town in the region. They drilled permafrost cores with a power auger, took other sediment and water samples and embedded temperature probes in the frozen ground. Later, back in the lab at Woods Hole, they began the process of analyzing the samples for carbon content and nutrients.
The goal is to better understand how thawing permafrost affects the landscape and, ultimately, how much and what mix of greenhouse gases is released.
“In order to know how much is lost, you have to know how much is there,” said Sue Natali, a Woods Hole scientist and permafrost expert.
Even in colder northern Alaska, where permafrost in some parts of the North Slope extends more than 2,100 feet below the surface, scientists are seeing stark changes. Vladimir E. Romanovsky, a permafrost researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, said that temperatures at a depth of 65 feet have risen by 3 degrees Celsius (about 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over decades.
Near-surface changes have been even greater. At one northern site, he said, permafrost temperatures at shallow depths have climbed from minus 8 degrees Celsius to minus 3.
“Minus 3 is not that far from zero,” Dr. Romanovsky said. If emissions and warming continue at the same rate, he said, near-surface temperatures will rise above freezing around the middle of the century.
There is plenty of debate among scientists about when and how much of Alaska’s permafrost will thaw. And there is no doubt that thawing of the full depth of permafrost would take millenniums.
But Dr. Romanovsky said that his and others’ work shows that permafrost “is not as stable as people thought.”
In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, thawing wreaks havoc on infrastructure, causing slumping of land when ice loses volume as it turns to water.
The main road in Bethel, where average temperatures have risen about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the mid-20th century, is more of a washboard than a thoroughfare because of shifting ground. Building foundations in Bethel move and crack as well. Some roads, airport runways and parking areas have to be reinforced with liquid-filled pipes that transfer heat out of the permafrost to keep the ground from slumping.
The thawing of permafrost is a gradual process. Ground is fully frozen in winter, and begins to thaw from the top down as air temperatures rise in spring. As average temperatures increase over years, this thawed, or active, layer can increase in depth.
At the field station, the researchers are especially interested in how wildfires affect the permafrost. Because burning removes some of the vegetation that acts as insulation, the theory is that burning should cause permafrost to thaw more.
In the field, Sarah Ludwig, a Woods Hole research assistant (left), and a student, Laura Jardine, extract a core of permafrost. In the lab, Ms. Jardine cuts the core with a saw. Stash Wislocki, except for last photo, by John Schade
In the field, Sarah Ludwig, a Woods Hole research assistant (left), and a student, Laura Jardine, extract a core of permafrost. In the lab, Ms. Jardine cuts the core with a saw. Stash Wislocki, except for last photo, by John Schade
Parts of the tundra here burned in the 1970s and in the summer of 2015, so the researchers took cores from both burned and unburned areas. Scientists wrestled with the bulky power auger as its stainless steel tube worked its way into the hard permafrost. Cores — often containing thin layers of solid ice — were labeled, packed in a cooler and sent by helicopter to a freezer in Bethel.
Thawing permafrost underneath or at the edge of a lake can cause it to drain like a leaky bathtub. Thawing elsewhere can bring about small elevation changes that can in turn lead to changes in water flow through the landscape, drying out some parts of the tundra and turning others into bogs.
Beyond the local effects on plant and animal life, the landscape changes can have an important climate change impact, by altering the mix of carbon dioxide and methane that is emitted. Although methane does not persist in the atmosphere for as long as carbon dioxide, it has a far greater heat-trapping ability and can contribute to more rapid warming.
So the researchers devote much of their time to studying the flow of water and the carbon and nutrients it contains.
“It’s one of the big questions to tackle – what’s wet and dry now, and what will be wet and dry in the future,” Dr. Natali said. If the decomposing permafrost is wet, there will be less oxygen available to the microbes, so they will produce more methane. If the permafrost is dry, the decomposition will lead to more carbon dioxide.
Estimates vary on how much carbon is currently released from thawing permafrost worldwide, but by one calculation emissions over the rest of the century could average about 1.5 billion tons a year, or about the same as current annual emissions from fossil-fuel burning in the United States.
Already, thawing permafrost and warmer temperatures are being blamed for rising carbon emissions in the Alaskan tundra, both here and farther north. In a study earlier this year, researchers found that bacterial decomposition of thawed permafrost, as well as carbon dioxide produced |
On September 4, 1957, the first day of classes at Central High, Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to block the black students’ entry into the high school. Later that month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school.
Desegregation of Schools
In its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, issued May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of America’s public schools was unconstitutional.
Until the court’s decision, many states across the nation had mandatory segregation laws, requiring African-American and white children to attend separate schools. Resistance to the ruling was so widespread that the court issued a second decision in 1955, known as Brown II, ordering school districts to integrate “with all deliberate speed.”
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
Little Rock Central High School
In response to the Brown decisions and pressure from the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Little Rock, Arkansas, school board adopted a plan for gradual integration of its schools.
The first institutions to integrate would be the high schools, beginning in September 1957. Among these was Little Rock Central High School, which opened in 1927 and was originally called Little Rock Senior High School.
Two pro-segregation groups formed to oppose the plan: the Capital Citizens Council and the Mother’s League of Central High School.
Who Were the Little Rock Nine?
Despite the virulent opposition, nine students registered to be the first African Americans to attend Central High School. Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls had been recruited by Daisy Gaston Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP and co-publisher of the Arkansas State Press, an influential African-American newspaper.
Daisy Bates and others from the Arkansas NAACP carefully vetted the group of students and determined they all possessed the strength and determination to face the resistance they would encounter. In the weeks prior to the start of the new school year, the students participated in intensive counseling sessions guiding them on what to expect once classes began and how to respond to anticipated hostile situations.
The group soon became famous as the Little Rock Nine.
Orval Faubus
On September 2, 1957, Governor Orval Faubus announced that he would call in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the African-American students’ entry to Central High, claiming this action was for the students’ own protection. In a televised address, Faubus insisted that violence and bloodshed might break out if black students were allowed to enter the school.
The Mother’s League held a sunrise service at the school on September 3 as a protest against integration. But that afternoon, federal judge Richard Davies issued a ruling that desegregation would continue as planned the next day.
Elizabeth Eckford
The Little Rock Nine arrived for the first day of school at Central High on September 4, 1957. Eight arrived together, driven by Bates.
Elizabeth Eckford’s family, however, did not have a telephone, and Bates could not reach her to let her know of the carpool plans. Therefore, Eckford arrived alone.
The Arkansas National Guard, under orders of Governor Faubus, prevented any of the Little Rock Nine from entering the doors of Central High. One of the most enduring images from this day is a photograph of Eckford, alone with a notebook in her hand, stoically approaching the school as a crowd of hostile and screaming white students and adults surround her.
Eckford later recalled that one of the women spat on her. The image was printed and broadcast widely, bringing the Little Rock controversy to national and international attention.
Richard Davies
In the following weeks, federal judge Richard Davies began legal proceedings against Governor Faubus, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to persuade Faubus to remove the National Guard and let the Little Rock Nine enter the school.
Judge Davies ordered the Guard removed on September 20, and the Little Rock Police Department took over to maintain order. The police escorted the nine African-American students into the school on September 23, through an angry mob of some 1,000 white protesters gathered outside. Amidst ensuing rioting, the police removed the nine students.
The following day, President Eisenhower sent in 1,200 members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and placed them in charge of the 10,000 National Guardsmen on duty. Escorted by the troops, the Little Rock Nine attended their first full day of classes on September 25.
Numerous legal challenges to integration continued throughout the year, and Faubus repeatedly expressed his wish that the Little Rock Nine be removed from Central High.
Although several of the black students had positive experiences on their first day of school, according to a September 25, 1957, report in The New York Times, they experienced routine harassment and even violence throughout the rest of the year.
Melba Patillo, for instance, was kicked, beaten and had acid thrown in her face. At one point white students burned an African-American effigy in a vacant lot across from the school. Gloria Ray was pushed down a flight of stairs, and the Little Rock Nine were barred from participating in extracurricular activities.
Minnijean Brown was expelled from Central High School in February 1958 for retaliating against the attacks. And it was not only the students who faced harassment: Gloria Ray’s mother was fired from her job with the State of Arkansas when she refused to remove her daughter from the school. The 101st Airborne and the National Guard remained at Central High School for the duration of the year.
Ernest Green
On May 25, 1958, Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, became the first African-American graduate of Central High.
In September 1958, one year after Central High was integrated, Governor Faubus closed all of Little Rock’s high schools for the entire year, pending a public vote, to prevent African-American attendance. Little Rock citizens voted 19,470 to 7,561 against integration and the schools remained closed.
Other than Green, the rest of the Little Rock Nine completed their high school careers via correspondence or at other high schools across the country. Eckford joined the Army and later earned her General Education Equivalency diploma. Little Rock’s high schools reopened in August 1959.
Did you know? Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. attended graduation ceremonies at Central High School in May 1958 to see Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, receive his diploma.
Little Rock Nine Aftermath
Several of the Little Rock Nine went on to distinguished careers.
Green served as assistant secretary of the federal Department of Labor under President Jimmy Carter. Brown worked as deputy assistant secretary for workforce diversity in the Department of the Interior under President Bill Clinton. Patillo worked as a reporter for NBC.
The group has been widely recognized for their significant role in the civil rights movement. In 1999, President Clinton awarded each member of the group the Congressional Gold Medal. The nine also all received personal invitations to attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.
Jefferson Thomas became the first of the Little Rock Nine to die when he succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 67 on September 5, 2010. After graduating from Central High, Thomas served in the Army in Vietnam, earned a business degree and worked as an accountant for private companies and the Pentagon.On Media Blog Archives Select Date… December, 2015 November, 2015 October, 2015 September, 2015 August, 2015 July, 2015 June, 2015 May, 2015 April, 2015 March, 2015 February, 2015 January, 2015
For comparison, 30 million watched the final night of the RNC last week in the preliminary ratings. | Getty TV ratings: 28 million watch final night of DNC
An average of approximately 30 million viewers watched Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech on the final night of the Democratic National Convention Thursday evening, according to preliminary ratings data from Nielsen.
For comparison, 32 million watched the final night of the RNC last week, and 35.7 million watched the final night of the DNC back in 2012.
From 10-roughly 11:45 p.m., when the broadcast networks and cable news channels were covering the DNC, CNN averaged 7.5 million viewers, MSNBC averaged 5.3 million viewers, NBC 4.5 million viewers, ABC 3.8 million viewers, CBS 3.6 million viewers and Fox News 3.0 million viewers,
From 8-11 p.m., when cable news was wall to wall with coverage, CNN averaged 5.7 million viewers, MSNBC 4.2 million, and Fox News 3.1 million.
The numbers do not include people watching on some other channels, like PBS, C-SPAN or Univision, nor do they include those that may have streamed the event online. Final numbers will likely be a little bit higher, and will come in later this afternoon.Painfully Skinny Jeans Land A Woman In The Hospital
Enlarge this image toggle caption iStockphoto iStockphoto
If you've wondered whether there's a downside to wearing superskinny jeans, this story's for you.
A 35-year-old Australian woman wound up in the hospital after wearing skinny jeans while helping a family member move.
The move involved "many hours of squatting while emptying cupboards," according to a report published Monday in the journal Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry.
As the day went on, those jeans were making her increasingly uncomfortable. But it wasn't until that evening that the situation went south. As she walked home, the woman found herself struggling to lift her increasingly numb feet.
She fell to the ground, and lay there for several hours before she was found and taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital.
At the hospital, the woman's legs were so swollen that staff had to cut off her jeans.
Neurologists tried to figure out what had gone wrong. Tests revealed that she had almost no muscle strength in her ankles and toes, while the muscles of her hips and knees were normal. A CT scan of her legs showed signs of muscle damage in the calves.
Tests of the tibial nerves, which provide movement and sensation to the calf and foot, and the peroneal nerves, which run from the outside of the knee down to the foot and ankle, showed they weren't sending signals properly.
That was the clue. Nerve damage can be caused by pressure. In the case of the peroneal nerves, that can include pressure from crossing the legs, wearing high boots or squatting. (Previous research refers to "strawberry pickers' palsy.")
"The wearing of'skinny' jeans had likely potentiated the tibial neuropathies by causing a compartment syndrome as the lower leg swelled," the report concluded.
Not good. The swelling of compartment syndrome can lead to permanent muscle and nerve damage, or amputation.
In this case, the victim fared better. After four days in the hospital on intravenous fluids, she regained her ability to walk and went home. No word on whether she's ever donned skinny jeans again.
This isn't the first time we've reported on the perils of excessively tight trousers. In 2011, a doctor in Tarrytown, N.Y., told us about a 15-year-old soccer player who had numbness and tingling in her leg caused by wearing compression shorts.
In some cases, the only damage tight clothes will do is to your wallet.
Last fall, the Federal Trade Commission ordered to two companies to stop selling caffeine-infused shapewear, saying that the amped-up skivvies would not, as one firm claimed, "reduce the size of your hips by up to 2.1 inches and your thighs by up to one inch, and would eliminate or reduce cellulite and that scientific tests proved those results."
The FTC disputed that claim, and ordered the companies to fork over $1.5 million to customers who had been lured in by the promise of effortless shrinkage.Prior to the Geneva watch trade show SIHH 2015, watch and luxury goods maker Montblanc has announced it is stepping into the smartwatch market – well, at least the smart wearables market. The upcoming Montblanc Timewalker Urban Speed collection of timepieces will have an optional strap called the e-Strap (product reference 113827) – perhaps the first smart connected wearable from an established luxury company. The e-Strap features a high-end leather strap that has a carbon fiber texture to it that Montblanc calls “Extreme Montblanc Leather” and is produced by them in Florence, Italy. At the bottom, sitting under your wrist is an electronic module made from DLC (diamond like carbon) coated steel or in gray steel. Apparently, there are a few color and size options.
Why isn’t Montblanc simply producing a smartwatch that combines technology with luxury watch design and materials? Well according to most people in the luxury watch world, that isn’t what most of their consumers want. In fact, many hardcore watch lovers face the upcoming dilemma of having to choose between a smartwatch (should they become indispensable) and a mechanical watch. At aBlogtoWatch, we refer to this as the “what I need versus what I want” choice dilemma. So, for Montblanc and other luxury watch makers, they are taking charge by offering what they feel is the ultimate combo – a traditional mechanical luxury watch with a strap that contains a smart wearable device.
The e-Strap will come on a few of the new for 2015 Montblanc Timewalker Urban Speed watches, but will be available for purchase separately. This is a similar concept as the Kairos T-band, which aBlogtoWatch covered in November of 2014 (a crowd-funded project). Interestingly enough, Montblanc debuted this new version of the long-standing Timewalker collection late in 2014 but did not mention the e-Strap option. That means not all Timewalker Urban Speed watches will have it. The Urban Speed is an attractive, but not revolutionary step for the Timewalker collection, but the availability of the Montblanc e-Strap makes for a totally different story altogether.
The e-Strap is “NATO-style” in terms of how it is designed and how it connects to the watch. Montblanc has made it clear that the e-Strap is debuting with the Timewalker Urban Speed but will be compatible with all 42mm or 43mm wide Timewalker watches currently or previously available. It should also fit on various other watches with similar lug space sizes (perhaps 22mm wide or so). Of course, if you simply don’t want the e-Strap, you can get the Montblanc Timewalker Urban Speed without it.
How impressive as a connected wearable device will the e-Strap’s electronic module be? It will have a 0.9 inch monochromatic OLED touchscreen display with a 128×36 pixel resolution. That isn’t exactly industry changing, but this is more than just a mere notification device. Montblanc has made it clear that in addition to basic calls, texts, e-mails, calendars, social media, and reminder notifications, the e-Strap will function as an activity monitor/tracker with a pedometer and accelerometer to measure data that feeds into an included iPhone or Android phone app.
Of course, you’ll also be able to control your phone’s music player with the e-Strap and perform a few other cool features such as use it as a remote phone camera trigger and use it find your phone if it is within Bluetooth range. Unsurprisingly, the Montblanc e-Strap will use Bluetooth 4.0 in order to connect to its host phone device. In terms of notifications, the e-Strap will offer vibration alerts to let you know when something new has come in. In my experience, these can be a bit annoying, so I hope that the available Montblanc e-Strap app will have a useful notification management tool.
Of course, everyone who has considered using a wearable device wants to know about battery life and, to a degree, durability. Montblanc claims that the e-Strap will offer five days of continuous use between charges with the internal lithium ion battery. It has a micro-USB charging port right in it. Montblanc claims that the e-Strap is shock resistant and splash resistant. Any wearable device that sits under your wrist will need to have some extra durability given how often people rest their hands on desks and tables. In terms of size, the Montblanc e-Strap is 40mm long, 14.2mm wide, and 9mm high (thick). That isn’t terribly small, but I think it can work without looking like a tumor on the underside of your watch strap.
As an interactive connected wearable device, the e-Strap is thankfully more than just a unidirectional notification device. With more and more interest in smartwatches, I think it is fantastic that the luxury watch industry has taken to studying and now producing these products even before the mainstream consumer has. While it doesn’t represent the sentiments of all luxury watch makers, Montblanc’s upcoming release of the e-Strap is a healthy sign that the often conservative luxury watch industry is trying to work with smartwatches rather than ignore them. I previously wrote a popular aBlogtoWatch article asking how screwed the luxury watch industry is because of upcoming smartwatches like the Apple Watch here.
Montblanc Timewalker Urban Speed watches have 43mm wide cases produced from steel with a ceramic bezel and a hip color palette that includes some nice red accents. Montblanc will release the pictured 43mm wide Timewalker Urban Speed Chronograph (ref. 112604) with a base Swiss ETA Valjoux 7750 automatic movement with the e-Strap priced at 4,690 Euros, while the 43mm wide Timewalker Urban Speed UTC will be priced at around 3,990 Euros and the 42mm wide Timewalker Urban Speed Automatic will be priced at about 2,990 Euros. Separately, the Montblanc e-Strap will sell for about 250 Euros – which, while a lot for a device of this nature, is very inexpensive for anything related to a luxury watch product. montblanc.comSpeed Dating In The 19th Century
Long before there were online dating sites, such as eHarmony, Match or OKCupid, there was a curious offline custom in America known as New Year's Calling.
In the 19th century, young single women in New York City; Washington, D.C., and other cities and towns across the country would hold open houses on Jan. 1 and invite eligible bachelors — friends and strangers — to stop by for a brief visit and some light refreshments.
Often the women posted ads — which included their names, addresses and visiting hours — in the local newspaper. This was communitywide speed dating.
Conventional Behavior
Curatorial consultant Steph McGrath, who studied New Year's Calling when she was at the DuPage County Historical Museum in Illinois, says she is not sure which sections of society participated in the convention, "though you'd think maybe the upper classes would set the style, rather than need a printed guidebook."
True. But for whoever needed guidance, there was Hill's Manual of Social and Business Forms, a compendium of knowledge and etiquette. As the 1888 edition observed, the ritual of New Year's Calling "enables gentlemen to know positively who will be prepared to receive them on that occasion."
By convention, male visitors were invited into the house. If the woman wanted the man to stay for a while, she could ask him to remove his hat and coat. Otherwise, she was to offer refreshments and conversation while he remained dressed for the cold. "The call should not exceed 10 or 15 minutes," the manual insisted, "unless the callers are few and it should be agreeable to prolong the stay."
A lady was encouraged by societal rules to accept male visitors in the privacy of her home. But shy types could also gather — and welcome men — in a group. The women were encouraged to "present themselves in full dress" and make sure to have a crackling fire in the fireplace. Suggested refreshments included breads, cakes, fruits — along with tea and coffee.
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of McLean County Museum of History Courtesy of McLean County Museum of History
"No intoxicating drinks should be allowed," the manual stated.
Gentlemen — singly or in manageable groups — were encouraged to pay a visit at some time between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. on the first day of the year. Each man was expected to present each woman he met with a calling card.
In the days following New Year's, it was customary for women to go see other women and download to each other all the juicy information they had gleaned from the parade of gentlemen callers.
End Of An Era
When New Year's Day fell on a Sunday, as it did in 1882, the calling day was shifted to Monday. A story from Washington, D.C., in The Advance reported that "the New Year's Day calling on the second was a great success." It was a bright, brisk day, the paper observed. "You may judge how extensive this calling is, when you know that one morning paper of the 1st had seven and a half close-set columns of names of ladies who would'receive' — say not less than 900."
During the Calling Day era, a shoe store on Pennsylvania Avenue advertised "calling" and "receiving" shoes.
The Hill's Manual cited another reasonable reason that New Year's Calling was an acceptable pursuit: It kept women from sending invitations to specific men, which "looks very much like begging." Moreover, the etiquette guide added it would discourage uninvited guests from visiting, which would defeat the rite's purpose "and thus the custom would go into disuse."
Eventually, the custom did fall by the wayside, for various reasons. Inclement weather, for instance. On Jan. 2, 1891, the New York Times reported: "With what little remained of the antiquated Knickerbocker custom of New Year's calling, yesterday's storm wrought havoc. Strangely enough, the intensely disagreeable atmospheric conditions worked disruption after a double fashion. Not only did they deter many who would otherwise have paid visits to their friends from so doing, but it put an effectual damper upon what seemingly promised to prove a revival of the custom of receiving."
A 1904 issue of Town and Country magazine blamed the gradual disappearance of the practice in New York on the city's burgeoning population. And on morphing manners and mores. "Think in this age of women of fashion being arrayed in semi-ball toilette at midday and remaining in their drawing rooms, with a short intermission for dinner, on a stretch of 12 hours."
As the 20th century wore on, there were attempts, in Philadelphia and other places, to revive the tradition. But by 1923 the New York Times was referring to the ritual as "old fashioned."
The newspaper observed: "People had pretty much grown tired of all those young chaps tramping through their parlors. People began the surly custom of leaving card baskets outside their doors. So as to be relieved of the trouble of entertaining their friends."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Protojournalist: an experimental storytelling project for the LURVers — Listeners, Users, Readers, Viewers — of NPR. lweeks@npr.orgANIMAL rescuers are attempting to retrieve pelicans caught up in the oil sludge runoff from this week's fire at Wingfield.
Australian Marine Wildlife Research and Rescue Organisation president said his team had attempted to reach a group of pelicans affected by the sludge but were unsuccessful.
He said two more coots - one dead and one alive - had been recovered today.
Four stricken birds - three coots and a Pacific black duck - were rescued yesterday.
The Environment Protection Authority will issue an update on the clean up efforts this afternoon.
EARLIER
UP to 50 birds could be affected by oil run-off from the Wingfield fire, an environmental group has warned.
Australian Marine Wildlife Research and Rescue Organisation volunteers, with help from Environment Protection Authority staff, yesterday plucked four stricken birds from wetlands near the Mulhern Waste Oil depot ravaged by fire on Tuesday.
The three coots and one Pacific black duck were caught up in oil sludge that was pushed beyond containment lines and into the wetland by Wednesday afternoon's heavy rain.
Australian Marine Wildlife Research and Rescue Organisation president Aaron Machado said there were sightings of at least 15 oil-affected birds yesterday that rescuers could not reach.
"That means there is probably another 30 to 50 other birds that we wouldn't know of that are contaminated," he said.
"It will take some time before they can all be dealt with. They need to turn really sick, so that they can't fly away.
"At the moment, they have oil on their belly but their wings are OK. Once they try and clean that off and ingest that oil, then their kidneys and liver will start to fail.
"Hopefully we get to them before it's too late."
Mr Machado was hopeful the four birds retrieved yesterday would recover but said it was too early to say they would definitely survive. He said he went to the scene about 8pm on Wednesday to find oil running into the wetlands but that authorities did not respond to his calls until the morning.
An EPA spokeswoman said dangerous conditions on Wednesday night meant yesterday morning was the earliest workers could respond.
She said two of three containment lines were breached on Wednesday night, but were re-established yesterday and an extra one added.
About 80 per cent of the more than 300,000 litres of contaminated water created by the fire and heavy storms have been removed.
"This will be a long-term clean-up operation," the spokeswoman said.
Three waste operators are using vacuum tankers to remove the contaminated water from behind containment lines and take it for treatment and disposal.Liberals' income inequality concerns built on false premise
I received an email a while back from a college student asking for my comments on the issue of income inequality for a research paper he was doing. My response to him was in the form of a few questions. How can everyone earn equal income? Where is it written that everyone can or should earn equal income? How does one arrive at his or her income to begin with? Are we to expect someone with only a high school education and little work experience to earn the same income as someone with at least a four-year degree? Are we to expect a social worker to earn the same income as a chemist, engineer, or medical doctor?
I informed him that an individual’s income is a combination of his or her level of education and experience. I concluded the email with the following comments: The entire income inequality movement is just rhetoric to inflame hearts and divide people. No logical person really believes that the income disparity between the rich (mostly educated) and the poor (uneducated) can ever be equal. If so, please explain to me how it could be possible. After listening to Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sanders’s comments during the first Democrat debate, I have since given this issue more thought. I now realize that the issue of income inequality is based on a false premise. A premise is a proposition upon which an argument is based or from which a conclusion is drawn. A false premise is an incorrect proposition that forms the basis of an argument – since the premise (proposition or assumption) is not correct, the conclusion drawn may be in error. The false premise behind income inequality complaints is that income is distributed instead of earned. If it is a fact that income is distributed instead of earned, I would like to pose a few questions. Who is responsible for distributing it? Who decides the amount of income to distribute? What factors are used to arrive at the income amount? If income is supposed to be distributed equally, does it matter the number of hours employees work? What about the different skill levels required for certain jobs? If a population is supposed to earn equal income, why have institutions of higher learning? This by no means is an exhaustive list of questions for this premise. I would like for liberals (Clinton and Sanders) to provide some specifics to how they plan to fix the alleged income inequality problem in America. When liberals speak about income inequality and the wealth gap, we notice that they replace the word “earn” with “distribute.” If they were to use the word “earn,” it might trigger the words “work” and “merit” to enter the conversation. Liberals believe that for someone to merit his or her income based on hard work is just not fair. If we examine any liberal stance on any issue, whether it is gun control or abortion, we will find that it is built on a false premise. Christian Commentary (http://patriciascornerblog.com), or contact the author at patdickson@earthlink.net. Follow me on twitter@Patrici15767099.Core Upgrade
We are happy to announce that Zcoin is almost ready to be deployed on Bitcoin Core 0.13 and will be released soon. One of the benefits of being on a Bitcoin base means we can adopt benefits of Bitcoin improvements relatively easily.
Official GitHub: https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/tree/core_upgrade
The upgrade of the Bitcoin Core from 0.8 to 0.13 is a culmination of several months of work and improves on many aspects of Zcoin with node connection reliability and sync speeds drastically improved. Sections of the Zerocoin code had to be rewritten to accommodate the core upgrade and opens the door to a whole range of improvements that we can adopt from light wallets to hardware wallet integration.
Some other improvements from the core upgrade:
Support for blockchain pruning
TX malleability fixes
Memory usage optimizations
Privacy: Stream isolation for Tor: This release adds functionality to create a new circuit for every peer connection, when the software is used with Tor. The new option, -proxyrandomize, is on by default.
, is on by default. Hierarchical Deterministic Key Generation
The core upgrade also allows us to work on implementation of Znodes. We will post an update once we upload the code on Github and also have the binaries available.
MTP
We are very pleased that has been a lot of academic debate on MTP the first being Dinur & Nadler’s paper which we had patched a quick fix to it as a temporary solution. It was this paper that prompted us to launch our USD10,000 MTP Audit and USD2,500 MTP Implementation bounties to further encourage research into MTP and also prompted a slew of changes to our MTP code.
Since then, we have also been given a draft copy of research from Fabien Coelho at Zeronote Skunkworks that brings new memory hard PoW proposals to improve MTP and to counter known attacks to the scheme and is currently awaiting feedback from the authors of MTP.
We have also received on the 11 and 12th August several submissions from Marc Bevand to the MTP bounty which require further investigation and also further scrutiny into the proposed fixes. You can view his submissions here which are currently being validated.
Alex Biryukov (one of the authors of MTP) has mentioned in light of Dinur & Nadler’s paper, that MTP needs further work and we have been informed that they are planning to continue work on MTP in September and October which aims to address these new academic papers and research and to further improve on MTP including proof size optimizations.
As such, although we are technically ready to migrate MTP in its current form to mainnet, in light of the above discoveries, the responsible thing to do is to hold off on deployment on mainnet until the revised paper is out and there is confirmation that the attack vectors are closed as opposed a temporarily patched MTP that will be almost certainly be changed again. We apologize for the late notification but it was not a decision we took lightly but we are thankful that the research came to light before deployment of MTP on main net.
MTP in its current form is completely functional and continues to be able to be tested on our Testnet. You can compile zcoind from our Github mtptest branch and also mine with its inbuilt miner. You can also ask from our Slack if you need binaries to the MTP testnet or get some testnet ZCoins.
You can view our Testnet explorer here: http://testnet.zcoin.io:3001/
We remain committed to MTP as long as it remains a viable PoW and we continue to refine our code to make it easier for third parties to work and read with. We thank you for your patience and understanding especially when developing cutting edge technology.Sitting in an orange jailhouse jumpsuit with his head bowed, the elderly Twin Cities businessman who invented the Sleep Number bed and later spent millions of other people's money trying to convert coal to natural gas learned Thursday he'll likely spend the rest of his life in jail.
A federal judge in St. Paul sentenced Robert Walker, who was convicted in March of defrauding investors in Bixby Energy of $57 million over a decade, to 25 years in prison.
His attorney said the 72-year-old, who started the successful bed maker Select Comfort before embarking on Bixby, "will probably not have a fresh breath of air again" as a free man.
"I apologize to my family, my friends and my investors," Walker said softly before the sentence was read.
Then, U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson sternly delivered her ruling.
"You caused devastating, lifelong injuries to hundreds of faithful investors," Nelson said. "You're barely accepting any responsibility for this destructive activity. You don't seem to feel remorse for the extraordinary pain felt by so many people. You're someone who cares more about themself."
Bob Walker Equis ni vendae pellasdf bo reperun t venimilasd incteasdf as mpos
After a seven-week trial, a federal jury convicted Walker on charges of fraud, tax evasion, witness tampering and conspiracy for repeatedly misleading investors about the prospects for success of his alternative energy company, Bixby.
About 1,800 people invested in the company, which Walker co-founded in 2001. The business was originally focused on producing corn-burning stoves to heat homes. When that business collapsed because of high corn prices, Walker turned Bixby's focus to developing a coal-to-gas technology. But it never worked.
The business folded in 2012, a year after two Bixby directors sued to oust Walker.
In court Thursday, Walker's defense attorney, Peter Wold, described him as a "naive" businessman who believed in the technology he promoted. "He did not set out to cheat anyone," Wold said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney David MacLaughlin portrayed Walker as a calculating, opportunistic individual guided by greed.
"Dollar signs determine what Mr. Walker believes and what he doesn't," MacLaughlin said. "He was a leader among crooks. He was a master manipulator … He has this narcissistic focus on himself."
Although Walker testified during the trial that he never intended to cheat anyone, evidence revealed that Bixby had employed two felons, including one Walker hired as chief financial officer and seeker of investment funds. Testimony also revealed that he battled with board members who disagreed with his leadership.
As for investors, testimony showed that Walker made repeated predictions that the company would soon be publicly traded to their benefit. He also gave glowing but unsubstantiated reports on the progress of coal gasification technology.
He has been behind bars since August 2013, when his parole was revoked after he attempted to contact a government witness through a third party.
In the 1980s, Walker achieved success by creating an adjustable air mattress and starting Select Comfort Corp. The mattress eventually became known as the Sleep Number bed and the company today has nearly $1 billion in annual sales. Walker left the firm in 1991, years before its meteoric growth and 1998 stock listing. A witness during the trial said the company was having financial trouble when he left.
Nelson opened the courtroom for comments and both friends of Walker as well as jilted investors took the chance to speak.
One of those was Marion Mast, who described himself as a Bixby co-founder. He said he witnessed "underhanded" actions by Walker with the company's board of directors and said when he was fired "it saved my life."
Others described Walker as trustworthy and self-confident.
"Whenever I had issues, Bob always had an open door and was cooperative," said George Bonfe who described himself as an early investor in the corn-burning stove business. "I always felt comfortable with him. He was never a hard-selling guy."
The judge at one point in the proceeding called Walker's crime "a magnificent fraud."
"We hold people accountable for pain and injustice they cause others, and I hold you accountable," she said.About
The Elder Theatre MUST obtain a Digital Projector to continue as a movie theatre.
The Elder Theatre is in danger and we need your help. Starting this summer, movie companies will begin to phase out the use of 35mm film. The Elder has been showing movies using a 35mm projector since it was built in 1942. If the theater is unable to install a digital projector, the owners will be forced to shut the doors and the community and Shelby County will lose its last movie theatre. After being in operation for 70 years we don't want to have to close the theatre down.
The History:
The Elder Theatre opened on November 29, 1942, with admission prices of thirty cents for adults and ten cents for children. The theatre was built by Elder Duff; it was the first theatre in the state of Ohio to feature a cry room with soundproof glass and rocking chairs for mother with babies. Since then the Elder Theatre has went through two ownership changes-Mr and Mrs. Brown bought the theatre in 1950 and they ran the movie house until 1981 when health problems set in on them. In 1982 the theatre was purchased by my aunt and uncle, Rod & Becky. Admission was just $1.00 in 1982.
What's Happened in those 30 Years?
Over the span of 30 years many changes have come to the theatre. The theatre has been continually upgraded since it was purchased in 1982. One of the first changes that occurred was the closing of the standing rail to make way for our current concession stand. A larger screen was then added, allowing for the way of Cinema scope at our theatre. The lobby was completely redone with new wall treatments, carpet and redone concession. One of our biggest upgrades came recently. In 2007 the entire inside of the theatre was redone! New wall coverings, new screen treatments and seats with Cupholders were installed! We take |
How is it that women, with dark pasts, serving time for murder and manslaughter, could possibly become honored peacemakers?
Their story is one of personal commitment to themselves and the community in which most are destined to live out their lives. “This is an environment filled with conflict and violence. There is a dire need and want for change,” says Susan Russo, one of the fifteen initial peacemakers, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the largest prison for women in the world, Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, CA. “Mediation interests all of us because we are lifers and long-termers hoping to make a difference in teaching our peers that there is a better way.”
Beginning her quest in 2007, Sue Russo wrote over 50 handwritten letters from prison to mediators all over California. Her letters went unanswered until August of 2009 when one of her letters made it to me, Laurel Kaufer, Esq., a Southern California mediator and peacemaker and founder of the post-Katrina Mississippi Mediation Project.
As soon as I read the letter, I was hooked, but also knew that I couldn’t do it alone. Still standing at the mailbox, I called my friend and colleague, Doug Noll, the only person I would consider working with on a project like this. Doug is a superb trainer, mediator, and restorative justice expert. I read the letter to him. He was silent for about a nano-second before he said, “I’m in. What’s our next step?”
We spent six months working our way up the chain of command to convince the prison authorities to let us run a pilot project. When we got the final approval, we selected our first fifteen women, all long term and life inmates, and the training began less than a month later.
Ten weeks later, the first 15 women were fully trained mediators and within two weeks of completing their training had conducted over 25 mediations and dozens of peace circles within the prison.
“I can already see the difference in the Prison community,” says participant Betty Mills, “as other inmates now strive to model their lives after the Peacemakers currently in Prison of Peace. I feel more empowered than I have felt in forty-four years.”
“The whole package has changed not only my way of thinking but also my feelings. I truly believe this will have a lasting effect on this whole institution,” says Russo.
Our secret is to build skills slowly with continued accountability throughout the process. The training, which takes ten consecutive weeks, consists of a two day intensive listening workshop, three weeks of follow-up, a day-long class in peace circles and restorative justice, three more weeks of follow-up, and a 3 day intensive mediation training workshop followed by two more weeks of follow-up. Every Wednesday for 10 weeks, I drove the 500 mile round-trip drive, between my home in Woodland Hills, California to the prison in Chowchilla. Doug, living somewhat closer to the prison in the foothills to the north of Clovis, California, provides our base of operations.
Over the course of the training, we saw amazing transformations in these women. They started out emotionally shut down and skeptical and ended up empowered and dedicated to making peace within the prison. It has been one of the most satisfying projects of our careers. This is the first time either of us have felt that a conflict resolution training might make a real, systemic difference within a community.
“Instead of running from conflict, I now run to conflict, with hopes of bringing resolution. Not only has this program taught me not to be scared of conflict, it has also taught me how to communicate at a higher standard and with more ease and grace,” says peacemaker, Anna Humiston
We are committed to making this project internally self-sustaining by training the life and long-term inmates to be trainers within the prison. At present, we have a waiting list of inmates seeking to participate in the program that will take us through 2010 and beyond. We expect to have 75 peacemakers fully trained by the end of the year. Our focus in 2011 will be to create trainers from our current peacemakers who will train the rest of the inmate population. This project is pro bono. We pay all costs out of our own pockets and do not charge for any of our time. More about our project can be found at www.prisonofpeace.org.
***
Watch this moving 10 minute video and hear what the women involved in this remarkable program have to say about the profound impact it’s had on them and the prison community.
***
On October 2, the initial 15 women in the Prison of Peace program received the Southern California Mediation Association’s 2010 Cloke-Millen Peacemaker of the Year Award. You can read more about this honor here.Image caption The Blur All Faces tool is designed to allow users to upload material while minimising the risk of repercussions
YouTube has added a tool which automatically blurs out the faces of people appearing in uploaded videos.
It said the function would be of use to activists wishing to share footage of protests involving participants who wanted to remain anonymous.
It hinted other features would follow, describing the move as "the first step towards providing visual anonymity".
But it added that its code could not be guaranteed to work in all instances and that other safeguards might be needed.
"This is emerging technology, which means it sometimes has difficulty detecting faces depending on the angle, lighting, obstructions and video quality," the Google-owned site said on its blog.
"Because human rights footage, in particular, opens up new risks to the people posting videos and to those filmed, it's important to keep in mind other ways to protect yourself and the people in your videos."
Users who wish to use the function must first upload their footage before selecting one of the site's Video Enhancement tools. They are then given a chance to see a preview of the blurred footage before making the version available to others.
Risk and reward
Google has previously used similar technology to blur faces and car numberplates captured by its Street View vehicles.
However, limitations with the technology mean that in many instances sketches of Kentucky Fried Chicken's mascot, Colonel Sanders, have been blurred out on the restaurant chain's buildings while in other cases people's faces have been missed when they appear on its Maps service.
Nevertheless, one London-based campaign group welcomed the news.
"Publishing videos online is a very effective way for charities and NGOs [non-governmental organisations] to show the world their work and attract support, but it has historically been difficult to do without invading the subjects' privacy or placing them at serious risk," said Emma Draper from Privacy International.
"Simply identifying certain people in certain situations - refugees, for example, or rape victims - can put them or their families in danger of their lives.
"While some companies are pouring resources into creating more accurate and more pervasive facial recognition systems, it is heartening to see YouTube take a step in the opposite direction."Ontarians should not only disapprove of Quebec’s new face-coverings law, the government should find a legal case to support to get it struck down, Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown says, continuing to harry the Liberal party from the left.
They keep saying he’s a frightening right-winger and he keeps refusing to play along. Brown criticizes the governing party not for being bleeding-heart incompetents, which they’re used to and know how to answer, but for letting screwups compound their meanness. That’s unfamiliar, uncomfortable ground for people who are used to thinking of themselves as the party of building Ontario up.
We’ll start with Quebec’s Bill 62, which is purportedly about enforcing secularism in the public sphere but which will, in practice, mainly tell niqab-wearing Muslim women they have to take their veils off to ride city buses or go to school. Unusually, all the parties in the legislature Thursday agreed to make time to condemn another province’s new law.
“This legislation would disproportionately affect women who are sometimes already at the margins and push them into further isolation. These are people that you and I know,” Premier Kathleen Wynne said, leading off. “They are our neighbours: the grandmother who, if she lived in Quebec, would no longer be able to drop off her granddaughter at a city-run daycare, or a mother who would not be able to bring her children to a hospital to see the doctor. That is not the kind of society that we stand for in Ontario.”
“My leader has often said it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, it doesn’t matter who you love, it doesn’t matter how much you make, and it doesn’t matter where you worship; you have a home here, in the province of Ontario, and we respect you,” agreed Ottawa Progressive Conservative MPP Lisa MacLeod, speaking for her party. “All Canadians have a legal right to their religious beliefs, including in the province of Quebec.”
But, she said, and Brown echoed her Friday, Ontario should go beyond shaking its head grimly.
“I would also ask that our government seek leave to intervene in any charter challenge on the constitutionality of this bill. I think that we must stand against it and stand firmly against it,” MacLeod said.
Neutrality is not enough. If feds won't lead Canada, and this racist law passes, ON must support a Charter challenge https://t.co/X9PZtEHi22 — Patrick Brown (@patrickbrownont) October 20, 2017
This followed last week’s social-issues kerfuffle, when Brown wanted to hurry a Liberal-designed ban on abortion-clinic protests into law faster than the Liberals did.
The provincial Tories are light on actual policy, but in the two-and-a-half years Brown has been their leader, he’s racked up a list of implicit promises through the criticisms he and his party have launched against the government.
The biggie is that electricity should be cheaper and the companies that provide it should be publicly owned. That’s popular, mainstream Ontario opinion, and also pretty socialist.
Brown (though he’s warring with his party base over this and who knows how it’ll turn out) supports pricing carbon emissions to fight climate change but he’s against the system of tradeable permits the Liberals have set up. Cap-and-trade used to be the conservative way of tackling climate change because it sets targets and lets businesses work out how to meet them. The market rewards companies that do it well.
Our system is linked with one Quebec and California built when Arnold Schwarzenegger was the state’s Republican governor, which creates a free-trade zone for carbon permits. Brown criticizes it because it “sends millions of dollars to one of the richest jurisdictions on earth for emission reductions there, which means failing to cut emissions here at home.” Well, that’s how trade works: we pay someone else to cut carbon emissions because they can do it more cheaply than we can. For conservatives, this is a feature, not a bug.
The Liberals are pushing school boards to close schools that are half-empty, as many as 600 of them, to save money; the Tories want to keep them open. The Tories criticize the Liberals for not spending enough on autism therapy, on mental health, on home care, on doctors. They fret about conditions in Ontario jails, that the government hasn’t done enough to get mining started in the Ring of Fire mineral deposits in the north.
Against all this, the Liberals accuse Patrick Brown of being a “Trump-style” politician for putting together ordinary attack ads and scour his record as a federal Conservative backbencher. Which is, to be sure, replete with socially conservative votes and mailers.
Brown has repudiated a lot of the things he used to stand for, which at best makes you ask whether he believes in the things he says. But he has repudiated them, directly and firmly, no sly wink-wink lines. He’s marched in gay-pride parades and supported the Liberals on sex education, at considerable cost to his grassroots support.
The Liberals are setting themselves up to run against Tim Hudak and his Million Jobs Plan and his Stephen Harper Conservative friends, repeating the 2014 campaign. The Patrick Brown we’ve seen so far is not that enemy. He’s not the gentler Tim Hudak of 2011, not even the centrist John Tory of 2007. He’s making the Liberals explain the things they’ve cut, the programs they haven’t funded, the injustices they’re not fighting hard enough.
Maybe the Tory platform, assuming there is one, will follow a different philosophy. But in the meantime, Brown’s an oddity these Liberals have never seen before and don’t yet know how to deal with.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevelyThe Soviet assault was the start of a nine-year civil war
What was it like to be in the presidential palace in Kabul 30 years ago when Soviet soldiers burst in and killed Afghan President Hafizullah Amin? The BBC World Service has brought together for the first time two people who were on different sides in the palace that day - a Soviet soldier and a young Afghan girl, Lucy Williamson reports. It was the first time Najiba had set foot inside the palace. For an 11-year-old girl, she says: "it was like something from a movie: the staircases, the golden lift, the chandeliers, and the glitter - the beauty of it." It was all brand new - the palace had just been refurbished. And Najiba's parents had been invited there for a party, to show off the new design. It was 27 December, 1979. And as the guests warmed themselves with lavish food, outside the palace walls other - uninvited - guests waited in the winter cold. The things I saw, my God, I saw a person like a scene from a nightmare movie, dead bodies, lots
Najiba Afghan eyewitness Among them was Rustam Tursunkulov, a 23-year-old special forces commander with the Soviet army. As Najiba bickered with her brother over the party food, outside Rustam prepared to give the order. Thirty years on, Rustam was sitting in our Moscow studio, after the BBC's Russian Service had found and contacted him. "In the end," he told me, "I didn't really order them at all. I hugged each of my men and said: 'I'll go ahead, you follow'. "We had no body armour and hardly any of us had helmets. We had to run through a shower of bullets. Panic set in "I kept the magazine of my rifle and my helmet for a long time afterwards - they were riddled with bullet holes." The coup had begun. Inside the palace, confusion spread quickly. "There was this huge, loud sound," Najiba remembers. "A huge explosion that shook the place. We had to run to the corridor and my nice yellow shoes were left behind and my white coat - I really wanted them, but my mum said there was no time, we had to run." Out in the corridor, Najiba saw President Amin half-dressed, shouting to his family; his wife running, bringing the Kalashnikovs. As panic set in among the palace residents, Rustam and his men moved methodically through the building. "We killed the Afghans who put up any opposition to us," said Rustam. "The building was on fire and by the light of the flames we could see silhouettes. We recognised our own people because they were swearing in Russian." "The things I saw," said Najiba. "My God - people on the floor. I saw a person like a scene from a nightmare movie. Dead bodies. Lots." Begs forgiveness Rustam tells me his orders were to kill everyone they met in the palace. I ask him if he did. "I was a Soviet soldier," he says. "We were trained to accept orders without question. I was in the special forces - it's the worst job. "In any army there has to be someone who'll do the harshest, most horrible tasks. Unfortunately, it's not soldiers, but politicians who make wars." I ask him how many people he thinks he killed that night. I want to thank you for talking to me and beg your forgiveness for what we did
Rustam Tursunkulov Former Soviet soldier "If I knew, I wouldn't tell you," he says. "I just carried out orders, I didn't count them." As I talked down the line to Rustam in Moscow, Najiba came into the studio and sat down shakily. It was the first time she had spoken to anyone involved in the coup. Clutching a tissue, she spoke haltingly into the microphone. "Hello," she said. "My name's Naijba, and I was inside the palace 30 years ago." Rustam's voice came back from Moscow: "I want to thank you for talking to me and beg your forgiveness for what we did. "It was a terrible thing, but you need to hear both sides of it." Bled to death Najiba told me she had been up all night turning over in her head the questions she wanted to ask. "There were so many," she said. "It's been 30 years." But in the end, she asked about the children - there had been lots of them in the palace that day, including the president's own 11-year-old son. "What happened to him?" Najiba asked. "Did you try and save the children?" Rustam replied: "Please try to understand that when there's a battle going on, it's hard to know there are children there. "Amin's son was hit by shrapnel and bled to death. All the bodies were wrapped in carpet and buried near the palace. There was no ceremony for them." Najiba asked him: "Do you remember me? I had blond hair then, and my mother was very fair." "No," said Rustam. "I'm sorry." "How long did the whole operation take?" asked Najiba. "Forty-three minutes," he said. It was 43 minutes that turned into a nine-year war, took the Cold War to a new level, and left more than a million people dead. Rustam and Najiba are both writing books about their memories of that night. As they end their conversation, Rustam promises to send Najiba some documents, to help with her research. They say goodbye, and the line to Moscow goes dead. You can hear more from both Najiba and Rustam in a special two-part series of 'Witness' on the BBC World Service, on Monday 28 December and Tuesday 29 December.
Bookmark with: Delicious
Digg
reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionIt’s the same scene over and over: men and women dressed in their brand-name best, shimmering and besuited, men’s hair gelled and women’s highlighted and curled, tumbling to their waists. They walk in the party together and then separate. The men enter the den of sin—living room or garage—and women enter the holy quarters, the kitchen area and dining room. The only time the two sexes interact is when the food is served.
The men drink alcohol, talk politics, smoke, tell dirty jokes and play live music. The women, if their children are absent, prepare the food, talk about their children and dance to pop music on another sound system. If the children are around, they run after them. The women rarely touch alcohol but tea is abundant.
This scene has been a part of my weekend social life among members of my Afghan-American community in the San Francisco Bay Area since I was 10 years old. But New Year’s Eve 2014, I made a resolution as I sat at yet another party separated from my husband: boycott all sex-segregated parties. I saw something deeply flawed in our gender segregated interactions. And I wasn’t having any fun.
We’re the largest Afghan enclave in the U.S. and an increasing unit of the Muslim-American-American community. Some in the community believe that Islam dictates gender segregation: funerals are segregated, women are discouraged from attending burials, the mosque is divided in rooms of men and women. But other Muslims argue that it’s more a cultural tradition even prevalent with other Americans. I’ve attended plenty of parties outside my own community where men are barbecuing and watching a football game while women cook and care for the children.
The much-discussed May 16 New York Times op-ed “Poor Little Rich Women” by an anthropologist showed how New York’s elitist banker husbands and stay-at-home-mom and wives split during their social hours to be with the same sex. The author of the op-ed, Wednesday Martin—whose upcoming book Primates of Park Avenue explores these women’s lives—had a poignant line that captured my motives for ending my social life with many Afghans and Muslims who cling to sex segregation.
“The worldwide ethnographic data is clear: The more stratified and hierarchical the society, and the more sex segregated, the lower the status of women.”
When I lived in the Muslim world for the first seven years of the millennium, I expected the segregation and tolerated it. I was there as a journalist to observe—it wasn’t my place to confront cultural taboos. But in the U.S., I put my foot down because this is my community. The people I interact with aren’t as wealthy as Martin’s subjects, but they all “choose” to spend more time with the same gender. Muslims have now adopted bridal and baby showers too, adding more gender-divided traditions to their social lives.
Not all Muslims or Afghan-Americans segregate at social events, but around me, it’s rampant. There are even born-again Muslims in families who insist on segregating our weddings as well.
Some of these Muslim women work and consider themselves equal to their men. But there’s a belief that they can only let their guard down and feel safe away from the ogling eyes of nonkin men in the room. They can make dirty jokes too and complain about their lives openly. I’m all for sisterhood and a few girls nights out once in a while. But when nearly every social event is divided, how can we learn to interact with the opposite sex?
Normal becomes equal but separate, which is an oxymoron to me, and women and men who cross the line are talked about with disdain. I’ve entered the men’s domain at these parties, and the men become uncomfortable. They stop telling their misogynistic jokes, hide their vodka-filled glasses and give each other that knowing glance which says: doesn’t she know her place?
In the U.S., it’s not the lack of exposure to women that causes men to ogle—it’s the dearth of meaningful dialogue and social interaction between the sexes in my community.
The Afghan refugee community I was raised in was desperate to hold onto its moral character. Preserving that morality discouraged male-female friendships and dating. Our elders and now even among my own generation believe gender mixing is a prelude to sinful sexual activity. What they don’t understand is that the less the genders mix, the more enticing the opposite sex becomes. Unfortunately, once in the accepted bond of marriage, husbands and wives have little to say to each other. They much prefer to hang out with their pals than their spouse because they cannot connect on a social level.
Studies show that gender segregation not only lowers the status of women—it’s the women serving the men at these parties I attended—but it has obvious adverse effects on their work and romantic relationships.
“Segregation reinforces gender stereotypes and when these men and women enter the work field, they don’t know how to co-exist. The women may be perceived as less competent and sociable,” said Nahid Aziz, associate professor of psychology at the American School of Professional Psychology in Washington D.C.
Aziz, an Afghan-American who has observed Afghans and other Muslims in different American cities, said co-gender socializing leads to better communication and more marital satisfaction.
When men and women do mingle, they have more respect for each others’ ideas, and they can learn to control their sexual impulses better and engage in activities they both enjoy.
If I can’t convince members of my community to mingle, the only other option is to continue my one-woman boycott. The response to my boycott has been mixed. My sister-in-law was supportive and had a mixed-gender gathering last week to prove her support. But some of my family members are upset. My actions are seen as selfish and snobby.
“Why can’t you just have fun? Why does everything have to be an issue for you?” one relative asked. “You’re breaking up the family when you do this.”
Another friend sneered at my decision to boycott. “You think you’re going to change our people by refusing to attend? They’re just going to backbite against you. Your principled stance is lost on them. Most of them are happy in their gendered world.”
Perhaps she’s right, but refusing to participate in these parties frees up my time to attend events where couples sit together and learn from each other’s company. Then at least I can say I went to a party and had fun.US businesses and organisations could be subject to cyberattacks as research into secure systems is “non-existent or too small”, a report from MIT has said.
It is one of a series of stark warnings from the University that the US could drop behind other countries in the world and miss out on important technological developments because of funding cuts.
Everything from brain technology to infectious diseases, defense technology and more are outlined as the 15 areas that will suffer the most.
The report also warned that other countries, such as China, are putting more of their resources into research programmes and that funding cuts can cause “long term damage” to the country.
One researcher, March Kastner, added that scientific findings may be “unpredictable” but pay off over time – in response to the report, ‘The Future Postponed’.
“Some areas of research are so strategically important that for the US to fall behind ought to be alarming,” the authors of the report said.
“Yet Chinese leadership in supercomputing—its Tianhe-2 machine at the Chinese National University of Defense in Guangzhou has won top ranking for the third year in a row and can now do quadrillions of calculations per second—is just such a straw in the wind.”
The academics went on to say that further in the future there could be damage to national projects as well as domestic ones.
“Another is our apparent and growing vulnerability to cyberattacks of the type that have damaged Sony, major banks, large retailers and other major companies.
“Ultimately, it will be basic research in areas such as photonics, cybersecurity, and quantum computing (where China is investing heavily) that determine leadership in secure information systems, in secure long distance communications, and in supercomputing.”
MIT has produced the report in response to competitiors around the world increasing their investment in basic research and contrasting this with the US federal budget devoted to research falling to around 4%. In 1968, the university points out in a press release, the federal research budget was 10%.
Thirty of MIT’s senior staff members formed a committee to evaluate ‘the innovation deficit’ and produced the 50 page report.
Fusion energy, which could power the entire world, was listed as one of the areas that US could fall behind on if more investment isn’t provided. This is despite recent US led advancements in superconducting wires and tapes – as well as more than 3,600 people being employed in the sector.
“The US has world-leading depth in measurement, theory and computation for fusion research, but it cannot be sustained for long in the absence of new experimental facilities,” the researchers wrote.
“No research program can guarantee a successful outcome, but the potential to accelerate the development of fusion as a source of clean, always-available electricity should not be ignored.”
The report also said that while the US is the leading country in the world for using industrial robots, there is no US company that is a market leader in creating them.
“The US is already relying on other countries to provide industrial robots,” the report said.
“Staying competitive in rapidly growing and evolving new markets for robotics will require larger investments.”
Despite the robotics research that is being completed by organisations such as DARPA, NASA and universities scattered across the country, the MIT researchers said that research opportunities can still exist to make robots more useful to humans.
The authors said: “The research opportunities include putting still more flexibility, sensing capabilities, and intelligence into robotic devices, to make them still more capable of helping people and organizations accomplish routine daily tasks or function at times and under conditions that people don’t want to work.”Qubits, gates and networks
Consider the two binary strings,
011, 111.
The first one can represent, for example, the number 3 (in binary) and the second one the number 7. In general three physical bits can be prepared in 23 = 8 different configurations that can represent, for example, the integers from 0 to 7. However, a register composed of three classical bits can store only one number at a given moment of time. Enter qubits and quantum registers:
A qubit is a quantum system in which the Boolean states 0 and 1 are represented by a prescribed pair of normalised and mutually orthogonal quantum states labeled as {∣0⟩, ∣1⟩} Sch95. The two states form a `computational basis' and any other (pure) state of the qubit can be written as a superposition α∣0⟩ + β∣1⟩ for some α and β such that ∣α∣2 + ∣β∣2 = 1. A qubit is typically a microscopic system, such as an atom, a nuclear spin, or a polarised photon. A collection of n qubits is called a quantum register of size n.
We shall assume that information is stored in the registers in binary form. For example, the number 6 is represented by a register in state ∣1⟩ ⊗ ∣1⟩ ⊗ ∣0⟩. In more compact notation: ∣a⟩ stands for the tensor product ∣an − 1⟩ ⊗ ∣an − 2⟩…∣a1⟩ ⊗ ∣a0⟩, where ai ∈ {0, 1}, and it represents a quantum register prepared with the value a = 20a0 + 21a1 + …2n − 1an − 1. There are 2n states of this kind, representing all binary strings of length n or numbers from 0 to 2n − 1, and they form a convenient computational basis. In the following a ∈ {0, 1}n (a is a binary string of length n) implies that ∣a⟩ belongs to the computational basis.
Thus a quantum register of size three can store individual numbers such as 3 or 7,
∣0⟩ ⊗ ∣1⟩ ⊗ ∣1⟩ ≡ ∣011⟩ ≡ ∣3⟩, ∣1⟩ ⊗ ∣1⟩ ⊗ ∣1⟩ ≡ ∣111⟩ ≡ ∣7⟩,
but, it can also store the two of them simultaneously. For if we take the first qubit and instead of setting it to ∣0⟩ or ∣1⟩ we prepare a superposition $1/\sqrt{2}\left( |0\rangle +|1\rangle \right)$ then we obtain
$\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left( |0\rangle +|1\rangle \right) \otimes |1\rangle \otimes |1\rangle \equiv \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left( |011\rangle +|111\rangle \right),$ $\equiv \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left( |3\rangle +|7\rangle \right).$
In fact we can prepare this register in a superposition of all eight numbers -- it is enough to put each qubit into the superposition $1/\sqrt{2} \left( |0\rangle +|1\rangle \right).$ This gives
$\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left( |0\rangle +|1\rangle \right) \otimes \frac{1}{\sqrt{ 2}}\left( |0\rangle +|1\rangle \right) \otimes \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left( |0\rangle +|1\rangle \right),$
which can also be written in binary as (ignoring the normalisation constant 2 − 3/2 ),
∣000⟩ + ∣001⟩ + ∣010⟩ + ∣011⟩ + ∣100⟩ + ∣101⟩ + ∣110⟩ + ∣111⟩.
or in decimal notation as
∣0⟩ + ∣1⟩ + ∣2⟩ + ∣3⟩ + ∣4⟩ + ∣5⟩ + ∣6⟩ + ∣7⟩,
or simply as
∑x = 07∣x⟩.
These preparations, and any other manipulations on qubits, have to be performed by unitary operations. A quantum logic gate is a device which performs a fixed unitary operation on selected qubits in a fixed period of time and a quantum network is a device consisting of quantum logic gates whose computational steps are synchronised in time Deu89. The outputs of some of the gates are connected by wires to the inputs of others. The size of the network is the number of gates it contains.
The most common quantum gate is the Hadamard gate, a single qubit gate H performing the unitary transformation known as the Hadamard transform. It is defined as
../sites/default/files/wiki_images/6/62/Img44.png
The matrix is written in the computational basis {∣0⟩, ∣1⟩} and the diagram on the right provides a schematic representation of the gate H acting on a qubit in state ∣x⟩, with x = 0, 1.
And here is a network, of size three, which affects the Hadamard transform on three qubits. If they are initially in state ∣000⟩ then the output is the superposition of all eight numbers from 0 to 7.
../sites/default/files/wiki_images/a/a6/Img49.png
If the three qubits are initially in some other state from the computational basis then the result is a superposition of all numbers from 0 to 7 but exactly half of them will appear in the superposition with the minus sign, for example,
../sites/default/files/wiki_images/7/71/Img50.png
In general, if we start with a register of size n in some state y ∈ {0, 1}n then
∣y⟩ ↦ 2 − n/2∑x ∈ {0, 1}n( − 1)y ⋅ x∣x⟩,
where the product of y = (yn − 1, …, y0) and x = (xn − 1, …, x0) is taken bit by bit:
y ⋅ x = (yn − 1xn − 1 + …y1x1 + y0x0).
We will need another single qubit gate -- the phase shift gate \phi defined as ∣ 0⟩ ↦ ∣ 0⟩ and ∣ 1⟩ ↦ eiϕ∣ 1⟩, or, in matrix notation,
../sites/default/files/wiki_images/4/4f/Img59.png
The Hadamard gate and the phase gate can be combined to construct the following network (of size four), which generates the most general pure state of a single qubit (up to a global phase),
../sites/default/files/wiki_images/2/27/Img60.png
Consequently, the Hadamard and phase gates are sufficient to construct any unitary operation on a single qubit.
Thus the Hadamard gates and the phase gates can be used to transform the input state ∣0⟩∣0⟩...∣0⟩ of the n qubit register into any state of the type ∣Ψ1⟩ ∣Ψ2⟩... ∣Ψn⟩, where ∣Ψi⟩ is an arbitrary superposition of ∣0⟩ and ∣1⟩. These are rather special n-qubit states, called the product states or the separable states. In general, a quantum register of size n > 1 can be prepared in states which are not separable -- they are known as entangled states. For example, for two qubits (n = 2), the state
α ∣00⟩ + β ∣01⟩ = ∣0⟩ ⊗ (α ∣0⟩ + β ∣1⟩)
is separable, ∣Ψ1⟩ = ∣0⟩ and ∣Ψ2⟩ = α∣0⟩ + β∣1⟩, whilst the state
α ∣00⟩ + β ∣11⟩ ≠ ∣Ψ1⟩ ⊗ ∣Ψ2⟩
is entangled (α, β ≠ 0), because it cannot be written as a tensor product.
In order to entangle two (or more qubits) we have to extend our repertoire of quantum gates to two-qubit gates. The most popular two-qubit gate is the controlled-NOT (C-NOT), also known as the XOR or the measurement gate. It flips the second (target) qubit if the first (control) qubit is ∣ 1⟩ and does nothing if the control qubit is ∣ 0⟩. The gate is represented by the unitary matrix
../sites/default/files/wiki_images/5/57/Img76.png
where x, y = 0or 1 and ⊕ denotes XOR or addition modulo 2. If we apply the C-NOT to Boolean data in which the target qubit is ∣0⟩ and the control is either ∣0⟩ or ∣1⟩ then the effect is to leave the control unchanged while the target becomes a copy of the control, i.e.
∣x⟩∣0⟩ ↦ ∣x⟩∣x⟩ x = 0, 1.
One might suppose that this gate could also be used to copy superpositions such as ∣Ψ⟩ = α ∣0⟩ + β ∣1⟩, so that
∣Ψ⟩∣0⟩ ↦ ∣Ψ⟩∣Ψ⟩
for any ∣Ψ⟩. This is not so! The unitarity of the C-NOT requires that the gate turns superpositions in the control qubit into entanglement of the control and the target. If the control qubit is in a superposition state ∣Ψ⟩ = α∣0⟩ + β∣1⟩,
oindent (α, β ≠ 0), and the target in ∣0⟩ then the C-NOT generates the entangled state
(α∣0⟩ + β∣1⟩)∣0 |
has "no significant medical problems." His blood pressure was 110/65.
His blood pressure was 110/65. He has lost 15 pounds recently and takes baby aspirin.
He has lost 15 pounds recently and takes baby aspirin. He has never had cancer or major surgery such as hip, knee or shoulder replacement.
He has never had cancer or major surgery such as hip, knee or shoulder replacement. He has had an appendectomy.
He has had an appendectomy. He has never used alcohol or tobacco.
Otherwise, the letter assures us that Trump's "physical strength and stamina" are extraordinary and that his cardiovascular health is "excellent." His recent medical result also included "only positive results" — which might not actually be the best way of phrasing that, given a "positive" test usually is pretty bad news.
It's easy to dismiss the whole doctor-letter flap as just another fun/ridiculous sideshow — Trump's unique-looking doctor appropriating Trump's language in his own very Trumpian evaluation of the GOP nominee's health. But the Trump campaign and its allies in recent weeks have sought to speculate and raise innuendos about Clinton's health — often in a very underhanded way. And it's presumptuous to call for Clinton to seriously address questions about her health and to disclose more information when you have not taken your own medical evaluation and disclosure seriously.
Unless Trump's goal here is not to get Clinton to disclose more but rather to continue fomenting innuendo about her being gravely ill in a way that gives voters pause.Göbekli Tepe ( pronounced [ɟœbecˈli teˈpe][1]), Turkish for "Potbelly Hill",[2] is an archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, approximately 12 km (7 mi) northeast of the city of Şanlıurfa. The tell has a height of 15 m (49 ft) and is about 300 m (980 ft) in diameter.[3] It is approximately 760 m (2,490 ft) above sea level.
The tell includes two phases of use believed to be of a social or ritual nature[by whom?] dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. During the first phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected – the world's oldest known megaliths.[4] More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. Each pillar has a height of up to 6 m (20 ft) and weighs up to 10 tons. They are fitted into sockets that were hewn out of the bedrock.[5] In the second phase, belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB), the erected pillars are smaller and stood in rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime. The site was abandoned after the PPNB. Younger structures date to classical times.
The details of the structure's function remain a mystery. It was excavated by a German archaeological team under the direction of Klaus Schmidt from 1996 until his death in 2014. Schmidt believed that the site was a sanctuary where people from a wide region periodically congregated, not a settlement.
In 2018, the site was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.[6]
Discovery [ edit ]
Göbekli Tepe site (1)
The site was first noted in a survey conducted by Istanbul University and the University of Chicago in 1963.[7] American archaeologist Peter Benedict identified lithics collected from the surface of the site as belonging to the Aceramic Neolithic,[8] but mistook stone slabs (the upper parts of the T-shaped pillars) for grave markers, postulating that the prehistoric phase was overlain by a Byzantine cemetery.[9][10] The hill had long been under agricultural cultivation, and generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles, which may have disturbed the upper layers of the site. At some point attempts had been made to break up some of the pillars, presumably by farmers who mistook them for ordinary large rocks.[11]
In 1994, Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute, who had previously been working at Nevalı Çori, was looking for another site to excavate. He reviewed the archaeological literature on the surrounding area, found the 1963 Chicago researchers’ brief description of Göbekli Tepe, and decided to reexamine the site. Having found similar structures at Nevalı Çori, he recognized the possibility that the rocks and slabs were prehistoric. The following year, he began excavating there in collaboration with the Şanlıurfa Museum, and soon unearthed the first of the huge T-shaped pillars.[11]
Dating [ edit ]
View of site and excavation
The imposing stratigraphy of Göbekli Tepe attests to many centuries of activity, beginning at least as early as the Epipaleolithic period. Structures identified with the succeeding period, Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), have been dated to the 10th millennium BCE. Remains of smaller buildings identified as Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) and dating from the 9th millennium BCE have also been unearthed.
A number of radiocarbon dates have been published[citation needed]:
Lab-Number Context cal BCE Ua-19561 enclosure C 7560–7370 Ua-19562 enclosure B 8280–7970 Hd-20025 Layer III 9110–8620 Hd-20036 Layer III 9130–8800
The Hd samples are from charcoal in the fill of the lowest levels of the site and would date the end of the active phase of occupation of Level III - the actual structures will be older. The Ua samples come from pedogenic carbonate coatings on pillars and only indicate the time after the site was abandoned—the terminus ante quem.[12]
Complex [ edit ]
Göbekli Tepe is on a flat and barren plateau, with buildings fanning in all directions. In the north, the plateau is connected to a neighbouring mountain range by a narrow promontory. In all other directions, the ridge descends steeply into slopes and steep cliffs.[13] On top of the ridge there is considerable evidence of human impact, in addition to the construction of the tell. Excavations have taken place at the southern slope of the tell, south and west of a mulberry that marks an Islamic pilgrimage,[14] but archaeological finds come from the entire plateau. The team has also found many remains of tools.
Plateau [ edit ]
Göbekli Tepe surrounding area
Complex E
The plateau has been transformed by erosion and by quarrying, which took place not only in the Neolithic, but also in classical times. There are four 10-metre-long (33 ft) and 20-centimetre-wide (7.9 in) channels on the southern part of the plateau, interpreted as the remains of an ancient quarry from which rectangular blocks were taken. These possibly are related to a square building in the neighbourhood, of which only the foundation is preserved. Presumably, this is the remains of a Roman watchtower that belonged to the Limes Arabicus, however, this is conjecture.[15]
Most structures on the plateau seem to be the result of Neolithic quarrying, with the quarries being used as sources for the huge, monolithic architectural elements. Their profiles were pecked into the rock, with the detached blocks then levered out of the rock bank.[15] Several quarries where round workpieces had been produced were identified. Their status as quarries was confirmed by the find of a 3-by-3-metre piece at the southeastern slope of the plateau. Unequivocally Neolithic are three T-shaped pillars that had not yet been levered out of the bedrock. The largest of them lies on the northern plateau. It has a length of 7 m (23 ft) and its head has a width of 3 m (10 ft). Its weight may be around 50 tons. The two other unfinished pillars lie on the southern Plateau.
At the western edge of the hill, a lionlike figure was found. In this area, flint and limestone fragments occur more frequently. It was therefore suggested that this could have been some kind of sculpture workshop.[16] It is unclear, on the other hand, how to classify three phallic depictions from the surface of the southern plateau. They are near the quarries of classical times, making their dating difficult.[17]
Apart from the tell, there is an incised platform with two sockets that could have held pillars, and a surrounding flat bench. This platform corresponds to the complexes from Layer III at the tell. Continuing the naming pattern, it is called "complex E." Owing to its similarity to the cult-buildings at Nevalı Çori it has also been called "Temple of the Rock." Its floor has been carefully hewn out of the bedrock and smoothed, reminiscent of the terrazzo floors of the younger complexes at Göbekli Tepe. Immediately northwest of this area are two cistern-like pits, believed to be part of complex E. One of these pits has a table-high pin as well as a staircase with five steps.[18]
At the western escarpment, a small cave has been discovered in which a small relief depicting a bovine was found. It is the only relief found in this cave.[17]
Layer III [ edit ]
At this early stage of the site's history, circular compounds or temene first appear. They range from 10 to 30 metres in diameter. Their most notable feature is the presence of T-shaped limestone pillars evenly set within thick interior walls composed of unworked stone. Four such circular structures have been unearthed so far. Geophysical surveys indicate that there are 16 more, enclosing up to eight pillars each, amounting to nearly 200 pillars in all. The slabs were transported from bedrock pits located approximately 100 metres (330 ft) from the hilltop, with workers using flint points to cut through the limestone bedrock.[19]
Pillar 27 from Enclosure C (Layer III) with the sculpture of a predatory animal
Pillar with the sculpture of a fox
Two taller pillars stand facing one another at the centre of each circle. Whether the circles were provided with a roof is uncertain. Stone benches designed for sitting are found in the interior.[20] Many of the pillars are decorated with abstract, enigmatic pictograms and carved animal reliefs. The pictograms may represent commonly understood sacred symbols, as known from Neolithic cave paintings elsewhere. The reliefs depict mammals such as lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, and donkeys; snakes and other reptiles; arthropods such as insects and arachnids; and birds, particularly vultures. At the time the edifice was constructed, the surrounding country was likely to have been forested and capable of sustaining this variety of wildlife, before millennia of human settlement and cultivation led to the near–Dust Bowl conditions prevalent today.[11] Vultures also feature prominently in the iconography of Çatalhöyük and Jericho.
Few humanoid figures have appeared in the art at Göbekli Tepe. Some of the T-shaped pillars have human arms carved on their lower half, however, suggesting to site excavator Schmidt that they are intended to represent the bodies of stylized humans (or perhaps deities). Loincloths appear on the lower half of a few pillars. The horizontal stone slab on top is thought by Schmidt to symbolize shoulders, which suggests that the figures were left headless.[21] Whether they were intended to serve as surrogate worshippers, symbolize venerated ancestors, or represent supernatural, anthropomorphic beings is not known.
Some of the floors in this, the oldest, layer are made of terrazzo (burnt lime), others are bedrock from which pedestals to hold the large pair of central pillars were carved in high relief.[22] Radiocarbon dating places the construction of these early circles in the range of 9600 to 8800 BCE. Carbon dating suggests that (for reasons unknown) the enclosures were backfilled during the Stone Age.
Layer II [ edit ]
Creation of the circular enclosures in layer III later gave way to the construction of small rectangular rooms in layer II. Rectangular buildings make a more efficient use of space compared with circular structures. They often are associated with the emergence of the Neolithic,[23] but the T-shaped pillars, the main feature of the older enclosures, also are present here, indicating that the buildings of Layer II continued to serve the same function in the culture, presumably as sanctuaries.[24] Layer II is assigned to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB). The several adjoining rectangular, doorless and windowless rooms have floors of polished lime reminiscent of Roman terrazzo floors. Carbon dating has yielded dates between 8800 and 8000 BCE.[25] Several T-pillars up to 1.5 meters tall occupy the center of the rooms. A pair decorated with fierce-looking lions is the rationale for the name "lion pillar building" by which their enclosure is known.[26]
A stone pillar resembling totem pole designs was discovered at Göbekli Tepe, Layer II in 2010. It is 1.92 metres high, and is superficially reminiscent of the totem poles in North America. The pole features three figures, the uppermost depicting a predator, probably a bear, and below it a human-like shape. Because the statue is damaged, the interpretation is not entirely clear. Fragments of a similar pole also were discovered about 20 years ago in another Turkey site at Nevalı Çori. Also, an older layer at Gobekli features some related sculptures portraying animals on human heads.[27]
Layer I [ edit ]
Layer I is the uppermost part of the hill. It is the shallowest, but accounts for the longest stretch of time. It consists of loose sediments caused by erosion and the virtually-uninterrupted use of the hill for agricultural purposes since it ceased to operate as a ceremonial center.
The site was deliberately backfilled sometime after 8000 BCE: the buildings were buried under debris, mostly flint gravel, stone tools, and animal bones.[28] In addition to Byblos points (weapon heads, such as arrowheads etc.) and numerous Nemrik points, Helwan-points, and Aswad-points dominate the backfill's lithic inventory.
Chronological context [ edit ]
All statements about the site must be considered preliminary, as less than 5% of the site has been excavated, and Schmidt planned to leave much of it untouched to be explored by future generations when archaeological techniques will presumably have improved.[11] While the site formally belongs to the earliest Neolithic (PPNA), to date no traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found. The inhabitants are presumed to have been hunters and gatherers who nevertheless lived in villages for at least part of the year.[29] So far, very little evidence for residential use has been found. Through the radiocarbon method, the end of Layer III can be fixed at about 9000 BCE (see above), but it is believed[by whom?] that the elevated location may have functioned as a spiritual center during 11,000 BCE or even earlier, essentially, at the very end of the Pleistocene.
The surviving structures, then, not only predate pottery, metallurgy, and the invention of writing or the wheel, but were built before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, that marks the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry, around 9000 BCE. The construction of Göbekli Tepe implies organization of an advanced order not hitherto associated with Paleolithic, PPNA, or PPNB societies, however. Archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the heavy pillars from local quarries and move them 100–500 meters (330–1,640 ft) to the site.[30] The pillars weigh 10–20 metric tons (10–20 long tons; 11–22 short tons), with one still in the quarry weighing 50 tons.[31]
Around the beginning of the 8th millennium BCE Göbekli Tepe lost its importance. The advent of agriculture and animal husbandry brought new realities to human life in the area, and the "Stone-age zoo" (Schmidt's phrase applied particularly to Layer III, Enclosure D) apparently lost whatever significance it had had for the region's older, foraging communities. But the complex was not simply abandoned and forgotten to be gradually destroyed by the elements. Instead, each enclosure was buried quite deliberately under as much as 300 to 500 cubic meters (390 to 650 cu yd) of refuse, creating a tell consisting mainly of small limestone fragments, stone vessels, and stone tools. Many animal, and even human, bones have been identified in the fill.[32] Why the enclosures were buried is unknown, but it preserved them for posterity.
Interpretation [ edit ]
Klaus Schmidt, 2014 in Salzburg
Schmidt's view was that Göbekli Tepe is a stone-age mountain sanctuary. Radiocarbon dating as well as comparative, stylistical analysis indicate that it is the oldest ceremonial site yet discovered anywhere.[11][33] Schmidt believed that what he called this "cathedral on a hill" was a pilgrimage destination attracting worshippers up to 150 km (90 mi) distant. Butchered bones found in large numbers from local game such as deer, gazelle, pigs, and geese have been identified as refuse from food hunted and cooked or otherwise prepared for the congregants.[34]
Schmidt considered Göbekli Tepe a central location for a cult of the dead and that the carved animals are there to protect the dead. Though no tombs or graves have been found so far, Schmidt believed that they remain to be discovered in niches located behind the walls of the sacred circles.[11]
In 2017, discovery of human crania with incisions was reported, interpreted as providing evidence for a new form of Neolithic skull cult.[35]
Schmidt also interpreted the site in connection with the initial stages of the Neolithic.[11] It is one of several sites in the vicinity of Karaca Dağ, an area that geneticists suspect may have been the original source of at least some of our cultivated grains (see Einkorn). Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in sequence to wild wheat found on Karaca Dağ 30 km (20 mi) away from the site, suggesting that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated.[36]
With its mountains catching the rain and a calcareous, porous bedrock creating lots of springs, creeks, and rivers,[37] the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris was a refuge during the dry and cold Younger Dryas climatic event (10,800 – 9,500 BCE). Speculation exists that conditions driven by population expansions locally could have led them to develop common rituals strengthened by monumental gathering places to reduce tensions and conflicts over resources,[38] and probably, to mark territorial claims.
Schmidt also engaged in speculation regarding the belief systems of the groups that created Göbekli Tepe, based on comparisons with other shrines and settlements. He presumed shamanic practices and suggested that the T-shaped pillars represent human forms, perhaps ancestors, whereas he saw a fully articulated belief in deities as not developing until later, in Mesopotamia, that was associated with extensive temples and palaces. This corresponds well with an ancient Sumerian belief that agriculture, animal husbandry, and weaving were brought to humans from the sacred mountain Ekur, which was inhabited by Annuna deities, very ancient deities without individual names. Schmidt identified this story as a primeval oriental myth that preserves a partial memory of the emerging Neolithic.[39] It is apparent that the animal and other images give no indication of organized violence, i.e. there are no depictions of hunting raids or wounded animals, and the pillar carvings generally ignore game on which the society depended, such as deer, in favour of formidable creatures such as lions, snakes, spiders, and scorpions.[11][40][41] Expanding on Schmidt's interpretation that round enclosures could represent sanctuaries, Gheorghiu's semiotic interpretation reads the Göbekli Tepe iconography as a cosmogonic map that would have related the local community to the surrounding landscape and the cosmos.[42]
Importance [ edit ]
Göbekli Tepe is regarded by some as an archaeological discovery of great importance since it could profoundly change the understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human society. Ian Hodder of Stanford University said, "Göbekli Tepe changes everything".[2][43] If indeed the site was built by hunter-gatherers as some researchers believe then it would mean that the ability to erect monumental complexes was within the capacities of these sorts of groups, which would overturn previous assumptions. Some researchers believe that the construction of Göbekli Tepe may have contributed to the later development of urban civilization. As excavator Klaus Schmidt put it: "First came the temple, then the city."[44]
Sites with T-shaped pillars from the PPN
Not only its large dimensions, but the side-by-side existence of multiple pillar shrines makes the location unique. There are no comparable monumental complexes from its time. Since its discovery, however, surface surveys have shown that several hills in the greater area also have T-shaped stone pillars (e.g. Hamzan Tepe,[45], Karahan Tepe,[46], Harbetsuvan Tepesi,[47] Sefer Tepe,[48], and Taslı Tepe,[37]) but little excavation has been conducted. Most of these constructions seem to be smaller than Göbekli Tepe, and their placement evenly between contemporary settlements indicates that they were local social-ritual gathering places,[48][37] with Göbekli Tepe perhaps as a regional centre.[49] So far none of the smaller sites are so old as the lowest Level III of Göbekli Tepe,[37] but contemporary with its younger Level II (mostly rectangular buildings, though Harbetsuvan is circular). This could indicate that this type of architecture and associated activities originated at Göbekli Tepe, and then spread to other sites.[citation needed]
A site that is 500 years younger is Nevalı Çori, a Neolithic settlement. It was excavated by the German Archaeological Institute and submerged by the Atatürk Dam since 1992. Its T-shaped pillars are considerably smaller, and its rectangular ceremonial structure was located inside a village. The roughly contemporary architecture at Jericho is devoid of artistic merit or large-scale sculpture, and Çatalhöyük, perhaps the most famous Anatolian Neolithic village, is 2,000 years later.
At present Göbekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. It remains unknown how a population large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and compensated or fed in the conditions of pre-sedentary society. Scholars cannot interpret the pictograms, and do not know what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there is little or no evidence of habitation, and many of the animals pictured are predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation. Alternatively, they could have served as totems.[50] The assumption that the site was strictly cultic in purpose and not inhabited has been challenged as well by the suggestion that the structures served as large communal houses, "similar in some ways to the large plank houses of the Northwest Coast of North America with their impressive house posts and totem poles."[51] It is not known why every few decades the existing pillars were buried to be replaced by new stones as part of a smaller, concentric ring inside the older one.[52] Human burials may have occurred at the site. The reason the complex was carefully backfilled remains unexplained. Until more evidence is gathered, it is difficult to deduce anything certain about the originating culture or the site's significance.
Conservation [ edit ]
Göbekli Tepe
Future plans include construction of a museum and converting the environs into an archaeological park, in the hope that this will help preserve the site in the state in which it was discovered.[53]
In 2010, Global Heritage Fund (GHF) announced it will undertake a multi-year conservation program to preserve Göbekli Tepe. Partners include the German Archaeological Institute, German Research Foundation, Şanlıurfa Municipal Government, the Turkish Ministry of Tourism and Culture and, formerly, Klaus Schmidt.[54]
The stated goals of the GHF Göbekli Tepe project are to support the preparation of a site management and conservation plan, construction of a shelter over the exposed archaeological features, training community members in guiding and conservation, and helping Turkish authorities secure UNESCO World Heritage Site designation for GT.[55]
The conservation work caused controversy in 2018, when Çiğdem Köksal Schmidt, an archaeologist and widow of Klaus Schmidt, said the site was being damaged by the use of concrete and "heavy equipment" during the construction of a new walkway. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism responded that no concrete was used and that no damage had occurred.[56][57]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe (ed.): Vor 12.000 Jahren in Anatolien. Die ältesten Monumente der Menschheit. Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung im Badischen Landesmuseum vom 20. Januar bis zum 17. Juni 2007. Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-2072-8
Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung im Badischen Landesmuseum vom 20. Januar bis zum 17. Juni 2007. Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-2072-8 E.B. Banning, "So Fair a House: Göbekli Tepe and the Identification of Temples in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East", Current Anthropology, 52.5 (October 2011), 619 ff.: https://www.scribd.com/doc/67961270/Gobekli-Tepe-temples-Ted-Banning-2011
Andrew Curry, "Seeking the Roots of Ritual," Science 319 (18 January 2008), pp. 278–80: https://web.archive.org/web/20120415112503/http://80.251.40.59/veterinary.ankara.edu.tr/fidanci/Yasam/Gelecege_Miras/Gobekli-Tepe.pdf
Andrew Curry, "Göbekli Tepe: The World’s First Temple?". Smithsonian Magazine (November 2008): http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html
DVD-ROM: MediaCultura (Hrsg.): Vor 12.000 Jahren in Anatolien. Die ältesten Monumente der Menschheit. Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-2090-2
Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-2090-2 Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, The Creation of Inequality (Cambridge and London, 2012), pp. 128–131.
(Cambridge and London, 2012), pp. 128–131. David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, "An Accidental revolution? Early Neolithic religion and economic change", Minerva, 17 #4 (July/August, 2006), 29–31.
, 17 #4 (July/August, 2006), 29–31. Klaus-Dieter Linsmeier and Klaus Schmidt: Ein anatolisches Stonehenge. In: Moderne Archäologie. Spektrum-der-Wissenschaft-Verlag, Heidelberg 2003, 10–15, ISBN 3-936278-35-0.
In: Spektrum-der-Wissenschaft-Verlag, Heidelberg 2003, 10–15, ISBN 3-936278-35-0. Charles C. Mann, "The Birth of Religion: The World's First Temple" National Geographic Vol. 219 No. 6 (June 2011), pp. 34–59: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text
Steven Mithen, After the Ice:A global human history, 20,000-5000 BC. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2004, ISBN 0-674-01570-3. Pp. 65–69, 89–90.
. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2004, ISBN 0-674-01570-3. Pp. 65–69, 89–90. J. Peters & K. Schmidt: "Animals in the symbolic world of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey: a preliminary assessment." Anthropozoologica 39.1 (2004), 179–218: https://web.archive.org/web/20110612061638/http://www.mnhn.fr/museum/front/medias/publication/10613_Peters.pdf.
K. Pustovoytov: Weathering rinds at exposed surfaces of limestone at Göbekli Tepe. In: Neo-lithics. Ex Oriente, Berlin 2000, 24–26 (14C-Dates)
. In: Ex Oriente, Berlin 2000, 24–26 (14C-Dates) Erika Qasim: "The T-shaped monuments of Gobekli Tepe: Posture of the Arms. In: Chr. Sütterlin et al. (ed.): Art as Behaviour. An Ethological Approach to Visual and Verbal Art, Music and Architecture. Oldenburg 2014, 252-272
Sandra Scham, "The World's First Temple," Archaeology 61.6 (November/December 2008): http://www.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/turkey.html
K. Schmidt: Frühneolithische Tempel. Ein Forschungsbericht zum präkeramischen Neolithikum Obermesopotamiens. In: Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 130, Berlin 1998, 17–49, ISSN 0342-118X
In: Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 130, Berlin 1998, 17–49, ISSN 0342-118X K. Schmidt: "Zuerst kam der Tempel, dann die Stadt." Vorläufiger Bericht zu den Grabungen am Göbekli Tepe und am Gürcütepe 1995–1999. Istanbuler Mitteilungen 50 (2000): 5–41.
K. Schmidt, 2000a = Göbekli Tepe and the rock art of the Near East, TÜBA-AR 3 (2000): 1–14.
3 (2000): 1–14. K. Schmidt, 2000b = Göbekli Tepe, Southeastern Turkey. A preliminary Report on the 1995–1999 Excavations. In: Palèorient CNRS Ed., Paris 2000: 26.1, 45–54, ISSN 0153-9345: http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/paleo_0153-9345_2000_num_26_1_4697
In: CNRS Ed., Paris 2000: 26.1, 45–54, ISSN 0153-9345: http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/paleo_0153-9345_2000_num_26_1_4697 K. Schmidt: Sie bauten die ersten Tempel. Das rätselhafte Heiligtum der Steinzeitjäger. Verlag C.H. Beck, München 2006, ISBN 3-406-53500-3.
. Verlag C.H. Beck, München 2006, ISBN 3-406-53500-3. K. Schmidt, "Göbekli Tepe. Eine Beschreibung der wichtigsten Befunde erstellt nach den Arbeiten der Grabungsteams der Jahre 1995–2007", in K. Schmidt (ed.), Erste Tempel—Frühe Siedlungen. 12000 Jahre Kunst und Kultur, Ausgrabungen und Forschungen zwischen Donau und Euphrat, (Oldenburg 2009): 187–233.
, (Oldenburg 2009): 187–233. K. Schmidt, "Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New results of ongoing excavations with a special focus on sculptures and high reliefs," Documenta Praehistorica XXXVII (2010), 239–256: https://web.archive.org/web/20120131114925/http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/authors37/37_21.pdf
Metin Yeşilyurt, Die wissenschaftliche Interpretation von Göbeklitepe: Die Theorie und das Forschungsprogramm. (Neolithikum und ältere Metallzeiten. Studien und Materialien, Band 2.) Lit Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-643-12528-6.
ISBN 978-3-643-12528-6. "Göbekli Tepe". Megalithic Portal.
Articles [ edit ]
Photographs [ edit ]Compromised data: Dates of birth, Email addresses, IP addresses, Passwords, Usernames, Website activity.
28 services hacked, 4.9 Million affected.
QuinStreet
In approximately late 2015, QuinStreet the maker of “performance marketing products” had a number of their online assets compromised.
The attack impacted 28 separate sites, predominantly technology forums such as flashkit.com, codeguru.com and webdeveloper.com (the full list of sites is below).
QuinStreet advised that impacted users have been notified and passwords reset. The data contained details on over 4.9 million people and included email addresses, dates of birth and salted MD5 hashes.
Why are you only hearing about this now?
Whilst the breach occurred in December 2015, sometimes there can be a lengthy lead time of months or even years before the data is disclosed publicly. It’s just a question of how readily available the data is.
The Past Hack
In 2013 there was a reported hack that any site owned by QuinStreet could easily be exploited by a Perl script using the USERID_COOKIE to reveal 7M + user details. — seclists.org
Have you been affected?
As with any data breach, the usual advice applies: consider the potential risk to yourself based on the types of data exposed. For example, if passwords were compromised then go to the impacted site and reset yours immediately plus, of course, ensure that you’re not reusing that password on any other sites.
Full list of websites:
antionline.com
aspmessageboard.com
baselinemag.com
board.flashkit.com
channelinsider.com
cioinsight.com
codeguru.com
collection-agency-quotes.com
collectionagencyservices.net
databasejournal.com
datamation.com
devx.com
enterprisemobiletoday.com
eweek.com
forums.windrivers.com
hardwarecentral.com
justlinux.com
linux-mag.com
phpbuilder.com
practicallynetworked.com
serverwatch.com
sharkyforums.com
sysopt.com
vbforums.com
virtualdr.com
voipservicedirectory.com
webdeveloper.com
wi-fiplanet.com
What Next?
You can run a search for breaches of your email address at haveibeenpwned.com to get a complete list of sites where your account has been compromised.
Sources: https://haveibeenpwned.com/PwnedWebsites#QuinStreet
https://www.reddit.com/r/pwned/comments/1ac912/full_disclosure_use_any_site_owned_by_quinstreet
Will Preston
As always if you would like to discuss recommendations for you, then do email by clicking my logo below.Today marks George Orwell’s 108th birthday. To celebrate, we have compiled a visual history of the publication of one of his most influential works, 1984. Though 1984 has come and gone with little in the way of Big Brother (although we suppose it depends on whom you ask), Orwell’s novel is still a key component of American education and culture. If you’ve got two hours on your hands this afternoon, wish Orwell a happy 108th by watching this 1954 BBC Television production of the novel. Otherwise, click through to see our compilation of 1984 book covers from home and abroad. But be warned: you’re about to see a million stark, staring eyes and a whole lot of domineering typography. Let us know your favorites in the comments!
First British Edition, 1949
First American Edition, dust jacket and cover, 1949
Penguin Books UK, 1951
Signet edition, 1954
Penguin UK, 1954
Argentinian edition, 1954
Penguin edition, date unknown
1959 Swedish edition, designed by Olle Eksell
17th Signet printing, 1959
First Signet Classic edition, 1961
French edition, 1969
Harcourt Brace International, 1977
Penguin, 1978
French edition, 1980
Penguin Modern Classics, date unknown
Spanish edition, 1983
Penguin UK film tie-in edition, 1984
Spanish Edition, 1984
Signet Classics, 1985
Penguin, 1989
Penguin UK, 1989
Polish edition, 1989
Swedish edition, date unknown
Signet Classics, 1990’s
Signet Classics, date unknown
Plume Centennial Edition, 2003
Penguin Readers edition, 2003
Penguin Classics, 2003
Indonesian Edition, circa 2003
Penguin Modern Classics, 2004
Penguin Readers Simplified Text, 2008
Penguin UK, 2008, design by Shepard Fairey
Spanish edition, 2008
P |
art & Baker are streaming them now at Soundcloud, and you can purchase the releases via the buy link on the Soundcloud player below.Steve Bannon, who rose to power as Breitbart News chairman and Donald Trump’s strategist on a wave of anti-Wall Street fury, spent much of the past decade and a half using many of the complex financial mechanisms employed by the largest financial services firms as a board member and investor in penny-stock ventures.
Court filings and corporate records reviewed by Politico show that during this period, long after Bannon’s stint with Goldman Sachs in the 1980s, these penny-stock firms employed some of the complex corporate maneuvers favored by financial masters of the universe — transnational acquisitions, reverse mergers and asset purchase agreements — though on a much smaller scale. Most of the companies failed to take off, often in the throes of legal troubles, in the years before Bannon emerged as a populist critic of financial wizardry run amok and failures to prosecute Wall Street executives.
Story Continued Below
“It’s just sheer hypocrisy,” Jaime Harrison, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a candidate for chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said of Bannon’s recent stances. “It’s: ‘Do what I say, not what I do.’”
Bannon’s partner in a series of these ventures was a close friend and ongoing business associate with whom he shares a voting address in Florida. (Bannon registered at the address following news reports that he was previously registered to vote at a vacant property.)
Before Bannon shared a home address with the man, Andy Badolato, the pair partnered in a series of business ventures that included homeopathic nasal sprays, cosmetics and fragrances. The ventures came during an overlooked chapter of Bannon’s career, in the years leading up to the most recent financial crisis, when Trump’s incoming chief White House strategist dove into the world of penny stocks.
Badolato has been the defendant in numerous lawsuits related to his personal finances. Though he was never charged, Badolato was also implicated by the government in a stock manipulation scheme that grew out of one of Badolato’s ventures with Bannon and put two men in prison. Another one of Bannon’s colleagues in these ventures, Seattle attorney David Otto, was slapped in a Securities and Exchange Commission settlement with a six-figure fine and a five-year ban from participating in the offering of penny stocks for his alleged role in an unrelated stock-fraud scheme.
Bannon, who declined to comment through a spokeswoman, emerged unscathed from the murky milieu of the pink sheets — where companies that do not make it onto major stock exchanges trade — climbing to conservative media mogul-dom and now the White House.
“The guy is smart and knows exactly what he is doing,” entrepreneur Mark Cuban, a vocal critic of Trump who has dealt with Bannon in the purchasing of film distribution rights and met with him in New York on Nov. 22, wrote in an email.
Bannon’s foray into the high-risk, high-reward world of penny stocks began around the turn of the millennium. It spanned multiple firms, and Bannon, as a veteran Wall Street and Hollywood dealmaker, would often serve as an adviser in his role as board member and shareholder, according to his associates in some of the ventures.
Todd Van Siclen, a former associate at Otto’s law firm who was involved in some of the ventures, said Bannon mostly stayed away from the day-to-day operations. “People such as Bannon, their role with those companies was more involved with review, consultation – as opposed to being hands-on,” he said.
One of those ventures was Donna Messenger Corp., a cosmetics business registered in 2003 in Delaware that included Bannon, Otto and Badolato on its board, according to corporate filings.
Another was SinoFresh, a maker of homeopathic nasal sprays. Ahead of a 2003 IPO, Badolato, a Sarasota-based entrepreneur, began providing SinoFresh with financial advice and Bannon and Otto joined its board, according to corporate records and legal filings in Florida. But their partnership with the company soon soured.
The company’s founder, Charles Fust, uncovered an alleged scheme by Badolato to rob him of a million shares of stock by putting it under the control of a corporation registered in Belize and controlled by a Costa Rica-based businessman named Jonathan Curshen.
Fust and his allies responded in early 2004 by attempting to remove Bannon and Otto from the company’s board, citing their ties to Badolato, according to an SEC filing. Bannon, Otto and two relatives of Badolato retaliated with a lawsuit alleging that Fust used company funds to purchase an engagement ring, among other misdeeds. Bannon and Otto were reinstated to the board, but a court-appointed independent expert found that the allegations against Fust were baseless.
The independent expert also found accounts of the disputed shares given by Badolato and Curshen — who ran a firm in Costa Rica that offered offshore financial services — unconvincing and riddled with inconsistencies, and awarded the shares to Fust, according to court records in Florida. SinoFresh was roiled by the dispute and performed poorly. Its stock stopped trading altogether in 2011.
Bannon, Badolato and Otto moved on. In 2005, they formed a company called Bio-Flavorance Technologies and Research Inc., which owned rights to patents for the flavors and fragrance industry, according to its news release.
In January 2006, the company was acquired by Industrial Biotech Corp., or IBOT, via an asset purchase agreement, and issued a news release. IBOT had been founded four months earlier, and was registered to the same Sarasota office suite that Bannon and his partners had listed as their address in the Bio-Flavorance filing. Following the acquisition, Badolato became chairman and president of IBOT. Otto and Van Siclen joined its board.
IBOT was soon rocked by scandal. In 2008, Curshen and a Florida-based stock promoter were arrested after attempting to enlist an undercover FBI agent posing as a stock broker in a scheme to manipulate IBOT’s stock. The fraud, called a pump-and-dump, involved artificially raising the price of IBOT’s stock by faking organic trading activity and bribing brokers to buy the stock for wealthy clients at inflated prices. Curshen and the stock promoter were convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison terms.
Generally, pump-and-dump schemes require the cooperation of whoever controls the trading shares of the company targeted. Badolato was never charged, but in court filings both the government and Curshen describe him as a co-conspirator and the primary beneficiary of the scheme.
Curshen has asserted in court that proceeds from the scheme were deposited into an account controlled by Badolato.
In a motion opposing a 2012 attempt by Curshen to vacate his guilty plea, lawyers for the Justice Department asserted, “Badolato controlled all of the free trading shares of IBOT. … [The Florida-based stock promoter] and Curshen agreed that they could help Badolato promote the IBOT stock in exchange for a sizable payment. Over the course of several meetings, Curshen, [the promoter], and Badolato negotiated the payment structure. They agreed that all three million IBOT shares would be sold by [Curshen’s firm]. Once the shares were sold, they would deduct the expenses incurred from selling the stock (i.e., bribes, promotional materials, mailers, etc.). Of the remainder Badolato would take half, and Curshen and [the promoter] would each take a quarter.”
Badolato declined to comment on any of his ventures through his lawyers. In a letter to Politico, the lawyers, Wil Florin and Thomas Roebig Jr., wrote, “Mr. Badolato as you know is a private figure. He has no interest in entering into a public discourse on any subject related to him. … He is a single father and a well-liked and respected businessman in the Tampa area.”
The lawyers added, “Mr. Badolato, as you know, has never been convicted of a felony in any court.” Neither Badolato nor Bannon responded to questions about what relationship, if any, Bannon had to IBOT after the company purchased Bio-Flavorance.
Bannon, meanwhile, had embarked on another business venture with Otto. In 2006, he became chairman of a business called Veritas Solutions, which Otto had founded two years earlier. Veritas acquired SARS, a logistics firm, and Bannon became chairman of that company in October 2007. Also in 2007, SARS went public through a reverse merger by acquiring the multimedia design firm Mycom. That same year, it merged with the U.K. firm Andronics, which remotely monitored the levels of liquefied petroleum tanks, and the next year acquired Jinkhold Ltd., creating a firm called SARS Andronics, according to corporate filings with state, federal and U.K. regulators.
SARS Andronics aimed to become a service provider to the gas industry, but SARS became embroiled in a legal dispute and then fizzled. In May 2008, a software vendor sued SARS, alleging it had breached its contract by hiring away a developer to steal its intellectual property, then hiding the move by employing the developer through another corporation and providing him with an email address under a false name. SARS countersued the vendor, and Bannon resigned from the company’s board that July. Ultimately, SARS agreed to pay the vendor $90,000 in a 2011 settlement.
Otto said the company never took off, chalking the failure up to an “expectation of a relationship with BP that never materialized.”
In 2011, Otto agreed to pay more than $200,000 and he and Van Siclen accepted a five-year ban from offering penny stocks to settle allegations that they engaged in a pump-and-dump scheme by promoting fake products for a company called MitoPharm Corp., according to a statement from the SEC. (There is no indication that Bannon or Badolato were involved with MitoPharm.) Otto and Van Siclen did not admit wrongdoing, and Otto said he settled because he did not want to continue paying a lawyer after racking up more than a million dollars in legal fees.
During his years working with Bannon, Otto said he saw no hints of the flame-throwing populist he would become. “He was certainly sophisticated and capable. He seemed like he understood the private equity, if you will, type business, the leveraged buyout business. He understood the financing business, the capital markets business and understood how difficult it was for early stage businesses,” Otto said. “We never got into any conversations about the systemic problems with Wall Street or the economic nationalism stuff.”
Badolato filed twice for Chapter 7 and twice for Chapter 13 personal bankruptcy between 2005 and 2014, according to federal court records. He has also become a local tea party activist in Sarasota. He has maintained his close relationship with Bannon, appearing on panels with him and contributing sporadically to Brietbart.com, where he has written on Trump’s odds in betting markets and the availability of Christmas decorations with overt Christian messages. He also partnered with Bannon in the production of political documentaries, helping to market Bannon’s 2011 film about Sarah Palin, then serving as an associate producer on “Occupy Unmasked” and “District of Corruption.” Most recently, Badolato worked as an associate producer on "Clinton Cash," a Bannon-produced documentary based on Peter Schweizer’s investigations of the Clinton Foundation. The movie was released in July.
Bannon, meanwhile, has steadily climbed the ranks of outsider conservatives in recent years, projecting a radical populist worldview and building Breitbart into a media force to be reckoned with.
In 2010, he wrote, directed and produced “Generation Zero,” a documentary about the financial crisis that attributed it in part to large investment banks converting from partnerships to publicly traded companies, encouraging reckless behavior because the firms’ leaders were no longer personally liable for the actions of their business partners.
In 2013, he reportedly described himself as a “Leninist” at a book party on Capitol Hill, though he has said he does not recall the conversation. And in a 2014 lecture transcribed by BuzzFeed, Bannon, commenting on the financial crisis, condemned a system that allowed savvy elites to engage in complex financial machinations without any consequences for their misdeeds.
“It’s all the institutions of the accounting firms, the law firms, the investment banks, the consulting firms, the elite of the elite, the educated elite,” he said. “They understood what they were getting into. … And they’ve never been held accountable.”Medium Chill - A technique used to disengage oneself from another person's drama when direct contact is unavoidable.
Medium Chill is disengaging emotionally and giving neutral responses to what someone does or says. The focus is on you, your feelings and needs, not the other person or their feelings and needs.
Someone using Medium Chill is assertive without being confrontational. They will give no appearance of withdrawal, and they will maintain a pleasant and calm tone of voice and demeanor.
There are two key components to Medium Chill:
1. Don't share any personal information.
Don't volunteer details about your life or your feelings. Everything in your world is perfectly OK, normal and uneventful. Tell them nothing, ask them nothing. Conversation is nothing more than pleasantries about weather, traffic, news etc. Engage in the type of conversation you might have with a total stranger while waiting for the bus. When communicating a decision you have made (should you deem it necessary to share in the first place) do not share your thought process on how you arrived at your decision. It is none of anyone's concern.
2. Don't get involved in another person's chaos or drama.
When asked to help or get involved, be unavailable without offering the reason why you are unavailable. Sharing the details only motivates others to help you clear your obstacle to being there to help them. You are simply busy, you know, same old stuff. When others try to draw you into their drama and chaos you are a bored and dull listener. You are there, just not present or terribly involved. Never show anger or compassionate involvement; paying attention but not too much attention. Don't offer any advice or opinions of your own. Don't try to solve their problems. You are simply not involved. If someone is angry and manages to get you angry they have successfully projected and transferred their anger to you. Take your leave as soon as possible in cases of anger or rage. Simply and calmly leave or end the phone call. When others lash out, show no anger. When others are nice, don't reciprocate. Be distant and flat in both cases. When others can't easily manipulate a reaction, they tend to leave you alone.
Medium Chill keeps things light, fluffy, airy and breezy. There's no real substance to the conversation. You wind up doing a lot of listening and giving very uninteresting and inconsequential answers. You don't feed the supply, so you'll find conversations are shorter and not as frequent - because you're not giving the other person anything they can use. You are of no use to them and also quite boring and uninteresting.
Medium Chill is also 'non answers' to intrusive questions and interrogation. See examples below.
Medium Chill can be useful in dealing with instances of Baiting, Blaming, Bullying, Chaos, Circular Conversations, Dependency, Emotional Abuse, Emotional Blackmail, Engulfment / Enmeshment, Hoovering, Manipulation, Projection and Verbal Abuse. While undesirable behaviors cannot always be totally avoided, the damage and impact can be minimized if you can keep yourself as emotionally detached as possible.
Examples:
When asked an intrusive question:
I don't know. I'll have to get back to you.
We'll see.
That's a really good question, why do you ask?
Let me think about that.
It doesn't concern you.
My decision is made.
This is not a discussion
It's simply my preference.
It's none of your business.
It's already handled, taken care of.
The topic is closed
I said no and do not bring this up again
Sometimes it can be useful to simply not answer a question and let the question just hang there, pause, then change the conversation:
So anyway, how about the weather?
When attempting to draw you into drama or chaos:
It's none of my business.
I can't be there, it doesn't work for me.
I'd love to but no.
I'm sorry you feel that way.
I don't know what to tell you.
I don't know what to say.
That's a shame.
Now you're just being silly (when they accuse you of something).
You'll have to speak to so and so about that (when complaining about so and so).
You may need to speak to your doctor / lawyer / electrician about that.
This is not my problem. If you want to make it my problem I will find a solution to this that suits me and there is every chance that it will not suit you. If you want a solution that suits you, then you need to go work on that & leave me out of it.
You may need to get in touch with your inner 'tween for some of these:
That's too bad/That's nice. (You may be surprised how long you can keep a conversation going with those words).
Now's not the time to talk about that.
I can't do anything about that.
I want to hear how you're doing.
That's up to you.
I know you don't understand this.
I know you really want to talk about XYZ but now is not the time.
It looks like my being here is upsetting you, we'll get together another time.
If the drama ramps up in an attempt to get you involved:
Exit the conversation. say "Sorry I have to go now. Maybe we can continue later."
Leave the room and house if you can safely do so.
Any threats of suicide or harm tell them to call 911 or the suicide hotline.
Remember to convey everything in a dull, flat tone of voice, with a non-confrontational, matter-of-fact manner.
What It Feels Like
Medium Chill can be extremely liberating. You are in control of you, you are directing your life, you are in charge of you, you steer the conversation and you are protected. You are free to exercise your boundaries and communicate them effectively.
What NOT To Do:
Don't focus on mitigating the other person's anger.
Don't worry about how your actions appear.
Don't try to solve the other person's problems or try to fix anything
What To Do:
Maintain a flat, calm and unemotional tone.
Choose to emotionally and mentally disengage.
Become uninteresting and boring.
Learn to say NO
Content in this page courtesy of OOTF Forum members SpringButterfly, VividImagination, WomanInterrupted and SandpiperGizmodo's leak of the iPhone 4 already made Monday's Apple keynote slightly awkward. But the most uncomfortable moment was when part of Steve Jobs' iPhone 4 demo failed due to Wi-Fi issues.
Watching the video below (shot by IDG), you can almost feel the increasing frustration of the CEO, and you can only imagine what was going on backstage to resolve the problem.
After about a minute of troubleshooting – and a failed attempt to connect to AT&T's 3G network instead – Jobs explained that over 500 Wi-Fi devices were being used in the crowd, likely causing interference with his demo unit. He even asked bloggers to stop doing their jobs for the sake of the demo.
"All you bloggers need to turn off your base stations," Jobs said. "If you want to see the demos, shut off your laptops, turn off all these MiFi base stations and put them on the floor, please."
At one point Jobs asked Scott Forstall, vice president of iPhone (now "iOS") software, if he had any suggestions, and someone in the crowd shouted "Verizon!"
Google also ran into similar network problems that stalled its demonstration of Google TV last month. In Apple's case, Jobs was referring to users of Verizon's MiFi, a device that creates a portable hot spot that can be shared by up to 5 users. Some smartphones, such as the Palm Pre and some modified Android phones, are also capable of serving as a hot spot. The iPhone currently permits tethering (a one-to-one connection with a laptop) but AT&T has not permitted that service for its customers, and the iPhone can only act as a hot spot if it has been jailbroken.
With over 500 Wi-Fi hot spots in a room of 5,000 people, it's a sign of how popular hot-spot–sharing devices or features have become.
To be fair, if Verizon were the iPhone's carrier, it would likely suffer from the same issues as AT&T. But the problem of an overloaded cellular network would be mitigated if the iPhone were available on multiple carriers as opposed to just one. During his glitchy keynote, Jobs was probably feeling our wireless woes more than any other day.
See Also:
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comMelbourne journalist and former Pirate Party Australia staffer Asher Wolf posted the photos on Twitter on Wednesday evening, after allegedly finding them on an open Facebook group.
The veracity of the images has not yet been confirmed by the Immigration Department or officials at the centre.
The images show a number of apparent asylum seekers, some heavily bruised or bearing stitches and bandages.
Another shows two men posing with their IDs in front of poster bearing an image of Reza Barati, the detainee killed during the recent riot at the centre, and the words “we never forget”.
Other images show what is believed to be blood stained bedding, a blood trail on a set of lockers and bullet holes.
Wolf stated that the bullet holes depicted were at head height.
Blood trail halfway up a set of lockers at Manus Island detention centre https://t.co/TPPLaZF7WV pic.twitter.com/tEXOu7vzy7 — Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) March 5, 2014
The images follow fresh claims of self-harm and bullying at the detention centre, aired by SBS on Tuesday.
Exclusive footage obtained by Dateline details a string of allegations, including incidents of racism and bullying of detainees by guards on Nauru and Manus Island centres.
A former Salvation Army worker reported men self-harming on an almost daily basis while at Nauru.
Blood stained pillows at the Aust. Department of Immigration and Border Protection's detention centre at Manus Island pic.twitter.com/LVOnlZgSOw — Asher Wolf (@Asher_Wolf) March 6, 2014
The university student, identified as Marie, said she had witnessed asylum seekers cutting their wrists and necks, trying to suffocate themselves with plastic bags and stitching their lips together.
The former worker also detailed widespread bullying by the guards, including an incident where several ex-Army officers would mime shooting detainees while on site.The Odyssey orbiter has been hovering above Mars, photographing its surface and taking data for 16 years now. There’s seemingly infinite combinations of things to study and instruments to study them with—this time, all NASA had to do was turn the camera around.
Odyssey snapped its first photos of the tiny Martian moon, Phobos, with its Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) on September 29th. The moon is only 14 miles in diameter (around the width of Washington D.C.), and the images were taken from a distance of around 3,500 miles, the distance from New York to London.
Advertisement
You might be confused as to why this is news, since other orbiters like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have taken snapshots of Phobos before. This is the first time Odyssey specifically has taken a peek at the moon, and the first infrared imaging available.
Odyssey normally looks at Mars with THEMIS, since the planet is only about 250 miles below. Normally, the orbiter works on its main goals—understanding the geology of the red planet, its water activity and whether it has or ever had life. But, according to a NASA statement, scientists only recently developed the maneuver to actually turn the orbiter upwards at the moon, which orbits at an altitude of 3,700 miles.
Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
Advertisement
As a thermal imager, THEMIS, takes surface temperature information. This is important for studying space stuff: Understanding how things heat and cool under sunlight could help researchers figure out what things like Phobos are made of, and therefore their origin story. It’s like trying to figure out what a stovetop pan is made of based on how quickly it cools.
Mars’ moons are weird. They’re tiny, pathetic potatoes compared to moons like ours or Titan, Saturn’s moon that’s bigger than even planet Mercury. But some scientists think that once in the planet’s past, it had a ring system like Saturns’ that coalesced into moons—and will one day turn into rings again. After all, Phobos is literally falling apart.
The universe is full of new things to study. But sometimes you just gotta turn around first.
Advertisement
[NASA]A West Virginia UPS driver says many find no shortage of company in the four-legged friends they meet along their delivery routes. Sean McCarren of Falling Waters, West Virginia says it’s common for delivery drivers to keep boxes of dog treats on hand. And he’s now started a Facebook page called UPS Dogs to share some of his furry friends.
"I know people who buy a couple of boxes [of dog treats] a week," McCarren told TODAY. "As soon as you deliver to a stop, especially in rural areas, (the dogs) start popping up in your truck. They become a part of your family, kinda. They’re expecting you. The worst is when you run out of treats, next time, they get a double treat!"
After noticing a dog-pile of pictures on his phone, McCarren started the Facebook page in 2013 to share the highlights. Four years later, the page has over 500,000 followers and contributors from across the globe, some of whom are now real-life friends.
"At first I started adding a couple of local drivers, then it starts to spread," McCarren recalled. "Slowly it trickles out. Some lady from Spain a few years ago liked the page — people from London, Germany. It's really catching fire. I have people bombarding me with dogs right now.”
Many posts are fluffy, others tell more emotional stories. One driver adopted a pit bull named Leo after his owner passed away.
Drivers have also used the group to seek support in times of loss.
"There's sadness, when you lose dogs on the route," McCarren explained. "Last year I lost a dog, Belle. She would come out and greet me and expect a treat, and then she died suddenly last year. You see (these dogs) every day. It's tough on the families, too."
The page has also run posts featuring cats, deer, donkeys and pigs. But dogs will always be McCarren's first love.
"There’s nothing you can say negative about dogs," he said. "Dogs aren't just man's best friend, they're people’s best friend. Everybody loves dogs."Last week, we wrote that we thought President-elect Donald Trump would be hard-pressed to deliver on his promises to “bring back” large numbers of America’s lost manufacturing jobs, even if he does renegotiate the nation’s trade deals. The reason: Manufacturing work is increasingly carried out by robots, rather than people.
The problem for Trump and blue-collar workers is that when manufacturing returns to the states (and several trends favor that), the associated job-creation will not be what it once was. Nor will the difference be just a minor effect – it’s going to be major.
Which is why we want to add this telling chart to the discussion about the future of manufacturing jobs. Take a look at this single, stark graph depicting the 35-year-history of U.S. manufacturing efficiency:
Here you can see in the two line plots that the inflation-adjusted output of the manufacturing sector is as high as it has ever been, while employment declined by more than 6 million jobs over 35 years. Viewed positively, the diverging output and employment lines represent a success: They reflect solid increases in U.S. manufacturing productivity. But now look at the declining series of gray bars. These bars report the steadily declining number of workers required to generate each $1 million of manufacturing output during the time period, given the sharply increased productivity of the sector.
And the story is dramatic: In 1980, it took 25 jobs to generate $1 million in manufacturing output in the U.S. Today, it takes just 6.5 jobs to generate that amount—and that’s after five more stable years of little change.
The Trump administration will need to “bring back” a huge amount of manufacturing activity in the next few years if it is going to meaningfully address the plight of displaced production workers with new manufacturing jobs. How much of a manufacturing renaissance would be needed to repair the breach? Since 1980, the nation has lost some 6.4 million manufacturing jobs—more than one-third of the sector’s employment base. Restoring just half of those jobs in the next four years would require, factoring in current manufacturing efficiency and job sparseness, a massive 26 percent surge in manufacturing output. To put that in perspective, this additional needed output would be equivalent to about 100 Tesla “gigfactories.” (And in fact, Tesla only plans to hire 6,500 people to produce an anticipated $100 billion in output over two decades, meaning its highly-automated operation will require just 1.3 jobs to generate $1 million output annually!). Related Content The Avenue It won’t be easy to bring back millions of manufacturing jobs The Avenue Look to advanced industries to help drive productivity gains The Avenue Can the Internet of Things help renew Rust Belt cities?
Note also, for a further comparison, that President Obama only managed to generate half a million manufacturing jobs in his first term—a performance that benefited from an $80 billion auto-industry bailout and post-recession global trade boom.
In short, President-elect Trump’s promise to address the plight of displaced manufacturing workers through reshoring is not as straightforward an answer as it seems. By all means, the nation should demand fair trade and aggressively employ the anti-dumping provisions in existing trade pacts to rebalance the playing field. By all means, the nation should address the disrupted careers, depressed wages, and sense of marginalization of the nation’s dislocated production workers. And by all means the nation should bolster its critical manufacturing sector. But to hang frustrated workers’ hopes of relief on large-scale hiring in an increasingly automated, hyper-efficient manufacturing sector appears to be severely misdirected. It would be far better to focus on preparing workers for the rise of the robots than to promise them jobs that will be done by machines.With little fanfare, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force changed its name to the National LGBTQ Task Force last week. In an op-ed for The Advocate, director Rea Carey wrote:
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is changing its name and upping its game to tear down any remaining barriers to full freedom, justice, and equality for all LBGTQ people. We want to create a world where you can be you, without barriers. Our new name is the “National LGBTQ Task Force,” our tagline is “Be you,” and our vision is a society that values and respects the diversity of human expression and identity and achieves freedom and equity for all.
The Task Force began as the National Gay Task Force in 1973 and added lesbian to its title in 1985. After decades of pushing for a more inclusive name from bisexual and trans activists, it has officially incorporated the B, T and Q. It’s great to see a major organization embracing more people in the rainbow in its name. But the timing and manner of the name change leave me a bit cynical.
In recent years, the Task Force has increased its efforts to work on behalf of bi and trans folks. In 1997, it updated its mission statement to include those groups, and a look at its campaigns, events and reports in recent years demonstrates a growing diversity in its programs. Hopefully this new name will precede even stronger efforts on behalf of more parts of the complex and beautiful community we are part of. Mark Daley, a spokesman for the group, says he fully anticipates that the community will continue to define itself with new letters and names.
“Regardless of which letter you identify with, whether it’s used today or has not been invented yet, we include you in our work,” Daley said. “And we want to do more for everyone who belongs to our community.”
It would have been powerful to see the Task Force get ahead of the political curve with its naming and mission. Instead, its name change coincides with a political and cultural moment when transgender and bisexual people have seen a burst in acceptance and success in achieving policy needs and when “queer” has gained acceptance, at least in some circles, as both an identifier and a blanket term. In the last few years, bi, trans and queer people have made extraordinary efforts to pursue their goals, often without the support of mainstream gay and lesbian groups like the Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign. Nominally supporting bi, trans and queer people has gone mainstream, but those groups haven’t seen substantial increases in funding and political action. Instead, national organizations often promote statistics about the crisis facing bi and trans people without always supporting those groups and their work.
More promising than the name change is the corresponding announcement that the group will increase its focus on topics like anti-queer and -trans violence and employment and housing discrimination. The Task Force should also turn its attention to problems like mass incarceration, police violence, institutional racism and homelessness that disproportionately harm queer people. The group’s future actions and inclusivity will speak much louder than its name, said bisexual activist Lynnette McFadzen, the creator of the BiCast. The Task Force has a history of excluding bi and trans needs from its programs, though it’s improved in recent years, she said.
“The real issue isn’t their name, it’s their conduct, and that’s something they need to work on,” McFadzen said. “If they conducted themselves as an inclusive task force, that would be great. I’m not concerned about the alphabet soup.”
The organization’s upcoming programs include several trans specific initiatives, including a campaign to protest violence against trans people using the hashtag #StopTransMurders. But they still have work to do. The organization left the bi community stunned when it published an piece from one of its staff members called “Bye Bye Bi, Hello Queer” on Celebrate Bisexuality Day. The article called for a rejection of the term bisexuality based on outdated definitions of the term that enforce a binary understanding that the bi community itself doesn’t use. The Task Force also published a positive article about bisexuality on the same day, and it later published a counter article from trans and bi writer Aud Traher. Weeks later, it took the offensive post down and posted a brief apology.
The complexity of our community makes it hard for us to be 100 percent inclusive all the time with our work and language. At Autostraddle, we sometimes default to LGBT, queer or gay because we’re working with a language that doesn’t actively create space for all our experiences. We also work to be inclusive of everyone’s stories and examine our own biases and failures to do better. I hope to see the same efforts from national organizations like the Task Force so that their organizing, writing and political work celebrate and advance every part of our community and family.Poverty is on the rise and inequality has reached unprecedented levels, even in the developed world.
No-one expected a world with so many intelligent minds and with such abundant methods of communication between them to decline in such a manner, in spite of our astonishing technological advancements.
As members of this race we thought that science would do it all; that if we allowed erudition and research to take a leading role in shaping our lives, it would eradicate poverty and carve a more equal landscape.
However, more than 200 years after the Age of Enlightenment, wars continue to dominate events around the world, conflicts linger unresolved, and the trading of arms as well as the plundering of natural resources continue unabashed.
“It is not the fault of science – how could you expect it to fix everything?” one might exclaim.
That is precisely the point: we need more than scientific advancement to better the lives of people.
We need values that guide us as to how to use science and technology, how to distribute wealth equally across the globe, and how to stand firmly against policies that protect only the interest of those with financial might. Only then can we realise the dream of a more equal, just society.
The legend of Christ and the values he strived to implement must be revived. They must not be regarded as ‘old’ or antiquated ideals. People are people and the scruples that govern their interactions are the same – whether they live in the 21st or the 1st century, whether they use coal, wind or nuclear power as their primary energy source.
Universal ideals surpass time and place: be it for our parents or our children; or be it in the Levant or in London. Principles must never be dented or eroded by any force. What was noble in the eyes of Christ and others who forged a better way is still noble today. What was evil at that time, should still be viewed as such.
One may argue against this by using slavery as an example. The practice of human subjugation was acceptable in the past and humanity has only recently developed to reject it. Yet the likes of Christ never viewed slavery as a good thing – the practice was always wrong in their eyes. It us up to the people – to us – to transform those higher moral standards into reality.
Easter and Lent come this year to a world full of pain and suffering. Their arrival is timely. They bring back hope; hope in the people themselves. As we reflect on the life of Christ and the principles that he called for – whether or not we view him as a religious figure – people of faith and none can find the morality that the world needs the most in this period.
The values of Christ – and Hussain ibn Ali – are what people really need to effect change in a world that needs it more than ever before.We're not going to actually show you five million 4chan posts, since we and all of you would likely be sent to prison for a long time. But here's a word cloud generated from 5,576,095 posts. (Click on the photo above to enlarge.)
The word cloud comes courtesy of MIT grad student Andres Monroy-Hernandez. He and several colleagues collected 5 million posts from 4chan's anarchic /b/ board over two weeks and analyzed them in academic paper about the site.
Unsurprisingly, the cloud is dominated by swears, slurs and memespeak. Here's an explanation of some of the more popular words:
Desu: The reason "Desu" dominates the word cloud is there's this |
Steve Jobs is expanding wide and should earn first place at the box office. It is the only film on this week's list with a shot at $20 million. This weekend last year, Ouija nearly reached $20 million and five other films earned $10 million. I don't think we will match that this year. It could be close and any gain or loss in the year-over-year comparison should be in single digits, so there's no reason to be overly concerned. More...
October 22nd, 2015
Ant-Man made a triumphant return to the international chart with a first place, $43.5 million run in 3 markets for totals of $275.9 million internationally and $454.7 million worldwide. Nearly all of this weekend haul came from China, where the film opened in first place with $42.77 million. (Some are reporting it came in second place to Goodbye Mr. Loser, but they are comparing the film's weekly total to Ant-Man's opening weekend.) Depending on how much money the film cost to advertise worldwide, it might have broken even already. If not, it will get there very early in its home market run. More...
October 20th, 2015
It is hard to get excited about the weekend box office results, as the top four films all missed predictions. (Granted, Bridge of Spies came within a rounding error of expectations.) Goosebumps did well for a live-action family film, but still not great. The Martian fell faster than anticipated, but it was Crimson Peak that was the biggest disappointment. Overall, the box office rose 2.5% from last weekend to $121 million. However, this was 7.6% lower than the same weekend last year. Had every film in the top five matched expectations, then this gap would have been reduced to just a percent or two. Despite this, 2015 is still ahead of 2014 by more than $400 million at $8.46 billion to $8.05 billion. It would take a few more weeks of year-over-year declines before I would be concerned. More...
October 18th, 2015
A slightly-softer-than-expected (but still good) opening for Goosebumps will be enough to take the film to the top of the box office chart this weekend, according to studio projections released on Sunday morning. Sony expects the family horror adventure to come in with $23.5 million on opening weekend, which is a solid enough start, and sets the film up for a good run, helped by strong reviews and Halloween coming up in a couple of weeks. The Martian will land in second with a projected $21.5 million as of this morning, a slightly steeper-than-expected 42% decline from last weekend, and a total to date around $144 million. In general, weâre looking at quite a few steep drops from last weekend thanks to an unfavorable comparison with the Columbus Day long weekend and a batch of new releases. More...
October 17th, 2015
It looks like it will be a very interesting weekend, as Goosebumps and The Martian appear to be in a close race for first place. Goosebumps led the way on Friday with $7.35 million. This is 40% more than Panâs opening day last weekend. Add in the filmâs better reviews and its family-friendly target audience and it should have a solid internal multiplier, perhaps in the vacinity of Alexander and the Blah, Blah, Blah. That puts Goosebumps on track for a $25 million opening. Thatâs a little lower than I would have liked and the film will need solid legs and a reasonable international run to break even. I wouldnât bet against it breaking even, but I don't think it will be turned into a franchise. More...
October 15th, 2015
We are getting closer to Halloween and there are two scary movies opening wide this weekend. Goosebumps is a live-action family film and as we saw with Pan, those are rarely big hits. On the other hand, this film is earning great reviews and cost about 60% less to make, so even if it just matches Pan's opening, it will still have a shot at profitability. Crimson Peak is an old-fashioned Haunted House horror film, similar to The Woman in Black, but with a $55 million production budget. That might be too much to recoup. Finally there's Bridge of Spies, a Cold War era Spy Thriller. Its reviews are the best for this week, but its target audience isn't known for rushing out to see a movie opening weekend. This weekend last year, there were five films with more than $10 million, but only one with more than $20 million. This year, we should have the same number of $10 million movies, but at least two $20 million movies and perhaps even a $30 million movie. I think 2015 has the edge in the year-over-year comparison, but unless the new releases are bigger hits than most anticipate, it could be close. More...
October 14th, 2015
The Martian remained in first place with $58.1 million in 75 markets for totals of $119.0 million internationally and $227.7 million worldwide. $200 million worldwide was the minimum needed for the studio to save face. If it can get to $300 million worldwide, then we start talking about profitability. I don't see a way it won't get to $300 million, perhaps as early as this time next week, while $500 million worldwide is a reasonable goal to aim for. Its biggest new market of the weekend was South Korea where it earned first place with $11.09 million on 1,132 screens over the weekend for a total opening of $13.00 million. It also dominated the chart in Russia with $8.18 million on 2,246 screens. On the other hand, it only managed second place in Germany with $3.85 million on 676 screens. As far as holdovers go, the film remained in first place in the U.K. with $5.96 million in 582 theaters over the weekend for a two-week total of $20.44 million. This is about on par with its run here, which bodes well for its worldwide total. More...
October 13th, 2015
There was some great news at the box office this weekend, as both The Martian and Hotel Transylvania 2 reached the century mark. On the other hand, Pan bombed performing even worse than expected. I don't think there's really any controversy in saying it bombed, as the $150 million movie opened with less than Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day made last year. The overall depth was also weak, which led to the box office falling 21% from last week and 20% from last year. 2015 is still way ahead of 2014, $8.30 billion to $7.87 billion, and it would take a serious collapse for that lead to evaporate before the end of the year. More...
October 11th, 2015
As expected, The Martian will easily win a second straight weekend at the box office, with Fox predicting the film will fall just 32% from its opening to $37 million, for a running total of $108.7 million. That keeps it tracking just a little behind Gravity, which fell 23% in its second weekend, and ahead of Interstellar (down 40%, second time around) and Prometheus (59% down). Comparing all four movies, The Martian looks set to move easily past $200 million, and perhaps settle around $225 million, unless it tops that number thanks to a re-release around Oscar time. More...
October 10th, 2015
Pan cost $150 million to make. It is very rare for a live-action family film to cost this much and the reason for that is very simple: these movies almost never become monster hits. Pan will certainly not be the exception, as it pulled in just $5.2 million on Friday. By comparison, Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day had an opening day of $5.30 million. It also earned overall positive reviews, while Pan will go down as one of the worst major releases of the year. Even if we pretend the two films will have the same internal multiplier, Pan will only open with $18 million. $16 million seems more likely given its reviews. $16 million on a $150 million budget. This is terrible news for Warner Bros. And it is not like they've had a great year so far. More...
October 9th, 2015
The only wide release of the week is Pan, which is being described as critically panned, because entertainment writers have a pathological need to use puns. I hate puns and I'm still guilty of this. Despite being the only new release, Pan isn't expected to open in first place, or even second place. The Martian is expected to repeat on top, while Hotel Transylvania 2 should have another strong hold remaining in second place. This weekend last year was in some ways the polar opposite, as there were four new releases in the top ten, plus another that opened in eleventh place. However, the result was the same, as Gone Girl remained in first place. The Martian should top Gone Girl's performance, while Hotel Transylvania 2 and Pan should match Dracula Untold and Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. However, after that, 2014's depth seems too strong and 2015 will likely lose in the year-over-year comparison. That's fine, as 2015's lead is huge and there are still a few (nearly) guaranteed monster hits left to open this year. More...
October 8th, 2015
The Martian opened in first place with $45.2 million on 9,299 screens in 50 markets. This includes a first place, 10.01 million opening on 582 theaters in the U.K. This was the biggest opening for both the director and the star. The film had a similarly strong opening in Australia earning first place with $4.28 million on 582 screens. It also earned first place in Hong Kong ($2.26 million on 70 screens) and Taiwan ($1.68 million on 137 screens). It only managed second place in Italy with $2.53 million on 464 screens and in Mexico with $2.9 million on 1,757, while it debuted in third place in Brazil with $1.82 million on 507. Overall, the film it doing about as well internationally as it did here, which is good news for Fox. More...
October 8th, 2015
The winners of our Rescue Mission contest were determined and the entrants with the closest predictions for The Martian opening weekend were... More...
October 8th, 2015
Only two films were in the $10,000 club this weekend. He Named Me Malala led the way with an average of $15,221 in four theaters, which is very strong for a documentary. The film's reviews are only good, but the appeal here is Malala Yousafzai and I don't think moviegoers are too upset that the film is a little shallow. The Martian was close behind with an average of $14,176. More...
October 6th, 2015
It was an interesting weekend as The Martian was in a tight race with Gravity for Biggest October Weekend. It didn't quite set the record, but it came close enough to be the big story all weekend. Hotel Transylvania 2 held on better than expected, which helped the overall box office grow 8.3% from last week to $149 million. More importantly, the top two films this year were well ahead of the top two films last year, Gone Girl and Annabelle. This helped the overall box office grow 1.8% from the same weekend last year. Most people were not expecting that. Year-to-date, 2015 now has a 6.0% lead over 2014 at $8.14 billion to $7.68 billion. It would take a relatively serious collapse for 2015 to not come out on top at the end of the year. More...
October 4th, 2015
Just a week after Hotel Transylvania 2 broke Septemberâs weekend record, The Martian has a shot at setting a new mark for October, although itâs going to be a challenge. Fox is projecting the sci-fi thriller will make $55 million this weekend, just a fraction behind Gravityâs $55.8 million debut two years ago this weekend. Thereâs just a sliver of a chance that The Martian will take the record, but it would take a great performance on Sunday. More...
October 3rd, 2015
The Martian earned $2.5 million during its Thursday midnight showings and Fox is estimating a total of $18 million on Friday to easily win at the box office. By comparison, Gravity opened with $1.4 million during its midnight showings and $17.48 million on opening day. Gravity went on to earn $55.79 million opening weekend. Should The Martian have the same internal multiplier, it would pull in $57 million over the weekend, which is just ahead of the record for Biggest October Weekend. However, The Martianâs higher midnight showings and lower Friday-proper numbers likely means it will be a little more front-loaded, and it should pull in $53 million over the weekend. This is almost exactly what was predicted on Friday and it also means Gravityâs October record is likely safe for at least one more year. More...
October 2nd, 2015
The Martian is the only true wide release this week, but it might not be the only new release in the top ten. The Sci-fi adventure film is earning award-worthy reviews and is also being praised for being an inspiring portrayal of science on the big screen. Sicario is expanding its theater count to 2,500, which should push it into the top five. The Walk opened in IMAX screens on Wednesday, but it missed the top ten place and it will likely fall. This weekend last year, Gone Girl and Annabelle both opened with between $37 million and $38 million. The Martian will open with more than either of those films opened with. However, it won't open with more than both of them combined. We will need good growth from Sicario and solid legs from Hotel Transylvania 2 to match last year's result. More...
October 1st, 2015
September ended on a record note with the debut of Hotel Transylvania 2. Additionally, there was great depth and 2015's lead over 2014 grew to nearly $500 million. How do things look going forward? The month starts out with The Martian, which should have no trouble becoming the biggest hit of the month and might even top $200 million. On the other hand, no other film is expected to get to $100 million. There's only one or two that will even come close. Fortunately, last October was very similar with one $100 million hit, Gone Girl, while two other films came close, Annabelle and Fury. It looks like it will be up to the depth films from both years to determine which year comes out on top. More...
September 29th, 2015
The winners of our Family Fun contest were determined and the entrants with the closest predictions for Hotel Transylvania 2 opening weekend were... More...
September 25th, 2015
The first weekend of October has only one wide release, The Martian. It should easily dominate the box office and could be one of the best wide releases for the rest of the year. As such, it is the only real choice for the target film for this week's Box Office Prediction contest. In order to win, one must simply predict the opening weekend box office number for The Martian.
Whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), without going over, will win a Frankenprize consisting of two previously reviewed DVDs or Blu-rays. Whoever comes the closest to predicting the film's opening 3-day weekend box office (Friday to Sunday), without going under, will win a Frankenprize consisting of two previously reviewed DVDs or Blu-rays. Finally, we will be choosing an entrant from the group of people who haven't won, or haven't won recently, and they will also win a Frankenprize consisting of two previously reviewed DVDs or Blu-rays. There is a difference this time. Two people will earn Frankenprizes consisting of two horror movies. The other winner will earn a Frankprize consisting of two "horror" movies, that is to say movies so bad that it will fill you with horror. Entries must be received by 10 a.m., Pacific Time on Friday to be eligible, so don't delay! More...The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights under the Obama administration became the nation’s leading inquisitor, threatening to revoke federal funding from schools that didn’t withhold due process from students accused of sexual misconduct (or even telling off-color jokes).
It’s not clear yet that Secretary Betsy DeVos* or the acting head of OCR, Candice Jackson, have the will to make a hard break with their predecessors’ sweeping and dubious interpretations of Title IX.
But in a refreshing break with one practice, they aren’t asking for a giant bump in staff.
OCR’s fiscal year 2018 budget request proposes slashing 46 full-time equivalent positions while keeping its overall funding level of $106.8 million.
Full-time permanent staff “obligations” would fall by $3.2 million, while full-time temporary and part-timers would rise by $60,000. Another $3.7 million in IT spending would roughly cancel out the cuts.
Full-time equivalents would fall from 582 to 523, but no one would get fired: “The decrease is needed to cover the 1.9 percent pay raise, [Civil Rights Data Collection], and central services increases. OCR will rely on attrition to reduce its FTE level by 46.”
In an email blast, the due-process advocacy group Stop Abusive and Violent Environments pointed to a chart in the request that noted one person filed 88 percent of the sex-discrimination complaints in FY 2016.
In its budget requests in the waning years of the Obama administration, OCR asked the Republican-controlled Congress for large funding and staff increases.
For example, lawmakers gave it a 7 percent funding increase for the FY 2016 cycle, which the administration promptly declared too little, demanding a 28 percent increase for FY 2017 to enable “more vigorous enforcement of our Nation’s civil rights laws” (meaning nonbinding regulatory guidance).
Read the request.
*Disclosure
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
IMAGE: MR. Nattanon Kanchak/ShutterstockUmbro Canada are at it again bringing fans of the Canadian National Teams another reason to spend their money. On Wednesday at noon (Eastern) they will present their newest offering to the public which will be available at B.C. Place during the CanWNT game and online during the day for those hoping to purchase it.
With Umbro launching a new white kit in 2013 this week they will be replacing the red kit. It will be the third different home kit since Umbro returned to making the kits for the CSA and will hopefully continue the trend in the right direction. There was the chevron kit to start with which was followed up by the simple red kit with white piping on it and now we are in for something new.
The new kit will get its first action on Wednesday night as well when the Canadian Women's National Team take on Germany in a friendly at B.C. Place. The Canadians will certainly be in tough against one of the top sides in the women's game but it is a safe bet that they will at least look good.
Thanks to Jason deVos on twitter we have a taste of what the new kit is going to look like before the official launch. It appears the kit will have a simple red collar with white trim with the Canadian flag featured prominently just below the collar on the back. It is only a small taste but so far it looks very promising.
I'm told a new @UmbroCanada jersey is on the way soon. Here's a sneak peek. Well done @mikeshoe10 and company! http://t.co/d8hTEEd2vv — Jason deVos (@jasondevos) June 18, 2014
We will have more images when they become available but for now it is time to get excited about another way to spend some of your hard earned money. Safe to say that no matter how it looks it will be another piece that I have to add to my collection in time for the two World Cups on Canadian soil.- Shrimp Building A Snowman Greeting Card! -
Let's build a snowman, we'll make him our best friend!
Trying to find the perfect card for that special someone? Luckily these exist! Share your love for snow folks with tiny carrot noses, shrimp, and ridiculous things with this elegant card.
This stunning photograph was taken by Shrimp Whisperer AK, of Valdez, Alaska. Photo-editing was not used to put this buddy in a hilarious situation, it's all natural. Professionally printed with a UV protective gloss on the outside, and a nice matte on the blank inside, this card will surely steal the show on any mantelpiece or fridge.
5x7, includes envelope and cellophane bag.
Check out our ten packs and send these to everyone on your holiday list!
As seen on the PBS show Indie Alaska!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuOn6ZM0kKQ&feature=youtu.be[What can game developers learn from the film industry, if anything? No, it's not about storytelling -- it's about the very style of production, argues Tess Jones, who has worked as both a film producer and a game producer.]
Over the years I have mused on the differences and similarities between producing games and films. Both have large, creative crews working towards successful delivery of a visually entertaining product.
When I worked on movie sets, I drove around the city to a different location each day. Once there, I was greeted by a troupe of 200 creative people on the movie set all trying to achieve one vision.
When I worked on games, I was again greeted by 200 creative people all trying to achieve one vision, but instead of using a physical set to stage their dramatic scenes requiring me to cross town, the environments and sets were all contained at the office on their computer screens.
Despite their different work environments, both mediums aim to entertain, creating tension and excitement, making people laugh, cry, or tremble in fear at the edge of their seats.
From there, the similarities seem to end. Producing works in these two fields is drastically different. Films have significantly shorter production periods than games. A detailed schedule is created based on the scenes required in a screenplay. The cast and crew are hired, production begins, and each day they film specific scenes until the entire script is complete. When all scenes have been filmed, the crew is done. This can all be done in as short as a month.
Games have long production periods. New gameplay mechanics present engineering challenges. Players have the ability to stop and walk around in environments, rotating 360 degrees around objects. Unexpected bugs may arise late in production, not to mention the possibility that players will navigate levels in unexpected ways or become frustrated with gameplay elements requires ongoing iteration as testing happens. And finally, games are generally much longer than films, and require a hefty amount of creative content, with "short" games providing a six to eight hour game experience.
Despite these differences, I believe there are techniques from the film industry that can be applied to game production. Film production teams deliver fast because they have to, with location, crew, and cast restrictions tied to a very precise clock. As the market tightens and consumers expect more features from games, we need to find ways to make games faster and cheaper. One place to look is to the well-oiled machine of film production.
Lesson #1: Never Shoot a Movie without an Assistant Director
The cast arrives at 5am for make-up, while the production crew of 200 people gets there at 7. First up is a scene in a downtown office building, which includes a complicated crane shot. A second unit is shooting up the street to fill in the gaps so the whole crew can pack up and be at a second location by 2pm. The second location closes by 6pm -- no ifs, ands, or buts -- and they have to get four shots before the sun goes down, one including 50 extras in the scene. Oh, and by the way, your key actor is late, meaning you have to rearrange your entire shot list and pray to God you get everything complete without having to add another day to the schedule -- and budget.
Holy jigsaw puzzle of time management! If you thought your teams were hard to manage, imagine the pressure on the shoulders of a film's Assistant Director. "ADs," as they are known on set, are unionized through the Director's Guild of America.
They are highly skilled in judging all the various elements that will go into a shot and determining how much time it will take. On a film set where money is literally being spent as each minute on the clock ticks by, they keep things running smoothly towards completing each shot on the list.
I've worked on small films without an AD, and the inevitable result is that you find yourself still trying to "get that last shot" at 2am in an apartment in the Bronx, eventually falling asleep with your face plastered onto a piece of pizza. It's not pretty.
People tend to avoid the clock in games. Thinking about time estimates hampers the "cool" and "creative" game dev lifestyle. It's all about iteration, and you can't put a time estimate on that, can you? That's all well and fun during concept phase when your devs are passionate, but when you're exhausted and pushing to Beta... Yup -- you got it. You're stuck with another brutal, middle of the night sleeping pizza face incident. Sleep deprivation -- that is the real obstacle to creativity. What you need is a skilled AD.
What? "I don't need that! My producer does that." Well, yes and no. Some producers are amazing at time management, and others not so much. Producers often also have other elements on their mind: big picture concept, correspondence with marketing, milestone reports, a whole lot of other things that draw their attention away from the nitty-gritty, day to day of making sure elements are "in the can."
Movie sets have both a producer and AD, each managing different responsibilities. What game teams need is a dedicated resource to manage time. A qualified, experienced resource that can eyeball time estimates and build a schedule based on the risks and elements in front of them. Headcount is always tight on game teams, and project managers dedicated to scheduling could be seen as unnecessary overhead. But if you want to shoot a movie in 45 days with no overages and to have a beautiful film in the can, in the movie business, you hire a good AD.You can usually tell when someone is wearing a hearing aid by the device sat behind one or both of their ears. But such aids can only help so much. Depending on the level of hearing impairment, conventional aids may not be enough to allow an individual to hear and understand important sounds such as those that form speech.
An alternative is to have a hearing implant, but until now the required surgery to fit them has taken several hours, making it unsuitable for the elderly–the group most affected by hearing loss. However, a solution is on the horizon in the form of a new, simple implant that can be fitted as outpatient surgery and could allow better hearing to even the most severe of impairments.
The new implant actually consists of three parts. The key implanted part is a 1.2mm electro-acoustic transducer, which is positioned at the so-called “round window,” which is where the middle and inner ear connect. It then produces “amplified mechanical vibrations” that stimulate the auditory nerve. Even though the transducer is tiny, it can reach volumes of up to 120 decibels, meaning even those with severe hearing impairment should experience a major improvement.
The other two parts of the implant are a microphone and battery contained in a casing, and the signal and power wireless transmission system that links the transducer and the microphone sections.
The image you see above is of the prototype version of the electro-acoustic transducer. The research team at the Fraunhofer Institute already have it working, but say the final version of the transducer will be round rather than square. They also need to select a suitable coating for the implant so it can survive inside the body without degrading or being rejected.
The good news is, the final version should be ready to use by next year with each implant expected to function for at least 10 years once in place.New Thor: Ragnarok Trailer Will Answer A Serious Marvel Mystery By Corey Chichizola Random Article Blend The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been on fire lately. Their two most recent releases, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming, have been met with universal critical acclaim and made some serious cash at the box office. The next installment in the shared universe is highly anticipated, as Thor: Ragnarok will bring Mark Ruffalo's Hulk into the Thor franchise for an intergalactic buddy movie. The two heroes are the most powerful members of The Avengers, and now Ruffalo has teased that one of the most hotly debated aspects of Marvel lore will finally be answered: who would win a in a fight, Thor or The Hulk? Saw new Thor3 trailer today. Amazing!!! Guess who wins in a fight between Thor and Hulk? There seems to be a little confusion. You'll see. — Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) July 13, 2017 Ok, I'm going to need access to the newest Thor: Ragnarok trailer ASAP. While fans of the MCU likely assumed that we'd have to wait until Ragnarok hits theaters in order to find out the result of Thor and Hulk's battle, Mark Ruffalo's Tweet seems to imply that the answer will be present in the next trailer for the threequel. And with both D23 and San Diego Comic-Con happening over the next week, that trailer should arrive very soon. Thor: Ragnarok overall feels like a game changer for the franchise. While the first film was a delightful fish out of water adventure, The Dark World wasn't quite as beloved. Overall, Thor is one of the less popular original Avengers members, mostly because the tone isn't always as light and frothy as some of the other properties. But director Taika Waititi and company have consistently teased that Ragnarok will have far more comedy than its predecessors, mostly due to the unlikely duo of Thor and Bruce Banner. Adding another Avenger into the mix will also delight the hardcore MCU fandom, who consistently yearn for crossovers. And although the overall events of Thor: Ragnarok are still a mystery, I'm eager to se how Thor and Bruce Banner's adventure affects their personal relationship in future films. The duo was noticeably missing in Captain America: Civil War, but when they reunite with their allies in Avengers: Infinity War they'll have experienced something significant together. The personal relationships between the various MCU heroes aren't always explored in depth, so this is a great way to put characters like The Hulk and Thor into the main conversation for the shared universe. Thor: Ragnarok will arrive in theaters on November 3, 2017, and Hulk, Thor, and Valkyrie will return for Avengers: Infinity War in May 2018. In the meantime, check out our 2017 release list to plan your next trip to the movies. WATCH: New Captain Marvel Trailer Teases Epic Space Battle Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to topAt the New Orleans Pelicans end of season presser, Alvin Gentry remarked DeMarcus Cousins getting in better physical condition before the start of the 2017-18 season needed to be on the to-do list.
Wish granted?
A post shared by DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) on Jun 15, 2017 at 4:33pm PDT
There is no denying he looks svelter to the eye, but what’s more important than any scale reading is Cousins being able to handle the Pelicans quick pace of play. Too many times onlookers noted Boogie lagging behind game action, getting back on defense too slowly or seemingly just crossing the half court line with the offense already on the attack.
Cousins was shut down for the final week of the regular season with Achilles tendinitis, but later Dell Demps divulged that Boogie had been dealing with the same issue since his trade to New Orleans. In other words, Cousins was never 100% healthy at anytime in a Pelicans uniform, yet he still managed to post averages of over 24 points and 12 rebounds a game.
Being healthy at the start of next season will be key, but Cousins is dedicated to far surpassing that bar. Earlier this month, the New Orleans general manager appeared on Prime Time Sports with Scott Alexander and had this to say about the big man.
“He’s committed to the group,” said Demps. “He’s working out right now. He’s consistently asking questions. He wants to be a part of it — He’s in.”
This looks like a great workout and I can’t wait for the release of the full training video in the near future, but the promise of a more agile Cousins is the biggest takeaway. Newly hired assistant coach Chris Finch went on record yesterday to Jim Eichenhofer in comparing Cousins to Nikola Jokic.
That certainly sets the tone, when you have Nikola Jokic as an elite-level passer, just like I believe DeMarcus Cousins is. The opportunity to run the offense through (Jokic) at the top of the floor – once we got over the learning phase after 20 games, which often happens as guys try to figure out their roles – things really took off.
Make no mistake, the Pelicans are going to run a lot of their offense at the top of the arc through Cousins much like the Denver Nuggets successfully did with Jokic this past season. It sure looks like Boogie is well on his way to meeting the demands of that responsibility.After North Carolina failed to repeal House Bill 2 (HB2), the law which allows for the discrimination of the LGBTQ community, the NBA and NCAA have reconfirmed their boycotts of the state.
The Charlotte City Council rescinded its expanded non-discrimination ordinance, which had been nullified by HB2, on Wednesday in order to make way for a repeal of HB2. The North Carolina General Assembly held a special session that same day to consider repeal, but failed to do so after a consensus could not be reached. Republican Senators filed a repeal bill that put in place a six month moratorium on new ordinances, upsetting Democrats who feared they would, as Sen. Berger suggested on the floor, look for a “long term solution,” to such ordinances passing in cities and municipalities.
“The NCAA’s decision to withhold championships from North Carolina remains unchanged,” NCAA spokesman Bob Williams said in a statement.
An NBA league source told ESPN‘s Andy Katz that its stance in withholding the All-Star Game from Charlotte also had not changed.
The 2017 All-Star Game was initially to be held in Charlotte, but the league announced over the summer that they were pulling it from North Carolina in response to the law, which nullified non-discrimination ordinances passed by cities across the state, capped the state’s minimum wage and requires transgender individuals to use the bathrooms and locker rooms matching the gender on their birth certificate in government owned buildings.
It has since been moved to New Orleans. The NBA has said that they intend to hold the 2019 All-Star Game in Charlotte is a “high priority,” but only if the situation around HB2 were to change.
This Story Filed Underby
It’s a well-worn trope that Mormons don’t do theology. To the extent that this is true (it probably is), it is to be regretted. I believe that “doing theology” is essential and its absence leads us into all kinds of religious dead ends.
Absent theology — i.e. reasoned argument about the truth of God — we are left with little more than noise and counter-noise. To apply this to a current controversy, here are some rather ad hoc thoughts on the usefulness of a theology of women:
Over at FPR, gwesley argues that “apostle” does not imply priesthood in the New Testament. The implication seems to be that the New Testament does not present a view of priesthood that is really congruous with current practice. This may or may not be true, but that is a decision that needs to be made by looking carefully at the text. It was the layering of tradition over scripture that characterises the Great Apostasy in Mormon eyes.
Before we claim that theology undermines revelation, let us remember the Roman Catholic tradition. Take Aquinas’s theology of natural law and add it to the papal encyclical Evangelium Vitae and you have a revealed, authorised, and logically coherent doctrine of sexual and reproductive ethics. I may disagree with the Catholic stance on abortion but I can at least examine it on its merits. It is consistent and defensible if one accepts natural law and papal infallibility, and therein lies the argument, not in some tedious claim the Vatican is “out of touch” or that we should “obey the Pope or else.” So, we need theology but also revelation; we need revelation but also theology.
doctrine of sexual and reproductive ethics. I may disagree with the Catholic stance on abortion but I can at least examine it on its merits. It is consistent and defensible if one accepts natural law and papal infallibility, and therein lies the argument, not in some tedious claim the Vatican is “out of touch” or that we should “obey the Pope or else.” So, we need theology but also revelation; we need revelation but also theology. I think a case can be made for a separation of male and female roles in the church. For example, one could argue — and it would be reasonable to do so, I think — that at the very least the Levitical priesthood is for males. In a Mormon context, that then retains baptism, the eucharist, etc. as rites that must be performed by men, who act in the male persona Christi. That is an argument that serves the Catholic church well.
Those of you who read my last post will notice that the argument above is at odds with my own interpretation of Gregory of Nazianzus, but that’s the inherent inexactitude of theology, which is fine. It is in such debate that bad ideas should ultimately be rejected, bringing us closer to the truth. Does the presence of female deacons in the Early Church |
piece for MSNBC that explained a potential conflict for prosecutors.
"Our justice system allows district attorneys to be charged with the great responsibility of prosecuting the very same police officers they work side-by-side with every day and whose union support they seek when running for reelection," wrote James in 2014.
A grand jury did not indict the officer who killed Garner, and neither did a grand jury in the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed just months after Garner. Last year the Rice family accused the prosecutor of manipulating the grand jury away from an indictment. "It has been clear for months now that Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty was abusing and manipulating the grand jury process to orchestrate a vote against indictment,” the family said in a statement.
AP/Jose Luis Magana - apimages.com
The Washington Post's Radley Balko outlined cases where police retaliated against prosecutors for bringing charges against officers.
Last year, the district attorney's office in Albuquerque, New Mexico brought charges against two police officers in the shooting death of a homeless man. Prosecutors were soon shut out of meetings with city officials in another police shooting case, and received conflict of interest complaints from the police department in another unrelated case, according to Balko's reporting.
Police groups and the police union in Salt Lake City, Utah promised to back another candidate after a prosecutor brought charges against officers for the deadly police shooting of a woman in 2013.
Some lawmakers have called for independent prosecutors to tackle police shootings.
In October, the New Jersey state Senate passed a bill that would require the state attorney general to prosecute cases where officers were involved with a death. The bill is still moving through the state legislature.
"Any investigation of police-involved fatalities should be fair, it should be thorough and it should result in justice being served," one of the bill's sponsors, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, told NJ.com. "It's also important that the public has faith and confidence in the impartiality of these investigations."
Flickr/Tony Webster - flickr.com
Last year, Democrats in U.S. House called for states to require independent prosecutors in cases of police shootings. They introduced an unsuccessful bill that would have reduced federal funding to police departments that don't use independent prosecutors.
"We need reform. Asking local prosecutors to investigate the same local police with whom they work so closely is a conflict of interest," Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) told The Hill last year. "Even if they handle such investigations appropriately, there will continue to be a perception of bias."That PvP should only happen in games that were built around it from the start.
(side note: some overlap with Dale Thomas’ answer, here)
Since the dawn of gaming, half the players have always wanted to directly compete against other players. But guess who always didn’t? Exactly. The other half.
Not like the industry ever truly gave a f* about this wish, though. And what’s worse: The segment of the community who demands competitive PvP is always much, much more vocal than its unwilling counterpart.
It really doesn’t matter what kind of game you produce these days. If it doesn’t have PvP, that is inevitably what people ask for. Whether it makes sense or not:
You made a simulation game with a universe containing a billion planets, so vast that it is nearly impossible for people to ever meet while exploring?
The first thing people moan about:
They want to shoot each other, instead.
with a universe containing a billion planets, so vast that it is nearly impossible for people to ever meet while exploring? The first thing people moan about: You made a stealth game where the player has a huge array of overpowered abilities, and its main challenge lies in using as little of those resources as possible to get what you want?
The first thing people moan about:
They want to shoot each other, instead.
where the player has a huge array of overpowered abilities, and its main challenge lies in using as little of those resources as possible to get what you want? The first thing people moan about: You made a strategy game where the player has to battle an overwhelming enemy force by constantly making the right base-building decisions, or perish?
The first thing people moan about:
They want to shoot each other, instead.
where the player has to battle an overwhelming enemy force by constantly making the right base-building decisions, or perish? The first thing people moan about: You made an action game entirely built around the idea of the player constantly dying to slowly learn ever-new, complex strategies to defeat bosses?
The first thing people moan about:
They want to shoot each other, instead.
entirely built around the idea of the player constantly dying to slowly learn ever-new, complex strategies to defeat bosses? The first thing people moan about: You made a hack&slash game where you wade through thousands of enemies, hoping to randomly get better gear and then wade through thousands of (slightly harder) enemies?
The first thing people moan about:
They want to shoot each other, instead.
where you wade through thousands of enemies, hoping to randomly get better gear and then wade through thousands of (slightly harder) enemies? The first thing people moan about: You made a sandbox rpg where the player has a whole world to explore and hundreds of quests to fulfill until he becomes a near-godlike individual?
The first thing people moan about:
They want to shoot each other, instead.
where the player has a whole world to explore and hundreds of quests to fulfill until he becomes a near-godlike individual? The first thing people moan about: You made an immersive mmo game with huge zones and breathtaking graphics, tons of dramatic lore and interesting combat mechanics tweaked for complex boss battles?
The first thing people moan about:
They want to shoot each other, instead.
with huge zones and breathtaking graphics, tons of dramatic lore and interesting combat mechanics tweaked for complex boss battles? The first thing people moan about: You made a building game where you carefully nurse your city/house/castle/ship/garden/pet/car to a level of excellence and beauty, able to finally stand against every challenge the game may throw at you?
The first thing people moan about:
They want to shoot each other, instead.
where you carefully nurse your city/house/castle/ship/garden/pet/car to a level of excellence and beauty, able to finally stand against every challenge the game may throw at you? The first thing people moan about: … continue this list ad nauseam.
And sure, it appears to make sense from a financial perspective: cramming some additional netcode into your product so that all those loud people can finally bash in each others heads? It’s not all that costly - compared to the overall effort needed for the game. Plus, every hour in which players compete against other players is not spent on consuming/playing through all that expensive hand-crafted new content… of which there’s never enough around, anyway.
But good lord, does it usually screw things up for everyone else.
Developers are suddenly forced to re-balance all mechanics. Abilities and options that were supremely fun to acquire and use against AI enemies suddenly have to be nerfed into oblivion because they would dominate PvP. Unwilling players have it even worse, though. As they are suddenly forced to participate in PvP. At least if they don’t want their painstakingly acquired resources to disappear… or to get the big (PvE) items they want…
Or merely to survive and somehow play “their” side of the game at all. Because often enough, it’s the equivalent of the headmaster handing over the schoolyard to the bullies. With a misinformed but proud, beaming, smile on his face.
Ask people about this, though - and all you get is a shout-down along the lines of “lol L2P nab!” from the PvPers, as well as a soft, resigned sigh from the PvEers.DMV rapper GoldLink has a pretty solid following and even more solid hit with his single, Crew alongside Shy Glizzy and Brent Fiyaz. Now, Link looks to hit the road in support of his new album, At What Cost spanning the U.S. touching 30 cities, starting in Nashville and ending in Philly on October 15th.
Look at the date below and cop your pre-sale tickets HERE.
9/3 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
9/6 – Atlanta, GA Masquerade – Heaven stage
9/7 – Orlando, FL @ Backbooth
9/8 – Miami, FL @ Hangar 305
9/9 – Tampa, FL @ Orpheum
9/10 – Tallahassee, FL @ Potbelly’s
9/13 – New Orleans, LA @ Republic NOLA
9/14 – Houston, TX @ Studio at warehouse live
9/15 – Dallas, TX @ Tree’s
9/16 – Austin, TX @ Grizzley Hall
9/17 – San Antonio, TX @ ACMC
9/20 – Scottsdale, AZ @ Pub Rock
9/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Novo
9/22 – Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory
9/23 – Santa Barbara, CA @ Soho Restaurant & Music Club
9/24 – Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst
9/27 – Vancouver, BC @ Commodore Ballroom
9/28 – Seattle, WA @ Showbox
9/29 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
9/30 – Boise, ID @ Neurolux
10/1 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
10/3 – Denver, CO @ Cervantes
10/4 – Lawrence, KS @ Granada Theater
10/7 – Madison, WI @ Majestic Theatre
10/8 – Chicago, IL @ Metro
10/10 – Detroit, MI @ The Shelter
10/12 – Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
10/13 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Steel
10/14 – Montreal, QC @ L’Astral
10/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Coda
© 2017, Oktane. All rights reserved.Evolutionary biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin has made his career studying cooperation, so it makes perfect sense that the subject of his latest book would be an anarchist. In The Prince of Evolution Dugatkin tells the story of the Russian prince, evolutionary theorist, and political radical Peter Alexeyevich Kropotkin whose Darwinian theory of mutual aid was the first to argue that cooperation was an integral part of natural selection. Today, the quest to understand how cooperative behavior evolved is one of the hotest areas in the life sciences, though few researchers realize that many of their questions were first posed by Kropotkin more than a century ago.
"Kropotkin was not only the first person who clearly demonstrated that cooperation was important among animals," Dugatkin writes, "he was the first person to forcefully argue that understanding cooperation in animals would shed light on human cooperation."
Dugatkin's book [an excerpt of which has been posted at Scientific American.com] is a précis on Kropotkin's life and work, an overview that highlights the common theme of mutual aid in both his scientific and political ideas. Some may be familiar with Kropotkin as the revolutionary theorist of anarchism, a political system in which people organize their own affairs at the local level without interference from an external government, but few are likely to realize that this "anarchist Prince" started out as a physical geographer and geologist whose work was celebrated around the world. The discoveries that Kropotkin made of glacial formations during the Quaternary Period in Russia were received with international acclaim and earned him invitations to join the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as a Cambridge University endowed chair in geology (which he turned down because it came with the stipulation that he give up his political work).
The Prince of Evolution offers a tantalizing peek into the life and ideas of a man Dugatkin calls "one of the world’s first international celebrities," someone who filled auditoriums throughout Europe, England, and the United States with talks ranging from biology to anarchy to Russian literature. Kropotkin was a thinker whose ideas were so large that a single discipline could not contain them, and they were thought to be so dangerous that he was arrested multiple times and spent lengthy prison terms in Russia and France for communicating them. Part of what made him such a threat to the monarchs of Europe, Dugatkin suggests, was that Kropotkin refused to accept any authority that wasn't based on scientific principles. He urged people everywhere to reject illegitimate tyranny and to use the tools of critical thinking and science to build a more equitable society themselves. As Kropotkin wrote in his Appeal to the Young (1880):
We need above everything to spread the truths already mastered by science, to make them part of our daily life, to render them common property. We have to order things so that all, so that the mass of mankind, may be capable of understanding and applying them; we have to make science no longer a luxury but the foundation of every man’s life. This is what justice demands. I go further: I say that the interests of science itself lie in the same direction. Science only makes real progress when a new truth finds a soil already prepared to receive it.
Lee Alan Dugatkin has likewise taken up this clarion call for science advocacy. As a Professor and Distinguished University Scholar in the Department of Biology at University of Louisville in Kentucky, he has published eight books and more than one hundred scientific papers in such journals as Nature, Quarterly Review of Biology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. He has also written for Scientific American ["How Females Choose Their Mates," April, 1998; "Jefferson's Moose and the Case against American Degeneracy," Feb., 2011], as well as New Scientist, BioScience, The Huffington Post and The Wilson Quarterly.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Dugatkin last week to discuss his latest project on the science of Peter Kropotkin and what we might learn from a notorious anarchist whose ideas continue to inspire and provoke to this day.
Eric Michael Johnson: One of the things that strikes me about Kropotkin’s work is how he always saw the world through his scientific lens. He insisted that any important political philosophy needed to be based in scientific principles and he dismissed Karl Marx for that very reason. He even called Marxism a cult.
Lee Alan Dugatkin: Not only did Kropotkin think of Marxism as a cult but he also referred to Berlin as their Mecca. He has a number of wonderful quotes like that. Everything that he did from his work on biology and geology to his work on anarchy to his work on prisons or the French Revolution were all done through the prism of science. He made a point of arguing that one of the things that separated the anarchist philosophy from other political systems, including Marxism, is that anarchism was based on scientific principles, and specifically those principles derived from evolutionary thinking. Even though Marxism claimed to be a scientific discipline, it was not based on a biological understanding of the world at all.
One of the things that he despised about Marxism is that it was based on the idea of ultimate government control, whereas Kropotkin wanted no government shackles on anybody. He thought it was good that they wanted to distribute resources more fairly, but he didn't think the government should have that role. He thought that the distribution should take place without government and that it should happen more naturally. Kropotkin wasn’t advocating a violent expropriation of resources, even though he was not particularly outspoken against violence, but he himself didn’t see violence as the way to get there.
Johnson: Kropotkin was also highly critical of the excesses of capitalism. However, as you point out in your book, he used the work of the economist Adam Smith to argue against the very competition that most people assume Smith was advocating. Why would an anarchist turn to the father of modern capitalism to make his case?
Dugatkin: Yes, it’s a great question. Kropotkin saw the old Adam Smith and the young Adam Smith as dramatically different figures. The Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations was not somebody that Peter Kropotkin was particularly fond of for both political and philosophical reasons. But Adam Smith also wrote a book called The Theory of Moral Sentiments where he argued that empathy was the key to understanding human behavior. It was for this reason that people are good to one another. They undertake what Kropotkin would call mutual aid because they could see the world through the eyes of somebody else.
Kropotkin was enamored with that Adam Smith. But, for Kropotkin, Adam Smith didn’t go far enough because he only focused on moral sentiments with regard to humans. Kropotkin began to think that this same empathy was what drove mutual aid in animals and he was convinced that it would end up playing a critical role in understanding animal cooperation as well as human cooperation. So he took up with Adam Smith, but only the Adam Smith who wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, not the Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations who he saw as a capitalist troublemaker.
Johnson: You’ve written a good deal about the role of imitation and behavioral traditions in a variety of species. How does this and the modern science of epigenetics relate to the way Kropotkin discussed the theory of biological inheritance proposed by Jean-Baptiste Larmarck? Do you think Kropotkin’s perspective would be entirely out of place today?
Dugatkin: Kropotkin, particularly towards the end of his career, became very interested in Lamarckian inheritance. This was the idea that acquired characteristics, traits that were gained during an individual's lifetime, could be passed down across the generations. I think he did this primarily because he was looking for a mechanism that could produce mutual aid extremely quickly. Kropotkin saw mutual aid emerging whenever environments got harsh, but this was happening at a time scale that was too quick to be encompassed by the slow and methodical pace of natural selection favoring some traits over others. He used Lamarck’s inheritance of acquired characteristics as a mechanism that could still promote mutual aid with an evolutionary underpinning but at a much faster rate. Kropotkin saw almost all biological and political change as something that happened in spurts. When it occurred it would occur quickly and it would occur intensely. But then there would be periods where very little was going on.
Johnson: This sounds a lot like the theory of punctuated equilibrium that would later be proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge.
Dugatkin: Yes. This is sort of a political version of punctuated equilibrium. Kropotkin saw that there was an episodic nature to major political change that maps nicely onto the punctuated equilibrium view of biological change.
Johnson: And epigenetics? Kropotkin was a committed Darwinist and rejected the idea that physical traits evolved the way Lamarck proposed. But, as you point out, his theory of mutual aid was based in animal cognition and empathy. There has been a great deal of work recently, most notably by biologist Michael Meaney at McGill University in Montreal, that has identified non-genetic heritable changes in cooperative behavior that occur based on environmental influences. What do you think epigeneticists would have to say about Kropotkin's ideas?
Dugatkin: I think the epigeneticists today would be pretty happy with Kropotkin. There are a small cadre of folks who think that the inheritance of acquired characteristics may play a role in evolutionary change among nonhumans. But when it comes to human cooperation I think everybody understands that both classic Darwinian natural selection but also what amounts to the inheritance of acquired characteristics drive the evolution of human behavior. It's a dynamic between cultural and genetic evolution. While most animal behaviorists today might dismiss the Lamarckian side of Peter Kropotkin as something that we shouldn’t even be talking about anymore, human sociobiologists would be much kinder to him.
Johnson: In your book you write that “for more than 80 years—until about the 1960s—Kropotkin’s ideas on mutual aid played a prominent, critical role in the study of behavior and evolution.” By that I assume you’re referring to the work of George C. Williams, William Hamilton, and John Maynard Smith who heavily criticized the concept of group selection and inaugurated what is sometimes referred to as “neo-Darwinism,” best known through the selfish gene theory of Richard Dawkins.
Dugatkin: Absolutely. The birth of sociobiology and behavioral ecology in the 1960s is also the death of Peter Kropotkin’s work within the animal behavior sciences. Until that point there were at least some people who were paying attention to Kropotkin’s work, not enough, but some people were paying attention. This was happening particularly in what was called the Chicago School of animal behavior that included folks like W.C. Alee, Alfred Emerson, and their colleagues. They paid real attention to Kropotkin. When G.C. Williams and Hamilton, as well as Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, came around it was the death knell for Kropotkin because the idea that traits can benefit others at a cost to oneself was severely criticized, in many ways rightly so. But I think that Kropotkin was thrown out with the bathwater. I don’t think anybody in that selfish gene group really read Kropotkin. I’m fairly certain they didn’t.
Johnson: Kropotkin clearly seemed to be advocating an early form of group selection. But wasn’t Darwin often advocating this as well? There’s a well-known quote from his book The Descent of Man that “Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” He goes on to argue how those groups would end up doing better than other groups, a textbook definition of group selection.
Dugatkin: Yes, this is the most famous group selection quote associated with Darwin. I did my work with researchers who developed some of this group selection theory, and they’re certainly very familiar with that quote. Darwin, I think, did believe that group selection played a role in structuring human societies. However, the amount of space that’s spent on group and community level selection is very small and it’s almost all in The Descent of Man. This is an argument that group selectionists and selfish gene folks have all the time. Darwin has a very Jefferson-like quality in this regard. Abolitionists and slave holders could both claim that Thomas Jefferson said "X" about slavery and therefore he’s really the founder of their movement. But Darwin certainly talked about group selection and Kropotkin picked up on it. He then expanded on it in ways that were much deeper than Darwin, but he could and certainly did trace it to Darwin himself.
Johnson: Kropotkin argued that communities, left to themselves, would emphasize mutual aid internally and he saw the feudal lords and early capitalists as parasites that were exploiting the community for their own personal benefit. After the blatant exploitation and corruption in the heart of America’s financial sector, do you think there is some truth to this assertion?
Dugatkin: Kropotkin would not have been at all surprised by what has happened in the United States over the last few years. He generally had a negative view of capitalism but, even more important, was his work on mutual aid in human evolution from early on through the medieval period. His research showed that over and over again people figured out a way to create small, interacting cooperative groups like the guilds in the Middle Ages. But the problem he found was that, as soon as these cooperative groups emerged, it immediately created selection pressures that favored parasites. These parasites would come in and suck up what they needed from individuals who were being good to one another and, eventually, cause the society to crumble. So, certainly, Kropotkin would not have been at all surprised by what has happened today.
I think this gets to the episodic nature of social change in Kropotkin’s view. As soon as you establish a cooperative society, you immediately create these dramatic forces that favor cheating. The question of how to stop that was one that Kropotkin was obsessed with. He thought the prison system was a terrible solution to this sort of problem, that what it did was create more people that were even more parasitic when they came out because of the terrible conditions they had to deal with on the inside. But I don’t know that he was happy with any particular solution that he came up with. He knew this was one of the big problems that was going to consistently have to be dealt with. But in his heart of hearts I think he envisioned that a properly conceived anarchist society with rules for curtailing this kind of cheating would work. What exactly those rules would be, I think that's difficult to know. He had some ideas but I don’t think he was completely satisfied with any of them.
Johnson: In the nineteenth century Kropotkin felt that coming to a scientific understanding of community politics (with the goal of promoting a more cooperative society) was vitally important for the future of the human species. But he also lived during a time when disciplinary boundaries weren't so rigid and a naturalist could still have something valuable to contribute in the arena of political ideas. Do you think his project still holds any meaning in the twenty-first century?
Dugatkin: I absolutely do. I would argue that this is one of the many points that show Kropotkin’s prophetic powers. In essence what we are seeing today, what people like E.O. Wilson called Consilience, is the bringing together of the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities with an underlying naturalist explanation for everything that occurs on the planet, including political interactions. The lines between people who are studying evolution, economics, political science, psychology, anthropology, etc., are slowly beginning to fade because people realize that the underlying theoretical framework for all of these disciplines is evolution. Kropotkin knew that even then. He was really the first person to show how consilience could be achieved and he showed it, not just to other scientists, but to anyone and everyone who would listen. And there were plenty of people that did.RBMen has come across some more specs for the upcoming next Oppo Find handset, which we already heard is rumoured to be running the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor. The new device will supposedly be called the Find 7 not the Find 6, as it seems that Oppo prefers odd numbers. So without further delays here are the specs:
Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor (unknown clock speed)
5 inch 1920×1080 display
2GB RAM
13 megapixel rear camera
8 megapixel front facing camera
NFC enabled
4000mAh battery
The big deal here is the massive 4000mAh battery, which should help give this 5 inch handset plenty of battery life. Compare this with other 5 inch smartphones, like the Galaxy S4 which only has a 2600mAh battery, and you’re looking at a significant battery improvement. However there’s still no word on whether the battery will be removable or not, I wouldn’t bet on it based on the Find 5, but with that size I doubt it’s going to be such an issue for many users.
Apart from the Snapdragon 800 processor and the vastly improved front facing camera, the specs appear to be pretty much the same as the older Oppo Find 5. The handset will also supposedly be 9.9mm thick, which suggests that it will be a tiny bit larger than its older brother.
Just like we heard before, we’re still looking at a mid-September release date, but there’s no news yet about which regions the handset will be launching in. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer until we receive an official statement about the Oppo Find 7.Scotland is set to become a major new hub for the horror film industry under plans to transform a former church in Fife.
The UK’s only dedicated studio for the production of horror and fantasy films will be based there under plans backed by veteran American producer Roger Corman.
A green screen studio, sound recording facilities and special effects workshop will all be created at the historic “gothic revival” building in Kirkcaldy.
It is thought the £500,000 project, which is behind led by the Kirkcaldy-based production company Hex Media, will create up to 20 jobs.
Work is set to get underway on site within weeks with the new facilities expected to be up and running by the summer. Hex has declared that the new venture, which is expected to produce three films a year, will focus on “bold, original storytelling, and nurturing diverse voices in the genre.”
Hex Media founder Lawrie Brewster, an independent director and producer whose previous work includes Lord of Tears and The Unkindness of Ravens, said: “Hex Studios is inspired by the glory days of Hammer Horror at Bray Studios.
As a dedicated facility, Hex Studios will be producing, distributing and raising money for films like an old-fashioned studio would have done in the 1940s and 1950s.
“It’s more than just a physical production space or a studio company, it’s a grass-roots movement that seeks to pursue a revolutionary approach to the art and business of filmmaking.
“It will be based on developing talent in Scotland, rather than being a vehicle for international companies to come in and leave again. It will put Scotland right at the heart of horror genre filmmaking in Britain.”
Hex Media partner Sarah Daly added: “We want to foster a resurgence in the great British tradition of horror filmmaking, as well as providing opportunities for aspiring writers, actors and filmmakers in Scotland and all over the world.”
Corman, whose previous films include Little Shop of Horrors, House of Usher and Not Of This Earth, said: “Hex Studios is an ambitious new project which aims to rekindle the spirit of classic horror cinema, and gives me hope for the future of original, independent filmmaking.”
Scotland has a long history of being used as a backdrop for horror films. The best known is probably The Wicker Man, which sees a policeman played by Edward Woodward becoming increasingly suspicious of the behaviour of locals on a remote island where a child has been reported missing.
Most recently Scarlett Johannson played an alien predator roaming the country seducing young men in Under The Skin.
British director Neil Marshall made two horrors in the Highlands - Dog Soldiers, about a group of troops trying to fend off a pack of werewolves, and The Descent, which sees a group of female caving enthusiasts who are hunted down by flesh-eating creatures after they become trapped.
Celia Imrie is to star in a new film, Hush, about a pair of bogus ghost-busters hired to investigate an old foster home.We’re living at a time when a major shift in attitudes is bringing on a new era–one in which people get more value by owning less property. And this shift holds the power to change all of our lives, for the better. While it’s not the traditional American dream, it makes sense if you think about what’s defining America today:
New ways of sharing, driven by online social standards, have taken collaboration to new levels. Thanks to the social web, we can share and trade to use a whole universe of things we once had to buy ourselves. From cars to solar panels, people are realizing they can reap the benefits of ownership without the expense and hassle of buying. For me, not owning a car means I may spend a little extra time on public transportation, but I can use that time to read, catch up on work projects, and make the phone calls I couldn’t get to earlier. Plus, I never waste time at the mechanics or gas station.
After living through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, Americans have learned that relationships and experiences are more important than stuff, stuff, and more stuff. Take the now-retiring baby boomers. When their wealth was diminished by the financial crisis, they had to take a new approach to purchasing decisions. According to America’s Research Group Ltd. Chairman, “Many retirees are staying in their homes, moving closer to their children or getting smaller houses with less upkeep, instead of traveling or buying luxury items and second homes.”
Smart companies have shown Americans how greener choices can actually save them money in one fell swoop. And the people have spoken: If they can go green and save green, they will. In a recent survey my company Sunrun issued to better understand our customers’ motivations, 9 out of 10 Americans of both voting persuasions said they had made what can be considered ‘green’ changes to their lifestyles over the last five years. Their primary motivator? “Saving money.” The new status symbol isn’t what you own–it’s what you’re smart enough not to own.
The new status symbol isn’t what you own–it’s what you’re smart enough not to own.
At the same time, companies that target consumers have recognized this opportunity and are helping turn it into a movement. For example, Airbnb users have now booked over 10 million nights of stays in other people’s homes. A survey conducted earlier this year revealed that almost 20% of Zipcar members sell their cars after joining, and nearly half reported that the service allowed them to avoid buying a car altogether. I am a Zipcar user and love the convenience of it both for daily life and travel.
I’ve heard some opinions that this trend of dis-ownership is limited to the young and urban, that it’s just a temporary phase. But, data proves otherwise: While started in San Francisco, it now spans more than 26,000 cities and nearly 200 countries. In cities and small towns across the globe, Airbnb offers multiple choices of places to stay.Everyone seems to comment on "there are a few bad actors".
That is true. The number of "line cutters" is small compared to the total. It is also true there are a few bad actors everywhere. But - and I don't know why this is the case - everyone seems to be missing some context which makes jumping the queue in China different than other places.
Line cutters are ignored by everyone else Sure there are bad people everywhere. But if someone cut in line in the US, the rest of the line would revolt and that person would be ridiculed, yelled at, and flat out physically pushed to the back of the line if necessary. In China, not only do people not say a word, they frequently make room for the cutter.
Lines (queues) are not typical I have seen the pictures below of some lines in China, but they are not typical. Unless there is something forcing people to stand in line (ropes or wooden barriers, like at Disneyland), Chinese people almost never line up (queue).
Go down in the Beijing subway. There are lines painted on the ground showing where people should stand to get on and not stand to let others off - just like in Tokyo, London, Boson, etc. People will usually not stand right in front of the door. But if someone is at the "front" of the "get on here" painted sign, others will simply stand next to / in front of them crowding the "get off here" lane. And if people queue in the "get on here" lane, others will simply crowd around, ignoring the queue.
Why would anyone stand in line? There was a story about a reporter who went over before the Olympics. China was trying to show how cosmopolitan it was. The gov't minders brought a bunch of reporters down to the subway to show them how excellent it was. There were people with flags standing next to each door, and everyone queued perfectly.
The reporters took pictures and were ushered off. One had actually lived in China before, spoke Mandarin, and hung around to catch a train somewhere after the rest left. The moment the people with the flags left, all the queues collapsed into a mob pushing their way onto the train.
The reporter asked someone why they were no longer queueing. The people said "why would we? the government people left". They were honestly confused why anyone would queue if there wasn't an authority telling you to queue. It was not that they were thinking they could get ahead, they just did not understand what the point of standing in line was.
They can be shamed Contrary to some people's beliefs, the queue jumpers can be shamed.
This is limited to places where there are barriers or people telling you to stand in line. It does not work in shops or other places where there is no clear designation to "stand here".
The people jumping in line depend on the rest of the crowd to stand aside and say nothing. If several people loudly comment on how rude they are, they actually look embarrassed and sometimes even go to the back of the line.
It's uncommon, but 10 years ago it never happened. Now it happens, albeit rarely.
Nothing to do with being foreign or gender As others have said, this is not related to being non-Chinese or male/female - although my personal experience is males jump the queue far more often than females.
I see Chinese people jumping a queue full of nothing but Chinese people all the time.
I've even been asked the opposite! As some of you might know, airlines frequently have multiple lines for economy, business class, first class, and the like. My wife and I were walking up to a counter in Beijing airport and walked into the business class line, which happened to be empty at the moment. (I have lots of miles & upgraded.) A Chinese person in the (very long) economy line shouted to the attendant. My wife (who was born & raised in Beijing) started laughing.
Apparently the Chinese lady was asking if we got to jump the queue because I was white. The attendant pointed out we were in the business class line, while my wife pointed out there were multiple "white" people in the economy line in front of and behind the lady in question.
Guess people see what they want to see.
Perhaps due to the cultural revolution? I've heard from people living in China that line cutting / queue jumping is due to Mao & the cultural revolution.
Mao encouraged things like reporting your parents to the Party if they were not loyal, destroying millennia of "respect your elders" culture. He did many other things which essentially nullified what people in the west would call "civilized behavior".
I honestly cannot tell if that is true or perhaps just a contributing factor, or maybe irrelevant. But in my limited personal experience, those who lived there at that time seem to think this is the cause of the deterioration of Chinese society.
Summary Hope this helped add some context to other people's answers.
When I go to China, I ignore the queue jumpers - mostly. My wife doesn't like me to make a scene. But if I am near where they are going to "cut", I physically block their way and stare them down. I'm a reasonably large white person, which makes me slightly larger than a typical Chinese. I do not tower over them like some people do, but I am big enough not to be |
was wondering about Laurie. Not just the fact that she's alive but also that she'd keep that from Kevin. With the choice to have Laurie be alive though, how did you think viewers might react given that so many of us thought she'd died back in "Certified?" Essentially, we thought we'd said our goodbyes and here she was alive and with a child. How did you think her resurrection, as it were, might be received? And was she convinced not to kill herself because she heard her kids' voices on the phone or did she never intend to kill herself at all?
Lindelof: I'll speak to how I think others might absorb this piece of information, that Laurie is alive, and how that impacts the story of "Certified" and I'll also tell you a little bit about what was happening in the writers' room and on the set because I think it's very holistic and inter-twined, starting with the writers' room. When we broke that story, and then Patrick Somerville and Carly Wray wrote that script, we were pretty much committed to the idea that she killed herself. That she was dead. And Amy Brenneman emailed me, because I wasn't going to be down in Australia before the scene where she went overboard, but I was going to be there for the scene where she says goodbye to Kevin on the porch of Grace's ranch. She was like, "I kind of need to know." And I said, "Look, I'll always give you an absolute when it's an absolute and this is a very big question you're asking, but I'm 90% sure Laurie is not coming out of the water" and she was like, "Okay, I understand."
So all that being said, all the best things we've ever done on The Leftovers, even when they felt really risky or dangerous, there was a level of our guts telling us that it was the right thing to do. And even if the audience might reject it or thought we were crazy, we're into this. The fact that Laurie killed herself - it just wasn't sitting well. We were feeling really angry and uneasy about it. Then the dailies came in -- Carl Franklin directed that episode -- and there's this amazing shot of Laurie basically cutting across the water with the early morning light on her face and she looks brave and courageous. And my brain started asking, and my heart started asking, "Is this what someone looks like when they're about to go kill themselves?" Also, have we earned Laurie killing herself after all Laurie's gone through and been through, all the tragedies she's suffered and all the things that happened in this episode, is her solution to this to give up? Is there actually nobility in her suicide? And then we watched the scene where Tom and Jill call her and she puts on the mask and goes under and it was really upsetting to us. Maybe upsetting because we were saying goodbye to a beloved character but also maybe upsetting because it felt like it was the wrong choice.
“ The more important part of the narrative here is that the writers' room kind of shut down after this, emotionally.
The more important part of the narrative here is that the writers' room kind of shut down after this, emotionally. Normally we were unanimous, and there were intense and passionate conversations about the show, but we would always land on something that we agreed on and felt good about. The first time this didn't happen was during this part. And we couldn't break episode seven or eight. Was it separation anxiety? Was it the difficulty that the end was coming? We'd already talked so much about what the ending was going to be and what [episode] seven was going to be, and that it should be exciting that we were going back to this "International Assassin" space, but the morale was super low. And I went to each writer in their office, one by one, to basically ask what was going on and they all answered "Laurie." They couldn't shake it. And so if the audience was going to be feeling this way after the episode airs, I didn't want them to be feeling this way. I didn't think we should change the ending of six and it's still going to strongly imply that she's not coming up - but what would happen if she did? What would happen if she decided not to kill herself?
Then we started asking some of the questions you were asking, which is "Well, when did she decide to not kill herself?" Was it when she was going out on that boat? Was that already a declaration of life? Was it a "F*** You" to suicide? "Oh Nora, you pitched me this scuba diving idea? Well, I'm going scuba diving as an affirmation of life. Kevin talks about being drowned? I'm going under the water with a scuba tank on and I'm going to be under there breathing. I'm going to come up." And then, the major thing that happened was when she speaks to Tom and Jill she doesn't tell them she's in Australia. She doesn't tell them she's about to scuba dive. So were she to kill herself they would go, "Wait, mom died in a scuba accident five minutes after we talked to her? And when we asked her where she was and what she was up to she didn't say she was even in Australia?" It was too suspicious and it would totally negate the idea of the selfless faked accident. All signs were just pointing to the fact that Laurie was coming out of the water.
Then the next dailies that came in were of the scene on the bluffs where Nora talked about the beach ball and when Nora asks why anyone would want that job, of squeezing the air out of the ball, I was like "Yeah, I don't want to squeeze the air out of the ball" and that's what it felt like by killing Laurie. And then Laurie agrees to be Nora's shrink and I though, "What if she's still Nora's shrink fifteen years from now? What if Laurie is her one connection to the real world? Does that feel right?" And it did. So she was Schrödinger's Laurie. She was both alive and dead for a certain period of time. And then she was alive. So that was all the thinking behind the choice. As for the other part of your question, asking will the audience have that experience that we would have when you kill a character off at the end of one movie and then suddenly... "Ripley's alive again?" You know, "They built a new Terminator? It feels like a cop-out. I went through the emotional experience of letting go of this person and now it feels like a cheat."
“ I don't think that we earned Laurie's suicide.
I can't speak to that. I don't know what people are going to feel about Laurie still being alive but I think the way we re-introduce Laurie in the world, in service of Nora -- and it's almost a comedic scene, like in a rom-com when someone tells their best friend "the guy asked me to the dance" and the friend says "maybe you should go" -- I hope that people go with it. But more importantly, I don't think that we earned Laurie's suicide. And maybe the reason for that is that suicide is never really earned. There's always a level of confusion surrounding it. Unless someone is dying from an illness that's going to cause a lot of pain for them, does suicide ever make quote unquote sense? Probably not. But making the decision I made freed up the writers' room to do the work they needed to do for seven and eight, so I'll never regret making that decision.
Continue on as Lindelof discusses the question of whether Nora was telling the truth or not when she told Kevin her story.I’m not one to post these long novel Facebook statuses, but I really feel that this needs/should be made public – and put to the people. Yesterday afternoon, I ordered an Uber (as I do on the daily.) Little did I know on this particular afternoon I would be stepping into an Uber with a psychotic/mentally unstable driver aka “Paul”. After refusing to put my destination into his GPS he requested my directing (which I had no problem with) however I was on an important phone call and during one of the directions he snapped and screamed at me in a very aggressive manner. He then pulled the car over continued to scream “get out of my car” multiple times whilst getting very physical, grabbing me and trying to drag me out of the car.
He soon realised that there were 4 on lookers witnessing the whole thing and yelling that they were calling the police – he then panicked and ran back around to the driver side door, jumped in to his 4WD – and hit the accelerator like an absolute maniac. My door was still open as I was frantically trying to grab my bags out of the car and before I could get away I was thrown to the ground and my leg was being run over.
Sascha Pangallo suffered a suspected broken leg (Picture: Facebook)Ben Carson and Donald Trump. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who recently left the race for the Republican presidential nomination, will endorse Donald Trump on Friday morning.
The Washington Post, which first reported the news, notes that the endorsement is the "most high-profile nod" for Trump since former candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie endorsed the frontrunner.
Carson reportedly met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, the latter's resort in Florida where the announcement will take place. Carson has "gradually come to see Trump as the GOP's best chance of winning a general election and turning out droves of disengaged voters," according to The Post.
Carson told Fox News earlier in the day that he was leaning toward endorsing Trump, calling him a "thinking individual."
Trump himself confirmed the endorsement during CNN's Republican debate on Thursday night.
"I was with Dr. Ben Carson today, who's endorsing me, by the way, tomorrow morning," Trump said.
The endorsement comes at somewhat of a surprise, considering the difference in tone between the two. Carson became known for his calm demeanor and refusal to get in the "mud" of politics, as his business manager, Armstrong Williams, once said.
In contrast, Trump is known for his blistering critiques of his rivals, including Carson. Trump once compared Carson's "temper" to that of child molesters.
Trump was "very brutal" in his criticism of Carson, Williams told Business Insider on Thursday. But Carson decided to put it behind him.
"None of it ever bothered Dr. Carson," Williams said. "... It's just politics. This is what they do. But sometimes you just have to rise above all of it and ask what's best for the country."
Carson also thinks Trump has the clearest path to the Republican nomination.
"Dr. Carson feels like the American people have spoken. There's something about Donald Trump being a strong man," Williams said, adding that "neither Rubio nor Cruz have a pathway to the nomination."
"He feels that Donald Trump is probably the best chance of moving America forward, of changing this country," Williams said.
And Carson thinks he might be able to influence Trump, according to Williams.
"He believes deep down that he can have a very profound impact on his thinking, on his temperament and everything else," Williams said. "When he met with Mr. Trump this morning, he saw a different side of him. He saw a humble man who was willing to listen."Shenmue creator Yu Zuzuki has said that he will not be disappointed if Shenmue 3's Kickstarter funding fails to reach his dream of $10 million.
Responding to a question about the $10 million target during a Q&A over the weekend, Suzuki said: "No I won't be [disappointed]. I am grateful that there's another chance for a new Shenmue. I will make what I can within the budget from your money."
If $10 million is achieved, Suzuki says that "the area Choubu will get a big expansion, and be like Dobuita in Yokosuka where you will have a lot of options to explore and have fun. I hope we can shoot for that goal and make Shenmue 3 more open world like".
Suzuki also reiterated his desire to finish the Shenmue story, which may require a fourth instalment in the series.
"I'm going to have to think about having a successor," he said in relation to completing his story.
During last month's Reddit AMA he explained: "There are a total of 11 chapters that make up the whole story. Over the past 14 years I originally planned for there to 4 or five games to the series. If at all possible, I would still like to realize the full story of 11 chapters."
Suzuki isn't clear on how exactly this could be achieved just yet, although he told fans that he's "not considering" story-based chapter expansions at the moment. And if future instalments were to be released, Suzuki says he has "not decided" if players will be able to bring over save data from Shenmue 3.
Suzuki also teased VR fans, stating that he feels "VR offers great possibilities", although whether or not that will be as part of Shenmue 3 remains to be seen.
Source: KickstarterGet the biggest Arsenal FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Arsene Wenger will move for West Ham contract rebel Winston Reid next month.
The Gunners boss has targeted the New Zealand centre-half because he believes West Ham may be tempted to sell rather than lose Reid for nothing in the summer.
West Ham are desperately trying to get the 26-year-old to sign a new deal but Reid appears to have set his sights on a move away from Upton Park.
He wants £60,000-a-week and a £1m signing-on fee if he is a free agent in the summer with Liverpool also monitoring developments closely.
But Wenger wants to bolster his squad in January with a defender top of his wish list and Arsenal have watched Reid in every single game for the past two months.
(Image: PA)
Hammers boss Sam Allardyce will be desperate not to sell Reid but Arsenal believe they may be able to tempt them with a cut-price offer.
Arsenal have also been scouting Celtic’s Virgil Van Dijk since last summer and the Dutchman could be available for around £10m in January.
They have also been watching Ipswich’s Tyrone Mings as one for the future but they will go for Reid and then look at other targets.
Gallery: West Ham vs Arsenal
Arsenal are also looking at a holding midfielder and Wenger has been told he has got £20m to spend in January and therefore may be able to get two players in.
But it is understood that a defender is his No1 priority as Laurent Koscielny has a chronic Achilles problem and has been missing games. There is a fear that he will also miss a chunk of the second half of the season.
READ MORE: 5 things we learnt from West Ham 1-2 Arsenal
In pictures: Arsenal's January transfer targetsThe San Francisco 49ers have "effectively completed" a trade involving quarterback Alex Smith, CBS Sports' Jason La Canfora reported on Sunday.
La Canfora reported that the 49ers have told inquiring teams that they have completed a trade, but it cannot be finalized until the league year officially begins on March 12.
The other team involved in the trade wasn't immediately clear. La Canfora speculated that the teams that make the most sense would be the Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars. Yahoo Sports' Jason Cole reported Saturday that the Chiefs were among the most active pursuers of Smith.
The 49ers have expressed to others that a deal for QB Alex Smith is effectively complete. Can't be finalized til league year begins 3/12 — Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) February 24, 2013
so it's not official, both clubs view it at as it's effectively done. I do not know the other team. KC and JAX are 2 teams that make sense — Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) February 24, 2013
Smith was in the midst of the best season of his career before suffering a concussion on Nov. 11. Up to that point, he had a 104.1 passer rating and had guided the 49ers to a 6-2 record. But Colin Kaepernick dazzled the next week against Chicago, and head coach Jim Harbaugh made the decision to stick with Kaepernick thereafter.I was driven to buy this book by the fact that this book was written by Rachel who is just 16. This is the 1st time I buy a book from her. I have 2 little girls at home and they want bedtime stories all the time. I have little imagination and not much patience. I always start telling a story and and then the end ( which means I start a story and end it in seconds). I love the fact that a child can write books as I believe they have more imagination than adults.
I would always support this type of work, I mean a book for a child written by another kid is so genuine. It is not like when adults write books they might do it for money. When a kid imagines a story and then makes it a book they do it because it is fun. It they do it for fun they can pass that on. I love the fact that this book leaves a message. I think all childrens book should leave a message.As the world’s most successful hippie-capitalists, cream-enthusiasts and inveterate chunketarians Ben and Jerry have always been out front on environmental issues. Their latest conservation endeavor will definitely increase their company's lead. Vermont's most famous lactose lovers have purchased a zero emissions ice-cream truck. More precisely, they've bought a fast-as-hell Tesla Model S.
Jerry Greenfield chose the best of Elon Musk’s electric supercars, a D model, with all-wheel drive, 600 horsepower and a zero-to-sixty time of 3.3 seconds. Reportedly, the car will maintain all its performance capabilities despite being outfitted with several freezers (for deliveries, of course) and a groovy paint job featuring the appeal, “Save Our Swirled!”
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
The purchase is another step toward the company’s plan to rely exclusively on renewable energy sources by 2020. We congratulate the company and support their green policies, which we will aid by brainstorming ideas for the inevitable Elon Musk-derived specialty flavor.
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
"WatermElon"? "Teslatté"? "Butterscotch Bailout"? It's easy to get creative, but we'd advise keeping it simple. Just go with "Musk."
[photo via Twitter.com/benjerrystour]
Photos by Twitter.com/benjerrystourFor the longest time, people believed that the world's largest lizard, the Komodo dragon, killed its prey with a dirty mouth. Strands of rotting flesh trapped in its teeth harbour thriving colonies of bacteria and when the dragon bites an animal, these microbes flood into the wound and eventually cause blood poisoning.
But that theory was contested in 2005 when Bryan Fry from the University of Melbourne discovered that a close relative, the lace monitor, has venom glands in its mouth. The discovery made Fry suspect that Komodo dragons also poison their prey and he has just confirmed that in a whirlwind of a paper, which details the dragon's "sophisticated combined-arsenal killing apparatus".
By putting a virtual dragon skull through a digital crash-test, Fry showed that its bite is relatively weak for a predator of its size - instead it's adapted to resist strong pulling forces. This is a hunter built to inflict massive wounds through a "grip and rip" style that involves biting lightly but tearing ferociously.
The wounds provide a large open area for the dragon to inject its venom and Fry unquestionably showed that the dragons poison their prey. By placing the head of a terminally ill dragon in an MRI scanner, he managed to isolate the venom glands, which turn out to be more structurally complex than those of any other snake or lizard. He even managed to analyse a sample of venom, which is loaded with toxins that prevent blood from clotting and induce shock.
And as the icing on the cake, Fry concluded that Varanus prisca, a extinct close relative of the Komodo dragon probably also had venom glands. Also known as Megalania, V.prisca was three times the size of the Komodo dragon, making it (to our knowledge) the largest venomous animal to have ever lived.
Fry used a CT scanner to create a three-dimensional model of a Komodo dragon's skull and he assessed its properties with a technique called finite element analysis. Engineers use the method to crash-test cars; Fry used it to compare the dragon's skull to that of another giant reptile - the saltwater crocodile. Of the two, the dragon had a much weaker bite, exerting just 39N of force with its jaws compared to the 252N chomp of the croc. If a dragon bit with that much strength, its skull would fracture.
The dragon's skull wasn't much better at coping with twisting or shaking movements either - this is not an animal that can bite and hold onto a prey animal for long. However, Fry found that its skull is highly resistant to pulling forces, and that's the key to its method of attack. Biologists watching these animals have noted that when they bite, they often yank their heads back with powerful neck muscles. Their skulls take the brunt and their sharp, serrated teeth open considerable wounds in their prey.
Other studies using finite element analysis have found that other famous predators, like sabre-toothed cats and great white sharks, do similar things. For their size, they have relatively weak bites but they made up for it with strong neck muscles and very sharp teeth. In all cases, prey start losing blood, but those bitten by the Komodo dragon suffer from another weapon - venom.
Fry used a medical MRI scanner to analyse the preserved head of a dead Komodo dragon and found that it has two long venom glands, running down the length of its jaw. They are the most structurally complex venom glands of any reptile. Each consists of six compartments, with ducts leading from each one to openings between the teeth. Other venomous lizards, like the Gila monster, channel venom down grooves that run the length of their teeth but the Komodo dragon doesn't have these - it just drips venom straight into the wounds that it inflicts.
The venom itself consists of over 600 toxins, a chemical arsenal that rivals those of many snakes. Many of these poisons are familiar and they greatly exacerbate the blood loss caused by the dragon's bite. They cause internal haemorrhaging from leaky blood vessels, prevent blood from clotting and cause muscle contractions and paralysis. Fry calculated that a typical adult dragon would need only 4mg of venom proteins to send a 40kg deer into toxic shock from collapsing blood pressure. A full venom gland packs at least eight times this amount.
If the dragon has venom, you can be sure that it uses it. Venom is so costly to produce that the moment it becomes obsolete, natural selection rapidly does away with it. That's happened in other reptiles - members of venomous families that have developed other ways of feeding (like constriction, or egg-eating) quickly lost their venom system. The glands atrophied, the fangs became smaller and the genes that produce toxic proteins built up debilitating mutations. The Komodo dragon, on the other hand, has strong glands that are loaded with poison.
These results don't discredit the salivary bacteria idea, but Fry has little time for it. For a start, he says that since the dragon was first 'discovered' by Western scientists in 1912, no one has actually documented a case of a dragon victim falling foul of blood poisoning. While dangerous bacteria have been isolated from the mouths of Komodo dragons, no single species has been consistently identified in all individuals. This variability makes it very unlikely that dragons could rely on the presence of toxic bacteria as a reliably strategy to hinge their evolutionary success upon.
One study suggested that the bacterium, Pasteurella multocida, accounted for much of the saliva's killing power, but the researchers didn't find this lethal bug in all the dragons they looked at. P.multocida is rare in reptiles but common in mammals, especially those that are sick or old - exactly the demographic that dragons prefer to kill. As such, Fry believes that the bacteria isolated from the mouths of dragons actually came from the animals they fed on. To him, Komodo dragon victims die not from bacterial sepsis, but from heavy, bleeding wounds that are exacerbated by the toxic effects of the giant lizard's venom.
The dragon's extinct and even bigger relative, V.prisca or Megalania, may have done the same. This giant lizard also had a strong skull but relatively slender jawbones. It was very closely related to the Komodo dragon and the lace monitor, both of which are venomous. And Fry has previously shown that the capacity to produce venom evolved once in the common ancestor of snakes and lizard groups like the iguanas and monitors. There's every reason to think that V.prisca used venom too, which would make it the largest venomous animal to have ever lived.
For more venomous animals, and some truly amazing stories, be sure to check out Bryan Fry's blog Sex, Drugs and Rockin' Venom: Confessions of an Extreme Scientist.
Reference: Fry, B., Wroe, S., Teeuwisse, W., van Osch, M., Moreno, K., Ingle, J., McHenry, C., Ferrara, T., Clausen, P., Scheib, H., Winter, K., Greisman, L., Roelants, K., van der Weerd, L., Clemente, C., Giannakis, E., Hodgson, W., Luz, S., Martelli, P., Krishnasamy, K., Kochva, E., Kwok, H., Scanlon, D., Karas, J., Citron, D., Goldstein, E., Mcnaughtan, J., & Norman, J. (2009). A central role for venom in predation by Varanus komodoensis (Komodo Dragon) and the extinct giant Varanus (Megalania) priscus Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0810883106; Dragon photos by Chris Kegelman; skull image from paper.
More on komodo dragons and other lizards:He frequently dresses up in different costumes and even puts on make-up, but it's not a hobby nor fetish for Kongsak Nimitkasem, or 'Tum'.
Instead, he puts on his 'performance' for his 10-year-old son, Ikkyu, who was left brain-damaged and paralysed after a choking incident four years ago.
The family, who reside in Thailand, had gone for a meal at a steamboat restaurant when the then six-year-old Ikkyu choked on a fishball.
Ikkyu and his younger sister, before the accident.Photo: Facebook/น้องอิคคิว
His heart had stopped for four minutes, but doctors managed to resuscitate him. Ikkyu was in a coma for three days before regaining consciousness, but as his brain was starved of oxygen for that precious few minutes, Ikkyu was left with permanent brain damage and paralysis.
Having his son wake up a completely different person was a devastating blow to Tum and his wife.
Ikkyu, four years after the accident, and his sister.Photo: Facebook/น้องอิคคิว
Instead of a bubbly and active six-year-old, Ikkyu was glassy-eyed and expressionless, with limbs that were rigid and immobile.
However, Tum, who also has a younger daughter with his wife, did not give up hope.
He said: "Ikkyu may not be able to remember anything, but I will help him remember. Even if he never knows how much I love him, but as long as he bravely lives on so that I can still look after him, that's good enough."
Tum quit his job to look after Ikkyu full-time, and believes that his son will one day make a miracle recovery.
In order to make Ikkyu happy and possibly elicit a response from him, Tum began cosplaying and cross-dressing - from donning sexy sailor outfits to leopard prints, nothing was out of bounds.
Occasionally he would dress and put on make-up for Ikkyu too, hoping to trigger his sensory nerves.
Although he remains unresponsive most of the time, Ikkyu would occasionally break into a smile, giving Tum a sliver of hope and motivation to continue his unusual form of 'therapy'.
"Even though we can't change the past, but we can alter the future," said Tum, whose dashing good looks have earned him the description 'handsome dad' in some news media.
His positivity and unyielding dedication has also touched netizens across the region from Thailand to Hong Kong and Taiwan, who have offered donations to help the family cope with their expenses.
candicec@sph.com.sgWASHINGTON - President Barack Obama saluted the NHL's Boston Bruins for their 2011 Stanley Cup championship on Monday, but one key member of the team skipped the White House visit in protest.
"I believe the federal government has grown out of control, threatening the rights, liberties, and property of the people," Goalie Tim Thomas said in a statement. The decision to stay away, Thomas said, "was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country."
Even though Thomas, winner of the Vezina Trophy as the league's top goaltender in the regular season and the playoff MVP, skipped the event, many of the Bruins made it to the White House.
The Bruins won their first Stanley Cup title in 39 years last June after a bruising seven-game final series against the Vancouver Canucks.
It was the latest in a string of Boston sports championships, including the Celtics in 2008, the Red Sox in 2007 and the New England Patriots in 2005. The Patriots play in next month's Super Bowl.
"The Bruins, the Sox, the Celtics, now the Patriots. Enough already, Boston," Obama said during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. "What's going on, huh?"
Obama also jokingly invoked some New England slang in welcoming the Bruins, along with the Stanley Cup, to the White House.
"I know you are all wicked happy to be here," he said.
The president said there was no better image of the Bruins' dominance than when Zdeno Chara, the team's 6-foot-9 defenseman, hoisted the Stanley Cup above his head in Vancouver in celebration last spring.
"Which is, I'm sure, the highest that the Stanley Cup had ever been," he said.
Obama drew laughter from the crowd when he cited the scrappy play of Bruins forward Brad Marchand, who emerged as a star with five goals in the last five games of the finals against Vancouver.
"'The `Little Ball of Hate' shrugged off the rookie jitters," said Obama, adding "What's up with that nickname, man?"
Obama praised the teamwork of the six-time champions.
"Together, these players proved that teamwork is everything," he said. "It can overcome injuries, it can overcome long odds."
Obama praised the team for its work off the ice as well, noting the Boston Bruins Foundation has donated more than $7 million to charities in New England.Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley Meets With Oregonian Editorial Board
Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley on Oct. 7, 2014 discussed his experience with the Cover Oregon health exchange.
(Beth Nakamura / The Oregonian)
Updated with new Cover Oregon response:
As a U.S. senator, Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., makes $174,000 a year. So imagine his surprise a few months ago, when he learned the Cover Oregon health insurance exchange had enrolled him in the Oregon Health Plan, which covers only the poorest of the poor.
Chalk up another embarrassing glitch for Cover Oregon, which remains a troubled work-in-progress after months of triage and more than $300 million in taxpayer money.
A few months ago, Merkley opened the mail at his east Portland home to find he'd been enrolled in the Medicaid-funded Oregon Health Plan.
The Oregon Democrat already had signed up for private insurance about six months before using the exchange, braving an application process that he called "horrific."
"It must have been about half a year after I was on (private insurance) we suddenly got a mailing that said 'Congratulations, you're enrolled!'" Merkley recalled. "And I was like, 'What? You're crazy.'"
The error by the exchange and the Oregon Health Authority, which oversees the health plan, is significant not only because it involves a sitting U.S. senator. It appears to also reveal a new type of enrollment glitch: not just an erroneous enrollment or miscalculation of benefit, but a double enrollment of someone who clearly was ineligible for Oregon's version of Medicaid.
Exchange officials on Thursday said that the problem of "dual enrollment" -- someone enrolled in private insurance as well as Medicaid by Cover Oregon and the Oregon Health Authority -- is not unique to Merkley. They said the group represents a portion of the more than 2,100 enrollment errors announced earlier this fall.
In addition to receiving his salary, Merkley's wife works as a registered nurse. They and their two children also receive income from several rental properties.
For a family of four, the Oregon Health Plan is reserved for incomes of about $32,900 or below.
The Medicaid mistake was one of several he and his family were subject to while applying, Merkley said on Tuesday. He disclosed his story for the first time in response to The Oregonian's questions about his experience with the exchange.
His decision to use Cover Oregon was a personally costly one. Members of Congress received a large subsidy only if they use the Washington, D.C., exchange – more than $900 a month for a family plan.
But Merkley has long made a point of "not living in a bubble," he said, residing in troubled low-income communities in D.C. in the 1980s as a congressional analyst, and later in Portland. With Cover Oregon, "I wanted to have the same experience that Oregonians were having, to see what this was about," he said.
So he and his family signed up through Cover Oregon in November, using a fax machine for their initial application to make sure they had a record that they had applied.
"And then you wait," he recalled. "You have no confirmation from the state that they've received it. And your spouse is going 'Are we going to have insurance when our current insurance runs out?'And you're like 'Well, I hope so but we're waiting to hear from the state.'"
Then his family received a second-stage application telling him his initial application has been approved, and he was eligible to choose between a variety of private plans.
That's when they encountered what Merkley calls "the first mess-up."
The second-stage application instructions were that he had to "exactly" enter the same information that the state had returned to him from his initial application.
But in the slot for his family size in the form sent him by the state was a staggering number.
"They had taken our zip code and put it into the square that was the number of people in your family," Merkley recalled. "So I had 97,000 people in my family."
"The instructions were that you must put exactly this information into the next form," Merkley recalled. "I could have single-handedly increased the sign-ups for Oregon health care by 100,000 people."
Instead, he contacted the exchange, which told him to ignore the mistake and put his zip code in the correct place on the form.
Later, he alerted the state to his family's Medicaid enrollment, and that was fixed as well. He assumes the mistake was one of thousands made by the hundreds of temps hired to manually enroll people when the Cover Oregon website flopped. There wasn't a lot of training or quality control for those people, Merkley observed. "It was some central mess-up," he said, but "I've never gotten the details of what went wrong."
The exchange and the Oregon Health Authority have already acknowledged several other types of errors:
In February, anonymous whistleblowers alerted lawmakers that the exchange had
In August, the state began contacting
On Sept. 1, the state withdrew Oregon Health Plan coverage for
In September The Oregonian broke the news that thousands of Oregonians
As for Merkley, he calls the application process "a nightmare" and calls the Cover Oregon technology project a "debacle." He faults technology vendor Oracle America as well as the state for a project that he says should not have been so complicated.
But he said his experience only reinforced his support of the Affordable Care Act that created the exchanges. He has publicly defended his vote for the law while he runs for reelection against Monica Wehby, a local pediatric neurosurgeon who has criticized the health care law.
Merkley said he was struck by the fact that so many in Oregon were willing to go through the "gauntlet" that he did to sign up. The exchange processed applications for more than 350,000 Oregonians, including 250,000 who enrolled in the Oregon Health Plan.
"It's amazing how many families went through this," he said. "They were locked out of the health care system, and having access to affordable health care was so fundamental to their quality of life that they pursued it through all these frustrations."
-- Nick BudnickUpdate (November 1, 2017): Added Python 3 support.
A few months ago, I got first place in this Code Golf contest to create the weirdest obfuscated program that prints the string “Hello world!”. I decided to write up an explanation of how the hell it works. So, here’s the entry, in Python 2.7:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 ( lambda _, __, ___, ____, _____, ______, _______, ________ : getattr ( __import__ ( True. __class__. __name__ [ _ ] + []. __class__. __name__ [ __ ]), (). __class__. __eq__. __class__. __name__ [: __ ] + (). __iter__ (). __class |
LinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[1].pntx kFloatLinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[1].pnty kFloatLinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[1].pntz kFloatLinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[2].pntx kFloatLinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[2].pnty kFloatLinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[2].pntz kFloatLinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[3].pntx kFloatLinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[3].pnty kFloatLinearAttribute pPlaneShape1.pnts[3].pntz kFloatLinearAttribute }}} Which tells me that in some cases, the plugs don't exist until some type of user interaction. Something even crazier I've found: If instead of grabbing all the verts by hand and deleting them, if I instead run the command: {{{ delete -constructionHistory; }}} On the mesh, the attrs will appear as well. It must be triggering some kind of massive "you are dirty" flag on all the plugs so they suddenly show up.... or something.... I have yet to find a more elegant solution for this :( ---- Also see: *[[API: Find all attributes & plugs on a node]] *[[How can I get a list of all the child multi-attrs, of a given attr name?]] (using the command engine, rather than the API)
''API Code Snippet'' In this example, I set all variable names to be the type of object they are, to make it easier to understand how objects are returned and used. I don't recommend doing this in regular code, just using it as an explanation tool __Highlights:__ *Create {{{MItDag}}} 'DAG iterator object' to loop over all mesh. *Create {{{MDagPath}}} 'DAG path object' for each mesh, giving access to it's path/name. *Create {{{MFnMesh}}} 'polygonal surface function set' object, allowing for actions to be performed on the current {{{MDagPath}}} object. {{{ # Print the name of all the mesh in the scene & their vert counts. import maya.OpenMaya as om # Make a MItDag iterator object, for mesh only: MItDag = om.MItDag(om.MItDag.kDepthFirst, om.MFn.kMesh) # Start looping over each mesh: while not MItDag.isDone(): # Make a MDagPath object that will store the path of # the mesh: MDagPath = om.MDagPath() # Set the MDagPath object to the path of the current mesh # as defined by the current loop of the iterator: MItDag.getPath(MDagPath) # Create a new MFnMesh object, set to the current dag path. # We can now do operations on that mesh via that object. MFnMesh = om.MFnMesh(MDagPath) # As an example, find the number of verts on the mesh # from the MFnMesh object: numVerts = MFnMesh.numVertices() # get the name of our node from the MDagPath object: name = MDagPath.fullPathName() # Print results: print name, numVerts # Advance to the next mesh in our iterator: MItDag.next() }}}
Example via the ~OpenMaya Python API of finding the closest vertex on a polygonal mesh to a given transform. I've not tried it, but it may be worth checking out a solution using [[MMeshIntersector|http://docs.autodesk.com/MAYAUL/2013/ENU/Maya-API-Documentation/cpp_ref/class_m_mesh_intersector.html]]. There is an example using it online [[here|http://docs.autodesk.com/MAYAUL/2013/ENU/Maya-API-Documentation/index.html?url=cpp_ref/closest_point_cmd_8cpp-example.html,topicNumber=cpp_ref_closest_point_cmd_8cpp_example_html,hash=_a33]] For fun, I made two different implementations. They both do the same thing, just go about it different ways. {{{ # This first code chunk is required for both examples: # Python code from operator import itemgetter import maya.cmds as mc import maya.OpenMaya as om def getMDagPath(nodeName): """ Convenience function that returns a MDagPath for a given Maya DAG node. """ selList = om.MSelectionList() selList.add(nodeName) mDagPath = om.MDagPath() selList.getDagPath(0, mDagPath) return mDagPath }}}!!!Example A: In this example, we fill a {{{MPointArray}}harry reid
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada arrives before the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016. (Joe Raedle/Pool via AP)
(Joe Raedle)
In a letter to FBI Director James B. Comey on Sunday night, outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid, D-Nev., says Comey may have broken the law.
And that's not even the most brazen claim in the letter -- not by a long shot.
In the course of arguing that Comey's disclosure that the FBI is looking into new Hillary Clinton investigation emails may have violated the Hatch Act, Reid slips in an extremely bold claim about the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
"In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government -- a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity. The public has a right to know this information. I wrote to you months ago calling for this information to be released to the public. There is no danger to American interests from releasing it. And yet, you continue to resist calls to inform the public of this critical information."
Did FBI Director James Comey break the law by telling Congress about Hillary Clinton-related emails? Maybe Did Comey, a Republican, try to influence the campaign?
Even for a man known for bare-knuckle politics, this is remarkable.
Reid is saying that he has been told the FBI has evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And he's not just saying this information came from mysterious and unnamed national security officials; he's saying Comey himself has left him with this impression.
To be clear, Democrats including Reid have argued for months and months that the Russian government wants Trump elected president, citing hacks into Democrats that intelligence officials say probably originated in Russia. Trump himself has stoked the fire by saying nice things about Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his former campaign manager's ties to Russian interests are well chewed-over.
But there is no public evidence to support Reid's claim of actual "coordination" between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. And were that to be the case, it would be a scandal of epic proportions.
Asked what evidence exists of such a connection, Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson cited classified briefings.
"There have been classified briefings on this topic," Jentleson said. "That is all I can say."
Asked whether the letter means Comey has shared such information directly with Reid, Jentleson said, "Refer you to the language in the letter."
This is the political equivalent of Reid lighting a match, dropping it on a dry ground and walking away.
FBI obtains search warrant for Hillary Clinton-related emails The FBI has obtained a warrant to search the emails found on a computer used by former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Anybody who has studied Reid's political career, of course, won't be terribly surprised. We don't have to look too far in the rear-view mirror to find another example of Reid offering an evidence-free claim about a Republican presidential candidate.
Back in 2012, Reid said he had been told that Mitt Romney hadn't paid any taxes over the preceding 10 years. Reid offered no proof, and his claim turned out to be wrong. But he injected the idea into the campaign and left it up to Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, to disprove it.
As recently as last month, Reid offered absolutely no apologies for his incorrect claim, suggesting that it had had the intended effect. He even called it "one of the best things I've ever done."
"Why? Because I knew what he had done was not being transparent and forthright about his taxes, and to this day he hasn't released his tax returns," Reid said. "Did I want to do that? No. I had the information, I tried to get somebody else to do it.
"So I did it. And with that, like everything I think in life, here's something I learned from my father: If you're going to do something, don't do it half-assed, don't play around."
That Reid interview with The Post's Ben Terris also included this gem:
"Is there a line he wouldn't cross when it comes to political warfare?
"'I don't know what that line would be,' [Reid] said."
As with the Romney allegation, Reid's suggestion that Comey himself has told him about this alleged coordination between the Russian government in the Trump campaign is now sitting there for Comey to either respond to or not. He's daring Comey to disclose something, and if Comey doesn't (in keeping with protocol), Reid can argue that speaks for itself and there's a double standard.
Reid clearly has very few reservations about making these kinds of allegations, and now that he's retiring from the Senate, he's apparently even more liberated.
--
(c) 2016, The Washington Post. Aaron Blake wrote this story.Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and the month in which the Qur’an was revealed. Fasting during the month of Ramadan is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The month is spent by Muslims fasting during the daylight hours from dawn to sunset.
According to Islam, the Qur’an was sent down to the lowest heaven during this month, thus being prepared for gradual revelation by Jibreel (Gabriel) to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Therefore, Prophet Muhammad told his followers that the gates of Heaven would be open for the entire month and the gates of Hell (Jahannam) would be closed.
The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, and months begin when the first crescent of a new moon is sighted. Since the Islamic lunar calendar year is 10 to 11 days shorter than the solar year and contains no intercalation, Ramadan migrates throughout the seasons. The Islamic day starts after sunset.
Since the new moon is not in the same state at the same time globally, the beginning and ending dates of Ramadan depend on what lunar sightings are received in each respective location. As a result, Ramadan dates vary in different countries, but usually only by a day. This is due to the cycle of the moon.
The moon travels the same path all year round and when the moon is seen in the east, it is then seen traveling towards the west. All the countries around the world see the moon within a 24-hour period once spotted by one country in the east.
Each year, Ramadan begins about eleven days earlier than in the previous year. Astronomical projections that approximate the start of Ramadan are available. 33 Islamic years are approximately equal to 32 tropical years, with six days over.
Yawm Al-Ro’ya aka the Moon Sightseeing Day for Ramadan 1437 will be on Sunday June 5, 2016.
The Astronomical New Moon (conjunction) will occur on the same day on Sunday the 5th of June 2016 at 3:00 UT. On that day there is a possibility of moonsighting in Americas, and easy visibility in the Pacific. However, on Monday the 6th of June, the moon will be easily seen in the entire Islamic World and the whole world.
This means that the Muslim Countries and Muslims all over the globe will witness the 1st day of Ramadan on Monday the 6th of June.Do you know what your effective tax rate is? Everyone hears numbers such as 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, etc. thrown around by reporters and pundits, but those numbers usually represent marginal income tax rates. Your effective tax rate is figured by dividing your total tax by your adjusted gross income. MSN Money reports that in 2009 Americans with incomes in the top 25 percent of taxpayers, which includes many middle class families, paid an average effective federal income tax rate of 14.68 percent.
According to a new study released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Monday, in 2010 corporations paid, on average, an effective tax rate of 12.6 percent, far below the 35 percent corporate rate that is set in federal law. Unlike other reports which have used corporate financial statements to determine the effective tax rates paid by those companies, the new study used actual corporate income tax returns from 2010. From the GAO study:
For tax year 2010, profitable Schedule M-3 filers actually paid U.S. federal income taxes amounting to 12.6 percent of the worldwide income that they reported in their financial statements (for those entities included in their tax returns). This tax rate is slightly lower than the 13.1 percent rate based on the current federal tax expenses that they reported in those financial statements; it is significantly lower than the 21 percent effective rate based on actual taxes and taxable income, which itself is well below the top statutory rate of 35 percent. The relatively low federal effective tax rate cannot be explained by income taxes paid to other countries. Even when foreign, state, and local corporate income taxes are included in the numerator, for tax year 2010, profitable Schedule M-3 filers actually paid income taxes amounting to 16.9 percent of their reported worldwide income. [emphasis added]
In a statement, Michigan Senator Carl Levin (D) observed: Some U.S. multinational corporations like to complain about the U.S. 35 percent statutory tax rate, but what they don’t like to admit is that hardly any of them pay anything close to it. The big gap between the U.S. statutory tax rate and what large, profitable U.S. corporations actually pay is due in large part to the unjustified loopholes and gimmicks that riddle our tax code.The Houston Texans prepare for the 2016 Season during Training Camp.
Texans head coach Bill O’Brien confirmed on Sunday that Texans rookie offensive lineman Nick Martin is dealing with an ankle injury.
Other than that basic information, O’Brien said Martin’s status is still uncertain.
“His ankle is being evaluated, but it is an ankle injury,” O’Brien said one day after Houston’s 16-9 preseason win against New Orleans.
“It’s still being treated by our doctors and our trainers.”
A Saints player rolled into his ankle following a play during Thursday’s joint practice between the teams. Martin limped off the field and then was carted away from the practice area with a reported high ankle sprain.
READ MORE: Texans Center Nick Martin Limps Off The Field With Ankle Injury
O’Brien said the swelling in Martin’s ankle has still not subsided. That likely hinders the diagnosis process and has surgery as an option for the second-round pick out of Notre Dame.
“Anytime you have an injury like an ankle or a knee, you probably want to see how it reacts when the swelling goes down,” O’Brien said.
“Right now, [surgery] is a possibility, but that hasn’t been [fully] determined yet. It is a possibility.”
Martin was expected to be a starter on a deep and experienced offensive line unit right away, as he impressed O’Brien and his peers with a strong grasp of the playbook.
The center’s status was already in doubt for the regular season opener against Chicago. Any ankle surgery could extend his absence by months instead of weeks.Vox and Celeste, at the tender age of eight, sit at a folding table on their front lawn. A piece of poster board is taped to the table that reads “Lemonade $1” in washable marker. Ardan is trimming the hedges around the house. A young couple take their cups of lemonade from the kids and hand over a few bills.
Celeste– Thank you! Please tell your friends.
Young Man– Thank you.
The young couple turns to leave.
Vox– Will you?
Young Man (turning around)- What?
Vox– Will you tell your friends?
Young Man– Oh, sure.
Celeste– Say it.
Young Man– Huh?
Vox– Say, “I’ll tell my friends.”
Celeste– It’s pretty simple, just say it.
Young Man– I’ll tell my friends.
The twins beam.
Celeste– Thank you!
The young couple leaves and a Stormguard soldier carrying an axe strolls over to the table.
Stormguard– Hey, one lemonade please.
Vox and Celeste stare at her in baleful silence.
Stormguard– Can I have a lemonade?
Celeste (full of venom)- I don’t know, can you?
The twins high five without looking. Twin stuff.
Stormguard– Okay, never mind.
The Stormguard turns to leave. Vox hops up from his seat and quickly slides in front of her.
Vox– Wait, I thought you wanted a lemonade.
Stormguard– No thanks.
Vox– Is our customer service not up to your standards?
Celeste– Should we have saluted first?
Vox– Or called you, “Your Majesty”?
Celeste– Should we be bowing?
Vox prostrates himself on the ground before her. Celeste throws her body over the table.
Vox– Oh benevolent Stormguard soldier, please grace us with your dollar.
Celeste– We humbly request your patronage.
Stormguard (getting frustrated)- Alright that’s enough, leave me alone.
Vox– Please buy a cup. We milked the lemons ourselves.
Celeste– Our sweat and blood went into this to making it suitable for your righteous taste buds.
Stormguard– Stop it!
Vox peers up at her from the ground.
Vox– You seem mad, wanna fight?
Celeste– Yea, let’s fight!
Ardan– No!
Ardan comes rushing over and scoops Vox off the ground in one swift motion. Depositing him back in his seat, he places one firm hand on each child’s shoulder and holds them in place.
Ardan– Sorry about that. (He notices she’s a Stormguard. He stiffens briefly, and then tries to relax) Kids, right?
Stormguard (looking Ardan up and down)- No problem Mr…
Ardan– Ardan.
Stormguard– Mika. Nice to meet you.
Mika reaches out to shake Ardan’s hand. He stares at it, Vox and Celeste both glare up at him. Hastily shaking her hand, he returns his grip to the kids, their bodies starting to squirm.
Ardan– Right, so, sorry again. Have a nice day.
Mika– After all that I don’t get any lemonade?
Ardan– Oh, sure. Kids, give the nice soldier some lemonade.
Mika– Can’t you serve me, Mr. Ardan?
Mika leans on her axe, cocking one hip out to the side. The kids make low growling noises and the lemonade stand begins to glow and hum. Mika doesn’t notice.
Ardan (moving fast)- Okay, one lemonade, great. (Shoving it into her hand) There you go, bye now.
Mika– But I haven’t paid.
Ardan– It’s on the house.
Mika– Oh, well thank you. (She takes a sip) Mmmmm it’s delicious. Did you make it?
Ardan– Nope, all the kids.
Mika (to the twins)- You make good lemonade.
Vox– You should try our knuckle sandwich.
Twin high five. You wouldn’t understand.
Mika (Laughing)- Oh, aren’t they just a hoot. Keep you busy?
Ardan (struggling to keep them seated)- Very much so.
Mika– And there’s no Mrs. Ardan?
The table positively shines and the hum starts to sound like a low-flying jet.
Ardan (Sweating and blinking something fierce)- ….No.
Mika– Very interesting.
Mika leans forward over the lemonade stand, which promptly explodes in a flash of light and sound that tosses the neighbor’s mailbox onto their roof and shatters most of the windows on the block. The Stormguard stares stupefied, pieces of table in her hair.
Ardan– I’m sorry, they have allergies.
Mika (Stunned)- Huh.
Ardan– In fact, I better get their medicine or they’ll swell up like a couple of lemons themselves. C’mon kids.
Ardan lifts the twins up under his arms and starts running toward the house.
Vox– We’re going to kill you!
Celeste– Tell your friends!Daisuke Matsuzaka isn’t necessarily next in line for a shot at closing games if Kyle Farnsworth bombs, but the Mets may consider the veteran right-hander for the role if there is a need.
Manager Terry Collins on Wednesday cited Matsuzaka’s improved control from when the Mets first signed him last season as a reason Matsuzaka could handle the job.
But the Mets also value Matsuzaka — who arrived last week from Triple-A Las Vegas to work from the bullpen — as a sixth starter should a need arise in the rotation.
“We’ve wrestled with trying to keep him ready to start a game and yet use him as his versatility dictates in shorter roles,” Collins said before the Mets’ 3-2 victory over the Cardinals at Citi Field.
Matsuzaka entered in the seventh inning and struck out Mark Ellis before Carlos Torres and Scott Rice combined for a scoreless eighth. Kyle Farnsworth got the save after allowing a run in the ninth.
Collins said he turned to Torres instead of keeping Matsuzaka on the mound beyond the seventh because he now considers Torres as the team’s primary eighth-inning option.
“When you’ve got a two-run lead, you go to your guy, and that’s what we did,” Collins said. “Now [Thursday] we’ve got both of them.”
Michael Wacha became the fourth pitcher in major league history to strike out 10 or more batters in four innings or less, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The Indians’ Danny Salazar had 10 strikeouts in 3 ²/₃ innings against the White Sox earlier this month.
Despite the fact Vic Black hadn’t allowed a run in six appearances at Triple-A Las Vegas entering Wednesday, Collins indicated the right-hander isn’t close to returning to the big leagues. Collins cited the fact Black had seven walks over 7 ¹/₃ innings. The right-hander was demoted to the minors in spring training because of control problems.
Bobby Abreu is expected to make his first start for the Mets on Thursday. … Major League Baseball made a scoring change from Saturday’s game and subtracted a hit from Daniel Murphy’s total. Murphy was awarded a single on an eighth-inning grounder that Dan Uggla mishandled. The play was changed to an error.Apple gets a lot of patents, like nearly 2,000 last year in the U.S. alone. And they aren’t all new iPhones or other high-tech gear. It also gets patents for chips and other components, tools it uses to make its products and even the fixtures in its stores.
Speaking of the latter, one of its just-granted awards caught my eye. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company has been granted a design patent on a planter. Yep, the thing you put trees and bushes in.
The application, made in 2015, was awarded patent status on Monday. It appears to be the design Apple used inside its Regent Street store in London.
And lest you think coming up with a round planter design is easy, Apple’s patent lists 17 inventors, including Richard Howarth, the company’s head of industrial design.CHANDIGARH: Almost eight months after the Haryana government dropped the chargesheet against whistleblower IAS officer Ashok Khemka in the Robert Vadra land deal, Haryana's BJP government has issued a fresh chargesheet against him.He has been held responsible for what many see as a minor issue of "causing avoidable loss on account of unsold stocks of 87,000 quintal wheat seeds".The case is at least three years old.The new chargesheet has taken many by surprise given that the previous state Congress government had proposed that Khemka be held responsible for the unsold stock, but it has been served to him only now.The latest case pertains to the period when Khemka was MD of Haryana Seeds Development Corporation (HSDC) during 2012-13.The charge sheet alleges Khemka "did not take much interest" in liquidating the stock of certified wheat seed, which resulted in about 87,000 quintals valued at Rs 22.21 crore, remaining unsold. This, the government has alleged, caused an avoidable financial loss of Rs 3.41 crore to HSDC.Khemka has been charge-sheeted for a minor penalty under Rule 10 of the All India Services (Appeals and Discipline) Rules. He has been terming the "loss" as a "Goebbelsian" truth falsely propagated by a retired IAS officer and his company to defame him as "the officer wanted him out of HSDC after he (Khemka) exposed many scams there"."The excessive supplies and lower demand for wheat seeds in Rabi-2012 were due to the existence of an estimated 9.2 lakh quintals of wheat seeds produced in-situ under the seed village scheme in Rabi-2011 and the complete ban imposed on sale of private wheat seeds outside the state for extraneous considerations. The low demand and excessive supplies resulted in lower prices in Rabi-2012 due to which some wheat seed stocks remained unsold," Khemka had stated in a 2014 letter to the government.Bob McGinn is arguably the most respected writer of all those who cover the Packers. His research is normally impeccable. He’s an accomplished author, having written a fabulous book called, “The Ultimate Super Bowl Book.”
But he is wrong about James Starks. In a short “Notes” piece on Monday, McGinn states:
Rookie James Starks, a sensation against the Philadelphia Eagles, looked like just another running back Saturday night in the Green Bay Packers’ 48-21 victory over the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC divisional playoffs.
Starks carried 25 times and gained 66 yards, a paltry 2.6-yard average that paled in comparison to his 23 carries, 123 yards, 5.3 average six days earlier in Philadelphia.
I’m guessing Bob hadn’t re-watched the game again when he wrote this. Because if he had, he would have seen an offensive line whose run blocking could best be described as “sieve-like.”
Not to say the pass protection was any better, with Aaron Rodgers having to play the part of Houdini the great escape artist to lead the Packers to victory. But that’s a whole other article. We’re just talking about the run blocking here.
Starks gained 123 yards against the Eagles because their defensive line is undersized and weak enough to make the Packers’ run-blocking look good. Against a solid, and big defensive front like Atlanta’s it was a party in the Packers’ backfield.
Forget about getting any push, the Packers’ offensive line couldn’t even hold the line of scrimmage. The fact that Starks gained a few yards on some of these plays actually showed he was much more than “just another running back”. Here are some examples:
And these were just a few. The common theme is that you see plenty of penetration into the Packers’ backfield. I could show you plenty more, but neither one of us have that kind of time. Now I’m not saying that Starks’ play was magnificent, but I think he did about as well as any top running back would have done with that kind of blocking.
And give Starks credit for his post game comments of not being satisfied with his performance and for not throwing his offensive line under the bus:
“I’m a lot better than that,” Starks said. “My standards for myself are a lot higher. I’ve got to pick my legs up. Break more tackles. I’ve got to break the big one.” “That’s something I have to look at,” said Starks when asked if he missed any holes. “I think I could have done better.”
No James, you didn’t miss many holes. A few times there were no holes and you still found a way to make positive yardage. When the Packers managed to hold the line of scrimmage and give Starks time to find an alley, he did quite well, thank you. Here are a few examples that show what just a little bit of blocking will do:
In these examples, the Packers maintain the line of scrimmage (one minor exception in the first play, but the linebacker is allowed to just run himself out of the play). Starks has time to look for a seam, or bounce it outside if none exists.
So Bob, I have to respectfully disagree with your premise. I re-watched the entire game, focusing on Starks and Rodgers. I think Starks did better than Ryan Grant would have done with this kind of blocking. Grant has his own strengths, but making something out of nothing is not one of them. We haven’t seen Starks’ style of running in Green Bay for a while, now.
I like it.
——————
Follow Jersey Al:
Follow @JerseyAlGBP Add to Circleson
Jersey Al Bracco is the founder and editor of AllGreenBayPackers.com, and the co-founder of Packers Talk Radio Network. He can be heard as one of the Co-Hosts on Cheesehead Radio and is the Green Bay Packers Draft Analyst for Drafttek.com.
——————Pakistan has been a thorn in India’s left side for 65 years, and amazingly, India has tolerated its pain and irritation, against most odds of human nature. After four wars and multiple proxy wars waged by Pakistan, it still doesn’t count as much for India – a big elephant that is difficult to move. India’s Pakistan policy practices restraint and constraint against an enemy that hates it, that was born in conflict against India in brutal bloodshed, and even now hopes one day to overcome a weak India.
Pakistan still has the energy and gumption to promote proxy wars in India via Nepal, Bangladesh, and, of course, Kashmir.
Despite all the difficulties that Pakistan has faced and faces – internal political turmoil and terrorist threats, external issues in Afghanistan, an economy that is on the verge of collapse, and being condemned around the world for its export of terrorism – Pakistan still has the energy and gumption to promote proxy wars in India via Nepal, Bangladesh, and, of course, Kashmir. Which concept of rationality in the modern world can accept Pakistan’s belligerent and incongruent worldview, at a time when the civilized world wishes peace and economic prosperity against a threatening climate, growing population, an oncoming oil crisis, and worldwide economic woes?
By all facts and accounts, Pakistan has been sapping India’s productive and psychic energy every day for 65 years. It is somewhat true that Pakistan has been bleeding India by a thousand cuts. Look at the billions of hours of productive time and newspaper print and headlines wasted on a Pakistan that is an affliction for India and perhaps the world. None of the energy spent on Pakistan counts towards India’s GDP or improved industrial productivity, nor does it improve the economic position of India. The industrial production of India, creativeness of its engineers and thinkers, and ability to gain a foothold in the world has been compromised because a Pakistan exists that threatens war on the subcontinent, distracts national pursuits for excellence, and thereby diminishes foreign investment and confidence in India. For India to grow and have peace and confidence, it must get rid of the Pakistan that obstructs it in many ways, even standing against it in its quest for a rightful position on the permanent Security Council, and one that tried vehemently to oppose the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Pakistan is more dangerous as an independent state positioned to be taken over by terrorist elements supported by a manipulative ISI than under Indian control. In fact, the USA must find merit in the argument that it can better contain the terrorists and Taliban with India controlling them than they themselves. While the USA realizes that Pakistan is duplicitous with its terrorists, the USA is unable to see through the haze that can only be seen by those who have lived with Pakistan and in Pakistan’s neighborhood forever, such as India. Neither does Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai trust Pakistan, nor do the Iranian Shia’s have much love for Pakistan’s Sunnis, even though the Iranians acquired nuclear technology from A Q Khan. A Pakistan that doesn’t exist is safer for the world than a Pakistan that does.
Pakistan is more dangerous as an independent state positioned to be taken over by terrorist elements supported by a manipulative ISI than under Indian control.
Once every few years, Pakistan feigns interest for diplomacy and negotiations (cricket diplomacy, bus diplomacy, this or that) and often brings up ethnic and language similarity with India to suit its temporary interests – only to back off at the last minute and plot new proxy wars or battles against India. This is of no use to India; in fact, it is a hindrance in India’s quest to be a self-confident power in and of itself. Pakistan presumably hates India and starts an anxiety disorder each time it realizes that Kashmir may slip from it is grip. Now, in another deceptive move, Pakistan recommends that India withdraw from Siachen – a mistake India can ill afford to make after the mistakes of Haji Pir and the return of 93,000 POW’s. Withdraw from Siachen for what? Only for Pakistan and China to occupy it in a sudden move before the onset of a future China-Pakistan joint invasion of Ladakh? None of the satellite monitoring or UN observation systems will be effective at that time, and China and Pakistan will be staring down at Leh and the valley of Ladakh in free sport. The sooner that India can realize it cannot ever trust Pakistan on anything, the healthier it is for India. In that vein, the dialogue and negotiation with Pakistan that is thrust on India by the USA, only helps to prolong the inevitable and the burning pain. The only way to put Pakistan in its place is to possibly have no truck with it, perhaps even not trade with it. One reason that India often enters into negotiations with Pakistan is because its diplomats need to generate work for themselves to justify their existence; also, the USA quite often exerts pressure on India in its usual patronizing attitude to negotiate with Pakistan. This is not healthy.
Among the most feared aspects of a war with Pakistan is the nuclear element. Now that India has allowed Pakistan to move ahead in this department in the 1970s and 1980s, and failed to implement Operation Brasstacks into a fully fledged invasion of Pakistan, India has to bite the bullet on this score. Though Pakistan threatens India with nuclear retaliation in an all-out war, that too must not hold India back against trashing Pakistan. Whatever others may believe, my opinion is simply that it is better for India to brave a costly nuclear attack by Pakistan, and get it over with even at the cost of tens of millions of deaths, than suffer ignominy and pain day in and day out through a thousand cuts and wasted energy in unrealized potential. This is not to say that the objective can’t be achieved without a nuclear war. In this respect, India’s no-first strike policy stands it in very good stead. In fact the process objective must be to achieve the strategic objective through conventional war. Without the elimination of Pakistan, India may never become a secure nation where the mind is held high without fear, and cannot ever hope to attract the type of foreign investment it needs for its economic growth. In addition, the psychological boost that India will get by eliminating Pakistan is unequal in and of itself—one which can propel India into the status of a future, stable, democratic, competitive, responsible, and secular nation.
Neither does Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai trust Pakistan, nor do the Iranian Shia’s have much love for Pakistan’s Sunnis, even though the Iranians acquired nuclear technology from A Q Khan. A Pakistan that doesn’t exist is safer for the world than a Pakistan that does.
Analysts tend to ask what will happen to a Pakistan if India defeats it in battle. The answer is not complicated at all: Baluchistan will become independent, but under Indian security arrangements; Kashmir will revert to India; Sindh and West Punjab will be de-weaponized and become special states under Indian protection; and the entire NWFP handed over to the Pathans for a Pakhtoonistan that includes Southern Afghanistan and Kandahar. This will have ramifications on Afghanistan, as well, which may then naturally divide into two for its own peace and stability; Afghanistan’s northern areas consisting of the Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazaras, need to form their own country because they have little in emotional and filial bond with the Pathans. This whole reorganization will change the boundaries of the region, but one that has to be undertaken which will be a welcome change to the current bloodshed, turmoil, and export of terrorism. Very often, major change is needed to change the status quo when minor changes don’t succeed.
Much of this is against formal Indian foreign and security policy. The United Nations might also tend to balk at the destruction of a nation member, though it is likely that the West may not shed tears at this. But, this article is not being written to agree with Indian policies, or to present a framework within those policies, or to appease those who worship the Indian mentality. Quite to the contrary, a reformation in Indian policies is presented, and perhaps indicated, one that can give confidence and bring esteem to its people. It is in this light that a new paradigm is advanced. For instance, for long, the Indian policy has been to not engage in cross-border attacks, especially since Prime Minister Inder Gujral passed an ordinance to that effect in the late 1990s. But, such instructions are counter-productive, and Pakistan has taken full advantage of that policy by increasing its own cross-border infiltration. It is to be pointed out that Indian security policies are nothing to be proud of simply for the sake of pride in government. Policies that trample on sustainable Indian pride must be dismantled. The writer feels that the implementation of this new paradigm is ripe for action at this current time where Pakistan is reeling under internal imbalances. If a boxer will not knock out his opponent when the opponent is dizzy and imbalanced, then other opportunities are only guesswork.
Eventually, for India to succeed, Pakistan must be out of the picture and cease to exist for peace on earth, and India must actively work towards that objective |
or A does not reveal x) A and B do whatever is required on each blockchain to ensure outstanding transactions are refunded on timeout
A key element is the'secret', which we need to be able to specify without revealing, and confirm once revealed, e.g. by specifying the cryptographic hash H(x).
As long as both sides use exactly the same secret representation and hashing function, and the pay on reveal secret semantics are implemented correctly on both sides of the exchange, the atomic exchange algorithm should work, regardless of the actual implementation of pay on reveal secret on each side.
In other words, different implementations of pay on reveal secret can interact, as long as they share the same secret and hashing function.
Standardised pay on reveal secret
That's pretty cool. And it seems there's quite a big an opportunity here, I think. Perhaps the most important point in this article is then to suggest that:
all cryptocurrencies should support the implementation of 'pay on reveal secret' in some form
with secret representation and hashing function standardised used across all such implementations.
If we can do this, it becomes possible to implement atomic exchange, at a fundamental level, between arbitrary pairs of cryptocurrencies.
Working example
Looking at the 'pay on reveal secret' semantics, it seems like this shouldn't be hard to implement, and it isn't, in the general case.
I've implemented a working version of this, for example, in 'SwapBill'.
SwapBill is an protocol for updating a shared global state representation based on information embedded in certain (specially formatted but standard) Bitcoin transactions.
This is implemented in a python client application, and this client can currently be run against the Bitcoin and Litecoin testnet blockchains, and used to exchange value between these blockchains.
The actual fundamental cross-chain exchange operation is implemented between 'Bitcoin SwapBill' and 'Litecoin SwapBill', for a simple direct exchange between two parties (so without any offer matching), but SwapBill also includes a bunch of stuff to make it easy to exchange SwapBill with host coin on each blockchain (including trade books and offer matching), and you can use this to make a 3 step exchange between the two host currencies (e.g. Bitcoin -> Bitcoin SwapBill -> Litecoin SwapBill -> Litecoin).
There's some documentation for SwapBill here, and documentation for the cross chain exchange operation specifically on this page.
Pay on reveal secret in SwapBill
In Bitcoin, global state is essentially limited to the set of unspent transaction outputs.
SwapBill extends this to add a bunch of other stuff, like order books and pending payments, and this extra global state is then used to implement pay on reveal secret without the need for refund transactions.
When a 'pay on reveal secret' transaction goes through, SwapBill creates a pending payment object in the SwapBill global state.
By default, this pending payment will expire on a specified block, and the person making the payment is refunded on pending payment expiry. A second'reveal secret' transaction is required (before expiry) in order for the payment to complete.
Note that we still need some way of referencing the initial pay on reveal secret transaction in the following reveal secret, and this is done by a 'pending payment ID'. Crucially however, this pending payment ID is not required for the default refund case, and can be checked by the recipient at the same time as checking that the 'pay on reveal secret' has actually gone through on the blockchain, with the right details, with enough confirmations, and so on.
Secret hashing function implementation
SwapBill's pay on reveal secret implementation currently uses Bitcoin public keys as the secret, and public key hashes as the secret hash.
This works out as follows:
import hashlib def publicKeyToPubKeyHash ( publicKey ): assert type ( publicKey ) is type ( b '' ) assert len ( publicKey ) == 64 ripemd160 = hashlib. new ( 'ripemd160' ) ripemd160. update ( hashlib. sha256 ( b'\x04'+ publicKey ). digest ()) return ripemd160. digest ()
It's a bit odd to use 'public keys' as a secret, but this works (you can't currently work back from Bitcoin addresses, which are essentially formatted public key hashes, to the corresponding public key) and this was a convenient way to set up secrets in SwapBill.
I don't recommend this as a standard, however.
I guess a standard hashing function should probably be a little bit more over-engineered and future proofed.
Suggestions about the best function to use for this, from people with more cryptographic chops than myself, are very welcome!
Timing issues
The refund transactions from the Bitcoin wiki use a block count (with nLockTime) to specify when refund transactions can be submitted, which corresponds to the expiry time in our pay on reveal secret semantics.
The SwapBill implementation also a block count, although with automatic expiry as part of the protocol definition.
We need to be aware then, that although Bitcoin uses difficulty adjustment to keep block generation times around a fixed period of 10 minutes, this block time can vary quite significantly.
When making exchanges we need to make an estimate based on expected average block time in order to approximate wall time, but this is not exact, and we'll need to leave a certain amount of room for error.
It's probably not a good idea, also, to perform exchanges across a difficulty step.
I think the block count mechanism should probably be considered an implementation detail (although an important one), and there may be other ways to approach this.
Bitcoin includes a block timestamp, and a mechanism for keeping this within certain bounds with respect to wall time, and other cryptocurrency may include similar features.
Maybe it's possible to use this kind of wall time tracking, then, for pay on reveal secret expiry times.
Making pay on reveal secret work in Bitcoin
So we've seen that pay on reveal secret can be implemented in an 'embedded protocol', but what are the possible approaches for making this work directly in Bitcoin?
We saw transaction malleability is being addressed, and maybe the approach based on refund transactions can be made to work at some point, but this is all quite tricky. Transaction IDs weren't designed to be immutable. There are a whole bunch of different ways transactions can potentially be mutated, and it all ends up quite difficult to understand in the entirety and 'audit'.
Another alternative might be to add more direct support for this in the Bitcoin protocol. For example, maybe it is possible to add support for some kind of conditional scripting, where one subscript can be used to spend an output only up to a certain block limit, and another part only after that block limit.
This isn't a detailed proposal. The point is just that, if support for pay on reveal secret functionality is considered a priority, there are certainly ways to implement this.
Politics
There are some potentially financial and political issues here, however.
In particular, if you have a vested interest in the price of Bitcoin you might not actually want to enable, or encourage exchanges between Bitcoin and other currencies.
That would seem like a short sighted point of view to me, however.
I don't think you really can prevent people from moving value to other cryptocurrencies, if they really want to do this, but support for trustless exchange is something that I think will increase the utility of Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general.
(Disclaimer: I own some Bitcoin myself, although not a large amount, and try not to let this influence my opinions!)
Pay on reveal secret in other currencies
A lot of cryptocurrencies use a similar mechanism for transaction output scripts as Bitcoin, and so similar issues and alternatives will apply.
Some newer currencies change things up a bit more radically, however, with stuff like smart contracts and Turing complete scripting. It sounds like 'pay on reveal secret' should be easy to implement in these newer currencies, but I haven't looked into the details for this.
Extending to other types of exchanges
I don't think the pay on reveal secret semantics have to be limited to pure cryptocurrency exchanges. If you can set up delivery of physical goods or fiat with similar'semantics' then it should be possible to apply the same atomic exchange idea here.
Imagine a world, for example, where the guy selling you something through eBay hands it over in return for scanning a QR code, where that QR code is a secret that unlocks the counterpayment.
Or maybe something like this can be used by the delivery guy for something you bought through Amazon. This isn't completely trustless. You still need to trust the guy not to grab the physical item back from you and run off, after you reveal the secret, but it seems better than the current mechanisms for this.
And wouldn't it be great if, as well as simple unconditional (and non-reversible) wire transfers, I could also make bank payments on condition that the recipient reveals a specified secret, within a specified time limit?
Conclusion
To sum up:
Atomic cross chain exchange is possible, given support for certain fundamental transaction semantics, and 'pay on reveal secret' seems like a good basis for this.
Standardising the secret hashing function makes this work across arbitrary currency pairs.
There are implementation issues in Bitcoin, currently, but these aren't fundamentally hard to resolve (or can be worked around with an embedded protocol).
Personally I think that this is the future of cryptocurrency exchange.
If you're an exchange operator, I think you should already be looking into what will be involved in building convenient exchange services on top of atomic exchange.
If you're working with a cryptocurrency that already supports pay on reveal secret, let us know.
Otherwise, if you're a cryptocurrency 'consumer' and could benefit from this feature, let the developers know!DUP faces split threat if party agrees to gay marriage demand by Sinn Fein BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Former Health Minister Jim Wells has claimed he and other MLAs will split from the DUP if it agrees to Sinn Fein's demand for gay marriage. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2017/dup-faces-split-threat-if-party-agrees-to-gay-marriage-demand-by-sinn-fein-35640160.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article35640159.ece/3574b/AUTOCROP/h342/2017-04-21_new_30494074_I1.JPG
Email
Former Health Minister Jim Wells has claimed he and other MLAs will split from the DUP if it agrees to Sinn Fein's demand for gay marriage.
While the DUP appears to be willing to negotiate on the Irish language, same-sex marriage is a'red line' issue that will not be accepted by many members, Mr Wells said.
"Peter will not marry Paul in Northern Ireland," he vowed.
Mr Wells also said that the DUP will kill off Sinn Fein's proposal for a civil forum because a similar forum in the Republic led to a successful referendum on same-sex marriage.
"We will strangle that idea at birth if that's what it's going to bring. Nobody wants it except Gerry Adams anyway," he said.
Sinn Fein MLA Megan Fearon has said the DUP are out of touch with the people on the issue of marriage equality.
Megan Fearon said: "Comments from Jim Wells that the DUP could split if there is equal marriage in the north highlights the attitude of that party to equality. His remarks show just how out of touch he and his party are with the views of the general public.
"And it shows once again that the DUP is placing its party self interest above the need for equality for all.
"Marriage equality is an issue where the people are ahead of many politicians."
During his Easter Sunday 1916 commemoration speech, Mr Adams said that progressive parties that favour a civil forum should not fear another election if Sinn Fein-DUP talks do not succeed in setting up a new Executive.
The civil forum would allow ordinary people to put forward ideas for legislation, similar to the constitutional convention in the Republic that meets to recommend constitutional change.
In 2013, 79% of the Republic's convention delegates recommended the constitution be changed to allow same-sex marriage.
A referendum in the Republic approved same-sex marriage two years later.
Mr Wells said the DUP would vigorously oppose such a forum in Northern Ireland if same-sex marriage was discussed and would not allow Sinn Fein to bypass the Assembly.
Secretary of State James Brokenshire met the five main Assembly parties yesterday in an effort to get the Executive running again.
Asked if, as a compromise, the DUP would maintain its opposition to same-sex marriage but lift its veto against it in the Assembly, Mr Wells said that was tantamount to accepting gay marriage in Northern Ireland.
"Don't even think that. That's an absolute no," he added.
"Some of us would walk before that would happen. We feel very, very strongly about that."
The DUP has repeatedly used the petition of concern to block same-sex marriage legislation in the Assembly, even though it is favoured by a majority of MLAs at Stormont.
A petition of concern, which can veto any legislation, requires the signature of 30 Assembly members.
Until the March 2 election this year, the DUP's 38 MLAs were easily able to defeat same-sex marriage.
Now with 28 MLAs, the DUP lacks the numbers to single-handedly use the block if the Assembly is restarted.
However, ex-DUP stalwart and current TUV leader Jim Allister has indicated his willingness to support a veto, bringing the number up to 29.
Mr Wells and other DUP colleagues believe that a conservative member of the Ulster Unionists will bring the numbers up to 30.
While same-sex marriage remains an impassable power-sharing barrier between the DUP and Sinn Fein, former First Minister Arlene Foster has been offering an olive branch on Irish language issues, without committing to an Irish Language Act.
Mrs Foster said that she will meet non-politicised Irish language groups very soon.
The DUP has written to Pobal - the Irish language advocacy group - accepting a meeting before the general election on June 8.
Belfast TelegraphWACO, Texas - The secrecy that enshrouds the investigation into a biker shootout in May that left nine people dead led to the mass-arrest of 177 people is hardly surprising in this city, where public scrutiny is rare and unwelcome.
On the banks of the Brazos River in Central Texas, Waco and the surrounding county are largely run by a close-knit circle of judges, prosecutors and law enforcement that defense lawyers complain leads local agencies to close ranks in the aftermath of this most recent calamity.
It's a city where a district judge and district attorney are former law partners, the mayor is the son of a former mayor, the sheriff comes from a long line of lawmen and Waco pioneers and the sheriff's brother is the district attorney's chief investigator.
Bikers and public watchdogs have criticized authorities here for how they've handled the investigation, citing the mass arrests in which people were held for days or weeks on $1 million bonds without sufficient evidence to support such actions four months after the shootings.
No formal charges have been made, and it remains unclear whose bullets, including police bullets, struck the dead and injured, or when cases will be presented to a grand jury, which is currently led by a Waco police detective.
"I don't know of any defense lawyer who hasn't looked at the facts of this case and gasped," said Grant Scheiner, a criminal defense attorney in Houston not connected to the bikers' case.
Biker explains Waco, Tex. brawl
Waco police, McLennan County prosecutors and judges refused to comment - citing a gag order written by the DA - but law enforcement staunchly defend their actions, including the 12 shots that the police chief said officers fired into the melee after bikers allegedly opened fire on them.
The violence erupted May 17 before a meeting of a coalition of motorcycle clubs that advocates rider safety. Police have said two rival biker gangs got into a confrontation that turned deadly when one group of bikers opened fire on another outside a Twin Peaks restaurant.
Some 177 people were arrested and remained in custody until their bonds were reduced. Defense attorneys have been critical of how the cases have been processed, accusing District Attorney Abel Reyna of writing "fill-in-the-blank" arrest affidavits. A police officer testified a justice of the peace approved the affidavits without making any individual determination of probable cause.
In the criminal case of one of the defendants, Reyna's former law partner, District Judge Matt Johnson, issued a gag order as written by Reyna.
Many bikers who previously told The Associated Press they were innocent bystanders are now reluctant to speak further because of the gag order.
Although police and the district attorney described last spring everyone who was taken into custody as criminals, an Associated Press review of a Texas Department of Public Safety database found no convictions listed under the names and birthdates of more than two-thirds of those arrested.
Undercover agent describes infiltrating biker gangs
Justifying the mass arrests, Sheriff Parnell McNamara said, "A message was sent to the whole country that we will not tolerate this type of disorder in our community."
McNamara describes the county's criminal justice system as a close-knit Christian "posse" of Baylor University graduates committed to "putting away as many hard-core criminals as possible."
That kind of mentality led the county's former district attorney, John Segrest, to compare the McLennan County criminal justice system to a "bubble, a separate realm. When you're a member of the system, you tend to think that most everything revolves around anything that you do. You get an unrealistic view of the world from inside."
The city's crown jewel is Baylor, the world's largest Baptist university, which in the 1880s attracted Baptists from across Texas to Waco, then known as the buckle of the Bible Belt. The private university has an air of insularity that extends to the county courthouse, a domed palace whose Lady Justice lost her arm holding scales in a storm.
From a series of Ku Klux Klan lynchings nearly a century ago to a massive twister in 1953 that tore through downtown to the Branch Davidian siege in 1993, Waco's downtown streets, a mix of historic mansions, public buildings, dilapidated houses and empty spaces where nothing was rebuilt reflect a city perpetually recovering from its last disaster.
Sheriff McNamara, the descendent of one of Waco's early settlers, was formerly a U.S. marshal who participated in the Branch Davidian siege in which federal agents tried to arrest cult leader David Koresh for stockpiling weapons at a ranch outside town. The confrontation led to a 51-day standoff that ended when the complex caught fire, killing Koresh and nearly 80 followers.
The international attention brought by the tragedy left Waco residents wary of outside law enforcement, and they say they'll handle the biker shootout themselves.
"Waco's nickname is Six-Shooter Junction," McNamara said. "Not really anything we're real proud of, but that's just the way it is."The NBA Development League Referee Tryout offers the opportunity for select referees to demonstrate their skills. Each participating referee will officiate two games featuring prospective NBA Development League players.
The deadline for submitting applications to the 2015 National Tryout is May 15.
Date and Location
Sunday, June 14 at Basketball City in lower Manhattan
Training
Participating officials will meet with NBA/WNBA/D-League Referee Operations personnel prior to officiating their first game. Following each game, participating officials will take part in a complete tape breakdown with an experienced professional official.
Eligibility
Space is limited. Participants will be selected based on officiating experience, which must include, at a minimum, two years of officiating at the high school level or higher.
Costs
Participants attending the 2015 National Tryout will be required to pay in advance a fee of $175, which is payable upon selection to the National Tryout.
Application Process
To apply for the 2015 National Tryout, please fill out the online application form. If you are not already a member, you must sign up for a free NBA All-Access membership in order to fill out the form.
Game Rules
NBA game rules will be used for officiating and instruction at the NBA Development League Referee Tryouts. The NBA Rule Book and Case Book are available to download through the link below.
You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these files. Get it FREE.Subaru Flex Fuel
This long awaited, highly anticipated, feature is upon us!
What is COBB Flex Fuel?
Firstly, let’s define Flex Fuel. Flex Fuel allows seamless flexibility between using standard gasoline and ethanol based fuel which is where the term Flex Fuel is derived. The key component enabling flexible fuel usage is an ethanol content sensor. This provides a real-time measurement of the ethanol content feeding the car’s engine allowing the ECU to actively make adjustments based on the sensor reading. This is something several US manufacturers have had implemented for a number of years. You have probably seen several vehicles badging this capability during your commute. Although there are vehicles that have this functionality from the manufacturer, unfortunately, very few of them are models that are likely to be found in an enthusiast’s garage. Ergo: COBB Flex Fuel!
The COBB Flex Fuel kit consists of an ethanol content sensor and analyzer. This is a plug and play system that connects directly to factory hardware and mounting points. Couple this hardware with your COBB Accessport and a Protune and you get the OEM functionality of Flex Fuel with the added performance ethanol has to offer.
Why Do I Want It?
Compared to standard pump fuel, the higher ethanol content in E85 provides a substantially higher effective octane rating. The octane rating of a fuel indicates it’s ability to resist detonation. This added resistance allows tuning to be more aggressive through timing and boost, yielding greater horsepower output. These factors combined make for a fuel solution with more power potential over the standard gasoline you find at the pump. With an active Flex Fuel system, a vehicle’s ECU is able to seamlessly blend calibrations required for each type of fuel.
The COBB Flex Fuel kit will allow you to overcome any disparities in ethanol content from station to station or season to season. This is something a standard tune for E85 cannot do. Also, if there isn’t a station with E85 convenient, simply fill up with pump gas and avoid the need to change maps.
How Do I Get it?
COBB Flex Fuel will be available in January 2016! Several Flex Fuel packages will be available to compliment your existing modifications or to take a completely stock car the full distance. Stay tuned for additional details.
Read more about our Subaru Flex Fuel release in our most recent update: http://www.cobbtuning.com/subaru-flex-fuel-update/The GamerGate fiasco has brought with it the ugly phenomenon of internet threats. If we are to take our assumptions from the media narrative, then the side that is correct at the end is the one that received the most threats, and has capitalized best on these threats.
The incentives to make threats are literally less than zero. There are only disincentives. Anyone with reasoning abilities can see this, particularly based on the proportion of anti-GG coverage devoted to the threats.
Progressives simultaneously understand and do not understand this. There have been a number of blunders where “threats” turned out to be bogus, with obvious intent to stir up public hatred for GamerGate and initiate a spiral of silence by making #GamerGate feel dirty on the tongue of most.
There are astronomical incentives to appear to be a victim of threats. This truth has been leveraged many times in the form of fake threats.
Notice the identical IDs in the image above. The unsavvy false-flagger wasn’t aware of the easy-to-miss feature of some imageboard that shows if posts come from the same IP address.
We can deduce that most threats which loudly fly the banner of GamerGate are fake, or by seriously deranged people who cannot understand simple results of actions. Any reasonable person, even a Machiavellian one trying to win an ideological war, would understand the simplest of cost and benefit.
Of course, the source of a majority of these threats isn’t as obvious as in the above image. But we can use reason and understanding of incentives to come to the conclusion that the only people with real incentives to make anti-GG threats are the anti-GG individuals themselves. So if I had to pick, I would guess that a majority of purported threats against women are from anti-GG individuals. If this is still mystifying, let’s break it down:
There are incentives to be a victim of threats by ideological opposition.
There are disincentives to make threats against ideological opposition.
Certainly some of the threats are real, and I have all the sympathy in the world for the victims. We all sleep soundly knowing that nobody is out to cause us harm and destroy our well-being. A threat, even one unlikely to become reality, can temporarily ruin your life. I understand this, I really do, and disagreeing with you on some issues doesn’t change this. Whoever these deranged individuals are that are making threats, they are not the secret weapon of GamerGate. They are, in fact, the greatest weapon of the journalists and ideologues fighting a hashtag war. After all, all of the media reports focus on the outrageous threats received. It’s a sensational phenomenon.
And yeah, when it reads something like
Haha #GamerGate for life bitch, I am gonna rape you, war on women now prepare to die whore I am a typical GamerGate supporter who likes the Patriarchy, I am a proud misogynist haha heil hitler ISIS rules
it’s pretty obvious that it’s a false flag. If you want someone to reap the benefits of being a victim without the associated costs of a real threat, dial it back a bit. Also, only progressives have a paranoid belief in a “war on women.” Just like “trickle-down economics,” it’s a term used to mischaracterize the opposition. It’s not a term that the opposition themselves take seriously.
For those in the anti-GG camp who may be reading this, I want to know: do you disagree with my take on the incentives of this situation? Did I miss something? I ask this earnestly, since I wasn’t born with the right ideas, and my opinions change a lot.Raising three children on a single income can be tough enough.
When Christmas rolls around, it can be even harder to find a few extra dollars for presents that aren’t already earmarked to put food on the table, keep the lights on and cover the rent.
That’s why the Mississauga News Santa Claus Fund is such a welcome initiative for those families struggling to pay the bills. It also ensure their kids have a memorable and merry Christmas.
Elizabeth, whose last name is not being used to protect her children’s privacy, and her three little ones are just one of the thousands of families in Mississauga that will receive a gift box this year through the fund.
“Every year when Christmas comes around, it can be tough,” said Elizabeth, who stays home to raise her three children, aged nine, six and four, while her husband works. “When we get the (gift boxes), we tell the kids they’re from Santa himself. It really does mean a lot to us.”
Each box contains some basic necessities, including a hat, mittens, warm shirt and socks, but also comes with some fun stuff for the little ones such as a book, small toy and candy. As well, a toothbrush and toothpaste go to those children aged four to 12 while infants will receive clothing and baby accessories.
Funnily enough, Elizabeth said, it’s the toothbrush her kids really love. It’s a bit of a head scratcher she said, because it’s not like her children don’t all have their own toothbrush.
“Out of everything in there, they seem to get the most excited about the toothbrush and the toothpaste for some reason,” said Elizabeth.
It’s probably a good thing they get pumped because they’re also big fans of the candy that comes in the gift box.
“We always tell them that Santa really cares about their teeth and that’s why he gives them a toothbrush,” she added, with a laugh.The YN560-III has been confirmed and it will pack a built-in radio receiver, compatible with RF-602 and RF-603 triggers.
Chinese manufacturer Yongnuo may have just made flash trigger receivers obsolete. In a bold move, they have openly announced their latest manual flashgun, the Speedlite YN560-III, which was previously hinted at late last week. The device is almost identical in specifications to the YN560-II except for one (possibly game-changing) addition: integrated 2.4GHz flash triggering.
Any user of either Yongnuo RF-602 or RF-603 wireless triggers will be able to sync their camera with the YN560-III out of the box — a surprising capability, considering that the two systems are not themselves inter-compatible with each other. Using the flash’s LCD control panel one can select which of the 16 available channels is preferred. Then you can trigger the device from as far as 100 metres away. A “GRP” button label suggests the possibility for wireless flash grouping in the future.
Other features lend the YN560-III well to a range of off-camera lighting setups, all of them inherited from the YN560-II.
Guide number of 58 (at 105mm)
Power control down to 1/128
3 second recycle time at full power
16-channel radio receiver, compatible with RF-602, RF-603
Hotshoe, PC port and dual-mode optical slave (alternative options to radio triggering)
Fresnel head zooms from 24mm to 105mm focal lengths, plus flip-down diffuser panel
Stroboscopic “Multi” flash mode for creative effects
External high voltage battery input socket, to speed up recycle times and increase endurance
User-configurable ready beep
Though it does not look like you can use the YN560-III as a radio transmitter on your camera, if you wanted to use on-camera flash and radio triggering of remote flashes simultaneously, you can mount an RF-603 transceiver on your DSLR hotshoe and then slide the YN560-III into the hotshoe on top of that. Other possible configurations include using a 3rd-party transmitter with a built-in autofocus assist lamp.
Pricing information for this flashgun has not yet been released, but it is easy to imagine that it will be cheaper than other radio-capable flashes such as the Canon 600EX-RT or Quantum Qflash, since the Yongnuo has stripped out non-essential features like TTL control. The RF-603 radio transmitters for your camera — assuming you do not already have a couple — are widely available for under US$30 a pair or about the same for an RF-602 transmitter-receiver kit.
Once launched, you will find the Yongnuo YN560-III on sale at the manufacturer’s official store. For further technical information, visit the official product page.
Rival brand Phottix claimed they had a “game-changer” on their hands with the Mitros TTL HSS flash. Have Yongnuo done the same? Share your opinions in the comments below.Digital Track Digital Track Streaming + Download Purchasable with gift card Free Download You own this
Share / Embed
about
Free 320 Mp3 For those who don't care about audio quality:
Facebook:
Twitter:
Soundcloud:
Youtube:
Want to use my music for videos/projects etc? E-mail We took the hardest drop we could get our hands on and made it drop harder.Free 320 Mp3 For those who don't care about audio quality: www.mediafire.com?xm0nll2ukjw702v Facebook: www.facebook.com/ephixamusic Twitter: www.twitter.com/ephixa Soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/ephixa Youtube: www.youtube.com/djephixa Want to use my music for videos/projects etc? E-mail management@ephixa.com and we will set you up with the files/rights.
lyrics
I'll carry the torch if you burn this down
Strike a match and hit the ground
Countdown run coward run
Ashes rise and mask the sun
Get Out
And I watched the world burn alone
Just fall asleep
Your eyes fade out so lightly
Mother nature don't fail me now
credits
released March 31, 2011
bar9 for piano tune
license
all rights reservedTech 2 manufacturing is a clickfest. If you don’t like having to do a great deal of clicking, just wanting to installing jobs once a week, move on. You will be clicking a lot.
That said, the profits with Tech 2 manufacturing can be pretty good. They’re more sensitive to market conditions than many T1 products, but all that means is, check your numbers before you start.
Tech 2 BPOs
First, get the idea of Tech 2 BPOs out of your head. You will, likely, never lay your hands on one. They can make substantial profits, but they’re limited on throughput. They generally sell for several years of profit. Sure, they have a low time investment, but other than that, they’re generally not worth it. They’ll tie up a substantial quantity of capital, with a low ROI. There are one or two markets where you can’t compete with them. These are small markets, however. Ones where the BPO throughput is high enough to completely fill the demand. The majority of Tech 2 stuff, across all of New Eden, comes from Invention. And that’s pissed off a fair number of people with the BPOs.
Invention
This is where most people start with Tech 2 manufacturing. You can, sometimes, buy T2 BPCs on the market. They’re relatively rare, however, and expensive, compared to inventing them yourself.
Skills:
Required:
Science 5
At least one of the following. They’re requirements for the science skills.: Engineering 5 Mechanics 5 Electronics 5
At least one of: Amarr Encryption Methods Minmatar Encryption Methods Gallente Encryption Methods Caldari Encryption Methods
At least 2 of the science skills. You’ll find these normally running in pairs, like Quantum Physics is common with Hydromagnetic Physics, or Nanite Engineering with Molecular Engineering.
Worth having:
The rest of the encryption methods.
A larger number of the science skills.
Laboratory Operations 5
Advanced Laboratory Operations 4. These two are just so you have more slots to work with.
Scientific Networking 1+. For when you move into a POS, or want to roam.
You may notice I’m not mentioning levels for a lot of the skills. That’s because you can work with them at 1. Higher is better, and will give you better results, but you can get started at 1. Plan to get them to 4, but it’s not a requirement to get started. Just take it into account with your math.
The invention process
Pick something to make. Exactly how you do this, is a whole different topic. The short version is: Think about what people use; then check the math (say, using my blueprint calculator)
Tech 2 BPCs are created from Tech 1 BPCs. In general, you want max run copies for modules (300), weapons(300), drones(1500) and ammo(1500), and single run copies for ships and rigs. The ME and PE of the Tech 1 BPC is irrelevant. 0 is absolutely fine. Mine tend to be better, but that’s because I also often manufacture from the BPO they’re copied from.
The skills you need to invent from the Tech 1 BPC are on the Bill of Materials Tab, on the Invention tab (big surprise). It can be worth checking the details for the resultant BPC as well, to make sure you have the skills to actually manufacture the module. Those show up on my Calculator.
The materials needed to do the invention will also show up on that tab. They will consist of:
A data interface.
2 different kinds of Datacore.
The datacores will match the science skills required to invent the module. The interface will match the racial Encryption Methods skill. There are different interfaces for doing modules/weapons/ammo/drones, rigs and ships, per race.
The datacores will be used up, regardless of if you succeed or not. The interface will not be used up, and will be immediately available for doing another run. So if you’re doing this all in the one station, you only need one of each type.
There are also Decryptors that you can use. These are getting renamed in Odyssey, to a consistent naming scheme. For now, ignore them. They’re valuable when it comes to ships and rigs, but for most invention jobs, they’re a waste of money. I’ll cover them in a note below.
You can also use Meta versions of the thing that you’re inventing. This will affect the chance of success, depending on your skills. Higher skills = a better bonus from a Meta module.
The Method
Stick everything in the appropriate hangar. If you’re using a POS, the BPC can be in the corp hangar at the station, but everything else needs to be in the array.
Select the blueprint, right click it, and pick ‘Invention’.
Select the appropriate installation slot for actually doing the invention in.
Select the input/output hangars appropriately.
Pick the Meta module if you’re using one.
Pick the decryptor if you’re using one.
Pick the output type. Some things can turn into two different types. Like a Rifter can become a Wolf or a Jaguar. Most are 1 to 1 though, requiring no changes.
Hit ok
At this point, you’ll get a quote. If you’ve put everything into the appropriate places, you can hit accept quote.
When the job completed, deliver it. you’ll be told if it succeeds or fails. If it’s succeeded, you’ll have a T2 BPC.
The Math
You will fail when you do invention. You’ll fail a great deal. Suck it up, and put the cost into your calculations.
The chance of success, for invention, depends on your skills, the thing you’re inventing, the meta level of the module you’re using (if any) and the decryptor you’re using (if any). The formula is pretty simple, but to make life easy, I have a standalone calculator, as well as building it into the blueprint calculator (just click on Invention Material Requirements).
The Invention Formula
Base – Base chance Modules and Ammo have a base probability of 40% Frigates, Destroyers, Freighters and Skiffs have a base probability of 30% Cruisers, Industrials and Mackinaws have a base probability of 25% Battlecruisers, Battleships and Hulks have a base probability of 20%
– Base chance E – Racial Encryption Skill
– Racial Encryption Skill S – Science Skills. Add them together.
– Science Skills. Add them together. Meta level – The metalevel of the module you’re using.
– The metalevel of the module you’re using. D – Decryptor modifier. Use 1 if you’re not using one.
So, a Tech 1 item (no meta level) has no effect. A meta 4 item, when you |
video of the event shows. Mac Donald, a Manhattan Institute scholar who spoke on campus at the behest of the Bruin Republicans to give a "Blue Lives Matter" talk about her 2016 book "The War on Cops," appeared to be able to largely get through the first half of her speech without much dissension. But when she opened the floor to questions, the uproar began. The chants launched, with several people taking over the floor at the front of the room and continuing to yell over and over: "Black lives – they matter here! Black lives, they matter here!" Event organizers tried to calm the crowd and regain order. After the Black Lives Matter chant ended, several protesters remained at the front of the room, shouting and making gestures as a student organizer asked for calm. But they started up with more chants, including: "America was never great!" After the uproar – which lasted about eight minutes – finally died down, Mac Donald (pictured) fielded questions from the audience, including from a black female who asked her to speak on whether "black victims killed by cops" mattered. "Yes," Mac Donald replied. "And do black children that are killed by other blacks matter to you?" At that the room erupted in gasps and angry moans and furious snaps, and the young lady who asked the original question began to yell at Mac Donald, pointing her finger and repeating the original question. Mac Donald, known and admired for her unapologetic stance to report facts over emotion, doubled down on the infuriated young black woman. "Of course I care, and do you know what," Mac Donald said. "There is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that black lives matter than the police." Again, gasps and moans filled the auditorium.
Note that there was no rational response to Mac Donald's statements – only hysterical, emotional outbursts. Mac Donald did something that most BLM sympathizers and liberals would never dream of doing: she challenged the false, warped worldview of activists by directly confronting their hate.
But Mac Donald may as well have been speaking to collection of stones:
Mac Donald took more questions and at times was able to articulate her points during the Q&A, but was also often interrupted by angry audience members shouting out things such as: "I don't trust your numbers." "Why do white lives always need to be put above everybody else? Can we talk about black lives for one second?" "The same system that sent police to murder black lives …" "You have no right to speak!" "What about white terrorism?!"
How many times would Mac Donald have to say that yes, black lives matter and no one cares more about them than the police before the activists would have actually heard her?
It's a useless exercise. The BLM activists are not interested in the truth – only their paranoid, delusional worldview.
If that's the case, why should authors and commentators like Mac Donald even make the effort? BLM efforts to incite violence against police and white people must be countered by reason and logic, even if the activists themselves are unreasonable and illogical. Mac Donald is not seeking to alter the perceptions of BLM members. She is trying to place a logical context around a serious issue – that there is a widespread perception in the black community, not based on reality, that police are more willing to take black lives than white ones. That poisonous perception is being used by BLM activists to gain power and influence in the black community.
For those in the black community who are persuadable, Mac Donald's conclusions are compelling. Eventually, BLM hysteria will be discounted, although probably not until damage done to law enforcement leads to making neighborhoods less safe.
In the meantime, disagreeing with BLM about anything will lead to scenes such as the one at UCLA.Several Temple Movement activists tried to make the Pesach sacrifice on the Temple Mount.
Jerusalem police detectives detained right-wing activist Noam Federman and others for questioning, Monday afternoon, and seized a lamb the activists wanted to sacrifice on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City. Police cited them for transporting an animal without a permit.
Federman reacted by saying, "We demand to offer the Passover sacrifice, one of the most important commandments. The Jerusalem police are harming freedom of religion.
Several Temple movement tried to make the Pesach sacrifice on the Temple Mount Monday, expecting police to block their way, as has happened in previous years.
The activists planned to assemble at the promenade near the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City at 1:30 p.m., with the goats and lambs they plan to sacrifice. At 1:45, led by Noam Federman, they were to begin advancing toward the Temple Mount, with the hope of setting up what they term a minimal kosher altar" there.
The activists said that they know their chances of success are slim, and noted that in previous years, police used force to block their way and arrested some of them as well. Charge sheets were also filed against some of them, on alleged unauthorized transport of animals and cruelty to animals.
Some activists hoped, however, that police will be more sympathetic to their efforts, because the new Knesset and government include Temple activists like MK Moshe Feiglin and Minister Uri Ariel in senior positions.
The Temple organizations noted that hundreds of supporters have signed petitions calling on the government to enable the Pesach sacrifice on the Temple Mount, as part of the freedom of religion and worship that the government must allow, by law.
Activists held a sacrifice ceremony outside the Old City walls and opposite the Temple Mount on Thursday.Trump, down by increasingly large numbers both nationally and in swing-state polls, needs a game-changing moment in the election, and while that could come from a range of places, the one he has the most control over is the debates.
Whatever his failings, Ailes knows his way around TV and salesmanship. He famously got his start in politics by reinventing Richard Nixon as a television-friendly, or at least television-adequate, candidate in 1968, following his disastrous televised debate against John F. Kennedy eight years earlier. As a young producer on the Mike Douglas Show, he introduced himself to the candidate, saying, “Mr. Nixon, you need a media adviser.” “What’s a media adviser?” Nixon asked, puzzled. “I am,” Ailes said.
In a sense, Ailes is a natural fit for the Trump campaign. The candidate has consciously styled himself after Nixon in ’68, right down to borrowing phrases like “silent majority” and calling himself the candidate of “law and order.”
One of Trump’s closest advisers is Roger Stone, who formally left the campaign a year ago but is reportedly still in close contact with the candidate and his team. Stone is an old Nixon hand—as a teenager, he worked for the Committee to Re-Elect the President, sending a contribution to the Young Socialist Alliance in the name of Pete McCloskey, a Nixon challenger—who famously bears a tattoo of Tricky Dick on his back. Stone also has a long history of racism, lies, and unsavory connections. Stone’s old business partner Paul Manafort is the chairman of the Trump campaign. Manafort didn’t work for Nixon, but he was an aide to Gerald Ford, helping him beat back a primary challenge from Ronald Reagan in 1976. As has been in the news this week, Manafort also has a dubious past, working for repressive leaders from Ferdinand Marcos to Viktor Yanukovych.
Ailes, a former Nixon aide badly tarnished by the sexual-harassment scandal, first right in with them. It’s like a political remake of The Expendables: Grizzled veterans of bareknuckle Republican politics the 1960s and 1970s get back together, hauling a train car’s worth of baggage, for one last dirty job.
Ailes is of a piece with other members of Trump’s circle in another uncomfortable way, too. Notable Trump pals, surrogates, and endorsers have included Bobby Knight, the legendarily chair-throwing retired basketball coach; Don King, the boxing promoter who once stomped a man to death, and whom Republican leaders reportedly had to strong-arm Trump into dropping from a convention speaking slot; and convicted rapist Mike Tyson.
Trump’s tolerance for violence and misogyny among his associates is striking; it goes back decades, to his close relationships with mob figures. By now, adding an adviser who was recently fired over accusations of serial sexual harassment would be as unsurprising as hiring a TV wizard for debate prep.Editor’s Note: This Guest post is written by Max Zachariades, who spent the last five years at Microsoft in various roles. He blogs under the name Max Zografos.
I first used Windows on a TULIP portable computer, some twenty years ago. Graphical user interface, icons, mouse, an amazing new world was ushered in before my wide eyes.
At university, I scored a summer internship with Microsoft. I sported a Microsoft collared shirt and showed off my “Microsoft Product Specialist” badge with infinite pride. When Windows 2000 launched, I distributed official evaluation copies to the School of Engineering. Lecturers didn’t hide their admiration, and wonder, about my infatuation with this company. They called me the “Microsoft man,” which I saw as a compliment.
In 2005, I was commissioned to lead two Microsoft Europe-wide projects. Microsoft seemed way ahead. Virtual meetings, digitized calendars all beeping in tandem, flexible work arrangements, massage chairs, free soda. What’s more, toilets were squeaky clean. Most multinationals I’d worked for had heinous facilities, which pretty much poisoned the well for me.
Like Alice in Wonderland, I pranced around the campus, drinking as much of the Microsoft Kool-Aid as I possibly could. In 2007, I obtained a “blue badge.” I was a full-time employee now. One of them.
Fallen Star
Within my first year, I was awarded the venerable “Gold Star.” It read:
Congratulations! In recognition of your important contribution to our success, you have been selected to receive a special Gold Star Spot bonus award. I am pleased to inform you that you will receive an award of $1,000 less all applicable taxes and withholding. Since joining you’ve hit the ground running — you’re a star in the making!
Microsoft also gave out corporate-branded gizmos, laser pointers, memory keys, plastic crystals and other toys. When I raised a suggestion that we divert some of those funds to charity, my communication style was flagged as inappropriate and antagonistic.
In time, my eyes opened. We were box tickers and pen pushers. Any original thinking was sacrificed at the altar of time-proven, common sense process. Efforts to break the mould were all but punished.
The Microsoft Meeting
Microsoft culture expects you to be in meetings. Calendars need to be decorated with sufficient colourful blocks, to signal over-activity.
Dig a bit deeper and you’ll realise that Microsoft meetings are a way to diffuse and evade responsibility for decisions. Yes – let’s spend weeks on weeks “reviewing with stakeholders.” It’s so much safer that taking swift decisions ourselves. The company places no trust on the individual to make the right decision on their own.
So what happens in those meetings? Are they brainstorming earth-shattering new ideas? Are they inventing new products? Why are they getting paid to join so many of them? How can Microsoft afford to have so many of its employees fluffing about?
Because they can. Microsoft sits on stockpiles of cash, with about $60 billion earning interest in the bank. With that mystery out of the way, let’s take a look at some of those meetings: Strategy reviews, deep dives, virtual coffee breaks, quarterly off-sites, monthly get-togethers, director summits, leadership meetings, etc.
Yikes, who is going to organise all that? Fear not. Every team has their very own “business manager.” And since business managers are too senior to be bogged down with logistics, enter the legions of “support managers” and “administrative assistants” reporting to business managers.
Large companies have overheads, a necessary evil, you say. Overheads need to be managed. And managed they are: Group Managers, Program managers, General managers, together with ‘Senior’ flavours of those and a whole new breed of directors, stakeholders, business owners, relationship leads coupled with their own countless derivatives.
All those meeting-goers are not making anything. Deciding upon and making something is hard. And if this onerous activity has to be done, then hire external consultants for it. It’s easier and less risky.
There is no creative tension, no vision these days. Left to Microsoft’s hands we’d still be toiling on overheating Vista desktops.
This company is becoming the McDonalds of computing. Cheap, mass products, available everywhere. No nutrients, no ideas, no culture. Windows 8 is a fine example. The new Metro interface displays nonstop, trivial updates from Facebook, Twitter, news sites and stock tickers. Streams of raw noise distract users from the moment they login.
In an already loud world, all Windows 8 does is increase the decibels.
Getting Fired
Mea Culpa: I should have left on my own volition, much earlier.
Truth is, I was comfortable. Too comfortable. Stupefied even. Why look for work elsewhere when I could coast from meeting to meeting, uttering and typing meaningless busywork. I could not relinquish that kind of comfort.
Year after year, I began to voice my concerns about the meaninglessness of it all. Why write up dozens of monthly scorecards when nobody ever reads them? Worse yet, why join follow up conference calls? Why schedule get-togethers when there is no agenda? Why spend a month chasing stakeholder-committees for trivial project decisions. Why spam people’s inboxes with monthly newsletters and weekly narratives about how great our team is?
They called it out in my performance reviews: I lacked “respect for authority.” “Microsoft people are well-tenured,” said my boss once. Many employees are with Microsoft for 15 years or more. Sidestep hierarchy and tenure at your own peril.
I became cynical about the whole process. I was seen as a “rebel” and the leadership team began to marginalise me. My planned and promised promotion was cancelled.
Month after month, what I saw as a dubious case was put together. Official HR warnings were sent. My time ran out. I was offered 12-weeks’ pay for an amicable departure. Instead I decided to escalate the thoughts above to the highest echelons of Microsoft.
Below is an excerpt of my email to a Corporate Vice President.
Naturally, large teams are expected to have overheads. However, I’ve never witnessed such a systematic waste of company’s time and resources. … including its execs—spend much of their time in informational meetings with no agenda or
purpose. Let me cite an example from today’s newsletter. A senior exec talks about what he will do in March: ‘March is going to be a busy month! I will be representing at the first ever and then will representing at in San Diego on. Then back in the U.S. again the week of for the LT Strategy Planning Workshop. In March, I have 1:1s lined up with and several of her LT:,,, and.” I struggle to discern what will actually be achieved in March by this exec. All I can see is a series of expensive trips and endless hours spent in gatherings with no outcomes or deliverables. Can Microsoft afford that? … Entire days spent on meetings about meetings, drafting and re-drafting ‘team stories’ and participating in endless informational conference calls. I am confident that could achieve the same actual results with just 10 percent of its current funding. Given the opportunity, I can provide more clarity on this topic. … In a time of disruptive new technologies and competition, I believe Microsoft, and each organization within, should lead by example. We cannot afford not to.
Within hours of sending this email I was summarily fired and escorted to the door, days short of my 5-year anniversary with Microsoft.Transistor could allow devices to function for months without a battery
Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a transistor which operates on energy ‘scavenged’ from its environment and say this could enable devices which function for months or years without a battery.
Using a principle to that of a computer in sleep mode, the transistor harnesses leakage current for its operation – the first time this has been captured and used functionally. The transistors can be produced at low temperatures and printed on materials ranging from glass and plastic to polyester and paper. The transistor is based on a geometry which uses a characteristic previously thought to be ‘non desirable’ – the point of contact between the metal and semiconducting components of a transistor, or Schottky barrier. “We’re challenging conventional perception of how a transistor should be,” said Professor Arokia Nathan of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “We’ve found that these Schottky barriers, which most engineers try to avoid, have the ideal characteristics for the type of ultralow power applications we’re looking at, such as wearable or implantable electronics for health monitoring.” The new design is also said to get around one of the main issues preventing the development of ultralow power transistors, namely the ability to produce them at very small sizes, while offering high gain. Operating at less than 1V and consuming less than 1nW, the transistor is said to be suited to applications where function is more important than speed. “If we were to draw energy from a typical AA battery based on this design, it would last for a billion years,” said Dr Sungsik Lee, also from the Department of Engineering.
AuthorAll of this has made marriage rarer, something that not everyone needs--or wants. Yet, paradoxically, it has become all the more important. At a time when two incomes are often necessary for a middle-class lifestyle, marriage can matter a lot. Years ago, most men, even those with only a high school degree, could settle down, buy a home, support a family, and lead some semblance of a middle-class life. Such economic security is gone for lower-income, less-educated, or working-class Americans, especially if they lack a college education. It's tough for any single person, male or female, regardless of educational attainment, to be assured of supporting a family.
"If marriage goes well now, it can help people out economically," said Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history and family studies at Evergreen State College. "But it's also a riskier investment. Are you going to get saddled with a guy who can't hold down a job?"
Even as fewer people marry overall, a demographic divergence has emerged. Increasingly, marriage is more common among college graduates than among Americans with less education. Roughly 69 percent of adults who finished college are married, according to Pew, compared with 56 percent of those without a college degree.
For educated women, the prospects for marriage have improved considerably. They now marry with greater frequency, while feeling less pressure to conform to a 1950s domestic ideal. In 1960, according to economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, 29 percent of college-educated women in their sixties had never married; now, only 8 percent of them stay single. Well-educated women tend to marry later than others do, but they stay married longer and report higher levels of marital satisfaction.
College grads may marry later than the rest of the population, yet more of them wind up settling down--and with one another. Increasingly, Americans are choosing spouses like themselves. In 1970, according to the Pew Center's data, only 37 percent of married, college-educated men had a wife with a bachelor's degree; by 2007, 71 percent of them did. A middle-class fellow with a typical salary and a 401(k) plan seeks out a woman with a similar economic profile. Same goes for the working-class or poorer couples. Gone are the days when the Harvard grad marries the girl with the high school degree simply because, well, she's pretty.
Marriage, as a result, now offers fewer people a boost up the economic ladder. Stop and think what this means for the growing inequality in Americans' incomes over the next decade or more. If well-educated people with good jobs marry one another, they'll have a better shot at saving money and accumulating wealth. Less-educated, lower-income couples may stick together, but their lack of schooling means they're both more likely to struggle to find work, and they'll have sparser resources to fall back on if one of them loses a job.After spending a year in jail for a felony assault conviction, the fighter formally known as Jon Koppenhaver is now back among civilized society. And that, he told Ariel Helwani on Monday's episode of The MMA Hour, is proving to be a lot tougher than he expected."It's weird. The first few days you get out, it's real emotional," said the fighter who legally changed his name to War Machine. "You have kind of a lot of anxiety... It's culture shock. But now that I've had time to acclimate, I feel a lot better now and I'm happy to be back in the gym."War Machine was released from the UFC in 2008 after making controversial comments about the death of former UFC fighter Evan Tanner on his MySpace blog. He later signed with upstart promotion Bellator, but was released before he ever got a chance to debut, again for his MySpace blog comments, this time about newly-elected president Barack Obama.After a series of run-ins with the law over physical altercations in bars, and one violent episode at porn industry party during his brief career as an adult film actor, he was sentenced to a year of incarceration in a San Diego detention facility.Now that he's out, he said, it's been something of a struggle to adjust."The whole year in there, I was bored a lot, but it was never real emotional or challenging for me. But my first couple days back, it was hard. Like I cried at nighttime. It was weird. It's hard to explain....Now it feels like I was never really in jail, like it was all a dream. It's a trip."Once he was released, he said, he immediately returned to the gym to resume his training. But he also took some time to reflect on the problems that his behavior had caused those close to him, such as his wife, who he married shortly before beginning his sentence."It was a lot of sadness and a lot of anger. Like the first night I got out...my wife was asleep and I couldn't sleep the first few days. I would always look at her sleep and I started thinking about the hard year she had. My year wasn't hard; my year was boring. She had a hard year. That made me upset to think about the hardships she went through...I felt guilty. I felt guilty for putting the people who cared about me through a lot of crap. All these emotions hit me at once and I started crying like a little girl."While in jail, War Machine said, he occupied his time mostly with reading and trying to avoid other inmates -- a goal made easier when a mersa infection resulted in him being segregated from the rest of the prisoners."The first six months I was in general population and the last six months I was in the hole. To be honest, most guys, they hate the hole. It's punishment. I loved it because I didn't like living with random guys in my cell, random guys I didn't know. It was awkward and I didn't like it. The only stress I ever had in there was stress over the possibility of getting into an altercation and then getting into more trouble. So once I was in the hole, that possibility ended. It was actually a big stress relief."The worst part of the experience, he said, was the food, which was so bad "it shouldn't even be called food." Other inmates had no interest in trying to challenge a professional fighter, he said, so the main battle was against boredom.Even then, he said, the year in prison seemed to go by faster than the six weeks he spent filming The Ultimate Fighter."It's a time warp. Time isn't the same in jail. The days kind of drag, but the weeks fly by," he said.Now that he's free, War Machine plans to return to fighting in the fall, hopefully no later than October, he said. While he still hasn't decided which organization he'll fight for, he said he certainly has suitors, adding that the U.K.-based BAMMA, which has signed other UFC castoffs like Paul Daley and Nate Marquardt, was courting him "even when I was in jail."But rather than sign a long-term deal with one of the smaller leagues, his hope now is to get a few wins, serve out his three-year probation, and then get back in the big time.Hopefully in the next two or three years when I'm off probation, and people see that I've changed my behavior, maybe the UFC or Bellator will give me another chance."The Fifa whistleblower Chuck Blazer has said he and others took bribes for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup, in a testimony published by the United States Department of Justice.
Blazer, the former Concacaf general secretary and a Fifa executive committee member from 1996 to 2013, made his revelation little more than 24 hours after Sepp Blatter announced he would be standing down as Fifa’s president as the corruption crisis in world football deepened.
“I and others on the Fifa executive committee agreed to accept bribes in conjunction with the selection of South Africa as the host nation for the 2010 World Cup,” Blazer said in his testimony.
“During my association with Fifa and Concacaf, among other things, I and others agreed that I or a co-conspirator would commit at least two acts of racketeering activity. Among other things, I agreed with other persons in or around 1992 to facilitate the acceptance of a bribe in conjunction with the selection of the host nation for the 1998 World Cup.
“Beginning in or about 1993 and continuing through the early 2000s, I and others agreed to accept bribes and kickbacks in conjunction with the broadcast and other rights to the 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2003 Gold Cups.
Participants
“Between April of 2004 and May 2011, I and others who were fiduciaries to both Fifa and Concacaf, in contravention of our duties, I and others, while acting in our official capacities, agreed to participate in a scheme to defraud Fifa and Concacaf to the right to honest services by taking undisclosed bribes. I and others agreed to use email, telephone and a wire transfer into and out of the United States in furtherance of the scheme. Funds procured through these improper payments passed through JFK Airport in the form of a check [cheque].
“Between December 2008 and May 2011, I and others agreed to and transmitted funds by wire transfer and cheques from places within the United States to places in the Caribbean, and from places in the Caribbean to places in the United States. I agreed to and took these actions to, among other things, promote and conceal my receipt of bribes and kickbacks.
“I knew that the funds involved were the proceeds of an unlawful bribe, and I and others used wires, emails and telephone to effectuate payment of and conceal the nature of the bribe. Funds procured through these improper payments passed through JFK airport in the form of a check [cheque].
“Between 2005 and 2010, while a resident of New York, New York, I knowingly and wilfully failed to file an income tax return and failed to pay income taxes. In this way, I intentionally concealed my true income from the IRS, thereby defrauding the IRS of income tax owed. I knew that my actions were wrong at the time.” Guardian ServiceThe group behind the annual N.W.T. Literacy Week says it's time to get physical.
Although literacy is commonly known as the ability to read and write, it's also defined as the knowledge in a specified area. So this year, the N.W.T. Literacy Council has decided to educate the public about "physical literacy."
"You would learn how to throw a ball or how to jump, how to balance on one leg, maybe what the difference between a hop and a jump is, or a skip and a gallop," said Jessica VanOverbeek, executive director of the Mackenzie Recreation Association.
Physical literacy is there to help people get more active, learn how to move, but also the vocabulary attached to the movement, she said.
On Monday, VanOverbeek was giving a presentation in front of an empty room, making it clear that physical literacy may be an unknown concept for a lot of people.
The International Physical Literacy Association says the concept of physical literacy was first proposed in 1993 at the International Association of Physical Education and Sport for Girls and Women Congress in Melbourne, Australia.
Charlotte Upton, a coordinator with the literacy council, said literacy week is promoted through Facebook, posters and emails. Even if people did not show up Monday, she is excited by this year's topic.
A lot more than sports
She acknowledges the term is still new for a lot of people but believes physical literacy is important in the North because of the long, cold, dark winters.
"They kind of just think it's sports but it's a lot more than sports. It's getting out on the land, being able to navigate your way on the water, being able to check your nets, being able to participate in your community in whatever capacity that you want to," she said.
The challenge with physical literacy — just as it is with other forms — is to learn the basic skills, get confident and then improve.
This year, there are 15 events in various communities that are being funded by grants from the council. For example, there will be a basketball tournament in Inuvik and a bowling night in Hay River, says Upton.
Other communities are also organizing free swims.
In Yellowknife, the literacy council will be giving out free books at noon Tuesday near the Post Office. It will also have a family physical literacy fun night on Friday at the Fieldhouse.
Families will have the opportunity to understand firsthand, through games, what physical literacy is really about.CARSON — Injuries, international call-ups and overall inconsistency played a role in the Galaxy’s slow start through the first 17 games of the regular season.
However, there’s time on the calendar to regroup. That’s the direction the Galaxy believe they are headed, winners of two consecutive games, including last week’s 1-0 victory at Seattle.
“I would give us a grade of a ‘B-,’” Galaxy coach Bruce Arena said of his first-half grade this week from training. “I think we probably could have another five or six points.”
In a competitive Western Conference, the Galaxy have recorded eight consecutive points to move into a tie for third place with Real Salt Lake on 29 points. The Galaxy will look to win a third consecutive game when they host last-place Houston at 8 p.m. Friday at StubHub Center.
One area that has been solid foundation through the myriad of injuries has been the defense. Anchored by goalkeeper Brian Rowe, the Galaxy have allowed just one goal during their current four-game unbeaten streak (2-0-2) and just two goals in their previous six games.
“They’ve played pretty well the entire year,” Arena said of the defense. “We’ve given up the second-least goals per game in the league and we’ve been consistent the whole year. Over the last couple of games, we’ve had a little bit more continuity in the backline, which helps, so we’ve only had to replace generally one guy, which for us is a miracle, so that helps.
Promising for the Galaxy has been their depth, especially on the backline, with the likes of Daniel Steres and Dave Romney filling in as injuries have sidelined Robbie Rogers and Ashley Cole. Romney has started four league games and Steres has 17 appearances, with 16 starts.
“Steres has been real good,” Arena said. “He’s played the most games (19) on our team this year and Romney has been asked to fill in for a couple of guys over the last few weeks and he’s done a very good job as well. It is really encouraging.”
Defender Jelle Van Damme returned the starting lineup last week and said last week’s effort could be a turning point.
“That was to me a typical game on the road,” he said. “We didn’t play the best soccer, but we got a result and ended up coming back with three points.”
Saturday’s victory was the second on the road this season for the Galaxy (2-3-4). The Galaxy won two games on the road last year.
It also doesn’t hurt to have Robbie Keane returning from international duty with Ireland. Keane returned for the July 4 game against Vancouver and has scored one goal in each of the previous two games.
“We’re getting better and better and I have a feeling that as the season goes, with everybody coming together, so I think in general we will be ready for the second half of the season,” Van Damme said.
HOUSTON DYNAMO at L.A. GALAXY
Kickoff: 8 p.m. at StubHub Center
TV/Radio: UniMas; KWKW/1330
Update: The Dynamo (4-8-6) are winless on the road through their first 10 games with three draws. Houston (18 points) fell to last place in the Western Conference after Seattle defeated FC Dallas 5-0 on Thursday. Houston defender DeMarcus Beasley (knee) is out indefinitely. The Galaxy (7-3-8) are undefeated at home with a 5-0-4 record. The Galaxy are undefeated in their previous four games with two draws and two victories (July 4 and last Saturday). The teams met in April with the Galaxy winning 4-1 on goals from Gyasi Zardes, Baggio Husidic and two from Giovanni dos Santos. The Galaxy will be without midfielder Nigel de Jong, who had his suspension extended for a second game following his red card. Ashley Cole (hamstring) will also be unavailable. Dave Romney earned the start last weekend at left-back. Bruce Arena said this week he expected Cole to miss one more game.Ignore the sign at the United States’ border crossing near Buffalo, New York claiming those coming in from Canada will be treated with courtesy, dignity and respect. An American journalist says that’s far from what happened recently when returning home.
A producer with National Public Radio’s “On the Media” program says the US Customs and Border Patrol agents who interrogated her and her friends and family while they attempted to return to the States following a recent wedding in Toronto, Ontario were anything but courteous.
Sarah Abdurrahman told NPR that she attempted to cross into the US at Niagara Falls earlier this month on Labor Day when CBP agents stopper her entire party and subjected them to around six hours of questioning.
All six people in the car were American citizens, she said.
“Once we realized we wouldn't be leaving the border facility anytime soon, the giddiness we still had from the wedding weekend quickly disappeared,” Abdurrahman told NPR.
For six hours, the CBP agents detained Abdurrahman, her family and her friends, all the while refusing to even explain why they were being held.
A division of the Department of Homeland Security, Abdurrahman said CBP is now the largest federal law enforcement agency in the US. Even if it’s impressive in size, though, the CBP isn’t increasing its efforts to be transparent.
“During my detainment, I tried asking the guy in charge, Supervisor McPherson, why we were held for so long. He said it wasn't my right to know,” she recalled for a recent episode of On the Media. “I asked him the names of the agents who interacted with us while we were detained, and was once again told it wasn't my right to know.”
One of Abdurrahman’s passenger, Sofyan Amry, said the CBP agent seemed “like they were a bunch of frat boys,” and the Americans attempting to legally return home “were a bunch of initiatives just sitting there, awaiting their judgment.”
“There was not a single courtesy given,” he said, even despite a list of the CBP’s “pledges to travelers entering the US” that may have momentarily suggested that civil liberties wouldn’t be stripped away over baseless assumptions.
“Even the bathroom was an ordeal. It was an uphill battle. Absolutely no dignity, at all. We were antagonized from the start, from the cold air to the terrible seats, to the heightened tension and the fact that we – they were kind of laughing on the other end of the room, kind of looking over at us like we were huddled sheep for the slaughter,” Amry said.
Other members of the party were grilled about their religious background. All of them were told to surrender their cell phones, unlocked, and not expect them to be necessarily returned.
Munia Jabbar, an attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told NPR that CAIR has noticed a pattern of CBP agents imposing “really invasive and personal questions about their protected religious activity” when questioning Muslim travelers.
“You’re singling out people based on their religion and then subjecting them to longer detentions and to humiliating questioning about stuff that they're allowed to do legally, in fact, stuff that is part of the bedrock of our Bill of Rights,” Jabbar said.
The Bill of Rights also protects people against unlawful search and seizure, but the Muslim-Americans who attempted to come home on Labor Day weren’t allowed that right either.
“It went from, we won't search your phones to, we’re gonna search your phone, confiscate it and not give it back to you,” Abdurrahman’s friend Khaled Ahmed told NPR “I got into an argument with the officer. I said, ‘Listen, all my work is on my phone. I really need it.’ He got aggressive with me, he said, ‘Listen, you're not leaving with your phone today.’”
“The government says only around 15 of the 1.1 million people who enter the US each day have their electronic devices searched by Border Patrol agents. If that's true, our three cars may have accounted for almost all of CBP's device searches that day,” Abdurrahman said.
Another carload of US citizens entering America from Canada at the Detroit, Michigan crossing following the wedding near Toronto were stopped as well, hundreds of miles away from Abdurrahman. Weeks later, they still haven’t been told why they were held up. The American Civil Liberties Union has since gotten involved, but haven’t been able to come up with many answers either.
“The accounts are so widespread and so consistent, that it's very hard to see this as anything other than a systemic problem and |
village of Muslim weavers, or julahas, whose homes and looms had been totally destroyed by a mob of Hindus. The survivors were being taken care of by a prosperous Muslim weaver in Bhagalpur town, who had laid out tents in his garden. Other refugees were being provided food and shelter by a Muslim religious organisation. Of government work in the resettlement and rehabilitation of the refugees there was not a sign.
I was shaken to see that my fellow Hindus would willingly partake of such savagery, and that my government would take no responsibility for the victims. Till then, the politics of religion had no place in my scholarly work or writing. My principal field of research was the environment. I had just published a book on the social history of the Himalayan forests, and had written scholarly essays on environmental conflicts in Asia and North America. However, I was now provoked to write an essay on the Bhagalpur riots for the Sunday Observer. That newspaper collapsed soon afterwards, but I remain grateful to it for publishing the first article I wrote on the bloody crossroads where religion and politics meet in modern India.
II
In the 1990s and beyond, as the religious right gained in strength and importance across the country, I was making the move from academics to becoming a full-time writer. I now published fortnightly columns in two different newspapers. My brief, in each case, was very broad; I could, and did, write on history and sport apart from politics. But since these were the years in which the Sangh parivar moved from the margins to the centre of public life in India, naturally I wrote about their activities as well.
RSS cadre at one of the outfit’s functions in north Delhi. (Photograph by Narendra Bisht)
In the past two decades, I must have published some forty articles that have dealt with the politics or policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, or of state and central governments led or directed by them. This constitutes somewhat less than 10 per cent of my total output—that is to say, at least nine in ten of my articles have dealt with other subjects. However, it is always articles that touch on the philosophy and practice of Hindutva that attract the most attention (and anger). They have brought me into contact with a certain kind of Indian who gets up before dawn, has a glass of cow’s milk, prays to the sun god, and begins scanning cyberspace for that day’s secular heresies. If a column I write touches in any way on faith, Hinduism, Hindutva, Guru Golwalkar, Gujarat, or Ayodhya, by breakfast I have had deposited, in my inbox—or perhaps in the ‘Comments’ section of the newspaper’s own website—mails which are hurt, complaining, angry, or downright abusive. A representative sample follows:
I think you are living on other planet. As historian, if India’s integrity is at stake from terrorist Islamic Shaitan Pakistan you are quiblling on small matters....so called pseudo historians like you besmirch India in Western media from whom you get sinecures and royalty. Ramachandra is very much a Hindu name. Please dont insult that name, and show your secularism by changing your name to rahim or rehaman. anyway... sanatana dharma does not want cowards like you!!! especially cowards who rape their own mother(land)!!! It would be to your advantage if you get mentally treated before it is too late if you are suffering from a mental problem of distortions and if it is treatable and can be cured. Good luck. When muslims got a land to live out of the land that belongs to hindus of india since 2000 BC where is the need for muslims to continue to live in India and if they cannot go to there to the land given to them they should keep quiet and vote in Pakisthan elections not in India. You too can go with them to pakisthan and live there...I will be the most happiest man if a poison like you is not exist in this world. If so our country will be more safe with less one enemy.
Sometimes the mails are sent as letters to the editor of the journals where I write, with a copy mailed to me. These ostensibly impersonal rejoinders tend to be rather forceful as well. Consider these examples, where the historian is characterised as, respectively, a Naxalite sympathiser (but simultaneously a Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist), a newspaper sales agent, a covert Christian missionary, and as akin to a Swiss bank:
India has been one country not in the westophilian sense but in a dharmic sense for the last thousands of years. He might not have heard about Adi Sankara who was born in Kaladi but established Mutts in the four corners of India. For him Indian spiritual unity does not exist. Guha who is a Naxalite sympathiser has got permission from Sonia (Gandhi) to use the archives at Nehru Museum to write his book and so sing the songs of the Sonia Dynasty. What your news paper want cheap publicity I can understand. Actually you want to increase sell of news paper that’s why you published this type of anti India and anti RSS article because at least RSS people will buy your newspaper. I vow not to buy your news paper and will try to convince more and more people. The egoist people like Guha will be punished by masses along with you. Any criminal in India can get his stupid views on every thing under the son published in any so called secular publication and even earn a very comfortable living provided he invariably starts his piece with a lamentation about the untold suffering the Christians have been undergoing in India since independence. But still, how could somewhat decent people like Mr Vinod Mehta (then editor of Outlook magazine) tolerate these fake intellectuals? It is advertisement income, stupid. The controlling share of almost all multinationals are held by church groups. Mr Guha was one of the historical cartels in India who brainwashed the young and impressionable students in India about how worthless ancient Indian heritage was.... I think Ramachandra Guha’s assets are liable to be proceeded against in a Class Action law suit either in India or the USA like the Swiss Banks’ role in profiting from the Holocaust victims under Hitler by laundering the sufferings of Hitler’s Jewish victims. The Swiss Banks received the gold from Hitler’s Germany including those melted from the tooth fillings of his Jewish victims. I believe the Colonial victims of India and their descendants including those victimised by Mr.Guha censorship of ancient Indian Heritage for ideological reasons are on a similar standing to the Holocaust victims and their descendants!!!
Not all letters are angry or abusive. Some are written in a civil tone, yet reflect the same anxieties and (dare one say) paranoias of a certain kind of modern Hindu. A letter I received from an elderly gentleman now based in El Cerrito, California, feared that India was becoming a Muslim nation. In the 1940s, the leaders of what this man called a ‘rogue religion’ had intrigued with the British to create Pakistan; now, they sought by demographic means to convert the already balkanised motherland into another Islamic state. “Afghanistan,” wrote my Californian correspondent, “was once a 100 per cent Bodth (Buddhist) Country and entire poplation was converted to Islam by the terroristic tactics in the past many centuries. Now, the Madarsas of India are too churning out terrorists like Pakistan at the expense of Hindu taxpayers....Soon the population explosion of Muslims will make them in Majority and the fate of Indian Temples will be the same as Bamyan Budha had faced.... You may not be able to give such thoughts to the Indian Press because of certain reasons but these fears are real and felt thousands of miles away by Hindus who are living in United States....”
Sometimes, the chastisement is gentle, offered in sorrow rather than anger, and outlining the hope that, despite my past errors and misdemeanours, I might yet come to respect and even represent the cause of the vulnerable and aggrieved Hindu. A correspondent with whom I had an extended exchange, asked:
I beg, please do a favour. Do not use every single opportunity to offend those who speak for Hindus. We have no where to go. This is our fatherland/motherland our spiritual land. The land of our gods. And we have only welcomed every persecuted race on earth and given space here. Helped them to flourish and now we are paying the price. There are bigger monsters to fight. Please use your energy there. We need bright intellectuals like you there, sir. For our great nation and its great civilisation. And like it or not, the Hindu Civiilsation is the only glue that keeps our great nation together. And if it dies we have no identity and India would not exist.
III
This was a selective but not unrepresentative sample of the mails I have received over the years from the intensely chauvinistic tribe of Internet Hindus. I have replied, as courteously as I possibly could, to each e-mail I received (a practice I still maintain), but discontinued the correspondence if (as was often the case) the mailer proved incapable of reasoned discussion or debate.
But for all this love of the motherland, it’s striking how, while this particular heretic lives in India, so many of his orthodox opponents are based overseas, in decidedly un-Hindu Europe and the US.
I have withheld the names of my correspondents. Notably, they were all male. I do have one Hindutva-oriented mailer who is a woman—but she is an exception, the only one I have encountered in some fifteen years of such correspondence. Along with the gender bias is a caste bias. Sharma, Shukla, Rao, Iyer, Gupta—these kinds of surnames recur with regularity in my inbox. These are typically dwija names, denoting ‘twice-born’ castes who, according to the tenets of orthodox Hinduism, can wear the sacred thread. (My experience in this regard tends to confirm the characterisation of the BJP as a ‘Brahmin-Bania’ party.) Other names I recognise are of Kayasth or Rajput origin, that is to say, also upper-caste. The age profile is harder to construct. It appears that a large proportion of my mailers are in their twenties and thirties, but there is a significant sprinkling of senior citizens as well. The former tend to be impatient, seeking to overcome India’s manifest weakness as a nation and a state with an infusion of the right kind of dharmic energy. The latter tend to be anguished or bitter, believing that India threw away its chances of becoming a great and powerful nation because of the reliance of its leaders on the pernicious Western ideology of secularism. Had India followed the example of Israel, they argue, and based its national unity on a shared religion, language and sacred text (Hinduism, Sanskrit and the Vedas, in this case), it would have stood tall among its neighbours, and in the world. For these despairing, defeatist nationalists, the one true moment of national pride was when India defeated Pakistan in the war of 1971, for them both revenge and consolation for centuries of humiliation at the hands of Muslim and Christian invaders.
VHP men moments before the Babri Masjid came down, 1992
The young profess to detest the West too. But for all this love of the motherland and the ancestral faith, it is striking how, while this particular heretic lives in India, so many of his orthodox opponents are based overseas, in the prosperous and decidedly un-Hindu nations of Europe and North America. One of my regular mailers writes from his home in 1650 Voyager Avenue, Simi Valley, CA, USA. A second, who chooses rather to address the editors of the journals I write for, signs his name and then adds, by way of further identification, ‘Out West, USA’. A third (the only woman in the pile) writes from Canada and always reminds me that she is a ‘Ph D, Western Ontario’. A fourth, who likewise combines an admiration of indigenous culture with an almost unreasoning hatred of the modern West, nonetheless never fails to mention that he is the possessor of those very Western certifications, ‘M. D., Ph D’. A fifth ended a long and very angry mail with these oddly defensive sentences: “I risk of being dismissed as a unemployed ‘Hindu fundamentalist’ and would not be surprised at all if this mail is put in trash can. Hence I think it is appropriate that I introduce to you that I am a experienced Senior Management professional working with a MNC in India’s sunshine industry.” A sixth first asked: “Who cares about your opinion, man? You speak as if you are representing a billion plus Hindus! Dimwits and slaves like you sit in a corner of your dimly lit houses and pontificate to others”; and then offered his own, rather, better qualifications for speaking about the subject at hand: “I am educated, young, well read (with 3 masters degrees) and residing in the west. Yet I have great pride and respect for my country, its culture, my Hindu religion, its Heroes, God and philosophies.”
The fundamentalist is convinced he will be victorious. Like the Marxist, the evangelical Christian, the Islamic fanatic, the Hindutvawadi needs to constantly reassure himself that he’ll win in the end.
The sociological background of the Hindutva hate-mailer can be partially reconstructed from his name and background. His ideology is more directly manifested in his mails. This rests on a deep suspicion of and hostility towards those Indians who are not Hindus by religious background. Christians and especially Muslims come in for special animosity. And yet, as the historian Dharma Kumar once pointed out, the philosophy of Hindutva only mimics and reproduces the ideology of its major adversary. Its unacknowledged model is the Islamic state, where those who do not belong to the ruling faith are tolerated if they are obedient and subservient, but attacked if they seek to assert the rights of equal citizenship.
Hindutvawadis thus want to construct what Dharma Kumar described as ‘an Islamic state for Hindus’. In medieval Muslim states, there was a category known as dhimmi, consisting of Jews and Christians, who, as people of the book, were treated somewhat more leniently than the kafirs, the unbelievers. The dhimmi were barred from the top positions in the state and in the army. However, so long as they paid their taxes and did not challenge the ruler, they could live in peace and security. The kafirs, on the other hand, were seen always and invariably as adversaries. In the same manner, if the RSS were to get its way, Muslims and Christians in modern India would live undisturbed, so long as they acknowledged their theological and political inferiority to the dominant Hindus. But if they sought equal rights of citizenship they would be punished as the kafirs had once been.
Like all fanatics, the Hindutva hate-mailer thinks in black-and-white. Although I am a liberal who has consistently stood against left-wing as well as right-wing extremism, the default reaction to my criticisms of Hindutva is that I must be a communist. The mail that follows is characteristic:
If the communist journalists thinking they can distroy an organization by writing few words against them, you are wrong sir. There was a time people forced to belive what you wrote. But today there is mass Communication between people. Unlike earlier there are people now to respond against communist journalists immediately. Today even your own media can not survive without supporting Hindutva. You see today your CPM channel in Kerala is live coverage (though it was sponsored) of a Mahayagam at Thirivananthapuram. 90% of the participants are Sangh Parivar leaders. I pity your CPM channel, they have no other alternative but to telecast the live coverage. Remember that our work is already spreads each and every corner of the country. Now we are engaged to increase our activitis more powerful. It is our challange we will dismantle Communist party in India. You wait and see what is going to happen in the coming time.
The extremist only recognises other extremists. Since I carry a Hindu name, yet have distanced myself from the bigotry and chauvinism of the Hindutvawadi, I must be a crypto-communist.
The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai, under attack during 26/11. (Photograph by Reuters, From Outlook 19 November 2012)
Apart from thinking in black-and-white, the fundamentalist is convinced that he will, in the end, be victorious. This triumphalist rhetoric, however, is actually a product of paranoia and insecurity. Like the Marxist, like the evangelical Christian, like the Islamic fanatic, the Hindutvawadi needs constantly to reassure himself that he will win in the end. This mail I received from a young man of Gujarati extraction is both typical as well as rather sad:
Narendra Modi is the Chief Minster of my great state Gujarat. He is without doubt the greatest Chief Minster in the history of India. One day in the near future he may become the Prime Minster of India. You all third rate parasitical dhimmi toads who do nothing all your lives except lecture others and contribute not an ioata to the Indian economy can then take a permenant sabbitical to your natural abode Paki Stan. You can bark you can rant and you can use every conceviable weapon to villify and demonise Narendra Modi and us Gujaratis and every time we will show you envious scums of the earth two fingers and treat you like one treats sewage. We Gujus are no 1 and will always remain no 1 whether you like it or not and continue to contribute the highest to the Indian economy....You third rate filth we Gujus have nothing but contempt and disdain for your types. you can continue barking and ranting against my State, its Chief Minster and her people and everytime we will say Up yours!
To this deep suspicion of diversity and pluralism, this tendency to think in black-and-white, this insistent (if ultimately unconvincing) claim that they are history’s inevitable winners, let me add one final characteristic of the Hindutva hate- mailer—an utter lack of humour. The mails already quoted illustrate this in abundance, but consider also some responses to an essay I wrote criticising the Ministry for Human Resources Development for proposing that the wife of the richest man in India be made a ‘brand ambassador’ for their adult literacy campaigns. I had pointed out that “if one is thinking of a name to motivate poor women or men to learn their letters, no name could be more spectacularly inappropriate than Nita Ambani’s. She is soon to be the resident of a 4,00,000 square feet house; she is already the recipient of a Boeing aircraft as a birthday gift. If this exhibitionism does not run contrary to our constitutional commitment to socialism and equality, I don’t know what does. As for our other national commitment to secularism and the scientific temper—which I presume the HRD ministry shares—how does one square that with Mrs Ambani’s periodic visits to a Southern hill-top to pray for, of all things, a cricket team?”
Hate mails increase at particular moments...before the 1999, 2004, 2009 general elections, I got a flood of mails warning that I’d be put in my place once the party of the faithful came to power.
The article was published in a paper that does not have an edition in Bangalore. Downloading it the morning it appeared, I noticed that the boys weaned on cow’s milk had come sniffing already. One mailer complained that “the ‘Southern Hilltop’ the journalist so callously refers to here is the much revered Lord Balaji’s temple. Where do these people get the nerve?? Will he say ‘People running to middle eastern desert’ for Haj pilgrimage?? This is called ‘Proving one’s secular credentials’ by putting down the most revered Lord in India.” Another angrily asked: “Would Mr. Guha have taken a swipe at a Muslim person, worthy or worthless in her own right, for praying five times a day or for doing Haz? Why this step-motherly treatment for visiting temples?”
Fortunately, these mailers had been put in their place by an Indian with a sense of proportion, who responded to their screeds as follows: “There we go again, just drag religious sentiments into it, and finish off with a Hindu-Muslim comparison to highlight a perceived bias. (Guha) was commenting on (Nita Ambani’s) visits to pray ‘for, of all things, a cricket team’... The point being she was praying not for literacy, not for end of poverty, not for benefit of fellow man, country or world but her commercial interests in a cricket franchise.”
IV
The number and intensity of Hindutva hate mails in my inbox has varied over the past two decades. They have increased and become more abusive at particular moments—after the Gujarat riots of 2002, for example, or after the terror attack in Mumbai of 2008. Before the general elections of 1999, 2004 and 2009 I also got a flood of mails warning me that I would be put in my place once the party of the faithful would be elected or re-elected to power. The mails fly thick and fast in times of political controversy, but they by no means dry up in quieter periods in-between. For the hard-core fundamentalist, the hunt for heretics is a full-time business.
I shall end this essay by quoting five very special mails that, in their individual and distinctive ways, illustrate the peculiarities and pathologies of the Homo Indicus Hindutvawadi.
The first mail offers this apparently careful and close definition of Hinduism:
A Hindu is someone who believes in the native and natural traditions of India. These traditions include a lifestyle that is compatible with the natural bounties and limits of India. A belief in the multiple facets of spirituality and tolerance of diverse concepts of god(s) (incl. that it is Man who created god(s) - not the other way around!). By this token some Moslems or Christians may be better Hindus than those who were born Hindus. But in general Hindus are the backbone of India and give it its true character. Minority communities, no matter how large, are the unfortunate remnants of past invasions. Westernized seculars like Ramachandra Guha are mere third rate stool pigeons who could not move to the richer West on their own but would say anything to harm the core of India for a few dollars as baksheesh!
The definition was however undermined by the address of the writer (‘out west, United States’)—although, as a patriotic Hindu, perhaps he had demanded of his employer that he be paid in (saffron-coloured and lotus-shaped?) rupees.
A ransacked church in Kandhamal in 2008, Orissa
My second example, coming also from a non-resident Indian, is notable for its capacious demonology, which included Muslims and Englishmen but privileged above all the Muslim-loving and English-loving renegade Hindu, Jawaharlal Nehru:
Dear Mr. Guha, I have read some of your articles, the headings of your articles have nothing to do with body of your articles, every article is BJP/RSS and Hindu bashing. But if you care to answer two questions which are asked by large number of Indians, the questions are:- 1. After British left India, all British invaders had left India, why Muslim invaders were not evicted? What right Nehru and Gandhi had to keep tens of millions of Muslims after giving them “homeland” (read Hindu land)? 2. If there are 150 million Muslims in India then why Pakistan was created and if Pakistan was created then why there are 150 million Muslims in India? Are you denying that before British took over Hindus were not fighting to get rid of Muslims? It seems all the “historians” are on Saudi pay roll. When I come to India I talk to rickshaw wallas, rail coolies, waiters and other real Indians, all ask the same questions. They talk to me because they know I live overseas and I am not a danger to them like journalists and people like you who immediately declare Hindus “anti-Muslim”, “anti-secular”, “chauvinists” etc and also let police and Congress goons let on them.... Nehru was a loafer, thug and a ruffian, he was only interested in Lady Mountbatten, can’t you see the damage done by Nehru? Kashmir, Tibet, Aksai Chin and decimation of Hindu society? About Gandhi, less said the better. But coming back to my two question, do you have the courage, guts, IQ to detach yourself from white skinned lady and answer truthfully, not your general doble-de-gook....
The third example illustrates the hectoring and bullying typical of a certain strain of Hindutva. It was written from Maharashtra, after I had published an article in The Telegraph of Calcutta on the Maoist threat to Indian democracy. I here recalled a similar threat from the extreme right in the early days of Indian independence, and mentioned in passing that Gandhi’s murderer, Nathuram Godse, had once been a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. An angry mailer claimed that my article “has nothing to do with facts and history also equating RSS with Maoist is sheer lie and hence court suit is inevitable against you if you doesn’t tenders straightaway apology to RSS.
A Bajrang Dal activist during the Gujarat riots, 2002. (Photograph by AFP, From Outlook 19 November 2012)
We have successfully countered such type of blasphemous propaganda against RSS through court battle.... So I am hereby demanding immediate apology from you and The Telegraph for the report or be prepared for legal battle, In case legal battle starts it is sure that your career as journalist would end abruptly, so it is not in your personal interest hence better to tender apology and end the matter here before reaching to the Court premises.”
No apology was offered either by myself or The Telegraph—a libel suit is yet awaited.
To be fair, the criticisms also allowed for a benign interpretation of the words that appeared under my name—namely, that I was suffering from some kind of mental sickness.
My fourth example illustrates the streak of paranoid triumphalism I spoke of earlier. After I had published a long essay explaining why, given the social and political fault-lines within, India would not and should not become a superpower, a reader wrote in to say that “India is bound 2 be worldpower. Take my words. People like Mr Guha are agents of China and they also go to temple (though in the dark of night)”.
Of all the hate mails that, over the years, have popped into my inbox, my personal favourite came from a man (with a resoundingly Brahmin name, as it happens), living in the town of Ghaziabad, in Uttar Pradesh. This, in one single sentence, encapsulated the sentiments of his fellow fanatics and ideologues. “It is suspected,” said my correspondent, “that you are getting money through Hawala (the black market) from antiIndia forces or your mindset is communist or you are psychologically weak requiring treatment or modern time ‘Asura’ (demon) wishing to destroy motherland.” I think of myself as a patriot, who loves his country, and lives and works in it. I also think of myself as a moderate, middle-of-the-road, liberal democrat. But by the definitions of right-wing Hindus I was something else altogether. Since I found flaws in Hindutva thought, it was self-evident that I could not be a patriot. Since I criticised the practice of Hindu fundamentalist groups, I must be an extremist on the other side, that is to say, a communist. Since I made these criticisms repeatedly, it was overwhelmingly likely that I was in the pay of foreign powers. And since I was published in a well-circulated Indian newspaper I was probably a demon in disguise, too. To be fair, the criticisms also allowed for a more benign interpretation of the words that appeared under my name—namely, that I was suffering from some kind of mental illness. If only I could see the right doctor, who would then prescribe me the correct medicines, the motherland would be saved.
Excerpted from Patriots and Partisans by Ramachandra Guha. Publishing date: November 20, 2012.Quanta Computer is expected to enjoy a strong second-half 2017 thanks to rising demand for notebooks, growing server sales and the release of the next-generation Apple Watch, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report.
Apple is reportedly planning to launch its third-generation Apple Watch in 2017 and the wearable is likely to help Quanta's Apple Watch product line turn profitable. Although Compal Electronics reportedly has joined the supply chain of the Apple Watch, the market watchers believe Apple is likely to let Compal mainly handle older-generation models, the paper added.
Apple has sourced Quanta Computer as the primary manufacturer of the Apple Watch since the original wearable device began a production ramp-up in late 2014/early 2015 for its official launch in the spring of 2015.The supplier was again the sole source of Apple Watch manufacturing for the Series 2 models in 2016, and a new article out today by Chinese-language site Economic Daily News has echoed previous reports that stated Apple will yet again keep Quanta as its main Apple Watch supplier for the so-called "Apple Watch Series 3." The move is expected to lead Quanta into a "strong" second half of 2017, further cementing the next-generation Apple Watch's debut this upcoming fall (via DigiTimes ).Additionally, Quanta's income towards the end of the year is poised to rise thanks to the manufacturer's supply of notebooks and servers, but the Apple Watch Series 3 is described as one of the company's biggest assets. Secondary to Quanta, EDN's report today cited market watchers who believe Compal will also be sourced as an Apple Watch supplier this year, but with a focus on older-generation models and not including Series 3.While rumors leading into the fall of 2017 have largely focused on the iPhone 8, it is believed that Apple will launch an all-new Apple Watch device this year, perhaps at the same iPhone debut event expected in September. The company used that strategy last fall when it announced and launched the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and Apple Watch Series 2 within the same September timeframe.Besides the expected new-generation bumps to processing speeds and a longer battery life, Apple Watch Series 3 has been rumored to include cellular connectivity so users could make phone calls, send iMessages, and stream Apple Music without needing to be tethered to their iPhone, with the caveat of an added data plan likely. The Series 3 device is also said to not include any major visual overhauls to the Apple Watch design, keeping the same case and band form factor that Apple has used since 2015.Erdoğan orders village heads to stop smoking, seizes cigarette packages
ISTANBUL
An official from the Turkish Presidency has shared images of cigarette boxes belonging to village heads (muhtars) who have reportedly quit smoking at the request of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, known as a fierce opponent of smokers.Village heads promised to quit smoking during their meeting with Erdoğan on Aug. 19, Hasan Doğan stated.“Many of our village heads promised to quit smoking to our president,” Doğan tweeted, along with an image showing boxes on which were written the names of the village heads who had vowed to quit smoking.This is not the first time Erdoğan has expressed his objection to smoking.Last year, he was recorded singling out a man who was smoking a cigarette in a cafe while Erdoğan was visiting Istanbul’s Esenler district.Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş, who was present at the scene, tried to defuse the tension by suggesting that the man “could promise that he won’t smoke again” and the issue could be closed. But Erdoğan rejected this suggestion, insisting that the man smoking in an enclosed public area must be penalized on the spot.“He has blatantly behaved rudely. This man is just sitting there and keeps smoking even after the president tells him not to,” he was caught on camera saying.Earlier this year, Erdoğan sent his first personal tweet on World Quit Smoking Day to give an anti-smoking message.“Today is Feb. 9, World Quit Smoking Day. Be strong-willed and do not surrender to a cigarette,” Erdoğan tweeted.Buy Photo Michael Shank Racing-Andretti Autosport IndyCar driver Jack Harvey (50) during practice for the Indianapolis 500 Monday, May 15, 2017, afternoon at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (Photo: Matt Kryger/IndyStar)Buy Photo
POCONO, Pa. -- IndyStar has learned that Jack Harvey will be behind the wheel of the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports No. 7 car for the final two races of the Verizon IndyCar Series calendar at Watkins Glen International and Sonoma Raceway.
Team owner Sam Schmidt confirmed the move Sunday at Pocono Raceway.
Sebastian Saavaedra was tasked with taking over for Mikhail Aleshin and teaming up with James Hinchcliffe this weekend at Pocono Raceway and next weekend at Gateway. He then will cede cockpit of the No. 7 car to Harvey.
IndyCar fans last saw the Englishman at the Indianapolis 500, where he drove for Michael Shank Racing under the umbrella of Andretti Autosport. Harvey qualified in the ninth row and completed 65 laps before crashing in Turn 3.
That was his only race in an Indy car.
Harvey drove for SPM’s Indy Lights team in 2014 and '15. He finished runner-up in the championship both years after winning a total of six races, four poles and racking up 18 podiums.
Harvey should feel comfortable at the season finale in Sonoma, where he earned two Lights wins. He also tested for SPM there in 2015.
Harvey will be the fourth different driver to pilot the No. 7 car this season. Aleshin drove it for 12 races, Saavedra for two, and Robert Wickens drove in practice ahead of the race at Road America while Aleshin was stuck in Europe dealing with visa issues.
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
Follow IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter and Instagram: @jimayello.
More racing coverage
• It's all available on the free INSports app
• Alexander Rossi's role in Takuma Sato winning the Pocono poleFans waiting for a Season 3 renewal for "Lucifer" are in for a treat. The writers of the Fox crime-drama have hinted that a renewal is in the show's cards.
Fox's network executives still haven't made any announcements about "Lucifer's" future but the writers are optimistic. Posts from the "Lucifer" writers' room Twitter account indicated that the team has "so many plans for the future." However, they want to focus on the remaining episodes of Season 2 for now. Check out the tweets below.
We will get to the renewal # later in Season 2!! We still have so much more to come this season! #Lucifer — Lucifer Writers Room (@LUCIFERwriters) January 6, 2017
TVLine's 2017 renewal scorecard labeled "Lucifer" Season 3 as "a safe bet." When the show returns for the second half of Season 2 this month, the lead characters will be embroiled in three major storylines.
When the first half of "Lucifer" Season 2 ended, it was revealed that Chloe (Lauren German) is a miracle baby that God intentionally put in the fallen's angel path. Lucifer's (Tom Ellis) mother, Charlotte (Tricia Helfer), will ponder on how to best take advantage and "weaponize" Chloe's real identity, TVLine reported.
Co-showrunner Ildy Modrovich said that Chloe may be the "key to getting home" and since Charlotte is adamant on doing just that, her plans could jeopardize Lucifer and Chloe's relationship and specifically, their blooming romance.
Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside), meanwhile, will finally pick a side between his brother and mother. It appears that Amenadiel will back Lucifer judging from the trailer for episode 11 titled "Stewardess Interruptus."
In the promo, Amenadiel is trying to prevent his mom from using Chloe as a pawn to force Lucifer's return to Hell. However, Modrovich also teased that Amenadiel may not choose the right side and "if he didn't, will he realize it too late?"
Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt), while pretending as a "sexy stewardess" to hunt a bounty, "will be pushed to possibly hurt Lucifer," Modrovich added. Maze, a demon who inhabits the form of a sultry woman, has a complex relationship with God's former favorite son. They are best friends but sometimes act as frenemies.
As for future episodes, Modrovich revealed that in episode 13 Dr. Linda's (Rachael Harris) "First, Do No Harm" doctoral vows "will be put into question" and "even sweet, spiritual Ella (Aimee Garcia) may be harboring a secret."
Watch the promo for "Stewardess Interruptus" below. The sneak peek showed Chloe's nose bleeding profusely. Perhaps as a side effect of her miracle baby status? Viewers should stay tuned. "Lucifer" Season 2 returns to Fox on Monday, Jan. 16, at 9 PM EST.(Photo by Ralph Crane, The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
As Nine Lives languishes in the box office, let us all take a moment to remember the legendary black cat audition of 1961.
As captured by photographer Ralph Crane, 152 cats lined up at what is now Raleigh Studios, hoping to be cast as the eponymous character in a film adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat. According to TIME, many hopefuls were dismissed due to splotches of white fur, but seven all-black felines were selected as understudies for a veteran cat actor who had already been cast in the main role. These seven cats were selected for having the most vicious visages.
In The Black Cat, published |
Jaitley today to pick Raghuram Rajan's successor RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan's term ends in September Dr Rajan's sudden exit came after persistent criticism from BJP lawmaker
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will begin discussions today with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to pick a successor to Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan, whose term ends in September.The Prime Minister will meet Mr Jaitley in his office immediately after a meeting of the union cabinet this morning.The corridors of the stately North and South Blocks that house the offices of the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister have been buzzing all week with the names of people who could replace Dr Rajan. Among those being talked about are Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das, Niti Ayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagriya and former RBI deputy governors and noted economists Subir Gokarn and Rakesh Mohan.PM Modi needs to juggle competing demands from within his own party, the economy's need for more stimulus and investors' demands for an independent thinker.Traditionally, senior bureaucrats in the economic affairs department have seamlessly transitioned to the central bank because they understand internal economic challenges. But the RBI governor now must also possess experience and expertise at a global economy level.Also, the Indian economy's biggest challenge right now is a banks crisis over non-performing loans and the RBI governor must be able to tackle that. "The government has names that fit one or two of these criteria. The right person has to fit all three," a senior official said.Global and Indian investors have been on edge with reports that Prime Minister Modi could select the new RBI governor within 48 hours of his return from his Africa tour yesterday.But sources said the government will weigh whether to announce a new governor before the RBI's next policy announcement in August. A section in the government suggests it would be prudent to wait till the end of Dr Rajan's term so as not to unsettle him. But another argues that an early announcement will give the new Governor a chance to prepare for the crucial role.Dr Rajan - held in high esteem for defusing a currency crisis, cutting interest rates and overhauling the way the RBI operates, including introducing inflation targeting - had stunned financial markets last month by announcing that he would step down after a single three-year term to return to academia. The government responded with a tweet from the finance minister that the next governor would be announced soon. Raghuram Rajan's sudden exit came after persistent criticism from BJP lawmaker Subramanian Swamy and right-wing affiliates.Pep Guardiola has hinted that he is looking to offload defender Eliaquim Mangala in the next transfer window.
The French defender’s £42 million move to Manchester City made him the most expensive defender in British history.
However after making 50 appearances under former Blues boss Manuel Pellegrini, his future at the Etihad may be in doubt.
He was loaned out to Valencia for the 2016-17 campaign. Since coming back into the City fold however, he hasn’t made a single start under current manager Pep Guardiola.
The Blues have gained a stellar 37 points from 13 games played so far this season and are performing a mile above their competition.
According to Guardiola, he feels he needs additions to his already-packed squad in order to be successful.
He said “(We are going to rescale everything.) Not just with Mangala, for everybody.
The club is going to ask them if they are happy or if they are not; if they are comfortable in the position they had in the past, playing or not playing? They have to decide.’’
However, the big question is does Mangala really want to stay at Manchester City, or further his career playing somewhere else?
Opinion: In terms of Pep Guardiola suggesting that he needs more signings in order to make a push for the Premier League title, it is best to keep a close eye on deadline-day target Alexis Sanchez.
After protracted negotiations in last summer’s Deadline Day failed to pay off for both player and manager, contract negotiation between the Chilean winger and current boss Arsene Wenger seems stale, hinting at a possible move in the upcoming January window.
The previous connection between Pep and Sanchez from their time together at Barcelona may just clinch the move come January.
AdvertisementsAbout This Game Make America Great Again, in which you assume the role of President in fighting against Islamic State who have occupied and brought destruction to areas in the Middle East.
Make America Great Again, is a different kind of game, a 2D indie game, that mixes pixel art with digital painting. At first, the user finds the commands odd, but then the game becomes surprisingly entertaining and exciting, being hit you lose and must restart the level. The fearless leader will face the Islamic State (ISIS) in different regions, and the tests of his mission increase as the game progresses. However, President counts with an infinite amount of ammo that he took from front lines of the war.
One sure thing. You will either love or hate this game!
It takes a particular skill player to defeat ISIS.We've found that smart replies can often feel impersonal, or they just don't quite fit the message you want to send. But Google says that 12 percent of all Inbox replies use smart replies, so clearly people like them. They are pretty effective for quick confirmation or "thank you" replies, so it's definitely not without utility. And since Google uses machine learning to improve the suggestions over time, the more you use them the better they'll fit your writing style.
Regardless of where you stand on the utility of smart replies, the fact that they'll be showing up in the main Gmail app for Android and iOS means a lot more people are likely to try them out. You might as well get on board now: The update is rolling out today in English, with Spanish smart replies set to arrive in the coming weeks.WASHINGTON—According to a poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center, the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine has left Americans sharply and bitterly divided along ignorant and apathetic lines, with the nation’s citizenry evenly split between grossly misinformed and wholly indifferent factions.
“The very real threat of a Russia-Ukraine war has completely polarized the general public, pitting two deeply entrenched blocs against one another: those who have absolutely no clue what they’re talking about and those who couldn’t care less,” said Pew spokesman Andrew Collins, noting that the ouster of Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych and Russia’s subsequent occupation of Crimea has inflamed tensions between the two sides to a level unseen since the height of the war in Syria. “This is not a distinctly regional or socioeconomic split, either. We’re seeing local workplaces, friends, even families ripped in two by their desire to either ignore the whole thing completely or spout an inane, half-witted opinion on it like they’re some geopolitical expert.”
Advertisement
“And as the situation develops and Western powers become more involved, these divisions will only appear more stark,” he added. “In the coming weeks, we can expect to hear a growing cacophony of uninformed and harebrained calls for action or restraint from one side, and absolutely nothing at all from the other.”
Results of the poll found that the two sides are at odds on nearly every facet of the crisis, from last week’s protests in Kiev, to Ukraine’s freeing of former president Yulia Tymoshenko, to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Crimean Peninsula in defiance of Western warnings, with neither group seeing eye-to-eye on any of the developments’ significance—or whether they even have any significance to begin with.
Additionally, nearly half the U.S. public has put forth numerous breathtakingly naive potential solutions to the crisis—which range from economic sanctions on Russia, to economic sanctions on Ukraine, to deploying the U.S. military to the “middle of Asia” to solve the standoff—while an equal number of Americans firmly and repeatedly stated their commitment to not giving a shit one way or the other.
Advertisement
Furthermore, sources are reporting that the deep ideological rift over the Russia-Ukraine conflict is visible in nearly every community and place of work across the country, with disinterested and misinformed Americans confirming they have repeatedly come into conflict in recent days.
“It’s incredibly frustrating to try to talk some sense into someone who doesn’t realize that Crimea’s very freedom as an independent nation is at stake,” said completely ignorant San Jose, CA resident Carol Goldmacher, who admitted that she has clashed constantly in the past week over Ukraine with her staunchly apathetic roommate Lisa Suarez. “Talking to her is like talking to a brick wall. It’s almost as if she doesn’t even want to hear how Putin was kicked out of Ukraine by his own people and then retaliated by invading Crimea. Frankly, no matter how much I tell her that Obama’s this close to breaking his silence and issuing a warning to Russia, it’s just not getting through to her.”
“The bottom line is that Carol’s views aren’t going to affect my opinion,” said Suarez of her roommate’s constant uneducated opinions about John Kerry’s upcoming trip to Kiev and her bizarre personal assertion that the invasion happened “suspiciously close to the Olympics.” “My mind’s made up, and I completely stand by my lack of interest in this issue. So Carol should just keep her mouth shut and let this situation—whatever it is—play out.”
Advertisement
According to reports, most Americans see little chance of the warring camps coming to any sort of reconciliation any time soon, as supporters on both sides appeared committed in their respective efforts to either gravely misconstrue the complicated crisis in Ukraine or remain checked out of the issue entirely. Still, some experts are holding out hope that the two groups may be able to someday see eye-to-eye on the thorny issue of Ukrainian sovereignty and Russian aggression.
“As startling as these two factions’ differences may seem at first, there’s still opportunity for the two sides to come together and reach a compromise on the Ukraine conflict,” said Collins. “When it comes to the situation in Crimea, there’s a middle ground between ignorance and apathy on this issue that I think all Americans could happily live with.”Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
*Introductory pricing schedule for 12 month: $0.99/month plus tax for first 3 months, $5.99/month for months 4 - 6, $10.99/month for months 7 - 9, $13.99/month for months 10 - 12. Standard All Access Digital rate of $16.99/month begins after first year.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Thank you for supporting the journalism that our community needs!
For unlimited access to the best local, national, and international news and much more, try an All Access Digital subscription:
We hope you have enjoyed your trial! To continue reading, we recommend our Read Now Pay Later membership. Simply add a form of payment and pay only 27¢ per article.
Goltz has taken all the first-team reps in practice this week after Buck Pierce injured his abdomen in a loss to Toronto last Friday.
Bombers head coach Tim Burke had said Tuesday that whoever took first-team reps at practice on Wednesday would be Winnipeg's starter this week.
A club spokesman tweeted the news this morning just as the players were making their way out on to the field for practice.
Justin Goltz will get his first-ever professional start at quarterback when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers host the Calgary Stampeders Friday night at Investors Group Field.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 24/7/2013 (2043 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/7/2013 (2043 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Justin Goltz will get his first-ever professional start at quarterback when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers host the Calgary Stampeders Friday night at Investors Group Field.
A club spokesman tweeted the news this morning just as the players were making their way out on to the field for practice.
KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Blue Bomber QB Justin Goltz during practice Tuesday.
Bombers head coach Tim Burke had said Tuesday that whoever took first-team reps at practice on Wednesday would be Winnipeg's starter this week.
Goltz has taken all the first-team reps in practice this week after Buck Pierce injured his abdomen in a loss to Toronto last Friday.
Burke said after today’s practice that Pierce will dress but will be the No. 3 quarterback for Friday’s game.
"He’s not completely healthy and we only have three quarterbacks on the roster so that’s the least-likely place where he could be re-injured. It would take a lot to get all the way to your third quarterback."
Max Hall will be the team’s No. 2 on Friday.
Goltz said after practice today that he relishes this chance.
"It feels good that I’ve lasted this long and finally getting the opportunity," Goltz said. "There’s pressure there but I don’t think one person coming in is going to change the whole face of the franchise. I’m going to do everything I can to be the spark that we need. I think that our team definitely needs that spark and I’m confident I can provide that spark."
Burke was asked if Goltz can win the starting job this week, rather than just being Pierce’s fill-in.
"Maybe," the coach said.
Want to get a head start on your day? Get the day’s breaking stories, weather forecast, and more sent straight to your inbox every morning.
For tackle Glenn January, not a lot’s going to change from his spot on the field, he said today.
"It’s not necessarily different in a good or bad way," January said. "You just have to change small things whenever you have any quarterback back there. We’ve talked about this in past years, when we had the carousel with Buck and (Alex) Brink and (Joey) Elliott, everybody has a little bit of preference. Some of them like to fade a little bit when they drop back. It’s just little things you have to know and take into account whenever you go out there and play the game but there’s no drastic changes needed for us now."
January said there is an eagerness to see what Goltz can do in a main role.
"We’re excited for him to get out there and get a chance," the veteran lineman said. "You have to feel for Buck right now with his lingering after-effects of last week but that’s what we’re going to do.
"We’ve had a whole week to work with him. We’ll see how it goes."
— with files from Tim CampbellTHE Reddit user who claims to have created the meme of the Donald Trump’s CNN WrestleMania clip has apologised to the media company and others.
In an astonishing statement posted to the subreddit self.The—Donald, user HanAssholeSolo has called the meme a prank, which had acted as an “extreme wakeup call”, and called on other trolls to think about what they were doing.
CNN later revealed it had managed to track down HanAssholeSolo but he had asked them not to publish his identity for fear of his personal safety and for the public embarrassment it would bring to him and his family.
The news organisation said it would not be publishing his name because he was a private citizen who had issued an apology, showed his remorse and said he was not going to repeat his behaviour.
“CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change,” it said.
While the identity of HanAssholeSolo has not been revealed, reports had emerged in recent days about the user’s numerous racist posts in the past. In his apology, the user denied being racist, bigoted or anti-semitic.
“I am in no way this kind of person, I love and accept people of all walks of life and have done so for my entire life,” he said.
“I was trolling and posting things to get a reaction from the subs on reddit and never meant any of the hateful things I said in those posts.
“I would never support any kind of violence or actions against others simply for what they believe in, their religion, or the lifestyle they choose to have.”
HanAssholeSolo said the attention around his posts had been “extreme wakeup call” to always consider how others think or feel before submitting comments.
“Free speech is a right we all have, but it shouldn’t be used in a manner that it was in the posts that were put on this site.”
The user said the Donald Trump meme was created purely as a satire and was not meant to be a call to violence against CNN or any other news affiliation.
“Trolling to get a reaction out of people is not the best way to make a point.
“To people who troll the internet for fun, consider your words and actions conveyed in your message and who it might upset or anger. Put yourself in their shoes before you post it.”
The user apologised to the subreddit community, the site, the media (especially CNN) and to anyone offended by the posts.
They said it would be the last post from the account and they would not be posting hurtful or hateful things in jest online anymore.
The post, which has been removed twice from the subreddit that is a forum for “serious supporters of President Trump”, struck a very different tone to the user’s reaction to having his video retweeted by the US President.
Redditor HanAssholeSolo, the guy who posted the Trump/CNN clip the president tweeted, has apologized to @CNN, the media, and others pic.twitter.com/GlePoiSlFj — Brandon Wall (@Walldo) July 4, 2017
“I wake up and have my morning coffee and who retweets my s---post but the MAGA EMPEROR himself!!! I am honored,” HanAssholeSolo wrote.
While comments have also been disabled on the apology, some said the user should not have apologised and speculated that HanAssholeSolo may have been “doxed”, which means the user’s identity may have been published.
Several news organisations had been looking at the user’s identity, pointing out racist comments made by HanAssholeSolo, which have since been deleted.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Centre on Extremism, which tracks extremism and hate online and offline, found an 18-month record of comments and memes against Muslims, African-Americans, Jews and others — some which seemed to glorify violence.
They also said the user’s posts pointed to him being a parent and veteran in his 40s living in Tennessee.
Trump caused huge controversy after tweeting a clip on July 2 that showed him pommeling a man in a business suit — his face obscured by the CNN logo — outside the wrestling ring.
It was unprecedented, even for Trump: a sitting president, in effect promoting physical assault of a media stand-in.
Media watchdogs quickly called him out. Unrepentant, Trump argued over the weekend that his outsized Twitter presence was part of a calculated redefinition of the presidency.
“My use of social media is not Presidential - it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL,” he tweeted.
But Trump’s tweets now have US politicians so concerned they are worried about the President’s sanity and are making a plan that could see him removed from the White House.Yes, micro USB cables work with any Android phone, which means that they’re extremely useful. However, they still have an annoying feature: there’s only one way to plug them into devices, as they’re not reversible like the new USB Type-C cables. However, someone fixed that problem for you, and you can reserve your reversible micro USB cables right now on Indiegogo.
DON’T MISS: I just watched my smartphone case heal itself from scratches
The world’s so-called “first reversible micro USB cable” is called MicFlip and it’s a project that already raised more than $70,000 in pledges, or more than 1,100% its initial funding goal. The cheapest MicFlip cable costs $15 and will ship free of charge worldwide at some point in September.
What the company did to “fix” the micro USB cable is to replace the usual trapezoid connector with one that has a hexagonal shape, as you can see in the image above.
In addition to offering users a more convenient way of plugging in their devices, the cable comes with gold-plated plugs and aluminum shells, which should make it more durable than your average micro USB cable. Unfortunately, MicFlip’s regular USB connector isn’t reversible too, which would have made the product insanely better.
The following video demos the main features of this MicFlip reversible micro USB cable.NEW YORK On the fourth day of the 1967 Arab Israeli War, the intelligence ship ‘USS Liberty’ was steaming slowly in international waters, 14 miles off the Sinai Peninsula. Israeli armored forces were racing deep into Sinai in hot pursuit of the retreating Egyptian army.
‘Liberty,’ a World War II freighter, had been converted into an intelligence vessel by the top-secret US National Security Agency, and packed with the latest signals and electronic interception equipment. The ship bristled with antennas and electronic ‘ears’ including TRSSCOMM, a system that delivered real-time intercepts to Washington by bouncing a stream of microwaves off the moon.
‘Liberty’ had been rushed to Sinai to monitor communications of the belligerents in the Third Arab Israeli War: Israel and her foes, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan.
At 0800 hrs, 8 June, 1967, eight Israeli recon flights flew over ‘Liberty,’ which was flying a large American flag. At 1400 hrs, waves of low-flying Israeli Mystere and Mirage-III fighter-bombers repeatedly attacked the American vessel with rockets, napalm, and cannon. The air attacks lasted 20 minutes, concentrating on the ship’s electronic antennas and dishes. The ‘Liberty’ was left afire, listing sharply. Eight of her crew lay dead, a hundred seriously wounded, including the captain, Commander William McGonagle.
At 1424 hrs, three Israeli torpedo boats attacked, raking the burning ‘Liberty’ with 20mm and 40mm shells. At 1431hrs an Israeli torpedo hit the ‘Liberty’ midship, precisely where the signals intelligence systems were located. Twenty-five more Americans died.
Israeli gunboats circled the wounded ‘Liberty,’ firing at crewmen trying to fight the fires. At 1515, the crew were ordered to abandon ship. The Israeli warships closed and poured machine gun fire into the crowded life rafts, sinking two. As American sailors were being massacred in cold blood, a rescue mission by US Sixth Fleet carrier aircraft was mysteriously aborted on orders from the White House.
An hour after the attack, Israeli warships and planes returned. Commander McGonagle gave the order. ‘prepare to repel borders.’ But the Israelis, probably fearful of intervention by the US Sixth Fleet, departed. ‘Liberty’ was left shattered but still defiant, her flag flying.
The Israeli attacks killed 34 US seamen and wounded 171 out of a crew of 297, the worst loss of American naval personnel from hostile action since World War II.
Less than an hour after the attack, Israel told Washington its forces had committed a ‘tragic error.’ Later, Israel claimed it had mistaken ‘Liberty’ for an ancient Egyptian horse transport. US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and Joint Chiefs of Staff head, Admiral Thomas Moorer, insisted the Israeli attack was deliberate and designed to sink ‘Liberty.’ So did three CIA reports; one asserted Israel’s Defense Minister, Gen. Moshe Dayan, had personally ordered the attack.
In contrast to American outrage over North Korea’s assault on the intelligence ship ‘Pueblo,’ Iraq’s mistaken missile strike on the USS ‘Stark,’ last fall’s bombing of the USS ‘Cole’ in Aden, and the recent US-China air incident, the savaging of ‘Liberty’ was quickly hushed up by President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
The White House and Congress immediately accepted Israel’s explanation and let the matter drop. Israel later paid a token reparation of US $6 million. There were reports two Israeli pilots who had refused to attack ‘Liberty’ were jailed for 18 years.
Surviving ‘Liberty’ crew members would not be silenced. They kept demanding an open inquiry and tried to tell their story of deliberate attack to the media. Israel’s government worked behind the scenes to thwart these efforts, going so far as having American pro-Israel groups accuse ‘Liberty’s’ survivors of being ‘anti-Semites’ and ‘Israel-haters.’ Major TV networks cancelled interviews with the crew. A book about the ‘Liberty’ by crewman James Ennes’ was dropped from distribution. The Israel lobby branded him ‘an Arab propagandist.’
The attack on ‘Liberty’ was fading into obscurity until last week, when intelligence expert James Bamford came out with Body of Secrets, his latest book about the National Security Agency. In a stunning revelation, Bamford writes that unknown to Israel, a US Navy EC-121 intelligence aircraft was flying high overhead the ‘Liberty,’ electronically recorded the attack. The US aircraft crew provides evidence that the Israeli pilots knew full well that they were attacking a US Navy ship flying the American flag.
Why did Israel try to sink a naval vessel of its benefactor and ally? Most likely because ‘Liberty’s’ intercepts flatly contradicted Israel’s claim, made at the war’s beginning on 5 June, that Egypt had attacked Israel, and that Israel’s massive air assault on three Arab nations was in retaliation. In fact, Israel began the war by a devastating, Pearl-Harbor style surprise attack that caught the Arabs in bed and destroyed their entire air forces.
Israel was also preparing to attack Syria to seize its strategic Golan Heights. Washington warned Israel not to invade Syria, which had remained inactive while Israel fought Egypt. Bamford says Israel’s offensive against Syria was abruptly postponed when ‘Liberty’ appeared off Sinai, then launched once it was knocked out of action. Israel’s claim that Syria had attacked it could have been disproved by ‘Liberty.’
Most significant, ‘Liberty’s’ intercepts may have shown that Israel seized upon sharply rising Arab-Israeli tensions in May-June 1967 to launch a long-planned war to invade and annex the West Bank, Jerusalem, Golan and Sinai.
Far more shocking was Washington’s response. Writes Bamford: ‘Despite the overwhelming evidence that Israel attacked the ship and killed American servicemen deliberately, the Johnson Administration and Congress covered up the entire incident.’ Why?
Domestic politics. Johnson, a man never noted for high moral values, preferred to cover up the attack rather than anger a key constituency and major financial backer of the Democratic Party. Congress was even less eager to touch this ‘third rail’ issue.
Commander McGonagle was quietly awarded the Medal of Honor for his and his men’s heroism not in the White House, as is usual, but in an obscure ceremony at the Washington Navy Yard. Crew member’s graves were inscribed, ‘died in the Eastern Mediterranean..’ as if they had be killed by disease, rather than hostile action.
A member of President Johnson’s staff believed there was a more complex reason for the cover-up: Johnson offered Jewish liberals unconditional backing of Israel, and a cover-up of the ‘Liberty’ attack, in exchange for the liberal toning down their strident criticism of his policies in the then raging Vietnam War.
Israel, which claims it fought a war of self defense in 1967 and had no prior territorial ambitions, will be much displeased by Bamford’s revelations. Those who believe Israel illegally occupies the West Bank and Golan will be emboldened.
Much more important, the US government’s long, disgraceful cover-up of the premeditated attack on ‘Liberty’ has now burst into the open and demands full-scale investigation. After 34 years, the voices of ‘Liberty’s’ dead and wounded seamen must finally be heard.
May 2, 2001
The Best of Eric S. MargolisA major change is coming to the Hardy Toll Road. After shutting down this weekend from noon on Friday until 5 am Monday to demolish its toll plazas, the Hardy will no longer accept cash payments.
Like certain segments of the Grand Parkway and the entire Westpark Toll Road (among others), drivers will need an electronic toll tag, either an EZ TAG or a TxTag, to utilize the 21-mile roadway.
According to the Harris County Toll Road Authority website, 80 percent of drivers during peak times already use electronic payment on the Hardy, and additional payment lanes will undoubtedly speed traffic during rush hour. Beyond not having to slow down to pay, the HCTRA has always provided the incentive of less expensive tolls to those who pay electronically.
People who will be negatively effected include those who use the Hardy occasionally as a respite from the grueling traffic on I-45 on inner loopers who hop on the roadway to expedite an occasional trip to the Woodlands for a concert or staycation.
Those who feel pressured to acquire a tag but are also looking to save a little money should consider a TxTag instead of a EZTAG. Issued by the Texas Department of Transportation, the TxTag has a lower initial payment ($20 instead of $40) and doesn't cost anything to acquire if the driver accepts automatic debits (each EZTAG is $15).The raging bull! How Mark Webber has left world champions Button and Hamilton trailing in his slipstream
By Malcolm Folley
At his local petrol station in Buckinghamshire, Mark Webber drew some quiet, congratulatory comments when he returned home from Monaco last week.
'Usually, people tell me that if Lewis or Jenson can't win, they support me,' said Webber. 'I'm the third cab off the rank, but that's understandable.'
Not any longer. In the space of eight, unforgettable days, Webber, a 33-year-old Australian who has taken root in England, has turned the established order of Formula One on its head with back-to-back victories in Spain and Monaco.
Leading the way: Webber won his second consecutive grand prix in Monaco
After eight largely unprofitable years spent predominantly at the wrong end of the grid, Webber, at 6ft 2in preposterously tall for a racing driver, has become an overnight sensation.
At the start of the season, nobody envisaged the Aussie with the lean, muscular build of a fast bowler - and a steel rod in his right leg as the result of an accident suffered in the unlikely circumstances of a charity cycling event - travelling this fast, or this far.
The year was supposed to be dominated by reigning world champion Jenson Button joining forces with his predecessor, Lewis Hamilton, to form a British dream team at McLaren. Fernando Alonso's Ferrari was meant to be their most potent threat, while the return of seven-times world champion Michael Schumacher at 41 was expected to present a force for younger men to fear.
All smiles: Webber leads the championship withe Sebastian Vettel
And if Red Bull were to become a team of substance, then 23-year-old Sebastian Vettel was the driver earmarked to advance their claims.
Yet last week, the man being showered with champagne and compliments was Webber, who until a fortnight ago had enjoyed just two wins from 142 F1 races.
After winning the Monaco Grand Prix last Sunday, leading from first corner to last with a composed, masterful drive in his Red Bull - just as he had done at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona the weekend before - Webber has thrust himself to the head of the World Championship standings.
'I suppose it's amazing because, only three or four weeks ago, everyone was talking about the dream team at McLaren or Michael doing this or that,' said Webber. 'But I'm not getting carried away; our sport changes in a flash.'
Over recent days Webber has received a deluge of calls and messages from racing men like Nigel Mansell, Sir Stirling Moss, Alain Prost, Jody Scheckter and Jack Brabham, as well Australian cricketers Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting.
He feels humbled by the acclaim. 'It seems a lot of people watch the Monaco Grand Prix,' he said.
Webber's success is sweeter for having endured years of hardship with under-funded teams since making his debut with Minardi in 2002.
Flat out: Webber has turned the world of Formula One upside down
Years in the outback of the sport followed with Jaguar and Williams, teams condemned to compete with little money and even less hope of winning. Then, cruelly, just as he appeared to be turning the corner with a new team, Red Bull, Webber feared his career could be stolen from him.
Seventeen months ago he was knocked over by a car when he was cycling in his own charity event in Tasmania. He suffered a double compound fracture of his right leg, along with a broken shoulder. Webber was given just 82 days, from entering hospital in Australia to passing a fitness test set by his Red Bull paymasters, to get himself fit to continue racing for the team in 2009.
'It was an aggressive time-frame with the injuries I had,' he said without complaint last week. 'The team were putting a huge amount of effort into being successful against Ferrari and McLaren week in, week out and you can't have one of your key personnel messing you around.
Taking a dip: Webber celebrates after winning the Monaco Grand Prix
'I admit they were difficult times, but I had good people around me and I was determined to make it.'
The steel rod holding his right leg in place is a legacy of his battle; but, then Webber is a man who defies stereo-typing. Just recently, he watched surgeons perform open-heart surgery at a hospital in Nottingham.
'I wanted to see other professional people perform under pressure,' he explained. His mother, Diane, had successfully undergone a similar operation at home in New South Wales.
'I wasn't clever enough to study medicine, but I've always been fascinated by physiology and the human condition,' he added.
Making a splash: Webber has won two races inside eight days
When he called home from Monaco on Sunday, he shared his elation with his father Alan, hugely instrumental in assisting Webber's journey from the small country town of Queanbeyan, near Canberra, to Formula One.
'But mum couldn't get any further than, "Hello", because she was too emotional.' The family remembered only too well the odds that Webber surmounted.
Without a £54,000 interest-free loan from Australia's maverick rugby star, David Campese - until then the most famous inhabitant of Queanbeyan - he would have run out of money during his apprenticeship in Formula Three in Britain.
By then, Webber was already in a relationship with an Englishwoman, Ann Neal, who had worked as a consultant with Ford in Australia after her marriage had broken down.
Tough times: Webber's 2009 season was in doubt after his accident
She was with Webber when he dined with Prince Albert as guest of honour at the traditional post-Monaco Grand Prix black-tie gala party on Sunday night.
'I was in jeans, but smart jeans,' he insisted. 'Ann did well but, true to form, females need more time to get ready! Still, I was let in and Prince Albert seemed happy to see me.
'It struck me that, at that dinner with the Prince, I was part of history. never forget them peeling back roof of the building for a fireworks display. It was a great conclusion what had been a unique, dramatic week in my life.'
Webber's celebrations came attached with a health warning. To escape madding crowd wanting to share triumph at the end of the race, Webber made an unconventional return to team's HQ, a three-storey palatial restaurant-bar-business centre, with its own swimming pool, that was beside the paddock.
All smiles: but Hamilton is yet to open his winning account this season
Along with Vettel, who secured Red Bull a memorable one-two result, Webber jumped into the harbour from a height of around 20ft and swam back.
'I've got to admit the water didn't taste too good, mate,' said Webber. On Monday, he had a hangover made in heaven.
'I drove round the track again in my road car looking to see where the rubber was, just taking in the moment,' he explained. 'The last time I'd driven it, I'd been pretty wired! I am not one for the glitz or glamour, but I know how tough it is to win there. A small error and your race is over. I just wanted another look on Monday.'
What he saw was how he had placed himself among the most exalted company. And at the end of an exceptional week's work, Webber is now deemed in control of the driver market.
His contract ends this year and he is attracting the attention of Ferrari, who are widely expected to part company with Felipe Massa this year.
Yet, with the wisdom acquired from years in the business, Webber is unexcited about his sudden change of status.
'I've just won two races, back-to-back, and people are asking me where I'm going to drive next year,' he said. 'I'm very close to the guys at Red Bull, we've been through a lot, and I have a great relationship with them. Yet things happen and change very fast in this business, and you never |
their growing collection of radical collection, such as material emanating from the Stop the War Coalition – Stefan Dickers, the library and archives manager at the Bishopsgate, volunteered to take any material that Ruskin did not want. Some material was donated, such as a photograph and portrait of Raphael Samuel and MA dissertations in Public History taught at the College from 1996 – 2012 when the course was closed down. But rather than take up this offer of receiving all unwanted material it was decided to eradicate it. Papers have not gone to a landfill site but have been specifically destroyed. Even the removal firm seemed puzzled and sought clarification from the principal who allegedly confirmed that indeed such material must be destroyed. Perhaps the firm’s staff were viewers of ‘Who do you think you are?’ and understood their worth…
While some valuable material is now saved from such acts of philistinism the destruction of Ruskin’s past has not yet finished. The iconography that adorned the public walls of the College–the anti-imperialist mural in the block named after anti-apartheid activist David Kitson; the banner from the miners’ strike of 1984-5 when the College hosted striking miners; the plaque presented to Charles Bowerman, former President of the TUC and member of Ruskin’s governing council – are no longer part of the public history and public profile of the College. Volunteer students working in the archive instructed to shred labour movement pamphlets acted with the imagination and integrity one expects of the best of the Ruskin tradition. Other material such as pamphlets or ephemera has been squirreled away by staff keen to preserve the past – but understandably wary of their own future in the current climate.
Brecht famously enumerated ‘the questions of a worker who reads’. Weaver John Ward was one such worker. The Clitheroe labourer who rescued his writing was another. Ruskin students have provided such readers in their thousands, ordinary people interested in the past, present and future who asked questions of the world around them. Like Brecht’s character, they contemplated traces of the past that some people regard as valuable and others choose to ignore.
The destruction of the Ruskin archive will not stop such questions being raised, but better to retain the traces, than to wipe them out.
Hilda Kean is the former Dean of Ruskin College. Her latest book is The Public History Reader (Routledge, forthcoming 2013) edited with Paul Martin.
i John Burnett Useful Toil.Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s, Penguin,1977, p.80. ii ’ http://www.soas.ac.uk/infocomp/dpa/policy/retaining/ (site accessed 1 October 2012)We already shared the story of an Uber driver who arrived home to find someone parked in the spot he had shoveled and then ‘saved’ by placing an ‘old bookshelf’ in it. He then exacted revenge on the parking spot thief by shoveling all the snow back in the space, right on top of the car.
Now, hear from the alleged perpetrator.
Emily Ackerman manages a South End restaurant. She moved to Boston six months ago from upstate New York.
When Ackerman left for work on February 8, she gave up a parking spot she had shoveled out, on Eliot Street in Jamaica Plain.
Advertisement
“I didn’t put anything in the spot I dug out,’’Ackerman said. “I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be able to find another spot.’’
That evening, she returned home from work only to find there were no spots available near her apartment.
Ackerman didn’t know the space saver rules. You’ll never guess what happened next.
“I was totally baffled. I knew I had to find a spot with no marker,’’ she said.
After driving around “for about an hour,’’ Ackerman finally found a spot with no space saver. It was on Dunster Road, almost a half mile from her apartment.
Ackerman now knows that the original shoveler of the Dunster Road parking spot claims to have placed an old bookshelf in the spot to save it.
But she told Boston.com there was no bookcase there by the time she arrived.
“Whether someone took it or what, I don’t know,’’ she said. “I pulled my car in, and didn’t think anything of it. I walked home and went to sleep.’’
Later that night, the Uber driver arrived home from his evening shift, only to find Ackerman’s Monte Carlo with New York plates parked in ‘his’ spot.
He pondered his options, and acted, covering her car by shoveling all the snow back in.
Advertisement
The next day, Ackerman walked the half mile back to the parking spot, only to find her car absolutely buried.
“I called my mom and told her all the other cars have only a foot of snow on them,’’ she said, adding that at first she assumed a plow must have been responsible.
“It didn’t hit me for a few minutes. And then I called my mom and said ‘I think I pissed somebody off.’’’
Ackerman said the whole incident has had her laughing more than anything else.
“I was kind of confused at first. But then I laughed about it,’’ she said. “I just had to dig it out and move on.
It took Ackerman three and a half hours to free her car from the spot.
Ten days later, Ackerman was on Facebook and she saw Boston.com’s story.
“I said ‘Oh my god that’s my car’ – and then I decided I needed to reach out – to apologize,’’ she said.
“I wanted to offer a sincere apology. I’m sure it ruined his day, too,’’ she said. “And the whole thing is really just funny. I’ve been giggling about it for hours now.’’
The Uber driver who buried Ackerman’s car asked that his name not be released, for fear of punishment for his “crime.’’ But he told Boston.com he accepts Ackerman’s apology.
“As far as I’m concerned, as soon as I finished shoveling the snow back in, everything was right with the world,’’ he said. “It’s good we’re both able to sit back and laugh about it.’’
Advertisement
Ackerman is moving to the South End tomorrow, where space savers are banned but still very much used.The Defense Department plans to let some illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children enlist in the military -- a policy that comes as the Army is effectively firing active-duty soldiers due to budget cuts.
The Military Times reports that a program -- called the Military Accessions Vital to National Interest, or MAVNI -- which currently allows recruiters to search for foreign nationals with unique skills will be expanded to accommodate the new policy.
The Defense Department now wants to let in some illegal immigrants who enjoyed a reprieve under a 2012 Obama administration policy. That policy applied to those who came to the country before they were 16 years old and spares them from deportation.
The new program reportedly is capped at 1,500 recruits every year, and could be the first step in an effort to create a path to citizenship for some illegal immigrants.
Lt. Commander Nate Christensen, a DOD spokesman, said late Friday, "The Department continues to work closely with the Department of Homeland Security and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in reviewing all MAVNI candidates.
"We do not know how many people with the required skills will apply to enter the military and therefore do not have an estimate of how many people this will potentially impact."
According to the Army's recruiting site, the program offers a range of benefits to applicants -- who until now were largely legal noncitizen residents. Among the benefits offered are educational aid, pay and benefits from service, and "expedited citizenship."
The decision to move forward on the new, and likely controversial, policy comes after the White House initially asked the Pentagon to hold off on letting such illegal immigrants seek a path to citizenship by serving in the military.
That request came over the summer at a time when the White House was still trying to get Republican congressional support for comprehensive immigration legislation. The White House has since given up on that effort, for now, and is pursuing unilateral executive actions instead.
But the military, while expanding who may be eligible to join, also is making steep reductions to comply with congressionally mandated budget cuts.
The Army alone is removing thousands from the active-duty ranks, in a bid to reduce the force strength from about 520,000 soldiers earlier this year to as low as 440,000. Those cuts have raised concerns about military readiness.
The policy that opened the door for young illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S. is the so-called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, announced by President Obama in 2012. More than 500,000 immigrants have benefited from the program.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.Do you want to explore another country for a longer period of time and have a deeper experience than a packaged two week holiday? Why not spend up to a year living and working abroad with working holiday visas?
Working holiday visas generally allow a traveler to be employed in the country during their visit as a way of supplementing their travel funds. A working holiday gives you the chance to live in a foreign country for a longer period of time than you would on a vacation because you will be able to earn money while you are there.
This type of visa also gives you a chance to experience day to day life beyond the tourist zones, make friends with locals and gain a deeper insight into the culture. It’s a fantastic way to travel and going on a working holiday will be an experience you will never forget.
Most working holiday visas schemes are under reciprocal agreements between two countries, because these countries want to encourage travel and the exchange of culture between their citizens. The requirements for each scheme vary between countries but are often quite similar.
Working holiday visas are usually limited to visitors between the ages of 18-30, although some will accept applicants as old as 35. Some of the working holiday visas place limits on the types of jobs that travelers can take or the amount of time they can be employed during their visit. The usual types of jobs that young people get on working holiday visas are in the tourism and hospitality, retail or seasonal industries, but there are plenty of other options available.
Don’t worry about how taking a year off to work abroad will affect your career. Most employers will actually look upon your working holiday favorably, as it shows that you have initiative and that you are capable of adapting to different situations.
In order to qualify, you will need to prove that you have enough funds saved up to cover your expenses while you are first looking for employment. You might also need to purchase health or travel insurance in some countries.
Which Countries Offer Working Holiday Visas?
The list of countries which offer working holiday visas is huge, so you will have a lot of choice when it comes to where you can go. New Zealanders and Australians have the most choice, whereas Canadians and British are a close second.
Handy Tip: Use the “Find” tool in your browser to search through this page for your country, so you can quickly see which Working Holiday Visas you are applicable for.
You can also check out our more specific Working Holiday Visa lists for Canadians, Americans, Australians and British citizens.
Remember that these working holiday visas requirements are subject to change and before applying for any working holiday visas you should always do your own research.
Please note, Passport holders of EU member countries do not need permission to work in each other countries, these countries are. Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.
Argentina
Duration: 12 months
Age Limit: 18-30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, Denmark, France, Ireland, New Zealand
More Information: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Argentina
Australia
Duration: 12 months (but no more than 6 months working for one employer)
Age Limit: 18- 30 years (35 for Canadians)
Countries Accepted: Taiwan, Estonia, Belgium, Italy, France, Cyprus, Finland, Hong Kong, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Malta, Republic of Korea, Ireland, Japan, The Netherlands, Canada, United Kingdom
Passport holders from Turkey, Thailand, Malaysia, Iran, Indonesia, Chile, Bangladesh, Argentina and the USA need to apply for a subclass 462 visa and are required to have a tertiary education.
New Zealand citizens of any age can work in Australia indefinitely.
More Information: Everything You Need to Know About Your Working Holiday in Australia
Austria
Duration: 6 -12 months
Age Limit: 18-30 years
Countries Accepted: New Zealand, Hong Kong, Israel, Taiwan and South Korea (as well as an exchange program for Canadian students.)
More Information: The Austrian Foreign Ministry
Belgium
Duration: 12 months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan
More Information: Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs
Canada
Duration: 12 months
Age Limit: 18- 30 years for most countries, 18- 35 years for Switzerland, Ireland, Italy, Germany, France, Denmark, Czech Republic, Chile and Australia.
Countries Accepted: United Kingdom, Taiwan, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Latvia, Republic of Korea, Japan, Italy, Ireland, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Estonia, Denmark, Czech Republic, Chile, Belgium, Austria, Poland, Ukraine and Australia.
More Information: Government of Canada
Chile
Duration: 12 months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand, Canada
More Information: The Chilean Department of Foreign Affairs (Click the Union Jack flag to switch to English, then submit your application)
China
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: New Zealand
More Information: The Republic of China Consular Affairs
Czech Republic
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30/35 years
Countries Accepted: Canada, South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan and Chile
More Information: Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Denmark
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Argentina
More Information: The Official Portal for Foreigners and Integration
Estonia
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 19 – 30 years (18-35 For Canadians)
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand, Canada
More Information: Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Finland
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand
More Information: Finnish Immigration
France
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (35 for Canadians, 31 for Australians)
Countries Accepted: Uruguay, Taiwan, Russia, Mexico, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Colombia, Chile, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Australia
*Citizens of Albania, Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Macedonia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Monaco, Montenegro, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Seychelles, Taiwan, Uruguay and the Vatican City, as well as British Nationals (Overseas), of any age can work in France for up to 90 days without a visa.
More Information: The Official Visa Website for France
Germany
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18-35 for Canadian Citizens)
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea,Taiwan, Brazil, Uruguay, Israel, Chile. (Canadian applicants must be enrolled at a post-secondary institution.)
More Information: Deutschland.de
Hong Kong
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom.
More Information: Hong Kong Immigration
Ireland
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18 – 35 for Canadians)
Countries Accepted: Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, Chile, Canada, Australia, Argentina.
Citizens of Taiwan may also apply, but they have a separate application form.
Ireland also has a Working Holiday Visa scheme for US students or recent graduates.
More Information: Ireland Department of Justice and Equality
Israel
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: New Zealand, South Korea, Germany, Austria, Australia
More Information: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Italy
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18-35 for Canadians)
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Korea
More Information: Canadians apply at the Italian Embassy in Ottawa, Australians apply at the Italian Embassy in Canberra and New Zealanders apply at the Italian Embassy in Wellington. Further info can be found at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Japan
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18-25 for Australian, Canadian and Korean applicants, with some exceptions for over 25. 18-26 for citizens of Iceland.)
Countries Accepted: Iceland, Chile, Czech Republic, Argentina, Spain, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Portugal, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Korea, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
More Information: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan
Latvia
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18-35 for Canadians)
Countries Accepted: Canada, New Zealand, Australia
More Information: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Latvia
Lithuania
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Canada, New Zealand
More Information: For Canadians: Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to Canada, For New Zealanders: Ministry of Social Security and Labour
Malta
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand
More Information: EU Immigration Portal, Identity Malta
The Netherlands
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, South Korea
More Information: Netherlands Immigration and Naturalisation Service
New Zealand
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18-35 in some cases)
Countries Accepted: Argentina, Hong Kong, Philippines, Austria, Ireland, Poland, Belgium, Israel, Portugal, Brazil, Italy, Singapore, Canada, Japan, Slovakia, Chile, Korea, Slovenia, China, Latvia, Spain, Croatia, Lithuania, Sweden, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Taiwan, Denmark, Malaysia, Thailand, Estonia, Malta, Turkey, Finland, Mexico, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, USA, Germany, Norway, Uruguay, Hungary, Peru, Vietnam.
Australians of any age may work in New Zealand indefinitely.
New Zealand is our favourite working holiday visa destination. Learn why New Zealand is a great choice for a working holiday.
More Information: New Zealand Immigration
Norway
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18-35 for Canadians)
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Argentina
More Information: Norwegian Directorate of Immigration
Poland
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18-35 for Canadians)
Countries Accepted: Taiwan, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada
More Information: Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
South Korea
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 25 years
Countries Accepted: USA, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Sweden, Romania, Portugal, Poland, Netherlands, Mexico, Italy, Israel, Ireland, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Hungary, Japan, Czech Republic, Germany, France, Denmark, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Belgium, Austria, Australia.
More Information: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Korea
Singapore
Duration: 6 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Working holiday visas only for graduates and undergraduates from Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, United States
More Information: Singapore Ministry of Manpower
Slovakia
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Japan, Taiwan
More Information: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: New Zealand
More Information: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Slovenia
Spain
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years (18-35 for Canadians)
Countries Accepted: New Zealand, Canada, Australia
More Information: Embassy of Spain in Ottawa (For Canadians), Consulate of Spain in Melbourne (For Australians), Embassy of Spain in Wellington (for New Zealanders), Embassy of Spain in Tokyo (For Japanese Citizens)
Sweden
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Uruguay, South Korea, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Chile, Canada, Australia, Argentina
More Information: The Swedish Migration Agency
Switzerland
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 35 years (Must have completed post-secondary studies or be currently studying.)
Countries Accepted: Canada
More Information: Swiss Federal Council
Thailand
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand and must have certain qualifications. (3 years full time study)
More Information: Working Holiday Visas for Australians
Turkey
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, New Zealand
More Information: How to Get the Turkish Working Holiday Visa
UK
Duration: 24 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: Australia, Canada, Japan, Monaco, Taiwan, New Zealand, South Korea, Hong Kong, British Overseas Territories
More Information: Youth Mobility Scheme Visa
Uruguay
Duration: 12 Months
Age Limit: 18 – 30 years
Countries Accepted: New Zealand, Australia, France, Sweden
More Information: For Swedish Citizens, For New Zealanders, For Aussies
Are you excited to go on your travel adventure yet? Read more Working Holiday Resources and get started on your application today.Following on from last week’s look at 1987 Autobot Headmasters, this week we are concentrating on the three non-Movie Decepticon Targetmasters Misfire, Triggerhappy and Slugslinger. These Decepticon jets continue the futuristic post-movie look and the marked move away from realistic Earth-based vehicles for Transformers alternate modes. While the Headmasters were incredibly blocky due to the forced aesthetic of the Headmaster companions, the 1987 Targetmasters were much more well-proportioned figures in robot mode but still featured a number of uniform design choices across the range. As with last week’s Autobot Headmasters, these Targetmaster Decepticons are Transformers-only moulds as Hasbro and Takara were no longer exclusively sticking to pre-Transformers sculpts from Diaclone, Micro Change Series and the like.
While the Nebulan partners of the Autobot Headmasters were freedom fighters, for these three Decepticons (as well as Scourge, Cyclonus and the Decepticon Headmasters), their partners were actually members of the evil Hive, the Nebulan overlords of planet Nebulos who oppressed the population via their mind-controlled machines. To fight the threat of the freshly binary-bonded Autobots and Headmaster Nebulans, members of the Hive submitted themselves to the same Headmaster process, but also came up with a way of binary-bonding Hive members to Decepticon weapons, and thus the Targetmasters were born. Cyclonus bonded with Nightstick, Scourge with Fracas, Misfire with Aimless, Triggerhappy with Blowpipe and Slugslinger with Caliburst.
Just like the Headmasters packaging, the Targetmaster boxes featured a more digital-style sunburst grid behind the toy artwork and an extra window where the Nebulan partner could be seen in the packaging. As far as Transformers toy collecting was concerned, I always found Targetmasters to be more valuable on the second-hand market, especially the short-packed Targetmaster Scourge, but I think the values of TMs and HMs are converging a little more now.
From left to right above we have Aimless (Misfire), Blowpipe (Triggerhappy) and Caliburst (Slugslinger). You’ll notice the naming of both the main Decepticon and the Targetmaster partner relates heavily to weaponry/arms and firepower. There is also a much more uniform colour palette for the Decepticon Targetmasters than, say, their Headmaster counterparts in either faction. While the Autobot Targetmaster partners seem to pivot around a pin, Aimless, Blowpipe and Caliburst are absolutely notorious for having a ridiculous design for their pivot, a plastic rod/axle with what can only be described as corners. This rod clunks through the rotation during transformation (folding the thing in half basically) and massively stresses the plastic casing of the rod. Broken Decepticon Targetmaster partners are one to a dozen, finding mint ones undamaged is very tough and/or expensive. All of these above TM partners had stress marks, and transforming them for the photos gave me stress marks. And yes, it is customary to pretend that the enormous pegs sticking out of their chests are not there.
First up is the offensively beautiful pink Misfire, a figure that manages to completely hide all the curves and sleek lines of the jet mode behind a tremendously blocky robot mode. With thighs longer than his lower legs and possibly the largest feet ever seen on a G1 bot (and he had the nerve to tease Flywheels) making his lower body seem slightly disproportionate, it’s amazing how he still sometimes has difficulty standing! The futuristic jet really is gorgeous, and despite the clashing aerodynamically-challenged Targetmaster “Aimless” attached, Misfire works very well in jet mode. Where Misfire really excels is his head sculpt, truly one of the finest of the era. Unlike the Autobot Targetmasters, the Decepticon TMs have painted faces and Misfire’s blue eyes on a pink face stand out. Sticker wear and mis-applied labels can really affect the look of this figure.
Transformation is easy to deduce from the images, like the other 2 Decepticon Targetmasters the legs have to be folded up and around, making up a significant part of the alternate mode. The entire front end of the jet folds back to reveal the robot head, making a hefty backpack. Targetmaster partner Aimless is treacherous to transform for the reasons highlighted above, it’s also the simplest looking of the 3 Nebulan Decepticon partners in this set, being a straightforward 2-part figure that requires folding over. Misfire’s popularity will have risen significantly thanks to his entertaining depiction by James Roberts as part of the Scavengers in IDW’s ongoing More Than Meets The Eye title.
Now we have the wonderful Triggerhappy and “Blowpipe”, another futuristic jet but this time a mix of deep blue and grey. The illusion of subtlety in his appearance is short-lived when you see his copper highlights, red face and orange visor, not to mention Targetmaster partner Blowpipe’s green face. Those double-barreled cannons are a signature look for this toy. Triggerhappy suffers terribly when he is yellowed or damaged, but when mint the figure is peerless as a G1 representative. The leg and elbow ratchets are superb, he has fold-out hands like Misfire and Slugslinger, a translucent blue canopy like the other two Targetmaster jets and his Targetmaster Nebulan is similarly grey and blue overall, like “Aimless” and “Caliburst”. Unlike the other two, we are not denied Triggerhappy’s blue canopy in robot mode as it sits prodly on display as his chest.
Trouble spots on Triggerhappy include loose double-barreled cannons that won’t stay up in robot mode, and the little tabs on them breaking off. Yellowing of the grey parts is a major issue, the spring on the pop-up head can be an irritation and of course broken Blowpipes litter eBay weekly. Speaking of Blowpipe, this is a 3-part Targetmaster with a parts-forming barrel that detaches and re-attaches behind Blowpipe in robot mode. The variety is welcome when there is generally quite a lot of uniformity across the three Decepticon TM jets. As mentioned before, when Triggerhappy is in good, tight and undamaged condition, the toy is a complete joy to transform and display. Interestingly, he shows disparity between his animation model and toy, on-screen he had eyes not a visor, and a mouth-plate instead of the toy’s humanoid face.
Finally, the glorious Slugslinger, he of unforgettable name, unmistakable twin-cockpit jet mode and plane on his back. Slugslinger has one of the best head sculpts in all of Generation 1, even nicer than Misfire. That is one of the great strengths of the Decepticon Targetmasters. He has a lovely light blue and grey motif, as does his Targetmaster Nebulan partner “Caliburst”. Slugslinger suffers more than any of the others with yellowing, even my boxed specimen above obviously exhibiting discolouration on the cockpits and one robot foot. The silver paint on the circular moulded sections on either side of his belly is hardly all there to begin with, let alone after years of use. The legs can also be a little tricky to unclip when folding them off the back of the jet and down for robot mode. Like Triggerhappy, Slugslinger is covered in comforting ratchets.
Caliburst is susceptible to the same instant breakage at the pivot as the other Decepticon TM partners. Caliburst is also a 3-part TM like Blowpipe. In fact, Slugslinger and Triggerhappy have a number of common features like the spring-loaded pop-up robot head, the 3-part Nebulan, similar arms/elbows/hands and small flip out feet with in-built heels, although Sluggy’s don’t need separate transformation like Trigger’s. Slugslinger also has the fold-down landing gear as well as rear wheels mounted on his wings. I’m not entirely sure I’m a fan of those yet. The blue canopy is there too, times two! Slugslinger’s on-screen counterpart had a far darker blue appearance and separate eyes, but I prefer the toy appearance much more, as his visor really makes that head sculpt. A truly outstanding looking figure, in my opinion.
I feel as though the non-movie Decepticon Targetmasters were something slightly removed from all the other Transformers of the same year, and even across the entire G1 range. Despite being realtively uniform in their transformation, colours and aesthetic, their futurstic forms set them apart from early G1, their Targetmaster partners allow them entry to a small club of TFs, their highly humanoid face sculpts, excellent proportions and sleek alternate modes put them in a distinctly separate group from most other Transformers, especially the Headmasters. It is both an advantage and a disadvantage that their Targetmaster companions are not as integral to the look of the jet or robot mode as the Headmasters. Sure, Cyclonus and Scourge are a part of this crew and were cross-sold as part of the five Decepticon Targetmasters, but something about Misfire, Triggerhappy and Slugslinger elevates them above gimmick-specific toys, they were after all not originally conceived to be Targetmasters, and they look sublime together. I only wish that Hasbro and Takara had found a way to bring the fourth (sixth, really) Decepticon Targetmaster jet to life beyond the concept drawings showing another futuristic fighter in the same mould as the above three. Targetmaster Decepticons, the highlight of Transformers 1987.
You can get your own vintage G1 Transformers here at TFSource
All the best
MazWhat if you could travel back in time 3 billion years, and take a breath? What would earth’s air smell like?
Deeply stinky, according to Brooke Norsted, an outreach specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum.
Drawing on input from UW-Madison geoscientists about the organic and chemical compounds present at that time, Norsted has concocted an aroma she believes comes pretty close to the volcanic and microbial stew of early earth.
Visitors to a new exhibit, “Biosignatures: What Does Life Leave Behind?” created by Norsted and Museum Director Richard Slaughter, can get a whiff by lifting the cap of a display labeled “Aromas of Astrobiology.” Inside: a vial of aroma beads Norsted special-ordered from a California company that supplies custom-made smells to museums, stores, and eateries.
[caption id="attachment_13122" align="alignleft" width="300"] UW-Madison Geology Museum's Brooke Norsted with home-grown microbes. (Sarah Morton, College of Letters & Science)[/caption]
“I asked them for all the stinky smells: damp earth, decay, urine, volcano ash,” Norsted says. “Physical phenomena like sea vents still exist, so it wasn't too hard to construct an odor for that one.”
Set to open to the public Sept. 26 to coincide with the start of the 2013 Wisconsin Science Festival, “Biosignatures” aims to excite public curiosity about astrobiology research at UW-Madison.
Research sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, which funds the Wisconsin Astrobiology Research Consortium and other teams, is developing new tools and methods for detecting evidence of past life, which in turn may provide clues for recognizing signs of life or the precursors to life in other places, such as Mars or even Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The Wisconsin consortium, led by Vilas Distinguished Professor of Geoscience Clark Johnson, received its second major grant from NASA in 2012.
The exhibit’s creative displays about astrobiology will go a long way toward getting some difficult concepts across, says Johnson.
“The record of early life on Earth and Mars won’t be big dinosaur bones — life would have been microbial, and so the evidence often lies in indirect things such as a unique chemical signature,” says Johnson. “We were looking for a display that would be remembered, and smells are certainly something many people do not forget.”
"The record of early life on Earth and Mars won’t be big dinosaur bones — life would have been microbial, and so the evidence often lies in indirect things such as a unique chemical signature."
— Clark Johnson, Vilas Distinguished Professor of Geoscience
In the earth’s violent early days, during which meteorite impacts produced hurricane-force winds and 1,000-foot tsunamis, primitive bacteria were forming and dying, laying a chemical trail that survives in ancient rocks. Johnson’s group is focused on very early iron-based microbial metabolisms. These processes are recorded in major iron deposits around the world, including the Lake Superior region. Few people realize, Johnson says, that the metal used in everyday life — including that mined in the Upper Midwest — was concentrated by microbial processes 2.5 to 3 billion years ago.
“That is kind of amazing, when you think about it,” he says.
Sulfides were important to “chemolithotrophic” organisms (those that use inorganic chemicals for energy) such as the iron-processing microbes, which existed before the oxygenic photosynthesis we know today — thus contributing some rotten-egg aroma to “early earth.”
On the other hand, Titan smells pretty sweet. Turns out the largest moon of Saturn is blanketed with cyanide dust, which smells like burnt almonds. (Norsted is quick to point out that visitors aren't actually smelling cyanide, just aroma-infused beads).
Other exhibit highlights include:
A homemade microbial community that Norsted has been growing in giant test tubes in her office for the past couple of years (the layers of green and purple slime will continue to change and grow while on display).
A large sample of “ejecta”– a rock that formed on a single day when a gigantic asteroid (one of the largest to ever to hit the earth) punctured the mantle, vaporized, and spewed across North America.
A piece of Mars – for this exhibit, the museum acquired a meteorite that was broken off of the “Red Planet” around 700,000 years ago and landed in Morocco in 2011.
[caption id="attachment_13124" align="alignleft" width="300"] A meteorite from Mars found in Morocco in 2011.(Photo courtesy Peter Utas)[/caption]
With more than 50,000 visitors a year (14,000 Wisconsin schoolchildren get hour-long guided tours), the Geology Museum is the most popular science outreach venue on the UW-Madison campus.
In addition to stewarding collections of some of the earth’s oldest rocks (3.5 billion years or more) and rare fossils such as the Boaz mastodon (a full skeleton discovered in 1897 by boys playing along a creek in Boaz, Wis.), the museum is known for its friendly public persona. When the Packers won the Super Bowl in 2010, for example, museum curator Carrie Eaton made the mastodon an extra-large green and gold jersey to celebrate.
“Biosignatures: What Does Life Leave Behind?” is the largest exhibit mounted by the museum since it erected “Wisconsin’s first dinosaur” (Edmontosaurus) in 1991.
The new exhibit meets with NASA’s approval. Communicating and sharing the discoveries made and knowledge gained from NASA-funded astrobiology research is one of the agency’s key goals, according to Daniella Scalice, education and public outreach lead for the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
“Brooke and her team have always been on the leading edge of innovation in education and outreach projects,” says Scalice. “They deserve full credit for their creative approach.”SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - Thousands of San Diegans are losing power in the middle of a heat wave this weekend as SDG&E moves forward with planned power outages for maintenance work.
“We really need to do this work to make sure there are not unplanned or unexpected power outages in the future,” said Amber Elbrecht, SDG&E spokesperson.
From Friday night to Saturday |
uniform, unless it was intended to be shared.
“This is just an example of waste and redundancy that we just can’t afford,” Enyart said.
The amendment’s prospects are unclear. On Tuesday, a spokesman for Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), the committee chairman, said he could not comment on the amendment before it had been introduced.
Enyart has worn several types of camouflage: He served in the Air Force from 1969 to 1973, and then in the Illinois Army National Guard from 1982 to 2012. He retired last year as a general.
That meant he wore one of the least popular of the 10 designs in use now: the Army’s “universal” camouflage, which was introduced in 2003. It turned out not to be universal, and the Army spent $2.9 million to produce another pattern for use in Afghanistan.
Enyart said that uniform had another problem. He said its many Velcro strips could cause trouble: “You brush up against somebody, you stick to each other!
“I’m retired now — I can say this: It was a silly design,” he said.This is a guest post by Kathy Orlinsky. Kathy writes at The Stochastic Scientist blog.
…
I listen to a lot of theological discussions and debates. Often, someone will mention the name of a common argument for God’s existence… but I can never seem to remember which argument is which. Maybe you’re in the same boat.
Accordingly, I’ve prepared the following guide for distinguishing five standard apologetics, along with my counterarguments. This isn’t a comprehensive list of arguments, nor does it cover the many nuances of arguments for or against God. Rather, it’s a guide for people like me who just can’t keep the arguments straight.
…
The Ontological argument: God is the greatest thing ever. Things that exist are greater than things that don’t. Therefore, God must exist.
In essence, this argument is asserting that nonexistence is a flaw. Since God, by definition, has no flaws, he must exist.
Objections: There are a couple of problems with this attempt to “define” God into existence. First, this is what’s known as a circular argument. I define God a certain way, and then proclaim that God must have the specific properties that I defined him to have.
Suppose I define chicken soup as “all-curing soup.” Would I then be justified in insisting that chicken soup can cure all ailments? After all, it can’t be “all-curing soup” if it doesn’t cure everything, but we know it’s “all-curing soup” because that’s the definition of chicken soup.
Second, this argument makes the unsupported assumption that things that exist are better than things that don’t exist. That’s a rather peculiar way to look at the world. Are unicorns more flawed than horses? If I don’t accept that God can have no flaws and/or that nonexistence is a flaw, I’ve defeated the ontological argument.
…
Transcendental argument (TAG): The goal of this argument is to show that God is the source of logic. This is easily the most confusing of the arguments for God, in part because it requires an understanding of logical absolutes. It also relies on some language sleight of hand that I’ll explain in a minute.
First, what are logical absolutes? These are simply truth statements that can never be contradicted. A is always A; A can’t ever not be A. A cat is always a cat and can never not be a cat.
Neither theists nor atheists take issue with the fact that logical absolutes exist. The question is, why do logical absolutes exist? A typical theist argument (abridged from Matt Slick) goes as follows:
Logical absolutes are transcendent; they are not dependent on time or space Logical absolutes are conceptual; they have no physical properties. Concepts are the product of a mind. Logical absolutes can’t be the product of human minds, which are variable and limited. Therefore, logical absolutes are the product of God’s mind.
Objections: You may not have noticed, but this argument is no more than a giant play on words. TAG conflates the fact that logical absolutes exist with our ability to recognize that they exist. It’s a bit like confusing the word “cat” with the animal “cat.” The word “cat” may not exist without a mind, but the animal “cat” certainly can. By the same token, the application of logic may require a mind, but logical absolutes are independent of any mind. A cat is still a cat when no one is around.
The same can be said for any abstract idea. Jupiter was still larger than Neptune before anyone understood the concept of size comparison.
There’s no need for an external mind to bring those concepts into being.
…
Cosmological argument (Kalam argument): Why do we have something rather than nothing? If the universe began in a Big Bang, then what caused the Big Bang? Something must have started the ball rolling. That something could only have been God.
Objections: This argument makes two broad and incorrect assumptions. First, cosmologists today can account for several ways in which our universe could have “come from nothing.” Not being a physicist, I won’t try to do them justice, but I direct your attention to some excellent books by Brian Greene, Victor Stenger, Lawrence Krauss, and others. To name one possibility, our universe may be just one of an infinite number of universes, each in a different stage of formation or destruction.
Second, and more importantly, the cosmological argument assumes that God did not need a creator. Obviously, if you argue that everything has to have been created, then you’ll run into the problem of who created God. And if God doesn’t need a creator, then why does the universe need a creator?
…
Anthropic principle (fine-tuning argument): There are several universal constants, such as the speed of light, that have specific measurable quantities. If these constants varied by the slightest amount, stars would not form and there could be no life. The chance that all those constants happen to be exactly right for intelligent life to develop on Earth is so infinitesimal, the constants must have been preset by God.
Objections: Proponents of this argument make a lot of unwarranted assumptions about the probability of the existence of life in our universe. For example, they may say, “There’s a one in a thousand chance that constant A has its current value, and there’s a one in a thousand chance that constant B has its current value, so the chance that both have their current values is one in a million.” When they’ve finished with all the constants, they end up claiming that there’s something like 1 chance in 10138 that our universe ended up with the physical properties we require. That sounds highly unlikely, doesn’t it? Too bad there is no basis for either the individual probabilities used or the fact that each constant is independent of all the others.
No one knows whether it’s even possible for physical constants to differ, let alone how likely that would be. Perhaps our universe had to have those exact constants. Or perhaps the constants are all linked in some fashion, such that if one were altered, the rest would have to be changed in some compensatory manner that would also be conducive to life.
All you can really say is that the chance of the physical constants of the universe being exactly right for life is not zero, and may be 100%. After all, the one example we have to study does in fact contain intelligent life.
…
Argument from design: Living things are so perfectly adapted to their environments and have such intricately amazing inner workings, they must have been purposefully designed. That designer was God. How else can you explain the beauty of a flower or the power of a jaguar? Those things could not have arisen by accident.
Objections: This argument also makes two assumptions, both of which are wrong. The first is that living organisms are perfectly formed. Unfortunately for the argument, and for living creatures, this just isn’t so. Our bodies have many design flaws that no engineer would have allowed. For example, the mammalian laryngeal nerve, which connects the brain to the larynx, does so via a detour around the aorta. In giraffes, it takes over fifteen feet of nerve length to cover the few inches from brain to larynx. Would you choose to loop an extension cord through the middle of your kitchen and back to a plug six inches from the end of your toaster?
Besides, arguing that creatures are perfectly designed for their environments points to a lack of imagination in my opinion. If dolphins were really perfectly designed for their watery environment, wouldn’t they have gills? Or extendable snorkels?
The second assumption is that even if the design is poor, it’s still the only explanation for how living things came to look the way they do. Wrong again. There’s a much better explanation for the diversity of life, and that is evolution. It’s thanks to our common ancestry with fish that our laryngeal nerves shoot off in the wrong direction and have to make a u-turn. In fish, this nerve goes to the last of the gills at the back of the head. As mammals evolved, the gills moved around and became other organs (such as the larynx) but the laryngeal nerve still had to start out in its original direction toward the bottom of the neck.
…
So those are a few of the most common arguments for God. I’m indebted to the Iron Chariots counter-apologetics wiki maintained by the Atheist Community of Austin for helping me sort them out.The Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, met for the first day of direct talks in Washington yesterday and agreed that a peace deal could be achieved within a year.
George Mitchell, the White House envoy who joined the negotiations, said the two leaders decided to begin putting together a framework agreement on all major issues – such as borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and security – that will "establish the fundamental compromises necessary" to flesh out a comprehensive peace deal.
Mitchell said Netanyahu and Abbas agreed to meet again in a fortnight in the Middle East and every two weeks after that. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and Mitchell will attend the first of those meetings on 14 September.
The negotiations are likely to face their first real test with the next round of talks coming just days before Israel's partial freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank comes to an end.
Netanyahu has so far resisted US calls to renew the freeze, which the Palestinians see as a litmus test of the Israeli prime minister's intent.
Mitchell declined to disclose the detail of the discussions, although he said some of the major issues were touched on. Netanyahu and Abbas met US officials and then met privately. Mitchell described the two men's relationship at the talks as "cordial".
Before the talks opened, Netanyahu said two key demands – recognition of his country as a Jewish state and arrangements to ensure it does not come under attack from within a Palestinian state – were a prerequisite to a wider agreement.
Netanyahu again called Abbas his "partner in peace" and said he was prepared to make "painful concessions" to reach a deal. But the Israeli prime minister said that what he called the "two pillars to peace" must be resolved.
Clinton launched the negotiations by calling for the leaders to show themselves as bold and courageous statesmen and reach a comprehensive peace agreement within the one-year deadline set by Barack Obama. "We understand the suspicion and scepticism that so many feel born out of years of conflict and frustrated hopes," she said. "But by being here today you each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change."
Netanyahu said Israel was prepared to make sacrifices to reach an agreement. "Together we can lead our people to a historic future that can put an end to claims and to conflict. This will not be easy. A true peace, a lasting peace, will be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides … from my side and from your side," he said.
Hamas responded to the talks by announcing that it has joined forces with other armed groups such as Islamic Jihad to launch a wave of attacks against Israel. Earlier this week, Hamas claimed responsibility for the killing of four Jewish settlers in the West Bank, including a pregnant woman.
The Israeli prime minister said there were two issues that he regarded as central to any agreement: legitimacy and security. "Just as you expect us to be ready to recognise a Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognise Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people," he said. "I said too, a real peace must take into account the genuine security needs of Israel … new forces have risen in our region, Iran and its proxies and the rise of missile warfare [with Hamas attacks from Gaza]. A peace agreement must take into account security arrangements against these real threats."
Abbas said he believed a deal was possible. "We're not starting from scratch, because we had many rounds of negotiations between the PLO and the Israeli government."Two days ago, D.C. United officially submitted the information needed (specifically, the Planned Unit Development) by the District of Columbia Zoning Commission, which includes the most detailed plans to date for the stadium and stadium site at Buzzard Point. Let's take a brief tour through these documents, to which I've linked at the end so you can find everything that I didn't.
But first, some high levels thoughts. The biggest thing that stuck out to me was how much the constraints of this particular site played into the design of the stadium. The Pepco facilities played a defining role because of the easement they have, and they can't build out the west seating bowl to the same depth as the other seating areas. We knew that the site would affect the stadium, but I did not know to what extent that would go.
Overall, the details and the dozens of renderings included in these documents make me like the stadium even more. We can now see the whole plan for the stadium, rather than just pictures from which we have to try to extrapolate meaning. So, without further ado, the details:
There is a second, local architect working on the project in addition to Populous: Marshall Moya Design. Their soccer related experience includes participating in the design competition for the Rio World Cup Pavilion.
Pepco has an easement that runs through the property, and it causes more problems that originally thought: "The terms of the easement require that Pepco have access to it at all times, so no part of the Stadium, up to a height of 18 feet, may be constructed on or above the easement." This means that stadium was designed to have seating above that 18 feet.
That also means that the design of the building was heavily influenced by the Pepco facilities. "The easement that runs along the east side of the Property has heavily influenced the design of the Stadium. None of the structure under the seating bowl may be within the easement area. However, because of this easement condition, the Stadium has been "shifted" to the west as far as possible so that more of the seating on the east side can rise above the easement area without having to drastically increase the height of the seating as it moves further away from the field. This creates the somewhat lopsided appearance of the Stadium with the greater height and amount of seating concentrated on the east side."
The seating for the stadium is still in flux, with various numbers thrown out throughout the documents. Approximately 19,000 and approximately 20,000 are the most commonly used numbers.
As we saw in the renderings, "The Stadium will consist of a seating bowl with two canopies surrounding an uncovered field." There will be three tiers of seating on the east side of the stadium, with suites located above the first level of seating. The north side will have a mix of seats and indoor suites, and the northeast corner will be almost all suites. The west side of the stadium will be almost all outdoor seats, but the depth of that bowl is less than the others because of the shifted stadium caused by the Pepco easement. Finally, the south side is mostly outdoor seating. See Part 3 for a stark visual of how the easement played into the design of the stadium, and parts 5 and 6 for detailed maps of the stadium.
You will be able to see directly into the stadium and see the field of play from Potomac Avenue. "The main entrance to the Stadium will be at the northeast corner of the site. Because most spectators likely will walk along Potomac Avenue from the east, this entrance will be the largest with 18 gates, and it will be the most visually prominent down the Potomac Avenue view shed. In fact, the view from Potomac Avenue will be directly into the Stadium and the field since no structure will be in this line of site and the field will be near ground level. The ability to see onto the field from outside the Stadium will be one of its most unique and street-activating features virtually unknown in other professional sports stadia."
Many of you noticed the prominent escalator feature; it is described thusly: "A structure containing stairs and escalators will form a prominent corner for the Stadium as viewed down Potomac Avenue. The structure will be open to the outside and the plaza on its eastern side. A large platform at its first level, raised above the ground level, will provide a gathering space for spectators to look out upon the plaza and for performances to have a stage to which to perform toward the plaza. The sides of the structure will be covered in porous metal screens that will have varying levels of opacity that will change depending on the daytime to create an interesting visual experience."
The design is meant to honor the industrial past of Buzzard Point: "The architectural style of the new D.C. United soccer stadium, referred to as contemporary-industrial, is borne out of its site context and the aspirations of becoming a transformational addition to the neighborhood. The design team wanted the new Stadium to establish itself as a beacon for a new design aesthetic, while at the same time grounding itself in the industrial past of Buzzard Point. In order to establish this, the design team chose to use the steel support structure as a defining signature element. Not only does the steel structure define the building as a sports-specific building it also is a nod to the industrial heritage of the Buzzard Point neighborhood."
The team expects most fans to arrive through public transportation, and the site itself will not have any parking. However, they have secured approximately 3400 parking spots in nearby areas. The stadium is.57 mile from the Waterfront Metro station and.6 mile from the Navy Yard Metro station. See part 4 for details of where their parking will be (including some Nationals lots), but the Metro stations are closer than much of it.
The Stadium will be designed to satisfy LEED Gold standards.
There are also a lot more renderings of every aspect of the stadium in parts 7, 8, and 9, so give them a look. What do you think of these details?Microdosing for Republicans
Just a little lick of love, every day Just a little lick of love, every day Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Microdosing for Republicans 1 / 8 Back to Gallery
I used to think it was so simple, that the most obvious, overarching problem facing fundamentalist Christian Americans, pseudo-macho politicians and puny, big-stick dictators alike was largely one of gross sexual ineptitude, all that angry old-male megalomania and grim saber-rattling stemming merely from gloomy carnal repression and warped Puritanical anxiety, all resulting in a desperate need to compensate, to prove their value and their sad macho mettle in pretty much any way possible.
Buy some guns, get a Hummer, forsake your soul to a megachurch, start a war with Iraq, worship Fox News, whine about female empowerment, never think for yourself, turn Republican and fear and hate upon just about everything that doesn’t conform? Just for starters.
To be sure, all those were certainly hallmarks of the Bush era, and it led to the concomitant trope that if only the repressed conservatives of America would free themselves from the tepid chains of fundamentalist Christian panic and, you know, get well and happily laid once in a while, they’d surely calm the hell down and the world would might survive a few more generations.
Ah, youth.
I don’t quite believe that anymore, and not only because my understanding of the world has become more sophisticated, or because all those brittle conservative males have become any less oppressed, or any less ignorant of god.
Exactly the contrary. It’s because the modern political world – white conservative males in particular – have taken a turn for the worse, the darker, the more spiritually hostile. As the world these men inhabit contacts and shrivels, as their influence decreases, their actions only turn more ruthless, their souls more dim.
Translation: There is no longer any room for quaint notions about sexual oppression and getting laid. No more jokes about furtive gay hookups in the bathroom, senator. The tepid sexual anxiety that was at the root of so much damning scandal for the GOP and fundamentalist Christianity in the ‘90s and ‘00s has given way to something far more gruesome, and far more devastating. And Trump is leading the charge.
So, what now? If vile Trumpism is no longer only about old white guys compensating for raging feelings of inadequacy, if all their hateful trolling not just pushback against their own increased cultural irrelevancy, then surely they are on the verge of true and violent collapse, threatening to take us all down with them. And so maybe what these lost boys really need, is a far more intense sort of... cracking open, before it’s too late.
They need to see Earth from space. They need to volunteer in a slum in India. They need to imbibe large amounts of peyote and spend a week in a sweat lodge in the desert, crying out to the ancestors. They need to drop ayahuasca with master shamans in a Brazilian jungle, and have a personal reckoning with the One True Mother. They need to witness their own bloated egos explode into a million fractal shards and reassemble into the shape of a giant, undulating butterfly with wings of blood. Hey, it’s a start.
Too much to ask? Of course it is. So maybe they could just dive into the latest trend of, say, microdosing. Maybe some intrepid D.C. interns could, I don’t know, spike the congressional coffee with sufficient micrograms of LSD, psilocybin or MDMA, just a little bit, every single day, for the next few years. And the entire White House, too. And see what happens.
After all, microdosing is in. It’s the freshest, most viral pathway to heightened awareness. It reportedly reduces depression, aids creativity, tickles the anima’s synapses just so; it just might be the magic elixir, the thing mystics have known for millennia and science is now beginning to understand, the idea that hallucinogens (and, increasingly, various strains of THC), even in tiny, barely perceptible doses, can soften the ego’s roughest edges, aid in perception and generate feelings of delight and ease. What’s not to like?
Of course it makes sense. Of course millennia of deep hallucinogenic experience across myriad cultures and millions of humans would translate directly to the notion that a small bit of same, every few days, could help a person, you know, reconnect. With spirit. With nature. With the planet. With his or her fellow man.
Could it maybe, just maybe, help the viciously maladjusted, spite-filled modern GOP relocate the one human quality that’s most lacking in Trumpland today: empathy? Of course it could.
Longshot, I realize. And of course, Trump himself is way too far gone for any such transformation. Never has an American president been so sadistically, so enthusiastically lacking in basic concern for humanity’s well-being. Never has an American leader been so entirely bereft of warmth, fundamental decency or moral literacy. And never have so many Republicans gleefully followed him right into the bleak abyss.
But then again, who knows? It’s worked for anxious moms. It’s worked for business types, yogis, teachers, mechanics, doctors, writers, students, athletes and authors, ancient masters and modern intellectuals, gurus and saints and gods.
Jesus almost certainly enjoyed a great deal of hallucinogens, if he wasn't one himself. Buddha was a walking indica cookie. The gurus who channeled the Vedas, the most ancient, most mystical spiritual literature on human record? Come on.
So then, a humble call-out to the D.C. interns, the disgruntled White House staffers, the furious FBI agents, the beleaguered reporters, the miserable wives and daughters of congressional Republicans, et al. Let us happily conspire to perhaps start dosing the most hateful and morally egregious among you with various (increasingly legal) compounds of wow, and see what transpires.
And of course, save a good amount for yourself, too. We're all in this together. That's what the mushrooms tell me, anyway.Al Mukalla: Yemen government forces on Saturday morning liberated most of a strategic district near Bab Al Mandab Strait in a renewed push to drive Al Houthi rebels out of cities along the Red Sea, a senior army commander said on Saturday.
Major General Fadhel Hassan, the commander of Aden-based 4th Military Region told Gulf News that his forces stormed Dhobab after a new offensive that began on Friday night.
“We have liberated almost all the Dhobab and Al Wazyia regions,” he said.
About the significance of the territorial gains on the Red Sea, Hassan said that Bab Al Mandab would be safe from possible Al Houthis attacks and would put the government forces closer to Mocha — a town in Taiz province.
Fighter jets from the Saudi-led Arab coalition launched intense air strikes on Al Houthi rebels positions and mobile reinforcements that arrived in Dhobab and other neighbouring areas.
Dozens of Houthi fighters were killed in the fighting with government forces.
Hassan said his forces received a new shipment of modern arms from the Saudi-led Arab coalition.
Military experts say government and coalition forces have mounted the fresh assault in order to kick Al Houthis out of areas along the Red Sea.
It will help secure the vital shipping passage from Houthi missile attacks that have threatened both military and commercial ships in the past.
In October, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels launched missile attacks on a US Navy destroyer, after which the US destroyed their radar systems.
Houthis also attacked a UAE-owned ship carrying injured civilians in the Red Sea in October.
Brigadier General Abdo Moujali, a spokesperson for the army, told Gulf News that government forces took control of a part of Al Ameri mountain, near Dhobab and were advancing towards Mocha. These areas serve as a vital arms supply route for Houthi rebels.
Also in Taiz, government forces pushed Houthis out of Sharif Al Anen and Al Oud mountains on the western edges of the city, said Moujali.
“These two strategic locations overlook the main road that links the city of Taiz with city of Hodeida. This means cutting the supply line to Houthis.” he said.
In the northern province of Saada, government forces fought their way into rugged mountains after tightening their grip on Brigade 101 and a border crossing with Saudi Arabia.
AThese are the Billboard Hot 100 number one hits of 1984. "Like a Virgin" by Madonna had the longest run at number one of any song which rose into the top position during 1984. Though it spent only two weeks at number one at the end of the year, it went on to spend an additional four weeks at the top to begin 1985, for a total of six weeks. Overall, Prince spent the most weeks at number one in 1984, reigning for seven weeks at the top with "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" (with the Revolution).
Chart history [ edit ]
Key The yellow background indicates the #1 song on Billboard's 1984 Year-End Chart of Pop Singles.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Malaysia on Tuesday released raw satellite data used to determine that missing flight MH370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean, information demanded by passengers’ relatives who are frustrated over the failure to find any wreckage. The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) said in a statement it had worked with Inmarsat to provide 47 pages of data communication logs recorded by the British satellite operator, as well as explanatory notes for public consumption. Analysts said it would take time to draw any conclusions from the raw, “highly technical” data. The families of the 239 passengers and crew on board the Malaysia Airlines plane had demanded the information be made public after a massive and costly search for the flight, which mysteriously diverted from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route 11 weeks ago, found nothing. Officials, relying in part on the Inmarsat data, have said they believe the plane ended up over the southern Indian Ocean, where it crashed into the sea. The numerical data used the Doppler effect – the change in frequency of waves from a moving object – to decipher the Boeing 777’s final flight path. Inmarsat’s interpretation of the data was subsequently verified by the international investigation team, which includes the DCA, the US National Transport Safety Board, Britain’s Air Accidents Investigations Branch, and China’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Department. But, with no sign of the plane found since its disappearance on March 8, relatives were sceptical. “There is no mention on why they are so sure the Inmarsat data is highly accurate and reliable, to the extent that they have thrown all resources there,” the families said in a May 20 report to the governments of Malaysia and Australia, which is coordinating the search efforts. Shukor Yusof, an aviation analyst with Malaysia-based Endau Analytics, told AFP that the satellite data was “highly technical” and required an expert to decode. “There are very few people who can make head or tail as to what the numbers indicate. To me as a layman, it looks like a sequence of signals that were given out by the aircraft possibly indicating its flight path,” he said. Greg Waldron, Singapore-based managing editor with aviation publication group Flighglobal, said the satellite data was consistent with what Inmarsat had previously revealed. “Basically it shows the timings of the handshakes of the plane with the satellite over the Indian Ocean,” he said. “But I would not dare to guess if they are searching in the right place. The fact that they are using this type of data shows how desperate the search for the plane is.” The DCA has previously stressed that satellite data was just one of several elements being examined by investigators. Malaysian authorities have been tight-lipped on details, saying they can only divulge information once it has been verified and when its release will not affect ongoing investigations into the plane’s disappearance. Australia, which is leading the hunt in the Indian Ocean, has committed up to US$84 million (S$105 million) towards the search operation over two years.Dired Shell Commands: The find & xargs replacement
If you’re a Linux/BSD user you probably do most of your bulk operations on files with the command line tools find... -exec or find... | xargs – but there’s a much better way. Dired ( M-x dired or C-x d ), Emacs’s DIRectory EDitor, can do the same but in a very intuitive way. I’ve talked about Dired before: how to work with files spread out across many directories and editable dired buffers that will persist the changes made to filenames and permissions in the buffer.
Of all the hidden gems in Dired, this is one of my favourites: the ability to run arbitrary shell commands on marked files – and if it’s a file extension known to Dired, it will suggest a default action: untarring.tar.gz files; displaying.pdf files; and much more!
Installing Dired-X
The latter functionality is buried in dired-x, an add-on for Dired that… ships with Emacs but isn’t enabled by default.
To use dired-x you must load it first.
(add-hook 'dired-load-hook ( lambda () ( load "dired-x" )))
You can also just (require 'dired-x) somewhere in your init file.
Using Emacs’s Guess Shell Command functionality
To apply a shell command to marked files press!. If you have no marked files Dired will apply the shell command to the file or directory point is on. Dired will suggest a list of defaults (navigate the choices with M-n and M-p ) and if Dired-x is loaded it will set a default action so you just press enter to apply it.
Dired-x ships with a fairly large repository of common operations on files and you can add your own by modifying the alist dired-guess-shell-alist-user.
Running Arbitrary Shell Commands
Another little-known feature of Dired’s shell command functionality is that you can write your own one-off commands but run each command per marked file or collect (and separated by whitespace, like in the shell) them all and pass them to a single instance of the command.
Some shell commands accept many files per command and others just one. You can use two wildcard operators ( * and? ) in a Dired shell command and that will determine how Dired constructs the external shell command(s).
Let’s say I want to call the external script foo.py. My shell command can be constructed in two ways. And let’s assume I have two files marked in Dired: hello.txt and world.txt.
If the command foo.py only accepts a single file argument I can use? as the substitution variable. So foo.py? will give us the following expanded commands:
foo.py hello.txt foo.py world.txt
If I had used * in lieu of the? substitution variable then the entire list of marked files would have been inserted with whitespaces separating each file, like so:
foo.py hello.txt world.txt
Note: You must separate the substitution variable with spaces or it won’t work right!
If you want your calling shell to expand the * as a globbing wildcard you must type *"" instead.
Finally, you can dictate whether the shell commands should be executed synchronously or asynchronously.
By default the commands are called synchronously unless you append &, ; or ;&. However, they are not all alike. If you are operating on multiple files (that is, you are using the? substitution variable) then & will make the shell commands execute in parallel as well! If the command ends in ; or ;& then the commands are executed sequentially, one after another but still asynchronously.Map of the Great White Fleet's voyage (2009 political boundaries shown).
The Great White Fleet was the popular nickname for the powerful United States Navy battle fleet that completed a journey around the globe from 16 December 1907, to 22 February 1909, by order of United States President Theodore Roosevelt. Its mission was to make friendly courtesy visits to numerous countries, while displaying new U.S. naval power to the world.
It consisted of 16 battleships divided into two squadrons, along with various escorts.[1][2] Roosevelt sought to demonstrate growing American military power and blue-water navy capability. Hoping to enforce treaties and protect overseas holdings, the United States Congress appropriated funds to build American naval power. Beginning in the 1880s with just 90 small ships, over one-third of them wooden and therefore obsolete, the navy quickly grew to include new modern steel fighting vessels. The hulls of these ships were painted a stark white, giving the armada the nickname "Great White Fleet".[3]
Background and purpose [ edit ]
Flagship Connecticut : one of a set of commemorative postcards of the ships of the Great White Fleet
In the twilight of his administration, United States President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched 16 U.S. Navy battleships of the Atlantic Fleet on a worldwide voyage of circumnavigation from 16 December 1907 to 22 February 1909.[1][2] The hulls were painted white, the Navy's peacetime color scheme, decorated with gilded scrollwork with a red, white, and blue banner on their bows. These ships would later come to be known as the Great White Fleet.
The purpose of the fleet deployment was multifaceted. Ostensibly, it served as a showpiece of American goodwill, as the fleet visited numerous countries and harbors. In this, the voyage was not unprecedented. Naval courtesy calls, many times in conjunction with the birthdays of various monarchs and other foreign celebrations, had become common in the 19th century. Port calls showcased pomp, ceremony, and militarism during a period of rising pre-war nationalism. In 1891, a large French fleet visited Kronstadt, Russia, in conjunction with negotiations between the two nations. Although France and Russia had been hostile to each other for at least three decades prior, the significance of the call was not lost on Russia, and Tsar Nicholas II signed a treaty of alliance with France in 1894. As navies grew larger, naval pageants grew longer, more elaborate, and more frequent. The United States began participating in these events in 1902 when Roosevelt invited Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to send a squadron for a courtesy call to New York City. Invitations for U.S. Navy ships to participate in fleet celebrations in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany followed.
Additionally, the voyage of the Great White Fleet demonstrated both at home and on the world stage that the U.S. had become a major sea power in the years after its triumph in the Spanish–American War, with possessions that included Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico.[5] It was not the first flexing of U.S. naval muscle since that war, however; during the Algeciras Conference in 1906, which was convened to settle a diplomatic crisis between France and Germany over the fate of Morocco, Roosevelt had ordered eight battleships to maintain a presence in the Mediterranean Sea. Since Japan had arisen as a major sea power with the 1905 annihilation of the Russian fleet at Tsushima, the deployment of the Great White Fleet was therefore intended, at least in part, to send a message to Tokyo that the American fleet could be deployed anywhere, even from its Atlantic ports, and would be able to defend American interests in the Philippines and the Pacific.[7][8]
That gesture capitalized on diplomatic trouble that had resulted from anti-Japanese riots in San Francisco. Those problems had been resolved by the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 and the fleet visit was a friendly gesture to Japan. The Japanese welcomed it.[9] Roosevelt saw the deployment as one that would encourage patriotism, and give the impression that he would teach Japan "a lesson in polite behavior", as historian Robert A. Hart phrased it. After the fleet had crossed the Pacific, Japanese statesmen |
are somewhat squeamish, as you can imagine, giving the president the power of any issue, given his expansive view of his powers on so many other issues. But this is a trade promotion authority not just for President Obama, but for the next president as well. This is a six-year trade promotion authority bill that will give the next president an opportunity to enter into additional trade agreements with other countries around the world."
McConnell had previously described his coordination with the president on trade as "an out-of-body experience."
Fast-track authority faces a significantly more difficult path in the House. Nearly all Democrats are opposed, as is a strong contingent of Republicans, who are hesitant to hand Obama a victory.
And yet Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was confident Sunday that the measure would pass the lower chamber.
"We will have the votes," Ryan said on CNN's "State of the Union." "We're doing very well. We're gaining a lot of steam and momentum."
Presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has so far remained quiet on TPP. While progressive groups want Clinton to come out against the trade deal, other Democrats want her to support it.WINNIPEG — A 28-foot mobile aquarium is rolling into Assiniboine Park Zoo on Friday.
The Vancouver Aquarium’s AquaVan 150 Tour is visiting Winnipeg to teach visitors all about marine life. The exhibit includes sea stars, sea cucumbers, crabs and sea anemones, among other invertebrates from the Pacific Coast.
“We have a great relationship with the Vancouver Aquarium, and we are very excited to have the AquaVan at the zoo,” said Gary Lunsford, senior director of animal care and conservation at Assiniboine Park Zoo.
“This will give visitors an opportunity to learn about marine life in an interactive way and also give them a better understanding of the role we all can play to ensure the health and preservation of our country’s waterways for future generations.”
Various touch pools will teach visitors about ocean literacy and exploring the impacts humans have on our rivers, lakes, and oceans.
The AquaVan will be located inside the zoo across from Winston’s Ice Cream Shoppe between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. and is included with admission.
Advertisements
News Highlights
Related
Comments
commentsWhat little historical records we have pertaining to Queen Eadgifu tell us she exercised considerable power. She was the third wife of Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the Great. While she didn’t have much prominence during the life of her husband or her stepson Aethelstan, she came to exert her influence during the reigns of her sons and grandsons. She was the first important queen of the tenth century due to her landed interests and to her role in the family politics of the time.
The best estimate of a birthdate for Eadgifu is c. 901. She was the daughter of Ealdorman Sigehelm of Kent. She owned extensive and widespread landholdings in Kent and held Minster in Thanet, and possibly Ely. Edward the Elder had been living with a woman named Ecgwynn at this father’s court. We don’t know for sure he was married to Ecgwynn but he had two children with her, Aethelstan and an unnamed daughter. In 901, when Edward had been king for two years, he had a new wife named Aelflaed. Together they had at least eight children, two sons and six daughters. Around 919-920, Edward set aside Aelflaed and she became a nun at Wilton where she was joined by two of her daughters. It was at this time Edward married Eadgifu, most likely to gain control of her landholdings since he already had plenty of heirs.
Eadgifu would have been around twenty at the time of her marriage. She was called seo hlæfdige or The Lady of Wessex. She had a son named Edmund who was born in 920/1 and another son Eadred, born in 921/2. She also had at least two daughters. Eadburh was a nun who died c. 960 and Elgiva married Louis, King of Arles. Eadgifu gained more lands during her marriage due to grants from Edward. Edward was to die in July of 924, leaving Eadgifu a widow with young children.
There were three half-brothers to her children who stood to succeed to the throne before her sons; Aethelstan, Edward’s eldest son by his first wife and then there was Edwin and Aethelweard by Edward’s second wife. Aethelweard died shortly after his father in 924 and Edwin died in a mysterious drowning in 933. The succession after Edward’s death was not truly settled for about a year when Aethelstan finally secured his position as king. Eadgifu probably lived as an obscure widow during the reign of Aethelstan, bringing up her children at court. But by the end of Aethelstan’s reign, she had maneuvered herself into a better position because Aethelstan named her sons as his heirs. Aethelstan may or may not have promised not to marry in order to secure their succession.
At the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, King Aethelstan was victorious and Eadgifu’s son Edmund fought at his side. Aethelstan reigned for two more years and died in October of 939. Edmund succeeded him as king at the age of eighteen. Eadgifu appears to have gained sudden prominence in the 940’s after a long period where West Saxon queens remained in obscurity. Her power derived from her status as a widow and the mother of the king. She had more power during her son Edmund’s reign that she ever had before. Edmund was married twice and she eclipsed both his wives, maintaining her power and position.
It is unlikely she was designated as the actual regent for her sons. She is commonly called The King’s Mother in documents from the period. Eadgifu appears in witness lists as one of the most regularly recorded witnesses of diplomas and charters during Edmund’s reign and is the only woman in the lists. And her name appears directly after the king’s. This meant she was included in the hierarchy of the newly expanded kingdom of her sons.
King Edmund was known as the “Magnificent”. He was a great warrior and possibly had a fondness for spectacle. He was stabbed to death in a brawl at Pucklechurch near Bath in 946. His two sons Eadwig and Edgar were too young to rule so his brother Eadred succeeded him as king. Eadred suffered from some kind of stomach ailment and had trouble swallowing. But his illness didn’t affect his ability to rule and he was a strong warrior. He united the kingdom of England once again after some rifts had occurred.
Eadgifu witnessed even more charters during the reign of Eadred, most granting land to laity and the church. She was a patron of the monastic revival and reform in England. It was always beneficial to garner the support of the saints and the church for one’s family. She influenced her sons to support the church reforms. Payments were frequent between kings, queens and churchmen during this time. She assisted in advancing bishops like Dunstan and Athelwold who were significant in driving the reforms. She maintained a high degree of power during Eadred’s reign by making an alliance with Dunstan. Eadred had no wife to challenge her position. After a long illness, Eadred died at Frome, Somerset on November 23, 955.
With the death of her son, Eadgifu’s position was perilous. Her power was at the mercy of any shift in influence. There was a struggle between her two grandsons Eadwig and Edgar, both teenagers. Eadwig declared his position as king and planned to marry a woman of royal descent named Aelfgifu. She was Eadwig’s third cousin once removed. Dunstan didn’t approve of Eadwig marrying a woman he was so closely related to and started working to replace Eadwig with his brother Edgar. Eadgifu may have supported Dunstan in this plan. Neither one of them wanted to give up what power they had. With the support of some noblemen, Eadwig sent Dunstan into exile from court as well as from the kingdom. He also seized Eadgifu’s lands.
Eadgifu disappeared from court and the record. When Eadwig died suddenly in 959, Edgar asserted his position as king and restored Eadgifu’s land to her. Her role as queen/regent was through and she was rarely at court after 959, most likely in a nunnery. She came out of retirement in 966 to attend a meeting granting additional privileges to the New Minster at Winchester. There was also a family celebration to recognize the legitimacy of Edgar’s new son, born to his third wife Aelfthryth.
Eadgifu’s reputation has been heightened by the supportive position she plays in the Lives of Dunstan and Athelwold. She was very interested in acquiring churches and land and actively promoted the extension of West Saxon power. She may have been, for all intents and purposes a regent in Kent. Eadgifu survived her husband Edward by over forty years. It is believed she died c. 966/7. She was associated with the monastery at Wilton and may have been buried there.
Further reading: “The Kings and Queens of Anglo-Saxon England” by Timothy Venning, “Queen Emma & Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England” by Pauline Stafford, “Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages” by Pauline Stafford, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England” edited by Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg, “Edward the Elder: 899-924” edited by N.J. Higham and D.H. HillHey you! This Sunday marks the series premiere of Fear the Walking Dead, AMC's new zombie series that bears a striking resemblance to one of the network's other shows: Mad Men. I mean The Walking Dead. But WTF is Fear the Walking Dead and how is it? Come sit on my knee and let me tell you...
All right, so exactly what is Fear the Walking Dead?
It's a spinoff companion piece to the wildly popular The Walking Dead, obviously. But really, it's a way for AMC to capitalize on its moneymaker by offering up more zombies, because zombies equal ratings. Unlike its older cousin, Fear the Walking Dead is not based on any of the comics, so not only will there be no one around to blurt out spoilers, there will be no one around to complain about how the show is different from source material. PHEW! There are six episodes in Season 1, and AMC has already renewed the show for a 15-episode second season premiering next summer, because it knows that people are going to watch no matter how good or bad it is.
Who is involved with the show?
Robert Kirkman, the co-creator of The Walking Dead comics and the show, co-created Fear the Walking Dead with former Sons of Anarchy producer Dave Erickson, who will serve as showrunner. Erickson's other credits include Low Winter Sun and Marco Polo, so uhhh, yeah. Walking Dead producers Gale Ann Hurd and Greg Nicotero are also credited as producers.
When and where is it set?
While The Walking Dead was set in Atlanta and took place several months after the zombie outbreak first turned people into flesh-eating meat bags, Fear brings zombies to the West Coast, specifically Los Angeles. And we join things as the outbreak first breaks out, meaning life is mostly normal for the zombie buffet in the first episode. It's a nice contrast to the backwoods of Georgia.
How does that affect the tone of the series?
Well, there aren't any dirty people running around with shotguns... yet. Instead, Fear the Walking Dead shows off the initial panic of a populace wondering what in the W-T-F is going on. Remember, in the universe of The Walking Dead, people don't have the benefit of zombie movies, meaning all these weirdoes shambling around eating people are total f'ing mysteries. And because it's set in Los Angeles, there's more of an urban feel to the show rather than a bunch of hillbillies wandering around eating squirrels.
Which unlucky characters will we be following this time around?
When Erickson and Kirkman started promoting the show, they sold it as a family drama. I KNOW. But that's exactly what it is, particularly in the first episode. Maddie Clark (Kim Dickens) is a guidance counselor and mother who is engaged to Travis (Cliff Curtis), and they both have kids from previous relationships. Maddie's teen kids are Nick (Frank Dillane), a James Franco-like heroin addict, and Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), a good kid and ambitious student. And Travis' teen son Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie) totally hates Travis for divorcing his mom Liza (Elizabeth Rodriguez). In fact, most of these people sort of hate each other in the first episode, because that's what makes good family drama these days, I guess.
What about the undead, what are they like?
If you've been watching The Walking Dead, then you've probably noticed that the Walkers have been slowly deteriorating over the series' run. Like, some are just barely hanging together by rotting tendons now. In Fear, these monsters are fresh and decomposition is minimal. You'll see some glassy eyes and they lumber around like they've been dead for a while (no speedy 28 Days Later zombies here), but otherwise they are pretty intact.
What did you like about what you saw?
Even though The Walking Dead made a great decision to start things well after the beginning of the outbreak so it could concentrate on stories of survival and post-apocalyptic society, we've all been curious about how everything started. Well... here you go! That paranoid atmosphere really comes through in the second episode, and some of the acting is strong, too, particularly Dickens and Dillane. Oh! And the music is pretty good. It's more of a throbbing, electro-pulse score than the eerie strings of Bear McCreary's score for The Walking Dead. There are some scares, and call me an anarchist misanthrope, but there's something strangely gratifying about watching the world descend into chaos.
What didn't you like about what you saw?
The first episode is steeped in bad family melodrama (of course one of the kids is a drug addict), and there's a bit of a disconnect in watching everyone wonder what is going on when we all know very well what's going on. It's zombies, dummies. Overall, it's a pretty dry approach to the start of a zombie apocalypse and doesn't offer anything you wouldn't expect.
Well, should I watch it?
I liked the second episode a lot more than I liked the first episode, but if you really like The Walking Dead, there's no reason you shouldn't like both. It is, for better and worse, very similar to The Walking Dead in its effectiveness. If you don't like The Walking Dead, then I would stay away because there's nothing that different. People are scared and are trying not to get eaten, basically. (Note: You can watch the series' opening scene here).
And the most important question: Will there be an after-show talk thingy called Talking Fear the Walking Dead or Talking Fear or Fear the Talking Dead or Fearing Talking About Fear the Walking Dead?
No! At least not yet.
Check back Sunday for a full review of the 90-minute premiere from Cory Barker.
Fear the Walking Dead premieres Sunday, August 23 at 9pm on AMC.Almost 15 years after introducing American Gods into the world, Neil Gaiman was watching his creation take on a new life of its own. The acclaimed author was standing on a set in Toronto in mid-April 2015, in the midst of the first day of production on Starz's American Gods, watching as Ricky Whittle and Ian McShane officially stepped into their respective roles — the brooding and bruising Shadow Moon, and the powerful con artist known as Mr. Wednesday — for the very first time.
Interestingly enough, it wasn't even Gaiman's only set invitation of the day.
"I got a very sweet email from Chuck Lorre a week before, saying, 'We would love to write you a part on The Big Bang Theory. Will you come in and play yourself?'" Gaiman tells THR, recalling the memory one year later. "And I had to say no, I'm going to Toronto, because as much as I would like to play myself in The Big Bang Theory, nothing will keep me away from that first scene being filmed. And it was magic. It was an absolute delight."
For Gaiman, it had already been a long enough road between American Gods the book and American Gods the television series, premiering on April 30. Gaiman first published the novel in 2001, forging it from a few key ingredients: an evocative title, a vision of thunder, and a drive through American back roads and small towns. The result: a sprawling novel about old Gods of myth waging war against new Gods of the digital age, with the hearts and minds of the American people at stake — and with one mortal man caught in the middle.
At least, that's one way to pitch it.
"We've always known it's not a book that pitches cleanly," says Michael Green, who oversees American Gods alongside his fellow co-creator and executive producer Bryan Fuller. "God help them," Fuller agrees, speaking to the American Gods uninitiated. For that crowd, Fuller feels the best way into the story is through its protagonist.
"There's something so relatable about Ricky Whittle and Shadow's journey of a man who went to prison for the woman he loved," Fuller tells The Hollywood Reporter. "Days before getting out, he loses that woman and finds out the life he thought he led before imprisonment was not quite as authentic as he'd hoped. That's infinitely relatable to anybody who has experienced the loss of a loved one. His numbness and his search for himself, now that all the defining factors have been removed from him, are exactly where Wednesday (Ian McShane) wanted him. It's also a great place for a new audience to perceive this character, because they're seeing him after everything's been broken and taken away. We're rooting for him to assemble something that he could call a life again."
Relatable and rootable as he is, Shadow just scratches the surface when considering the various different deities and mythologies at play within American Gods: vengeful Viking gods, bar-brawling leprechauns, sharp-tongued spiders who spin lies as elaborately as webs, and entirely new deities built around technology and media. It's complicated, in other words, and easy to see how the subtleties of the book might not survive a television adaptation. As Green puts it: "You can imagine the 2004 NBC-adapted version of this book, calling it 'God Squad,' where they all pile into the minivan that has all the religious symbols on the side and they solve crimes every week."
Fans of the book can find comfort in knowing the adaptation of American Gods was never quite at the God Squad level of risk, but still, the process involved some fits and starts all the same. In 2011, Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions was set to adapt American Gods at HBO, with Gaiman co-writing a pilot script that ultimately remained on the ground: "By the time we handed it in, the [HBO] executive who bought it was no longer there, which meant that we then had essentially two drafts and a polish for people who didn't really know what this thing was, didn't know why they had it, and didn't really want it."
Gaiman regained the rights, found new partners in FremantleMedia, and very quickly landed on Starz as the right home for the series. From there, the author recalls flying to Toronto for his first meeting with eventual showrunner Bryan Fuller: "I asked him, 'Bryan, do you want to do this?' And he said, 'Oh my God, I'm the world's biggest American Gods fan. But I have no idea how you do it. I just know I want to put the stuff I love up on the screen.' And I thought, 'That's a pretty good place to go!'"
With Fuller came Green. The two were colleagues on Heroes and became friends and confidants in the years that followed. Beyond admiring one another, both men had great reverence for Gaiman's body of work.
"I remember very vividly not studying for a test in college because a friend and I went to the comic book store to pick up the latest Sandman," says Green. "It turns out, if you're lucky, the things you goofed off doing in your youth can become your profession. I loved the book [American Gods]. I read it and thought, 'This will be a wonderful TV show one day, and I hope to get to see it.' Then I was fortunate enough where it became, 'This will be a wonderful TV show one day — and I hope I get to make it.'"
That day came along, leading to Fuller and Green spearheading a direct-to-series order for American Gods. In time, other ingredients settled into place, including the likes of McShane as the self-professed grifter Mr. Wednesday, Emily Browning as the ill-fated Laura Moon, and more.
"Neil's book is so masterful in its alchemic balance of a wide variety of different tones," Fuller says about what drew him to the project. "That broadness of scope not only for the narrative but for the manner in which the narrative is told gave us an opportunity to apply our own wits and visual flourishes to the tale."
With that in mind, Green says he and Fuller wanted to "apprehend the feeling of the book through the medium of a television show," with the creation of wholly original scenes or expanded storylines meant to feel of a piece with the original American Gods text. "The book never leaves our bedside or our desk side," he says. "We're always measuring against that. Does something we add feel like it shook out of your copy? That's the author's preferred preferred, the one that doesn't exist except in our imaginations."
"For Michael and I, as fans of the book, we knew what we wanted to see as fans," adds Fuller. "The show is in essence fan fiction, or a hybridization of the fiction and the fan fiction we brought to the adaptation."
With that said, adapting American Gods wasn't without its moments of struggle. Fuller points to an early moment when trying to fulfill the season's original 10-episode order, despite feeling that the season had a nine-episode arc, as an example. In trying to turn what was then the third episode into a third and fourth episode, Fuller, Green and the rest of the team walked away incredibly unsatisfied with what they had produced, both from story and production perspectives.
"It was too early and too premature. We got to places in Shadow's emotional arc, from non-believer to believer, that were too soon, so we removed them, and there was the other element of it, the element of what we shot — we didn't like it," he says. "We didn't like what the set looked like. We didn't like the body props that were in the sequence. We had the choice of either rebuilding and refilming, or just removing it altogether. Fortunately, Starz as our partner said they would rather have fewer greater episodes than more less-than-great episodes. They very happily allowed us to reduce our order."
Fuller adds that the season's original intended end point, the mesmerizing House on the Rock sequence from the novel, was also impacted as a result: "We had our finale that required shooting in Wisconsin and getting to the House on the Rock, and that was a big chunk of change we needed to apply to go back and reshoot some things we weren't happy with, to facilitate a better version of the show."
For his part, heading into the series, Green says he expected that signing on to realize American Gods as a television series would be a heavy commitment marked by highs and lows.
"We knew going into this it was going to be a slog to get to the end of a first season, and it has been — an enjoyable one at every turn, mostly because of the partnership working with Bryan," he says. "Showrunners are often all too alone, and I recommend they all partner up, especially if they're going big. You need someone to turn to, someone to gut check when you're going for something crazy, and someone to cover for you when you need to go into your bed and cry for a month. And to hold the interest it was going to take for the two to three years to go from our first conversations to the end of the final episode of the first season airing, it has to be something you have an inexhaustible passion for."
As the author of the story on which the series is based, Gaiman couldn't agree more with Green's take, and even adds a few extra cents into the equation: "The people who love it all have to deal with the fact that we're dropping you into this story with as little explanation as Shadow gets. You're going to have to figure it out as you go. You'll be told stuff. You'll figure bits out. But really, you're in it now. We're signing you up, and you are expected to be clever."
American Gods premieres April 30 on Starz. Let us know your expectations of the series in the comments below, and keep following for more news and interviews.(CNN) -- A British man beat 34,000 other applicants Wednesday to win, what has been dubbed, "the best job in the world" -- to stroll the white sands of a tropical island in Queensland, Australia, file weekly reports online to a global audience and earn a cool $100,000.
Ben Southall will move into a three-bedroom beach home overlooking the Great Barrier Reef.
For the winner, Ben Southall, the six-month assignment is a far cry from his old job as a fundraiser.
"I love discovering new places," Southall said in his hyperkinetic minute-long application video for the position.
"Last year, I drove all around Africa, I crossed deserts, climbed mountains, run marathons, bungee jump, mountain-bike, scuba-dive and snorkel everywhere because I'm practically a fish myself."
Oh, and he rode an ostrich.
He will move into a three-bedroom beach home overlooking the tropical island's Great Barrier Reef. For six months, he will feed the fish, clean the pool and send weekly blog and video reports on what is happening on the island.
Other benefits include free return airfares from their nearest capital city, transport on the island, computer and camera gear and travel to other islands.
The applicants used various attempts to woo their prospective employer, from wandering round a chilly city center in a bikini, to making their application in the form of a street musical, complete with chorus singers.
Sixteen finalists were flown in to Hamilton Island on Monday for interviews with a four-person panel.
The job starts July 1.
All About Culture and Lifestyle • Jobs and Labor • AustraliaBurazin via Getty Images
Quick quiz: does pregnancy cause weight loss or gain? It seems like a dumb question but it’s a test that the promoters of the “hCG diet” seem to have failed.
Short for human chorionic gonadotrophin, hCG is the hormone secreted by the embryo that makes a pregnancy test positive. Since the 1950s, certain doctors have promoted hCG injections as the key to hunger-free weight loss — and now, the diet is taking off on the Web. This, despite 14 clinical trials showing that hCG has no effect on weight.
The hCG diet restricts caloric intake to 500 calories a day. That alone pretty much guarantees weight loss for anyone who can manage to stick with it. But people who take a placebo instead of hCG while restricting calories do just as well as those who take the hormone — and taking the hormone doesn’t increase the likelihood that people will stay on the diet. (More on TIME.com: Placebos Work Even If You Know They’re Fake–But How?)
Some doctors will actually give injections of hCG, but many people take hCG pills, which are sold online — illegally, according to the FDA — for use in this diet. There’s even less evidence for the effectiveness of pills than the injections, however, and it’s impossible to know whether the pills actually even contain hCG.
There’s also data to show that such starvation-level diets — with or without hormones — can cause dramatic rebounds in weight in the long run, making maintaining healthy weight much more difficult.
So why does this demonstrably ineffective and potentially harmful diet aid stay popular? In brief, it’s the power of placebos and anecdotes.
For one thing, research on placebos has shown that the effect of getting an injection is more powerful than taking a pill, in terms of getting a result based on patients’ positive expectations. So the hCG injections themselves power the placebo effect, producing compelling anecdotes of successful weight loss. In reality, of course, what causes the dropped pounds is the caloric restriction — but the people who tout the diet emphasize the shots. (More on TIME.com: To Slash the Abortion Rate, Dole Out Birth Control Pills A Year At A Time)
And all of us — doctors included — are fundamentally susceptible to seduction by dramatic success stories. Our brains are biased to believe real people providing emotional accounts of change over the dull, dry statistics found in scientific papers. What better evidence could there be than a dramatic before-and-after story, our minds tell us.
But it’s worth remembering that anecdotes cannot be used to distinguish between effective and ineffective treatments: that misconception is what allowed bloodletting and other harmful practices to persist in medicine for centuries. Requiring a higher standard of proof to demonstrate causality is what has made modern medicine a success. Going beyond anecdote is the only way to know for sure whether something helps or harms.
So if you want to find a diet or other medical treatment that works, it’s better to stick with the data and avoid hCG. Unless you want to believe that a growing infant in the womb secretes hormones altruistically to avoid growing and to make its mom skinnier. Consider this: even the nausea of early pregnancy generally ends in weight gain, not loss.At least 50 people were killed and more than 200 were injured in a mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival Sunday night, marking the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history. The numbers could fluctuate as the day goes on.
The shooter, who has been named as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest Festival from the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino at 10:08 p.m, authorities say. Country singer Jason Aldean was playing on stage at the time. Paddock is now dead after an encounter with authorities.
The Las Vegas shooting is now deadlier than last year’s attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, which left 50 dead and another 53 injured. The motive behind the Las Vegas assault is not yet known.
Here’s a list of the deadliest shootings in recent U.S. history:
More than 50 people, October 1, 2017 A gunman opened fire on a Las Vegas outdoor music festival from the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel; at least 50 were killed and 200 injured. The motive remains unclear.
50 people, June 12, 2016 After a gunman opened fire at a prominent gay club in Orlando early on a Sunday morning, 50 people were killed and 53 injured. Police killed the shooter after he held some locals in the club hostage.
32 people, April 17, 2007 A 23-year-old student at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia killed 32 people in shooting spree in two locations. The shooter, Seung-Hui Cho pre-recorded a video of him ranting about rich “brats” and complaining about being bullied. Cho killed himself on the scene.
27 people, December 14, 2012 20-year-0ld Adam Lanza gunned down 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, as well as six adults and school staff before killing himself. Lanza committed suicide.
23 people, October 16, 1991 George Hennard crashed his pickup truck through the walls of Luby’s Cafeteria, a packed restaurant in Killeen, Texas. The 35-year-old then shot and killed 23 people before killing himself. A former roommate said he hated “blacks, Hispanics, gays” and said women were “snakes.”
21 people, July 18, 1984 A security guard fired from his job entered a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California with a shotgun and killed 21 employees and customers, including children. The guard, 41-year-old James Huberty, was killed by a police sniper an hour after he started shooting.
18 people, August 1, 1966 A 25-year-old former marine, Charles Joseph Whitman, went to the top of a tower at the University of Texas at Austin shortly after killing his wife and mother, and shot and killed 16 people on the campus, wounding 30. He was then killed by a police officer.
14 people, December 2, 2015 Husband-and-wife couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik opened fire at an employee gathering in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people. Both were radicalized in the United States and discussed jihad in private messages to each other.
14 people, August 20, 1986 A part-time mail carrier in Edmond Oklahoma, Patrick Henry Sherrill, armed with three handguns, kills 14 postal workers 10 minutes before killing himself.
13 people, November 5, 2009 Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and injured 32 in a shooting at Fort Hood, Texas during a shooting rampage. He was caught and sentenced to death.
13 people, April 20, 1999 Students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, shot and kill 12 other students and a teacher. They committed suicide in the school’s library.
13 people, February 18, 1983 Three men robbed 14 people in a gambling club in Seattle, shooting each of them in the head and killing 13. Two of them were were convicted of murder, while the third was convicted of robbery and second-degree assault and deported to Hong Kong in 2014.
13 people, September 25, 1982 40-year-old prison guard and army veteran George Banks killed 13 people in Wilkes-Barr, Pennsylvania, including five of his own children. He was sentenced to death but the ruling was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after finding Banks mentally unfit.
13 killed, September 5, 1949 A 28-year-old World War II veteran named Howard Unruh killed 13 people on the street of Camden, New Jersey with a German Luger pistol. He was found insane sent to a mental institution.
12 people, September 16, 2013 James Holmes, a 24-year-old recent neuroscience PhD at the University of Colorado, killed 12 people and wounded 58 in a crowded movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Holmes is serving life in prison without parole.
12 people, July 29, 1999 44-year-old Mark Barton of Atlanta killed his wife and two children at his Atlanta home, then opened fire in two separate stock brokerage houses, killing nine people and wounding 12.
12 people, September 16, 2013 Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old former Navy officer shot and killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard.
— Julie Shapiro and Sam Frizell contributed to this report.
Contact us at editors@time.com.LOS ANGELES -- Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry said he consulted with former Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant this week on how to deal with a painful, injured ring finger on his shooting hand.
Curry missed a game this week because of the injury but was able to play 39 minutes with a wrap and pad on his finger in the Warriors' 127-123 overtime win over the Lakers on Wednesday night at Staples Center.
Editor's Picks Steph, KD lead way in OT as Warriors fend off Lonzo, Lakers The first meeting between Steph Curry and Lonzo Ball was a thriller, but the reigning champs eventually rose to the top, with Kevin Durant scoring 29.
Curry said he reached out to Bryant because he knew the former Lakers star had dealt with a similar injury during his career. According to Curry, Bryant told him it was possible to play with the injury if it's wrapped and padded, but that it was one of the more painful injuries he'd experienced in his career, and that it did not heal quickly.
Bryant repeatedly chose to play with the injury, thereby declining surgery on his finger. Curry did not say whether his finger injury was severe enough to consider surgery but stressed that he intended to continue playing through it. The challenge going forward will be pain management and adjusting to playing with tape and padding on his shooting hand, Curry said.
"It hurts," Curry said. "But guys have played through worse than this. Obviously with your shooting hand, it's one of those things you got to get adjusted to. I'm not used to playing with tape, a brace, wrist wrap, all that stuff. But I'll get better with it."
Curry finished with 28 points on 9-for-20 shooting. But he struggled mightily early in the game, airballing three times and missing eight of his first 12 shots. He finally settled in during the overtime period, when he hit all three of his shots and scored 13 of the Warriors' 18 points.Long before Donald Trump and Michael Flynn split a case of Baltika #4s with Vladimir Putin on the nineteenth tee at Mar-a-Lago, FX’s The Americans brought the Cold War back to the forefront of our cultural discourse. The series—featuring Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as implanted Soviet spies Philip and Elizabeth Jennings in 1980s DC suburbia—revisits an era of geopolitical tension from the perspective of socialist idealism, and creates an empathy and understanding for the “enemy” that is rarely seen in American art. As a story device, the Jennings clan—Philip, Elizabeth, and their children Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati)—are not |
ally protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Liberty of Speech Clause of the California Constitution (expressive activity), and has made available certain areas of its property for expressive activity...."
"Paid areas of BART stations are reserved for ticketed passengers who are boarding, exiting, or waiting for BART cars and trains, or for authorized BART personnel," the statement said. "No person shall conduct or participate in assemblies or demonstrations or engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of BART stations, including BART cars and trains and BART station platforms."
Protesters are angry over what they say is excessive use of force after the death of Hill, and of another man in 2009. A BART officer fired three shots at Hill, a 45-year-old transient, after Hill allegedly threw a bottle at officers and waved a four-inch knife at them. That followed a highly publicized fatal shooting on January 1, 2009, in which a BART officer shot Oscar Grant in the back as he lay on the ground unarmed and restrained. Video from cell phones and cameras went viral and fanned anti-BART resentment and protests. The officer was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after claiming he meant to fire his Taser instead of his gun, and he served a two-year sentence.
AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said, in regard to the wireless shutdown, "We have no comment on this. Suggest you speak with BART." A T-Mobile representative said the company had no comment and referred questions to BART.
Representatives from Sprint and Verizon either did not immediately respond to calls and e-mails seeking comment or said they were looking into the matter.
Updated 3:05 p.m. PT with info on Anonymous' anti-BART campaign, 2:30 p.m. with "no comment" from AT&T, 2:25 p.m. with BART saying the subway system--and not the carriers--had cut cell service, 2:15 p.m. with info on the BlackBerry's role in the London riots, ACLU comment, details on Hill shooting, and background on Oscar Grant death, 6:06 p.m. with "no comment" from T-Mobile and reports that say protest appeared not to happen.INCREDIBLE CREATURES I
$22.95
The Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution Series enters the fascinating world of animals to reveal sophisticated and complex designs that shake the traditional foundations of evolutionary theory. This series features Dr. Jobe Martin, who for the past 20 years, has been exploring evolution vs. creation. His findings have been fascinating students around the world as he lectures on these remarkable animal designs that cannot be explained by traditional evolution. Dr. Martin himself was a traditional evolutionist, but his medical and scientific training would go through an evolution, rather a revolution when he began to study animals that challenged the scientific assumptions of his education. This was the beginning of the evolution of a creationist. - Are there really creatures that produce fire to defend themselves? - How does a giraffe get a drink without causing lethal blood pressure to his brain? - How can Geckos walk upside down, even on glass and not fall? This program features: Bombardier Beetle
Giraffe
Woodpecker
Australian Incubator Bird
The Chicken Egg
Platypus
Black & Yellow Garden Spider
Gecko & Chuckwalla Lizards
Human Eye & Ear Drum
INCREDIBLE CREATURES II
$22.95
The Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution Series enters the fascinating world of animals to reveal sophisticated and complex designs that shake the traditional foundations of evolutionary theory. This series features Dr. Jobe Martin, who for the past 20 years, has been exploring evolution vs. creation. His findings have been fascinating students around the world as he lectures on these remarkable animal designs that cannot be explained by traditional evolution. Dr. Martin himself was a traditional evolutionist, but his medical and scientific training would go through an evolution, rather a revolution when he began to study animals that challenged the scientific assumptions of his education. This was the beginning of the evolution of a creationist. - How can birds navigate over thousands of miles of ocean and never get lost? - How do fireflies and glowworms create light that generates no heat? - How do great whales dive to the bottom of the ocean without the pressure causing them to implode? - What creature was the inspiration for the helicopter? - How can some creatures be cut in half and still regenerate themselves? Some can even grow a new head! This program answers these questions and examines: Whales
The Pacific Golden Plover
Dragonflies
Hippopotamus
Glowworms and Fireflies
Bears
Earthworms
Elephants
Education Dishonesty section
Sparrow
INCREDIBLE CREATURES III
$22.95
The Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution Series enters the fascinating world of animals to reveal sophisticated and complex designs that shake the traditional foundations of evolutionary theory. This series features Dr. Jobe Martin, who for the past 20 years, has been exploring evolution vs. creation. His findings have been fascinating students around the world as he lectures on these remarkable animal designs that cannot be explained by traditional evolution. Dr. Martin himself was a traditional evolutionist, but his medical and scientific training would go through an evolution, rather a revolution when he began to study animals that challenged the scientific assumptions of his education. This was the beginning of the evolution of a creationist. - What kind of bird can kill a lion with a single kick? - How can some dogs know that a storm is coming before it appears, or can sense when their masters are about to experience a seizure? - Which creature perlexes scientists because of its amazing ability to heal itself, even when it sustains horrendous injuries? - How do Emperor Penguins go two and a half months without eating or drinking? This program answers these questions and examines: Lampsylis Mussel
Horses
Ostrichs
Hummingbirds
Vestigial Organs
Dogs
Manatees
Elephants
Butterflies
A section on designs and designers
Cuttle Fish
Penguins
Milopina Bee and vanilla
VALUE PACK: INCREDIBLE CREATURES THAT DEFY EVOLUTION : INCREDIBLE CREATURES I, II, III & Book: THE GIFT OF SHARING
$83.80 $67.85 On Sale!
Includes Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution I, II, III and God's Incredible Creatures - The Gift of Sharing Book.
INCREDIBLE CREATURES THAT DEFY EVOLUTION AUDIO ADVENTURE CD
$9.95
These are not just audio versions of the DVD's but fully produced audio programs on these topics. And you hear things that aren't included in the DVD/VHS programs. The Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution audio adventure enters the fascinating world of animals to reveal sophisticated and complex designs that shake the very foundations of evolutionary theory. Host Jim Veldouis sits down with Dr. Martin as he describes these remarkable animals designs in detail. And you'll hear from show host David Hames and his up-close encounter with a Bombardier Beetle and the scars he still carries to prove it! Perfect for use in radio broadcasts, small group settings, classrooms and home school use. Running time 30 minutes. Download the Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution Audio Adventure for FREE by signing up for our email newsletter! Click Here Now.
GOD'S INCREDIBLE CREATURES: The Gift Of Sharing
$14.95
Inspired by the creatures featured in the DVD "Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution, this board book will delight pre-school children as they learn lessons from nature. Sammy the squirrel has just found the largest acorn ever! and he doesn't want to share it. On his quest to hide the acorn he meets a few of God's incredible creatures. Each one seems to have a special gift and soon Sammy learns that he too has gifts. Travel with Sammy as he discovers the gift of sharing. 3D Board Book with gift.
INCREDIBLE CREATURES THAT DEFY EVOLUTION : WATCH NOW
Incredible Creatures clips are online! Watch actual footage from the feature. The Melipona Bee Mystery (from Incredible Creatures III)
Glowbugs & Fireflies (from Incredible Creatures II)
Bombardier Beetle (from Incredible Creatures1)
INCREDIBLE CREATURES THAT DEFY EVOLUTION : LISTEN NOW
Hear the 30-minute audio special for this feature, online.
Telly Award Winner
The Telly Awards was founded in 1980, to showcase and give recognition to outstanding non-network and cable programs.
About The Host - David Hames
David Hames - Host of the Incredible Creatures That Defy Evolution Series And while David spends most of his time "behind" the camera, he is occassionally called to do some work in front of it, hosting the children's television series, "ZooTV" which took viewers behind the scenes of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado. In fact, it was through David's work on "ZooTV" that he was first discovered for "Incredible Creatures." David currently lives in Colorado Springs with his wife Renee and his 2-year-old son, Aidan. And as David will attest, being a Daddy is truly the greatest job he has ever had.
INCREDIBLE CREATURES THAT DEFY EVOLUTION : What People are Saying
"The INCREDIBLE SERIES is technically robust and visually stimulating. It's exciting for all ages. If it was a book you wouldn't be able to put it down. - John Morris / President
Institute for Creation Research " This film is exactly what people young and old today need. This is a powerful way to reach the skeptics around you." - Joy Peterson - Student/University of Boulder “Has a solid message regarding the shortcomings of the theory of evolution. I shared this program with my 20-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter, and they were amazed at the intricacy of God's creative power. Should be mandatory viewing in schools throughout America." Ron Shoup, VP of Programming, INSP Network "I own nearly every video from creationist organizations and these are some of the best!" Pastor Tim Chaffey
Article: Bugged by a Beetle Creationists used to bug Jobe Martin, until a bug helped make Jobe Martin a creationist. Only half an inch long, the Bombardier Beetle may not be very big, but it helped chew great big holes in his long-held views on evolution. Or, more accurately, burn them. Read more...A survey by a prominent gay rights group asserts that large numbers of gays and lesbians in Arkansas report having been the victims of discrimination and harassment. The group is now pushing for legal protects for the LGBT community in the state with support from one prominent Democrat, but a Republican member of the Arkansas legislature is saying not so fast.
In the survey released Monday (July 28) by Human Rights Campaign — the largest such survey conducted of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi, trans-gendered) individuals in Arkansas' history, the group said — a fourth of all respondents reported employment discrimination, while another 37% described harassment in the workplace.
The report from HRC notes that 38% of LGBT households earning less than $45,000 annually have experienced workplace harassment, while 43% of respondents said they had been harassed at "public establishments." The reported said 45% of those surveyed experienced harassment of some sort at school, with 44% saying that harassment was most common in high school. A full third of LGBT students in rural areas reported being harassed on a weekly basis at their schools.
"To address these disparities, earlier this year, HRC launched Project One America," a press release from HRC said. "With the goal of improving the lived experience of LGBT people, Project One America will work to change hearts and minds, advance enduring legal protections, and build more inclusive institutions for LGBT people from the church pew to the workplace."
As part of its work in the state, HRC on Monday named Kendra Johnson as state director for HRC Arkansas, where Project One America Director Brad Clark said she would work with Arkansas' elected officials to affect change in the state's hearts and minds and laws.
“Kendra has the vision to create a strong Arkansas community by working with various local leaders across the state,” Clark said. “She has the experience to bring LGBT Arkansans the respect and dignity they deserve.”
Jerry Cox, executive director of the Arkansas Family Council, said even though the survey from HRC may show that individuals feel as though they've been discriminated against, he said to his knowledge there has not been a single reported case of an individual being discriminated against "or thrown out of a restaurant because they were go."
"It's a solution in search of a problem," he added.
Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, said the results of the survey show that Arkansas should advance some sort of legal protections for the LGBT community though he doubts such legislation will occur before his time in the legislature is up at the end of 2016.
"I do think we need to take some action. However, I don't think any legislation would stand a chance in the current (Republican-controlled) legislature," he said. "I think nationally, we clearly see opinion trending toward acceptance and equality. I think that's just the arch of the universe with past struggles. We're moving in that direction. Arkansas has lagged, but even here I see us moving in that direction (toward acceptance)."
But Rep. Stephen Meeks, R-Greenbrier, said passage of a law targeted at prevention of discrimination against gays and lesbians would create "special protections" that were unnecessary.
"I guess that would be my question, is what special protection do they need? There are already anti-discrimination laws that are available. I don't see where they would see that they would need special protections."
But Leding pointed to laws he said were specifically designed to discriminate against gays and lesbians as part of the reason why protections were needed.
"Obviously, I'm a pretty big proponent of doing away with the 2004 constitutional ban on marriage equality," he said. "The law forbidding unmarried couples from adopting, even though it didn't name gay couples, that's who they were targeting. And that's been repealed."
Arkansas' ban on gay marriage was ruled unconstitutional of Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza, though it is not binding pending an appeal of the ruling. But the decision to stay Piazza's ruling did not come before hundreds of gays and lesbians married at courthouses across the state.
Where Leding said action needs to take place is locally, where city and county ordinances could be passed that would hopefully spur representatives of those communities in the legislature to act on a statewide level.
Leding's own city of Fayetteville is considering an ordinance that would protect LGBT citizens in the community from discrimination, according to a report from the Arkansas Times. Leding said even without the bill having passed, the conversation it has sparked within the Fayetteville community is a positive step forward for LGBT citizens in the city and in Arkansas.
"It has sparked some debate here in the community," he said. "I believe the mayor has expressed support. I know members of the council have. I've heard some mixed comments, too. Some in the business community think it is necessary. Some don't. But I'm glad the community is having the conversation, regardless of whether it passes or not. I think something could be done on a statewide level, certainly after I'm gone. But what will help drive that change more quickly is local communities passing ordinances similar to what's under consideration here in Fayetteville. That helps move things up the ladder."
But for all the talk of equal rights for gays and lesbians, Meeks said being a member of the LGBT community is a choice and therefore should not be afforded the same anti-discrimination protections as other groups, such as African-Americans.
"Laws should apply equally and fairly to everyone. This is why I would disagree. There are current protections in place, like for race. We can't decide our race or nationality. Those are things we have no choice over. These other things, people have a choice as far as their sexual preferences, so forth. So if we keep making these special exemptions or rules for these groups, where does it end?"
Comments
commentsHere’s another thing I found when searching through my Christmas fabric box, a placemat I made years ago, and the makings of another one. Which is great because I can show you how I made it without having to make another! If only I can remember how it went together.
The centre block, the Christmas wreath, is a “kind of” nine patch, made up of a centre strip 2 green squares 2.5 inches and a white rectangle 2.5″ by 3.5″. the corner squares are 3.5″. The red border is 2 inches, can’t think why. The chequerboard border is made up of 2.5 inch squares too.
The little square in square blocks I think must have been made up of the bits left over when I made the corner blocks.
I used the stitch and flip method, place a small square on the larger square at the corner, stitch diagonally corner to corner, then cut off all but the seam allowance, and flip over to create a new corner to the block, this block uses that method twice with two different size smaller squares on diagonally opposite corners. I took the opportunity to sew together the two bits I would cut off, simply because it’s easier to sew fiddly little bits while they are still attached to the larger piece.
I copied the holly leaf quilting pattern from a hand bill advert I found, it was a tiny but simple line drawing of a holly leaf with berries, which I had to scale up and transfer to cardboard,cereal box card. I drew round the pattern with a disapearing pen, and machine stitched with gold thread for a little Christmas sparkle. Finally the Christmas wreath block, which is supposed to be a holly wreath is embellished with little red buttons, they are too big to be berries, but smaller ones would have been difficult to source, and I would have needed very many of them to get the balance of colour right.
subsequently I’ve cut some more chequerboard squares and made another Christmas wreath placemat… well I’ve got the top done. The wadding backing and quilting will have to wait till I can get to a shop that sells wadding.
I’m also making something bigger, I’m not sure yet what it will look like, possibly a table runner to go the length of the table or maybe just something for the middle of the table to hide all the table mats, and protect my snowy white table cloths. Watch this space, but don’t hold your breath, it might be ready for next Christmas.Class quiz. Who is chief of Toronto's parks? Who leads its school system? Who is its transportation boss? If you can't answer, you are not alone. In Toronto, the officials who hold these crucial jobs tend to keep a low profile, leaving their elected overseers to face the heat of the television lights.
Jennifer Keesmaat is a refreshing exception. Since becoming the city's chief planner in 2012, she has used her pulpit to push causes from better transit to a cleaner urban environment. She hosts roundtable discussions. She gives speeches. She sits for interviews and profiles. She has a lively presence on Twitter.
"I was pretty clear from the outset: I am not a bureaucrat," she told me a couple of years ago, when some critics at city hall were first complaining about her outspokenness. "I am a kind of can-do, change-agent type of person." Pushing for more bike lanes hardly makes her a dangerous revolutionary, but, right from the start, her vocal advocacy rubbed some city councillors the wrong way.
Story continues below advertisement
Now she is in another spot of trouble. In the recent debate over the Gardiner, she came out strongly in favour of pulling down the eastern end of the crumbling elevated expressway and opening up the waterfront. Mayor John Tory came out strongly in favour of keeping the expressway up, at least in a modified form. Toronto's top elected official and its chief planner found themselves on the opposite sides of an important city issue.
Mr. Tory made it clear that while she had a right to her opinion, he did not think she should be debating him in public. The Globe's Ann Hui reported that after Ms. Keesmaat was summoned to a meeting in the mayor's office, her tweets on the Gardiner came to a stop. A Tory spokeswoman said that even if it was "perfectly appropriate" for officials to voice their opinions, "it is not appropriate for city staff to campaign against councillors or the mayor on social media or through other public platforms."
It was silly to make such a fuss. Ms. Keesmaat was not waging a vendetta. She was simply expressing her professional opinion, which is what she is paid to do.
Her opinion, in this case, was that taking down the eastern Gardiner was more in keeping with Toronto's plans to revive the waterfront and make the city less "car-centric." Given her background and her past pronouncements, it would have been astonishing if she had said anything different – and absurd if she had said nothing at all.
Toronto should not be forcing a cone of silence on engaging officials like Ms. Keesmaat. It should be encouraging them to speak up. In some other big cities, appointed officials are not shy about expressing themselves.
New York's former transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, became one of the best known officials in the city as she transformed the streets of the metropolis, rolling out a network of bike paths and opening Times Square for pedestrians. Joel Klein, New York's chancellor of schools from 2002 to 2010, was anything but reserved as he shook up the city's underperforming education system.
In the end, of course, the city's elected leaders make the big decisions. Mr. Tory got city council to approve his Gardiner plan, if only by a narrow margin. Ms. Keesmaat must now defer to council's authority. She is well aware of that.
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
But it would be a mistake to rein her in. Toronto needs more like her: bright, articulate public servants who are not afraid to speak their minds on civic issues.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Mass Effect: Andromeda will run at 30 FPS across both PlayStation 4 and the new PlayStation 4 Pro.
Producer Fabrice Condominas shared the detail in an interview with GameSpot this evening at the PlayStation Meeting. The PS4 Pro is more powerful than the existing model. It is in theory capable of delivering higher frame rates, but that won't be the case here, apparently.
It's also worth noting that what we saw of Andromeda today was a pre-alpha build, so it's possible optimization efforts in the future could lead to better performance.
Earlier in the evening, Jason Connell of Sucker Punch Productions told GameSpot during a roundtable interview that Infamous: Second Son and First Light's PS4 Pro versions will run at the same frame rate as the standard PS4 versions.
Higher frame rates for multiplayer games specifically can make a difference for gameplay. It remains to be seen, however, if Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Battlefield 1's PS4 Pro editions will run at a higher frame rate than their standard edition cousins.
For more on Andromeda, which comes out in 2017 also for Xbox One and PC, check out some new PS4 Pro footage from the PlayStation Meeting embedded above.
The PS4 Pro launches in November for $400. Next week, Sony will launch the PS4 Slim, priced at $300.OTTAWA — An Ottawa man who had been talking about joining ISIL signed a terrorism peace bond on Thursday that requires him to wear a GPS ankle bracelet and not view online terrorist propaganda.
Tevis Gonyou-McLean, 25, became the latest Canadian subject to a terrorism peace bond, which police have been using against those they believe have become supporters of ISIL or groups with a similar ideology.
The son of a military family who has struggled with drug use and mental health issues, he must abide by 18 conditions, including a ban on applying for a passport. The peace bond will last 12 months.
At a hearing, Crown lawyer Celine Harrington said Gonyou-McLean’s mother had reported her son to police in 2014 after he told her he had planned to join ISIL. He later converted to Islam and continued to talk about joining ISIL, she said.
“He said that he hates our society because there’s no Shariah law,” Harrington told the court, adding he had spoken approvingly of terrorist attacks and said he couldn’t wait to see the ISIL flag flying from local churches.
The pizza shop worker was arrested Aug. 12 for what police said was a threat to avenge the killing of ISIL supporter Aaron Driver, shot dead Aug. 10 as he was preparing to commit a suicide bombing.
Police charged Gonyou-McLean with threatening but also sought a peace bond against him on the grounds he might commit an offence for a terrorist group or leave Canada to participate in a terrorist group.
The threatening charge was later dropped but he agreed to sign the peace bond and pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching the release conditions imposed on him following his arrest, and two counts of mischief for damaging the GPS ankle bracelet he was required to wear.
Defence lawyer Biagio Del Greco said Gonyou-McLean was not admitting to the Crown’s allegations. He said he hoped to return to court in six months to show the restrictions were no longer necessary.
“This is an incredibly restrictive set of conditions,” Justice Matthew Webber said. But he said Gonyou-McLean had repeatedly made extremist and threatening statements and that caution was necessary given events around the world.
Gonyou-McLean’s mother and father attended the hearing. His mother was later allowed to meet him in a private room. Among his conditions are that he attend abuse treatment “as required by the John Howard Society.”
Police have sought 19 terrorism peace bonds in the past two years, most recently in B.C. But their effectiveness has been questioned since Driver, despite living in Ontario under peace bond restrictions, built a bomb, recorded a video saying he was committing an attack for ISIL and was killed by police.
National Post
• Email: sbell@nationalpost.com | Twitter: @StewartBellNPThe SlimROM development team has released Slim7 stable build (based on Android 7.1.2 Nougat) for a wide range of devices. This update includes several bug fixes and optimization. Slim7 stable version supported device list includes almost all Nexus devices, many Samsung devices, OnePlus 2, OnePlus 3, several HTC devices and more. However, some devices will get only the beta or nightly build for now.
For your information, Slim7, which is based on Android 7.1.2 Nougat, is the slimmed down version of AOSP (Android open source project) ROM, but at the same time it is a feature rich alternative to all other custom ROMs. Since it supports a wide range of older devices, users can enjoy latest Android version, even if the device manufacturer stop support.
Today’s guide lets you know how to install Slim7 stable build on your Android phone. Note that, since the development team added a correct signature to firmware zip and apk files, users need clean wipe to flash this ROM and any new builds.
Note: Slim7 ROM does not include Google Apps (Gapps), so you need to flash it separately after installing the ROM.
Important: Before installing Slim7 ROM, backup every data you have on your phone. Also, create a Nandroid backup in custom recovery.
Requirements:
a) Unlocked bootloader
b) Latest version of any custom recovery like TWRP with fastboot
c) At least 70% of battery remaining
How to Install Slim7 Rom on your Android Phone
Disclaimer: Follow the instruction at your own risk. We will not be liable if any damage occurs to your device and/or its components. It is recommended for technically talented users only.
1. Download Slim7 stable build for your device from here. Also download Android 7.1 compatible Gapps zip file from here.
2. Save both the zip files on your SD card
3. Boot your phone into TWRP recovery mode (Google for how to boot into recovery mode).
4. Now, do a full system wipe (factory reset, wipe cache, dalvik cache and format system)
5. Once the full system wipe is done, go back to the main menu, select “Install”, choose the ROM zip file and flash the ROM. Also, flash Gapps.
6. Now, wipe cache and dalvik cache. This step is optional but recommended in order to avoid boot loops.
7. Finally, reboot your phone, setup and enjoy.
If you have any issue installing Slim7 ROM on your phone, let us know it in the comment section below. (Source – Google+)Beijing’s architecture is a scene of extremes: on one end are Rem Koolhaas’s multibillion-dollar structures ; on the other, Dai Haifei’s $964 sleep-pod — which the 24-year-old architect built because he couldn’t even afford to live in the city he helps shape.
Haifei was inspired to design and build his egg-shaped domicile after seeing a conceptual project called “City’s Egg” at the 2010 Shanghai Biennale Exhibition. “I was impressed by the green-notion of building a house like that, especially in cities like Beijing where rental price for a fresh graduate is a huge burden,” Dai told China Daily.
The egg-house’s specifications are, of course, spartan at best: two meters high at its tallest point, built on a bamboo frame, insulated with wood chips, and an exterior made of what looks like cut-up sleeping bags. But what the pod lacks in good looks, it makes up for with hardy sustainable design: grass seeds planted in the cladding will sprout into a green covering over the whole structure, and a solar panel provides power for a lamp and handful of electrical necessities inside.
There’s room inside for a bed, water tank, and a small night table — only the bare necessities for Haifei, who told China Daily he crashes in the egg after working until midnight at his architecture office. Let’s hope what he saves on rent will translate into his creating better options for other price-out Beijing residents in the future.The mountain pine beetle is taking a dramatic toll on Canadian forests which are critical for home building and other lumber needs here in the U.S. - Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Listen To The Story Marketplace Embed Code <iframe src="https://www.marketplace.org/2012/10/26/sustainability/beetle-infestation-drives-lumber-prices/popout" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="240px"></iframe>
A new set of beetles is taking North America by storm. This time the casualty is lumber and lumber prices. The mountain pine beetle is taking a dramatic toll on Canadian forests which are critical for home building and other lumber needs here in the U.S.
A lumber-industry consultancy called the International Wood Markets Group has sounded the alarm in a recent report. Russell Taylor is the president, and he spoke to us from Vancouver, British Columbia, this morning.
"These very tiny beetles -- they're about the size of a grain of rice -- they basically flock to a tree and they burrow into it and lay their eggs," Taylor explained. "That basically kills the flow of water up and down the tree, and they kill everything in sight as they grow and grow and grow. It's been one of the largest natural disasters, we can think of, of all time."
Taylor noted that the beetles have ravaged the forests of British Columbia and moved all the way across the Rocky Mountains into Alberta. He said he doesn't see it slowing down in the interim, and it's already affecting prices in lumber.
"We've been actually predicting what we called a'supercycle' in lumber, starting somewhere around now," he said. "And we're seeing it occurring and we think the peak years of 2014 and 2015, we're going to see prices literally going through the roof as the supply-side dynamics get tighter as U.S. demand and the U.S. housing market comes roaring back."
“I think the best compliment I can give is not to say how much your programs have taught me (a ton), but how much Marketplace has motivated me to go out and teach myself.” – Michael in Arlington, VA As a nonprofit news organization, what matters to us is the same thing that matters to you: being a source for trustworthy, independent news that makes people smarter about business and the economy. So if Marketplace has helped you understand the economy better, make more informed financial decisions or just encouraged you to think differently, we’re asking you to give a little something back. Become a Marketplace Investor today – in whatever amount is right for you – and keep public service journalism strong. We’re grateful for your support. BEFORE YOU GOCiguatera Poisoning: What Is It and How Can You Avoid It?
I don't wish to be alarmist here but it's not good news, ciguatera poisoning. You can get it from eating fish that host ciguatoxin. But what is it, and where does it come from? And most importantly, how can you avoid it?
But unless you eat fish from tropical or subtropical seas there's no need to get too excited about it at all, as it's only the fish from these warmer waters that can become hosts to the ciguatoxin.
And thankfully, not all tropical and subtropical saltwater fish get it.
It depends on what type of fish they are, what they feed on - and where they feed.
As someone who sails and fishes regularly around the Caribbean Islands, I take the possibility of ciguatera poisoning very seriously.
So far, touch wood, I've not had it but I know someone who had a relatively mild dose. Believe me, she didn't didn't enjoy it one little bit...
How do some fish become hosts to ciguatoxin?
It all starts on tropical reefs, where ciguatoxin-bearing micro-organisms proliferate and make their way into the food chain.
Tiny reef fish ingest the toxin, who then get eaten by larger fish and so it goes on. For some reason, it seems that fish are incapable of ridding themselves of the toxin, and although it causes the fish no harm at all, it accumulates in their flesh.
As a result it's the older, larger fish that carry the most ciguatoxin and represent the greatest danger to us humans who dine upon them.
How can you tell if a fish is carrying ciguatoxin?
You can't. A fish with the toxin looks the same, smells the same and even tastes the same as on without it.
There's a lot of local folklore about simple tests for the toxin, along the lines of 'lay a silver coin on the fish and see if it goes black', or 'cook sweet potato with it and see if it changes colour'.
Another bit of 'advice' is that you should leave a piece of fish out in the open. If the flies won't settle on it, it's got ciguatera. Having seen what flies are willing to settle on, I'd certainly treat this with a degree of scepticism!
In fact, none of these 'tests' have any basis in science and are downright dangerous if treated with anything but total disdain.
If you have access to a disposable cat or dog, you could give it a piece of the fish and watch what happens. More reliable this approach, but unlikely to endear you to anyone who finds out about it.
How will I know if I've got ciguatera poisoning?
Believe me, you'll know. Even a mild dose of ciguatera poisoning will leave you feeling distinctly unwell. Symptoms will usually arrive within 3 to 5 hours of eating the fish and might include:~
stomach ache
head ache
dizziness
vomiting
diarrhea
general numbness
a tingly sensation of your arms and legs, and around your mouth
For a severe dose, expect all of the above, plus:~
muscle pain
tooth ache
blurred vision
hair loss
loss of nails
cold things will feel hot and vice versa
In the most severe cases, this may be followed with muscle paralysis, coma and eventual death through respiratory paralysis.
If you survive, recovery can take months and some symptoms may linger for years.
What can I do to get rid of ciguatera poisoning?
'Not much' is the unfortunate answer. OK, there are one or two things you can do to reduce the symptoms - drink plenty of water, induce vomiting to rid the body of as much of the toxin as you can, and take an infusion of Mannitol being the documented advice.
But I'm no doctor - you should seek qualified, professional advice immediately you show the symptoms of ciguatera poisoning and not rely on anything you read here.
How can I avoid getting ciguatera poisoning?
The obvious answer is 'don't eat fish' - but that would be an extreme measure of risk mitigation. However there are several parts of a fish that you should never eat. They are:~
the liver
the gills
the guts or any other internal organ
...and never, ever eat any part of a moray eel.
The risk associated with ciguatera poisoning is often localised - fish from with one reef can be infected, whilst those from another a few miles away can be entirely free of the toxin.
Hence local knowledge must be gained before eating any local fish. If the locals won't eat a fish of a certain species or above a certain size, then neither should you.
For example, in the West Indies we eat small barracuda (less than 30 inches long) caught south of Martinique, but wouldn't look at one of any size in Guadeloupe or the islands to the north.
This one we caught off Carriacou (an island to the north of Grenada) where local advice is that ciguatera poisoning isn't an issue.
But because of its size we didn't risk it. We gave it to a local man from Hillsborough, who shared it with several families - and very grateful they were too!
Which fish most often carry ciguatoxin?
Pelagic fish of the open ocean, far from tropical reefs, will be clear of ciguatera. The offshore fish we most regularly catch on the trolling lines towed astern of our yacht Alacazam include dorado (mahi mahi), tuna and wahoo which we have little concern about eating.
The most likely species to carry the toxin include barracuda, grouper, snapper, jacks and moray eels. Amberjack, kingfish, parrotfish, surgeonfish, triggerfish, filefish, and porgy are also susceptible, |
a CSF protein or abnormal neuroimaging findings, are found to be associated with the disorder, it remains largely speculative how these markers relate to the symptoms and pathophysiology of the disorder. Most importantly, for psychiatric disorders, we do not yet have evidence that assessing the profile of a biomarker will alter the clinical outcome of the patient. As an aside, it appears that some recent court cases have already begun to use markers, such as neuroimaging findings and genetic polymorphisms, as arguments to convince the court that the accused has a mitigating psychiatric disorder (clearly affecting the defendant’s outcome!).4 This seems premature given our limited understanding of how these markers relate to the expression of psychiatric symptoms.
Confounding factors While some candidate biomarkers can be shown to be highly associated with a psychiatric disorder (i.e., high sensitivity), the specificity of the biomarkers for the disorder may also be particularly problematic in the case of psychiatric disorders. In general, there is large overlap in pathophysiological findings among psychiatric disorders, and a biomarker must not only differentiate disorder A from healthy control conditions, but must also differentiate disorder A from disorders B–Z. For example, Benson and colleagues5 recently described a set of eye movement abnormalities detected using simple viewing tasks that could distinguish people with schizophrenia from healthy controls with 98% accuracy. Yet eye movements are complex functions regulated by multiple brain regions, so one might expect that abnormalities in many brain areas could give rise to disorganized scanning. In fact, scanpath abnormalities are found in many other disorders, so a specific signature of deficits would need to be found that differentiate schizophrenia from other types of psychiatric and neurologic disorders. A factor confounding the utility of many potential biomarkers (e.g., oxidative stress, inflammation, growth factors, prepulse inhibition of startle, altered hypothalamic pituitary adrenal function, neuroimaging disturbances in the default mode network) is that they are found to be altered in multiple psychiatric and neurologic disorders. Some markers may also be readily influenced by environmental and lifestyle factors, such as diet, stress, activity levels and substance abuse, which further confound findings. Of course, confounding effects of psychotropic medications on biomarker findings remain an ongoing issue.
Approaches to biomarkers for psychiatric disorders Given the lack of specificity of many biological findings in psychiatry and the very nature of psychiatric disorders, which are multifactorial in etiology and heterogeneous in expression, it is unlikely that any 1 biomarker will greatly impact diagnosis and treatment. Progress in biomarker research for psychiatric disorders will almost certainly require a more complex approach incorporating a range of biological findings that have been associated with a particular disorder. Several groups are working on incorporating a multiplicity of clinical, socio-environmental, molecular, neuroimaging and neurophysiological findings associated with a psychiatric disorder (e.g., Alzheimer disease,6 depressive disorder,7,8 schizophrenia9) to detect particular signatures of the disorder. The identification of the relevant biomarkers in these approaches may be based on either a theoretical framework derived from existing evidence about the disorder7 or on an atheoretical informatics approach that does not rely on understanding mechanisms.8 One of the most advanced projects in this respect is the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. Funded jointly by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the pharmaceutical industry and other organizations since 2004, it initially involved researchers in more than 50 American and Canadian sites collecting longitudinal imaging, genetic, biochemical and clinical data in a standardized way on a large population at high risk for or with Alzheimer disease, and is now being extended to include collection of data from countries around the world.6 Remarkably, this huge data set is freely available to any researcher wishing to investigate or confirm their individual findings and hypotheses. An expected benefit from this approach is the use of biomarker signatures to define the members of current high-risk populations in whom Alzheimer disease is most likely to develop, thus decreasing the numbers of participants needed and the costs for clinical drug trials. In a similar vein, a Canadian multicentre initiative to define biological signatures for subpopulations of major depressive disorder, derived from a wide range of clinical, genetic, neuroimaging and biochemical markers, is also currently underway.8 While such intensive approaches will not be practical to assess individual patients in daily clinical practice, it is hoped that a workable small number of key informative biomarkers will emerge. This seems to be the way the field is headed, but there appears to be much work ahead to analyze large data sets of patient characteristics and biomarkers to discover biomarker signatures that define patient subgroups and to experimentally validate whether these signatures predict treatment response. A further hurdle will be to determine whether one can tailor a biomarker signature approach that is practically and economically viable for clinical practice. For this to happen, meaningful differences in treatment response will need to be achieved using a small, workable number of biomarkers. In addition, the major problem of standardization of biomarkers in a clinical setting (e.g., quantification of neuroimaging measurements) will need to be addressed.1 The practical establishment of biomarker availability will also open a variety of ethical and social issues related to their use, as discussed in a recent commentary.10 In the final analysis, the major challenge for biomarker research will be to demonstrate that it provides improved outcomes compared with current clinical diagnosis.
Footnotes Competing interests: None declared.by Brett Stevens on November 8, 2017
A Republican lost an election in Virginia and already the media, essentially the propaganda arm of the Left, is telling us how Democrats are “back” and Republicans are doomed.
As usual, it is best to ignore the neurotics.
The real lesson that we can take from this election and others around it is that Republicans who fail to embrace the Trump/Farage/Petry style populist agenda are doomed because their base will come out and vote for a cuck. They realize that the Left is doom for this country, Western Civilization and themselves, so they will not keep electing do-nothings, as the Republicans proved to be — with a slight exception for Ronald Reagan — for the past century.
Looking into the supposed carnage, we see the message that Republican and moderate voters are sending to the GOP, who still hopes to retain its job as house Negro for the Democrats. The GOP bureaucrats just want to keep the bucks flowing without having to tackle difficult issues, which are never popular because when you take on difficult issues, you can actually lose, where with do-nothing issues, the result is the same whether you fail or succeed, and you have better job security.
In the Virginia gubernatorial race, Republican Ed Gillespie tried to have it both ways — with disastrous consequences. Gillespie, who privately agonized about the degree to which Trump should be involved in the contest, refused to campaign with the president. But at the same time, he trumpeted Trump’s culture war issues in ads. White House advisers spent Wednesday combing through the election results and fuming about Gillespie’s have-it-both-ways approach. By keeping Trump at arm’s length, they said, Gillespie squandered an opportunity to motivate conservatives whose support he needed. “He wouldn’t embrace the president, so the base that came out to vote for the president and that voted for me, didn’t come out,†said Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart, a Trump campaign official who nearly defeated Gillespie in the June GOP primary.
Instead of a victory for the Left, this shows their future defeat, but we will have to wait a little while: the cucks and bureaucrats are being replaced by action candidates like Trump, Farage or Petry. More accurately, if the GOP fails to run a populist candidate, it will be replaced, and so natural selection is going to weed out the cucks.
You can tell that this is true because the GOP “experts” — the ones who make their money on nothing getting changed — are telling us exactly the same thing that the Leftist press is. Hint: if it agrees with Pravda, it is probably KGB. We are at that level of civilization decline in America now, in that our “deep state” is really a vast Communist gang that has taken over government from within with the help of its fellow travelers in academia, media and (mostly dot-com) industry.
For us, the best thing to do now is the exact opposite of what the “experts” and media shills tell us to do. The Right needs to double down on its core ideas because those ideas reflect the changes in the world that have occurred with the failure of globalism, which is taking down the Left, liberal democracy and ideology-as-an-alternative-to-realism across the world.
Gillespie made his bed by waffling like Mitt Romney or John McCain, and voters rejected him, which let the Left take the lead. Future elections will either by lost by the Right in going with the old “deep state friendly” GOP agenda, or won by their replacements, who will take the Republican platform to where it should have been for the past century.
Tags: deep state, donald j. trump, ed gillespie, frauke petry, nigel farage, populism
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Niantic's inability to make Pokémon Go work properly is becoming legend. Basically, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. And there was a lot of wrong at the high-profile Pokémon Go Fest in Chicago last weekend. It was such a mess that a few dozen players have filed a class action lawsuit against Niantic, alleging false advertising.
The plaintiffs are demanding Niantic compensate them for travel to the festival, which was an unmitigated disaster. One Jonathan Norton retained Chicago-based lawyer Thomas Zimmerman to handle the case. Norton traveled from California to attend Pokémon Go Fest with the understanding he'd be able to play the game and catch rare Pokémon, and he was far from the only out-of-towner to show up. However, he and several thousand others found they were unable to play the game at all during the event.
Niantic has apologized for the situation, but now 20-30 people have joined the lawsuit in search of a more tangible monetary apology. Attendees were offered a refund on the $20 tickets and $100 of in-game currency. The promised legendary Pokémon was also provided. However, the event was a bust, and many players spent a significant amount of money to get there. Niantic has refused to comment on the pending litigation.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Wednesday urged China to stop vilifying the Dalai Lama and instead talk to the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader in order to achieve peace and stability in troubled, Chinese-ruled Tibet.
The Dalai Lama meets with Paula Dobriansky, the U.S. under secretary of the State Department for Global Affairs and Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan April 21, 2008. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
“The Chinese government should seize the opportunity to talk to those Tibetans, represented by the Dalai Lama, who oppose violence and do not seek independence for Tibet,” Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte told a U.S. Senate hearing.
“Public vilification of the Dalai Lama will not help defuse the situation,” he said of China’s angry tide of statements since protests erupted across Tibet in March.
Negroponte told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that China’s response to U.S. attempts to persuade Beijing to engage in dialogue with the Dalai Lama and to allow diplomats or other observers into troubled Tibet have been “minimal at best.”
Lack of access to tightly controlled Tibetan areas in China wee a concern because China had detained some 4,000 people and
“reports of mistreatment of detainees are numerous,” he said.
Negroponte said China would not achieve the stability it seeks without resolving grievances built up over decades of Chinese rule, and failure to work with the 72-year-old Buddhist leader would cede ground to extremists in the Himalayan region.
“Through outreach and genuine dialogue, China and the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the vast majority of Tibetans, can begin to bridge differences, explore the meaning of genuine autonomy and address long-standing grievances,” he said.
Beijing has accused the Dalai Lama of being behind March 14 riots in Lhasa and unrest that followed in other ethnic Tibetan areas, as part of a bid for Tibetan independence and to ruin the coming Olympic Games.
The Dalai Lama has said he wants autonomy for Tibet, not a separate state, and has denied he orchestrated the unrest, which China says killed 19 people. Exiled Tibetans have given a far higher death toll.
Hollywood actor Richard Gere, chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, dismissed China’s account. He said the protests had no connection to the Olympics and were “not instigated by the Dalai Lama, no matter what the Chinese authorities have so offensively claimed.”
U.S. President George W. Bush should “throw some weight behind this issue and become publicly engaged,” he told the Senate panel.
Bush awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal last October, but “today, when Tibetans are in their greatest moment of need, we have heard only a passing comment from the president,” Gere said.
The situation has resulted in demonstrations against and attacks on the Olympic torch as it travels around the world ahead of the summer games in Beijing.
The Dalai Lama met Paula Dobriansky, the U.S. special envoy for Tibet, in Michigan on Monday and told her he appreciated U.S. concern with China’s handling of the political unrest in Tibet, adding: “At this moment we need your help.”Throughout his presidential race, Donald Trump has been the NASCAR candidate: The press and voters seem riveted by his campaign because there’s no telling when there might be a dramatic crash.
For anyone tuning in for that reason, Sunday night’s second presidential debate was just the ticket: a fiery, multi-car pileup. Trump meandered around the stage restlessly, delivered long strings of misleading statements, feuded with the moderators, and promised to prosecute a political rival if he won the race. He openly slapped down his running mate, Mike Pence, over Syria policy, saying, “He and I haven't spoken and I disagree.” In perhaps the most surreal moment of a surreal evening, moderator Anderson Cooper had to tell a major-party nominee for president, “You bragged that you had sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”
The Republican candidate, in the middle of the worst stretch of an often-turbulent campaign, was peevish and erratic, frequently interrupting his opponent. He seemed even more ill at ease than he had during the first debate. Once again, he inhaled noisily over the microphone. And once again, he delivered a string of inaccurate statements. With Republicans abandoning Trump in droves just 29 days before the election, Trump seemed content to drive all of them off—perhaps even his own running mate.
And that doesn’t even get to Trump’s bizarre pre-debate press conference with three women who accused former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, of sexual misconduct, as well as a fourth woman whose rapist Hillary Clinton represented in court. The four women also attended the debate and sat with the Trump family.
In a highly unusual breach of protocol—if not a great shock—Trump and Clinton did not shake hands at the start of the debate, and the mood only got more acrimonious from there. The first question to the candidates, from a teacher, was about whether the candidates were setting an example they would want American schoolchildren to emulate. Clinton, starting off, answered the question with an anodyne statement of positivity. She did not bring up the recently released video of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. Trump, answering second, offered a quick litany of ills he said were plaguing the nation.
Only then did the video come up. Trump offered no apology for his remarks, continuing to insist they were little more than “locker room” conversation. Cooper had to ask Trump five times whether or not he had actually sexually assaulted women before Trump denied it.
Clinton pounced. “With prior Republican nominees for president, I disagreed with them, politics, policies, principles, but I never questioned their fitness to serve. Donald Trump is different,” she said. “What we all saw and heard on Friday was Donald talking about women, what he thinks about women, what he does to women, what, and he has said that the video doesn't represent who he is. But I think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is because we've seen this throughout the campaign.” She also brought up remarks Trump had made about Muslims, African Americans, immigrants, and others.
Trump, for his part, tried to deflect attention away from himself and toward Clinton’s husband. “If you look at Bill Clinton, mine are words and his were actions,” Trump said. “There's never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women.” Hillary Clinton mostly declined to take the bait, quoting Michelle Obama’s maxim that “When they go low, you go high.” She demanded that Trump apologize to Khizr and Ghazala Khan, Judge Gonazlo Curiel, disabled reporter Serge Kovaleski, and President Obama, for “the racist lie” that he was not born in the United States. Trump insisted that the slur had originated with Clinton’s 2008 campaign, a claim that has been debunked, and is also largely beside the point.
That exchange set the tone for the rest of the night. The two rivals took opposite approaches. Clinton dredged up Trump’s prior comments in strategic strikes. Trump, meanwhile, paced the stage, irritated, interrupting her. Clinton made an effort to address the audience, both at home and at Washington University in St. Louis, while Trump spent much of the night addressing Clinton directly. His approach was one of quantity, throwing as many attacks against Clinton as possible. During a discussion of tax policy, Trump demanded to know why she had not closed the carried-interest loophole while serving as a senator from New York. A grinning Clinton delivered a zinger straight out of Schoolhouse Rock: “You know, under our Constitution, the president has something called veto power.”
A few minutes into the debate, discussing Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, Trump promised, “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation,” adding that if he were in charge, “you would be in jail.” While the campaign has seen numerous incidents of Trump aides suggesting the sort of political retribution more common in banana republics, the specter of one candidate promising the prosecution of the other was unprecedented.
Several questions later, Trump took the opportunity to prove Clinton’s point about Muslims. When a Muslim woman stood up and asked the candidates what they would do about Islamophobia, Trump promptly turned the question around, blaming American Muslims for not informing law enforcement about potential terrorist activity in their midst. In other words, asked about Islamophobia, Trump blamed Muslims. Of refugees, he added, “This is going to be the great Trojan horse of all time.” But Trump said he no longer supports a blanket ban on Muslims entering the country, replacing it with a nebulous idea of “extreme vetting.” Trump has not explained how his new vetting would differ from the existing process of screening refugees.
The debate was not long on policy, as questions about the Affordable Care Act and the war in Syria demonstrated. Clinton said that while the country might have been better off with non-employer-backed health insurance, she preferred to fix flaws in the law that President Obama signed, and she recited its most popular provisions. She did not specify what her fixes might be. Then Trump came up. His answer was a meandering mess. Asked how he would guarantee coverage for people with preexisting conditions, he promised to allow the sale of insurance across state lines and block-grant Medicaid to states. Both proposals are popular among conservatives, but he was unable to say what they had to do with guaranteeing coverage to people with preexisting conditions.
Syria wasn’t much better. Clinton’s main answer to a question about how she’d act proceed than President Obama was to institute a no-fly zone. If her answer was vague, Trump’s answer was nonsense. He assailed Clinton and Obama, but couldn’t say what he’d do differently. Moderator Martha Raddatz repeatedly pushed Trump to answer what his own strategy would be. “I want to remind you what your running mate said,” she said. “He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength.” That’s when Trump answered that he had not discussed the matter with Pence and did not agree.
Trump once again refused to release his tax returns until an audit is completed, and he insisted he had paid taxes. But he also appeared to confirm that he had used a $916 million loss in the 1990s to avoid paying personal income taxes. "Of course I did," Trump said. He added, of another way real-estate investors can reduce their tax bill, “I love depreciation.”
Trump’s dizzying performance overshadowed several perilous moments for Clinton. The email issue continues to be a weakness, and she apologized once again on Sunday for using it. (Trump, apparently forgetting that this was a town-hall debate, sniped at Cooper, asking why he didn’t bring it up.) She also had to answer questions about what appear to be excerpts from paid speeches she made to banks, released by WikiLeaks in apparently hacked emails. Clinton has refused to release the speeches. In one excerpt, she said that “you need both a public and a private position.” During the debate, Clinton claimed that she was referring to the portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s biopic of the 16th president, and in particular the way he used different messaging in different ways to convince Congress to pass the 13th Amendment. Trump, meanwhile, mused nonsensically, “Maybe there is no hacking,” and said, “I know nothing about Russia.”
It was a microcosm of the campaign: Clinton is a weak candidate, with a train car’s worth of luggage trailing behind her. But Trump is weaker still, and at every turn, he seems to overshadow her problems with much deeper problems of his own—much louder gaffes, much more serious political errors. That has been a rather depressing spectacle for the nation. In the last question of the evening, a citizen asked earnestly if either could say what they respected about the other. It wasn’t pretty. Clinton deflected, a little. “I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald. I don't agree with nearly anything else he says or does, but I do respect that,” she said.
Trump wasn’t sure whether to be grateful. “I consider her statement about my children a very nice compliment. I don't know if it was meant to be a compliment,” he said. Then he offered his own backhanded compliment. “I will say this about Hillary: She doesn't quit. She doesn't give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is,” Trump said. “She is a fighter. I disagree with much of what she is fighting for. I do disagree with her judgment in many cases, but she does fight hard and she doesn't quit and she doesn't give up and I consider that to be a very good trait.”
And with that, it was, blessedly, over.
What does this fiery crash of a debate mean for the final month of the campaign? Trump is in deep trouble. His polling was already falling before the Friday release of the 11-year-old lewd video, and since then, dozens of leading Republicans have withdrawn their endorsements and called on him to leave the race. During the debate on Sunday, he was erratic, failed to land many blows, and humiliated his running mate on the Syria question. As for Clinton, her performance may not go down in the history books as one of the most sparkling debates, but it didn’t need to. She managed to remain above the fray, seeming calm, presidential, and poised as her rival roamed the stage and interrupted. Trump’s pugilistic performance may serve as a rallying point for his key supporters, but the Republican’s task right now is to staunch the bleeding and start winning over new voters, since he doesn’t currently have enough to win. There’s practically no prospect he made progress on that goal Sunday night.
—David A. GrahamSAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — People who visit San Francisco’s Ocean Beach will continue to be allowed to burn bonfires for free, and without a permit, but there will be restrictions on when they can burn.
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area officials had proposed a permit process with a $35 fee to help educate the public about beach fire safety.
“We’ve had children with third degree burns from having walked over what they thought was sand, and their foot went through into a smoldering fire that had been going for hours,” Alexandra Picavet of the GGNRA said.
But, city leaders balked at the plan. Free fires at the beach have been a part of San Francisco’s history as far as anyone remembers.
“But, they also said they would work with us, to make this a sustainable project that, hopefully will help us develop a core of ambassadors, or beach ambassadors, and volunteers that will help us clean the beach,” Picavet said.
The park also agreed to increase the amount of fire rings, from 12 to 16. They are concrete pits along a one mile stretch of Ocean Beach.
But, there won’t be any fires allowed between November and February, as that is the time when the majority of Spare The Air days occur."Pokémon Go" is the latest in smartphone augmented reality gaming crazes. You may have already heard about the game on the news, or seen kids playing it in your neighborhood. To play, players must walk around in the real world with their GPS enabled smartphone, collecting different virtual Pokémon which appear at random spots in the real world, replenishing the virtual items need to collect Pokemon at "Pokéstops" and putting Pokémon to battle at "Gyms". Pokéstops and gyms are often city landmarks such as popular shops, fountains, statues, signs etc. For those who have no idea what "Pokémon" are: Pokémon are fictional animals from a popular children's cartoon and comic.
Since the game is GPS based, Stefan Kiese decided to see if he could cheat at the game by spoofing his GPS location using a HackRF software defined radio. The HackRF is a relatively low cost multipurpose TX and RX capable software defined radio. When playing the game, players often walk from Pokéstop to Pokéstop, collecting Pokémon along the way, and replenishing their items. By spoofing the GPS signal he is able to simulate walking around in the physical world, potentially automating the collection of Pokémon and replenishment of items at Pokéstops.
To do this he used the off the shelf "GPS-SDR-Sim" software by Takuji Ebinuma which is a GPS Spoofing tool for transmit capable SDR's like the HackRF, bladeRF and USRP radios. At first, when using the software Stefan noticed that the HackRF was simply jamming his GPS signals, and not simulating the satellites. He discovered the problem was with the HackRF's clock not being accurate enough. To solve this he used a function generator to input a stable 10 MHz square wave into the HackRF's clock input port. He also found that he needed to disable "Assisted GPS (a-gps)" on his phone which uses local cell phone towers to help improve GPS location tracking.
Next he was able to use the GPS-SDR-Sim tools to plot a simulated walking route and see his virtual character walking around on the real world map. A warning if you intend on doing this: Remember that 1) spoofing or jamming GPS is highly illegal in most countries outside of a shielded test lab setting, so you must ensure that your spoofed GPS signal does not interfere with anything, and 2) the game likely has cheating detection and will probably ban you if you don't simulate a regular walking speed.
GPS spoofing is not new. One attempt in 2013 allowed university researchers to send a 80 million dollar 213-foot yacht off course, and it is suspected that hackers from the Iranian government have used GPS spoofing to divert and land an American stealth drone back in 2011. In past posts we also showed how security researcher Lin Huang was able to spoof GPS and bypass drone no fly restrictions.
[Also seen on Hackaday.com] / [Russian Readers: There is a translation of this article by softdroid now available]Introduction
Radeon R9 280X Market Segment Analysis GeForce
GTX 660 Ti GeForce
GTX 760 Radeon
HD 7950 GeForce
GTX 670 Radeon
HD 7970 Radeon
R9 280X MSI R9 280X
GAMING GeForce
GTX 770 HD 7970
GHz Ed. GeForce
GTX 680 GeForce
GTX 780 Shader Units 1344 1152 1792 1344 2048 2048 2048 1536 2048 1536 2304 ROPs 24 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 32 48 Graphics Processor GK104 GK104 Tahiti GK104 Tahiti Tahiti Tahiti GK104 Tahiti GK104 GK110 Transistors 3500M 3500M 4310M 3500M 4310M 4310M 4310M 3500M 4310M 3500M 7100M Memory Size 2048 MB 2048 MB 3072 MB 2048 MB 3072 MB 3072 MB 3072 MB 2048 MB 3072 MB 2048 MB 3072 MB Memory Bus Width 192 bit 256 bit 384 bit 256 bit 384 bit 384 bit 384 bit 256 bit 384 bit 256 bit 384 bit Core Clock 915 MHz+ 980 MHz+ 800 MHz 915 MHz+ 925 MHz 1000 MHz 1050 MHz 1046 MHz+ 1050 MHz 1006 MHz+ 863 MHz+ Memory Clock 1502 MHz 1502 MHz 1250 MHz 1502 MHz 1375 MHz 1500 MHz 1500 MHz 1753 MHz 1500 MHz 1502 MHz 1502 MHz Price $235 $250 $205 $295 $300 $300 $310 $380 $375 $390 $650
With a market presence of close to two years and counting, the Radeon HD 7000 series kept AMD afloat in the discrete PC graphics market. The company pretty much sat out 2012, probably focusing its efforts on getting its next-generation console chips right. Come Q4 2013 and a product-stack update is long overdue for AMD. The company feels that the silicon it built its HD 7000 on is still fit for duty, provided that SKUs based on them are repositioned in the product stack much in the same way NVIDIA shuffled its with the GeForce GTX 700 series. Much like NVIDIA, AMD is going into its new generation with just one new chip it codenamed "Hawaii" while repositioning "Tahiti" and "Pitcairn" based SKUs one tier lower.The R9 290 series will succeed the HD 7900 series in the product stack, and the R9 280 series succeeds the HD 7800 series while the R9 270 series succeeds the HD 7700 series. Since such an arbitrary product stack repositioning would create unreal price-performance increments at the price points AMD launched its various HD 7000 series products, AMD tweaked pricing a little, so there really is a different and equally valid way of looking at AMD’s new product stack by using price points.The Radeon R9 280X we have with us today is an interesting proposition for $299. It’s fundamentally identical to the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition from last year, but sells at a price that isn't too far off the $249.99 at which the Radeon HD 7870 debuted. Under the hood, the card is based on the same 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon that proved to be AMD's workhorse performance-segment chip for the better part of the two years.The Radeon R9 280X comes at an interesting time: DICE, publishers of the smash-hit "Battlefield" online multiplayer shooter franchise, announced that the recommended system requirements for the upcoming "Battlefield 4" prescribes graphics cards with at least 3 GB of video memory. That disqualifies the likes of the $410 GeForce GTX 770 and even NVIDIA’s flagship for last year, the GeForce GTX 680. Even though a very artificial requirement, it could still impact buyers psychologically, swaying them to buy either the R9 280X or the now $220-ish HD 7950.Based on the 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon, the Radeon R9 280X features 2,048 stream processors based on the Graphics CoreNext architecture, 128 texture memory units (TMUs), 32 raster operations units (ROPs), and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 3 GB. AMD’s reference clock speeds for the chip are 1000 MHz on the core and 1500 MHz (6.00 GT/s effective) on memory, churning out 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth.We have with us the MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming Series. The card is based on a PCB that's practically identical to that of the HD 7970 TwinFrozr III graphics cards from the previous generation, but with the new TwinFrozr IV cooling solution that did wonders on some of the company’s GeForce GTX 700 series products. At 1050 MHz, the card comes with a 5% overclock on the GPU.by Steve Jaconetta
The black adidas Yeezy Boost release date is Aug. 22, 2015.
Rumors have recently been circulating about an August release for the shoe, and Sole Collector has confirmed with a retailer the official date. Expect the sneaker to be the same as the first Yeezy 350 Boost in terms of availability.
In all likelihood, the adidas Yeezy 350 Boost will be launched via the adidas Confirmed app, as well as via independent retailers.
adidas Yeezy 350 Boost "Black"
Release Date: 08/22/15
Color: Pirate Black/Pirate Black-Pirate Black
Style #: AQ2659
Price: $200
UPDATE 8/16: New on-foot images via Sneaker Shouts.
UPDATE 8/13: As leaked photos with visible box tags indicate, the black adidas Yeezy 350 Boost WILL be releasing in half sizes. Buyers have had issues sizing the previous two releases and adidas appears to be making adjustments. The Yeezy 350 releases next Saturday, August 22 for $200.
UPDATE 8/7: An image, from what appears to be a stockroom, showing off the black Yeezy Boosts. This marks the first time the sneakers have been seen not on the feet of Kanye, or his models at the adidas Yeezy Season 1 show.Republicans continue to clash over Obamacare taxes as Congress plans to draft a repeal package.
Conservatives worry that a tax credit included in the Ryan plan would cost too much and might create an expensive new entitlement program. Congressman Mark Walker (R-NC), chairman of the Republican Study Committee says, “I want to make sure that we’re not getting to a place where we’re providing this open-ended benefit that enables people.”
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) said refundable tax credits could be a “new entitlement program.” He doubts that House leaders possess the votes necessary to pass refundable tax credits.
Other conservatives object to taxing employer-sponsored health insurance plans. Rep. Pete Session (R-TX), chairman of the House Rules Committee, told reporters that this would amount to “a Republican tax on Cadillac plans.”
Committees will meet in early March to draft Obamacare’s repeal, although House Republicans remain disunified on the details.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) assured his fellow Republicans, arguing that a tax credit offers immediate help. Brady said, “It covers more people, because it applies to those who don’t have a tax liability, and it’s advanceable, so it’s available today.”
Some rank-and-file Republicans want to keep Obamacare’s taxes to provide revenue for Obamacare’s replacement. Brady, as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has significant power to draft Obamacare’ replacement. He argued that Obamacare’s taxes are bad for economic growth. He said, “I’ll just tell you, I don’t want Americans to suffer under the Obamacare taxes. They’re anti-growth, they drive the prices of healthcare up; I just think they’re bad all around.”
Republicans continue to battle over Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Thirty-one states expanded Medicaid, and Congress continues to debate over how to scale back Medicaid expansion.
The conservative House Freedom Caucus, along with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), unveiled their Obamacare repeal bill that repeals Medicaid expansion entirely. The Ryan plan lowers the federal government’s match rate for Medicaid spending back its traditional level.
Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told Breitbart News, “There is wide agreement amongst the governors, Republicans and Democrat alike, that they would like us to send Medicaid to the states.” Blackburn believes that block-granting Medicaid to the states will, “get rid of some of the constraints from the federal government and offer a better product at a more affordable cost and help more people.”
Chairman Brady remarked that tax breaks in Obamacare’s replacement would benefit all Americans, not just the few. He said, “I’m not interested in raising taxes anywhere else, and so I think unlocking and redesigning the current tax break so not just a few Americans can use it, but all Americans can use it, I think that’s where we ought to focus our thought, make sure we design it right and get it right.”Teal for real: City, MWRD probing cause of two-toned Chicago River
Metropolitan Water Reclamation District and city officials are probing what caused a color change in the Chicago River over the weekend. | Sun-Times staff photo
If you took a rainy stroll along the Chicago Riverwalk this weekend, your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you: the Chicago River took on two vastly distinct colors — one of them seemingly unnatural.
At Wolf Point, the normally dark, muddy color of the north and south branches of the river was starkly met by a vibrant teal more reminiscent of the green hue pumped in for the city’s annual St. Patrick’s Day river dyeing, or the waters of Canada’s Lake Louise.
The strange sight started to become apparent on Friday and was lingering into Sunday; people in downtown high-rises saw it more clearly than at street level.
Officials with the city’s Department of Water Management and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago have been investigating.
“The D |
ody in Blue, featured an extended musical scene recreating the opening of the original Broadway production of Porgy and Bess. Included was the original Bess, Anne Brown, recreating her performance. The scene includes a more elaborate (and historically inaccurate) arrangement for the film of the song "Summertime", sung by Anne Brown as Bess with full chorus, but the Catfish Row set design is a virtual duplicate of the one seen in the 1935 Broadway stage production.
The 1985 film White Nights featured a scene in which Gregory Hines performed "There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York" as Sportin' Life. Hines' rendition, before a Siberian audience, included a tap dancing sequence. Director Taylor Hackford pointed out in a special edition DVD release of the film that it was necessary to locate a Russian woman of color (Helene Denbey) to portray Bess, as per Gershwin's stipulations.
Television [ edit ]
In 1993, Trevor Nunn's Glyndebourne Festival stage production of Porgy and Bess, not to be confused with his later production, was greatly expanded scenically and videotaped in a television studio without an audience. This first Nunn production was also called The Gershwins' 'Porgy and Bess' when shown on television. It was telecast by the BBC in England and by PBS in the United States. It featured a cast of operatic American singers, with the exception of Willard White, who is Jamaican but sounded American, as Porgy. Cynthia Haymon sang the role of Bess. Nunn's "opening up" of the stage production was considered highly imaginative; his cast received much critical praise,[57][58][59] and the three-hour production retained nearly all of Gershwin's music, heard in the original 1935 orchestrations. This included the opera's sung recitatives, which have occasionally been turned into spoken dialogue in other productions. No extra dialogue was written for this production, as had been done in the 1959 film. All performers lip-synched rather than singing live on set, leading The New York Times to write: "What you hear is basically Mr. Nunn's acclaimed Glyndebourne Festival production, the original cast intact. What you see was filmed later in a London studio. The performers, some new to the production, are lip-synching. It's as if an elaborate visual aid had been concocted for the EMI recording."
This Porgy and Bess production was subsequently released on VHS and DVD. It has won far greater acclaim than the 1959 film, which was widely panned by most critics. The 1993 television production of Porgy and Bess was nominated for four Emmy Awards, and won for its art direction.[60] It also won a BAFTA Award for Best Video Lighting.[61]
In 2002, the New York City Opera telecast its new version of the Houston Opera production, in a live performance from the stage of Lincoln Center. This version featured far more cuts than the previous telecast, but, like nearly all stage versions produced since 1976, used the sung recitatives and Gershwin's orchestrations. The telecast also included interviews with director Tazewell Thompson and was hosted by Beverly Sills.
In 2009 the San Francisco Opera debuted the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess to critical acclaim. The production was recorded at that time and shown on PBS in the fall of 2014, and was later released on DVD and Blu-ray.
Radio [ edit ]
On December 1, 1935, during the Broadway run, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown performed "Summertime", "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" and "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" on NBC's The Magic Key of RCA radio program. Duncan and Brown also appeared on the 1937 CBS Gershwin memorial concert on September 8, 1937, broadcast from the Hollywood Bowl less than two months after the composer's death, along with several other members of the Broadway cast, including John W. Bubbles and Ruby Elzy. They performed several selections from the opera.
The complete Porgy and Bess has been broadcast by the Metropolitan Opera three times as part of the Met's live radio broadcast series. The 1985 broadcast performance starred Simon Estes and Grace Bumbry.[62] In 1986 Ms. Bumbry was heard with Robert Mosley as Porgy. In 1990, Estes and Leona Mitchell sang the leads in the third broadcast.
Concert [ edit ]
Gershwin prepared an orchestral suite containing music from the opera after Porgy and Bess closed early on Broadway. Though it was originally titled "Suite from Porgy and Bess", Ira later renamed it Catfish Row.
In 1942 Robert Russell Bennett arranged a medley (rather than a suite) for orchestra which has often been heard in the concert hall, known as Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture. It is based on Gershwin's original scoring, though for a slightly different instrumentation (the piano was removed from the orchestral texture at the request of the conductor Fritz Reiner, for whom the arrangement was made). Morton Gould also arranged an orchestral suite in the 1950s.
Bennett's 40-minute Porgy and Bess, a concert version for soprano and baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra was prepared in 1956. It is based very closely on Gershwin's original instrumental and vocal scoring, the principal recasting being the use of standard concert-orchestra instrumentation, eliminating the clarinet-saxophone doubling specified in Gershwin's 1935 orchestration.[citation needed]
Piano [ edit ]
In 1951, Australian-born composer Percy Grainger, who was an admirer, performer and arranger of Gershwin's music, completed a twenty-minute piece for two pianos titled Fantasy on George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess".
The pianist Earl Wild prepared a virtuoso piano arrangement in the manner of Franz Liszt, entitled Fantasy on Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess".
Brass Quintet version [ edit ]
In 1987 Canadian Brass commissioned Luther Henderson to create an arrangement of Porgy and Bess music for an RCA Red Seal recording release "Strike Up The Band". The printed version then became available to performers from Hal Leonard Publishing Corp.
Jazz versions [ edit ]
Songs [ edit ]
Porgy and Bess contains many songs that have become popular in their own right, becoming standards in jazz and blues in addition to their original operatic setting.
Some of the most popular songs are:
Some of the more celebrated renditions of these songs include Sarah Vaughan's "It Ain't Necessarily So" and the versions of "Summertime" recorded by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Jascha Heifetz in his own transcriptions for violin and piano.
Numerous other musicians have recorded "Summertime" in varying styles, including both instrumental and vocal recordings; it may be even the most popular cover song in popular music.
Commendations [ edit ]
On July 14, 1993, the United States Postal Service recognized the opera's cultural significance by issuing a commemorative 29-cent postage stamp.
In 2001, Porgy and Bess was proclaimed the official opera of the state of South Carolina.[67]
The 1940/1942 Decca Porgy and Bess recording with members of the original cast was included by the National Recording Preservation Board in the Library of Congress, National Recording Registry in 2003.[68] The board selects recordings on an annual basis that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
References [ edit ]
Notes
Sources
Further readingBefore I ever met Saul Bass, before we worked together, he was a legend in my eyes. His designs, for film titles and company logos and record albums and posters, defined an era. In essence, they found and distilled the poetry of the modern, industrialised world. They gave us a series of crystallised images, expressions of who and where we were and of the future ahead of us. They were images you could dream on. They still are.
For instance, I look at Saul’s design for the album Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color, and I’m immediately drawn into a shared sense of the world at that moment, 1956. There was a vision of progress then, of hope, of a newer, better world. And there was an idea that everything could be streamlined, and that we would all benefit.
Now, how is the future as we imagined it in 1956 contained in this beautiful album cover design? It’s a series of rectangular colour bars (resembling the Cuisenaire rods they used to teach maths to children), in hues suggesting an array of moods, from warm to cool, from contentment to thoughtful melancholy. It has something to do with the economical beauty and elegance of the design, and the range of feeling it contains. In a way, it describes a mental space we all share.
I’m speaking in the present tense here because Saul’s designs, the ones he executed on his own and then with his wife and creative partner, Elaine, speak so eloquently that they address all of us, no matter when, or where, you were born.
When I was leafing through Saul Bass, A life in Film & Design, a new book about Saul’s work, I came to a section devoted to the trademarks he designed (for Fuller Paints, Continental and United Airlines, the updates of Bell Telephone and Quaker Oats, and Getty and AT&T and Minolta… it boggles the mind), and read this quote from him: “The ideal trademark is one that is pushed to its utmost limits in terms of abstraction and ambiguity, yet is still readable. Trademarks are usually metaphors of one kind or another. And are, in a certain sense, thinking made visible.”
To me, that encompasses Saul’s genius, because that’s the way we take in reality a lot of the time: feelings push perceptions to the limits of abstraction and ambiguity, but the world around us stays readable, somehow. Thinking made visible.
Saul and I worked together on four occasions. The first time was on Goodfellas. I had an idea of what I wanted for the titles, but couldn’t quite get it. Someone suggested Saul, and my reaction was: “Do we dare?” After all, this was the man who designed the title sequences for Vertigo, Psycho, Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent, Spartacus, Ocean’s 11, and so many other pictures that defined movies and moviegoing for me. When we were growing up and seeing movies, we came to recognise Saul’s designs, and I remember the excitement they generated within us: like Bernard Herrmann’s scores, they added a whole extra dimension to whatever picture they were part of.
They made the picture instantly special. And they didn’t stand apart from the movie, they drew you into it, instantly. Because, putting it very simply, Saul was a great film-maker. He would look at the film in question, and he would understand the rhythm, the structure, the mood – he would penetrate the heart of the movie and find its secret.
That’s what he did with Vertigo and those spirals that just keep endlessly forming – that’s the madness at the heart of the picture, the beautiful nightmare vortex of James Stewart’s affliction. And so, when I showed him and Elaine Goodfellas, they understood what we were driving at right away: the speed, the flash, the sense of life soaring along and then jumping the tracks. The simplicity of what they did with those titles astonished me, because they could only have been done by someone with a refined understanding of what we were trying to do.
But then, I was equally astonished each time we worked together, all over again – by the sinuous reflections in the Cape Fear sequence, the blooming flowers, again and again, under layers of lace for The Age of Innocence, the silhouetted man tumbling through a neon hell for Casino. I always became caught up in the wonder of Saul and Elaine’s work, all over again.Coastal Californians will receive a tsunami alert Wednesday morning on television and radio that the NOAA says may or may not include the word “TEST.”
As part of National Tsunami Preparedness Week, officials will conduct a test of the tsunami warning system in the coastal regions of central and southern California at approximately 10:15 a.m. PDT.
A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) release states, “Some television systems are programmed to scroll a standard emergency alert text message and in some cases, the message may not contain the word “TEST.” An audio message will say that the message is only a test, but if the volume is turned down or otherwise unheard, viewers may not realize the message is a test.”
The NOAA has mitigated potential for confusion by determining to cancel the test should any “excessive seismic activity” occur in the 24 hours leading up to the test.
NOAA, Cal OES, California Broadcasters Association and local emergency management officials in coastal California have come together in cooperation to conduct the test.
“During California’s Tsunami Preparedness Week, March 22 – 28, NOAA and emergency managers promote tsunami safety and awareness and urge coastal residents and visitors to prepare themselves and their families for a tsunami,” according to the NOAA release.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDianaAn alcoholic beverage a day, especially wine, is widely believed to help keep heart disease risk low, but research from the University of Gothenburg shows that only about 15 percent of the human population — those with a specific the form of the cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) gene — actually gain this benefit from moderate alcohol consumption.
What the study shows, beyond the fact that our understanding of alcohol’s health benefits needs to be more subtly shaded, is that genetics may play an underrated role in many health factors. We talk about health in absolutes, but how many of the “rules” we follow (e.g. don’t eat red meat) are in fact conditional on our particular genetic makeup?
The Gothenburg study, published in the journal Alcohol, re-examined the effects of moderate alcohol consumption on 618 patients of both genders, under the age of 75. The researchers collected blood samples from all participants and included over 3,000 types of heart-healthy control subjects. In addition, all participants were measured for parameters such as height and weight.
First, researchers singled-out patients with a genotype (CETB TaqIB) known to reduce the risk of heart disease. Within these patients, they found two distinct groups with based on whether they had the B1 or B2 version of the CETB gene.
Results revealed that people with the B2 allele exhibited a lower risk of coronary heart disease, and the result was more significant on people who enjoyed moderate alcohol consumption. However, in their testing group, only 19 percent of their patients had the B2 allele. People who already have an innate resistance allele mutation to heart disease had their resistance boosted further by moderate alcohol consumption.
Professor Lauren Lissner, head of the Public Health Epidemiology Unit at Gothenburg and an author of the study, stress that a common attitude toward alcohol focuses on the idea that “moderate drinking has health benefits for everyone.” Unfortunately, evidence suggests that this advice may be untrue for a large portion of the population.
Now consider other health advice in the context of these findings.
When my mother was pregnant with me, her obstetrician told her to drink a small glass of red wine each day to benefit her heart and my fetal development. Some doctors recommend that you completely avoid alcohol when you’re expecting; others still say that occasional light drinking is unlikely to harm your baby.
A 2009 study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that the chances of erectile dysfunction were reduced by 25 to 30 percent among alcohol drinkers. The lead researcher, Kew-Kim Chew, an epidemiologist at the University of West Australia, conducted the study with 1,770 Australian men. However, even Chew himself said that more research was needed to accurately complete the connection between male performance and alcohol.
It seems likely as more studies like that at Gothenberg take place, we’ll come to understand that our health recommendations cannot be issued as absolutes, whether they’re about alcohol or exercise or disease. Instead, genetic analysis will allow us to follow increasingly customized guidelines based on our own unique genetics. Until then, perhaps we should take sweeping medical recommendations with a grain of salt.
Emily Sutherlin is a science journalist focusing on education and communication issues surrounding crop and animal biotechnology. Follow her @kimberlyvmonet.
Additional Resources:Media playback is not supported on this device Sinfield excited by rugby code switch
Leeds Rhinos captain Kevin Sinfield is to switch codes and join Championship rugby union side Yorkshire Carnegie at the end of the rugby league season.
The 34-year-old former England captain has agreed an 18-month contract with Bryan Redpath's side.
Sinfield was made skipper of the Rhinos in 2002 at the age of 22.
Media playback is not supported on this device Six famous rugby cross-code converts
"My entire adult life has been spent at Leeds Rhinos and I am extremely grateful for all the support I have had over the past two decades," he said.
"This was one of the toughest decisions of my career but I know the time is right for me to finish my time in rugby league and embark on a new challenge with Yorkshire Carnegie.
"I never wanted to play against the Rhinos and throughout my career I have always had an admiration for rugby union and wanted to challenge myself in that code.
"I am fortunate as a professional player in this era that opportunities like this exist for me and it is something I want to grab with both hands."
The Oldham-born stand-off made his debut for the Rhinos in 1997 at the age of 16 and has gone on to lead them to six Grand Final wins, three World Club Challenge successes and one Challenge Cup victory.
He was awarded an MBE in 2014.
Sinfield is the second Rhinos legend to announce his departure from the club in the past week, after prop Jamie Peacock revealed he would be joining Hull KR as football manager at the end of the current Super League campaign.
Yorkshire Carnegie executive president Sir Ian McGeechan added: "I have admired Kevin Sinfield as both a player and an individual for many years. His professionalism, attitude and commitment are top class.
"I am sure he will be a great addition to our squad for next season and his goal-kicking record speaks for itself."
Carnegie, who last played in the top flight in 2011, recently appointed former Scotland captain Redpath as their new head coach and currently sit sixth in the Championship.Keep up with the latest WWE Network content updates and new features right here on WWE.com. Bookmark this page, and check back for future updates. With more than 10,000 hours of video on demand, WWE Network is available in over 180 countries and is the only place to watch all WWE pay-per-view events streaming live at no additional cost.
WWE Fastlane 2019 is free for new WWE Network subscribers. Start your one-month free trial.
Monday, Feb. 25
Best of WWE Network – 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. ET – Streaming all day in celebration of WWE Network's 5th birthday
WWE Shorts – 10 a.m. ET on demand
ARRIVAL: Matt Riddle – Streaming after Monday Night Raw
Tuesday, Feb. 26
205 Live – 10 p.m. ET
Wednesday, Feb. 27
Monday Night Raw (Episode #1,340) – 10 a.m. ET on demand
WWE NXT UK – 3 p.m. ET
WWE NXT – 8 p.m. ET
Thursday, Feb. 28
Hidden Gems – 10 a.m. ET on demand
SmackDown LIVE (Episode #1,015) – 10 a.m. ET on demand
ARRIVAL: Matt Riddle (encore broadcast) – 7 p.m. ET
Friday, March 1
This Week in WWE – 7:30 p.m. ET
Saturday, March 2
WWE Main Event (#333) – 9 a.m. ET on demand
HELPFUL LINKS
Watch pay-per-views live in your preferred language
Tune in live and listen to commentary in one of eight languages on most devices. Available languages include English, German, Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. All languages will still be available on-demand after the event, but why wait if you don’t need to? Visit our FAQ to learn more.
Update the WWE App
Update the WWE App on the App Store for iOS devices, or Google Play for Android devices.
How to Watch
Click here for watching in three easy steps.
Click here for all the compatible devices you can watch on.
Click here for how to watch in your country.
FAQ & Customer Service
Click here for more help on watching WWE Network.
Prepaid Cards
Click here to purchase. (no credit card required)When the federal government approved the Cape Wind project in April, allowing 130 power-generating turbines to be placed in the waters off Cape Cod, it gave a significant boost to the prospects of wind energy. The comparatively high costs of wind power, however, remain a problem. But in a study, MIT researchers have concluded that some of the price problems associated with wind power can be remedied right now, given a couple of changes to the electricity grid.
“Everyone knows advances in technology are critical for more widespread use of clean energy, but effective operations are also vital for profitability and can help us take advantage of current opportunities,” says Jarrod Goentzel, director of the MEng in Logistics (MLOG) program at MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL), who helped direct the study. “Obviously without good technology we won’t get there, but we will get there sooner by operating the technology in a more efficient way.”
A key insight of the study is that wind’s apparent drawbacks as a power source — it only blows intermittently, and in many places blows harder at night than during the day — could actually be used to the advantage of power companies, with one condition. If power grids were equipped with large storage batteries that are commercially available right now, placed near urban areas, they could accumulate energy via wind power during off-peak night hours, then discharge the saved power during peak afternoon hours (when people have their air-conditioning on during the summer, for instance). That would make economic sense for the power-grid operators, which pay higher rates to generators during peak hours, while keeping consumer prices intact.
“With existing battery technology and realistic costs, we wanted to see if it is possible to take advantage of market dynamics to make wind power profitable now,” says Goentzel. He and his colleagues combined information about leading-edge grid-scale batteries with two years of historical data on wind speeds, utility prices and consumer electricity use throughout New England. For power companies, Goentzel says, wind can work, but “it comes down to how you manage the battery: When you charge, when you discharge and where you locate it.”
Location, location, location
The MIT study began as a piece of research in the 2008-09 academic year by two MLOG students, Prashant Saran and Clayton Siegert, whom Goentzel supervised. Now the paper, “Economic Analysis of Wind Plant and Battery Storage Operation using Supply Chain Management Techniques,” has been accepted for presentation at the July 2010 IEEE Power Engineering Society General Meeting, in Minneapolis.
In New England, retail electricity prices in February 2010 averaged 16.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (a standard industry measure), according to the Department of Energy. The Cape Wind project is slated to begin selling wholesale electricity to National Grid, a utility firm, at 20.7 cents per kilowatt-hour.
In general, however, the cost of wind energy depends on wind speed, location — onshore turbines generate cheaper power than offshore machines, due to installation expenses — and other factors like transmission costs. Nationally, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group, wind costs a wholesale price of 4.8 cents per kilowatt-hour with wind speeds of around 16 miles per hour, and 2.6 cents per kilowatt-hour at about 21 miles per hour. (This factors in the federal government’s renewable energy production tax credit, worth 2.1 cents per kilowatt-hour.)
To calculate costs, the MIT team first received detailed data about current and next-generation products from officials at two companies that build large-scale modular batteries suitable for grid use (the firms asked for anonymity). Then, after scrutinizing the historical data, the researchers noticed something that could make wind power feasible: In all locations, electricity prices vary between peak and off-peak hours, but the spread is greater in heavily populated areas, like Boston, Providence or southern Connecticut. Yet because of civic politics, notes Siegert, “Wind plants are located further away from where the demand is.” People tend not to want windmills spoiling the view from their windows.
To turn wind power into affordable electricity, then, the key is to connect rural wind farms to power-storage devices near cities, rather than locating storage devices near wind farms. “If you put batteries in upstate Maine, yeah, you’re going to get lower prices at night and higher prices during the day, but the difference is not as extreme as in the area around Greenwich or Cos Cob, Connecticut,” observes Siegert. “So if you look strategically at where to place grid-scale batteries, there are huge arbitrage opportunities in some locations.”
Batteries not included (yet)
To see if wind power would fit into a profitable power-delivery model, the researchers built a Monte Carlo simulation model of the grid, plugged in a rich set of data on weather patterns and market prices, and then examined the expected profits.
The two types of large batteries in the model cost $144 million and $60 million, respectively. Given the current range of electricity prices, the researchers’ conclusion is that the second type of battery would pay back its costs after 14 years of summer-level use (when electricity consumption is higher) and 32 years of winter-level use, and would have an operating life of 30 years.
The operating profit, they found, increases sharply when grid batteries charge and discharge dynamically throughout the day depending on conditions. Other energy analysts have studied the battery concept while assuming operators would employ six-hour spans for charging at night and discharging during the day. But consumer use fluctuates more rapidly than that; an energy-delivery program with shorter charging and discharging periods would not only fit demand patterns more closely, but help extend battery life, too. Moreover, adds, Goentzel, “Any technological advances in batteries will only make the business case better.”
One additional policy qualification is needed to make the concept practical, adds Goentzel. Grid operators pay pumped hydro-power facility owners in order to have backup power capacity ready at all times. Applying the same concept to battery-stored power would give businesses incentive to invest in wind farms. “Installed capacity payments are important in making large-scale battery storage viable,” acknowledges Goentzel, “But it’s not some kind of special green energy subsidy, it would just require extending the current policy for pumped hydro to batteries.”
“Having additional energy-storage resources on the grid could potentially improve the economic viability of wind resources in any part of the country, assuming the economic viability of energy storage itself,” says Chris Namovicz, a long-term renewable-energy forecasting expert at the federal government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), in response to e-mailed questions.
If large-scale batteries are a profitable investment for energy-delivery companies, then, and can be operated in a way that fits the characteristics of wind power, the final question is how much room there is for wind power to grow. The offshore areas of Massachusetts are the windiest in the state. On dry land, New England’s largest contiguous windy area is Eastern Maine.
Namovicz says the EIA projects that as much as 8,500 megawatts of wind energy — enough to power between 1.9 million and 2.6 million homes — is available in New England at economically viable prices.
The critical question the study has answered, Goentzel says, is that “certain operational strategies can help profitably deploy battery storage at scale without special subsidies. The concept is not limited to experimental projects, like putting a small battery on a wind-farm site.”Victory has proved more expensive, time-consuming, and elusive than advocates predicted for the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. What do these conflicts have in common beyond U.S. involvement, at great expense? A trio of news stories published today hint at one significant similarity.
Item one: "The hugely expensive U.S. attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan has had only limited success and may not survive an American withdrawal, according to the findings of a two-year congressional investigation."
Item two: "The State Department is preparing to spend close to $3 billion to hire a security force to protect diplomats in Iraq after the U.S. pulls its last troops out of the country by year's end."
Item three: "British and French attack helicopters struck for the first time inside Libya over the weekend, significantly ramping up NATO's operations. Ten explosions shook the capital early Wednesday, a day after the alliance's most intense wave of air strikes of the two-month campaign. The intensified air strikes raise the question of whether NATO is sticking rigidly to its U.N. mandate to protect civilians."
Do you see what I see?
Despite the differences in these wars, all are proceeding in ways that were unanticipated by their most prominent backers. In every case, the unwelcome surprises are so significant that they totally change the nature of the conflict. And had Americans had better forecasts about what would actually be involved in these military operations, opposition to launching them might have been far more widespread.Though the calendar — and the temperature — remain firmly planted in summer, this week feels like December to Bruce Boudreau. “It’s like those days just before Christmas,’’ the Wild coach said, as he gleefully awaited the start of training camp. “You just can’t wait for it to get here.’’
About 50 players will report Thursday for physicals and meetings at Xcel Energy Center, followed by their first practices Friday. Boudreau said nearly all of them arrived early. After the Wild set franchise records for victories (49) and points (106) last season, Boudreau’s first year in St. Paul hit an abrupt and disappointing end with a first-round playoff loss to St. Louis, leaving players and coaches eager for a fresh start.
Most of the Wild’s core remains intact, including its top six scorers, top four defensemen and goaltender Devan Dubnyk. The team also improved its depth with offseason roster moves and expects some intriguing youngsters to challenge for spots. Earlier this week, Boudreau discussed some of the questions he hopes will be answered before the season begins on Oct. 5 in Detroit.
Q: Once you got past the letdown of the early playoff exit and assessed the full season, how pleased were you with the team’s body of work and what does that give you to build on this year?
A: The positives really outweighed the negatives. It was a really fun group to coach, which is why I’m so excited to be back. They’re all in pretty good shape right now. Everybody’s come in early. That shows me a level of excitement, that they’re ready to play.
Bruce Boudreau begins his second season as Wild coach.
Q: When you sat down with [General Manager] Chuck [Fletcher] for postseason meetings last spring, what areas did the two of you identify that needed to improve during the offseason?
A: Our backup goaltending. Whether it was just me — because in previous years, [Darcy Kuemper] was very good for this team — but I just didn’t have enough confidence in March and April to play him. So I thought we needed to upgrade there. And when we brought Alex [Stalock] in, even in the short term, he showed the energy and life that I think he would be really successful with us this year. Of course, he hasn’t got the job given to him. He’s got to beat [Niklas] Svedberg.
The other thing that Chuck and I talked about is shoring up the fourth line. We thought that was really important. I think [Matt Cullen] does that. He gives us the ability to throw somebody out there, and if there’s a faceoff or an icing and the other team puts its first line on, I’m feeling comfortable that he’s on the ice, and the people we have with him — whoever they may be — it’s more of an NHL fourth line. In the past, that was my biggest fear. They might end up being great players, [Tyler] Graovac and [Jordan] Schroeder, but sometimes, I thought they were overwhelmed when all of a sudden [Sidney] Crosby jumps over the boards. Matt has played against every other top line in the world. So that makes me feel better.
Q: You had some roster churn during the offseason, but your main core is intact. What are your thoughts on the group you’re bringing back?
A: I think our core is really good. I think our leadership is really good, as good as I’ve been around. It’s all a learning experience. It took time for Mikko [Koivu] and Zach [Parise] and Eric [Staal] and [Ryan Suter] to understand what I was all about. But in the end, we were all on the same page and looking forward to positive things for this year.
Q: You were able to keep Matt Dumba and Jonas Brodin, like you wanted. What kind of progress do you want to see from them this season?
A: For three games last year in the middle of the year, we put Dumba with Suter and Brodin with [Jared] Spurgeon. I think we’re going to start camp off with that group. It gives us a lot of bonus stuff when we do that. When Spurgeon was out earlier in the year, Matt played with [Suter], and he was playing the kind of minutes [Suter] played, and he excelled. In training camp, if we give them the opportunities, 2½ weeks or three weeks of no-pressure playing together, I think it will be a big jump. And if we don’t think it works as well as it should, then it’s pretty easy to go back.
I always believe you need to play at least 300 games on defense in the NHL to be a defenseman. It’s a tough position to get to know. And [Brodin] is just past that. [Dumba] is still learning. I think he got better last year than he was the year before, and I think he’s going to be better this year than he was last year. So you add all of those things up, and you hope to see a better level for those guys.
Q: With two spots on defense up for grabs, some of your top candidates are Kyle Quincey, a guy with a lot of experience, and two talented young guys in Mike Reilly and Gustav Olofsson. Do you feel any hesitation about playing two young guys on that third pair, or do you have to have an experienced player to anchor it?
A: When you sign a guy like Kyle, you’re signing a veteran to maybe play with one of the younger kids. He’s got that fifth spot right now. In the end, it’s all what you do on the ice. And [Ryan] Murphy, who’s been up and down in Carolina but is a highly sought-after first-round pick. They will all be given opportunities to play. That’s what we like, when you talk about depth and friendly competition.
Q: What do Reilly and Olofsson need to show you in camp to convince you they’re ready to be everyday defensemen in the NHL?
A: We need guys that feel comfortable, like, ‘Hey, put me out there.’ Not ‘Oh, my God, don’t put me out there.’ We want guys to take that step, and a guy like Murphy to do the same thing, take that step. We want them to make the decisions really tough on us.
Q: What did the younger guys vying for roster spots — guys like [Joel] Eriksson Ek, Olofsson, Reilly — do over the summer to prepare for camp, and how do they look?
A: Reilly looks a lot stronger now, and he looks bigger than what I’ve seen in the past. Eriksson Ek has put on 10-12 pounds of muscle, and he looks faster, bigger, stronger. Olofsson has put on 10 pounds of muscle. The previous two summers, he wasn’t able to train because of injuries. This year, he had the whole summer, and he trained, and he’s almost 200 pounds now to fit into that 6-foot-3 frame.
Q: There has been so much discussion in recent seasons about reducing Suter’s minutes. His average was down a bit last year [to 26 minutes, 55 seconds per game], but he was still third in the league in ice time. How much time would you like him to get this year?
A: He played 26 minutes a game last year, which is pretty normal for a No. 1 defenseman. He can play those minutes. Before I came over here, I was worried about it. But he was up at 28, 29 [minutes]. He’s going to still be put in every situation needed, and we’re going to play Ryan as much as we can to help us win games. At the same time, there might be games where if you’re winning 6-0 or you’re losing 6-0 that you don’t play him as much. But he’s our go-to guy. He led the league in plus-minus. To me, that tells me, you’re playing those kind of minutes, that means something good is going to happen when you’re on the ice. I think putting him with Matt [Dumba] puts him in a little more of an offensive role. He got the most goals he’s ever scored last year, at nine. But I think even at his age, he’s still capable of more. And defensemen, a lot more than forwards, can play into their late 30s. I think Ryan is a guy who can play as long as he wants. Last year, it was unknown. This year, I have no qualms about playing him as much as I need to play him.
Q: So many of |
in murder. And they imposed their own strict gun control laws trying to clean up the streets.
It worked. Bogota became safer. There was less murder. Less crime. Less violence.
But how could the same policy engineer completely different results in two cities?
This disparity becomes even more vexing when we look at other countries.
Honduras and Brazil both have very high homicide rates. Yet Brazil has highly restrictive gun laws, while Honduras has fairly lax gun laws.
Pakistan has some of the loosest gun laws in the world. Chile’s are fairly restrictive. Yet both have low homicide rates.
Bosnia has a very liberal gun laws. Belgium has very restrictive laws. Yet their homicide rates are similar.
Luxembourg has few privately-owned guns per capita, yet its murder rate is much higher than Germany’s, which has over twice as many.
Hawaii and Vermont have polar opposite gun laws yet nearly the same homicide rate.
Maryland and Virginia have vastly different gun laws, yet almost identical rates of gun-related deaths.
The numbers are all over the board.
Staunch advocates for gun control tend to think that more regulations and fewer guns make us safer.
Those who oppose gun control tend to think that more guns and fewer regulations make us safer.
But the data doesn’t support either assertion, meaning there must be other factors at work.
(By the way, the National Academy of Science and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention came up with the exact same conclusion– the numbers don’t support either assertion.)
But it’s impossible to even begin to analyze until we admit what the real concern is. After all, we’re not really talking about gun violence.
Gun violence has been occurring for years, predominantly in poor neighborhoods across the country. 75% of gun-related violence takes place in just 5% of US zip codes.
But no one really cares about that.
As long as gun violence stays localized to black people, Mexicans, and other ethnic minorities in poor neighborhoods, it’s considered ‘crime’ and never makes the news.
It’s not until some lunatic shoots up a predominantly white, middle class neighborhood that CNN covers it, and Hollywood celebrities air public service announcements telling us that ‘we’ have to do something.
That response is an emotional one. Let’s get rational.
These incidents are undoubtedly tragedies. But if the goal really is to save lives, and you start with a flawed premise that it is the government’s responsibility to protect people, consider that every piece of legislation incurs a rather significant cost.
There’s the cost of lobbying… campaigning… plus the actual costs incurred in implementing and enforcing a gun control program.
How much is that? Billions? Tens of billions? Hundreds of billions? I mean, we’re talking about politicians who spent $2 billion on the Obamacare website.
Also consider that the United States government doesn’t exactly have limitless resources.
Based on its own financial statements, the US government is in the hole by more than $60 TRILLION, and they run a half-trillion dollar budget deficit each year.
These guys are broke, which means they have to choose wisely.
So again, if the goal is to save lives (and if you really believe this is the government’s responsibility), the cold, hard truth is that you have to make rational decisions to get the highest return on investment, i.e. the most lives saved per dollar spent.
The President of the United States proudly told the nation last week that his government had spent $1 trillion protecting Americans against terrorists.
That’s a pretty amazing figure given how low the odds are of dying in a terror attack.
Hell, it’s more likely that you’d be shot by a police officer, or get killed in a US drone strike while visiting a hospital in Pakistan.
(By any independent count, Mr. Obama has killed more innocent civilians than all the crazed lunatics put together. Perhaps he needs to control some of his own guns.)
The government’s own numbers tell us that 3.8 people per 100,000 in the US die each year from non-suicide gun violence. Terror-related deaths are effectively 0.0.
Meanwhile, 11.6 per 100,000 die in traffic related deaths. A whopping 169.8 people per 100,000 die from heart disease.
If you’re going to spend scarce resources (time, energy, and money that you don’t have) to save lives, doesn’t it make sense to tackle a bigger problem that’s easier to solve, and where the solution is actually supported by the data?
Let’s talk about this more in today’s podcast. And it’s not what you think.
I’m not going to make an argument that more guns make us safer, or that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people…’ or anything like that.
Regardless of how you feel about the issue, I really encourage you to spend some time listening to this.Among seven potential Democratic presidential contenders, Hillary Clinton is the overwhelming favorite — and the third-most liberal candidate. How the other candidates are arrayed on an ideological spectrum could make her run for the White House easier than the last time out.
In some ways, the cast of candidates for 2016 resembles the group from the 2008 race, with a field of stalwartly liberal politicians. Mrs. Clinton was slightly more liberal in 2008 than now, according to Crowdpac, which scores politicians on a left-right scale of -10 to 10. (Crowdpac bases this mainly on campaign contributions, but also on votes and speeches.) Her problem was that Barack Obama, who was further to the left of her — at -7.8 to her -6.9 — also had the donors who were to the left of her. He ran a better campaign, particularly in Iowa, and benefited from a surge in money from small-dollar donors.
This time, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (-8.2) and Bernie Sanders (-8.3), Vermont’s independent senator, are to her left. Ms. Warren has the higher fund-raising profile of the two, with a leadership PAC that raised more than $2 million during the 2014 election cycle. But she and Mrs. Clinton (and to a lesser extent Mr. Sanders) would be competing for a similar pool of donors. During her 2012 Senate race, Ms. Warren raised more than $3.4 million from individuals who also gave to Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign, Federal Election Commission data shows.The congestion on I-94 heading towards St Cloud, particularly on sunny Friday afternoons, can be infuriating. It’s understandable that a lot of people are calling for ‘something to be done.’.
The quick reaction of politicians and others is a call to widen the thing—$30 million for another lane. Certainly that is the solution, they think.
There are a few concerns with this approach. First, we’ve never yet built our way out of congestion. We add roadway and, within a short time, (often just four years according to some studies) the problem is just as bad as before.
Second, widening one section of road often just pushes the problem down the road—literally. We might soon be hearing calls for widening further along 94, expanding 15 through St Cloud, and more.
Third, this is another few million dollars we could use elsewhere, like dealing with the all day every day congestion and fatalities in the Twin Cities that impact more individuals and businesses every day.
There’s also a question of safety (hint, with the same number of daily vehicles, which is safer and faster: a 4-lane highway in Europe or a 6-lane highway in the U.S.?).
There’s a possible solution that won’t cost $30 million, can provide relief immediately instead of five to seven years from now, won’t require a year or two of construction headaches, and will increase safety instead of decrease it.
Phantom Jam
Here’s what happens on a typical Friday afternoon on I-94. Someone drives slower than others in the left lane and a few cars pile up behind him waiting to get by. This micro jam of cars is called a platoon by traffic engineers. Platoons like this are inefficient use of the roadway and their tightly packed nature and enraging of drivers can be quite dangerous.
Once the lane blocker at the head of the platoon moves to the right, or everyone behind does to get around him, the platoon moves forward and breaks up. For these drivers it is a bit frustrating, but usually results in only a minor slowdown.
However, there’s another platoon lined up behind another lane blocker a few minutes behind this one and another behind that. Over the course of about 20 minutes, in the early afternoon, the gaps between these platoons get narrower and narrower until one platoon comes up on the rear of the platoon in front of it and whammo, you have the beginnings of the day’s phantom traffic jam. And it all started with the left lane blocker who’s now happily 30 minutes ahead of the jam they helped to start.
If you are a math or physics minded person, this behavior has been modeled by MIT and others with Poisson Distribution and Fluid Dynamics.
For those smart enough to studiously avoid such things, let’s watch a video:
Now, assume every car on I-94 is moving at a constant 80 mph (yes, it’s possible in a perfect world, perhaps such as if every car had a radar based dynamic cruise control to keep you exactly ten feet behind the car in front of you). One car brakes for just a very brief moment, which causes the car behind to brake, and so forth. Each car brakes just a little more than the one in front and so about the 80th car brakes to a stop and soon there are 50 cars stopped and jammed up behind number 80. This jam of stopped cars will grow and move backwards through traffic, sometimes for miles.
Someone blocking the left or middle lane has the same effect. One engineer describes the resulting jam as a shockwave moving backwards from the lane blocker.
We may not be able to prevent this completely in really heavy traffic, but we can likely reduce it quit significantly.
Lane Discipline
Lane Discipline is using the lanes of a roadway in the most efficient and safe manner as possible and is usually summed up as Keep Right Except To Pass.
A huge potential benefit of a four-lane highway, such as I-94, isn’t just to double the capacity of a two-lane rural roadway by having two lanes in the same direction instead of just one, but to multiply the capacity much more. Allowing faster drivers to quickly move around others and then get back in to the flow of traffic allows these drivers to utilize roadway capacity that is otherwise unused.
Instead of that driver being in front of you, they are now well down the road and not impacting you. You have more space to the car in front of you and are more comfortable. They are filling an unused gap. And this hasn’t cost anyone anything.
Our lack of lane discipline eliminates this benefit. Instead of getting perhaps a threefold increase in capacity by building a four-lane highway in place of a two-lane rural road, we only get about a twofold increase.
Lane blocking makes our highways more dangerous and less efficient for everyone.
If that first person had not blocked the lane, the people behind him would have proceeded on up the road, leaving the lanes available for those behind them to use. Same for the second person blocking the lane, and each after them.
Lane blocking not only creates jams, but prolongs them as well when someone at the head of the jam continues to block the left lane instead of moving right and allowing those behind to move forward and get out of the way of those behind them.
If you’re sitting in this traffic at the back of the jam, it’s hard to believe that something so simple as lane discipline can work. Consider, though, that most of the cars around you wouldn’t be here now if the cars in front of them were further down the road instead of blocking them, and on and on up to the left lane blockers at the very front.
In front of this jam, just a few miles ahead of you, are miles and miles of I-94 with much lighter traffic—a lot of excess capacity. But a few people are preventing others from using this excess capacity.
In Europe, where Lane Discipline is routine, you don’t see the weaving, tailgating, and road rage to the extent we have here in the U.S. Their highways are more efficient, people drive faster and at more consistent speeds, and yet they have fewer fatalities and many fewer crashes. Their law enforcement knows the importance of keeping the lanes open for traffic flow and are much quicker to ticket someone for blocking a lane (left or middle) than speeding.
In the U.S., some western states have enforced lane discipline for years and recently Texas began doing so and New Jersey recently began heavier enforcement and increased fines for blocking the left lane.
Minnesota already has a law (169.18(10)) requiring slower vehicles, regardless of their speed or the speed limit, to move right, we just need to begin enforcing it. Many people think that this applies only to vehicles moving slower than the speed limit, but that is not the case and may be the crux of the problem.
Perhaps more important, people need to understand why we have that law and why it’s being enforced. They need to understand that blocking the left lane isn’t just against the law, but that their blocking the lane makes our roadways significantly more dangerous for everyone and needlessly causes a traffic jam.
Another way to think of it is this—Mind The Gap–if the car behind you is closer than the car in front of you, you likely need to move right and let others utilize the space in the gap in front of you.
Tailgating is dangerous. Enraging other drivers is dangerous. Weaving in and out of traffic is dangerous. Inconsistent speeds in the same lane is dangerous. Passing on the right is dangerous. And we effectively encourage all of this by not enforcing lane discipline—Keep Right Except To Pass.
We likely have enough road surface, we just need to use it more safely and efficiently. We have nothing to lose and potentially much to gain by enforcing some lane courtesy. If traffic continues to be a significant problem, then we can consider spending millions for extra lanes.
The next time you’re stuck in a “phantom” traffic jam, MITs term for those jams that you get to the front of only to find nothing there to have obviously caused it, consider this; You are likely in this jam thanks to a lane blocker or two. If people five, ten, or thirty minutes ago hadn’t blocked the left lane, the people in front of you would be further down the road right now instead of sitting in front of you.
Share this: Email
Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Tumblr
Related
Streets.mn is a non-profit and is volunteer run. We rely on your support to keep the servers running. If you value what you read, please consider becoming a member.President Obama continued to make news from abroad Sunday morning, taking questions from reporters as he wrapped up meetings with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Madrid. After deflecting another question about the FBI’s email investigation, the President tackled criticism that have been leveled at the #BlackLivesMatter movement over a handful of anti-cop statements that have been made at protests.
The President acknowledged that sometimes, protesters will say things that are “stupid” or “imprudent,” but he defended the movement as part of the American tradition that includes other great social movements, while cautioning against anti-cop rhetoric:
One of the great things about America is that individual citizens and groups of citizens can petition their government, can protest, can speak truth to power, and that is sometimes messy, and controversial. But because of that ability to protest and engaging free speech, America over time has gotten better. We’ve all benefited from that. The abolition movement was contentious. The effort for women to get the right to vote was contentious and messy. There were times when activists might have engaged in rhetoric that was overheated, and occasionally counter productive, but the point was to raise issues so that we as a society could grapple with them. The same was true with the civil rights movement and the union movement and the environmental movement and the anti-war movement during Vietnam. And I think what you’re seeing now is part of that long standing tradition. What I would say is this: that whenever those of us who are concerned about fairness in the criminal justice system attack police officers, you are doing a disservice to the cause. First of all, any, any violence directed at police officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted. But even rhetorically, if we paint police in broad brush without recognizing that the vast majority of police officers are doing a really good job, and are trying to protect people and do so fairly and without racial bias, if the rhetoric does not recognize that, then we’re going to lose allies in the reform cause. Now in a movement like Black Lives Matter there will always be folks who say things that are stupid or imprudent or over-generalized or harsh. And I don’t think that you can hold well-meaning activists who are doing the right thing and peacefully protesting responsible for what is uttered in a protest site.
President Obama has cut short his international trip so he can return home to visit Dallas in the wake of the tragedy there.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comThe Connecticut House of Representatives has given final legislative passage to a compromise that would prevent the release of crime scene photos and video evidence from the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and other homicides.
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed legislation into law Wednesday that prevents the public release of crime scene photos and video evidence from the Connecticut school shootings that took the lives of 20 first graders and six school employees.
The new law, a result of efforts to balance private and public interests, creates an exemption to the state's Freedom of Information Act and applies to homicides in Connecticut.
The law prevents the release of photographs, film, video and other images depicting a homicide victim if those records "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of the victim or the victim's surviving family members."
Malloy signed the bill hours after the General Assembly approved the eleventh-hour compromise during the early morning hours of the final day of the state legislative session. Malloy said he believes "a parent of a deceased child should have the right to remember that child" as they wish and not because they were "caught up in some tragic and unbelievable circumstances."
The governor's office originally worked privately with legislative leaders and the state's top prosecutor to draft a bill that would address the concerns of families who lost relatives in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown. They considered various proposals, including legislation applying only to the Newtown victims and allowing their families to decide whether certain information should be released.
But in the end, the bill was tailored off an exemption in the federal Freedom of Information law.
During a somber early-morning Senate debate on the bill, as several family members of the victims looked on, Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr. said lawmakers were moved by the parents' concerns and tried to come up with a fair proposal.
"We have tried our best as Democrats and Republicans to work together to protect the interests of these families, these parents, these relatives sitting behind me, at the same time honoring our tradition as a free and open democracy," he said.
The new law creates a one-year moratorium on the release of certain portions of audiotape or other recordings in which the condition of a homicide victim is described. The exemption does not include 911 emergency call recordings, however.
Additionally, it creates a task force that would make recommendations on the balance between victim privacy under the FOI law and the public's right to know. The task force must submit its recommendations by Jan. 1.
Disputes over the release of materials could be resolved as similar disputes have been in the past, either in the state Freedom of Information Commission or the courts.
Colleen Murphy, the commission's executive director, said the standard of an "unwarranted" invasion of the personal privacy of the victim or victim's surviving family members has never been time-tested in Connecticut. She said the commission decisions on this issue will be a first.
The Senate approved the bill 33-2; the House by a vote of 130-2.
Rep. Stephen Dargan, D-West Haven, who voted against the measure, said he was concerned about the message it sent.
"Some people that thought they were impacted underneath the Second Amendment feel that they're impacted underneath the First Amendment because the government is covering up or not letting the public have the right to know," he said.
On Tuesday, family members of the Sandy Hook victims began a vigil at the state Capitol, waiting for legislative action.
Mark Barden, whose 7-year-old son Daniel was killed, told The Associated Press he knows of individuals and groups that want the photos. Given today's technology, he said, one photograph can be distributed worldwide and remain accessible forever.
"It's these strange individuals and fringe interest groups that have expressed a very real need for this information and they don't have any business having it," he said. "Nobody would benefit from it. On the contrary, it would do so much harm."
Members of the legislature's Black and Puerto Rican Caucus also voiced concerns about the original legislation preventing only the release of photos from the Newtown massacre. Legislators then broadened the bill to include other homicides.
The Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association had expressed concern about the possibility of limiting access to the documents.
"Any time the state is interested in opening up the Freedom of Information Act, we urge them to use extreme caution. Obviously, there's deference to the tragedy that happened at Sandy Hook," said Christopher VanDeHoef, the association's executive director. "But it's our concern that we're going to use that as sort of a sweeping change to FOI law that could be damaging to the openness of government down the road."Vladimir Smirnov has passed away undefeated.
Victor Zhdanovich, the Soviet foil fencer, has won the Olympic Games for the first time in 1960. Twenty years later, his success was achieved again by Vladimir Smirnov. Other Russian foil fencers have never won in individual competitions at Olympic Games neither in the Soviet time, nor later. Reference: Vladimir Smirnov (20.05.1954 - 27.07.1982)
1980 Olympic Games Champion in foil, silver prize winner in Games-80 command tournament in foil. The World Champion of 1981 in individual competitions. The World Champion in 1979-1981 in team competitions. The winner of the World Cup in 1980, 1981. The USSR Champion in 1977, 1979, the Champion of the USSR Republican Tournament in 1979, bronze prize winner at the Olympic Games-80 in command competitions in foil. In his childhood, Vladimir Smirnov tried various kinds of sports: hockey, football, basketball. Upon an invitation of Yevgeny Syromyatnikov, the fencing coach, who worked in his native town Rubezhnoye (Lugansk region in Ukraine), Vladimir came to the fencing club, got attracted by that romantic kind of sport, and stayed there forever. At Ukraine championships, the athletically built guy with a shy look in his open face has attracted the attention of Viktor Bykov,the well-known Kiev coach, who had already prepared the silver prize winners of the World Cups Sergei Paramonov and Yuri Chizh. Volodya fencing was not extremely skillful, but thanks to extraordinary physical force, he could break through the defense of any competitor. Bykov has developed a long-term program for his trainee. He decided not to rush, to take their time. Volodya was following the coaching program carefully and thoughtfully. They used to stay in one room during training get-togethers, and Bykov remembers that often in the middle of the night Smirnov would wake him up with the words: "Ive got an idea, lets try a new trick." Having hardly waited till six in the morning, they would already be in the salle. Only once Smirnov has violated his coachs program. In 1977, Bykov has set up the goal for his trainee to get into the group of final eight competitors at the USSR Championship. Volodya, having got in the finals, has summoned up all his strength and became the winner. It became clear that this athlete was capable to fight for the highest places in tournaments and the World Championships. At the Olympic Games of 1980 all Soviet foil fencers got in the final group of six competitors: Alexander Romankov, who had the title of the three-fold World Champion in individual competitions and the silver prize winner of 1976 Montreal Games, Vladimir Smirnov and Sabir Ruziyev. Tatiana Kolchanova has described the events of one day of the Olympics in her book "Fencing Personalities:
"It seemed the situation could not be better. Before that day only question was under dispute: who will be the winner Romankov or Smirnov, who was more reserved, cautious, did not take risks in fencing, which could play the decisive role in the tense atmosphere of serious competitions. However, the Olympics, like an innovative producer, has prepared a surprise in the final bouts, turned them into a fascinating performance, which made the competitions especially tense and nervous to the participants, even to those spectators, who accidentally dropped in to watch fencing bouts.
Everything happened because of Pascal Zholio, who intervened in competitions for the medal and looked as an embodiment of a musketeer, a fairy tail prince. He was fencing with such grace and elegance, that his foil looked like a golden needle. Romankov wanted to prove he was the strongest, Smirnov was fighting for the right to be called the winner, while Zholio was enjoying fencing in graceful, truly French fashion. With dazzling smile, he looked as a person who has nothing to lose, but who could win the whole world. We know, the Olympics love the newcomers and give them special treatment. Getting prepared to the Olympics, professionals pull together all their efforts, strength and courage for four years, it is not easy to them to stay calm and keep up fresh perception of the bout. It is difficult to wake up and go to bed with the only idea that you need to win, you just have to do it. Unlike them, Pascal has just reached his twenty first year and he was still not aware of his great potential. He did not bothered by ambitious dreams and slept very well. During the decisive bouts between Russian strongest fencers, the spectators could not always notice, how Smirnov makes his hits to Romankov, but due to the reaction of Romankov and Ernst Asiyevsky, his coach, they realized that something unusual was happening. Having lost, Alexander looked discouraged, he was retrieving from the strip with the drooped head, walking as if he was carrying a heavy burden.
Smirnovs reaction to his defeat to Zholio was different. He clenched his fists, his face looked inscrutable and numb. Everybody was looking forward for the last bout between Romankov and Zholio. With four victories in his stock, the young hero was demonstrating his glorious smile to the camera men, who were eager to catch the sensation, making dozens of photos of potential Champion. The Champion is exercising. The Champion and his coach. The Champion puts on his mask, etc. The bout between Romankov and Zholio was breathtaking. There was a moment, when the score was 4:4 and only one hit could decide the outcome of the battle, the spectators jumped up from their seats and started screaming: Sasha, Sashenka, Sahsa!, trying to support Alexander. The reporters were silent; what words could they find? The opponents at the strip took their time, the risk was too high. They were moving in short steps, trying to guess the potential actions of each other. And here Romankov decided to take the risk. He liked risky fencing and the point, when the bout strategy could be abruptly changed. He started a vigorous attack, and Zholio was retreating at the same pace. Some spectators shut their eyes. The risk was too high, the chances to reach the competitor were unbelievable, nobody could do it. And suddenly the audience screamed, a thunderous applause filled in the salle, but the glorious voice of the winner was even louder. He was jumping up on the strip and turning around in the air. Now there were three potential champions. Romankov has defeated Smirnov, but lost to Zholio. Smirnov has defeated Zholio. Now, each of them had one victory and the chances for the medal depended only on the score of hits. Smirnov was the best in this respect, Zholio was the second, Romankov the third one. Two of them looked happy, Sasha Romankov was discouraged. But this is sports. This is the way it happens in fencing, where the victory does not depend only on one result, high speed or distance. A fencer has to go out to the strip dozens of times in the season, held 20-40 bouts at every tournament, fight with the same competitors stay unpredictable to them, bewilder them, try to guess their potential tricks. To be able to do it, one has to be a freak like Smirnov, who would suffer in the night about a missed hit and wake up his coach, if he invented a new trick and was eager to train it right now." After the victory in Moscow, Vladimir did not lose in any other competition, became the World Champion in 1981 and won a victory in the World Student Games in the same year. In 1982 he was going to the World Cup to gain a victory again. During all those years he was supported by his wife Emma. They have met, when they were both sixteen and were together ever since then. Four years later they got married and had two kids, the son Dima and daughter Olya. In 1982, Dima was six years old and Olya was five. They were well aware what their father was doing, and very proud of his successes.
On July 20, 1982 at the World Cup competition, Smirnov had a bout with Matheus Ber, the German foil fencer. Both competitors demonstrated powerful, athletic fencing. In one attack Bers foil got broken, while Smirnov was rushing forward, and the stub, having pierced his mask, got through his eye and penetrated in the brain for 15 centimeters. In fact, Smirnov died immediately, though he was kept up with reviving devices for eight days more. After the devices were disconnected, his body was delivered to Kiev by plane. All those days Emma was trying to break through bureaucratic obstacles to be able to get to Rome, but failed..Ber has left the strip for many years. The International Fencing Federation has introduced strict requirements to the outfits. Fencing outfits are made now of Kevlar bullet-proof fabric, the masks are made of impervious steel, the blades - of the "Maraging, practically unbreakable steel.
Smirnov had to die to make the International Fencing Federation to take care of security in our kind of sports. Though earlier, at the Olympics in Moscow, Vladimir Lapitskogo, Smirnovs teammate, had a narrow escape from the death. During the semi-final command competition with the national team of Poland, a stub of the blade pierced Lapitsky chest in the heart area. In that case our foiler was lucky, as the hit was mitigated by the rib. Emma still lives in Kiev. Four years after her husband's death she got married. Nevertheless, even now, remembering the summer of 1982, she cries and says: "That punch has ruined my life. I was really very happy with Vladimir. And all our life could have been different." In Lugansk, the native city of the unique fencer, an annual tournament is held in the memory of Vladimir Smirnov.About the Passenger Pigeon
Legendary among ornithologists and lay people alike as a symbol of staggering abundance on the one hand and of human greed and indifference on the other, the Passenger Pigeon is arguably North America’s best known extinct species. Historical accounts of its huge flocks appear beyond belief were they not so consistent among independent observers for over three centuries.
It is reported they darkened the sky for hours or even days at a time. The beats of their wings would create drafts that chilled the people over whom they flew.
“But the most remarkable characteristic of these birds is their associating together, both in their migrations, and also during the period of incubation, in such prodigious numbers, as almost to surpass belief; and which has no parallel among any of the other feathered tribes on earth, with which naturalists are acquainted” (Wilson 1812: 102–103).
Once the most abundant land bird in North America
It is estimated that the Passenger Pigeon was once the most abundant land bird in North America, comprising an estimated 3 billion to 5 billion individuals, perhaps a quarter of the continent’s avifauna (Schorger 1955). The species occurred only in North America, primarily east of the Rocky Mountains, and bred almost exclusively in the eastern deciduous forest. Despite its vast flocks, this pigeon was extinct in the wild by the end of the nineteenth century. Its last representative, the fabled Martha, died on September 1, 1914, in the Cincinnati Zoo.
No match for 19th century technology
The key to the Passenger Pigeon's abundance was its nomadic flocking behavior, which allowed it to exploit seasonally superabundant crops of mast and acorns that were unpredictable in space and time. Passenger pigeons nested singly and in groups of all sizes, but the larger part of the population nested in huge colonies. Aggregating in such immense numbers allowed the species to satiate any potential predators, until they attracted the ultimate predator—humans armed with nineteenth-century technology.
From billions to none in 40 years
The dramatic decline to extinction in the wild occurred over a period of only 40 years. The birds were subjected to unrelenting exploitation as an item of commerce and sport, with human disruption of essentially every nesting colony. During this period, there were no documented uninterrupted and completely successful mass nestings, which were necessary to sustain the population.
Read the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's monograph of the Passenger Pigeon.
(Back to Top)If academic quality is harmed by ideological skew, then the social sciences are a rotting carcass.
A new study of economics, history, journalism/communications, law and psychology departments at 40 “leading” U.S. universities finds that Democrats outnumber Republicans 11.5 to 1 – a gap that has widened since 2004, “and the age profile suggests that in the future they will be even higher.”
The skew is most pronounced in history (33.5:1) and journalism/communications (20:1) and least in economics (4.5:1), according to the study published in Econ Journal Watch.
Some other notable findings from the full report, which looked at 7,243 professors: “the ratios are higher at more prestigious universities and lower among older professors and among professors with higher-ranking titles” – hence the widening gap among younger academics who are coming up.
The report also found that nearly 46 percent of professors are neither Rs nor Ds. The actual percentage of Republicans in the reviewed departments is 4.3.
The widest ratio gaps: Brown University (60:1), Boston University (40:1), Rochester and Johns Hopkins (each 35:1) and Northeastern (32:1). There’s a startling gap between the top two schools in U.S. News rankings: Princeton’s ratio is 30:1, while Harvard’s is 10:1.
The most even ratio is from Pepperdine University (1.2:1), perhaps because of its affiliation with the Churches of Christ.
The authors are Mitchell Langbert, associate professor of business at Brooklyn College; Anthony Quain, a “health economics solutions” developer; and Daniel Klein, the journal’s editor and economics professor at George Mason University.
Read the report (h/t Inside Higher Ed).
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on TwitterTrump’s Defense-Heavy Budget Plan Sets Up Showdown With State Dept.
President Donald Trump stunned U.S. diplomats and many security experts on Monday as he pledged what he called a “historic increase” of $54 billion in military spending to be offset by cuts to the State Department and other federal agencies.
U.S. officials said Foggy Bottom would be required to send a plan to the White House within 48 hours to cut as much as 30 percent of its budget, a bold proposal that would force the elimination of foreign assistance programs and a massive reorganization of the State Department.
White House budget plans are merely the first volley in negotiations between the Oval Office and federal agencies, and later must win approval in Congress. But the broad outlines of Trump’s first budget proposal have revived the suspicions of U.S. diplomats and foreign aid advocates that the White House, led by chief strategist Stephen Bannon, places little value on diplomacy, or the broader role of the State Department.
“The White House is essentially telling the State Department: Now you’re going to fit into a size 7 shoe, which toe would you like to cut off?” Peter Yeo, president of the Better World Campaign, a non-profit group that supports foreign aid, told Foreign Policy.
The White House on Monday said that it is preparing a budget plan that would boost defense spending by about 10 percent, or $54 billion, from current levels, though it wasn’t clear if the budget proposal would maintain current levels of additional Pentagon spending earmarked for the cost of overseas combat operations. In order to avoid increasing the deficit, the White House wants to make cuts in other areas of the government — the only places it politically can do so, since Trump ruled out touching programs like Medicare or Social Security.
But it’s far from clear that even that math works. Other agencies, like the State Department, are a fraction of the size of the Pentagon.
“It would be both foolish and mathematically impossible for President Trump to offset other spending increases by slashing State Department and development budgets, which represent just one percent of all federal spending,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware.
Federal agencies typically soften the hard edges of a president’s budget request, but the magnitude of Trump’s proposed cuts and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s lack of staff and experience could create an interagency mismatch.
“It’s challenging because Tillerson doesn’t have a lot of his people in place,” said Yeo, noting the absence of a deputy secretary of state. “What number will he settle on? Is he going to comply? I’ve never seen anything where you get 48 hours to respond.”
The State Department declined to comment on the size of Trump’s cuts, but acting spokesperson Mark Toner said Foggy Bottom is “working with the White House and OMB to review its budget priorities.”
“The Department remains committed to a U.S. foreign policy that advances the security and prosperity of the American people,” T |
veil on its premises. The school said it is a safety issue to be able to identify all of those on school premises. Serroukh's lawyer, Attiq Malik, said it was a "straightforward" test case of religious discrimination. "The government constantly talks about British values. To me, those values include diversity and multiculturalism." July 21. The British government lacks reliable immigration statistics and has no way of accurately tracking who is entering or leaving the country, according to a new report released by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee: "The available data on migration are extremely poor. They fail to provide an accurate number of migrants entering or leaving the country or the number of migrants in work. The data, based upon flawed sample surveys, are wholly inadequate for policy making and measuring the success or otherwise of the policies adopted. The margin of error for the latest net migration statistics was 41,000. The Government must prioritize plans to improve the longstanding flaws in the data if it is to take effective control of migration." July 22. A freedom of information request revealed that Anjem Choudary, an Islamist who is serving a five-and-a-half year sentence for urging support of the Islamic State, has received more than £140,000 ($180,000) in taxpayer-funded legal aid for his unsuccessful bid to avoid prison. The figure is set to rise as his lawyers continue to file claims. The father-of-five has claimed up to £500,000 ($640,000) in benefits, which he has referred to as "Jihad seeker's allowance." July 22. Zana Hassan, a 29-year-old Iraqi who has been living illegally in Britain for nine years, avoided deportation after he stormed into a Methodist church and threatened churchgoers. "I will kill you and kill all the English," he shouted. The Crown Prosecution Service deemed the offense a "low-level disorder," which allowed Hassan to avoid time in jail. Hassan walked free after Home Office officials failed to take the opportunity to seek a deportation order. Ukip MEP Mike Hookem asked, "Do we really need this sort of person in our country?" George Richardson, Conservative county councilor for Barnard Castle East, said, "It seems someone needs to be killed before they get a bigger sentence." July 25. Mujahid Arshid, 33, was charged with kidnapping, raping and murdering Celine Dookhran, a 19-year-old Indian Muslim, in a suspected "honor killing" in London. Prosecutor Binita Roscoe told the Wimbledon Magistrates' Court that the teenager was of Indian Muslim heritage and had started a relationship with an Arab Muslim man. July 25. An inmate at a prison in Norfolk shouted "this is for Allah" before slashing the throat of a guard. After being moved to another prison, the man attacked a second officer. An official source said that the suspect was not serving a sentence for a terror-related offense, a statement that raised the possibility that he had been radicalized in prison. July 26. A 15-year-old girl was raped at a railway station in Birmingham. She was then raped again by the driver of a passing car she flagged down to help her. Police described the first attacker as an "Asian" man in his early 20s and of a skinny build. Police said the second man was also "Asian" and in his 20s and of a large build. July 27. Victoria Wasteney, a Christian NHS worker, lost an appeal in her legal battle which erupted because she shared her faith at work with her Muslim colleague, Enya Nawaz. Wasteney, the former Head of Forensic Occupational Therapy at St. John Howard hospital in East London, was suspended in June 2013 for "gross misconduct" after Nawaz complained that Wasteney had been attempting to convert her to Christianity. Wasteney said she was surprised by the allegations because she thought she and her colleague had become friends over the 18 months they worked together. Wasteney lost the case when she took the trust to the Employment Appeal Tribunal. In October 2015, Wasteney won permission to appeal on grounds of religious freedom. After losing the appeal in April 2016, she decided to challenge the decision, but lost once again. July 27. An official report revealed that Omar Deghayes, a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay who was paid £1 million ($1.3 million) in compensation by the British Government for the time he spent at the detention center, passed some of the money on to teenage jihadists who later died fighting in Syria. Deghayes is alleged to have paid young Muslim boys to attend a gym where children were "vulnerable to radicalization." The Serious Case Review revealed that police and other authorities were warned about a network of teenage jihadists attending the gym, but that those concerns were ignored. July 27. Four members of the Rochdale sexual grooming gang received £1million ($1.3 million) in taxpayer-funded legal aid to fight their deportation to Pakistan. Lawyers for Shabir Ahmed, Abdul Aziz, Adil Khan and Abdul Rauf, paedophiles who raped and abused girls as young as 13, are leveraging Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which safeguards the right to family life. David Spencer, of the Center for Crime Prevention think-tank, said: "These men have been convicted of some truly abhorrent offenses and it beggars belief that they are now able to run up even bigger taxpayer-funded bills making spurious appeals in an effort to extend their stay in the UK." July 28. Iman FM, a radio station in Sheffield, was taken off the air by Ofcom, the media regulator, after it broadcast 25 hours of lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, a former leader of al-Qaeda who was killed in an American drone strike. Ofcom said Iman FM was guilty of "extremely serious breaches" of the broadcasting code by airing material that "was likely to incite or encourage the commission of crime or to lead to disorder." Iman FM said it "fully accepted" that breaches had taken place but insisted they were due to "recklessness, but not deliberate intent." July 28. The government appeared to abandon its two-year-long attempt to ban teachers caught up in the Trojan Horse affair in Birmingham, after those in the remaining cases were told that disciplinary action against them has been halted. Fifteen teachers and senior staff were accused of trying to Islamize schools in Birmingham, but letters from the National Council of Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) — an arm of the Department for Education — to lawyers for the remaining teachers involved were told that the proceedings have been discontinued. The decision means that only one teacher out of the 15 who faced proceedings by the government has received a classroom ban, while the other 14 have had their cases dismissed, overturned or dropped. July 30. Mubarek Ali, the ringleader of sexual grooming gang in Telford, was told he would be released from prison just five years into a 22-year sentence. Ali was one of seven men convicted at Worcester Crown Court in 2013 for preying on girls as young as 13. Telford MP Lucy Allan condemned the decision, which could allow Ali back into a community where his victims continue to live. She said: "Victims and members of the public would have expected a 22-year sentence to mean that the community could have time to heal and victims would be able to get on with their lives. What we see in this case is that the one of the main perpetrators is being released into the community only five years after the trial.... "What is unacceptable is that in this case there was no attempt by the authorities to reach out these young women and prepare them for this wholly unexpected event. Worse still is the prospect that this person may be returned to Telford and naturally this has caused huge anxiety to victims." July 31. Amin Mohmed, 24, Mohammed Patel, 20, and Faruq Patel, 19, were sentenced to between 18 and 42 weeks at a young offenders' institution after rampaging through Liverpool city center attacking strangers because they were white "non-Muslims." One of the men stopped Gary Bohanna and said, "I'm a Muslim, what are you?" When Bohanna answered, "I'm a Christian," the attacker shouted, "Why aren't you a Muslim?" before punching him twice, breaking his glasses and causing a 2-cm cut above his left eye. The group then encountered St. Helens councilor Paul Lynch and his girlfriend. Faruq filmed Mohmed punching Lynch with a "sickening blow" that could be "seen and heard." The judge said: "References to the fact he was not a Muslim were made and you appeared to justify your actions because of certain beliefs you held." Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. Follow Soeren Kern on Twitter and Facebook © 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute. Related Topics: United Kingdom Recent Articles by Soeren Kern A Month of Multiculturalism in Germany: January 2019, 2019-02-18
Germany: Number of Foreign-Born Prison Inmates at Record High, 2019-02-13
UK: Landmark First Conviction for Female Genital Mutilation, 2019-02-06
A Month of Multiculturalism in Britain: January 2019, 2019-02-04
France and Germany: "We Are Committed to the Emergence of a European Army", 2019-01-25 receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free gatestone institute mailing list en 25 Reader Comments Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply-> Reply->War veterans will start returning their medals from tomorrow to protest the government notification on implementation of ‘one rank-one pension’, which they have rejected, and hit back at Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar for his comments that not all their demands can be met.
Advertising
“We have one and only demand and that is OROP. It was the government who inserted provisions that has made the issue complicated. We want OROP as per the definition. No junior should get more pension than his senior.
[related-post]
“In protest against the government notification, we will start returning our medals from tomorrow. On November 10-11, ex-servicemen across the country will start returning their medals. They have already informed the District Magistrates about this,” Group Captain V K Gandhi (retd), general secretary of Indian Ex-servicemen Movement (IESM), said.
The government had on Saturday formally notified the OROP scheme for the over 24 lakh ex-servicemen and six lakh war widows in the country, which was rejected by the protesting ex-servicemen.
Parrikar had said earlier in the day that everyone has the right to make a demand in democracy but not all demands can be fulfilled. He said “maximum” demands of the veterans have been fulfilled and that the judicial commission to be set up by the government will look into their “problems”.
In Delhi, the medals will be returned outside Terminal 1 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) tomorrow, Gandhi said, adding selecting crowded places for the purpose was meant to educate the common man about the issue.
The protesting ex-servicemen also met Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and briefed him about the OROP notification.
Advertising
“He called us today and asked us to brief him about the government notification. He has said in coming days he will take up the issue, address press conference and also visit the protesting ex-servicemen at Jantar Mantar,” Gandhi said after meeting Kejriwal.A new project Mapping Racist Violence in Athens was just released. The aim of this map is to provide up-to-date information about racist attacks taking place in Athens and other Greek cities. The map is accessible here:
map.crisis-scape.net
Being constantly updated, it will become an ongoing reference point where the quantity and scale of attacks, their location and severity can be grasped at a glance. The map will highlight and prioritise first-hand reports, yet it will nevertheless include information submitted by individuals, witnesses, mainstream or independent media –– as long as it meets a minimal verification level.
Given the complexity of the legal status and story of each migrant individual identities will remain hidden unless they have already been publicised elsewhere or the person explicitly wishes to publish their identity. This of course also counts for anyone else that might risk police persecution or fascist violence.
The aspiration is for the map to become a tool for anti-racist and anti-fascist organising locally and for raising international awareness and pressure.[+]Enlarge RESTING PLACE This is the dilapidated bus where McCandless’s body was found. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Erik Halfacre
In 1992, a party of moose hunters discovered the remains of a 24-year-old man in the Alaska wilderness. His name, they would learn, was Christopher J. McCandless. His tale would rise to international prominence in 1996 as the subject of a best-selling book, and later a movie, called “Into the Wild.”
WHAT IS β-ODAP? [+]Enlarge Names: β-N-Oxalyl- l -α,β-diaminopropionic acid (β-ODAP); l -β-oxalyl aminoalanine (BOAA); l -2-amino-3-oxalylaminopropanoic acid; dencichine. Known sources: Grass pea (L. sativus), some other Lathyrus plants, and some Panax, Crotalaria, and Acacia plant species. Effects: Glutamate mimic and neurotoxin. Its mechanism is not fully understood. Long-term exposure affects neurons in the lumbar portion of the spinal cord, paralyzing legs, a condition known as lathyrism. Who’s at risk: Lathyrism occurs when a plant such as grass pea is consumed as a sole food source for a period of weeks or months. Men are more susceptible than women. SOURCES:Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, National Brain Research Centre, in India; Peter Nunn, University of Portsmouth, in England
The story polarized readers. Some praised McCandless’s choice to leave a comfortable existence to embrace the uncertainty of the backcountry. Others derided him as an unprepared fool.
A coroner’s report ruled the man probably starved to death. But his photos and cryptic diary pointed the author of “Into the Wild,” Jon Krakauer, elsewhere. In his book, he posited that McCandless accidentally ate a poison. And last month, in a blog post at The New Yorker, Krakauer cited a new chemical analysis supporting the idea that McCandless ate poisonous seeds from a wild potato known as Hedysarum alpinum. Though this plant is thought to be nontoxic, he wrote, the seeds actually contain crippling levels of a neurotoxic amino acid, β-N-oxalyl- l -α,β-diaminopropionic acid (β-ODAP).
But those data, from high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separations of potato seed extracts, don’t show what Krakauer says they do, according to experts who reviewed the report for C&EN. In fact, they say, the extract was barely separated at all, making it impossible to tell what the seeds contain.
Krakauer had sent freshly collected seeds to Ann Arbor, Mich., chemical analysis firm Avomeen Analytical Services. The lab conducted HPLC analysis and concluded that H. alpinum seeds contain 0.394% β-ODAP by weight, which is within levels that cause paralysis. Krakauer made Avomeen’s data publicly available at the Alaska Dispatch news website.
However, “there are problems with that report,” says Daniel W. Armstrong of the University of Texas, Arlington, who specializes in chromatographic separations. He says the HPLC data cannot be used to conclude that wild potato seeds contain β-ODAP.
To search for β-ODAP in the potato seeds, Avomeen adapted an existing published protocol, Armstrong explains, but Avomeen’s data differ dramatically from what would be expected on the basis of the protocol.
Avomeen’s purported β-ODAP peak exits the HPLC column after less than three minutes, Armstrong says. This suggests that the seed extract had little to no interaction with the HPLC column. Without interacting with the column for a longer time, the extract’s many components cannot be separated effectively. The peak is “somewhat broad and misshapen,” Armstrong says, further suggesting that the peak contains a mixture rather than β-ODAP alone.
Avomeen’s β-ODAP peak was also the first thing to exit the HPLC column, and that’s another oddity, says David G. Klapper, an emeritus professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an expert in amino acid separation technology. Avomeen chemically modified the amino acids in the extract according to the literature procedure. This chemistry leads to formation of a salt, and in most cases this salt is the first compound to exit the column. “It would be very unusual indeed for the target compound to precede the salt,” and in the Avomeen report, the salt peak comes after the purported β-ODAP peak, Klapper says. Because of that “I would question the Avomeen data,” he concludes.
One reason for these radical differences is probably pH, Armstrong says. The published report calls for 0.1 M sodium acetate buffer adjusted to an acidic pH of 4.6. Avomeen’s team reported using 0.1 M sodium acetate but did not report a pH. It’s possible the team didn’t adjust the pH of their sodium acetate solution, so it would have an alkaline pH of 8.9, instead of 4.6. “That’s going to cause a big difference in the chromatography,” Armstrong says.
Evolving Theory: What Killed Chris McCandless? 1992 Fairbanks, Alaska, coroner’s report: Probable starvation 1993 Outside magazine: Mistakenly ate poisonous seeds of the wild sweet pea (Hedysarum mackenzii) 1997 “Into the Wild,” 1997 edition: Ate seeds of the wild potato (H. alpinum); early tests suggest they contain poisonous alkaloid swainsonine Mid-2000s University of Alaska, Fairbanks, chemist Tom Clausen concludes H. alpinum seeds do not contain swainsonine 2007 “Into the Wild,” 2007 edition: Ate H. alpinum seeds contaminated with Rhizoctonia leguminicola, a mold that produces swainsonine Late 2000s Clausen’s student grows mold on H. alpinum but finds no swainsonine or related alkaloids 2013 The New Yorker post: Ate seeds of the wild potato (H. alpinum), which contain neurotoxin β-ODAP
Philip J. Proteau, who studies natural products at Oregon State University, agrees there are serious questions. “These experiments are not conclusive in any way,” he says. Like Armstrong, he believes the single HPLC peak likely contains multiple compounds.
Armstrong, Klapper, and Proteau all say that new data are needed to determine whether H. alpinum seeds contain β-ODAP. A new HPLC analysis that includes mass spectrometry (MS) and pays careful attention to buffer pH could settle the question, Armstrong says.
Klapper says it might be simpler to inject seed extract directly into a mass spectrometer. “Mass spec takes about a minute, but it is the gold standard for identification,” he says.
Proteau would like to see additional tests on top of MS. “Full confirmation of the presence of β-ODAP would require nuclear magnetic resonance data and proof that the correct l -enantiomer is present,” he says.
Krakauer tells C&EN that Avomeen is conducting another round of analysis, this time with MS. Both Krakauer and Avomeen declined to comment for this story, pending the outcome of that test.
The idea is certainly worth follow-up work, the chemists say. “The analysis as it stands is far from conclusive, but the β-ODAP hypothesis is very intriguing,” Proteau says.
“If it’s true that β-ODAP is in the seeds of this particular plant, people need to know about that,” Armstrong says. If the seeds test positive, it might even be possible to perform another autopsy on McCandless’s body to search for evidence of the toxin, if the body hasn’t decomposed too much, Armstrong says.
“I am very interested in what [Avomeen] finds,” says Thomas P. Clausen, an emeritus professor from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, who is an expert in plants’ chemical defenses. Clausen’s lab helped Krakauer analyze wild potato seeds for the first edition of “Into the Wild.” Clausen says it’s possible that his own lab’s analyses may have missed β-ODAP, but he’d like to see more data before he’ll be convinced that it is present.
No matter what the science ultimately decrees, Clausen says, there will always be those who refuse to change their minds about McCandless. “Alaskans are a little too hard on Chris,” Clausen says. “I don’t know anyone who’s spent time in the wilderness without making a few mistakes,” he says. “Chris just paid very dearly for his.”SOUTH LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Some South Los Angeles residents said they are fed up with the growing piles of trash that litters their neighborhood.
Ashley Allen documented on Facebook the garbage that is strewn all over the streets, block after block.
“This is what my son has to look at every morning,” Allen said. “The amount of trash that’s been there, the illegal activity that’s been there. It’s just been kind of hard on all of us around here.”
She said the homeless have even figured out how to steal electricity.
“They were definitely drawing power. So when you would come through the alley at night, you would see lights. You know they weren’t flashlights. You would see a cord that was running through several different poles that they had inside of there,” Allen explained.
Another neighbor said as quickly as police shut the popular homeless encampment down, it popped back up. “This is ongoing. It’s like you clean it up; 60 seconds later, it’s back,” said a neighborhood who would only identified herself as “Missy.”
Los Angeles city and county officials are both calling the homeless problem an emergency. The city council said the homeless population has jumped 11 percent in the past year.
Allen and her neighbors said they are sympathetic but want city leaders to do something about the issue.
“They’ll come and make a big thing but they don’t follow through. And not following through, you just leave it looking like this, over, over and over. It’s past crazy,” Missy added.
The council member who represents the area said he is well aware of the problem and hopes Proposition HHH will pass and provide the funds needed to address the homeless issue.WASHINGTON -- Disney and its Marvel Studios film unit won't make any more movies in Georgia if the governor signs a law allowing open discrimination against gay people, a company spokesman said Wednesday.
"Disney and Marvel are inclusive companies, and although we have had great experiences filming in Georgia, we will plan to take our business elsewhere should any legislation allowing discriminatory practices be signed into state law," a Disney spokesman told The Hollywood Reporter.
Disney is part of a growing coalition of businesses that have condemned Georgia's HB 757, the so-called religious liberty bill that would prevent the government from taking action against organizations or people with “a sincerely held religious belief regarding lawful marriage between... a man and a woman.” The bill, awaiting Gov. Nathan Deal's (R) signature or a veto, would open the door to all kinds of discrimination against gay people. It could allow state-funded adoption agencies or drug counselors, for example, to turn away same-sex couples.
Businesses have derailed similarly discriminatory bills in other states and have been raising the pressure on Georgia. Last week, the NFL signaled it may pass over Atlanta as a Super Bowl site if the bill becomes law. Salesforce, a cloud-computing company valued at $44 billion, vowed to pull its investments out of Atlanta if Deal signs the bill.
Disney has filmed a number of recent movies in Georgia, including "Guardians of the Galaxy 2," which is now in production in Atlanta. "Captain America: Civil War" was filmed there last summer and netted the state $60.2 million. Marvel made last year's "Ant-Man" in Georgia -- a production that employed 35,000 residents and generated $106 million in spending in the state.
Deal said last month that he won’t sign any bill that promotes discrimination in order to protect people of faith, but he's been mum on his plans for HB 757. A spokeswoman for the governor didn't respond to a Wednesday request for comment.
Deal has until May 3 to sign the bill or veto it. If he does nothing, it will automatically become law without his signature.
UPDATE: 3/24 -- Time Warner announced Thursday morning that it, too, is urging Deal to veto the bill.Wow, it's been a while since I submitted much of anything. O_o Well, now that my life has somewhat settled down and I'm settling into my new place and new job, hopefully the artsing can continue as often as it did before money became such a big problem XDFor my somewhat-triumphant-I-suppose return to DA, have a picture of Equestria's most regal duo kickin' it at an Italian pizzeria on a San Francisco-inspired pier setting, specifically Pier 39, where my fam and I used to chill around back n the day playing tourist.I...kinda tend to play around with the size of my ponies a little.In some pics they might be around knee height, others they're compact enough to fit inside a sock! The next time I draw these two they might be the size of planets or something, my god.Luna's face is inspired by this one pic I did a LONG while back:For some reason I've always imagined her to have this face should I ever get the chance to chibify her. It is by far my favorite expression/facial style I've ever drawn for her...you can just see thousands of years of collective wisdom and knowledge staring you back in the face as it radiates from that regal, dignified expression and gloriously royal gaze.Royal manes are certainly fun to draw...especially Luna'sEnjoy y'allAlmost every day, there was that one moment where I braced myself for at least five minutes, wanting to say “Hi” to her.
But I didn’t.
I was too scared, perhaps. Maybe because of my perceived shortcomings: I'm not the quintessential popular frat boy who is six feet ((1.8 meters)) tall with massive biceps. I couldn't hold a conversation for very long. With my thick Indian accent, I found myself repeating everything, instead of actually making some sense.
Even an introduction was tiring.
My Indian name “Parth” turned out as “Bart” to American ears. It took at least three determined attempts to get the name right.
“Why am I not in India?” I sometimes thought to myself. Life would have been much easier without the added effort to have to adjust to American culture, customs and way of life.
I can’t lie. I wasn’t really homesick. I had already spent six years at a boarding school in the foothills of the Himalayas far away from my parents. By the time my freshman year came around, I was used to living away from home.
Yes, I craved authentic Indian food at times, but I learned to suppress the cravings or eat out at an Indian restaurant. It's almost the same thing.
But things changed, and honestly, at this point, I couldn't be happier.
Happiness is a choice, surely. It doesn't come automatically. One has to try really hard.
The phrase “no shield” is a good approach to avoid homesickness. ((My friends will laugh at this. Because I keep on giving them the same “gyan,” or knowledge, as they say.)) It means to just let go. Without inhibition.
What’s the worst a “Hi” can do? They'll look at you, and frown or giggle or not talk to you?
So say that “Hi.” Meet people. Open up to them. And, make friends.
Next, step into many things in your first semester. No joke.
I’m not telling you to sleep for only four hours a day powered by three cups of coffee, but be curious. Try out different things to actually learn where your passion lies. And, even if you know, it's always great to build new interests.
The two biggest pillars of my life, journalism and theater, have sprung from that mantra.
Never in my wildest dreams in high school could I have imagined I would be writing for Voice of America, let alone pursuing a career in journalism. Or fathomed myself weeping on the floor at the death of my father, in Henry VI, Part 2, during a monologue in a theater class about Shakespeare.
I even took a baking class one semester because it was fun! Doing what I really like has kept me very happy.
And, finally, embrace.
Embrace yourself. Embrace others. Embrace situations.
In college, there are many moments to lament. But don’t. Find the silver lining even in the worst of problems. And be different; enjoy your uniqueness.
My time in the United States is echoed by the words of American poet Maya Angelou, and I have been happy.
“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
After bracing myself, I finally said that one “Hi.” We ended up dating for a year. Beautiful. And, we're still great friends.
Parth Vohra is a junior at the University of California-Berkeley.
Have you fallen in love in America? Please share your suggestion in the Comments here, and visit us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn, thanks!An Overview of GCC Architecture [ edit ]
This section is based on a Red Hat magazine article.
GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) comprises a number of compilers for different programming languages. The main GCC executable gcc processes source files written in C, C++, Objective-C, Objective-C++, Java, Fortran, or Ada and produces an assembly file for each source file. It is a driver program that invokes the appropriate compilation programs depending on the language of the source file. For a C source file they are the preprocessor and compiler cc1, the assembler as, and the linker collect2. The first and the third programs come with a GCC distribution, the assembler is a part of the GNU binutils package. This book describes the internals of the preprocessor and compiler cc1.
Each compiler includes the following three components: a front end, a middle end, and a back end. GCC compiles one file at a time. A source file goes through all three components one after another. Figure 1 illustrates the components and the source file representations associated with each component.
GCC front end, middle end, and back end with source file representations.
The purpose of the front end is to read the source file, parse it, and convert it into the standard abstract syntax tree (AST) representation. There is one front end for each programming language. Because of the differences in languages, the format of the generated ASTs is slightly different for each language. The next step after AST generation is the unification step in which the AST tree is converted into a unified form called generic. After this, the middle end part of the compiler takes control. First, the tree is converted into another representation called GIMPLE. In this form, each expression contains no more than three operands, all control flow constructs are represented as combinations of conditional statements and goto operators, arguments of a function call can only be variables, etc. Figure 2 illustrates the differences between a tree in generic form and a tree in GIMPLE form. GIMPLE is a convenient representations for optimizing the source code.
After GIMPLE, the source code is converted into the static single assignment (SSA) representation. The central idea of this form is the fact that each variable is assigned to only once, but can be used at the right hand side of an expression many times. Every time the same variable of a tree in the GIMPLE form is reassigned, the compiler creates a new version of that variable and stores the new value into it. When the same variable is assigned to in both branches of a conditional expression, one needs to merge the two possible values of the variable into a single variable. This operation is denoted as PHI function in the SSA form.
The SSA form is also used for optimizations. GCC performs more than 20 different optimizations on SSA trees. After the SSA optimization pass, the tree is converted back to the GIMPLE form which is then used to generate a register-transfer language (RTL) form of a tree. RTL is a hardware-based representation that corresponds to an abstract target architecture with an infinite number of registers. An RTL optimization pass optimizes the tree in the RTL form. Finally, a GCC back-end generates the assembly code for the target architecture using the RTL representation. Examples of back-ends are x86 back end, mips back end, etc.
In the next sections we describe the internals of the C front end and the x86 back end. The compiler starts with its initialization and command line options processing. After that the C front end preprocesses the source file, parses it and performs a number of optimizations. The back end then generates the assembly code for the target platform and saves it to a file.
Take home: GCC is a compiler collection that consists of a front end for each programming language, a middle end, and a back end for each architecture. The main representations that each source file goes through are AST in front end, RTL in middle end, and the assembly representation in back end. GCC compiles one file at a time.
GCC Initialization [ edit ]
The C front end includes the C/C++ preprocessor and the C compiler. Program cc1 includes both the preprocessor and C compiler. It compiles a C source file and generates an assembly (.S) file.
The compiler frontend and backend interact with each other using callback functions called language hooks. All hooks are included into a global variable struct lang_hooks lang_hooks that is defined in file langhooks.h. There are the following types of hooks: hooks for tree inlining, hooks for call graph, hooks for functions, hooks for tree dump, hooks for types, hooks for declarations, and language-specific hooks. The default values for the hooks are defined in file langhooks-def.h.
GCC initialization consists of command line option parsing, initializing the back end, creating the global scope, and initializing the built-in data types and functions.
Each declaration is associated with a scope. For example, a local variable is associated with its function's scope. A global declaration is associated with the global scope.
Function toplev_main() is the function that processes the command-line options, initializes the compiler, compiles a file, and frees up the allocated resources. Function decode_options() processes the command-line options and sets the corresponding variables within the compiler.
Following the command line option parsing function do_compile() is called. It performs the back-end initialization by calling function backend_init(). After that, function lang_dependent_init() performs language-dependent initialization which includes the initialization of a front-end and a back-end. The C initialization function c_objc_common_init() creates built-in data types, initializes the global scope and performs other initialization tasks. Function c_common_nodes_and_builtins() creates pre-defined types described in file builtin-types.def.
The standard C types are created at the initialization time. The following table presents several types:
GCC builtin types Variable Name C type char_type_node char integer_type_node int unsigned_type_node unsigned int void_type_node void ptr_type_node void*
GCC built-in functions are the functions that are evaluated at compile time. For example, if the size argument of a strcpy() function is a constant then GCC replaces the function call with the required number of assignments. The compiler replaces standard library calls with built-in functions and then evaluates them once the function's AST is constructed. In case of strcpy(), the compiler checks the size argument and uses the optimized built-in version of strcpy() if the argument is constant. Builtin builtin_constant_p() allows to find out if the value of its argument is known at compile time. GCC builtins are used beyond GCC. For example, the string processing library of Linux kernel uses builtin_constant_p() to invoke the optimized version of a string processing function if the string size is known at compile time.
GCC evaluates each builtin function using a corresponding expand_builtin() function. For example, builtin_strcmp() is evaluated using expand_builtin_strcmp(). The following table gives examples of GCC builtins:
GCC builtin functions Builtin Name Explanation builtin_constant_p returns true if the argument is a constant builtin_memcpy equivalent to memcpy() builtin_strlen equivalent to strlen()
Take home: GCC initialization consists of command line option parsing, initializing the back end, creating the global scope, and initializing the built-in data types and functions.
C Preprocessor [ edit ]
Following the initialization, function do_compile() calls function compile_file(). This function invokes parse_file() front-end language hook which is set to function c_common_parse_file() for C language. The latter function invokes function finish_options() which initializes the preprocessor and handles -D, -U, and -A command line options (which are equivalent to #define, #undef, and #assert respectively). The C preprocessor handles the preprocessor directives such as #define, #include in the source code.
Following the preprocessor initialization, c_parse_file() function is invoked. This function uses the standard lex/bison tools to parse the file. The preprocessor is implemented as a part of the lexer. The C language lexer function c_lex() calls the libcpp function cpp_get_token() which handles the preprocessor keywords. The state of the preprocessor is defined by variable cpp_reader *parse_in. Type struct cpp_reader contains most importantly the list of text buffers being processed. Each buffer corresponds to a source file (.c or.h). Function cpp_get_token() calls appropriate functions for legitimate preprocessor keywords. For example, when #include is encountered, function do_include_common() is invoked. It allocates a new buffer and |
and Pixel 2 XL users will have one less thing to worry about soon, as Google has announced that it has identified a problem causing the phones to randomly reboot. It will be issuing a fix “in the coming weeks,” according to Android Police. That could come either bundled as part of a monthly security update (which sometimes include Pixel fixes) or a future Android software release.
The bug was reported on both Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL devices, and according to various forum threads, it resulted in the phones rebooting seemingly at random. So, if you’ve been experiencing this on your own devices, at least you can take solace in the fact that Google has figured out what’s wrong and will be fixing it soon.
And while it’s no doubt frustrating that these issues continue to crop up on what are supposed to be flagship phones, at least Google is continuing to do its best to fix problems as they continue to pop up.People whose names were used to spam the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website with anti-net neutrality comments are demanding an investigation into the identity theft.
In a letter sent Thursday to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, more than a dozen victims asked for the comments made under their names to be removed from the website—which the commission has yet to do—and warned that hundreds of thousands of other people may have been impacted.
"Whoever is behind this stole our names and addresses, exposed our private information in a public docket without our permission, and used our identities to file a political statement we did not sign onto," the letter states.
The stolen identities included those of recently deceased people, they said, writing:
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts
We call on you, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, to take the following actions: Notify all who have been impacted by this attack
Remove all of the fraudulent comments, including the ones made in our names, from the public docket immediately
Publicly disclose any information the FCC may have about the group or person behind the 450,000+ fake comments
Call for an investigation by the appropriate authorities into possible violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 ("making false statements") and other relevant laws.
"In my nearly 30 years of being an Internet user, I've been extremely judicious about using my real name online. On those rare times when I have chosen to do so, it's been for something I feel strongly about. To see my good name used to present an opinion diametrically opposed to my own view on net neutrality makes me feel sad and violated," one signatory, Joel Mullaney, told Fight for the Future. "Whoever did this violated one of the most basic norms of our democratic society, that each of us have our own voice, and I am eager to know from what source the FCC obtained this falsified affidavit. I have been slandered."
Fight for the Future launched a website last week allowing users to check if their identities were used in the spamming operation. Comcast, which opposes net neutrality protections, threatened to take legal action against the digital rights organization for trademark infringement. But Fight for the Future's website, Comcastroturf.com, returned dozens of verified reports from people around the country.
"There is significant evidence that a person or organization has been using stolen names and addresses to fraudulently file comments opposing net neutrality," Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, said Thursday. "For the FCC's process to have any legitimacy, they simply cannot move forward until an investigation has been conducted. We need to know who is doing this."Alexander Yakovlev has plenty of fighting experience, considering his career spans nearly a decade and 26 fights.
But he is neither old nor slowed by the experience.
“There were many good and powerful fighters in my career,” Yakovlev wrote to MMAjunkie, “but I hope the most significant battles are waiting for me to come.”
In November Yakovlev alerted the MMA world that his future remains bright when he scored a unanimous-decision victory over big-show vet Paul Daley at “Legend – Part 2: Invasion” in Moscow. The 29-year-old St. Petersburg, Russia resident moved his current winning streak to three, improving his overall record to 21-4-1 since his professional debut in February 2004.
Now many around Yakovlev think he’s near his biggest step yet: advancing to a larger promotion and showcasing the talent he has been developing since he started wrestling as a young boy. Getting early inspiration from another Russian fighter, Oleg Taktarov, Yakovlev later started his own training to help him reach closer to the goal of leaving a not-so-pleasant past behind.
Despite the load of fights on his resume and his success, Yakovlev still remains somewhat unknown to U.S. crowds, which he hopes can change soon. His latest fights come at a time when the UFC has involved more Russian fighters in its shows, making their appearances more common.
That bodes well for the current Russian prospects like Yakovlev. And even more so for him, because of his mix of experience but freshness to the larger MMA community.
But reaching that point hasn’t always been easy.
Always active
One of the questions commonly asked of fighters in this column space is about their childhood and family situations, which often provide interesting stories about where they’ve come from or from what conditions they were produced.
For the time being, Yakovlev didn’t wish to elaborate on those details.
“I did not have the happiest childhood,” he wrote. “And while I’m not ready to talk about it yet, I think the time will come when I will tell you everything about my family.”
He grew up in Veliky Novgorod, one of Russia’s oldest cities. He lived there through his first 18 years, which weren’t always happy ones.
His time was instead spent working on two of his main passions, his education and his sporting life. His daily training centered on wrestling, and he regularly had dreams of competing for his country in the Olympics.
“My only activities as a child were going to school and daily training,” he wrote. “I was very motivated since I realized that anything I was going to achieve was going to be done entirely on my own. Plus my time in school and sports helped to distract me from the unfavorable situation with my family and home.”
His training would take on more of a focus during his teen years when he spotted a fellow countryman aiding the early stages of the UFC.
Building a career
Yakovlev was still focused on wrestling when he first spotted his sporting future.
“My first introduction to MMA was in 1997, when I first saw a video tape of UFC,” he wrote. “One fight that impressed me very much was Oleg Taktarov and Tank Abbott in the finals of UFC 6, where Oleg won in a very tough bout and became the champion. So then I thought I would like to try MMA myself someday. In time, the idea became my reality.”
It just took a few years. Yakovlev didn’t begin his MMA training until 2003, when, as a college student, he went into an MMA gym for the first time. One of the coaches there was Andrei Semenov, who was well-known to MMA fans in his country.
It didn’t take Yakovlev long to adapt to the training, and after just a few months he committed to make his professional MMA debut. It came in February 2004, which started a regular stream of bouts. Through all of his fights, Yakovlev still has yet to suffer two consecutive losses.
That helped build his resume with an eye toward fighting in front of larger crowds. He certainly has the experience, so he’s now looking for the next opportunity.
“Like many of the top Russian fighters, I am planning a trip to the U.S. to train with my team at K Dojo Warrior Tribe as soon as possible,” he wrote. “As of today, I have just been ranked as one of the top 5 welterweights in Russia, so I have high hopes.
“I have plans to fight the best to be the best.”
Catching up
Earlier this year, Josh Rettinghouse told us about his history in wrestling, how he advanced to MMA and how he was looking forward to his first fight outside of the Washington state-area circuit. He impressed in that fight, topping former Olympic bronze medalist Alexis Vila by unanimous decision on Oct. 26 at WSOF 6.
The victory was Rettinghouse’s third straight, and it improved the bantamweight’s record to 10-2.
When we talked with him this past month, Kevin Aguilar joked that he had experience chasing after opponents in the past because he had helped his father handle the family’s goats when he was young. His experiences had helped him to a strong start to his career, but he then suffered his first loss on Dec. 6, dropping a first-round TKO to Leonard Garcia in a bout for the vacant featherweight title at Legacy FC 26.
With the loss, Aguilar dropped to 8-1.
Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel pens “Fight Path” each week. The column focuses on the circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.During one of many behind-the-scenes moments that featured Pro Bowl players enjoying themselves during Wednesday night's televised pre-game draft in Hawaii, ESPN's cameras flashed quickly to Cincinnati Bengals tight end Tyler Eifert.
For a couple of quick seconds, Eifert could be seen holding a helmet while American service members who were part of the festivities were scribbling their signatures on the helmet.
At least, exactly what it looked like before cameras quickly went away. If you blinked, you might have missed it.
If you happened to see Eifert in that shot during the draft's broadcast, your eyes did not fool you. That's exactly what Eifert was doing. As a star NFL pass-catcher, Eifert usually is the one putting his John Hancock on a football or helmet or jersey for adoring fans. Usually, he's the hero to eager autograph-seeking kids. In this case, he was the giddy one, excitedly asking several real-life heroes for their own signatures.
The NFL's Twitter account caught a little more of Eifert's act, and posted video of it Wednesday night.
All throughout its coverage of the Pro Bowl draft, ESPN had a series of vignettes about the military's impact in Hawaii, and how it has moved on there in the 74 years since the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Eifert was one of six Bengals picked in the draft by Team Irvin (coached by Hall of Famer Michael Irvin and captained in part by Bengals defensive tackle Geno Atkins). One other, Cedric Peerman, will play Sunday for Team Rice (coached by Hall of Famer Jerry Rice).Self-taught Software Developers: Why Open Source is important to us
Michael Mavris Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 12, 2016
This is a story about how my perspective for Open Source changed through time and how it’s helping me with my career.
Introduction to Open Source
About 13 years ago (at High School) a friend (Netcyrax) introduced me to Open Source community. He explained me everything about Open Source and how it works. He then gave me an Ubuntu CD and told me that Ubuntu was promoting their OS by sending free copies.
The next day, I visited www.ubuntu.com using my 56k connection and ordered 50 copies of Ubuntu. My intentions were to sell them to other people instead of giving them for free. That was the 15-year-old me who failed to understand the purpose of Open Source.
Failing to understand the purpose
Then I started programming. I was already aware of Open Source but really I couldn’t understand why I have to share my precious lines of code. Why share for free the source code of my program, which I spend months developing? What if someone stole it? What if my “competitors” use my source code to improve their products?
What I failed to understand back then, it was that I wasn’t an exceptional Software Developer and my program could be developed from scratch in few days by an experienced Software Developer (instead of months).
Using Open Source libraries is handy
It’s 2008 and I got my first iPhone (3G). Apple announces iOS 2 and iOS SDK. I decided that I will become an iOS Developer (on my free time). Since there was no one experienced with iOS SDK yet, I had to learn developing apps by myself. I created a simple app with a WebView and the business logic was inside the web app built with JavaScript.
I was pretty disappointed by the iOS SDK (Rookie Developer + Objective-C + Manual Reference Counting = Disaster), so I suspended the native iOS development for a couple of years. In the meantime, I was experimenting with hybrid SDKs like Titanium, Adobe Air-ActionScript.
When I came back (to native) at iOS 5, everything was different. In about a month I managed to build my first real app and upload it to the App Store. But what was changed(other than Automatic Reference Counting)?
Answer: Open Source community for iOS development. ASIHTTPRequest for network request and SDWebImage for downloading and caching images helped me to built my first app.
Version Control and GitHub
Most of the open source projects and libraries were hosted on Github. So I was using Github to download my libraries but since I was programming on my free time and having no experience in commercial environment, I couldn’t say the difference between Git and Github.
After building some iOS apps I was feeling confident about my skills so I decided to apply for iOS opportunities.
At some point in the first interview:
-Interviewer: What version control do you use?
-Me: What do you mean version control?
-Interviewer: I mean how you keep versions of your code base? SVN? Git?
-Me: Time machine (The backup software for OS X)!!
The reaction of the interviewer
So after having this conversation with the interviewer I decided that I want to learn more about Git (and version control in general) and that I want to use it on my own projects.
I read a lot of articles about Git and how it should be used in a team. I learned to use “Commit” and “Push” on my BitBucket repositories. I was using it as backup and versioning of my code but not as a collaborative tool.
First Pull Request
One day I was looking for a back-end library to help me manage push notifications on iOS and Android. I found a simple open source library that it was almost what I was looking for. I modified it to suit my needs and fixed some bugs. Then I sent a message to the owner of the repository letting him know about the bugs and the extra functionalities that I added to the project. The owner came back asking me to create a “Pull Request” to his repository.
Pull what?
I am pretty sure that “Pull Request” was mentioned in all of those articles that I read about Git, but since I was not using it, I forgot about it. Long story short, I did some research for “Pull Request” and by trial and error I managed to create my first “Pull Request”.
After my first “Pull Request” was approved I got excited and I was sending “Pull Requests” for each library that I was adding new functionalities.
As you can see we had a win-win situation here. I contributed and I improved an open source library and the open source community helped me to understand and correctly use collaborative tools like “Pull Request”. As self-taught and indie Software Developer I wouldn’t be able to learn how to correctly use Git on my own. I read a bunch of articles about it but that’s theoretical and I am hands on guy. Of course, I messed up a lot of my own repositories through the time but at least there were my own pet projects and not the company’s(at a later point) I am working for.
Observing how other Software Developer works
The most difficult part of being self-taught Software Developer is that you don’t have a mentor.
Early in my career, I was working as Systems Engineer and I was lucky enough to have two of the best mentors I could had. Who am I considering as excellent mentors? The ones who had deep technical understanding and helps you by giving you hints (not the solution) and then correct you when you messed things up.
Since there is no one to guide us, we need to guide ourselves. So for every open source project I am using, I am observing the source code (especially the small projects). Then I do a small research about things that I didn’t understand or methodologies that triggered my curiosity. Even better is when I am contributing and I am forced to use that kind of new methodologies.
Thanks to open source we have access to some big projects like Mozilla Firefox for iOS or Wordpress for iOS. Being curious and observing projects like these will help you to evolve as Software Developer.
Creating open source libraries
At some point I created a custom UIAlertView that I was using to my projects and I decided to make it open source. So I modified it, to be more dynamic and uploaded it to GitHub. I also wrote my first documentation explaining to other developers how to use it on their projects.
Probably nobody ever used it because it was a simple project but I was feeling good about my contribution.
Even though she has no idea what programming means
One day I was working on my pet project called IT Buddy and I needed to add a new feature. That feature would scan then network (that the mobile device is connected) and would show all available devices in the network. That’s very useful tool for Network/Systems Engineers when they are troubleshooting.
Because that’s a lot of work to do, I searched for an open source library and unfortunately I didn’t find any decent library. I found an old one which was solving a part of the problem (scan only /24 networks, show only IP of the host). Also, it was slow and was blocking the main thread of the app. So I forked that library and modified it.
I added some features like:
Shows MAC Address of the device
Shows Brand of device based on MAC Address
Shows hostname (if available) of the device
Scan any subnet (not only /24)
I then created a new repository on GitHub and created my own network scanner for iOS called MMLanScan (The reason I didn’t create a pull request back to original project it’s because it was abandoned).
A few days later, the repository got its first stars, a couple of forks and some issues where opened. That feedback encouraged me to constantly maintain my repository.
The MMLanScan V2.0
There was a huge improvement from the old repository, but I still wasn’t satisfied with the performance. So it’s was time for the V2.0 of the MMLanScan.
I created a new branch and started from scratch. Having in mind how other libraries works, I tried to keep the same API, so when the developers will update the library, they won’t have to change their code.
In order to improve the performance, I had to use background threads for the operations (ping and retrieve MAC Address from 254 hosts if it was the common case of /24 network). I was familiar with multithreading since I was using GCD for simple tasks but for this project, NSOperation & NSOperationQueue seems to be the ideal API. I experimented in the past with NSOperations but not in a real project.
To ping the available hosts I used Apple’s SimplePing. SimplePing was having issues to work with GCD and NSOperation so I reported a bug at Apple. They came back explaining that it wasn’t a bug and gave me a hint how to solve this issue (RunLoops).
After a few days, I rewritten MMLanScan, with huge performance boost (500% faster), better structure and of course more accurate results.
Again we have a win-win situation here. I created an open source library for scanning hosts in device’s network (I know it’s not the next SDWebImage but some people will find it useful) but I learned a ton of new things.
What I learned from this project:
Keeping the same API to make the update procedure easier.
Creating “Tags” for library versions in Git.
Working with High and Low level multithreading tools.
Writing a good documentation for the project.
Interacting with Apple’s Engineers.
Making an Objective-C library compatible with Swift.
Experimenting with Swift in order to create the demo project.
Summarise
I believe that Open Source community makes our life easier. Software Developer from all over the world are collaborating to create any kind of libraries, used by millions of people.
Personally, I feel that Open Source community offered me a lot of things and it’s time to give something back.
Also as self-taught Software Developer, you have to keep up with the other Software Developers from all over the world. If you are active at Open Source community then you will be able to keep up with the best Software Developers or even better, to collaborate with them on a project.The Smokestack Effect: Toxic Air and America's Schools What might be in the air outside your school? Search for a school to see the toxic chemicals that government data indicated were in the air outside. School Name City/County Select a State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington Washington D.C. West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Required field Regulators have found high levels of neurotoxic manganese in the air outside two schools in Ohio and West Virginia, the latest results of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to check for chemicals outside schools across the nation. Government scientists have determined that long-term exposure to manganese can cause mental disabilities and emotional problems, especially in kids. The preliminary results, to be released today, found average manganese levels at least 70% higher than what the EPA considers safe for long-term exposure outside Warren Elementary School in Marietta, Ohio, and Neale Elementary School in Vienna, W.Va. The schools are about 10 miles from each other. FULL COVERAGE: The Smokestack Effect EPA: List of schools being monitored In both cases, EPA officials stress the results are preliminary, and that drawing conclusions about long-term health dangers from a small number of samples is impossible. Regulators will take at least six more samples at the schools. "This entire effort has been about sound science, transparency and the responsibility EPA has to ensure our children are protected where they play and learn," says EPA spokesman Brendan Gilfillan. The results worry experts. "That's definitely something we don't want to see in the air near schools," says Gina Solomon, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. One reason: Manganese can accumulate in the soil. That means kids at elementary schools can also be exposed by playing in the dirt, Solomon says. "I'm very concerned," says Stephen Lester, science director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, a group that focuses on children and schools. "It speaks volumes to the need to address these problems." Manganese is often emitted by metalworking plants, Solomon says. If monitoring continues to show problems, she says, the "priority is figuring out where it's coming from" and reducing the emissions. That's the hope of Tom Gibbs, superintendent of the Ohio school's district. "We're optimistic that the monitoring will result in some action," he says. "This is something that the community is going to need to work together to address." Neale Principal Michael Fling says he plans to let the parents of his 389 students know later this week what the EPA is finding. "I'm glad that they're doing it," Fling says of the EPA. "There are a lot of people in the community who had questions." The 63-school monitoring effort is part of a $2.25 million EPA program launched in response to a USA TODAY investigation that identified hundreds of schools where chemicals appear to saturate the air. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read moreHYDERABAD: The Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) has come up with a technology that can keep the temperature inside a house much cooler than outside. In fact, the difference can be as much as nine degree Celsius.The low-cost thermally insulating roofing technology has also been transferred to Tata, which had sponsored the research project.The technology was developed using light weight foam made of cashew nut shell, and the foam has been covered by a thin sheet of tin.According to Shekharam Tammishetti, senior principal scientist and head, polymers and functional materials division, CSIR-IICT, the new technology has several advantages over the asbestos roofing or tin sheet roofing that is used now. “This foam roofing is not only light weight, but also acts as a shield against heat. If the outside temperature is 45 degree Celsius, the temperature in the house with the roofing will be only 36 degree Celsius,” he said.It is learnt that Tata will use the technology for its low-cost housing projects. Scientists said that it can also be introduced in the market. If necessary, the foam can also be laminated on both sides with the thin tin sheet. Another feature of this roofing is the acoustics. Due to strong wind, a tin sheet roof or asbestos could make a lot of noise, but not the foam-based roofing.Another roofing technology also has been developed and transferred to a Hyderabad-based company for commercial use. In this, castor oil structural foam is used. “In these technologies, renewable resources are used - they cost less and are highly effective”, Shekharam said.With both the Centre and state government laying emphasis on housing, Tammishetti said IICT would only be too eager to assist governments in developing more cost-effective technologies for housing.To read more on Black Panther and this year’s Comic-Con, pick up the new issue of Entertainment Weekly on stands Friday, or buy it here now. Don’t forget to subscribe for more exclusive interviews and photos, only in EW.
We are in the Hall of Kings. It’s a place rich in history. The spiritual center of Wakanda.
Vines creep the ancient stone steps, still growing strong after centuries — much like the royal family arrayed before us.
This is a portrait of the ruling Wakandans from Marvel’s new Black Panther film, with the title hero played by Chadwick Boseman standing front and center, clad in the onyx-hued armored suit he uses to defend this technologically advanced wonderland from the outside world.
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
The Black Panther suit is woven with Vibranium, the indestructible yet-surprisingly-maleable mineral that is nearly non-existent around the world but can be found in abundance beneath the surface of Wakanda — a fact its people have kept secret for thousands of years.
They’ve mined it, experimented with it, and used it to develop medicines, vehicles, and weaponry that make the rest of the industrialized nations look primitive.
Wakanda is a land that has never been conquered. And as long as outsiders remain in the dark about its treasures and advancements, maybe no one will really try.
But that’s wishful thinking. There are myriad threats from outside its borders, and now there may be uprising and revolution within. T’Challa is a young man, a novice on the throne, and the assassination of his father is proof to many within Wakanda that outreach to the rest of the world is foolish. Maybe it’s time for someone else to seize the reins of power.
In that way, executive producer Nate Moore tells us that Black Panther pays tribute to two cinematic classics.
One is an iconic saga about a son rising to fill the void of a fallen patriarch, and “the five families” competing to seize power amid the upheaval.
The other is a fun-loving action series about a hero with a license to kill.
“What I think we landed on was sort of a cross between James Bond and The Godfather,” Moore tells EW. “A big, operatic family drama centered on a world of international espionage. So hopefully we’re getting the best of both worlds.”
Let’s take a closer look at the forces at play in Black Panther.
T’CHALLA
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
“What makes him different from other superheroes first and foremost is he doesn’t see himself as a superhero,” says director and co-writer Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Creed). “He sees himself as a politician. That’s the first thing on his mind when he wakes up in the morning. ‘How am I going to fulfill my duties as king of this place?’”
That means not just fighting external foes, but keeping the citizens of his nation happy. He’s a king, but not a tyrant. And Wakandans don’t speak with only one voice. There are many political factions, many clashing points of view. Some are ready for revolution. Some are being pushed.
“He has to keep harmony between the tribes within his country, and that means managing expectations and doing things that are unpopular,” Coogler says. “At the same time, he is the protector of that nation.”
RAMONDA
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
Angela Bassett costars as Ramonda, once the queen, now the mother of the king.
“She is one of the advisors that he would look to,” Boseman says. “He has to look to her for some of the answers of what his father might want or might do. She may not be exactly right all the time, but she definitely has insights. She is the queen mother. And she’s that for not just him, but for everybody.”
Bozeman laughs. “She’s has her hands in everything — even his love life.”
NAKIA
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
“The one thing I will say about all the female characters in this movie is that they are very strong,” Boseman says. “It’s a very matriarchal society.”
One of them is Wakanda’s undercover operative Nakia, played by 12 Years a Slave Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong’o. She may actually be the closest thing to 007 in this movie, and she’s a former lover of T’Challa’s.
“She is a departure from what she was in the comic book,” Nyong’o says. “Nakia is a war dog. She is basically an undercover spy for Wakanda. Her job is to go out into the world and report back on what’s going on.”
She also boasts some unique weaponry. “We call them her ring blades,” says Moore. “The ones Lupita carries while in the green outfit are based on traditional African weaponry. However, she does get a hi-tech upgrade later in the film, compliments of Shuri.”
SHURI
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
Letitia Wright plays T’Challa’s kid sister, who is no one you want to face in battle either. “She is also a genius and runs the entire Wakandan design group,” says producer Kevin Feige, whose also president of Marvel Studios and one of the chief architects of its interlocked universe. “She’s responsible for all these amazing technological advances that Vibranium has brought about from Wakanda.”
Here she is pictured with twin, panther-shaped weapons. It’s not clear yet what they do exactly, but it probably hurts.
OKOYE
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
She’s not technically family, but she’s just as close. This character played by The Walking Dead‘s Danai Gurira is the head of the Dora Milaje, the all-female special soldiers unit that protects the kingdom (and the king) from harm.
“They are a very powerful force,” she says. “They are not utopic, but what Wakanda has down well is it has allowed people to function within their strengths. These women, their strength is to preserve Wakanda. It’s more like the secret service in a sense that it’s not just military. She is head of intel.”
Okoye has guilt over the death of the previous king, and she’s generally a stoic presence. But she’s not unfeeling. “She can be serious, but she also has an unexpected sense of humor,” Gurira says. “She has a heart, but for her country and for her people. She’s not a person who doesn’t connect to human beings as a result of what she does.”
ERIK KILLMONGER
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
There is an enemy in this portrait.
In the comics, he was once a Wakandan known as N’Jadaka, but he took on this “death-dealing” nom de guerre when he became a dissident, then an exile, from his homeland.
Michael B. Jordan’s character is one of the antagonists of the film, allied with the mercenary Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis, reprising his role from Avengers: Age of Ultron), an arms dealer who has plundered Vibranium before and plans to do it again. He’s addicted.
In The Godfather terms, Killmonger has sided with this outsider against “the family,” his brothers and sisters of Wakanda. “I think Killmonger has his own opinion on how Wakanda has been run and should run, and what I think Michael brings to the table is sort of a charming antagonist, who doesn’t agree with how T’Challa is running things, frankly,” says Moore. “I think that puts T’Challa in a difficult situation. Killmonger is a voice of a different side of Wakanda.”
W’KABI
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya plays T’Challa’s best friend, who is also a member of one of the most vital groups in the nation. “W’Kabi is the head of security for the Border Tribe,” says Moore. “They live on the borders of Wakanda and serve as the first line of defense for the country.”
In other words, he helps maintain the disguise that Wakanda is just mines, farms, and woods.
“To outsiders they appear to be what people would ‘expect’ of a small provincial African nation – but the truth is they are some of the fiercest warriors in Wakanda, intent on protecting the secrets of their advanced nation at all costs,” Moore says.
Now that T’Challa is king, he asks W’Kabi to join him as a palace advisor.
ZURI
Kwaku Alston/©Marvel Studios 2018
Another vital voice of reason for the young king is Forest Whitaker’s shaman, a longtime advisor to T’Challa’s father and the keeper of the Heart-Shaped Herb, a plant that grows only in Wakanda and absorbs the Vibranium-rich minerals. When consumed, it gives the new leader superhuman strength. (But in the comics, it only works on members of the royal bloodline.)
“He’s somewhat a religious figure or spiritual figure,” Coogler says of Zuri. “Spirituality is something that exists in Wakanda in the comics, and it’s something we wanted to have elements of in the film. Forest’s character, more than anything, is a major tie-back to T’Challa’s father. Zuri is someone he looks to for guidance.”
As wondrous as Wakanda seems, it can also be treacherous. For all the talk of honor in The Godfather, the families were compulsively driven to destroy each other. 007 may venture to the most beautiful places (and people) on Earth, but there’s always a villain determined to wipe those places off the map. If Black Panther owes thematic inspiration to those predecessors, the danger comes hand in hand with the beauty.
But that’s where the similarities will end. When the Marvel Studios movie debuts Feb. 16, the story will remain on Earth, but its creators pledge to take fans to a world they’ve never seen before nonetheless.
“I don’t think people are prepared for what this movie is going to be,” says Feige. “Not just Black Panther, but the Dora Milaje, and Killmonger, and the entire design of Wakanda – both its traditional African-inspired elements, but also the Vibranium inspired techno-elements. I can’t think of a blend that has happened like that before in movies.”
There’s only one Black Panther, after all.
No matter who wants to lay claim to his throne.
There will be more Black Panther coverage as part of our Comic-Con issue roll-out. Check back to EW.com later for a Q&A with Chadwick Boseman.
Thursday: More exclusive photos!The song is the first mostly Spanish-language No. 1 since "Macarena" in 1996 & makes Bieber the first artist ever to earn new No. 1s in back-to-back weeks.
Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's "Despacito," featuring Justin Bieber, crowns the Billboard Hot 100 chart (dated May 27), rising 3-1. Among highlights for the new leader, it's the first mostly Spanish-language Hot 100 No. 1 in more than 20 years and it makes Bieber the first artist ever to notch new No. 1s in consecutive weeks. A week ago (on the May 20 chart), Bieber bowed at No. 1 as featured (with three other acts) on DJ Khaled's "I'm the One" (which this week dips to No. 3).
Fonsi and Daddy Yankee each earn their first Hot 100 No. 1 and Bieber banks his fifth with "Despacito" (released on Universal Music Latino / Raymond Braun / SchoolBoy / Def Jam / UMLE / Republic Records).
As we do every Monday, let's run down the top 10 of the Hot 100, which blends sales, airplay and streaming data. All charts will update on Billboard.com tomorrow, May 16.
In fact, let's take the many notable achievements for "Despacito" at No. 1 on the Hot 100 one-by-one.
No. 1 in streams & sales: "Despacito" scores its first week at No. 1 on the Streaming Songs chart with 54.3 million U.S. streams, up 14 percent, in the week ending May 11, according to Nielsen Music. It also leads the Digital Song Sales chart, rebounding 2-1 for a second week on top, with 104,000 downloads sold, up 4 percent, in the week ending May 11; |
. The second and more important reason: If we can’t entirely avoid the collision, let us at least learn from it—and let’s do so as quickly as possible.
All traditional indigenous human societies eventually learned self-restraint, if they stayed in one place long enough. They discovered through trial and error that exceeding their land’s carrying capacity resulted in dire consequences. That’s why traditional peoples appear to us moderns as intuitive ecologists: having been hammered repeatedly by resource depletion, habitat destruction, overpopulation, and resulting famines, they eventually realized that the only way to avoid getting hammered yet again was to respect nature’s limits by restraining reproduction and protecting other forms of life. We’ve forgotten that lesson, because our civilization was built by people who successfully conquered, colonized, then moved elsewhere to do the same thing yet again; and because we are enjoying a one-time gift of fossil fuels that empower us to do things no previous society ever dreamed of. We’ve come to believe in our own omnipotence, exceptionalism, and invincibility. But we’ve now run out of new places to conquer, and the best of the fossil fuels are used up.
As we collide with Earth’s limits, many people’s first reflex response will be to try to find someone to blame. The result could be wars and witch-hunts. But social and international conflict will only deepen our misery. One thing that could help would be the widely disseminated knowledge that our predicament is mostly the result of increasing human numbers and increasing appetites confronting disappearing resources, and that only cooperative self-limitation will avert a fight to the bitter end. We can learn; history shows that. But in this instance we need to learn fast.
So I keep plugging away with the same old message in as many different ways as I can, updating it as events unfold. And I play my violin—with a carbon fiber bow.
Announcing AFTERBURN: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels
The advent of fossil fuels changed the world profoundly (giving us everything from plastics and automobiles to global warming); the inevitable and rapidly approaching end of the oil-coal-and-gas era will likewise bring overwhelming transformation in its wake. My new book Afterburn explores that transformation—its opportunities and challenges—in sixteen essays that address subjects as varied as energy politics, consumerism, localism, the importance of libraries, and oil price volatility.
Afterburn is a book of “greatest hits”—that is, popular essays that have been previously published—similar in that respect to an earlier book of mine, Peak Everything (2007). Like that previous collection, this one has been carefully selected and arranged, and features an all-new Introduction.
Here are just a few of the highlights:
“Ten Years After” reviews the debate about “peak oil” from the perspective of over a decade’s work in tracking petroleum forecasts, prices, and production numbers. As we’ll see, forecasts from oil supply pessimists have generally turned out to be accurate, far more so than those of official energy agencies or petroleum industry spokespeople.
Environmentalists tend to agree that consumerism is a deal-breaking barrier to the creation of a sustainable society. It’s helpful, therefore, to know exactly what consumerism is (not merely a greedy personal attitude but a system of economic organization) and how it originated (not as a natural outgrowth of “progress,” but as the deliberate creation of advertising and marketing firms). “The Brief, Tragic Reign of Consumerism” tells this story, and explores how we might go about building an alternative sufficiency economy.
Some long-time environmentalists have been anticipating global social and ecological catastrophe for many years, yet it has so far failed to manifest in all its devastating glory; what we see instead are periodic localized economic and environmental disasters from which at least partial recovery has so far been possible. “Fingers in the Dike” explains why industrial society has been able to ward off collapse for as long as it has, and suggests ways to best make use of borrowed time.
In 2011 a student organization at Worcester Polytechnic Institute invited me to give an alternative commencement address to the graduating class (the official commencement speaker was Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil). “Your Post-Petroleum Future” is the text of that address.
Environmental philosophers are currently debating the significance of our new geological epoch—which has been dubbed the Anthropocene, in acknowledgment of humanity’s dramatically expanding impact upon Earth’s natural systems. Some commentators take extreme positions, arguing the new epoch will usher in either human godhood or human extinction. “The Anthropocene: It’s Not All About Us” suggests instead that we are about to bump against the limits of human agency and thereby regain a sense of humility in the face of natural forces beyond our control.
“Conflict in the Era of Economic Decline” discusses the kinds of social conflict we are likely to see in the decades ahead as economies contract and weather extremes worsen—including conflict between rich and poor, conflict over dwindling resources, and conflict over access to places of refuge from natural disasters. This chapter also proposes a “post-carbon theory of change” that encourages building resilience into societal systems in order to minimize trauma from foreseeable economic and environmental stresses.
“Our Cooperative Darwinian Moment” points out that, while we inevitably face a critical bottleneck of overpopulation, resource depletion, and climate change, it’s up to us how we go through the bottleneck—whether in ruthless competition for the last scraps of food and natural resources, or in a burst of social innovation that brings more cooperation and sharing. Biology and history suggest the latter path is viable; it is certainly preferable. However, our chances of taking it successfully will improve to the degree that we devote much more effort now at developing cooperative institutions and attitudes.
Advocates for social change today face a nearly unprecedented opportunity, as I argue in “Want to Change the World? Read This First.” However, in order to make the most of it, they will need to understand historic and current revolutionary transformations in the relationship between society and ecosystem. As society’s energy systems inevitably change, this will bring the necessity for a reinvention of our economy, our political systems, and the explicit and implicit ideologies with which we explain and justify our world. With so much at stake, there has—quite literally—never been a more crucial moment to be aware and active in helping shape the process of societal change.
Welcome to life beyond fossil fuels.THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Syria has revealed a previously undeclared research and development facility and a laboratory to produce the poison ricin to the global chemical weapons watchdog, diplomatic sources told Reuters.
A container (top L) is moved from the Danish ship Ark Future, carrying a cargo of Syria's chemical weapons, after it arrived at Gioia Tauro port in southern Italy July 2, 2014. REUTERS/Ciro De Luca
Syria has detailed three new facilities to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as part of an ongoing review of the state’s toxic arsenal, three sources said.
The disclosures appeared to support assertions from Western governments in recent months that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had not been fully transparent to the world body in detailing its chemical weapons program.
Damascus agreed last year to eliminate its entire chemical weapons program after a sarin attack on Aug. 21 killed hundreds of people in Ghouta, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus.
Under the agreement reached with Washington and Moscow, which averted threatened U.S. military action, the Nobel Peace-prize winning OPCW is overseeing the destruction of 1,300 tonnes of chemical weapons that Syria declared to the Hague-based body.
Syria was supposed to have already destroyed all production, filling and storage facilities, but still has 12 cement hangars and underground bunkers. Those are due to be destroyed in the coming months.
The new disclosures described by diplomats came as part of an ongoing review of “discrepancies” in Syria’s initial OPCW declaration, which Britain and the United States have said they feared excluded some chemicals, notably sarin.
The risk that stray chemicals fall into the hands of hardline militants has grown with the spread of Islamic State forces, who have taken large swathes of Iraq and Syria since the summer.
Syria has never declared it had any sarin or the rockets used to kill more than 1,000 people and blamed the worst chemical weapons attack in a quarter century on insurgents.
Damascus disclosed dozens of sites to the OPCW last year, but has now told a team of inspectors about three more facilities.
One is a laboratory for the highly toxic ricin, the site of which Syrian officials said was inaccessible to inspectors due to ongoing fighting between insurgents and government forces, sources said.
A second diplomatic source, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the ricin plant had been destroyed before Syria joined the OPCW.
At a third location “small amounts of experimental work” was done on chemical weapons development, two diplomatic sources in The Hague said.
OPCW officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
As part of joining the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, Damascus is prohibited from developing, storing or using any chemicals as weapons and must declare any stocks of toxins to the OPCW.
“That information is having to be extracted, piece by piece, demonstrating that he (Assad) didn’t properly come clean when he joined the convention,” one diplomatic source said.
Nearly all of the chemical stockpile Syria declared has been destroyed on a converted U.S. cargo ship, the Cape Ray, while the toxic effluent, or discharge, is being processed in commercial waste facilities abroad.
A joint UN-OPCW team overseeing the process, headed by Sigrid Kaag, is due to return to the region this month for another round of discussions with Syrian officials.
“Syria will argue that the facilities were not revealed earlier because they were in a rush when they first had to report them,” said one diplomatic source. “They had said the ricin was for medical purposes, but we don’t believe that’s true.”
CHLORINE BARREL BOMBS
Two diplomats said a report published last week on chlorine attacks by an OPCW fact-finding team showed that Syria had violated the agreement to get rid of all of its chemical weapons and that three western governments were considering raising the matter at the UN Security Council.
An OPCW fact-finding team was assembled to look into dozens of reports of chlorine “barrel” bomb attacks this year in Syria’s civil war, which has killed around 200,000 people in less than four years.
The report last week, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, described through eyewitness testimony how dozens of attacks in villages, said to be carried out with helicopters, killed several people and injured hundreds.
“You have to keep in mind that these attacks killed hundreds and maybe thousands of people, so we need to keep the pressure on the Assad regime,” the third source said. “Going to the UN would send that signal.”
Reacting to the findings, Britain and the United States last week blamed Assad’s regime, which they said was the only party in the civil war with helicopters.
“It is a clear violation of Security Council resolution 2118,” one diplomatic source said. “We are considering raising this in New York, along with other countries.”
The head of the OPCW has ordered the team to continue investigating the use of chlorine in Syria’s war, which occurred as recently as Aug. 28, according to the report.
The use of chemical weapons by either side in the conflict is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the U.N. Security Council resolution issued to support Syria’s chemical weapons destruction plan.Stephen A. Smith, co-host of ESPN's "First Take," wonders why women don't take more responsibility when they are violently assaulted by their partners. And more than just women failing to own up to the things that they do to provoke their partners into violently assaulting them, Smith wonders why society as a whole is silent on this issue of asking women to "prevent the situation from happening" when the situation that is happening is them being violently assaulted.
Important questions, all.
Advertisement:
Smith monologues for quite a while before making the point about women provoking domestic violence, but he eventually lands here (emphasis mine):
But domestic violence or whatever the case may be, with men putting their hands on women, is obviously a very real, real issue in our society. And I think that just talking about what guys shouldn't do, we got to also make sure that you can do your part to do whatever you can do to make, to try to make sure it doesn't happen. We know they're wrong. We know they're criminals. We know they probably deserve to be in jail. In Ray Rice's case, he probably deserves more than a 2-game suspension which we both acknowledged. But at the same time, we also have to make sure that we learn as much as we can about elements of provocation. Not that there's real provocation, but the elements of provocation, you got to make sure that you address them, because we've got to do is do what we can to try to prevent the situation from happening in any way. And I don't think that's broached enough, is all I'm saying. No point of blame.
This is, of course, ignorant and dangerous. It is abuser's logic repackaged as personal responsibility. "If only she wouldn't act this way, I wouldn't have to get violent." "She knows just the buttons to push that make me fly off the handle." "Why do you make me do this?" And when the culture parrots the abuser's logic, victims are silenced. Because it's harder to come out and get help if you think you're going to be blamed for what's happened to you.
Now we know how this will all play out because because we've been here before. Smith's comments will likely be denounced by ESPN, he will likely issue an apology, and we will all definitely move on. And when something just like this happens again? Rinse and repeat.
But Smith is not some outlier and his attitudes about domestic violence don't exist in a vacuum. Just like the "Game of Thrones" director who argued that rape can become "consensual by the end" was actually just articulating a pretty common belief about sexual assault. Just like George Will isn't alone in thinking that the rates of sexual violence on college campuses have been grossly exaggerated because sexual assault is now a "coveted status" that confers victims with "privileges." These guys aren't aberrations, they are the norm. A steady and reliable stream of justifications and excuses. Predictable as the sun as it rises and sets. This is what a culture of violence against women looks like.
The problem comes, it seems, when you're a little too blunt about the rules of the game. After all, Smith made his comments in response to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's decision to penalize a man charged with violently assaulting his wife with a two-game suspension. (To make his good guy bonafides clear, Smith even concedes that Ray Rice "probably deserves more than a two-game suspension.") And this was, of course, after Rice was allowed to enter a pre-trial diversionary program that will allow him to avoid jail time and possibly have the charges removed from his record.
But Smith doesn't connect the dots between the lack of repercussions for assaulting one's partner and his own thinking about domestic violence. Goodell suspended Rice for two games because he knew he could get away with it. Because he knew that enough people in this country probably think -- like Smith does -- that Janay Rice did something to provoke Rice into allegedly hitting her so hard she lost consciousness. That an incident that a grand jury classified as aggravated felony assault was really just a private disagreement between two people, and that it's not their place to judge.
Advertisement:
The disconnect runs deep in Smith because it runs deep everywhere else. He starts out saying that men "have no business" putting their hands on a woman. But Smith also clearly believes -- an idea reinforced in our culture and our criminal justice system -- that there are reasons that men can put their hands on a woman. It just depends on the woman, it seems.Washington Capitals reporter Isabelle Khurshudyan explains how the team has changed in the past year and how that could affect its playoff chances. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Washington Capitals reporter Isabelle Khurshudyan explains how the team has changed in the past year and how that could affect its playoff chances. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)
Like any serious stick collector, Washington Capitals defenseman Karl Alzner has a carefully thought-out wish list. His favorites have a story, so he made sure to get one from Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price last year because Price went on to win the NHL’s MVP award. Now, he wants Chicago Blackhawks forward Artemi Panarin’s stick, suspecting Panarin will be the rookie of the year.
“I’m always thinking about it, so I can go back and be like, ‘Oh yeah, this was Panarin’s rookie of the year stick,’ ” Alzner said.
In the NFL and professional soccer, players often exchange jerseys on the field after games. In the NHL, mementos from peers are acquired in private, members of teams’ equipment staffs often making the actual swap. Sticks and blades are bartered, and teams typically have at least one player who collects.
There is that oft-repeated adage that there are no friends on the ice, but off it, players are fans, too — and some will go to great lengths for a stick they really want.
“If anybody ever asks for my stick, I think it’s pretty cool,” Colorado forward Matt Duchene said. “It’s a bit of an honor to have your peers want one.”
1 of 28 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Capitals 2015-16 season: One for the books View Photos Washington had one of the best seasons in franchise history, winning the Presidents’ Trophy for the best record in the league and setting other records, both team and individual. Caption Washington had one of the best seasons in franchise history, winning the Presidents’ Trophy for the best record in the league and setting other records, both team and individual. Capitals 5, Devils 3 In his 11th season opener, Alex Ovechkin scores in the third period, hitting the top right corner of the goal, and adds an assist. “If he can do that every time we’re tied in the third period, that would be fine,” teammate Justin Williams said. “Just 81 more plus playoffs.” Katherine Frey/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
[This is what the Caps group-text each other all day long]
Alzner and Alex Ovechkin are the Capitals’ most avid collectors. For Ovechkin, swaps are simple because his own stick is sought after due to his elite status and the blade’s unique curve. Ovechkin estimated he has 60 sticks — legends such as Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Brett Hull represented — displayed along the walls of his home gym.
“If you’re a guy like me,” Alzner said, “you just hope that they give you one.”
Though a steady and valued defenseman for Washington, Alzner isn’t a hockey household name, so acquiring stars’ sticks when they likely don’t want yours takes some ingenuity. Alzner laughed that his stick has only been requested back twice, with one occasion being this season. He asked Detroit Red Wings rookie Dylan Larkin for a stick as they lined up for a faceoff, and a flattered Larkin wanted to trade, so Alzner inscribed a message to the speedy 19-year-old to “slow down.”
“Those are kind of the cool ones that I’ll look back in 20 or 30 years and be able to see that, especially a player of his caliber,”Alzner said. “He can have one heck of a career, so it’s neat to have that.”
That the practice is considered to be what Ottawa’s Zack Smith called an “elite players’ ritual” makes some players hesitant to participate. Smith said he wouldn’t feel comfortable asking for someone’s stick because of the occasionally abrasive role he plays on the ice. Washington’s Tom Wilson agreed. “It’s kind of tough when you go out and hammer a guy and then ask for a stick after,” Wilson said with a shrug.
Though not everyone collects, opposing players’ sticks can be acquired for the purpose of testing them in practice, as Wilson did with Jack Eichel’s earlier this season. Others request signed sticks for charity auctions.
1 of 56 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin through the years View Photos A look at the three-time NHL MVP’s career in Washington. Caption A look at three-time NHL MVP Alex Ovechkin's career in Washington. June 26, 2004 Ovechkin poses with Capitals scouting director Ross Mahoney, owner Ted Leonsis, and GM George McPhee after being picked first overall in the NHL Draft. “This is my fifth draft, and I haven't seen any consensus around the number one pick in those five years as I saw with this pick,” Leonsis said after the pick. “Time will tell whether this was the right decision, but right now it feels pretty good.” Ellen Ozier/Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
“As a young guy, I haven’t pushed my hand yet, but that’s something I think I really want to get involved in,” Senators forward Curtis Lazar said. “It’s cool. I’m 21, but playing against guys at the end of their career, you’re going to keep those as keepsakes. I lived with Chris Phillips last year, and he has a bit of a collection. It’s something you’re going to keep for a while. I guess when I get more comfortable and get more games in, for sure I’ll join the trade.”
Exchanges are particularly popular at All-Star Games or international tournaments. Some in-season swaps are arranged through connections, a player texting his friend on an opposing team before a game to ask a teammate if he’s willing to sacrifice a stick. If it’s a trade, both players will notify a member of their respective equipment staff, and a stick unlikely to be used again is picked out, autographed, set aside and then later exchanged.
Other players prefer to ask themselves. The negotiations will occasionally occur in warmups or even during a game. Alzner asked Boston Bruins defenseman Zdeno Chara for a stick before a faceoff; when Chara skated by Alzner as the period expired, he asked whether Alzner wanted it autographed.
Arizona Coyotes captain Shane Doan agreed to give Alzner a stick, but then forgot after the game. A few days later, Doan relayed an apology through the teams’ equipment managers and promised to have a stick for Alzner next time.
The more unique a stick is, the more desirable. Alzner pines for the stick of San Jose Sharks center Joe Thornton, in part because he uses so few a year. It’s in two pieces, so Thornton typically just changes out the blade. Alzner has tried and failed to get one for three or four years, but is hopeful former Capitals winger Joel Ward, now with the Sharks, can help facilitate an acquisition.
[Capitals’ 2016 playoff slogan: ‘Entitled to Nothing’]
The best stories seem to always involve the pursuit of a Jaromir Jagr stick — or as Ottawa’s Smith accurately put it, “the most sought-after stick right now.” The 44-year-old Florida Panthers forward has a reputation for not giving away many sticks.
“I think it took [Jason] Spezza five or six years to finally get one from him,” Smith said.
“I probably tried to ask Jags for three or four years,” the Dallas Stars center later clarified. “He was a guy that I really liked as a younger player coming up and a guy that I kind of tried to watch. He’s really particular with his stick, so it took me a few years to track down his stick, but I got one.
“It’s definitely one of the jewels of my collection.... It became a bit of a joke. I’d send the trainers over, and they’d ask. I think the first time I asked him myself. Eventually, it ended up filtering over my way.”
Colorado’s Duchene has an even better Jagr stick story.
“[Devils goaltender] Cory Schneider is a friend of mine, so when [Jagr] was in Jersey, I asked Schneids to get me one,” Duchene said. “He got me one, put it aside and someone stole it before it got to me. It took two more years to get one.”
Alzner got a Jagr stick through Martin Erat, who knew Jagr well because of their shared Czech roots. He considers that the coolest of his collection, along with the stick of former Red Wings defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom. Duchene’s favorite in his stock is the last stick with which Peter Forsberg ever played.
Asked about the sticks he still wants, Alzner is reminded to check on one hunt.
“You know who is the toughest right now? [Edmonton Oilers rookie] Connor McDavid,” Alzner said. “They’re not giving out many of his sticks this year. I have two hookups though, so I’m hoping they can come through for me. They haven’t... yet.”We all have seen the White House, the Golden Gate bridge, the Las Vegas strip and other American landmarks destroyed in various sci-fi movies. And now we have a real-life version of a Wrigley Field Apocalypse, and it's very photogenic indeed.
The idea of a new Wrigley has been debated for years, but now that it's happening, Cubs fans owe it to themselves to make a trip to Wrigleyville to get a good look at the iconic bleachers coming down. Even though we knew it was coming, it's a jarring sight to behold.
A trip to the ballpark Friday morning found a dozen or so people milling around, taking photos on cameras and smartphones from behind a fence on Waveland Avenue. Most of the outer wall of left field already was torn down, leaving chunks of broken-up granite and twisted guard rails lying in piles on a street Cubs fans turned into a giant mosh pit during the 2003 National League Championship Series.
Unfortunately, the workers installed green netting around the fences surrounding the project, forcing the photographers to find small openings or to hold their cameras high over the fence and just take random shots without framing them.
Being a devoted tree climber, I decided to trek up one on a Waveland Avenue parkway for a better view. It was my own makeshift rooftop club, albeit with a capacity of one and no payout to the Cubs.
It was from my perch up high that I realized the Cubs were denying fans a beautiful bird's-eye view of the renovation, while also missing out on a great revenue-enhancing opportunity for the organization.
All the Cubs really need to do to aid the curiosity-seekers and make a little money is set up some temporary bleachers on the street, much like ones they use in football stadiums. They could charge viewers a dollar or two for a perfect view of the wreckage, and maybe put it toward signing free agent Jon Lester.
Demolition has started for Wrigley's outfield bleacher section. (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune) Demolition has started for Wrigley's outfield bleacher section. (Brian Cassella, Chicago Tribune) SEE MORE VIDEOS
The Cubs could sell the naming rights to a brewery, sell hot chocolate and hot dogs on the corner of Sheffield and Waveland avenues, and put up a few port-a-potties.
Whether you supported the modernization of Wrigley or not, it's fascinating to see the ballpark resemble a war zone, and TV just doesn't do it justice. These bleachers aren't just any cheap seats; they're a piece of Chicago history, built in 1937 after a 12-year period with no bleachers.
"The old bleachers in left field were the happy target of Hack Miller, Cub slugger of a decade and a half ago," the Tribune reported in '37. "They were torn out when it developed that the Cubs had fewer sluggers who could reach the area than were on the rosters of visiting teams."
Some things, it seems, never change.
One change would be most welcome for Cubs fans: It's called winning. Judging from the number of sportswriters who told me during the playoffs "Next year the Cubs will be here," the consensus is they're well on their way to reaching nirvana. Three years into President Theo Epstein's rebuild, we're now in the first inning of the long-awaited renovation of Wrigley Field.
And even if it's painful and jarring at times, change is a necessary part of progress. Watching the demolition at Wrigley reminds me of a story back in 1995. On a cold February afternoon, while a wreckers' ball was tearing into the west wall of the old Chicago Stadium, Rocky Wirtz's car was being towed for being illegally parked.
"We'll get another one," Wirtz quipped as he viewed the empty parking space.
Things turned out OK for Wirtz, who eventually succeeded his father as Blackhawks' chairman and has watched them win a couple of Stanley Cups while playing in the new building.
Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts is hoping a modernized Wrigley Field also will bring his Cubs to the Promised Land, and perhaps even make him as lovable as Wirtz and his Blackhawks have become in Chicago.
psullivan@tribune.com
Twitter @PWSullivanA few hours ago Peter Dalgaard (of R Core Team) announced the release of R 3.0.0! Bellow you can read the changes in this release.
One of the features worth noticing is the introduction of long vectors to R 3.0.0. As David Smith recently wrote:
Although many people won’t notice the difference, the introduction of long vectors to R is in fact a significant upgrade, and required a lot of work behind-the-scenes to implement in the core R engine. It will allow data frames to exceed their current 2 billion row limit, and in general allow R to make better use of memory in systems with large amounts of RAM. Many thanks go to the R core team for making this improvement.
You can get the source code from: http://cran.r-project.org/src/ base/R-3/R-3.0.0.tar.gz
or wait for it to be mirrored at a CRAN site nearer to you. Binaries for various platforms will appear in due course (which often means it will be within the next 2-48 hours).
If you are running R on Ubuntu, you may wish to consult this post.
If you are running R on Windows, you can use the following code to quickly download and install the latest R version using the installr package:
# installing/loading the package: if (! require ( installr ) ) { install. packages ( "installr" ) ; require ( installr ) } #load / install+load installr updateR ( ) # this will only work AFTER R 3.0.0 will be released to your CRAN mirror
Either way, all users should note that this new release requires that packages will need to be re-installed, which means that after you install the new R, you should run the following command in it:
update. packages ( checkBuilt = TRUE )
(thank to Prof. Ripley for the above clarification, and the FAQ pointer)
Also, To run R 3.0.0 with RStudio, you will need to upgrade to the latest version of RStudio.
R 3.0.0 NEWS:
SIGNIFICANT USER-VISIBLE CHANGES
Packages need to be (re-)installed under this version (3.0.0) of R.
There is a subtle change in behaviour for numeric index values 2^31 and larger. These never used to be legitimate and so were treated as NA, sometimes with a warning. They are now legal for long vectors so there is no longer a warning, and x[2^31] will now extend the vector on a 64-bit platform and give an error on a 32-bit one.
and larger. These never used to be legitimate and so were treated as, sometimes with a warning. They are now legal for long vectors so there is no longer a warning, and It is now possible for 64-bit builds to allocate amounts of memory limited only by the OS. It may be wise to use OS facilities (e.g. ulimit in a bash shell, limit in csh ), to set limits on overall memory consumption of an R process, particularly in a multi-user environment. A number of packages need a limit of at least 4GB of virtual memory to load.64-bit Windows builds of R are by default limited in memory usage to the amount of RAM installed: this limit can be changed by command-line option –max-mem-size or setting environment variable R_MAX_MEM_SIZE.
in a shell, in ), to set limits on overall memory consumption of an process, particularly in a multi-user environment. A number of packages need a limit of at least 4GB of virtual memory to load.64-bit Windows builds of are by default limited in memory usage to the amount of RAM installed: this limit can be changed by command-line option –max-mem-size or setting environment variable R_MAX_MEM_SIZE. Negative numbers for colours are consistently an error: previously they were sometimes taken as transparent, sometimes mapped into the current palette and sometimes an error.
NEW FEATURES
identical() has a new argument, ignore.environment, used when comparing functions (with default FALSE as before).
has a new argument,, used when comparing functions (with default as before). There is a new option, options(CBoundsCheck=), which controls how.C() and.Fortran() pass arguments to compiled code. If true (which can be enabled by setting the environment variable R_C_BOUNDS_CHECK to yes), raw, integer, double and complex arguments are always copied, and checked for writing off either end of the array on return from the compiled code (when a second copy is made). This also checks individual elements of character vectors passed to.C().This is not intended for routine use, but can be very helpful in finding segfaults in package code.
, which controls how and pass arguments to compiled code. If true (which can be enabled by setting the environment variable R_C_BOUNDS_CHECK to yes), raw, integer, double and complex arguments are always copied, and checked for writing off either end of the array on return from the compiled code (when a second copy is made). This also checks individual elements of character vectors passed to.This is not intended for routine use, but can be very helpful in finding segfaults in package code. In layout(), the limits on the grid size have been raised (again).
, the limits on the grid size have been raised (again). New simple provideDimnames() utility function.
utility function. Where methods for length() return a double value which is representable as an integer (as often happens for package Matrix), this is converted to an integer.
return a double value which is representable as an integer (as often happens for package Matrix), this is converted to an integer. Matrix indexing of dataframes by two-column numeric indices is now supported for replacement as well as extraction.
setNames() now has a default for its object argument, useful for a character result.
now has a default for its argument, useful for a character result. StructTS() has a revised additive constant in the loglik component of the result: the previous definition is returned as the loglik0 component. However, the help page has always warned of a lack of comparability of log-likelihoods for non-stationary models. (Suggested by Jouni Helske.)
has a revised additive constant in the component of the result: the previous definition is returned as the component. However, the help page has always warned of a lack of comparability of log-likelihoods for non-stationary models. (Suggested by Jouni Helske.) The logic in aggregate.formula() has been revised. It is now possible to use a formula stored in a variable; previously, it had to be given explicitly in the function call.
has been revised. It is now possible to use a formula stored in a variable; previously, it had to be given explicitly in the function call. install.packages() has a new argument quiet to reduce the amount of output shown.
has a new argument to reduce the amount of output shown. Setting an element of the graphics argument lwd to a negative or infinite value is now an error. Lines corresponding to elements with values NA or NaN are silently omitted.Previously the behaviour was device-dependent.
to a negative or infinite value is now an error. Lines corresponding to elements with values or are silently omitted.Previously the behaviour was device-dependent. Setting graphical parameters cex, col, lty, lwd and pch in par() now requires a length-one argument. Previously some silently took the first element of a longer vector, but not always when documented to do so.
,,, and in now requires a length-one argument. Previously some silently took the first element of a longer vector, but not always when documented to do so. Sys.which() when used with inputs which would be unsafe in a shell (e.g. absolute paths containing spaces) now uses appropriate quoting.
when used with inputs which would be unsafe in a shell (e.g. absolute paths containing spaces) now uses appropriate quoting. as.tclObj() has been extended to handle raw vectors. Previously, it only worked in the other direction. (Contributed by Charlie Friedemann, PR#14939.)
has been extended to handle raw vectors. Previously, it only worked in the other direction. (Contributed by Charlie Friedemann, PR#14939.) New functions cite() and citeNatbib() have been added, to allow generation of in-text citations from "bibentry" objects. A cite() function may be added to bibstyle() environments.
and have been added, to allow generation of in-text citations from objects. A function may be added to environments. A sort() method has been added for "bibentry" objects.
method has been added for objects. The bibstyle() function now defaults to setting the default bibliography style. The getBibstyle() function has been added to report the name of the current default style.
function now defaults to setting the default bibliography style. The function has been added to report the name of the current default style. scatter.smooth() now has an argument lpars to pass arguments to lines().
now has an argument to pass arguments to. pairs() has a new log argument, to allow some or all variables to be plotted on logarithmic scale. (In part, wish of PR#14919.)
has a new argument, to allow some or all variables to be plotted on logarithmic scale. (In part, wish of PR#14919.) split() gains a sep argument.
gains a argument. termplot() does a better job when given a model with interactions (and no longer attempts to plot interaction terms).
does a better job when given a model with interactions (and no longer attempts to plot interaction terms). The parser now incorporates code from Romain Francois’ parser package, to |
that Samsung has released a curved version of arguably their most popular range of phones, and marketed it as extensively as their traditional model, it’s clear that this design element isn’t going away any time soon. This trend became notable in 2013, after Samsung and LG released their Galaxy Round and G Flex models respectively, both with different ideas as to what a curved phone should be. The Galaxy Round probably got it wrong, all things considered, but its horizontal curvature allowed specific software features like their ‘roll effect’, which displayed notifications and useful information if the user had the Round face-up on a table and rolled it towards them. There are similar software benefits made possible by the sloped edge design that started with the Youm concepts and the Galaxy Note Edge. However, it’s the vertically curved display that may catch-on, especially considering the previously mentioned movement towards large smartphones, and there are a few good reasons for that.
Curving a smartphone along its vertical axis brings the top of the smartphone closer to where your thumb is, making it easier to reach the top of the display. Again, considering how many buttons are placed near the top of apps, along with the constantly used notification shade and quick settings, this kind of benefit can become very useful when looking at bigger form factors. Also, similar to the flip phones of old, vertical curves bring the microphone close to your mouth, and the earpiece close to your ear, hugging your face in a more natural way. This should improve call quality for both users, and definitely aids things like noise cancellation, where the phone has an even clearer idea of what audio should be kept, and what is background noise. There are other smaller advantages too, like the reduction in reflections on a curved display, excellent for when watching videos, and the simple fact that the curved shape fits your palm and pocket better, making the handset more comfortable to use. Lastly, there’s a potential benefit in terms of durability too. If a flat smartphone is dropped on to a flat surface on its front, there’s a high chance that the display will take the brunt of the shockwave, shattering the glass if the fall is from a height. Curving the phone brings the display away from direct contact with the floor, improving the chances of it coming away unscathed, as well as reducing the probability of you scratching it on a surface.
The Flexible and the Rugged
Phones like LG’s Flex and Flex 2 are also flexible, meaning that they’re less likely to be damaged by being bent, or having any stress put on them when being shoved into pockets or bags, something the iPhone 6+ could have really benefited from. We’ll ignore LG’s ‘self-healing’ backs for the moment, but durability is an underrated and important feature when it comes to devices we use every day. It’s clear we’ll be seeing more ‘fixed’ curved phones like the G4 and Samsung Nexus S moving forward, with LG being so confident in this fact, they predicted that almost half of the smartphone market will feature this design by 2018. Premium materials can get in the way of durability of course, and considering how highly those materials are currently valued it’s clear that flexibility won’t be particularly common until someone can figure out a way of joining the two ideals. For now though, if you want a rugged phone, you’ll need to stick to specifically designed models like Kyocera’s range and deal with their generally lower specs, or try to reach a compromise with water and dust-proof flagships like Sony’s Xperias, or the Galaxy S5.
The Future
So where’s all of this leading? We have a rich history and broad canvas of smartphone design to take influence from, and we’re starting to see the kind of technology that could make previously fantastical form-factors possible. An unnamed Samsung Display insider said earlier this year that “The industry believes that the commercialization of foldable smartphones will be possible in 2016”, and there’s no shortage of concepts for this kind of idea. Recent patents from Samsung back up this direction, showing foldable dual-screen designs and more. LG has also patented its own ideas and announced their expectations in the form of the roadmap laid out below. This kind of form-factor combines a number of the advantages from the examples we’ve looked at so far, and solves many of the problems that those solutions inevitably produce. The most obvious improvement here is the combination of a large screen, but a small overall size. By being able to fold your device in half, or in to thirds, you double or triple the size of your display, meaning the folded footprint of your phone remains easily pocketable. This means that your smartphone instantly transcends the lines between phone, phablet and tablet, making portable media consumption better by an order of magnitude.
Another great plus of foldable devices with large screens is that you could replicate full-size keyboards, by bending the display and propping it up to 60-80 degree angle, and turning the bottom half into a keyboard that sits flat on a desk. Touch typers everywhere would gain from this implementation, although it isn’t likely to solve the issue of lack of physical feedback while typing. Similarly planned but not realized yet is the world of rollable smartphones. This design takes the idea that the display can be wrapped around a cylinder that houses the core components, and is unfurled to provide a screen as large as you need. This is even further into the future than the foldable smartphone, but it performs the same kind of function, answering the same questions. Small size when inactive, maintaining portability, large size when in use, promoting productivity. But in reality, we’re not going to see really compelling versions of these form factors for a few years. The first that come to market could well be bulky, or just not perform well, due to having to cram hardware into ever smaller profiles. Battery life would definitely suffer, because currently no one has come up with battery that can bend.
Round Up
Since the practical implementation of the modern smartphone, we’ve essentially been fighting a battle on the fronts of productivity and performance and therefore the design has been forced, to a degree at least, to mold itself around the hardware. The straight candybar shape is useful for fitting circuit boards and components inside, allows for landscape and portrait display orientation, and stuck because it’s a simple way of achieving those goals. Naturally, we as users have settled almost unanimously on smartphones favoring this form factor, being the most common available. While this is no bad thing, given the points above, there is room to try to benefit the industry as a whole by having manufacturers spend more time looking at their designs, and less at the specifications of the device. We’ve seen how a bit of experimentation in physical design can quickly benefit the user where software cannot, and even if the design doesn’t work the first time around, future revisions can provide a solution to any of the problems faced. We’re talking mostly about flagships here, where the design element becomes extremely important to the customer who’s spending upwards of $700 on their new bit of kit, but it’s the side projects, the concepts and the prototypes that will lead the way in this process of evolution.
So here’s to R&D, trial and error, and the wacky ideas of those looking to further the industry. I think there’s a lot of potential beyond what we’ve become accustomed to, and personally I’m particularly excited to see what’s next in smartphone design.
What do you think of the design of current smartphones?
Let us know in the comments!Last night in the State of the Union Address, President Obama laid out an agenda to protect and grow America's middle class. From spurring innovation and creating high-skilled jobs here in the U.S. to protecting our homes and businesses, acting on climate change is crucial to achieving this vision.
Fueled by carbon pollution, climate change poses a serious threat to our economy. 2014 was the hottest year on record -- and as temperatures and sea levels rise, so do insurance premiums, property taxes, and food prices. The S&P 500 recently said climate change will continue to affect financial performance worldwide.
And when climate disasters strike -- like more frequent droughts, storms, fires, and floods -- low-income neighborhoods and communities of color are the hardest hit. Climate action is crucial to helping reduce barriers to opportunity that keep people out of the middle class.
That's why EPA is taking action, delivering on a key part of President Obama's Climate Action Plan with the first-ever carbon pollution standards for our nation's largest source -- power plants. When we act, we deliver the certainty companies need to drive innovation and create new jobs.
The American auto industry has come roaring back to life -- and it's greener than ever. President Obama visited Wayne, Michigan, earlier this month, where he spoke about his decision to rescue the floundering American auto industry in 2009, protecting millions of middle-class jobs. In exchange for the help, he demanded responsibility. Companies innovated environmental safeguards that have fueled the American auto industry's resurgence. We're now on track to double average gas mileage and cut carbon pollution from our cars in half by 2025 -- all while producing more vehicles than we have in a dozen years.
Climate action drives other transportation solutions, like high-speed rail. Earlier this month, I visited Fresno, California, for the groundbreaking of a new high-speed rail line connecting the northern and southern parts of the state. The initial phase of the project alone will create 20,000 jobs lasting at least five years -- with tens of thousands more jobs to come as the project is completed. High-speed rail travel will cut carbon pollution, smog and other dangerous pollutants -- helping residents in places like Fresno, who suffer from higher-than-average rates of asthma and respiratory illness and who are vulnerable to climate impacts.
EPA climate action also encourages energy efficiency. Existing technologies can help us use electricity more efficiently in our homes and businesses -- cutting carbon pollution and saving consumers money. Efficiency is always a win-win, because the cheapest kilowatt of electricity to generate is the one we never need in the first place.From the NYT:
Although certain kinds of engineers are in short supply in the United States, plenty of potential candidates exist for thousands of positions for which companies want to import guest workers, according to an analysis of three million résumés of job seekers in the United States.
The numbers, prepared by a company called Bright, which collects résumés and uses big data tools to connect job seekers with openings, enter a contentious debate over whether tech companies should be allowed to expand their rolls of guest workers. In lobbying Congress for more of these temporary visas, called H-1B visas, the technology industry argues there are not enough qualified Americans. Its critics, including labor groups, say bringing in guest workers is a way to depress wages in the industry.
Many economists take issue with the industry’s argument, too.[Big Data Analysis Adds to Guest Worker Debate, by Quentin Hardy, New York Times (blog), July 23, 2013]
To be precise, economics takes issue with the industry's argument. In contrast, economists, on average, have been shamefully reticent about pointing out that the Silicon Valley billionaires are denying the basic findings of economics (e.g., supply and demand) to add to their billions. Why? Maybe they figure if they are nice to the billionaires, the billionaires might be nice to them.
... “I didn’t expect this result,” said Steve Goodman, Bright’s chief executive.
Bright is based in San Francisco, and it makes money in part by placing qualified candidates with recruiters and, according to Mr. Goodman, employs workers using H-1B visas. “We’re Silicon Valley people, we just assumed the shortage was true,” Mr. Goodman said. “It turns out there is a little Silicon Valley groupthink going on about this, though it’s not comfortable to say that.”
For a few job categories, like computer systems analysts, there are relatively few “good fits” among American applicants, Bright found. Computer systems analyst jobs, considered relatively low-skilled in the tech world, had four openings for every American candidate. For others, like high-skilled computer programmers, there were more than enough potential candidates in the United States, the company found.
Bright’s study is unlikely to end the debate, partly because it rests on the company’s proprietary algorithm to determine who is a “good fit” for a particular job opening. Its algorithm uses a range of criteria, including work experience and education, but also work descriptions that indicated a high likelihood of other skills.
For the study, Bright looked at the job categories for which firms applied for H-1B visas, and then, looked at résumés of job seekers in the United States whose résumés matched those same categories.
Giovanni Peri, an economist at University of California, Davis, said that the Bright study was insufficient to determine whether there was a need for foreign engineers.
Hey, Giovanni, didn't you prove that in 2007, immigration was wonderful for California workers? Has anything happened economically in California since 2007? Seems like I read about something in the papers.
“It is the difference between job vacancies (demand) and unemployed with right qualifications (supply) that provides a measure of the excess (or not) of demand,” he said. “Knowing only the number of unemployed with right qualifications does not do it.”
The Senate immigration bill, passed last month, nearly doubles the number of H-1B visas that companies can seek every year.
... Bright’s analysis suggests a hierarchy in the industry that mirrors what has long been said about jobs like low-skilled agricultural or restaurant work: Americans could do these jobs, but are unlikely to accept the pay or conditions. As a result, the jobs are taken by immigrants.
The age of workers, which the study did not look at, may also play a role. Experienced American workers tend to be older in an industry that prizes youth.
A study conducted by a Seattle-based company called Payscale found that among 32 technology companies surveyed, only six had a work force with a median age over 35. At Monster, the job search portal, the median age was 30; at Google, 29; and at Facebook, 28. The median age of American workers over all is 42.3 years old, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Another reason for a youth bias is the cost of health insurance, which is immense these days. Peter Schaeffer's rough estimate is that health care (private and public) costs a staggering $12 per hour worked in the United States.
Yet, what do you think health insurance costs per worker at Facebook compared to, say, at General Electric? Not much, right? It's one reason you can get so Zuckerberg Rich in tech — you don't have to pay much for your employees' health insurance. Obviously, that's not the only reason, but it's pretty weird that ultra-rich companies like Facebook bear so little of the burden of health care.
But, in my experience, people tend to get old. So, shoving the costs of health care onto somebody else, while good for Mark Zuckerberg's net worth, is just a zero sum game, one that the tech billionaires are winning, which means that somebody else (i.e., you) are losing.
... Later that day, Bright was having a party, partly to attract new talent, he said, including foreign programmers here on H-1B visas.
Bright's report is here.GraphQL is a query language for APIs that abstracts multiple data sources and enables app developers to request data in the format they need, without requiring backend API changes. Because GraphQL decouples front- and backend, it can consolidate multiple APIs into a single endpoint.
GraphQL’s combination of expressiveness, performance, and flexibility has made it a runaway hit with developers, who find it more efficient than REST for many common use cases, and a natural fit for composing microservice calls.
In this post, I’ll create a GraphQL resolver using FaunaDB for a schema of posts, authors, and comments to support a blog engine. It’s ported from an original example for the Serverless Framework.
GraphQL commonly accesses a database to resolve queries. A typical pattern is that each domain object (author, blog post, comment) is backed by a microservice which queries a database or other resource. GraphQL queries these microservices in parallel and composes the results for the client. FaunaDB is well suited for GraphQL’s parallel execution model, with strong consistency that can protect against some of the uncertainties that come with accessing data via microservices.
Below you can see how FaunaDB’s query syntax compares with GraphQL. You’ll notice that GraphQL abstracts away concerns like pagination and indexes, presenting an app-focused surface area, while FaunaDB queries give more explicit control to allow for fine tuning and more complex queries.
I based this example on Kevin Old’s blog example, which demonstrates the Serverless Framework with GraphQL. For this post, I ported Kevin’s example from DynamoDB to FaunaDB, reducing the code and complexity in the process. I also upgraded the example from version 0.5 of the Framework to the current version.
One advantage of working with an existing project is that you can see how much code DynamoDB required for its care and feeding compared to the relative simplicity of using FaunaDB. (Go ahead and click that last link there and read a handful of FaunaDB queries. You’ll be glad you did.)
The service provides an API for a basic blog structure, including posts, authors and comments. The entire API consists of only 1 HTTP endpoint.
Getting Started
To run the demo below, you’ll need to do a few things first:
1. Install Serverless Framework with NodeV4+:
npm install serverless -g
2. Get the example service code by cloning our demo repo:
git clone https://github.com/fauna/serverless-graphql-blog cd serverless-graphql-blog
3. Inside the serverless-graphql-blog checkout, install dependencies:
npm install cd blogs npm install
Create a Database on FaunaDB
Now that you have the tools you’ll need for this demo, create a database on FaunaDB. This database will hold the data returned by your GraphQL endpoint.
1. If you don’t have a FaunaDB account, start a free trial.
2. Create a database in the FaunaDB Dashboard:
Click Create a Database. Enter the name graphql-blog-demo in the text box. Click Create Database again.
3. Get a key:
Click / in the upper left side of the screen. Click Manage Keys and Create a Key.
Name your key, assign it a server role, and choose the graphql-blog-demo database. Click Create Key. Your key’s secret will be displayed. Copy it to your serverless.yaml file, replacing SERVER_SECRET_FOR_YOUR_FAUNADB_DATABASE.
Deploy Your GraphQL Endpoint
Now that FaunaDB has some data to return via your GraphQL handler, it’s time to deploy that GraphQL endpoint so you can use it to query FaunaDB.
When you run the following command, be sure to note the POST endpoint URL it’s assigned.
serverless deploy
You’ll see a result like this, which contains your POST endpoint URL:
Service Information service: serverless-graphql-blog stage: dev region: us-east-1 api keys: None endpoints: POST - https://XYZ.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/blog/graphql functions: setupFaunaDB: serverless-graphql-blog-dev-setupFaunaDB sadiavas: serverless-graphql-blog-dev-sadiavas Serverless: Removing old service versions...
Invoke the private endpoint for creating the classes and indexes in your FaunaDB database. This creates the posts, authors, and comments classes, and indexes for loading posts by author.
serverless invoke --function setupFaunaDB
Querying with GraphiQL
The graphql-js endpoint provided in this Serverless project is compatible with GraphiQL, a query visualization tool.
Usage with GraphiQL.app (an Electron wrapper around GraphiQL) is recommended and shown below:
Sample GraphQL Queries
First, create an author and some of their posts.
To create an author, visit the authors class in the FaunaDB dashboard. The URL is: https://dashboard.fauna.com/db/graphql-blog-demo/classes/authors
Click “Create Instance”, enter some JSON-formatted data. Then save your author instance.
{ "name": "Chris", "id": "123" }
Create a blog post
Now, you can switch to GraphiQL to run a mutation to create a blog post. Make sure to enter the endpoint URL that was returned by serverless deploy. Then you can enter a GraphQL query like this to create a blog post for your author:
mutation createNewPost { post: createPost (id: "5", title: "Fifth post!", bodyContent: "Test content", author: "123") { id, title } }
Now that you’ve created some data, you can run other queries.
List of author names
{ authors { name } }
Results
{ "data": { "authors":[ {"name":"Chris"} ] } }
List of posts with id and title
{ posts { id, title } }
Results
{ "data": { "posts": [ { "id":"1", "title":"First Post Title" } ] } }
List of posts with id, title and nested author name
{ posts { id, title, author { name } } }
Results
{ "data": { "posts": [ { "id":"1", "title":"First Post Title", "author": { "name":"Chris" } } ] } }
Conclusion
If you’re using FaunaDB as the backend of an existing app, standing up a microservice to allow GraphQL access to your database is an architecturally sound approach, which works especially well if you are already taking advantage of FaunaDB’s native object-level access control. Your FaunaDB/GraphQL endpoint can also compose data from other APIs, backend services, and IT systems.
If you are already building microservices, FaunaDB can unify your data model. FaunaDB’s support for joins, constraints, and triggers lets you provide efficient access for each microservice, all while enforcing access control and validation logic.
Of course, you don’t have to build microservices to benefit from the combination of GraphQL and FaunaDB. FaunaDB’s query language is flexible in a similar way to GraphQL, but processed by the backend database. A mature GraphQL/FaunaDB connector will be able to consolidate requests across multiple GraphQL schema resolvers into a single FaunaDB query. This approach will add an additional layer of optimization potential to your GraphQL queries. Watch this space for more GraphQL updates.
Visit the FaunaDB Serverless GraphQL Blog README for more query examples, and notes about how you can contribute to the example.
If you enjoyed this topic and want to work on systems and challenges just like this, Fauna is hiring!Image caption The relationship between Steve Jobs and Google chairman Eric Schmidt soured over Android
Steve Jobs said he wanted to destroy Android and would spend all of Apple's money and his dying breath if that is what it took to do so.
The full extent of his animosity towards Google's mobile operating system is revealed in a forthcoming authorised biography.
Mr Jobs told author Walter Isaacson that he viewed Android's similarity to iOS as "grand theft".
Apple is suing several smartphone makers which use the Android software.
According to extracts of Mr Isaacson's book, obtained by the Associated Press, Mr Jobs said: "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
He is also quoted as saying: "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion [£25bn] in the bank, to right this wrong."
Sour times
Apple enjoyed a close relationship with Google prior to the launch of the Android system. Google products, including maps and search formed a key part of the iPhone's ecosystem.
I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this. Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder
At that time, Google's chief executive, now chairman, Eric Schmidt also sat on the board of Apple.
However, relations began to sour when Google unveiled Android in November 2007, 10 months after the iPhone first appeared.
In subsequent years, Apple rejected a number of Google programs from its App store, forcing the company to create less-integrated web app versions.
Android has subsequently enjoyed rapid adoption and now accounts for around 48% of global smartphone shipments, compared to 19% for Apple.
But its growth has not gone uncontested. Apple has waged an aggressive proxy-war against Android, suing a number of the hardware manufacturers which have adopted it for their tablets and smartphones.
Motorola was one of the first to be targeted, although it is Samsung that has borne the brunt of Mr Jobs' ire.
The South Korean firm is currently banned from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia and Germany because of a combination of patent infringements and "look and feel" similarities. A smartphone ban is also pending in the Netherlands.
Samsung is counter-suing Apple for infringing, it claims, several wireless technology patents which it holds the rights to.
Defence mechanism
Patents blogger Florian Mueller, who has been following the court cases closely, said Apple would be conscious of its past, where other companies exploited some of its early ideas.
"If Apple doesn't want the iPhone and iPad to be marginalised the way it happened to the Macintosh at the hands of the Wintel duopoly, it has to use the full force of its intellectual property to fend off the commoditization threat that Android represents," he told BBC News.
Mr Mueller - who has previously undertaken consulting work commissioned by Microsoft - was also critical of Eric Schmidt's dual role at the time: "The fact that Eric Schmidt stayed on Apple's board while he was preparing an iOS clone was an inexcusable betrayal of Steve Jobs' trust."
Mr Schmidt resigned from the Apple board in August 2009. He was later quoted by Bloomberg as saying: "I was on the board until I couldn't stay on the board anymore."Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis ( Italian: [ˈdiːno de lauˈrɛnti.is]; 8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian-American film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of World War II. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were nominated for Academy Awards. He also had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Early life [ edit ]
De Laurentiis was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti made by his father's pasta factory. He started his studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome in the years 1937–1938 then interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.[1]
Career [ edit ]
Film production [ edit ]
Following his first movie, L'ultimo Combattimento (1940), Laurentiis produced nearly 150 films during the next seven decades. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into production. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced Italian neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1949) and the Fellini classics La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti. In the 1960s, Laurentiis built his own studio facilities, although these financially collapsed during the 1970s. During this period, though, De Laurentiis produced such films as Barabbas (1961), a Christian religious epic; The Bible: In the Beginning (1966), Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, an imitation James Bond film; Navajo Joe (1966), a spaghetti western; Anzio (1968), a World War II film; Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), both successful comic book adaptations; and The Valachi Papers (1972), made to coincide with the popularity of The Godfather.[citation needed]
De Laurentiis relocated to the US in 1976,[2] and became an American citizen in 1986.[3] In the 1980s he had his own studio, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG), based in Wilmington, North Carolina. The building of the studio made Wilmington a center of film and television production.[4]
De Laurentiis made a number of successful and acclaimed films, including The Scientific Cardplayer (1972), Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Mandingo (1975), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Shootist (1976), Drum (1976), Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977), Ragtime (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Blue Velvet (1986) and Breakdown (1997). De Laurentiis' name became well known through the 1976 King Kong remake, which was a commercial hit; Lipstick (1976), a rape and revenge drama; Orca (1977), a killer whale film; The White Buffalo (1977), a western; the disaster movie Hurricane (1979); the remake of Flash Gordon (1980); David Lynch's Dune (1984); and King Kong Lives (1986). De Laurentiis also made several adaptations of Stephen King's works, including The Dead Zone (1983), Cat's Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985), and Maximum Overdrive (1986). De Laurentiis's company was involved with the horror sequels Halloween II (1981), Evil Dead II (1987) and Army of Darkness (1992).
De Laurentiis also produced the first Hannibal Lecter film, Manhunter (1986), an adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon. He passed on adapting the novels' sequel, The Silence of the Lambs (1991),[citation needed] but produced the two follow-ups, Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), a re-adaptation of the novel. He also produced the prequel Hannibal Rising (2007), which tells the story of how Hannibal becomes a serial killer.
DDL Foodshow [ edit ]
In the 1980s, de Laurentiis owned and operated DDL Foodshow, a specialty retailer with two gourmet Italian markets in New York City and Los Angeles.[5]
Family [ edit ]
His brief first marriage in Italy was annulled.[6] In 1949, De Laurentiis married actress Silvana Mangano, with whom he had four children: Veronica; Raffaella, who is also a film producer; Federico, another producer who died in a plane crash in 1981 (Dino's movie Dune is dedicated to him); and Francesca. De Laurentiis and Mangano divorced in 1988;[7] she died in 1989. In 1990, he married Martha Schumacher, who produced many of his films since 1985, and with whom he had two daughters, Carolyna and Dina. One of his grandchildren is Giada De Laurentiis, host of Everyday Italian, Behind the Bash, Giada at Home, and Giada's Weekend Getaways on Food Network. He was the younger brother of Luigi De Laurentiis, who became a film producer after Dino did, and uncle of Aurelio De Laurentiis, also a producer and the chairman of S.S.C. Napoli football club.
Awards and recognitions [ edit ]
In 1958, he won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for producing La Strada, back when producers and directors would win the award instead of the country it was made in.
In 2001, he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[citation needed]
In 2012, he received the America Award of the Italy-USA Foundation (in memory).[citation needed]
Death [ edit ]
De Laurentiis died on 10 November 2010 at his residence in Beverly Hills at the age of 91.[8][9][10][11]
Selected filmography [ edit ]
Films produced [ edit ]It’s no secret that a good portion of the left today considers science profoundly uncool. A slight affinity with it persists among a majority, but few asides of scorn by the continental philosophers influential in the contemporary leftist canon see spirited response and science’s most prominent champions remain dated historical figures like Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus. Indeed there’s a lingering whiff of technocratic stodginess and death that the word “science” has never quite shaken. Those leftists most associated with it have a tendency to either be authoritarians looking to legitimize near-fascist narratives, or doe-eyed activists enchanted by saccharine visions of self-managed bureaucracies and The Meeting That Never Ends. To a great many who identify as radicals “science” appears in our lives primarily as a place our various enemies habitually retreat to conjure the authority their shoddy arguments couldn’t.
Taken in this light as a sort of nebulous divinity — spoken of with explicit capitalization and the occasional flourishing exclamation mark — “Science!” often strikes like a character in the tales we encounter throughout our life, gradually accumulating a jumble of associations and personality traits. Tales that are almost uniform across our society. Everyone knows the high school story of Science! in rough terms: The belief that the entirety of our reality can be divided up into little atoms and facts. Gleaned from numbers, brutally harvested, and then locked into little jars. Except — the story goes — it’s never quite capable of successfully reducing us to these accounting sheets; all it succeeds at is calling for xenocidal policies, unleashing catastrophes, and, in its insane pursuit of infinite knowledge (ie domination) over nature, consuming everything and everyone in its wake. Science! is surely just another way of expressing the logic of empire and capitalism. Science! is a religious institution that brokers no alternatives. Science! is nuclear weapons, GMO killer seeds, animal testing, bulldozers, nazi medical experiments, Jurassic Park, and Christopher Columbus. It may have some more anodyne faces, but the affair as a whole is inseparable from destructive hubris and cold inhumanity.
Once you’ve seen this pattern or narrative it’s all too easy to fit everything into it.
Chances are you don’t directly experience science in your everyday life. But you do encounter its glossy logo incessantly. In the news stories trolls cite against you to “prove” something about gender roles. In the stickers on giant technological devices. If it’s not sneering Dawkins fans telling you Science! says they’re right then it’s the horror tales repeated incessantly by a fearful popular culture. We’ve watched thousands of movies moralizing about “playing god” by seeking understanding, to the point where we just assume such cinematic mistakes are a realistic thing that totally happens. Someone says “the Large Hadron Collider could create a blackhole” and we partially believe them because like we’ve seen this movie before and further we immediately leap to our Hollywood notion of a “blackhole” where it eats the earth (rather than immediately evaporating into hawking radiation). There’s literally a terrorist organization trying to murder graduate students over a fear (“grey goo”) they admit they don’t understand at all. But again, we’ve seen this movie.
Okay, sure, scientists may occasionally manage to poke their heads through the media wall and point out that pollution is happening or that actual neuroscience doesn’t back patriarchal narratives, but that’s clearly just them cleaning up after their colleagues, their own mistakes, their own colonizer logic. So many terrible people cite science as a justification there must be something to it. And who could deny that ozone depletion and deforestation wouldn’t have happened in the first place if we weren’t making pencils and measuring devices for those scientists to scribble down their findings. (Don’t talk to us about scale or ridiculous differences in orders of magnitude! Numbers remind us of how much math class sucked and any reference to scale proves it’s “just a matter of degree.” And anyway all of industrial society surely depends entirely on all the rest of it! It’s a package deal!) Even if Science! has good parts, it surely also has a Dark Side and dare not be let free to its own desires. At best it’s a tool capable of some good (if tightly enslaved) and much evil (if embraced for its own sake). But if it is just a tool it’s totally the master’s tool. And at worst? At worst Science! is an insane power fantasy of our rulers that has motivated and facilitated the enslavement of the entire world.
Science! is — in short — accepted on face value. It is taken more or less as what we see called Science! almost everywhere. An unlucky few of us are granted closer experience, stumbling into soul-sucking engineering jobs for companies or academic sweatshops, specializing in what boils down to optimizing a single widget. Science! is on the nametag. Science! is on the diploma. Science! is on our report. Science! is how our paymasters excuse the damage our widget causes in military or economic application. Science! must surely be this.
You can tell I think this is all patent nonsense. A similar intentionally misattributed and surface-deep tale could be told about “Anarchy” from the newscaster desks to the Hot Topic stickers.
Yet the pull of such narratives are all consuming. And like any good tale, they typically have a wide enough array of moving parts to make any attempt at thorough critique prohibitively involved. Even if you were to examine every association, assumed causation, repeated lie, and misattribution it’s unlikely someone enraptured by this narrative would be able to hold it all in their attention at the same time. They’d always feel confident you hadn’t addressed enough. And in the face of such complexity, they might as well default on whatever bundle of associations they already have. In any case this narrative is dressed up as a ‘critique’ of something presently in power — what? do you oppose critiques? are you defending those in power?? surely the status quo needs no more defenders!
As with conspiracy theories, if you hold a believer’s nose to the tricks or holes in their tale they’ll sincerely retort that surely every other possible story depends on equivalent slights of hand. Time and time again I hear from hip radicals the same derision with science dressed up as enlightenment: “All models are wrong, it’s just that some can be useful self-deceptions.” If everything’s equally just a myth, equally ungrounded, or politically suspect, you might as well settle on whatever seems like it would be the most useful story given your psychology and context.
A Context of Unending Appropriation
Among other peculiarities I have the dubious distinction of having been raised by a true believer in “Christian Science.” If you’re unfamiliar with the religion think less Scientology than a cranky first-wave feminist sort of Mormonism. Which is mostly just to say a distinctly 19th century American invention with a tenuous |
lecturers the right of renewal.
The pay scales for sessional lecturers will increase by two per cent for the 2018-2019 academic year.
Impact on student learning conditions
Even with the improvements, things are still not ideal. Lecturers say students can feel the impact most. Bose said sessionals expend energy on stress that could be put into teaching.
Robinson, a sessional years before joining CAUT, recalled a student of his who couldn’t find references for graduate school since his long-term professors had been on contract and were no longer with the institution.
Robinson added contract faculty were less likely to be critical of the administration or take risks in the classroom out of fear their contract won’t be renewed.
“Contract faculty often don’t exercise their academic freedom, and I think that hurts the quality of education for everybody.”
Gorrie said there is stigma to the term “sessional” that can keep instructors from telling students their position, even though most have years of experience and PhDs in their field.
“We have less security, we get paid less, but we still love our jobs. We love our research. We love our students. We love our teaching. We shouldn’t want to do anything else.”We are sorry, you need to be a subscriber to watch this video
We are sorry, you need to be a subscriber to watch this video
Two Burmese men have confessed to murdering Hannah Witheridge and David Miller, the British backpackers who were bludgeoned to death last month on the holiday island of Koh Tao, Thai police claimed today.
The men, who have not been named by police, were reported to have admitted attacking the pair in order to rape Ms Witheridge, 23.
Thai detectives — who have repeatedly named suspects during the investigation, only to clear them soon after — said that they were awaiting the results of DNA tests to establish whether there was a match with traces of sexual activity found on Ms Witheridge’s body.
Post mortem examinations of the murdered tourists suggested that Ms Witheridge was raped by two men before being bludgeoned with a metal garden…“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain. Time to die.”
Roy Batty’s final words at the end of Blade Runner might not be the most famous movie villain monologue—Jack Nicholson’s from A Few Good Men and Orson Welles’ from The Third Man probably beat it out—but it is the most sympathetic.
In the fictional Blade Runner universe, Jan. 8, 2016, marks the birthday incept for this Nexus 6 model replicant, who was played by Rutger Hauer in the groundbreaking 1982 sci-fi film. (Fellow replicants Pris and Leon were born Feb. 14, 2016, and April 10, 2017, respectively, in case you were wondering when you need to send cards.) So near the date of Batty’s biological creation is an apt time to take a look at a recent post in the Movies community: Which movie villain’s motives do you agree with?
Reddit user H4RJ posed that question and used tech billionaire Richmond Valentine’s plan to save the planet by wiping out a good chunk of the human race in Kingsman: The Secret Service to illustrate that idea.
“In Kingsman, Samuel L. Jacksons character wants to reduce the overpopulated world. Just imagine no more traffic or waiting in line!”
Empathy for Batty and his tragic circumstances—a sophisticated clone with a four-year life-span manufactured by humans to serve humans—also ran high in the thread. So what if Batty insisted on using both his thumbs to see how deep his creator’s eye sockets went?
What other bad guys did redditors think were misunderstood? Here are some of their suggestions and the reasons why those cinematic criminals and ne’er do wells might’ve had the right idea after all.
Hannibal Lecter
Magneto in the X-Men Films
The Shark in Jaws
The Machines in The Matrix
Principal Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Syndrome in The Incredibles
Fletcher in Whiplash
Prof. Hinkle in Frosty the Snowman
Technically, this is a TV villain, but we snuck him in because we always thought he got a raw deal, too.Select Your Options:
Gift Wrapping Option?
We always look for ways to give our customers more options for their purchases from us. Below is an explanation of our gift wrapping service. If there is no drop down options for our gift wrapping service, that means that option is not available for that particular item.
Include a packing slip so the recipient knows who it's from.
Keep the gift a surprise by concealing items that ship in only the manufacturer's original box.
We will gift wrap the item based on your selection. The item(s) will then be placed in a protective box for shipping.
Here are examples of the sizes of packages and which gift wrap service these fall under.
Small Items: Accessories, Apparel, Shoes
Medium Items: Bowling Balls, Single Bowling Bags
Large Items: Double Ball Bowling Bags, Single and Double Roller Bags
X-Large Items: 3 and 4 ball roller bags.
If there is no drop down options for our gift wrapping service, that means that option is not available for that particular item.
No Thank You
CLOSE XWhat do researchers, socially active people, young politicians, computer programmers and activists have in common?
What do researchers, socially active people, young politicians, computer programmers and activists have in common? The answer: a passion for contributing to the basic-income experiment.
Our bus was crammed with ideas, inquisitive minds and, naturally, Post-It stickers in various colours when we set out for Finland’s first Basic Income Hack, held on 4 March 2016 in Vuosaari, Helsinki.
Ten teams, 40 participants and a handful of organisers worked for 32 hours on finding new perspectives on basic income and solving the associated problems. This two-day session generated a dozen or so interesting ideas, the best of which, The cost-of-living bonus – a solution to the problems associated with housing allowance (Perustulon elikustannuslisä) and Basic income game – a simulator for illustrating the impact of life choices on the public economy (Perustulopeli) were rewarded at a final session arranged at Sitra on 8 March 2016.
Basic income arouses passions
As part of the current Government Programme, the basic-income experiment has been one of the political hot potatoes of late 2015 and early 2016. The fragmentation of work on the one hand and the bureaucratic traps associated with social benefits on the other have spurred the discussion on – and brought us a step closer to – a basic-income experiment.
If welfare is complex, so too are the preparations for a basic-income experiment. The question of the amount paid, the type of experiment conducted and the recipients’ obligations have kept the discussion lively. This situation is not helped by the fact that no proper basic-income experiments have ever been conducted before. Instead, the concept is being widely discussed around the world, perhaps more than ever.
“Because this is a crucial experiment which could entail a massive change in Finnish society, it is critical that we listen to those affected by the change – the people,” says Vesa-Matti Lahti from Sitra.
Of the more than 60 people who registered for this developer event, 40 – in 10 teams – were selected in advance. Each had their own perspective on basic income. While some were interested in incentive traps, others focused on cutting through red tape, while a third group sought facts and knowledge based on a burning desire to contribute to a major social policy reform.
Some ideas addressed problems related to the basic-income experiment, such as Selective sampling for the basic-income experiment (Valikoiva otanta perustulokokeiluun), and The cost-of-living bonus – a solution to the problems associated with housing allowance (Perustulon elinkustannuslisä – ratkaisu asumistuen ongelmiin). Other participants sought ways of combining the Nordic welfare state with the concept of a basic income. These ideas included A progressive negative income tax (Progressiivisen negatiivinen tulovero) and Basic income in the Nordic welfare society (Perustulo pohjoismaisessa hyvinvointivaltiossa). The basic income game (Perustulopeli) and The basic-income calculator (Perustulolaskuri) sought to illustrate both the costs associated with a basic income and its effect on life choices in terms of influencing behaviour. Another focus was the communications aspect, with the teams Congratulations! and Scenario Building (Moodhack) emphasising the importance of visualisation and clear language when communicating on the basic-income experiment. The Good Village (Hyvä kylä) and Guarantee Network (Takuuverkko) teams put their faith in individuals – they viewed basic income as involving a bonfire of red tape, with carrot-and-stick-based bureaucracy replaced by trust-based collaboration.
The following ideas were proposed at the Basic Income Hack
Valikoiva otanta perustulokokeiluun (Selective sampling in the basic-income experiment). This team sought to enrich the results of the basic-income experiment by combining them with existing research on social and welfare services. As its name suggests, the team proposed that basic income be applied to a number of special groups chosen through selective sampling.
Perustulon elinkustannuslisä – ratkaisu asumistuen ongelmiin (The cost-of-living bonus – a solution to the problems associated with housing allowance). This team sought a solution to problems associated with housing allowance, such as incentive traps and continuous rent rises. The idea was to identify a social welfare model that would retain the benefits of the basic income while eliminating problems associated with housing allowance.
A team known as Takuuverkko (The guarantee network) also focused on poverty traps. It sought a basic-income model that would guarantee a sufficient income level for people all over Finland, while stimulating activity and creating added value throughout society.
Hyväkylä (Good Village) was an experiment in activating people and communities to shift from a money-centred basic-income concept towards a community-based approach. Community and trust took centre stage in this experiment.
The Moodhack – Basic Income group aimed at a visual model that would present various scenarios on how a basic income would lead to behavioural changes in people, organisations and society.
Onneksi olkoon, sinut on valittu! (Congratulations! You have been chosen!). This team focused on the communicative aspects of the basic-income experiment. It envisaged a citizen-centred information pack on the impacts and opportunities of the basic income at various stages of life. The information pack was to be posted to the people selected to participate in the basic-income experiment.
Taantuvasti progressiivinen veromalli (The regressively progressive taxation model) is a completely new basic-income model. The team in question developed a mathematical function which provides a simple way of combing income tax with welfare. This model can also be regarded as an application of the reverse income tax, but with a strong mathematical basis. It seeks to combine the progressive income tax typical of the Nordic countries with a welfare system that incentivises people.
Perustulolaskuri – Miten perustuloa vaikuttaa sinuun? (The basic income calculator – how will the basic income affect you?). Understanding the concept of a basic income is difficult. The basic-income calculator provides citizens with an easy-to-use tool for comparing their current income with the one they would receive under the basic-income experiment. This team created a visual simulator which allows gamers to assign a value to the choices made by various groups on their earnings and use of time, and presents the resulting financial effects.
Perustulopelissä (The basic-income game) simulated the impact that people’s life choices had on the public economy, in order to encourage participants – in a simple way – to make personal life choices.
Omat Palvelut – palvelupoluista palvelumaisemaan (My Services – from service paths to a service landscape). The basic income has been criticised for leaving people to their own devices and failing to provide sufficient incentives. The Yleisturva (general protection) model rewards people by providing them with increased benefits. This model, with its acclaimed link to services, is created using the profiling and self-assessment feature of the Omat Palvelut (My Services) application.
All of the above ideas can be found on the website of the hackathon here (in Finnish).
Whether or not some of the ideas will find its way in the proposals of the Kela-led consortium (Kela – Social Insurance Institution of Finland), one thing is for sure: Finland has taken a step closer to a genuine experimental culture. It is also great to see how many people were willing to devote most of their weekend to an important social experiment. As one of the journalists put it: it is wonderful that 40 people were willing just to help Kela. This is surely positive news.
The Basic Income Hack was arranged by Demos Helsinki and Open Knowledge Finland as part of a Kela-led survey on the basic income. The Basic Income Hack was based on the hackathon method, which is used for problem-solving by professionals such as computer programmers and is increasingly being applied to societal problem-solving and the testing of ideas. A hackathon is not a seminar, meeting or conference. It is closer to a brainstorming session involving the cross-pollination of ideas.“Check it out. It’s actually a jet engine,” says Johnathan Goodwin, with a low whistle. “This thing is gonna be even cooler than I thought.” We’re hunched on the floor of Goodwin’s gleaming workshop in Wichita, Kansas, surrounded by the shards of a wooden packing crate. Inside the wreckage sits his latest toy–a 1985-issue turbine engine originally designed for the military. It can spin at a blistering 60,000 rpm and burn almost any fuel. And Goodwin has some startling plans for this esoteric piece of hardware: He’s going to use it to create the most fuel-efficient Hummer in history.
advertisement
advertisement
Goodwin, a 37-year-old who looks like Kevin Costner with better hair, is a professional car hacker. The spic-and-span shop is filled with eight monstrous trucks and cars–Hummers, Yukon XLs, Jeeps–in various states of undress. His four tattooed, twentysomething grease monkeys crawl all over them with wrenches and welding torches. Goodwin leads me over to a red 2005 H3 Hummer that’s up on jacks, its mechanicals removed. He aims to use the turbine to turn the Hummer into a tricked-out electric hybrid. Like most hybrids, it’ll have two engines, including an electric motor. But in this case, the second will be the turbine, Goodwin’s secret ingredient. Whenever the truck’s juice runs low, the turbine will roar into action for a few seconds, powering a generator with such gusto that it’ll recharge a set of “supercapacitor” batteries in seconds. This means the H3’s electric motor will be able to perform awesome feats of acceleration and power over and over again, like a Prius on steroids. What’s more, the turbine will burn biodiesel, a renewable fuel with much lower emissions than normal diesel; a hydrogen-injection system will then cut those low emissions in half. And when it’s time to fill the tank, he’ll be able to just pull up to the back of a diner and dump in its excess french-fry grease–as he does with his many other Hummers. Oh, yeah, he adds, the horsepower will double–from 300 to 600. “Conservatively,” Goodwin muses, scratching his chin, “it’ll get 60 miles to the gallon. With 2,000 foot-pounds of torque. You’ll be able to smoke the tires. And it’s going to be superefficient.” He laughs. “Think about it: a 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and does zero to 60 in five seconds!” This is the sort of work that’s making Goodwin famous in the world of underground car modders. He is a virtuoso of fuel economy. He takes the hugest American cars on the road and rejiggers them to get up to quadruple their normal mileage and burn low-emission renewable fuels grown on U.S. soil–all while doubling their horsepower. The result thrills eco-evangelists and red-meat Americans alike: a vehicle that’s simultaneously green and mean. And word’s getting out. In the corner of his office sits Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 Jeep Wagoneer, which Goodwin is converting to biodiesel; soon, Neil Young will be shipping him a 1960 Lincoln Continental to transform into a biodiesel–electric hybrid. His target for Young’s car? One hundred miles per gallon.
advertisement
This is more than a mere American Chopper–style makeover. Goodwin’s experiments point to a radically cleaner and cheaper future for the American car. The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered–the poor man’s version of a Goodwin conversion–he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50% less fuel and produce 80% fewer emissions. On a full-size gas-guzzler, he figures the kit earns its money back in about a year–or, on a regular car, two–while hitting an emissions target from the outset that’s more stringent than any regulation we’re likely to see in our lifetime. “Johnathan’s in a league of his own,” says Martin Tobias, CEO of Imperium Renewables, the nation’s largest producer of biodiesel. “Nobody out there is doing experiments like he is.” Nobody–particularly not Detroit. Indeed, Goodwin is doing precisely what the big American automakers have always insisted is impossible. They have long argued that fuel-efficient and alternative-fuel cars are a hard sell because they’re too cramped and meek for our market. They’ve lobbied aggressively against raising fuel-efficiency and emissions standards, insisting that either would doom the domestic industry. Yet the truth is that Detroit is now getting squeezed from all sides. This fall, labor unrest is brewing, and after decades of inertia on fuel-economy standards, Congress is jockeying to boost the target for cars to 35 mpg, a 10 mpg jump (which is either ridiculously large or ridiculously small, depending on whom you ask). More than a dozen states are enacting laws requiring steep reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Meanwhile, gas prices have hovered around $3 per gallon for more than a year. And European and Japanese carmakers are flooding the market with diesel and hybrid machines that get up to 40% better mileage than the best American cars; some, such as Mercedes’s new BlueTec diesel sedans, deliver that kind of efficiency and more horsepower. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, in short, have a choice: Cede still more ground–or mount a technological counterattack. Goodwin’s work proves that a counterattack is possible, and maybe easier than many of us imagined. If the dream is a big, badass ride that’s also clean, well, he’s there already. As he points out, his conversions consist almost entirely of taking stock GM parts and snapping them together in clever new ways. “They could do all this stuff if they wanted to,” he tells me, slapping on a visor and hunching over an arc welder. “The technology has been there forever. They make 90% of the components I use.” He doesn’t have an engineering degree; he didn’t even go to high school: “I’ve just been messing around and seeing what I can do.” All of which raises an interesting possibility. Has this guy in a far-off Kansas garage figured out the way to save Detroit? America’s most revolutionary innovations, it has long been said, sprang from the ramshackle dens of amateurs. Thomas Edison was a home-schooled dropout who got his start tinkering with battery parts; Chester Carlson invented the photocopier in his cramped Long Island kitchen. NASA, desperate for breakthroughs to help it return to the moon, has set up million-dollar prizes to encourage private citizens to come forward with any idea, no matter how crazy. As the theory goes, only those outside big industries can truly reinvent them.
advertisement
Goodwin is certainly an outsider. He grew up in a dirt-poor Kansas family with six siblings and by age 13 began taking on piecework in local auto shops to help his mother pay the bills. He particularly enjoyed jamming oversized engines into places no one believed they’d fit. He put truck engines inside Camaros, Grand Nationals, and Super Bees; he even put a methanol-fueled turbocharger on a tiny Yamaha Banshee four-wheeler. “We took that thing from 35 horsepower to 208,” he recalls. “It was crazy. We couldn’t put enough fins on the back to keep it on the ground.” After dropping out of school in the seventh grade, he made a living by buying up totaled cars and making them as good as new. “That,” he says, “was my school.” Along the way, Goodwin also adopted two views common among Americans, but typically thought to be in conflict: a love of big cars and a concern about the environment. He is an avid, if somewhat nonideological, environmentalist. He believes global warming is a serious problem, that reliance on foreign oil is a mistake, and that butt-kicking fuel economy is just good for business. But Goodwin is also guiltlessly addicted to enormous, brawling rides, precisely the sort known to suck down Saudi gasoline. (I spied one lonely small sports car in the corner of his garage, but he confessed he has no plans to work on it right now.) When he picked me up from my hotel, he drove a four-door 2008 Cadillac Escalade XL that should have had its own tugboat. He parallel parked it in one try. If Goodwin is an artist, though, his canvas has been the Hummer. His first impression of the thing was inauspicious. In 1999, he bought an H1 in Denver and began driving it back to Kansas. Within 50 miles, the bolts in the transmission shook loose, forcing him to stop to fix it. “By the time I made it home, after three roadside repairs, I pretty much knew that the Hummer was not all it should be,” he told me. He didn’t think much of the 200 horsepower engine, either, which did “zero to 60 in two days. It was a piece of junk.” So Goodwin decided to prove that environmentalism and power could go together–by making his new lemon into exhibit A. First, he pulled the gas engine so he could drop in a Duramax V8, GM’s core diesel for large trucks. Diesel technology is crucial to all of Goodwin’s innovations because it offers several advantages over traditional gasoline engines. Pound for pound, diesel offers more power and torque; it’s also inherently more efficient, offering up to 40% better mileage and 20% lower emissions in engines of comparable size. What’s more, many diesel engines can easily accept a wide range of biodiesel–from the high-quality stuff produced at refineries to the melted chicken grease siphoned off from the local KFC. “Think about it,” Goodwin laughs. “A 5,000-pound vehicle that gets 60 miles to the gallon and will do zero to 60 in five seconds!” Putting a diesel engine in the Hummer, however, required Goodwin to crack GM’s antitheft system, which makes it a pain to swap out the engine. In that system, the engine communicates electronically with the body, fuel supply, and ignition; if you don’t have all the original components, the car won’t start. Goodwin jerry-rigged a set of cables to trick the engine into believing the starter system had broken, sending it into “fail-safe mode”–a backdoor mechanism installed at the factory. (At one point in his story, Goodwin wanders over to a battered cardboard box in the corner of the garage and hauls out an octopuslike tangle of wires–“the MacGyver,” his hacking device. “I could have sold this for a lot of money on eBay,” he chuckles.) Once he’d picked the car’s lock, Goodwin installed the Duramax and a five-speed Allison–the required transmission for a Duramax, which also helps give it race-car-like control and a rapid take off. After five days’ worth of work, the Hummer was getting about 18 mpg–double the factory 9 mpg–and twice the original horsepower. He drove it over to a local restaurant and mooched some discarded oil from its deep fryer, strained the oil through a pair of jeans, and poured it into the engine. It ran perfectly.
advertisement
But Goodwin wanted more. While researching alternative fuels, he learned about the work of Uli Kruger, a German who has spent decades in Australia exploring techniques for blending fuels that normally don’t mix. One of Kruger’s systems induces hydrogen into the air intake of a diesel engine, producing a cascade of emissions-reducing and mileage-boosting effects. The hydrogen, ignited by the diesel combustion, burns extremely clean, producing only water as a by-product. It also displaces up to 50% of the diesel needed to fuel the car, effectively doubling the diesel’s mileage and cutting emissions by at least half. Better yet, the water produced from the hydrogen combustion cools down the engine, so the diesel combustion generates fewer particulates–and thus fewer nitrogen-oxide emissions. “You can feed it hydrogen, diesel, biodiesel, corn oil–pretty much anything but water.” “It’s really a fantastic chain reaction, all these good things happening at once,” Kruger tells me. He has also successfully introduced natural gas–a ubiquitous and generally cheap fuel–into a diesel-burning engine, which likewise doubles the mileage while slashing emissions. In another system, he uses heat from the diesel engine to vaporize ethanol to the point where it can be injected into the diesel combustion chambers as a booster, with similar emissions-cutting effects. Goodwin began building on Kruger’s model. In 2005, he set to work adapting his own H1 Hummer to burn a combination of hydrogen and biodiesel. He installed a Duramax in the Hummer and plopped a carbon-fiber tank of supercompressed hydrogen into the bed. The results were impressive: A single tank of hydrogen lasted for 700 miles and cut the diesel consumption in half. It also doubled the horsepower. “It reduces your carbon footprint by a huge, huge amount, but you still get all the power of the Duramax,” he says, slapping the H1 on the quarter panel. “And you can feed it hydrogen, diesel, biodiesel, corn oil–pretty much anything but water.” Two years ago, Goodwin got a rare chance to show off his tricks to some of the car industry’s most prominent engineers. He tells me the story: He was driving a converted H2 to the SEMA show, the nation’s biggest annual specialty automotive confab, and stopped en route at a Denver hotel. When he woke up in the morning, there were 20 people standing around his Hummer. Did I run over somebody? he wondered. As it turned out, they were engineers for GM, the Hummer’s manufacturer. They noticed that Goodwin’s H2 looked modified. “Does it have a diesel engine in it?” “Yeah,” he said. “No way,” they replied.
advertisement
He opened the hood, “and they’re just all in and out and around the valves and checking it out,” he says. They asked to hear it run, sending a stab of fear through Goodwin. He’d filled it up with grease from a Chinese restaurant the day before and was worried that the cold morning might have solidified the fuel. But it started up on the first try and ran so quietly that at first they didn’t believe it was really on. “When you start a diesel engine up on vegetable oil,” Goodwin says, “you turn the key, and you hear nothing. Because of the lubricating power of the oil, it’s just so smooth. Whisper quiet. And they’re like, ‘Is it running? Yeah, you can hear the fan going.'” One engineer turned and said, “GM said this wouldn’t work.” “Well,” Goodwin replied, “here it is.” Goodwin’s feats of engineering have become gradually more visible over the past year. Last summer, Imperium Renewables contacted MTV’s show Pimp My Ride about creating an Earth Day special in which Goodwin would convert a muscle car to run on biodiesel. The show chose a ’65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he’d doubled its mileage to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 horsepower. As a stunt, MTV drag-raced the Impala against a Lamborghini on California’s Pomona Raceway. “The Impala blew the Lamborghini away,” says Kevin Kluemper, the lead calibration engineer for GM’s Allison transmission unit, who’d flown down to help with the conversion. Schwarzenegger, who was on the set that day, asked Goodwin on the spot to convert his Wagoneer to biodiesel. Observers of Goodwin’s work say his skill lies in an uncanny ability to visualize a mechanical system in precise detail, long before he picks up a wrench. (Goodwin says he does much of his mental work during long drives.) “He has talent unknown to any mortal,” says Mad Mike, Pimp My Ride‘s host. “He has this ability to see things so exactly, and I still don’t know how he does it.” For his part, Goodwin argues he’s merely “a problem solver. Most people try to make things more complicated than they are.” He speaks of the major carmakers with a sort of mild disdain: If he can piece together cleaner vehicles out of existing GM parts and a bit of hot-rod elbow grease, why can’t they bake that kind of ingenuity into their production lines? Prod him enough on the subject and his mellowness peels away, revealing a guy fired by an almost manic frustration. “Everybody should be driving a plug-in vehicle right now,” he complains, in one of his laconic engineering lectures, as we wander through the blistering Kansas heat to a nearby Mexican restaurant. “I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we’re good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day.
advertisement
“Detroit could do all this stuff overnight if it wanted to,” he adds. In reality, Goodwin’s work has begun to influence some of Detroit’s top auto designers, but through curious and circuitous routes. In 2005, Tom Holm, the founder of EcoTrek, a nonprofit that promotes the use of alternative fuels, heard about Goodwin through the Hummer-junkie grapevine and hired him. When Holm showed GM the vehicles Goodwin converted, the company was duly impressed. Internally, Hummer executives had long been looking for a way to blunt criticism of the H2’s gas-guzzling tendencies and saw Goodwin’s vehicles as an object lesson in what was possible. So GM decided to flip the switch: It announced the same year that, beginning in 2008, it would convert its gasoline Hummers to run on ethanol; by 2010, it said, Hummers would be biodiesel-compatible. “It was an influence,” concedes Hummer general manager Martin Walsh, of the EcoTrek vehicles. “We wanted to be environmentally responsible by having engines in Hummers that run on renewable fuels.” But until I contacted Hummer for this story, GM didn’t know that the man behind those machines was none other than Goodwin. GM’s commitment is a start, however halting. Overall, though, Detroit still seems to be all but paralyzed by the challenges of fuel economy, emissions, and alternative fuels. And it’s not just about greed or laziness: Talk to car-industry experts, and they’ll point out a number of serious barriers to introducing radically new alternative-fuel vehicles on a scale that will make a difference. One of the highest is that low-emission fuels–biodiesel, ethanol, electricity, hydrogen, all of which account for less than 3% of the nation’s fuel supply–just aren’t widely available on American highways. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem. People won’t buy alternative-fuel cars until it’s easy to fill them up, but alternative fuel makers won’t ramp up production until there’s a viable market. Goodwin admits all these things are true but believes the country could be weaned off gasoline in a three-step process. The first would be for Detroit to aggressively roll out diesel engines, much as Europe has already begun to do (some 50% of all European cars run diesel). In a single stroke, that would improve the nation’s mileage by as much as 40%, and, because diesel fuel is already widely available, drivers could take that step with a minimum of disruption. What’s more, given that many diesel engines can also run homegrown biodiesel, a mass conversion to diesel would help kick-start that market. (This could have geopolitical implications as well as environmental and economic ones: The Department of Transportation estimated in 2004 that if we converted merely one-third of America’s passenger cars and light trucks to diesel, we’d reduce our oil consumption by up to 1.4 million barrels of oil per day–precisely the amount we import from Saudi Arabia.) The second step in Goodwin’s scheme would be to produce diesel-electric hybrid cars. This would double the mileage on even the biggest diesel vehicles. The third phase would be to produce electric hybrids that run in “dual fuel” mode, burning biodiesel along with hydrogen, ethanol, natural gas, or propane. This is the concept Goodwin is proving out in his turbine-enhanced H3 Hummer and in Neil Young’s Lincoln: “At that point, your mileage just goes really, really high, and your emissions are incredibly low,” he says. Since those vehicles can run on regular diesel or biodiesel–and without any alternative fuel at all, if need be–drivers wouldn’t have to worry about getting stranded on the interstate. At the same time, as more and more dual-fuel cars hit the road, they would goose demand for genuinely national ethanol, hydrogen, and biodiesel grids.
advertisement
For Goodwin, navigating this process is all about imagination and adaptability. “The point is to design cars that are flexible,” he says. “You’ll see a change in how vehicles are fueled in the future. Which fuel source will be the exclusive one or the one that’ll take over the petroleum base is, you know, anybody’s guess, so it’s like the wild, wild West of fuel technology right now. I think it’ll be a combination between a few different fuels. I know hydrogen will definitely come around.” Imagination and vision, of course, are often rewarded. As global pressure increases on the United States to reduce our carbon emissions, those rewards are likely to get juicier. Under some versions of legislation being considered in Congress, for example, companies voluntarily deploying superefficient vehicles in large fleets could be awarded substantial offsets. Take DHL, the FedEx rival: Goodwin says his company, SAE Energy, is negotiating with the shipper to convert 800 of its vehicles to dual fuel. “We could get them an offset of something like 70 cents a gallon,” Goodwin says, “and reduce their cost of fuel by 50%.” Industry insiders and observers agree with many of Goodwin’s prescriptions, particularly his concept of fuel flexibility. “We have to have alternatives,” says Beau Boeckmann, vice president of California’s Galpin Motors, the largest Ford dealership in the country, who recently partnered with Goodwin to convert a 2008 F450 truck to hydrogen and biodiesel. “Only with a combination of things can we get alternative fuels off the ground.” Boeckmann believes hydrogen is the true “silver bullet” for ending greenhouse gases but thinks it’ll take more than a decade to figure out how to create and distribute it cheaply. Mary Beth Stanek, GM’s director of environment, energy, and safety policy, also agrees with the multifuel approach–and points out that this is precisely how Brazil weaned itself from regular gasoline. “They pull up to the pump, and they’ve got a whole bunch of different choices,” she notes. She, too, predicts diesel will make a comeback because of its inherent fuel efficiency: “You will see more vehicles going back to diesel over a lot of different lines.” Yet in reality, American carmakers seem conspicuously slow on the uptake. Stanek is about as ardent a fan of alternative fuels as you’re likely to find inside GM, but even she admits no one there is seriously thinking of abandoning the gasoline engine anytime soon. The 300-million-gallon U.S. biodiesel business is a fraction of the 12-billion-gallon ethanol one. And Detroit is extremely cautious about what the market can bear. A Detroit carmaker does, of course, have to worry about selling millions of cars at reasonable prices. But we’ve been hearing this refrain for a long, long time. And with European and Japanese carmakers driving ever harder into our market–and with Chrysler having become just another meal for Cerberus Capital–this hardly seems like the time to be overly cautious. (Those ultralow-emission Mercedes BlueTec diesels, for example, include a four-wheel-drive sedan that gets 37 mpg and goes from zero to 60 in 6.6 seconds.) Moreover, after decades of consumer apathy, improving fuel economy and reducing carbon output are becoming urgent national priorities. The green groundswell has arrived, and, given the stakes, anyone who ignores it does so at his peril. If Detroit can’t sell diesel now–especially a clean, high-performance, money-saving diesel–it never will. With U.S. carmakers being stripped for parts, now is hardly the time for them to play it safe. Goodwin, perhaps, can afford to be a visionary. He has the luxury of converting cars for fancy clients who’ll pay handsomely to drive on higher moral ground. (He charges $28,000 for a “basic H2 conversion to diesel–custom concept cars cost far more.”) The future of the American car |
flicker of uncertainty pass through her, at the uneasy realization that she might have miscalculated. She normally considered her own instincts second-to-none, be it on the battlefield or the bedroom, but the apprehensive expression on Pyrrha's face forced her to confront the probability that they'd been wrong.
"Sorry, that was... maybe a little aggressive," said Yang, sliding back a bit. Without Pyrrha's body heat, the booth suddenly felt as cold as a freezer.
"No... I mean, yes... but not..." Pyrrha clearly floundered for words. "I very much enjoyed the kiss, and nobody except sponsors have bought me dinner in years, but what I'm trying to say... " The woman who'd faced down four muggers without a moment's hesitation was suddenly looking for an escape vector. "It's not right."
Yang furrowed her brow at the unexpected objection. "Are you seeing someone?"
Pyrrha blinked. "No," she said, in a tone of voice suggesting that Yang was asking the complete wrong question.
"And you said you liked the kiss?" Yang continued, inviting further clarification.
"It's just... if I rescued you, then it's inappropriate for me to expect some kind of payment. You don't owe me anything simply because you were attacked."
Yang couldn't quite stifle a guffaw-snort, earning her a rare scowl from Pyrrha. "You're worried about taking advantage of me?"
"That's not quite how I would have phrased it," said Pyrrha, though her semantic gymnastics were confirmation enough.
"Okay, um, give me ten seconds here." Yang hurried back to her side of the booth, picking up the gym bag she'd deposited on the floor and unzipping the side pouch. With a conspiratorial glance about Yang slid the pistol out, just enough so the metallic barrel was clearly visible over the edge of the table. Pyrrha's eyes widened at the sight but she said nothing, not until Yang had dropped the bag back beside the booth.
"You had a gun the whole time?" Pyrrha asked, leaning in close so she could drop her voice to a loud whisper.
"Yeah," Yang confessed. "I may have slightly misrepresented myself as a damsel-in-distress there."
"I figured you were hardly helpless," answered Pyrrha, wordlessly sweeping her eyes over Yang's fearsome biceps. "I'm guessing you learned First Aid and marksmanship in the same place?"
Yang grinned at that. "Yup. United States Marine Corps. 2nd Marine Division, 1/8." The pride on her face was unmistakable. "Spent most of the past year running all over Afghanistan - Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni, you name it. Kicking ass and taking names."
"And when you returned home, you started taking on petty criminals?" Pyrrha interjected, making the logical extrapolation.
Yang's head swayed side-to-side. "Maybe I got a little bored," she confessed. Her expression quickly sobered. "I definitely didn't mean for you to get involved, though! I really didn't think there were going to be any civvies out at this hour. Definitely none who'd..." she fumbled awkwardly for words "...try to save the day."
Pyrrha accepted her apology with a gracious smile. "While I can't say I entirely condone your... extra-curricular activities..." she began, tactfully avoiding the word 'vigilantism', "I suppose it's a case of 'no harm, no foul'." That Pyrrha was evidently excluding both herself and the would-be muggers from the 'harmed' category was of no small relief to Yang.
"Sooooo.... now that you know I'm not some hapless maiden," said Yang, leaning forward, "would another kiss impugn your sense of honor?" She let slip a hint of a drawl that normally only liquor elicited. Her hands slid across the table, finding Pyrrha's, and she took comfort in the absence of a flinch.
"It wouldn't," Pyrrha admitted. "But we haven't even had our first date yet."
It took Yang a good five seconds to parse that sentence, to get from the gentle let-down to the implied invitation, her emotions rising and falling with every processed phoneme. Then she finally saw the warm smile on Pyrrha's face, and her heart began racing.
"So, um, do you want to go on a date?" asked Yang, with a recovery as smooth as sandpaper.
"Oh, Yang, I thought you'd never ask," replied Pyrrha, her grin and tone equally teasing. Her fingers played across Yang's knuckles, sending shivers down the recipient's spine.
"So what do you like doing on dates?" Yang asked, barely able to keep her cool. "Clubs? Movies? Long walks on the beach?"
"Well, you did buy me dinner..." Pyrrha let the statement hang in the air while she unzipped her backpack. "I'm not sure what your schedule looks like for the night of the eighteenth, but..."
Yang's eyes widened at the small piece of paper being slid across the table. Really, the words BEACON ARENA - VIP PASS were all she needed to see.
Pyrrha took in the other woman's stupefied expression with a shrug. "They give me a bunch of passes to hand out, but I usually don't have anyone to give them to." There was just a trace of remorse in her voice, but she quickly plowed through it. "If you register using the number on the bottom of the stub I believe you're entitled to a Platinum Seat in the upcoming tournament."
"You're fighting in this one, right?" Yang asked, picking up the ticket like it might disintegrate in her hands. "For, what, your fourth Championship?"
"Fifth, if you're counting," replied Pyrrha, with a note of vague disinterest that suggested she really wasn't.
"Wow, I mean, thank you, I mean... yes. This would be awesome," Yang managed to finally get sputter out, and a warm smile blossomed across Pyrrha's face.
"It's my pleasure," answered Pyrrha, and her tone made it clear that it was more than rote politeness talking. "And after that, perhaps I can give you a tour behind-the-scenes..."
They exchanged excited small-talk for the better part of an hour, opening up to each other with unusual ease. They talked about everything and about nothing. About fights and about brawls, about gyms and cereals and workout regimens. About family and about loneliness. Yang came up with no fewer than three date ideas in her head. Pyrrha just reveled in the presence of someone who wasn't the least bit intimidated by her.
"Well, it's getting late," Yang finally said, glancing at the clock on the wall. And that was a significant understatement. "I should probably be getting home."
Pyrrha nodded, and the two collected their belongs in silence, each leaving a rather generous tip for Velvet. They stepped out into the cold evening air, Yang folding her arms across her chest. The streets were empty and silent, the night now clouded and moonless.
"I'm just a couple of blocks south from here, so you don't have to worry about me. Being, you know, mugged or something," said Yang.
"Still," replied Pyrrha, a mischievous smirk coming to her face, "I'd rest easier if you let me walk you home."
Pyrrha's playful smile was matched and exceeded by Yang's exuberant one. "Sure thing," she said, finding Pyrrha's hand and slipping it into her own. "But only to the door, okay?"
She shot Pyrrha a wink and a grin, and her heart was aflutter all the way home.BEVERLY, MA – Commuters, weekend warriors, and people who hate driving rejoice: Weekend service on the Newburyport/Rockport line is expected to return earlier than expected. The MBTA announced Wednesday that the work being done on the line is expected to be complete one month earlier. Sunday, Aug. 27, will be the last day for weekend shuttle bus replacement service.
The work being done is on Positive Train Control (PTC), a federally mandated safety control system that automatically reduces train speeds when needed, reducing train collisions and preventing human error. In order to meet the federal deadline set to accomplish PTC installation, the entire commuter rail line needs to be shut down for crews to work as efficiently as possible.
As a result of PTC work on the Newburyport/Rockport Line being completed earlier than anticipated, weekend PTC installation will begin several weeks earlier than scheduled on the Needham Commuter Rail Line. Needham Commuter Rail Line train service will be suspended on Saturdays beginning Sept. 2 through Nov. 18.
Image via ShutterstockBridging Arabic And Western Music With An Unusual Instrument
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist
Ibrahim Maalouf plays a four-valve trumpet — most just have three. The extra valve, attached to the button a trumpeter pushes down, allows the Lebanese musician to play quarter-tones — the notes between notes that characterize Arabic "makams."
"The makams are scales and modes with quarter-tones and three quarter-tones intervals," Maalouf says. "This is something that you cannot find in Occidental music."
Maalouf credits his father, the renowned Lebanese classical trumpeter Nassim Maalouf, with the innovation.
"This trumpet that he invented is really pure genius. He invented the only Arabic instrument in which you blow, that allows you to play all modes, all scales, in all the tonalities," Maalouf says. "This does not exist in Arabic music. It's not only a trumpet that makes you play quarter-tones. He invented a way to blow in the instrument. He invented a new way to play the trumpet."
Maalouf says there are many links between Arabic and Western music. He says when he's playing jazz, he can incorporate Arabic scales thanks to one specific similarity.
"There's this note that we actually call 'the blue note' and I believe it's a heritage from African music," Maalouf says. "Those notes that are right in the middle, between a note and another note, those are 'blue notes' that you bend with the lips. Those are quarter-tones. From these kinds of scales, I can switch to music that is very close to Arabic feelings."
Ibrahim Maalouf's latest project is his first devoted exclusively to jazz: a score he was commissioned to write for the 1926 silent film by French master René Clair, The Prey of the Wind. Maalouf's inspiration was another trumpeter's score for another French film: Miles Davis' music for the Louis Malle film Elevator to the Gallows.
"This music really, really has been probably one of my favorite musics for years," Maalouf says. "So I used this opportunity to compose the music of a very, very old French movie of the '20s, and I decided to compose something that would sound a little bit like the music of Miles on his movie."
YouTube
John Schneider, founding director of MicroFest, the country's largest microtonal music festival, says Maalouf crosses the boundaries between jazz and Middle Eastern music elegantly.
"He's using those seven notes in the scale but when it comes time for him to improvise, he strays off the path just a little bit — he's breathing," Schneider says. "It's like spicing food in a particular way. So sure, we've all had chicken, but tandoori chicken is different from Mexican chicken or Chinese chicken, right? It's still the same meat, but what you do with those spices make all the difference.
"It's almost like an accent, too: an English accent, an American accent, a Southern accent," Schneider adds. "The words we recognize, but how they're presented, slightly different.
"The man obviously has Lebanese music, traditional music, in his ear. So when it comes time for him to ornament, he uses those strange, wonderful spices to get them an odd quarter-tone tinge and that gives you that flavor of the Middle East."
Maalouf moved with his family to Paris when he was a small child. His father still lives there and, according to Maalouf, is not too keen on his son's current career path.
"In some way, I think that he believes that I should have taken some other way," Maalouf says. "Some other direction that would have been what he wanted me to do when I was young."
He says his dad is not the only one. When he visits older musicians in Morocco or Cairo, he's always confronted with the same reaction to his music.
"So I usually take my trumpet off my bag and I play him this very, very old kind [of] traditional improvisation," Maalouf says. "And they start usually saying, 'Oh this is what I prefer and this is what you need to do.' And I say, 'You know, I know how to do that and I love to do it. Today, I want to mix my music to the new world, to the new scene. I want to meet people who are discovering new colors — to participate, to create new music. I don't want to remain in an old white and black postcard.'
"Then, after this discussion, they usually understand what I mean and they say, 'You know what, you're right. Don't listen to your father. Do what you want.'"
Ibrahim Maalouf says he may not be playing or recording classical or traditional Arabic music, but he's still holding on to the heritage he received from his father.[Image used by a scammer in “friend” requests]
Over the past years posting here at M*, I have been perplexed by those unwilling to consider the facts I am bringing forward. From time to time I wander across a thread elsewhere on the Internet where I am specifically derided.
In one thread, I recently saw that I had written that perhaps this opposition was for my experience and would prove to be for my good.
Little did I anticipate how my new “muscles” developed in discussing truth despite derision would serve. Bottom line: those you love can believe a lie no matter how hard you try to lovingly persuade them it is a dangerous error.
The Scam
I have a relative who lives alone. Let me call them Riley. Riley shared holidays with my family. When it snowed, we would shovel Riley’s driveway.
About a year ago we became aware Riley was making friends on the Internet. Except some of the friends turned out to be dishonest. We showed Riley how to block unwanted callers and thought we were done.
Riley was in the habit of coming to our house to print things. So we noticed when Riley wanted to print something about accepting a gold shipment. The associated information was classic scam: “I have inherited gold mine in Africa. Need assistance. Send money.”
We pointed out that the correspondence was clearly suspect. Riley nodded agreement and left.
It was only months later that another person in the extended family let us know Riley had sent money and expected a shipment of gold. Riley had contacted the other person because they lived near the airport where Riley planned to meet the people who allegedly had the gold. We mobilized and called Homeland Security and the FBI, among others. Everyone said it would be dangerous for Riley to personally accept the “gold” shipment. And Riley nodded and agreed they had been misled.
Then we learned from other extended family members that Riley was requesting early repayment of loans. Riley had taken out a mortgage on their home, but now the thousands of dollars Riley had in the bank were gone. Lacking the stores of liquid cash, Riley was leaning on everyone they could to obtain more money.
Concerned, we contacted Adult Protective Services. Riley turned APS away, denying they needed help. Adult Protective Services had referred us to the Financial Crimes division of the police force. The police told us since the money was being wired overseas, only the FBI had true jurisdiction. But the police sent Riley a letter with pamphlets.
The FBI agreed to meet with Riley. The agent explained that there would be no hope of getting back any of the money. Riley happily replied that they were rich enough to absorb the loss. The agent was surprised. Wires over $10,000 are routinely reported to the FBI, and from what the agent could see, Riley had wired approximately $600,000 to various Africans in the past eight months. Riley confirmed they had started the calendar year with $700,000 in the bank and now had less than $10,000.
After we left the FBI field office, Riley confided there were details the FBI didn’t know anything about. The money wired to Africans was for fees associated with a gold mine and £100 million a female friend in Africa had given to Riley in exchange for their kindness. Riley explained they had never seen the friend except in pictures, and the monies and gold couldn’t be sent to America or Riley would be forced to pay taxes on the large amount. But Riley sat back and smiled contentedly at the windfall they’d stumbled across.
When we suggested it was a scam, Riley became angry, threatening to cut us off from inheriting the portion of these new riches Riley had planned to leave us. And it was real, Riley insisted. Riley had a copy of the friend’s passport, which they had promised to send to the FBI for validation.
A few days the FBI responded. The passport number belonged to a man born decades before the supposed female friend. The place of birth on the passport only gave a city, rather than indicating state and country. And “Los Angelos” isn’t the way the name of the supposed birthplace should be spelled on an official document.
We offered to help Riley break off communication with the scammers. Riley refused and broke off communication with us.
We did our own research, and found the image of the supposed female friend was actually a picture of a Las Vegas woman who sells intimate videos of herself engaged in unseemly activities. Riley replied to this, explaining that there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the supposed female friend had used pictures of someone else. After all, Riley asserted, the pictures of the Las Vegas woman resemble the female friend. A female friend Riley has never seen, not even in video chat.
As I live closest to Riley, I contacted a lawyer and entered a petition to become conservator of Riley’s financial assets. Upon learning of the legal petition, Riley e-mailed me that the female friend was going to be their family and together they would manage the gold mine, and I would be sorry, as Riley had planned to include me in their will but would now be cutting me out. When this didn’t cause me to withdraw the petition, Riley claimed they would petition to become conservator of my assets, as I was clearly the one who didn’t understand. Riley called various members of the extended family to have a message conveyed to me that Riley was going to hire lawyers and rack up tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, which I would be forced to pay when my supposedly ridiculous legal petition was denied by the court.
Then Riley did hire a lawyer and things have gotten peaceful (if expensive) for the moment. But I suspect Riley still believes they have a beautiful female friend who loves them enough to give them a gold mine and millions.
Meanwhile, I have learned that other co-workers have had instances of this need to assume responsibility for a faltering relative.
Believing That Which is Not True
My experience with Riley has been instructive on how willing someone can be to believe a thing despite obvious clues the thing is wrong, even when valued resources and significant relationships are on the line.
There are times when someone will proclaim the righteousness of their cause, because they are “giving up” so much and therefore the thing for which they are “giving up” so many precious resources and relationships is therefore good by definition. I’ve seen that kind of rationale from those who have left the Church, for example, as though the losses they have sustained by leaving the Church somehow prove that they are courageous and brave to have severed their ties.
Riley believes that it is an admirable thing to have given away hundreds of thousands of dollars and alienated family in the pursuit of helping the woman in Africa who supposedly has gifted Riley so much. Riley has certainly argued the virtuousness of their path to me.
Similarly there are those who have left the Church who will threaten, explaining that if the Church hadn’t been so obdurate and its adherents so unfeeling, then the individual who has left would not be forced to consider suicide or other harmful action(s).
Riley has similarly asserted that we are the problem, that our failings are causing the harm that is occurring. If only we would leave well enough alone, Riley could be loved and rich without any of this bothersome legal action and mental pain. Riley asserts it is all our fault (mostly my fault).
May It Please The Court
In the case of my concern for Riley, there will come a time when a guardian ad litem will make their recommendation to the court regarding what is best for Riley. Then the judge will consider what the guardian ad litem has recommended and make a ruling on Riley’s future control of assets.
In the case of us all, there will come a time when Jesus will make His recommendation to God the Father regarding what is best for each of us. Inasmuch as we have thrown ourselves on the mercy of Jesus, that recommendation will include Jesus pointing out that He has paid for our sins. For those who have refused to participate in Jesus’ mercy, it will not be possible for Jesus to recommend that His suffering on behalf of that individual should be taken into consideration. Then God the Father will consider what Jesus has recommended and make a ruling on the individual’s future role in heaven.
Those who refuse Jesus or any possibility that God exists or that God might find them in error are like Riley, confident that there is no need for any curb on their actions. They declare themselves the captains of their own lives, sovereign unto themselves and justified in anything they may choose to do.
The Outcome
I don’t know what the judge will determine with respect to Riley. If I am declared conservator, then I will accept that role. If my petition is wholly denied, then I will accept the court’s judgment and stand down.
Similarly, I cannot be certain what God’s final judgement will be for any individual soul of my acquaintance. At the end, however, I expect we will accept God’s judgment.
As we interact with our own loved ones on matters that we have reason to believe are of eternal import, may we always remember the prayer authored by Reinhold Niebuhr:
God, grant me the
Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can, and
Wisdom to know the difference.THE Philippine Athletics Track and Field Association (Patafa) formally cut ties with Olympian Mary Joy Tabal, who it said has been causing disruption and divisiveness within the federation.
Patafa president Philip Ella Juico said he has already given up on the 27-year-old marathoner, adding the national track and field team is ready to do battle in the Southeast Asian Games in Malaysia without her.
“Ayaw na namin sa iyo, tapos,” said an exasperated Juico during a hastily called press conference on Monday at the board room of the Philippine Olympic Committee (POC).
“Sisirain mo itong community, wawasakin mo pa itong federation,” added Juico, who was surrounded by members of the national training pool, coaching staff, and top officials of the federation. “Tigil na, tama na. This has been going on for too long.”
Tabal, of Barangay Guba, Cebu City,has refused to join the national pool and is training on her own with the help of her personal coach.
Continue reading below ↓
She recently topped the women’s race of the Scotiabank Ottawa Half-Marathon in Canada, convincing her handlers that she should be part of the Philippine delegation to the SEA Games.
But Patafa insisted the selection for the final lineup of the Philippine team for the SEA Games does not rest on performance alone.
Juico stressed among the equally important conditions for inclusion and retention in the national team are word of honor, fidelity to the national team, respect for athletes and authority, commitment to the federation, and the absence of abhorrent attitude of entitlement.
Tabal, a silver medal winner in the 2015 Singapore SEA Games that should've been enough to make her a cinch for this year’s contingent, has violated most of these requirements, Juico said.
“Athletes should build a good character and attitude,” said longtime national coach Jojo Posadas. “This is national level, so you have to be a good example as a good coach and as a good player.”
Continue reading below ↓
“We have to follow rules and regulations.”WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R), has led the GOP’s war on abortion rights and Planned Parenthood throughout his career. But it was Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine (D) who shined on the issue in the vice presidential debate Tuesday night, making a strong case for women’s moral autonomy.
“We can encourage people to support life, of course we can,” said Kaine, a practicing Catholic. “But why doesn’t Donald Trump trust women to make this choice for themselves? That’s what we ought to be doing in public life: living our lives of faith or motivation with enthusiasm and excitement, convincing each other, dialoguing with each other about important moral issues of the day. But on fundamental issues of morality, we should let women make their own decisions.”
While Kaine has personally struggled with the issue of abortion in the past because of his faith, he and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton both strongly support the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which protects a woman’s right to seek abortion up until the time the fetus would be viable outside the womb. Kaine attacked Trump on Tuesday night for saying women should face “some form of punishment” for having an abortion.
“We support the constitutional right of American women to consult their own conscience and make their own decision about pregnancy. That is something we trust American women to do,” Kaine said. “And we don’t think that women should be punished, as Donald Trump thinks they should, for making the decision to have an abortion.”
Pence replied that Trump misspoke about abortion because “he is not a polished politician.” He said their GOP presidential ticket “would never support legislation that would punish women who made the heartbreaking choice.”
His record suggests otherwise. As a congressman, Pence once co-sponsored a bill that would force women to undergo an ultrasound before an abortion and hear a detailed description of the fetus, regardless of whether the procedure is medically necessary. As governor, he signed a bill that would require doctors to offer women the “remains” of the fetus after an abortion, which serves no apparent purpose other than to humiliate them.
Pence criticized Clinton Tuesday night for wanting to end the Hyde amendment, a long-standing policy that prevents Medicaid from covering abortion care for low-income women. And he accused her of supporting partial-birth abortion ― a late-term procedure that Clinton has said she would support only in cases where the woman’s life or health is in danger.
Pence said his anti-abortion views are central to his platform.
“A society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable: the aged, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn,” Pence said. “I believe it with all my heart, and I could not be more proud to be standing with a pro-life candidate in Donald Trump.”
Kaine argued that “you should live your moral values, but the last thing governments should do is to have laws that would punish women who make reproductive choices.”It was a controlled explosion, and shouldn't have been a surprise, but the boom a couple of hundred yards away in this lush, rainswept district of central Vietnam nonetheless prompted the small group of nongovernmental organization (NGO) workers, locals, diplomats, and journalists there to witness the event to flinch and recoil. Then the relieved-looking group exhaled almost in unison, a nervous-sounding release as if mimicking the puffs of smoke rising from the explosion into the gray sky.
Taking the blast in his stride, though not literally, however, was 14-year-old Duong Nhat Binh, a shy-looking, soft-spoken teenager wearing a "FBI"-emblazoned baseball cap. Two years ago he had a much closer encounter with a fragment of the estimated 800,000 tons of unexploded ordnance (UXO) thought to remain hidden in the grass and jungles around Vietnam, endangering lives and hindering local economies.
“I was on the way back from school, and I saw this metal thing in the grass. I picked it up and put it in my pocket and went home,” he recalls. “I did not know what it was.”
After he reached home, the "bombie" – as the UXO is known colloquially in Vietnam and in other UXO-affected countries such as Laos – went off, knocking him unconscious and leaving scars on his hand and arm. “I was lucky it wasn't much worse,” he concedes, “but I was out for four hours and only woke up in the hospital. My mother brought me there after she found me,” he adds.
In 2007, the Vietnam Ministry of Labor reported that there had been more than 104,000 civilian casualties due to contact with UXO, with more than 38,000 people killed. In Quang Tri province, 84 percent of land is affected by UXO, making it the worst-hit in Vietnam.
Wednesday's controlled explosion of three pieces of UXO, all sitting within a 30-foot radius of each other, was carried out by the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), an international NGO that does UXO clearance work in 15 countries.
“We have evacuated the area,” says Portia Stratton, Vietnam Country Director for MAG, which responded within hours after the UXO find was reported to the group two days previously.
“We don't try and move any of this material,” says Ms Stratton, who was speaking prior to the controlled explosion. “These devices are volatile, so we will destroy them where they sit.”
Pointing out the precariousness of life for rural Vietnamese who have to contend with UXO, Stratton says that the ordnance was found less than 30 feet from the roadside, close to a nearby shop. “The tree behind you marked with an X will be pulled down, as apparently there is more unexploded ordnance in the ground below it and around,” she says.
Since starting work in the country in 1999, MAG has destroyed on average 15,000 items of UXO each year. These controlled explosions are commonplace in heavily bombed areas of Vietnam, such as this part of Quang Tri, a three-hour drive north of Vietnam's third-largest city, Danang, and an hour from the old capital, Huế.
All told, an estimated 15 million tons of ordnance are estimated to have been used on the Vietnamese countryside during the US-Vietnam war in the 1960s and '70s. The Vietnamese defense ministry says that only 20 to 25 percent of explosives left by the war have been cleared so far, and in an acknowledgement that much more remains to be done before Vietnam can be rid of the UXO scourge, the Irish government last week announced a 600,000 Euro ($767,000) grant to MAG for clearance work in Vietnam's three worst-hit provinces of Quang Tri, Quang Binh, and Quang Nam.
“Unexploded bombs cause death and injury by the thousands in Vietnam every year,” says Ireland's Minister of State for Trade and Development, Joe Costello, who visited Vietnam last week. “We see supporting MAG's work as vital to addressing this,” he adds.
To date, the MAG says it has freed-up 7.6 million square meters (1,878 acres) of land from the UXO peril, making the land available for farming and other forms of potential economic gain for rural Vietnamese, many of whom live well below the country's average income per head of just over $1,250 per annum.
That poverty can prompt a somewhat reckless approach to ordnance among some Vietnamese living with the threat. “The land here is owned by a scrap-metal dealer,” says Henk Liebenberg, an ex-South African army soldier and nowadays MAGs technical operations manager in Vietnam.
“People in the area would find bits of ordnance and bring to him to sell. Either they overcame any worries about the danger or they were not aware of what they had found,” he says.
Lack of awareness of UXO is a concern, says Nguyen Thi Hing Thanh, a local schoolteacher, flicking through schoolbooks that try to inform children about the dangers of UXO. “A little girl of only 15 was blinded not so long ago by an explosion, she cannot go to school now. It is so sad,” says the teacher. "Not only do we use these specialized books in class, but other lessons also bring in UXO teaching," she adds.
Even if children are made aware of the hidden dangers in the nearby fields, spotting the now-weathered, decades-old devices isn't easy. Before the explosion, the devices to be destroyed sat inside a wall of bright yellow sandbags, but otherwise were barely distinguishable from the surrounding soil and leaves, due to a naturally acquired camouflage of dirt and rust.
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy
“I could see the bomb,” says Duong Nhat Binh, recalling his own ordeal. “But maybe it would have been better if I could not,” he says laughing as he speaks after the devices were destroyed, an explosion that was a welcome echo of the sounds that almost laid waste to this idyllic part of Vietnam 40 years ago.
• Sign up to receive a weekly selection of practical and inspiring Change Agent articles by clicking here.An annual meteor shower is set to peak early Tuesday morning providing skywatchers with a chance to catch a “falling star.”
The Leonids meteor shower, which gets its name from the constellation Leo that the meteors appear to originate from, occurs every year around November 18. The annual meteor shower is created from the debris coming off of comet Tempel–Tuttle, which passes through the inner solar system every 33 years leaving a trail of debris in its wake. When the debris enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it creates what appears to be “falling stars.”
“We’re predicting 10 to 15 meteors per hour,” according to Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “For best viewing, wait until after midnight on Nov. 18, with the peak of the shower occurring just before sunrise.”
NASA and the Slooh Community Observatory will be providing live streams of the meteor shower for those who are unable to view it due to light pollution or poor weather conditions. NASA’s live stream begins Monday, Nov. 17 at 7:30 p.m. EST here and will continue until sunrise on Tuesday Nov. 18. The Slooh Community Observatory’s webcast will begin at 8 p.m. EST on Nov. 17.
Watch the Slooh live stream here:
Watch NASA’s live stream here:The chief of the association representing private job agencies in Greece, Athanassios Kottaras, said he received six or seven complaints every week (they were almost unheard-of just two years ago) from Greeks moving abroad for jobs that turn out to be nonexistent or exploitive. Mr. Kottaras has appeared several times on Greek television to raise awareness about the problem, which he attributes to hundreds of illegal job agencies.
The head of Greece’s state labor inspectorate, Michalis Kandarakis, said there were about 300 such illegal job agencies in Greece, compared with the 90 legal ones represented by Mr. Kottaras. But he said closing them down was difficult, as they often changed names, staff and premises to elude the authorities. “They even lodge charges of harassment or attempted blackmail against inspectors to slow down the process,” Mr. Kandarakis said.
The Greek Orthodox association in Melbourne, Australia, has published a warning on its Web site after receiving “numerous complaints” from Greeks “in regard to certain unscrupulous individuals that seek to take advantage of prospective migrants.” The site warns against professed migrant advisers who are “seeking exorbitant amounts of money for the purpose of issuing visas and finding employment.”
Official efforts to combat the swindles are often hampered by the victims’ reluctance to report their experiences to the authorities.
Vangelis Kouris left the Greek capital for Oslo last month after his bakery business collapsed and efforts to find work failed. But a job packing fish in a Norwegian factory, proposed to him by Greeks at a cafe near his neighborhood in Athens, did not exist. Neither did the factory. Mr. Kouris, 45, has since been sleeping at Oslo’s main railway station as he looks for work, anxious to raise some money for his wife back home, who has bowel cancer and cannot afford medical tests, he said.
But he has refused to alert the authorities in either country out of fear that he will be ordered back to Athens. “I had a bad experience,” Mr. Kouris said. “But I have to stay and try my luck here. There’s no work back home, nothing.”
Ioanna Zacharaki, a social worker based in the German city of Düsseldorf, reported an alarming influx of Greeks seeking work, adding that many claim to have been duped in job frauds. Working with other local Greek immigrants, she has organized concerts and other events to raise money to pay for return flights for those who want to leave and hotel accommodations for those who insist on staying. But she is reluctant to report suspicious cases to the police. “People are obviously making a commission in these exchanges, but what do you tell the authorities? You don’t want to get mixed up in anything,” she said.
The worst thing, according to Greeks in destination countries, is that those exploiting the hopeful emigrants are generally Greeks. “Swindling your compatriots when they’re down on their luck,” Ms. Zacharaki mused. “I never thought I’d see it happen.”NICOclub.com purchases, downloads, and maintains a comprehensive directory of Nissan Factory Service Manuals for use by our registered members.
While we wouldn’t prevent anyone from using this information, we’d hope you would appreciate our efforts enough to frequent the forums here, rather than using them as a reference on other websites.
Select your vehicle to access the Factory Service Manuals:
What is a Factory Service Manual?
If you plan to do your own work on your Nissan, whether it be routine maintenance or more in-depth projects, you’ll want to have access to a Factory Service Manual (FSM). These manuals are significantly better, and more |
that is particularly relevant to this discussion is his article on “Line Up Theory”. The TLDR of this article is roughly as follows: you have a certain combination of removal in your deck. Not every piece of removal lines up with every threat. We should try to allocate resources such that every removal spell hits an optimal target, otherwise we will be left without the proper answer for a given threat. This effect is noticeable against any deck, but becomes very important when playing control mirrors. Although Deathstrike is a prized possession against Rakano as it is the only answer to an oversized Champion of Glory, you won’t have time to wait around to find Annihilate if your opponent is beating you up with a 7/7 Rakano Outlaw. In our example of the Felnscar mirror, wasting a Deathstrike on a Steward of the Past is probably worse than taking 9 or 12 damage while looking for an Annihilate. You have the time to get the maximum efficiency out of all your cards. To highlight this point, lets summarize the lesson:
The player that more efficiently allocates resources will be at a huge advantage in a game that goes long.
The other side of making sure your removal is used optimally, is understanding how to meter out threats. This is especially important to understand if you are the deck that needs to assume the role of mediocre beatdown deck. One thing that is fairly obvious is not running into sweepers. Most control decks have some type of sweeper, whether it is Harsh Rule or Withering Witch. Getting 2 or 3-for-1’d off a sweeper hurts in any match up, but it especially hurts when you are playing a deck with limited threats. You should meter out threats such that your best threats come out last. For example, in the Felnscar mirror, you should throw out Steward of the Past like it is chopped liver. If your opponent has the Annihilate you can move on to the next threat, but maybe they don’t or they misunderstand the match up and waste a Permafrost or Deathstrike instead! Knowing the removal suite of any given opponent is therefore important, as the value of your threats will be directly proportional to the number of answers your opponent has for them.
One thing to consider in timing your threats might be understanding key turns for the opponent. For example, decks like Icaria Blue or Armory often like to slam down an Icaria on 7 power. If you play out a threat right before they would reach some critical turn like this you can force them to play slightly off-curve, which might be annoying for them. This is not usually a major consideration, but it is something to bear in mind.
Strange Things Start to Matter
All this discussion has not fully articulated the bizarreness of control mirrors. Things just get very strange in some games, you need to get comfortable with that. In control mirrors of long ago it was understood that you should sometimes spend multiple turns not doing anything as the player who acted first often got horribly punished.
Take for example an Amory mirror match. You reach 6 power and have an unbuffed Starsteel Daisho in hand, and the board is clear. Should you play it? The answer is usually no, because your opponent can easily spent their next turn using a Runehammer, their own Daisho, or even a buffed Sword of Icaria to destroy your relic weapon. If you pay attention to the card economy, you have lost your weapon for only dealing 8 to the opponent in a match up where life totals are not very important for most of the game. Instead, you should try and be patient and load up your hand with more powerful weapons to respond to whatever the opponent does.
I have played the Felnscar mirror multiple times since my article was published last week, and many games involve going to discard. Although this feels weird, especially if I have playable units in my hand, I am convinced it is often right. Think about it – are Lightning Storm and Annihilate really worth a card in this match up? Am I losing much by discarding them? Don’t I give up less value by literally throwing away a useless card than playing out a Withering Witch with no targets?
Although the match up has these insanely low value cards that often end up doing very little, you still need to try and get maximum card advantage whenever possible. Take for example Feln Bloodcaster. I usually hold him in hand until I reach 10 power rather than play him out before then. Drawing a few more cards than the opponent means you will have more threats and answers than the opponent, which is obviously great. This also leads into another bizarre element of control mirrors. You often need a ton or power. It is strange because nothing will happen for 4 or 5 turns in a row, and then all of a sudden each player drops 3 or 4 cards a piece. There have been times that I have waited for 14 power so that I can cast Bloodcaster + activate while holding up Deathstrike. Hitting these power totals in normal games seems crazy, but you will notice if you are the one with only 8 power in play, while your opponent has a comfortable 12 or 14.
One final aspect of control match ups that is a very important angle is decking. If you run out of cards in your deck you lose at the end of the turn. Those who have played a lot of Magic the Gathering will be familiar with a similar rule, while those from Hearthstone are very likely to have played many games that end in fatigue battles. Depending on the configuration of each deck, it is possible that you can literally kill every threat your opponent has access to, and they will be left with nothing but removal spells and a rapidly shrinking deck. This tactic has very interesting implications for role assessment. If you have 15 cards in deck and your opponent has 25, you need to be the beatdown since they win the game in 15 turns unless you do something about it. On the flip side, if you are the one with 25 cards you often don’t need to try and kill your opponent until something changes, as they are the ones under the gun. I recently played a game that ended with my opponent decking out. I think they realized that is what was happening somewhere between 15-10 cards left in deck. I had decided this was my path to victory when they had about 30 cards left in their deck. By appreciating this aspect of the match up I could play things out at a slow pace, forcing them to put pressure on me, playing into the strengths of my deck. By identifying this aspect of the match being important before my opponent I was at a massive advantage. It should be noted that trying to deck out a Time based control deck is usually a mistake, since they can Excavate for another Excavate and never lose. As a final point to close out this article lets get one more summary point to encapsulate this.
The rules of control mirrors are different, and you must be comfortable with that to be successful. You need to identify what actually matters and stick to the appropriate plan.
Conclusions
I hope this discussion gives you an added appreciation of the strange things that happen in control mirrors. The specific nuances of every match up are impossible to encapsulate, but this will hopefully give you the tools to attack them with great efficiency. Do you think I missed something? Are there any tips and tricks that help you one-up your opponents? Be sure to share your thoughts in the Reddit thread or in the comments section! Until next time!
Share this: Twitter
FacebookSunday, January 14, 2007
[Beliefnet, Jan 10, 2007]
In recent decades, some Protestant denominations have undergone heavy fighting over the question of whether women should be ordained. A woman holding a worship service or preaching was once so rare that the 18th century English author, Samuel Johnson, could say: “a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”
This controversy hasn’t gained a high profile in the Orthodox Church, probably due to our way of approaching such issues: if the early church was in agreement on a matter, if that consensus continued unbroken over the centuries, then that seems to be the Holy Spirit’s leading. Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). It’s not always easy to discern a clear consensus, but there’s no problem here. For 20 centuries, the Orthodox Church has not ordained women priests.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t women preachers, though. I’ve preached at worship services in Orthodox churches, myself.
If that sounds like an inconsistency, it’s because we understand the purpose of ordination differently than many Protestants do. For us, it has to do primarily with setting someone aside to be a minister of the sacraments. Non-sacramental ministry, such as preaching, is open to non-ordained people, as long as they are continuing in the faith and worship of the Orthodox Church, and in obedience to a spiritual father or confessor.
And when answering questions about the Church’s practice, instead of searching the records for resolutions that were passed at conventions, we look at what the Church has actually done. So if the question is, Can a woman be a missionary evangelist, and preach the gospel in foreign lands? We can say yes, because we see the example of St. Nino of Georgia. She was just a young girl, 14 years old, when she was abducted and carried as a slave into the nation of Georgia. But there she had an opportunity to speak to the Queen about saving faith, and then the king, and eventually the whole nation was baptized. So, yes, a woman can preach, and prepare people for baptism (St. Nino brought in a priest to accompany her to actually perform the baptisms), and pave the way for churches to be founded.
Many questions about women’s ministries can be answered that way, by looking at what Orthodox women have actually done. Can a woman be a theologian and liturgist? Yes, there’s St. Cassiane. Can she be an apologist and debater, presenting the Christian faith against opponents? Yes, St. Catherine, St. Perpetua, and others were brilliant debaters.
Here’s a toughie: can a woman exercise authority over both men and women, and rule an entire nation? Can a woman call a council that establishes church doctrine? Yes, we honor the valiant accomplishments of Empress St. Theodora. And there are many women who are called “Equal to the Apostles,” including St. Mary Magdalene, St. Helen, and St. Junia.
In the Orthodox church, women have exercised a vast range of ministries. A glance through history shows that an Orthodox woman can be a healer, a missionary, a preacher, a teacher, an evangelist, a spiritual mother, a church-planter, a miracle-worker, an iconographer, a hymnographer, a pastoral counselor, a debater, a writer of prayers and theology, a martyr, or a fool-for-Christ—and she doesn’t need to get a clerical collar first.
I don’t mind, then, if Protestant denominations want to ordain women. Many times, this just means allowing Protestant women to do things that Orthodox women have always done. In our church, holy women do virtually everything men do, except stand at the altar. That leaves them rest of the world, which is where most of God’s work gets done.
People often ask me whether I find the Orthodox Church to be repressive, compared to the freedom of my previous mainline denomination. Talk about patriarchal—Orthodoxy has actually got patriarchs. But that hasn’t result in any “repression”; in fact, I have been welcomed to speak in pulpits and parish halls, and invited to write for Orthodox magazines and book publishers, much more than I ever was in that mainline denomination. If it’s a matter of, as the jargon goes, “affirming women’s gifts,” this woman’s gifts found greatest acceptance in the Orthodox Church.
I can’t explain why my church has never ordained women priests—the Church has never spelled out a reason—but that doesn’t seem to have held women back. Most of Christ’s work in the world is done by people who aren’t ordained, after all. As I said, I don’t care if other churches ordain women, but it seems to me that focusing on it obsessively seems like a kind of clericalism, one that exalts ordained ministry and dismisses the value of the work lay people do. The opportunities for lay service are so vast, and the work done only by clergy is so small, that there is more than enough work for lay men and women to do, even without a clergy collar.
But as women have begun to be ordained in other churches, the question of why Orthodoxy has never done that is being raised, and it is legitimate to consider the question. It’s a strange thing, but it seems that this question is being raised for the first time in our history. It appears that, in the whole history of the Orthodox Church, this has just never been controversial. If God had intended all along that women be ordained, you would think that the topic would have surfaced again and again, and that a kind of restlessness and tension would have been haunted the Church. If half the pool of possible priests was being excluded solely on the basis of gender, you would think that the Church would have been visibly damaged by that loss. You would think that the Holy Spirit would have repeatedly sent prophets to challenge it. In fact, you could trace it back to Jesus and note that he prayed all night before choosing the 12 Apostles. He must have been able to foresee that his choice of an all-male band would be understood as a guideline, for century after century of Christian faith.
It appears that the all-male priesthood was never a point of argument. For some reason, previous generations have been content with things the way they are. It’s possible they understood something about the nature of men and women that we no longer perceive. How can we learn to see what they saw? We’ll work around to that point.
Even if we decide that the all-male priesthood is correct, there is no harm in trying to figure out why it is. Someone said that this is like a fill-in-the-blank question: “Because of _____, _____, and _____, the Orthodox Church does not ordain women priests.” We know the conclusion of the sentence, but not what goes into the blanks in the first part.
There are some arguments used by conservative Protestants and Catholics, but I actually don’t think they’re very good. When I was going to Episcopal seminary some years ago, and hoping to be ordained myself, I was confronted by these arguments and looked at them seriously, and concluded that they’re just not convincing.
(I should say as an aside that I never was ordained. I finished seminary just when women’s ordination was legalized, and my husband and I were unable to find a bishop who would take both of us—in the Episcopal Church, you have to have a job before you can be ordained. So my husband and I decided that he would go ahead and be ordained—we were about to have our first child and things needed to be settled—and I would wait and try again later. As it turned out, after I’d had a few years exposure to what a pastor’s life is like from the inside, I said “I don’t want that job. That is a hard job.”)
For example, opponents of women’s ordination often start by citing St. Paul’s requirement that women be submissive and silent in church (I Tim 2:11-15 and I Cor 14:34-35). Yet this can’t mean utter silence, because Paul honors many women in active ministry, like the deaconess Phoebe (Romans 16:1), and he hails Euodia, Synteche (I Cor 4:2-3) and Prisca (Rom 16:3) as synergoi (fellow-workers) in the gospel. Vocal prophetesses span the bible, from Moses’ sister Miriam (Ex 15:20) to the four daughters of St. Philip (Acts 21:9). The prophetess Anna spoke out in the temple, telling everyone about the child Christ (Lk 2:36-38).
When read in context, it sounds like St. Paul’s primary concern is that worship be reverent and orderly. It’s not just women; he wants men to shape up, too. In I Timothy, he admonishes men to pray “without anger or quarrelling” and tells women to “be silent,” as if both men and women have been restless, noisy, and disruptive. The problem isn’t women speaking in church, it’s women talking in church. Speaking in church would be something different, a way of participating in worship, which we can guess Philip’s daughters did when they functioned as prophets.
By the way, when Paul says women should “be silent,” in New Testament Greek it’s “be in hesychia,” a state of prayerful stillness.
In the I Corinthians passage, it looks again like St Paul is concerned about orderliness. He says it is “disgraceful” when women talk in church, and equally “disgraceful” when they pray without wearing a veil. Yet among those Protestants who insist that women must not speak or preach during worship, there aren’t many who insist that women should wear veils when they pray.
Recently I was talking with a woman who books speakers at a large Protestant retreat center, and she was trying to find a time that I could come speak. She kept mentioning this Ladies’ Lunch and that Women’s Weekend, till I broke in to say that she didn’t have to think of me as a speaker for women’s groups only; most of the time when I speak it is to a mixed group of men and women.
But she said, “We don’t do that.” At their retreat center, women are not allowed to address groups that include men. Women speak only to female audiences. It’s because of these passages in St. Paul. She said that, rarely, a couple may address a mixed audience together, but the woman is allowed to speak only when her husband is present.
I felt like saying, “Didn’t you ever hear of St Nino of Georgia?”
Now, if all you have is the Bible, you read St Paul saying, “Women should keep silence in the churches, they are not allowed to speak,” maybe you have no alternative but to take it literally. But what a tragedy to not have St. Nino and St. Thekla and all the other woman evangelists of the early church. How blessed we are to have a living tradition, that sets scripture in a context of real people and real lives, so we can see how the scriptures should be handled.
I have to admire, in a way, how these Protestants are so consistent in sticking by their principles, no matter how strange it makes them seem to the outside world. But I usually want to ask them, “So, if you believe in strict enforcement of the scriptures about women, where’s your head covering?”
Here’s another argument: a priest must be male because he represents Christ. When I was in seminary I would say, sure, Christ was male, and he was also Jewish, and a certain height and hair color. Why is only his maleness indispensable? Surely the fact that he was Jewish is even more significant, but we don’t exclude from ordination people who don’t have Jewish genes.
We don’t find the argument that Christ was male used in the early church; in fact, early Christians reflected very little on why Christ was male. Instead, they emphasized the fact that he was human. As Bp. Kallistos Ware points out, Christ’s maleness isn’t even mentioned in the hymns appointed for the Feast of the Circumcision, which would seem the likeliest spot. There might be good practical and theological reasons why Jesus was born male, but the early church did not explore them.
I’m grateful that I am now in a church that doesn’t make a big deal about the differences between people, whether it’s gender, ethnicity, age, occupation, or anything else. If you visit a Protestant or Catholic Christian bookstore, you’ll see that book publishers put out bibles designed for a whole array of niche audiences—there are bibles for women, Latinos, singles, grandmothers, Marines, and teenagers. The bible part is all the same of course—what’s specialized is the support material, the articles, study questions, and footnotes. This may be smart marketing—you can sell more bibles if everyone has to have their own special version—but I am grateful that in Orthodoxy we have none of that divisive nonsense. Soon after my chrismation I was talking to a priest’s wife, and mentioned that I was looking forward to learning about what women’s spirituality was like in Orthodoxy. She looked at me, puzzled, and asked, “Why would it be any different?”
Another familiar line goes, “But we’re not putting women down. Women and men are equal. They just have different roles.” Okay, but this still doesn’t answer the question “Why?” Sure, every person has a unique calling. Every role is “different” from every other role. I understand why men are better at combat, firefighting, and being lumberjacks. But what is it about the priesthood that requires maleness?
If the Holy Spirit is leading us to make a change as regards women’s ordination, it will become undeniable. We pray “Thy will be done” by the millions every day, and if his will is that we begin ordaining women, we will be unable to avoid recognizing it. Personally, I would be surprised to see that happen, because I can’t understand why the Holy Spirit would have denied ordination to Orthodox women for two thousand years. If women’s ordination is right, then it is unspeakable cruelty to have blocked all those women’s gifts and ministry for all those years. So I can’t imagine how it could be that women’s ordination was wrong in the 4th century or the 13th century, but it’s right now. I don’t think it could be that today’s women (or men, for that matter) are somehow holier or more worthy than they were in ages past.
However, I did see a problem in my mainline denomination that I would want to warn against. In that church I saw how the movement for women’s ordination kept separating women from men, into two separate groups. And it was as if the two groups were fighting against each other—that there wasn’t enough to share, and women had to fight to get their rights. It ended up isolating women as a group, separating them from men. There was also a tragic tendency to give in to self-pity and brooding over past wrongs. Anger grew, indeed was nurtured by, this brooding.
It was especially worrisome to see women demanding power, praise, and honor—something that should be instinctively alarming to any follower of Christ. But thinking so long on how wrongly women had been treated led them to see only wrongs, and to demand so-called rights. Division and self-righteousness resulted. Brothers and sisters, I would never want to block the Holy Spirit, and if he is calling us all to a new understanding, that women should be ordained, it will be impossible for us to avoid seeing that. But the earmarks of that change will be peace, humility, and unity in Christ. When the focus is on getting honor and glory and a bigger piece of the pie, something has gone wrong. It is time to go back and read the instruction manual.
In 1988 an Orthodox consultation met in Rhodes and considered some aspects of women’s ministries. They recommended resuming the practice of ordaining women deacons (something I don’t know much about, but it seems was a practice in the early church that gradually fell out of use). The group also suggested an image for the balance of male and female: that the all-male priesthood showed a correspondence between the priest and Christ, which reflected that between the Virgin Mary Theotokos and the Church.
But the group also said, “We are in a sphere of profound, almost indescribable experience of the inner ethos of the world-saving and cosmic dimensions of Christian truth.” They feared to trespass on something so far beyond words.
Not everyone is satisfied with ineffability. When you wonder why there’s this pattern of all-male ordination, some people have a ready answer: it’s because the early Christians were dumb. We know better now.
Somehow the concept of evolution leaks over from biology to theology, and it’s presumed that our generation is what the Holy Spirit was aiming at when he came out with flawed prototypes like St. Macrina and St. John Chrysostom.
I suspect the reverse is true, and that we’re blind to some spiritual realities that were obvious to earlier Christians. Take the value of male and female virginity, for example. I once spent a year reading intensively about saints, and at the end I was convinced that earlier generations knew something we don’t. They knew that virginity is a source of great spiritual power.
(Christianity isn’t alone in valuing virginity; other great world religions also consecrate male and female monastics. I like the line in the film “Keeping the Faith” where, after a series of nosy questions about celibacy, a Catholic priest mutters, “They sure don’t ask the Dalai Lama those questions.”)
When it comes to understanding the power of virginity or gender differences or anything else related to sex, there’s a good chance we just won’t get it. We live under the bombardment of continual targeted, intoxicating messages about sex, which present it in a radically anti-wholistic way, as if it’s something that happens to an empty body. Though we are exhorted to be ecologically aware and “green” in every other aspect of life, when it comes to sexuality, the natural meaning is ignored. We are steadily evangelized by the consumer culture to treat sex as an isolated mechanical act with no relation to a person’s past, future, emotions, relationships, or health. (I heard Fr Pat Reardon say: “Sometimes during confession I have to tell people: ‘Your body is a temple, not an amusement park!’”)
That “amusement park” mentality is used to sell us everything from tires to toothpaste. But in reality, sex can’t be separated from the rest of existence. It always occurs in a complete embodied life, one humming with ceaseless spiritual and emotional activity. In this windstorm of messages, two significant truths are being suppressed: that the underlying urge is still to reproduce; and that sex requires a lot of vulnerability, so the most desired quality in a partner is trust.
Since we can’t understand sex in the instinctive, body-deep ways our ancestors did, it’s natural that we won’t understand sex differences. We don’t see any more how savory and good these differences are. While you could sort humans in many ways–by height or shoe size or age–the all-time favorite is by sex. We just get a kick out of gender differences, even though most of the human body plan is shared by men and women alike. It’s the distinctives that we highlight: women’s clothes suggest an hourglass figure no matter what shape the lady inside, while men’s jackets are enhanced by brawny padded shoulders. After a birth the first thing we want to know is “Boy or girl?,” and lumpy, indistinguishable newborns are stuffed into baseball costumes or palest pink. We pass along gender-based jokes, because these clumsy stereotypes point toward something that fascinates and delights us. The difference between the sexes is the most cheerful and exhilarating thing we know: it’s where babies come from. The difference between the sexes is how we partner with God in ongoing creation of the universe; the difference between the sexes creates life.
If we can’t understand the difference between male and female, we sure can’t understand what previous generations knew about the value of an all-male priesthood. I can only hope that some future generation will regain the peace and clarity we’ve lost, and be able once again recognize and enunciate this mystery.There have been truly exemplary examples of AI in video games. There’s this myth that it depends mostly on processing power but that’s not really true, is it? Majority of advancement depends on the amount of work developers are willing to put behind pushing the AI in games. Bungie did it with Halo Reach, and showed that it is not entirely dependent on processing power.
Overgrowth Alpha 193 is a game that not many people have heard of, and for a good reason. It’s an obscure PC game with very less coverage, but hopefully after this demonstration it picks up a bit.
They’ve developed a technique called adaptive AI, in which the AI adapts to your techniques, so you have to vary your moves and be quick on your toes. The AI is relentless as you can see in this video which shows two rabbits… err, yeah kicking the crap out of each other.
The main objective here is to make the AI ‘more human’, and based on this video, and ignoring the fact that these are rabbits fighting, the combat is really impressive and realistic. You can visit their website here to learn more.
Here are the new features you can see in this video:
AI has slower reaction time to changes in target position
AI pays attention to attack pose (if target is planning to attack)
AI can try to provoke attacks while intending to counter
AI mixes up counter attacks and counter throws
AI can predict attack patterns; vary your attacks and combinations
AI avoids potential jump attacks
Fixed problem with player passive block not triggeringShould companies be able to sue for libel? The recently launched Lord Lester libel reform bill includes a provision that companies would have to show substantial financial loss before being able to sue. The House of Commons select committee for culture, media and sport has also called for fundamental reform of libel law in respect of corporate reputation, while many Australian states have limited actions in libel to companies with fewer than 10 employees.
But to the conventionally minded English lawyer there is no question that companies should be able to sue for libel. After all, companies are "legal persons" – and in English law, personality goes a very long way. The view is that if "natural persons" can sue for libel then so can companies.
The English courts have nevertheless progressively limited the scope of corporate actions in defamation. The current position is that a company does not have quite as general a right to sue for libel as a natural person does. It can sue only in respect of its trading reputation and, not having feelings, its entitlement to any damages will usually be lower compared with a human claimant.
But should companies be able to sue for defamation at all? In the groundbreaking Derbyshire case of 1993, the House of Lords held that a public corporation could not maintain an action for libel. In 1998 the high court also held that a political party could not sue for libel. In neither case was the undoubted fact that a public corporation or a political party had a reputation taken to be determinative. Instead, the public interest in uninhibited public criticism was deemed more important. By removing the right of a public corporation or a political party to sue for libel, the ability of such entities to threaten to sue is also taken away.
And this is important, for it is the threats to sue which cause libel chill, rather than the actions themselves.
Companies have reputations, and of course in a commercial environment these reputations are important. But companies already have a wide range of legal means to protect their brand and to prevent unfair competition. In terms of intellectual property, companies can and do use the law of trademarks, passing off and copyright to prevent inappropriate and damaging attacks on its brand and its products. There is also the right to sue for malicious falsehoods. And since the introduction in 2008 of the business protection from misleading marketing regulations, companies also have a range of protections from other commercial actors making misleading statements, especially in comparative and similar targeted advertising.
It is rather difficult to see what legitimate purpose the right of a company to sue and – crucially – threaten to sue for libel now has in our society. A brief look at cases where companies have sued individuals for libel – the McLibel litigation, British Chiropractic Association v Dr Simon Singh, General Electric Healthcare v Professor Henrik Thomsen and the still ongoing case of NMT v Dr Peter Wilmshurst – suggests that whatever the general arguments for allowing companies to sue for libel, it is a legal weapon that can be used in unattractive ways and against the public interest.
There is a strong chance that there will be primary legislation on libel in the next couple of years. This is a good moment to ask questions about who should be able to use – and threaten to use – this powerful and inhibiting area of law in a modern democratic society. Given the range of other legal means open to companies to protect their commercial reputations, I think the right of companies to sue for libel should be severely limited, if not abolished altogether. The public interest requires nothing less.For more than 30 years, Operation Smile has provided more than 200,000 free surgical procedures to children and young adults around the world suffering from facial deformities – giving each one a new start in life in some of the world’s most impoverished communities.
During this year’s Operation Smile campaign in Vietnam, two Israeli doctors joined 300 delegation members from 18 countries to provide free reconstructive surgery for children born with conditions such as a cleft lip or cleft palate, as well as other facial deformities.
Dr. Omri Emodi and Dr. Zach Sharony hail from Rambam’s Health Care Campus. Dr. Emodi works in the hospital’s Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, and Dr. Zach Sharony works in the Department of Plastic Surgery.
A cleft is an opening in the lip, the roof of the mouth, or the soft tissue in the back of the mouth. A cleft palate occurs when the two sides of a palate do not join together. Children born with cleft conditions often suffer from ear disease and dental problems, as well as problems with speech development. They may also have difficulty speaking, hearing, breathing, or eating properly.
In developing countries, parents often cannot afford the corrective surgeries their children need for healthy, productive lives. Operation Smile has often reached areas where children and families have never even seen a doctor or healthcare worker.
As the largest volunteer-based children’s medical charity providing free cleft surgeries, Operation Smile heals thousands of children every year. The international children’s medical charity works in more than 60 countries to heal children’s smiles with a network of more than 5,400 volunteers from more than 80 countries including Israel.
During January’s Vietnam mission, the Israeli doctors were part of an international medical team that performed more than 500 cleft surgeries during the 10 days they spent volunteering across the country. Delegation members operated 12 hours each day and helped children at six different sites throughout Vietnam.
“The atmosphere among doctors was extremely convivial. Our free time was filled with conversation, jokes, and mutual invitations,” remarked Dr. Sharony. “The cliché that medicine is a bridge between cultures was more apparent than ever.”For the elder druid, see Elder Chaos druid
Chaos druids are low-level humans commonly killed for their consistent drops of herbs. Unlike most druids, they worship both Guthix and Zamorak. They attack using their fists and also use the Confuse spell, which takes the appearance of Bind and binds their target very briefly if successful. The Chaos druids' weakness is Ranged. Beware of player killers in the Edgeville Dungeon, as it is a popular place to train for players with low Defence. They are one of very few low-level monsters with access to the rare drop table, along with their already profitable drops; as such, even high-level players can frequently be found fighting them.
Since the druids will commonly drop air and law runes, you should bring a fire rune to cast Varrock Teleport for quick bank trips with almost no cost. Alternatively, for players fighting chaos druids in the Taverley Dungeon, it's advisable to bring at least 1 water rune to cast Falador Teleport.
Ironman accounts may benefit from the frequent law rune drops at a low level.
Contents show]
Locations
Drops
100%
Item Quantity Rarity GE market price Bones 1 Always 54
Herbs
Runes
Armour/Weapons
Item Quantity Rarity GE market price Mithril bolts 2–12 Uncommon 140–840 Bronze longsword 1 Rare 22
Other
Gem drop table
In addition to the drops above, this monster has access to the gem drop table.Another Redis use case: Centralized logging
Log analysis has become a difficult task in our production environment at work because logs are distributed on different machines and in different files. So, we wanted all the exception logs from all of our apps to be tracked centrally and viewed in single console.
And once again, we found another good use case for Redis. Our strategy is to dump all of critical logs in to a Redis List and have a background worker which continuously pulls logs from the Redis List and write stuff in log file.
As we use python for all our backend work, I quickly wrote a Log Handler that can dump log messages in to Redis.
So RedisLogHandler class looks like this:
To hook up this RedisLogHandler to your application logger, all you need to do is following:
I quickly hooked it up to our all of our background jobs in celery and I can see it working. Let me know what you think of this solution.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
DisqusThe start of it all: TV close-ups of Sachin Tendulkar which attracted the interest of match referee Mike Denness © Associated Press
The fifth and final day of the second Test between South Africa and India in Port Elizabeth in November 2001 should have been a fairly uneventful affair. On a decent batting strip India resumed on 28 for 1, chasing an improbable 395 to win, and a draw appeared likely. As it was, it was just the start of a row that briefly threatened to rip world cricket apart on racial lines.
At the heart of the furore was match referee Mike Denness, a straightforward and firm Scot who had captained England in 12 Tests between 1973 and 1975. Two incidents in the game had attracted his attention. The first surrounded over-enthusiastic appealing, orchestrated by Harbhajan Singh, expanded on by several team-mates and not checked by Sourav Ganguly, India's captain. The second centred on allegations Sachin Tendulkar, a hero to hundreds of millions of Indians and a player with an unblemished record, had been found tampering with the seam of the ball |
the bathroom stall where you start doing the I-have-to-drop-a-deuce-right-now dance while removing your extra layers with all the other jamokes who are seriously MISSING IT.
We've all been there. But no one wants to be. Now, you never have to miss a powder run again. Introducing the Big Dumps TI 5000, a high-performance undergarment for the most committed skier. Developed in collaboration with experts from the incontinence industry, these pull-on briefs have super ultra-absorption and protection, no matter how big the release. Meanwhile, a stretchy, wicking Spandex waist provides comfort and breathability all day long. Made with eight-layer Gore-Tex NeoGnarnia outer-fabric with locally sourced vegan merino wool liners and a titanium snapping closure, the Big Dumps TI 5000 skimps none of the details while ensuring maximum comfort and minimal leakage. Not only will you never miss it again, but, providing double-practicality, the garment is also ideal for the next time you are standing on top of a particularly frightening line, scared shitless. Time to get sick.
Skiing Hot: Avoid disastrous ski area bathroom stalls and maximize your shredding every day; extra butt warmth on the chairlift.
Skiing Not: You're an adult wearing a diaper.
This story originally appeared in the September 2017 (46.1) issue of POWDER. To have great stories delivered right to your door, in print, subscribe here.VARANASI: The district police on Saturday imposed a ban on the trading of Chinese'manjha' (thread used in flying kites).SSP Rajesh Modak made it clear that in the case of detection of trading of Chinese manjha at any shop, legal action would be initiated against the trader concerned. The SSP issued the order on the suggestions made by the people on the Facebook account of district police.It may be recalled that the only son of a mason, Rohit alias Raut was killed when his throat was slit with Chinese manjha in Madauli area on December 23. Resentment was brewing among the people, who had also staged a demonstration. Suggestions for banning the'manjha' were pouring in on the police Facebook account.Modak said that after getting suggestions from people he held a discussion with his subordinates. It was decided to ban the trading of Chinese manjha. He said that the order has been issued in public interest and to avoid further untoward incident.Norwegian news portal VG Nett reported that last week Muslim extremist terrorist group Ansar al-Sunna has threatened the Norwegian government with an attack similar to 9-11 unless part of the capital city of Oslo is not transformed into a Muslim nation.
"We do not wish to live together with dirty beasts like you," the extremist group wrote in a letter to Norwegian lawmakers and newspaper editors.
"We received the letter on Tuesday and have started an investigation on the letter," Police Security Service spokesman Siv Alsén told VG Nett. "We take it seriously, absolutely."
The terrorist group demanded that a section of Oslo, specifically the Greenland district, become independent from the current government so that they can form an Islamist state.
"We do not want to be a part of Norwegian society," the letter also noted. "And we do not consider it necessary either to move away from Norway, because we were born and grew up here. And Allah's earth belongs to everybody."
The development arose just one week before Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian gunman who killed 77 people in a massacre last summer, was sentenced to 21 years in prison. Breivik said he committed the murders to protest the "Islamization" of Norway.
The letter from Ansar al-Sunna also accused senior government officials -- Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide -- of having given direct orders to "attack... Muslims."
In addition, the group demanded that Norway pull its troops out of Muslim countries, adding the threat: "If Norwegian soldiers can take planes to Afghanistan, then Osama [bin Laden] and Mohammed can also take planes to Norway. Now, the government must wake up and assume responsibility, before this war spreads to Norway. Before the counterpart reacts.
"Before Muslims take the step necessary. Do not confuse the Muslims' silence with weakness. Do not profit from the Muslims' patience. Do not force us to do something that can be avoided. This is not a threat, only the words of truth. The words of justice."
The letter included a logo that resembles one used by al Qaeda in Iraq.
According to VG Nett, the Norwegian police had already been following a few members of this terrorist group before the letter was even sent.
A few days after that letter was sent, Norwegian-Pakistani imam Fayed Sarased Ali Bukhari warned that any Muslim who doesn't fast during Ramadan should be beheaded.
NRK, a Norwegian broadcaster, showed a clip in which Bukhari stated: "If a person doesn't fast during Ramadan, he is mocking Islam. And if the person is in a Muslim state, the authorities must behead him.
"For a person who doesn't perform his daily prayers, and is of age and sound mind, the most lenient punishment in an Islamic state is incarceration," he added. "In certain schools of law, there would be grounds to kill them."
Norway's Muslim population is relatively small but has been increasing due to immigration. As of 2007, about 3.5 percent of the nation's people were Islamic.I have recently got to the Miranda NG project and checked it with the PVS-Studio code analyzer. And I'm afraid this is the worst project in regard to memory and pointers handling issues I've ever seen. Although I didn't study the analysis results too thoroughly, there still were so many errors that I had to split the material into 2 articles. The first of them is devoted to pointers and the second to all the rest stuff. Enjoy reading and don't forget your popcorn.
Checking Miranda NG
The Miranda NG project is a successor of the multi-protocol IM-client for Windows, Miranda IM.
Well, I didn't actually plan to check Miranda NG at first. It's just that we need a few actively developing projects to test one PVS-Studio's new feature on. It is about using a special database storing all the information about messages that shouldn't be displayed. To learn more about it, see this article. In brief, the idea behind it is the following. It is sometimes difficult to integrate static analysis into a large project because the analyzer generates too many warnings and one has a hard time trying to sort it all out while still wishing to start seeing the benefit right away. That's why you can hide all the warnings and check only fresh ones generated while writing new code or doing refactoring. And then, if you really feel like that, you can start gradually fixing errors in the old code.
Miranda NG appeared to be one of the actively developing projects. But when I saw the analysis results generated by PVS-Studio after the first launch, I knew for sure I had got enough material for a new article.
So, let's see what the PVS-Studio static code analyzer has found in Miranda NG's source codes.
To do this check, we took the Trunk from the repository. Please keep in mind that I was just scanning through the analysis report and may have well missed much. I only checked the general diagnostics of the 1-st and 2-nd severity levels and didn't even bother to take a look at the 3-rd level. You see, the first two were just more than enough.
Part 1. Pointers and memory handling
Null pointer dereferencing
void CMLan::OnRecvPacket(u_char* mes, int len, in_addr from) {.... TContact* cont = m_pRootContact;.... if (!cont) RequestStatus(true, cont->m_addr.S_un.S_addr);.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V522 Dereferencing of the null pointer 'cont' might take place. EmLanProto mlan.cpp 342
It's all simple here. Since the pointer equals NULL, then let's dereference it and see if anything funny comes out of it.
First using the pointer, then checking it
There are numbers and numbers of errors of this kind in Miranda NG, just like in any other application. Such code usually works well because the function receives a non-null pointer. But if it is null, functions aren't ready to handle it.
Here's a typical example:
void TSAPI BB_InitDlgButtons(TWindowData *dat) {.... HWND hdlg = dat->hwnd;.... if (dat == 0 || hdlg == 0) { return; }.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V595 The 'dat' pointer was utilized before it was verified against nullptr. Check lines: 428, 430. TabSRMM buttonsbar.cpp 428
If you pass NULL into the BB_InitDlgButtons() function, the check will be done too late. The analyzer generated 164 more messages like this on Miranda NG's code. Citing them all in this article won't make any sense, so here they are all in a file: MirandaNG-595.txt.
Potentially uninitialized pointer
BSTR IEView::getHrefFromAnchor(IHTMLElement *element) {.... if (SUCCEEDED(....)) { VARIANT variant; BSTR url; if (SUCCEEDED(element->getAttribute(L"href", 2, &variant) && variant.vt == VT_BSTR)) { url = mir_tstrdup(variant.bstrVal); SysFreeString(variant.bstrVal); } pAnchor->Release(); return url; }.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V614 Potentially uninitialized pointer 'url' used. IEView ieview.cpp 1117
If the if (SUCCEEDED(....)) condition is wrong, the 'url' variable will remain uninitialized and the function will have to return god knows what. The situation is much trickier though. The code contains another error: a closing parenthesis is put in a wrong place. It will result in the SUCCEEDED macro being applied only to the expression of the 'bool' type, which doesn't make any sense.
The second bug makes up for the first. Let's see what the SUCCEEDED macro really is in itself:
#define SUCCEEDED(hr) (((HRESULT)(hr)) >= 0)
An expression of the 'bool' type evaluates to 0 or 1. In its turn, 0 or 1 are always >= 0. So it turns out that the SUCCEEDED macro will always return the truth value thus enabling the 'url' variable to be initialized all the time.
So now we've just seen a very nice example of how one bug makes up for another. If we fix the condition, the bug with the uninitialized variable will show up.
If we fix both, the code will look like this:
BSTR url = NULL; if (SUCCEEDED(element->getAttribute(L"href", 2, &variant)) && variant.vt == VT_BSTR)
The analyzer suspects something to be wrong in 20 more fragments. Here they are: MirandaNG-614.txt.
Array size and item number mixed up
The number of items in an array and the array size in bytes are two different entities. However, if you are not careful enough, you may easily mix them up. The Miranda NG project offers a handful of various ways to do that.
Most harmful of all was the SIZEOF macro:
#define SIZEOF(X) (sizeof(X)/sizeof(X[0]))
This macro calculates the number of items in an array. But the programmer seems to treat it as a fellow of the sizeof() operator. I don't know, though, why use a macro instead of the standard sizeof() then, so I have another version - the programmer doesn't know how to use the memcpy() function.
Here is a typical example:
int CheckForDuplicate(MCONTACT contact_list[], MCONTACT lparam) { MCONTACT s_list[255] = { 0 }; memcpy(s_list, contact_list, SIZEOF(s_list)); for (int i = 0;; i++) { if (s_list[i] == lparam) return i; if (s_list[i] == 0) return -1; } return 0; }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V512 A call of the'memcpy' function will lead to underflow of the buffer's_list'. Sessions utils.cpp 288
The memcpy() function will copy only part of the array as the third argument specifies the array size in bytes.
In the same incorrect way, the SIZEOF() macro is used in 8 more places: MirandaNG-512-1.txt.
The next trouble. Programmers often forget to fix memset()/memcpy() calls when using Unicode in their code:
void checkthread(void*) {.... WCHAR msgFrom[512]; WCHAR msgSubject[512]; ZeroMemory(msgFrom,512); ZeroMemory(msgSubject,512);.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic messages:
V512 A call of the'memset' function will lead to underflow of the buffer'msgFrom'. LotusNotify lotusnotify.cpp 760
V512 A call of the'memset' function will lead to underflow of the buffer'msgSubject'. LotusNotify lotusnotify.cpp 761
The ZeroMemoty() function will clear only half of the buffer as characters of the WCHAR type occupy 2 bytes.
And here is an example of partial string copying:
INT_PTR CALLBACK DlgProcMessage(....) {.... CopyMemory(tr.lpstrText, _T("mailto:"), 7);.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V512 A call of the'memcpy' function will lead to underflow of the buffer 'L"mailto:"'. TabSRMM msgdialog.cpp 2085
Only part of the string will be copied. Each string character occupies 2 bytes, so 14 bytes instead of 7 should have been copied.
Other similar issues:
userdetails.cpp 206
weather_conv.cpp 476
dirent.c 138
The next mistake was made due to mere inattentiveness:
#define MSGDLGFONTCOUNT 22 LOGFONTA logfonts[MSGDLGFONTCOUNT + 2]; void TSAPI CacheLogFonts() { int i; HDC hdc = GetDC(NULL); logPixelSY = GetDeviceCaps(hdc, LOGPIXELSY); ReleaseDC(NULL, hdc); ZeroMemory(logfonts, sizeof(LOGFONTA) * MSGDLGFONTCOUNT + 2);.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V512 A call of the'memset' function will lead to underflow of the buffer 'logfonts'. TabSRMM msglog.cpp 134
The programmer must have been in a hurry, for he mixed up the object size and number of objects. 2 should be added before the multiplication. Here's the fixed code:
ZeroMemory(logfonts, sizeof(LOGFONTA) * (MSGDLGFONTCOUNT + 2));
In the next sample, the programmer tried his best to make it all work right using sizeof() but eventually ended up mixing sizes up again. The resulting value is larger than needed.
BOOL HandleLinkClick(....) {.... MoveMemory(tr.lpstrText + sizeof(TCHAR)* 7, tr.lpstrText, sizeof(TCHAR)*(tr.chrg.cpMax - tr.chrg.cpMin + 1));.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V620 It's unusual that the expression of sizeof(T)*N kind is being summed with the pointer to T type. Scriver input.cpp 387
The 'tr.lpstrText' variable points to a string consisting of characters of the wchat_t type. If you want to skip 7 characters, you just need to add 7; no need to multiply it by sizeof(wchar_t).
Another similar error: ctrl_edit.cpp 351
It's not over, I'm afraid. What about one more way of making a mistake:
INT_PTR CALLBACK DlgProcThemeOptions(....) {.... str = (TCHAR *)malloc(MAX_PATH+1);.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V641 The size of the allocated memory buffer is not a multiple of the element size. KeyboardNotify options.cpp 718
Multiplication by sizeof(TCHAR) is missing. There are 2 more errors in the same file, lines 819 and 1076.
And finally the last code fragment with an error related to the number of items:
void createProcessList(void) {.... ProcessList.szFileName[i] = (TCHAR *)malloc(wcslen(dbv.ptszVal) + 1); if (ProcessList.szFileName[i]) wcscpy(ProcessList.szFileName[i], dbv.ptszVal);.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic messages: V635 Consider inspecting the expression. The length should probably be multiplied by the sizeof(wchar_t). KeyboardNotify main.cpp 543
Missing multiplication by sizeof(TCHAR) can also be found in the following fragments: options.cpp 1177, options.cpp 1204.
Now we're done with sizes, let's pass on to other methods of shooting yourself in the foot with a pointer.
Array index out of bounds
INT_PTR CALLBACK DlgProcFiles(....) {.... char fn[6], tmp[MAX_PATH];.... SetDlgItemTextA(hwnd, IDC_WWW_TIMER, _itoa(db_get_w(NULL, MODNAME, strcat(fn, "_timer"), 60), tmp, 10));.... }
V512 A call of the'strcat' function will lead to overflow of the buffer 'fn'. NimContact files.cpp 290
The "_timer" string doesn't fit into the 'fn' array. Although it consists of 6 characters only, mind the terminal null character (NUL). Theoretically, we've got undefined behavior here. In practice, it appears that the 'tmp' array will be affected: '0' will be written into the null element of the 'tmp' array.
The next example is even worse. In the code below, HANDLE of some icon will be spoiled:
typedef struct { int cbSize; char caps[0x10]; HANDLE hIcon; char name[MAX_CAPNAME]; } ICQ_CUSTOMCAP; void InitCheck() {.... strcpy(cap.caps, "GPG AutoExchange");.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V512 A call of the'strcpy' function will lead to overflow of the buffer 'cap.caps'. New_GPG main.cpp 2246
The end-of-string character is again not taken into account. I guess it would be better to use the memcpy() function here.
Other similar issues:
main.cpp 2261
messages.cpp 541
messages.cpp 849
utilities.cpp 547
The Great and Powerful strncat() function
Many heard about the danger of using the strcat() function and therefore prefer to use a seemingly safer strncat() function instead. But few can really handle it right. This function is much more dangerous than you might think. You see, the third argument specifies the amount of free space left in the buffer, not the buffer's maximum length.
The following code is totally incorrect:
BOOL ExportSettings(....) {.... char header[512], buff[1024], abuff[1024];.... strncat(buff, abuff, SIZEOF(buff));.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V645 The'strncat' function call could lead to the 'buff' buffer overflow. The bounds should not contain the size of the buffer, but a number of characters it can hold. Miranda fontoptions.cpp 162
If only half of 'buff' is occupied, the code will show no care about it and allow adding 1000 more characters thus causing an array overrun - and quite a large one indeed. After all, the programmer could simply use strcat() to get the same result.
Well, to be exact, the statement strncat(....,...., SIZEOF(X)) is fundamentally incorrect. It implies that the array ALWAYS has some free space left.
There are 48 more fragments in Miranda NG where the strncat() function is misused. Here they are: MirandaNG-645-1.txt.
By the way, such issues in the code can well be treated as potential vulnerabilities.
In defense of Miranda NG programmers, I should note that some of them did read the description of the strncat() function. These guys write their code in the following way:
void __cdecl GGPROTO::dccmainthread(void*) {.... strncat(filename, (char*)local_dcc->file_info.filename, sizeof(filename) - strlen(filename));.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V645 The'strncat' function call could lead to the 'filename' buffer overflow. The bounds should not contain the size of the buffer, but a number of characters it can hold. GG filetransfer.cpp 273
Unfortunately, it's wrong again. At least, there is a risk of spoiling 1 byte outside the array. And I think you have already guessed that the reason is that very ill-fated end-of-string character that wasn't taken into account.
Let me explain this error by a simple example:
char buf[5] = "ABCD"; strncat(buf, "E", 5 - strlen(buf));
The buffer doesn't have any more space left for new characters. It is keeping 4 characters and an end-of-string character. The "5 - strlen(buf)" expression evaluates to 1. The strncpy() function will copy the "E" character into the last item of the 'buf' array and the end-of-string character will be written outside the buffer bounds.
Other 34 issues are collected in this file: MirandaNG-645-2.txt.
Erotica with new[] and delete
Someone of the Miranda NG team keeps constantly forgetting to write square brackets for the delete operator:
extern "C" int __declspec(dllexport) Load(void) { int wdsize = GetCurrentDirectory(0, NULL); TCHAR *workingDir = new TCHAR[wdsize]; GetCurrentDirectory(wdsize, workingDir); Utils::convertPath(workingDir); workingDirUtf8 = mir_utf8encodeT(workingDir); delete workingDir;.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V611 The memory was allocated using 'new T[]' operator but was released using the 'delete' operator. Consider inspecting this code. It's probably better to use 'delete [] workingDir;'. IEView ieview_main.cpp 68
Here are 20 more issues of the kind: MirandaNG-611-1.txt.
Well, errors like that don't usually have any serious effects though. That's why I put them into the "erotica" category. More hard-core things are shown further.
Perverted new, malloc, delete and free
The programmer mixed up methods of memory allocation and freeing:
void CLCDLabel::UpdateCutOffIndex() {.... int *piWidths = new int[(*--m_vLines.end()).length()];.... free(piWidths);.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V611 The memory was allocated using 'new' operator but was released using the 'free' function. Consider inspecting operation logics behind the 'piWidths' variable. MirandaG15 clcdlabel.cpp 209
11 more Kama Sutra positions can be studied here: MirandaNG-611-2.txt.
Meaningless checks
In case of a memory shortage issue, the ordinary 'new' operator throws an exception. That's why it doesn't make sense checking a pointer returned by 'new' for being null.
Such an excessive check is usually harmless. However, you may sometimes come across code fragments like the following one:
int CIcqProto::GetAvatarData(....) {.... ar = new avatars_request(ART_GET); // get avatar if (!ar) { // out of memory, go away m_avatarsMutex->Leave(); return 0; }.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V668 There is no sense in testing the 'ar' pointer against null, as the memory was allocated using the 'new' operator. The exception will be generated in the case of memory allocation error. ICQ icq_avatar.cpp 608
If the error occurs, the mutex should be freed. But it won't happen. If an object can't be created, things will go quite a different way than the programmer expects.
I suggest checking the rest 83 analyzer's warnings of this kind: MirandaNG-668.txt.
SIZEOF() and _tcslen() mixed up
#define SIZEOF(X) (sizeof(X)/sizeof(X[0])).... TCHAR *ptszVal;.... int OnButtonPressed(WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) {.... int FinalLen = slen + SIZEOF(dbv.ptszVal) + 1;.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V514 Dividing sizeof a pointer'sizeof (dbv.ptszVal)' by another value. There is a probability of logical error presence. TranslitSwitcher layoutproc.cpp 827
Something strange is written here. The SIZEOF() macro is applied to a pointer, which makes no sense at all. I suspect that the programmer really wanted to calculate the string length. Then he should have used the _tcslen() function.
Other similar fragments:
layoutproc.cpp 876
layoutproc.cpp 924
main.cpp 1300
vptr spoiled
class CBaseCtrl {.... virtual void Release() { } virtual BOOL OnInfoChanged(MCONTACT hContact, LPCSTR pszProto);.... }; CBaseCtrl::CBaseCtrl() { ZeroMemory(this, sizeof(*this)); _cbSize = sizeof(CBaseCtrl); }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V598 The'memset' function is used to nullify the fields of 'CBaseCtrl' class. Virtual method table will be damaged by this. UInfoEx ctrl_base.cpp 77
The programmer was too lazy and settled for the ZeroMemory() function to zero the class fields. He didn't take into account, however, that the class contains a pointer to a virtual method table. In the base class, many methods are declared as virtual. Spoiling a pointer to a virtual method table will lead to undefined behavior when handling an object initialized in such a crude manner.
Other similar issues:
ctrl_base.cpp 87
ctrl_base.cpp 103.
Object lifetime
static INT_PTR CALLBACK DlgProcFindAdd(....) {.... case IDC_ADD: { ADDCONTACTSTRUCT acs = {0}; if (ListView_GetSelectedCount(hwndList) == 1) {.... } else {.... PROTOSEARCHRESULT psr = { 0 }; // <= psr.cbSize = sizeof(psr); psr.flags = PSR_TCHAR; psr.id = str; acs.psr = &psr; // <= acs.szProto = (char*)SendDlgItemMessage(....); } acs.handleType = HANDLE_SEARCHRESULT; CallService(MS_ADDCONTACT_SHOW, (WPARAM)hwndDlg, (LPARAM)&acs); } break;.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V506 Pointer to local variable 'psr' is stored outside the scope of this variable. Such a pointer will become invalid. Miranda findadd.cpp 777
The 'psr' object will cease to exist when the program leaves the else branch. However, the pointer to this object will have been already saved by the time and will be used further in the program. This is an example of a genuine "wild pointer". The results of handling it cannot be predicted.
Another similar example:
HMENU BuildRecursiveMenu(....) {.... if (GetKeyState(VK_CONTROL) & 0x8000) { TCHAR str[256]; mir_sntprintf(str, SIZEOF(str), _T("%s (%d, id %x)"), mi->pszName, mi->position, mii.dwItemData); mii.dwTypeData = str; }.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V507 Pointer to local array'str' is stored outside the scope of this array. Such a pointer will become invalid. Miranda genmenu.cpp 973
The text is printed into a temporary array which is destroyed right after. But the pointer to this array will be used in some other part of the program.
I wonder how programs like this work at all! Check other 9 fragments inhabited by wild pointers: MirandaNG-506-507.txt.
Torments of 64-bit pointers
I didn't examine the 64-bit diagnostics. I look only to V220 warnings. Almost each of them indicates a genuine bug.
Here's an example of incorrect code from the viewpoint of the 64-bit mode:
typedef LONG_PTR LPARAM; LRESULT WINAPI SendMessageA( __in HWND hWnd, __in UINT Msg, __in WPARAM wParam, __in LPARAM lParam); static INT_PTR CALLBACK DlgProcOpts(....) {.... SendMessageA(hwndCombo, CB_ADDSTRING, 0, (LONG)acc[i].name);.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V220 Suspicious sequence of types castings: memsize -> 32-bit integer -> memsize. The value being casted: 'acc[i].name'. GmailNotifier options.cpp 55
A 64-bit pointer is to be passed somewhere. To do this, it must be cast to the LPARAM type. But instead, this pointer is forced to turn into the 32-bit LONG type and only after that automatically expanded to LONG_PTR. This error dates back to the times of 32 bits when the LONG and LPARAM types' sizes coincided. Nowadays they no longer do. The most significant 32 bits will be spoiled in the 64-bit pointer.
What is especially unpleasant about bugs like this is that they do not eagerly reveal themselves. You will be lucky while memory is allocated within the low addresses.
Here are 20 more fragments where 64-bit pointers get spoiled: MirandaNG-220.txt.
Non-erased private data
void CAST256::Base::UncheckedSetKey(....) { AssertValidKeyLength(keylength); word32 kappa[8];.... memset(kappa, 0, sizeof(kappa)); }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V597 The compiler could delete the'memset' function call, which is used to flush 'kappa' buffer. The RtlSecureZeroMemory() function should be used to erase the private data. Cryptlib cast.cpp 293
The compiler will delete the call of the memset() function in the release version. To find out why, see the diagnostic description.
There are 6 more fragments where private data won't be erased: MirandaNG-597.txt.
Miscellaneous
There are another couple of analyzer's warnings which I'd like to discuss together.
void LoadStationData(...., WIDATA *Data) {.... ZeroMemory(Data, sizeof(Data));.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V512 A call of the'memset' function will lead to underflow of the buffer 'Data'. Weather weather_ini.cpp 250
What the'sizeof(Data)' expression returns is the size of the pointer, not WIDATA. Only part of the object will be zeroed. A correct way to write this code is as follows: sizeof(*Data).
void CSametimeProto::CancelFileTransfer(HANDLE hFt) {.... FileTransferClientData* ftcd =....; if (ftcd) { while (mwFileTransfer_isDone(ftcd->ft) && ftcd) ftcd = ftcd->next;.... }
PVS-Studio's diagnostic message: V713 The pointer ftcd was utilized in the logical expression before it was verified against nullptr in the same logical expression. Sametime files.cpp 423
In the loop condition, the 'ftcd' pointer is first dereferenced and only then checked. I guess the expression should be rewritten in the following way:
while (ftcd && mwFileTransfer_isDone(ftcd->ft))
Conclusion
Handling pointers and memory is not the only aspect of C++ programs. In the next article, we'll discuss other types of bugs found in Miranda NG. There are not as many of them, but still quite a lot.This is the first blog post in this series about LXD 2.0.
A few common questions about LXD
What’s LXD?
At its simplest, LXD is a daemon which provides a REST API to drive LXC containers.
Its main goal is to provide a user experience that’s similar to that of virtual machines but using Linux containers rather than hardware virtualization.
How does LXD relate to Docker/Rkt?
This is by far the question we get the most, so lets address it immediately!
LXD focuses on system containers, also called infrastructure containers. That is, a LXD container runs a full Linux system, exactly as it would be when run on metal or in a VM.
Those containers will typically be long running and based on a clean distribution image. Traditional configuration management tools and deployment tools can be used with LXD containers exactly as you would use them for a VM, cloud instance or physical machine.
In contrast, Docker focuses on ephemeral, stateless, minimal containers that won’t typically get upgraded or re-configured but instead just be replaced entirely. That makes Docker and similar projects much closer to a software distribution mechanism than a machine management tool.
The two models aren’t mutually exclusive either. You can absolutely use LXD to provide full Linux systems to your users who can then install Docker inside their LXD container to run the software they want.
Why LXD?
We’ve been working on LXC for a number of years now. LXC is great at what it does, that is, it provides a very good set of low-level tools and a library to create and manage containers.
However that kind of low-level tools aren’t necessarily very user friendly. They require a lot of initial knowledge to understand what they do and how they work. Keeping backward compatibility with older containers and deployment methods has also prevented LXC from using some security features by default, leading to more manual configuration for users.
We see LXD as the opportunity to address those shortcomings. On top of being a long running daemon which lets us address a lot of the LXC limitations like dynamic resource restrictions, container migration and efficient live migration, it also gave us the opportunity to come up with a new default experience, that’s safe by default and much more user focused.
The main LXD components
There are a number of main components that make LXD, those are typically visible in the LXD directory structure, in its command line client and in the API structure itself.
Containers
Containers in LXD are made of:
A filesystem (rootfs)
A list of configuration options, including resource limits, environment, security options and more
A bunch of devices like disks, character/block unix devices and network interfaces
A set of profiles the container inherits configuration from (see below)
Some properties (container architecture, ephemeral or persistent and the name)
Some runtime state (when using CRIU for checkpoint/restore)
Snapshots
Container snapshots are identical to containers except for the fact that they are immutable, they can be renamed, destroyed or restored but cannot be modified in any way.
It is worth noting that because we allow storing the container runtime state, this effectively gives us the concept of “stateful” snapshots. That is, the ability to rollback the container including its cpu and memory state at the time of the snapshot.
Images
LXD is image based, all LXD containers come from an image. Images are typically clean Linux distribution images similar to what you would use for a virtual machine or cloud instance.
It is possible to “publish” a container, making an image from it which can then be used by the local or remote LXD hosts.
Images are uniquely identified by their sha256 hash and can be referenced by using their full or partial hash. Because typing long hashes isn’t particularly user friendly, images can also have any number of properties applied to them, allowing for an easy search through the image store. Aliases can also be set as a one to one mapping between a unique user friendly string and an image hash.
LXD comes pre-configured with three remote image servers (see remotes below):
“ubuntu:” provides stable Ubuntu images
“ubunt-daily:” provides daily builds of Ubuntu
“images:” is a community run image server providing images for a number of other Linux distributions using the upstream LXC templates
Remote images are automatically cached by the LXD daemon and kept for a number of days (10 by default) since they were last used before getting expired.
Additionally LXD also automatically updates remote images (unless told otherwise) so that the freshest version of the image is always available locally.
Profiles
Profiles are a way to define container configuration and container devices in one place and then have it apply to any number of containers.
A container can have multiple profiles applied to it. When building the final container configuration (known as expanded configuration), the profiles will be applied in the order they were defined in, overriding each other when the same configuration key or device is found. Then the local container configuration is applied on top of that, overriding anything that came from a profile.
LXD ships with two pre-configured profiles:
“default” is automatically applied to all containers unless an alternative list of profiles is provided by the user. This profile currently does just one thing, define a “eth0” network device for the container.
“docker” is a profile you can apply to a container which you want to allow to run Docker containers. It requests LXD load some required kernel modules, turns on container nesting and sets up a few device entries.
Remotes
As I mentioned earlier, LXD is a networked daemon. The command line client that comes with it can therefore talk to multiple remote LXD servers as well as image servers.
By default, our command line client comes with the following remotes defined
local: (default remote, talks to the local LXD daemon over a unix socket)
ubuntu: (Ubuntu image server providing stable builds)
ubuntu-daily: (Ubuntu image server providing daily builds)
images: (images.linuxcontainers.org image server)
Any combination of those remotes can be used with the command line client.
You can also add any number of remote LXD hosts that were configured to listen to the network. Either anonymously if they are a public image server or after going through authentication when managing remote containers.
It’s that remote mechanism that makes it possible to interact with remote image servers as well as copy or move containers between hosts.
Security
One aspect that was core to our design of LXD was to make it as safe as possible while allowing modern Linux distributions to run inside it unmodified.
The main security features used by LXD through its use of the LXC library are:
Kernel namespaces. Especially the user namespace as a way to keep everything the container does separate from the rest of the system. LXD uses the user namespace by default (contrary to LXC) and allows for the user to turn it off on a per-container basis (marking the container “privileged”) when absolutely needed.
Seccomp. To filter some potentially dangerous system calls.
AppArmor: To provide additional restrictions on mounts, socket, ptrace and file access. Specifically restricting cross-container communication.
|
with the subgroup Al-Farooq that had previously carried out attacks in Bahawalpur, Muzaffargarh and Attock.
He said police had seized arms including pistols, Kalashnikov rifles and suicide jackets from them. Mubashir said police had also seized hate literature, armament manuals and material on ways of conducting attacks and executing suicide bombings from the men.
Raids are underway to arrest the accomplices of the terrorists, Maikin said.
Regarded by orthodox Muslims as heretical,
Ahmadiyya Muslims are not allowed to refer to their places of worship as mosques or to publicly quote from the Quran – acts punishable by imprisonment of up to three years.
Pakistan’s constitution was amended 40 years ago to declare Ahmadiyya to be non-Muslims.Delegates at party conference should have been given a vote on Brexit, LabourList readers have said.
Just over half of people (52.7 per cent) said Momentum was wrong to “block” a ballot on Labour’s stance on Brexit. The Jeremy Corbyn-supporting group asked members to chose subjects other than Britain’s withdrawal from the EU among the four “contemporary motion” debates in Brighton.
More than a third (38.5 per cent) backed Momentum’s actions while 8.9 per cent said they did not know.
Readers also called on Corbyn to make early years and childcare the priority of its education policy rather than university tuition fees.
Some 40.5 per cent said this area should be the focus of the party’s work shadowing Justine Greening, the Tory education secretary. Nearly one in five (18.8 per cent) said reducing fees – which Labour promised to abolish at the general election – should be the priority while 17.9 per cent simply said both were essential. The remainder said they did not know.
Finally, readers of the blog want to see Corbyn argue for stronger action from the government to get aid into Syria. A huge 76.8 per cent said Labour should argue for Theresa May to do more to supply aid for the war-torn nation. Just 12.9 per cent opposed the move while 10.4 per cent said they did not know.
The survey was carried out while Alison McGovern, Wirral South and chair of Progress, served as guest editor.
Thank you to the 2,340 people who took part in the research.The fairytale finale was not forthcoming for the Colorado Rapids as the Supporters’ Shield slipped from their grasp on the final day of the 2016 regular season, but more firsts were confirmed as a record-breaking regular season drew to a dramatic close.
A frustrating 1-1 home tie against bottom side Houston Dynamo left the Rapids two points adrift of FC Dallas (STANDINGS), who grabbed a goalless draw at LA Galaxy, a result which would have been enough for the Shield irrespective of the outcome at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
The outcome in Commerce City meant the Rapids became only the fifth team in MLS history to go an entire season undefeated at home (11-0-6). By conceding just the one goal the Rapids set a new league record for average goals against at home (0.41).
Despite the Rapids controlling the opening passage of play, a moment of hesitation defensively allowed the Dynamo to score for the first time in three games, with 20 minutes gone. Andrew Wenger smashed home the loose ball at the far post after Tim Howard could only parry a cross from the left.
Jared Watts, Kevin Doyle and Dominique Badji - twice - had chances to score in the opening period, but the Rapids somehow went in at the break trailing. Having looked comfortable, the Rapids were now chasing the game, and needing two goals to give themselves any chance of the Supporters’ Shield. Ahead of kickoff they needed to win and FC Dallas to lose.
Following a rather flat, nervy first half, the Rapids showed their true colors after the interval. Their dominance eventually paid off on 67 minutes when Shkëlzen Gashi scored his ninth goal of the season, but his first at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park. As the game resumed, midfielder Jermaine Jones entered as a substitute for his first appearance since July 4.
Unfortunately, his presence, and the momentum of an equalizing goal was not enough for the Rapids to complete the turnaround. They can maybe count themselves a little fortunate not to have leaked at the last, with Wenger, Cristian Maidana and Will Bruin all enjoying glorious chances to shatter the unbeaten home record. At the other end, Badji bellowed to the heavens as a heavy first touch proved costly when just yards from goal in the dying moments.
A win would have been the perfect platform from which to launch their playoff push, but having Jones and Marlon Hairston healthy, and going the regular season undefeated at home is not too shabby.
The Rapids will not discover their Western Conference semifinal opponents until Wednesday or Thursday. The first leg is away next Sunday, with the return at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park on November 6 (TICKETS).
BOX SCORE
Colorado Rapids 1-1 Houston Dynamo
Sunday, October 23, 2016 - Dick’s Sporting Goods Park
Scoring Summary
HOU: Andrew Wenger 20’ (unassisted)
COL: Shkëlzen Gashi 67’ (Marlon Hairston, Dominique Badji)
Colorado Rapids: Tim Howard, Eric Miller, Jared Watts, Axel Sjöberg, Marc Burch; Dillon Powers, Sam Cronin (Jermaine Jones 68’); Shkëlzen Gashi, Kevin Doyle, Sebastien Le Toux (Marlon Hairston 61’); Dominique Badji.
Subs not used: Zac MacMath, Bobby Burling, Mekeil Williams, Micheal Azira, Caleb Calvert.
Houston Dynamo: Joe Willis, Sheanon Williams, Keyner Brown, Jalil Anibaba, DaMarcus Beasley, Collen Warner, Alex (Cristián Maidana 73’); Andrew Wenger, Eric Alexander, Boniek Garcia, Mauro Manotas (Will Bruin 84’).
Subs not used: Calle Brown, Abdoulie Mansally, David Horst, Jose Escalante, Yair Arboleda.
Disciplinary
HOU: Boniek Garcia 74’ (caution)
COL: Jermaine Jones 88’ (caution)
HOU: Sheanon Williams 90’+4’ (caution)
COL: Marc Burch 90’+4’ (caution)
Attendance: 18,446
Team Records
Colorado Rapids: 15-6-13 (58 points)
Houston Dynamo: 7-14-13 (34 points)Remembering the Gallipoli Campaign, April 1915 – January 1916
In his memoir, Over There with the Australians (1918), R. Hugh Knyvett, an Australian officer, pondered on the preoccupation with the Anzac experience at Gallipoli:
Australia and New Zealand’s part does not, in actual accomplishment or in personal daring and endurance, outclass the doings of these others, the larger half of the army. But there is a romance and a glow about the Anzac exploits that (rail at the injustice of it as you may) makes a human interest story that will elbow out of the mind of the ‘man in the street’ what other troops did. In fact, every second man one meets has the idea that the Australians and New Zealanders were the only men there.
The Anzac troops weren’t the only men who fought during the Gallipoli campaign though the landing has become synonymous with the exploits of the dominion men. Alongside them were troops from India, Ireland, France, Britain and other empire and Allied forces, with whom they interacted both in the battlefield and at camp.
The troops also had contact with their Turkish enemies, sharing moments of touch and intimacy.
This Saturday will be the centennial commemoration of the landing of the Anzac troops at Gallipoli, arriving to play their part in the long campaign that would come to an end in January 1916. As Australia and New Zealand remember Anzac Day at home and at dawn ceremonies at Gallipoli, and across the globe, let it also be remembered that the Anzac men were not the only troops fighting at Gallipoli, and the other fronts across the world. Instead these were spaces for encounter with the troops who served alongside them and those they fought against, moments of interaction – however fleeting – that would shape how these men experienced the war.Contenders or pretenders, the list of potential candidates for President-elect Barack Obama's soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat stretches from Chicago to Springfield and back again.
All are Democrats. All would love the chance to follow Obama as the junior senator from Illinois in a state where Republicans have a long losing streak in major statewide contests. The appointment lasts the final two years of Obama's term.
Among them are at least two members of Congress and Obama campaign co-chairs: Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., the South Side son of a famous political father, and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an early Obama supporter from progressive Evanston.
Other names mentioned in Illinois political circles are Obama family confidante Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago businesswoman; state Senate President Emil Jones Jr., an Obama mentor in the mid-1990s; and Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a rising star and likely candidate for governor in 2010.
Tammy Duckworth, the Illinois director of veterans affairs, is high on everyone's list.
An Iraq war veteran who lost most of both legs after her helicopter was shot down, Duckworth was recruited for a losing 2006 House race by Sen. Richard Durbin and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the prospective White House chief of staff. Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, guided her campaign and is a fan.
The decision lies with Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose political decisions are famously unpredictable. He told reporters yesterday that he is unlikely to choose himself, although that is permissible.
"The search begins today," Blagojevich said in announcing that a new committee would consider potential picks. He said he aims to make a decision by Jan. 1.
Day of Reckoning
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is about to learn the price of his open support for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his stark criticism of Obama during the campaign.
Lieberman is scheduled to meet with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) by the end of this week to discuss his future as an independent who caucuses with Democrats, aides said. It will be a face-to-face sit-down, but the precise timing and location are still undisclosed, perhaps out of senatorial deference to Lieberman.
Reid, who said publicly for most of the spring and summer that it was fine for Lieberman to endorse McCain, became angry with his colleague when he delivered a blistering speech at the Republican National Convention that included criticism of Obama's readiness to be president.
One possible penalty would be to strip Lieberman of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which many Democrats would support but some would consider light punishment. Another option is to expel him from the caucus by stripping him of all committee assignments, a move that would force Lieberman to caucus with Republicans if he wants to take part in committee deliberations.If you only looked at the surface, last month’s election was a resounding endorsement for the two main parties (or, one set of voters hated the other side’s party leader more). More than 80 per cent of voters opted for the two main parties on 8 June.
And yet, and yet. As with so much in politics today, it’s not quite that simple.
Firstly, we have to look at the oddities of the voting system. Despite this big vote share, no party secured a majority. The Conservatives won the same vote share as the landslide under Margaret Thatcher in 1983. And this was Labour's highest vote share since 2001 – when they again secured a huge (but diminished) majority. Even on first past the post’s own (warped) terms however, there was no mandate to rule alone.
It’s true that people turn out to vote when they think it really matters, and when there are clear policy differences between parties. But the idea of a straightforward contest between two choices, each that the other side finds, as the New Statesman's Jonn Elledge puts it, "utterly hateful", masks how the system is shaping how people vote and masking their preferences.
Voters are highly diverse in their policy wants-and-needs, and there’s often a surprising degree of overlap between the two camps. But when voting for a wide range of parties in 2015 landed Britain with only a slim majority government – and almost no representation for Greens and UKIP – this time they felt they had to game the system.
We know that because, a week before polling day, one in five voters said they planned to "hold their nose" and vote tactically – double the rate of 2015. That is a decision based on pragmatics above pure love or loathing for a party leader.
Many used the increasing number of vote-swapping sites, while others second-guessed other voters off their own bat. Either way, voters became masterminds in deciding who stood the best chance in their seat. This one election, many millions lent their vote "just this once". But it wasn’t just the voters doing it.
Ukip stood in just 377 seats this time. That’s down from 624 in 2015. Their vote share collapsed. Of course it did – almost by mathematical necessity it was bound to. Whether it was a national decision to stand down or a series of local moves based on resources is a moot point – standing down made the choice for voters before they could themselves.
Similarly, the Greens stood in only 468 seats, down from 573. But more important than these numbers was the rhetoric of "progressive alliances". It gave the message that, in marginal seats, it was OK for Green supporters to opt for Labour. Again, whether that was the party’s intent or not doesn’t matter. Voters read it as a suggestion to vote tactically – and the Greens lost half their votes.
Elledge argued that: “It strikes me that one of the things most likely to get your vote to turn out is your opponent. Turns out that all the two-party system needed to revive it was a pair of leaders the other lot could find utterly hateful.”
But this wasn’t a vote based on hatred – it was based on the brutal absurdity of a voting system that, after the most disproportionate election result ever in 2015, made people think: "The only way I can vote is for Labour or the Tories." Political decisions of all shapes struggled to squeeze into that rectangular ballot box slot.
And let’s not forget – the result in Scotland was actually a shift to multi-party politics, not the opposite. The Conservative haul of over a dozen seats (up from one) is a pluralist game-changer north of the border.
Whatever the case, referendums have had a hugely disruptive effect breaking down party loyalties. There is no great return to tribalism.
Last month, voters played the lottery election. Like most lotteries, there weren’t many winners.
Darren Hughes is acting chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society.Image copyright Reuters Image caption A campaigner holds a sign outside the Reichstag, demanding a minimum wage
The German parliament has approved the country's first minimum wage, in a vote in the Bundestag on Thursday.
The wage will be set at 8.50 euros (£6.80) per hour, which is higher than the equivalent in the US and UK.
Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats approved the new policy as part of a power-sharing deal with the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Germany has previously relied on trade unions and business groups to fix minimum pay instead.
At the moment, the country is one of seven in the 28-nation EU without a minimum wage level.
The minimum wage has been the subject of much controversy in Germany, with business leaders warning that it would result in fewer jobs, or force companies to move production facilities to other countries, where labour is cheaper.
Lobbyists have also claimed that the policy would make Germany less competitive.
However others have been angered by concessionary measures, including a two-year grace period for some employers to phase in the policy.
Additionally, the wage does not cover minors, interns, trainees or long-term unemployed people for their first six months at work.
For the rest of Germany's employers, the regulations will come into effect on 1 January 2015. The wage will be reviewed annually from 1 January 2018.
Regardless of the outcome of Thursday's vote, the policy will still need to be passed by Germany's upper house, the Bundesrat.
Other European countries have been adjusting their minimum wage policies.
In March, the UK government announced a 19p increase to the national minimum wage, bringing it to £6.50 per hour.
In May, Swiss voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to introduce what would have been the highest minimum wage in the world, in a referendum.
Under the plan, employers would have had to pay workers a minimum 22 Swiss francs (about $25; £15; 18 euros) an hour.A former smartphone powerhouse wants to be an instrumental part of the coming smart car revolution, and BlackBerry is deepening its investment int he field with a new autonomous driving research center opening for business on Monday in Ottawa, Reuters reports. BlackBerry is one of three initial organizations to get clearance from the government of Ontario to test self-driving vehicles in the province on public roads.
BlackBerry’s bet on self-driving is mainly riding on QNX, the company it acquired in 2010, and whose software later became the basis for its BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system. QNX had been a part of Harman International at the time, and was focused on infotainment system software even back then.
For its initial tests, BlackBerry will be using Ford Lincoln vehicles retrofitted with autonomous vehicle hardware and software, and the former smartphone maker also has an agreement in place with Ford to work with it directly, with an expanded mandate that includes not only infotainment, but also security software and likely also autonomous driving features, though neither BlackBerry nor ford are getting quiet so specific about their work together just yet.
BlackBerry may be able to ride the interest in self-driving tech to renewed relevance, but it’s also going to face a lot of competition. At the software level, companies like Delphi are looking to provide production-ready autonomous hardware and software to automakers, and a number of other players are also in the space, including chipmakers like Qualcomm (through NXP), Intel and Nvidia, and while these companies focus on hardware, they’re also developing software that they could end up supplying to push sales of their primary business.
The new research facility will be an extension of BlackBerry’s existing QNX operations in Ottawa, and will also focus on advanced driver assist features like automatic emergency breaking and intelligent cruise as well as development of full autonomy.If there is one person who could be said to be Donald Trump's political soulmate, it would be former Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. They bonded over a very special issue: birtherism. Back in 2011, Trump was considering a run for president against Barack Obama and had his minion Sam Nunberg immerse himself in fringe right-wing media for months to get a feel for the lay of the land.
He found that a large part of the GOP base was convinced that Barack Obama was a secret Muslim who had not been born in the United States and was therefore ineligible to be president. Trump knew he'd found a winning issue in demanding the "long form birth certificate," and for a time he was even tied for first place in early polling for the 2012 GOP nomination.
Advertisement:
President Obama released the form and then humiliated Trump to his face at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, so Trump set his White House plans aside until 2016. But the birther issue didn't die. It was taken up by Arpaio, well-known as a sadistic lawman who made prisoners parade around in pink underwear in 120-degree desert heat, in what he himself called "concentration camps." Arpaio took up the cause and sent out a five-man “cold case posse” to "authenticate" the long form birth certificate.
Donald Trump was very impressed and sent Arpaio a congratulatory note on a printed copy of the AP article announcing the "finding."
From that point on, the two men were brothers in arms, sharing a deep bond with white America's racist id.
Sheriff Joe is a pioneer when it comes to Latino-bashing. In fact, his strident enforcement of the "show me your papers" law, even after it was struck down by the federal courts, is what landed him in hot water and got him convicted on a misdemeanor charge of contempt of court, giving Trump the opportunity to issue a pardon for his anti-immigrant, birther soulmate, just seven months into his term.
And what an opportunity it is. Indeed, Trump has got to be thrilled that Arpaio offered him a way to send messages to certain people he desperately needs to keep on board the Trump train.
Advertisement:
The first is the base itself, of course. There isn't a lot of evidence that he's losing his followers in any great numbers. But polls suggest his fervent support is fading among the faithful, and that could lead to real erosion if he doesn't nip it in the bud. Trump's base may be a bit uncomfortable with coddling Nazis with torches, but pardoning a brutal, anti-immigrant cop is right in their wheelhouse.
The second reason Trump may have pardoned Arpaio is to give his pardon power a little road test to let people know that he's ready to use it. Recent reporting has special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators homing in on some of Trump's associates in the various Russian counter-espionage and obstruction of justice investigations. He may want to let them know that he has their backs, bigly.
Finally, I think there is an even more important reason for doing this, although I don't know that Trump is even conscious of it. He has always been an authoritarian at heart, going all the way back to his notorious 1989 full-page ad entitled "Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back Our Police." In July of 2016, he gave a speech declaring, "I am the law and order candidate.”
He has also declared that he loves torture and that he would summarily execute prisoners if he could. At one point he said that on his first day in office he would declare that it is mandatory to seek the death penalty for any cop killing, despite the fact that he would have no authority to do so. He promised over and over again that he was going to let the border patrol, ICE and local police "take the gloves off." As he told Larry King on CNN nearly 30 years ago:
Advertisement:
I am strongly in favor of the death penalty. I am also in favor bringing back police forces that can do something instead of turning their back because every quality lawyer that represents people that are trouble, the first thing they do is start shouting police brutality, etc.... The problem we have is we don't have any protection for the policeman.
When the Central Park Five were found to be innocent and later received a large settlement from the city, Trump was angry and wrote an op-ed in the Daily News, arguing they had to be guilty: "Speak to the detectives on the case and try listening to the facts. These young men do not exactly have the pasts of angels." He refused to accept the judgment of the courts and instead apparently relied on some police officers who told him the wrongfully convicted young men deserved what they got.
During the presidential campaign, Trump appeared before police groups all over the country, where the rank and file cheered his speeches; many of their unions endorsed him and some even wore his iconic red hats. Not long before Charlottesville, the president made a big speech to the Long Island police and stunned everyone by telling them that they should rough up suspects during arrests. Many police chiefs responded negatively, but the cops in that audience cheered.
Trump didn't just pardon Arpaio to signal the base that he's still the anti-immigrant xenophobe they voted for. He pardoned Arpaio to signal to the police in this country that the "law and order" president thinks it's fine if cops ignore the courts and the law if they believe those things are inhibiting them from doing their jobs.
Advertisement:
None of this is to say that he doesn't truly feel a personal bond with Arpaio and wants to spare him a prison sentence, however short it might be. After all, he interfered with the case months ago. But he could have granted clemency, which would have kept the ex-sheriff out of jail. Trump chose to pardon him for a reason: He truly doesn't believe Arpaio did anything wrong by ordering his deputies to practice racial profiling during traffic stops, or by defying a court order to stop doing it. Indeed, Trump wants the police to know this president will back them if they do the same.
When he says "law and order," he means that police are the law and they can keep order by any means necessary. That's the opposite of the rule of law, a concept for which President Trump clearly has no respect.
By the way, USA Today reported on Sunday that Trump intends to lift an Obama-era ban on supplying local police forces with surplus military equipment. What could go wrong?NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI The planet Venus sparkles as a bright point of light, seen through the rings of Saturn, in this image from NASA's Cassini orbiter. Venus is the speck just above and to the right of the image's center. The picture was captured on Nov. 10, 2012.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been sending us eye-filling pictures of the giant planet Saturn for almost nine years, but every so often, the camera also sees the small fry of the solar system — such as Venus, which shines in the two latest offerings from the Cassini imaging team.
One of the photos, captured last November, shows Venus as seen through Saturn's gossamer rings, from a distance of 884 million miles (1.42 billion kilometers, or 9.51 AU). The other picture highlights Venus as a "morning star," hanging just beyond Saturn's edge and next to the giant planet's G ring. Venus was 849 million miles (1.37 billion kilometers, or 9.13 AU) away when that picture was taken in January, according to the imaging team.
From such a distance, Venus looks like nothing more than a bright speck. Which isn't surprising, considering that Earth takes on pretty much the same appearance from Saturn, even though it's slightly bigger. The mind-boggling perspectives involved in space vistas led the late astronomer Carl Sagan to call our home planet a "pale blue dot," and I guess that makes Venus a pale yellow dot.
Venus looks lovely from millions of miles away, but it's not a place you'd want to visit, Carolyn Porco, the leader of the imaging team at the Colorado-based Space Science Institute, said in an email:
"Along with Mercury, Earth, and Mars, Venus is one of the rocky 'terrestrial' planets in the solar system that orbit relatively close to the sun," she wrote. "It has an atmosphere of carbon dioxide that reaches nearly 900 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius), a surface pressure 100 times that of Earth's, and is covered in thick, white sulfuric acid clouds, making it very bright. Despite a thoroughly hellish environment that would melt lead, Venus is considered a twin of our planet because of their similar sizes, masses, rocky compositions and close orbits.
"Think about Venus the next time you find yourself reveling in the thriving flora, balmy breezes, and temperate climate of a lovely day on Earth, and remember: You could be somewhere else!"
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI Dawn on Saturn is greeted across the vastness of interplanetary space by the morning star, Venus, in this image from Cassini. Venus appears just off the edge of the planet, in the upper part of the image, directly above the white streak of Saturn's G ring. Lower down, Saturn's E ring makes an appearance. A bright spot near the E ring is a distant star. This picture was captured on Jan. 4, at a distance of about 371,000 miles (597,000 kilometers) from Saturn.
Slideshow: Best of Cassini The Cassini spacecraft is sending back unprecedented imagery of Saturn, its rings and its moons. Click "Launch" to see some of the greatest hits from the Cassini mission. Launch slideshow
More about Saturn and Venus:
Slideshow: Month in Space
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.Well, this is embarrassing. Last month, evangelical pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren announced that he was going to hold a forum at Saddleback Church with the presidential candidates. Warren hosted a similar event in 2008 with John McCain and Barack Obama, at which he interviewed each of the men separately in front of a large audience. The forum was covered by all the major media outlets, and Warren basked in his self-appointed role as America’s leading religious figure.
Yesterday, Warren declared that he was cancelling this year’s candidate forum because the presidential campaign had become too uncivil. It was a ridiculous excuse and a transparent attempt to save face. In reality, there was no event to cancel.
The first sign that Warren has misjudged his influence should have been the fact that he never had a firm date for his forum. In the July conference call with reporters to announce his plans, Warren said that he still needed to finalize an exact date but was looking at the week of August 20. He also noted that while he had held favorable conversations with both campaigns, neither candidate had yet agreed to attend. By comparison, Warren only unveiled plans for the 2008 forum after weeks of intense negotiations with both sides and after getting commitments from both campaigns to participate. He also announced the scheduled date for the event.
Despite Warren’s efforts to make it seem as if he was selflessly cancelling an appearance with both presidential candidates in order to avoid contributing to a toxic political climate, the evidence strongly suggests that there wasn’t any Saddleback forum this time to cancel. The Associated Press reported this morning that neither campaign was planning on attending any event at Saddleback. Saddleback’s own events calendar does not list any candidate forum. (And lest you think a listing was removed when the forum was “cancelled,” the calendar does note that the cross-training fitness class originally scheduled for today has been cancelled.)EXCLUSIVE // Stream the long awaited debut album from He Was Eaten By Owls
One of the reasons I identify so strongly with the math rock community is its socially progressive nature that to me is rooted in the music itself: a rejection, manipulation, or blatant disregard for standards and limitations. At last year’s ArcTanGent, 65daysofstatic‘s Joe looked out at a crowd of what he perceived as like-minded individuals and encouraged us all to extend this gathering beyond the long weekend, beyond Fernhill Farm, and to form a physical community in protest against the military-industrial complex we increasingly find ourselves in. The crowd cheered; they played another song; the plea stuck in a few of our minds but mostly went unanswered.
I say this not to place blame on all of us attendees – myself included – for not immediately handing round a signup sheet pledging our participation in a land purchase. I say this to introduce a record that affirms the radical left-wing politics of the math rock community: a record dealing, through references to literature and art in the titles, through samples and modest vocals, with the personal and political psyches of composer/guitarist Kyle and percussionist Vilius: intersectional feminism; queer theory; the civil rights movement and its release through art; borders and refugees; the ‘pacification’ – that Kyle himself witnessed – of the Rio de Janeiro favelas for a few games of football; and how it is up to us, as individuals and generations, to continue the work of those before.
How did they choose to frame these statements? In the most fully-realized chamber-math record I’m yet to hear.
He Was Eaten By Owls‘ truly monumental rock opera Chorus 30 From Blues For The Hitchhiking Dead is one long orchestral song, at times urgent, restful and playful, an undercurrent of distortion pushing through the transitions between parts that recall Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Renaissance Sound, and 65daysofstatic’s own violin-laden release. There is detail, affection and raw energy in this feast of strings, horns, guitar and drums that demands many plays. You owe it to yourself to let the first play be right now.
Chorus 30 will be released on the 25th of March via Fu Inle Records (UK), Ozona Records (US) and Silent Project (Malaysia). Pre-orders can be made right here. Get it in your life, son/daughter.Hairdressers contain normally moved concerning commoners and kings, nevertheless they contain accomplished their most important recognition at 3 details within just background: quickly just before the loss of Greece, precisely prior to the French Revolution – and these days.
Within Europe all through the Center Ages, the regional barber and health care provider ended up one particular and the identical gentleman. With the eventual department of labor, the physician believed extensive robes, despite the fact that the barber, who was always furthermore a wigmaker, wore shorter types. At first, all hairdressing upon ladies was completed inside the dwelling, ordinarily by way of the wives and daughters of barbers. For exceptional instances, they moved into the houses of abundant noblewomen, at times performing for times in direction of establish an complex coiffure.
please click the following internet site
The very first person hairdresser toward provide as a females’ stylist was Champagne, who flourished within the times of Louis XIV. An impulsive artist, he was inside perfect need for his massive hairdos. Nonetheless as he constantly dropped his mood and stomped out leaving his patrons with 50 percent of their hair undressed, a great number of females grew to become towards Canillat and LeBrun, both equally of whom ended up wives of wigmakers.
There was no fast successor toward Champagne, however before long right after 1640, at the peak of his reputation, the wig and wigmakers arrived into their personal.
Above 1740, females’s hair once again begun toward be dressed by way of males. Peruke brands had been referred to as on in the direction of crank out extensive rolled curls which includes the types upon gentlemen’s wigs. A person of the 1st was Frison, who within 1763 demonstrated the very first women of all ages’ hairdressers guild.
Legros, who was to begin with a baker, opened an academy exactly where women of all ages Art classes Fairfax County‘ maids and valets could possibly teach the artwork of hairdressing upon employed patterns. He was a person of countless beaten inside the festivities attending Marie Antoinette’s marriage ceremony toward Louis. The Queen and her partner have been hence moved through Legros’ dying they donated a wide amount of economical towards his spouse and children.
just click for source
Marie Antoinette’s to start with hairdresser was Larseur. Inevitably, she arrived towards like the models of Leonard. However toward conserve Larseur’s gentle inner thoughts, she allow for him do her hair initially, then experienced it combed out and redone by means of Leonard.
Striving by some means in the direction of escape the greatest wrath of the Revolution, Marie Antoinette entrusted her jewels toward Leonard. They ended up in direction of be offered toward her sister in just Brussels. Leonard, detailed in between individuals guillotined and buried within a well-liked grave, became up alive soon after a 20-12 months continue to be within just Russia. At the period of his loss of life inside of 1820 he was superintendent of burials in just Paris.
Soon when the Revolution and the slide of enormous hairdos – adopted through the Listing’s shorter-cropped « coiffure a la victime » – there was an funny criminal move taken towards hairdressers through the study barbers and wigmakers guild, who viewed as hairdressers damaging competition.
The hairdressers complained, within just quick:
« What are the tasks of barbers still toward shave heads and invest in severed hair toward present the needful plait by means of signifies of hearth and iron upon locks that are no extended residing? »
The artwork of hairdressing, they ongoing, necessary at at the time the qualities of poet, painter, and sculptor. « It is needed, » they insisted, « towards fully grasp colours of coloration, chiaroscuro and the suitable distribution of shadow; the artwork of dressing prudes with out generating them evident; the artwork of exhibiting the coquette, and of manufacturing the mom glimpse toward be the elder sister of the daughter; the artwork of suiting the coiffure toward the affections of the soul which a person is preferred towards recognize, in the direction of the demand from customers in direction of make sure you, towards the languid bearing which would like simply just in direction of attention, toward the vivacity which will brook no resistance – all this will take an intelligence which is not preferred and a tact which should be inborn. The artwork of the « coiffure des dames » is thus an artwork encompassing on genius and hence is a cost-free and liberal artwork. »
These days’s hair stylist faces the very same conditions and ought to comprise the similar capabilities as did these lengthy-back, militant hairdressers. He is made up of, Regrettably, substantially extra operating for him than the eighteenth-century French coiffeurs who relied consequently intensely on the whims of the incredibly prosperous and fairly noble; particularly, scientifically created attractiveness products and solutions and a greatly diverse purchasers.
How to study abroad New YorkPHILADELPHIA — Growing up, Aliya Khabir never felt like an outsider. She’s a Muslim and an African-American and she wears a khimar (head scarf) and an abaya (a loose fitting outer dress). But in Philadelphia, home to over 200,000 followers of Islam, most of them black, none of that ever seemed outside the American norm.
“I tell my friends we live in kind of a |
's worth a quarter of Turner's acquisition price."
The site's web dominance is woven into its very fabric. Online marketer and SEO expert Hugo Guzman points out that Bleacher Report's "site architecture lends itself to SEO. They built a site to facilitate search engines spidering through and picking up all the different article pages and category pages." This, he notes, is a marked contrast to the legacy media sites that break the stories Bleacher Report goes on to dominate. Many of the nation's most prominent journalistic outlets are "on website platforms that were not built with SEO in mind. They were built when that was not even a factor." News sites were constructed to display stories. Bleacher Report is built to disperse them.
Guzman rattles off the "best practices" technical elements that have enabled Bleacher Report's ascent: "Internal linking architecture!" "Metadata!" "Server-side elements!" He pauses and laughs. "I can guarantee you that there are other publications out there that have frameworks on par with Bleacher Report's," he says. "So, ultimately, what's their biggest differentiator? Free content!" Bleacher Report's volunteer army generates scads of material — and the money the site doesn't spend on writers is spent to move the company where it wants to go.
It couldn't get there, however, without addressing the pitfalls of crowdsourcing and lowest-common-denominator crap Kaufman mentioned to Google. So, in the last two years, the site has worked to rehabilitate its image: Would-be writers must gain admittance via a process that rejects 17 out of every 20 applicants. Lead writers and knowledgeable featured columnists have been added to the roster, and many of the site's early contributors have been bounced. "A few years ago I couldn't look at their site without my eyes bleeding and my head pounding," says veteran sports journalist Kevin Blackistone. These days, "That doesn't happen with the same frequency." It's hard to argue Bleacher Report hasn't improved — but it's impossible to say it hasn't improved its curb appeal. This is what enabled its acquisition by Turner — and what may enable the amalgamated entity to strip the "Worldwide Leader in Sports" mantle from ESPN.
Turner, unlike ESPN, Fox Sports, or Comcast, lacked a major sports web destination. Now it owns the No. 3 sports website in the realm. And with a hulking new digital platform on which to sell ads, Turner has a new method of making money. This would provide a leg up in bidding for whatever comes next. "By expanding their set of assets, it allows Turner to go after things, and, perhaps, successfully obtain things they couldn't otherwise," says Ed Desser, president of Desser Sports Media.
Before this deal, Desser continues, Bleacher Report was "just another aggregator of customer-created content." But now? The wave of the future. No media outlet can ignore the allures of crowdsourcing — or dismiss out of hand the rewards of reverse-engineering content.
"There was a time when the traditional media viewed new media as not up to their standards. But that time has passed," Desser notes. "Tastes change. Look at TV. Think about how much stuff would never have been on 30 years ago: vulgar language, sexual situations, eating bugs. It's all out there now. We're a long way from Ozzie and Harriet."
Or, as Bleacher Report puts it, "If you really want to maximize your fanbase, your best bet is to give the people what they want."
In an era when those who have more get more, when so many have been forced to recalibrate their expectations, it's hard not to see Bleacher Report as epitomizing more than just sportswriting on the Internet. Those on the top have profited handsomely. For the folks whose work powers the site, however, Bleacher Report is often the best opportunity they can find, and a springboard to diminished dreams.
Drew Laskey is an occasional writer and onetime copy editing intern for Bleacher Report — and a full-time North Carolina basketball fanatic. He is now a copy editor for Journatic, an outfit recently popped on This American Life for using fake bylines to obscure that many of its articles were penned in foreign countries by non-native English speakers paid a pittance. Laskey says the articles he copy edits at Journatic, incidentally, are "much cleaner through and through" than those at Bleacher Report.
He still remains an unabashed fan of the site. "If you take Bleacher Report seriously and you have the talent and the ability to learn and take constructive criticism, Bleacher Report can pay off for you," he says. "I've seen it pay off. People have gone on to other websites." He hopes it'll propel him to an internship writing for InsideCarolina.com. This unpaid position would "be my dream job. To have a payment attached to it would be surreal. It's something I can't even fathom."
Bleacher Report alum Lukas Hardonk is one of those writers who've gone on to paying gigs elsewhere. He's now the managing editor of the Maple Leafs Central blog and a contributing editor of TheHockeyWriters.com. "As bad a rap as Bleacher Report gets, it's really tremendous what they did for me," he says. Hardonk wrote three years for the site, but found there were only so many slideshows in his system. By 2011, he realized he'd outgrown Bleacher Report. Still, "they kickstarted my career."
It'll be interesting to see where that career goes after the 17-year-old finishes his senior year of high school.And when Jesus passed on from hence, he saw a man sitting in the custom house, named Matthew; and he saith to him: Follow me. And he rose up and followed him.
Matthew 9:9
My favorite liberal, Kirsten Powers, has joined the Church.
Powers, who grew up in the Episcopal Church, became an evangelical about 9 years ago, after attending Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. Listening to Tim Keller preach opened the door for her to believe in God.
“I came to realize that even if Christianity wasn’t the real thing, neither was atheism,” she wrote in a 2013 testimony for CT. “I began to read the Bible. My boyfriend would pray with me for God to reveal himself to me.”
For a while, Powers felt no connection to God. That changed during an overseas trip, where Powers said Jesus spoke to her. Eventually she joined a Bible study, an experience that changed her life.
“I’ll never forget standing outside that apartment on the Upper East Side and saying to myself, ‘It’s true. It’s completely true,’” she wrote it 2013. “The world looked entirely different, like a veil had been lifted off it. I had not an iota of doubt. I was filled with indescribable joy.”
Powers gave few details about her decision to become Catholic. She did thank Father Jonathan Morris, pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church in the Bronx, on Twitter.
Go here to read the rest. Go here to read posts that explain why I call her my favorite liberal. Welcome to the Faith Kirsten!Looking for news you can trust?
Subscribe to our free newsletters.
Last night President Obama noted the unremarkable truth that the United States can’t try to rebuild every country that falls into crisis. “It’s the lesson of Iraq,” he said. Over at National Review, Bing West was not amused:
That is insulting to all who fought. What does Mr. Obama say to the families who lost a loved one: they died in a quagmire that weakened us? The lesson of Iraq is that after American troops achieved stability, Mr. Obama quit, leading to a larger war and more American deaths.
Jesus, this pisses me off. Are conservatives ever willing to take responsibility for anything? They destroy the economy and then spend eight years bitching and whining because it’s taking Obama so long to dig out of the hole they dug. They sit around spouting tough talk about their “Axis of Evil” but do nothing to stop North Korea and Iran from developing nuclear programs—and then go ballistic when Obama finally does something about it. And after merrily dragging us into the stupidest and most disastrous war in recent memory, they’ve spent every year since then desperately trying to pin blame for the aftermath on Obama.
They’re like small children, ruining everything they touch because the world is a big playground that they govern with their guts instead of their brains. Then they throw temper tantrums when the adults come along and try to clean up the messes they’ve made.
Calling Iraq by its true name is no insult to anyone. The insult is that people like Bing West were willing to throw American troops into a killing field because they had to take out their post-9/11 rage on someone, and Iraq was handy. It’s time to grow up, Bing. You can’t remain a child forever, blaming your mistakes on everyone but yourself.Atheists are one of the fastest growing groups in the world. At the same time, the latest Pew poll shows that they’re the most distrusted group in America, and Americans would be less likely to support a Godless presidential candidate than an unfaithful or a pot-smoking one.
These trends don’t contradict each other in the slightest, and I’d argue that the mistrust is both a consequence and a cause of the rapid decline of religiosity in the U.S. Atheism is gaining, steadily and sometimes with remarkable rapidity, and it’s not at all surprising that this rise meets resistance and fear.
As someone who speaks a fair amount at atheist conferences, Americans’ declining religiosity has been vivid over the last few decades: audiences are getting younger, larger and more diverse; there are rapidly rising numbers of new atheist organizations, especially among college-aged students; and atheism is attaining greater respectability and visibility. A large part of the phenomenon is not conversion, but that much–though not all–of the stigma against atheism is fading, allowing many people who had to conceal their beliefs against intense social pressure to finally express themselves openly. America has a long tradition of free thought. Many people who would never have called themselves atheists, including members of my family, were always against traditional organized religion. For those, taking the step to admitting their atheism is relatively small.
But there are many other factors contributing to the recent surge.
The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now
The end of the Cold War
There was a time when “godless” was a word inextricably linked to “commie,” when being an atheist was reflexively associated with being an enemy of the state. For most people, it’s now safe to be a patriot and not go to church, but old enmities die slowly and there are still ideologues on the Right who consider “God” and “Country” to be synonymous—and a vast middle ground made uneasy by departures from tradition.
The rise of the Religious Right
The American body politic is deeply polarized, and one of the major forces driving the schism is religion. Many of us now associate religiosity with small-minded pettiness, bigotry, preening egotism and a set of political policies that are worse than medieval (much to the chagrin of my liberal religious friends). Every sanctimonious politician who uses the Bible to advance an absurd policy decision generates a reaction that pushes more people towards atheism. George W. Bush was a great advocate by bad example for the godless, and simultaneously a paragon to the religious. Those who love Bush will dislike atheists, and vice versa—the mistrust is entirely mutual.
We also have seen a rapid rise in the number of atheists in Ireland. This increase is almost certainly a reaction against the atrocious behavior of the Catholic Church in that country. Again, the Pope has been a friend to the godless by supporting odious policies.
A new and aggressive expression of atheism
The early years of the 21st century saw the publication of inspiring and rational polemics against religion by Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins that changed the whole tone of organized atheism. For many years we’ve been preaching to the choir, having conversations within the atheist community between self-identifying atheists, but keeping mostly to ourselves. There is a new dynamic now: we’re not just telling ourselves that our ways are better, but we’re announcing to everyone that God is not good and that religion is folly. That does, of course, antagonize the majority of people of faith.
The Internet
The world wide web has democratized access to information to a remarkable degree. Where once a community could isolate its members from heretical ideas, now it’s easy and confidential to sit quietly at home and browse sites that disagree vociferously with all kinds of ideas; I can comfortably read about what Baptists and Catholics think, and believers can quickly find atheists expressing themselves. And in a fair and open exchange of ideas, atheism routinely wins the minds (if not the hearts) of citizens.
The Internet is also a boon to isolated individuals. So many people who thought they were alone in their god-fearing communities discovered that there is a thriving culture of free thought online, and acquired a new confidence to come out and join in the conversation.
I am confident that you can expect the trend of declining religiosity to continue for many years to come. There are only a few things that might stop an expanding atheism. One would be the ascendance of liberal religious thought that was accepting of scientific facts and others’ right to believe as they please, and that explicitly divorced its theology from secular concerns. Such religious organizations exist now, but they would have to replace the dominant, strident form of reactionary religion that dominates the discourse today. Second would be that our government could actually return to the promise of the Constitution, end the mutual interference between church and state, and there could be a common attitude that the religious beliefs of political candidates are private and irrelevant to holding office.
Either of those alternatives would greatly slow the growth of atheism. I fear they are unlikely, but even speaking as an atheist, it wouldn’t be so bad if they came to pass.
PZ Myers is a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He was named Humanist of the Year in 2009 by the American Humanist Association and received the International Humanist Award in 2011 from the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He has lectured throughout the world on biology, evolution, atheism and skepticism. His blog, Pharyngula, was named the Best Expert Blog by the Koufax Awards in 2005 and the Best Science Blog by the Weblog Awards in 2006. In 2006, the journal Nature listed Pharyngula as the top-ranked blog by a scientist. His book, The Happy Atheist, is now available in trade paperback from Vintage Books.
Contact us at editors@time.com.Sriracha Maker Has A Saucy Response To Judge's Ruling
Enlarge this image toggle caption Courtesy of Watchara Phomincinda/San Gabriel Valley Tribune Courtesy of Watchara Phomincinda/San Gabriel Valley Tribune
"No tear gas made here." That's the battle cry emblazoned on a banner outside the factory of Huy Fong Foods in Irwindale, Calif. Last week, a judge ordered the maker of the popular hot sauce Sriracha to halt any work that produces irritating fumes. Neighbors had previously complained to city officials about the air quality near the factory.
But in keeping with the fiery nature of the sauce, Huy Fong Foods is not stepping down without dishing out.
Josie Huang of Southern California Public Radio reported on Monday:
"Whether the banner — photographed by the Pasadena Star-News on Friday — is indicative of whether the company will seek an appeal of the judge's decision is unknown. A company representative said Monday that [owner David] Tran had no comment other than a brief statement released last week. "According to the city of Irwindale, there's been no contact with the company since Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Robert H. O'Brien issued a preliminary injunction Nov. 26."
Huang quoted an email from a company spokesperson who said: "We are still open for operations, but if we are forced to stop production, there will be less 200,000 bottles a day of our product."
The surge in popularity of Sriracha has found its way to a long and growing list of sauce-ified products. There's Sriracha vodka. Sriracha candy canes. Sriracha Subway sandwiches. Sriracha lip balm.
Are you a Sriracha fan watching all this news unfold with bated, garlicky breath? Worried about a potential shortfall? Comment below.Play 19:45 Play 19:45 'Club cricket has become a business'
'Would love to work with young cricketers' - Dravid Rahul Dravid has reiterated that he would like to coach young cricketers at some point in his life, but added this is not the right time for him to be interested in taking over as India coach. Asked if he sees himself as a future India coach or he is happy with his role as a television commentator, Dravid said: "I think there is a time and place for everything. I have enjoyed the media side of what I have done. I don't think it's easy. I have enjoyed the mentorship thing that I do with Rajasthan Royals for two months. It just fits into where my life is at the moment. That's just an honest answer, having two young kids. It's just a question of balancing how your life is. But yeah, I would love at some stage to work with young cricketers. Whether that's with the Indian coach, I don't know. It could be as a coach of a Ranji team at some stage."
Rahul Dravid believes bowlers who have been banned for suspect bowling actions are suffering from kinks, which once corrected should allow them to reintegrate with international cricket. He added that he would always give a bowler the benefit of the doubt before he passes a judgment on his action.
"Personally I don't think we should see chucking as a crime as such. It is just a technical fault that people have. So if you have a technical fault in the action, you correct that and come back. When you overstep the line, nobody says you are cheating. You say, okay, come back behind the line. And here we are saying, come back within 15 degrees [of elbow flexion] and play the game," Dravid said in an interaction with the audience after delivering the annual Dilip Sardesai Memorial Lecture.
In the past few months, several bowlers have been called up for tests by the ICC and subsequently banned if they failed to demonstrate a legal bowling action. The most notable examples have been Sri Lanka offspinner Sachithra Senanayke and his Pakistan counterpart Saeed Ajmal, arguably the best spinner in the world at the moment.
"I think the ICC has a rule in place," Dravid said. "They reviewed a lot of the old footage and they found out that the elbow bent to about 15 degrees was pretty normal and that is what everyone was doing. Glenn McGrath had a slight bend in his elbow up to 15 degrees. I am not suggesting that Glenn McGrath was chucking. They have a system in place and what I am glad about is that they are really enforcing it strictly.
"They are reviewing people, they are getting people caught. I give them the benefit of the doubt. I always give the bowler the benefit of the doubt. Murali went through every test possible at that time so you have to give him the benefit of doubt. What the ICC is doing now is they are being vigilant. What they are saying is that if once you are cleared in 2009, you can't [not] be checked again. You have got to keep monitoring, watching it closely and they see bowlers developing new types of deliveries, then why not go into the lab and have it checked."
The discussion then veered to the health of the three formats of cricket and Dravid said ODIs were being put under pressure by "meaningless games"
"I think one-day cricket is seriously struggling," he said. "I definitely think that one-day cricket without a context is struggling. When you think of one-day cricket from a point of view of Champions Trophy and the World Cup, it is relevant. But I think all the other one-day cricket should be given towards playing the Champions Trophy and the World Cup. And then you've got Test cricket and you've got the T20 format of the game. Meaningless one-day games and too many one-day games can actually be a problem and it is something that can be cut off. You should play lesser one-day cricket and play more tournaments. So Champions Trophy and World Cup, I would go for it, definitely."
Questions were also raised regarding young Indian cricketers' seriousness towards playing Tests after the team's meek surrender in the recent tour of England. Dravid, however, backed the next generation, saying he never got a sense of them not being serious about Tests during his week-long stint as a consultant with the Indian team ahead of the five-Test series.
"When people say that some of our boys don't care about Test cricket, that's completely wrong. Because all they are asking me is, 'how did you do well?'. They are not worried about a T20 game coming up. They are only interested in knowing how did we do well in England, how did we do well in Australia. Virat Kohli is asking those questions all the time. I don't think it is that they don't care. They care deeply but they were found out against a really good bowling attack on a difficult wicket. And they were not good enough in those particular Test matches. But I think they do care [about Tests] and they ask those questions."
Amol Karhadkar is a correspondent at ESPNcricinfo
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Mass Effect: Andromeda is targeting the same performance on the standard PS4 as well as the Pro.
Sony used gameplay footage from Mass Effect: Andromeda to demonstrate the power of PlayStation 4 Pro during the PlayStation Meeting last night. The game looked great, but many were left wondering if the extra performance will be used to deliver high frame-rates.
The answer is no, unfortunately, as game producer Fabrice Condominas confirmed to Gamespot at the reveal that Andromeda will run at 30 frames-per-second on both PS4 and PS4 Pro.
This isn’t too surprising, but certainly a disappointment for fans who hoped to see frame-rates higher than 30 on the more powerful console. That said, it remains to be seen if BioWare will offer a high frame-rate option for those with 1080p displays.
Mass Effect: Andromeda is out in early 2017.Appledelhi Siniz Hesap Lütfen Estimated Age 42 Height 6' 8" Weight 466 lbs Hair Colour Brown Eye Colour Green Planet of Origin Earth ID L12345ABC Criminal Records Bank Robbery, Manslaughter (forged by Edward Voice actor Kenji Utsumi (Japanese)
Barry Stigler (English)
"Thanks for taking care of my son! Or, uh...was that my daughter?" ―Mr. Appledelhi[src]
Siniz Hesap Lütfen Appledelhi (アップルデリー・シニズ・ヘサップ・リュトフェン, Siniz Hesap Lütfen Appledelhi?) was a cartographer on Earth. He is the father of Edward, though was not around for much of Edward's life.
Contents show]
Biography Edit
In the 2060s, Appledelhi spent several years charting the terrain changes on Earth due to rock showers along with help from his assistant, Macintire. Appledelhi would often not remember Macintire's name, either through forgetfulness or a complete lack of caring.
Edward was born in 2058. Despite being a loving father, he left Edward at a daycare center in 2064 and forgot about her due to his work. He spent years looking for her and eventually reached the same orphanage she had wandered into in 2071, but she had been long gone. He left a holographic picture of himself with Sister Clara in case she came back.
Two months later, Appledelhi had an encounter with Spike Spiegel and Jet Black, who pursued him due to a bounty on him. During this, their ship, the Bebop, suddenly ran aground at his location and he saw Edward, who drove the ship there. Appledelhi rejoiced when reunited with Edward and offered to take her along with him in his mapping. The conversation abruptly ended when another meteor crashed and he left with Macintire to follow.[1]
Appearance Edit
Though it is not clear whether or not Appledelhi is as big as his rap sheet claims, Appledelhi does appear to be a large man. He is taller and wider than Spike and perhaps Jet Black as well. He is able to easily hold his own in a fight against Spike with very little effort and gain the upper hand.[1]
Trivia Edit
"Appledelhi Siniz Hesap Lütfen" name sounds like "Afedersiniz hesap lütfen." This is a Turkish sentence which means, "Excuse me, check please."
Gallery Editcityscape How the Greenbelt is Growing Into Toronto’s Ravines
Why Toronto's urban river valleys make a difference in community building.
This article is brought to you by Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation
Folks from the Fairview Residents Action Group (FRAG) are here along the East Don River where they’re training to become nature walk leaders themselves. “When I first came to Toronto from California and Colorado, I felt very disconnected from this new landscape,” says Anna Hill who coordinates the nature walk program. “Once I discovered the ravines and started appreciating the unique features of Toronto’s ecosystems, I started to feel very connected to my new home,” she adds. “Understanding that basic concept of the landscape—that you’re in a landscape of water and these watersheds are always running into Lake Ontario—that offers the big picture of where you are. That has been so meaningful to me, and I wanted to share that experience by helping other people connect with urban nature.”
Nearly 20 per cent of Toronto’s land area is covered by urban river valleys, many of which, as Hill points out, have been damaged by the wrong kind of human use. And while nature walk groups like this one help create a sense of stewardship for the ravines, residents need government support when it comes to valuing and protecting these lands.
On May 10, the Ontario government made strides towards that much-needed protection by proposing updates to the Greenbelt Plan, along with three other provincial growth plans. The Greenbelt, a nearly two million acre swath of land encompassing the GTHA, offers the highest protection available for the remaining agricultural land and natural heritage systems in the region. Widely supported by residents, with nine out of 10 Ontarians recognizing the Greenbelt as essential for supporting smart growth, the Ontario’s Greenbelt is the largest in the world and serves as a model in curbing a bygone era of unmitigated sprawl.
Among the changes proposed by the Province is a plan to grow the Greenbelt to include 21 urban river valleys across the Greater Golden Horseshoe, four of which—the Humber River, the Don River, and Morningside and Etobicoke Creeks—flow through Toronto. The announcement follows recommendations from community members, city planners, ecologists, and advocacy groups who have long demanded that Greenbelt safeguards extend to the expansive ravine systems that course through the region.
“This announcement—extending the Greenbelt into the ravines—this is really a big deal,” says author and urban designer Ken Greenberg. “It’s not just a change in policy, it’s a change in perception—a change in the way we think about the city.”
For most of the city’s history, Toronto’s urban river valleys were seen as inconveniences—forces of nature needing to be conquered in the name of urbanization. For the past 150 years, ravines and wetlands have often been paved over to build parking lots, highways, and towers. We set up sewage systems, factories and mills along their shores, dumping our unfiltered waste into their waters. “In the early 20th century, Toronto Harbour Commission filled in the largest wetland on the Great Lakes to create the portlands,” Greenberg recounts. “They referred to it as draining a swamp.” By the early 1950s, most of Toronto’s urban river valleys were polluted to the point of condemnation. Many original species were phased out, and the thought of recreating in their surrounding greenspaces was repulsive.
Tried as we could, the ravines could not be tamed, and our efforts to do proved devastating in some cases. In 1954, Hurricane Hazel hit the city, bringing calamitous floods—destruction that could have been largely avoided had the river valleys been protected. “Their vulnerability was particularly revealed at the time of the hurricane,” says Greenberg.
Three years later, the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) was formed with flood control being its primary mandate. Today, the TRCA owns 40,000 acres of land, including most of Toronto’s river valley lands, and spearheads myriad restoration initiatives, species monitoring programs, and social events linked to the ravines, like their annual Paddle the Don.
Since the TRCA’s inception, Toronto is slowly coming to terms with, and even starting to embrace, its identity as a ravine city. Now often described as the region’s inverted mountain range, or the veins of the city, urban river valleys are widely considered Toronto’s most distinguishing natural feature—certainly its most valuable green asset. The ravines function as a draining system that runs from the Oak Ridges Moraine in the Greenbelt all the way down to Lake Ontario; the rivers flowing from watersheds to the north, through the city and into Lake Ontario are part of the vital hydrological systems that clean our water, provide flood protection, and connect us to our landscape. Canada has 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water supply, and an Environics poll shows Ontarians believe the Greenbelt’s most important function is protecting clean water for us now and in the future.
“But very, very important, in terms of human use, the ravines are a magnificent and extensive park system which is only now being appreciated,” says Greenberg. “We’re gaining a new appreciation of living in a bioregion—an understanding of our vulnerability to nature and our need to work with nature,” he adds. “All of the sudden the ravines are coming into a very sharp focus.”
For some groups, like FRAG, the ravines offer spaces to build connections with each other and their natural landscape. For other communities, like Birchmount Eglinton East, it’s about refuge, changing perspectives, and healing. “Because our community has had a lot of experience with violence, it shows the community in a different light,” says Laura Hammond, the coordinator of the Birchmount Community Action Council and leads youth nature walks and gardening programs in the neighbourhood.
This newfound appreciation of the ravines is thanks, in part, to TRCA, along with other organizations like the Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA). In 2009, TEA approached Toronto City Council asking to grow the Greenbelt into the city’s river systems. “By then it was obvious that people really liked the Greenbelt,” says Franz Hartmann, executive director of TEA. “It had become a brand that people associate with something useful, something that needs protecting. And having our urban river valleys part of that meant they too would be viewed as an important pieces of infrastructure.”
At first, the City was keen to make the ravines part of the Greenbelt Plan, but there was no existing mechanism to allow it. In 2011, Council asked the Province to update the plan, and two years later, the Province responded with the Urban River Valleys (URV) designation, which allowed municipalities to request that publicly owned ravine lands be part of the Greenbelt.
While the creation of the URV designation signalled the Province recognized the importance of ravines, it wasn’t enough. Each municipality still had to apply to the Province to have their portion of the river valley protected under the Greenbelt policy, a piecemeal process that continued to ignore one of the ravines’ biggest strengths: rivers and water systems flow through all of our communities and have tremendous potential to connect people across the region through our natural heritage.
Ravines don’t end at municipal boundaries; rivers don’t stop flowing where York Region meets Toronto. Yet up until now, geography is what determined who made policies around ravines and what those policies were. “You need a higher order of government looking after this,” says Hartmann, who became convinced of this while sitting on the advisory committee for the City’s ravine strategy, which is set to be drafted this summer. “At the beginning of the process, we were focusing on the ravines that are in the city of Toronto, literally in the geographical boundary,” he says. “I get that you’re a municipality and you don’t have jurisdiction over the river once it crosses the city limits, but that struck me. Watersheds don’t know jurisdictional lines, but here we are developing policy that demarcates these very important boundaries,” Hartmann continues. “By having the Greenbelt extend along these rivers, it’s essentially saying, ‘you’re now all part of the same thing.’”
When the Greenbelt Plan, and three other growth plans, came under review in January 2015, TEA and other advocacy groups pushed the Ontario government to use its power to designate all urban ravines as part of the Greenbelt without requiring municipalities to apply. Their request was answered in last month’s announcement to protect 21 urban river valleys—a victory more than seven years in the making.
As Hartmann points out, greenbelting Toronto’s ravines won’t immediately change how we protect these spaces. “The provincial designation is more encouraging than forceful. The key thing is getting people to understand that these river systems are part of a larger ecosystem and a larger community,” says Hartmann. “The Greenbelt Plan raises the standard of care municipalities should strive together to achieve.” In the meantime, the TRCA has jurisdiction over these lands by way of the Conservation Authorities Act, and most would agree that the organization has a sturdy handle on protecting our ravines.
“Toronto’s ravine system connects us to the land and to each other,” says Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation CEO Burkhard Mausberg. “As we cross over the Don on our morning commute or walk along the Humber on a Saturday afternoon, we’re enjoying a protected landscape that runs not only through our city, but through the countryside where our neighbours are working the land and growing the food we eat. The Greenbelt is a protected system that ensures smart growth for our future that is sustainable and ecologically sound, and now we extend that protection into our city and become a part of that legacy.”
Back on the Betty Sutherland trail, the wind carries the faint sweet smell of black locust flower, intensifying as the sun gets low in the sky. “They become more fragrant in the evening to attract insects to the trees,” explains Nancy Dengler, a veteran botanist and tonight’s walk leader from Toronto Field Naturalists. It’s two weeks until the training program ends, but already group members have started organizing their own walks. “I take friends to a ravine every weekend,” says one woman. And Amy Guo leads regular hikes across the GTA in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. The group has over 500 members and each hike, which are sometimes 20-plus kilometres, brings out about 50 residents. “We talk about the plants and the history of the ravines,” says Guo. “There’s so much to see and learn. I love it,” she says. “I love when people come with me and we discover the ravines together. One thing I’ve discovered is that so many of the trails and rivers are connected. It takes time to figure it out, but it’s always there—that connection.”
To learn more, check out www.greenbelt.ca.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
Aides to Sen. Mitch McConnell are frustrated because President Obama has made it known that he is not going to back down and give the Republican controlled Congress what they want.
Politico reported, “McConnell’s aides are frustrated at the lack of movement they see from Obama after the election-night wipeout. They say he’s still stuck in the same battle lines with the GOP that make deals on tax reform and infrastructure less likely. White House officials say the president will keep making the same case he’s already made for his tax reform and infrastructure ideas, and believe Republicans will eventually have to give ground on a minimum wage hike now that voters in four states approved increases Tuesday.”
Republicans seem shocked that Obama hasn’t bowed to their ability to win elections in mostly red states where he isn’t popular. Remember, all of those promises that Republicans made on the campaign trail? Give us the Senate, and we’ll repeal Obamacare. Not so much. What about all of those bills that Speaker of the House John Boehner claims will now be signed into law under Obama? Forget it. All of those pipe dreams that Republicans sold voters about a Republican congress breaking the gridlock? They were a fantasy.
President Obama has no reason to move. He has been saying the same thing for nearly seven years now. Obama has been urging Republicans to meet him in the middle. Instead of compromising, congressional Republicans keep asking aloud why Obama won’t give them what they want.
The odds are that the new Republican Senate majority is not going to accomplish much. What is most likely to happen is that Republicans will try to pass bills that Democrats can’t support. Republicans don’t have sixty votes in the Senate, so they won’t be able to do much. The only difference is that Mitch McConnell won’t be able to blame Harry Reid. He is going to have to own his failure.
Obama isn’t going to cave. The president is willing to work with Republicans, but nothing in this world is free. The so-called party of personal responsibility is looking to get something for nothing. That’s not going to happen while Barack Obama is occupying the White House.
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Walter Mazzarri has signed a three-year deal to take over as Watford manager. The former Napoli and Internazionale manager held talks with the Watford owner, Gino Pozzo, this week and agreed terms on a deal on Friday night.
The 54-year-old has not managed since leaving Inter in 2014 but has spent parts of the past two years in England |
their eyes flamed bright with sacrifice’ or ‘blood oozed from his head like a secret’).
Out of date language that evokes the emotion of nostalgia. If you are a fan of Lord of the Rings, for example, you might like to smite asunder the hoary shackles of shadow play. If nineteenth century romance is your game, why not contrive to bewitch your reader with the éclat of meretricious rapture?
Random rather than revealing absurdities, such as women with three breasts, fourteen blue clowns, any in-vogue absurd symbol (such as cheese, fish and ninja) or indeed any symbol (aka ‘motif’) at all, provided you repeat it enough.
Reportage: the tedious minutiae of your life or of your character’s. This one — the ‘oh my god look at that kettle’ school of literature — is crucial for the young writer with no experience of life; although filling up a book, and days of your poor readers’ life, when the entire point could have been reached in five or pages is a vital element in the skill-set of all successful, well-paid writers.
Interrogations of the hypnogogic anamnesis of subjects so alienated they can never be sure if your recondite professional art jargon or philosophical verbiage is, in fact, bullshit.
More important than all this, however, is to never, ever show your audience artistic truth or let that truth speak for itself; you must tell people what to think and feel. If you are writing a story, don’t make it bright with recognition of subtle psychological vibe-truth, don’t help us to understand characters in a new way and allow us to naturally care for them, don’t masterfully arrange events so that the external world mirrors the internal world, forcing characters to confront and overcome themselves in archetypically satisfying sacrifice, don’t sprinkle your stories with the bizarre brilliance of what can actually happen or the elusive, mystery of actually existing vibe. No — don’t do that, because you cannot So judge your characters and then manipulate them into situations which are supposed to be deep, touching, exciting or funny; holding up, in effect, mood signs saying ‘cry’ or ‘laugh’.
Telling, rather than showing, is based on ignorance of a reality we can genuinely share; that which actually exists. Tolstoy’s dictum that to express the things of the imagination is hard, but to express real life is harder still, should be dismissed out of hand. You should have no real interest in what your senses reveal to you of the world, no capacity to lay wide your soft-conscious attention in order to absorb the strange quality of the moment, the hidden subtleties of life or the strange understory being played out in the world as it is. All this is always out of fashion for the mediocre-but-successful writer, who must instead focus on imagination (whatever she can think up, or, closely allied, whatever she has read) and reportage (the isolated, ideally media-filtered facts of experience). This will ensure that what you write has an air of, on the one hand, magic, wonder, creativity or, on the other, hard-hitting truth-telling factual accuracy while, actually, being derivative, dull, fundamentally misleading and, if fiction, full of characters who all speak like you.
Perhaps you have noticed this in literary art? A strange tendency for superheroes of the future, animated sausages, five year-old children, ancient tribespeople and alien mind-clouds to all speak like comfortable middle-class graduates working in the entertainment industry? Perhaps you have heard the mono-voice which speaks in the bestsellers and literary prize-winners — the same voice you hear on the radio, at the office, in the newspapers…?
Talking of newspapers, if you are a columnist — one of the most degraded and futile of all human activities — you should tell the reader what to think, what to believe and what to hope for. Either make the subject of your headlines what must happen, should happen, could happen and will happen; or just judge something. ‘The left needs new ideas…’ for example, or ‘Wellness promises change without affecting anyone; that’s fantasy’ or ‘Syrian children are starving, we must help them, now’. Facts are of some importance here, but not very much. The key is that you believe that your ‘perspective’ matters. As a modern, professional, writer of non-fiction what you have to say is not as important as the mere fact you believe in it; for this reason you must worship relativism; the doctrine that the particular experience of the individual is the final arbiter of experience (also known as beauty being in the eye of the beholder). This postmodern emphasis on ‘perspective’ (also a lynchpin of the modern humanities) can be used to defend yourself against all criticism (‘oh well, that’s just your opinion’) and will help to disguise your lack of real experience or love of life, your lack of courage or exposure to uncertainty and your lack of magic empathy for the condition of things in existence.
Another key component of dreadful non-fiction is newspeak. This is not the same as news speak (using words like ‘defence’, ‘peace’, ‘progress’, ‘democracy’ and so on to ally yourself to the system or the [state / corporate] establishment and to conceal its crimes), rather the subtler, unspoken assumption that certain terms can only be understood by trained academics. You must adhere to the belief that the true meaning of words like ‘energy’, ‘consciousness’, ‘beauty’, ‘love’, ‘paradox’, ‘matter’, ‘time’ and so on is one that only a few, highly specialised thinkers can grasp. In this way you can suck the communicative power of language utterly dry while filling people’s heads up with second hand reports of what experts say. Marvellous.
Oh, and don’t forget to get offended by a whole lot of nasty, nasty words. Apart from the crimes of official enemies, there should be nothing worse in the entire universe than ‘abuse’. The grinding misery of the world, the permanently alienated frustration of the modern worker, the earth that is actually dying, a crippled world unable to use its feet — oh yes, quite awful. But he said WHAT? a RACIST word? AND a wolf-whistle? Turn the outrage dial up to ten thousand IMMEDIATELY! (and then swoon). This will make you seem passionate, moral and edgy — and boost your status — without actually changing anything; just what the corporate editor loves.
Of course you can’t get offended if you’re not devoted to the PC world. ‘Is eating a banana a feminist issue?’ ‘How should people of colour react to black foods, such as Marmite?’ ‘Was Shakespeare Transgender?’ and so on, and so forth. There are important things to be said about race and gender, but the point, for you, as an aspiring bad writer is that whole-self allegiance to feminism, gay rights, anti-racism and so on gives you a personality, ideology, message and crusading style, ready-made for the recent graduate to step into and start a column in the The New Statesman.
I mention The New Statesman because it is it is one of the shining examples of fatuous bullshit masquerading as fact and analysis. It once was, however, a publication that had some integrity, thanks to Peter Wilby, who had this to say about journalists:
No skills or talent? Come and join us. I have often expressed the view that journalism needs a social class category all to itself. It is not a profession (no esoteric knowledge) nor a skill (many hacks, including me, don’t have shorthand) nor a working-class occupation (no manual labour). I would call it unskilled middle class. Now I discover that Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone’s star reporter, agrees, though he puts it more graphically than I’ve ever done. ‘If you have no real knowledge or skill set,’ he says in an interview, ‘and you’re lazy and full of shit but you want to make a decent wage, then journalism’s not a bad career option… I can’t believe people actually go to journalism school. You can learn the entire thing in, like, three days.’ Or, judging from the state of some newspapers, less.
Schopenhauer was, as ever, a little closer to the bone;
A great many bad writers make their whole living by that foolish mania of the public for readint nothing but what has just been printed; journalists I mean. Truly, a most appropriate name. In plain language it is journeymen, day-labourers!
The venality and corruption of journalism are well known. The complete lack of skill, culture, originality or intelligence in the profession tends to be a little harder to spot because, like all writers with nothing to say, the one thing they learn is how to hide their extraordinary mediocrity — behind titillation, ‘strong opinions,’ outrage, novelty and the like. In this they resemble the high priests of the meaningless, modern artists, which modern journalists always get tremendously excited about.
IT’S SO EASY!
As with any other brainwashing (such as parenting or teaching), there is no need to learn to cover your lack of originality or real point, or to practice the tricks we’ve looked at. It will come naturally, of itself, just as long as you do one thing; at all costs you must avoid experiencing the subtle, paradoxical and mysterious moment, fully, without crutch, prop or funnel. You must fall out of touch with the immanent (non-technical) innocence and genius of life. This will ensure you do not feel the rending impulse to tear yourself open to it further, which will in turn ensure that you will feel no burning need to express or share it, which will, finally, ensure that no great craft or honesty is required to write it down; for it is easy to make second-rate art with a crude, binary, blatant self in charge (explained here). If you do not know what words and images really mean, it is easy to corrupt them and fun to paint the prison walls with them; provided of course that you are paid for it. Only a madman writes for love alone.
There are of course many other technical tricks you can ignore to further degrade your lacklustre skills (the advice of Joseph M. Williams, Robert McKee, [early] David Mamet, John Gardner and George Orwell should be carefully ignored, for example, along with the delighted study of masterpieces), but it is your life you should work hardest to corrupt. If you avoid conscience, uncertainty, transcendence, independence from the system, wild nature, death, solitude, emotional stillness, the supersensitive delicacies of vibe-tone and the roaring insanities of love carefully and cleverly enough, you’ll be sure to generate line upon line of superficially stimulating life-sucking flannel, filling your page, your reader’s lives, the world entire with more and more dazzling, ambitious, emotional, epic, enigmatic, sensuous, thoughtful, important, exuberant, compulsive, charming, expanding, multiplying, conviction, conception, vision, fact, analysis and opinion; book upon book, film upon film, article upon article, idea upon idea, until the psyche of the earth, strained to busting point with world upon world of ever increasing ever accelerating sequences of meaningless information, goes, POP!
Then there will be silence, and recognition.
So keep going. You’re doing a great job!It appears a US Postal Service employee last week was tired of delivering the mail, and decided to pull up to a D.C. Water catch basin at Anacostia Ave. and Douglas St. NE and dump mail into the sewer system.
It may never have been discovered except Gertrude Troyer who lives near there asked her neighbor, a retired D.C. cop Vincent Wright to snake out a clogged drain at a house she owns.
Wright says he started pulling up paper and on closer inspection discovered that it was mail. He followed the trail to the catch basin and raked out enough mail to fill a wagon. Items included Pepco bills, and what appeared to be a check to a neighborhood company for $10,800.
When ABC7 notified the D.C. office of the US Postal service, the Postmaster Gerald Roane showed up himself with several other employees, who gathered what mail they could would the help of Wright and left vowing to return.
Postal Service Spokesman Tom Ouellette later issued the following statement:
"This isolated incident has been referred to the USPS Office of Inspector General and a full investigation is underway. The Postal Service takes mail delivery seriously and is committed to discovering the cause of this incident. Rest assured we will make every effort to recover and deliver all mail as promptly as possible. The Postal Service apologizes for any inconvenience this may have caused our customers."
Postmaster Roane would not comment whether they knew which postal employee dumped the main.
He established that the regular letter carrier for the neighborhood was off last week and returned to work today. He also confirmed there had been no postal robberies that could have resulted in mail postmarked last recently as "May 11," ending up in the sewer system.
Roane said workers would return with D.C. Water, which controls the sewer system, to retrieve more of the mail much of which was still floating in the catch basin at the end of the day.Saudi Arabia’s coastguard has opened fire on Iranian fishing boats in the waters south of Iran, killing a fisherman, a senior border official of the Islamic Republic says.
The incident happened after two Iranian boats fishing in the Persian Gulf strayed from their course due to big sea waves, the Iranian Interior Ministry’s director general for border affairs Majid Aqa-Babaei said on Saturday.
“Accordingly and without establishing whether the Iranian boats had crossed Saudi borders, the coastguard of this country opened fire on the Iranian boats and an Iranian fisherman was killed due to a bullet hitting him in the waist,” he added.
“This Saudi move is not compatible with human principles and even assuming that the boats had crossed Saudi borders due to sea waves, they were not authorized to shoot at the Iranian boats,” the official said.
Aqa-Babaei noted that the Islamic Republic is following up on the issue to determine whether the boats had entered Saudi territorial waters.
“This move by the Saudis was incompatible with human and maritime principles,” he reiterated.
Relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia worsened after a deadly human crush occurred during Hajj rituals in Mina, near Mecca in September 2015.
Islamic Republic officials blamed the incompetence of Saudi officials for the incident, which, according to Iran, killed 4,700 people, including 465 Iranian nationals.
Earlier that same month, a massive construction crane had collapsed into Mecca’s Grand Mosque, killing more than 100 pilgrims, including 11 Iranians, and injuring over 200 others, among them 32 Iranian nationals.
Mutual ties deteriorated further when Riyadh executed prominent Saudi Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr in January 2016. Saudi Arabia unilaterally severed its diplomatic ties with Iran after protests in front of its diplomatic premises in the cities of Tehran and Mashhad against Nimr’s execution.Wow I haven't even been here in over a year. I guess I came to finally say I'm pretty much done with deviantart, but I guess you all knew that from the lack of updates. I have like carpal tunnel in my wrist and it has killed my drawing wants lol. It also killed my video game obsessiveness for most of the summer, I was also on a massive hiatus. Also school. And trying to find housing. Life is hard right now. I guess in the future I might draw more, but I don't know about now. I just don't feel like drawing. I kinda want to get a tablet and I think it might help with some of my problems with drawing/painting tbh. Its hard on me doing all the little layers with colored pencils. I've been taking care my succulent and cacti collection more and I guess that fills the void a little bit, for doing something creative. Making arrangements, potting them up, etc. Anyways, I guess good bye for now my 1 watcher. If I ever come back or start on a different platform I'll link it here. But I don't even know if I will draw. I've taken a whole bunch of art classes/art history and it kinda turned my whole art world upside down. I don't even know what direction I want to take my art, or even do it professionally. I'm going to get my degree in art history because I want to work in museums.
I've always struggled with my art and people saying "It doesn't mean anything! When I was younger and would draw a lot of dragons. I stopped drawing dragons and would draw portraits, and that was better for them. I didn't dislike portraits, but I still wanted to draw dragons.
I still get those comments lol. With all the deer I draw. "What does it mean?" "Your art is pretty decorative!" (instead of emotionally based)
Why do I have to draw things emotionally charged all the time? I can't. Its hard on me emotionally. Why can't I draw something and just have it be pretty? Why do they have to mean anything? Sometimes I just need to paint a color or a cute idea.
Even though we are all born right after the abstract period, we are pretty much children of the renaissance and when people think of all the french, venetian, and dutch masters they think that is the the highest/best form of art. Naturalistic=better. Its hard to compete with that idea. Sometimes all I want to do is draw squares on my piece of paper. I can't bring myself to make forms. A lot of us are classical thinkers and its hard to please. I guess that what I've been struggling with lately and I'll leave you all with those thoughts. I'll still be drawing my shapes on a piece of paper though. Because fuck what other people think. :PDemocratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, appeared in a meeting with Latino officials last week and his speech was mostly targeted toward support for immigration reform.
Sander's comments came at the conference on the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, where he vowed that if he wins the White House, he would push for reform and do more than Obama has done for deportation relief.
"It is time to end the politics of division in this country, of politicians playing one group of people against another group, whether it is white against black, male against female, straight against gay or native born against immigrant, that division has got to end," he said in his statement.
He also expressed that he believed it was not acceptable for there to be millions who reside in the country illegally but who are doing their best to work hard and contribute to society, and he said "that has got to end."
At the conference, it was noted that Sanders was supportive of the reform bill, which cleared the Senate in 2013, and the Dream Act, which aimed to grant legal status to undocumented people who arrived in the U.S. as children.
Sanders also said it is one of his core goals to make sure that workers will not be taken advantage of by bosses who think that their illegal status will stop them from voicing out concerns.Spotify vs Apple Music: The pros and cons of both
Tony L Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 1, 2016
[EDITED/UPDATED ON MAY 24, 2017]
I first subscribed to a music streaming service in 2005 and I haven’t looked back since.
I have zero regrets.
The first service that I subscribed to was Yahoo! Music Unlimited. Yes, this was really a thing. It worked just like streaming services do now, basically. For example, you could stream millions of songs on their desktop app and you could build playlists. The service even supported various MP3 players, although it did not support the iPod. The service was limited, but better than the also limited competition, and eventually closed down in 2008.
After that, I used Microsoft’s Zune service. I wanted a high quality MP3 player and settled on the Zune (over the iPod) because it had an accompanying streaming service. The service worked well…but a few years later I bought an iPhone 3GS.
Good-bye Zune. Hello App Store.
On my new 3GS, I first subscribed to MOG. It was a nice service (it eventually got bought by Beats, who later got bought by Apple), but I soon discovered Rdio, which had a much better web interface and a more tastefully designed app. I subscribed to Rdio for a very long time before switching to Spotify. Some where in there I tried both Rhapsody and Beats, but I wasn’t impressed enough with either of them to leave Spotify.
Then Apple Music came around and I switched over to that as my primary music streaming service. However, after about one year of Apple Music use, I went back to Spotify. I just missed those Discovery Weekly playlists too much.
Today there is a lot of debate and discussion about who has the better streaming service, Apple or Spotify. For those of you trying to decide, I would urge you to try both, as they both have ways to try the service for free.
If you have tried both, but still cannot decide, I have provided some information below to help you along. I tried to remain as nuetral as possible, which was actually pretty easy, since they are both excellent services.
Spotify vs Apple Music: Pros and Cons
Apple Music:
Pros:
Great Siri integration with the iPhone and iPad.
Beats 1 shows are available on-demand and with playlists.
There are various exclusives, usually lasting for a week or two before coming to other services, such as Spotify.
There is a three month free trial.
If you have a billing question, you can call and talk to a human being.
The “My New Music Mix” personalized playlist is good. It is updated weekly and consists of personalized song recommendations. (This is very similar to Spotify’s Discover Weekly.)
The “My Favorites” personalized playlist is somewhat similar to the “Your Daily Mix” playlists from Spotify. The “My Favorites” playlist is a playlist that includes the songs you listened to the most that week.
The Apple Music phone and iPad apps include lyrics, so you can view the lyrics to the song you are listening to without having to use a 3rd party app or web site. (Note: not every song has this feature, but most of them do.)
There is a 99.00 dollar per year individual plan. (Both services have a 4.99 per month student plan and a 14.99 per month family plan. Both services also have a 9.99 per month individual plan. But on Apple Music, if you pre-pay for a year, you can get the 99.00 individual rate.)
Cons:
Offline saving remains buggy.
There is no access through a web browser.
The iTunes integration is (arguably) poorly done.
There are only two choices for streaming quality while on a cellular network.
There is no free tier, although the Beats 1 live stream is free.
User-created playlists cannot be found by searching, only by direct-link.
There is no last.fm integration.
Spotify:
Pros:
Offline saving works dependably.
There are three choices of quality when on cellular networks.
The Discover Weekly personalized playlists are great.
The Release Radar personalized playlists are great.
There is web browser access.
There is a highly polished desktop app.
There is a free tier.
User created playlists can easily be found by using the search feature.
In-app Sonos integration.
Spotify Connect works with speakers other than Sonos as well, including the Amazon Echo.
Last.fm integration.
The Daily Mix playlists are updated every day. Here is how Spotify describes the Daily Mix feature.
Cons:
No Siri integration.
Dark mode is the only theme for all apps and web access.
If you have a billing question, you have to rely on questionable email and/or Twitter help.
Very limited access to song lyrics.
Both services:A man enraged by delays from a person struggling to use a credit card while exiting a garage at Pentagon City Mall on Friday fired a gun shot into the air before the car he was in sped off, leading to a police pursuit into the District, according to police in Arlington County.
One of two occupants of the car threw a gun out the window during the chase, according to police who said they found the weapon near the George Washington Parkway at I-395.
Both men were arrested at the Third Street tunnel near Massachusetts Avenue, forcing police to close the northbound lanes of the highway that cuts through the heart of the District, disrupting the Friday evening rush hour. The pursuit went through Southwest and Northwest parts of the District, and skirted the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall on streets that included Constitution, Independence and Pennsylvania avenues.
Police said no one was injured in the shooting in Virginia, which occurred about 3:10 p.m. at the parking garage near the exit on the 15th Street side.
Lt. Kip Malcolm with the Arlington County Police Department said the incident began when people in two cars were exiting the mall garage. Police said the driver of the car at the gate seemed to have trouble getting his credit card to process, and got out of his vehicle to ask the driver behind him to back up.
Malcolm said words were exchanged and the passenger took out a gun and fired what police believe was a warning shot.. The driver of that car then sped fromthe garage through a different exit. There were many witnesses given the shopping season, and Arlington County police quickly spotted the white vehicle and began a pursuit.
The chase ended on I-395 near Massachusetts Avenue. Police said the driver stopped and he and a passenger ran from the car. Both were quickly arrested by police from Arlington County and the District, Malcolm said. Their names were not immediately released.You love him, you love him not. In 2011, Ndamukong Suh ranked as the most liked player in the NFL according to a Forbes poll with an appeal score of 71 percent. But you stomp on one player during America's perfectly nice Thanksgiving dinner and all of the sudden
you're
the bad guy. "Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, the second overall pick in 2010 whose early popularity slipped into reverse as he developed a reputation for dirty play,"
. "Suh, whose appeal registers at just 19%, was suspended by the league last season for stomping on a Green Bay Packers lineman in front of a national TV audience on Thanksgiving Day." But now it appears that Suh is back in the good graces of the American public. An apparent kick to the groin? Pshaw. Did you hear about Manti Te'o? According to Forbes, all it took was decades of cheating and a fake dead girlfriend to make Suh more likable.
aimed at finding out where athletes stand in terms of popularity, Suh was remarkably absent. "Among the most disliked of 2012 who escaped the list this year are Kris Humphries, no doubt a one-shot wonder after his quickie marriage to Kim Kardashian landed him in the tabloids, and LeBron James, who shook off a lot of the negativity surrounding his "decision" thanks to an NBA title and an Olympic gold medal. Also dropping off: Plaxico Burress (gun bust), Ndamkong Suh (dirty play), and Terrell Owens (all-around pot stirrer), memories of whom are fading quickly."
Matt Schaub and Warren Sapp did not contribute to this report.
-- Download the Detroit Lions MLive app for iPhone and Android -- Follow Gillian Van Stratt on Twitter -- Like MLive's Detroit Lions Facebook pageSeptember 20, 2017
KMOJ-FM 89.9 LAUNCHES THE STATE’S FIRST URBAN HIP-HOP STATION
The New Urban Hip-Hop sound heats up the Minneapolis-St. Paul airwaves today at Noon and in the process logging another first for The Center for Communication and Development/ KMOJ-FM and HD1.
CCD/KMOJ-FM 89.9 is on the air with KMOJ HD2, The Ice. The new HD Channel, found at KMOJ-FM 89.9 HD2, is Minnesota’s first Urban Hip-Hop format. The Ice will also present Public Affairs programming in keeping with its community radio FCC license.
Just as KMOJ launched in 1976 playing un-filtered Adult R&B, The Ice launches in much the same way playing Urban Hip-Hop music featuring established national and emerging artists from the Twin Cities and beyond.
“CCD/KMOJ is protecting its core demographic, an urban base in the much sought after 25 to 54 base,” according the General Manager Freddie Bell. He said The Ice aims at a younger 12 to 24 audience. Bell said KMOJ wants its audience to grow up with The Ice as it has with KMOJ-FM.
Combined, KMOJ-FM and The Ice HD2 look to super-serve its core and emerging audience with the best Adult Urban Contemporary and Urban Hip Hop music as it services its license with Public Affairs programming.
The on-line streams can be found at www.kmojfm.comOne easy and very trendy way to create a keepsake book is to compile everything into a smash book. So what is a SMASH book? It is a quick place to literally “smash” photos, memorabilia, journal notes, and other keepsakes into one place for a collage of memories.
So instead of buying a pre-made smash book I wanted to upcycle and make a smash book as well as have a more personalized book than something I could find at the store because I figured if I’m going to all the trouble to hand make this project then perhaps having a “green” way of making the base of the book would be a great way to make it even more personal
Below is an example of how to make a smash book from an old ring binder.
I started with an old 3-ring binder, since the rings are a great way to easily add new pages to the smash book – it just seemed like a no brainer.
First I needed to get rid of the cover so I cut off the vinyl from the front and back and removed it from the spine where the ring is.
And I was left with this!
I saved the front and back chipboard from the binder to use as pages in my SMASH book which I then trimmed to the size I wanted.
To add a little pizzazz I thought it would be fun to create tabs so I created a template for the tabs I wanted and trimmed the pages accordingly.
And here is my SMASH book ready to decorate. All I needed next was a few scrapbooking supplies, photos, and a little creativity.
The best part of leaving the chipboard under the ring is it gives you a good base to decorate. I found some scrap burlap and decided to glue that on more a more rustic feel and finished it off by accenting with jute.
Then I got busy adding photos!
Other fun things I could easily add to this book are:
Greeting Cards I don’t know what to do with but don’t want to throw out.
Scribble art
Funny notes and memories
Piece of that favorite old blankie
Trip memorabilia
Ticket stubs
Now that you know how to make a smash book, it’s time to dig into your old office supplies/crafting stash and make that smash book of your own.Note: By submitting this form, you agree to Third Door Media's terms. We respect your privacy.
Get the most important digital marketing news each day.
Thanks to super-fast reactions, at least three brands were able to “newsjack” the power outage that hit the Super Bowl early in the third quarter of today’s game.
With the Ravens up by a score of 28-6, and a 49ers third-down play just about to begin, the lights inside the stadium went out, causing a somewhat lengthy delay that’s still ongoing as I type this.
Several brands saw the power outage as a chance to market themselves in clever ways on Twitter, which is no doubt experiencing new, all-time usage levels for a sporting event.
Oreo, which ran a commercial earlier in the TV broadcast that promoted its Instagram account, reacted quickly with this brilliant power outage-related tweet that’s been retweeted and favorited thousands of times in only about 15 minutes:
Audi, another Super Bowl TV advertiser, also reacted quickly with a tweet that took a jab at Mercedes-Benz (@MBUSA), its competitor that holds the naming rights to the Superdome. It’s also been faved and retweeted several thousand times:
Sending some LEDs to the @mbusa Superdome right now… — Audi (@Audi) February 4, 2013
And Walgreens, which so far hasn’t aired a TV commercial during the game, posted a couple tweets that played off the power outage:
Those have also had thousands of retweets and favorites from Twitter.
That’s quick response from some major brands, and a good way to “newsjack” a huge event like the Super Bowl — especially the Oreo example, which is just brilliant on all counts. (Newsjacking is a term popularized by David Meerman-Scott to describe the process of inserting your thoughts/ideas into breaking news events.)
Postscript: In the comments below, on Twitter, and via email, several other examples have been shared with us. I’m not sure that all examples of a brand that tweeted about or during the blackout are “newsjacking,” but here are a few more that are worth including (and thanks to all who shared these with us):
PBS Television
This might be a good time think about alternative programming. #SuperBowlBlackOut #WeHaveDowntonPBS — PBS (@PBS) February 4, 2013
SimCity
Looks like the #SuperBowl electricians can learn a thing about proper power management. #SimCity — SimCity (@simcity) February 4, 2013
Tide
Zagg
Power outages don’t matter if you have a ZAGGsparq: zagg.com/accessories/za… #SuperBowl — zaggdaily (@ZAGGdaily) February 4, 2013
ONE Campaign
half a billion people in Africa NEVER have power. Learn more at one.org/us/2012/11/13/… #superbowl — ONE (@ONECampaign) February 4, 2013
HealthCare.gov
Don’t be left in the dark like the #SB47 football players. Sign up for the latest Marketplace/health care info at bit.ly/hcsocmed. — HealthCare.gov (@HealthCareGov) February 4, 2013
Cars.com
Is the stadium power outage the most dramatic moment of the night or was it the Cars.com wolf? #NoDrama — Cars.com (@carsdotcom) February 4, 2013
Hyundai
While you’re waiting for the power to come back on, check out our Team Inspired ad bit.ly/Xf2rdh #SB47 #blackoutbowl — Hyundai USA (@Hyundai) February 4, 2013
Seattle Police Department
This would never happen at c-link… — Seattle Police Dept. (@SeattlePD) February 4, 2013
As you can see, some of these resonated on Twitter much more than others. The Seattle Police Department’s tweet captured much more engagement than Hyundai tweeting out its Super Bowl commercial and Cars.com tweeting about its commercial, for example. (The “c-link” reference in the Seattle PD tweet is a reference to the nickname for Century Link Field, the Seahawks’ home stadium.)
No doubt this “blackout bowl” episode and all the attempts at newsjacking will be the subject of countless articles, studies and presentations in the future.Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter
July 17, 2015, 6:35 PM GMT / Source: TODAY By Alexandra Zaslow
Mike Long was disappointed to find out that girl superhero costumes are hard to come by. That’s why he went to great lengths to make sure his daughter attended a superhero-themed party in style.
After scouring the Internet, he found limited costume options for his 6-year-old daughter. Instead of choosing between Sexy Batgirl and a pink Spider Girl outfit, he decided to take matters in his own hands and made a costume from scratch.
The 'Ms. Marvel' costume Courtesy of Mike Long
Long, who is from Surrey, England, thought his daughter would make a great Kamala Kahn, also known as Ms. Marvel, so he started to get crafty.
He bought a blue dress, glittery blue mask, yellow fabric from a pillow, some cheap red polyester and then put his sewing machine skills to the test.
RELATED: 'Avengers' star Mark Ruffalo: 'We need more superhuman women' in movies
“When it finally came together, my little one fell in love with it,” Long wrote in his open letter to Marvel on Tumblr. “With hindsight, I’m glad I made it over buying one already put together, but I write this not as a rant, but as a plea to make merch more girl inclusive.”
Courtesy of Mike Long
Long’s letter to Marvel requesting more girl superhero costumes has been reblogged more than 3,000 times, including by G. Willow Wilson, the author of the Ms. Marvel comic.
“Now this is one dedicated super-dad,” Wilson wrote when he reblogged the letter.
RELATED: Girl demands more female superheroes: See how DC Comics responded
It doesn't seem too big a feat for Marvel to listen to Long's plea and start selling more girl-inclusive merchandise. Just last year, they released a female Thor.
“Ms. Marvel is an incredible concept who empowers a multi-cultural demographic and to be honest, this needs to be pushed harder!!!” Long wrote.The dilemma facing Brexit negotiators on the ‘Irish border’ question is how to retain an invisible, frictionless, ‘soft’ North-South border in Ireland and somehow avoid the seemingly inevitable reality of the emergence of a ‘hard’ border if the UK leaves the single market and the customs union.
Squaring this circle is a little tricky. It’s hard to have a border and not have a border all at the same time. Borders are a bit like boiled eggs, either hard or soft but not both simultaneously.
One possible response to this conundrum is to focus on placing ‘the border’ somewhere else – down the Irish Sea, to be precise. The EU and Dublin see advantages to this option.
It would facilitate Northern Ireland having a closer post-exit relationship with the EU than Britain and allow the continuation of a free North-South border.
However, having a border down the Irish Sea is opposed by the unionist parties, who regard it as an unacceptable separation of the core components of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Nigel Dodds emphatically opposed the idea on Saturday at the Democratic Unionist Party conference:
Make no mistake. For us the integrity of the United Kingdom is non-n |
to decide if what you've done is damning or worthy of life again?Overall: 10I'm loath to give out a perfect score other than categorically, but Death Parade gets so many things right in such a complete package of a show. Emotional depth, empathy, charisma, mystery, intrigue... It's all here. Believable characters, and a sense of connection with the events going on while being spun a rather unique narrative on morality and examination of the human condition, Death Parade is a true gem. Refreshing in many ways, this show is one that should be considered a modern classic."Judgement must be performed hand in hand with both life and death. it is something that must be performed hand in hand with humans."tl;dr+ Great characters+ Mysterious, gut wrenching plot+ Beautiful dark art+ Fresh+/- Some supporting characters need a little more time"Life is something which is always met with unfairness; there are those who live fulfilled lives, and there are lives that pass away in no time at all."What’s in a Curve? Moose players talk sticks, blade curves & personalized gear
High above the ice surface at Bell MTS Place I was in my usual perch in the press box watching a recent Moose game when the stick of one of the Manitoba players snapped. When the play was whistled dead he returned to the bench in order to select a new twig. He eyeballed the stick given to him and selected one to use during his next shift.
When I went to the Bell MTS IcePlex a few days later to watch the Moose practice I had the opportunity to discuss the subject of sticks, blade curves and what it means to have personalized gear with some of the players. Coincidentally, CCM pro rep Todd Duffin happened to be in attendance that morning to outfit some of the Manitoba players with new gear and was able to provide some additional insight.
CCM has an exclusive partnership in place in the AHL (which was extended by five years in 2016) whereby they supply all sticks, helmets, gloves, pants and jerseys to players in the league. A few of the veteran players have the option to use something other than CCM.
Most players are quite specific about their sticks and curves. Duffin expanded on this indicating “Every player in that room is going to be a little bit different. Some guys are very tech and spec on their sticks and what they use. There are some modifications when guys talk about their blade maybe being a little too soft, they want something with a little more harder feel. The flex points not right for their shot profile, whether it’s a one timer, snap shot, wrist shot, in close. We have different profiles and flexes that will cater to those certain players.”
In terms of how specific players can be with their sticks Todd told me that it runs the gamut including “from lengths of their sticks to shaft geometry (how thick the shaft is going to be or a more round style shaft), blade height, blade length, curves (for shot style), etc.” Ultimately from Todd’s perspective “It’s important to communicate with the player to figure out what he wants and then trying to work together to match those specifications.”.
After talking with the expert I touched based with four Jets prospects (Chase De Leo, Jack Roslovic, Nic Petan and Mason Appleton) about their sticks, blade curves and what it means to have personalized gear.
Chase De Leo (Jets 2014 4th rounder) used an Easton stick growing up but switched over to Bauer when he joined the Portland Winterhawks of the WHL. While still in junior hockey he made the switch over to CCM. De Leo uses a “tall blade” which is three inches tall, bigger than the normal blade as he felt “it helped in the face off circle, gave me more area to get the puck.”
I asked him whose stick he used when he was younger “Joe Sakic. I had this VHS tape when they won the cup with Forsberg and Roy and those guys and I just loved that stick.” When I asked him what it is like seeing his name on the stick and what it means to him “When I was little I had my mom and dad print up stickers to put my name on my sticks. So it’s cool to see my name on it.”
One player who hasn’t changed his curve much in the last few years is top scoring forward Jack Roslovic (Jets 2015 1st rounder) who told me “in U-17 (U.S. National Under-17 team) when I first started playing for the U.S. program I created my own curve with CCM and from there I don’t think I’ve ever switched”. Considering he is near the lead for the AHL scoring title something tells me he won’t be switching that curve anytime soon.
When asked what players sticks he gravitated towards when he was younger, one of the two was somewhat surprising. “There were two favourites” said Roslovic on sticks he got when he was a fan sitting in his family’s season tickets in Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio. “Rick Nash was one of my favourites and goalie Tomáš Vokoun. I was a righty and I always liked using his stick in the house. Kind of weird to play with a goalie stick but it was a right-handed one and I could stick handle with it.”.
Roslovic reflected back to when he was a kid using a program online to customize his stick “to have my own name on it” and how it compares to his present reality where he has customized sticks by CCM admitting, “it’s a pretty cool feeling”.
When he was in peewee and bantam hockey dynamic forward Nic Petan (Jets 2013 2nd rounder) used an Easton stick with the Jarome Iginla curve. Once he got started in junior hockey with the Portland Winterhawks he switched over to using Bauer. At age 17, he and fellow Winterhawk (and Winnipegger) Brendan Leipsic switched up the pattern they were using, to more of a straight curve which he kept until he was 20. After a brief change he went back to using a more straight curve, something he acknowledges, makes him fairly unique on the team. “I think I’m the only guy who uses a straight curve on the team, it’s kinda weird, they all chirp me for it, but straight curves are the best curves.” With 16 assists in 22 games this season he may be onto something.
Rookie Manitoba forward Mason Appleton (Jets 2015 6th rounder) was a Bauer guy his entire life, until he got to junior hockey. In the USHL they use CCM so he switched over to that brand when he was with the Tri-City Storm. A year later he arrived in East Lansing, Michigan for college to join the Michigan State Spartans and he switched back to using Bauer. When he got to Winnipeg to play for the Moose he went back to CCM and he’s currently using a Tacks stick with a Toews curve indicating “It’s a bigger curve than I’ve ever used in my life but I like shooting with that big curve and I feel like I can do other things with it.” Clearly he has found something that works sitting second in the AHL rookie scoring race and tied for eighth overall in the league.
Often times when we think of players making the adjustment from college to the AHL we think in terms of the physicality, the speed, the greater number of games, etc. but there can also be a big change from the perspective of the equipment. For Appleton there was an adjustment period “when I got here, there was a different feel for sure and I just tried to replicate the stick (he used in college) as much as I could. It took a little bit to adjust to it but now I am definitely happy using the CCMs. We’re always able to make changes here and there so that is really helpful as well.”.
When asked what it is like to see his name on his personalized stick “It is pretty special. I know growing up when I would go through a locker room tour that was always one of the coolest parts for me was to see a guy’s stick, with his name on it. When I went to juniors it was pretty surreal when I saw my name on a pack of six sticks. You try not to take for granted all these little things we get here. Like our customized sticks and all of our gear customized. It is pretty cool to see your name on your stick and your stick designed exactly to fit you.”.
Unfortunately I didn’t remember to ask if any of these players if they have ever used an illegal curve…..
As always stay tuned for the latest Winnipeg Jets and Manitoba Moose news by keeping it locked to our web site illegalcurve.com and on social media including Twitter | Facebook | Instagram. You can also follow me on twitter as well (@icdave).Happy New Year! A new year means it's time for the annual Android prediction post. First off though, a trip down memory lane with a look at Aaron's post from last year.
A Look Back To 2011
Way back in January 2011, we were all gobsmacked at the recent announcement of 300,000 Android activations per day. That looks cute now, doesn't it? A year later and it's more than doubled, now we're up to 700,000 per day. That's just incredible. Android could hit a million activations per day by the end of the year.
Last Year's Predictions
Tablets: The New Netbook - Netbooks definitely died. Android tablets, though, had very little to do with it. Tablets are much more refined than the 7 inch Galaxy Tab we were stuck with last year (giant phone apps!), but today, the app selection still isn't there. Google deserves as much blame as anyone, Google Docs on a tablet is borderline unusable, and G+ and Voice don't have tablet layouts either. It just doesn't seem like Google takes tablets seriously. Netbooks were mainstream consumer products, and Android tablets, well, aren't.
Dual-Core CPUs For Everyone! - Yep, nailed it! 2011 even saw the (semi) release of a quad core tablet. The processor gods have been good to us.
Manufacturer UIs: Stayin' Alive! - "Love them or hate them, they won't go away." Ugh. Yep. OEM skins are still here. In 2012, things seem to be even worse. Manufacturers have adopted a strategy of "Differentiation at any cost," regardless of how negative it is for the end user. At least Gingerbread was ugly. Ice Cream Sandwich is a beautiful, fresh new look for Android, but OEMs plan to just wipe it away and dump the same old skins on top. It's like vandalizing a piece of art. It's criminal.
Fragmentation Sucks. Does Google Have a Solution?
Nope. Google tried to get manufacturers to take upgrades seriously with the Android Alliance, but it's obvious that was a broken promise. At the end of the day, OEMs see no financial incentive to rush out updates. The Motorola purchase will hopefully have a competitive effect on fragmentation. Check out that section for details.
Android Owned 2011
Overall, Android has had a killer year. Sales have been absolutely through the roof, and any competition is left fighting over the scraps. Ice Cream Sandwich has brought some serious refinement to Android, and 2012 looks to be even better.
So, here we go: My predictions, research, and musings on the future of Android or "Hey Android! You've just won the smartphone wars! What are you going to do next?"
A Look Forward to 2012
Danger 2.0 - The Android Hardware Division
This is going to require some background. Danger Inc. was a cutting edge smartphone company founded by Andy Rubin, Matt Hershenson, and Joe Britt. (They also had a now well-known Director of Design by the name of Matias Duarte.) The company was famous for making the iconic Hiptop/Sidekick line of phones, one of the first affordable, mainstream consumer smartphones. You could multitask, go on the internet, and send emails, and everything was backed up to Danger's servers. Danger was basically building Android 0.01.
Andy Rubin left Danger and founded Android, where he is now the benevolent overlord of around half of the smartphone market. Matias Duarte bounced around the industry, but he eventually wound up back with Rubin, where he is now the Director of Android User Experience. But what about Matt Hershenson, and Joe Britt? Well, at Google I/O 2011, this happened:
Surprise! Andy got the band back together. Rubin's Android division is basically Danger 2.0. And, wait a minute...what did Hugo say? The Android Hardware Engineering Team? Yeah that's right, somewhere, deep inside Google, Rubin's old Danger buddies are running an entire team dedicated to hardware.
On-stage at I/O 2011 they announced the Android Open Accessory program, the ADK Arduino board, and [email protected] These are all fun, geeky projects, but I expect much more out of the former Danger gang.
“If you get a guy who started a company that built a phone, what else are you going to do?” - Andy Rubin (In The Plex, pg. 226)
That's an excellent point, Mr. Rubin. Why would you bring a bunch of hardware guys into your software company? These guys will spend 2012 cooking up all sorts of fun little toys for us.
With Motorola and all the important bits of Danger, Google has all the parts they need be a full on phone manufacturer. They will still keep the Motorola brand around, and try to appear to not play favorites, but the fact is Google is now more vertical than Apple. Motorola Mobility owns factories around the world, while Apple outsources their manufacturing to companies like Foxconn. Speaking of Motorola:
Motorola: The Ultimate Weapon Against OEM Apathy
I believe Google is fed up with OEMs. They just aren't holding up their end of the bargain. Slow updates, horrible skins, and a lack of enthusiasm for new features, like NFC. OEMs are the weak link in the Android Ecosystem, despite numerous chances to get their act together. Google tried to solve the problem with the Nexus program, but its reach was too limited. Then they tried working on the update problem with the Android Alliance, but OEMs offered only lip service.
It became obvious that manufacturers just didn't share Google's ambition, and, in August 2011, they just couldn't take it anymore. Google went with the nuclear option: they bought Motorola.
"Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers. I look forward to welcoming Motorolans to our family of Googlers.” - Larry Page, CEO of Google
"Supercharge the entire Android ecosystem" is the key phrase here. How will Google do that? Competition. Motorola is going to be the flagship Android OEM. Stock Android, hardware that's in line with Google's latest initiatives (like NFC), quality designs, and fast updates. It's like taking the Nexus program mainstream.
It's clear OEMs aren't going to step their game up without some kind of financial incentive. In 2012 the message will be loud and clear: keep up with Motorola or they will crush you. Motorola's fast updates and beautiful, stock software will light a fire under the manufactures, and the Android ecosystem will get better for everyone.
Lots of boring regulatory stuff needs to happen in order for the takeover to be official; Google expects everything to finish up early this year. Then the rebuilding of Motorola can begin.
Motorola Turns Into A Model OEM
Larry Page likes to make a splash. During his first week as CEO, he completely reorganized the company's executive structure, tied everyone's bonus to the success of the company's social strategy, and ordered a complete redesign of every Google site. All of that in 7 days. He's not a timid guy when it comes to action. Page has had around 6 months to plot his first day of Motorola ownership. He will no-doubt come out guns a' blazing as soon as Motorola falls under his rule. We probably won't hear about these things for a few months, but they will happen. Any Motorola news will be hush-hush so as not to scare the other OEMs.
We will definitely hear about the firings. I expect most of Motorola's software team to be fired. Google is notoriously picky about its software engineers. It takes anywhere between 4-9 interviews, you are asked ridiculous questions like "how many golf balls can fit in a school bus?," and all the hiring decisions are done by committee. It's hard to get hired at Google. I really doubt they will suddenly welcome a bunch of scrubs from Motorola who've been responsible for Motoblur. Producing universally-reviled software probably doesn't look good on your resume. The axe man will be working overtime.
This isn't the first time Google has had to cut a large workforce. DoubleClick is a fantastic example of a large Google acquisition. When Google bought the ad platform, they cut 40% of the workforce. Employees were held to Google's hiring standards, and anyone that didn't make the cut, was cut. That meant most of the software engineers. If I was a Motoblur dev, I'd be job hunting right now.
Speaking of Motoblur. Its days are numbered. Google isn't going to be building Android in one division, and ruining it in another. Motoblur will die, and Motorola will become a stock-only Android house.
The Two Most Innovative Android Companies Combine Forces
After the software team is shown the door, Google and Motorola should get along very well. Motorola is easily the most innovative Android OEM: They make every form factor known to man (slates, landscape qwerty, and blackberry style), they're usually the first to market with new processor tech (Droid 1: first Cortex A8, Atrix: first dual core), and the Razr was an innovation showcase (the world's thinnest LTE phone, Kevlar backing, and a water repellent internal coating). And how Googley was the Atrix's Laptop dock? Here's a crazy beta product that's totally ahead of its time, let's release it and see what happens! Motorola seems like the only OEM interested in trying new things and being innovative. They will fit right in with Google.
Google innovations and Motorola innovations will Votron together to form AWESOME Android products. I expect seriously cool things to come out of Googlerola. Just think, how much cooler would a Lapdock be with all Google software and OS-level integration? New pieces of hardware, like NFC, can quickly be integrated into Motorola's next line of phones along with the software support to make it work. The two companies will make Android nimbler, and cool technology will hit more consumers, faster.
Complete Failure In The Set Top Box Market
Motorola Mobility is the leading manufacturer of cable boxes, which means Google is now the leading manufacturer of cable boxes. Never one to fear poking a beehive with a stick, Google will try and get the cable companies to change, and they will fail. Cable execs have already started to batten down the hatches and I'm sure they will vehemently fight against anything even resembling "progress." Google has almost no leverage against them; cable providers can just look elsewhere for boxes. I expect Google to try and build a better cable box, but cable companies have no reason to change; and won't.
Jelly Bean Will Blow Our Minds
Our source tells us he's hearing that the "game-changing stuff" that had originally been scheduled for Ice Cream Sandwich is now being pushed to Jelly Bean - This Is My Next
Waaaaaay back in September 2011, when all that was known about Ice Cream Sandwich was a handful of redacted screenshots (some released right here on AP), This Is My Next (now The Verge) released the above quote. Looking back, it seems pretty accurate. I believe it. (I should point out, Jelly Bean is not the official name. But we have to call the next version of Android something.)
Ice Cream Sandwich, while a worthy upgrade, is almost entirely UI enhancements. The merging of phone and tablet UIs must have been a pretty big job, and as a result most of the cool, new features were pushed to the next version of Android. It's totally plausible. As to what those new features might be? Well I can take a few guesses.
A Major Upgrade To Voice Actions
Voice control has always been the Sci-fi future of computing. Google kicked off the voice race with the launch of Voice Actions for Android, and Apple brought their usual brand of we-invent-everything hype and fawning press coverage to the party with Siri. Voice Actions is seriously due for an upgrade, it's almost been a full year since any new functionality was added. Google employs way too many natural language experts to not have something cooking.
A particularly believable rumor that's been flying around is of "Majel," the supposed codename for the evolution of Voice Actions. The project is named after Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, the voice of the Star Trek computer. The basic idea, if you haven't guessed, is to just build the Star Trek computer. A computer you can talk to, that talks back.
What makes this believable, you ask? Well, everyone, across the entire company, won't shut up about Star Trek. They mentioned it when they bought Phonetic Arts, and again in their Evolution of Search video, and at the Galaxy Nexus launch. If fact, when asked where Google's answer to Siri was, Matias Duarte basically laid it out for us:
"Our approach is more like Star Trek, right, starship Enterprise; every piece of computing surface, everything is voice-aware. It’s not that there’s a personality, it doesn’t have a name, it’s just “Computer.” And you can talk to it and you can touch it, you can interact with it at the same time as you talk with it. It’s just another way to interface with the computer."
So more voice controls are coming. The only question is when. The Majel rumor said the end of 2011, which has come and gone. I'm putting my money on Jelly Bean.
UI Scaling For External Displays
In Ice Cream Sandwich, the tablet OS and the phone OS are the same thing. Most of the tablet and phone apps are actually the same apk. Your phone even has the ability to turn into a tablet. Here, I'll prove it:
Grab a rooted Galaxy Nexus, crank the software DPI down to 160, and bam! you've got a tablet. This UI doesn't work well on a screen this small, but what about when I plug my phone into a TV, or dock it into a crazy tablet or Lapdock? Well someone asked this very question at Google I/O:
So plans are in the works to switch screen modes on the fly. Plug into a larger screen, and the apps and OS rearrange make the most of it. Just imagine this with one of the crazy devices Motorola loves to cook up. A more refined Lapdock that would switch to tablet mode would be pretty cool.
Google TV Merges With Android
When Google TV was announced, Android was on 2.2, a smartphone-only OS. There were a million problems with using Android on a television. It wouldn't run on Google TV's x86 processor, the UI wouldn't scale to something appropriate for a TV, there was no support for peripherals like remotes and keyboards, and many parts of the OS and apps demanded telephony hardware and a touchscreen in order to function. In 2010, it totally made sense to make Google TV a separate project.
So GTV did just that, trying to be Android compatible, but never really being "Android." They ported as many Android parts as possible to x86, maintained Android APK compatibility, and built whatever else they needed. They seemed to have almost no communication with the Android team; Honeycomb came to Google TV about 8 months after its debut. That's the kind of time frame Motorola customers are used to dealing with, and that's embarrassing for a 1st party project.
Now though, Ice Cream Sandwich natively supports x86, it works on screens of all sizes, there's native USB host support for all kinds of peripherals, and being "a phone" is no longer a requirement. Combine this with GTV's less than stellar sales, and horrified partners, and you have to ask: Why is Google TV still a separate project? The ICS UI can effortlessly handle phone and tablet interfaces, so why not phone, tablet, and TV interfaces?
All of the reasons for GTV to exist separately are no longer valid, it's time to make the team a division of Android, and end all the wasted time chasing the latest version. Fold GTV into Android, just like the tablet OS. It's just one more DPI range, and maybe a new launcher.
Actually, it's total revamp time. Let Matias Duarte spruce up that UI (because right now GTV is butt ugly), and change the name. "Google TV" brings to mind a boring, white search box, and the name has gotten non-stop bad press. "Android TV" is much more descriptive of what it actually is, and it sounds way more exciting. It conjures up vibrant images of apps, games, widgets and notifications, and implies cool remote functionality with your other Android devices.
I should also point out, I am not a proponent of merging Android and Chrome OS. They are trying to accomplish two different things. GTV and Android are trying to accomplish the same thing, so it makes sense for them to merge.
Intel CPUs Will Melt Your Eyeballs And Your Battery
In 2010, Smartphones started outselling PCs. Smartphones and tablets are the future, and Intel knows it. They've been plugging away at a mobile x86 CPU for something like 7 years. Intel wants, desperately, to be in the mobile market. This will be the year they will finally do it.
"Medfield" is the system on a chip they'll be pushing this year. It's basically an Atom CPU with all the modems and RAM and stuff a smartphone needs. That's right, an Atom. Intel wants to put a full-on netbook CPU in your smartphone or tablet. LG is rumored to be building a phone with one of these beasts, we'll have to see just how ready for prime time it is at CES.
Why has it taken years for Intel to break into the mobile market? In a word: Power. Intel's chips have been way too power hungry. The first generation that actually makes it to market will probably come in just under the wire of acceptable power usage. That means crap battery life. We're probably looking at Thunderbolt-level staying power. It will be crazy fast, but it will need to be tethered.
Still though, this is exciting. It's the first step towards the new age of Android processors. An age of Intel domination. Ice Cream Sandwich elevated x86 to a fully supported architecture, all Intel needs to supply now is the hardware. The version after Medfield will have much lower power usage, and in a year or two I expect Intel to crush ARM chips.
Microprocessor manufacturing is mostly a game of scale, and nobody has bigger scale than Intel. They own something like 84% of the CPU market. Their crazy scale means they have a ton of cash to invest in their chip production. As a result they are usually a full generation ahead of everyone else when it comes to transistor size. The cutting edge, quad core Nvidia Tegra 3, which just started shipping in December 2011, uses a 40 nm manufacturing process. That's cute. Intel was shipping 32 nm processors almost 2 years ago. In 4 months they will be on 22nm. Intel is just in a whole other league when it comes to processor technology. Even if you have a better architecture and design, but it's hard to compete when Intel has smaller transistors than you do.
x86 software is going to be a huge pain in the butt for everyone. Normal apps should be okay, but anything written using the NDK will be incompatible with x86. That means 3D games will need special version for Intel chips. Bring some Advil.
At some point in the near future. Facebook will pull a Kindle. They will fork Android, strip out all the Googleyness, and pile their own crap on top of it. They have to. Everyone that fires up a Galaxy Nexus is prompted to join Google+, if OEMs leave that in ICS, that's 700,000 G+ advertisements a day.
Go look at your news feed, how many updates are from mobile phones? Mobile is the future, and Google is on track to own it. I'm sure Facebook has nightmares of Google using their dominant mobile position to push HARD for G+ signups, and they will feel the need to respond. Forking Android automatically wins you the app battle, a game you can't win with someone like Microsoft, and Apple doesn't want to partner with you. An Android based Facebook phone is the best response to Google's hypothetical Android/G+ hybrid. Facebook even has an ex-Android PM running their mobile division. They've even dipped their toe in the Android waters.
On the left is the Motorola ROKR. It was the first phone Apple was in involved with. Apple announced it at a media event. It worked with iTunes and could play all your Apple music. It was basically Apple's test drive of the cell phone market. 2 years later they launched the iPhone.
On the right is the HTC Cha Cha. It (along with the HTC Salsa) was the first phone Facebook was involved with. It sported a front button that would take you directly to a Facebook app or share whatever you are currently viewing. I'm seeing similarities in strategy here. Anyone else?
So what would a Facebook phone look like? (Readers with weak stomachs may want to skip this paragraph) Just think of the synergy! A homescreen status update bar! Your friends are your contacts! Messenger is your email! Events is your calendar! A 24/7 Chat connection! A search page that promotes Facebook pages! Bing Maps and check-ins! Your Photos are your Gallery! Automatic camera uploads! A Facebook app store! "You've just made a phone call to bob! would you like to share it on your wall?"
I'm sure Facebook's collective head is just spinning with the possibilities.
The Long Shot: Google Robots!
Yes that's right, I said it. Robots. My crazy, long shot prediction is that Google will release (or have a big hand in) a consumer level robot of some kind.
Google just loves robots. Larry Page is a big robot fan, and is very fond of big, scary projects that take lots of time and money. And I'll just say Andy Rubin called his company "Android" for a reason. Google isn't shy about its robot love: They were all over the place at Google I/O.
iRobot had a session at I/O, and Willow Garage (makers of the most advanced robot ever, and stewards of ROS, the open source Robotic Operating System) and Google gave a 40 minute joint talk on Cloud Robotics. During the introduction, one of the presenters casually drops this bomb on the audience:
We're both on the Cloud Robotics team at Google, Which I'm sure you've never heard of before today. -Ryan Hickman, Google I/O 2011 Cloud Robotics Talk
So Google has a Cloud Robotics team. How cool is that?
During the talk, the Google Cloud Robotics team talked about how the Android Open Accessory API meant you can now use all of an Android device's modems and sensors for your robot. Willow Garage and Google also worked together to port ROS to Java, saying "This new library was developed at Google with the goal of enabling advanced Android apps for robotics." In fact, iRobot had a Motorola Xoom-Bot at I/O:
What do you think Google Goggles is? It's robot vision. Voice Typing is robot hearing. Google Maps is robot location and navigation. The Phonetic Arts acquisition is a robot voice. Google's cloud compute gives you unlimited robot brain power. Google has many robot parts, they just need to put it in a robot.
And I almost forgot to mention Google's totally in-house, working robot platform: Google self driving cars. A few years ago, Google hired the Director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and his team, and threw money at them to make this car happen. The New York Times says Google wants to turn them into a real product, and they may even manufacturer the cars themselves.
When this is done, Google will have built a world class robot navigation solution, which can no doubt be adapted for indoor navigation as well.
A Google Bot of some kind is coming. Robots are the next big technology industry. Google has the money, brains, ambition, and desire to make it happen. It just makes too much sense.
Conclusion
This article would have been a heck of a lot easier to write after CES, which, (oh dear god) is NEXT WEEK. We'll see many companies' plans for a good portion of 2012, and Android promises to be all over the show. It's definitely something to keep an eye on (like you could avoid it).
Well, that's about all I can think of for 2012. It promises to be a wild year. What do you think 2012 has in store for us? What are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments!Sure, the world's attention may be focused on the winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, but one dad is bringing the intense athletic action a whole lot closer to home.
It started with a 12-foot-tall homemade ice luge Tim Smith, from Crystal, Minn., built in his front yard to keep his three kids - ages 12, 10 and 7 - entertained. But after they had gotten plenty of fun mileage out of it, the steep, slippery slope took a competitive turn on Feb. 6, the same day as the opening ceremony, as the family hosted an elaborate kiddie winter Olympics for the whole neighborhood.
"We had actual Olympic medals," Smith said of his miniature winter games. "We put stickers on them that said 'Smith Olympics.'
"As they came up," he continued, "I had a cordless sound system. I asked them what country they were representing and said, 'Welcome to the Smith Games.' The sound was bouncing off the houses and it was just so powerful."
Dad Builds 12-Foot-Tall Homemade Ice Luge in Front Yard for His Kids
The family even had an official table for athlete registration where the children received their numbers.
"It was really cute," said Smith, who explained the competition was split up into three categories: speed, distance and style.
"It was all on the ice luge," he said. "The first was speed. Each kid got three timed runs, and whoever had the best run was the winning score."
"Then there was distance," he recalled. "The overall distance was measured. Of course that's pretty easy to judge."
Top Photos: Winter Olympics 2014
But they saved the best round for last, as the style competition was easily the fans' and athletes' favorite.
"The kids had a lot of fun with the style category," Smith said. "It was freestyle, so the kids could do whatever they want like putting their hands up or really getting creative."
"People had a lot of fun trying to come up with tricks," Smith's daughter, Savannah, 12, said. "My brother had the [most awesome] trick ever. He went down on one sled, and in the middle of the slope, in the really hard part of the luge, he switched sleds."
Teen Boys Build 50-Foot-Long Backyard Roller Coaster for $50
Smith kept the entire experience as authentic as possible, even having the kids help him "light the Olympic torch," which he explained was actually a huge caldron set up to keep the participants warm in the harsh, freezing Minnesota temperatures.
"Everybody totally appreciated it," he said of the event's success. "With the huge fire and sounds of the Olympic song playing, just everything lit and in full working mode. It was incredible for kids and adults alike."
But for Smith, the best part wasn't even pulling off the sporting spectacle. He says it was the kids' reactions and comments.
"It was overwhelming," he explained, pausing to gather his emotions. "They really loved it."
Tune in to catch all the latest buzz every weekday on " GMA LIVE!" at 9 a.m. ET.I’ve been swamped with other things and haven’t had a chance to weigh in on Robert Putnam’s new book. I hope to do so soon, as I have pretty strong views about whether the American Dream is in crisis, as his subtitle declares. Without getting into it, one objection I have—not at all the only one—is that Putnam and others tend to catalogue a bunch of negative trends without considering trends that might work toward increasing the upward mobility of poor kids. For instance, violence and drug use are down a lot, teen births are way down, and unwanted births probably have also declined. If you’re a good liberal, then you must think that falling class size and expanded access to health care will make a difference. Racial discrimination, while not a thing of yesteryear, is quite a bit rarer than it was a generation or two ago. And so on.
One possible force for greater upward mobility is the welfare reforms of the 1990s. Hear me out, because I think the case is stronger than is generally admitted. We probably won't know the answer for a few more years, because the oldest children born in the 1990s are only 25 years old today, and the youngest are barely 15 years old.
For background, the 1990s featured a number of policy reforms aimed at low-income families with children. Early in the decade, many states began to experiment with reforms to the federal cash assistance program for nondisabled low-income families, known then as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). This experimentation was made possible by state waivers that Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton approved.
Welfare reform featured prominently in the 1992 presidential race as well. Then, in his first budget, Clinton proposed a substantial expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which was enacted later that year. He also initiated a push to reform AFDC, and Congressional Democrats were working on various proposals before the Republican electoral sweep of 1994. Republicans took welfare reform proposals in a tougher direction, and in 1996, Clinton signed their third bill, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
The bill transformed AFDC into “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families” (TANF), which sent block grants to the states, took away the entitlement to benefits that was |
text circulates among some of the skiers from the Tunnel Creek group: Michelson, Stifter, Saugstad, and others. “Thinking of you.” “Sending love.” “Thinking of the boys.” Up at Stevens Pass, the anniversary is marked every year by a Shred for Stevens event—participants spread out across the resort, filling in a checklist of activities before settling down to tell stories about their friends over beers. And back in Leavenworth, anyone who wants to can hike or bike the 4 the Boys trail anytime, dipping into their memories as they go.
Hessburg also has her own private memorial, carried with her everywhere.
It’s a ring she had made by a friend who’s a jeweler. The thick silver band is etched with the outline of Cowboy Ridge. Above the ridge four birds fly: Rudolph, Jack, Brenan, and another friend, Danny, who was killed by an avalanche in 2011. Two curving lines descend the mountain—ski tracks, one for Rudolph and one for Hessburg.
“This is kind of my daily reminder,” she says of the ring. Not that she’s at risk of forgetting.
Anne Hessburg always wears a ring featuring two curving ski tracks, one representing her and one representing Chris Rudolph. Image: Kyle Johnson
“The cliche that I hate the most is that time will heal,” she says. “I think that is such a load of crap. I don’t think that time heals anything, I think that—when someone experiences tragic loss…I don’t think that you ever fully heal from that. I think that it’s a deep wound that you always carry with you. You just learn how to live with it.”
She likens it to building a scab around an unhealed wound, “so that it can’t hurt you every single day.”
For the skiers who were at Tunnel Creek that day, there are lingering questions and regrets that may never heal: What if they had gone out earlier, or later, or not at all? What if they had skied a different line? What if they had talked more, as a group, about the plan and the risks? What if someone had called it off?
People sometimes ask Hessburg if she has regrets too. If she’d somehow known how things would end, would she still have chosen to spend those years with Rudolph? Her answer is easier: Of course. “I am who I am because I had Chris in my life,” she says.
She thinks about him all the time—especially when she’s at Stevens Pass, under a big blue winter sky, making her turns and ripping downhill the way he taught her. She’ll get to the bottom of an especially good run and look back up the snow-covered mountain behind her, and think: He would have loved that one.The world is on the brink of enlisting market forces in the fight against climate change on a truly global scale for the first time, United Nations officials have claimed.
After years of opposition, hundreds of the world’s major companies and investment firms – including several oil giants – have agreed that there should be a charge for the damage done to the planet by greenhouse gases.
This means that an international carbon market – in which companies buy and sell the right to produce harmful emissions – is now close to becoming a reality.
Join Independent Minds For exclusive articles, events and an advertising-free read for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent With an Independent Minds subscription for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month Get the best of The Independent Without the ads – for just £5.99 €6.99 $9.99 a month
Even China, the world’s biggest polluter, plans to set up a carbon pricing system next year.
It is hoped that market forces will inevitably drive down the level of greenhouse gases as money flows from companies that produce emissions to those that reduce them, such as renewable energy firms.
Read more The era of climate fatalism is over
Georg Kell, executive director of UN Global Compact, the body’s initiative to get firms to adopt sustainable policies, said the recent conversion of much of the business world was hugely significant.
“This is a breakthrough as usually business blocks climate action on a national level,” he said yesterday. “For the first time, the private sector has argued in favour of pricing externalities. Polluters are making the case to be charged.”
“Externalities” is the word used by economists to describe things that are outside, or not priced by, the free market. For example, the health costs associated with air pollution from car exhausts are currently borne by tax-payers, not by polluters.
“Not pricing pollution and carbon emissions is the biggest market distortion in human history,” Mr Kell said. According to him, China’s decision to introduce carbon pricing would create significant business opportunities. “China is putting in place a national pricing system for carbon next year. This will be the biggest carbon market,” he added.
Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of senior executives from pension funds, major banks and institutional and sovereign wealth funds in Copenhagen, Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, stressed the importance of a global system.
“The United Nations cannot do it alone. No country can do it alone. We have to combine our resources and ambitions, particularly together with business communities,” he said. And carbon pricing, he stressed, was “one of the most powerful tools available for reducing emissions and generating sustainable development and growth”. “The Global Compact has helped generate a major shift in corporate mindset in just one decade,” Mr Ban added.
So far, 74 countries, including the EU, China and Russia, but not the US, Canada, Japan or Australia, and 1,000 businesses – from oil firms BP and Statoil to giant corporations such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Unilever – have signed up to a UN declaration in support of carbon pricing.
And a group of 354 major institutional investors, such as BlackRock, the BT Pension Scheme, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rothschild & Cie Gestion, have also agreed to call on governments to “provide stable, reliable and economically meaningful carbon pricing that helps redirect investment commensurate with the scale of the climate change challenge”. Collectively, they handle about £15trn in assets – more than the United States’ GDP.
The EU currently runs the world’s biggest carbon-trading scheme, which means there are limits on about 45 per cent of total emissions from the 28 member states, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. More than 11,000 power stations and manufacturing plants and most flights are covered. Under the system, companies that emit greenhouse gases can buy credits from “emission-saving projects around the world”. They can be fined if they fail to get enough allowances to cover their emissions.
However, it has been criticised for failing to produce significant results, partly because the price set for emitting a ton of carbon, which is supposed to reflect the damage to the environment, was too low. It remains to be seen whether the Chinese scheme will be more rigorous.
And there is still a long way to go to wean humanity off carbon. According to the International Energy Agency, 82 per cent of the world’s energy is still produced by fossil fuels. But Mr Kell said there were optimistic signs that this could be about to change. “The world is longing for solutions,” he said.One of the most notable accomplishments of liberalism over the past 20 years is something that didn't happen: the demise of affirmative action. Contrary to all predictions, affirmative action has survived. This is a triumph not only for race relations but also for the liberal vision of an inclusive society with full opportunity for all.
In the early 1990s, the future of policies aimed at assisting racial minorities seemed bleak indeed. In 1989, the Supreme Court invalidated an affirmative-action plan for government contracts in Richmond, Virginia, holding that such programs at the state and local level must be subject to "strict scrutiny" -- the same level of skeptical assessment applied to laws or decisions that had historically disadvantaged racial minorities. That same year, the Court issued decisions that neutered the concept of "disparate impact" as a form of racial discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Disparate impact required employers not only to desist from intentionally excluding racial-minority applicants because of their race but also to avoid race-neutral screening criteria that had the same effect, unless the criteria could be justified by "business necessity" or shown to be related to job performance. In 1990, when Congress repudiated the Court's regressive interpretation of Title VII, President George H.W. Bush vetoed the legislation, calling it a "quota bill."
The Civil Rights Act of 1991 passed eventually, but not before Bush put a new impediment in the way of affirmative action. He nominated Clarence Thomas, a vehement enemy of affirmative action, to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court. This was a momentous shift that would be tantamount to Antonin Scalia being replaced by, say, liberal legal scholar Laurence Tribe. Thomas -- a black man who famously overcame racism and impoverishment as a youngster -- added extra timbre to the Court's anti-affirmative-action chorus, despite the fact that he was himself a beneficiary of the policy, both at Yale Law School and in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.
Conservatives charged that affirmative action amounts to "reverse racism"; discriminates against "innocent whites"; stigmatizes its putative beneficiaries; erodes the incentives that prompt individuals to put forth their best efforts; lowers standards; produces inefficiencies; goes to those racial minorities who need it least; and generates racial resentments. This indictment and the backlash it rationalized resonated not only with Republicans but also with Democrats, some of whom shared the conservatives' philosophical objections to the policy, while others worried simply that supporting it meant electoral suicide.
Writing in these pages in 1990, sociologist William Julius Wilson asserted that "the movement for racial equality needs a new political strategy... that appeals to a broader coalition." Eschewing affirmative action (though he has subsequently changed his mind), Wilson championed redistributive reforms through "race-neutral policies," contending that they could help the Democratic Party regain lost political support while simultaneously benefiting those further down within minority groups. Similarly, in 1992 Prospect founding co-editor Paul Starr lamented that affirmative action "has taken a big political toll," alienating working-class whites, increasing political support for the right, and making it harder to enact "the kind of positive legislation that would especially benefit low- to middle-income Americans of all races."
One key Democrat attracted to this critique is Barack Obama. Writing in The Audacity of Hope, he did not expressly condemn affirmative action, but he did consign it to a category of exhausted programs that "dissect[s] Americans into 'us' and 'them'" and that "can't serve as the basis for the kinds of sustained, broad-based political coalitions needed to transform America." As president, Obama has repeatedly eschewed race-targeting (with respect most notably to employment policy) in favor of "universal" reforms that allegedly lift all boats.
Over the years, affirmative action has been truncated by judicial rulings and banned by voters in some states. In one guise or another, however, special efforts to assist marginalized racial minorities remain a major force in many schools and firms, foundations, and governments. Affirmative action survived principally because many rightly believe what President Bill Clinton declared on July 19, 1995, in what is (thus far) the only presidential address wholly devoted to the subject: "Affirmative action has been good for America." Clinton argued that ongoing injuries of past racial wrongs require redress; that affirmative action can usefully serve to prevent new invidious discrimination that is difficult, if not impossible, to reach through litigation; that the adverse consequences of affirmative action on whites are often grossly exaggerated and can easily be minimized; and that better learning and decision-making arise in environments that are racially diverse.
The amorphous and malleable idea of "diversity" provided much needed buoyancy to affirmative action, especially in the 2003 University of Michigan affirmative-action cases when 65 major companies, including American Express, Coca Cola, and Microsoft, asserted that maintaining racial diversity in institutions of higher education is vital to their efforts to hire and maintain a diverse workforce. A group of former high-ranking officers and civilian leaders of the military concurred, declaring that "a highly qualified, racially diverse officer corps... is essential to the military's ability to fulfill its principal mission to provide national security." Even Theodore Olson, the Bush administration's solicitor general, took pains to defer to "diversity" in a brief on the case.
The rise of the diversity rationale for affirmative action has not been costless, but it has ensured that appreciable numbers of racial minorities are in strategic positions, while dampening certain side effects that attend any regime of racial selectivity. Unlike affirmative action based on grounds of compensatory justice, the diversity rationale is non-accusatory. It doesn't depend on an assumption of culpability for some past or present wrong, and it minimizes the anger ignited when whites are accused of being beneficiaries of racial privilege. Everyone can be a part of diversity.
Many are drawn to the diversity rationale because it frames affirmative action not as special aid for designated groups but as a way of producing better services and products. Businesspeople love to say that "diversity is good for the bottom line." Many of them would be ideologically allergic to a business practice based solely on notions of justice or altruism but comfortable supporting a program that can be seen as reinforcing the principal mission of their enterprises.
The diversity rationale also facilitates the evasion of prickly subjects -- for instance, the fact that racial minorities selected for valued positions sometimes have records that, according to certain criteria such as standardized tests, are inferior to those of white competitors. The diversity rationale moves the spotlight from the perceived deficiencies of racial minorities to their perceived strengths. Unlike other justifications for affirmative action that seek to make exceptions to meritocracy, the diversity rationale is consistent with meritocratic premises. This is the most striking and historically significant aspect of affirmative action: It enables racial-minority status for the first time in American history to be seen as a valuable credential. Instead of the presence of blacks and other racial minorities constituting an expiation of past sins, the diversity rationale makes their presence a welcome and positive good.
Liberals have been key supporters of the modern struggle for racial equality. Affirmative action is both a major strategy and central accomplishment of that struggle. Its status is paradoxical. The election of the first African American president represents a coming of age of the "affirmative-action babies," but the right has so successfully vilified the policy that Obama is embarrassed by it. He has yet to say forthrightly what Bill Clinton aptly declared: Affirmative action is good for America.
This observation is not necessarily a criticism of Obama. The president should be pragmatic. If quietude about affirmative action serves its purposes or is essential to him retaining office, then by all means he should remain quiet. Fortunately, though, Obama's acts and omissions, justifiable or not, will not prove decisive. The true measure of affirmative action's staying power is that its absence now is virtually inconceivable. Liberalism has made racial homogeneity uncool and unacceptable. Even many conservatives are made uncomfortable by lily-white gatherings -- hence the enhanced value to the right of Clarence Thomas, Shelby Steele, Condoleezza Rice, Linda Chavez, and any well-spoken Negro or Latino who consorts with the Tea Party crowd. That conservatives practice affirmative action even as they condemn it is a tribute to liberalism's handiwork.Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA has suggested that hip-hop's famous collective might reunite – but only if they do it entirely on his terms. "I've been talking to some of the guys, like: 'Yo, look, I would suggest that you put down everything you know, and trust me one more time'," RZA told the New York Times.
The group might reconvene, he suggested, to mark next year's 20th anniversary of the Wu-Tang's landmark debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). "There's one last job Wu-Tang Clan must do," RZA said. "The 20th anniversary is next year. And we need to, one time, completely, efficiently, properly, professionally represent our brand. One more time. But this time, showing up on time for press and for concerts and studio. Do it one time, perfect."
RZA said he believed the power of the Clan had been at its greatest when the other members allowed him to be "a dictator", but that they had since come to like doing things their own way. "It's like: 'What makes you think you're the genius?' Before, they believed in me like that, they trusted me like that. Now, they've had a chance to do their own thing, and some things they liked better. Whether it was successful or not, they may like it better. But I would say, if we get one more shot of me being completely trusted as the driver of the ship, I think we could give the world one more record, maybe. And if not that, one more campaign. You got people with tattoos on, man. You got people that some of those words we did, it influenced their life. And you don't want to leave them."
He dismissed fears that without the full original lineup – Ol' Dirty Bastard died in 2004 – any reunion would lack legitimacy. "There's enough of us still alive, and I think there's still enough fans out there. Hip-hop is stronger than ever, as far as worldwide recognition, and our name is synonymous with it. It'd be smart for us to say: 'OK, 20 years, guess what?' We've proven that not only could the music last for 20 years, but there's an entity – you could go see a Rolling Stones concert right now. You could go see a Kiss concert. Anyway, I think there's one more round for Wu-Tang, if they go proper. But if they don't come proper, for some reason, whether it's my fault, their fault or the world's fault, I'm going to continue creating art and the Wu-Tang saga."Authored by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
Let’s take a breather from more consequential money matters at hand midweek to consider the tending moods of our time and place — while a blizzard howls outside the window, and nervous Federal Reserve officials pace the grim halls of the Eccles Building.
It is clear by now that we have four corners of American politics these days: the utterly lost and delusional Democratic party; the feckless Republicans; the permanent Deep State of bureaucratic foot-soldiers and errand boys; and Trump, the Golem-King of the Coming Greatness. Wherefore, and what the fuck, you might ask.
The Democrats reduced themselves to a gang of sadistic neo-Maoists seeking to eradicate anything that resembles free expression across the land in the name of social justice. Coercion has been their coin of the realm, and especially in the realm of ideas where “diversity” means stepping on your opponent’s neck until he pretends to agree with your Newspeak brand of grad school neologisms and “inclusion” means welcome if you’re just like us. I say Maoists because just like Mao’s “Red Guard” of rampaging students in 1966, their mission is to “correct” the thinking of those who might dare to oppose the established leader. Only in this case, that established leader happened to lose the sure-thing election and the party finds itself unbelievably out-of-power and suddenly purposeless, like a termite mound without a queen, the workers and soldiers fleeing the power center in an hysteria of lost identity.
They regrouped briefly after the election debacle to fight an imaginary adversary, Russia, the phantom ghost-bear, who supposedly stepped on their termite mound and killed the queen, but, strangely, no actual evidence was ever found of the ghost-bear’s paw-print. And ever since that fact was starkly revealed by former NSA chief James Clapper on NBC’s Meet the Press, the Russia hallucination has vanished from page one of the party’s media outlets — though, in an interesting last gasp of striving correctitude, Monday’s New York Times features a front page story detailing Georgetown University’s hateful traffic in the slave trade two centuries ago. That should suffice to shut the wicked place down for once and for all!
The Republican Party, to avoid going full-Whig and sliding down the laundry chute of history, made a bad deal for a new figurehead who is liable to make the party look way worse than it could ever accomplish on its own. This golden boy has dragged the party poobahs to the put-up-or-shut-up room of our nation’s capital — the place that Senator Rand Paul was searching high and low for last week — where they are charged with reforming the country’s health care racket. It looks for now like they will cook up a toxic farrago of new giveaways to their patrons in the hospital cartel, the insurance companies, and pharma. The voting public already detects the odor of 30-day-old carp in the first tastings of the dish. There’s a fair chance that the recipe will end up getting tossed in the capitol dumpster, and that in itself could finish the party because there’s little question that the current system known as ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act (not) is something like a fatal tumor in the nation’s craw. If the effort to fix that fails, the Republicans complete their transformation from the Party of No to the Party of Just Go.
The Deep State seems eager to sever its connections to both putrifying parties and attempt to run the groaning colossus of government ad hoc if necessary. The military and intel chains of command remain intact, along with their “assets,” and one can easily imagine anxious meetings of scenario-running in the back rooms of the Pentagon and the Langley frat house. What if…? “What if we just smoke the fucker?” an old Agency warrior remarks offhand, and the roomful of colleagues pause in their cogitations to weigh the notion. Some of them nod and make a moue, and others just cough into their sleeves. One young striver in the back mentions “a little something” they’ve been working on that involves hairspray and a neurotoxin derived from the Gaboon viper….
And then there is our President himself: Donald J. Trump, in the awesome solitude of his Twitterverse dome. A strange destiny brought him to his place in history thus far, and many of us surveying the scene lo these many months kind of get it: the festering disgust with the other three corners of American power; the dismal fall of the middle class into a purgatory of repossession, idleness, opiates, and tattoos; the accelerating purposeless of the dwindling consumer economy; the matrix of racketeering that systemically drains everyone’s financial mojo while adding humiliation to the shoddy service it delivers; the pointless, costly wars in faraway places and their conversion into permanent shit-holes; the disgraceful disfigurement of a once grand national landscape into a wilderness of dying malls and freeway ramps.
So, onto the scene strides The Donald, a giant among the squalling midgets of our time, with his promise to bigly re-greatify this suffering land. I suppose he means well in his torturous way. So did a lot of other figures in history who found themselves at the top: Idi Amin, Uncle Joe Stalin, Vlad the Impaler, King Leopold of Belgium, Adolf You-Know-Who, Pol Pot. The list of the well-meaning is very long.This afternoon, Colts rookie starting left guard Jack Mewhort missed practice with an ankle injury. He played every offensive snap Sunday, meaning that he played through the injury, but he missed practice today.. When asked about his status, Pagano didn't hide anything, saying that Mewhort will miss this Sunday's game against the Baltimore Ravens.
"He's out," Pagano said this afternoon. "He's out. I will not string anybody along with that. We're just upfront and forthright around here, trying to be as honest as we can."
So who will replace Mewhort at left guard? Pagano offered an answer to that question as well: they'll put Lance Louis there.
"When you've got a bunch of guys that prepare as starters," Pagano said, "and I just think of Lance (Louis) going in and stepping in for Hugh (Thornton) at right guard last week and doing a great job, we've got Hugh back so now we just put Lance over at the left side and we roll."
Simple as that: Jack Mewhort will miss this Sunday's game, and Lance Louis, who started at right guard last week in place of the injured Hugh Thornton, will shift over to left guard to play this week. When Donald Thomas initially went down with a season-ending injury, Pagano mentioned both Mewhort and Louis as options to replace him. We all knew that it would be Mewhort, but Louis was at least a bit of an option there for Pagano and the staff.
Additionally, there was a rumor going around this morning that the Colts would start Jonotthan Harrison at center over A.Q. Shipley (possibly because of Shipley moving to guard), but while the second part of that seems to have been shot down by Pagano in saying that Louis will move to left guard, when asked about the rumors of Harrision possibly replacing Shipley, Pagano gave a sort of non-answer.
"I don't know where that's coming from," Pagano said. He continued to say "just be careful what you listen to and read. Wait 'till game day." While that last part might suggest there's something more to the situation, Pagano's answer appeared much more to indicate that he wasn't really going to answer the question about the center position. To me, it seemed like a non-answer - different from last week, when Pagano definitively named A.Q. Shipley the starting center on Wednesday. I wouldn't make too much out of it, but it did send the feeling of a typical "non-answer."
What we do know, however, is that Chuck Pagano said today that Jack Mewhort will miss Sunday's game and that Lance Louis will shift over to left guard to replace him. It will be the second straight week that a different starting lineman (both guards) will miss a game, and hopefully the streak ends at two.Who Is The Greatest Mr. Olympia Winner Of All Time?
Determining the greatest Mr. Olympia winner of all time is not an easy task. With such an illustrious history marked by several distinct eras, each with at least one champion ushering in a new benchmark for bodybuilding excellence, this unprecedentedly prestigious professional bodybuilding event stands as a living, evolving monument to physical supremacy. Over its 45-year history the Mr. Olympia contest has crowned only 12 winners.
Each of these men has represented the best professional bodybuilding had to offer during their respective era. On several occasions more than one athlete has excelled over the course of a given period, providing legendary rivalries that will not soon be forgotten. In picking the best of the best one is faced with determining championship status based upon several compatible factors: era, level of competition, assisting technological advancements, overall physical development and impact beyond the stage.
When pro bodybuilders are judged at the Olympia they are, for the most part (there will always be bad calls), subject to strict, objective criteria based on what is deemed appropriate at the time. Deciding upon the greatest ever champion requires taking the criteria a particular athlete is judged by into consideration along with all of the conditions governing their win. Like judging the contest itself, popularity, likeability and popular perception should not enter the equation.
In the following feature I will assess each Mr. Olympia winner on their bodybuilding merits and the overall impact they have made on the worldwide bodybuilding subculture, to determine just who is the greatest of all time.
The Contenders
Larry Scott: 1965-66
When Joe Weider established the Mr. Olympia contest - bodybuilding's first professional event - back in 1965, he could not have dreamed how big it would become.
In Larry Scott - professional bodybuilding's first great champion - he could not have asked for a better initial representative: with unprecedented size and shape Scott superseded the development of men like Steve Reeves to truly mark a watershed moment for men's bodybuilding competition.
A sign of great things to come, Scott had charisma, size and freakiness, which captivated scores of fans and helped to establish the pro bodybuilding scene, as we know it today. His impact is immeasurable.
Sergio Oliva: 1967-69
Picking up where Larry Scott left off was Sergio Oliva, a more massive competitor with better conditioning who many still regard as the most genetically gifted bodybuilder of all time.
With rudimentary training and nutritional practices Oliva was able to craft a physique resembling finely hewn steel, with near-perfect symmetry and proportions, and capped off with a startling degree of muscle density.
Known as The Myth, few thought his development could ever be matched. A 27-inch waist, 30-inch quads and 21-inch arms, which flowed seamlessly into a perfectly developed physical whole of megalithic proportions made him worthy of bodybuilding's biggest prize.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: 1970-75, 1980
Even by today's lofty standards, the legendary Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his prime, built an undeniably spectacular physique.
He presented development that was uniquely symmetrical, well proportioned and huge, and he did so with an unprecedented level of charisma and confidence that created an aura of magnificence and invincibility few of his peers could hope to replicate.
He succeeded in winning seven Mr. Olympia titles through intelligent, intensive training efforts coupled with a degree of cunningness and, on several occasions, ruthlessness that, rather than detracting from his image, actually enhanced the mystique surrounding his legend and reputation for being in a class of his own.
The mental game was something the man commonly referred to as the Austrian Oak had mastered. Each contest to him was a battle in which no enemy was to be spared. His 1980 Mr. Olympia win, for example, was highly questionable and his well publicized "psyching out" of the opposition made him a much feared and most intimidating opponent.
But despite this critiquing his influence on and emergence in the world bodybuilding scene has not since been matched. He single-handedly revolutionized bodybuilding's publicly perceived image to where many people took to the iron because its biggest and most outspoken representative did so.
Schwarzenegger also demonstrated the great crossover appeal inherent in building one's physique. He proved that developing the body was not only healthy but also sexy and fun and advantageous from a self-promotional perspective.
But it is, of course, his sublime physical presence - complete with tiny waist, massive arms, near-perfect proportions and great conditioning for its time - that captivated many Oak fans and positioned him, in the minds of many, as the greatest bodybuilder of all time.
Franco Columbu: 1976, 81
Traversing the eras was Franco Columbu who presented a compact and highly muscular physique with great conditioning (for his first win) and spectacular chest and back development. Though not having the overall impact of other Olympia winners, Columbu kept the competition honest and fighting for the top.
His 1981 Mr. Olympia win - which took place in an era marked by a new, superior breed of muscular superstar - hails as one of the most controversial of all time (his leg development was substandard and he was not the best man on stage), making it one of few blots to have emerged on the Olympia landscape.
Frank Zane: 1977-79
The epitome of symmetry and proportion, Frank Zane presented one of pro bodybuilding's first classical physiques. Like living sculpture, he posed his physique to perfection and presented it with class and style.
Zane appealed to those for whom bodybuilding represented the judicious development of muscle in all the right places; not an overemphasis on size at the expense of shape.
Not the largest man on stage (competing at around 180 pounds, ripped), he nevertheless dominated bodybuilding's biggest event for three years, relying on unmatched conditioning and flair to pull off three big wins amongst formidable opposition.
With a small waist, wide shoulders and flaring lat muscles he proved that a magnified V-taper could convey the illusion of great size.
Chris Dickerson: 1982
Though not possessing the phenomenal shape of Zane (few could), Chris Dickerson carried himself with class and posed with the best of them. He was perhaps best known for consistently bringing perfect conditioning and presentation each time he competed.
He also presented among the best calf, shoulder and back development at the time of his 1982 Mr. Olympia win.
His victory was a long time coming: the year prior he had controversially lost the title to Franco Columbu and the year before that was bested by a mediocre Arnold Schwarzenegger. He persisted and was justly rewarded, thus demonstrating the heart of a true champion.
Samir Bannout: 1983
The Lion of Lebanon has had a sketchy pro bodybuilding career, but he pulled it all together in 1983 to shock the world with his best ever showing.
No one would have predicted it but Samir Bannout knew he could do it: and an Olympia win has immortalized him as one of pro bodybuilding's greatest champions. With a complete physique showing no discernable flaws, Bannout's development flowed with no one body part overshadowing the other.
Still, his back and leg development was particularly noteworthy for its thickness and shape. Once he finally nailed his conditioning his physical gifts were all the more obvious.
Lee Haney: 1984-91
Heralding in the late '80s era of mass combined with great shape, Lee Haney drew a clear line in the sand to separate those who figured they could rely on symmetry, proportion and conditioning at the expense of overwhelming size.
No longer could a good small man beat a good big man. Huge muscles were now a'sizeable' factor; pro bodybuilders needed to have the complete package and this included mind boggling muscular development.
Lee Haney represented a new era in size, but he did not neglect balanced development in doing so. He had the best of both worlds and competitors were now faced with the prospect of gaining the necessary mass to compete with Haney and his ilk.
At over 240 pounds (at his heaviest) Haney was the largest competitive pro - with balanced development - during the early part of his reign. It would take a behemoth to overthrow his hold on the Olympia title.
Dorian Yates: 1992-1997
In 1991 Dorian Yates burst onto the pro bodybuilding scene as a legitimate contender for the Mr. Olympia title, challenging Lee Haney and losing by the slimmest of margins. With Haney's retirement the year following his eighth straight Olympia victory, Yates was the obvious pick for the 1992 event.
And so it transpired: so imposingly muscular and well conditioned was Yates that the 1992 battle ultimately proved to be for second place. Since his first Mr. Olympia win the Englishman Yates continued to gain momentum, presenting a more massive physique with each passing year (reaching 260 pounds of grainy muscle by 1995).
If Haney ushered in the era of size, Yates took the mass stipulation one step further to where freakiness had begun to prevail with men such as the 280-pound Nasser El Sonbaty being, at one point, Dorian's only conceivable competition.
Though not perfectly developed, but with good proportions and layers of ripped to the bone muscle mass, Yates provided yet another benchmark to which pro bodybuilding's elite were forced to aspire.
It seemed that no longer could an under-230 pound competitor win the Mr. Olympia title, regardless of how good they were. Less muscular competitors, it seemed, could claim the smaller titles, but bodybuilding's biggest prize was strictly reserved for the giants of the sport.
Ronnie Coleman: 1998-05
With Yates's retirement from bodybuilding competition in 1997 - after winning his sixth straight Olympia title - the field was wide open. Great competitors such as Shawn Ray, Ken (Flex) Wheeler, Kevin Levrone and Nasser El Sonbaty each were poised and ready to claim the trophy they had waited so long for.
However, a dark horse who was considered nothing more than a top ten competitor had other ideas. Placing ninth the year before, Ronnie Coleman gave it his all in 1998 with a view to cracking the coveted top six.
He instead came away the victor with a physique displaying size and shape that had never before been seen on any pro stage, thus signalling yet another bodybuilding era. Throughout his eight-year reign as champion - equalling the challenge set by Lee Haney six years prior to Ronnie's first big win - Coleman was virtually untouchable.
His 2003 effort - where he competed at almost 290 pounds, shredded - is today widely considered the greatest single performance of any Olympia winner.
Though he made the classic mistake of coming back in 2007 after he had given his best - and was, in placing fourth, soundly beaten by eventual winner Jay Cutler - Coleman is still regarded by many as the greatest bodybuilder of all time.
From an objective standpoint he presented the greatest single collection of desirable attributes needed to win a Olympia title (including great proportions, freaky size and conditioning and an overwhelming onstage presence) - by pure bodybuilding terms alone a strong case could be made for Ronnie Coleman being the best Olympian ever.
Jay Cutler: 2006-07, 2009
Ronnie Coleman's long-time nemesis Jay Cutler had fought the eight-time champ hard since 2001, where he seemingly came from nowhere to almost dethrone the titleholder.
In 2006 his hard work paid great dividends: he captured his first Olympia title fighting off several hungry contenders, at least two of which represented a throwback to the shape and aesthetics rewarded several decades earlier: Dexter Jackson and Melvin Anthony.
With muscle mass on an almost equal par with Coleman, without, it must be said, Ronnie's great balance and shape, Cutler brought a peeled physique to the 2006 Olympia stage and was thusly rewarded.
A popular Olympia champion, Cutler is also the only competitor to have claimed the title back after losing it (to Dexter Jackson in 2008). With all muscle groups fully developed, sheer size is Cutler's biggest advantage, though he is known for being blocky around the midsection, which detracts from his overall aesthetics.
With modern-day champions in the form of Kai Greene and Phil Heath nipping at his heels he will face a great deal of pressure in retaining his title in 2010.
Dexter Jackson: 2008 |
: August 11, 2014, 08:31:11 PM by ForgottenPassword #2
It seems to be for getting the announcements on new releases. Why do you need the hash of the home directory for that?
The GUI gave me the impression that I had to press "Check for updates" before it would "dial home", apparently I was wrong. Why would you do that every 30 minutes? It shouldn't do that automatically!
I didn't see the comment where they admit its logged. But if it is why in the hell would they do that? that puts them at unnecessary legal risk of receiving subpoenas for this information.
Update:
The Armory developers are releasing an update that will fix everything we were worried about, see here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=731315.msg8299712#msg8299712 Holy hell. Thats pretty serious if you ask me. Has anyone brought this up before?It seems to be for getting the announcements on new releases. Why do you need the hash of the home directory for that?The GUI gave me the impression that I had to press "Check for updates" before it would "dial home", apparently I was wrong. Why would you do that every 30 minutes? It shouldn't do that automatically!I didn't see the comment where they admit its logged. But if it is why in the hell would they do that? that puts them at unnecessary legal risk of receiving subpoenas for this information.
Tip Address: I have private messages disabled. Send me an email instead. My contact details can be found here. Tip Address: 13Lwo1hK5smoBpFWxmqeKSL52EvN8U7asX
ForgottenPassword
Offline
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Full MemberActivity: 154Merit: 100 Re: Why is Armory sending our *USERNAMES* to bitcoinarmory.com ‼️ August 09, 2014, 02:31:41 PM #9 Quote from: etotheipi on August 09, 2014, 02:27:03 PM Guys, calm down.
The code you posted doesn't send your username to bitcoinarmory.com, it sends the truncated hash of your user home directory path. This does not give us any information about you except that it will be the same when your system makes multiple requests for version/announcement information. We intentionally chose this instead of tracking by IP because we knew that IP logging was "not cool". And in the end, we don't care about your IP, we only use it the ID for collecting statistics about what operatings systems are being use to run Armory and what versions people are using, especially after announcing new versions. This helps us remove duplicates.
Armory (the company) only tracks unique IDs long enough to collect daily statistics of our user base, like how many people have upgraded. If a announce-request is made and comes from an ID we have never seen, we add the OS and Armory version to the statistics. Otherwise we ignore it. That's it. We added the unique ID so that we have a way to count unique users without logging IP addresses. We also add the ability for you disable this by running with "--skip-annuonce-check".
As a company, we have to have some way to measure our userbase, and we felt this was the least intrusive way possible. And you can opt-out.
If that is the case, why do you need to collect statistics every 30 minutes? By doing that you also see what times the installation is running which could allow you to match it up against bitcoin transactions made during those times.
And whether you like it or not the IP is transmitted along with the unique installation ID and we can't know whether you are storing the IP's or not. This bypasses any proxy settings set on bitcoind, such as people using Tor. If that is the case,By doing that you also see what times the installation is running which could allow you to match it up against bitcoin transactions made during those times.And whether you like it or notThis bypasses any proxy settings set on bitcoind, such as people using Tor.
Tip Address: I have private messages disabled. Send me an email instead. My contact details can be found here. Tip Address: 13Lwo1hK5smoBpFWxmqeKSL52EvN8U7asX
ForgottenPassword
Offline
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Full MemberActivity: 154Merit: 100 Re: Why is Armory sending our *USERNAMES* to bitcoinarmory.com ‼️ August 09, 2014, 02:39:22 PM
Last edit: August 09, 2014, 02:51:18 PM by ForgottenPassword #12 Additionally you could still get a list of all usernames on bitcointalk for example and compute the ID hashes by working out what their home directory would be expected to be if they used the same username on bitcointalk and their PC.
You'd be able to check that hash against your "statistics database" and find their installation along with all of the IP's that gave you the statistics.
What you do is arguably worse than simply collecting IP's.
Why don't you just send the OS version etc without the ID on the first time Armory is run? Much better than what you do.
Tip Address: I have private messages disabled. Send me an email instead. My contact details can be found here. Tip Address: 13Lwo1hK5smoBpFWxmqeKSL52EvN8U7asX
ForgottenPassword
Offline
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Full MemberActivity: 154Merit: 100 Re: Why is Armory sending our *USERNAMES* to bitcoinarmory.com ‼️ August 09, 2014, 03:06:13 PM
Last edit: August 09, 2014, 03:16:54 PM by ForgottenPassword #16 Quote from: etotheipi on August 09, 2014, 03:00:16 PM So that we don't "count" that ping as a unique user. Our goal is to get a rough gauge of how many people are using Armory, and what the OS & version distribution is. That's all we use the data for. If we send a ping without the ID, we don't know if it's a duplicate.
Also, I shouldn't have suggested "just" hard-forks... a piece of secure software used by people with massive amounts of money has many different reasons users might need to be notified, including critical security issues with Armory, if they arise.
I still don't know why you need to know their installation ID for each ping. Can you come up with a real-life example of a situation where you'd need to know that information when providing announcements? if there were critical issues in Armory that would affect everyone running that version and not specific installations.
For most users privacy is just as important as security.
Annoucements/statistics should be two completely seperate things. I think statistics should happen on first-run ONLY and it should be very obvious it's happening and easy for the user to opt-out. Checking for annoucements should send the bare amount of information you require, the Armory version and platform.
I was under the impression checks for announcements weren't automatic and it seems others were too. Maybe it should be more obvious that they are automatic and easier to disable them (in the GUI) for people who want to check manually instead. I still don't know why you need to know their installation ID for each ping. Can you come up with a real-life example of a situation where you'd need to know that information when providing announcements? if there were critical issues in Armory that would affect everyone running that version and not specific installations.For most users privacy is just as important as security.Annoucements/statistics should be two completely seperate things. I think statistics should happen on first-run ONLY and it should be very obvious it's happening and easy for the user to opt-out. Checking for annoucements should send the bare amount of information you require, the Armory version and platform.I was under the impression checks for announcements weren't automatic and it seems others were too. Maybe it should be more obvious that they are automatic and easier to disable them (in the GUI) for people who want to check manually instead.
Tip Address: I have private messages disabled. Send me an email instead. My contact details can be found here. Tip Address: 13Lwo1hK5smoBpFWxmqeKSL52EvN8U7asX
ForgottenPassword
Offline
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
Full MemberActivity: 154Merit: 100 Re: Why is Armory sending our *USERNAMES* to bitcoinarmory.com ‼️ August 09, 2014, 08:06:54 PM
Last edit: August 09, 2014, 08:51:08 PM by ForgottenPassword #18 Quote from: 1a5f9842524 on August 09, 2014, 08:04:40 PM Utter nonsense.
If you wanted a unique anonymous ID you would have generated a few random bytes and used that. Instead you used a highly identifying, personal piece of information and sent it to your remote server along with the IP address of the user. There's no way you can pretend that was a mistake from somebody who is writing wallet software.
Why don't you do us a favor and delete all the information you've collected without your users consent.
I agree.
On the website, they have a privacy policy that states this:
Quote ATI may collect your devices IP address: when you start the software on your device and the software checks for updates and notifications, unless you opt out of this feature.
ATI does not share this information outside of ATI except that ATI may share information with governmental authorities pursuant to a court order or other lawful order.
However I don't recall being forced to agree to this when I ran the software, though from looking at the source it appears to be in the help menu at least. I agree.On the website, they have a privacy policy that states this:However I don't recall being forced to agree to this when I ran the software, though from looking at the source it appears to be in the help menu at least.
Tip Address: I have private messages disabled. Send me an email instead. My contact details can be found here. Tip Address: 13Lwo1hK5smoBpFWxmqeKSL52EvN8U7asXThere is substantial evidence that natural infrastructure (i.e., healthy ecosystems) and combinations of natural and built infrastructure (“hybrid” approaches) enhance coastal resilience by providing important storm and coastal flooding protection, while also providing other benefits. There is growing interest in the U.S., as well as around the world, to use natural infrastructure to help coastal communities become more resilient to extreme events and reduce the risk of coastal flooding. Here we highlight strengths and weaknesses of the coastal protection benefits provided by built infrastructure, natural ecosystems, and the innovative opportunities to combine the two into hybrid approaches for coastal protection. We also examine some case studies where hybrid approaches are being implemented to improve coastal resilience as well as some of the policy challenges that can make implementation of these approaches more difficult. The case studies we examine are largely in the U.S. but also include a couple of international examples as well. Based on this analysis, we conclude that coastal communities and other decision makers need better information in order to incorporate ecosystem protection and restoration into coastal resilience planning efforts. As additional projects are developed, it is important to capitalize on every opportunity to learn more about the cost of natural and hybrid infrastructure projects, the value of the storm and erosion protection benefits provided, and the full suite of co-benefits provided by healthy coastal ecosystems. We highlight top priorities for research, investment in, and application of natural and hybrid approaches. These data are critical to facilitate adoption of these approaches in planning and decision-making at all levels to enhance the resilience of our coasts.Posted by coltsindianapolis on March 3, 2015 – 2:47 pm
The Indianapolis Colts today signed free agent defensive end Earl Okine.
Okine, 6-6, 284 pounds, most recently played for the Brooklyn Bolts of the Fall Experimental Football League (FXFL) in 2014, where he helped the team to a 4-0 mark. He also played for the Orlando Predators of the Arena Football League (AFL) in 2014 and totaled 28 tackles (16 solo), 7.5 tackles for loss, 5.5 sacks, three passes defensed and one fumble recovery in 16 games. Prior to joining the Predators, he was signed by the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League (CFL) on October 14, 2013 and was released on November 18.
Okine began his professional football career with the Houston Texans where he was signed as an undrafted free agent on May 10, 2013 and was waived on August 27. Collegiately, he appeared in 41 career games for the Florida Gators and finished with 27 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, 1.0 sack, one blocked field goal and one pass defensed. As a senior in 2012, Okine played in all 13 games and recorded a career-high 12 tackles and a blocked field goal.
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
Print
Like this: Like Loading...
Posted in Colts Blog(Image: Amelie-Benoist/BSIP/UIG via Getty Images)
DESPITE decades of work and hundreds of trials, Alzheimer’s disease remains an end-of-life trauma for millions. Could that be about to change? Although there is still no way to reverse or cure the condition, a small clinical trial in 33 people with Alzheimer’s suggests that a drug already widely used to treat rheumatoid arthritis might be able to delay or even halt its progression.
A new therapy is desperately needed. A 2012 report by the World Health Organization estimated that, by 2030, 70 million people worldwide will have dementia. The few existing treatments only ease symptoms and slow the progression of the disease, and new candidate drugs are failing clinical trials. Between 2002 and 2012, 413 trials of drugs for Alzheimer’s disease were conducted, but 99.6 per cent of them failed (Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, doi.org/tqh).
Now, preliminary results from a pilot trial suggest that a drug used to treat arthritis could have the potential to halt the progression of Alzheimer’s.
Advertisement
Over six months, people with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s taking a placebo showed expected cognitive decline, but those taking the drug, called etanercept, had similar scores in some tests for cognitive function at the end as they did at the start of the trial.
In other tests for cognition, behaviour and coping, the symptoms of those taking the drug either stabilised or declined to a lesser degree than those of people taking a placebo.
“We saw exactly what we hoped we would, and no one has shown these effects before,” says Clive Holmes of the University of Southampton, UK, who presented the results at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Wednesday. “There’s always the proviso,” he adds, “that it must be done in larger numbers of patients in a bigger study, over a year, not six months.”
We saw exactly what we hoped we would, and no one has shown these effects before
The work is being regarded as promising by other researchers, nonetheless. “The results of this small-scale study are fascinating and exciting as they offer proof of principle,” says Robert Dantzer of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, who studies how the immune system affects illness. “Patients treated with etanercept were essentially stabilised, while the placebo-treated patients continued to deteriorate, slowly but surely.”
Patients given etanercept stabilised; those given a placebo deteriorated, slowly but surely
Etanercept works by sponging up and disposing of a protein called TNF-alpha, which ramps up and sustains inflammation following infections or as a result of metabolic or inflammatory diseases including diabetes. The drug is prescribed as a weekly injection for people with arthritis.
In 2010, Richard Chou’s team at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, compared the health records of people with Alzheimer’s and arthritis with those of people with arthritis but not Alzheimer’s. They found that people taking anti-TNF-alpha drugs halved their risk of developing Alzheimer’s.
That might be because inflammation outside the brain has knock-on effects inside it, aggravating and accelerating dementia and brain degeneration if those processes have already begun. Earlier this year, Holmes and his colleague Hugh Perry uncovered how inflammatory molecules made by white blood cells can initiate a process that results in the death of brain cells.
“The rationale that inflammation from other diseases such as arthritis, diabetes, atherosclerosis and infections contributes to Alzheimer’s disease progression is well-founded scientifically,” says Colm Cunningham of Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, who helped Perry piece together the mechanism by which inflammation elsewhere in the body affects disease in the brain. Tackling some of these conditions could help fend off Alzheimer’s (see “Protect yourself“).
Of the 33 people with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease participating in Holmes’s trial, 18 received weekly injections of etanercept, while 15 were given a placebo of weekly saltwater injections, for six months. At the start, middle and end of the trial, a host of tests of the participants’ cognition, behaviour and well-being were carried out by assessors unaware of which volunteers had received treatment.
The main objective of the small study was to check that the treatment was safe and well-tolerated by people with Alzheimer’s disease. But Holmes’s team found that the participants taking etanercept performed comparatively better on memory, behaviour and well-being tests, although there was no statistically significant difference in their performance on other tests of cognition and depression (see “A measured effect“).
In a small pilot study like this, the success of the drug could be down to chance, says Holmes. “But the results are very consistent, and the big Alzheimer’s trials that have been performed on thousands of patients have not shown anything like it.”
Other researchers warn that doing larger studies is paramount before people get excited about etanercept’s potential. “Trials like this are not big enough to tell whether the drug works, but rather to check the drug is safe, and it is,” says John Hardy of University College London. “Analysing the data suggests there may have been an improvement, but the study is about a tenth the size we would need to draw a conclusion about whether the drug slows disease progression.”
Holmes says expanding to larger trials would be relatively simple because the drug has a proven track record. “We know a lot about it, and it’s already out there for arthritis,” he says. “It could move very quickly, and within maybe two to three years we would be there.”
“It’s certainly worth following up with a larger study,” says Eric Karran, director of research at the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK. “Considering the small size of the trial, it’s very promising to see positive effects on measures of memory and thinking, behaviour and day-to-day activities, and for these to get stronger with time.”
Protect yourself Forty-four million people are estimated to have Alzheimer’s disease, and there is currently no way to halt or reverse its ravages on the brain (see main story). But a third of those cases could have been prevented by lifestyle changes, says neuroscientist Carol Brayne at the University of Cambridge. Alzheimer’s is caused by a combination of genetics and lifestyle factors. To work out the effect of potentially modifiable influences, Brayne’s team reanalysed previous studies. These covered seven factors known to be associated with Alzheimer’s: diabetes, depression, physical inactivity, smoking, low educational attainment, obesity and high blood pressure in middle age. They then factored in associations between some of the factors. For example, increasing physical activity can also lower blood pressure. One in three cases of Alzheimer’s can be attributed to modifiable factors, estimate the researchers. By reducing the relative risk from each of these factors by 10 per cent every decade, it would be possible to reduce the 2050 prevalence of Alzheimer’s by 8.3 per cent, and prevent 9.6 million cases. That is a win-win situation, says Brayne. Tackling factors such as physical inactivity will lead to a healthier old age in general as well as reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer’s (The Lancet Neurology, doi.org/tqj). Helen Thomson
A measured effect Thirty three people took part in six-month pilot trial of a drug called etanercept for Alzheimer’s disease. Clive Holmes at the University of Southampton, UK, and his colleagues used a host of tests to measure the mental faculties of the participants. Some of the tests seem to show that etanercept reduces mental decline. COGNITION The Mini-Mental State Examination can evaluate memory problems, and is scored from 30 (completely healthy) to 0 (completely incapable). At the start of the trial, participants had an average score of 20. Six months later, the score had barely changed in those taking the drug. The scores of people taking a placebo dropped by two points on average. In another cognitive test, those taking the drug showed less of a decline than those taking the placebo, but the difference was not statistically significant. COPING ABILITIES The Bristol Activities of Daily Living Scale measures how well a person can feed, wash and look after themselves. In this test, higher scores signal greater disease severity. Participants taking a placebo saw their scores increase by, on average, 5.2 points more than those taking etanercept. In another test of the severity of mental illness, however, the difference between the two groups was not significant. BEHAVIOUR The Neuropsychiatric Inventory assesses people on a range of things including delusions, anxiety and apathy. On the 144-point scale, in which 0 signifies the best health, the scores of people taking a placebo increased by an average of 10.5 points above those of the participants taking etanercept. However, another test for depression showed no significant difference between the two groups.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Drug stalls attack of Alzheimer’s”
When this article was first published it confused the number of patients in the treatment group with that in the control groupArmenia's small banking sector wants to follow in neighbouring Georgia’s footsteps and become the next darling of frontier market investors.
As Ameriabank, the country's largest bank, readies itself to go public in London, the rest of the banking sector is raising equity and assets, and consolidating in a merger and acquisition (M&A) frenzy sparked by regulatory changes.
Ahead of new minimum capital requirements that became mandatory in January 2017, the sector’s lenders boosted capital by 32.7% y/y to AMD648.5bn (€1.26bn) in 2016, while the number of banks consolidated from 21 to 17.
2017 promises to bring more changes in the form of mergers and acquisitions, Gevorg Tarumyan, deputy general director and chief financial officer at Ameriabank, told bne IntelliNews in an interview. "Since the [banking] sector is on the verge of technological upgrade, smaller lenders will further lose their competitive advantage, even if they comply with [regulatory requirements]".
The sector is dominated by local banks, with Ameriabank, Ardshinbank and Armbusinessbank, the three largest lenders, accounting for almost 45% of sector assets. Among the banks with foreign capital are ACBA-Credit Agricole, which is owned by France's Credit Agricole, and the local subsidiaries of VTB Bank (Russia), HSBC Bank (UK) and Bank Mellat (Iran).
Three of the four banks that disappeared from the market in 2016 were foreign owned - ProCredit Bank (Germany), BTA Bank (Kazakhstan) and GazpromBank (Russia; their investors were unwilling to foot the bill to raise the capital of their Armenian subsidiaries six-fold to AMD30bn in order to comply with the new regulations.
With assets at just under 40% of GDP, the banking sector has not been much of a driver for economic growth - agriculture and mining have been playing that role thus far. However, the rise in equity and assets, together with the consolidation among lenders, could mean that Armenia's banks will play an increasingly important role in driving economic growth going forward.
Armenia's economic growth has been disappointing as of late, mainly because of a drop in trade with, and investment and remittances from, Russia in 2014-2015, from which the small and Russia-dependent Armenian economy has yet to recover. In 2016, the economic activity index, a narrower gauge for GDP growth, expanded by a mere 0.5% y/y, one sixth of the government's growth target.
As lending grows and the economy stagnates, the banking sector’s non-performing loan (NPL) ratio has risen to around 10%, up from 7% at end-2014. However, Tarumyan insists that "the system is becoming much healthier and that most of the non-performing assets have already been adequately provisioned".
Tarumyan anticipates that asset growth in the banking sector will slow down to 10% in 2017. "The biggest uncertainty during the upcoming year is going to be the [parliamentary] election in April. This can slow down the economy, though in the baseline scenario we don't assume any major surprises," he says. Indeed, the ruling Republican Party is expected to win the April ballot and to continue with similar economic policies thereafter.
A good year
Ameriabank started 2016 on the right foot. In January, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) injected $40mn into the bank for a 20% stake. The acquisition was a vote of confidence in the lender – the only one in Armenia to have exceeded $1bn in assets – ahead of its planned initial public offering (IPO) in London. A few days after the EBRD deal, Ameriabank moved to sign a subordinated debt transaction with the International Finance Corporation for $50mn.
"Geared up with this new equity and regulatory capital boost, we made 2016 noteworthy for Ameriabank," Tarumyan says. Over the course of the year, the lender's loan book exceeded $1bn, its assets grew by almost 40% y/y to AMD718bn, and the bank debuted on the local stock exchange, Nasdaq OMX Armenia, with a $15mn corporate bond placement, the largest issuance of its type in Armenia to date.
But 2017 promises to bring further changes, as the bank has overhauled its strategy and is looking to rebalance its "lending profile". At the moment, some 85% of Ameriabank's loans go to corporate clients. The lender aims to reduce that ratio to some 45% in the next one to two years to favour more retail lending. Tarumyan says that the "huge leap" will require additional capital, a higher asset base, wise asset allocation and effective absorption.
"The ‘fuel’ we received recently is not sufficient," he says, referring to the EBRD capital injection. "Yes, we will look for new equity and new investors, because several factors will contribute to the aggressive erosion of our capital adequacy rate", he adds, listing the change in lending profile as one of them.
One market segment which Ameriabank could tap into further is small and medium enterprises (SMEs), a market segment that the lender has been a champion for. So much so, that Tarumyan credits the existence of many Armenian SMEs to Ameriabank's support in the form of advisory services, project finance, consultancy and investment banking over the last 15 years.
"As a result, many SMEs are up and running simply because Ameriabank believed in their success and ventured into funding, which other commercial banks would never do," he says.
The lender's interest in SMEs coincide with that of its shareholder EBRD, which has financed SMEs in the Caucasus for years and even created a €30mn fund specifically to promote Armenian SMEs in 2016.
Thirsty for growth
All eyes have been on Ameriabank since the bank announced in 2016 that it is preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) in London. If and when that happens – Tarumyan's answers suggest that it will not be before one to two years from now – Ameriabank will join Georgia's TBC Bank and Bank of Georgia as the third regional lender to boast a listing on the London Stock Exchange.
And while the bank is looking for equity partners, it is not ruling out the issuance of a Eurobond, its investment banking director Arno Mosikyan told Reuters last year, without elaborating on the amount that it was looking to raise through the issuance.
"Of course our thirst for growth is not quenched yet. We have rolled out quite an ambitious business plan for the next three years," Tarumyan says, adding that the bank will likely easily reach $1.5bn in assets this year, and that it aims to rank first in "asset size, total loan book and corporate loan portfolio" and to remain the largest deposit taker in the market with a double-digit return on investment. However, due to the changes in the structure of its loan portfolio, capital adequacy could become a "growth constraining factor, and we should focus on its replenishment as we speak".
Last year, the lender mulled various M&A deals, but decided not to go through with any of them. Seeing how the "landscape remains flat with a high propensity for large, systemic deals to come", Tarumyan says that Ameriabank will continue to keep an eye out for similar opportunities in 2017 -2018.
"The new minimum regulatory capital threshold has pushed dozens of local commercial banks into an ‘M&A frenzy’ in search of a matching partner. Ameriabank is currently evaluating potential acquisition and to lesser extent possible merger deals with couple of M&A targets, and with available acquisition debt finance opportunities from league table investment banks. This process, we believe, is just a matter of time," he says.Johnny Oduya and Patrick Sharp will be competing together in a new city next season. Tim Fuller/USA TODAY Sports
The moves came fast and furious this offseason.
Brandon Saad, a key member of the Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks, was swiftly dealt to the Columbus Blue Jackets. The next day, Phil Kessel was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins in a blockbuster deal that was perhaps the most buzz-worthy news of the summer.
Because of a combination of factors -- salary-cap limitations, threats of offer sheets, etc. -- the frenzy of July 1 was more dizzying than years past. Sure, the interview period might have prompted general managers to exercise greater restraint in handing out those ill-advised contracts to unrestricted free agents, but the sheer number of players who moved in the first few days of July was noteworthy in and of itself. So, if you were lulled into a fog -- or you realized it was actually an opportune time for vacation -- we have you covered. Here are the big happenings in hockey since the July Fourth weekend.
Biggest move: While the Saad trade took some by surprise, virtually no one was shocked to see Patrick Sharp dealt, with the Hawks' long-rumored interest in shopping the veteran forward. Though many speculated he would be traded at the draft, the move wasn't consummated until July 10, when Sharp and top defensive prospect Stephen Johns were sent to the Dallas Stars in exchange for defenseman Trevor Daley and forward Ryan Garbutt. One interesting caveat of the deal is that the Stars retained 50 percent of Garbutt's salary, so in addition to moving an expensive contract in Sharp, the Hawks gained some additional, and much-needed, salary-cap relief.
Ryan O'Reilly signed a seven-year, $52.5 million deal before the incident in Ontario. Brent Lewis/The Denver Post/Getty Images
Biggest off-the-ice player news: Recently traded centerman Ryan O'Reilly, who was shipped from the Colorado Avalanche to the Buffalo Sabres this offseason, was charged with impaired driving and leaving the scene of the crime after the 24-year-old allegedly crashed a truck into a coffee shop in Ontario. O'Reilly, who was traded in a multiplayer deal in June, inked a whopping seven-year $52.5 million deal with Buffalo just weeks ago, before finding himself ensnared in this legal drama. The Sabres are looking into the incident; in the meantime, O'Reilly is set to appear in court Aug. 20.
Biggest league-wide development: It was only a matter of time, really, after commissioner Gary Bettman received authorization in June to begin the expansion process. As of July 6, the league is now soliciting official applications, which are due by Aug. 10. And it does not come cheap. According to reports, the cost of simply submitting an application is north of $2 million, and it's not entirely refundable. Furthermore, any interested party must be willing to pay more than $500 million in expansion fees, according to sources. Still, there are at least a handful of interested suitors, with Las Vegas, Quebec City, Toronto and Seattle reportedly throwing hats into the ring.
Biggest non-move: No, you did not miss anything: The Toronto Maple Leafs have yet to hire a general manager for the 2015-16 season, and team president Brendan Shanahan doesn't seem to be in any rush to make a decision. In fact, Shanahan seemed altogether comfortable when asked at the draft about the collective decision-making of his current team, which includes wunderkind assistant general manager Kyle Dubas, director of pro personnel Mark Hunter, capologist Brandon Pridham and senior adviser Cliff Fletcher. That group has been far from idle, beginning the dismantling of the club with the much-anticipated Kessel trade that clearly signaled the team is heading in a different direction.
Biggest need fulfilled: The Stars finally acquired some blue-line help with the addition of veteran defenseman Johnny Oduya, who inked a two-year deal worth $7.5 million on Wednesday. Oduya was a vital component for the Hawks on defense during their championship run, and he will bring some needed veteran savvy and experience to Dallas' back end. Smart signing for Stars general manager Jim Nill, who has been among the most active in this second wave of free agency.
Biggest move for the future: Acquired from the Vancouver Canucks last summer, centerman Ryan Kesler proved to be an ideal fit for the Anaheim Ducks, providing the team a potent one-two punch down the middle along with Ryan Getzlaf. Matchups for the Ducks' opponents will continue to be a nightmare, as the team announced Wednesday that Kesler inked a six-year contract extension, which comes with an annual average salary of $6.875 million, sources told ESPN.com's Pierre LeBrun. The 30-year-old forward led the team in faceoff percentage, faceoff wins and shots and ranked second among forwards in hits, takeaways and blocked shots in his first season with the Ducks. He finished with 20 goals and 47 points in 81 games this season, earning himself a well-deserved extension and a secure future in Southern Cal.Why Should a Man Bear Responsibility
for a Woman who Decides to have a Baby? Are women responsible for anything that they do? Isn't it incredible that when it comes to having a baby, the feminist propaganda machine always tries to make us believe that the man is responsible for such an event, when, in fact, he has very little to do with it? How many times do we hear the politically-correct complaining about young boys who go around impregnating girls and then abandoning them, as if, somehow, the boys have any control over what the girls' biological outcomes will be? It is females who are in control of their pregnancies. And they have total control. Females have ready access to all forms of contraception. They can take the contraceptive pill. They can take the morning-after pill. They can don the diaphragm. They can insist on condoms. They can use spermicide. They can have abortions. And they can refrain from having sex. To prevent an unwanted baby being born, women can do something before sex, during sex and after sex. To prevent an unwanted baby being born, women can do something before sex, during sex and after sex. They are also in control of all areas to do with giving birth - physically, chemically, biologically, psychologically, socially, legally and medically. In the west today, no man can force a woman to have a baby. It is entirely her choice. So why do our politicians and the media continue to blame men (and with such vitriol) for unwanted or undesirable pregnancies? The answer is, of course, very simple. It is the vindictive, prejudicial rhetoric of feminism which always blocks any attempts to make women responsible for anything. Unfortunately, promoting this politically-correct nonsense takes away responsibility from the very group of people - women - who have the wherewithal to prevent these unwanted events. It allows them to say, 'It's not my fault'. I don't know how many times I have seen chat shows wherein, for example, women with seven or eight children (from two, three or four different men) complain about how badly the state looks after them. And the audience is invariably directed to shift the blame for this situation on to the'reckless' men who have impregnated them. It never seems to dawn on this feminist-indoctrinated society that such women have total responsibility for having children. No-one can force them to have children. women never need to consider their own responsibility No wonder, therefore, that such women never need to consider their own responsibility and are quite happy for everyone else to pay for their children, and for the problems that, statistically speaking, these children are likely to cause, for decades to come. Until we remove the deceptions and the deceits of feminist doctrine from our society, and start to make women responsible for their actions, we do not really have much hope of solving anything. If a woman becomes pregnant then there is nothing that the man can do to alter the future course of events. This future is entirely up to her. And this continual stirring up of hatred towards men by the media by blaming them for events over which they have no control whatsoever is outrageous. Trisha, one of the trashiest chat programmes on TV, consistently draws its viewers by verbally spanking working-class boys and blaming them for the ills of all of society. 'He Got Four Of Us Pregn |
Fedora, openSUSE is a more bleeding edge version of Linux. SUSE was once one of the great user-friendly desktop Linux distributions, but Ubuntu eventually took that crown.
Mageia is a fork of Mandriva Linux created in 2011. Mandriva — known as Mandrake before that — was once one of the great user-friendly Linux distributions.
Like Fedora and openSUSE, this is a community-created project to create an open-source Linux distribution. Mandriva SA no longer creates a consumer Linux distribution for desktop PCs, but their business Linux server projects are based on Mageia code — just like how Fedora and openSUSE provide code to their enterprise equivalents.
Arch Linux is more old school than many of the other Linux distributions here. It’s designed to be flexible, lightweight, minimal, and to “Keep it Simple.” Keeping it simple doesn’t mean Arch provides tons of graphical utilities and automatic configuration scripts to help you set up your system. Instead, it means Arch dispenses with that stuff and gets out of your way.
You’re in charge of configuring your system properly and installing the software you like. Arch doesn’t provide an official graphical interface for its package manager or complex graphical configuration tools. Instead, it provides clean configuration files designed for easy editing. The installation disc dumps you at a terminal, where you’ll need to enter the appropriate commands to configure your system, partition your disks, and install the operating system yourself.
Arch uses a “rolling release” model, which means any installation image is just a snapshot of the current software. Every bit of software will be updated over time without you needing to upgrade to a new “release” of Arch.
This distribution has a bit in common with Gentoo, which was popular at one time. Both Linux distributions are designed for users who know how their systems work or who are at least willing to learn. However, Arch uses binary packages while Gentoo had an (unnecessary) focus on compiling every bit of software from source — this means it’s quick to install software on Arch as you don’t have to spend CPU cycles and time waiting for software to compile.
Slackware is another institution. Founded in 1993, Slackware is the oldest Linux distribution that’s still maintained and putting out new releases today.
Its pedigree shows — like Arch, Slackware dispenses with all those unnecessary graphical tools and automatic configuration scripts. There’s no graphical installation procedure — you’ll have to partition your disk manually and then run the setup program. Slackware boots to a command-line environment by default. It’s a very conservative Linux distribution.
RELATED: Revive Your Old PC: The 3 Best Linux Systems For Old Computers
Puppy Linux is another fairly well-known Linux distribution. Previous versions have been built on Ubuntu, but the latest is built on Slackware. Puppy is designed to be a small, lightweight operating system that can run well on very old computers. The puppy ISO file is 161 MB, and Puppy can boot from that disc in a live environment. Puppy can run on PCs with 256 MB or RAM, although it does recommend 512 MB for the best experience.
Puppy isn’t the most modern and doesn’t have all the flashiest bells and whistles, but it can help you revive an old PC.
These aren’t the only Linux distributions out there. Distrowatch lists many and tries to rank them by popularity.Once upon a time, just under nine years ago now, on my way out of our home on our first evening away from our first child, I explained to the kindly, grandmotherly babysitter from the nanny service that my daughter was a horrible sleeper.
Horrible.
Impossible to get her to sleep. And any tiny noise would wake her once you did. Generally colicky from 9pm to midnight. Every. Single. Night.
Horrible.
I told her I was sorry and that I hoped it wasn’t too dreadful and that I had no expectations that she would be asleep when we got home so she needn’t fret about it.
She told me in a kind (though slightly condescending way) that she had been doing this for 40 years and she could put any baby to sleep.
Fast forward to 1am. We arrived home to find both the baby and the nanny in tears. She said that she had never, in all her years, experienced anything quite like it.
It made me feel pretty smug. “HA! Told ya she’s IMPOSSIBLE! I KNEW it wasn’t me. It’s HER. She's a bad sleeper! HA!”
I mean, I didn’t SAY that out loud to the teary and exhausted granny. I just smiled serenely and thought it to myself.
But then, at age 13 months, she slept through the night. And she never had another issue again. And when she was five, our building’s fire alarm accidentally went off and my husband and I and our 2-yr-old son leapt about 10 feet into the air. And that little girl snored through it. And then the fire trucks arrived with sirens blaring and our little girl slept right through it. At which point we began to worry that if there were ever a REAL emergency, our daughter might, very dangerously, sleep through it.
All to say this: Nothing is permanent. The bad stuff. The good stuff. None of it stays, Pony Boy.
This is both a blessing and a curse, of course, but it is an important thing to know.
You cannot make accurate blanket statements about your child, or, really, anything at all in the universe, without adding the qualifying “right now.”
Because while there were times when these statements would have been true:
*My daughter is an impossible sleeper.
*My son is dying from liver disease.
*My son is completely non-verbal.
*My daughter is too terrified to enter the room for ballet class.
*My son refuses to get into the swimming pool at his swim lesson.
*My son is academically behind.
The current reality is now this:
*My daughter sleeps like a champ, can sleep through almost any disturbance, and will sometimes insist upon being put to bed if she feels she is not going to get adequate sleep if she stays up any longer.
*My son’s liver is working beautifully.
*My son will not stop talking – especially about poop, butts and penises. (I’m told this is also a phase. I think it generally begins to end around age 35...for some).
*My daughter requests arts and swimming classes all the time and does well in all of them.
*My son will march into swim lessons and fearlessly jump into the deep end of the pool even if there is a possibility he will then need to be rescued (not a good thing, but it’s a big change).
*My son has caught up with his classmates academically in almost every area.
So this is what it is right now. And I know enough now to recognize that these same sentences may not hold true for them six months from now. And it is my job to try not to pidgeon-hole them or make them self-fulfilling prophesies by labeling them as a bad sleeper or scared of the dark or behind in school or a bed-wetter or whatever.
Because it is all so blissfully, tragically temporary.
This is all to say, New Mama, that your non-sleeper will sleep, and your sleeper may very well stop that nicety for a bit. Phases will come and phases will go and the best thing to do on this roller coaster is to simultaneously hold tight and relax (which is a little like patting your head and rubbing your tummy) and know that whether you choose to panic about it or whether you choose to shrug and embrace it for a while, it’s probably going to be a bleary memory in a couple years (or months) anyway.
It is also to say that your own situation is temporary. If you are staying home and you find yourself lamenting the loss of career or your inability to spend time with adults or the fact that you smell like sour milk ALL THE TIME. It’s temporary. They grow up. You’ll get out of the house with your hair brushed eventually. You might even be wearing a clean shirt. People will ask your opinion about things that are not child-related. I promise.
If you are lamenting the heartbreak of leaving a baby behind and going back to work, it will be OK. It will feel normal eventually. And the baby will grow up and will go to school and have friends and clubs and sports. And your work situation may very well change – in good ways and in bad.
Wherever you are right now? That’s just right now. And you are strong. (I mean, you carried a human in your belly and either pushed it out through your vagina or allowed someone to open your tummy and pull it out. You're a badass, my friend.) You can handle anything in the short-term and, since almost nothing in life is as long-term as you think it is, the short-term is all you have to handle. So you’ve got this.
Seriously.
You’ve totally got this.
Wanna get an email alert when a new post comes out? Put your email address in the box below and create an amazing and affordable (free!) blog subscription that is spam-free and that you can cancel at any time.Whether we like it or not - and let's face facts, it's probably the latter - 8K display technology is coming. 8K support is baked into the upcoming HDMI 2.1 standard, and in fact, if you live in the US and you have $5000 to spare, you can buy a quad-UHD screen right now: Dell's 32-inch UP3218K. The question is: using today's top-tier graphics technology, is 8K PC gaming viable? We broke out a pair of Asus Strix GTX 1080 Tis, ran them in SLI and gave it a try. The results were unpredictable, unstable, but at the same time, also quite awe-inspiring.
After all, an 8K screen is effectively equivalent to a 2x2 arrangement of ultra HD displays, representing an immense 7680x4320 resolution. To put that into perspective it's also equivalent to 16 full HD screens lined up in a 4x4 arrangement. To make life a little more complicated, we tested at full 8K, specifically 8192x4320. This is mostly down to the fact that we didn't have a native 8K screen to hand, meaning we would be using Nvidia's dynamic resolution scaling (DSR) technology to internally render up from our screen's maximum supported resolution: 4096x2160.
Going into our tests, we weren't hugely optimistic. Linus Tech Tips has a great 8K video worth a watch, where two Titan X Pascals struggle to run Crysis at medium settings at 30-40fps. And that kind of makes sense: Nvidia's top-end GPUs can run games at 4K at 60fps, but settings tweaks are usually required to get the job done - and we're asking two cards to run four times as many pixels. In short, there's bound to be a big hit to performance. But what we found was that for the most part, the usual rules of settings tweaking hold little water when running at 8K - often, your ceiling is the sheer pixel-throughput, meaning that some settings can be pushed up to high or even ultra levels.
Taking Crysis 3 for example, that 30fps can be maintained at the game's very high preset, with just the shading and shadows settings requiring some tweaks down. Set everything to high and you're at 40fps. But it's the sheer pixel throughput that is the defining, limiting factor here: retain high settings and drop resolution to 7094x3741 (3.5x our baseline 4K) and we're at 50-60fps. That's effectively the same kind of performance you can expect from one GTX 1080 Ti running at 4K.
And 7K turns out to be the charm for Battlefield 1 too. 8K at ultra settings sees a visually spectacular presentation, marred by frame-rate drops down to 30fps and lower. Dropping just one setting - post-processing - adds 20fps to the tally, while other tweaks downwards make no impact to performance at all. Again, it's 7K that saves the day, where we could run a taxing campaign stage beautifully at 60fps.
Join Rich and Dave for a live hands-on, as they play MGS5, Crysis 3, Battlefield 1, COD Infinite Warfare, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Forza Horizon 3 at 8K resolution.
Buy the Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti 11GB [?] from Amazon with free shipping
Rise of the Tomb Raider struggles to maintain 60fps at 4K with a single GTX 1080 Ti, but a series of strategic settings choices allows us to run this title at 30-35fps at 8K, where it still looks spectacular - but it's here where we reach another physical limit of current GPU technology: VRAM. We could only achieve solid performance by running the game's console-level texture assets, not the 4K artwork. GTX 1080 Ti's 11GB simply isn't enough, and judged by today's standards, 16GB looks like the sweet spot. Certainly, that's what Watch Dogs 2's VRAM indicator reckoned would be required to get the job done - we had some initial success with that one, but settings exploration just caused multiple crashes, something we had to contend with throughout the entire testing experience.
And general instability was a constant companion, whether it was occasional graphical glitches, full-on crashing or bizarre slowdown. Metal Gear Solid 5 can run at a beautiful 60fps at native 8K with a mixture of high and extra high settings - until an enemy opens fire, where frame-rate can crash as low as 10fps. And then there are the titles with engines that simply don't support multiple GPUs, leaving us with 20-30fps gameplay in the likes of Just Cause 3 and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. SLI is also incompatible with Watch Dogs 2's temporal filtering (aka checkerboarding), meaning that the efforts to test 'next-gen upscaling' to 8K were stymied.
So, what's the takeaway here? The fact is that pixel-density even on our office's 58-inch Panasonic 4K TV is very, very high to the point where making out pixel structure on the screen is challenging enough. For our money, any 8K screen would need to be absolutely huge - to the point where projection or possibly even Total Recall-style integration into the wall would make sense. Practically though, the implications for a great VR experience are more interesting, as this is an area where pixel density can have a profound impact on the quality of the experience.
We'll return to GTX 1080 Ti SLI for a deeper look soon, but fundamentally, SLI - when working of course - opens up a window to the type of performance we can expect from the next generation of top-tier GPUs. But 8K represents challenges on top of pure compute power. Pixel throughput seemed to be our biggest limiting factor, suggesting that a big boost to render back-ends would be needed to really get the job done. On top of that, 16GB of VRAM is a must. But the fact that we got close to 60fps gameplay in some demanding titles is heartening. The success we had with 7K in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 1 suggests that three-screen 4K surround could be viable here - but the key takeaway is that it's all about thoughtful settings management.
Whacking up everything to ultra is a recipe for disaster, and by extension, there's a strong case to be made that developers need to work better in telling us what individual presets do, what the hit is to GPU resources can be, and to what extent visual quality is improved. And regardless of the resolution you choose or the hardware you own, that kind of information is priceless in getting a great PC gaming experience.You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, the Garber Zone!
Major League Soccer is a bizarre beast. In some ways it acts like a league. In other ways, due the single entity structure, it acts like a team. That means that players get assigned in bizarre ways. On August third of 2013 one of those bizarre ways meant that Clint Dempsey became a Seattle Sounder.
That didn't occur in normal conventions as understood by even the most ardent followers and media around MLS. Odd signing paths are becoming more common. Michael Bradley and Maurice Edu didn't follow conventions. Julio Cesar's loan made no sense under the salary cap/budget system.
Jermaine Jones and Sacha Klejstan are rumored to be joining the league. Neither of those will come to the league in standard fashion either. The new normal isn't normal at all. It's about capturing as much high-end talent as possible. It didn't stop with the new television contract (some suggested Dempsey/Bradley were just show signings to please ESPN/Fox).
Don Garber set aggressive goals for MLS to become one of the top leagues in the world by 2022. He wants MLS to be a league of choice. The list of players that are choosing that league in the last three transfer windows is immense, potent and an indication of things to come.
Starting with Seattle there was the signing of Clint Dempsey. Huge deal. Great marketing. He's the face of US Soccer and the league. Also within the last three windows Sounders FC retained Osvaldo Alonso as a DP rather than possibly lose him to a foreign league of his choice. Solid moves.
The Chicago Fire signed Juan Anangono. They since loaned him out, but that's kind of a Fire thing.
Chivas USA, Rebrand FC acquired Mauro Rosales and maintained his DP deal. They even have two other DPs, which is surprising enough.
Gabriel Torres signed with the Colorado Rapids as their first ever Designated Player. He was the top scorer in the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup.
D.C. United traded for one time want-away-from-America forward Eddie Johnson and made him a DP.
FC Dallas went all in with three Young DPs within those last three window. Some aren't even regular players, but they acquired future talents through the mechanism.
DeMarcus Beasley isn't quite the name that Bradley or Dempsey are. But he's played in 27 World Cups the most of anyone ever, anywhere. He's now with Houston and he's not their only DP in this past year. They also grabbed Alexander Lopez.
Up in Montreal they nabbed Bernardello and Piatti. They already canned Bernardello, but Piatti is a new signing that could help power the Impact into non-suckitude.
NYCFC already signed two DPs in David Villa and Frank Lampard. They're going to sign another one because they play with Liberace Money.
Orlando City has Kaka under contract and are likely to be adding Robinho and probably another great Brazilian. They also have Liberace Money (other LM members are RBNY, LAG, TFC and SFC).
The Union wanted to get Bradley and couldn't, so instead they signed Maurice Edu and Cristian Maidana.
Down south Merritt Paulson's crack staff signed Liam Ridgewell, Fenando Adi and bought-out the loan of Diego Valeri. Another three DP team and all during the last three windows.
San Jose just signed Matias Perez Garcia. MPG is a brilliant playmaker and indicates a shift away from the cheap by a team wanting to make a splash when it opens an actual stadium.
Sporting KC kept both Matt Besler and Graham Zusi in the league through the DP mechanism. Like Alonso, they could have gone elsewhere. They didn't. The Sporks have a third DP as well.
TFC didn't just grab Bradley. They reinvented their roster and splashed for Jermain Defoe while also grabbing Gilberto (which might not have been a good signing, but they did do it).
Rather than have to sell off Matias Laba TFC/MLS sent him to Vancouver. He's not their only DP in the last three windows, they added Pedro Morales who may be the best Morales in MLS. That also means he may be the best CM in the league.
That's 29, plus OCSC and NYCFC adding one to three more huge names. There's this odd rumor about Ronaldinho come to the league. There's Jones and Klejstand and dreams of greater.
No, this did not start with Clint Dempsey. Some of these players signed before he did. But the push, and funds, from the league that acts like a team acting like a league is adding serious talents at a pace more rapid than ever. There's even a new CBA coming which seems like it could add more DP slots or other mechanisms to add "world class" talent (or maybe just guys that are pretty damn good but not great).
This is the Garber Zone. It's stunning. It's a new dimension of American soccer, but it is only a journey.by Pete Bodo
It was a classic Grand Slam-style moment, available only to television viewers but memorable nonetheless. Out on Centre Court at the All England Club, in a first-round Olympics match, Brazil's Thomaz Bellucci was giving as good as he got in a rally of warp-speed ground strokes with No. 5 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. Bellucci felt a visible surge of elation as the linesman confirmed that a prodigious backhand by the Frenchman Tsonga had flown just long.
Game and first set to Mr. Bellucci, seven games to six.
Moments later, on Court No. 1, Fabio Fognini of Italy, ahead 8-7 in the first-set tiebreaker suspended due to rain hours earlier (at 7-all!) drew a bead on No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic's service return and did what he had failed at when he had a set point earlier in the match—he stepped in and attacked the ball with conviction, driving a backhand winner down the line to salt away the set just like Bellucci had done.
It briefly looked like we might experience firsthand how different best-of-three set tennis can be from the familiar best-of-five drill we see during Wimbledon, but that wasn't in the soggy cards today. Both favorites roared back to win (see below).
Some of you may have had the same feeling I did when I looked at the draws and schedule yesterday morning. I felt, well, overwhelmed, especially when I took into account the doubles. The singles draw may be 64 for both men and women (creating an already tight schedule for a nine-day event), but this is the Olympics. The medals they give out for doubles have the same value and prestige as any other in the Games, and they count just as much in the record book and medal standings.
I realized a few hours in yesterday that I didn't fully appreciate how quickly best-of-three matches can fly by, even ones that go the distance, but clearly Wimbledon and ITF officials did. But one thing they can't be predicted as accurately is the weather. And the rain today was as threatening as it was irritating.
Sure, the Centre Court has a roof; unfortunately, that only guarantees that the tournament will finish on time if the rainouts occur late in the tournament (as was the case a few weeks ago at Wimbledon). It's a little different during the Grand Slam event in London, where the 13 day schedule and the overwhelming priority on singles allows for a lot of flexibility—and therefore a lot of rain. But at the Olympics, where doubles counts for so much, the tournament will really suffer if we get significant washouts in the next two or three days. The schedule today called for 48 matches; only 12 were completed.
And here's a wild-card factor: Because of the state of the courts after Wimbledon, only 12 courts were to be used for the Olympic event (one prominent exclusion: The very cozy and pleasant Court 3 stadium). Would the referee decide to use some of the off-limits courts, even if they were somewhat chewed up, if the need were dire?
Okay, we'll burn that bridge when we come to it. And now for the distribution of our accolades and otherwise:
Germany's Julia Goerges pulled off the biggest upset of the first two days when she survived a comeback by Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland, seeded No. 2 and a Wimbledon finalist just weeks ago. The scores were 7-5, 6-7 (5), 6-4. It was the second straight day that a recent Wimbledon runner-up was beaten (on opening day, it was Tomas Berdych, the losing finalist in 2010, who went down in flames), which suggests that Maria Sharapova, Vera Zvonareva, and Andy Roddick had better watch their backs.
Radwanska is a significant scalp to take because it isn't often that she beats herself, while Goerges is the opposite—somewhat prone to emotional ups and downs, and a forehand that sometimes has a mind of its own. If you saw the way Radwanska bolted out to a 6-2 lead in the second-set tiebreaker or how, after seizing the momentum by winning the set, she broke Goerges for 1-2 in the third, you might have been convinced that Goerges had merely set off a false alarm. Not so.
Regaining her composure—as well as the range on her serve and forehand—Goerges broke back for 3-all and went on to break Radwanska in the 10th and final game of the third set with a terrific inside-out forehand service return winner. The Serena-esque win by Goerges was built on 20 aces and a grand total of 56 winners—more than twice as many as Radwanska hit.
Tsonga and Djokovic, as noted above, both escaped upsets at the hands of, respectively, Bellucci and Fognini, the latter seemingly arriving fresh off the set of the latest movie in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise (Fognini playing Johnny Depp's long lost twin brother).
Okay, kidding. But in any event, Fognini played the first set in swashbuckling style in every sense of the world (he was dressed in Wimbledon-worthy whites that contrasted sharply with his keenly groomed, jet black facial hair). But Djokovic helped Fognini with some uncharacteristically sloppy—or was it "nervous"?—play. He made 17 unforced errors in the first set, but then just six more over the last two sets of his 6-7 (7), 6-2, 6-2 win.
It was an excellent fightback, but it also had to leave his fans feeling a little nervous because he seemed a little lackluster, a little too within himself, just as he had in the Wimbledon semifinal with Roger Federer. Fognini was 1-16 against Top 10 opposition (he recorded his lone win at Wimbledon two years ago, against Fernando Verdasco), so it's pretty clear that Djokovic is likely to meet more dangerous and threatening competition in the coming rounds.
Tsonga's come-from-behind win saw him in greater danger for a longer time. Bellucci, a mercurial, gifted left-hander, has been making strikes in the mental department lately. He went deep in two clay-court tournament just before the Olympics, losing in the semis of Stuttgart to Janko Tipsarevic and exacting vengeance the following week over the same rival in the final of Gstaad. Pundits galore have been waiting to see if Bellucci would ever get his head together, could it happen at the Olympics?
Bellucci and Tsonga were both in fire in the first set; both had a first-serve conversion rate above 70 percent and neither lost a point on his second serve. It was an old-fashioned grass-court shootout, and Bellucci struck the first significant blow when he bounced back from a mini-break that made it 1-2 in the first-set tiebreaker to even it up at 3-all. There were no more mini-breaks until the final point (described at the top of this story).
By then, it was clear that Tsonga was having trouble with his footing; he was slipping, sliding and tumbling left and right. He changed his shoes for the second set, which solved some of his footing problems enough so to make him confident. The match remained competitive and entertaining. Bellucci demonstrated once again that he has the ability to reel off winners, but also that he's more apt to do it when he's just trying to stay in the rear view mirror of his opponent. "He's a lefty, he's tall, and he's really impressive," The No. 5 seed said of Bellucci, after he put up his 6-7 (5), 6-4, 6-4 win. "You think he will kill the ball but he has a very nice touch as well."
Bellucci is improving, but he still has a long way to go to fulfill his potential.
You have to feel for Bernard Tomic of Australia, who lost to Japan's Kei Nishikori in a pair of identical, 7-4 tiebreaker sets. Just 19, Tomic had a breakout year at Wimbledon in 2011 (he qualified and even got a set off Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals—Tomic's eighth match of the tournament). But he's now lost in the first round in his last six tournaments, and his ranking (No. 49) is likely to plummet.
What's worse, Tomic was frankly and touchingly fired up about the Olympics, recently telling the AAP news agency, "You can't put into words what winning a gold medal would mean. I can only dream of it. (The Olympics) is like a fifth Grand Slam and something I always wanted to do better at than Grand Slams."
Tomic also reckoned that lower-ranked players stood a better chance at the Olympics because of the best-of-three sets format. The handwriting was on the wall for this one at Wimbledon, where Tomic split sets with talented and diligent Belgian wild card—and ATP No. 70—David Goffin, only to take his foot off the gas and petulantly take a four-set loss.
Nobody has ever questioned Tomic's talent; what concerns were expressed have been about his competitive character and work ethic. He's young and still absorbing the harsh facts of tennis life—the first of which is that you must remain eternally vigilant and perpetually diligent.
In the "at least this hasn't gone viral on YouTube" department, we have the racquet-smashing tantrum Ryan Harrison threw during his loss on Day 1 to Santiago Giraldo of Colombia. Harrrison would ordinarily have gotten a simple thumbs down yesterday (the incident escaped my attention until this morning) for making an ass of himself, because his actions reflect to some degree on the USA. But also because it wasn't like Harrison lost a third-set tiebreaker on a let-cord winner. He was waxed by a clay-courter, 7-5, 6-3.
However, today he gets a thumbs up for going on television during the long rain delay to apologize—sincerely and repeatedly (perhaps a little too much so, but you can hardly fault him for that)—during a chat with Olympics tennis host Pat O'Brien.
I thought Harrison's enthusiasm for making amends showed just how awful he felt about his meltdown, and his inability to control a temper that caused him to yell at ballboys and, ultimately, smash up his racquet. He seemed on the verge of tears at times during the interview, and while I make no apologies for the incident it also shows just how tense and tighly-wound Harrison was as a first-time Olympian. He's just 20, after all. Perhaps he and Tomic ought to go out together for a milkshake or a cherry Coke and commiserate.
I can't stand it when commentators and/or cameramen go ga-ga over celebrities who attend tennis matches, especially when they're more likely to be, say, Desperate Housewives than "First Woman in Orbit" types. Did I really need to see 30 shots of Chris Evert's former spouse, (golfer) Greg Norman, today?
But at least Norman, like Caroline Wozniacki's squeeze Rory McIlroy, is an accomplished athlete of sorts (if a golfer can be so described). But why the big deal over Chelsea Handler, who showed up to watch Maria Sharapova's match? It was bad enough that it rendered some of the Bravo broadcast team awestruck (so I would learn; my own TV was muted at the time, so I missed the fuss). What was worse, I thought, was that Rennae Stubbs took up valuable time during the already brief on-court interview to ask Sharapova about it—by which time my sound was on again.
"You had a special guest in the player box today," Stubbs said, coyly.
Sharapova then explained who she'd gotten an email from "Chelsea" late the previous night; she was looking for tickets, and Maria replied, "Do you know how tough it is to get... Yadda-yadda-yadda" as if she didn't get a handful of guest-box passes to every match.
Apparently, Handler is "just Chelsea" to these folks, because that's how Stubbs also identified her, as a result of which and I ended up wasting 10 minutes of my precious life in a panic, Googling "Chelsea and Clinton and Maria Sharapova" to learn the identity of this mystery guest. I almost had a Ryan Harrison moment when I found out that Handler's a late night talking head, most famous (tennis-wise) for daring to ask Sharapova if she's a "b*tch."
Sharapova confirmed in that interview that she is, for those of you who were wondering.
Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany will crack the Top 20 for the first time in his career when the rankings come out on Monday, but he's paid a heavy price for playing in Kitzbuhel, Austria, this past week on red clay (losing in final to Robin Haase). And so has the winner, who's from the Netherlands. They are the only men from their respective nations in the Olympic men's singles draw.
Haase and Kohlschreiber were both due to fly to London tonight, with Haase set to play France's Richard Gasquet in his first-round match tomorrow, while Kohlschreiber was meant to face off against Blaz Kavcic—who's ranked in the 70s and needed an ITF wild card to get into the draw. Kohlschreiber, however, pulled a hamstring in the Kitzbuhel final, or so the story goes, and abandoned his place in the draw. He was replaced by Vardhan Vishnu of India, who was on site as Leander Paes's doubles partner, and is ranked No. 302 in singles.
Time was, Germany could place the maximum four players in the Olympics field, including two Wimbledon champs (Boris Becker and Michael Stich). Now, there won't be a single German man in the entire 64-playerdraw. The only consolation is that the German women probably have the best chance to put more than one woman on the singles medal podium than at any time since the heyday of Steffi Graf and Anke Huber.
Call me crazy, but is it worth missing the Olympics to play Kitzbuhel?
We'll see you tomorrow. The schedule is loaded!Electric Boat Edit
General Dynamics traces its ancestry to John Philip Holland's Holland Torpedo Boat Company. This company was responsible for developing the U.S. Navy's first modern submarines, built at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard in Elizabethport, New Jersey. The revolutionary submarine boat Holland VI was built there, its keel being laid down in 1896. Crescent's superintendent and naval architect Arthur Leopold Busch supervised the construction of this submarine, which was launched on 17 May 1897. It was eventually purchased by the navy and renamed USS Holland (SS-1).
The Holland was officially commissioned on 12 October 1900 and became the United States Navy's first submarine, later known as SS-1. The Navy placed an order for more submarines, which were developed in rapid succession and were assembled at two different locations on both coasts. These submarines were known as the A-Class or Adder Class and became America's first fleet of underwater craft at the beginning of the 20th century.
Holland grew short on funds due to the lengthy and expensive process of introducing the world's first practical submarines, and he had to part with his company and sell his interest to financier Isaac Leopold Rice, who renamed the firm the Electric Boat Company on 7 February 1899. Holland effectively lost control of the company and found himself earning a salary of $90 a week as chief engineer, while the company that he founded was selling submarines for $300,000 each.[citation needed] Holland resigned from the company effective April 1904, and Rice became Electric Boat's first president, remaining there from that time until 1915 when he stepped down just prior to his death on 2 November 1915.
Electric Boat gained a reputation for unscrupulous arms dealing in 1904–05 when it sold submarines to Japan's Imperial Japanese Navy and Russia's Imperial Russian Navy, who were then at war with one another.[7] Holland submarines were also sold to the British Royal Navy through the English armaments company Vickers, and to the Dutch to serve in the Royal Netherlands Navy.
Electric Boat was cash-flush but lacking in work following World War II, with its workforce shrinking from 13,000 to 4,000 by 1946.[citation needed] President and chief executive officer John Jay Hopkins started looking for companies that would fit into Electric Boat's market in hopes of diversifying.
Canadair purchase Edit
Canadair was owned by the Canadian government and was suffering from the same post-war malaise as Electric Boat. It was up for sale, and Hopkins bought the company for $10 million in 1946. The factory alone was worth more than $22 million, according to the Canadian government's calculations,[citation needed] excluding the value of the remaining contracts for planes or spare parts. However, Canadair's production line and inventory systems were in disorder when Electric Boat purchased the company. Hopkins hired Canadian-born mass-production specialist H. Oliver West to take over the president's role and return Canadair to profitability. Shortly after the takeover, Canadair began delivering its new Canadair North Star (a version of the Douglas DC-4 |
and a net margin of 16.1%.
IBM Organization Structure Changes In 2016
IBM announced a number of changes to its organization structure during its investor briefing on February 25, 2016. These changes support the IBM transformation into a cognitive solutions and cloud platform company. The key changes are summarized below.
The software segment will no longer exist as a stand-alone unit.
IBM has created a cognitive solutions business unit. This includes solutions software and transaction processing software. Solutions software are in areas such as analytics, commerce and security. The unit also includes several of the IBM initiatives around Watson, Watson Health, Watson Internet of Things (IoT). Watson is the first commercially available cognitive computing platform that has the ability to interact in natural language, processing vast amounts of big data, and learning from its interactions with people and computers.
Integration software, including WebSphere, has been brought together with IBM’s cloud platforms and global technology services business.
Operating systems software has been moved to systems to align it more closely with the underlying hardware platforms.
IBM new organization structure is represented in the following diagram.
IBM 2015 revenues as per new business segments are provided in the following diagram. Of the total $81.7 billion revenues in 2015, IBM generated
$35.1 billion revenues, 43.0% of the total, from the technology services and cloud platforms segment. Of the $35.1 billion, IBM generated $23.1 billion from infrastructure services, $7.4 billion from technical support services, and $4.6 billion from integration software.
Of the $35.1 billion, IBM generated $23.1 billion from infrastructure services, $7.4 billion from technical support services, and $4.6 billion from integration software. $17.8 billion revenues, 21.8% of the total, from the cognitive solutions segment. Of the $17.8 billion, IBM generated $12.0 billion from solutions software and $5.8 billion from transaction processing software.
Of the $17.8 billion, IBM generated $12.0 billion from solutions software and $5.8 billion from transaction processing software. $17.2 billion revenues, 21.0% of the total, from the global business services segment. Of the $17.2 billion, IBM generated $7.7 billion from consulting, $1.4 billion from global process services, and $8.1 billion from application management business.
Of the $17.2 billion, IBM generated $7.7 billion from consulting, $1.4 billion from global process services, and $8.1 billion from application management business. $9.5 billion revenues, 11.7% of the total, from the systems segment. Of the $9.5 billion, IBM generated $7.6 billion from systems hardware and $2.0 billion from operating systems software.
Of the $9.5 billion, IBM generated $7.6 billion from systems hardware and $2.0 billion from operating systems software. $1.8 billion revenues, 2.3% of the total, from the global financing segment.
IBM Revenues, Net Profits, and Net Profit Margins 2011 To 2015
IBM Revenues are on a constant decline for the last five years. This may be due to several factors. Some of them are: Weak global economy; Decreasing demand of IBM products; Increasing competition in the different business segments; IBM divestitures of some of its businesses; Strong dollar currency environment.
However, IBM is able to maintain the net profit margins because of a strong financial discipline.
Will the newly announced organization structure help IBM grow its top-line revenues as well? Analysts and investors would be looking forward to the IBM earnings in the coming quarters and years for answer to this question.Gaye Mullin, from Waitara, Taranaki, has seen her succulent grow to crazy heights in her back yard.
Gaye Mullin has come to terms with the fact her almost 8-metre tall succulent is going to die.
"I think it is near the end now, going on the growth pattern... I'll be sad to see it go," she says of her "stairway to heaven".
Mullin's agave geminiflora has a stalk that's grown non-stop, at a very fast rate, but she was told when it flowers, it will die.
GRANT MATTHEW/FAIRFAX NZ The succulent is said to be on death row.
"Someone said to me, 'I have to tell you Gaye, it is going to die'," she said. "But it doesn't look like it."
READ MORE:
* When your succulent just won't stop growing
* The sky's the limit for soaring succulent
* Eight stylish succulents anyone can grow
The succulent is said to only flower once in its lifetime and the stalk had been blooming for a while now, with its burgundy flowers and yellow stamens lighting up Mullin's Waitara garden, in Taranaki.
GRANT MATTHEW/FAIRFAX NZ A burgundy flower with yellow stamens presents itself "bit by bit".
And despite the fact the stalk is still growing – and had grown overnight – Mullin said it was slowing down.
"It seems to flower a bit, and they all die, and then the next bit comes out, and it sort of creeps up," she said. "I think it's had it now, going by the pattern on the petals."
She said it grew fastest overnight and still rose about 10 centimetres each night – however, in late February, it was growing about 15cm a night.
When Stuff spoke to Mullin on February 22, the succulent was about five-metres tall. Six days later it was a metre-and-a-half taller.
Mullin has received phone calls from all over the world since then, as people admire her "Waitara Wind Wand".
She said she would just let the succulent stalk "do its thing", rather than chopping it down if it died.
She could still laugh though, saying there was no way she was getting to heaven now.
"As I said, it's my stairway to heaven, 'cause I ain't going to get there any other way."
Mullin bought the plant in 2008 from the Ellerslie Garden Show when it was still held in Auckland. For years, it did nothing out of the ordinary, before it took off.
She said she had seen three agave geminiflora down near Waitara Beach, but they weren't half the size of hers, so she wasn't sure the Waitara climate was to thank or not for her plant's extraordinary growth.Bearing the words "my will" and a smiley face, one deceased man's drafted text message was found to be a legitimate last will and testament by the Brisbane Supreme Court in Australia.
Drafted before the 55-year-old man committed suicide in October 2016, the unsent message dictated that the man's house and pension should be left to his brother and nephew rather than his wife and son.
"The informal nature of the text does not exclude it from being sufficient to represent the deceased's testamentary intentions," wrote Justice Susan Brown, who handed down the decision on Monday.
She noted that a previous court decision found that a DVD with the words "my will" written on it was a valid document.
Signed with a smiley
The text message addressed the man's brother and nephew, stating: "Keep all that I have house and superannuation, put my ashes in the back garden."
The man's wife "will take her stuff," the message stated, adding that there was "a bit of cash behind TV and a bit in the bank."
At the end of the draft text were the words "my will" followed by a smiley face emoji.
The man's wife argued that since the message wasn't sent it showed the deceased hadn't made up his mind
The man's wife and his son from a previous marriage challenged the validity of the unusual will in court. The woman argued that since the message wasn't sent, it was "consistent with the deceased not having made up his mind" and cannot be a legitimate will.
The court rejected her argument, noting that the wording of the drafted text showed that the man intended for the message to serve as his will.
"The reference to his house and superannuation and his specification that the [wife] was to take her own things indicates he was aware of the nature and extent of his estate, which was relatively small," Brown wrote in her decision.
The court noted that the deceased man "did not have any real relationship" with his son as well as "a fairly rocky relationship" with his wife — although the couple was also "observed to have had happier times."
Although the man did not leave his wife or son anything in his final message, the judge said they could apply for a stake in the estate under family law.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
ANGRY protestors chased Scotland's only Conservative MP out of town after he turned up to open a food bank.
Protestors shouted “Shame on you” and screamed at Scottish Secretary David Mundell after he sneaked out the back door of the Trussell Trust-operated facility in the Dumfries and Galloway town.
They surrounded the white Ford Focus motor he was in, which had to slowly edge its way through the raging mob with the help of a police escort.
People banged on the windows and at first refused to let the vehicle move, until four uniformed police officers arrived to part the crowd.
The Tory toff and MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale has previously questioned claims of a link between food bank use and his party’s welfare reforms.
He said in February: “We’re just not going to agree on that. What we are going to agree is that we need to do something about it. That is best achieved by everyone working together.”
Disabled protestor Ian Patterson, 66, who lost half his left leg and a toe on his other foot following complications due to diabetes seven months ago fumed: “If I had still had both my legs I would have booted him in the nuts.
“It is disgusting that Mundell has come along today to open a food bank when it is his party which had put people in the position where they can’t afford to feed themselves or their families.”
Ian, who lives in the town, added: “The Tories are targeting the most vulnerable people in society - the disabled, the elderly, and now the young with their cut in housing benefit for the under 21s.
“If Mundell believes in his party policies, and that food banks haven’t been caused by the Tories, he would have come out the front door and faced folk - not scurried out the back like a coward.”
Mundell, who had sneaked in the back door of the Dumfriesshire food bank, in the town’s Apex Centre, to avoid protestors, was welcomed by the Trussell Trust’s Scotland Network Manager, Ewan Gurr,
Gurr told reporters and staff inside the building: “It is not a pleasure opening a new food bank.
“David and I probably both stand here with conflicting emotions. In one sense, we commiserate the fact that food poverty exists, but we absolutely, unashamedly celebrate the way in which communities pull together in times like this to respond to a need.
“I have welcomed Labour MPs to open food banks, SNP MPs, and Liberal Democrat MPs to open food banks, and you sure as hell better believe I am going to welcome a Conservative MP to come and open a food banks, so I welcome David Mundell today.”
Mundell also made a short statement, but refused to answer any questions from the press, and point-blank refused requests from photographers to step into the adjoining room where food parcels were being prepared to pose in front of some of the donations already made by generous members of the public.
Speaking in front of a spread of sandwiches, biscuits, and quiche, which had been laid on for his arrival, Mundell said: “I believe it is very important to have full, open discussions about issues, and I don’t want to hide away from people’s concerns, and I don’t do that.
“I have been a local representative for 16 years, and I haven’t spent that time just going round speaking to people who agree with me, or who agree with government policy.
“That is a very inappropriate way for a local MP to act.”
However, just seconds later he scuttled off through the back door where he was surrounded by the angry mob of around 200 folk - and despite what he had just said - refused to speak to any of them.
He sat in the front seat, expressionless, and facing forward as the crowed bayed around him, refusing to acknowledge anyone who was there.
(Image: Daily Record/Alasdair MacLeod)
Fellow protestor Lesley-Anne McLelland, 56, who is also confined to a wheelchair, said: “It is absolutely ridiculous that so many people have to rely upon food banks in Scotland in this day and age.
“We are the only oil-rich country in the world where people have to be fed using them.
“For Mundell to come and open this while his government is putting through Parliament more hurt and misery for people is disgusting.
“He didn’t even have the guts to face anyone who was here today.
“He and his party are targeting the young, the old, and the disabled with their attack on the benefits system.
“It is like we are back in the 18th century, I am just waiting for the Tories to say they are sending children back up chimneys.
“Instead of targeting the vulnerable, the Westminster government should be going after the big companies and businessmen who are guilty of tax avoidance, but they will do nothing about that because the vast majority of them are Tory doners.”
South Lanarkshire Solidarity Councillor, Pat Lee, added: “We are here to hold Mundell to account for his hypocrisy, and instilling further austerity on the whole of Scotland.
“We are here to show support for the people of Dumfries, and the obscenity of a further food bank, and a Tory MP revelling in the publicity of opening another food bank.
“As MP Mhairi Black has said, the opening of food banks shows the welfare state has failed.
“Mundell is a liar and is in complete denial if he claims the Tory government’s policies have nothing to do with the explosion of food banks across Scotland.”Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Incredible never-before-seen footage of one of the greatest night's in Liverpool's history has emerged online.
Tuesday 4 May 1965 is date forever etched into Anfield folklore - the night the FA Cup was finally paraded at the ground for the first time after victory at Wembley the previous Saturday, ahead of the humbling of world and European champions Internazionale of Milan in the first leg of the European Cup semi final.
Students of LFC history will be familiar with the black and white tv coverage of the match in existence which features the iconic rendition of 'Go back to Italy' by the Kop to the then-popular tune of Santa Lucia.
Now colour footage - converted from an 8mm cine camera taken by ex-Liverpool player Tom Bush, who played 69 games for the club in a war-disrupted career between 1933 and 1947 - has been released by Tom's son Alan to The Unofficial Liverpool Football Club Museum, a superb Facebook page specialising in archive gems from the Reds' unparalleled history.
(Image: The Unofficial Liverpool Football Club Museum)
(Image: The Unofficial Liverpool Football Club Museum)
Alan told the ECHO: "Father was then the youth team coach (amongst other duties) and told Bill Shankly after winning the cup final it was the best day in his career, since Roger Hunt, Ian Callaghan, Gerry Byrne, Tommy Lawrence, Tommy Smith and Chris Lawler had all come through the junior ranks, something which would not happen today.
"Father knew in advance the FA Cup would be paraded before the match as it had been discussed inside the club. Hence he took his cine camera and we have this moment captured on film."
Anfield has of course seen many famous European occasions but the Inter match is so revered because it was the night which set the tone and laid the foundations for much of the success which was to follow.
Inter had won their first European Cup under the 'catenaccio' (blanket defence) tactics of Argentine coach Helenio Herrera the previous season and, having beaten Independiente of Argentina to lift the Intercontinental Cup, were favourites to retain the trophy with the 1965 final due to be played in their own San Siro stadium in Milan.
Bill Shankly's Liverpool were an emerging force however, having won the league championship in 1964 only two seasons after promotion from the Second Division, and in the club's first ever season of European competition, they had seen off Rekjavic of Iceland, Anderlecht of Belgium and Cologne of Germany (by virtue of the toss of a coin following a play-off in Rotterdam after two draws) to reach the semi finals, as they aimed to become the first British team to be crowned champions of Europe.
Four days before Inter were due to Anfield for the first leg of the semi final, Shankly's Reds broke new ground by winning the FA Cup for the first time in the club's 73-year history, overcoming Leeds United 2-1 after extra time at Wembley, to leave Anfield a cauldron of jubilant excitement by the time the Italians arrived on the Tuesday evening for what at the time would have been the biggest match ever played on the ground.
Sharing the converted cine footage on his Unofficial Liverpool Football Club Museum page, Jim Donnelly explained: "This is special, very special. For over 50 years it has been in a box, unseen.
"It is a home video, in colour, filmed on 8mm cine film by ex-Liverpool player Tom Bush from May 4th 1965.
"Tom attended the match three days after us winning our first FA cup at Wembley.
"We faced the coiffured Italians, Inter Milan, in the first leg of that notorious semi-final in our maiden European campaign.
"The game has descended into our history and remains there with an almost mythical glow about it.
"Anfield was their Colosseum that night and Shankly wanted them to feel it.
"In a tactical masterstroke, he sends Gordon Milne and the injured gladiator, Gerry Byrne, to parade the cup in a clockwise procession towards the packed Kop.
"From his seat in the Main Stand, Tom captures the warm up and parade by Milne and Byrne as well as some snippets of the match itself.
"Amazingly, no part of the Anfield you see in the film exists anymore.
"The film is short, grainy with poor lighting and no sound but I tell you what… the FA Cup is gleaming!
"For those of us who were not there it brings it slightly more to life.
"For those of us who were, I hope it revives the memories.
"Of all the places you would like to have been in our in our history, this must be in most people’s top 5.
"Sit back, relax and drink in 2 minutes 30 seconds of pure iconic history, in colour.
"(Sincere thanks to Alan Bush, son of Tom, who has very generously sent us the cine film and allowed us to get it converted to be put on here)."
(Image: LFC History)
Liverpool capitalised on the febrile pre-match atmosphere by taking an early lead through Roger Hunt's instinctive volley and, though a Ron Yeats error soon enabled Sandro Mazzola to equalise, a smartly-worked Ian Callaghan free-kick and close-range Ian St John effort secured a 3-1 first leg advantage to take to Italy for the return, which would have been greater had a first half Chris Lawler effort not harshly been disallowed for offside.
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
History records that was not to be enough as a contentious 3-0 defeat in Italy eight days later saw Inter to progress to the final (where they beat Benfica 1-0) amid allegations of corruption, with Argentinian referee Jose Maria Ortiz de Mendibil and Inter themselves later implicated in allegations of bribery.
Bill Shankly, who had retired as manager by the time Liverpool eventually did lift the European Cup in 1977, said: “Inter beat us 3-0 but not even their players enjoyed the game, and we didn’t think two of the goals were legal. They put an indirect free-kick straight into the net for the first, and the ball was kicked out of Tommy Lawrence’s hand for the second.
“Afterwards, the people were sweeping the streets with enormous flags and I said to our players, ‘all right, we’ve lost, but see what you have done.
"Inter Milan are the unofficial champions of the world and all these people are going mad because they are so pleased that they have beaten Liverpool. That’s the standard you have raised yourselves up to.'”
Shankly and his men shrugged off their disappointment to regain their league title the following season, winning their first European title - the EUFA Cup - in 1973 as the most sustained period of success in the club's history began to take root but those four days in May 1965 are seen as many as the making of the modern Liverpool.
This unearthed film footage gives a tantalising glimpse into such a halcyon period and, as former ECHO journalist Hyder Jawad commented on The Unofficial Liverpool Football Club Museum's post : "This is historic stuff and a find of archaeological proportions. Incredible."President Donald Trump has been off to a rough start. For one, he has lots of foreign policy problems to work through: the United States' tense relations with Syria and North Korea, and let's not forget the Russia scandal that won't end. Now, one of the most popular politicians of 2016 has said he thinks Trump's second term is dead on arrival. Bernie Sanders doesn't think Trump will last, and he was pretty straightforward about it.
The senator talked with the Associated Press on Wednesday as he prepared to kick off a nationwide tour with Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez on April 17. His take on Trump was pretty brutal:
In terms of the first three months in office, Donald Trump is the least popular president in the history of polling.... I do not believe that if Trump continues these policies that he's going to be reelected. Nor do I think that the Republicans are going to do well in 2018.
Those policies he's referring to are specifically Trump's support of tax cuts for the rich, budget cuts, and the American Health Care Act, which would strip coverage from millions, the AP reported.
Despite the Electoral College loss, Sanders remained positive about the midterms and, of course, beating Trump in 2020. "The momentum right now is with the progressive movement in this country. And I think the Republicans are on the defensive and will be on the defensive increasingly," Sanders said.
Scott Eisen/Getty Images News/Getty Images
He noted that the Congressional race in Kansas to fill now-CIA director Mike Pompeo's seat was extremely close. Republican Ron Estes won but only by 7 percentage points; Pompeo had won in November with a margin of more than 30 points.
"The Republicans had to spend money like crazy at the end to beat him," Sanders told the AP. "I think that's a very good omen for the future."
Sanders has a busy couple of weeks ahead of him with this tour. He and Perez are hoping to find messaging that will fight Trump successfully. "At a time of massive income and wealth inequality and a shrinking middle class, we need a government which represents all Americans, not just Wall Street, multi-national corporations, and the top 1 percent," they said in a statement. They are going to Portland, Maine, first on Monday. In the following days, there will be visits to Florida, Texas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Utah, Arizona, and Nevada.
If Sanders shares this same message about defeating Trump while on the road, he might just be able to continue motivating the Berners out there to turn out for races across the country. That could help Democrats win in 2018 and beyond.By Adam Taylor
So far we have looked at how we could instantiate the Xilinx PicoBlaze processor hardware within a system based on the Zynq SoC. In this blog, I am going to explore more on how we generate the PicoBlaze program and how we can update the program using the JTAG port without recompiling the design.
Obviously the first thing we need to do is write the assembler program that implements the desired function. We can do this using a program like Notepad++ or even a more advanced IDE like fidex (http://www.fautronix.com/en/fidex).
This assembly file should have the file extension of.PSM, for instance test.psm. The PicoBlaze processor is programmed using the Picoblaze assembler. Detailed information on the assembly syntax for the PicoBlaze processor is provided within UG129 and the file All_kcpsm6_syntax.psm, which comes with your download. The syntax is very easy to understand and learn.
The example we used last week to flash the LEDs uses the code below, which flashes four LEDSs on the IO Carrier card at 2Hz with the PicoBlaze processor running on a 40MHz clock. We will achieve this blink rate using a counter that counts down from a predefined number and toggles the LED status when it reaches zero.
The PicoBlaze an instruction in two clock cycles so we calculate the predefined blink count thus:
5s / 50ns = 10,000,000 cycles
However looking at the code below in the delay loop there are five instructions to be executed, therefore we need to divide the above number by 5, which gives a constant of 2,000,000—or 1E8480 in hex.
Here’s the resulting LED blink program code for the PicoBlaze processor:
NAMEREG s0,led ;rename S0 register to led
;As 8 bit processor we need four delay loops 256 * 256 * 256 * 256 = 4294967296
CONSTANT max1, 80 ;set delay
CONSTANT max2, 84 ;set delay
CONSTANT max3, 1e ;set delay
CONSTANT max4, 00 ;set delay
main: LOAD led, 00; load the led output register with 00
flash: XOR led, FF; xor the value in led register with FF i.e. toggle
OUTPUT led,01; output led register with port ID of 1
CALL delay_init; start delay
JUMP flash; loop back to beginning
delay_init: LOAD s4, max4;
LOAD s3, max3;
LOAD s2, max2;
LOAD s1, max1;
delay_loop: SUB s1, 1'd; subtract 1 decimal from s1
SUBCY s2, 0'd; carry subtraction
SUBCY s3, 0'd; carry subtraction
SUBCY s4, 0'd; carry subtraction
JUMP NZ, delay_loop;
RETURN
The next step is to run this source listing through the assembler that came with your PicoBlaze download to generate a memory file (in VHDL for use within your FPGA which we used last week), a log file, and a hex file.
Having written the program, we can instantiate it as we did last week within our design. However if we need to change the program behavior during integration testing, one method is to use the JTAG loader which also comes with the download. The JTAG loader allows us to modify the PicoBlaze processor’s RAM contents using the JTAG interface. Then we can test the updated program before we rebuild the FPGA configuration with the updated program so that it runs from RAM automatically.
We can use the JTAG loader on one instance of the PicoBlaze only. If there are several PicoBlaze instances within the design—yes, that’s definitely allows—we need to ensure only one processor has the JTAG loader enabled. We achieve this by using the JTAG loader Generic in the PicoBlze instantiation thus:
Having set the JTAG loader for only one of our PicoBlaze instantiations, we can then use the JTAG loader which comes with the program to download modified code using the Hex file generated when we assemble a program.
The process is simple. First select the correct version for the operating system you are using from the JTAG_loader directory of the download and copy it to your working directory (where you hex file is located). Once this has been completed, you can open a command window and navigate to your working directory and use the command below:
jtagloader –l <Your Project Name>.hex
Note, I have renamed the version of the executable for my OS jtagloader.exe
As this downloads you will notice that the JTAG loader halts the core execution and downloads the new program to memory before releasing the core reset, at which point your new program starts running.
While a very powerful utility like this allows you to download and verify program modifications, it does have a few draw backs, unfortunately. For example, the next time you power cycle the board, the original program—not the updated one—will be executed. Also, you cannot update more than one PicoBlaze instance without generating a new FPGA configuration.
Thankfully the architecture of the Zynq enables us to overcome both of these limitations and we will be looking at how we achieve this over the next few blogs. It is really quite exciting.
Please see the previous entries in this MicroZed series by Adam Taylor:
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 56: The Zynq and the PicoBlaze
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 55: Linux on the Zynq SoC
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 54: Peta Linux SDK for the Zynq SoC
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 53: Linux and SMP
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 52: One year and 151,000 views later. Big, Big Bonus PDF!
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 51: Interrupts and AMP
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 50: AMP and the Zynq SoC’s OCM (On-Chip Memory)
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 49: Using the Zynq SoC’s On-Chip Memory for AMP Communications
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 48: Bare-Metal AMP (Asymmetric Multiprocessing)
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 47: AMP—Asymmetric Multiprocessing on the Zynq SoC
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 46: Using both of the Zynq SoC’s ARM Cortex-A9 Cores
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 44: MicroZed Operating Systems—FreeRTOS
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 43: XADC Alarms and Interrupts
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 42: MicroZed Operating Systems Part 4
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 41: MicroZed Operating Systems Part 3
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 40: MicroZed Operating Systems Part Two
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 39: MicroZed Operating Systems Part One
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles MicroZed Part 38 – Answering a question on Interrupts
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 37: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with MicroZed Part 8
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 36: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with MicroZed Part 7
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 35: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with MicroZed Part 6
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 34: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with MicroZed Part 5
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 33: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays with the Zynq SoC
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 32: Driving Adafruit RGB NeoPixel LED arrays
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 31: Systems of Modules, Driving RGB NeoPixel LED arrays
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 30: The MicroZed I/O Carrier Card
Zynq DMA Part Two – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 29
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Eight: Zynq DMA – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 28
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Seven: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 27
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Six: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 26
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Five: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 25
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Four: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 24
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Three: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 23
The Zynq PS/PL, Part Two: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 22
The Zynq PS/PL, Part One: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 21
Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Four: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 20
Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Three: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 19
Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part Two: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 18
Introduction to the Zynq Triple Timer Counter Part One: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 17
The Zynq SoC’s Private Watchdog: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 16
Implementing the Zynq SoC’s Private Timer: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 15
MicroZed Timers, Clocks and Watchdogs: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 14
More About MicroZed Interrupts: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 13
MicroZed Interrupts: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 12
Using the MicroZed Button for Input: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 11
Driving the Zynq SoC's GPIO: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 10
Meet the Zynq MIO: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 9
MicroZed XADC Software: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 8
Getting the XADC Running on the MicroZed: Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles Part 7
A Boot Loader for MicroZed. Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 6
Figuring out the MicroZed Boot Loader – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 5
Running your programs on the MicroZed – Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 4
Zynq and MicroZed say “Hello World”-- Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles, Part 3
Adam Taylor’s MicroZed Chronicles: Setting the SW Scene
Bringing up the Avnet MicroZed with VivadoThis essay won 3rd Place in our 2015 Essay Contest and was written by Robert Ye, a high school student in Chappaqua, New York, USA.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century, Winston Churchill is believed to have suffered from bipolar disorder. After observing numerous symptoms such as depression, suicidal intention, mania, and a decreased need for sleep, Churchill's doctor, Lord Moran, recounted in his memoir Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, that he had diagnosed a middle-aged Churchill with bipolar disorder. Churchill often referred to his periods of intense and prolonged depression as his "black dog." During these fits of lengthened, manic-depression, Churchill exhibited little energy, few interests, losses of appetite, and trouble concentrating, according to his wife Clementine. On the other side of the spectrum, when his "black dog" had become docile, Churchill exhibited abnormally high levels of energy and restlessness, often beginning to work at 8 am and ending work at around 2 am. Unfortunately, these times of abnormal productivity receded as his "black dog" returned after just a few months of absence. Churchill, despite the difficulties brought by his crippling depression, disregarded his affliction and fulfilled a life of purpose and achievement.
Churchill accepted his mental condition and helped to benefit the lives of many people. In 1911, Churchill pushed through periods of depression and began to prepare Great Britain for war. He established the Royal Naval Air Service after noting Germany's growing bellicose nature, anticipating an imminent conflict (World War I). Churchill's depression is believed to have increased his realism and empathy, helping him assess the true dangers that were otherwise overlooked by his colleagues. Similarly during World War II, Churchill's heightened skepticism allowed him to realistically evaluate the ever-growing German threat. In World War II, Churchill kept his "black dog on a leash" and kept British spirits high. Regularly delivering rallying speeches to Parliament and British citizens, Churchill soon became an iconic leader of the war effort against the Axis powers. Churchill's foresight and inspirational influences undoubtedly saved the lives of many people and may have even changed the courses of both World War I and World War II. Churchill inadvertently benefitted from his depressive episodes and, his manic episodes. Granted with a rare surge of energy, activity, and restlessness, Churchill published 43 books while upholding his duties as acting Prime Minister. The acme of Churchill's career as a writer was his acceptance of the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature, which honored a number of his published works.
Churchill's unbelievable accomplishments are proof that, despite being challenged with bipolar disorder, individuals in today's society can still achieve great things. Churchill's adamant nature towards his depression and advantageous use of his mania can motivate individuals and show that it is possible to overcome impairments and pursue excellence. Churchill's hardheadedness to his disorder benefitted the Allied Powers in World War I, the Allies during World War II, and his literary endeavors. Just like Buzz Aldrin, Theodore Roosevelt, Ted Turner, and many other historic figures who suffered from bipolar disorder, Winston Churchill overcame his manic-depressive illness and lived a life of fulfillment.It’s not often that I’ll stop my fast forward through commercials to watch something. I definitely did when I saw |
reported hourly wage or their weekly earnings, inclusive of OTBC, divided by weekly hours. For all non-hourly workers, we calculate hourly wages using their reported weekly earnings, inclusive of OTBC, divided by their reported weekly hours. This approach means that our estimates may be understating the true incidence of minimum wage violations and the volume of wages stolen, since we are treating bonuses, overtime, and commissions as part of the hourly base wage.
Consistent with ERG (2014) and Galvin (2016a), we exclude from our final sample all observations of workers not specifying hourly/nonhourly status, observations of nonhourly workers with weekly earnings less than $10, and all observations of workers with hourly wages less than $1. We then distribute the weights from these observations to all remaining valid observations.
Coverage of the FLSA and state minimum wage laws
As explained in the body of the report, not all workers are eligible for the minimum wage. The FLSA has a variety of exemptions for different occupations and classes of workers. State minimum wage laws also vary greatly in the volume and types of exemptions allowed for businesses to pay workers less than the minimum wage. For example, virtually all workers in California are subject to the state minimum wage. In contrast, Florida’s state minimum wage law explicitly exempts all workers exempted from the federal minimum wage.
To limit our sample to minimum-wage-eligible workers, we carefully account for all possible exemptions to the minimum wage portions of the FLSA and each state’s specific minimum wage exemptions. In cases where the data do not allow for the straightforward exemption of a particular industry or occupation, we either take the broadest possible interpretation of the exemption or randomly assign exempt status to the proportion of workers in that industry or occupation that the Department of Labor estimates to be exempt from the FLSA. For example, DOL estimates that 3 percent of seasonal amusement and recreational establishment workers are exempt. (See Kimball and Mishel 2015 and U.S. DOL 2015 for further detail.) Thus, we mark as exempt from the FLSA 3 percent of workers in those industries that can include seasonal amusement and recreational establishment workers: independent artists, performing arts, spectator sports, and related industries; museums, art galleries, historical sites, and similar institutions; bowling centers; other amusement, gambling, and recreation industries; and recreational vehicle parks, camps, and rooming and boarding houses.
The list of all federal and state exemptions is too long to include here; however, we are happy to provide greater detail upon request.
Appendix Table A1 shows the share of the workforce in each of the 10 most populous states that we estimate to be covered under federal or state minimum wage laws. Of the roughly 67.3 million workers in these 10 states, we estimate that 71.7 percent are covered under the FLSA, 84.8 percent are covered under state minimum wage laws, and 87.6 percent are covered under either the FLSA or state minimum wage laws. Although California does have some exemptions to the minimum wage—such as door-to-door salespeople and individuals who are the parent, spouse, or child of the employer—they are very limited and most cannot be identified in the CPS data. Thus, in our sample, we consider nearly all California workers to be covered by the state minimum wage. (We exempt door-to-door salespeople, which reduces the minimum-wage-eligible workforce by 0.04 percent to 99.96 percent.) Florida’s 72.3 percent of workers covered by either the state or federal minimum wage is the lowest share covered of all the states analyzed in this report. Florida’s state minimum wage law does not cover any additional workers beyond those already covered by the FLSA.
Appendix Table A1 Federal and state minimum wage coverage rates Total workforce Share of workers covered by federal minimum wage Share of workers covered by state minimum wage Share of workers covered by federal or state minimum wage Total 67,349,000 71.7% 84.8% 87.6% California 14,575,000 70.6% 100.0% 100.0% Florida 7,626,000 72.3% 72.3% 72.3% Georgia 3,831,000 71.0% 92.8% 98.4% Illinois 5,248,000 70.9% 98.3% 98.8% Michigan 3,819,000 74.9% 69.3% 74.9% New York 7,806,000 66.6% 70.1% 77.5% North Carolina 3,822,000 72.6% 80.8% 81.4% Ohio 4,685,000 76.3% 83.2% 83.6% Pennsylvania 5,290,000 72.7% 80.7% 81.3% Texas 10,649,000 73.0% 83.8% 91.5% Note: California's minimum wage covers 99.96% of workers in the state. Numbers may not add due to rounding. Shares are computed based on unrounded numbers. Sample includes workers age 16 to 85 in the 10 most populous states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Source: EPI analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group data, 2013–2015 Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image
Sensitivity analysis
As noted in the body of this report, accurately measuring minimum wage violations is challenging, and even the best public data sources—such as the CPS-ORG data we use—contain measurement error that can confound results. In this section, we describe the results of a series of sensitivity tests we performed, similar to those in ERG (2014), to assess how measurement error may be influencing our findings.
Appendix Table A2 shows the results of three different sensitivity tests. The first row presents our original results. The second row shows results for only those CPS respondents that report being hourly workers; these workers should have less measurement error in their hourly wage data than workers paid on a weekly or salaried basis. In this specification, the workforce analyzed shrinks by roughly one-third and the share of workers experiencing minimum wage violations drops by 0.5 percentage points to 3.6 percent. The amount of wages stolen falls by 16.5 percent on an hourly basis and 25 percent on a weekly or annual basis. The share of affected workers’ earned wages that are not paid shrinks by 3.8 percentage points to 20.1 percent.
Appendix Table A2 Sensitivity analysis Category Total number of minimum-wage-eligible workers Eligible workers experiencing minimum wage violations Number Share of eligible workers Average hourly under-payment Average weekly under-payment Average weekly wages received Average annual under-payment if full-year Average annual wages received if full-year Share of earned wages not paid Baseline analysis 59,014,000 2,422,000 4.1% $1.88 $64 $203 $3,300 $10,500 23.9% Hourly workers only 37,887,000 1,352,000 3.6% $1.57 $48 $189 $2,500 $9,800 20.1% Change from baseline -35.8% -44.2% -0.5 ppt -16.5% -25.0% -6.5% -25.0% -6.5% -3.8 ppt Excluding proxy responses 28,629,000 948,000 3.3% $2.08 $73 $207 $3,800 $10,700 26.1% Change from baseline -51.5% -60.9% -0.8 ppt 11.0% 14.7% 1.9% 14.7% 1.9% 2.2 ppt Only hourly violations >$0.25 59,014,000 1,999,000 3.4% Change from baseline 0.0% -17.5% -0.7 ppt Note: Full-year annual wages are calculated by multiplying weekly wages by 52 weeks per year. Numbers may not add due to rounding. Shares are computed based on unrounded numbers. Sample includes workers age 16 to 85 in the 10 most populous states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Source: EPI analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group data, 2013–2015 Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image
The third row of Appendix Table A2 shows results excluding all CPS responses that were given by a member of the household on another member’s behalf—i.e., proxy responses. Because household members may not be fully informed of each other’s exact wage rates and work schedules, proxy responses can be more susceptible to measurement error. When we exclude proxy responses, the analyzed workforce is cut roughly in half. We find that 3.3 percent report being paid wages below the minimum wage—a reduction of 0.8 percentage points from the baseline analysis. The average hourly wages lost actually increases by 11.0 percent, and the weekly wages lost increases by 14.7 percent. In this specification, workers report losing, on average, 26.1 percent of their earned pay.
For the last row of Appendix Table A2, we do not count instances of minimum wage violations if the reported or calculated hourly wage is within 25 cents of the applicable minimum wage. Researchers have found that CPS respondents are prone to round their hourly wage rates to the nearest dollar—e.g., reporting an hourly wage of $7.00 when they are actually paid $7.25. Thus, in this specification, we assume that reported wages as low as $0.25 below the applicable minimum wage are instances of errors in reporting, not wage theft. With this leeway, the share of the workforce experiencing minimum wage violations falls by 0.7 percentage points to 3.4 percent. Since we are restricting the pool of affected workers to those that experience wage theft of more than 25 cents, we do not report changes in the amount of lost wages as we would be directly biasing any such calculations.
While there is undoubtedly measurement error in the CPS-ORG data, it is still the best available public data source on hourly wages. Where possible, we have taken the more conservative approach in our estimates, particularly in how we handle exemptions and how we construct hourly wage values for non-hourly workers. The results of these sensitivity tests show that even when we limit our sample to those observations with the most accurate wage information, or allow for greater error in the wage measure before designating a violation, we see that there are still millions of workers who appear to be victims of wage theft and that their losses are substantial.
Additional tables
Appendix Table A3 shows the full demographic and wage statistics for the minimum-wage-eligible workforce and workers suffering minimum wage violations in the 10 states studied. Appendix Tables A4 through A13 show the same statistics for each individual state.
Appendix Table A3 Summary statistics on minimum wage violations in the 10 most populous states Category Minimum-wage-eligible workers Eligible workers experiencing minimum wage violations Total number Share of total Number Share of total group Group’s share of category Average hourly underpayment Average weekly underpayment Average annual underpayment if full-year Total earned annual wages not paid to workers Average weekly wages received Average annual wages received if full-year Total annual wages received by workers experiencing minimum wage violations Share of earned wages not paid All workers 59,014,000 100.0% 2,422,000 4.1% 100.0% $1.88 $64 $3,300 $8,002,000,000 $203 $10,500 $25,500,000,000 23.9% Low-wage earners 14,094,000 23.9% 2,422,000 17.2% 100.0% $1.88 $64 $3,300 $8,002,000,000 $203 $10,500 $25,500,000,000 23.9% Gender Men 31,521,000 53.4% 1,088,000 3.5% 44.9% $1.78 $64 $3,300 $3,624,000,000 $216 $11,300 $12,200,000,000 22.8% Women 27,493,000 46.6% 1,334,000 4.9% 55.1% $1.95 $63 $3,300 $4,378,000,000 $191 $9,900 $13,300,000,000 24.8% Age Under 20 2,031,000 3.4% 276,000 13.6% 11.4% $1.26 $31 $1,600 $439,000,000 $151 $7,900 $2,200,000,000 16.8% 20 and over 56,983,000 96.6% 2,145,000 3.8% 88.6% $1.95 $68 $3,500 $7,564,000,000 $209 $10,900 $23,300,000,000 24.5% 16–24 8,607,000 14.6% 791,000 9.2% 32.7% $1.69 $50 $2,600 $2,060,000,000 $173 $9,000 $7,100,000,000 22.5% 25–54 39,012,000 66.1% 1,240,000 3.2% 51.2% $1.95 $70 $3,600 $4,524,000,000 $221 $11,500 $14,300,000,000 24.1% 55–85 11,395,000 19.3% 390,000 3.4% 16.1% $2.00 $70 $3,600 $1,418,000,000 $204 $10,600 $4,100,000,000 25.5% Race/ethnicity White 32,872,000 55.7% 1,141,000 3.5% 47.1% $2.04 $67 $3,500 $3,966,000,000 $186 $9,700 $11,000,000,000 26.5% Black 7,205,000 12.2% 353,000 4.9% 14.6% $1.67 $55 $2,900 $1,013,000,000 $203 $10,600 $3,700,000,000 21.4% Hispanic 13,834,000 23.4% 708,000 5.1% 29.2% $1.69 $60 $3,100 $2,227,000,000 $225 $11,700 $8,300,000,000 21.2% Other 5,103,000 8.6% 220,000 4.3% 9.1% $1.94 $69 $3,600 $795,000,000 $217 $11,300 $2,500,000,000 24.3% Marital & family status Married parent 15,139,000 25.7% 417,000 2.8% 17.2% $1.92 $70 $3,600 $1,519,000,000 $229 $11,900 $5,000,000,000 23.5% Single parent 4,713,000 8.0% 223,000 4.7% 9.2% $2.06 $69 $3,600 $800,000,000 $204 $10,600 $2,400,000,000 25.3% Married, no kids 15,246,000 25.8% 451,000 3.0% 18.6% $1.95 $71 $3,700 $1,675,000,000 $219 $11,400 $5,100,000,000 24.6% Unmarried, no kids 23,916,000 40.5% 1,331,000 5.6% 55.0% $1.80 $58 $3,000 $4,008,000,000 $189 $9,800 $13,100,000,000 23.5% Family income Less than $10,000 2,186,000 3.7% 185,000 8.4% 7.6% $1.99 $68 $3,500 $649,000,000 $196 $10,200 $1,900,000,000 25.6% $10,000–$24,999 6,991,000 11.8% 512,000 7.3% 21.2% $1.83 $62 $3,200 $1,662,000,000 $207 $10,800 $5,500,000,000 23.1% $25,000–$39,999 9,707,000 16.4% 478,000 4.9% 19.7% $1.81 $62 $3,200 $1,546,000,000 $208 $10,800 $5,200,000,000 23.0% $40,000–$59,999 10,630,000 18.0% 415,000 3.9% 17.1% $1.85 $64 $3,300 $1,377,000,000 $208 $10,800 $4,500,000,000 23.5% $60,000–$99,999 15,051,000 25.5% 470,000 3.1% 19.4% $1.86 $62 $3,200 $1,528,000,000 $201 $10,400 $4,900,000,000 23.7% $100,000–$149,999 8,178,000 13.9% 205,000 2.5% 8.5% $1.94 $62 $3,200 $664,000,000 $189 $9,800 $2,000,000,000 24.9% $150,000 or more 6,272,000 10.6% 157,000 2.5% 6.5% $2.07 $71 $3,700 $577,000,000 $186 $9,700 $1,500,000,000 27.6% Industry Construction 3,570,000 6.0% 77,000 2.2% 3.2% $1.85 $70 $3,700 $283,000,000 $237 $12,300 $1,000,000,000 22.9% Manufacturing 6,760,000 11.5% 130,000 1.9% 5.4% $1.84 $68 $3,600 $461,000,000 $236 $12,300 $1,600,000,000 22.4% Retail 7,582,000 12.8% 358,000 4.7% 14.8% $1.25 $41 $2,100 $763,000,000 $208 $10,800 $3,900,000,000 16.4% Agriculture, forestry, and fishing 467,000 0.8% 43,000 9.1% 1.8% $1.65 $71 $3,700 $157,000,000 $276 $14,400 $600,000,000 20.4% Wholesale 1,659,000 2.8% 41,000 2.5% 1.7% $1.58 $62 $3,200 $131,000,000 $254 $13,200 $500,000,000 19.5% Transportation and utilities 3,456,000 5.9% 96,000 2.8% 4.0% $1.77 $72 $3,800 $362,000,000 $253 $13,100 $1,300,000,000 22.3% Information 1,323,000 2.2% 36,000 2.7% 1.5% $2.03 $64 $3,400 $122,000,000 $167 $8,700 $300,000,000 27.9% Financial activities 3,625,000 6.1% 84,000 2.3% 3.5% $2.25 $83 $4,300 $362,000,000 $209 $10,900 $900,000,000 28.5% Professional and business 6,432,000 10.9% 192,000 3.0% 7.9% $1.81 $64 $3,300 $635,000,000 $223 $11,600 $2,200,000,000 22.2% Education and health 12,027,000 20.4% 324,000 2.7% 13.4% $1.90 $64 $3,300 $1,073,000,000 $202 $10,500 $3,400,000,000 23.9% Food and drink service 4,394,000 7.4% 627,000 14.3% 25.9% $2.21 $68 $3,500 $2,209,000,000 $168 $8,700 $5,500,000,000 28.8% Other leisure and hospitality 1,840,000 3.1% 124,000 6.8% 5.1% $1.72 $60 $3,100 $388,000,000 $194 $10,100 $1,300,000,000 23.6% Other industries 5,880,000 10.0% 289,000 4.9% 12.0% $2.01 $70 $3,700 $1,057,000,000 $205 $10,700 $3,100,000,000 25.5% Occupation Management 6,935,000 11.8% 98,000 1.4% 4.1% $2.74 $115 $6,000 $589,000,000 $211 $11,000 $1,100,000,000 35.3% Professional 11,630,000 19.7% 192,000 1.6% 7.9% $2.26 $78 $4,100 $778,000,000 $200 $10,400 $2,000,000,000 28.0% Service 11,704,000 19.8% 1,126,000 9.6% 46.5% $2.05 $66 $3,400 $3,849,000,000 $187 $9,700 $10,900,000,000 26.0% Sales 6,970,000 11.8% 364,000 5.2% 15.0% $1.37 $46 $2,400 $877,000,000 $206 $10,700 $3,900,000,000 18.4% Office and administrative support 7,674,000 13.0% 197,000 2.6% 8.1% $1.46 $44 $2,300 $447,000,000 $203 $10,500 $2,100,000,000 17.7% Farming, forestry, and fishing 351,000 0.6% 41,000 11.6% 1.7% $1.70 $77 $4,000 $164,000,000 $281 $14,600 $600,000,000 21.6% Construction and extraction 3,090,000 5.2% 73,000 2.4% 3.0% $1.73 $65 $3,400 $249,000,000 $241 $12,500 $900,000,000 21.3% Installation, maintenance, and repairs 2,281,000 3.9% 39,000 1.7% 1.6% $2.06 $82 $4,300 $167,000,000 $219 $11,400 $400,000,000 27.2% Production 4,030,000 6.8% 104,000 2.6% 4.3% $1.71 $61 $3,200 $330,000,000 $234 $12,200 $1,300,000,000 20.7% Transportation 4,350,000 7.4% 188,000 4.3% 7.8% $1.53 $56 $2,900 $552,000,000 $235 $12,200 $2,300,000,000 19.4% Worker status Part time (<20 hours) 3,156,000 5.3% 307,000 9.7% 12.7% $1.54 $20 $1,100 $323,000,000 $85 $4,400 $1,400,000,000 19.2% Mid time (20–34 hours) 8,817,000 14.9% 844,000 9.6% 34.9% $1.88 $48 $2,500 $2,101,000,000 $158 $8,200 $6,900,000,000 23.2% Full time (35+ hours) 47,042,000 79.7% 1,271,000 2.7% 52.5% $1.95 $84 $4,400 $5,578,000,000 $261 $13,500 $17,200,000,000 24.5% Education Less than high school 6,281,000 10.6% 559,000 8.9% 23.1% $1.49 $51 $2,700 $1,482,000,000 $212 $11,000 $6,200,000,000 19.4% High school 16,789,000 28.4% 752,000 4.5% 31.1% $1.83 $63 $3,300 $2,451,000,000 $206 $10,700 $8,100,000,000 23.3% Some college 18,152,000 30.8% 772,000 4.3% 31.9% $2.02 $65 $3,400 $2,630,000,000 $191 $9,900 $7,700,000,000 25.5% Bachelor’s degree or higher 17,791,000 30.1% 338,000 1.9% 14.0% $2.30 $82 $4,300 $1,439,000,000 $207 $10,700 $3,600,000,000 28.4% Nativity & citizenship U.S.-born 45,934,000 77.8% 1,731,000 3.8% 71.5% $1.92 $63 $3,300 $5,657,000,000 $189 $9,900 $17,100,000,000 24.9% Foreign born 13,080,000 22.2% 691,000 5.3% 28.5% $1.76 $65 $3,400 $2,345,000,000 $235 $12,200 $8,500,000,000 21.7% U.S.-born citizen 46,500,000 78.8% 1,750,000 3.8% 72.3% $1.92 $63 $3,300 $5,705,000,000 $190 $9,900 $17,300,000,000 24.8% Naturalized U.S. citizen 5,786,000 9.8% 236,000 4.1% 9.7% $1.87 $69 $3,600 $842,000,000 $230 $12,000 $2,800,000,000 23.0% Not a U.S. citizen 6,728,000 11.4% 436,000 6.5% 18.0% $1.71 $64 $3,300 $1,455,000,000 $239 $12,400 $5,400,000,000 21.2% Union status Union covered 615,000 1.0% 14,000 2.3% 0.6% $1.63 $46 $2,400 $34,000,000 $217 $11,300 $200,000,000 17.4% Not union covered 51,596,000 87.4% 2,288,000 4.4% 94.5% $1.88 $63 $3,300 $7,551,000,000 $201 $10,500 $23,900,000,000 24.0% Union status not available 6,804,000 11.5% 120,000 1.8% 4.9% $1.82 $67 $3,500 $417,000,000 $229 $11,900 $1,400,000,000 22.7% State California 14,569,000 24.7% 590,000 4.1% 24.4% $1.88 $64 $3,400 $1,979,000,000 $224 $11,700 $6,900,000,000 22.3% Florida 5,515,000 9.3% 404,000 7.3% 16.7% $1.57 $54 $2,800 $1,124,000,000 $213 $11,100 $4,500,000,000 20.1% Georgia 3,769,000 6.4% 82,000 2.2% 3.4% $1.94 $71 $3,700 $301,000,000 $203 $10,600 $900,000,000 25.9% Illinois 5,185,000 8.8% 243,000 4.7% 10.0% $1.62 $53 $2,800 $675,000,000 $205 $10,700 $2,600,000,000 20.6% Michigan 2,861,000 4.8% 130,000 4.5% 5.4% $2.05 $63 $3,300 $429,000,000 $169 $8,800 $1,100,000,000 27.3% New York 6,047,000 10.2% 300,000 5.0% 12.4% $1.82 $62 $3,200 $965,000,000 $210 $10,900 $3,300,000,000 22.8% North Carolina 3,111,000 5.3% 84,000 2.7% 3.5% $2.14 $72 $3,800 $316,000,000 $179 $9,300 $800,000,000 28.8% Ohio 3,915,000 6.6% 217,000 5.5% 9.0% $1.65 $53 $2,800 $601,000,000 $185 $9,600 $2,100,000,000 22.4% Pennsylvania 4,299,000 7.3% 107,000 2.5% 4.4% $2.46 $80 $4,200 $448,000,000 $164 $8,500 $900,000,000 32.9% Texas 9,743,000 16.5% 265,000 2.7% 10.9% $2.38 $85 $4,400 $1,165,000,000 $182 $9,500 $2,500,000,000 31.7% Note: Full-year annual wages are calculated by multiplying weekly wages by 52 weeks per year. Numbers may not add due to rounding. Shares are computed based on unrounded numbers. “Low-wage earners” includes all minimum-wage-eligible workers in the bottom quintile of wage earners in each state. Sample includes workers age 16 to 85 in the 10 most populous states: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Source: EPI analysis of Current Population Survey Outgoing Rotation Group data, 2013–2015 Share on Facebook Tweet this chart Embed Copy the code below to embed this chart on your website. Download image
Appendix Table A4 Summary statistics on minimum wage violations in California Category Minimum-wage-eligible workers Eligible workers experiencing minimum wage violations Total number Share of total Number Share of total group Group’s share of category Average hourly underpayment Average weekly underpayment Average annual underpayment if full-year Total earned annual wages not paid to workers Average weekly wages received Average annual wages received if full-year Total annual wages received by workers experiencing minimum wage violations Share of earned wages not paid All workers 14,569,000 100.0% 590,250 4.1% 100.0% $1.88 $64 $3,400 $1,979,000,000 $224 $11,700 $6,886,000,000 22.3% Low-wage earners 3,071,000 21.1% 590,250 19.2% 100.0% $1.88 $64 $3,400 $1,979,000,000 $224 $11,700 $6,886,000,000 22.3% Gender Men 7,855,000 53.9% 273,340 3.5% 46.3% $1.76 $64 $3,300 $910,000,000 $238 $12,400 $3,388,000,000 21.2% Women 6,714,000 46.1% 316,910 4.7% 53.7% $1.98 $65 $3,400 $1,069,000,000 $212 $11,000 $3,498,000,000 23.4% Age Under 20 376,000 2.6% 49,640 13.2% 8.4% $1.32 $31 $1,600 $80,000,000 $174 $9,100 $450,000,000 15.2% 20 and over 14,193,000 97.4% 540,610 3.8% 91.6% $1.93 $68 $3,500 $1,898,000,000 $229 $11,900 $6,437,000,000 22.8% 16–24 1,988,000 13.6% 183,400 9.2% 31.1% $1.75 $51 $2,700 $487,000,000 $193 $10,000 $1,841,000,000 20.9% 25–54 9,878,000 67.8% 311,750 3.2% 52.8% $1.88 $69 $3,600 $1,121,000,000 $243 $12,700 $3,946,000,000 22.1% 55–85 2,703,000 18.6% 95,100 3.5% 16.1% $2.13 $75 $3,900 $371,000,000 $222 $11,600 $1,100,000,000 25.2% Race/ethnicity White 5,784,000 39.7% 168,980 2.9% 28.6% $2.23 $75 $3,900 $663,000,000 $209 $10,900 $1,834,000,000 26.5% Black 730,000 5.0% 41,950 5.7% 7.1% $1.65 $51 $2,600 $111,000,000 $220 $11,400 $480,000,000 18.7% Hispanic 5,498,000 37.7% 283,270 5.2% 48.0% $1.64 $58 $3,000 $849,000,000 $238 $12,400 $3,510,000,000 19.5% Other 2,557,000 17.5% 96,050 3.8% 16.3% $2.08 $71 $3,700 $356,000,000 $213 $11,100 $1,063,000,000 25.1% Marital & family status Married parent 4,051,000 27.8% 112 |
you invest it all in property because you believe that the price of property always goes up in the long-term? If you made a killing on the stock market, would you cash some (not all) of it in and go on a cruise, or would you reinvest all of it back into stocks because you think in the long-run stocks are always a good investment?
The world’s cruise ships are full of wealthy people who could tell you the answer. Bitcoin has the potential to be the currency that keeps on giving. Who cares if it is an intelligence test? Is that a bad thing? Don’t make the mistake of mixing up an investment that beats inflation with a deflationary asset.
Critics who say that bitcoin owners ‘hoard’ their bitcoins misunderstand that we are at the beginning of a phase of fiat-to-bitcoin conversion. Converting fiat to bitcoin and keeping it is the name of the game. You don’t have to buy bitcoin from people who are pessimistic about the price; there are many people who are sitting on piles of bitcoin and who are quietly converting them to fiat to pay their day-to-day living expenses. Bitcoin wealth is being used for philanthropic donations. It is being used as investment capital, and it is being put up as rewards for further innovation. In short, it is being used for whatever the owner wants to use it for—but it is being used.
So, what should Satoshi do—when he finally decides to do something? The coolest thing he could do would be to use the funds to increase the adoption of the Bitcoin protocol. There are several ways in which this could be done, but acting as an investor is probably the worst. The simplest would be to set up a Bitcoin Faucet Trust that made every recipient a stakeholder in the new financial system. This could be directed (as in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) at the poorest people in the world and give them an asset that could be used to meet their real-world needs. One million coins might be five per cent of the world’s future money supply, but it is only slightly more than the 870,000 that went walkies from Mount Gox and a lot fewer than the billions of people who are financially disenfranchised. Gavin Andresen’s bitcoin faucet was generally agreed to have had a significant effect on adoption; the only problem was that the pump ran dry. We’re going to need a bigger faucet. The effect on the markets would be minimal, but the direct and indirect effects on world poverty could be significant.
I don’t think anybody would object to the outstanding coins being trickled back into the market in that way. It would help the currency, and it would secure Satoshi’s reputation as a great philanthropist as well as a brilliant conceptual economist and mathematician.
What do you think should be done with Satoshi’s millions?
Permalink: http://bitcoinmagazine.com/16142/satoshiBrawn, who is F1’s motorsport managing director, believes great opportunities are being missed on digital platforms through not exploiting the wealth of data, simulations and telemetry that teams have available to them.
He says new owners Liberty Media are working with F1’s technology partners Tata Communications on how best to take the sport to a new level of fan engagement – through the use of Apps, mobile devices and even Augmented and Virtual Reality.
While some changes – including adding WiFi networks to F1 tracks - are pretty straightforward, other aspects will take time but should be hugely popular.
“There is a great layer of information in Formula 1, that we should be making available to the fans, so the fans can watch at whatever level they want to engage in,” Brawn told Motorsport.com.
“I had three years as a TV enthusiast and what I missed was the ability to keep going deeper and deeper into what’s going on in the race.
"I was used to pitwall environment where I had all the information and I had the analysis from my experts being fed in to me as well. So I had a picture of the whole race.
“Imagine that you have all the information available that the strategists have on the pitwall, to decide when they do a pitstop. You simulate all that, you decide when you want a pitstop and you work through it.
“We can make available a necessary program, so people could use it to make their predictions. You have the tyre profile, you have the length of the pitstop, you have the position of the cars and you have the gaps. So you’d be working out a pitstop yourself, which for me would be fascinating.
“With all the fans engaging like that, you can imagine the collection of opinions and debate that would go on. And this is only an example of one aspect of the racing, because there’s so much information out there – and it’s all available.
“The teams do massive analysis of how’s the car behaving, how much understeer it has, how much oversteer it has, what would brake wear be like? If we cross that barrier, to make all that information available, I think the large chunk of enthusiasts would really enjoy seeing all that, both live and retrospectively.”
Speaking to teams
On the technological front, F1 is ready to unleash Liberty’s vision for opening up the data channels and taking it to fans
Tata Communications, which celebrated its 100th race involved with F1 at the Chinese Grand Prix, has already prepared the connectivity needed to do just that – having successfully even completed tests for UHD and OTT broadcasts last year that require huge bandwith.
Brawn said: “We’ve got a framework and we’ve got a platform to almost do whatever we want. And that’s a great position to be in.”
Tata Communications itself believes that if F1 is going to keep expanding its reach, then it has to produce better content that engages audiences.
Mehul Kapadia, head of Tata’s F1 operations, said: “Beforehand you could have the racing experience and not worry about the technology. I think now, the technology is as important as cars going faster. If you consider great racing action and great means to deliver it to audiences, that is where the real punch is.
"What Netflix cracked the code on was to ensure that when you want it, you will get it. Live sports still faces that challenge of, is it interesting enough after I already know who has won? So what do you do to the content to deliver that.”
A new mindset
One of the first hurdles to the digital change will be in convincing teams to give up the wealth of information that they gather themselves.
Brawn knows the value that teams put on understanding their own performance and that of their rivals, but he thinks that F1 as a whole would benefit if everything was made open and shared
“It’s thinking with a bigger picture – let’s stop being so competitive in certain arenas,” he said.
“We know we need to beat each other, but can we cross that barrier and instead say, what we want is a much bigger business. And if we all do it, nobody is going to be disadvantaged or advantaged.
“I remember it was the same with team radio. Teams didn’t want radio conversations broadcast, but now it is a very interesting aspect of the race and nobody thinks about it any more.”
When asked if he had spoken to teams about this idea, Brawn said: “To be fair, we haven’t got our ideas straight on what we feel would be the right requirement from the teams to take this forward.
“I don’t want go out and ask for a bit of this and a bit of that. We really need get our idea straight and we’re in that process. It will take a little while and we can cross that barrier of secrecy.”
Tests this year
Brawn suggests that the first tests for the new ideas could take place as early as this season – with a view to a proper introduction in 2018.
“Maybe some trials this season, but I think next year is more realistic for substantial elements, but there will be pieces coming in this season,” he said.
Change could be coming for the fan experiences at the track too, with plans to finally install a WiFi network at circuits.
One of F1’s previous failures was that despite having a world-class technology expert like Tata on board, it did not push for a connected stadium approach – where fans had access to the best WiFi possible in the grandstand.
Despite sources suggesting Tata could have implemented this ‘in a matter of hours’, Bernie Ecclestone was reluctant to go down that route for commercial reasons. It is something that Brawn says Liberty Media will address soon.
“That’s coming, that’s definitely coming. It’s being worked on,” said Brawn on the Wifi situation.
“You know, the things I’ve spoken about - following a race and understanding the strategy and working out pit stops, if you could do that on a grandstand, on your portable device. Imagine how great that would be.”
Don't forget to have your say on the future of F1 through our Global Fan Survey.eBay user harpel is willing to part with an entire trailer full of sorted Lego pieces for a minimum of $20,000. From his listing:
Let’s cover what is here in this lot. Well, first of all every theme you could ask for. And pretty much every piece Lego has made. I spent years separating and organizing 1000’s of lbs of Lego. I weighed everything in their containers and it all came to around 1158 lbs not including the metal cabinet with Lego instructions.
Yes, you heard that right. He even kept the instructions.
If you’re within 500 miles of Frontenac, Kansas, he’ll even drive it to you. Otherwise, you’ll have to pay the shipping. Of course, if you’d like to pick it up yourself, he’s also willing to part with the trailer that houses the lot of them, for a mere $2,000 more, if that makes your life easier.
Now, $20 per pound is a bit steep, considering that Lego offers its basic brick sets at $30 for two and a half pounds, but we’re guessing the extra $8 or so is due to the fact that this lot is full of minifigures and modern non-rectangular pieces from licensed sets like Star Wars, Batman, and Harry Potter. Also, Lego does not offer pieces in bulk in the US. Also, did we mention that he kept the instructions.
While we don’t currently have the means (in the sense of either money, or storage, or motivation) to take advantage of harpel’s offer, we can still appreciate some of the gems in his listing:
I am also currently going through the lot putting sets together by inventory. These will be bagged and set aside for ease of construction. I am doing this for fun while I am on vacation. I stopped counting mini-figures at 2358. There are more here, I just got tired of counting.
We also highly recommend checking out the extensive photos of his collection.
(via Geekologie.)Congressional leaders have quietly deleted a measure meant to stop the National Security Agency's "backdoor" surveillance of American communications from a major spending bill.
The House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted in June to ban the NSA from searching for Americans' communications in surveillance collected while targeting foreigners. But the omnibus spending package unveiled Tuesday night -- a piece of legislation that must pass to avoid a government showdown -- chucks that NSA safeguard.
"I'm watching the will of the people be subverted. Our representative democracy has been short-circuited with this omnibus," said Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.), a Republican who co-sponsored the original NSA reform measure with Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.).
In place of the backdoor surveillance ban is language that states the NSA must not "target" American citizens' content for surveillance. But the agency's highly specific definition of targeting would still allow it to collect and search Americans' emails as long as they are sent abroad.
"It is a complete placebo. It is restatement of existing law," said Massie. "I'm almost embarrassed that they put it in the bill, because it does absolutely nothing."
Part continuing resolution and part omnibus, the so-called cromnibus incorporates the defense appropriations act the Massie amendment was attached to and was designed by House and Senate leadership. That includes House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Massie previously told HuffPost that McCarthy wrote a slanted description of his amendment that was distributed in the House cloakroom before the June vote. The leadership also includes Senate Appropriations Chair Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who represents thousands of NSA employees.
Massie said he didn't know who blocked the NSA reform.
Senate Appropriations spokesman Vincent Morris did not weigh in on who stripped the backdoor spying ban, but said the alternate language about targeting that Massie called a placebo "has been in the bill for a year and is not new." A House leadership spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
The Massie-Lofgren amendment passed the House on a 293-123 vote in June, with majority support from members of both parties. Its quiet death underscores the obstacles to surveillance reform in the face of deep opposition from intelligence agencies. A Senate NSA reform bill sponsored by Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) died in November when it got 58 votes, two short of the number needed to end debate under Senate rules.
Massie and Lofgren aren't giving up on NSA reform, however. They introduced legislation with Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R- Wis.) on Wednesday that would prevent the government from ordering software companies to insert surveillance "backdoors" in their products. A similar provision was included in the original Massie-Lofgren amendment passed in June.
Massie said the bill won't pass in the waning hours of this Congress, but he has hopes for next year.
"A lot of Republican freshmen... are going to be really good on this issue," he predicted.
This post has been updated with a comment from Senate Appropriations spokesman Vincent Morris.Ubisoft has released the full patch notes for the Rainbow Six Siege update patch 5.3, which will be going live today across all of the game’s supported platforms. While this update is mostly focused on bug fixes, they have added the ability for custom lobby hosts to pause everything while teammates are selecting operators.
There are some notable gameplay tweaks that will be coming with this patch, which will go towards removing some gameplay glitches that have stuck around for awhile now. These include things like being able to move through a reinforced wall, barricade pieces being stuck in place and a lot more. The following are the complete 5.3 update patch notes for Rainbow Six Siege:
Pause Button in Custom Lobby During Operator Selection Phase
We have added a Pause button to the UI that will allow the host of a Player-hosted lobby to pause the match during the Operator Selection phase.
To utilize this functionality, the host will need to press [End]/[Start+D-Pad Up] to stop the timer. Press the button again to resume the timer.
Gameplay
Fixed – Barricade pieces remain stuck in place if hit from a perpendicular angle.
Barricade pieces remain stuck in place if hit from a perpendicular angle. Fixed – In rare instances, a drone is able to use a dead Attacker’s shield to move the Defuser.
In rare instances, a drone is able to use a dead Attacker’s shield to move the Defuser. Fixed – When deploying a reinforced wall, it is possible to pass through the reinforcement.
When deploying a reinforced wall, it is possible to pass through the reinforcement. Fixed – Muzzle brake also hides the flash for side arms.
Muzzle brake also hides the flash for side arms. Fixed – When a shield user goes prone while attempting to use an observational tool (drone), the shield will stay equipped while prone.
When a shield user goes prone while attempting to use an observational tool (drone), the shield will stay equipped while prone. Fixed – In some cases, clipping would cause an Operator’s shield to disappear. This would allow the Operator to be shot through their shield.
Operator
IQ
Fixed – Dropping from any height while holding a breaching charge will make her sidearm invisible.
Tachanka
Fixed – Shotgun pellet impacts do not remain on Tachanka’s LMG Shield.
Shotgun pellet impacts do not remain on Tachanka’s LMG Shield. Fixed – After destroying the LMG Shield, it will reappear for a few frames.
Hibana
Fixed – Getting kills with Hibana will not count towards and SAT Weekly Challenge.
Echo
Fixed – Getting kills with Echo will not count towards and SAT Weekly Challenge.
Getting kills with Echo will not count towards and SAT Weekly Challenge. Fixed – Yokai drones will sometimes hit an invisible wall when jumping through door ways.
Yokai drones will sometimes hit an invisible wall when jumping through door ways. Fixed – Yokai drones will sometimes hit an invisible wall when jumping in 2F Geisha Room on Skyscraper.
Fuze
Fixed – Cluster Charges destroy gadgets without destroying breakable floors.
Valkyrie
Fixed – Black Eye’s remain floating in mid-air when thrown at a broken barricade.
Frost
Fixed – When a trap is placed on an elevated surface, it will trigger even without vaulting onto it.
Blackbeard
Fixed – Corrupted animation when equipping a second rifle shield after the first was destroyed.
Twitch
Fixed – Sound effects from her Shock Drone’s taser does not propagate as intended.
Jager
Fixed – In some instances, Jager’s Magpie devices do not react to Hibana’s pellets.
Kapkan
Fixed – Player’s controller will not vibrate when killed by an EDD.
Game Mode
Bomb
Fixed – Players are unable to see who has the Defuser, drop it, or pick it up on Favela.
Hostage
Fixed – Hostage is not able to be revived if the Hostage goes DBNO and clips with the Kitchen Table.
Tactical Realism
Fixed – Operators with “launcher gadgets” (Hibana and Ash) do not have feedback when reloading.
Spectator Camera
Fixed – When a spectator joins a match in progress, they will not be able to see Tachanka’s LMG Shield.
When a spectator joins a match in progress, they will not be able to see Tachanka’s LMG Shield. Fixed – Following a player outside, they player can sometimes become invisible to the Spectator.
Level Design
Bartlett University
Fixed – Missing camera in Vista Hallway.
Missing camera in Vista Hallway. Fixed – Tachanka has invisible bullet collision at the entrance of 1F Lobby.
Kafe Dostoyevsky
Fixed – Users remain stuck in a vaulting animation after vaulting through the 2F Back Stairs window.
Kanal
Fixed – Operators are able to vault through wooden panels and clip inside of a wall.
User Experience
Fixed – The shield on Tachanka’s LMG is offset during Kill Cam replays.
The shield on Tachanka’s LMG is offset during Kill Cam replays. Fixed – The shield on Tachanka’s LMG is not visible in Support Mode after switching between Tachanka and another Operator.
The shield on Tachanka’s LMG is not visible in Support Mode after switching between Tachanka and another Operator. Fixed – Dud range on Hibana’s X-Kairos launcher is still visible for other players, even after it has been turned off.
Dud range on Hibana’s X-Kairos launcher is still visible for other players, even after it has been turned off. Fixed – Melee kills are displayed as headshots in the kill feed.
Melee kills are displayed as headshots in the kill feed. Fixed – Bandit’s Shock Wire kills are displayed as headshots in the kill feed.
Bandit’s Shock Wire kills are displayed as headshots in the kill feed. Fixed – Kill Camera will sometimes pass through walls.
Kill Camera will sometimes pass through walls. Fixed – In some instances, Operators appear to have raptor legs in the Kill Cam.
In some instances, Operators appear to have raptor legs in the Kill Cam. Fixed – When a player is kicked from a Casual match, they are still able to rejoin it.
When a player is kicked from a Casual match, they are still able to rejoin it. Fixed – When a player is kicked from a Ranked match, they are able to rejoin the same match if it is still running after their 15 minute ban is
Rainbow Six Siege is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Late last year Ubisoft shared information on the game’s year 2 season pass, which includes 8 new operators along with several other pieces of content.- A new report from the Minnesota court system to the legislature details how often cellular surveillance devices are being used to track criminal suspects in Minnesota, but it is also raising questions about whether such court orders should be public, or remain under seal. Of specific interest to privacy advocates is the use of StingRay, a device that can locate cell phones by mimicking a cell phone tower.
FIRST REPORT: State of surveillance: StingRay warrants sealed despite changes in Minnesota law
The report, which is required under state law, says law enforcement was granted 1,820 court orders in a two-year period for devices that could locate suspects. The courts never denied an application. And, for the most part, all the orders remain under seal.
According to the report, suspects were tracked three different ways: through their cell phone (1,202 times), by a GPS tracking device on a car (436 times), and through their social media (182 times).
“Law enforcement is tracking us with our digital devices more than they’re aware of,” said Hennepin County Public Defender Shawn Webb, who tracks the issue.
Two years ago, the legislature added a special provision for electronic tracking devices, like StingRay. That statute requires that law enforcement needed probable cause for a tracking warrant, and that they would generally become public after 90 days.
But the report reveals that the vast majority of those warrants are being applied for under an older provision of the law, that doesn’t specify what device is used, only requires reasonable suspicion a crime has been committed, and the court order remains permanently sealed.
“The disconnect is we have these two statutes that overlap in subject matter, but doesn’t say which is controlling,” Webb said. “Until there’s clarity from legislature or courts there’s going to be this overlap, and law enforcement gets to choose which statute they’ll use.”
According to the report, mobile tracking, a GPS device attached to an automobile, was used 436 times, Pen Register (incoming numbers) and Tap and Trace (outgoing numbers) was used 35 times, and electronic tracking, a device known as StingRay, was used 89 times. But that’s only when the court order specified what type of device was used. On 1,260 occasions it was not specified. It appears that 1,202 of those occasions, it was the cell phone that was being tracked.
More than half the court orders/warrants (804) were applied for by local law enforcement, and the majority were used in narcotics cases (758), followed by sex crimes (206) and homicide (147).TEHRAN – U.S. Senator John McCain has lauded the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO or MEK), describing it as “an example to everyone in the world that is struggling for freedom.”
During a meeting with the head of the MKO, Maryam Rajavi, which was held in Tirana, Albania, Senator McCain said he believed that “the Iranian regime, Bashar Al-Assad and Daesh (ISIS)” were all interrelated.
According to Rajavi’s website, the two sides met on Friday, April 14, to discuss the latest developments in Iran, “the Iranian regime’s nefarious meddling in the region”, and the future prospects.
The MKO, which is currently acting as a proxy against Tehran, has carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials over the past several decades.
“There is no doubt that people in this room have suffered not only themselves, but in the loss of their loved ones,” McCain told MKO members in a gathering.
The MKO fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq and was given a camp by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. It fought on the side of Saddam in the Iraqi imposed war on Iran during which the former Iraqi dictator used chemical weapons against Iranian civilians on a massive scale. The notorious group is also responsible for killing more than 17,000 Iranians in different acts of terrorism, including bombings in public places and targeted killings.
It was listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union in 1997 and 2002 respectively, but as more efforts got directed to vilify Iran, the MKO got delisted by the EU on January 26, 2009 and by the U.S. on September 28, 2012.
For her part, Rajavi praised McCain for his “unsparing efforts” in support of the MKO members in Ashraf and their relocation out of Iraq after they were expelled from Iraq.
“Today, there is a consensus in the Middle East about the clerical regime's destructive role and that the religious fascism ruling Iran is the primary source of war, terrorism and crisis in the region,” she said.
“Regime change is not only indispensable to ending the egregious violations of human rights in Iran but also to establishing peace and tranquility in the region. As long as the clerical regime is in power, it will not abandon the export of terrorism and fundamentalism.”
After Washington formally removed the MKO from its list of terror organizations, the group became able to have its assets under the U.S. jurisdiction unfrozen and do business with the American entities. A number of U.S. officials received hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for speaking on MKO’s behalf ever since.
There is a long list of U.S. politicians from both major parties who have received money for expressing their support for the MKO, including Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House; Bill Richardson, a former New Mexico governor and UN ambassador under Bill Clinton; former Vermont governor Howard Dean; two former CIA directors, James Woolsey and Porter Goss; former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge; former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; former Attorney General Michael Mukasey; former FBI Director Louis Freeh, former UN Ambassador John Bolton; and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell.
However, American officials are not the only ones receiving money from the MKO in exchange for political support. On July 9, 2016, former Saudi intelligence chief and former Saudi ambassador to Britain and the United States Prince Turki al-Faisal Al Saud spoke for 30 minutes before a crowd in Paris, France, for the annual conference of the MKO.
In April 2012, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command trained operatives from the MKO at a secret site in Nevada from 2005 to 2009.
According to Hersh, MKO members were trained in intercepting communications, cryptography, weaponry and small unit tactics at the Nevada site.
“We, the Americans, have continued to provide intelligence and other kinds of material support for the MEK,” he said.
MH/PAMarch 11, 2013 In the wake of the Republicans' 2012 disaster at the polls, the civil war between the GOP’s various factions is in full swing. And the sex obsession of social conservatives, their opposition to conservative gays even being part of the movement, has disgusted and alienated a generation of new voters. If this brand of conservative ends up dominating the GOP and the movement, both will find themselves in the dustbin of history.
CPAC ascending
Witness the Conservative Political Action Conference controversy. First held in 1973, CPAC now attracts 10,000 individuals. Different levels of sponsorship allow groups to have exhibit hall display tables, handouts in conference goodie bags, and program speaking slots. Witness the Conservative Political Action Conference controversy. First held in 1973, CPAC now attracts 10,000 individuals. Different levels of sponsorship allow groups to have exhibit hall display tables, handouts in conference goodie bags, and program speaking slots.
It’s always been a big-tent event that allows various groups to discuss their views and differences: free trade or nationalistic protectionism; marijuana decriminalization or enhanced drug war; circumspect or imperialist foreign policy.
The Fabrizio-McLaughlin survey taken at CPAC-2009 asked participants which of three choices “comes closest to your core beliefs and ideology.” Of 1,757 respondents, a whopping 74 percent chose “to promote individual freedom by reducing the size and scope of government and its intrusion into the lives of its citizens.” Only 15 percent answered “to promote traditional values by protecting marriage and protecting the unborn,” with 10 percent giving a strong foreign policy priority. Libertarian-oriented conservatives seemed in the ascendency.
Big tent deflated
But in 2010 and 2011, the participation of the gay Republican group GOProud caused the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, and prominent social conservatives to boycott the event.
In 2012, with a change in leadership at the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, GOProud was banned and in 2013 it was again told to stay away. For many social conservatives, association with conservative gays is a deal-breaker.
But now dozens of high-profile Republicans have signed a legal brief for a case before the Supreme Court seeking to overturn California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages. And Republicans who haven’t signed the brief but who support such unions include former Vice President Dick Chaney, a conservative favorite, and former first lady Laura Bush.
The battle lines are drawn.
Truths for social conservatives
So it’s time to speak frankly to social conservative friends concerning their position on gays.
marry or not. You don’t like gay marriage? Then don’t marry a gay! I’m a married hetero with two beautiful toddler daughters and gay unions are no threat to my family. First folks, allowing gays to form the specific partnership contract called “marriage” in no way limits your freedom tomarry or not. You don’t like gay marriage? Then don’t marry a gay! I’m a married hetero with two beautiful toddler daughters and gay unions are no threat to my family.
Second, there’s no evidence that gay unions have adverse social effects for heterosexuals. They don't undermine families, spread sexually-transmitted diseases, or encourage the out-of-wedlock births and broken homes that lead to other social pathologies. Even though same-sex unions were banned everywhere until very recently, half of heterosexual marriages now end in divorce.
Third, stop obsessing about the legal piece of paper inscribed with the letters M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E. If you weren’t told, you wouldn’t even know if a gay couple living together in a loving, exclusive relationship had such a piece of paper stashed away in their sock drawer.
Fourth, you’re on the losing side of history. Most young people have no problem with gays or gay marriage. In a decade or so gay marriage in this country will be the rule and the country will be better for it.
Fifth, you’re seen by many people as pig-headed bigots. Don’t give us the “hate the sin, love the sinner” rot. I won’t claim to know your hearts, but how are we to take the fact that many of you won’t attend an event also attended by gay Republicans who probably agree with you on free markets and limited government? You’re alienating potential allies who want nothing to do with a party or movement dominated the likes of you.
Sixth, all the money and effort you put into ostracizing gays and limiting their liberty is money and effort not spent fighting against the expansion of government control over every aspect of our lives. Leftists and socialists love you. You’re wasting your time and looking foolish while they accumulate power.
Seventh, in the end your liberty to live by your values and religion will be attenuated by powerful leftists and socialists. Wait till they go after home schooling!
You social conservatives claim to understand how individuals harm themselves when they allow their whims and urges to rule them unchecked. You seem driven by an irrational obsession concerning gays and other peoples’ sex lives. Resist that master passion! Focus on limiting government in our lives or all of our lives will soon be limited by government. EXPLORE:
Questions For Conservatives About Gay Marriage And Sock Drawers by Ed Hudgins
CPAC 2009: A Focus on Freedom by Ed Hudgins
spiderID=3188Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan. Umit Bektas/Reuters It's not exactly a golden age for Turkish foreign policy.
ISIS is on Turkey's southern border. Ankara's having trouble handling its always fractious relationship with the Kurds. President Reccip Tayyip Erdogan can't seem to go a week without lashing out at his ostensible allies.
And today, Turkey failed in its bid for a two-year term on the UN Security Council, losing out to Spain and New Zealand in a vote before the UN General Assembly over two open seats.
The result comes as a surprise, since Spain is one of Europe's perennial economic trouble spots, and New Zealand is a geographically isolated island nation of 4.5 million people.
Turkey, on the other hand, fancies itself a rising superpower, a NATO member boasting the world's 17th-largest economy along with a sizable and advanced military. Its leaders have even tried to take a leading role in reforming the Security Council in a way that would reflect the ascendancy of emerging powers like Turkey.
Newsweek's Benny Avni was correct in calling today's vote "a tremendous upset." Avni noted that Turkey's foreign minister had hosted a party for diplomats at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria the night before the vote, "where many of the guests predicted an easy victory for Turkey."
But Turkey was apparently complacent and didn't realize how dead set its two biggest rivals in the Middle East were against letting Ankara hold one of 15 UNSC votes. Per Avni, the two countries most suspicious of the Muslim Brotherhood wanted Erdogan to pay a tangible diplomatic cost for his support for the group:
In the past few days, according to several diplomatic sources, there was an intense campaign, led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, against Turkey's membership in the council. The two countries are angered by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which both are fighting at home.
Another possible explanation is Turkey's disastrously muddled handling of its border with Syria. Turkey has lined tanks along the border near the besieged city of Kobane, but steadfastly declined to come to the city's aid as ISIS closed in — at the same time its officials were slamming the allied bombing missions against Islamic State fighters as a "PR campaign."
Turkey has taken a harder line against Syrian President Bashar Assad than just about any other NATO country, something that's led to the government turning a systemic blind eye toward jihadist recruiting within its own borders.
The vote not only denies Turkey one of the most prestigious and powerful positions in the entire international system — it's also a sign of how frustrated much of the world is with Ankara's trajectory, and how ineffective Iraq and Syria's northern neighbor now is at stating its case.CARACAS, VENEZUELA—Ousted Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma said he plans to take his fight against Venezuela’s socialist government to Europe after he escaped house arrest and fled to Colombia on Friday. The flight was an apparent embarrassment for security forces who had been keeping close watch over one of Venezuela’s most prominent opposition leaders. “I’m more useful fighting for Venezuela’s democracy abroad than I am as a hostage at my home,” Ledezma told The Associated Press in a phone interview minutes before boarding a Madrid-bound plane in Colombia’s capital.
Former Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma is shown in this 2009 file photo. The former mayor escaped house arrest in Caracas and arrived in Colombia, Friday. ( Eraldo Peres / The Associated Press file photo )
He said the decision to flee Venezuela was his alone, kept secret even from his family, which has been living abroad. He provided no details of how he sneaked past the Sebin intelligence police officers stationed 24 hours a day outside his residence, but said that during the long, nighttime drive past several national guard checkpoints to Venezuela’s western border, he relied on the help of members of the security forces he described as increasingly fed up with President Nicolas Maduro. Read more: Venezuela’s creditor meeting is a bust as S&P declares country in default
Article Continued Below
He was one of the leaders of anti-government protests that rocked Venezuela in 2014 that also led to the jailing of other prominent opponents, including Leopoldo Lopez, who remains under house arrest. “This decision I took consulting only my conscience,” he said, adding that he had spoken by phone to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, who offered his support. Colombian immigration authorities said in a statement that Ledezma entered the country legally after crossing the Simon Bolivar bridge separating the two countries. There was no immediate reaction from the Venezuelan government. As Venezuelans were waking up to the news of Ledezma’s escape and resurfacing in Colombia, several heavily armed police officers surrounded his residence in Caracas. Ledezma, 62, was removed as mayor of Caracas and detained in 2015 on charges of plotting to oust Maduro. After a few months in jail he was released and placed under house arrest due to health issues.
He was one of the leaders of anti-government in protests that rocked Venezuela in 2014 that also led to the jailing of other prominent opponents, including his former cellmate Leopoldo Lopez, who remains under house arrest. He said the decision to abandon his homeland was driven by unspecified threats intended to force the opposition to resume politically fraught negotiations with the government. Ledezma was forcibly taken from his home in the middle of the night in August and thrown back in jail for a few days as the government cracked down on opponents following criticism of a vote granting the ruling party nearly unlimited powers.
Article Continued Below
Ledezma has adamantly criticized other members of the opposition alliance for being too accommodating with the government. Lawmakers from his Alliance for the Brave People political party were among a small group of hardliners who this week formed their own parliamentary bloc after the main opposition alliance sent representatives to the Dominican Republic to discuss an agenda for future talks with senior officials. Those negotiations are slated to begin Dec. 1 under international mediation from six nations, including Maduro’s leftist allies Nicaragua and Bolivia. “I’ve never been an enemy of dialogue, but these talks are a joke,” Ledezma said. Having outlasted months of deadly unrest and consolidated his grip on power, Maduro is hoping he can convince the opposition to sign off on plans to restructure Venezuela’s foreign debt as U.S. financial sanctions exacerbate the country’s economic misery. Years of mismanagement and decline in oil output have brought Venezuela’s economy to its knees, with inflation running in the triple digits and many people struggling to eat three meals a day. This week, several ratings agencies and a finance industry group said Venezuela had defaulted on its foreign bonds after missing several payments. Maduro has blamed a financial “blockade” imposed by the Trump administration for delaying payments and said Venezuela will continue to honour its debt, as it |
of people who worry about that,” the Yale- and Columbia-educated Dean said.
Watch the clip to see how Scarborough rates a college degree—and how he takes Dean to school on the question, which appears to have become important in some quarters as Walker rises among his Republican peers in the polls.
It's unfortunate the media chose to politicize this issue during our trade mission to foster investment in WI. — Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) February 11, 2015
This post has been modified.
>>> Commentary: Howard Dean Judges Scott Walker for Not Having a College Degree. Why He Shouldn’t.Jay Frye, president of competition and operations at IndyCar, has pledged to try and change the procedures that can harm the “purity” of the races, and to try and ensure the best teams and drivers at any given event, rather than the lucky ones, are rewarded.
One of the regular topics of debate over the past decade and more has been the automatic closing of the pits under full-course cautions. Even at its best, this eliminates the gaps between cars, but at its worse it can upend the running order.
If some drivers have pitted already and then the yellows fly, those who haven’t pitted – perhaps because they’ve been better at going fast while fuel saving – are left stranded on the track at pacecar speed, allowing those who have pitted already to pack up behind them, and then hit the front once the pitlane is opened and the leaders go for their fuel and tire stops.
Frye told Motorsport.com that he wishes to alter this procedure so as not to punish the best drivers.
“Every offseason we look at what we did in the prior season and examine what we can do better,” he said. “We check out what technology is out there for 2018 that maybe wasn’t there going into ’17, and figure out how that might help what we’re currently doing from a procedural process.
“And closing the pits under yellow falls under that discussion topic. Anything we can do to make track position and running order less random, the better. We owe it to our teams, drivers and our fans to come up with a solution that doesn’t randomize things, doesn’t leave people asking questions and wondering what just happened.
“So I’m going to COTA for the Formula 1 race this weekend to see what technology they have that could help us, what would fit for us. Having Cosworth and Pi electronics for all teams and engines in IndyCar should make it possible to come up with a solution.”
Although Frye wasn’t yet prepared to discuss how they might impose speed restrictions – via Race Control, virtual safety car, fixed speeds past accident scenes, etc. – he did say that protecting drivers and safety crew members would remain the imperative part of any new procedure. The main reason for currently closing the pits under caution is so those who haven’t pitted won’t continue at racing speed past an accident scene in order to pit and regain the track without losing their on-track advantage over those who’ve stopped already.
“There’s the purity of the event to consider, and also the safety component to consider,” said Frye. “So can we have a sort of hybrid procedure going forward, so pit closures aren’t automatic? Can there be times when we don’t close the pits, and times when we do?
“Maybe we do it differently according to the type of venue. Some of our limitations have been imposed by the diversity of the series’ tracks, so for example, when we go to street courses, there are certain things we can’t do. Timelines on city streets or runways can become an issue.
“But we are looking different technology to see if we can find a solution that will make a positive difference. We’ll come up with A, B and C options, talk to everybody about these and get their opinions. Then once we decide on the solution and write the rules accordingly, we’ll make sure everybody including the fans understand the criteria going forward.”
Oval qualifying procedure set to change
Frye's quest to ensure IndyCar racing is a meritocracy also extends to qualifying procedure on ovals. There have been increasing calls from drivers to change how running order is decided – currently achieved by names being picked out of a hat – since the early runners encounter the least favorable track conditions. Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden and Will Power recently told Motorsport.com that this can be so critical when it comes to race/championship outcomes that an alternative method needed to be found. It’s a point with which Frye agreed.
“Yeah, we’re definitely looking at it, again to remove this random element in a race weekend,” he said. “As you’d imagine, there’s probably five or six legitimate ways of doing it differently – practice speeds, going in reverse order of points, and so on – and we’re looking at several different options.
“Over the course of five or six events, the odds are that the order selection will shake out – good draw, bad draw – but it may not. And like I said, I’m a big proponent of procedures and processes, and the less randomness the better.
“But when you throw out to the team managers different scenarios as possibilities, the answers that come back will point out the nuances of each one, good and bad. So we’ll sort through those nuances for each procedure and decide which is the best.
“So in answer to your question, is oval qualifying going to change from last season? Probably, yes, but I’m not sure which direction we’re going to go yet.”Anne Arundel County police are investigating a home invasion turned shooting in Annapolis.Officers were called to the 1000 block of Skidmore Drive at 2:48 a.m. Thursday on a report of a shooting.A 52-year-old man was at a neighbor's house and reported that he had been shot in the leg.The victim told police that he and his girlfriend were home when someone knocked on the front door and forced their way in. One man pointed a pistol at the victim, who said he grabbed it. In an ensuing struggle, the victim was shot in the leg, police said.The victim kept struggling and wrestled the gun away from the intruder and shot him before fleeing the house, police said. Officers secured the home where they found the incapacitated suspect and the victim's girlfriend.The girlfriend told police that a second man ran from the home after her boyfriend ran.A silver Dodge van was seen fleeing the area.Both the victim and suspect, later identified as Delonta Alonzo Snowden, 37, of Glen Burnie, were taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center for treatment. Police said Snowden is in stable condition and is being guarded pending charges. The victim is also in stable condition, police said.A regional lookout was issued for the van, described as a silver 2009 Dodge, which has yet to be found.The second intruder is described as a black man, 5 feet 5 inches tall, with a medium build, wearing blue jeans and a gray hoodie shirt.Detectives were called in to handle the investigation.Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Eastern District Detective unit at 410-222-6145.
Anne Arundel County police are investigating a home invasion turned shooting in Annapolis.
Officers were called to the 1000 block of Skidmore Drive at 2:48 a.m. Thursday on a report of a shooting.
A 52-year-old man was at a neighbor's house and reported that he had been shot in the leg.
The victim told police that he and his girlfriend were home when someone knocked on the front door and forced their way in. One man pointed a pistol at the victim, who said he grabbed it. In an ensuing struggle, the victim was shot in the leg, police said.
The victim kept struggling and wrestled the gun away from the intruder and shot him before fleeing the house, police said. Officers secured the home where they found the incapacitated suspect and the victim's girlfriend.
The girlfriend told police that a second man ran from the home after her boyfriend ran.
A silver Dodge van was seen fleeing the area.
Both the victim and suspect, later identified as Delonta Alonzo Snowden, 37, of Glen Burnie, were taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center for treatment. Police said Snowden is in stable condition and is being guarded pending charges. The victim is also in stable condition, police said.
A regional lookout was issued for the van, described as a silver 2009 Dodge, which has yet to be found.
The second intruder is described as a black man, 5 feet 5 inches tall, with a medium build, wearing blue jeans and a gray hoodie shirt.
Detectives were called in to handle the investigation.
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call the Eastern District Detective unit at 410-222-6145.
AlertMeNote: Do not read on if you have not seen Season 2, Episode 6 of HBO's "Game of Thrones," entitled "The Old Gods And The New."
"Don't trust anyone. Life is safer that way." -- Shae
Everything is going pretty badly for everyone: Joffrey sits the Iron Throne, but no one -- no one -- wants him there; Theon seizes Winterfell, but instead of a pat on the back, receives a household full of men who hate him; and Daenerys loses her dragons.
In "The Old Gods and the New," we learn that it doesn't matter who you pray to, how often or how hard. It doesn't matter whether you were born to rule or born in a hut across the wall. It only matters whose sword is raised above your neck, ready to cleave it from your shoulders, and how quickly you can shove your own blade into your opponent's stomach.
The Power Rankings
Using a complex algorithm that takes into account each player's wealth, military might and dominion over lands, along with a "bonus" factor that adjusts for unquantifiable assets that could influence events, we've surveyed the lay of the land to figure out who's winning the game of thrones at this point of Season 2.
1. Stannis Baratheon
No sign of Stannis this episode; the title "The Old Gods And The New" left no room for The Red God, the very newest one, as far as Westeros is concerned. Still, between the mysterious power Melisandre, his own fleet, Salladhor Saan's fleet and the bulk of Renly's army, Stannis is the one to beat. How long will he wait before marching north to King's Landing?
2. Tyrion & Tywin Lannister
The smart wing of the Lannister family is doing what it can with somewhat limited resources. Tywin is surrounded by semi-illiterate buffoons (plus one highly literate cupbearer) up in Harrenhall. And Tyrion is spending all his time and energy putting out fires starting by his nephew. Indeed, one of the most satisfying moments of the season this far is his post-riot castigation of Joffrey -- including one of his trademark Kingslaps!
Still, TyTy, as we like to call the pair, is very good at working mediocre situations to benefit the Lannister position: Tyrion showed that by following through on his plan to send Myrcella to Dorne, in the hopes of securing soldiers from the powerful House Martell. And Tywin, in his discussion with Lord Baelish, seemed open to the idea of binding his house to House Tyrell. If those two negotiations go well -- which never a given in turbulent Westeros -- they could end up mustering a force strong enough to defeat Stannis, Robb and anyone else that comes their way.
3. Joffrey & Cersei Lannister
Myrcella's off to Dorne, and just in time. As the royals make their way back, the peasants are rabblerousing. They call Joff a bastard as he trudges past, until one throws shit in his face and he orders his men to kill them all. Instead, the mob coagulates into a mass of hunger and anger, ripping the septon from limb to limb with their hands and thrusting his amputated arm into the air like a trophy.
"I want these people executed," Joffrey screams
"And they want the same for you," the Hound replies.
When they get back, Tyrion is overcome with rage.
"You blind bloody fool," he says. "We've had vicious kings and we've had idiot kings, but I don't know if we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot king."
Tyrion smacks him, before sending men out for Sansa.
"If she dies, you'll never get your Uncle Jaime back," he says to Joff. "You owe him quite a bit, you know."
4. Robb & Catelyn Stark
The Starks are, in some ways, the Eeyores of Westeros, always spouting doom-and-gloom predictions about the proximity of winter. This episode showed why. Things don't generally go the Starks' way for long. As we see in the episode's first scene -- and as Robb and Catelyn discover near its end -- the North has fallen to, of all people, the Greyjoys. Including Winterfell! It seems likely that the Starks, with the help of Roose Bolton's bastard at the Dreadfort, will be able to win back their territory, given that they outnumber the Iron Islanders by a huge margin. But the attack on their home base means that their attention will be diverted from the main task at hand: taking down the Lannisters.
The other thorn in the Starks' side, at least as far as Catelyn is concerned, is Talisa of Volantis, who we at least now know to be a noblewoman, not just an itinerant nurse. When Catelyn arrives at Robb's camp, with Brienne of Tarth in tow, she finds Robb talking to the sultry foreigner. Robb introduces his two favorite ladies, prompting one of the most awkward exchanges in Game of Thrones history:
"Lady Talisa...?" Catelyn asks testily.
"Maigar," Talisa responds. Catelyn's face contorts wildly.
"Maigar," Catelyn says. "Forgive me. I do not know this name."
"An uncommon name here -- an old name in Volantis," Talisa mutters, before literally running away from Catelyn's fury.
Catelyn reminds Robb he's betrothed to Walder Frey's daughter, and so cannot follow his heart. Robb responds with a killer Tom Haverford impression when he mutters "I know..." in falsetto.
5. Margaery Tyrell
After the Lannisters and the Starks, the Tyrells have the greatest forces in Winterfell, according to Littlefinger. Their lands are the fertile crescent of Westeros, "feeding horses and soldiers." The Tyrells have not yet declared for a side, Loras wants revenge on Stannis, and Margaery wants to be queen -- wherever these flowers fall, they'll shift the tide, again.
Wildcards
Sansa Stark
As the riot turns to general melee, a band of men chase Sansa into a corner, where they rip her dress and prepare to rape her. Tyrion sends men after her, but the Hound gets there first. He lifts one man and stabs him, dragging his entrails out, before executing two others
"You're alright now, little bird. You're alright," he says, before throwing her over his shoulder.
Shae tends to Sansa, who doesn't understand why the enraged, starving peasants hate her so much.
"You are everything he will never have," Shae tells her. "Your horse eats better than his children." Sansa says she hates the king, before Shae shushes her, telling her, "Don't trust anybody. Life is safer that way."
Arya Stark
There's a special visitor to Harrenhal this week -- Littlefinger.
But of course Arya knows Petyr -- and though she tries to hide her face, you get the sense he may know her too. In some get-to-know-you time with Tywin, we learn that Jaime, apparently, is dyslexic, and Tywin is a better father than he is a man. After stealing a letter, Arya is caught by Amory Lorch, who chases her. She finds our Cheshire-smile sporting foreigner, Jaqen H'ghar and exhorts him to kill Lorch.
Lorch then walks into Tywin's room... before falling over dead.
Bran Stark
The Little Lord has more composure than ex-foster brother Theon, who's come back to take Winterfell.
"I took it. I'm occupying it. I sent men over the walls with grappling claws and ropes," he tells Bran.
"Why?" Bran asks, as if Theon has just told him that he's stuck his finger up his nose and is now eating his own snot. Still, Bran yields, to keep his men safe. It doesn't work. As Osha tells him, his dream has come true. "The ocean has come to swallow this place," she says.
Theon Greyjoy
"Prince" Theon has come back to roost in Winterfell, but it's not quite the homecoming he expected.
"You know me," he says to the gathered Winterfell residents.
"We know you for a steaming sack of shit," one responds.
Theon is clearly no tactician, but he informs the Maester to tell his sister she will bring 500 men to Winterfell.
Ser Rodrik, one of the floating bodies Bran foresaw, is dragged in.
"It grieves me to meet you as an enemy," Theon says.
"It grieves me that you have less honor than a back alley whore," Rodrik says, before he spits in his face. Theon orders Rodrik to be locked up, but one of his men tells him that Rodrik must pay the iron price.
The Maester pleads with him, as Bran screams, but it's no good.
"I'm off to see your father," Rodrik says to Bran. Over the sound of Bran's wailing, Theon hacks at Rodrik's neck before giving up and kicking his head from his body as his men and the men of Winterfell look on. He can't even get this right. Osha offers her services to Theon, who's uninterested until she takes her shirt off. He gives her her freedom, and in return, she slits the throat of one of his men before escaping with Hodor, Bran, Rickon and their dogs.
"Gods help you, Theon Greyjoy," Rodrik says before he dies. "Now you are truly lost." Judging by the bleak look on Theon's blood spattered face, he's probably right.
Jon Snow
As the men of the Wall trudge through the Arctic terrain of the North, Qhorin has some advice for Jon.
"Your death will be a gift to them south of the wall," he says. "They'll never know what you've done, they'll never know how you died, they'll never even know your damn name, but they'll be alive because some nameless bastard gave his life for theirs."
Jon seems impressed. Qhorin isn't.
"You're even dumber than you look," he says. "It's just words, boy. Keep us a little warmer in the night, make us feel like we got a purpose."
Soon, they come upon a band of wildlings and slay them -- but when Jon realizes the furry bundle he's about to kill is a woman, he can't do it. He volunteers to kill her, but she manages to run away before he pulls a Mario-style slide down the mountain and unlike Theon, he brings his sword down on the stone rather than killing her. She uses the moment to escape, before he captures her again. But by the time he's done, the men are gone and he has to bed down with Ygritte, his new redhaired wildling buddy. Like Qhorin, she recognizes his valor, and his idiocy.
"You're brave. Stupid, but brave," she says with a sort of longing on her face, before longing turns to mischief and she starts rubbing herself against Jon.
To mix references, Jon is definitely a Gryffindor.
Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish
Petyr comes with an offer for Tywin, who's unimpressed.
"Yes, a crisis is an opportunity. What other brilliant insights have you brought me today?" Tywin retorts.
Whether or not he sees Arya, nothing gets in the way of Littlefinger's profound skill for self-preservation.
Daenerys Targaeryn
As our silver-haired queen makes the rounds in Qarth like a startup founder pitching venture capitalists, she finds that dragons aren't quite enough to make her a good investment. The merchants dismiss her words as dreams.
But Dany responds: "I'm no ordinary woman. My dreams come true."
When she gets back to her lodgings, her men lay slain across the ground, her dragons are missing and a mysterious cloaked figure walks away with a screeching basket. Even the best of dreams can become nightmares.
Differences from the Book
As ever, chime in if you think we've missed something! These can be hard to spot. Though they were particularly numerous and egregious this week.Ubisoft is a major force in the console and PC world, owning such powerful franchises as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and the Tom Clancy games. They’ve had a mild presence on Windows Phone so far, with two Gameloft published Xbox games: Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles and Splinter Cell: Conviction, the self-published Babel Rising 3D (a bad game on any platform but particularly abhorrent on Windows Phone), and a couple of companion apps for console titles. Still, one terrible game is far from the best that Ubisoft can do for Windows Phone. They publish a fair share of quality mobile titles on other platforms that we have yet to see on our own. Blessedly, that appears to be changing quite soon. Ubisoft’s 2012-2013 Sales Report has quickly leaked three upcoming Windows Phone titles, which I think is cause for a little noise! Read on for our descriptions and predictions.
Monster Burner
All screenshots from iOS versions.
This one’s a challenging action/puzzle game in which hordes of monsters descend from the top of the screen. To keep them from reaching the bottom, you’ll need to tap the screen and send fireballs at the encroaching villains. Longer taps produce larger fireballs, but they also consume more of your precious mana. Running out leaves you vulnerable, so you’ll need to let it recharge between attacks. Monster Burner possesses some of the best art you’ll find in a mobile game. It’s also quite challenging, though the iOS game offers a Kids Mode to ease the pressure. The game has a big focus on collecting gold to purchase powerups, which of course make things easier as well. The iOS version of Monster Burner is a free-to-play game which is monetized through optional PDLC gold purchases. Microsoft has yet to truly open up to freemium games, as the only Windows Phone examples so far (Contract Killer and Gun Bros) both came out terribly, and Gunstringer: Dead Man Running on Windows 8 was designed as free but ended up costing money. The existing game also offers a new level for free every single day, though those levels might be built-in as opposed to downloads. It will be interesting to see how much of the freemium design and daily level features make the cut on Windows Phone. Rabbids Go Phone Again
This one’s more of a humorous app as opposed to an actual game, so I wouldn’t expect it to have Xbox features. The rabbit-like Rabbid characters debuted in Rayman: Raving Rabbids on Wii and have gone on to star in their own generally mediocre spin-off games. Go Phone Again basically allows players to tease and dress up their own virtual Rabbid. The little critter has a fair assortment of moves to discover by poking at prodding at it in various ways. He reacts to turning the phone (by falling over) and even dances to the user’s music collection on iOS. The only goal is to find all the moves you can. On iOS this one costs 99 cents and has two in-app purchases – we’ll see whether the same pricing system carries over to Windows Phone. Rayman Jungle RunThe province should test online voting with a pilot project during a byelection down the road, Elections Ontario recommends.
In a two-part, 271-page report to the legislature tabled Monday, Chief Electoral Officer Greg Essensa said it's time to embrace technological changes in order to encourage more people to vote.
"Voter participation in the electoral process is declining. In the 2011 general election, for the first time, voter participation dropped below 50 per cent, setting a record low for voter turnout, in Ontario," wrote Essensa.
"We need to identify and remove barriers in our processes and procedures that may discourage people from voting."
Essensa said his weighty study, "Alternative Voting Technologies Report," will serve as "the framework that we will employ as we move forward on our principled approach to innovation."
But there are security and technological challenges to online or telephone voting, he concluded after looking at experiences in Australia, Estonia, the U.S., the United Kingdom and various Canadian municipalities.
These include "identifying the need to overcome capacity challenges by building and supporting the infrastructure required to manage a system for the entire province" and understanding that there will be "significant costs associated with pilots and integrating network voting into a general election (more than $2 million per use of the system)."
As well, there is "the need for a two-step authentication process, given the lack of a government-issued ID card or digital authentication certificate."
The chief electoral officer said for a pilot project in a byelection, which would cost about $1.75 million, voters could use their driver's licence as identification.
"While verifying a user's identity using this form of identification is the best means currently available, it has a direct impact on voters who cannot obtain a driver's licence," he wrote. "While this compromise could be considered acceptable for the pilot, Elections Ontario would need to pursue a more universal form of identification or other personal data for future elections."Ringside
Edis Tatli (29–2) gets a chance to revenge his split decision defeat against Francesco Patera (18–2). Tatli and Patera will meet for the second time on 12th December in Finland.
Tatli and Patera met for the first time in May, as the challenger Patera managed to squeeze out a controversial decision over the EBU champ Tatli. Tatli, his team and Finnish sports journalists were shocked over the verdict, and Tatli’s manager Pekka Mäki filed a formal claim demanding an immediate rematch between the two.
The claim was rejected, but Tatli was named as the mandatory challenger for the victor of Patera’s next fight. Patera was supposed to face Yvan Mendy next, but Mendy had other ideas and withdrew from the fight. Therefore it’s Tatli’s turn after all.
Tatli vows to get his vengeance.
“This time the fight won’t go to the scorecards”, says Tatli.
“I will give him a boxing lesson. If I was too passive in our last fight, now it’s different. I will give him a beating and become the European champion once more.”
The fight, dubbed as The Rematch, will take place at Kisahalli, Helsinki. More info about the event will be published next week.Spirit Airlines will begin nonstop daily service from BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport to Los Angeles and Atlanta this summer, continuing its ongoing growth at the Anne Arundel County airport since 2012.
Spirit, which bills itself as an "ultra-low cost" airline but adds additional fees for optional services such as checked bags, will start its daily roundtrip service to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on June 18, BWI officials said Tuesday. The first flight from Los Angeles International Airport to BWI will begin July 9, with the first flight to Los Angeles on July 10.
Spirit first began its growth at BWI in September 2012, when it shifted its regional hub from Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington to BWI and launched flights to two destinations, Fort Lauderdale and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Atlanta and Los Angeles bring the airline's total number of BWI flight routes to nine.
"We welcome these new flights, which will provide our customers with more low fares and more travel options," said Paul J. Wiedefeld, BWI's CEO, in a statement.
The airline also announced additional city connections via LAX and ATL on Tuesday.
So far this year, Spirit has announced 37 new routes nationwide.
krector@baltsun.com
twitter.com/rectorsunThe secret to a free-to-play game is not volume. It is not about getting millions of users and relying on only a tiny percentage of that enormous volume to cover your costs.
It is about understanding the power-law. You can read more about the concept in my post How much is your game worth? but the secret to success in free-to-play is this:
Free to play not only removes barriers by letting players play the game for free; it removes the upper limit on how much a committed fan spends by removing the purchase price or subscription.
For an ironic take on this concept, see this cartoon on free-to-play from Penny Arcade.
I know of one company with around a quarter of a million registered users that is grossing $3 million a year and another with fewer than 1.5 million MAUs that grosses $20 million. The power-law business model works.
What is the power-law, and how does it work with online games
The power law simply expresses the idea that not all customers are equal. Some love your game, some will think it’s so-so. Some will have lots of time and no money, others will be vice versa. Some users are happy spending money for many reasons, ranging from convenience to social status.
By designing your game to allow users to spend different amounts of money – by offering consumable items, aesthetic items, power-ups and the ability to exchange time for money – you unlock the ability to let your biggest fans spend a lot of money with you.
(A note on terminology: the term “whales” for your biggest spenders has become dominant. I don’t like it, because it is a deeply unflattering term. I prefer true fans. But then I realised there is a difference between whales and true fans: true fans spend money because of what you do; whales spend money because of who you they are. Enabling true fans to spend lots of money because they love what you do is entirely ethical; targeting whales who can’t help themselves may not be. For more on this, read Whales, true fans and the ethics of free-to-play gaming.)
Modelling the freemium power-law
For the purposes of this spreadsheet, I split your gamers into three groups:
Minnows spend the smallest amount possible in a month, typically $1
Dolphins spend a “middling” amount. Typically I forecast they spend an average of $5 per month
Whales spend a lot. Typically I forecast they spend an average of $20 per month.
Freeloaders (see Whales, power-laws and the future of media) are, of course, the fourth group. They are covered by the conversion rate and not considered here)
For more details on ARPPU, see the separate post on this topic – ARPPU in freemium games.
My starting point for what percentage of your users fit in which bucket is:
Minnows: 50% of payers
Dolphins: 40% of payers
Whales: 10% of payers
Note that this is an approximation of the shape of the power law. You can change the percentages and change the ARPPUs as you like. Just be aware that changing the percentages and ARPPU changes the curve that you are predicting.
Benchmarks
It is pretty hard to get accurate, public benchmarks for how to separate the minnows from the dolphins and the whales. Many companies talk about their ARPPU in round terms. Bigpoint, for example, says that its ARPPU is larger than that of World of Warcraft. That hides a massive concentration amongst the whales.
We’ll keep digging to find publicly available splits of users into whales, dolphins and minnows. However, since it is an approximation to the power law curve, that may take us a long time.
In the meantime, I suggest you work with:
Minnows: 50%
Dolphins: 40%
Whales: 10%
It’s what I’ve seen across many of my clients, but you’ll just have to take that on trust.NEW DELHI: To counter Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's 'NaMo tea stalls', the Congress will now offer milk in the name of its vice president Rahul Gandhi in Gorakhpur, the Indian Express reports.
According to the report, 24 such stalls have been installed in the district by the party as a part of its 'Rahul Milk' campaign.
Mocking the NaMo tea stalls, the Congress workers are persuading people not to visit those counters as tea served by the BJP is 'poisonous'. Instead they want people to drink 'healthy' milk from 'Rahul Milk' stalls.
The 'Rahul Milk' stalls have banners and flex boards affixed over them with Rahul's photographs and even have a slogan with a political punch - "BJP ki zehreeli chai nahin, doodh pilayenge, desh ke naujawano ko pahalwan banayenge."
Gorakhpur district Congress president Syed Jamal was quoted by the Indian Express as saying, "Today we opened more stalls in 19 blocks of Gorakhpur's rural areas."
He added, "Our message is clear that the BJP's tea is spreading communal poison among the people. Tea is a foreign beverage and even doctors ask you to avoid it. But milk is an Indian drink that builds health of youths and gives them strength."
The Congress also boasts of 'Rahul Milk' stalls success. According to the party leaders, around 400 people everyday consume milk from each of the 24 milk stalls. A total of 50 litres of milk is consumed every day, they claim.But in overturning the verdict, the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, ruled that Judge Johnson erred in allowing the jury to hear evidence like the graphic testimony of a survivor of a fatal 2002 bus bombing in Tel Aviv, in which the defendants had not been implicated. Prosecutors had said the testimony was necessary to establish that the defendants knew that Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the bombing, engaged in terrorist activity, a point the defendants did not dispute.
Judge Barrington D. Parker Jr., writing for the appellate panel, said that the bombing, which killed six people, “was almost entirely unrelated” to the charges.
He also wrote that Judge Johnson should not have allowed testimony from another witness, Yahya Goba, who described spending time at a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan that Mr. bin Laden visited.
Prosecutors had called Mr. Goba, over defense objections, to explain the significance of a training camp registration form found by American forces in Afghanistan, on which a trainee had listed Sheik Moayad as having recommended him.
But Judge Parker wrote that Mr. Goba’s testimony ranged far beyond that, as he described the camp’s training in explosives and weapons and the visits by Mr. bin Laden. He also summarized a speech Mr. bin Laden gave in which he talked about the importance of “performing jihad,” Judge Parker noted.
Judge Parker wrote that the value of the testimony of both the Tel Aviv bus bombing victim and Mr. Goba “was far outweighed by its unfair prejudice.”
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.
Robert J. Boyle, the lawyer for Sheik Moayad, who is 60, said he was “extremely gratified” by the decision, “particularly its emphasis on the cumulative effect of the trial errors.”
“I hope this means that Sheik Moayad, who’s elderly and not in good health, will be able to go back to his country in the very near future,” Mr. Boyle said.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Mr. Zayed’s lawyer, Steven A. Feldman, said: “Even in the war on terror, justice knows no country. Justice was served.”
Sheik Moayad, who was sentenced to 75 years in prison, and Mr. Zayed, who is in his mid-30s and received 45 years, are both being held at the federal “supermax” prison in Florence, Colo.
Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn, said, “We are reviewing the decision and will consider the options available to the government before deciding our next course of action.”
If prosecutors choose to retry the case, they will have to go before a new judge, as the panel directed in its 68-page opinion.
Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at the New York University School of Law, said that typically appeals courts assume that when there are trial errors, the lower-court judge will not repeat the mistakes, and the case is returned to the same judge.
“It’s extremely rare to send a case to a different judge simply for errors,” Professor Gillers said. “It shows a lack of confidence.”
The panel, which also included Judges Joseph M. McLaughlin and Richard C. Wesley, also said that the conduct of the prosecutors probably increased the prejudicial effect of the two witnesses’ testimony.
“During both examinations,” Judge Parker wrote, “the government continuously attempted (with a great deal of success) to elicit testimony” that went well beyond the scope of its reasons for calling each witness.The flag of Russia (Russian: Флаг России) is a tricolor flag consisting of three equal horizontal fields: white on the top, blue in the middle, and red on the bottom. The flag was first used as an ensign for Russian merchant ships and became official as the flag of the Tsardom of Russia in 1696. It remained in use until the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet |
the fledgling language. She boldly started out by directly interacting with deaf teenagers at a vocational school. There, she was able to figure out a handful of the more straightforward signs – such as “house” and “what’s up?” – but found herself confounded by the majority of the communication. Frustrated, Kegl moved on to a school for younger children.
The difference between the teenagers’ and the children’s language was striking. The younger speakers of ISN included many more subtleties – for example, verb agreement, in which the number, gender, and/or location of the subject(s) is indicated with verb inflection. It was obvious that the children were using their language at a substantially more fluent level than the teenagers, a finding which coincided with the theorized “critical period” for language acquisition. The idea holds that, in general, young children can rapidly absorb and master new languages until the age of six; the ability declines quickly until age twelve, and after that any acquisition of a new language requires substantially more effort.
In the case of ISN specifically, Kegl suggests that the gestures exchanged by the older students were interpreted by the younger ones as language input. The younger children learned the gestures and very naturally began to add to them, filling in any linguistic gaps encountered along the way. This was what allowed ISN to become a language, rather than a mere set of signs. At this point the older children learned ISN from their younger classmates; their less fluent usage was akin to any second-language acquisition in adulthood. Of course it is still possible that the language could change over time, but it has developed enough that the process would be no different from the gradual shifts of any language.
Kegl and her husband, James Shepard-Kegl, went on to found two experimental schools – the Escuelita de Bluefields and Escuelita de Condega – to teach and observe ISN directly. Teachers at the schools are careful not to introduce any elements of other sign-language systems; these could possibly contaminate the development of ISN. The language now has an estimated 900 to 1200 signers.
The implications of a spontaneously-created language are numerous. Prominent linguists such as Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker have interpreted ISN’s birth as evidence supporting their respective theories that human beings possess an innate capacity for complex language. Obviously it would be unethical to perform an experiment to see whether a group of children left to grow up completely isolated will develop a language, but the circumstances under which ISN was born were similar.
Late prominent American Sign Language researcher William Stokoe, however, believed that the development of ISN may have been helped along by the children’s limited exposure to Spanish and to other forms of signing. Either way, it is incredible that such an elaborate language was improvised and refined by a group of children who had never truly read or heard a single word. ISN’s origins – along with the fact that it is still thriving after twenty years – stands as a testament to the human mind’s natural ambition to express complex ideas, even in the face of serious obstacles.Timothy P. Carney looks through LaHoods disclosures, old and new, and finds so many nuggets.
LaHood first came to office when he was appointed to a vacant State Senate seat a few years ago. In 2011, running for his first full term in the State Senate, LaHood came to Washington for a fundraiser. The fundraiser was hosted by Democratic lobbyist Bernie Robinson, the former chief of staff to liberal Democrat James McGovern of Massachusetts.
Why would a chief of staff for a Massachusetts Democrat throw a fundraiser for a Republican state senate candidate? "Darin is my friend," Robinson said at the time. LaHood had worked in D.C. for years, as a congressional staffer and at the Justice Department. Robinson also has Illinois GOP ties, having been the state's lobbyist in Washington for two years when Republican George Ryan was governor.
Oh, and also Robinson was a transportation lobbyist who was lobbying the U.S. Department of Transportation, at that point run by LaHood's father.
Robinson is a partner at the Livingston Group lobbying firm. Among his practice areas, according to his bio on the firm's website, is "Transportation, Shipbuilding, Shipping and Ports."Margaret Atwood ( @MargaretAtwood ) is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. She won the 2016 PEN Pinter Prize for her writing and political activism.
The Trust Project is a collaboration among news organizations around the world. Its goal is to create strategies that fulfill journalism’s basic pledge: to serve society with a truthful, intelligent and comprehensive account of ideas and events.
By signing up you agree to receive email about events, articles, offers, and the impact of The Walrus in your community. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Hair is in the election-season air. I didn’t put it there—those attack ads on Justin Trudeau introduced the subject, with “Nice hair, Justin”—but now that the hairball has been coughed up, so to speak, let’s consider it.
Hair is a big deal. People spend a lot of time worrying about their hair and a lot of money altering it. Some sculpt it, some dye it, some shave it off. Some hide it under scarves and hats because God, in his or her many forms, has taken a serious interest in hair—telling people to grow it, conceal it, cut it, refrain from cutting it, wear a wig in place of it, not let Delilah hack it off, and so on. Some are born with hair, some achieve hair, and some have hair thrust upon them through laws and customs. Some hair goes missing, leaving either a Mr. Clean macho look or a bowling-ball one, as with Mike Duffy. Some hair is curly, some is straight. Luck of the draw.
Fashion can be a cruel taskmistress, hair-wise. Many are the photos of us with odd hair from former times that we presently seek to conceal. (Ducktails? Beatles bangs? Flowing hippy locks?) My own hair can be interpreted as “Pre-Raphaelite” or “frizzy” depending on the hostility level of the interviewer. I’ve lived through those ’50s smoothening adventures with a product called Dippity Do, as well as the nightmare straight-hair Twiggy years of the late ’60s, which involved other failed processes. After that I gave up.
But back to the hair-strewn attack ads of the Conservatives. What’s the point? Women will recognize “Nice hair” as a pickup line, so I suppose addressing it to a political opponent is a way of girlifying him: the Conservative ad-writers would see girlification as inherently demeaning, their view of girls and women being what it is. But “Nice hair” makes them sound a bit envious, too: no one has ever accused Mr. Harper of having “nice hair.” It also makes them sound trivial. Hair, an election issue? Really?
But let’s suppose that hair is indeed crucial to the question of your vote. Is hair the measure of a man, or woman? Is character destiny, and is hair a clue to character?
Let’s try this hair quiz:
Of the three national male leaders, which one travels with a personal grooming assistant—lavishly paid for in whole or in part by you, gentle taxpayer—so that none of his hairs will ever be out of place, supposing they are indeed his and not a wig, as some have supposed? (Hint: Initials are S.H.)
Which leader, on the other hand, doesn’t need such an assistant because his hair is “nice” enough already? (Hint: Initials are J.T.)
And which one wouldn’t know what a personal grooming assistant was if he fell over one? (Hint: Initials are T.M.)
Yes! You got it right! Smart you!
Next: Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for the micromanagement of Harper’s hair? Is his hair in the public interest? Is it crucial infrastructure? A matter of national security? Or is the pampering just a matter of narcissistic vanity?
Maybe it wasn’t altogether wise for the Conservatives to bring up hair: it focused the hair spotlight. Start with one candidate’s hair and we can’t help thinking about the topside garnishments of the others—not only what they might signify, but also what they might be costing us.
Will the Conservatives now lay off on the personal-appearance attack stuff? Doubtful: they’ve got a thing for it. Jean Chrétien’s paralyzed face, laugh a minute! Trudeau’s hair, woo-woo! Who’s next? “Nice tits, Elizabeth? ”
Wait! I can see it coming! Mulcair’s beard! The Conservatives will have trouble with a straight-out character attack on Mulcair because they regarded the guy so highly they tried to hire him themselves, so they’ll have to fall back on the beard: “Thomas Mulcair. What’s he hiding behind that beard? ”
Don’t go there, Cons! Because then we’ll all start thinking about “hiding.” Why is Harper hiding his campaign events from the public? Is he running for Prime Minister of the whole population—those whose taxes pay, in whole or in part, for him and his hair—and if so, why isn’t he talking to all of us? In his earlier quoted comment, “I don’t care what they say,” who are they? Aren’t you agog to know if you’re on Harper’s hidden “enemy stakeholders list”?
Is he hiding what he knew about the Duffy cover-up, and when he knew it? He’s given four mutually exclusive answers about the subject so far. Is there a hidden real answer?
And if he’s hiding all this, what else is he hiding?On June 16, 1943, Charlie Chaplin slid a wedding ring on the finger of his fourth bride, Oona O'Neill, the 18 year old daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill. The five minute ceremony was performed by a local justice of the peace. The story goes that Chaplin stopped by the Catholic Church in Carpinteria where the priest refused to marry the couple. They sought out the Justice of the Peace at his home on Maple Avenue in the little house which has grown through the years and is now Roxanne's, A Wish and A Dream, Quilting, Knitting and Gifts. The 54 year-old film comedian met his bride eight months earlier when she came to Hollywood after winning a nightclub contest as New York's Glamor Girl of 1942. The fourth Mrs. Chaplin was older than most of the actor's former wives were at the time of their weddings. They were happily married for the rest of their lives and had five children.I was browsing through my canning books from my MFP class and found a recipe I must have missed over and over. There it was, the answer to my sister's question. Can I make a jar of Italian marinated peppers that can mimic the flavor of the jars in the italian market. Since this recipe has a "oil" and "vinegar" as ingredients I had to read it a few times to make sure I wasn't reading it incorrectly. I decided to give it a try and see if the flavors will be close.... And they are! So good and would never buy store bought again!
Marinated Bell Peppers
Yellow and Red Bell Peppers
USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning
4 lbs firm peppers*
1 cup bottled lemon juice
2 cups white vinegar (5%)
1 tbsp oregano leaves
1 cup olive or salad oil
1/2 cup chopped onions
2 cloves garlic, quartered (optional)
2 tbsp prepared horseradish (optional)
Yield: About 9 half-pints
Procedure: Select your favorite pepper.
Peppers may be left whole. Large peppers may be quartered. Wash, slash two to four
slits in each pepper, and blanch in boiling water or blister skins on tough-skinned hot peppers
using one of these two methods:
Oven or broiler method to blister skins – Place peppers in a hot oven (400°F) or under a broiler for 6 to 8 minutes until skins blister.
Range-top method to blister skins – Cover hot burner (either gas or electric) with heavy wire mesh.
Place peppers on burner for several minutes until skins blister.
After blistering skins, place peppers in a pan and cover with a damp cloth. (This will make
peeling the peppers easier.) Cool several minutes; peel off skins.
Flatten whole peppers. Mix all remaining ingredients in a saucepan and heat to boiling. Place 1/4 garlic clove (optional) and 1/4 teaspoon salt in each hot half-pint jar or 1/2 teaspoon per pint. Fill hot jars with peppers.
Add hot, well-mixed oil/pickling solution over peppers, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.
Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if needed. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened
clean paper towel. Adjust lids and process for 15 minutes in a water bath at a full rolling boil.
Yield: About 9 half-pintsEarlier this month, after two exhilarating and exhausting days at the Blended and Personalized Learning Conference in Providence, R.I., (which we cohosted with our partners at Highlander Institute and The Learning Accelerator), I boarded an evening flight back to D.C. Just after takeoff, a school principal from Virginia seated in the row just ahead of me poked his head through the seat to ask:
“So, what’s the difference between blended and personalized learning?”
First off, I want to say kudos to this school leader, who had also attended the conference. Over 48 hours of sharing practices, research, and challenges had me running on fumes. But he was tireless and eager to push the conversation forward.
Second, this moment felt distinctly like a healthy dose of karma given the title we had used for the conference. Not wanting to box ourselves too narrowly into one approach or model, we had taken the route of dubbing the conference theme “blended and personalized learning.” That phrase has become so common in the education lexicon that it’s almost like a single, deeply unfortunate compound noun—blendedandpersonalizedlearning. It’s a mouthful. Not to mention, it hardly lends itself to a pithy hashtag.
I particularly don’t recommend overusing the phrase because collapsing these two terms—blended and personalized—risks diluting the clarity of each and confusing the leaders and educators expected to do the hard work of educating real students in real schools.
So here’s the gist of what I discussed with that school principal, and how we at the Christensen Institute try to make a clear distinction between these related but distinct terms.
Blended learning is a modality of instruction. As we at the Christensen Institute define it, blended learning is a formal education program in which a student learns:
at least in part through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace;
at least in part in a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home;
and the modalities along each student’s learning path within a course or subject are connected to provide an integrated learning experience.
Blended learning, in other words, is a modality in much the same way a textbook, lecture, or project constitutes a modality. It does not refer to a particular philosophy or pedagogy (unless you consider using any technology whatsoever to be a philosophical or pedagogical decision unto itself). Blended learning has both online and offline components. These components of a blended model can be as diverse as the number of students in a given class or as uniform as an utterly traditional classroom.
Put differently, all sorts of learning experiences—from highly behaviorist drill-and-kill exercises to highly constructivist projects or inquiry-based exercises—can be incorporated into online or offline experiences within a blended model. What classifies a school or classroom as blended is not what is being taught, or even the pedagogical decisions of how teaching and learning occurs, but how students access content. If at least some content is delivered online, then an environment is blended.
That said, the current state of blended learning as a modality reflects the current state of education technology as a tool powering that modality. As a result, blended learning in practice can appear to be anchored in particular philosophical or pedagogical characteristics. For example, a large number of blended environments use off-the-shelf online content that offers adaptive exercises to allow students to learn and practice pre-determined content and basic skills. This has led some in the field to bemoan blended learning as at odds with some personalized approaches that aim to allow students to construct their learning from the ground up. But this take on blended learning is short-sighted: it conflates the particular edtech tools gaining traction in schools with blended learning as a modality that stands to evolve as edtech tools themselves do.
Personalized learning, on the other hand, is a broader term, and one that I’m not going to try to define here. (For those interested in definitions circulating in the field, the best synthesis I’ve recently seen is the appendix of the Rhode Island’s statewide personalized learning initiative white paper). But in the current education conversation, personalized learning tends to refer to a host of efforts and models that tailor learning and development to the individual student. These approaches tend to anchor on a particular philosophy about what outcomes we want students to reach and how to best help them get there. And herein, I think, lies a large part of the confusion: the field alternately refers to personalized learning as a collection of modalities and a collection of desired outcomes.
Larry Cuban’s recent look at an array of personalized approaches demonstrates this tendency. Based on his observations of schools in California, Cuban argues that personalized learning exists along a spectrum of corresponding goals and approaches. On one end of the spectrum, personalizing refers to integrating far greater degrees of differentiation to scaffold instruction along a pre-existing set of learning experiences and targets specific behavioral outcomes.
On the other, personalizing refers to moving away from those fixed learning targets or pathways and freeing students to construct learning as they go, in an effort to “reach beyond intellectual and academic outcomes” to cultivate student agency. Many schools, he points out, fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. (I agree more or less with his categorization scheme, although I’d actually argue that his example of VLACS sits much closer to the middle even though he places it at the far end of targeting particular concepts and skills).
Cuban’s spectrum illustrates that to date, schools pursuing personalized learning span a range of philosophies and corresponding modalities.
So back to the original question: what exactly is the difference between blended and personalized learning? Academic debates aside, here’s how I’d summarize it.
Blended learning is an instructional modality that describes integrating technology to deliver some content. Full stop. It’s not more or less than that, and it doesn’t connote a specific set of goals or philosophies.
Personalized learning, on the other hand, is broader and, at least today, connotes philosophical and pedagogical points of view. It’s not just about the mere presence of technology in an instructional model. Rather, personalized learning describes a combination of modalities and goals in a field that is reaching toward better and (and in some cases, new) outcomes for children. Blended learning is often one of those modalities because leveraging some online learning tends to make personalizing learning at scale far more feasible for a single teacher supporting many students spanning different levels of mastery. Depending on the personalized learning outcomes and philosophies a given system subscribes to, blended-learning models and content may look radically different.
Suffice it to say, we had plenty to discuss on the flight.In the NBA's first summer blockbuster, the Celtics will send future Hall of Famers Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Nets, according to sources. What does the trade mean for each side? Our panel examines the deal.
1. Good move or bad move for the Nets?
Kevin Arnovitz, ESPN.com: A wash. As TrueHoop Network alumnus Bret LaGree tweeted earlier Thursday, "Every conversation in the Nets front office [begins] with, 'You know who used to be really good?'" Are the Nets now better than Miami? Indiana? Chicago with a healthy Derrick Rose? That would put them in a dogfight for the fourth seed, which is precisely where they ended up in April.
Jeremy Gordon, Brooklyn's Finest: I'll cop out and call it an interesting move. There are too many questions to prejudge it as a success or failure, but if Garnett and Pierce return at their level from last season, have their minutes managed wisely and immediately jell with the team, it has to be a success. Those two plus Joe Johnson, Deron Williams and Brook Lopez take the Nets from middle-of-the-road to Eastern Conference contender. They also should make the Nets a lot more fun to follow, and isn't that the point?
Brian Robb, Celtics Hub: Good move. Kevin Garnett, Jason Terry and Paul Pierce are old, but all three are still valuable players in the league. Given Brooklyn's limited flexibility in bringing in useful contributors under the new CBA rules, it's hard to argue against making the ultimate push to win now.
Marc Stein, ESPN.com: If you've got an owner willing to absorb all the financial implications of this trade, it's a great move. The Nets weren't going to be able to trade Johnson. They didn't have an otherwise clear path to improving such a high-priced roster. And it's not as though they've thrown away the chance to get under the cap any time soon. So if the boss is willing to let his luxury-tax bill skyrocket, why would you ever protest?
Brian Windhorst, ESPN.com: It's a good short-term move. The talent changing directions at the moment obviously favors Brooklyn. There's no way to know what those draft picks will mean over the long haul. For the past few years the Nets have been spending like maniacs for short-term returns. This move will give them a lot of experience and the ability to play very big, but I'm not sure if it helps them beat a team like the Heat, who are much more athletic, or a team like the Pacers, who can match up and are also more athletic. The Nets are better, but I'm not sure how much better. Said the same thing about their team last year.
2. Good move or bad move for the Celtics?
Arnovitz: Good-ish. With this trade, the Big Dig officially begins in Boston. The Celtics have gutted their roster, but as consolation they now hold six first-round picks over the next three drafts. The Gerald Wallace contract is an albatross, but in their quest to get better by getting worse, they aren't exactly in the market to acquire high-dollar talent.
Gordon: Good move, because the Celtics weren't going to contend with this core, and they have positioned themselves to reload extensively through the draft over the next few years while getting back some of their cap space. If they can immediately deal Wallace's contract, even better. Better to rip off the Band-Aid than slowly and painfully pull it off.
Robb: Best deal available. Too early to say good or bad. It was certainly the biggest haul Boston was going to get for Pierce and Garnett this summer. However, I'm still not crazy about the deal. No valuable breathing assets in return at this point in time, and a trio of what likely will be late first-round picks from Brooklyn? It's better than nothing, but still quite the crapshoot.
Stein: Sad move for the Celtics. I'm a sappy old hoops romantic. I wanted to see Pierce retire in green. The reality is that they made the right move to go for multiple picks in a deal with the only team in the NBA universe that was willing and able (thanks to Garnett's no-trade clause) to take back both Pierce and KG. Hard to argue that Danny Ainge was going to have a better option. But this whole end-of-an-era stuff in Boston has been rather abrupt for us romantics to take.
Windhorst: It's not a good trade for them. They were handcuffed because they had such limited options thanks to the Garnett no-trade clause. They also made sending Pierce to a contender a priority, which is honorable but doesn't really serve the needs of the franchise. It probably would have served them better if they just were heartless and sent Pierce to the highest bidder. They cleared some long-term salary, but they're still going to be paying Kris Humphries and Wallace more than $22 million next season. That's not good. I suppose they'll sell all these draft picks but, in case you didn't watch the draft, those picks are crapshoots.
3. Where do the Nets now rank in the East?By Chris Mooney / The Washington Post
The Belridge oil field near Bakersfield, California, is one of the largest in the country. It has been producing oil for more than a century and last year produced around 76,000 barrels a day, according to operator Aera Energy.
Now the oil field is about to become even more remarkable. Its future production will be powered partly by a massive solar-energy project to make the extraction process more environmentally friendly, according to Aera and GlassPoint Solar, the firm that will create the solar project.
The Belridge field was discovered in 1911. Oil from the field flowed out of the ground because of natural pressure in the geologic reservoirs. Later, as the pressure declined, many companies said the field was exhausted. The field gained new life in the 1960s through a process known as enhanced oil recovery. But squeezing more crude oil from the Belridge requires large amounts of steam to loosen the heavy crude, which in turn requires energy.
Traditionally, Aera used natural gas to heat water to create steam. Now Aera and GlassPoint will use a large, 850-megawatt solar thermal array to evaporate the water that’s pumped into the ground to liberate more oil. The companies say this will offset 4.87 billion cubic feet of natural gas per year and avoid the emission of 376,000 tons of carbon. The water used emerges from the process of oil extraction itself and will be recycled and pumped back into the ground.
The project was made possible by the recent extension of California’s cap-and-trade system for carbon-dioxide emissions to 2030, said Christina Sistrunk, chief executive of Aera Energy, a company jointly controlled by Shell and ExxonMobil.
“We need some level of what I would call regulatory and legislative stability to be able to fund projects that really need a couple of decades worth of certainty to be economic,” Sistrunk said. “The extension of that program really underpinned our ability to make this long-term commitment.”
The solar thermal array will capture the sun’s energy using curving mirrors, then use that energy to heat water. A smaller, 26.5-megawatt solar photovoltaic installation will help power oil-field operations. The project should start operations by 2020, the participating companies said.
This is the second such megascale solar-oil project for GlassPoint, which is building the massive, 1-gigawatt Miraah project in Oman, on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. (A gigawatt refers to the capacity to instantaneously generate 1 billion watts of electricity; a megawatt refers to the capacity to generate 1 million watts.) The Belridge project will be California’s largest solar project, the company said.
“From the day we start operating, Aera will see an enormous reduction in the amount of gas they consume in a given day,” said Ben Bierman, chief operating officer and acting CEO of GlassPoint Solar.
The combination of massive solar and massive oil is not what comes to mind when it comes to the global expansion of renewables, which generally has been led by wind and solar installations. But joint projects of various types between major oil producers and renewable energy players are growing, too. The Norwegian oil giant Statoil has announced plans to build solar arrays in Brazil with a clean-energy industry partner and made a major push into offshore wind energy; Shell is exploring a large solar project in Australia.
What’s different about the Belridge project is the use of renewables, which don’t emit greenhouse gases, to produce more fuel that will emit those gases. That could leave environmentalists feeling rather ambiguous. But this, too, has parallels — a recent major carbon-capture and storage project in Texas will capture most of the carbon dioxide emitted by a major coal facility, then pipe the gas in a liquid form to an oil field where it will, once again, be used in enhanced oil recovery.
What these examples show perhaps most of all is that as renewable energy becomes more and more a part of our lives, it will also become increasingly integrated into more traditional energy systems.
From an environmental perspective, Aera-GlassPoint project is a “good step,” said Simon Mui, director of California vehicles and fuels for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy nonprofit. But Mui, who said his group had not yet fully evaluated that project, noted a distinction between reducing emissions from “fossil fuel infrastructure,” which the current project would do, and a more long-term project of reducing the emissions from transportation as a whole by substituting battery-powered vehicles or other technologies for cars that run on oil.
“I think it’s a false solution to think you can only do one or the other,” Mui said. “And I think the state policies are looking to do two things: one is accelerate the transition to electric-drive technologies and other alternative sources, as well as to clean up the existing fossil-fuel infrastructure. You kind of have to do both to meet both state and global air-quality and greenhouse-gas targets.”Blankets: New edition of Craig Thompson's graphic masterpiece
Craig Thompson's second graphic novel, the 582-page mammoth Blankets, swept the field's awards, taking three Harveys, two Eisners, and two Ignatzes. More than a decade later, and buoyed by his later successes (such as 2011's seminal Habibi), Drawn and Quarterly has produced a beautiful new edition.
Blankets is Thompson's memoir of his life growing up in a poor, deeply Christian, dysfunctional family in rural Wisconsin. It tells the story of the bullying Thompson endured at school and at home; of his sweet, fraught relationship with his younger brother; of his faith and his art; of babysitter who raped him and his brother; and of the first real love he ever felt.
The story is shocking and vivid, a tale as gripping as any you'll read. Thompson's spiritual journey and difficult relationship with his family is matched only by his depiction of his teenaged love and heartbreak with Raina, a girl he meets at Winter Bible Camp. It's the truest and most heartfelt description of pure youthful love as I've found. Joss Whedon calls it "one of the greatest love stories ever written, and surely the best one ever drawn."
Which brings me to the art. If you, like me, discovered Thompson through Habibi, then you know just how versatile an artist he is. While Habibi brings a lot of polish to Thompson's work, Blankets has a raw, brute power that can't be overstated.
I finished the book over this past weekend, on a flight to the Miami Book Fair, where I was on a panel with Scott "Understanding Comics" McCloud and when we discussed the book over a drink, he lit up, describing all the ways in which Blankets presented comics creators with a "toolkit" of graphic techniques for storytelling that, according to McCloud, creators are still only getting to grips with a decade later.
McCloud was able to effortlessly recall specific panels from the book that made his point, wordless illustrations like this one, where the negative space does so much to inform the story and the relationships between two sets of parents and their love-struck teens.
I'm not a particularly visual person, but McCloud's words sent me back to the book over the weekend for a second read, this one attuned to the visual techniques more than the story itself, and that second reading was, if anything, more moving than my first pass.
Thompson has a new title for kids out, Space Dumplins, which I haven't read yet, but the experience of reading Blankets has shot this to the top of my pile.
Blankets is one of those graphic novel memoirs, like Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, shows off the medium's capacity to be dark and light, sweet and bitter, at the same time. No wonder that Neil Gaiman called it "the most important graphic novel since Jimmy Corrigan" and Jules Feiffer called it "a transcendent kind of storytelling that grabs you as you read it and stays with you after you put it down," adding, "I'd call that literature."
Blankets [Craig Thompson/Drawn and Quarterly]Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Hearthstone players will soon be able to stream their matches via Facebook Live, thanks to budding relationship between the social network and game developer and publisher Blizzard Entertainment.
Blizzard titles will start rolling out a "Go Live" functionality built into each title, for fans to post their games directly to their Timeline.
This is just one part of a broader Facebook integration into Blizzard titles. Players will soon be able to use their Facebook accounts to log in to Blizzard's games. Players could use this in place of Battle.net, Blizzard's account system.
Blizzard is the first game creator to add Facebook Live integration, as the new streaming platform hasn't been embraced yet by gamers. It's a puzzling partnership, as Twitch, purchased by Amazon in 2014, is the de facto streaming platform for gaming, followed by YouTube, HitBox, Azubu and other services. But Facebook could be looking to strike big in gaming with Live, just like its attempting in other areas. (Media companies, including Mashable, are receiving payments from Facebook to create content for Live.)
The companies said the Facebook integration would happen "later this month" on Blizzard games, with the Live API coming sometime after.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.The world appears to be quite a terrifying place to a lot of people. They are convinced, for example, that unsupervised children will be abducted. Busybody neighbors are prone to involving the authorities, but what are the actual odds of that happening? About one in 750,000.
College students are similarly terrified. “Trump 2016” written in chalk on a sidewalk at Emory University was so jarring that the university provided counseling for everyone who saw or heard about it. One student put it succinctly, saying “I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school.”
Students at the University of Michigan claimed that wood paneling — yes, wood paneling — marginalizes minority students because it is “quiet, imposing, and masculine.”
And travel is also a place of, well, terror. Just last year, an airline passenger was so frightened of a foreign-looking economist scribbling mathematical equations that the pilot had to return to the gate. But then, math has always been scary.
The reality is that the United States has become so incredibly safe over the past generation that we have, thankfully, forgotten what real fear is. The downside is that people feel compelled to invent new and ever more ridiculous bogeymen to keep themselves occupied. And there is apparently nothing so asinine that it won’t suffice.
Not to be outdone by college students, public school administrators have declared “zero tolerance” for nearly everything that ever scared anyone, reasonable or not, including bringing a squirt gun to school, which resulted in a year-long suspension for a Prattville, Ala., student. Could any rational person possibly be afraid of a squirt gun? The key word here is “rational.”
No, the problem isn’t that the world is unsafe. The problem is that a vocal minority of people appear to have come unglued. When faced with possible fears, rational people take a deep breath and look at evidence. And there is plenty of evidence available.
According to FBI crime statistics, the incidence of murder and non-negligent manslaughter is down 47 percent since the 1980s. Robbery is down 51 percent, aggravated assault is down 25 percent, rape is down 26 percent and property crime is down 43 percent during the same period. Over just a few decades, virtually every category of serious crime has seen incredible declines.
The United States itself is a safe space — and it is getting safer.
As if that weren’t enough, the firearm-homicide rate is down 33 percent since the 1980s — and down a whopping 49 percent from 1993. Yet in a 2013 Pew poll, 45 percent of respondents said they believed gun violence was up in recent years, and 39 percent said it was about the same. Think about that: 84 percent of people said they believed gun violence was either the same or worse over the same period that gun violence had actually declined by half.
These aren’t people who are unjustifiably afraid. These are people who are woefully ignorant of reality or, worse, simply like being afraid. Either way, that these people vote at all is the real cause for concern.
If you need to be afraid of something, be afraid of that.
Antony Davies is associate professor of economics at Duquesne University. James R. Harrigan is CEO of FreedomTrust.Deanne Fitzmaurice / Science file Gibson, a Great Dane, can look a pony in the eye — while Zoie, a Chihuahua, can fit into a purse.
By Charles Choi
LiveScience
Big dogs apparently die younger mainly because they age more quickly, researchers say.
These new findings could help unravel the biological links between growth and mortality, the scientists added.
Normally, across species, larger mammals live longer than their smaller counterparts. For instance, elephants can get up to 70 years old in the wild, while house mice reach only 4 years. Puzzlingly, within species, the opposite seems true — in mice, horses and perhaps even humans.
The apparent cost of bigger bodies is especially conspicuous with dogs, a species that people have bred over the millennia to come in an extraordinary range of sizes. The heaviest known dog may have been Zorba, an English mastiff that weighed 343 pounds (155 kilograms), while the smallest dog alive may be Meyzi, a terrier less than a quarter-pound (110 grams) in size.
Large breeds often die young compared with smaller ones, with a 155-pound (70-kilogram) Great Dane having an average life span of about 7 years, while a 9-pound (4-kilogram) toy poodle can expect to live up to 14 years. [The 10 Most Popular Dog Breeds]
To shed light on the possible tradeoffs of large size, researchers analyzed ages at death in 74 breeds, using data from more than 56,000 dogs that visited veterinary teaching hospitals. The researchers focused on why large dogs lived shorter lives on average.
"My main scientific interest is |
ators to understand how these legacy players might embrace the future to improve their business. Instead, it's all about playing hardball politics to try to use new laws to prop up old business models. The article notes that the defeat of SOPA was a wake-up call to the various parts of the music industry to work together to stop "the increasing influence" from technology companies.Of course, they're just playing the same old game: lobby, rather than innovate. Collude, rather than compete. It's an old strategy that worked for decades, but seems much less likely to work these days. That was the lesson of SOPA, but it appears that the legacy players still don't get it.
Filed Under: lobbying, messaging, music industry, sopaFor centuries, people have imagined the possibility of life on Mars. But long-held dreams that Martians could be invaders of Earth, or little green men, or civilized superbeings, all have been undercut by missions to our neighboring planet that have, so far, uncovered no life at all.
Yet visits to the Red Planet by unmanned probes from NASA and the European Space Agency have found evidence that a prime condition for life once may have existed: water.”There has been a tremendous amount of very exciting findings this year that Mars once contained actively flowing, low-saline, near-neutral-pH water — pretty much the type of water where you find life on Earth today,” said Alison Olcott Marshall, assistant professor of geology at the University of Kansas. “This has made people think that it’s possible that life could have existed on Mars, although most researchers agree it’s unlikely to exist today — at least on the surface — as conditions on the surface of Mars are incredibly harsh.”
Olcott Marshall is working with her colleague and husband, Craig Marshall, associate professor of geology at KU, to improve the way scientists detect condensed aromatic carbon, thought to be a chemical signature of astrobiology.
“If we’re going to identify life on Mars, it will likely be the fossil remnants of the chemicals once synthesized by life, and we hope our research helps strengthen the ability to evaluate the evidence collected on Mars,” Craig Marshall said.
Craig Marshall is an expert in using Raman spectroscopy to look for carbonaceous materials, while Alison Olcott Marshall is a paleontologist interested in how the record of life gets preserved on Earth, especially when there is no bone or shell or tooth or other hard part to fossilize.
The pair is known recently for overturning the idea that 3.5 billion-year-old specks found in rocks in Australia were the oldest examples of life on Earth. (Rather than ancient bacteria fossils, the researchers showed the shapes were nothing more than tiny gaps in the rock that are packed with minerals.)
If traces if ancient biology are detected in Mars, the KU researchers want to make sure the evidence is more conclusive.
According to a recent paper by the Marshalls in the peer-reviewed Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, by itself Raman spectroscopy is able to screen for carbonaceous material, but it can’t determine its source — thus the technology needs to be supplemented in order to determine if life exists on Mars.
“Raman spectroscopy works by impinging a laser on a sample so the molecules within that sample vibrate at diagnostic frequencies,” Craig Marshall said. “Measuring those frequencies allows the identification of inorganic and organic materials. It’s insufficient because however the carbonaceous material is made, it will be the same chemically and structurally, and thus Raman spectroscopy cannot determine the origin.”
The Marshalls call for the use of gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy to supplement Raman spectroscopy and develop more conclusive evidence of ancient extraterrestrial life.
“Much like the search for ancient life on Earth, though, one strand of evidence is not, and should not be, conclusive,” said Alison Olcott Marshall. “This is a vast puzzle, and we want to make sure we are examining as many different pieces as we can.”
Currently, the KU researchers are extending this line of investigation by using Raman spectroscopy to analyze rocks from Earth that are similar to those on Mars. They hope to publish their findings in the near future.
“If you were to pick up a typical rock on Mars it would look quite different, chemically, from a typical rock here on Earth, not to mention the fact that it would be covered in rusty dust,” Alison Olcott Marshall said. “Previous research into how Raman spectroscopy would fare on Mars was mainly done on pure salts and minerals, often ones synthesized in a lab. We identified field sites on the Kansas-Oklahoma border with a chemical content more like what could be found on Mars, right down to the rusty dust, and we’ve been exploring how Raman spectroscopy fares in such an environment.”
VideoThe defence team for WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning is intending to demonstrate at this month's military hearing that numerous warning bells were sounded about the US soldier's fragile emotional and mental stability before his arrest in May 2010 – but were consistently ignored by superiors.
David Coombs, the lawyer representing Manning in his Article 32 pre-trial proceedings that open at Ford Meade in Maryland on 16 December, has presented a list of 48 people he wants to call to give evidence in Manning's defence and mitigation. Manning has been charged with 36 counts relating to the transfer of state secrets from confidential databases in Iraq to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, charges that carry a maximum sentence of life in military custody.
Coombs has published details of the 48 individuals, though their names have been withheld in the heavily redacted document. They include military officers, computer experts, psychologists and FBI agents, as well as an unnamed individual who is clearly President Obama and another who is evidently the secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
In the document, Coombs paints a picture of Manning as a disturbed and lonely person as he worked as an intelligence analyst in Iraq. A psychiatrist who evaluated Manning shortly before his arrest will testify that he had concluded Manning was "at risk to himself and others" and that he should be banned from carrying a useable weapon.
Another potential witness, a psychologist, had seen Manning five months before his arrest, and found that he was "under a considerable amount of stress" and was "hypersensitive to criticism". The psychologist recommended that Manning be taken off the night shift and put on low-intensity duties.
Other witnesses will testify, Coombs writes, that Manning was struggling with being gay under the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy that existed at the time he was serving in Iraq. A fellow soldier will testify that "he was having gender identify (sic) issues" and that he was being teased by other soldiers over his sexuality and his short stature.
Several witnesses are set be used to cast light on Manning's erratic behaviour in the run-up to his arrest. Manning displayed "extreme emotional issues": he was once found curled up in a foetal position in a meeting room, rocking himself back and forth.
An army supervisor will give evidence that in December 2009 Manning had an angry outburst during a counselling session in which he flipped over a table and had to be restrained after he stepped towards a rack of weapons.
Despite all the warnings, Manning's deeply troubled state of mind, which was first revealed in a Guardian documentary, appears to have gone unnoticed and unacted upon by military commanders at Forward Operating Base Hammer, where Manning was stationed. Coombs writes that several witnesses will testify that warnings were not passed up the chain of command, and that Manning was allowed to retain access to confidential databases.
A potential witness asked that Manning be removed from his intelligence post, but found that his issues were not taken seriously "and no one took any steps to help him, or even recognise that he needed help".
It is not clear how many of the 48 individuals listed will be present at the hearing. Coombs notes that several of the individuals have so far refused to be interviewed by him ahead of the proceedings.
Obama is included on the defence list in order to raise the issue of "unlawful command influence". Coombs contends that the president exerted improper sway on the prosecution of Manning by making comments about him at a fundraising event in April in which he said Manning "broke the law".
Clinton is listed as someone who would testify that the publishing of hundreds of thousands of WikiLeaks embassy cables through papers that included the Guardian was not as damaging to US national security as some had suggested. The trove of secrets had been embarrassing for the US government, but "they did not represent significant consequences to foreign policy," she said.WASHINGTON -- After the Supreme Court oral arguments in the health care case Tuesday morning, the Obama administration better start preparing for the possibility of a future without the individual mandate.
From the very start, things did not go well for the government's argument that the requirement under the Affordable Care Act that virtually all Americans have health insurance or pay a penalty is constitutional.
U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli began his argument not with his usual calm and clear delivery, but rather with a case of coughs that seemed to take him off his game.
And just as he was starting to recover his composure, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a key swing vote, asked, "Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?" Kennedy's question adopted the framing of the case put forward by those challenging the mandate.
From there, the barrage against Verrilli did not relent until he sat down nearly an hour later.
The conservative justices appeared particularly concerned that if they upheld the mandate, Congress would be loosed to regulate nearly anything else it deemed a national problem.
Verrilli argued that the health care market's unique features allow Congress to require the uninsured to purchase health insurance.
"The health care market is characterized by the fact that, aside from the few groups that Congress chose to exempt from the minimum coverage requirement,... virtually everybody else is either in that market or will be in that market," Verrilli said. Plus, he said, "people cannot generally control when they enter that market."
Chief Justice John Roberts responded, "The same, it seems to me, would be true, say, for the market in emergency services: police, fire, ambulance, roadside assistance, whatever."
When Verrilli said those services do not constitute markets, Justice Samuel Alito asked what would keep the government from applying to burial services -- which Verrilli conceded do constitute a market -- the same rationale about preventing cost-shifting that it used for health care.
Verrilli never quite answered that question, pointing instead to the "billions of dollars of uncompensated costs" that distort the health insurance market.
Alito then flipped the tables, saying that the mandate will require young, healthy people to pay more per year for insurance than they would pay for health care out-of-pocket, thus forcing them "to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else."
"If you're going to have insurance, that's how insurance works," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued back, in the first of the four-justice liberal bloc's attempts to shore up the government's case.
She and Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor would all leap in to make the government's case themselves after Justice Antonin Scalia invoked the prospect of a broccoli mandate.
Verrilli could not gain traction with his alternative argument that the mandate falls within Congress' ability to pass laws "necessary and proper" to effectuate its constitutionally enumerated power to regulate commerce. Scalia, who relied on this clause in 2005 to uphold a federal ban on cultivating marijuana for one's own state-legalized medical consumption, said the individual mandate may be necessary to carry out the Affordable Care Act, but it is not proper "because it violated the sovereignty of the States."
"If the government can do this, what, what else can it not do?" Scalia asked.
Before he sat down, Verrilli offered his remaining justification that the mandate, with its penalty for non-compliance to be paid through one's tax return, was constitutional under Congress' taxing power. But the justices, from Ginsburg to Scalia, seemed unswayed.
After a brief halftime, Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general, began his argument on behalf of the 26 states challenging the mandate.
If Verrilli struggled, Clement shined. The conservative justices remained largely silent as he skated through the liberals' heavy questioning.
"The mandate represents an unprecedented effort by Congress to compel individuals to enter commerce in order to better regulate commerce," he began, employing the same terms Kennedy used to describe the mandate throughout the government's argument.
When Breyer rolled out a multi-part question seemingly designed to be his tour de force on the mandate's obvious constitutionality, Clement cut the legs out from under it, noting that Breyer was talking about the wrong constitutional provision.
Roberts then asked Clement to address the government's contention that "everybody is in this market, so that makes it very different than the market for cars." But it was hard to view this question as anything but diplomatic after Roberts' own clear antagonism to the same contention during Verrilli's hour.
Instead, Roberts appeared to favor the challengers' belief that the mandate regulates the insurance market, not the health care market, and the consumption of insurance, unlike health care, is not an inevitable fact of life.
"We don't get insurance so that we can stare at our insurance certificate," Justice Elena Kagan responded when Clement offered her that argument. "We get it so that we can go and access health care."
Clement parried that remark and concluded his time before the justices apparently unscathed by the liberals' attacks.
Michael Carvin, representing the National Federation of Independent Business and several individuals, used his half hour as a sort of end-zone dance for the seeming defeat of the mandate, going so far as to chuckle at questions from Breyer and Sotomayor.
Towards the end of Carvin's argument, Justice Kennedy said that maybe the health insurance market, after all, is unique enough from other industries to allow a mandate to prevent cost-shifting where it might not be permissible in another market. "[M]ost questions in life are matters of degree," he said, softening from the hard line he seemed to take against the mandate during the first half of the argument.
On rebuttal, Verrilli gamely repeated the mandate's justifications that the conservatives already frowned upon, parting with the one arrow left in his quiver: a plea to the justices' "solemn obligation to respect the judgments of the democratically accountable branches of government."
Whether one or more of the Supreme Court's conservatives will ultimately come to that conclusion, and thereby defy the expectations they set on Tuesday morning, is anyone's guess.A couple of weeks ago Azure Event Grid service became available in public preview. This service enables centralized management of events in a uniform way. Moreover, it scales with you when the number of events increases. This is made possible by the foundation the Event Grid relies on Service Fabric. Not only does it auto scale you also do not have to provision anything besides an Event Topic to support custom events (see the blog post Routing an Event with a custom Event Topic).
Event Grid is serverless, therefore you only pay for each action (Ingress events, Advanced matches, Delivery attempts, Management calls). Moreover, the price will be 30 cents per million actions in the preview and will be 60 cents once the service will be GA.
Azure Event Grid can be described as an event broker that has one of more event publishers and subscribers. Furthermore, Event publishers are currently Azure blob storage, resource groups, subscriptions, event hubs and custom events. Finally, more will be available in the coming months like IoT Hub, Service Bus, and Azure Active Directory. Subsequently, there are consumers of events (subscribers) like Azure Functions, Logic Apps, and WebHooks. And on the subscriber side too more will be available with Azure Data Factory, Service Bus and Storage Queues for instance.
To view Microsoft’s Roadmap for Event Grid please watch the Webinar of the 24th of August on YouTube.
Event Grid Preview for Azure Storage
Currently, to capture Azure Blob Storage events you will need to register your subscription through a preview program. Once you have registered your subscription, which could take a day or two, you can leverage Event Grid in Azure Blob Storage only in Central West US!
The Microsoft documentation on Event Grid has a section “Reacting to Blob storage events”, which contains a walk-through to try out the Azure Blob Storage as an event publisher.
Scenario
Having registered the subscription to the preview program, we can start exploring its capabilities. Since the landing page of Event Grid provides us some sample scenarios, let’s try out the serverless architecture sample, where one can use Event Grid to instantly trigger a Serverless function to run image analysis each time a new photo is added to a blob storage container. Hence, we will build a demo according to the diagram below that resembles that sample.
An image will be uploaded to a Storage blob container, which will be the event source (publisher). Subsequently, the Storage blob container belongs to a Storage Account containing the Event Grid capability. And finally, the Event Grid has three subscribers, a WebHook (Request Bin) to capture the output of the event, a Logic App to notify me a blob has been created and an Azure Function that will analyze the image created in the blob storage, by extracting the URL from the event message and use it to analyze the actual image.
Intelligent routing
The screenshot below depicts the subscriptions on the events on the Blob Storage account. The WebHook will subscribe to each event, while the Logic App and Azure Function are only interested in the BlobCreated event, in a particular container(prefix filter) and type (suffix filter).
Besides being centrally managed Event Grid offers intelligent routing, which is the core feature of Event Grid. You can use filters for event type, or subject pattern (pre- and suffix). Moreover, the filters are intended for the subscribers to indicate what type of event and/or subject they are interested in. When we look at our scenario the event subscription for Azure Functions is as follows.
Event Type : Blob Created
Prefix : /blobServices/default/containers/testcontainer/
Suffix :.jpg
The prefix, a filter object, looks for the beginsWith in the subject field in the event. And in addition the suffix looks for the subjectEndsWith in again the subject. Consequently, in the event above, you will see that the subject has the specified Prefix and Suffix. See also Event Grid subscription schema in the documentation as it will explain the properties of the subscription schema. The subscription schema of the function is as follows:
<pre>{ "properties": { "destination": { "endpointType": "webhook", "properties": { "endpointUrl": "https://imageanalysisfunctions.azurewebsites.net/api/AnalyseImage?code=Nf301gnvyHy4J44JAKssv23578D5D492f7KbRCaAhcEKkWw/vEM/9Q==" } }, "filter": { "includedEventTypes": [ "<strong>blobCreated</strong>"], "subjectBeginsWith": "<strong>/blobServices/default/containers/testcontainer/</strong>", "subjectEndsWith": "<strong>.jpg</strong>", "subjectIsCaseSensitive": "true" } } }</pre> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 < pre > { "properties" : { "destination" : { "endpointType" : "webhook", "properties" : { "endpointUrl" : "https://imageanalysisfunctions.azurewebsites.net/api/AnalyseImage?code=Nf301gnvyHy4J44JAKssv23578D5D492f7KbRCaAhcEKkWw/vEM/9Q==" } }, "filter" : { "includedEventTypes" : [ "<strong>blobCreated</strong>" ], "subjectBeginsWith" : "<strong>/blobServices/default/containers/testcontainer/</strong>", "subjectEndsWith" : "<strong>.jpg</strong>", "subjectIsCaseSensitive" : "true" } } } < / pre >
Azure Function Event Handler
The Azure Function is only interested in a Blob Created event with a particular subject and content type (image.jpg). This will be apparent once you inspect the incoming event to the function.
<pre>[{ "topic": "/subscriptions/0bf166ac-9aa8-4597-bb2a-a845afe01415/resourceGroups/rgtest/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/teststorage666", "<strong>subject</strong>": "<strong>/blobServices/default/containers/testcontainer/</strong>blobs/NinoCrudele.<strong>jpg</strong>", "<strong>eventType</strong>": "<strong>Microsoft.Storage.BlobCreated</strong>", "eventTime": "2017-09-01T13:40:33.1306645Z", "id": "ff28299b-001e-0045-7227-23b99106c4ae", "data": { "api": "PutBlob", "clientRequestId": "206999d0-8f1b-11e7-a160-45670ee5a425", "requestId": "ff28299b-001e-0045-7227-23b991000000", "eTag": "0x8D4F13F04C48E95", "contentType": "image/jpeg", "contentLength": 32905, "blobType": "<strong>BlockBlob</strong>", "url": "https://teststorage666.blob.core.windows.net/testcontainer/NinoCrudele.jpg", "sequencer": "0000000000000AB100000000000437A7", "storageDiagnostics": { "batchId": "f11739ce-c83d-425c-8a00-6bd76c403d03" } } }]</pre> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 < pre > [ { "topic" : "/subscriptions/0bf166ac-9aa8-4597-bb2a-a845afe01415/resourceGroups/rgtest/providers/Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/teststorage666", "<strong>subject</strong>" : "<strong>/blobServices/default/containers/testcontainer/</strong>blobs/NinoCrudele.<strong>jpg</strong>", "<strong>eventType</strong>" : "<strong>Microsoft.Storage.BlobCreated</strong>", "eventTime" : "2017-09-01T13:40:33.1306645Z", "id" : "ff28299b-001e-0045-7227-23b99106c4ae", "data" : { "api" : "PutBlob", "clientRequestId" : "206999d0-8f1b-11e7-a160-45670ee5a425", "requestId" : "ff28299b-001e-0045-7227-23b991000000", "eTag" : "0x8D4F13F04C48E95", "contentType" : "image/jpeg", "contentLength" : 32905, "blobType" : "<strong>BlockBlob</strong>", "url" : "https://teststorage666.blob.core.windows.net/testcontainer/NinoCrudele.jpg", "sequencer" : "0000000000000AB100000000000437A7", "storageDiagnostics" : { "batchId" : "f11739ce-c83d-425c-8a00-6bd76c403d03" } } } ] < / pre >
The same intelligence applies to the Logic App that is interested in the same event. The WebHook subscribes to all the events and lacks any filters.
The scenario solution
The solution contains a storage account (blob), a registered subscription for Event Grid Azure Storage, a Request Bin (WebHook), a Logic App and a Function App containing an Azure function. The Logic App and Azure Function subscribe to the BlobCreated event with the filter settings.
The Logic App subscribes to the event once the trigger action is defined. The definition is shown in the picture below.
Note that the resource name has to be specified explicitly (custom value) as the resource type Microsoft.Storage has been set explicitly too. The resource types currently available are Resource Groups, Subscriptions, Event Grid Topics and Event Hub Namespaces, while Storage is still in a preview program. Therefore, registration, as described earlier, is required. As a result of the above configuration, the desired events can be evaluated and processed. In case of the Logic App, it is parsing the event and sending an email notification.
Image Analysis Function
The Azure Function is interested in the same event. And as soon as the event is pushed to Event Grid once a blob has been created, it will process the event. The URL in the event will be used to analyse the image. The image is a picture of my good friend Nino Crudele.
This image will be streamed from the function to the Cognitive Services Computer Vision API. The result of the analysis can be seen in the monitor tab of the Azure Function.
The result of the analysis with high confidence is that Nino is smiling for the camera. We, as humans, would say that this is obvious, however do take into consideration that a computer is making the analysis. Hence, the Computer Vision API is a form of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The Logic App in our scenario will parse the event and sent out an email. The Request Bin will show the raw event as is. And in case I, for instance, delete a blob, then this event will only be caught by the WebHook (Request Bin) as it is interested in any event on the Storage account.
Summary
Azure Event Grid is unique in its kind as now other Cloud vendor has this type of service that can handle events in a uniform and serverless way. Although it is still early days as this service is in preview a few weeks. However, with expansion of event publishers and subscribers, management capabilities and other features it will mature in the next couple of months.
The service is currently only available in, West Central US and West US. However, over the course of time it will become available in every region. And once it will become GA the price will increase.
Working with Storage Account as a source (publisher) of events unlocked new insights in the Event Grid mechanisms. Moreover, it shows the benefits of having one central service in Azure for events. And the pub-sub and push of events are the key differentiators towards the other two services Service Bus and Event Hubs. Therefore, no longer do you have to poll for events and/or develop a solution for it. To conclude the Service Bus Team has completed the picture for messaging and event handling.
Serverless360 is a one platform tool to operate, manage and monitor Azure Serverless components. It provides efficient tooling that is not and likely to be not available in Azure Portal. Try Serverless360 free for 15 days!The official website for the television anime of Mimana Orimoto's Bakuon!! manga announced on Tuesday that the manga's ninth compiled book volume will bundle a second original anime DVD (OAD) and an exclusive sticker on December 20. The OAD will center on Hijiri Minowa (Rikako Yamaguchi), and will adapt the manga's 40th chapter "Maid!!" which was not portrayed in the television anime. The site unveiled a visual of Hijiri Minowa with her Ducati 399 Panigale.
The 12-episode television anime adaptation premiered on April 4. Crunchyroll and The Anime Network streamed the series. Sentai Filmworks licensed the series, and describes it:
Moe and motorcycles have never looked better together in this sports comedy about a group of students in the motorcycle club of their all-girls school. When Hane Sakura sees the wild-hearted Onsa Amano riding a motorcycle to school, Sakura is inspired to join the motorcycle club and get her license. However, nothing could have prepared her for the challenges, or the joys, that come with hitting the road on the wings of a real bike!
Orimoto ( Mahou Shoujo Neko X, Maid in Japan ) launched the manga series in Akita Shoten's Young Champion Retsu magazine in February 2011. Akita Shoten published the manga's seventh compiled book volume on March 18. The seventh volume bundled the first OAD, which debuted in March ahead of the television anime's April premiere. Akita Shoten will ship the eighth volume on Wednesday, July 20.
Source: Comic Natalie(CNN) -- If you think an electric toothbrush is high-tech, wait until you hear about the Internet-enabled version.
Jesse Schell, a game designer and Carnegie Mellon University professor, says toothbrushes will be hooked-up with Wi-Fi Internet connections within five years.
The point? If the entire Internet knows how often you brush your teeth and for how long, there's an incentive to brush more often.
Toothbrush makers could offer rewards for frequent brushers, too. Say you brush your teeth twice each day for three months. A company like Crest or Procter & Gamble could reward you with coupons for more toothbrushes, since your well-used bristles would probably be frayed by then.
Schell says dental hygiene -- and, really, just about everything else -- will become a game. He thinks the "gamepocalypse," the moment when everything in our lives becomes a game, is coming soon -- if it's not already here.
The Web-connected toothbrush is just one example Schell touched on during a recent interview. Here's an edited transcript:
CNN: You've said games are showing up all over the place. What do you mean by that, exactly?
In short, we already see games creeping into our everyday lives in all kinds of funny ways. You go to Starbucks, and you get points if you have a Starbucks card. And, in fact, they have a whole leveling system. The more times you visit, the more you move from level green up to gold level, with special privileges and free soy milk.
Already, we have this whole system of economies floating around out there. And at the same time, we have all these technologies showing up that are allowing us to track new things, things that we couldn't do before.
CNN: What are we tracking now that we couldn't before?
A new example that's kind of a popular one is this new game Foursquare, which is a game that works off of the GPS in your phone.
We normally think, 'Oh, the GPS in my phone is useful in case I need to get directions to somewhere.' But there's no reason that your GPS can't track your location all the time. And, in fact, why not make a game of it?
So in the world of Foursquare, you get territory points based on all the places you visit. If you are the person who visits a place more than anyone else, you can become the mayor of that place, unless someone else visits it more than you, and then they take over the mayorship of the place.
New video gaming systems are coming out that track every joint of your body. It's basically going to become a normal thing for us to allow Microsoft to put a three-dimensional camera on top of your television set looking at you, which sounds like a Big Brother scenario if ever I heard one, but, still, it's what we're going to allow.
CNN: Do you think this will go so far that we'll be living a game?
I think people will find a great deal of their lives co-opted by games, sort of like how we saw advertising co-opt huge amounts of our lives in the 20th century.
CNN: Has it already happened?
I jokingly call this convergence of games into reality the "Gamepocalypse": the moment when every moment of life is actually a game. So many people have been interested in the topic that I made a blog called Gamepocalypse Now.
Do you know about this Green Goose product that you snap onto your bicycle and it tracks how much you ride... and it has a system of rewards based on how much gas you save?
There's a lot of these things that are starting to happen now, and I think we're going to see more and more of them coming together.
CNN: What's going to happen next?
I think camera-based technology and tracking is going to be one of the things, in the next 10 years, we're going to see a lot of evolution in.
The idea of cheap little cameras and disposable cameras are going to become fairly normal. And when you combine that with the fact that we're getting used to touch-based interfaces and gesture-based interfaces, I think we're going to see these cameras in a lot of places for interacting with a lot of things.
You've got Google Goggles, where you take a picture of like anything, and it will tell you what it is. We haven't really started to make games with that yet, but I think we will start to.
And if you look at the new Nintendo DSi, which is their newest handheld, it has two cameras on it, which at first seemed kind of crazy to people, but the idea is you have one camera that faces out into the world and one that faces you the user, so it can look at your face and study your face.
No one's quite figured out exactly what that's for yet.
CNN: What do you think it's for?
I presume they want to go toward some facial tracking. They want to have games that involve tracking your face.
I think one of the things we'll start to see is common is, massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft will start to have a camera on your face, and then they'll map your facial expression to your avatar.
That's technologically not very difficult, and I think the potential for meaningful emotional expression and communication is significant there.
CNN: Will that change our everyday lives?
Anybody who has a product that can sense that the product is being used... they're going to want to create motivations for you to use the product.
So fundamentally, they're going to make games out of it, because games are reward-based systems that motivate us to do things.
In fact, Oral-B is like halfway there. They already have a toothbrush that senses when you're brushing your teeth. And every 30 seconds, it beeps, meaning it's time now to change to a different corner of your mouth. So you do the four quadrants of your mouth, and when you've done all four, then it does a little special beep, and a happy face appears. And you don't get the happy face, you get a sad face, if you don't finishing brushing your teeth properly.
Now, that doesn't connect to the Internet yet, but, you know, it's about five seconds from connecting to the Internet. They already have a bathroom scale that uses Wi-Fi and connects to the Internet, so that every time you weigh yourself, it uploads it to a database so you can track your weight over time. You can configure it to automatically tweet your weight, in case you want that.
CNN: Is that supposed to be fun, or beneficial, for the consumer?
It depends on the product. If it's a product that gets you to brush your teeth more, or what if it not only it gets you to brush your teeth, but you floss?
That sounds health-giving. But if you look at people who make soda pop, they're going to try to incentivize you to do things that are less healthy. I hate to think about the systems the cigarette companies are going to come up with in order to incentivize people.
Whether it's fun is going to be important, because it's going to be competition. The 21st century is going to be this war for the attention of humanity.
CNN: Do you see a downside to people being watched and tracked all the time?
We all have choices to make about what aspects of our privacy we want to give away. We're already making choices like that all the time.
Anybody who uses Gmail has decided, "Yeah, I think it's OK for a major corporation to carefully sniff through every word of every e-mail I send and try to automatically come up with a profile of what sorts of things I might want to buy and then pop up distracting messages, specifically designed to distract me, based on my interests, on the side of the page."
So you could say, "Yeah, that's kind of creepy." Many of us say, "That's OK. I'm willing to give that up."
Is it OK for Amazon to know every word of every book you've read? Are you comfortable with that? Maybe you are. Is it OK to let everybody know you eat Corn Flakes? OK, but then there are certain products you might not want people to know that you're using....
The part that I worry about the most is sort of the perverse incentives that these systems are going to try to create. Largely, the companies won't be caring about our health and welfare. They're going to be caring about, "Can I manipulate you into doing things that help the company?"
CNN: Should we create regulations to keep that from happening?
That's hard for me to imagine. These things are going to creep up on us one by one, and it's going to be up to what can people take, and what can people tolerate?
CNN: Why are we attracted to games?
One of the main things that's appealing about games is that you know a game can be won. It's an unusual game that's impossible to win.
In real life, we have these problems, and the problems are hairy, and they're messy. You look at the problems that you face in your job or in your relationship or in your family, and it's like there's no clear winning, and there's no clear losing. Whereas, in a game, things are crisp and clear.
The game presents you with challenges that can be met, and then it congratulates you on your successes at those challenges. It's a thing we don't get everyday in life.O.P.
Hey Guys,
Just letting you know that we’ve reviewed the inclusions of some of our current plans and have made some changes we think you’ll be very pleased with – including the data inclusions! ;)
The changes mean that many of our existing Cable & DSL Direct plans will receive much larger data usage allowances from 01/12, just in time for the holiday period!
This info will not be updated on our homepage until early next week so here’s a bit of a sneak peak for you guys!
If you’re on one of the plans below there’s no need for you to do anything, as this change is going to happen automatically from 01/12. These plans will also be available for new customers who wish to sign up.
$69.99 up to 500GB (was 170GB) bundled with Home Phone:
Connection fee on a 24 month contract will change from $99 to $79 as standard; however we’re waiving the connection fee for a limited |
project called The Promise to find out what voters in the former steel county are hoping for, and asking: can Trump deliver?
George Bonser, a former security guard at the casino who had previously spent 30 years as a steelworker and union leader, helped organize the unionization effort. He said workers supported the union out of frustration over years of failed communication with the company about employee rights.
“We’ve been harping on this for a while, and that’s why it came to this,” Bonser told the Guardian.
Adelson, whose net worth is estimated at more than $30bn by Forbes, is one of the country’s most high-profile, and powerful, opponents of labor unions. He spent an estimated $105m on political races in 2012, with crippling unions as his top priority, he told the Wall Street Journal at the time.
This year, Adelson spent more than $20m to help elect Trump. Trump supports “right-to-work” laws that would ban requiring employees in unionized workplaces to pay union dues. The laws are an existential threat to unions, with individual employee opt-outs effectively annulling any majority vote to unionize.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Union leaders say that Adelson’s willingness and ability to wage scorched-earth legal and publicity campaigns against unions – not his generosity – are what have kept unions out of his properties. Photograph: Mark Makela for the Guardian
Since the election, Adelson has held multiple one-on-one meetings with Trump, and he and his wife, Miriam, attended the inauguration. “The president believes in right to work,” press secretary Sean Spicer said earlier this month.
The Las Vegas Sands Corp does not expect the Bethlehem unionization effort to have a domino effect elsewhere, spokesman Ron Reese told the Guardian.
“We don’t anticipate other organizing efforts because our pay benefits and working conditions have always exceeded those negotiated by unions,” Reese said. “In point of fact, despite the union bosses’ strong desire for it to be otherwise, the Venetian Las Vegas has been a non-union property since it opened in 1999.”
In an effort to stop union protests outside his flagship Venetian casino on the Las Vegas strip, Adelson battled the culinary workers’ union in court for a decade, all the way to the supreme court. The battle ended with a loss for Adelson in his effort to silence the protests – but there’s still no union inside the casino.
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: the town that built America – in pictures Read more
Union leaders say that Adelson’s willingness and ability to wage scorched-earth legal and publicity campaigns against unions – not his generosity – are what have kept unions out of his properties.
Before taking a security guard job at the casino, Bonser had worked for 30 years in unionized steel fabrication shops and had most recently served as vice-president of Local 2599 steelworkers, an amalgam of local steel unions.
Bonser said he had not planned on doing any work involving unions at the casino, which grossed $534m in the past fiscal year. But he was leaving work one day with a colleague who had been a steelworker and union leader at the Bethlehem plant, the legendary production site of steel for epic American infrastructure projects from the Manhattan skyline to the Golden Gate Bridge.
The pair was approached by colleagues who had been having problems with a supervisor, Bonser said.
“They said, ‘We’re walking out. We’re gonna walk out,’ on the job in protest, Bonser said.
“I said, ‘You guys can’t walk out. You guys walk out, you’re done. You can fight whatever with the labor department, but they’re going to keep you out, you’re done. You’re not going to get your job back. They’ll do whatever they have to do, even if they have to work the other two shifts to death.”
The guards asked the former steelworkers what to do.
“I’m thinking,” Bonser said with a laugh. “I’m thinking, ‘You gotta get a union!’ I’ll never forget that.”
“I was like, ‘Well, here we go’.”posted by Tezzeret
ADVERTISING:
[B]Hi, Kuroky. I’ll start with very important question – are you still playing for Virtus.Pro?
[B]Why did they kick you? What about contracts? Were they canceled by the organization?
[B]Let me cite your words from a recent interview: “Realistically, all teams besides Na'Vi don't provide the skill level I am interested in. I'm not looking for some top eight placements.” So before joining Virtus.Pro you thought their skill is enough to compete for top one? Do you still think the same?
[B]Was it hard to play with four Russian speaking teammates?
[B]Why were Dread and Azen were kicked before The International qualifiers?
[B]Did you take part in any decisions of Virtus.Pro? For example, kicking players, not attending DreamHack, etc.
[B]NS recently said that you personally couldn’t practice in May and beginning of June. Is that true?
[B]Do you have some complaints about the Virtus.Pro organization or managers? Did they pay you salary accordingly?
[B]Do you regret about not joining Mouz about a month ago? They placed in the top 3 at DreamHack and in The International Qualifiers. At the same time VP missed DreamHack and placed 5-6 in The International Qualifiers.
[B]So next time in the same situation you'll choose a lower salary and a European team?
[B]Can you comment on this picture? It’s quite popular in CIS.
[B]A bit an off topic question but… Tell us the history of your nickname. It was always interesting for me to know it.
[B]Did you watch DreamHack? Tell us your impression.
[B]What can you say about another Ukrainian team - Darer? Did they fail to impress you?
[B]Let’s talk about future. What plans do you have? Maybe retire from Dota?
[B]Will you create a new team or join some existing one?
[B]Few words about Russia. Have you ever been to Moscow?
[B]Do you like vodka?
[B]What do you think about Russian players in Dota 2? Do they insult everyone? Should Valve create an isolated server for them?
[B]What do you know about prodota.ru? Have you visited this website?
[B]Few words in Russian for our readers?
[B]Thanks for this great interview. It was a pleasure to talk with you. Do you have any shoutouts?
[/b]Hello. No, I’m not part of Virtus.Pro anymore. All I can say is that their current roster consists of NS and Santa. Everything else has not settled.[/b]I guess they don't think that the current roster works out, it's very hard to play with one guy from another nationality; I was simply disturbing the flow of the team, that's what I think.[/b]All players of Virtus.Pro have very high experience and skill, with more time the team would be a strong contender. We lacked strategies in our games, or at least we couldn't execute them the way we wanted.About my statement, at that time I was much more confident in my skill, but the last few months showed that I need to work much harder. My working moral is very bad, be it Dota or real life. I really need to work on my mindset.[/b]Yes, I wasn't feeling at ease at all; I don't think I will repeat this "experiment" in the future.[/b]I don't know, I was just told that the new roster had a better chance one day before the qualifier started. I didn't want to interfere in this decision, because the time was so close to the qualifier. Personally I wanted to keep Azen.[/b]No. It was sad to miss dreamhack, I really wanted to go and meet my friends again.[/b]Yes, I was on vacation, so I couldn’t practice. But it was only for six days. It was very unfortunate timing, because of the qualifier.[/b]Virtus.Pro took great care of me, no complaints - really great guys.[/b]No regrets at all. mouz is great but I made a conscious choice and live and learn from the choices I made.[/b]The decisive factor was playing with my friend (Azen), the salary between Virtus.Pro and mouz were very close. Another factor was that I was really interested to play with NS, because I respect him as player a lot.[/b]Haha. I was taught some good stuff in my time in VP, so I needed to spread the love.[/b]My old nickname, when I started playing in battle.net, was Shad0w) (I was 12-13 years old back then); I just wanted to use a more "professional", unique nickname, it has no special meaning, just sounds cool and looks nice.[/b]Yes I watched it and my prediction failed. I expected Na'Vi to take first and mTw second, so I was surprised. mTw showed that hard work and determination will show results, I was very happy for my friend kebap. Furthermore, it's good that mTw kicked Puppey's ass, so Na'Vi will finally be serious again and show some great Dota games.[/b]They need much more time to develop, it's normal for a new team.[/b]I was contemplating about retirement after the qualifier, but my fans cheered me up really well and I am still very interested to play competitive Dota, so I wanna stay and show some results in the future.[/b]I think I will try to build a German team, time will tell.[/b]Yes, I have been to Moscow. Beautiful city, I hope to visit it some time in the future.[/b]Haha. I don't like alcohol in general, but if I drink, then it's vodka.[/b]I barely have this problem in my games, I think people should just relax and play, it's just a game.[/b]I can hardly read Russian, so its hard to visit for me. If I learn more Russian, I will surely come and visit the site.[/b]Haha. Tashi Myaso![/b]Thank you, too. Shoutout to my German friends, dotasource.de and good luck to Vtirtus.Pro, NS and co; it was a enjoyable time.We've avoided discussing Mike's beloved Wizards all season, but with their playoff dreams on life support (they are 2.5 games back of the No. 8 seed in the East as of this recording with only nine games to play), we figured now was the best time to dissect how a season with such high hopes fell flat. So, we dialed up two of the deans of the Wizards' blogosphere to go in-depth on Washington's frustrating season.
Jake Whitacre, manager of SB Nation Wizards community Bullets Forever, and Kyle Weidie, longtime editor of popular Wizards site TruthAboutIt.Net, joined the show to discuss the following topics:
Why has the Wizards' pace-and-space transformation been such a struggle?
What is the future of head coach Randy Wittman and general manager Ernie Grunfeld?
Assuming the Kevin Durant dream is dead, how do the Wizards refurbish their roster this summer?
How much culpability does John Wall have for the Wizards' struggles?
What should the Wizards do about the oft-injured Bradley Beal this summer? Do they have no choice but to re-give him a maximum contract?
A note: one topic discussed was the Wizards' poor free-throw shooting. Immediately after recording, Jake did some research on how that's affected the Wizards' season.On Sunday, the Trail Blazers had what is called a “Blackout” day, which means no practice, no coming in for treatment, no weight lifting, no nothing. It is a day designed to give the players a break from basketball, a day when the lights stay off, leaving the practice courts black.
But it was no surprise when this Sunday, hours after the Blazers returned from Milwaukee, the lights flickered on and Pat Connaughton dribbled onto the court for a shooting session.
The way Connaughton sees it, there are no off days.
“I don’t ever want to look back and be like, ‘Oh, if I just put in a little more time,’’’ Connaughton said. “I just want to make sure I put in my work.’’
If there has been an unexpected boost, or a pleasant surprise to the Trail Blazers’ early season, it has been Connaughton, whose shooting off the bench has been a subplot to an encouraging 2-1 start.
His confident play, and accurate shooting, is rooted in days like Sunday. During the summer, Connaughton would hold two-a-day workouts, which included a requirement to make 500 three-pointers in each session, 1,000 a day.
“This is the year I wanted to make sure I was prepared for,’’ Connaughton said. “If it didn’t work out this year, then at least I could say I did it in attack mode. But I wanted to be ready for the moments.’’
So far, he has. After earning the backup shooting guard role with a solid preseason, Connaughton has been more than an adequate replacement for the departed Allen Crabbe, who was traded to Brooklyn.
Less than three minutes into the season opener in Phoenix, Connaughton was thrust into the game after Maurice Harkless got in foul trouble and the offense had sputtered to just two points. He instantly jump started what would turn out to be the most dominant opening night victory in NBA history by making his first five shots, eventually finishing with 24 points in 32 minutes.
He was also a factor in Indiana, hitting 3-of-4 shots, including two three-pointers, and in Milwaukee he continued the trend of making his first shot.
All told, Connaughton has made 13-of-20 shots, including 7-of-12 from three-point range, and scored 35 points. Crabbe in the first three games last season went 13-of-27, including 5-of-11 from three, and scored 40 points. It has been nearly the same production at a fraction of the cost (Connaughton makes $1.4 million while Crabbe last season made $18.5 million).
But even after the successful trip, and the flood of texts and calls from well-wishers, Connaughton knew he couldn’t, as he says, “start drinking the Kool-Aid” and rest on his laurels. After arriving home from Milwaukee in the early hours, he was back at the practice courts the next morning.
“For me, it’s funny because you hear from people, ‘Oh, you played so well on the road trip; you started the season the way you wanted to,’ but when I look at it, I look at Milwaukee, and I think I could have played better. I had two turnovers I could have avoided if I just took the jump shot that I had been shooting well.’’
It all replayed in his mind. The corner three he missed in Phoenix. A trailing three he missed in Milwaukee. The passing up a three in Milwaukee to penetrate, which resulted in a charge. The passing up a shot against the Bucks to make the extra pass, which was picked off. Those two turnovers had him talking to himself after he was pulled in the third quarter, as he went to the bench tapping his chest and saying “Shoot the ball … Shoot the ball … Shoot the ball.’’
“I’m keeping that fresh in my memory,’’ Connaughton said. “I have to do more things better.’’
It’s that work ethic and attention to detail that has elevated Connaughton from a baseball player trying to make the NBA, to an everyday rotation player.
Connaughton will likely play around 20 minutes each game, and coach Terry Stotts says he has always had confidence in Connaughton, dating back to last season when he played him in the playoffs. Stotts says he doesn’t see that changing.
But there is no question Connaughton’s stock has risen after the first three games.
“What he did is good for his confidence, good for the (coaching) staff’s confidence,’’ CJ McCollum said. “Lots of guys can shoot in practice. Lots of guys can shoot when there is nobody in the gym. And some guys can shoot at home in front of the home crowd. But not everybody can shoot on the road, at OKC, or at Golden State. That’s when you really see about players. Like a close game in Milwaukee … things change … and that’s when you judge people.’’
Connaughton, who says he has worked out on all but one “Blackout” day in his two-plus seasons in Portland, knows that rest will become more important now that he has graduated from a bit player to rotation player. Even so, he figures he will always be in the gym, “Blackout” or not.
“For me, the biggest thing has kind of been just building off good play,’’ Connaughton said. “This is the sport I’ve worked at the most in my entire life, so I want to go out there knowing I can do this, as opposed to playing timid and trying to figure things out. And to do that, I have to put in the work.’’
So for about an hour, he shot Sunday. While he was there, he saw a rehabilitating Noah Vonleh, and team captain Damian Lillard. And as he was leaving, McCollum was coming in for a workout of his own.
McCollum took note as he and Connaughton crossed through the doors.
“The work ethic is there,’’ McCollum said, nodding. “He knows what is at stake here.’’
Today's Blazers' links:
NBC Sports Northwest has video of Evan Turner's feelings about the plus/minus statistic.
Nick Krupke at KPTV has a nice feature on Maurice Harkless and his hobby of photography.
The Oregonian's Joe Freeman reports that Noah Vonleh is targeting a Nov. 1 return at Utah.
Mike Richman at The Oregonian writes about the Blazers' streak of winning home openers.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune previews tonight's Pelicans-Blazers game.Toronto may be nearly 1,000 km from Charlottesville, Virginia, but there's been plenty of reaction here to U.S. President Donald Trump's comments on who was to blame for the deadly violence at in that city this past weekend.
Trump drew ire from Democrats and Republicans alike when he said "many sides" were responsible for the violence that left a 32-year-old woman dead. White supremacists and neo-Nazis descended on the city in a "Unite the Right" Rally, as they protested against proposed dismantling of a Confederate general's statue.
The president went further on Tuesday; blaming the so-called "Alt-Left" for inciting violence and calling factions of the white nationalists "very fine people."
Trump's comments were on the minds of many when they spoke to CBC Toronto during a busy commute.
"I was shocked. I thought it was repugnant... I don't think a lot of people, myself included, thought in our wildest dreams that Donald Trump would be saying that neo-Nazis and anti-Semitism is okay," said Pamela Grace, while riding the subway.
Several riders latched onto passages of Trump's answers to reporters and took issue that he seemingly equated the actions of counter-protesters to those of white supremacists.
Torontonian Pamela Grace called Trump's comments'repugnant' and said she was'shocked.' (CBC News)
"You had some very bad people in that group. But you also had some very fine people," Trump remarked to reporters on Tuesday.
Ali Nassim, who was visiting Toronto with his family from New Jersey, said he was appalled by how the president responded to the tragedy. He said he does not believe counter-protesters are at fault for the violence that erupted.
Trump goes rogue with 'alt-left' Virginia comments
"That was shocking. How can you say there were two sides are to blame?" Nassim said.
"You clearly know that this is good and evil. If you can't distinguish between good and evil, you have to check your morals as a human being."
Brittani Asphall told CBC Toronto she disagrees with Trump's assertion that both sides were equally responsible for violence in Charlottesville but said Canadians shouldn't feel superior to Americans when it comes to race relations. (CBC News)
Here in Toronto, a group calling itself the Canadian Nationalist Party has stated it plans to hold a rally to "discuss the nationalist movement in Canada and future of our country" at the University of Toronto on Sept. 14. No less than three counter protests against white nationalism have been planned on the same day as a response. The U of T says it has told the Canadian Nationalist Party it does not have permission to hold the rally on campus.
Brittani Asphall said Canadians should not feel superior to the U.S when it comes to race relations.
"I think the only thing we're more superior with, is hiding it."Just after the NHL decided not to further punish Montreal defenceman P.K. Subban for his slash on Mark Stone of the Senators, the Senators have reported that Stone has a “micro-fracture ” of the right wrist and his status for the series is now in doubt.
The announcements were made Thursday morning in the wake of a rowdy Game 1 in the series between the Habs and the Senators in Montreal. The Senators lost 4-3 in the rematch of the 2013 first rounder that went to Ottawa.
Here’s the slash:
Stone had his arm X-rayed Thursday morning.
Huge news on the Stone front. Has a micro fracture. Status for rest of series unknown. — Wayne Scanlan (@HockeyScanner) April 16, 2015
There are reports of Mark Stone getting X-rays at Westmount Medical today. No confirmation yet. — Ken Warren (@Citizenkwarren) April 16, 2015
The league has also ruled out any punishment for Senators coach Dave Cameron for his remarks after the game that the league should suspend Subban or give Ottawa equal punishment if one of the Canadiens stars happens to get a two-hander across the arm.
The temperature of the series seems headed to a boiling point. Even Senators GM Bryan Murray got involved saying in a scrum Thursday morning that Subban had threatened Stone before the slash.
Subban, according to Murray, attempted to slash Stone twice before he chopped down on the Ottawa player with his stick.
“There was a threat made before, by Subban to Stone, there were two attempts — on faceoffs — to slash him, one connected and then he two-handed him in the wrist in front of the net,” Murray said during a press conference at the Bell Centre Thursday.
“I don’t want to use the phrase that I was told,” Murray added, referring to the alleged Subban threat. “Because we have players wearing (microphones) now, because we have four officials on the ice, probably one of the officials heard it. It’s not, ‘I said something, somebody else said something.’ I’ve asked the officials to investigate.”
Stone was examined at a medical facility in Montreal’s Westmount district Thursday morning, where doctors found micro fractures in his wrist as well as “ligament damage,” according to Murray.
For his part, Subban denied making any threats.
“I play tough against everybody out there, so I don’t ever remember targeting him or saying anything like that to him,” Subban said after Montreal’s practice.
He added: “Listen, I’ve been slashed a lot harder than that and I’ve probably seen many slashes harder than that. I don’t think it was that hard of a slash.”
Several Montreal players said trash-talking is part of the game.
“You can hear someone say something on every shift,” said Devante Smith-Pelly, who threw his weight around in Game 1. “It’s part of the game.”
Added Dale Weise with a smile: “I threatened (Ottawa goaltender Andrew Hammond); I told him I was going to score on him. It must have gotten to him because we scored two goals after that.”
Brendan Gallagher said he felt he was being targeted by the Senators, but shrugged it off as part of the game.
“They knew I was trying to go to the net and they were trying to stop me,” he said.Málaga Málaga Real Betis Real Betis 0 1 FT Game Details GameCast
Lineups and Stats
Veteran striker Ruben Castro's fifth goal in six games earned Real Betis a 1-0 La Liga victory over Malaga.
The 34-year-old coolly finished in the 64th minute to end Betis' three-game winless run and move them into the top half of the table.
Malaga thought they should have had a penalty early on when the ball struck former Hamburg defender Heiko Westermann's hand in the box after Duda stepped over the ball.
Goalkeeper Carlos Kameni produced a sharp near-post save to deny Castro, while counterpart Antonio Adan stood up to thwart Juan Carlos at the other end.
Castro continued to look lively but headed over from six yards after losing his man at Joaquin's cross.
There were chances at either end, though, Adnane Tighadouini firing just wide while Adan again came out to stop Juan Carlos at his near post.
But an error from Roberto Rosales allowed Castro to profit in the second period.
Rosales' loose control on the byline let Francisco Varela poke the ball away from him and Castro moved into the area before opening his body and curling the ball into the corner.
Charles' volley from Juan Carlos' cross was saved by Adan, who quickly jumped on the ball with substitute Duje Cop lurking, as the hosts sought an equaliser.
However, Betis held on to move up to ninth, while Malaga suffered their second straight 1-0 loss to remain 17th in the Primera Division.Edward "Edward" Abgaryan:
"Hello, people. I would like to say sorry to all the fans whom I have disappointed with my own performance. I don’t think that my own performance is that bad. I am putting 18 hours every day I play, and it sums up to a total of 80 SoloQ games per week on top of playing scrims and official games. I have put my personal life aside to do whatever I can to reach Worlds even without Alex Ich. But our results don’t depend only on our individual performances. We are doing horribly as a team, I am sure everyone can see that. I have never been so sad like I am now. I feel like I am doing everything I am supposed to do, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t reflect on our standings. At times, I am thinking about retiring, but I realize that it’s not the right way to finish my career. I feel like I can accomplish more as a player. It’s a tough time for Gambit and myself. I don’t know what else to say.
Read: Diamond on Super Week
P.S. I am a very emotional guy and therefore I decided to stop reading and using Reddit, Twitter and Facebook for some time. I’ll limit my use of social media to letting you know when I start streaming."You must enter the characters with black color that stand out from the other characters
Message: * A friend wanted you to see this item from WRAL.com: http://wr.al/d547
— The man who hit a pedestrian in Vance County Saturday night faces charges of driving with a revoked license, driving with a revoked license plate and driving without insurance.
The Vance County Sheriff's Office has said Eric Loznicka accidentally hit Reuben Wright, 18, on Raleigh Road in Henderson. Deputies said Loznicka had no chance to see Wright or stop before hitting him.
Some witnesses told deputies Wright was in the road, but his friends disputed that claim, saying he was standing alongside the road when he was hit. Wright was listed in critical condition at Duke University Hospital Tuesday night.
In 911 calls placed in the minutes after the accident, people describe a chaotic scene where bystanders pulled Loznicka from his car and began beating him.
"They're running up the street saying they're going to kill everybody," one caller said.
"Something really bad is going on here," another caller told dispatchers. "Somebody's getting hurt really bad."
Deputies arrested four Henderson men: Lonnie Jack Hargrove, 19, and Less Ragland, 26, both of 745 Southerland St., and Damien Elijah Trowbridge, 34, of 199 Bunn St., and Avone Fouch, 30, of 536 Abbott Road, Lot 10. Vance County Sheriff Peter White said two other men – brothers Carlton Ragland, 21, and James Henry Ragland, 22, both of 324 Charles St. – surrendered to authorities.
All six are charged with misdemeanor assault.
Loznicka escaped the crowd and ran to a passing truck, a caller said. The driver of the truck took him to Maria Parham Medical Center, where he was treated and released.
Some of the people from the scene of the beating followed Loznicka to the hospital, where someone hit his daughter in the head, authorities said.
There is no indication that the assault was racially motivated, authorities said.Like many people, I spent the weekend of August 12 and 13 glued to the news coming out of Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists had descended with torches and swastikas for a Unite the Right rally, prompted by the community’s moves to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. At home I watched photos and articles fill my Facebook feed. At the recreation center where I work out, I watched network news on the wall-mounted TV.
The synergy between race- and gender-based hatred has deep roots in the United States.
Hostility toward racial diversity was the driving force behind the rally — and it showed in the racial makeup of the crowds of people chanting Nazi slogans like “Sieg heil” and “blood and soil” — but I also noticed a serious lack of gender diversity as photos and videos circulated. Women were few and far between. However much I kept seeing it, though, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I grew up half Asian in a very white community, so seeing the dynamics of race has always come easily to me — and they were taking obvious form in Charlottesville. Having grown up cis-male, though, I don’t always catch the dynamics of gender on the first pass.
Then Monday came, and I was reminded, once again, of how gender played out at the Unite the Right rally. I read news that a white nationalist website, the Daily Stormer, was losing its domain host due to comments it published about the violence in Charlottesville.
The incidents of violence during the bloody weekend included a brawl that broke out during a Friday pre-rally march, as well as the beating on Saturday of a black 20-year-old named Deandre Harris. Just hours after Harris was attacked, the violence took a deadly turn — and one that brought gender-based hatred in its aftermath — when Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields, Jr., who had come from Ohio to join the rally, drove his Dodge Challenger into a group of counterprotesters, injuring 19 and killing one. The one killed was a woman, a local paralegal named Heather Heyer.
In response to her death, the Daily Stormer published insulting comments about Heyer, downplaying the tragedy by painting her as unworthy of their readers’ sympathy. I expected epithets like “race traitor.” What I didn’t expect — naively, in retrospect — is that the insults would take a misogynist turn and disparage Heyer based on her appearance and parental status. She was called “fat” and “childless.” The comments prompted Scottsdale-based GoDaddy to tell the Daily Stormer they had 24 hours to move their domain to another provider.
I shared the article on social media, commenting it was a good reminder that feminists and anti-racists are often in the same battle together, and they both need to be intersectional in their approach. I wasn’t entirely satisfied with my own commentary on the story, sensing there were deeper connections between misogyny and racism, that I had only scratched the surface of what was there.
Before long I was in an Internet wormhole that led me to an article on Vox, “How the alt-right’s sexism lures men into white supremacy.” The article was written in the wake of last year’s election of Donald Trump, a man who personified the link between race- and gender-based bigotry. He earned the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan for his promises to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border. He had also talked of closing mosques and banning refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority nations. He had a record, too, of insulting the appearance and intelligence of some women — and boasting of his aggressive sexual advances toward others, seemingly unconcerned with their consent.
Trying to make sense of one of the most energized voting blocks behind Trump’s election victory, Vox’s article describes an underworld of disaffected men who were drawn to white pride as a way to “gain self-confidence,” “boost individual male autonomy,” and “wrest back control of the country” from those who stand in the way of their primacy and elevated status — including feminists, anti-racists, and liberals. The article quotes tweets by writer Siyanda Mohutsiwa that described men who felt emasculated and resentful, many after growing up in single-parent households headed by strong women.
After reading Mohutsiwa’s tweets, I decided to see what kind of household Fields had grown up in. That’s when I read in the New York Times that “Mr. Fields’s father died before he was born.” He was raised by his mother, Samantha Lea Bloom, and their home was where his violence had its roots. Fields did not cut his teeth in Charlottesville. His mother told reporters about incidents in which Fields beat her, threatened her with a knife, and locked her in the bathroom. Mohutsiwa’s observations felt eerily, unsettlingly perceptive.
The synergy between race- and gender-based hatred has deep roots in the U.S. Both sexual harassment and sexual violence were used by white men in the Jim Crow South to maintain the racial order. They were used to attack, both verbally and physically, the people they wanted to keep in their place. Black women were subjected to both racist and misogynist insults when they boarded segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama — and, perhaps in direct response, black women were some of the most active and instrumental in making Montgomery’s 1955 bus boycott a success. Subjugating women, like lynching, was a tactic people used to enforce segregation and an oppressive system of white supremacy. In turn, protecting women’s bodily autonomy — and restraining men’s asserted sexual dominion over women — were part and parcel to establishing the basic civil rights of people of color. That white nationalists often disparage feminism and diversity in the same breath today suggests a collective memory of the role women’s rights played in the civil rights movement.
In the South in the late 1990s, misogyny and white supremacist ideology converged in the radicalization of Eric Robert Rudolph, who had a long history of connections to racist and anti-government groups, and who eventually found his way to the Army of God. The Army of God was an anti-abortion extremist group that was responsible for sending threatening letters to abortion providers and reproductive justice groups — and claimed responsibility for several bombings. Rudolph was responsible for four bombings: the Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 Summer Olympics; an abortion clinic in the Atlanta area in January 1997; an Atlanta LGBTQ bar in February 1997; and the New Woman All Women Health Care clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, on January 29, 1998. After the first of those bombings, Rudolph was commonly referred to as the Olympic Park Bomber. As Carol Mason of the University of Kentucky has written, he “was assumed to be protesting abortion, homosexuality, and the multicultural, multiracial pluralism exemplified by Olympic competition.”
Among white nationalists, abortion — along with immigration, racial integration, interracial marriage between whites and people of color, and low fertility rates among whites — is believed to be a threat to the white population. Tellingly, the Daily Stormer felt Heather Heyer, who was white, “had failed to do her most basic duty — her only real duty, in fact — and reproduce.”
When a white male’s overgrown sense of entitlement could uphold feelings of racial superiority, we shouldn’t expect it to show principled restraint and shows of respect when confronted with issues of gender or the autonomy of women. Devaluing the lives of women — like Samantha Bloom or Heather Heyer — serves the same function as devaluing the lives of people of color: to inflate his worth and display his power.
Speaking in 1981 before the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, the feminist and civil rights advocate Audre Lorde invoked the shared struggles for justice of women and people of color. “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you.”Polls have opened in two regions of eastern Ukraine in controversial leadership elections held by pro-Russia separatists that Kiev and the West have refused to recognise and which threatens to deepen the international crisis over the conflict.
The elections on Sunday in the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, which are based around the two main rebel-held cities, are designed to bring a degree of legitimacy to the makeshift military regimes that already control them.
Both are choosing new presidents and parliaments, but there is little question that the current unelected rebel chiefs - Alexander Zakharchenko in Donetsk and Igor Plotnitsky in Luhansk - will be confirmed in their posts.
Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel-Hamid, reporting from Donetsk, said that Zakharchenko was behaving more like a statesman than a rebel leader, telling his constituents that the vote would pave the way towards kick-starting the economy.
"The people here want peace with Ukraine, but they also want their own views to be recognised," she said. "It is a vote for legitimacy for the leadership, and a vote of hope for peace for the people who cast their ballots."
Break from Ukraine
Zakharchenko, she added, had implied that there were still some areas that the separatists needed to take to form their republic, and that force would be used if negotiations failed.
Voting in the main rebel city of Donetsk proceeded in the presence of gunmen inside three polling stations, the AP news agency reported.
Election organisers have cast the vote as a decisive development in the break from Ukrainian rule by the mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
About half the territory |
generation,” he said.
However, several other speakers at the Vienna-based conference warned of significant obstacles to the expansion of wind power.
Jean-Philippe Roudil from RTE in France identified long and complex permitting procedures for both renewable projects and grid developments, and public acceptance issues dominated by ‘Not In My Back Yard’ attitudes as important hurdles to overcome.
But Pat Rabbitte, Irish Energy Minister, said public acceptance can be achieved by a combination of the best possible engineering practices and communication. “Project developers must build in and communicate community gain considerations,” he said.
Anni Podimata, Vice-President of the European Parliament pointed out the economic problems Europe is currently facing including stagnant economic expectations for 2013 and rising youth unemployment. “However despite the crisis renewables remain one of the most dynamic sectors in Europe,” she said.
Like much of Europe’s economy, wind is experiencing difficulties, including wobbles in government support to the sector and a significant dip in bank lending to wind power. Tom Murley of HG Capital said that institutional investors like insurance companies and pension funds are increasing their investments in wind, countering the decline in bank lending, but the trend is not growing quick enough to stem the ebb of finance access the sector is currently experiencing.
EWEA 2013 continues tomorrow with a focus on wind power’s emerging markets, including the launch of EWEA’s latest report on the opportunties Europe’s emerging markets hold.Posted on by
First Open Source C++ Implementation to See Broad Availability Across Linux, Windows and Other Platforms
SUNNYVALE, CA, Aug 26, 2014 (Marketwired via COMTEX) — AMD AMD, +0.48% in collaboration with Microsoft(R) MSFT, -0.28% today announced the release of C++ AMP version 1.2 — an open source C++ compiler which implements version 1.2 of the open specification for C++ AMP, available on both Linux and Windows for the first time. The release represents another step forward toward AMD’s goal of supporting cross-platform solutions, multiple programming languages and continued contributions to the open source community. The tool, which leverages Clang and LLVM, accelerates productivity and ease of use for developers wishing to harness the full power of modern heterogeneous platforms spanning servers, PCs and handheld devices.
“AMD has a consistent track record of enriching the developer experience, and we’re proud to make the first open source implementation of C++ AMP available to enable greater performance and more power-efficient applications,” said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Heterogeneous Applications and Solutions, AMD. “The cross-platform release is another step in strengthening AMD’s developer solutions, allowing for increased productivity and accelerated applications through shared physical memory across the CPU and GPU on both Linux and Windows.”
“AMD continues to deliver excellent developer tools for heterogeneous programming. Partnering with AMD to deliver C++ AMP to the Linux and Open Source communities was a natural step for Microsoft as we work to improve the performance and developer experience on modern computing platforms,” said S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft.
C++ AMP version 1.2 enables C++ developers to accelerate applications across a broad set of hardware and software configurations by supporting three outputs:
— Khronos Group OpenCL(1), supporting AMD CPU/APU/GPU, Intel CPU/APU, NVIDIA GPU, Apple Mac OS X and other OpenCL compliant platforms; — Khronos Group SPIR, supporting AMD CPU/APU/GPU, Intel CPU/APU and future SPIR compliant platforms; and — HSA Foundation HSAIL, supporting AMD APU and future HSA compliant platforms.
Akey performance feature of version 1.2 of the open source C++ AMP specification is support for shared physical memory, which greatly simplifies sharing of data between the CPU and GPU on heterogeneous platforms. Heterogeneous platforms built on the new spec allow programmers to benefit from minimized overhead of expensive data copies and pointer updates when accelerating applications.
Supporting Resources
— Access latest C++ AMP compiler source code here — View the Open C++ AMP specification version 1.2 here — For more information about Clang and LLVM, visit their website.
About AMD AMD AMD, +0.48% designs and integrates technology that powers millions of intelligent devices, including personal computers, tablets, game consoles and cloud servers that define the new era of surround computing. AMD solutions enable people everywhere to realize the full potential of their favorite devices and applications to push the boundaries of what is possible. For more information, visit www.amd.com.
(1) OpenCL and the OpenCL logo are trademarks of Apple, Inc. and used by permission of Khronos.
Contact: Kristen Lisa AMD Public Relations (512) 602-6020 kristen.lisa@amd.com
SOURCE: Advanced Micro DevicesThe French Ask: Should We Be Building Warships For Russia?
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jean-Sebastien Evrard/AFP/Getty Images Jean-Sebastien Evrard/AFP/Getty Images
French President Francois Hollande says that for now, France intends to go through with a deal to build two warships for the Russian navy. The first of the Mistral-class assault vessels is supposed to be delivered in October.
The $1.6 billion deal is the biggest sale to Russia ever by a NATO country. And three years ago, when the contract was signed, French officials hailed it as a sign that Moscow should be considered a partner, not an enemy. Still, there were critics among NATO allies even then.
Today, in light of Russia's actions in Ukraine, the warship sale is hugely controversial — even in France.
The French foreign minister is in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and might face pressure to suspend the sale.
And when asked on a radio talk show recently whether France should suspend the sale, parliament member Bruno Le Maire responded: "Absolutely."
"It's the only way to show Vladimir Putin we're serious," he said. "Putin is playing on Europe's divisions and hesitations."
Le Maire did not want to speak to NPR. Neither did several other politicians approached for interviews.
That's because it's a sensitive issue, says Etienne de Durand, a defense expert at the French Institute for International Relations.
"[There's] a lot of money involved, possibly also jobs at stake, so of course it's a sensitive issue," he says.
De Durand says the warships are an easy target for critics because they're so visible. But there are other European countries with more at stake in Russia than France, he says: Germany because of the industrial and energy links; Britain because of all the Russian money that London manages.
One of the ships is named the Vladivostok, after the far eastern Russian city. The other ship is the Sevastopol — which is the port and naval base in Crimea, which Russia just annexed from Ukraine.
These helicopter assault ships can serve as hospitals or military command centers, with the capacity to carry 16 attack helicopters, 40 tanks and up to 600 troops.
Economics Vs. Moral Responsibility
At the Georgian Embassy in Paris, Ambassador Ecaterine Siradze-Delaunay says the events in Ukraine remind her of what happened in her country six years ago.
"It is absolutely like déjà vu because the feelings all Georgians had, including myself, when we saw what was happening in Ukraine, 2008 came back immediately," she says.
In 2008, the Russian army went into its southern neighbor, Georgia, occupying the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Kremlin claimed it was protecting the rights of ethnic Russians. Later the commander of the Russian navy said his country would have won the Georgian war much faster if it had had the French warships.
Siradze-Delaunay is diplomatic about whether she thinks France should suspend the deal. She says she understands the economic repercussions, but that there is a "moral responsibility" when facilitating a country that occupies other countries' territories.
Though France is not including advanced command and control systems on Russia's ships, some analysts say the boats will change the power equation in the Black and Baltic seas.
Analyst de Durand disagrees. He says Russia could build the ships on its own, although it would take longer and cost more. But he says the whole discussion about the warships brings up the question of whether military deals can still be done with Russia at all.Democrat Jennifer Wexton, Republican John Whitbeck and independent Joe May are vying for the seat held by Democrat Mark Herring, who was elected attorney general.
MCLEAN, Va. – Officials are urging voters in Northern Virginia to head to polls early as a winter storm moves into the region, but some voters are confused about the election.
The three-way special election is scheduled Tuesday in a swing district that will determine control of the state Senate.
Democrat Jennifer Wexton, Republican John Whitbeck and independent Joe May are vying for the seat held by Democrat Mark Herring, who was elected attorney general. The term will expire in 2016.
Polls are open and are scheduled to close at 7 p.m., but officials recommend that people cast their ballots early before weather conditions get too messy. Loudoun County public schools are closed, but polling places located at schools are still open.
WTOP has received calls from listeners in Loudoun County saying that some polling places are not open.
General Registrar for Loudoun County Judy Brown tells WTOP people are showing up at polling places that are not in the 33rd Senate district.
Loudoun County has 39 of its 85 precincts open. All of those are in the 33rd Senate district.
Brown says people need to check their voting cards to see where their polling places are.
Here are the Loudoun County polling precincts for the election.
Here are the Fairfax County polling precincts for the election.
The independent candidate running for the Senate, Joe May, previously served in the 33rd District in the House of Delegates. At the time he was a Republican.
Brown says because May is a familiar face from a House district with the same number as the Senate district, “maybe they’re (voters) a little confused.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow @WTOP on Twitter.LAS VEGAS -- A year ago, the Tampa Bay Lightning and Colorado Avalanche were licking their wounds months after completing dreadful seasons. They were looking forward to the 2013 NHL Draft, where they had high picks and could begin to change their fortunes.
Nobody could have predicted they'd each change fast enough to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs and send a combined eight representatives to Las Vegas for the 2014 NHL Awards.
The Lightning and Avalanche, who finished 28th and 29th, respectively, in the standings last season, lead all teams with four nominees each for awards. They'll find out who wins Tuesday in a two-hour live show at Encore Theater in Wynn Las Vegas (7 p.m. ET, NBCSN, CBC).
The other teams that have as many as three nominees here are the Los Angeles Kings and Boston Bruins, who have combined to win three of the past four Stanley Cup championships.
"The reason why we're here is because we played as a team," Avalanche coach Patrick Roy said. "Sometimes when you focus on playing as a team individual honors come with it because the team is doing well. The only reason why our players are here is because the team had success."
Roy could say the same thing about himself, but his success in his first season as a NHL coach is a big reason why the Avalanche finished third in the standings with 112 points and why he's here as a nominee for the Jack Adams Award, given to the League's top coach.
Similarly, Lightning coach Jon Cooper's success in his first full season behind as a NHL coach is a major reason why Tampa Bay had 101 points and why he's also here as a nominee for the Jack Adams Award.
Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock is also nominated. He was previously nominated for the Jack Adams in 2007-08, when he finished third.
"You go through stages in your career, and I've never really ever been one to second guess myself, but there's still that little bit of shadow of, 'Can I really do this?'" Cooper said. "When I reflect back on all the years and stages, I think at every stage there was a little bit of nervousness? After this first year, I personally feel that I belong and I can hang with these guys.
"In the big picture after this year I feel confident that I belong."
Roy said winning the Jack Adams would "be something special," but he couldn't call it a dream come true because he never dreamt of being a NHL coach.
"It's something 11 years ago when I retired I never thought I would have the opportunity," Roy said. "First of all, I didn't even know what I was going to do, if I was going to coach or be a GM at the junior level. From the day that I decided to become a coach, even thinking coaching in the NHL was not part of the plan. Things escalate and here I am today."
Cooper is amazed that he is even in the same category as Babcock and Roy, who between them have won the Stanley Cup a combined five times, including four for Roy as a player. Babcock has coached in the Stanley Cup Final three times and has won the Olympic gold medal twice.
"Well, Mike Babcock, Patrick Roy, Jon Cooper -- I'm honored to be in that breath," Cooper said. "It's surreal to me, but it's really, really exciting."
Considering how the Lightning and Avalanche won with young players this season, including a combined 15 regulars under the age of 25, it's not surprising that the three nominees for the Calder Trophy come from these two teams.
Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon, 18, is the favorite to win the Calder. MacKinnon, the No. 1 pick in the 2013 NHL Draft, led all rookies with 39 assists and 63 points.
MacKinnon's 24 goals were tied for first among rookies with Tyler Johnson of the Lightning, who joins teammate Ondrej Palat as the other two Calder Trophy nominees.
Palat was second among rookies with 59 points and first with a plus-32 rating. He had 37 points and a plus-17 rating in his last 32 games. Johnson was third among rookies with 50 points.
Palat and Johnson are 23 years old.
"To come to the awards like this, I never really thought it was possible so just to be here is a dream come true," Johnson said. "It's even better to have the guys on our team, like it's a little team reunion so it's a lot of fun."
Goalies Ben Bishop of the Lightning and Semyon Varlamov of the Avalanche are in the running for the Vezina Trophy, along with Bruins goalie Tuukka Rask.
Rask is already a Stanley Cup champion and was considered one of the best goalies in the NHL entering the 2013-14 season. Like their teams, Bishop and Varlamov played their way up the rankings of the League's top goalies this season.
Varlamov was first in the League with 41 wins and third with a.927 save percentage. Bishop was fourth in wins with 37 and fourth in GAA (2.23) among goalies with at least 40 appearances.
Varlamov credited Avalanche goalie coach Francois Allaire for changing his style and making him play deeper as reasons for his success. Roy, who became a Hall of Fame goalie under Allaire's tutelage, said he thinks Varlamov is just scratching the surface of his potential.
"He believes in himself," Roy said. "I think the key for him was the way he performed opened his eyes and made him understand he can be a dominant player in this League."
Ryan O'Reilly doesn't have any competition from current Lightning players for the Lady Byng Trophy. However, former Lightning captain Martin St. Louis is a finalist, along with San Jose Sharks forward Patrick Marleau.
O'Reilly led the Avalanche with 28 goals and was third on the team with 64 points, but he's here as a nominee because he had two penalty minutes.
O'Reilly's lone minor penalty came in Colorado's 74th game of the season, March 29 against the Sharks, coincidentally the day the Avalanche clinched a playoff berth. He was called for playing the puck with a broken stick at 8:49 of the third period. It's a penalty he still regrets.
"It would have been nice to go the whole season without a penalty," O'Reilly said. "I was so close. If I would have just dropped the stick and kicked the puck back, it wouldn't have been called. Who knows? I could have went the whole season without one. It happens."
---Hansen has made a substantive contribution to our understanding of Egyptian society by focusing on relations between Christians and Muslims. His discussions on a number of topics are insightful: the patron-client relationship between the two groups, the complex identities existing within the continuum between Muslim and Christian—from those on the extremes who see themselves exclusively as Muslim or Christian to those in the middle who see themselves as Egyptians—and Egyptian society's worsening post-revolutionary polarization along Islamist, secular, and Christian lines.
The book is not for the lay reader; its first fifty pages closely examine a number of sociopolitical and psychological theories and then regularly invoke them as paradigms for understanding Christian-Muslim relations. Moreover, while Hansen gives fair warning that "this book is addressed to Western academia," the result is a work that incorporates one of the key deficiencies of such scholars: the failure to factor in religion, particularly Islamic doctrine, when analyzing societal issues.
Thus, while noting Egyptian Christians' marginalized position, he also portrays them as "clannish and mistrusting" in what seems a strained effort to appear objective. When declaring that "discrimination [against Christians] is not a product of Islam as an essentially evil religion, which propagates the suppression of people not belonging to the faith," he trivializes and thus dismisses the topic of Islam's doctrines. One does not need to characterize a faith as evil to examine its actual tenets and their practical repercussions.
For example, while discussing the social, political, and psychological aspects that make it difficult to build or repair churches, Hansen never informs the reader that Shari'a bans the building and reparation of such houses of worship and that this is precisely what Muslims cite when they protest and attack churches. Nor does he mention how Muslim authorities use the conceit of "defamation of religions" to harass and imprison Christians (most recently of youths who mocked ISIS).
By not scrutinizing Islamic teaching, Hansen offers strange or naïve assertions: "Salafi with an inclusive attitude towards religious minorities" supposedly exist, and it is still "debatable" whether the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which Hansen acknowledges incited violence against Christians, was "democratically-minded or just politically opportunistic." There are even hints that the Christian Copts brought violence on themselves by supporting the anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution.
The book offers a comprehensive and sometimes insightful look into its topic, albeit through the secular lenses of sociopolitical and psychological theory. However, because it strictly avoids religion—specifically Islamic doctrines concerning non-Muslims—it offers a seriously incomplete analysis.About
Can This Book Help Change the Way the Next Generation Speaks?
The verdict is in: A Is for Accolade, Z Is for Zenith is “exactly what kids need to begin to build connections to the words they already know” and is "sure to bring smiles and make this book a favorite of parents and children alike,” according to leading national childhood literacy experts at the University of Pittsburgh and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Why do these experts want to see this book published? Because it’s full of fun, clever rhymes that get kids K – 4 excited about the riches of the English language. And because 4th graders knew only 28% of the vocabulary they should on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
If You Agree With the Experts, Make One of the Pledges on the Right Today!
If you believe that a strong vocabulary is critical to empowering our kids to reach their full potential in school and in the marketplace, I ask you to take 15 minutes to read the entire manuscript (including a sample puzzle from the workbook). And if you agree with the experts, make one of the pledges you see on the right side of this page today, to provide me with the funds I need to illustrate and publish A Is For Accolade, Z Is for Zenith, a beautiful, 64 page, full color, hardcover book you'll be proud to own. Pledge in the first seven days and I'll email you the audio book for free when this campaign completes in August!
Get Kids Excited about Learning Words and on the Path to Academic Success
With your support, A Is for Accolade, Z Is for Zenith can help to empower the next generation:
Full of word play and driving rhythms, this book begs to be read out loud! Kids love the vibrant mix of tongue twister, riddle, call & response, chant, free verse, and limerick.
Children always develop a great vocabulary if we use great words around them when they're young and get them excited about learning vocabulary.
Using sophisticated words around kids dramatically enhances their ability to think, speak, and write as they grow.
Research clearly indicates that children with larger vocabularies have higher school achievement.
Positive and character building, this book promotes wonderful traits such as generosity, intellectual curiosity, stewardship, tenacity, and boldness.
Endorsed by Leading National Vocabulary Expert Dr. Margaret McKeown, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Learning Research and Development Center and Clinical Professor of Instruction and Learning, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh.
"I enjoyed reading your book and I think it is a lovely way to engage children in sophisticated words. It could be used in so many ways by parents or teachers to entice children with language. Many of the rhymes are incredibly charming – I love the cawing crows, and the platefuls of hyperbole! Putting so much language around the words is exactly what kids need to begin to build connections to the words they already know. I look forward to having a copy of your book in my personal library."
Dr. McKeown should know. She is co-author of Robust Vocabulary Instruction: Bringing Words to Life, used by over 400,000 elementary school teachers nationwide to learn the most effective ways to teach children vocabulary.
Endorsed by American Academy of Pediatrics Literacy Expert Dr. Pamela C. High, MD, lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics policy Literacy Promotion, which urges us to read aloud to kids from birth!
"I am pleased to provide my own accolades for Christopher Darke’s new children’s book, perhaps the first in a series of “Great Words for Life” for children. The rhyming of these BIG words and the humor in these rhymes are sure to bring smiles and make this book a favorite of parents and children alike."
A Tremendously Fun Way to Get Kids Excited about Words!
This book just begs to be read aloud! Full of word play, driving rhythms, and lots of heart, A Is for Accolade, Z Is for Zenith is a tremendously fun way to introduce children to advanced vocabulary. Keep your kids engaged and laughing with this vibrant mix of tongue twister, riddle, call & response, chant, ballad, haiku, syllogism, litany, Q&A, free verse, and limerick!
Each page begins with a simple rhyming definition, followed by a catchy poem or song that reinforces the meaning. Questions and activities at the bottom of each page, beautiful illustrations, and surprise activities at the end of the book help cement the meanings.
Using Sophisticated Words around Kids Dramatically Enhances Their Ability to Think, Speak, and Write
The scientific evidence is overwhelming: by exposing children to a rich, varied, and complex vocabulary, you dramatically enhance their ability to think, speak, and write as they grow. Kids’ brains are like sponges, absorbing everything you say and using this data to build sophisticated pattern matching abilities. It’s the hallmark of intelligence. And so the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that we read aloud to kids from birth! Children from language-rich homes enter first grade knowing twice as many words as their peers, empowering them to read better, comprehend more, and thrive academically! Read, read, read, and push the envelope. No child is too young to be exposed to great words.
"Children should be exposed to a language-rich environment as soon as they are born because it can significantly improve cognitive and language development and readiness for school... And it’s not only the quantity of the words but the quality that counts.
"Lynda Richardson, "Rx: Read to Your Baby," New York Times
A Robust Vocabulary Predicts Success
Give your children the gift of a great vocabulary, and you'll equip them for a lifetime of fruitful learning, self-expression, and work:
"First-grade vocabulary predicts students’ reading achievement in their junior year in high school." ( Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction )
) "Research clearly indicates that children with larger vocabularies have higher school achievement in general and higher reading achievement in particular." (10 Research-Tested Ways to Build Children’s Vocabulary)
"There’s a positive correlation between a student’s vocabulary size in grade 12, the likelihood that she will graduate from college, and her future level of income." (E. D. Hirsch, Jr., "A Wealth of Words: The key to increasing upward mobility is expanding vocabulary," City Journal, Winter 2013. E. D. Hirsch, Jr. is the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation.)
Positive and Character Building
A Is for Accolade, Z Is for Zenith is uplifting and positive. The humor builds kids up without tearing others down and helps teach kids great character traits like generosity, intellectual curiosity, stewardship, tenacity, diligence, and boldness. The sentiments and values the book expresses are a reflection of my hopes and dreams for my children and yours, that they would be kind-hearted, generous people who love and support their family, friends, and neighbors.
May our children grow up to be articulate, magnanimous adults who use words to build up, not to tear down! Thank you for your support,
Christopher DarkeMost get-rich-quick investments are scams, and financing movies is undoubtedly a risky proposition. But here’s an investment tip for cinephiles: In Hollywood, there’s no better scheme to turn a quick and easy profit than making a horror movie.
That axiom was validated in a big way this weekend as M. Night Shyamalan’s Split won the US box office for the third week in a row since hitting theaters Jan. 20. The psychological horror-thriller is now the fifth highest-grossing January release ever and has already made back its modest $9 million budget 15 times over.
Horror titles dominate a list of the movies of the last decade that delivered the highest returns in proportion to their investment, according to the respected industry site The Numbers. These films have quietly thrived outside the mainstream Hollywood system by managing to put butts into theater seats despite their low costs to produce. They don’t collect the massive windfalls that big-budget Hollywood blockbusters often do, and most carry considerably less cultural cachet—but they’re also much cheaper to make.
Split, in particular, is a huge win for the genre. The Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions movie is the highest-grossing horror since The Conjuring in 2013, and it still has some shelf life in the theaters. The Conjuring opened to a near-identical $40 million, but that film dropped 63% in box office gross in its second week. Split only dropped 36%.
The Shyamalan movie’s resounding success, even by the genre’s lofty standards, can be chalked up to a perfect storm of factors. First, and probably most importantly, audiences (and the majority of critics) like it. Plenty of poorly reviewed horror films have still made back their budgets and then some, but it always helps when, you know, the film is good.
But before anyone even saw Split, it was on a path to prosperity. Some horror films are marketed poorly, which dooms their box office prospects. (Case in point: Rings, the latest entry in The Ring franchise that opened to woeful reviews and a mediocre $13 million weekend, in part because audiences didn’t know if it was a sequel, reboot, or remake.) But Split struck the right tenor in its ads, billboards, and commercials. Its trailer was shown on TV and in theaters so many times that some began to jokingly wonder if Split was just a trailer, and not a real movie.
Plus, the film was already swept into the narrative of M. Night Shyamalan’s triumphant comeback. The maestro responsible for horror classics like The Sixth Sense and Signs had spent the better part of the last 15 years making bad films, including the ridiculous Lady in the Water and the tragically misguided After Earth. Split was Shyamalan’s chance at a redemption—one that he apparently made good upon.
And then, of course, there’s the fact that there isn’t much competition around Hollywood in the dark days of January. The month is infamous for its lackluster entertainment output.
Shyamalan is already planning a sequel, and, given how quickly Split became profitable, the studio is certain to be on board. Not every horror film will match the success of Split, but they don’t need to. (Even Rings is already profitable.) The genre is the closest thing Hollywood has to a sure bet.Where to Stream: Game of Thrones
More Options
Season Seven of Game of Thrones opened with a mass murder. Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), wearing the face of Walder Frey, poisoned every single living Frey heir in one go. For fans who had spent four long years craving justice for the Red Wedding, it was delicious. It was catharsis! It was a vicious moment of true horror — a symbol of the destructive force that Arya Stark had grown into. It also slipped by in under five minutes and was soon swept out of our memories by the barrage of explosive battle scenes, thrilling character unions, all-too-swiftly dropped exposition, and a motherfucking ice dragon tearing a hole in the Wall.
What I’m saying is Season Seven of Game of Thrones kicked off with a narrative roar and it never stopped screaming.
Game of Thrones has always been simultaneously one of the most entertaining dramas on television and one of the most controversial. In the past, its entertainment was often derived by the inventive way in which showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were able to profoundly humanize the fantasy genre. They made a medieval fantasy world full of swashbucklers, dragon queens, zombies, and giant wolves seem relatable. That’s because at its heart, Game of Thrones has always been a soap opera about broken people trying to elbow their way towards power and away from the threat of death. The show’s controversy usually came from critics and fans looking at this feudal society through the lens of contemporary values. This season something flipped in the show. The controversy now seems focused on how “entertaining” the show is or isn’t. It turns out that some fans are more interested in quiet moments and realistically long raven flights than an army of ice zombies blowing a hole through an impenetrable wall of ice. It’s all a matter of taste.
The pace of Game of Thrones has indeed taken on a new velocity. If the first six seasons were the build up, Season Seven has been the show’s big drop. It’s the thrilling rush of a roller coaster car zooming down a track so steep your body is certain the whole train of cars is going to tip over. All there is pure experience. And pure experience can sometimes be ironically disappointing. It may not make much sense, but the thrill of anticipation is occasionally more entertaining, more moving, and strangely more visceral than the actual event.
For a lot of Game of Thrones viewers, the strength of the show has been its careful pacing. The ever-steady, but ever-lurching, chug-chug-chug of the narrative as it put all its myriad pieces into position. There were dazzling monologues and tense tete-a-tetes. The show’s deliberate pace meant that the really shocking twists (Ned Stark’s death, the Red Wedding, etc.) took on extra volume. We haven’t gotten a taste of that this year because it’s been almost non-stop twists and turns. Even the quieter conversations take on a higher pitch since they often happen between characters who share a lot of history.
I have to admit that I’ve been of two minds about this shift in the show. The exuberant fangirl in me has been over the moon about all the incredible battles and momentous meet ups. The critic in me has viewed the pacing and structure of the season with a measure of skepticism. “Beyond the Wall” may be the sloppiest episode of the entire series, but hot damn, if I don’t feel my heart race whenever I think of Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) swooping in to save Jon Snow (Kit Harington) — only to lose Viserion in the process. This past season does feel uneven in comparison to the previous six. That’s not a lie. It feels faster, angrier, sexier, and ironically, softer. When Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) and one of Drogon’s back up dragons are the two biggest deaths in a single season, it can feel like Game of Thrones is pulling its punches a bit. And yet, it can’t be reiterated enough that we got a freaking ice dragon this season.
Game of Thrones is a story about contrasts: ice and fire, the living and the dead, the dicks and the dick-less. It’s also a show that opened with the threat of a White Walker invasion and the constant promise that winter was coming. Season Seven has delivered on both those threats and promises. Game of Thrones changed this season, but it was always going to change. Winter isn’t coming anymore; winter is here. The sprawling story we’ve been following for seven years is pulling back in on itself, contracting and combusting, and crashing into what was always going to be inevitable.
Game of Thrones has finally become the show it always promised it would be: a rousing fantasy adventure series with dragons and zombies. With its high stakes drama, glorious action set pieces, and thumping heart, it’s still better than 99% of the rest of television. It’s just not the show it used to be.
Where to Stream Game of ThronesNail Gun Accident’s “Miracle Man”
LOS ANGELES, California (JP) – A construction worker who had six nails driven into his head by a high-powered nail gun on April 19, 2004, is expected to make a full recovery.
Isidro Mejia (ee-SEE-dro may-HEE-yuh), 39, was atop wooden trusses, helping to secure the house frame, when he fell from the roof onto a co-worker who was using the nail gun on the second floor. The two men tried to grab each other to keep from falling, but both fell 15 feet to the ground. At some point, the compressed-air nail gun discharged and drove the 3 ½-inch nails into Mejia’s face, neck and skull.
Four of the nails penetrated Mejia’s skull – three entering his brain, and one coming within centimeters of his brain stem. A fifth nail pierced his vertebral column while the sixth went through his face. Doctors said the nails barely missed his spinal cord, preventing paralysis or death.
Mejia remembered a “shock” to the back of his neck and little else before passing out. He was comatose when he was airlifted to the Providence Holy Cross trauma center (Mission Hills) where he was operated on, with removal of five of the nails. The sixth nail in Mejia’s face was removed four days later after the swelling went down.
Dean Fryer (of California’s Division of Occupational Health and Safety) is investigating the accident to check whether the safety mechanism on the nail gun may have been altered to allow it to fire rapidly.
Mejia’s speech is slow, his face is numb and he walks with minimal assistance, but his progress has been “remarkable,” said neurosurgeon Dr. Rafael Quinonez. Doctors said it is “amazing and miraculous” that he survived, and that they expect Mejia to fully recover after rehabilitation therapy.
Police sergeant Ken Kyle stated, “It was a bizarre accident – one of the freakiest I have ever seen.”
joe-ks.com thinks that he hit the nail right on the head…I wonder – do we understand
Each other, hear the heart
Which beats with rhythm – pure art,
Or do we just pretend:
That we are hearing truly,
Compassionately, fully,
Each other, words we speak,
The understanding that we seek.
I wonder still – the Love I feel –
Do you hear beating in your chest
Defenseless, being so possessed
That every moment does reveal
The peace of quiet feeling –
Such quietness appealing –
Which makes you stop and heed
And to the love concede.
I wonder – words I speak,
The words of love I share –
Are we as one aware
Of meaning, of mystique,
That love so pure proposes,
The secrets it discloses –
Do we see both as one
How our love begun?
I wonder not – I feel,
The love in you is known,
And mine is but your own,
Our love is one – so real!
The beauty of composure
Under pure love’s exposure,
Is what we have achieved –
Love can’t be misperceived!
Share this: Email
Reddit
Pinterest
Tumblr
Twitter
FacebookWe were lucky enough to sit down with Mary Kate Wiles, star of hit web shows The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Squaresville. Check out part 1 of our extensive and exclusive interview now.
The bicentenary of Pride and Prejudice may have come and gone, but here at Hypable we are still celebrating Jane Austen through out love of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Hypable writer Marama Whyte recently spoke with Mary Kate Wiles, who stars in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (and spin-off The Lydia Bennet) as Lydia Bennet, to discuss her thoughts on Lydia’s journey, her experiences in the intense Lizzie Bennet Diaries fandom, and much more.
Following on from controversial episode 87, we can now present the unabridged transcript of our interview with Mary Kate in two parts.
Hypable’s exclusive interview with Mary Kate Wiles
Hypable: How would you describe your version of Lydia?
Mary Kate Wiles: My Lydia is very different from the Lydia of the book. I think my Lydia is very loyal to her sisters and loves her family. I think Lydia loves fiercely, as [Lizzie] says in the show, she doesn’t do “anything by halfsies.” She’s very energetic and sometimes loud, but everything she does comes |
"I think they're littering there," Panto said this morning, adding he wanted to yell at the protester but controlled his temper and the tone of his voice. "The area looks terrible."
The city hopes to have the city parking lot adjacent to the tent camp open within a week to deal with overflow as the enlarged Crayola Experience reopens in Centre Square, the mayor said.
The group's cardboard protest signs lying on the mulch, in addition to cans and plastic bottles on the ground, need to be cleaned up, Panto said. The area has a "disheveled look," he said. He said the protester he spoke with said the signs were biodegradable but then agreed to spruce up the city property.
One of the protesters, who would only identify himself and his counterparts as part of the Occupy the Planet collective, said he was the one who spoke with Panto. Many of the group didn't realize the conversation was with the mayor.
"He asked me what I was going to do when they come to plant environmentally friendly seeds here and I said, 'We'd help you do it,'" the man said.
He recalled Panto told them their signs were littering, but he disagreed, saying they were on the ground to be displayed for the public. The group opposes littering, according to the protester. In fact, they planned on helping pick up trash and litter about noon along Fifth Street.
Panto said again today the protesters are in violation of city law, but says he has two reasons for not immediately forcing them to leave.
"We don't want to give them the notoriety they are looking for," he said. "They are violating the law, no doubt about it.... Do I enforce the law and run the risk of a lawsuit that costs the city thousands of dollars to defend?"
Panto said he knows the city's ordinances would stand up in court, but he was equally sure "some group" would challenge removing the protesters.
"It is a frustrating thing," Panto said. "I don't want to do the wrong thing."
The Occupy protesters aren't worried about the law. Another man who would not identify himself said the police were respectful in other encounters with the group and protesters expect the same this time.
"I think the police around here respect what we're doing," the man said. "They got their roles and we got our roles to play. We're all just trying to make this place better, to make this place cooler."
The protesters said they do expect to be approached by police at some point, but they would not reveal what they plan to do about it.
"We're willing to stay here indefinitely," one of the protesters added.
Panto said he's been contacted by more than two dozen people either at his office or on the city's streets and they uniformly want him to get rid of the protesters.
But, as for now, the mayor said, "We're going to see how it runs its course.... (But) they're going to have to move."
Those camped out on North Fourth Street say they've had the opposite interaction with visitors, who they say have stopped by frequently to talk. The man who spoke with Panto this morning, a neon green bandana hanging around his neck, said he's well aware of the visitors expected within the week for the Crayola Experience in Centre Square. He said he doesn't care what outsiders think of him as long as they understand the point of the movement.
"I think their opinion of me is irrelevant as long as they understand that I'm just trying to better the world," he said.Wait until dark Saturday. Dust off your telescope or binoculars. Grab the kids (dust them off too if needed). Go outside. Look up at the moon. Does it look bigger than usual?
According to NASA, this May’s full moon is called a "super moon,” and it will look about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than other full moons this year.
Scientists call it a “perigee moon.” Perigee, as all good space and science geeks know, means the moon is as close to the Earth as it will get for a while. The exact time of perigee will be 11:34 p.m. ET Saturday. (Apogee means far away - but we don’t care about a distant, tiny dim moon, do we?)
The best time to see the "super moon" is just as it crosses Earth's horizon. The moon always looks biggest then, although why is a bit of a mystery. Go online to find out when the moon rises in your area.
If you get good pictures of the "super moon" - please share with our iReport team.AleSmith Brewing Co.’s newest variation of its most popular stout is named after the old railcar tracks that run around the brewery.
The beer is Boxcar Speedway Stout, a 13 percent ABV imperial stout brewed with Brazil Forestero cacao nibs, hatch and mulato chili peppers, a blend of Columbian and Burundi coffee locally roasted by Swell Coffee and Madagascar vanilla beans before being aged in bourbon barrels for one year. The stout uses uses the San Diego-based brewery’s year-round Speedway Stout (12 percent ABV) as its base, a beer that was first released in 2002.
Boxcar Speedway Stout was first released at TapRoom’s event on Feb. 25 to commemorate the San Diego-based company’s tenth anniversary, and will join more than 60 variants of Speedway Stout released since 2002, including Hammerhead Speedway Stout, Hawaiian Speedway Stout and Barrel-Aged Speedway Stout among others.
According to a post on AleSmith’s Instagram page, Boxcar Speedway Stout will be packaged in 12-ounce cans and is being released at the brewery on March 11 priced at $16 each with a limit of 12 cans per person.Get the biggest Manchester United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
It's been well documented this season that Shinji Kagawa is struggling for first-team action at Manchester United after seemingly falling out of David Moyes' plans.
But the Japan international HAS managed to secure some game time by starring in a new beer advert.
Kagawa takes on samurais in this commercial for Kirin Beer, weaving past five or six of them before scoring from outside the box.
And he manages to do it while wearing a suit.
The 24-year-old will hope that his midweek substitute appearance against Olimpiakos is the start of a revival in his Old Trafford fortunes, but in the meantime here's aAs Theresa May spends £3m on ads for flagging policy, figures show 80% of candidates declared for autumn poll are male
More than 80% of the 130 confirmed candidates fighting the first elections for police and crime commissioners this autumn are male, according to the latest official analysis.
There are fewer than 100 days to go to the election on 15 November of the first commissioners with the power to hire and fire chief constables and set budgets in the 41 police force areas in England and Wales outside London.
The home secretary, Theresa May, has already made an 11th-hour attempt to rescue the policy by securing £3m from the Treasury to fund an ad campaign in October amid ministerial fears of an embarrassing flop, with low turnouts and poor-quality candidates.
However, a recent commentary by the influential website ConservativeHome suggested that even on the Conservatives' current discouraging polling figures they could still end up "winning" these elections by taking 21 of the jobs with Labour taking 20.
The PCC elections will be held the same day as Westminster byelections in Manchester Central and Cardiff South where sitting MPs have quit to stand as police commissioners. There is already speculation that the byelection in Corby and East Northamptonshire, where the Conservative Louise Mensch is quitting, will also be held on the same day to neutralise the impact of an expected Labour victory.
The analysis by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) shows that Labour has a complete slate of candidates in place for 15 November and the Conservatives have named their hopefuls in all but five force areas: Gwent, North Wales, South Wales, South Yorkshire and Merseyside.
The Liberal Democrats initially decided nationally to pass up the chance of fielding candidates but have now entered the fray with local parties advertising for candidates in six areas, including Manchester. So far the party has adopted official candidates in three areas – Avon and Somerset, Northamptonshire and Surrey.
Things have already got messy for the party in Devon and Cornwall, where Brian Greenslade, who was the Lib Dem leader on the Association of Police Authorities, risks being suspended from the party after declaring his intention this week to stand as an independent. The party has already said it will field an official candidate in Devon and Cornwall and the North Devon council leader risks being disciplined if he stands against them.
The APCC analysis shows that 43 independents have confirmed their candidacy. But May will be unsettled to discover that her hopes of attracting high-profile, high-quality candidates from beyond the world of politics appear to have flopped. The Falklands hero Simon Weston is among those who have dropped out.
Instead, the list of independents includes four English Democrats, one leading light of the English Defence League, and a Monster Raving Loony. The most high-profile independent is the magistrate Ann Barnes, who is resigning as chair of the Kent police authority to stand as the county's PCC on an anti-police-privatisation platform.
As equality minister, May will also be disappointed to find that 81% of the confirmed candidates are men. While the latest list includes male former ministers such as Lord Prescott, Alun Michael, Tony Lloyd and Michael Mates, the most prominent women standing are the former solicitor general Vera Baird and the ex-minister Jane Kennedy.
Even those Conservatives who have been selected are not necessarily likely to endear themselves to May. The party's official candidate in the West Midlands, Matt Bennett, has already declared he will abandon the force's private partnership plans.Why the Android Analyzer is Paving the Way for App Accessibility
The Android Analyzer: What It Does
What is the Analyzer? It’s a tool intended to aid developers in creating accessible Android applications by allowing them to integrate accessibility testing into their normal development workflow. Its rules are developed according to the Deque way and are in conjunction with the developing WCAG mobile standards. The Analyzer is built for both manual and automated testing and can be configured to meet developers needs. Developers can control which of Deque’s accessibility rules are run, how the results are displayed, and the highlight color on the device.
Simply put,the Android-A11y-Service is an Android accessibility service. When it’s enabled it runs on top of Android activities and analyzes their content for accessibility issues.
This is how it works: the view hierarchy is scanned every time an event occurs that changes window view content. Accessibility issues are then highlighted on the screen, with a border around the offending view. The Analyzer also creates a simple TCP Socket listener that sends an HTTP Response for simple REST calls. This allows you to view real time results from a browser that reflects what’s being shown on the device. The Analyzer then produces an HTML report with these details, with explanations on how to fix the issues.
Features & Abilities
The image below depicts two main ways you can interact with the Analyzer. Later on in this post, I’ll explain info that’s displayed in the screenshots in greater detail. The image below serves as a kind of introduction as to how the Analyzer works by displaying the visual results (both on device and on a connected computer through a browser).
Notice how there are red highlights around the On/Off switches. These highlights aren’t from the application, but from the Deque A11y Analyzer service that’s running on top of the application. You’ll notice a simple web view on the left. The analyzer launches a simple HTTP server* that allows you to connect to the service when you need more information about specific violations. You can also click on specific violations from the web console and highlight them individually.
*More information on that below under “Rest API”
Example with Deque University
Deque’s demo app, Deque University for Android, demonstrates many accessibility issues that occur in Android apps. It’s available on the Google Play Store and open sourced on GitHub. The app has intentionally inaccessible content that is used to demonstrate the Analyzer’s capabilities. Let’s look at an example from the app to see how the Analyzer works.
First, we’ll navigate to the Labels page through the app’s main menu. The “About” tab describes Labels in the context of Android APIs and explains their usefulness for both accessibility and usability.
Now let’s look at the broken tab of the same page. With the analyzer on, the three switches are highlighted in red to indicate an accessibility failure. In this case, the switches are inaccessible due to a lack of associated visible label that’s helpful for both sighted and non-sighted users.
Once you navigate to the fixed page, you’ll see that the Analyzer no longer highlights the switches. That’s because they’ve been correctly associated with their visible label.
The rest of the app is set up in a similar way that both demonstrates and highlights accessibility issues specific to the Android platform. The app is a useful companion to understanding and using the Analyzer.
Manual Testing
The Analyzer’s manual testing options allow users to quickly understand the state of an Android application’s accessibility. By highlighting inaccessible nodes on the device, users can actually pinpoint the location and severity of the errors present. Beyond just a visual scan, users can also discover more details about which nodes are affected. They can learn about the types of issues and how to fix them by accessing the Analyzer’s HTML output.
HTML Output
As I discussed earlier, the Analyzer will automatically highlight views with accessibility issues on the device being tested. While it’s obviously important to be notified about the existence of an accessibility issue, understanding the type of issue – and how to go about fixing it – is the ultimate goal. Luckily, the accessibility service has a simple HTTP REST API that you can ping in order to get more information about specific failures.
Every screen tested by the Analyzer can provide the user with a detailed HTML report (also available as a JSON object) by sending a request to the server the Analyzer sets up. The report is separated by rules. Each rule section is also separated by views scanned by that rule. These fall into one of three categories: pass, moderate, or critical. You can see images of each result type below.
Pass: the given Rule applied to that node, and the node passed.
Moderate: the given Rule applied to that node, and it may have an accessibility issue.
Critical: the given Rule applied to that node, and it has an accessibility issue.
An additional feature of the manual assessment output is the ability to find out which node was triggered by each report. Simply click on the text of any node’s output and you’ll see the corresponding node on the device is highlighted in green (or whichever color you configure in the settings).
Automated Testing
The automated testing features of the Analyzer allow developers to integrate accessibility testing into their existing test suite. The Analyzer’s output is consistent across manual and automated testing and provides details to aid developers in fixing the accessibility errors. There are two ways to integrate the Analyzer’s automated testing capabilities into your platform: using the Analyzer’s assertion library and using Calabash to run the analyzer on apps.
Unit Testing with Assertion Library
At the heart of any testing process is unit testing. Android Studio has powerful support for unit testing in the form of JUnit 4, instrumentation tests, and espresso automation tests. The Analyzer provides support for all of the unit/integration testing approaches and more. All of this comes with the same engine, rule set, and reports that you are accustomed to seeing if you’re using the manual assessment approach.
Results from tests are displayed in the developer console of Android Studio. They have the same information displayed using manual testing as I mentioned before.. Check out this simple example of results from a test run using the Control Labels rule.
—————- RuleControlLabels —————- Rule Description: Basic controls require a label for or contentdescription attribute. FAIL: android.widget.Switch Position: Rect(880, 655 – 1020, 736) Text: OFF Fix All: No associated visible label. This is done using the LabelFor attribute. —————- RuleControlLabels—————- expected:<PASS> but was:<FAIL>
Notice the typical JUnit style “Expected <Pass> but was <Fail>” has some additional information placed before it. This is output from AxeAndroid to help you fix the given accessibility violation. In this case I need to add a LabelFor attribute to a Switch control. Finding out which switch triggered the failure should be simple with the manual assessment tool.
Unit Testing with Calabash Integration
Calabash is a useful tool for automated testing. Using Deque’s step definitions, Deque’s accessibility testing can be easily incorporated into existing Calabash tests. The results from accessibility testing done through Calabash are catalogued in the same way as other Calabash tests. Here’s an example of tests run on Deque University.
Alt tag=Cucumber Features report including Acronym Announcement Story Feature results including four failing node descriptions and two warning node descriptions.
Notice that the Calabash results collect both the failing and warning nodes, but not the passing ones like other testing I discussed before – I did this for brevity – you can easily add in the passing nodes if you want them displayed.
The Analyzer is a Versatile Tool for Mobile A11y
The Analyzer is a tool that can be used in a variety of ways to ensure that Android applications are accessible. It has a tremendous set of rules that are tailored to the developing WCag mobile standards. Those who work on developing the analyzer (including myself!) are working closely with developing new accessibility mobile standards, and the rules are linked to these emerging requirements. Another huge plus? The Analyzer is built for both manual and automated testing, making it an optimal tool for any development team.
This post was co-authored by Chris McMeeking and Melinda Kothbauer1
Misdemeanors include actions that are in breach of peace, such as prostitution, public intoxication that disrupts order, or fist fighting in public. You cannot arrest someone for a misdemeanor if you did not witness the crime yourself.
A reasonable cause for believing a felony can be anything from you witnessing the crime yourself or seeing the offender fleeing the crime scene.
Felonies include murder, rape, and armed robbery as well as certain kinds of theft, battery, and arson.[3][4][5][6][7]
If you witness a person committing a crime, you can make a citizen's arrest. You should always proceed with a. You can perform a citizen's arrest if a misdemeanor public offense is committed or attempted in your presence. You can also perform a citizen's arrest if you know, directly or indirectly, that a person committed a felony. This can either be in your presence or not, as long as you have reasonable cause for believing the person arrested has committed it. If you can wait until police arrive and avoid making a citizen's arrest, absolutely do so.L’Oréal Paris has dropped its first transgender model from a campaign after she faced criticism for remarks about institutional racism.
The beauty brand said Friday on Twitter that the comments made by Munroe Bergdorf were “at odds” with its values and had decided to end the campaign with her.
The decision came after British tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail reported on remarks made by Bergdorf on Facebook.
“Honestly I don’t have energy to talk about the racial violence of white people any more. Yes ALL white people,” she reportedly said. “Because most of ya’ll don’t even realise or refuse to acknowledge that your existence, privilege and success as a race is built on the backs, blood and death of people of colour. Your entire existence is drenched in racism… Come see me when you realise that racism isn’t learned, it’s inherited and consciously or unconsciously passed down through privilege.”
The original post does not currently appear on her Facebook page. But Bergdorf later said on Facebook that her remarks had been taken out of context, and were in response to the recent violence in Charlottesville Va. “When I stated that ‘all white people are racist’, I was addressing that fact that western society as a whole, is a system rooted in white supremacy – designed to benefit, prioritise and protect white people before anyone of any other race,” she said
Some on social accused the transgender model of being racist, while others applauded the stance that she took against institutional racism and said that L’Oréal had gone against the diversity that it purported to support.
Bergdorf had only just announced that she was the face of L’Oréal’s #YoursTruly campaign on Aug. 27. In response to the decision to drop her from the campaign, she called on people to boycott the brand, saying: “Sit still and smile in a beauty campaign ‘championing diversity’. But don’t actually speak about the fact that lack of diversity and is due to racism. Or speak about the origins of racism. It’ll cost you your job.”
Contact us at editors@time.com.Piggy redirects here. You may be looking for the original pilot to use the nickname, Jek Tono Porkins. redirects here. You may be looking for
"My name is Voort saBinring. You can call me Piggy." ―Voort saBinring [src]
Voort saBinring, or "Piggy", was a Gamorrean male and member of Wraith Squadron from its inception in 7 ABY through most of the Yuuzhan Vong War. saBinring had been genetically-modified by Tuzin Gast, a scientist working for Warlord Zsinj to have much higher mathematical analysis; he later translated this into tactical acumen in New Republic military service. saBinring left the Wraiths after the death of his close friend Hohass Ekwesh during the Yuuzhan Vong War, but was re-recruited into an unofficial Wraith Squadron after the Second Galactic Civil War. Following the unit's official reinstatement in 44 ABY, saBinring became the leader of the Wraiths.
Contents show]
Biography Edit
New Republic Edit
"I think he told me about you when I was very young. One of those 'you can be whatever you want when you grow up' stories. 'The Gamorrean Who Became a Fighter Pilot.' I thought he'd made it up" ―Jaina Solo [src]
Prior to joining the New Republic Navy, saBinring was biogenetically altered by Binring Biomedical Product, given a genius mathematical acumen and the ability to speak Basic via a throat-mounted translator. His prowess with mathematics was so great that during his first days as a Wraith, he demonstrated an ability as a sort of tactical computer, his mathematical abilities and pattern recognition allowing him to guide other pilots to heighten their efficiency, even as he flew well himself.
Eventually escaping the facility with help from his creator, Tuzin Gast, saBinring made his way to Obroa-skai. It was here that he researched the war and chose to join the Rebellion, it was also where he chose his name. His creator later committed suicide. His starfighter career was abruptly cut short by a xenophobic superior officer who framed him for assault and insubordination. The officer threw a punch at him, which Piggy blocked, but the officer reported that saBinring attacked him. Undeterred, saBinring applied for transfer to Wraith Squadron and immediately impressed squadron leaders Wedge Antilles and Wes Janson with his genius for astronavigation and intelligence analysis. He also had a simple explanation for why he could not have attacked the officer: if Piggy had punched him, the officer would not have been able to speak coherently at the time he reported the "assault". saBinring was accepted into Gray Squadron after an extensive training regimen, earning a reputation as a navigational expert in the process. Piggy was given the callsign Wraith Twelve, with Lieutenant Janson operating as his wingman.
When the squadron's training ground was discovered by enemy forces, Piggy fought in the resulting Battle of Folor, using his keen analytic skills to view the opposing starfighters' movements and provide critical combat advice to his squadron- and also managed to shoot down at least one TIE Interceptor in the process.
The evacuation of Folor base following the attack by Admiral Apwar Trigit and the Implacable saw Wraith Squadron fall foul of Zsinj's latest toy, the Empion mine. While the squadron drifted helplessly in space, Piggy suffered the indignity of having his vocal implant disabled and he was only able to communicate through a series of grunts. Fortunately Grinder was able to effect repairs and Piggy volunteered for a crazy scheme to turn the tables on their ambushers.
By jury-rigging a vehicle made of X-wing parts and spare pieces of equipment aboard the Narra, they created a small transport called the Lunatic. Piggy volunteered to pilot this unusual craft due to his unique physiology (his Gamorrean bulk left the Wraith heavily insulated against vacuum exposure). saBinring was able to maneuver the Lunatic into the hold of the Night Caller and used his makeshift laser cannon taken off an X-wing to kill Captain Zurel Darillian and capture the ship. Piggy sarcastically asked if he could keep the newly-captured ship, and was mildly shocked when Commander Antillies outlined a potential career path in New Republic Fleet Command that would allow him to remain in charge of the Night Caller. Ultimately, Piggy declined- believing he would enjoy serving in an X-Wing more than on a ships' bridge.
After the Battle of Ession Piggy returned to Coruscant with the squadron, using his analytical skills once again in an attempt to predict Warlord Zsinj's next move. He suggested that Zsinj was attempting to build a secondary army of pirates to increase his military prowess. This theory led to the creation of the Hawk-bat Independent Space Force, a top-secret Wraith Squadron mission where the squadron would act as pirates in an attempt to get closer to Zsinj's operations. Their efforts were ultimately successful; Zsinj recruited the Hawk-bats to assist in the capture of Razor's Kiss- a newly completed Super Star Destroyer.
During the pirate raid, saBinring was able to simulate a fighter crash- he had actually made a rough landing atop the Warlord's flagship, Iron Fist (Executor-class). Piggy was able to inflict severe damage on the Destroyers' shields, forcing them to retreat while the Razor's Kiss was destroyed. Piggy barely escaped in his badly damaged starfighter; fellow Wraith Shalla Nelprin was able to track his erratic flight pattern and the Gammorean returned to his squadron.
Once again on Coruscant, Piggy found himself at the center of Warlord Zsinj's latest scheme—the warlord had brainwashed certain members of nonhumanoid species to wreak havoc in the New Republic and assassinate important leaders, thus stirring up distrust. In one such incident saBinring helped save Admiral Gial Ackbar's life. The attack came in the form of Lieutenant Jart Eyan, a Twi'lek, who was brainwashed while on leave. Upon receiving his code phrase trigger the lieutenant headed towards the admiral's office, and killed the admiral's secretary before entering. Admiral Ackbar and saBinring were inside the admiral's office discussing the odd behavioral patterns of the 181st Imperial Fighter Wing during their last battle. The unsuspecting admiral introduced the lieutenant who saluted Piggy and then shot him in the gut. Although severely injured, saBinring was overcome with base Gamorrean instincts, and rose to fight Eyan. He broke the blaster with a vibroblade and used a desk to smash the Twi'lek into the wall, smashing his head flat and leaving a large dent in the wall. The force of the blow was so strong that it knocked an ensign leaning against the wall unconscious. The Wraith had just enough strength left to avoid dropping the desk on Admiral Ackbar before passing out. saBinring had to be submerged in bacta for an extended period of time, but survived and was placed in the medical facilities aboard the Mon Calamari cruiser Mon Remonda to stay with his squadron, which had been assigned to the ship as part of an anti-Zsinj task force under General Han Solo.[3]
Piggy recovered from his injuries in time to participate in the raid on Binring Biomedial Products; his "birthplace." Despite a complicated trap meant to kill the Wraiths, Piggy escaped serious injury and aided in the capture of Doctor Edda Gast, who would provide vital information about the warlord's brainwashing schemes.[3]
During the Battle of Selaggis, Piggy recognized that several members of the ersatz 181st Imperial Fighter Wing were in fact droid ships armed with heavy explosives. Thanks to coordinating with members of Rogue Squadron, saBinring was able to shut down the droids before they could cause any serious damage to the New Republic starfighters. saBinring continued service with the squadron when it was transferred to New Republic Intelligence.[3]
In 13 ABY in a mission involving Imperial Admiral Kosh Teradoc, in a bar on the world of Ryvester Piggy acted as a dancer. After receiving the signal from Face, who was disguised as a pirate, Captain Hachat, looking for a partner to retrieve priceless work of art, Piggy shouted in Gamorrean that a raid was happening. This, coupled with audio recordings of other shouts of a raid, caused the patrons in the bar to panic. A fire fight ensued. Piggy relayed info of enemy positions from his throat implant to other Wraith members. When one of Teradoc's bodyguards aimed a blaster at the fleeing Loran and Dr. Mulus Cheems, he jumped off the stage and tackled him, breaking the guards bones and knocking him unconscious. Piggy then made his way out the door. When he made it outside, Runt played a trick on him making him think that he was caught. He got into a nearby airspeeder where he was expecting a change of clothes. But due to another one of Runts jokes he was forced to ride to the evac point practically naked. The Wraiths made it to the docks and boarded a luxurious yacht, belonging to Admiral Kosh Teradoc, where he found a robe and began to mix drinks. A short time later the fake statue Teradoc took back to his base exploded, killing Teradoc.[2]
Yuuzhan Vong War Edit
saBinring was still a member of the Wraiths during the Yuuzhan Vong War. After the Fall of Coruscant in 27 ABY, saBinring and several other surviving Wraiths made their way to Borleias to join their old leader, Wedge Antilles, who was serving as a general in charge of a fleet group. Antilles had seized Borleias back from the Yuuzhan Vong after the invaders had used it as a staging point for their assault on Coruscant, and had determined to fight a holding action while the New Republic regrouped.[4]
saBinring, along with Sharr Latt, an expert in psychological warfare, was assigned to work with Jaina Solo, a Jedi starfighter pilot in command of Twin Suns Squadron. Due to a Yuuzhan Vong religious obsession with twins, Solo—a twin herself—had begun a campaign of psychological warfare that promoted her as an avatar of the Yuuzhan Vong goddess Yun-Harla. saBinring and Latt helped further her deception, and saBinring himself joined Twin Suns Squadron, serving as an advisor and mentor in starfighter tactics.[4]
saBinring would also help plan Luke Skywalker's mission to Coruscant to hunt down the deranged Dark Jedi Lord Nyax. However, he and Latt remained on Borleias to assist Solo.[4]
In 29 ABY, near the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War, he was part of the mission to the Vong controlled world of Chashima, acting as the sniper for Runt and Estoric Sandskimmer. Just as the latter two were getting away from a shaper damutek with a new secret weapon that the Vong had developed, they were attacked. In spite of Piggy's help, both Wraith members were killed. Piggy was forced to perform a mercy killing on his friend Runt by shooting him through the chin so he wouldn't have to suffer the effects of the amphistaff venom that poisoned him. This incident caused Piggy to resign from the Wraith and renounce his nickname because of Runt's death and because the weapon that the Vong had developed at that point wouldn't be able to help them against the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances given that the GA had them on the ropes, making Runt’s death pointless.[2]
Hunt for a Traitor Edit
In 44 ABY Voort was a mathematics professor on the world of Ayceezee, no longer using the nickname "Piggy" because of the events of the Yuuzhan Vong war 15 years before. He was recruited by Face Loran to join a new team of Wraiths he set up at the behest of Head of Galactic Alliance Security, Borath Maddeus, to investigate whether then-head of Galactic Alliance Army, General Stavin Thaal, was part of the Lecersen Conspiracy. Voort was joined by Bhindi Drayson as Wraith Leader, Jesmin Tainer, Myri Antilles, Trey Courser, Turman Durra and Viull "Scut" Gorsat. The team followed Thaal to the Vandor-3, where they ran a variant of the "king of the droids" ploy to find a secret installation of Thaal's Pop-Dogs in a supposed petting zoo for children.
While gathering evidence of Thaal's actions, they ran into another group of Wraiths, led by Sharr Latt, which Loran had set up to investigate separate leads. Together they escaped the Pop-Dogs to a nearby installation, while Bhindi sacrificed herself to distract their pursuers. Forced to await rescue by Wedge Antilles who Myri had called, Voort declared himself leader of the new combined Wraith Squadron. This move was criticized by Scut - a Yuuzhan Vong member of the team Voort distrusted. He believed Voort unfit to lead because of his unresolved issues with what happened in the Yuuzhan Vong war and all the other times he lost a team mate. Voort was initially angry but admitted that Scut had a point and later managed to convince Scut and at the same time managed to accept Scut as a team member. Voort then traveled with his team to Kuratooine where they were able to capture Thaal. While on the mission, Voort had to dance to attract witnesses to the scene and managed to resolve his issues, calling himself "Piggy" again.
Appearances Edit
Sources Edit
Notes and references EditBeezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop Arrested Again On Drug Charges, Explains Name
By Chuck Sudo in News on Aug 19, 2013 9:40PM
The last we heard from Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop (formerly Jeffrey Drew Wilschke, commonly referred to as "Beezow" and called “Doo-Doo” by Chicagoist), he vowed to “get even” with Madison, Wisc. police after they arrested him for a variety of charges including carrying a concealed weapon, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana and a probation violation.
Doo-Doo is in more ca-ca after he was arrested on drug charges in Washington County, Iowa last month. No one should be surprised that Doo-Doo is involved with drugs; after all, he had a perfectly acceptable name before he decided to change it to a line from a Lambert, Hendricks and Ross song.
The Iowa charges include felony possession of a controlled substance and operation of a motor vehicle without registration. He was allegedly found holding.60 ounces of marijuana in a Mason jar and paraphernalia. A second man, the normally named Zachary Marinan of Davenport, Iowa, was also charged. Doo-Doo’s driver's license also listed his former name, even though he had it legally changed nearly two years ago.
The Wisconsin State Journal spoke with Doo-Doo about the meaning of his name. The breakdown is gloriously brilliant and addle-brained hippie nonsense:
Beezow explained that his first name represents “the explosion of awareness of the interconnectedness of the infinite love in the universe.” Doo-doo “is the struggle of our daily lives with that awareness, that with love comes chaos,” and Zopittybop-bop-bop “is the outcome of that struggle, which is often ironic, especially because all life ends in death.”
Doo-Doo is expected to go to trial Sept. 17 on the felony charge and faces five years in jail, if convicted. Washington County Jailer Dennis Boecker called Doo-Doo “a very interesting individual” with “a unique perspective on life” based on the letters he’s written that are screened by the jail. Doo-Doo has also said “I see a little part of myself in all of the Batman villains.”
Time to put down the pipe.My "pet deck" for 60 card games. A Modern tournament worthy "creatureless" deck that utilizes various planeswalkers to control the board while you use a host of removal spells to handle threats. Despite the price tag and number of high value cards, this deck was built on a budget and quite a number of cards were sold to build it. But at least I have my all time favorite deck built.LANDSShocklands and the Mardu tri-land. The shocklands were chosen over fetchlands as I had several of the shocks already and they were cheaper than the fetchlands. Nomad Outpost is something I've been hoping would get printed for ages, so I figured I'd try it out. It replaced Reflecting Pools, which I was not happy with in the deck.PLANESWALKERSOne of each 'walker for the corresponding color combination. One of the few remaining "original ideas" that has remained with the deck throughout its existence, and certainly isn't going anywhere. Each walker was chosen to help the deck along in some way. Vengeant, while being the only RW walker to choose from, can help with tapping down pesky threats as well as use his built in Helix to deal damage an offset life loss from the many cards that hurt me in my own deck. Firebrand is in the deck almost entirely for her second ability that allows me to copy all my most important spells. I am going to test out Pyromaster in place of Firebrand as the +1 is better and her 0 works well with the over all low |
Guns N' Roses songs that Axl Rose wrote solo. According to interviews, Rose wrote "One in a Million" on guitar (with which he was not proficient at the time), using only the bottom two strings. This differs from other Rose-written Guns N' Roses songs, which Rose composed on piano or keyboards. This is the first Guns N' Roses song to feature piano, played by Rose on the outro.
Controversy [ edit ]
The song's lyrics caused great controversy among many different groups, and accusations of homophobia, nativism, and racism were leveled against Guns N' Roses' lead singer and song lyricist, Axl Rose. Music critic Jon Pareles noted that:
With "One in a Million" on "G 'n' R Lies," the band tailored its image to appeal to white, heterosexual, nativist prejudices, denouncing blacks, immigrants and gays while coyly apologizing "to those who may take offense" in the album notes.[1]
In a 1989 Rolling Stone interview, Rose explained the lyrics "I used words like police and niggers because you're not allowed to use the word "nigger". Why can black people go up to each other and say, "Nigger," but when a white guy does it all of a sudden it's a big put-down. I don't like boundaries of any kind. I don't like being told what I can and what I can't say. I used the word "nigger" because it's a word to describe somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem. The word "nigger" doesn't necessarily mean black. Doesn't John Lennon have a song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World"? There's a rap group, N.W.A. - Niggers With Attitude. I mean, they're proud of that word. More power to them. Guns N' Roses ain't bad.... N.W.A. is bad! Mr. Bob Goldthwait said the only reason we put these lyrics on the record was because it would cause controversy and we'd sell a million albums. Fuck him! Why'd he put us in his skit? We don't just do something to get the controversy, the press."[2]
The cover of the GN'R Lies EP, which was designed as a mock-tabloid newspaper front page, actually contained an advance apology for the song, suggesting controversy was anticipated. A small "article" entitled "One in a Million", credited to Rose, ended: "This song is very simple and extremely generic or generalized, my apologies to those who may take offense."[3][4]
In response to the following accusations of homophobia, Rose initially stated that he was "pro-heterosexual" and "I'm not against them doing what they want to do as long as it's not hurting anybody else and they're not forcing it upon me", and spoke of negative experiences in his past, such as a seemingly friendly man who let him crash on his hotel room floor and then tried to rape him.[2] He later softened this stance, and insisted that he was not homophobic, pointing out that some of his icons, such as Freddie Mercury and Elton John, as well as David Geffen, the head of his record label, were bisexual or gay.
Axl Rose was also accused of being biased against police due to the negative lyrics in the song which mention them. Rose responded by claiming when he was a teenager he was once mistaken for a girl by two police officers, who then proceeded to make sexual comments towards him, infuriating him so much he attacked the officers, resulting in his arrest.[5]
Nevertheless, others - including some of his peers in the music industry - accused him of racism for the use of the word 'niggers' in the song.[6] When Guns N' Roses and Living Colour supported The Rolling Stones for a concert in Los Angeles in 1989, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid publicly commented on "One in a Million" during his band's set. After hearing this, Rose in turn suggested they play the song for their opening act "just to piss them off."
Several times Rose defended his use of the word 'nigger'. In one 1989 interview, he stated that he had used the word in reference to the John Lennon song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World". Rose also claimed that he had used the word because it was considered taboo.[7]
By 1992, however, Rose seemed to have gained new perspective on the song and its lyrics. In one interview, he added, "I was pissed off about some black people that were trying to rob me. I wanted to insult those particular black people."[7]
In his final public comments about "One in a Million" in 1992, Rose stated, "It was a way for me to express my anger at how vulnerable I felt in certain situations that had gone down in my life."[4]
The song was not included on a 2018 box-set reissue of Appetite for Destruction, which otherwise included the remaining songs recorded for G N' R Lies on a bonus disc.[8]
Response from bandmates [ edit ]
Before the release of Lies, the other members of the band tried in vain to make Rose drop the track from the record.[5] Fellow GN'R member Slash, whose mother is black, noted that he did not condone the song but did not condemn his bandmate, commenting in a 1991 interview with Rolling Stone: "When Axl first came up with the song and really wanted to do it, I said I didn't think it was very cool... I don't regret doing 'One in a Million', I just regret what we've been through because of it and the way people have perceived our personal feelings."[9]
In 1988, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin told rock critic Nick Kent that the lyrics simply reflected the poor race relations of inner city Los Angeles.[10]
Cover versions [ edit ]
Marilyn Manson had planned to record a version of "One in a Million", lyrics intact,[11] but plans to do so were scrapped.[12]
Personnel [ edit ]Rank School (first-place votes) Record Points Last week's ranking 1 Florida State (24) 19-4 763 1 2 Virginia (5) 18-4 712 5 3 South Carolina (1) 19-3 660 2 4 LSU 20-4 650 6 5 Vanderbilt 20-5 628 3 6 Louisiana-Lafayette 22-2 589 8 7 Oregon State 19-5 585 4 8 Oregon 17-5 584 7 9 Mississippi 21-4 483 14 10 Cal Poly 19-4 461 11 11 Rice 19-6 436 15 12 Cal State Fullerton 13-8 405 13 13 Louisville 17-6 400 9 14 Texas 19-6 296 20 15 UCLA 14-8 294 17 16 Mississippi State 17-9 268 19 17 Houston (1) 19-4 241 24 18 North Carolina 15-8 210 12 T19 North Carolina State 14-8 198 12 T19 Kentucky 17-7 198 NR 21 Tennessee 19-4 190 16 22 Clemson 14-9 154 18 23 UC-Santa Barbara 17-3 98 NR 24 Texas Tech 19-7 86 25 25 Virginia Commonwealth 20-3 69 NR
Others receiving votes: Oklahoma State 54; Maryland 51; Texas A&M 48; Florida International 43; Auburn 36; Washington 26; Oklahoma 20; Indiana 19; San Diego 18; Pepperdine 16; Baylor 12; Florida 11; Indiana State 10; Seton Hall 10; Georgia Southern 7; Miami (Fla.) 7; San Diego State 6; GeorgiaTech 5; Sam Houston State 5; New Mexico 4; Alabama 3; Charleston 2; TCU 2; Iowa 1; William & Mary 1.
The USA TODAY Sports board of coaches is made up of 31 coaches at Division I institutions. All are members of the American Baseball Coaches Association. The board for the 2014 season: John Anderson, Minnesota; Ed Blankmeyer, St. John's; Ray Birmingham, New Mexico; Ryan Brownlee, Western Illinois; Barry Davis, Rider; Greg DiCenzo, Holy Cross; Pete Dunn, Stetson; Nino Giarratano, San Francisco; Gary Gilmore, Coastal Carolina; Danny Hall, Georgia Tech; Fritz Hamburg, Saint Joseph's; Carlton Hardy, Savannah State; Dan Heefner, Dallas Baptist; Rodney Hennon, Georgia Southern; Charlie Hickey, Central Connecticut State; George Horton, Oregon; Steve Jaksa, Central Michigan; Dave Jarvis, Belmont; Omar Johnson, Jackson State; Rick Jones, Tulane; John Musachio, Oakland (Mich.); Jim Penders, Connecticut; Bobby Pierce, Troy; David Pierce, Sam Houston State; Mark Scalf, UNC-Wilmington; Matt Senk, Stony Brook; Dave Serrano, Tennessee; Doug Smith, UC-Riverside; Steve Smith, Baylor; Rocky Ward, New Mexico State; Bob Whalen, Dartmouth.child easy read vaccine schedule
Birth
1
month
2
months
4
months
6
months
12
months
15
months
18
months
19-23
months
2-3
years
4-6
years HepB HepB HepB RV RV RV DTaP DTaP DTaP DTaP DTaP Hib Hib Hib Hib PCV13 PCV13 PCV13 PCV13 IPV IPV IPV IPV Influenza(Yearly)* MMR MMR Varicella Varicella HepA§
Note: If your child misses a shot, you don’t need to start over. Just go back to your child’s doctor for the next shot. Talk with your child’s doctor if you have questions about vaccines.
Footnotes
*Two doses given at least four weeks apart are recommended for children age 6 months through 8 years of age who are getting an influenza (flu) vaccine for the first time and for some other children in this age group.
§Two doses of HepA vaccine are needed for lasting protection. The first dose of HepA vaccine should be given between 12 months and 23 months of age. The second dose should be given 6 months after the last dose. HepA vaccination may be given to any child 12 months and older to protect against hepatitis A. Children and adolescents who did not receive the HepA vaccine and are at high risk should be vaccinated against hepatitis A.
If your child has any medical conditions that put him at risk for infection or is traveling outside the United States, talk to your child’s doctor about additional vaccines that he or she may need.MONTREAL— If one were to summarize the spirit of Justin Trudeau’s so-called fairness for the middle-class manifesto, it is that the Liberals have belatedly resolved to fight fire with fire next fall or, in this case, tax cuts with tax cuts. For the first time in a decade, they are set to go head to head with the Conservatives on a battlefield that the latter have largely owned by default until now.
Based on the two major fiscal planks Jusstin Trudeau unveiled on Monday the plan he has built for his upcoming campaign is more a departure from that of his immediate predecessors than a continuation, writes Chantal Hébert. ( Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
In the past three elections, Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff to varying degrees tried to shift the campaign focus from the Conservative tax-cutting agenda to the social benefits of an activist federal government. Martin attempted to fight the lure of promised cuts to the GST and the reintroduction of a monthly child benefit by arguing that they would leave the coffers empty for major national initiatives such as universal child-care program. His pleas — on the heels of decades of unfulfilled federal promises on the child-care front — fell on a lot of deaf ears. Dion appealed to voters’ concerns over climate change. But his platform — loaded as it was with a carbon tax — was not crafted with the turmoil of a global economic crisis in mind. After his defeat his plan disappeared from the Liberal agenda.
Article Continued Below
Under Ignatieff, the Liberals tried to appeal to both the pocketbook and the social conscience of some of the voters that they were targeting. They promised to make post-secondary education financially accessible to all. That commitment failed to register — as did most of the 2011 platform. Based on the two major fiscal planks Trudeau unveiled on Monday the plan he has built for his upcoming campaign is more a departure from that of his immediate predecessors than a continuation. None of them embraced tax cuts in the way that Trudeau will be. In contrast with the narrative of recent Liberal campaigns, the message will not be that Trudeau would spend the federal surplus all that differently from Stephen Harper but rather that he would distribute it more fairly. By retargeting the Conservative child benefit on families that earn less than $150,000 Trudeau is able to offer most parents a sweeter deal, at the expense of a more affluent minority.
The Liberals would cut the federal tax rate on middle-income earners ($44,701-$89,701) and raising it for those who earn more than $200,000. That likewise would make more winners than losers. If you believe that elections are largely won or lost by putting money back in voters’ pockets these days, then the measures Trudeau puts forward make the Liberal party competitive with the ruling Conservatives for the first time since Harper — as the then-leader of the official Opposition — visited a GTA store early in the 2005 campaign to promise to shave two points off the GST.
Article Continued Below
But there is a trade-off, for what the Liberal platform will not do is recreate the federal fiscal room lost over a decade of aggressive Conservative tax-cutting for the kind of spending programs that used to a hallmark of previous Liberal platforms. To fund his measures Trudeau would cancel the doubling of the ceiling for contributions to a tax-free savings account (TFSA). He would do away the Conservative income-splitting regimen for all but seniors. That would still leave him $2 billion short — with details as to where those dollars would come from to be released at some later stage. All that adds up to a sizeable chunk of the spending of a future Liberal government. Over the past two years, Trudeau has promised to spend more on infrastructure. He said he would restore funding to the CBC. He is committed to offering the First Nations a better deal than the Conservatives. He talked about the federal government co-ordinating a provincial offensive on the climate change front. He wants to discuss health care and pension reform with the premiers. Most of those commitments fall under the general heading of a return to a more co-operative federalism than that practiced under Harper. But with much of the incoming federal surpluses spoken for, the federal government that Trudeau would bring to the provincial table would at least initially be as strapped for cash for new ambitious programs as its provincial counterparts.
Read more about:In the video above, I interview Alex Evans, Media Molecule co-founder and technical director about PlayStation 4's Dreams, a game that lets you sculpt your own character and your own world. From alien worlds to friendly enchanted forests, animated pears to giant robots; dreams lets you build any game you can imagine with ease. Little Big Planet was one of the most innovative and community supported games in years.
So to see the studio Media Molecule push character and game creation much, much further is a very exciting prospect. Now you can walk inside the game as the world is being created all around you by other players from a massive pallet of color, objects and characters made by Media Molecule themselves but more importantly, also made by the community. This community creation allows for virtually any genre to be built within dreams.Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivering a speech in Tehran. AP Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that his country would not enter into talks with the US outside the nuclear deal with world powers as Washington could use other negotiations to "penetrate" the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei's comments, published on his website, come as enough US lawmakers now support the nuclear deal to block passage of a resolution of disapproval and hand President Barack Obama a major foreign-policy victory.
"We approved talks with the United States about nuclear issue specifically," Khamenei said. "We have not allowed talks with the US in other fields and we not negotiate with them."
Speaking to a group of people in Tehran, Khamenei reiterated that America remained the "Great Satan."
"The Iranian nation ousted the Satan," he said, adding, "We should not let it back through the window to penetrate" Iran.
On Tuesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani signaled that Iran was ready to hold talks with the world powers on ways to resolve Syria's civil war, providing such negotiations can secure peace and democracy in the conflict-torn country. Iran supports embattled President Bashar Assad, whom the US opposes.
Khamenei also reiterated his hard stance against Israel.
"I say that you (Israelis) will not see the coming 25 years and, God willing, there will not be something named the Zionist regime in next 25 years," he said.
Iran does not recognize Israel and supports militant anti-Israeli groups like the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah groups.
Israel, which repeatedly criticized the nuclear deal, has not ruled out a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.Hey guys, aReNGee here with a legendary preview card from the upcoming Jekk’s Bounty! Most of you will have seen this card previewed already on stream, so here it is:
What can I do with this card?
Shadowlands Feaster is a 5/6 Flying Ambush – those are some pretty reasonable stats and very relevant abilities. Shadowlands Feaster can swoop down and snack on an Icaria without missing a beat. It hops in front of midsized units with ease, and can drop down end of turn to munch on a relic weapon. Ambush means that it dodges slow removal the turn you play it – while the Feaster is weak to removal like Permafrost and Vanquish, you should always get in an attack or block before it is available for targeting. Watch out for Annihilate and Deathstrike!
A 5/6 Flying Ambush with no other text would be a reasonable card, but Shadowlands Feaster comes with an additional, static ability. “When an enemy unit dies, it goes to your void.” This is a weird line of text, and before people get TOO excited I have to warn you, this has no impact on enemy Entombs. They’ll get the effect as normal. This stops recursion effects, like Dawnwalker and Ephermeral Wisp, from functioning as your opponents would like. It also frustrates void-recursion based strategies like those built around Haunting Scream or Smuggler’s Stash. Even Vara is potentially left without targets.
Where does this card fit?
“Wherever you want” is the cope out answer, but you all know me better than that. The first thing we need to note about Shadowlands Feaster is its cost: seven. That’s a lot of power, and you can’t just throw it in any deck and hope to succeed. You’re going to need a deck that regularly has seven power in play and can handle double shadow. Feln Control decks seems like a natural fit – it handles relic weapons and Icaria rather well, which is one of the Feln’s weaknesses. Larger Stonescar decks could take advantage of this card – its keywords allow it to fly above the deadly unit fueled board stalls Stonescar can get into, and ambush gives the deck more enemy turn interaction. Hopping down and eating an Umbren Reaper or an Impending Doom is also fun.
Beyond Feln and Stonescar, there’s no clear fit for Shadowlands Feaster at the moment. Stealing your opponent’s units is powerful, but I’m not certain the cards are there at the moment to make it anything more than incidental void hate. Still, we have 15 other new cards coming – these new cards will likely bring new archetypes! Who knows where the Feaster will end up?
Share this: Twitter
FacebookAfter Iowa, the results of the Democratic primary in New Hampshire no longer matter to Democrats. Bernie (the most likely winner) or Hillary, this race will be decided in the industrial heartland, and the two coasts.
Regardless of the New Hampshire results, neither candidate will drop out. Neither candidate will have trouble raising money. Neither will be "propelled" into South Carolina.
For Democrats, and for the country's future, what happens in the Republican New Hampshire primary is a 1,000-fold more important.
Democrats who realize this can do far more to help the country and the party by voting in the Republican primary -- for Ted Cruz (R/TP-TX), in droves.
Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses rather convincingly -- against the trend of the polls, against a very crowded field, against the opposition of the Iowa Governor, and despite his opposition to ethanol subsidies, the only candidate on either side to oppose them.
If he wins New Hampshire as well, the race is going to be pretty much his to lose. He is well-positioned in the southern primaries, and the glow from winning in the northeast would shine brightly.
New Hampshire allows cross-over votes, so that anyone can vote in any party's primary.
If I were a New Hampshire Democrat, concerned about the future of the country, and the world, I would sign-up to vote in the Republican primary, and cast that vote for Ted Cruz.
Why?
A Cruz victory in New Hampshire makes his nomination highly likely, at worst a brokered convention with Cruz holding the upper hand.
Because the Republican field remains fractured, the opportunity for Democrats (and Independents) in New Hampshire to affect the outcome is huge. Moreover, voting for Cruz in droves would provide him a resounding victory in a crowded field that his rivals would have trouble spinning.
Claire McCaskill's (D-MO) strategy of running against the worst Republican in the Senate primary worked because the race for the Republican nomination was also fractured. Had there only been two candidates, it is questionable whether her strategy would have worked. But, with a number of different candidates in the race, her efforts tipped the scale. She chose her opponent.
With Cruz at the top of the Republican ticket, Democrats will not only win the presidency, but they would have a very good chance to regain the Senate and might even win the House. Look at the margin of McCaskill's victory in the general election.
Yes, I know, I know. The Hillary-Bernie race is very exciting, and it would be nice to be able to put one's finger on the scale for one of them. But, neither candidacy is, anymore, going to be determined by New Hampshire.
The Republican side is quite different. Moreover, no matter who wins, if that person becomes president, the country is in for a major dose of Kansas/Michigan type governance: a government that could not give a sh*t about consequences to people, a government that will enact enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, force women to carry their rapists' children to term, abolish access to health care coverage... and, most ominously, take over the Supreme Court for at least a generation.
All the hard-won gains for racial and gender equality, for preserving our precious planet, for providing citizens access to health care or even to the ballot box, will be wiped out. Gone.
Once gone, they will not return in the lifetime of anyone reading this article. When the Right takes power, their primary strategy is to make taking that power back more and more difficult. They deny the vote, rig elections, gerrymander districts, take over local governments.
In case no one has noticed, the Right-wing is not a fan of democracy. They want power. Process and legitimacy mean nothing to them.
So, New Hampshire Democrats, Ted Cruz laid claim to the Republican nomination by winning in Iowa. If you cross-over and vote for him in droves, you can give it to him.
And, the chances of the general election resulting in a realignment, consigning the radical Right to the same place conservative William F Buckley, Jr, wanted them -- marginalized -- are high.
The Right has abused our patience by preventing progress in area after area of life where it matters to people -- from healthcare to voting, from good-paying jobs rebuilding our roads, bridges, etc. to denying a living wage to workers, from interfering with women's constitutional right to an abortion to forcing them to carry their rapists' children -- that Democrats should not let this opportunity of a realignment election pass.Boston Red Sox right fielder Mookie Betts entered Sunday the swinging a hot bat, hitting.435 with six walks in his past six games, but also came with a bit of an RBI drought, with only six in his previous 16 games.
A couple of big swings against the Toronto Blue Jays added to the hot hitting and took care of a few runners on base, as well.
The history
Betts tied a career high with eight RBIs in a 15-1 rout of the Blue Jays (the other right-RBI game was last season against the Diamondbacks). He joined Nomar Garciaparra as the only players in Red Sox history to have multiple eight-RBI games. Betts and Nelson Cruz are the only active players with two such games.
Three players have had more than eight RBIs in a game three times: Dave Kingman, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx.
Betts also tied the major league record for RBIs in a game from the leadoff spot. He’s the fifth player with eight, the first since Ronnie Belliard of the 2003 Rockies.
Lastly, Betts became the first player in MLB history to record two home runs, four hits and eight RBIs in multiple games
His season
Betts hasn’t been quite the player that he was in 2016, when he led the American League in total bases and finished with 9.5 WAR, but he’s still been outstanding.
Betts is currently hitting.286/.364/.506. He entered the day tied for the major league lead in doubles with Nolan Arenado, with 27.
He’ll likely be a 4-WAR player just past the season’s midpoint when Wins Above Replacement numbers are updated on Monday morning. The only position players ahead of him entering Sunday were Aaron Judge, Paul Goldschmidt and Carlos Correa. That’s partly a product of his defense. He leads the majors with 17 defensive runs saved, one year after posting 32.
The Red Sox are rolling
The Red Sox have won four in a row and 6 of 7 overall. They’ve scored at least nine runs in five of their past six games, averaging 7.5 runs per game in that span.
Next up are the Rangers, a team Betts has hit well against. He has a.357/.416/.514 slash line in 70 at-bats against them. That includes four hits and three walks in a three-game series earlier this season.image source
I’ve found that in the web industry, a lot of job titles are so rigid. I’ve explained in previous blog posts about how the lines can blur between Front-end Developers and Back-end Developers. I think it’s far overdue that we introduce a more specific title. That of a “Front-end User Experience Developer”.
During the course of this article, I will elaborate on this new title of mine and how I see it influencing the industry, clearing up job specifications and helping companies hire the correct people for the job.
Are you a UX guy, a web designer or a front end developer? Check out this revolutionary new tool to make your work a lot easier
Lets first start off with the problem
Every now and then, I jump onto job boards. I like to see what the industry is looking for in terms of experience and skill set. More often than not, I come across job advertisements that require Front-end Developers to be more than just Front-End Developers. In fact, according to the job spec itself, Front-end Developers tend to be required to know just as much as back end developers!! What can I deduce from this seemingly absurd predicament? HR really don’t know what they are looking for. Similar to shooting fish in a barrel, at some point, after many pulls of the trigger, you will eventually shoot a fish. To me, this is a waste of time and energy.
As an HR person, if you’re looking for a Front-End Developer, it shouldn’t be a case of our fish in the barrel scenario above. Front-end Developers should be hired for their Front-end experience, not require years of experience in every possible PHP framework ever written or expected to know Object Orientated Programming and MySQL. Of course, you will get those who have experience in all of the above; but then you are looking for a Full-Stack developer, who will probably look at your job advertisement with a crude grin. Why would someone with such broad and competent skill ever apply to be a Front-end Developer?
Now that I’ve presented the problem, let us take a look at the solution
In my experience as a Front-end developer, I’ve always embraced the blurring of technical lines. I have a passion to learn as much as I can about the web. Anything from Angular to PHP, SysAdmin to Regular Expressions. Naturally, with limited experience, I cant be proficient in all of these things. As someone who has coded up 100’s of HTML, CSS and JS files for websites, I want to make sure I put my skills to use – focus.
Planning to go full stack? 4 points to consider
The majority of Front-end Developers I know are creative. They enjoy being able to be stimulated by the creativity that the front-end provides. Most, don’t like the back-end: It’s scary, confusing and incredibly overwhelming, requiring a far greater understanding of technology, the internet and the services related to those concepts.
For the most part, I have found that 90% of my fellow comrades have begun developing a more acute understanding of user experience. Which makes sense right? When you’re so involved in making sure your page loads properly and efficiently, that you’ve accounted for users of different platforms, browsers, versions and more, are you not providing a better user experience? The answer is yes, you are.
So, what if Front-end Developers start to take on these more “abstract” concepts that move away from pure development? What if Front-end Developers begin looking at: Layout, color, typography, visual language, spacing, interaction, harmony, symmetry, balance, contrast, negative and positive space, in order to create a better user experience? Not only consider them, but amalgamate these design principles into their development in order to create a strong bond between development and communication.
A constantly updated list Tool-Up Time: The 67 Very Best Front End Web Developer Tools
Let’s take typography: Often designers spend many hours selecting font faces. Even Steve Jobs had a serious interest in typography and how fonts could be selected by users on MacIntosh’s first word processors. Typography has a world of subtle information just waiting to be released. How different fonts provide for better legibility or readability, or how they can subtly give you a better understanding about the visual language or tone of the brand.
What makes Front-end Developers so easily applicable to this situation is the fact that they understand how Web fonts work: Which browsers have a problem with certain fonts? If it’s better to user Google Fonts rather than using @font-face? How to get @font-face working on legacy browsers using Modernizr? Sound familiar?
I can even testify with regards to my own career how my insight in design, user experience and understanding of HTML, CSS and JS have benefited the projects I’ve worked on. My peers have considered me more knowledgeable, more holistic and trust my opinion when we are critical of user-centric components. Though, I feel like I have contributed more than just my opinion on Front-end development, so without further ado:
I introduce to you the Front-end User Experience Developer
Let’s run through a dry example of how a job advert would look like for this individual:
HTML, CSS, Javascript
HTML : Using HTML5 and a semantic hierarchy of elements to build the structure for well thought out, search engine optimised websites that considered user experience at its very core.
: Using HTML5 and a semantic hierarchy of elements to build the structure for well thought out, search engine optimised websites that considered user experience at its very core. CSS : Using CSS3 to create visually appealing sites, with minimal server load.
: Using CSS3 to create visually appealing sites, with minimal server load. Javascript : Implementation of clean, accessible, light-weight and Object Orientated Javascript that provides for a better and well-thought-out user experience.
: Implementation of clean, accessible, light-weight and Object Orientated Javascript that provides for a better and well-thought-out user experience. Experience working in AGILE based teams – Using sprints, standups and spikes.
based teams – Using sprints, standups and spikes. Experience working with Version Control Technologies like Git and Bitbucket.
Technologies like Git and Bitbucket. Experience in UX based concepts. Considering Design Elements like Form, Shape, Harmony, symmetry, Typography, Color, Layout, Flow, Hierarchy, Responsive Web Design, Load Time, Content communication and more in order to create a holistic experience for users.
Want a better issue tracking workflow and seamless project management with it? Watch the video
With this snippet in mind, as an HR person looking to fill a spot in a company that requires a Front-End Developer, you can now hire someone who really fits the bill, that will be part of a team or work alone developing well-thought out, user-centric websites that not only have a considered and structured code base, but also have a well-thought out and analytical user experience which can be split-tested in an instant.
To me, this person is an asset. A person that I can rely on to make sure we’ve ticketed the boxes of two very closely related fields, not fields that require every specialization under the sun. Due to this individual’s closely related specializations, he will be able to provide something very special. He could close the link between User Experience and Front-end Development. Meaning that not only would receive a great website that works unanimously across the board, but you would have considered the intricacies of user-centric design.
Visual feedback right on your website from your clients and testers: This is the tool front end developers need
A few may ask: Where does visual language come in? Well, a graphic designer can still have influence over this, maybe they are better at choosing fonts or creating color schemes than a developer would be, which is not a bad thing. In fact, they can fit in even more efficiently and practically than they would have in the past.
Working side by side with someone who understands not only how to communicate with users but who can input on the design side of things and provide wisdom when it comes to the trickier aspects of design for web, like grids for instance – something that is totally overlooked by the majority of graphic designers.
This is a repost of this article with the permission of the blogger. Daine Mawer is a Web Developer, Blogger, WordPresser who likes to make cool stuffs for a living.
The makers of DebugMe hope that you like this post and would love it if you follow us on Twitter. We are tweeting about web design, UI/UX and development related topics multiple times a day. DebugMe is an issue tracking, project management and screenshot tool for every website project. Get visual feedback right away and solve front-end problems faster. Try it now for free.ENGLEWOOD, Colo. -- In a defense with the likes of linebacker Von Miller grabbing headlines and sacking quarterbacks at almost every prime-time turn, some things might get caught and pushed aside in the jet wash of all that.
One of those things is that Denver Broncos safety T.J. Ward might be closing in on a slice of franchise history if he continues at his current, rather furious pace. He at least will put himself in some high-quality company with what he has done this season.
Eleven games into the season, Ward leads the Broncos with 69 credited tackles. The last safety to lead the Broncos in tackles for a season was Steve Atwater -- in 1995, or Mike Shanahan’s first year as the Broncos’ coach, and Atwater finished with 185 tackles, 38 more than the runner-up.
“Those kind of guys make plays no matter what,’’ said Broncos defensive coordinator Wade Phillips, who coached Atwater both as Broncos head coach and defensive coordinator. Phillips was in that position in 1993, when Atwater also led the team in tackles.
“You try to get them, put them in position to utilize them in any way you can,’’ Phillips said. “We blitz T.J. a lot more than we did Steve because he’s a tremendous blitzer, he can make plays and pressure quarterbacks. So not only can you play T.J. against the run, put him in the box, but you can rush him, play him in coverage, put him anywhere you want.’’
Ward was one of the Broncos’ acquisitions in their 2014 free agency flurry after he had played four seasons in Cleveland. He made one Pro Bowl appearance when he was with the Browns.
Unlike the Browns, the Broncos provided Ward an opportunity to play games in January, in addition to this past February’s Super Bowl win, and Phillips has set Ward loose on opposing offenses in a variety of roles. The Broncos' defense finished at or close to No. 1 in most major statistical categories last season and are the league's top team in pass defense as well as sacks this season.
“I feel like I’m playing my best ball right now,’’ Ward said. “This scheme, the guys we have on defense, the way we study and prepare, the whole situation has allowed me to play my best. I still think there’s more I can do, more plays I can make, but I’m playing better now than I have I think.’’
Phillips lines Ward up all over the formation, even using him as a weak-side linebacker at times when the Broncos go with six defensive backs in longer-yardage situations. Phillips said after he was hired by Gary Kubiak last year, it didn’t take a lot of game video to convince him that Ward could have a significant impact on the team’s defense.
“I didn’t know much about him,’’ Phillips said. “We didn’t see Cleveland that much when I was with the Texans, so I didn’t notice him that much. But when I got here and started looking at what we would do, I sure noticed him.’’
How quickly?
“Pretty quickly,’’ Phillips said. “You could say I noticed right away. And I don't think I looked at that much to decide.’’
Ward has earned one second-team |
's actions tell LGBT students that they should be ashamed of who they are and that their lives are valued less than their peers... We demand the Superintendent, and the board, reverse its decision to publicly humiliate, degrade and embarrass young LGBT people."
The Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition, a group that fights harassment, bullying and unfair school policies in the state, lists several schools as either having or working to form gay-straight alliances. The Ridgeland group is classified as "pending" on the Safe Schools Coalition's website.
The group of students approached the school principal in December, according to Madison County schools Superintendent Ronnie McGehee.
They had several discussions with the students and discussed particulars such as a staff sponsor, but the group is not yet official.
"We're open to clubs that go through the process. And again that's not going to be something where somebody walks in on Monday and you have a club on Tuesday," McGehee said.
Mississippi Safe Schools Coalition co-founder Anna Davis said GSAs "can create safer, more inclusive schools which lessens the likelihood of harassment and bullying."
To contact Kate Royals, call (601) 360-4619 or email kroyals@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @KRRoyals on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://on.thec-l.com/1IK8mznPol Pot was a political leader whose communist Khmer Rouge government led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork. One detention center, S-21, was so notorious that only seven of the roughly 20,000 people imprisoned there are known to have survived. The Khmer Rouge, in their attempt to socially engineer a classless communist society, took particular aim at intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants and religious leaders. Some historians regard the Pol Pot regime as one of the most barbaric and murderous in recent history.
Pol Pot: The Early Years
Saloth Sar, better known by his nom de guerre Pol Pot, was born in 1925 in the small village of Prek Sbauv, located about 100 miles north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. His family was relatively affluent and owned some 50 acres of rice paddy, or roughly 10 times the national average.
In 1934, Pol Pot moved to Phnom Penh, where he spent a year at a Buddhist monastery before attending a French Catholic primary school. His Cambodian education continued until 1949, when he went to Paris on a scholarship. While there, he studied radio technology and became active in communist circles.
Did you know? Millions of people living in Cambodia were killed during the brutal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Their bodies were buried in mass graves that became known as “killing fields.” The phrase later became the title of a movie about the horrors of the Khmer Rouge era, The Killing Fields.
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
When Pol Pot returned to Cambodia in January 1953, the whole region was revolting against French colonial rule. Cambodia officially gained its independence from France later that year.
Khmer Rouge
Pol Pot, meanwhile, joined the proto-communist Khmer People’s Revolutionary Party (KPRP), which had been set up in 1951 under the auspices of the North Vietnamese. From 1956 to 1963, Pol Pot taught history, geography and French literature at a private school while simultaneously plotting a revolution.
In 1960 Pol Pot helped to reorganize the KPRP into a party that specifically espoused Marxism-Leninism. Three years later, following a clampdown on communist activity, he and other party leaders moved deep into the countryside of northern Cambodia, encamping at first with a group of Viet Cong.
Pol Pot, who had begun to emerge as Cambodian party chief, and the newly formed Khmer Rouge guerilla army, launched a national uprising in 1968. Their revolution started off slowly, though they were able to gain a foothold in the sparsely populated northeast.
The Khmer Rouge Seizes Control
In March 1970, General Lon Nol initiated a military coup while Cambodia’s hereditary leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, was out of the country. A civil war then broke out in which Prince Norodom allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, and Lon Nol received the backing of the United States.
Both the Khmer Rouge and Lon Nol’s troops purportedly committed mass atrocities. At the same time, about 70,000 U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers stormed across the Vietnam-Cambodian border to fight North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops who had taken sanctuary in Cambodia.
U.S. President Richard M. Nixon also ordered a secret bombing campaign as part of the Vietnam War. Over the span of four years, U.S. planes dropped 500,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia, more than three times the amount dropped on Japan during World War II.
By the time the U.S. bombing campaign ended in August 1973, the number of Khmer Rouge troops had increased exponentially, and they now controlled approximately three-quarters of Cambodia’s territory. Soon after, they began shelling Phnom Penh with rockets and artillery.
A final assault of the refugee-filled capital started in January 1975, with the Khmer Rouge bombarding the airport and blockading river crossings. A U.S. airlift of supplies failed to prevent thousands of children from starving.
Finally, on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered the city, winning the civil war and ending the fighting. About half a million Cambodians had died during the civil war, yet the worst was still to come.
Cambodian Genocide
Almost immediately after taking power, the Khmer Rouge evacuated Phnom Penh’s 2.5 million residents. Former civil servants, doctors, teachers and other professionals were stripped of their possessions and forced to toil in the fields as part of a re-education process.
Those that complained about the work, concealed their rations or broke rules were usually tortured in a detention center, such as the infamous S-21, and then killed. During the Cambodian genocide, the bones of millions of people who died from malnutrition, overwork or inadequate health care also filled up mass graves across the country.
Under Pol Pot, the state controlled all aspects of a person’s life. Money, private property, jewelry, gambling, most reading material and religion were outlawed; agriculture was collectivized; children were taken from their homes and forced into the military; and strict rules governing sexual relations, vocabulary and clothing were laid down.
The Khmer Rouge, which renamed the country Democratic Kampuchea, even insisted on realigning rice fields in order to create the symmetrical checkerboard pictured on their coat of arms.
At first, Pol Pot largely governed from behind the scenes. He became prime minister in 1976 after Prince Norodom was forced to resign. By that time, border skirmishes were occurring regularly between the Cambodians and the Vietnamese.
The fighting intensified in 1977, and in December 1978 the Vietnamese sent more than 60,000 troops, along with air and artillery units, across the border. On January 7, 1979, they captured Phnom Penh and forced Pol Pot to flee back into the jungle, where he resumed guerrilla operations.
Pol Pot’s Final Years
Throughout the 1980s, the Khmer Rouge received arms from China and political support from the United States, which opposed the decade-long Vietnamese occupation. But the Khmer Rouge’s influence began to decrease following a 1991 ceasefire agreement, and the movement completely collapsed by the end of the decade.
In 1997 a Khmer Rouge splinter group captured Pol Pot and placed him under house arrest. He died in his sleep on April 15, 1998, at age 72 due to heart failure. A United Nations-backed tribunal has convicted only a handful of Khmer Rouge leaders of crimes against humanity.× Expand photo by Vance Lauderdale
First we lost the Big Shoe, and now the Giant Mouse is moving away. The 10-foot-tall mouse that was the much-photographed symbol of the Atomic Pest Control Company on Elvis Presley Blvd. is moving out of Memphis. Company president Carese Rice has confirmed that her company is merging with Allied Termite and Pest Control, and I guess Allied doesn't need — or want — the big mouse. So Carese gave it to her brother, who will move it to his own pest control company in Georgia.
On Wednesday morning, the mouse will be removed from Atomic Pest Control's offices at 2371 Elvis Presley Blvd. A crane is supposed to arrive between 7 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. to take it down from its rooftop perch, so if you want to see it one last time, this is your last chance.
As you might expect, I've written about this creature before. Carese, you see, is the daughter of Lester Tubbs, who founded Atomic Pest Control back in 1958. The 1,200-pound creature began life as a fiberglass promotion for the 1971 movie Willard, a charming tale about a lonely boy who befriends a pack of rats. It was showing at the old Crosstown Theatre on North Cleveland, and when Len saw the rat (or mouse), he realized he could put it to good use as an advertisement for his company after the theatre was done with it. At first, he just put it on a trailer and hauled it all over town, promoting his pest-control services, but it's been safely perched on the company's roof since 1978.
In case you're wondering, his whiskers are made of three-foot-long sections of thick wire, and that big piece of yellow cheese stands more than six feet tall. A few years ago, Carese had someone give him a fresh coat of paint, so he's always looked pretty spiffy. And quite eye-catching on the stretch of Elvis Presley Blvd.
Needless to say, he (I guess it's a he) has always attracted a lot of attention. Carese tells me that people stop by all the time to snap his picture, and he's been featured in the syndicated comic strip Zippy and even mentioned in an article by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Andrei Codrescu. One time, Carese even contacted the folks at the Guinness Book of World Records, who told her that, unfortunately, they had no official category for "world's largest mouse." Well, they certainly should, though I guess it's too late for Memphis. What a shame.More Westinghouse fuel for Ukraine
11 April 2014
Share
Ukraine's national electricity utility Energoatom has extended its nuclear fuel supply contract with Westinghouse through to 2020. The country primarily sources its nuclear fuel from Russia.
Two of the three units at the South Ukraine nuclear power plant (Image: Energoatom)
Westinghouse originally signed a fuel supply contract with Energoatom in 2008. Through that contract, Westinghouse supplied a total of 630 nuclear fuel assemblies to the three VVER-1000 pressurized water reactors at the South Ukraine nuclear power plant.
This contract has now been amended, extending Westinghouse deliveries of fuel through to 2020. Westinghouse will produce the fuel at its fabrication facility in Västerås in Sweden.
"The signing of this contract for Westinghouse VVER fuel design testifies to the quality of our fuel design and demonstrates that it has, in fact, operated without issue at the South Ukraine nuclear power plant, as confirmed by extensive and recent joint Energoatom and Westinghouse inspections."
Danny Roderick
Westinghouse president and CEO
Under a US-Ukrainian initiative to reduce Ukraine's dependency on Russia for fuel, in 2005 six Westinghouse fuel assemblies were placed into the reactor core of unit 3 at the South Ukraine plant, together with Russian fuel, for a period of pilot operation. A reload batch of 42 fuel assemblies was provided by Westinghouse in mid-2009 for a three-year period of commercial operation at three units of the South Ukraine plant with regular monitoring and reporting.
However, these trials were deemed unsuccessful, with Energoatom claiming manufacturing defects in the fuel led to a lengthy unscheduled outage at two of the units, while Westinghouse said that errors had been made during fuel loading. In June 2010, Energoatom signed a long-term fuel supply contract with Russia's TVEL for its nuclear reactor fleet. Earlier, Rosatom had offered a substantial discount to Ukraine if it signed up with TVEL for 20 years.
Commenting on its extended long-term supply contract, Westinghouse president and CEO Danny Roderick said: "The signing of this contract for Westinghouse VVER fuel design testifies to the quality of our fuel design and demonstrates that it has, in fact, operated without issue at the South Ukraine nuclear power plant, as confirmed by extensive and recent joint Energoatom and Westinghouse inspections."
He added, "This agreement recognizing the excellent Westinghouse VVER fuel design performance will allow Energoatom to continue diversification of its fuel supply. We expect that with continued superior results and competitive efficiency of our fuel design, Westinghouse will grow its share of the Ukrainian nuclear fuel market."
Rosatom head Sergey Kiriyenko was cited by RIA Novosti as saying, "There is an absolute right for each company to decide who it should buy fuel from, and political decisions should not have any influence [on that right]."
Fuel plant
TVEL and Westinghouse both bid to build a fuel fabrication plant in Ukraine, and in September 2010 the Ministry of Fuels and Energy selected TVEL. The state-owned holding company Nuclear Fuel signed an agreement with TVEL for a 50-50 joint venture to build a plant to manufacture VVER-1000 fuel assemblies. Work has started on the plant at Smolino, in the Kirovograd region of Ukraine. Once operational, it will produce some 400 fuel assemblies per year. Russia has agreed to transfer fuel fabrication technology by 2020.
Ukraine has 15 nuclear power reactors at four sites (Khmelnitsky, Rovno, South Ukraine and Zaporozhe), all operated by Energoatom. All the units are Russian VVER types, two being 440 MWe models and the rest larger 1000 MWe units. Between them, the plants provide almost half of the country's electricity.
Researched and written
by World Nuclear News
Related topicsE3 2015 – No Man’s Sky Preview: Exploring a Universe
The formula has been set, a universe has been created, and the humble yet passionate Sean Murray is my guide. We’ve seen the game as a concept numerous times in the past, but Sean is finally showing us the options and tools you have at your disposal as you explore the massive expanse that shows just how tiny and insignificant we are.
Due to the formula-based procedural generation, No Man’s Sky can be played either online or offline. Playing online allows you to use access points to upload your discoveries to Atlas, the central computer network that houses all of the discoveries in No Man’s Sky. Discoveries are first come, first serve, so if you’re the initial one to connect a discovery to Atlas, you get the credit and ability to rename the planet or creatures that you’ve found, though there will be filters so that you can’t name every star system and creature after words for your genitals.
Tools of the Galactic Trade
You are given a shield, ship, and weapon, all of which are upgradeable as you explore the universe. Your suit determines your ability to survive in different environments, and as you upgrade it, your shield and resistance to toxic environments or underwater will increase. Your ship has inventory slots for resources and technologies that you find on your journey. Each of these things will help you move further towards the center of the universe. If you do die, you will lose any materials you’re carrying and any discoveries made that you have not saved to the Atlas.
The beautiful thing about No Man’s Sky (well, one of the many beautiful things) is that you can play how you want to play. You can be a trader, ferrying goods between planets and space stations. Buying low and selling high can net you a pretty good profit. You can also play as a fighter, being a pirate and attacking trade ships, or being the white knight and rescuing traders under attack. Obviously, you can also play as an explorer, visiting planets to lay claim to your discoveries. You are never locked into one of these play styles and can move through them at will, or play as a combination of them.
Killing creatures and attack other ships will net you a wanted level, which sends sentinels and police forces after you. As it increases, more difficult military ships will be seeking you out. You can think of it as an intergalactic Grand Theft Auto. Reaching an access point will reset your wanted level as you upload your discoveries, so it is good to keep these close by if possible.
A Realistic Solar System
The planets in No Man’s Sky have a full day/night cycle and realistic orbit around their own individual sun. They are also big enough that you could walk straight around them for days or even weeks before you reach your starting point. They are quite literally planet-sized planets, with timezones and everything you would expect from a planet. If you spend time on a planet and take off to space, you will be at a different point in the solar system due to the orbit of the planet.
The menu in No Man’s Sky stores all of your discoveries, which Sean described as a kind of galactic encyclopedia. As you scan the planets for new things, points of interest will be highlighted on the map. You know that overwhelming feeling an open world game gives you with tons of markers on the map? Apply that to an entire planet, and then multiply that by an entire universe. Fortunately you can set waypoints, mark where you have been, and otherwise map your way through the vast expanse.
I could continue to ramble on, particularly about the part where Sean just used the controller to careen us through space for a minute or two, showing us just how vast it all is. I could have watched that mesmerizing scene for what seems like forever, but alas, the preview ended and we had to let our minds drift back to Earth. Little by little we’re learning more about No Man’s Sky, but there’s so much that the team at Hello Games wants you to discover on your own, as discovery and wonder are what the game is trying to achieve.West Ham United will auction all match-worn shirts from this weekend’s London derby against Tottenham Hotspur, with all proceeds going to the victims’ families and survivors of this week’s devastating Mexican earthquake.
The Club will then double the figure raised by the auction, before donating the total amount to an appeal organised by Hammers striker Javier Hernandez and his fellow Mexico international Miguel Layun to aid the relief effort in Mexico City and the surrounding area.
The devastating 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck southern Mexico on Tuesday, leaving thousands of families homeless and killing more than 200 people, with the death toll expected to rise significantly.
West Ham’s Chicharito and Porto’s Layun have announced the #YoXMexico initiative to aid their compatriots by raising funds that will help deliver food and supplies to those most affected by the disaster, via Red Cross and Los Topos, an organisation specialising in cleaning debris.
“We have all been moved by the news and devastating effects of Tuesday’s earthquake in Mexico,” said joint-chairman David Sullivan. “While disasters like this can seem very far away from us, it is important that we still help where we can.
“Javier has joined forces with Miguel Layun to raise funds to help his fellow countrymen in their time of need, and we hope this auction will be able to raise a significant amount which can go towards their fund.
“Although only a small gesture from the club, we will double any amount raised by the auction, which we hope can make a small difference to the people of Mexico.”
Hammers striker Chicharito said, “Being so far from Mexico and seeing the suffering of our compatriots in the distance has been very painful.
“So, after discussing it, we decided to take the initiative for Mexico and give our people a helping hand.
“We know that many see us as a source of inspiration, but in this case, what has inspired us is to see millions of Mexicans take to the streets and to lend a hand without asking for anything in return.
“We hope, with this initiative, to help those who need it and motivate more people to do it with us.
“Miguel and I are very grateful to have the backing of everyone at West Ham United and all of its supporters at this difficult time for our country.
“It is a fantastic gesture and we hope it can help us raise funds that will make a difference in Mexico.“
The auctions are now underway at officialwesthamauction.com with shirts of the players who featured against West Bromwich Albion available. However supporters will be bidding on match-worn shirts from the Tottenham Hotspur game on Saturday 23 September.
Winners of the auction will be able to decide after the conclusion of the auction whether they would like their shirt signed by the corresponding player or left unautographed.
Any supporter who purchases a player’s match-worn shirt and the player does not feature in Saturday’s squad, will then receive a match-worn shirt from the next game where the player features. The auction will last for seven days and will end at 5pm on Thursday 28 September.
Once an auction ends the winning bidder has three days to pay. If they decide to not pay then the opportunity is then passed onto the next highest bidder.
To donate directly to #YoXMexico please visit youcaring.com/yoxmex or follow #YoXMexico on Twitter at @YoXMexicoThe Cheyenne River Reservation, where the Sioux Nation’s pipe keeper, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, lives. (Photo: Jason Coppola)
“Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.” Chief Sitting Bull, 1877
The sacred lands of the Lakota are up for sale – again. A grassroots effort led by the Oceti Sakowin, or Great Sioux Nation, is underway to get them back.
On August 25 at 10 AM, nearly 2,000 acres of land, known as Pe’ Sla to the Lakota people and situated in the Black Hills of South Dakota, will be put up for public auction and sold to the highest bidder. The state of South Dakota has expressed interest in using eminent domain to pave one of the roads that runs through it. The land is currently known as the Reynolds Prairie Ranches. Other than the potential road-paving project, it is unclear for what type of development the land would be most sought after, although the manager of one local business expressed his hope that all five tracts up for sale would go to a rancher.
The land has been in the Reynolds family since 1876, the year of Custer’s Last Stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn. During this time, the Lakota have been able to access their sites. The whole of the Black Hills fall within the Fort Laramie Treaty lands of 1851 and 1868, which are guaranteed under the US Constitution to belong to the Lakota. The Fort Laramie Treaty ended the Powder River War of 1866-1867, led by Chief Red Cloud protecting earlier treaty lands against illegal white occupation. (The defeated 7th Calvary was commanded by a Col. Joseph J. Reynolds who some believe may have been the original owner of the homesteaded Reynolds land). The Treaty assured the Black Hills to be part of the Great Sioux Reservation spanning several states, where the Sioux Nation, which is made up of the Lakota, Nakota and Dakota people, were to have “the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation” of the land.
President Ulysses S. Grant, after an expedition led by Gen. George Custer in 1874 into the Black Hills confirmed the presence of gold there, decided that the military should cease its opposition of miners’ occupation of the Black Hills, which was part of the United States’ treaty obligation to preserve the integrity of Sioux territory.
Mining towns such as Deadwood, Central City and Lead were soon established, and military campaigns began to force the Sioux from the Black Hills.
Great victories during the resistance led by Chief Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse later led to their surrender and forced internment into prisoner of war camps commonly known as reservations (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was known as POW camp #344).
The United States then claimed the right of occupation to the Black Hills with the Congressional Act of February 1877. Although the document lacked the necessary Sioux signatures required to pass it, a deficiency that would nullify it, the Act, surrounded in controversy, seized the Sioux land while making reservations permanent.
At that point the sacred Black Hills of the Great Sioux Nation had been officially stolen. Land could then be opened to privatization.
“We Humans Have Power, but We Don’t Know It”
Ceremonies are performed at Pe’ Sla which, the Lakota believe, maintain a sacred harmony between heaven and earth and sustain their way of life.
The Black Hills, when viewed from a satellite, are shaped like a heart. Pe’ Sla, a bald spot among the pine-treed hills, sits in the center of a formation of sacred Lakota sites that mirror a pattern of celestial bodies, including the Pleiades and Sirius, beautifully demonstrating an as-above, so-below design. It is the center of the Lakota creation story.
As the sun would move through these constellations, the Lakota would change seasonal camps and perform specific ceremonies at these sacred locations.
Chief Arvol Looking Horse is the 19th-generation keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle. Ages ago, it was given to the Lakota by White Buffalo Calf Woman, Pte San Win. She taught the Lakota how to pray and have ceremony. Looking Horse holds the responsibility of spiritual leader among the Great Sioux Nation, whose indigenous name Oceti Sakowin means the People of the Seven Council Fires. He explained the spiritual significance of Pe’ Sla in an exclusive interview with Truthout conducted by Chase Iron Eyes. Iron Eyes is a member of the Oceti Sakowin and an author, attorney and the founder of lastrealindians.com, which publishes work by indigenous writers and artists. His conversation with Looking Horse earlier this month marked the first time the revered spiritual leader had spoken publicly on the issue.
Chief Arvol Looking Horse Calls for Unity
“Our creation story comes from the Black Hills, from the heart of Mother Earth. We came up from the caves which are connected under our Black Hills, and we received several very sacred places to do ceremony,” said Looking Horse.
“Pe’ Sla is one of these central ceremonial places. This is where our existence comes from. Pe’ Sla is where Morning Star came down to help the people, because we are star people,” he said.
“Sundance happens at Pe’ Sla,” said Looking Horse. “Other ceremonies that our spiritual leaders must perform happen at Pe’ Sla.”
The Sundance ceremony, one of seven sacred ceremonies given to the Lakota by Pte San Win, is a closely guarded practice, but Iron Eyes explained that it is one of sacrifice and renewal: participants re-enact the sacrifice of a spirit, Inyan, who spun himself and sacrificed himself until his blood became water. The ceremony ensures that nature’s process of renewal continues so that, for example, water, plants, and animals remain abundant.
“At Pe’ Sla we give energy, as the whites call it; that is what our ceremonies do,” said Looking Horse. “We humans have power, but we don’t know it. We can send energy to the universe and it comes back to us. We can change the environment. People must understand that we have power, and if we are to live, we have to have faith and belief through our spiritual ways and our sites. All indigenous do this with energy.”
“We need to come together to protect Pe’ Sla,” said Looking Horse. “All tribes, even though we went to war with each other at times, in our history. Yes, we went to battle with other tribes, but when either brought out spiritual bundles or was conducting ceremonies, nobody attacked. We actually worked together in spiritual ways because these were given by the Great Spirit to all his children here.”
“Our tribes are here to protect our people,” he said. “We need to stand up. We have always stood strong for our sovereignty, for our territory. We are the First Nations of Turtle Island. We are the original people of this continent based on our spiritual connections with the Black Hills, Pe’ Sla, and all the sacred sites on Turtle Island.”
Chief Looking Horse continued: “If we truly believe in our survival, if we believe in humanity’s future, then we should be given that land back. It doesn’t belong to the United States. That land should be in our hands so we can protect it, because it’s not just our lives that depend on it, but the rest of humankind.”
Looking Horse stressed the urgency of his message. “Humanity in general has gone too far in forgetting our values to respect our spirits, and this causes disease, disaster and negative energy,” he said. “It’s not just the spiritual and treaty leaders who must understand this, it is our oyate [people]. Everyone must understand, because at one time, our tiospaye [kinship] system made sure everyone understood these things. If we don’t go to Pe’ Sla and our other sites, we are not guaranteed help or life.”
Land Sale Seen as Part of a Pattern of Systemic Cultural Destruction
Familiar with the challenges facing indigenous peoples and nations across the globe, Iron Eyes told Truthout: “I don’t think it’s an accident that other indigenous peoples’ sacred sites are coming under attack, such as the San Francisco Peaks, or the Four Mountains of the Dine or Navajo Nation, all throughout Turtle Island – or North America – and South America. The way I see it is, this corporatocracy, or the Corporate West, is never satisfied. It just keeps consuming and destroying. This system needs to be put in check.”
Iron Eyes is teaming up with the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in order to focus the fundraising efforts to buy back as much of Pe’ Sla as possible. “We are going to find out real soon if we are able to raise enough money to buy back our own land,” he said. The irony of buying land that was stolen from you is not lost on Iron Eyes: “The United States holds illegitimate and illegal title to our land. They are trying to absorb not only the Lakota people, but everybody, into the corporate West.”
Iron Eyes views the protection of sacred sites as the final frontier where indigenous ways cannot waiver.
United Nation Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People James Anaya, after completing a fact-finding mission where he met with Sioux Nation leaders, released a statement saying, “securing the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands is of central importance to indigenous peoples’ socio-economic development, self-determination, and cultural integrity. Continued efforts to resolve, clarify, and strengthen the protection of indigenous lands, resources, and sacred sites should be made.”
According to Iron Eyes, “All the colonizers’ early efforts to cut our ties to the land, language, ceremonies” – such as Native children being taken from their families and forced into Christian boarding schools – “have been done to prepare us for maintenance of the corporate West, which leads to the ultimate destruction of our entire planet. If we believe and value as they in the system do, we will not be willing to defend our spiritual dignity, and by extension, our sacred sites.”
“The Heart of All That Is”
In a nation as young as the United States, founded by settlers, comprised of peoples with different ancestral lands, the significance of this fight for land that was inhabited long before it came to be governed as it is today can be difficult to comprehend.
“We call the Black Hills ‘the heart of all that is,'” said Iron Eyes. “My hope is that people can become aware of what these sites actually mean and learn to see what they have seen as natural resources ever since they were born, since they were taught, that they can learn to see the land, the trees, the mountains, see all these things as relatives. And the whole basis of Lakota worldview is to be a good relative.”
“We are definitely cognizant of the magnitude of this time that we are in, said Iron Eyes. “Any objective observer can see that around the globe, there is change going on. We don’t have to debate whether climate change is scientifically justifiable or it’s a hoax. All you have to do is look around and see that Mother Earth is cleansing. We recognize that energy. We’ve always respected Mother Earth, and we are ready for any change.”
“We don’t do these ceremonies just for us; we are doing them for you,” said Iron Eyes, referring to all people of the earth. “The whole universe renews itself” with the Sundance, said Iron Eyes.
The Black Hills Are Not for Sale
For the Great Sioux Nation, land was never about money.
The Sioux Nation was awarded approximately $17.1 million in 1974 by the Indian Claims Commission for the illegal annexation of the Black Hills. The sum reached $106 million when the value of gold taken from the hills was considered.
The claim was later argued before the Supreme Court in 1980 and upheld, awarding the Sioux Nation $106 million. This sum, with interest, was up to over $570 million in 2010. It is now believed to be close to $1 billion.
“Even after the Indian Claims Commission awarded the tribes for the illegal taking of the Black Hills,” Rosebud Sioux Tribal President Rodney M. Bordeaux told Truthout, “we have never accepted that money. It is not our right to accept it because of our ancestors and the wars they have fought, the sacrifices they have made: Wounded Knee, other massacres, being put on a reservation. Our people have never gave up their claim and their right to the Black Hills. So, even though the money is there in the US Treasury, we have not accepted it because those are our Hills.”
The Sioux Nation would be giving up their claim to the Black Hills if they were to accept this pay-off.
“We are trying a fundraising effort that, hopefully, along with the tribes, people who care about indigenous rights and the Lakota can come forward and contribute to this action,” said Bordeaux.
A Warning From Chief Arvol Looking Horse
“If we don’t follow our teachings, we don’t know what will happen to us,” said Looking Horse. “We don’t know what’s coming with the prophecies in the years to come. The earth is cleansing. White buffalo calves are being born.”
Previously appearing more rarely, white buffalo are born more often recently due to breeding practices in private herds, but regardless of their origins, the animals remain a sacred symbol of abundance and life to the Lakota and a signal that it is time for their people to return to their ways of ceremony and praying.
“Our own prophecies tell us to return to our sacred sites,” said Looking Horse. “If we don’t work to fulfill our prophecies at Pe’ Sla, and if we don’t return to our ways, then there will be consequences.”
In the end, says Chief Looking Horse, “If Pe’ Sla is destroyed by man, we do not want to know the depth of that loss, what the death of Pe’ Sla would mean to our people.”
Chase Iron Eyes, attorney, author, and founder of lastrealindians.com, contributed to this report.Here in New York, the things it’s advisable to avoid, lest our health and life be comprised, are known quantities: snot-faced children on the subway. Pedicabs. Dirty-water hot dogs. We don’t have earthquakes or flooding or any sort of natural disasters to be afraid of. On the rare occasions that something new or scary does appear in our midst, it’s just a loose coyote or Glenn Beck. Nothing otherworldly. Not unlike the poop bubbles that are growing on an Indiana farm. Poop bubbles that have a history of hurting people.
Last year, a hog farmer in Hayfield, Minn., was launched 40 feet into the air in an explosion caused by methane gas from a manure pit on his farm. He sustained burns and singed hair.
Thank God these can’t grow in New York. We just don’t have the space for it.
Manure Raises New Stink [WSJ]
Thank God these can’t grow in New York. We just don’t have the space for it.
Manure Raises New Stink [WSJ]This is one of those things that seems so obvious, it feels like someone should have done it before. After all, just last week someone finally got the idea to mod a Donkey Kong ROM so that Pauline could save Mario.
That's exactly what inspired Kenna W., a professional animator, to mod a Legend of Zelda ROM to allow you to play as, well, Zelda. "For me, I played my first Zelda game when I was pretty young, and at the time, I thought the game did star Princess Zelda," Kenna writes. "I figured I'd get to play as a magical battle princess that saved her kingdom. The game was fun, but I was bummed out that I never got to play as Zelda." Likewise, 26 years ago, I thought it strange that the game was named for a Zelda but featured no playable character by that name.
Kenna used a sprite editor to pump out the mod in about four days. The editor didn't allow for changing colors, however, which is why Zelda appears in a green dress. But the game's opening and closing scrolls also have been edited to completely flip the roles—Zelda is saving Link in this playthrough. She struggled with how to include Link. "In the end, I decided he's still Link. Even though he's seemingly powerless to leave a simple room."
The game is not a ROM unto itself—Kenna didn't want to run afoul of copyright problems. She created a patch for the Zelda ROM, available from many fine ROM sites you may already know. Both the patch and instructions for running it are available at the link. If you are playing on a Mac, use Nestopia and this tool to patch the file.
Advertisement
Zelda Starring Zelda: The Story [Kenna Writes Stuff]VANCOUVER — Self-proclaimed “driver’s advocate” Ian Tootill hasn’t much time for “do-gooder, controlling types,” especially those who would have him take his foot off the gas and slow down. Their ranks include certain lawmakers and enforcement officers, and people who don’t |
the hands of two young pilots.
I think the awesomeness of Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim is the reason we are seeing these kinds of films finally being pushed forward. We've also got Godzilla and Gaiking movies being developed. Who would have thought that people would like movies involving giant robots and giant monsters?
Mathieu is also attached to direct a sci-fi project called The Wind, written by David Keopp. Here's a Star Wars inspired commercial he made for Zenith that shows you the awesomeness he's capable of. Check it out!There are currently 15 states with medical cannabis home grow provisions and three states (D.C. included) where adults are allowed by state law to cultivate at home recreationally, with some of these states carrying heavier qualifications than others. This list continues to grow as more cannabis enthusiasts gain access and can try finally try out their own green thumbs.
Right now, if you live in one of these places and you meet the qualifications to cultivate in your home, there are only a few resources where you can go to get in-person consulting on the matter. Hydroponics shops and seed/clone retailers are a start, but these businesses, driven by monetary incentives, have a habit of suggesting that new growers begin by incorporating synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and non-soil grow mediums into their grow based on the fact that they all require a purchase at their facility.
Although conducive to achieving a sale, these suggestions aren’t always aimed on what is best for you, the consumer, as well as your plants. It’s important to understand that not all retailers share this modus operandi, and many shops are beginning to offer organic solutions alongside their synthetic companions. However, what you may not know is that for a fraction of the cost of a single bottle of synthetic liquid fertilizer, you can get the same, if not better yield, flavor, and cannabinoid content in your crop at home by simply using organic farming practices.
How to Grow Organic Cannabis
Getting started with organic cannabis farming is both simple and flexible as there are many ways to incorporate these methods into your home grow. Think of organic growing more in terms of a spectrum. Since there currently aren’t any regulations in the cannabis industry as to what actually qualifies as true organic farming, many interpretations do exist. As a result, this topic can be quite polarizing for industry professionals, but for home growers it simply comes down to a matter of preference.
For starters, an all naturally amended soil medium is perhaps the most important first step in creating a healthy sustainable grow. Building a clean and sustainable organic potting soil for cannabis is absolutely essential in creating a viable food web for the microorganisms that will ultimately help keep your plants stacked with readily available “organic” nutrients. Popular organic soil amendments include most types of compost, pumice, earthworm castings, kelp meal, perlite, bat guano, fish emulsion, peat moss, etc. Ingredients along these lines each serve a specific purpose and will help foster an environment for microorganisms to proliferate.
There are two ways to achieve a super soil of this caliber. The first is to build it yourself by acquiring these ingredients individually and mixing them to preference. Since this can be daunting to a novice grower, pre-mixed organic soils can also meet almost any growing condition and can be found in most hydroponic retailers that provide potting soils. Pre-mixed soils are highly recommended for first time cannabis growers because in most cases, these products require very little maintenance other than the occasional watering. This is because organic soils very rarely need pH adjustments, will produce and supply nutrients to cannabis plants without the need for additives, and are fortified with beneficial microorganisms that help deter pest damage.
Providing your cannabis with sufficient growing conditions is one of the most important steps in building a successful organic grow. This includes a proper spectrum of light, optimal temperature and humidity settings, and high ventilation and airflow. Many organic growers swear by gardening outdoors but if you’re limited to growing indoors, choosing lights with the broadest possible light spectrum and the coolest temperature output is the key. You can always offset hot lights with proper ventilation and temperature control.
With organics, the primary focus is to build the best possible environment to sustain life and provide nutrient access to your plants. This focus extends beyond the soil, so it’s best to view your entire grow as a tiny ecosystem that you must maintain in order to achieve homeostasis.
What to Feed Organic Cannabis
Feeding your organic cannabis is as easy as finding the right water to use. When growing organic, try to avoid using tap water. Municipal water supplies tend to contain fluoride and other chemicals that can and will kill beneficial bacteria in your soil (though you can always opt to pick up an organic soil amendment or supplement at your local hydroponic shop if you’re ever in a pinch).
There are a variety of wonderful organic supplements that may be added to assist in an organic grow, many of which offer a ton of benefits to the growing process. For example, incorporating the use of aerated compost teas can greatly help you in a number of ways. Compost teas reintroduce living microorganisms to the soil, in turn facilitating beneficial processes such as fighting pathogens in the soil, converting them to nutrients, and eliminating diseases.
Inoculating your soil with mycorrhizal fungi is another organic grow hack that can pack your soil with an extra punch. The symbiotic relationship between mycorrhizal fungi and your plants (i.e.., mycorrhizae) has the power to vastly increase both water and other nutrient intake at the roots. A sprinkle of a dry organic fertilizer containing s single-source fungi at the beginning of your grow can be the only thing you add to your soil through both the vegetative and bloom phase and your plants will thrive.
In addition to water, cannabis requires a few essential nutrients such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, manganese, etc. Synthetic nutrient supplements operate on a supply-lock basis, meaning that their job is to supply a nutrient directly to a plant until the plant locks that nutrient from further absorption. In this case, the remaining excess passes through the soil with water drain off. Organic soils, on the other hand, do not require nutrient supplements because they are comprised of ingredients that inherently contain these valuable minerals and molecules. Uptake in these cases is contingent solely on the plant’s needs and doesn’t require extra attention (or money) from the grower.
Controlling Pests on Organic Cannabis
Organic pest control is easier than you think. There are a handful of natural pest management remedies in circulation that work wonders for controlling both indoor and outdoor gardens and don’t require the use of harmful systemic synthetics. Companion planting, the practice of pairing certain varieties of flora to naturally deter pests, is a fantastic first step for outdoor growers. Try using basil or dill in your garden for gnats, or marigolds for aphids. A quick search will land you with a ton of beneficial pairing for your garden plants; just switch out your control group plant with cannabis and you’re good to go.
Other biological remedies such as bacillus thuringiensis, also known as BT or Mosquito Bits, and diatomaceous earth (DE) can help do wonders as an effective foliar agent to be used against pests.
Synthetic nutrients and pesticides both have a tendency to leave soils pretty beat up and saturated with salts and chemicals towards the end of a grow, mandating pretty serious flushing to prepare your crop for consumption. In many cases, these soils must be remixed and tilled or tossed before the next season. As organic soils are actually living entities, they do not require tilling to prepare for a new crop. By simply removing the root ball and adding a bit of dry mycorrhizal fungi to the soil, you’re ready to go for a new round. No-till gardening is emerging as a standard in most organic cannabis farming practices, not just for its obvious sustainability purposes, but for the benefit that organic soils that have been strengthened over a long period of time can offer.
Before you head into your local hydroponics shop and grab that bottle of “ Barry’s Synthetic Bud Ripening Super Juice” that’s packed full of salts and chemicals for your plants, consider going organic in your next home grow. Not only will your soil absolutely love the TLC, but your colas will, too. Organic cannabis farming can be cheap, simple, and far healthier and sustainable than using manufactured chemicals and synthetic additives in your grow. Whether you choose to incorporate one or all of these organic techniques into your grow, your cannabis will not regret it and neither will you!Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
George Sephton, the legendary Voice of Anfield, was taken to hospital after collapsing at the stadium.
The man whose voice has become synonymous with the stadium after more than 45 years was attending an event at Anfield last night to mark the 40th anniversary of Bob Paisley’s first trophies as Liverpool manager.
Former players including David Fairclough, Phil Neal, Alan Kennedy, Jimmy Case and Ian Callaghan were all in attendance at the occasion which was organised by the Merseyside branch of the Official Liverpool Supporters’ Club.
First team player Kevin Stewart was also there to pick up an award and some of thew Liverpool Academy youngsters.
Also among the audience was Graham Duncan, whose friend Lee helped organise help when George became ill.
Graham said: “We were probably about three quarters of the way through the night with a Q and A going on with some of the players and George looked as if he was getting up, maybe to go to the toilet or possibly because he wasn’t feeling well.
“He just looked to try and grab a shelf to steady himself but he fell back and collapsed. People went to help and a friend I was with Lee got him on his side and then people called for an ambulance.”
George’s family were contacted and his daughter rushed to Anfield and was able to leave with him in the ambulance.
“He was conscious and sitting up when he left,” added Graham.
Today George, a regular on social media, tweeted from his hospital bed, saying: “Currently enjoying the delights of hospital food for couple of days!”
His son also posted saying he was expected to stay in for a couple of days but was on the mend.
Late ran update from George said he had been allowed home.
"Thank you for all your kind words. I'm pleased to say that after a worrying 15 hours in cardiology the hospital have sent me home!"Image copyright cbies/Getty Images
Uncertainty around Brexit could prevent banks from lending to long-term projects in Wales, an expert has said.
Graeme Yorston, the former chief executive of Principality Building Society, warned investment in businesses could stall as banks go into "risk averse mode".
HM Treasury said it would strengthen "financial services relationships with non EU countries".
The Welsh Government said it has been working closely with businesses.
Mr Yorston, who was chief executive of Principality Building Society for five years, said if banks try to save costs due to lack of clarity about their future, they could defer long-term decisions, such as investing in businesses to help them grow or set up.
A recent report in the Financial Times suggested Brexit would push up costs for banks by as much as 4% and their capital requirements will rise up to 30%.
He told BBC Radio Wales' Good Morning Wales programme two key areas would need to be looked at - the regulation of UK banks and building societies and the impact on the UK domestic market.
"I think the whole uncertainty and the lack of answers... undoubtedly mean that banks and indeed building societies tend to think about things perhaps with a little bit more of a risk averse perspective," he said.
"By that I mean they might have to take some longer-term decisions that they would've taken with a degree of certainty, against the backdrop of uncertainty they may delay those decisions.
"Whether that be investing in their own business to make them grow, or whether it be lending to UK-based businesses who may have a market in the EU."
Image caption Graeme Yorston worked in the banking sector for more than 43 years
He said banks would focus on the things that they can control, such as costs, which he believes could have an impact on branches across Wales.
Mr Yorston said the Welsh Government was aware of the effect this might have on small and medium enterprises.
But he added banks and building societies may have seen Europe as "being over-regulated" and might welcome "getting back control" of financial services regulation.
A HM Treasury spokesman said: "The UK economy is fundamentally strong but we are not complacent.
"We will strengthen our trade and financial services relationships with non EU countries to create significant value for the banking industry, and ensure an environment in which firms can operate at the point of Brexit.
"We are determined to give businesses, banks and households the certainty they need to help us make a success of Brexit and its opportunities."
Image caption The HSBC branch in Machynlleth closed in 2015
A Welsh Government spokeswoman said it had been "clear that in the negotiations to leave the European Union we want the best possible outcome for the people of Wales".
She added: "We have been working closely with businesses of all sizes and from all sectors since the Brexit referendum. This has included meetings with businesses and representative bodies such as the FSB, CBI, IOD and the Chamber of Commerce as well as extensive engagement with SMEs.
"Through this work we have identified some of the key issues facing companies, the potential opportunities and challenges associated with Brexit and the areas where additional interventions or tools may be needed."
The spokeswoman pointed out that the launch of a Development Bank of Wales from October would "support small, medium and micro sized businesses get access to the finance they need to support and grow their businesses".Bine, or Bryth, refers to a mythical account of death and resurrection in Akkadian mythology. Its closest analogue in Greek mythology is Cerberus, in its guardianship of hell.
In the myth, it was described as a bearer of unwanted souls and the supplier of wings to exiting demons. Hell, in a sense, could not let demons go as long as they threatened to bring the wrath of the Almighty down upon them. Bine had the power to change captured souls into wings: the more souls you captured, the Bine could make your wings grow. Yet Bine himself was not immortal — he was a carpenter that worked for demons, before the archdemon of Akkadian lore banished him to guard the entrance in order that wayward demons could venture and build the army for the Second Coming.[citation needed]
ReferencesSatoshi has gone on record saying that he wanted the games to give children the same joy as he had during his bug collecting. People with autism tend to take up collecting as a hobby, so Satoshi gave them and everyone else a gift that only he could create: a whole new thing to collect.
By Colin Eldred-Cohen
Calling Pokemon a world-wide phenomenon would be a gross understatement. The franchise has redefined a generation through its hordes of games, TV seasons, manga adaptations, toys, cards, and so much more. But as Pokemon fans prepare for the release of Pokemon Sun/Moon or despair over Ash losing yet another Pokemon League tournament, it’s easy to forget how it all got started. Before Pokemon Go, the Johto region, Master Balls, and even Pikachu, there was a man named Satoshi Tajiri. In honor of Pokemon’s 20th Anniversary, I think it’s only right to look at the man who started it all.
Born in Tokyo in 1965, the young Satoshi had various obsessions — collecting bugs as a kid and arcade games as a teenager. The latter captured so much of his time and attention that he actually cut classes and wound up flunking high school. His parents were concerned; they actually didn’t understand his obsession with games and thought he was a delinquent throwing his life away. He eventually took make-up classes and got his high school diploma, but he only did a two year stint at the Tokyo National College of Technology studying computer science and electronics.
If you think that he put a cork in his video game obsession during his studies, think again. When he was seventeen, he started writing and editing a fan magazine that focused on the arcade game scene called Game Freak. Sound familiar to any fans? That’s because Game Freak is one of the companies that makes the Pokemon games, their logo and name appearing every time you start the game up. How did it jump from fan magazine to game juggernaut?
Enter Ken Sugimori, the man who would later to go illustrate the original 151 Pokemon (for the uninitiated, the franchise began with 151 unique monsters players would try to catch; there are currently 721 with more to come). He came across the magazine in a shop, liked it, and joined the team as the illustrator. After Game Freak grew and got several more contributors, Ken and Satoshi decided that they were disappointed with the current batch of video games and decided to make their own. Thus, after studying the coding language they would need to go forward, Game Freak went from magazine to game company in 1989.
Shortly after, he pitched the idea of Pokemon to Nintendo, inspired by the possibilities of the Game Boy’s connectivity possibilities (the Game Boy was Nintendo’s handheld console in the 90s with the revolutionary ability to have players link their Game Boys together and play against one another). Since Satoshi had some game credits under his belt at this point, Nintendo went along with the idea (even if they didn’t completely understand it). While developing the game, Satoshi was mentored and guided along the process by Shigeru Miyamoto himself, the pioneer behind such titles as Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and so much more.
Despite this, the process of developing the first Pokemon games for the Game Boy (Pokemon Red and Green/Blue) was anything but smooth. The six year effort to make the games nearly bankrupted Game Freak and five employees quit because of it. Satoshi even foregoed a salary, instead relying on support from his father. Given how popular Pokemon is nowadays, you’d think that the release resulted in a giant explosion of fanfare, but the media outlets didn’t give it a lot of press. The reason? Get this… they thought that the Game Boy was a dead console.
Oh, hindsight is a beautiful thing.
Not only did Pokemon become a hit, but actually saved Nintendo’s dipping sales. The franchise has gone on to become one of Nintendo’s greats, lasting through six generations of handheld consoles and will probably last through six more.
But I’m here to talk about Satoshi because this is one interesting guy. He relished his time developing the game and looked up to Shigeru Miyamoto. Case in point, in the original Japanese Pokemon anime, the main character we know as Ash is named Satoshi and his rival (Gary) is named Shigeru. It’s kinda sweet when you think about it.
But here’s the real kicker, the thing most people don’t know about him. Satoshi Tajiri is a high-functioning autistic. Yes, the creator of Pokemon is on the spectrum.
It actually fits when you look at it. People with autism tend to have fixations and specializations and you can see them in his past actions. When he was collecting and studying insects in his youth, he devoted so much of his free time to it that his friends called him “Dr. Bug.” I wouldn’t be surprised if that planted an idea in his head that would eventually become Professor Oak, the mentor figure in Pokemon Red and Green/Blue and later Pokemon Yellow. Also, that obsession with gaming in his teens? That didn’t just mean following the latest games that came out, he actually took apart and put together his own gaming systems to see how they worked. That level of intense dedication goes well beyond being an average fan.
That brings us to the poetic genius behind Pokemon. Satoshi has gone on record saying that he wanted the games to give children the same joy as he had during his bug collecting. People with autism tend to take up collecting as a hobby, so Satoshi gave them and everyone else a gift that only he could create: a whole new thing to collect. As a guy on the spectrum, I’ve been trying to collect all of the Pokemon since the fifth grade when I could recite and describe all 151. Nowadays, I could probably do… let’s say 85% of them.
So if you’re ever getting ragged on for not getting as good grades as your classmates or activities that other people find a waste of time, just remember that a bug collector who had to redo high school and had autism went on to change the world.
***
Colin Eldred-Cohen is a creative writer and story teller. He was born in San Diego and graduated from the San Diego School for Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA), where he discovered his talents for performing, singing and Irish dance. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in film.
He is currently living in San Jose where he is writing regularly for fishandcherries.com and putting his writing talents to use working on his first novel (that he hopes will be a best seller, made into an Oscar-winning movie and a line of happy meal toys.)
Colin is on the Autism spectrum, and has channeled his creative and active mind to become a talented writer and story teller. He is an active member of the Autistic Creatives Collective. His first children’s book, The Fire Truck Who Got Lost will be released in September.Author's instructions
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 3, 29 June 2007
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
The GNU General Public License is a free, copyleft license for
software and other kinds of works.
The licenses for most software and other practical works are designed
to take away your freedom to share and change the works. By contrast,
the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to
share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free
software for all its users. We, the Free Software Foundation, use the
GNU General Public License for most of our software; it applies also to
any other work released this way by its authors. You can apply it to
your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you
want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new
free programs, and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to prevent others from denying you
these rights or asking you to surrender the rights. Therefore, you have
certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if
you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must pass on to the recipients the same
freedoms that you received. You must make sure that they, too, receive
or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they
know their rights.
Developers that use the GNU GPL protect your rights with two steps:
(1) assert copyright on the software, and (2) offer you this License
giving you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify it.
For the developers' and authors' protection, the GPL clearly explains
that there is no warranty for this free software. For both users' and
authors' sake, the GPL requires that modified versions be marked as
changed, so that their problems will not be attributed erroneously to
authors of previous versions.
Some devices are designed to deny users access to install or run
modified versions of the software inside them, although the manufacturer
can do so. This is fundamentally incompatible with the aim of
protecting users' freedom to change the software. The systematic
pattern of such abuse occurs in the area of products for individuals to
use, which is precisely where it is most unacceptable. Therefore, we
have designed this version of the GPL to prohibit the practice for those
products. If such problems arise substantially in other domains, we
stand ready to extend this provision to those domains in future versions
of the GPL, as needed to protect the freedom of users.
Finally, every program is threatened constantly by software patents.
States should not allow patents to restrict development and use of
software on general-purpose computers, but in those that do, we wish to
avoid the special danger that patents applied to a free program could
make it effectively proprietary. To prevent this, the GPL assures that
patents cannot be used to render the program non-free.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
0. Definitions.
"This License" refers to version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
"Copyright" also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of
works, such as semiconductor masks.
"The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this
License. Each licensee is addressed as "you". "Licensees" and
"recipients" may be individuals or organizations.
To "modify" a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work
in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an
exact copy. The resulting work is called a "modified version" of the
earlier work or a work "based on" the earlier work.
A "covered work" means either the unmodified Program or a work based
on the Program.
To "propagate" a work means to do anything with it that, without
permission, would make you directly or secondarily liable for
infringement under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a
computer or modifying a private copy. Propagation includes copying,
distribution (with or without modification), making available to the
public, and in some countries other activities as well.
To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other
parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through
a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
An interactive user interface displays "Appropriate Legal Notices"
to the extent that it includes a convenient and prominently visible
feature that (1) displays an appropriate copyright notice, and (2)
tells the user that there is no warranty for the work (except to the
extent that warranties are provided), that licensees may convey the
work under this License, and how to view a copy of this License. If
the interface presents a list of user commands or options, such as a
menu, a prominent item in the list meets this criterion.
1. Source Code.
The "source code" for a work means the preferred form of the work
for making modifications to it. "Object code" means any non-source
form of a work.
A "Standard Interface" means an interface that either is an official
standard defined by a recognized standards body, or, in the case of
interfaces specified for a particular programming language, one that
is widely used among developers working in that language.
The "System Libraries" of an executable work include anything, other
than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of
packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major
Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that
Major Component, or to implement a Standard Interface for which an
implementation is available to the public in source code form. A
"Major Component", in this context, means a major essential component
(kernel, window system, and so on) of the specific operating system
(if any) on which the executable work runs, or a compiler used to
produce the work, or an object code interpreter used to run it.
The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all
the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable
work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to
control those activities. However, it does not include the work's
System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally available free
programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but
which are not part of the work. For example, Corresponding Source
includes interface definition files associated with source files for
the work, and the source code for shared libraries and dynamically
linked subprograms that the work is specifically designed to require,
such as by intimate data communication or control flow between those
subprograms and other parts of the work.
The Corresponding Source need not include anything that users
can regenerate automatically from other parts of the Corresponding
Source.
The Corresponding Source for a work in source code form is that
same work.
2. Basic Permissions.
All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of
copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated
conditions are met. This License explicitly affirms your unlimited
permission to run the unmodified Program. The output from running a
covered work is covered by this License only if the output, given its
content, constitutes a covered work. This License acknowledges your
rights of fair use or other equivalent, as provided by copyright law.
You may make, run and propagate covered works that you do not
convey, without conditions so long as your license otherwise remains
in force. You may convey covered works to others for the sole purpose
of having them make modifications exclusively for you, or provide you
with facilities for running those works, provided that you comply with
the terms of this License in conveying all material for which you do
not control copyright. Those thus making or running the covered works
for you must do so exclusively on your behalf, under your direction
and control, on terms that prohibit them from making any copies of
your copyrighted material outside their relationship with you.
Conveying under any other circumstances is permitted solely under
the conditions stated below. Sublicensing is not allowed; section 10
makes it unnecessary.
3. Protecting Users' Legal Rights From Anti-Circumvention Law.
No covered work shall be deemed part of an effective technological
measure under any applicable law fulfilling obligations under article
11 of the WIPO copyright treaty adopted on 20 December 1996, or
similar laws prohibiting or restricting circumvention of such
measures.
When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid
circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention
is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to
the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or
modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's
users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of
technological measures.
4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.
You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you
receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice;
keep intact all notices stating that this License and any
non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code;
keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty; and give all
recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.
You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey,
and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee.
5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.
You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to
produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the
terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:
a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified
it, and giving a relevant date.
b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is
released under this License and any conditions added under section
7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to
"keep intact all notices".
c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this
License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This
License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7
additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts,
regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no
permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not
invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.
d) If the work has interactive user interfaces, each must display
Appropriate Legal Notices; however, if the Program has interactive
interfaces that do not display Appropriate Legal Notices, your
work need not make them do so.
A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent
works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work,
and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program,
in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an
"aggregate" if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not
used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users
beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work
in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other
parts of the aggregate.
6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms
of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the
machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License,
in one of these ways:
a) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product
(including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by the
Corresponding Source fixed on a durable physical medium
customarily used for software interchange.
b) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product
(including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a
written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as
long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product
model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a
copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the
product that is covered by this License, on a durable physical
medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no
more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this
conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the
Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.
c) Convey individual copies of the object code with a copy of the
written offer to provide the Corresponding Source. This
alternative is allowed only occasionally and noncommercially, and
only if you received the object code with such an offer, in accord
with subsection 6b.
d) Convey the object code by offering access from a designated
place (gratis or for a charge), and offer equivalent access to the
Corresponding Source in the same way through the same place at no
further charge. You need not require recipients to copy the
Corresponding Source along with the object code. If the place to
copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source
may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party)
that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain
clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the
Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the
Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is
available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
e) Convey the object code using peer-to-peer transmission, provided
you inform other peers where the object code and Corresponding
Source of the work are being offered to the general public at no
charge under subsection 6d.
A separable portion of the object code, whose source code is excluded
from the Corresponding Source as a System Library, need not be
included in conveying the object code work.
A "User Product" is either (1) a "consumer product", which means any
tangible personal property which is normally used for personal, family,
or household purposes, or (2) anything designed or sold for incorporation
into a dwelling. In determining whether a product is a consumer product,
doubtful cases shall be resolved in favor of coverage. For a particular
product received by a particular user, "normally used" refers to a
typical or common use of that class of product, regardless of the status
of the particular user or of the way in which the particular user
actually uses, or expects or is expected to use, the product. A product
is a consumer product regardless of whether the product has substantial
commercial, industrial or non-consumer uses, unless such uses represent
the only significant mode of use of the product.
"Installation Information" for a User Product means any methods,
procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install
and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from
a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must
suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object
code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because
modification has been made.
If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or
specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as
part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the
User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a
fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the
Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied
by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply
if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install
modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has
been installed in ROM).
The requirement to provide Installation Information does not include a
requirement to continue to provide support service, warranty, or updates
for a work that has been modified or installed by the recipient, or for
the User Product in which it has been modified or installed. Access to a
network may be denied when the modification itself materially and
adversely affects the operation of the network or violates the rules and
protocols for communication across the network.
Corresponding Source conveyed, and Installation Information provided,
in accord with this section must be in a format that is publicly
documented (and with an implementation available to the public in
source code form), and must require no special password or key for
unpacking, reading or copying.
7. Additional Terms.
"Additional permissions" are terms that supplement the terms of this
License by making exceptions from one or more of its conditions.
Additional permissions that are applicable to the entire Program shall
be treated as though they were included in this License, to the extent
that they are valid under applicable law. If additional permissions
apply only to part of the Program, that part may be used separately
under those permissions, but the entire Program remains governed by
this License without regard to |
MrLouRawls@aol.com
SUBJECT: Re: Mysticum?
Hell-o!
Well, then i will wait for new tracks to arrive. Check out www.mysticum.com under releases link. There you can download the debut album for free. Or you can buy the newest masterpiece from me. Its different from the versions you can hear on the internet. This is more obscure and rotten. The demos that are included are from 1993, with the old sound and spirit that only was possible back then. Nowadays everything has Nice sound if you see what i mean? Let me know if you want to buy it.
For Fenriz: He has become an beer drinking humorist with an annoing laughter added to he´s jokes. I do not think you will hang with him. You will be dissapointed if you belive he is black. He is NOT!! But if you like beer and jokes, he is okay. It depends on you. But as i understand, you prefer it the black way.
MYSTICUM are lazy as allways. Only one album in 12 years. You can say: They are not overproductive. Many people thinks they are dead. But they are still alive
I am working with AMOK from Norway. Industrial BM. And i also hope to release the new GGFH album that are soon to be finished. But things are very un clear yet. Do you know GGFH?? From SanFransisco. Killer industrial stuff. A cult act. www.ggfh.com.
Saiihtam
----------------------------------------------------------
Mon., Dec. 13, 2004 11:28 PM
FROM: MrLouRawls@aol.com
TO: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
SUBJECT: Re: Mysticum?
dear saiihtam,
i like your new greeting "hello-o!" it is black because it has the word hell in it. i am going to start using it if that is okay with you. i will tell people that is was made up by my fellow black metal master in norway, saiihtam, who is extremely black and will be putting out the new witch taint album as soon as he hears our latest, most brutal tracks. speaking of which, i am doing a re-mix of some new tracks by torchlight. i find the torches help me get in touch with blackness even moreso. have you ever tried such a thing? you will never use track lighting again. also, we have had a recent lineup change in the band. our bass player, known to me as cuntlord, was spotted at a christmas party this weekend introducing himself to people as terry. what kind of bullshit is this? i shall not take over the world with my blackest of black metal with a guy who calls himself terry outside of band practice. he can sit and drink beer and tell jokes with that pussy fenriz for all i care. thanks for the heads up on that by the way. i had hoped to hang with fenriz when i come to norway to tour but now that i know that he is not black in the least he can forget about it and you can tell him i said so. do you know varg vikernes (speaking of pussies)? i would like to challenge him to a black metal duel.
tell those guys in mysticum to get it together. are they at least practicing? i should hope so. whether they put out another album on their own or simply tour scandinavia with me as my backing band, they had better get their shit together. they must scowl at all times if they are to play with me, even when they are tuning or loading my equipment.
what is the black metal scene in norway like at the moment? i am the only person in my town that walks around in corpse paint most days (even when i work at blockbuster). how often do you wear corpse paint?
i will check out the bands you mention. i will let you know if i think they are pussies or not.
blackest of the black,
lance
the king of black metal
----------------------------------------------------------
Wed. Dec. 15, 2004 3:36 PM
FROM: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
TO: MrLouRawls@aol.com
SUBJECT: Re: Mysticum?
are the new mp3s finished???
---------------------------------------------------------
Friday, March 25, 2005 3:40 PM
FROM: MrLouRawls@aol.com
TO: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
SUBJECT: Witch Taint Rising
dear saiihtam,
alas, it has been a while since we've spoken. i write to you from a state of blackness that is blacker than anything even i have ever experienced before. and that means a lot coming from me, the king of black metal and about 50 other fucking things. anyway, i wanted to give you an update on the latest happenings with witch taint and our upcoming release on your label. i'm sorry for not sending you any new mp3's. since our last correspondence, i fired everyone in the band and got in a huge fight with my mom so she wouldn't let me hold auditions in the basement for like a month until i did some bullshit around the house for her. anyway, the time off has done me well. the music i am writing right now is the most evil and blackest music ever recorded in my humble opinion. i realize pretty much no one but me could even handle it (and believe me, i can barely take it myself), but i look forward to unleashing the unholy taint on the willing. how are things with you? really black i hope. what is the latest with mysticum? i am still very much interested in using them as my backing band when i come to norway. speaking of which, can you recommend any venues where i might set up shows? preferably, i would like to perform in a forest or a cave, but i suppose i would need to rent a generator for this. do you think one of the guys in mysticum could take care of this? please let me know. also, i would like to do some shows with mayhem if possible. since it's witch taint's first time in norway, i would be happy to open for them. i will be sending you new mp3's soon. please make sure any pets or sharp objects are out of the room before listening.
blacker than the blackest of the black,
lance, the king of black metal now and forever
------------------------------------------------------------------
March 27, 2005 4:52 AM
FROM: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
TO: MrLouRawls@aol.com
SUBJECT: Re: Witch Taint Rising
1. Mysticum does not play live anymore. But if they did, they would have been headliners. They are not interested in helping others as they have enough with them self. They are not "active", they are a sleeping band at the moment.
2. I have not signed your band. You must send mp3s first so i can hear, but i doubt you will manage to convince me, as i am VERY selective!!!!
3. Well, how are things with me?? Pretty nice. I do not think i am so black that you want me to be. I look like an normal man with short hair, but with "special" interests. I had long hair down to my but many years ago but i got fed up with it. I dont care what people think or knows about me. Remember i am soon at the age of 30. I am who i am, and i know what i am doing!! I also have 2 kids and a wife, so my life is also dedicated to them besides my music interests. So maybe i am interupting the picture you have of me. Whatever. I have grown beyond sacrificing animals and stuff like that. Personally i dont think that has something to do with satanism, neither has the nature witch is beautiful and majestetic. Take a trip in a nuclear bunker from WW2 or somthing, that is destructing. I think BUSH and his killing crusade for world domination is the most evil that happens on earth now. To me Satanism is about dark feelings and beliving in your self and nobody else. Do not follow the masses! Belive not in something you can not see. Facination of dark music is important, deppressive music is the best.
4. To play with Mayhem you have to show you can make complicated evil music, not everybody manage to do that. You have not released anything yet, so that is something you must do first. You have to grow for many years and showing you are a true man over years.
5. Sharp objects ar no problem, i do not use to cut my self while listening to music. That is something i find pathetic. People doing that has either a twisted mind or have to pretend they are something they are not.
6. I doubt you are so black, no human is black. You can have dark feelings and facination for the dark side, i also have. But that does not makes us black. If we where totally black we would have killed our self long time ago, and we have not done that..... yet! I willl not. Dont know about you. Over years you will understand what i am saying. When i was at the age of 19, i was also like you. Now i have grown up. Life will show you that you are not alone beliving you are the king. Many people have thoughts like that. I am tired of all this people beliving they are the kings, who can ever decide who really am??
--------------------
Friday, April 1, 2005 5:39 PM
FROM: MrLouRawls@aol.com
TO: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
SUBJECT: Re: Witch Taint Rising?
dear mathias,
i apologize (i am normally not into this but for you i will make an exception) for my slow response. i have to admit, at first i was taken aback by your last e-mail. but after reading it and re-reading it and then reading it a few more times after that, i realize you are testing me. i am proud to say i have passed your test and i want to thank you (also not usually into this) for pushing me to the limit to see just how serious i am about black metal and blackness in general. i have to admit, you had me going for a minute about having short hair and saying that no human can really be black. also, that thing about no one being able to decide who is the king- let me just say that you can ask anyone in gary, indiana who is the king of black metal and they will all tell you it's me. even my mom, who is totally not into black metal at all, asked my dad the other day "where is the king of black metal?" and she was referring to ME. of course, i was down in the basement with the lights off working on the most evil music that has ever been created. the stuff i was working on the other day was so intense i couldn't even eat the pizza i had ordered. i am really excited (but in a really black way, mind you) for you to hear the new music i am recording. i promise you it will be the blackest, evilest, and depressingest music you have ever released on your label. we should probably take out some insurance because people will be killing themselves left and right after they hear it. my friend todd heard it the other day and was all like "turn it off- i can't take it anymore?" he didn't try to kill himself but i could tell he was seriously bummed out. personally, i don't think we need that kind of hassle when me and the rest of the mysticum guys are out touring the world and banging black metal chicks and stuff. maybe it should just say on the record "if you kill yourself while listening to witch taint- and you probably will- it is not our fucking problem." this will have to be printed in four or five different languages. the last thing i need is some bastard from south america trying to sue me because he tried to kill himself after listening to the mighty taint.
anyway, what kind of time frame are you thinking for an album release? as soon as the album is pressed up i am going to tell my boss at subway to fuck himself. also, do you know where i can get those power transformers so all my equipment will work in europe when we tour? the last thing i need is for all my equipment to short out when mysticum and i are unleashing the black metal fury!
blacker than ever,
lance, the king of black metal and about 50 other things
-----------------------------------------------------
Fri. April 1, 2005 6:59 PM
FROM: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
TO: MrLouRawls@aol.com
SUBJECT: Re: Witch Taint Rising
heh, like i said, mysticum will not play live, i have not signed you, you must first send mp3s so i can hear. I have no opportunity to arrange live shows.
-----------------------------------------------------
Sat. April 9, 2005 2:50 PM
FROM: MrLouRawls@aol.com
TO: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
SUBJECT: Re: Witch Taint Rising
dear saiihtam,
sorry once again for the slow reply. i have spent the last week cut off from the outside world- no computers, no newspapers, no telephone, no nothing. it was just me in my basement writing the most extreme black metal of all time while occasionally taking breaks to watch television, go to the bathroom, or order a pizza or something. i am very excited (yet also worried because this music may indeed drive you to hurt yourself) for you to hear the results. i have been recording the guitars with two microphones which not so coincidentally have been arranged to form an inverted cross. the sound is deadly. i can barely even make it through an entire song without having to take break because it is almost even too intense for me, the king of black metal. when i do take breaks however, i leave the mics on in order to pick up the sound of me sitting on the couch brooding and contemplating blackness. i plan to layer my tracks with these atmospheric sounds of doom. i will send you more tracks shortly. please make sure your family is away before you listen to it however. i do not wish to harm them.
as for mysticum, i am not interested in having them play live. this is no good for anyone. i only want them to appear with me as my backing band. for all intents and purposes, they will be members of witch taint. they will help load the equipment, guard me from fans, play music with me, and generally have the most amazing black metal experience of their lives. i imagine some of them will not be able to handle it, but i will take what i can get. i did notice that hellhammer from mayhem also played with mysticum at one point. if possible, i would like to get hellhammer to play with witch taint instead of the drummer from mysticum. if you could do so, please let the drummer from mysticum know that he will not be part of the tour as far as being a drummer goes. he is welcome however to be a roadie or assist me in matters of blackness along the way. in fact, perhaps he could be of some assistance in booking shows. i understand that you do not wish to be involved in this. you will be too busy planning the release of the witch taint album i am sure. as for our first show, i wish to play inside of a church in oslo. i cannot wait to watch the walls fall down around as the the church collapses from the unholy sound of the might taint. can you recommend any churches i might consider for this? please let me know.
also, do you have the e-mail addresses for fenriz from darkthrone or varg vikernes? i want to let them know that witch taint will be coming shortly.
how is your family?
blackest of the black,
lance, the king of black metal now and forever
-----------
April 14, 2005 5:45 AM
FROM: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
TO: MrLouRawls@aol.com
SUBJECT: Re: Witch Taint Rising?
see below in red:
MrLouRawls@aol.com wrote:
dear saiihtam,
sorry once again for the slow reply. i have spent the last week cut off from the outside world- no computers, no newspapers, no telephone, no nothing. it was just me in my basement writing the most extreme black metal of all time while occasionally taking breaks to watch television, go to the bathroom, or order a pizza or something. i am very excited (yet also worried because this music may indeed drive you to hurt yourself) for you to hear the results. i have been recording the guitars with two microphones which not so coincidentally have been arranged to form an inverted cross. the sound is deadly. i can barely even make it through an entire song without having to take break because it is almost even too intense for me, the king of black metal. when i do take breaks however, i leave the mics on in order to pick up the sound of me sitting on the couch brooding and contemplating blackness. i plan to layer my tracks with these atmospheric sounds of doom. i will send you more tracks shortly. please make sure your family is away before you listen to it however. i do not wish to harm them.
as for mysticum, i am not interested in having them play live. this is no good for anyone. i only want them to appear with me as my backing band. for all intents and purposes, they will be members of witch taint. No they will not. they will help load the equipment, guard me from fans, play music with me, and generally have the most amazing black metal experience of their lives. No. i imagine some of them will not be able to handle it, but i will take what i can get. i did notice that hellhammer from mayhem also played with mysticum at one point. if possible, i would like to get hellhammer to play with witch taint instead of the drummer from mysticum. I doubt hellhammer will do this. Mysticum has no human drummer but uses drum machines. if you could do so, please let the drummer from mysticum know that he will not be part of the tour as far as being a drummer goes. he is welcome however to be a roadie or assist me in matters of blackness along the way. in fact, perhaps he could be of some assistance in booking shows. i understand that you do not wish to be involved in this. you will be too busy planning the release of the witch taint album i am sure. Heh, i must see if your music is great first, i am not so easy to convince. as for our first show, i wish to play inside of a church in oslo. i cannot wait to watch the walls fall down around as the the church collapses from the unholy sound of the might taint. can you recommend any churches i might consider for this? please let me know. BM in a church, i dont think that will be allowed.
also, do you have the e-mail addresses for fenriz from darkthrone or varg vikernes? i want to let them know that witch taint will be coming shortly. NO!
how is your family? Fine!
whitest of the white
lance, the king of illusions now and forever
----------
Sat. April 23, 2005 12:48 PM
FROM: MrLouRawls@aol.com
TO: saiihtam (e-mail address removed)
SUBJECT: Re: Witch Taint Rising
dear saiihtam,
first, of all i want to thank you for continuing to test me. were i a lesser man or not as completely black as i am, i might have taken your comments as suggesting that you don't believe in the mighty power and extreme blackness of witch taint. since you have heard our music however, i know you are fully aware that we are indeed the future of black metal and that your comments are only intended to anger and sadden me so that i might have even more fuel to become the most powerful and influential figure ever to be a part of the black metal community. and that is precisely why i am glad that you will be working for us. i am thinking a fall release, just as the leaves are changing and the earthly death that is winter cackles in the distance. i would like to have two record release "parties", one in oslo and one in my hometown of gary, indiana, where i am the king of black metal. both "parties" will involve a single goat, tethered to a tree with the letters "WT" painted on its side in pig's blood. these letters, of course, will stand for witch taint, the greatest and blackest band in all of black metal. we will string up loudspeakers in the trees near the goat. at precisely midnight, the infernal sounds of our crushing debut will begin to play at a volume never before acheived by modern man. and that is when i and the members of mysticum will appear on the horizon on horseback. we will approach the goat, coming just close enough that our faces become dappled with the reflection of dancing flames (oh yeah, we should have a fire near the goat. i forgot to mention this). we will sit motionless on the horses (we will have one for each of us) until the final track of our legendary debut is finished. then we will turn and ride off into the distance, leaving the tethered goat shivering in the night. someone is going to have to come and get the goat eventually because it will probably be a rental. maybe we could have the drummer from mysticum do this since he won't be on horseback with us. he should totally come to the party though. just because he can't be a member of witch taint, doeesn't mean he shouldn't be able to witness the majesty. i don't want to be a total dick to the guy or anything.
please give my regards to your family. i imagine they are pretty excited that you are about to be a part of black metal history by working with the mighty taint.
blacker than even the blackest of the black,
lance
copyright 2005, all rights reservedI’m going to level with you, I really like the website www.statsbomb.com
It won’t be for everyone, but I find it challenges opinions, broadens horizons and gives insights that I don’t get from elsewhere.
Check it out and see if you agree.
Anyway, they’ve posted a season preview for the Blues, containing all of the above.
Give it a read
If Lukaku’s rumoured return to Chelsea goes ahead, we’ll be losing the most reliable goal-scorer Everton have seen for decades. I don’t truly know what style of football would suit the still-young Belgian, but it never felt we were particularly built around him, if only because it might have occurred to another team to stop making him look so clumsy with his back to goal.
If he leaves we’ll certainly miss his raw output, but I don’t believe he’s tactically irreplaceable, especially in an attack built around Deulofeu, if such a thing is possible.
And finally we have Ross Barkley. Did he make The Leap, or did he stumble again? Certainly, the same old habits held firm: the runs that went nowhere; the complete lack of recovery running; the terrible decisions.
But he began to show some sings of actual output last season, ending with 0.33 NPGA90. I would accept anything approaching Stones-level money for him in a heartbeat, but it’s entirely possible that slowly but surely he could one day, with the right training, stop being the most infuriating player on the team."I'm praying for the Satanists because the Lord told me to do it," Amy Piatt of Muskegon, Mich., said Dec. 2, 2015, during a rally at the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich. (Photo: Matthew Dae Smith, Lansing (Mich.) State Journal)
LANSING, Mich. — To counter a live Nativity scene planned next weekend on the Michigan state Capitol lawn, a Satanic group plans to resurrect its own "snaketivity" display begun last year.
A Nativity scene that Sen. Ted Cruz's presidential campaign is planning will happen the evenings of Dec. 12 and 13.
The Satanic Temple of Detroit is awaiting approval from the Michigan State Capitol Commission to perform its own live display Dec. 19, Jex Blackmore, the temple's director, said at a religious liberty rally Wednesday. State Sen. Rick Jones, a Republican from Grand Ledge, Mich., plans to sponsor another Nativity display the same day.
“The overriding message in our holiday display, and many of the Satanic Temple’s public activities, is one of plurality and religious liberty," Blackmore said in a written statement. "We have no interest in proselytizing Satanism to the public. However, we refuse to allow one religious perspective (to) dominate the discourse."
The Satanic Temple, a loosely organized national group, actually doesn't worship the Christian devil. It is a secular organization closely aligned with atheist groups in protesting religious displays on public grounds.
"Freedom of speech may be inconvenient, messy and at times offensive, but that is the cost of living in a free country," Wendy Day, Michigan state director for the Cruz campaign, said in an emailed statement. "America was founded on the principles of free speech and freedom of religion.... We don't have to agree on religious principles to stand together for the right of free speech."
“Freedom of speech may be inconvenient, messy and at times offensive, but that is the cost of living in a free country.” Wendy Day, Ted Cruz campaign
At Wednesday's Rally for Religious Liberty, sponsored by the Christian group Salt & Light Global, Blackmore and a handful of her fellow Satanists stood quietly at the back of the crowd on the east lawn with a large banner reading, "The Satanic Temple supports religious liberty," in white letters on a black background. While the event's speakers railed against what they deemed governmental intrusion into religious life — many speakers specifically criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year that states must allow gay men and women to marry — the Satanists received numerous raised eyebrows.
But, overall, they received a warm welcome.
After speaking from the Capitol steps, state GOP Sen. Patrick Colbeck of Canton, Mich., walked to the Satanists, shook their hands and thanked them for coming.
"Beautiful sign," he told them. "I would've probably chosen a different color."
Sean Bertolino, the capital area chairman for the Cruz campaign, also spoke with the group, giving them a Cruz campaign Christmas card that said, "One unplanned pregnancy changed the world." After the chat, Bertolino said he was pleased to find a common interest in religious liberty.
"It's a common issue, which is kind of cool," he said.
The Satanic Temple of Detroit's snaketivity scene was first displayed in December 2014 on the grounds of the state Capitol in downtown Lansing, Mich. (Photo: Rod Sanford, Lansing (Mich.) State Journal)
William Wagner, president and chairman of Salt & Light, said he couldn't comment specifically on the Satanic Temple's attendance because he wasn't aware of the group or its positions, but the rally was about protecting various religious expressions.
"It's about the First Amendment," he said, "That limitation on the exercise of government power protects the press and protects expressions of religious conscience of all kind."
The event was decidedly Christian, with signs such as "Vote Biblically" spread throughout the crowd.
"We have radical Islam; we need radical Christianity," the Rev. Ellis Smith of Detroit's Jubilee City Church said from the Capitol steps.
During the speeches, Amy Piatt of Muskegon, Mich., stood by Blackmore's group, her eyes closed and palms heavenward, praying for the Satanists. Asked why, she said, "because the Lord told me to do it."
The Satanic Temple first brought its snaketivity display — which depicts a snake wrapped around the Satanic cross, presenting a book as a holiday gift — to the Capitol in December 2014 in response to a planned Nativity scene later called off. But the Satanists' announcement spurred a response from Lansing-area churches and from Jones, who helped pull together a Nativity scene to counter the snaketivity last year.
In addition to Jones' Nativity scene Dec. 19, state Rep. Mike Callton, a Republican from Nashville, Mich., is sponsoring a Chanukah display Monday.
John Truscott, vice chairman of the Capitol Commission that regulates the statehouse facility and grounds, said Wednesday morning that the Satanic Temple hadn't submitted an official request for its display but had sent emails checking dates around Dec. 18 or 19. Truscott said the commission could sign off on a request within a week of its submission, so any request still could receive approval.
The commission would be obligated to approve the snaketivity display as long as it meets commission's guidelines, which limit the size of the display and prohibit permanent displays, meaning the Snaketivity would have to be placed and removed daily. The Satanic Temple met those criteria last year.
Follow Justin A. Hinkley on Twitter: @JustinHinkley
CLOSE Jex Blackmore of the Detroit chapter of the Satanic Temple discusses what's behind the “Snaketivity Scene" Sunday at the Capitol. By Christopher Behnan
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1QfwTmHEven before he took an NFL snap, there were many who believed that Tim Tebow might be better suited as a fullback or H-back-type player if he wanted to have a career in the league. Once Tebow was drafted and he struggled as a signal-caller – he couldn’t make decisions quick enough and he was inaccurate – the calls for him to switch positions, or maybe try his hand in the Canadian Football League, only grew louder.
But Tebow refused. It was quarterback or nothing. So nothing it is; Tebow spent training camp with the New England Patriots in 2013 and the Philadelphia Eagles in 2015, but the 2010 first-round pick hasn’t played a meaningful snap in the league since 2012.
So now Tebow has turned his attention to baseball. He hasn’t played the game since his junior year of high school over a decade ago, but he’s been working out on the diamond, and feels he’s ready to try out for teams.
On Tuesday, multiple reporters tweeted that Tebow will hold a showcase in Los Angeles on Aug. 30, and there’s enough curiosity in what the now-29-year-old Tebow can do that more than 20 Major League Baseball teams are confirmed to be sending personnel to watch the workout.
Tebow is of course willing to pursue whatever he’d like, and if he can find folks willing to indulge him, all the better. But as noted by The MMQB’s Albert Breer, it’s curious that after refusing to consider other positions and options with the sport (we assume) is his first love, Tebow is now willing to grind it out in baseball.
If he’s signed, Tebow isn’t just going to jump onto a Major League roster; he’ll be in the minors, the antithesis of glamour. In the NFL, games are played in front of 65,000 fans, teams travel to road games on chartered planes and have police escort their buses from hotel to stadium.
That’s not life in the minors. Tebow is from Florida and played in the SEC with the Florida Gators, so let’s say the Tampa Bay Rays sign him. Their advanced Single-A team is the Charlotte Stone Crabs in Port Charlotte, Fla., in the Florida State League. That means traveling all over his home state, to cities like Bradenton and Dunedin, and the biggest stadium is 11,000 seats for the Tampa Yankees.
Assume the Rays place Tebow with their Double-A team, the Montgomery (Ala.) Biscuits. The Biscuits are in the Southern League. You know the other teams in the Southern League? The Chattanooga (Tenn.) Lookouts, the Biloxi (Miss.) Shuckers and the Pensacola (Fla.) Blue Wahoos, among other teams. Again, biggest stadium is 11,000 seats. And the bus rides are a lot longer.
Keep in mind, too, those leagues wrap up their respective regular seasons by Sept. 5, though maybe he will play in the Arizona Fall league.
For the teams interested in Tebow, signing him is worth it if you believe that he’ll help boost attendance. That makes business sense.
Maybe Tebow is prepared for the reality of life as a minor leaguer. It seems odd that he wouldn’t change positions in football but now he’s all in on a baseball career that will almost certainly start in some small city, in front of small crowds, with a paltry per diem as he spends hours and hours on a bus between series.Hey there tech-death heads! It seems like a lot of people were digging the two The Ritual Aura songs last week, so I'm happy we have yet another early exclusive stream of some truly fantastic tech-death for your ears today. Ahead of its release next Tuesday, May 10th, we bring you an exclusive early stream of Eon, the debut full-length and swansong for standout underdogs Formless. As always, all prior editions of this series can be perused here.
Boston/Connecticut based technical death metal group Formless have an interesting history, they first teased their way into many of our hearts way back in 2010 when they dropped an intriguing three song demo of high quality tech-death with a unique flair all their own. Then things seemed to go dark, or quieter, or delayed, a mix of all those things really as time went on. But instead of getting into that, I'd prefer to discuss how damn good Eon is as an album now that it's finally almost out. Eon is a 53 minute massive slab of eclectic and infinitely varied progressive minded tech-death. A modern classic to my ears, but then again, the appeal of Formless always was the complexity and hard-to-pigeonhole nature of their music. And Eon takes that spastic stylistic jumping prone nature Formless have shown in the past, and craft an even larger and more inclusive sound. Guitarist Annie Grunwald adds gorgeous clean singing to a variety of the songs as well. In a way that never feels cliched, and also would probably appeal to fans of Fallujah as well.
Normally I wouldn't do this, but the band cite a massive list of influences and you can definitely hear just about all of them at some point in their music. So just think of Eon as a scientifically precise distillation and recombination of the bands they list on Facebook influence wise: Akercocke, Anata, Animals As Leaders, Arsis, Augury, Between the Buried & Me, Cynic, Death, Decapitated, Decrepit Birth, Defeated Sanity, Era Untold, The Faceless, Fallujah, Gojira, Gorod, Into Eternity, The John Jorgenson Quintet, Krallice, Martyr, Meshuggah, Mithras, Mr. Bungle, Necrophagist, Obscura, Opeth, Psycroptic, Sleep Terror, Spawn of Possession, Symphony X, Windir, Wolves in the Throne Room.
I think another way to put it is to compare what they do on Eon as being in a similarly constructed vein to Cephalic Carnage in the sense of writing songs that frequently flip through styles multiple times in their songs. The Formless-Eon record is like that, but with shifting through multiple tech-death styles, prog, and black metal elements back-and-forth endlessly. Making for songs that are never straightforward and simple to digest. Which to me, makes it all the greater of a listen, as its demanding of your sole attention, but as a result is an infinitely rewarding and epic release to hear!
If this is their final release, which the band has expressed it is, since members have moved away and other factors, its one hell of a way to go out. Eon is the kind of swansong worth remembering and coming back to. I really have to give mad props to each member of the band, as the performances here by all the members are fucking fantastic. The line-up on Formless-Eon is: Kevin Narowski – Vocals, Annie Grunwald – Guitar, Clean Vocals, Kenny Bullard – Guitar, and Craig Breitsprecher – Bass, Jake Shields-Drums. Some members of Formless will continue on in other killer groups worth checking out (some covered here previously!) such as: Xenosis and Archaic Decapitator who have a sick release coming up actually!
If you like what you hear below, Eon will officially drop on next Tuesday, May 10th, and you can pre-order the album from their Bandcamp here. Be sure to like them on their Facebook too!Abstract
Cannabis is the most frequently used illicit drug worldwide, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying continued cannabis use. Cue-reactivity (the physical, psychological, behavioural and neural reaction to substance-related cues) might be related to continued cannabis use. In this 3-year prospective neuroimaging study we investigated whether cannabis cue-induced brain activity predicted continued cannabis use and associated problem severity 3 years later. In addition, baseline brain activations were compared between dependent and non-dependent cannabis users at follow-up. Analyses were focussed on brain areas known to be important in cannabis cue-reactivity: anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, ventral tegmental area, amygdala and striatum. At baseline, 31 treatment-naive frequent cannabis users performed a cue-reactivity functional magnetic resonance imaging task. Of these participants, 23 completed the 3-year follow-up. None of the cue-induced region of interest activations predicted the amount of cannabis use at follow-up. However, cue-induced activation in the left striatum (putamen) significantly and independently predicted problem severity at follow-up (p < 0.001) as assessed with the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test. Also, clinically dependent cannabis users at follow-up showed higher baseline activation at trend level in the left striatum compared with non-dependent users. This indicates that neural cue-reactivity in the dorsal striatum is an independent predictor of cannabis use-related problems. Given the relatively small sample size, these results are preliminary and should be replicated in larger samples of cannabis users.A man |
’s being seen as a capitulation, Greece’s negotiators agreed to a list of measures even stricter than those rejected by the country’s voters in last weekend’s referendum. These will have to be approved by Greek lawmakers, as well as by other European parliaments, before a formal bailout decision can be made.
In return, eurozone leaders said they will give Greece up to 86 billion euros ($96 billion) in new bailout aid, on condition that Tsipras manages to implement these measures. Here are the key reforms required, from a full list released by the Euro Summit of eurozone leaders.
By July 15, Greece should:
— Streamline its VAT system and broaden the tax base to increase revenue
— Implement upfront measures to improve long-term sustainability of the pension system as part of a comprehensive pension reform program
— Safeguard the full legal independence of ELSTAT, Greece’s statistics office
By July 22, Greece should:
— Adopt the Code of Civil Procedure, which is a major overhaul of procedures for the civil justice system, aimed at significantly accelerating the judicial process and reducing costs
— Implement the EU Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive, the BRRD, with support from the European Commission
Additionally, Greece’s reform measures need to be “seriously strengthened to take into account the strongly deteriorated economic and fiscal position of the country during the last year,” eurozone leaders said in the statement.
That means Greece will need to:
— Carry out ambitious pension reforms
— Adopt ambitious product-market reforms, including changes to Sunday trade, sales periods, pharmacy ownership and reforms for bakeries
— Continue with the privatization of the electricity transmission network operator (ADMIE)
— Undertake rigorous reviews of the labor markets and the process for holding strikes. On the basis of these reviews, labor-market policies should be aligned with European practices and not return to previous policies, which “are not compatible with the goals of promoting sustainable and inclusive growth”
— Strengthen the financial sector, in particular by eliminating political interference
On top of that, the Greek authorities need to:
— Scale up privatization efforts. Valuable Greek assets will be transferred to an independent fund and the monetization of those assets will become a source to pay down debt. Total value of the fund is expected to be around 50 billion euros. €25 billion will be used to recapitalize Greek banks, approximately €12.5 billion will be used for decreasing debt-to-GDP ratio, while the remaining €12.5 billion be used for investments in Greece
— Modernize the Greek administration system to reduce costs
— Allow the lender institutions to work on the ground in Athens to assess progress in implementing the reforms. The Greek government will need to agree with the creditor institutions before submitting legislation to parliament
Want news about Europe delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Europe Daily newsletter. Sign up here.Research reveals low exposure of excellent work by female scientists
Scientists at the University of Sheffield have found that high quality science by female academics is underrepresented in comparison to that of their male counterparts.
The researchers analysed the genders of invited speakers at the most prestigious gatherings of evolutionary biologists in Europe - six biannual congresses of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) and found that male speakers outnumbered women.
Even in comparison to the numbers of women and men among world class scientists – from the world top ranked institutions for life sciences, and authors in the top-tier journals Nature and Science - women were still underrepresented among invited speakers.
The researchers also found that women were underrepresented at the 2011 congress because men accepted invitations more often than women.
Dr Hannah Dugdale from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, explained: “It’s important that we understand why this is happening and what we can do to address it – high quality science by women has low exposure at international level and this is constraining evolutionary biology from reaching its full potential. We’re currently investigating the reasons behind this lower acceptance rate – it could relate to childcare requirements, lower perception of scientific ability, being uncomfortable with self-promotion – there are many potential contributing factors.”
Dr Julia Schroeder, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Ornitholgoy in Germany said: “The most demanding phase of a career in Biology, when it is important to communicate one’s findings, and to build networks with other scientists, coincides with the age at which women's fertility starts to decline, meaning it is their last chance to have a family - unlike men. Thus, women scientists of this career phase may be pregnant, or have children. Stay-at-home-dads are rare, therefore, these women are less flexible about travelling for work, and may be more likely to decline invitations to speak. We have yet to investigate whether this is indeed the cause, but it is a likely factor that starts the downward spiral: lower exposure and fewer networking opportunities are costly to the career. Fewer women in top positions mean fewer female role models for students who aspire to be scientists.”
Kirsty Grainger, Head of Skills and Careers at the Natural Environment Research Council said: “Taking action to foster a culture that supports equality and diversity within research and that encourages better representation and support for women at all stages of their career is extremely important. We need to ensure that we attract and retain the brightest and best researchers, regardless of their background, into the UK research base. Understanding and addressing disincentives and indirect obstacles to recruitment, retention and progression in research careers is an essential part of this”.
Additional information The research has been published by the Journal of Evolutionary Biology and the full paper can be downloaded here. Dr Schroeder was funded by The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Volkswagen Foundation. Dr Dugdale was funded by NERC and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. The University of Sheffield With nearly 25,000 of the brightest students from 117 countries coming to learn alongside 1,209 of the world’s best academics, it is clear why the University of Sheffield is one of the UK’s leading universities. Staff and students at Sheffield are committed to helping discover and understand the causes of things - and propose solutions that have the power to transform the world we live in. A member of the Russell Group, the University of Sheffield has a reputation for world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. The University of Sheffield has been named University of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards 2011 for its exceptional performance in research, teaching, access and business performance. In addition, the University has won four Queen’s Anniversary Prizes (1998, 2000, 2002, 2007), recognising the outstanding contribution by universities and colleges to the United Kingdom’s intellectual, economic, cultural and social life. One of the markers of a leading university is the quality of its alumni and Sheffield boasts five Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students. Its alumni have gone on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence all over the world, making significant contributions in their chosen fields. Research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, Siemens, Yorkshire Water, and many more household names, as well as UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations. The University has well-established partnerships with a number of universities and major corporations, both in the UK and abroad. The White Rose University Consortium (White Rose) is a strategic partnership between 3 of the UK's leading research universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. Since its creation in 1997 White Rose has secured more than £100M into the Universities.I was well and truly out of civilisation now and had just spent my first night on the rocky outcrops of a mountain road, I’m sure there were plenty more of those to come. With the sun to the east I set off once again, straddling the mountainous ridge of Japan’s north. The scenery was transforming around me as I rode ever upward, eventually coming across an open gate, like an open invitation to a winter wonderland.
This all must have happened the previous night as this road was not exactly friendly for two wheeled transport, or any transport really. The road was quickly turning into a slushie.
I figured I would soon reach the end and start losing altitude again but the road was getting worse and worse and while the wobbles on the bike were fun, I didn’t want to lose my bike off the edge of a mountain just yet. I also hadn’t eaten yet, so the order of the day was to turn around, find civilisation and get some food into me.
I eventuated on a large restaurant looking building with very few cars but I was desperate so I thought I’d give it a try. It was completely empty inside and they didn’t seem to know what to do with me. I made myself at home though and got myself a menu, I pointed at about 5 different things they didn’t have in and my attempts to tell them to surprise me arrived on confused ears. Eventually I pointed at something that elicited a positive reaction.
Eating on the floor is customary in Japan and I found it rather difficult as I was larger than the typical Japanese person and my motorcycle pants weren’t exactly conducive to crossing my legs. I did my best though and thanked my new best friends for a lovely meal and I was off again. I figured the snow was an aberration and was still trying to head north, I just had to find a different route.
Finding a new route was difficult however and I kept hitting road blocks. It was frustrating having to backtrack all the time and find new routes, I was getting sick of it. I happened on my 3rd roadblock for the day and the little devil on my shoulder brought up the idea of sneaking around the side of the barrier..
I snuck my bike around the right side of the fence in the picture, it was a bit of a squeeze but manageable. I realised the gate on the other side might be impassable but worth case scenario I can come back, the road was likely to be a fun ride anyway.
The road was pure joy, no traffic, beautiful twisties and a nice view. As I got higher there were random chunks of snow on the road, I was starting to see why it was closed. The random chunks started to turn into the covering of whole lanes with snow.
I was tiptoeing through the snow and going ok, learning to let the bike move under me and correct itself, the snow started to thin out eventually and I thought I was home and hosed. How clever was I? Going around the barrier saved me a lot of time and who can say they travelled on a road like this?
Yep, I was screwed. There was absolutely no way of getting through this tunnel (trust me I tried). I had to head back over the snow and start from scratch again *sigh*. This time I was getting a little more cocky and urgent in the snow and it then decided to ground me, literally. I was going through a particularly dense bit of snow with a little ridge to it, my front wheel pushed through but my back wheel caught on the ridge, leading to my tires going in two different directions. Down the bike went, somehow I was still standing after the bike toppled, the bags on the back actually limited the damage somewhat and there was only cosmetic damage. I just wanted to get out of there and forgot to take a picture unfortunately.
The rest of the trip went without incident and I snuck around the barrier again. My hands were completely numb again and my face was in quite a bit of pain from the cold.
Riding at night again and I was struggling to find another place to camp. I saw a sign with the international symbol for camping ground and settled in to get nice and warm again for another day of adventure.
Here’s my trip computer for the day to give you an idea of how hard it is to cover distance in Japan.
AdvertisementsPolice in Taiwan who had arrested a man for stealing a bicycle discovered he was so poor that they decided to have a whip-round and buy him a bike.
The man, surnamed Huang, stole the bicycle from a high school near his home in Chiayi city in central Taiwan to save his daughter from her daily 5km walk to the closest bus stop on the way to her vocational school, the China Times reported on Thursday.
Huang had told his daughter he bought the bicycle second-hand, but after it was recognised by its former owner both father and daughter were taken in by the police.
Once police officers heard about the desperate conditions that the Huang family was living in -- with no access to water or electricity -- they had a collection and bought a new bike for the girl.ADVERTISEMENT
The video: The Republican Party — particularly its Tea Party contingent — is steadfastly opposed to many kinds of government oversight, from pollution laws to health insurance mandates. But one lawmaker took that anti-regulatory zeal a step farther this week than usual when he stood up in the Montana House and argued that drunk-driving laws hurt the economy. (See video below.) The argument came during debate over a new bill that would allow prosecutors to take into account 10 years of driving history when prosecuting drunk drivers, instead of the current five. "These DUI laws are not doing our small businesses in our state any good at all. They are destroying them," said Rep. Alan Hale, a Tea Party-supported freshman Republican, who also owns a bar. He argued that getting behind the wheel while intoxicated is simply a part of rural life in Montana. "These taverns and bars in these smaller communities connect people together," he said. "They are the center of the communities. I'll guarantee you there's only two ways to get there: Either you hitchhike, or you drive, and I promise you they're not going to hitchhike."
The reaction:. "It's crazy" to say DUI laws hurt small businesses, say Mothers Against Drunk Driving National President Laura Dean-Mooneys, as quoted by AOL. "He needs to do a little more fact checking before he makes statements like that and insults those who have lost loved ones to drunk driving." Besides bars, let's consider some other businesses that harsher drunk driving penalties might cripple, says Robin Marty at Care2.com. "Extra ambulances, auto repair shops, morticians..." See Hale's spirited defense:All the same, Hype is keen to distance himself from any labels. “What’s better is the integration of sounds right now. I can play to 20,000 at Boomtown Festival and I didn’t have to water down the set at all. It’s a festival crowd, but they were right on everything Hazard and I were doing – and that wasn’t the case a couple of years ago. At the end of the day you can’t deny a vibe and you can’t deny the kids – who else are we making music for?”
Phantasy, however, meets the challenge head-on. “Look, there’s a perception that this sound is chavvy, scummy – whatever. It’s a sad stereotype. Music has no boundaries. People forget why they got into this industry. We mingle with the fans, enagage constantly with them on social media; we make the ravers feel part of it. For me, it’s all drum ’n’ bass. We play hands-in-the-air vocals, rollers, dirty tech – if it’s good party music, it’s getting played. People work all week. We want them to come and see our shows and still be thinking of it Monday morning.”
For Macky Gee, there’s no issue. “‘Jump-up’ suits me – it lives up to its name!” And Mollie Collins is in no doubt. “At the National Drum ’n’ Bass Awards, even Sigma opened with a full-on jump-up tune! Jump-up is pure energy. But you can mix it in a way that gets the best out of it – you don’t need to smash five jump-up tunes in a row. I love to hear the crowd sing, so I love to blend in more vocal tunes in amongst the smashers.”
Shotta, ever articulate and ebullient, goes further. “There’s a preconception about what we do as MCs, too, but that’s almost a strength. When people see it live, in its purest form, they realise the different skill-sets involved.” He talks of a “trickle-down effect” from kids watching grime crews. “We feel like we’re bridging a gap and kicking down the doors for lyrical drum ’n’ bass MCs to come through. Typically, when it comes to festival drum ’n’ bass acts, MCs have been there just to host and boost up the artists. Lyrical d’n’b MCs haven’t quite reached the level of exposure we’re now getting. There’s also a stereotype in drum ’n’ bass that it’s impossible to break through as an MC. Now you look at youngsters like Azza, Grima, Dreps and his Team Drumz outfit, who all have huge followings, brands, club nights – this is real, and it’s happening.”
Label it, pigeonhole it, dismiss it, sneer, tut and grimace – but know this. Jump-up drum ’n’ bass, in its deliciously addictive MC-fuelled format, anchored by a raft of airtight new productions, is having its day in the sun. And its golden summer is just beginning.
This feature appears in the July 2017 issue of MixmagA 91-year-old New Hampshire state legislator is unapologetic after suggesting to a constituent that the state ship people with disabilities to Siberia.
The comments came when Sharon Omand, the manager of a mental health program in New Hamsphire, called her state representative, Martin Harty, to raise concerns about funding cuts to mental health services.
Omand said that Harty told her “the world is too populated” with “too many defective people.” Harty went on to explain that he was referring to, “you know the mentally ill, the retarded, people with physical disabilities and drug addictions — the defective people society would be better off without.”
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
“I wish we had a Siberia so we could ship them all off to freeze to death and die and clean up the population,” Harty said, according to Omand’s account.
After the comments were publicized during a state House committee meeting this week, Harty told the Concord Monitor that he did make the comments, but said he was “just kidding.” To read more click here.SCP-2858
Item #: SCP-2858
Object Class: Keter
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-2858 instances are to be stored in individual lockers located in Site-43's Low-Value Anomalous Items wing. MTF Β-2 ("Bubble Trouble") are currently responsible for monitoring the appearance of SCP-2858 instances, following the criteria supplied by the Department of Meta-Analysis study.
Following the events of Addendum SCP-2858-1, a public number has been set up under the guise of a companion marketing campaign for the "horror special" which aired during the incident. Those possessing SCP-2858 instances have been encouraged to call the number for a monetary reward – should they possess knowledge of SCP-2858's anomalous properties, B-Class amnestics are to be administered.
Description: SCP-2858 instances are generic PVC soap pump bottles, with their only distinguishing features being the label on the front of the bottle and the composition of the "soap".
SCP-2858 instances do not appear to have any real-world source, despite their labelling (see below for further details). Civilians who receive SCP-2858 instances report them being delivered by an anonymous sender – Foundation tracking of the packages reveal that they are inevitably sent from one of many Foundation front companies, despite no records of such deliveries existing.
The Department of Meta-Analysis has determined that the frequency of SCP-2858 appearance is directly proportional to:
the local population of wasps
the percentage of the population below the poverty line
the number of prison inmates from the area with sentences over 20 years.
SCP-2858 instances are invariably labelled with the words "Neutrogena Wasp Cleanser". The label also states that SCP-2858 is produced by the non-existent "Stanford-Caldwell Pty. Ltd.", and provides a list of component chemicals that is always incorrect, usually featuring implausible or simply fictitious compounds.
While such labels usually appear similar to the labels of other contemporaneous Neutrogena products, Neutrogena has never manufactured a product named "Wasp Cleanser". When questioned, Neutrogena representatives stated that they had no intention to produce such a product any time in the foreseeable future.
The contents of SCP-2858 instances (designated SCP-2858-A) share few common features between them, aside from the fact that they are invariably light blue in colour. A short list of SCP-2858-A instances follows:
Instance # Composition Physical Properties 18 Water, benzene, disodium laureth sulfosuccinate, Brilliant Blue FCF, acetic acid Has a pH of approximately 1.5. Despite this, when applied to human tissue, it failed to react as expected. Subjects who used the product for extended periods of time reported minor redness and skin irritation. Apparently used for dissolving foreign matter within pores. 23 Water, citric acid, rennet, salt, indigo dye Although the substance was able to be dispensed by the soap bottle as normal soap would, it otherwise behaves like a highly adhesive and stretchable solid. Appears to be intended for use by stretching the soap over an affected area, allowing it to adhere, and then removing it quickly, dislodging any foreign objects within the pores. 27 Water, ethanol, sodium bicarbonate, nitric acid, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, cobalt blue When applied to the body, an aerated solution of blood plasma and DDT erupts at high velocities from all pores that make contact with the solution. This has been shown to continue for up to 3 hours. D-1239 reported it was a "refreshing" experience, despite showing symptoms of severe hypovolemia. 31 Milk, lapis lazuli, glycol distearate, apatite Upon application, pores that made contact with it expanded to approximately 13 times their previous size, before several tooth-like structures began developing. These structures were able to grind an inserted steel needle into fine powder. Pores sporadically contracted and expanded for seven hours before the dissolution of the tooth-like structures, during which time the subject's body returned to normal.
Addendum SCP-2858-1: On the 25th of March, 2014, a commercial advertising SCP-2858 was broadcast on multiple popular American television channels from the hours of 4:00 AM to 4:11 AM. When questioned, employees of the broadcast station reported no memory of the advertisement ever being aired. Due to the low-visibility nature of the incident, disinformation protocols were successfully put into place and the commercial passed off as a one-off horror special. A transcript follows.
[The commercial begins on a close shot of an unidentified woman's face – the text overlay gives her name as "Cynthia Durham" – before zooming out to reveal her sitting on a stool, wearing a white labcoat.] 00:00 Durham: Here at Neutrogena, we know when wasp infestation strikes, you need to fight back fast. [It then cuts to Durham making a punching motion at the camera, before returning to the previous shot.] 00:10 Durham: So when they break out of your body, you need to make sure they stay out. [Durham produces an SCP-2858 instance from a table beside her and shows the label to the camera, which zooms in on the label. Notably, her arms are covered in multiple red welts.] 00:20 Durham: Introducing the new Neutrogena Wasp Cleanser. [Cut to three ostensible instances of SCP-2858 in center frame. Unusually, only one such instance is a pump bottle, the others being a small tub of cream and what appears to be a spray bottle. The scene then cuts back to the previous shot.] 00:35 Durham: We recognise that wasps don't just go away overnight, so we've developed a three-step solution to the problem. The first step is the lotion, specially designed to counteract the infestation fast. [The scene then changes to a view of another woman in an orange jumpsuit. The woman has multiple red abscesses on her face and is applying SCP-2858-A to the affected area by rubbing the welts with the solution. As the scene progresses, the abscesses become noticeably larger and more swollen.] 00:51 Durham (V.O.): Get the wasps out of your system quickly and painlessly! [The abscesses then burst to reveal multiple wasp larvae, which the woman then picks out and flicks away. The scene then cuts back to Durham sitting on the stool, now holding a small tub of cream.] 01:03 Durham: The next step in the treatment is the trademark topical cream. No matter how deep the wasps get into your system, I guarantee that Neutrogena's patented cream can get them out! [Again, the scene cuts back to the abscessed woman, currently applying the cream to the rest of her body, concentrating on the extremities.] 01:12 Durham (V.O.): Within just a few minutes, we can root them out in less time than ever before! [It is currently believed that the cream displayed on-screen has similar effects to SCP-2858-27, as evidenced by the emission of large quantities of unidentifiable fluid. Said fluid contains small foreign objects, presumed to be wasp nymphs. The camera then cuts back to Durham, holding the spray bottle.] 01:23 Durham: And because you don't want any pesky wasp fragments sticking around in your body, we've developed the perfect way to get them out with a formula – all new and improved with the aid of our helpful test subjects! [The scene changes to show the unidentified woman inhaling the contents of the bottle. After coughing heavily, the woman then begins to exhale significant quantities of smoke, before then exuding smoke from her eyes, ears and nostrils.] 01:36 Durham (V.O.): It doesn't just get rid of any loose bits of wasp, but also makes sure that they stay out. [The woman slowly ceases emitting smoke and shakes her head vigorously, dislodging multiple small black particles assumed to be fragments of wasp body. She then sweeps them off her face and turns to smile at the camera, before the scene cuts away to Durham once more.] 01:47 Durham: And now, for some celebrity testimony. [A clip of a man identified as popular musician Beck in text overlay then appears. His face is similarly abscessed, and the welts appear to have spread to his hands and wrists. Notably, he appears to be wearing a green star pendant, typically associated with members of GoI-005 ("Fifth Church").] 01:59 Beck: Uh, thanks to the Neutrogena Wasp Cleanser treatment, I was able to get rid of my wasp infection within the first week of beginning treatment. I'd been trying for weeks to find an antivespid cream that worked fast and was hypoallergenic, so when they came to me and offered the chance to try out this product, I sprang for it immediately. [A before and after image of Beck then appears, showing profile images of his face – in the "Before" image, an abscess hosting a developing wasp can be seen, midway through the process of the wasp breaking out, as well as multiple small boil-like growths on his neck and cheek. Said growths have mostly disappeared in the "After" image, instead being replaced by red blotches of skin.] 02:09 Beck (giving the thumbs up at the camera): No other product works better, and remember, because wasps die in three easy treatments, the world endorses this in fives.
Following the conclusion of this advertisement, civilians who had received SCP-2858 instances prior to containment received gift vouchers for (non-existent) Neutrogena products ostensibly also aimed at treatment of wasp-related conditions. Notably, said vouchers thanked the recipients for their efforts in "solving the shortage", although what this shortage was remains unclear.Many churches have set their sights on programs to attract new members or minister to their communities. But one Alabama church is aiming for outreach in a more unorthodox way: a gun range.
Rocky Mount United Methodist Church in Jemison has opened a gun range directly behind its sanctuary in effort to educate its members about gun safety and reach out to the community in the process.
"Really, the whole purpose of this range is to provide recreational and gun safety in a warm, loving, Christian environment," the church's pastor Phillip Guin told the Clanton Advertiser. "We wanted to come up with some different ideas to help our church grow, and we thought this would be a unique ministry to offer to the community."
After the range opened, the church formed the Rocky Mount Hunt and Gun Club LLC, a separate, membership-only, not-for-profit group. To use the gun range, people must be members of the gun club or be guests of a member.
The Jemison Police Department even used the gun range to provide firearm training through annual Citizens Academy, Guin said.
"There are a lot of people that are interested in enjoying themselves in a safe fellowship environment with a gun," Guin told Mashable. "This is not anything about some radical form of militant Christianity. It is a bit unique out of the box as church ministry goes, but we see it no differently as a church having a softball team or hosting camping ministries."
Guin said that criticism of the gun range is unwarranted, and that the purpose of the range is sincere and pure.
"The ministry itself is what we're doing in the name of Jesus Christ," he told a Mashable reporter. "It does happen to involve guns, but we don't want it to sound as though we're forming some kind of weird cult that revolves around guns."A user by the name of Zack Smith published an article on his website entitled "Is There Spyware in Ubuntu?" and targeted at Canonical, the sponsor of Ubuntu, and Jane Silber, the CEO of Canonical.
This is not the first time someone is accusing Ubuntu of spying on users, as three years ago Richard Stallman called Ubuntu a spyware OS because of the integration of Amazon Search engine that collected users' desktop search activity and sent the data over to Amazon.
According to Zack Smith, the Ubuntu Linux operating system should not be trusted because of Canonical's new CEO, Jane Silber, whose previous job was at the C4 Systems division of General Dynamics within the US Military Industrial Complex, which focuses on using computers for spying.
"There is no reason to assume that the compiled executables and libraries that comprise most of Ubuntu are built from the same source code that Canonical makes publicly available," says Zack Smith. "It may have had 'patches' added that provide spying capability. Any spyware in the object code only needs to behave stealthily."
Now, Zack Smith suggests that, if you want to use Ubuntu and stay safe at the same time, you should compile the entire operating system from sources, similar to how Gentoo Linux is installed, a process that will take you at least two or three days. OK, but how about updates? Maybe we shouldn't be using the Internet at all...On Wednesday we learned about the amazing journey of Bills cornerback Shareece Wright, who took an Uber ride from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to 1 Bills Drive in Orchard Park, New York, after a flight connection gone awry.
The trip lasted nearly nine hours and cost Wright more than $900 with the well-earned $300 tip for kindly driver Hadi Abdollahian. (Seriously though, hat's off to Hadi, who will skip the five-year waiting period and be inducted right into the Rideshare Hall of Fame later this year.)
Wright, as you might expect, has been doing the media rounds following his wild journey. On Thursday, he spoke with Andrew Siciliano on NFL Network's Inside Minicamp Live. Perhaps the funniest wrinkle of this story? When Abdollahian first picked up Wright, he thought he was giving the football player a ride to the local Buffalo Wild Wings.
"Initially that's what he thought," Wright confirmed. "I had to explain to him like, 'Man, we are going to Buffalo, New York, like Buffalo Bills. It's about eight hours away. You sure?' He was kind of like, 'Sir, I'll take you anywhere, anywhere you want to go. This is my job.' And I'm like, 'You sure? You got nothing to do tomorrow? Or like the next?' He was like, 'Yeah man. Don't worry. I'll be there in two minutes to pick you up.' And I was like, 'Thank God. Thank you for that.'"
The long ride gave the two men plenty of time to get to know each other.
"I kind of talked to him a little bit about his life and how he kind of made it to Chicago," Wright said. "When he was telling me his story all I could think of is how the character that it showed that he possesses inside of him to come from another country and escape like seeing his dad get killed and him being tortured, him fleeing and making it and having to come here and learn English, have dreams of being an astronaut.
"He's chasing that dream. He said he doesn't even have friends because of that because that's all that he is focused on is making it and living his dream, making his dream come true. That's a testimony for all of us who are fortunate enough to have family and have friends and have people that can help us through our hard times. He's like, 'I'm out here by myself. If I don't do it for myself, no one is going to do it for me.' And it said a lot about who he is and that was special to just hear that story. It kind of put things in perspective and I tried to get some sleep after that."
Wright pulled up to Bills headquarters at 6:58, two minutes before the start of practice. Did he actually get any sleep?
"I did. I was able to get about four hours of sleep. It wasn't that deep, comfortable sleep 'cause I don't really do well in car while other people are driving and I'm sleep. All I could think about was waking up on the side of the roads or something. One of my worst feelings is falling asleep and waking up in a car accident. So I got some rest but it wasn't like deep, deep sleep."
Damn, I never really thought of that before. The idea of being in a fitful slumber before a calamitous auto wreck has pretty much ruined me now. Great. Meanwhile, poor Davon House has to be bummed he only got one day wearing the crown as The Player With The Best Road Trip Story This Offseason. Competitive in these streets.Share
A person in The Netherlands gets 48.000 (forty eight thousand) euro from the Dutch government to distribute free toilet paper with text on it.
What is the catch? European Union (EU) is to make an ‘association’ agreement with Ukraine. Ukraine is not even applying (yet) for membership. It is all about a close cooperation deal similar to what some other non-EU members like Turkey already has.
Gone is the enthusiasm over ‘The United States of Europe‘
The thing is, Europe is not the Europe of 10-15 years ago. All that enthusiasm with the new members joining and the concept of ‘United States of Europe’ seems to have disappeared and replaced with xenophobia, angst and pessimism. It is the economy of course.
So the people against Ukraine having an association with EU have gathered enough number of signatures to force the Dutch government to organize a referendum on the issue. In the Netherlands, people or organizations can ask for money from the government to promote their view on such issues. So they did. And these people behind the company called “Raspoetin” have asked for and got the subsidy to “provide, to transport, to distribute via students the toilet papers printed with the texts against the Ukraine joining the EU’. And they have got for it 48.000 euro (or to be exact: €47.973).
In the same system, not only the opponents, but also the proponents of the Ukraine joining EU will get Dutch taxpayers’ money to run their campaigns. But it looks like they are the minority. Most of the subsidies went to the opponents of Ukraine.
A big hug from the Europe for the Ukrainians already under the stress of bullying and invasion by dictator Putin’s Russia? You bet!
Here is the list of the subsidies for this campaign :
For Ukraine-EU agreement:
€27.693 – Foundation Max van der Stoel
€50.000 – D66 (A Political Party)
Against Ukraine-EU agreement:
€13.500 Foundation European Committee Human Rights Hungarians Central Europe
€33.273 Political Association of Forza Harlemmermeer
€47.973 Raspoetin BV
€46.913 Foundation Forum for Democracy
€50.000 PINK!
Neutral
€30.780 Warm Ocean Water
And all these organizations have stated how they would spend the money they get but it is mostly mundane things like spreading leaflets, organizing meetings, radio programs etc. With the exception of Raspoetin BV of course….
[image credit: Brandon Blinkenberg. W.C.C]The planet Mercury is dotted with holes that appear to be unlike any other landform yet seen in the solar system, new pictures show.
High-resolution photographs from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft revealed the shallow, rimless, irregularly shaped depressions—similar to the holes in Swiss cheese—in impact craters all over Mercury.
The features are "widespread both in latitude and longitude," said study co-author David Blewett, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
Dubbed hollows, the odd landforms can be tens of meters to a few kilometers wide, whereas the impact craters that contain them are tens of kilometers wide or bigger.
The hollows are often seen in clusters on the walls, floors, and peaks of the craters. Many hollows have smooth, flat bottoms and feature highly reflective material.
While Mercury had previously been thought of as a geologically dead planet, with few changes to its surface over the past billion years, "these [hollows] just look fresh," Blewett added.
"I think there's a distinct possibility that they're active today."
Solar Wind Zapping Mercury's Minerals?
The researchers considered the possibility that the hollows were formed during Mercury's volcanic past. On other planets, volcanism can form rimless depressions such as calderas and vents.
The team notes, however, that the hollows are much smaller than known volcanic pits, and the holes appear in places on Mercury that aren't likely to have experienced volcanic activity.
What's more, the |
swarming with men in faded uniforms. Two husky, bearded peasant soldiers were stationed behind the counter, and one in the cashier's office kept watch over the safe. Two machine-guns poked their ominous muzzles through the entryway." (21)
Louise Bryant, another journalist commented that there were about 200 women soldiers in the palace and they were "disarmed and told to go home and put on female attire". She added: "Every one leaving the palace was searched, no matter on what side he was. There were priceless treasures all about and it was a great temptation to pick up souvenirs. I have always been glad that I was present that night because so many stories have come out about the looting. It was so natural that there should have been looting and so commendable that there was none." (22)
Rudolf Frentz, October Night (c. 1920)
On 26th October, 1917, the All-Russian Congress of Soviets met and handed over power to the Soviet Council of People's Commissars. Lenin was elected chairman and other appointments included Leon Trotsky (Foreign Affairs) Alexei Rykov (Internal Affairs), Anatoli Lunacharsky (Education), Alexandra Kollontai (Social Welfare), Victor Nogin (Trade and Industry), Joseph Stalin (Nationalities), Peter Stuchka (Justice), Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko (War), Nikolai Krylenko (War Affairs), Pavlo Dybenko (Navy Affairs), Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov (Finance), Vladimir Milyutin (Agriculture), Ivan Teodorovich (Food), Georgy Oppokov (Justice) and Nikolai Glebov-Avilov (Posts & Telegraphs). (23)
As chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Lenin made his first announcement of the changes that were about to take place. Banks were nationalized and workers control of factory production was introduced. The most important reform concerned the land: "All private ownership of land is abolished immediately without compensation... Any damage whatever done to the confiscated property which from now on belongs to the whole People, is regarded as a serious crime, punishable by the revolutionary tribunals." (24)
The journalist, Louise Bryant, had difficulty arranging an interview with Lenin. She commented in her book, Six Months in Russia (1918) that it took her several weeks before he agreed to see her. "He is a little round man, quite bald and smooth-shaven. For days he shuts himself away and it is impossible to interview him." She compared him with Alexander Kerensky who she had met several times: "Kerensky has personality plus... one cannot help but be charmed by his wit and his friendliness... On the other hand, Lenin is sheer intellect - he is absorbed, cold, unattractive, impatient at interruption... Lenin has tremendous power; he is backed by the Soviets... Lenin is a master propagandist. If any one is capable of manoeuvring a revolution in Germany and Austria, it is Lenin... Lenin is monotonous and through and he is dogged; he possesses all the qualities of a chief, including the absolute moral indifference which is so necessary to such a part." (25)Russia challenged the U.S. to either stop with its campaign hacking accusations or else produce proof to back up the claim.
Fox News severs ties with Monica Crowley as she gears up for new gig in Trump admin
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin “believes it is very indecent of the United States to groundlessly accuse Russia of intervention in its elections,” the Russian state news agency Tass reported.
Russia to US: Prove election hacking claims or shut up https://t.co/2a1ZgWR8JT pic.twitter.com/uMpTOrqmVI — CNN (@CNN) December 16, 2016
“They should either stop talking about that or produce some proof at last. Otherwise it all begins to look unseemly,” Dmitry Peskov said, according to Tass.
#Peskov: Accusations that Russia is involved in cyberattacks are unprofessional, groundless, have nothing w/ reality https://t.co/Y5kW0F1KwF pic.twitter.com/LGEmoxe1Z2 — Russia in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) December 12, 2016
With a few weeks left in office, President Obama vowed that “we need to take action and we will” against Russia’s alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential election. The administration faced criticism for its lack of retaliatory action against Putin which was reportedly due to Obama not wanting to appear to be interfering in the election which he was confident Hillary Clinton would win.
@CNN @FoxNews Your move Barack. He called you out. Put up or shut up. — Ken (@Gunny997) December 16, 2016
@CNN Let’s not do another stupid red line when it comes to Russia…Based on pure speculation. Obama shouldn’t try to act tough. Implausible — Question Everything (@tceplus3) December 16, 2016
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili did not find the hacking claims surprising, and even felt a sense of “I told you so” with the U.S.
Kellyanne Conway must have hit a nerve! Earnest not happy after she blasted him for Russia comment
“Well I almost was, like, vindicated when the same administration in Washington suddenly started to speak about Russian involvement in the election,” he told CNN on Friday. “Because we, for me, it’s déjà vu. They were the same people telling us, ‘no, no, it cannot possibly be true.’ And now it came to their doorsteps. And of course he [Putin] does all those things. Of course he is a great master.”
Wake up right! Receive our free morning news blast HEREUPDATE:
Clio students, staff raise $1,500 for family of victim of deadly rock-throwing
UPDATE:
Close-knit Clio grappling with aftershock of I-75 rock-throwing death
UPDATE:
Clio school district offers condolences to family of man killed in rock-throwing
FLINT, MI - The five teenagers accused of throwing more than a dozen rocks from a highway overpass - including one that pierced a van's windshield and killed a 32-year-old Mt. Morris man - were arraigned in court on Tuesday, Oct. 24, on second-degree murder and other charges.
The teens were arraigned before Genesee District Judge William H. Crawford II on Tuesday, Oct. 24 on charges of second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit second-degree murder, malicious destruction of property and other felony and misdemeanor charges in connection with the death of Kenneth A. White.
Families for both White and the suspects were in the courtroom as Crawford read off the charges for each suspect.
Those charged include 17-year-old Kyle Anger, 16-year-olds Mark Sekelsky and Mikadyn Payne, along with 15-year-olds Alexzander Miller and Trevor Gray, all of Clio.
Five teens charged with second-degree murder in I-75 rock-throwing death More than a dozen rocks were allegedly thrown from over the Dodge Road overpass along southbound I-75 that struck multiple vehicles including the van White was traveling in when it was struck by a rock weighing six pounds.
Crawford denied bail for all five citing "the seriousness of the nature of these charges and the danger to the public."
In total, the teens each face eight felonies and two misdemeanors in connection with White's death.
Anger is being held in the Genesee County Jail, while the other teens are being held in the Genesee Valley Regional Center for juveniles.
All face the possibility of up to life in prison.
More than a dozen rocks were allegedly thrown from over the Dodge Road overpass along southbound Interstate 75 and struck multiple vehicles, including the van White was traveling in. The rock that struck that vehicle punctured the windshield and led to his death, authorities say.
White's family declined to comment on the incident Tuesday, Oct. 24.
The teens are due back in court on Nov. 2.
Genesee County Sheriff Robert Pickell previously said tires and an engine piston also were thrown from the Farrand Road overpass onto I-75, roughly three miles north from where White was killed. Several other vehicles sustained damage, including flat tires, from items thrown onto the interstate.
The rocks, one weighing 20 pounds, were gathered from a dead-end street in Vienna Township and put in the flatbed of a pickup truck, Pickell said.
"It's just a sad situation that hopefully will be determined by the facts of the case," said Fred Meiers, the attorney for Gray.
After throwing the items, the suspects went to eat at a local fast-food restaurant investigators said on Monday while announcing the charges.
In coming to the decision on second-degree murder charges, Leyton said on Monday that Michigan law doesn't call for first-degree murder charges in this case.
"While some may be saying, 'Well, we want first-degree murder.' I don't believe there was pre-mediation (to cause a death) here," Leyton said.
Pickell previously said this case goes beyond teens joking around.
"It's not a prank. It's second-degree murder. I don't think anybody is laughing," said Pickell. "I think if there's any warning both David and I could give, it's telling young people you make a bad decision you could be spending the rest of your life in prison. This is not a prank."In the new issue of Entertainment Weekly, a report indicates that Greg Berlanti's upcoming Supergirl project at CBS could tie into the shared universe of Arrow and The Flash.
CBS, which co-owns The CW with Warner Bros., is wading into superheroes for the first time in years with Supergirl, which landed there with a 13-episode commitment and will air its pilot in the fall. A profile of Berlanti ran in this week's EW, centering primarily on the business side of things, featured this bit, spotted by Green Arrow TV:
Later in the afternoon at his other office on the Warner Bros. lot, Berlanti meets with fellow producer Ali Adler and Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood to go over looks for their upcoming revamp of Supergirl. The show will follow 24-year-old Kara Zor-El, Superman's cousin, and with a twist that that could melt fanboy brains, Berlanti says it's possible this Supergirl could enter the worlds of Arrow and The Flash.
The CW series don't share a universe with either the DC Cinematic Universe or with Gotham or Constantine. iZombie, coming later this year, is set in its own world (as it was in the comics), and while there's some speculation that Gotham could tie into the movies or Constantine into the hoped-for Dark Universe film adapting Justice League Dark, up to now, DC Entertainment has kept their universes separate, ostensibly to allow producers the most creative leeeway. With The Flash and Arrow taking on bigger and more recognizable superheroes and supervillains, though, it may be a no-brainer to let a series with quasi-shared ownership and a shared executive producer at least theoretically coexist with them.AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — Calling cities’ protection of trees “socialistic,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said a top priority for the special legislative session he’s called will be giving property owners the right to cut down trees whether their cities protect them or not.
The proposed tree law was one of 19 priorities Abbott listed last week when he called a special session of the Legislature for July. In promising to “make it count,” Abbott said the tree measure was of personal importance to him, along with anti-abortion measures and property tax legislation.
Abbott asked lawmakers to spend a portion of the 30-day special session — which is estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $1 million — to pass a law to prevent cities from regulating what property owners do with trees on their private lands.
During the regular 140-day session of the Legislature, which ended May 29, state Rep. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, unsuccessfully offered a bill that might have placated Abbott. Senate Bill 782, which never received a committee hearing, would have kept local governments from prohibiting landowners from trimming or removing trees, and limiting the fees municipalities could charge landowners for removing trees.
“City tree ordinances are some of the most egregious examples of property rights violations in our state, affecting millions of property owners in Texas,” Campbell said after filing the bill in February. “It’s time to shift the balance of local control back in favor of local liberty.”
Abbott echoed Campbell in a radio interview last week, lambasting Austin’s heritage tree ordinance, which protects certain species of trees 24 inches and greater in diameter.
“Austin, Texas, owns your trees and that is insanity,” Abbott said. “That is a violation of private property rights in the state of Texas and we want things like that repealed.
“It’s socialistic, is what it is,” Abbott said.
Abbott also revealed a personal reason for fighting tree ordinances. Before becoming governor, he said in the radio interview, he wanted to cut down a pecan tree in the yard of his Austin-area home.
“Austin told me no,” Abbott said. “I could not cut it down, and I had to pay money to the city of Austin to add more trees to my yard, because I wanted to cut down one very common tree that was in a bad location.”
When Abbott applied for a permit to build his home in May 2011, a city arborist determined that two pecan trees on the lot needed to be protected during construction.
A year later, the city approved a request to remove one of the offending pecan trees, because it was dead and had lost two-thirds of its canopy. The city said it could come down, on the condition that Abbott plant other trees on the property.
The Texas Observer reported on Monday that the tree had died because its roots were damaged during construction, despite the conditions of the 2011 permit.
In a letter to Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday, Campbell asked whether municipal tree preservation ordinances violate the Takings Clause of the Texas Constitution.
Campbell attached to the 1-page letter an 11-page legal brief that concludes: “municipal tree preservation ordinances are in some circumstances unconstitutional, violating the Takings Clause of the Texas Constitution.”
The Takings Clause states that no person’s property “shall be taken, damaged or destroyed for or applied to public use without adequate compensation being made.”
Campbell’s legal brief calls tree preservation ordinances unconstitutional because they “do not substantially advance legitimate state interests in some circumstances,” and because they “constitute a regulatory taking.”
The “character” of the tree ordinances, according to the legal brief, “is strongly analogous to a physical occupation of property, and in some cases the economic impact on the property owner will be too large to go uncompensated, particularly when the investment-backed expectations relating to a parcel are excessively frustrated.”
While tree preservation ordinances may strain the pocketbooks of some property owners, research has shown that Austin’s trees contribute significantly to the city’s economy.
Austin’s trees have a compensatory value of an estimated $16 billion, according to a February 2016 report from the U.S. Forest Service.
The report found that Austin’s trees, which cover more than 30 percent of the city, store approximately 1.9 million tons of carbon, a $242 million value.
Austin’s trees also reduce annual residential energy costs by an estimated $18.9 million per year and reduce storm runoff by approximately 65 million cubic feet per year.
Michael Embesi, an arborist who manages Austin’s Community Tree Preservation Division, told Courthouse News that the city’s trees provide numerous services, including cleaning the air, minimizing flood events, and shade, which is important in a city where temperatures reach 80 degrees or above more than 300 days a year.
Embesi called the protected heritage trees some of the city’s great service-providers.
“If we didn’t have these trees, we would have to have some great infrastructure to perform the services that these trees are providing,” Embesi said.
He called Austin’s tree ordinance “very fair and balanced,” as it allows 95 percent of the city’s trees to be removed under certain conditions. Only 5 percent of the city’s 34 million trees are protected.
Embesi said many of the protected trees are special to property owners, who value them for their beauty, the shade and privacy they provide, and the value they add to the property.
“One of the really great things of living in Austin and serving this community is that we don’t get a lot of complaints,” Embesi said. “There is a very healthy respect because there is an innate understanding that the trees are providing multiple services and are a very important part of our day-to-day lives.”
The Austin city attorney did not immediately Tuesday respond to a request for comment on the constitutionality of the tree ordinance.
The special session begins July 18.
Like this: Like Loading...Did you ever find a Kale Smoothie Recipe that actually tastes good? Did you ever even try? Do you know about the benefits of Kale? I certainly didn’t until recently but kept hearing things like “Kale is a Superfood” So I went online to find out why. According to WebMD Kale offers these benefits:
33 Calories per cup with 206% Vitamin A, 134% Vitamin C, and 684% Vitamin K.
Rich in lutein and zeaxanthin compounds promoting eye health.
Anti-Cancer health benefits
So I decided it was time to try it. YUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKK!! Too bitter for my taste buds. So how was I to get the benefits of Kale without having to hold my nose to ingest it? SMOOTHIE!!! But just throwing in Kale with your other smoothie ingredients won’t work well because it tends to leave chunks in the mix. And who wants that? So I give you my own recipe and with the exception of ice, all the ingredients are shown in the picture below.
Ingredients:
1 – 1 1/2 cups Kale pulled off the stem
1 cup Almond Milk (I prefer Blue Diamond Unsweetened as it only has 30 Calories) You can substitute milk but refer to the WebMD article for those with calcium absorption issues.
4-5 Strawberries
1 – Banana
2-4 Ice Cubes
Process:
Put only Kale and Almond Milk in Blender and blend until smooth. Add banana and strawberries and again blend until smooth Add ice and blend once more until smooth Drink up!!
Trust me that all you taste is the banana and the strawberry. No bitterness. You are all welcome for making sure you live long healthy lives so you can keep coming back so my site stats stay up. 🙂Matt Sullivan/Getty Images
Handshakes between Bill Belichick and Eric Mangini were often scrutinized.One of the big stories from Week 6 of the NFL season was the post-game handshake fireworks between Lions head coach Jim Schwartz and 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh (link here).
Closer to home, Patriots coach Bill Belichick was asked about the post-game handshake during his weekly appearance on sports radio WEEI's "Big Show" with Glenn Ordway and Michael Holley (link here).
Ordway started by asking Belichick if the handshake can be difficult because emotions must be held back.
“There are a lot of different things going through your mind at the end of the game. That’s one of them,” Belichick responded.
Belichick was then asked if he felt it was an uncomfortable situation that coaches are placed, especially with all the people running on to the field to capture the moment.
“I don’t think so. You always want to go out there as the winning coach, that’s for sure,” Belichick said, before sharpening his knife a bit on the media's attention of the handshake.
“But I think probably, like a lot of things in football, it’s become something a lot different than what it was really intended to be or what it really is. I think there was a time when you could go out there and actually exchange some words with your competitor after the game, like a lot of other players do. You have a relationship with a guy, or whatever, and after the game you go up and say something to him and talk for a couple seconds, then go into your locker room and that's it. As a coach, you could easily go up and say something to the coach about the game. If you lost, you could congratulate him. Or if you won, to maybe talk about the way his team played, or whatever.
“Of course now, it’s so heavily scrutinized by the media that it’s an event bigger than the game itself, which is so absurd. Like a lot of things, it takes any personalization out of the game and makes it a public topic of discussion. I think it’s pretty ridiculous that the media focuses on it the way it does.
“I’d like to think that the reason that the people are there is to see the game and to see the competition. But they seem to want to talk about everything but the game. That’s not uncommon. That’s the media’s job, so that’s what they do. It certainly takes away from, as a coach, the things that you would say, so you find other times to do it outside of that. Maybe before the game, or a phone call to the coach after the game, that kind of thing.”No Justice, No Billy Joel!… Leftist Protesters Crash Billy Joel Concert at Busch Stadium, Block Traffic, Harass Concert-Goers
Hundreds of leftist protesters gathered outside the Billy Joel concert at Busch Stadium tonight in St. Louis.
Last Friday a St. Louis judge found former Police Officer Jason Stockley NOT GUILTY in the shooting death of Anthony Smith, a black suspected heroin dealer. Black Lives Matter has held protests daily since the verdict.
The local Democrat Party is organizing these far left protests.
The next protest in response to the #STLVerdict is scheduled to begin at 6:30 pm at Kiener Plaza tonight, Thursday 9/21 #blacklivesmatter — STLYoungDems (@STLYoungDems) September 21, 2017
Hundreds of far left protesters blocked people from getting to the concert.
The U2 concert was cancelled on Saturday due to threats of violent protesters.
The protesters met at Keiner Plaza in downtown St. Louis and then marched to the stadium to harass concertgoers.
O/U 400 protesters were at Keiner Plaza forging relationships, then a whistle blew. Now on Bdway, trading polite nods with Billy Joel fans. pic.twitter.com/UNlyigoN5N — Joe Holleman (@STLsherpa) September 22, 2017
KENNY BAHR IS LIVESTREAMING THE PROTESTS TONIGHT IN DOWNTOWN ST. LOUIS:The BBC is reaching deep into its pockets to stump up an unprecedented £4.6m pay package to convince Top Gear co-presenters James May and Richard Hammond not to jump ship and save their flagship motoring format.
Both stars contracts with the broadcaster expired two months ago but reports in The Times suggest the BBC is keen to secure their services for an additional three series which would be hosted by a different guest presenter each week.
May and Hammond are both currently believed to earn in the region of £500k per year but if they accept the enhanced offer they could be raking in as much as £1.15m per annum, potentially earning them more cash than Clarkson himself who pocketed £1m per series.
The BBC wouldn’t comment on the latest speculation but is believed to be desperate to resurrect the show – not to mention the £50m per year revenue it brings in for its commercial arm.According to data published in December 2014 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in its annual Highlights of Women's Earnings report, in 2013, women made up 48.2% of the total number of workers in the U.S. labor force and the average woman in the United States earned 76% of what the average man did.
Also according to the same BLS report, going by the usual number of hours worked each week, the median earnings for women in the U.S. was within 10% of those for men for all but two categories: people who work 60 or more hours per week and also people who work 35 or more hours per week, but whose hours vary considerably from week to week.
Meanwhile, it would appear that U.S. men are paid more to work longer hours, but that U.S. women are paid more to work fewer hours.
But you don't have to take our word for it! Here's the data straight from Table 5 of the report for the number of workers by sex for each category of the usual number of hours worked each week:
2013: Number of Workers by Sex and Usual Number of Hours Worked Each Week Hours Worked per Week Number of Workers Number of Women Number of Men 1 to 4 hours 520,000 338,000 182,000 5 to 9 hours 1,155,000 771,000 383,000 10 to 14 hours 1,785,000 1,168,000 617,000 15 to 19 hours 2,604,000 1,760,000 844,000 20 to 24 hours 6,654,000 4,307,000 2,347,000 25 to 29 hours 3,200,000 2,081,000 1,120,000 30 to 34 hours 6,268,000 4,035,000 2,232,000 Hours Vary (usually < 35 hours) 2,478,000 1,500,000 978,000
35 to 39 hours 8,128,000 5,380,000 2,748,000
Hours Vary (usually 35 or more hours) 5,427,000 2,060,000 3,367,000
40 hours 70,466,000 32,504,000 37,963,000
41 to 44 hours 1,031,000 390,000 642,000
45 to 48 hours 5,493,000 1,957,000 3,536,000
49 to 59 hours 9,119,000 2,805,000 6,314,000
60 or more hours 4,599,000 1,173,000 3,426,000
All 129,110,000 62,316,000 66,794,000
And here's the corresponding data from the same table as it relates the median weekly earnings by the usual number of hours worked each week:
2013: Median Weekly Earnings by Sex and Usual Number of Hours Worked Each Week Hours Worked per Week Median Weekly Earnings (Both Sexes) Median Weekly Earnings (Women) Median Weekly Earnings (Men) 1 to 4 hours $58 $56 $61 5 to 9 hours $75 $76 $74 10 to 14 hours $113 $115 $109 15 to 19 hours $159 $163 $151 20 to 24 hours $205 $202 $210 25 to 29 hours $217 $223 $209 30 to 34 hours $264 $270 $255 Hours Vary (usually < 35 hours) $336 $352 $315
35 to 39 hours $495 $507 $466
Hours Vary (usually 35 or more hours) $672 $496 $791
40 hours $732 $691 $771
41 to 44 hours $880 $841 $912
45 to 48 hours $1,054 $993 $1,097
49 to 59 hours $1,270 $1,193 $1,317
60 or more hours $1,373 $1,202 $1,436
All $665 $584 $764
We thought it might be interesting to visualize all the data we've presented in table form above in a single chart. To do that, so we can show all the data with a single axis, we've calculated the percentage of all workers that are women along with the percentage of men's median weekly earnings that women earn for each category of usual hours worked per week.
What we see is that the median U.S. woman is typically being paid a 10% premium to work part time compared to a U.S. man working the same number of hours each week. As you can imagine, that kind of financial incentive would go a very long way to explaining why two-thirds of all working Americans who work less than 40 hours per week are women.
But as the number of usual hours worked each week rises, we see that situation reverses. For people who regularly work 40 up to 59 hours per week, women earn about 90% of what a man working the same number of hours does. However, as the number of hours required to earn incomes rise, we also see that fewer and fewer women are to be found working. At the topmost end, we see that for people who work 60 or more hours per week, the median income earned by a woman drops to 84% of the median working earnings of a man who puts in those kinds of hours, and also that only 26% of the total number of people who spend more than half their waking hours per week working at income-paying jobs like this are women.
U.S. women would also appear to be highly averse to working variable numbers of hours each week, which we see in the dips for the percentage share of workers who work varying hours each week with respect to those who work a steady number of hours.
While it is the combination of all these factors that results in the median weekly earnings for American women being just 76% of those for men, we find that it is the relatively higher pay rewards of part time employment for women as compared to men and the relative absence of women who choose to work 60 or more hours at income-paying jobs each week that are the greatest contributors to that statistic.
Data Source
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. BLS Report 1051: Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2013. Table 5. Median usual weekly earnings of wage and salary workers, by hours usually worked and sex, 2013 annual averages. [PDF Document]. December 2014.Supporters of same-sex marriage arrive at the Utah Capitol for a rally in January. (Photo11: Rick Bowmer, AP)
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Mormon church and four religious organizations are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and settle once and for all the question of whether states can outlaw gay marriage.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in a statement Friday, said it joined a friend-of-the-court brief asking the high court to hear Utah's marriage case.
Also taking part in the filing were The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Ethics & Religious Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
Each teaches that marriage is between a man and a woman.
"The time has come to end the divisive national debate as to whether the Constitution mandates same-sex marriage," the brief states.
Multiple organizations and governmental entities on both sides of the debate have filed similar briefs asking the court to take up the issue.
The religious groups urged the Supreme Court on the basis of tradition and religious freedom to uphold a state's right to not allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
"Legal uncertainty is especially burdensome for religious organizations and religious believers increasingly confronted with thorny questions," the brief says. "Is their right to refrain from participating in, recognizing or facilitating marriages between persons of the same sex, contrary to their religious convictions, adequately shielded by the First Amendment and other legal protections? Or is further legislation needed to guard religious liberties in these and other sensitive areas?"
Last month, attorneys for three Utah gay and lesbian couples formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take Utah's appeal of a favorable gay marriage ruling by a lower federal court.
The plaintiffs said they asked for the review even though they won at the federal appellate court level because they want the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether state same-sex marriage bans violate the Constitution.
The high court is under no obligation to take Utah's case or the others.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1rRB927Here is my recipe for iced tea lattes that was featured in my Hungry Husky column in this week’s Daily Campus…
Have you ever sat at a Starbucks or Dunkin’ Donuts enjoying a tea latte or perhaps an iced coffee? I, like many of you, have. I started thinking about how many calories, grams of fat and sugar were in my chai tea latte. Even more than that, I wondered how much money we spend a week on buying coffee or tea at these places. So, I decided there must be a way to be able to enjoy these drinks in a healthier way and on a healthier budget. This is a recipe for my solution to this little problem we all seem to have, a homemade iced tea latte.
Time: 15 minutes
Makes 4 cups
Here’s what you’ll need:
3 tea bags of your choice (like earl grey or chai tea)
1 cup of boiling hot water
3 cups of cold water
Milk of your choice
Sugar or honey to sweeten
Simply boil the hot water. Once the water is ready, pour it into a pitcher. Add your tea bags to the pitcher and let steep for a couple minutes or until you get the desired color and strength of tea. You can also use two tea bags if you prefer less steeped tea and on the other hand you can use four tea bags if you prefer very strong tea. Adjust as you see necessary but three tea bags for four cups worked well for me. Then remove your tea bags and add the cold water to the pitcher.
I placed this pitcher of tea in the fridge so that when I was in the mood for an iced tea, I could simply pour the tea into a glass, add a couple ice cubes, a splash of milk and sweeten it with a little sugar. This tea is also nice because it will keep in the fridge so you can make it ahead of time to have when you want a cool, refreshing and caffeinated (or un-caffeinated if you prefer) drink.
Now making this at home will surely save you a couple dollars that would have gone to your coffee shop of choice and those couple dollars add up. But what’s even nicer about this alternative is the health benefits.
If you make this recipe and sit down with your serving of brewed tea with a tablespoon of milk and a packet (about a teaspoon) of granulated sugar. Your tea has just 30 calories, 6 grams of sugar, and 0.3 grams of fat. Now let’s say you sit down at home with the same tea latte but from Starbucks. Assuming you order a “short” which is one serving of eight ounces and not a tall, 12 ounces, or a grande, 16 ounces, you will be ingesting 120 calories, 21 grams of sugar, and 1.5 grams of fat.
The tea you make at home for basically nothing has 90 less calories, 15 less grams of sugar, and 0.9 less grams of fat. Though we all utilize these places because of time and convenience, it’s actually more beneficial for your health and your wallet if you make that same tea at home.
AdvertisementsWith the recent passing of the boxer considered by many to be “the greatest of all time,” the world has stopped to reflect upon his legacy outside of the ring. It was no secret that Ali was just as outspoken about his political and religious beliefs as he was about his opinions of his boxing opponents. At the height of his career, the man formerly known as Cassius Clay spoke out against U.S. War in Vietnam and became a conscientious objector to the draft.
Because of his actions that he took because of his commitment to his Islamic faith, the U.S. government jailed him for draft evasion. In response to requests for explanation of his actions, the world heavyweight champ said, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”
Ultimately, Ali was vindicated and deemed to be a legitimate conscientious objector on an appeal that went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. But before he was officially cleared, Ali — along with Martin Luther King, Jr. and two serving U.S. Senators — was subject to NSA surveillance as a part of Operation Minaret. Ali was released from prison in 1970, but is thought to have remained under government surveillance until at least 1973.
Newly declassified material reveals that the highly secretive Operation Minaret tapped into the overseas phone calls of prominent critics of the Vietnam War. The new four volume history of the agency’s activity during the Cold War reveals some highly questionable (and possibly illegal) methods of anti-war sentiment suppression during the 1960s and 1970s. The operation began under the Johnson Administration and continued into Nixon’s presidency. Reports from operatives were printed on plain paper unadorned with the NSA logo and delivered by hand to the White House.
The documents containing such revelations were only released after an appeal to the Security Classification Appeals Panel was filed by the National Security Archive, an independent research institute based at the George Washington university.
“Clearly the NSA didn’t want to release this material but they were forced to do so by the American equivalent of the supreme court of freedom of information law,” Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian specializing in the NSA, told the Guardian.
Deception by the NSA did not cease with the end of the Vietnam War. In fact, it can be argued that it has only gotten worse as technology has boomed. Without the leaks made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, it is likely that many of the modern surveillance programs used by the agency would still be unknown.
In a 2013 Senate hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper specifically said that the NSA did not collect any type of data on hundreds of millions of Americans. However, he later said “I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner, by saying no.”
“If there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, when we are dealing with a non-transparent society such as the intelligence community that has a vast amount of power, then abuses can and usually do happen,” Aid concluded.
While he may have been heavyweight champion of the world, Muhammad Ali was just like the rest of us in one simple way: the government was monitoring his communications beyond its |
called Zen and the Art of Writing, written by Ray Bradbury and was a collection of essays about the writing process. One of the ways he would inspire stories was to write nouns that interested him on a note card and hang them in his office. He felt just having the word in his eyesight would get his mind working. [Merriwether] took this idea and made it into a writing exercise. We would all write 10 nouns on small pieces of paper and put them in a hat. The hat would be passed around and you’d have a minute to scribble down an idea based on the noun you drew. It would almost always start a discussion, and we wound up getting a lot of episodes out of it. She really came up with a great addition to the process.
Merriwether Williams, story editor, 1999-2004: I was working as a writer on Angry Beavers, another Nickelodeon show. I’d already worked at Nickelodeon on several different shows as a story editor, which is a position they no longer have. But at that time at the network, a lot of shows were sort of outsourced to Klasky-Csupo or other animation houses. It was my job to put the Nickelodeon stamp on it, especially the kid point of view. So I had worked as a story editor in that capacity.
Vince Calandra, who had worked on Rocko, knew Steve Hillenburg, and Steve called Vince and asked him who he would recommend as the story editor, or head writer, on SpongeBob. Vince recommended me. [Prior to my arrival on SpongeBob] Pete Burns had been the story editor for, I think, the first 14 episodes. Pete had lived in Chicago, and he went back to Chicago, so they needed a new head writer.
Certainly, [Steve and Derek] knew me—it wasn’t like the first time they had seen me when I walked in. We had all been around that building for six or seven years. I was definitely a familiar face, even if they did not know my work directly.
When I arrived, it was Derek, Steve, me and Doug Lawrence in the [writers’] room. I inherited Doug; he had already been there. Doug and I certainly came from different backgrounds. It was a good mix. We called Doug the “wing nut.” I would say the wing nut is anyone who paces around the room and throws out anything, the craziest ideas but not necessarily the best at seeing the overall picture. Doug and I were the writers, and Steve and Derek were who they were. We kept it really small at first.
The thing I brought to the room that had not been there before was a real conscious analysis of first act-second act-third act structure, simple set-ups and paying stuff off. Tracking a character arc in the tiniest way. The funny thing is, when I first arrived, that’s how I was talking about stories, and they didn’t really know what I was talking about. That really not how Pete had talked about stories. He talked more about, “This happens, that that happens,” which is how some people do it, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I guess I came from a way of looking at it more formally.
Coleman: Merriwether played an important role. There’s an element to SpongeBob that has these very simple stories. When it works, it seems effortless and you don’t pay any attention to the work that went into it, but I can assure you that it’s not effortless. It requires a lot of discipline and a lot of crumpling up pieces of paper. If you look at the stories in a lot of the early episodes, they’re very, very simple, and that requires strong characters to carry them through, beat by beat. So it’s a testament to how great those characters are that they can pull it off. It’s not just a strong of gags for 11 minutes—there’s a real emotional underpinning in the series, especially in the early episodes.
Osborne: I was in the writers’ room with Steve, Derek, Merriwether and Mark O’Hare. The meetings would start, but we would just sit around talking about things that happened and funny things that happened to us when we were kids. It wasn’t like, “OK, let’s get to work!” And someone would start laughing at something and would say, “Oh man, we’ve got to make an episode out of that!” And we’d start trying to figure out how to craft a three-act structure around it. And we’d have all these ideas that never went anywhere up on the wall, and I’d look at those a lot.
Those exercises of pulling a noun out and having a minute to write were good. You’d pull a piece of paper out of a hat, and it would say something like “can opener,” and you’d have a minute to write as much as you could about that. You wouldn’t have any time to edit your thoughts—everything would just spill out. That would get things flowing. And everyone in the writers’ room had a specialty. One person would be really good with jokes, and another would be really good with structure. Derek came up to me and said, “You’re the wing nut!” I said, “What’s that?” and he said I was the guy who made everybody laugh, and it was my job to be funny. It was a great job, and I learned a lot about writing and animation.
Williams: Steve came to me and said, “Why don’t you go read a bunch of books about writing,” or something like that [laughter]. He wanted to keep the enthusiasm up in the room, because sometimes it can be a slog. So I went off and I read a bunch of books. And the one that really captured my imagination was called Zen and the Art of Writing, by Raymond Bradbury. He told a story about how he would tape to the wall certain nouns that he liked or wanted to work into the story at some point. And a word he used was “gusto”—write with gusto. And the way I interpreted those two things was that maybe we should stop editing ourselves so much.
So I came up with a game called “the noun game,” in which everyone writes three to six nouns on a piece of paper. They could be anything. And I’m not a stickler—it could be a verb, but in general nouns seemed to work the best. You put them in a hat or a bowl or some container in the middle of the table, and everybody picks one, and you have a minute or two to write a story. It doesn’t have to be cohesive, it doesn’t have to be anything; there are really no rules. It could just have an image; it could have a beginning, a middle and an end. Basically, there’s a time limit, and just write whatever comes to mind. A lot of times, we would all go around the room afterwards and read them, and often they led to something. They almost never ended up as the outline itself, but it was a really good springboard for us to get to talking about things that were more original.
Another exercise involved going around in a circle and telling a story, but everyone contributed just one line at a time. I came from a pretty big family, and when I was a kid, we used to play that game where you write two lines of a story and fold the paper over the first line so all you can see is the second line. The next person would add a line, and then fold the paper again so all you could see is that line. You continue until you fill up the page. Then we would read the story, and a lot of the time it made no sense, but it was really funny. It also got us so we didn’t edit ourselves so much: Just say it, whatever’s on your mind. Don’t overthink things so much. Say it was me, Mark O’Hare, Steve, Derek, and say Kent [Osborne] was in there too. I would start: “Once upon a time, SpongeBob found a mouse.” The next person would have to say the next line, and the next person would have to say the next line. We didn’t fold it over so we couldn’t read it, but there was definitely a time limit. Don’t sit there and think about it. Say it. It was an exercise for us to get out of our heads, be with each other and make each other laugh before we got down to the nitty-gritty of story writing.Ahmed Majeed, head of security in the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), was reported dead in a raid by Iraqi army forces in Hit district on Saturday. Baghdad Operations confirms liberating 40 areas in Fallujah, 500 ISIS militants killed
AhlulBayt News Agency - Ahmed Majeed, head of security in the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), was reported dead in a raid by Iraqi army forces in Hit district on Saturday.
“A special unit from the 29th Division of the Iraqi military on Saturday raided a building where Majeed and other members of Daesh were hiding,” Defence Minister Khaled al-Ubaidi said in a statement, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS.
“Majeed, who served as the head of Daesh security, was killed along with seven other terrorists in Hit district earlier today,” the minister said.
Al-Ubaidi added that the “high level of coordination” between the Iraqi army brigades has helped them advance against ISIS in Nineveh and Fallujah.
Although the Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced the “liberation of Fallujah” from ISIS earlier this week, US officials and local sources said that ISIS is still in control of several districts inside the city.
Baghdad Operations confirms liberating 40 areas in Fallujah, 500 ISIS militants killed
On Saturday, Baghdad Operations Command announced liberating 40 areas in Fallujah from the ISIS control, while pointed out to the killing of 500 ISIS terrorists.
The spokesman for Baghdad Operations Command, Brigadier General Saad Moen, said in a press statement “The joint security forces, during the liberation operations of Fallujah, managed to liberate 40 areas from the ISIS control,” pointing out that, “The security forces killed about 500 [ISIS] members during the battles, in addition to dismantling tens of explosive devices and booby-trapped vehicles.”
Moen added, “Fallujah is now under the control of the security forces except few areas that will be liberated completely in the coming days.”The Access Fund and Rumney Climbers Association (RCA) are in the process of purchasing the final set of privately owned crags in Rumney, New Hampshire known as the Northwest Crags, a.k.a The Final Frontier.
Plate Tectonics (5.12c/d) at the Northwest Territories, Rumney, New Hampshire. Photo by Tyson Miller. ” title=”Wilson “Jay” Davis on Plate Tectonics (5.12c/d) at the Northwest Territories, Rumney, New Hampshire. Photo by Tyson Miller. ” style=”float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;”>The schist walls of Rumney, New Hampshire attract climbers from the world over, who come to test their strength on test-pieces such as Jaws II (5.15a), Livin’ Astro (5.14c), or Predator (5.13b) [watch Weekend Whipper: Victory Backflip], or to savor any of the 5.3 to 5.15 routes offered by the wooded crags.
Rumney is growing in popularity as one of the premier sport climbing crags in the northeast. But that brings bigger crowds, higher traffic at the crags, and as a result, more need for conservation.
Rest assured, the area is in good hands. The Access Fund and Rumney Climbers Association (RCA) are in the process of ensuring continued climbing access to a large portion of Rumney by setting the stage to purchase the final set of privately owned crags in the area, known as the Northwest Crags.
Dave Quinn, co-president of RCA, says that, “The Northwest Crags will be a big step forward in making life at Rumney a better experience.” The land acquisition will maintain climbing access at six different crags.
The majority of Rumney’s climbing areas are already under protection from the National Forest Service. In 1994, the Access Fund helped RCA purchase 36 privately-owned acres in Rumney, which gave access to many of the area’s most popular crags, including The Meadow, 5.8 Crag, and Monsters, and allowed volunteers to build the trails and area’s main parking lot.
The last privately owned area in Rumney is what RCA has called The Final Frontier – an 86-acre swath of land known formally known as the Northwest Crags. The area accounts for 12 percent of the area’s established routes and includes the crags Northwest Territories, Buffalo Pit, Northwest Passage, Prudential, Asylum part of the Black Jack Boulder. These crags are off the beaten path, and offer a quieter experience than the closer and more popular cliffs.
In a press release by Access Fund and RCA, Jay Knower* states; “The routes [at the Northwest Crags] are less travelled, and the experience is less urban than the more frequented crags at Rumney. Given the issues of overcrowding at popular crags, adding this area will provide climbers more options for their climbing days.”
www.climbrumney.com/finalfrontier
*Correction: Jay Knower’s last name was incorrectly spelled in a previous version. The mistake has been fixed and we regret the error.CTV Saskatoon
An 18-year-old man has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to three charges stemming from a fatal crash on Circle Drive last fall.
Mario Ahenakew was sentenced Monday in Saskatoon Provincial Court for his role in the Sept. 7, 2016, collision after the Crown and defence presented a joint submission.
The crash, which occurred on Circle Drive, near 108th Street, left a 70-year-old man dead.
A vehicle driven by Ahenakew was travelling northbound on Circle Drive when it struck a piece of construction equipment, crossed the median and hit a southbound Volkswagen Beetle, according to police.
The man driving the Beetle was pronounced dead at the scene. Ahenakew was taken to hospital, but later released.
Ahenakew’s mother previously told CTV News her son appeared in court in Saskatoon hours before the crash on another charge. She said she pleaded with the court to keep her son in custody because he was high on drugs and needed help.
Police said they received two reports of the suspect vehicle being driven erratically before the crash, but they were unable to locate the vehicle.
The crash shut down Circle Drive for nearly six hours while police investigated.
Ahenakew, who was 17 at the time of the collision, can be identified because he was sentenced as an adult.
He will be given credit for time served, which has been almost one year.Chiefs S Eric Berry has officially singed him franchise tender and will practice on Monday, according to BJ Kissel.
“He’s in great shape,” said HC Andy Reid, per Kissel. “It’s great to have him here.”
Reid added that he’s leaning against playing Berry in their preseason finale on Thursday against the Packers.
Berry, 27, worked his way back from Hodgkin’s lymphoma and managed to produce an impressive 2015 season. if a former first-round pick of the Chiefs back in 2010. He played out his rookie contract with the team before receiving the team’s franchise tag a few week ago.
The franchise tag will run the Chiefs $10.806 million fully guaranteed for the 2016 season.
Reports have mentioned that Berry likely has his eyes set on a big contract that could top the five-year, $51.25-million deal signed by Vikings S Harrison Smith a few months ago.
In 2015, Berry appeared in all 16 games and recorded 61 tackles, two interceptions, and 10 pass defenses for the Chiefs. Pro Football Focus has him rated as the No. 4 safety out of 88 qualifying players.Adityanath took oath +
MEERUT: Just two days after Yogias CM of UP, one of the BJP's oft-repeated promises during its election campaign - formation of anti-Romeo squads "to protect the honour of women " - took off with a great deal of purposefulness in the state.In Meerut on Tuesday, "anti-Romeo dals" were out on the streets in full force, making it among the first UP districts to form the teams that will be posted at educational institutions and public spaces "to prevent eve-teasing and ensure safety of girls".Soon, though, both boys and parents who found themselves at the receiving end of police reprimand and lecture were crying foul. They said the way the teams function blurs the line between crime control and moral policing.Each police station in Meerut district, for instance, will have one anti-Romeo squad comprising of three-four members from the station. Police stations with higher population density may have more than one anti-Romeo squad with more than four members. In Lucknow, orders came from the IG's office to constitute the squads in each of the 11 districts of the zone.On the first day of deployment of the squads, boys hovering around schools, colleges, cigarette stalls, pan shops and even pastry shops were picked up for "questioning" and let go after police called their parents to inform them about the "activities" of the boys.A boy who was picked up said it amounted to harassment. "I was standing outside DN College to meet a friend, and the police gave me a warning. They wanted to call my parents, but I did not give them the right number. They did not even know if I was there to meet a girl or a boy. For them, any young boy in public on a bike is a'majnu'," he said.A father who was called by the police to complain about his son's "wayward" ways, did not approve of this kind of police intervention. "It is not the police's job to decide where boys can stand and where they cannot. My son is 19, and is an adult. It makes no sense to call up his father to say that his son is loitering around," he said.According to police sources, the modus operandi of the squads will be the same as that of the infamous 'Operation Majnu' in 2005, in which boys at crossings and markets were pulled up, and couples in gardens were thrashed by police. It was seen as an attempt at moral policing and widely criticised, and even led to the suspension of two police officers.The work of the anti-Romeo squad of the Delhi Gate police station in Meerut bore a stark resemblance to the moral policing of 'Operation Majnu'."Very often boys who have nothing to do with schools or colleges stand outside in the afternoon when classes finish. We found several such boys and told them they would not be spared from now on," said M K Upadhyay, station officer, Delhi Gate police station.SP (city) Alok Priyadarshi denied charges of harassment. "The only job (of the squads) is to ensure safety of women and to ensure that eve-teasing does not takes place. For this we will also take preventive steps like not permitting miscreants to loiter in public areas where women are known to frequent. I will not say it is moral policing," he said.Tesla Stock Predictions
Summary
Tesla Motors has seen it’s stock price fluctuate in the past two months due to concerns about ability to scale up manufacturing
Tesla Motors has seen it’s stock price fluctuate in the past two months due to concerns about ability to scale up manufacturing Consumer Reports rescinded its recommend rating for the Model S due to reliability issues
3rd Quarter report looks promising for Tesla to reach production goals
Tesla Motors the electric car company looking to change the world by ending our reliance on oil needed to fuel the internal combustion engine has had a crazy couple of months.
At the end of August Tesla’s all wheel drive version of the Model S, the P85D, broke the Consumer Reports record where it earned a score of 103 out of 100. Around the time that Consumer Reports referred to the model S as the “best performing car we have tested”, Tesla was trading at $242.99, and things seemed great for investors. A month after this stellar review, Tesla announced the Model X, their revolutionary sports utility vehicle designed to be twice as safe as the next safest SUV. Another major event in the realm of Tesla was the October release of the autopilot feature, which was sent to approximately 40,000 vehicles over the air. With autopilot, Tesla vehicles were given the ability to steer, merge lanes and parallel park autonomously.
In early October, however, Tesla started to hear from its doubters. Shares fell down to $220.69 on October 9th as multiple Wall Street analysts downgraded the stock. Brian Johnson from Barclays lowered the price target from $190 to $180 saying that he was unsure if Tesla is able to successfully become a mass-market producer. Ben Kallo from Robert W. Baird & Co. lowered his price target to $282 from $335, as a result of skepticism towards Tesla’s ability to manufacture both the Model X and Model S in the same Fremont, California factory. The most bullish Tesla analyst, Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley cut his price target from $465 to $450 citing concerns about the Model X’s price. Jonas explains: “Unless Tesla introduces significantly cheaper versions soon, we do not expect the company to deliver more than 20,000 units of Model X in 2016.”
Further Tesla criticism came from billionaire Jim Chanos who on October 12th went on Bloomberg to claim that Tesla is an overpriced car company, and that they are unable to scale up their operations in order to compete with other auto manufacturers, such as BMW that sells two million cars a year. Other concerns about Tesla resulted from valuation and the fact that Tesla is trading at 7.5 times sales. The argument was made that Tesla’s approximately $30 billion market cap cannot be justified by Tesla’s sales of around 50,000 cars.
To make matters worse, on October 20th, Consumer Reports rescinded its recommend rating when they released a new report questioning the cars reliability. The report stated that Tesla is “likely to involve a worse-than-average overall problem rate.” The report went on to detail problems with the cars drivetrain, power equipment, driving equipment, the center console, and squeaking and rattling sounds. Tesla shares fell by 8% immediately after the report, closing the day at $213.03. Tesla continued to slide. Shares closed at a low of $206.93 on October 30th, as investors continued to wonder whether or not Tesla was overvalued and if they would be able to meet production demands.
Despite the grim October, Investors were relieved after Tesla posted their quarterly earnings on November 3rd, which beat expectations. Tesla reported GAAP revenues of $936 million, which show a year-over-year increase of about 10%. Overall, however, Tesla posted a net loss of $230 million, and $1.78 loss per share. Tesla reported non-GAAP revenue of $1.24 billion and $0.58 adjusted losses per share. Despite the loss, these numbers are quite good considering many analysts predicted worse. Because Tesla is still in its early phases, profitability is not necessarily the best indicator of performance. It is more important to look at growth potential, which to the delight of investors is looking hopeful. In 3Q15 tesla shipped 11,603 cars, which is almost 50% more than they the sold during the same time last year. Furthermore, Tesla has picked up its leasing operations through its own independent finance arm, as opposed to using commercial banking partners. Tesla directly leased 494 cars to customers in the Q3.
In the third quarter of 2015, Tesla had a negative free cash flow of $595 million. The company invested $392 million for capital expenditure and another $203 million in operating cash flow.
The most meaningful metric is Tesla’s plans for the fourth quarter. They announced plans to deliver between 17,000 and 19,000 cars in Q4, which means they will sell between 50,000 and 52,000 cars in fiscal 2015. Tesla produced 13,091 cars in 3Q15 and they plan on upping that number to between 15,000 and 17,000 for the fourth quarter. This numbers would indicate up to 93% yearly growth. In terms of global reach, Tesla announced that they have opened up two new retail locations in China, and that they expect strong demand growth in China.
In Q3 Tesla also began production of Tesla Energy products, such as Powerpacks and Powerwalls. Production of these products is currently taking place in the Fremont factory; however, Tesla has laid out their plans to shift production to their Nevada Gigafactory in Q4. Given the strong demand for Tesla Energy products in the US and worldwide, Tesla is in a position for strong growth in 2016. Tesla closed at $230.60 on November 3rd, after earnings were reported.
Most recently, Tesla received the support of billionaire Ron Baron, the chairman of Baron capital. On November 6th, Baron went on CNBC an expressed his belief that Tesla will quadruple in the next 5 years given how much room he believes the company has to grow. As mentioned, Tesla is expected to sell 50,000 vehicles this year, a figure that they plan to grow to 80,000 next year and then to half a million by 2020. Baron, who owns 1.2 million shares of Tesla is concerned with competition from larger more scalable auto manufacturers because he believes that they are already to invested in current factories and engines, whereas Tesla who is essentially starting from scratch is more willing to take the big risks needed to manufacture electric vehicles.
Currently, the I Know First algorithm has produced a bullish signal for Tesla for the next year.Professor Alan Clarke, 52, was discovered by his wife and neighbours in a blue and black rubber suit three hours after taking the family's dog for a walk
One of Britain's leading medical researchers was found dead in a rubber body suit in woodland in a bizarre sex fetish, an inquest heard today.
Professor Alan Clarke, 52, was discovered by his wife and neighbours in a blue and black rubber suit three hours after taking the family's dog for a walk.
Prof Clarke, director of the European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute and the Cancer Research UK, was found dead in a hooded mask.
The hearing was told Prof Clarke's wife Kathryn and three neighbours went looking for him after he failed to return home from the dog walk.
The father-of-two was already dead hanging from the tree dressed in the rubber suit.
Neighbour Steven Rogers told the hearing that he helped search for Prof Clarke on December 28 last year in Llangeview, near Usk, Monmouthshire.
He said: 'Mrs Clarke came to my house anxious and upset and explained that her husband had gone out with the dog earlier that afternoon and had not returned.
'During the search I could hear the very distant sound of a dog barking.
'I followed the sound in the hope that it was Tess the family dog.
'Eventually we found the dog on the opposite side of a stream from where we were walking.
'When I reached her I looked around the area with the aid of a torch and I saw a man kneeling with his face down.
'His head was covered by a hood with holes in it for eyes and a mouth.
'He was wearing a thin blue jacket with leather-like trousers.
'I couldn't see his face clearly but I knew it was Alan and I knew he was dead.'
Prof Clarke, based at Cardiff University, was a renowned expert in cancer research specialising in bowel, breast and prostate illnesses.
Pathologist Ian Thompson gave the cause of death as asphyxiation by hanging.
Prof Clarke, director of the European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute and the Cancer Research UK, was found dead in a hooded mask
Coroner David Bowen told the Newport hearing: 'In this case given the evidence the death of Mr Clarke was an attempt of some sort of sexual gratification that went wrong.'
Mr Bowen told the hearing there was evidence Prof Clarke started wearing the rubber outfit after his wife Kathryn was diagnosed with cancer.
He said: 'In recent years Kathryn was diagnosed with cancer and since she had been ill her husband had taken to wearing such an outfit.'
He added: 'There was nothing to suggest there was any third party involved in his death.'
He recorded a conclusion of misadventure.
The inquest heard he had been planning to take his family to the seaside the following day. His wife said he had never talked about committing suicide.
She said: 'He had too much to live for.'
Neighbour Steven Rogers told a hearing that Professor Clarke was found in woodland near his home in Llangeview (stock image)
After his death Professor Jim Murray, head of biosciences at Cardiff University, said: 'The sudden and untimely death of Professor Alan Clarke will be felt by all of us who knew him and the wider scientific community.
'He was an invaluable colleague, a patient and thoughtful mentor, and an outstanding scientist and leader. At this tragic time our thoughts are with his family, friends and close colleagues.'
Cardiff University chancellor Sir Martin Evans - a Nobel Prize winner for medicine - said: 'The sudden and untimely death of Alan Clarke has taken from us a friend, an eternally upbeat individualistic colleague and a superb scientist, teacher and leader.I want to teach you the difference between an inner and an outer join. We first need to think about what a join is. Simply, it’s when you combine two tables to make a new one. You’re not physically creating a new table when you join them together, but for the purposes of the query, you are creating a new virtual table. Every row now has the columns from both tables. So if TableA has columns Col1 and Col2 and TableB has columns Col3 and Col4, when you join these two tables, you’ll get Col1, Col2, Col3, and Col4. Just as with any query, you have the option of including all columns or excluding some, as well as filtering out rows.
Inner join. A join is combining the rows from two tables. An inner join attempts to match up the two tables based on the criteria you specify in the query, and only returns the rows that match. If a row from the first table in the join matches two rows in the second table, then two rows will be returned in the results. If there’s a row in the first table that doesn’t match a row in the second, it’s not returned; likewise, if there’s a row in the second table that doesn’t match a row in the first, it’s not returned.
Let’s take a look at an example, without using SQL. Say you have this table called CatOwners:
Name Occupation Alice Sanitation Engineer Bob Inventory Coordinator Charlie Theater Admissions Specialist
and this table named Cats:
Name OwnerName Fluffy Alice Mittens Alice Snuggles Bob Simba
We inner join these tables by matching the Name column from CatOwners to the OwnerName column in Cats to produce this new table (renaming the Name column from Cats to CatName):
OwnerName Occupation CatName Alice Sanitation Engineer Fluffy Alice Sanitation Engineer Mittens Bob Inventory Coordinator Snuggles
Alice is included twice since she matched two cats. Charlie doesn’t own a cat, so he’s not listed. Let’s say we wanted to see all the people, even if they didn’t happen to own a cat at the present. This would be a outer join.
Outer Join. A left join attempts to find match up the rows from the first table to rows in the second table. If it can’t find a match, it will return the columns from the first table and leave the columns from the second table blank (null).
Let’s join those two tables with an outer join:
OwnerName Occupation CatName Alice Sanitation Engineer Fluffy Alice Sanitation Engineer Mittens Bob Inventory Coordinator Snuggles Charlie Theater Admissions Specialist
We now see Charlie, but he doesn’t have a cat, so the CatName column is blank (null). This is an outer join.
Now remember how I used the terms first and second? We can reverse the order of the join. Imagine that to join two tables, you write “take CatOwners join Cats if CatOwners’ Name equals Cats’ OwnerName”. You read that sentence from left to right. The first table is CatOwners and the second table is Cats. When you say left vs. right join, that’s what it means: read this join starting with the left (left join) or starting from the right (right join). Let’s right join those tables and see how it’s different:
OwnerName Occupation CatName Alice Sanitation Engineer Fluffy Alice Sanitation Engineer Mittens Bob Inventory Coordinator Snuggles Simb
Charlie is now missing since he didn’t match any rows in Cats, but Simba is shows up. Since we right outer joined, Simba’s now in the first table so he shows up even if he doesn’t have a matching record in the CatOwners table, which is now the second table.
Developers often use the shorthand left join to mean left outer join. Let’s think about why that is. Specifying right vs. left for an inner join makes no difference (and you can’t do that anyway with MySQL), since the query will only show a row if and only if there’s a match between the two tables. It doesn’t matter which table you start from, the results will always be the same. If you’re specifying a direction for the join, you want it to be an outer join. Most developers are used to code, including SQL, that reads from the left to right, so the left outer join is the default.
In SQL
I’ve given some examples in plain English with simple tables. Let’s dive into SQL to see how it looks with MySQL. You can follow along either using your local development instance of MySQL or by using SQL Fiddle. First, we create our tables and fill it with data:
Create Table CatOwners ( Name Varchar(50) Primary Key Not Null,Occupation Varchar(50) Not Null ); Create Table Cats ( Name Varchar(50) Primary Key Not Null,CatOwnerName Varchar(50) Null,Constraint Cats_Fk_CatOwnerName Foreign Key (CatOwnerName) References CatOwners(Name) ); Insert Into CatOwners (Name, Occupation) Values ('Alice', 'Sanitation Engineer'),('Bob', 'Inventory Coordinator'),('Charlie', 'Theater Admissions Specialist'); Insert Into Cats (Name, CatOwnerName) Values ('Mittens', 'Alice'),('Fluffy', 'Alice'),('Snuggles', 'Bob'),('Simba', null);
We can run a simple inner join two ways in MySQL. This first way is ANSI syntax or explicit join notation:
Select CO.Name As OwnerName,CO.Occupation,C.Name As CatName From CatOwners CO Inner Join Cats C On C.CatOwnerName = CO.Name ; +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ | OwnerName | Occupation | CatName | +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ | Alice | Sanitation Engineer | Fluffy | | Alice | Sanitation Engineer | Mittens | | Bob | Inventory Coordinator | Snuggles | +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
You can also use implicit join syntax by putting the matching columns in the Where clause.
Select CO.Name As OwnerName,CO.Occupation,C.Name As CatName From CatOwners CO, Cats C Where C.CatOwnerName = CO.Name ;
These produce the same query plan, so there’s no performance difference. Stick to explicit syntax since it’s more common (I showed you implicit in case you encountered it in the wild).
We also don’t need the Inner since it’s implied:
Select CO.Name As OwnerName,CO.Occupation,C.Name As CatName From CatOwners CO Join Cats C On C.CatOwnerName = CO.Name ;
How do you do a left outer join in SQL? Just like this:
Select CO.Name As OwnerName,CO.Occupation,C.Name As CatName From CatOwners CO Left Outer Join Cats C On C.CatOwnerName = CO.Name ; +-----------+-------------------------------+----------+ | OwnerName | Occupation | CatName | +-----------+-------------------------------+----------+ | Alice | Sanitation Engineer | Fluffy | | Alice | Sanitation Engineer | Mittens | | Bob | Inventory Coordinator | Snuggles | | Charlie | Theater Admissions Specialist | NULL | +-----------+-------------------------------+----------+ 4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
You can’t use implicit join syntax with outer joins since MySQL expects there to be an on clause. I should also note that if you reference the second table in the where clause, you are basically converting it to an inner join since every column will be null:
Select CO.Name As OwnerName,CO.Occupation,C.Name As CatName From CatOwners CO Left Outer Join Cats C On C.CatOwnerName = CO.Name Where C.Name <> 'Frank' ; +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ | OwnerName | Occupation | CatName | +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ | Alice | Sanitation Engineer | Fluffy | | Alice | Sanitation Engineer | Mittens | | Bob | Inventory Coordinator | Snuggles | +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
You could avoid this by putting that criteria in the On clause or dealing with nulls in your criteria:
Select CO.Name As OwnerName,CO.Occupation,C.Name As CatName From CatOwners CO Left Outer Join Cats C On C.CatOwnerName = CO.Name And C.Name <> 'Frank' ; Select CO.Name As OwnerName,CO.Occupation,C.Name As CatName From CatOwners CO Left Outer Join Cats C On C.CatOwnerName = CO.Name Where (C.Name <> 'Frank' Or C.Name Is Null) ;
If we want the query to read the other way, from right to left (or bottom to top), we can specify a right outer join:
Select CO.Name As OwnerName,CO.Occupation,C.Name As CatName From CatOwners CO Right Outer Join Cats C On C.CatOwnerName = CO.Name ; +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ | OwnerName | Occupation | CatName | +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ | Alice | Sanitation Engineer | Fluffy | | Alice | Sanitation Engineer | Mittens | | Bob | Inventory Coordinator | Snuggles | | NULL | NULL | Simba | +-----------+-----------------------+----------+ 4 |
to sign Manchester United star Adnan Januzaj on loan, according to Sky sources.
There has been no formal approach from Sunderland who are looking to add to their attacking options ahead of the new Premier League season.
United have given no indication that the winger is available but he faces stiff competition for a place in the team, with Memphis Depay, Ashley Young, Antonio Valencia and Juan Mata likely to be ahead of him in the pecking order.
Meanwhile, Leroy Fer’s move from QPR to Sunderland looks to be off after Sky sources reported the midfielder returned to Loftus Road after failing a medical on Wearside.
Leroy Fer is close to joining Sunderland on loan, according to Sky sources
Sunderland's focus now appears to be on pushing through a deal for French midfielder Yann M'Vila as they prepare for the new season.
Dick Advocaat's side, who narrowly avoided relegation last season, begin their Premier League campaign away to Leicester City this Saturday.EUGENE -- As Oregon boarded its bus to the airport Tuesday for the first of its legs to the Women's College World Series, the Ducks cracked jokes, hugged and celebrated the program's second WCWS trip in three seasons.
The fun belies the serious expectations top-seeded Oregon carries on this "business trip" to Oklahoma City.
"We feel if we play softball the way we can we can compete with anybody and that's the goal for us," fifth-year head coach Mike White said. "Play our game, dictate the terms and we've been here before so hopefully we won't be starstruck."
With its third WCWS appearance Oregon (54-7-1) is still a relative newcomer to this level of NCAA softball. Eighth-seeded Florida State, Oregon's opponent Thursday at 11:30 a.m., is making its eighth trip, albeit its first in a decade (the teams are 4-4 all-time but haven't played since the 2004 NCAA regionals). Yet for all of Oregon's relative newcomer status, it handled the pressure from the program's first No. 1 ranking with aplomb by holding onto the top spot the final six weeks of the regular season and sweeping the NCAA's regional and super regional rounds on consecutive weekends.
The poised responses to its first No. 1 ranking and top NCAA seed have White believing that his team won't buy into the inherent pressure and that NCAA title expectations are within reach.
"It's something they've dreamed about as little girls but we've just got to take it as it is," White said. "We've been ranked No. 1 for six weeks and I don't think they blew that out of proportion. Hopefully we can take it in stride and just go down and play our game.
"Again it's not to make it bigger than what it is. We always go back to the fact that it's 60 feet, turn left. It's 43 feet from the mound to the home plate and a 12-inch ball, so we just try to keep it as normal as possible."
The game for all eight eight teams will be as much mental as physical at the World Series, which runs May 29-June 4 at ASA Hall of Fame Stadium.
First, there's the weather. Temperatures aren't expected to dip below the mid-80s and are forecasted to rise into the mid-90s in the final days of the tournament. Humidity is ever-present, as is the chance of thunderstorms and tornadoes.
Oregon left-handed starter Cheridan Hawkins (33-4) experienced those conditions before while playing on a national team but never coupled with the pressure of a World Series. During Oregon's 2012 trip to Oklahoma City, Hawkins was a high school senior. Six players off that team remain.
"I haven't seen what it's like in a College World Series atmosphere but just having felt that kind of heat and environment before will help," Hawkins said.
The atmosphere at the site begins with a welcome banquet Tuesday evening where the USA Softball College Player of the Year award will be given to either UCLA's Ally Carda, Michigan's Sierra Romero or Florida State pitcher Lacey Waldrop. It's those types of distractions that can make the World Series feel far from the kind of "normal" game White and the Ducks have attempted to prepare for.
How well Oregon succeeds at convincing itself that Thursday's opener is just another game will be especially crucial for Hawkins. She admitted to feeling nerves during her first NCAA super regional start last weekend against Minnesota, and in each game of the series it took a visit to the circle from White to relax the sophomore star with the 1.55 earned run average.
Hawkins said her key will be finding the right blend of staying loose, correct preparation and focused execution. And like the rest of her Duck teammates, she said she'll draw on UO's handling of its No. 1 ranking for inspiration as Oregon attempts to make even more history.
"I think it's prepared us to be in a high-pressure environment," Hawkins said. "That No. 1 title can be a lot for people and some people could brush it off, and I think we did a good job of just acknowledging that and being happy that we're No. 1 and celebrating the history created in all that. I think it will help us realizing that we've experienced pressure like that."
-- Andrew Greif | @andrewgreifIn September 2008, the Daily Telegraph blared:
“Kevin Rudd should ask himself: am I the Prime Minister or the Foreign Minister? Kevin 07 has become Departure Gate 08.”
In 2009, newly crowned LOTO Tony Abbott said:
“Kevin Rudd loves a crisis to give him an excuse to run to the airport and jump on a 747 and go off and do photo ops with [then British prime minister] Gordon Brown and Barack Obama. I accept that Australia’s voice should be heard in the councils of the world, but it would be nice to hear the prime minister’s voice at home occasionally.”
Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop accused Mr Rudd of harbouring an “obsession with chasing the global limelight”.
Tony picked up the criticism again when Rudd resumed the leadership in June 2013, saying:
“I think he wants to campaign for the prime ministership of this country from the front of a 747. I don’t think the Australian public are going to really warm to that but I think that’s the temptation before him now, to not only be Kevin 747 but maybe Kevin A380 and spend most of the next few months out of the country.”
In contrast to his rhetoric in opposition, since getting the keys to the plane, it is hardly any surprise to hear that Abbott has made 11 international trips, the same number as Mr Rudd made during his first 12 months in office.
At the beginning of this year it was briefly reported that:
“The $600 million lease on the current RAAF fleet of two Boeing 737 business jets and three smaller Challenger 604 aircraft will expire next year and the government will seek agreement from media companies to limit criticism of any decision to opt for bigger planes. Any negative publicity would be limited to plush add ons such as gold taps or marble sinks.”
This report is disturbing for a number of reasons. Tony wants bigger planes fitted out in VIP luxury so he can fly his media pack around with him, along with hundreds of businessmen, whilst directing the media to not criticise the decision or presumably risk losing their free ride.
Every major media outlet has correspondents in other countries. If Rupert wants to fly extra people in I am sure he could afford to do so. After all, the ATO just gave him $882 million for being good at shifting money around. (One wonders why they chose not to appeal that decision).
Tony Abbott paid a visit to China last April, accompanied by a record number of over 700 businessmen who together represented over half the value of the Australian stock exchange. Few realise that this was the first ‘outing’ of the REAL ‘Team Australia”.
“Five state premiers, along with 700 business leaders, including three billionaires are with the prime minister. The government has dubbed it “team Australia“.”
There was also a trip to Indonesia immediately after Tony’s coronation where he hosted 20 business heavyweights including the big banks, mining companies, and health care companies. Among them was Anthony Pratt, CEO of Visy, and Australian’s second wealthiest person according to BRW. Surely he owns his own jet. Must we fly James Packer around the world when he wants to land deals to build more casinos?
In August it was revealed that:
“DEFENCE Minister David Johnston has blown more than $100,000 sending empty VIP air force jets across the Nullarbor to pick up colleagues from WA, including Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.… the VIP planes (RAAF Boeing 737) fly 3000km to Perth empty of passengers. The “ghost flights’’ cost up to $16,000 each, excluding wages. On the return trip, MPs and their wives enjoy fine wine, craft beers, cocktails and gourmet hot meals. MPs’ children have also taken the flights, according to passenger lists.”
Perhaps our airlines would be doing a bit better if they were supported by our politicians. It is also rather incongruous that government representatives attending conferences get bumped from Tony’s flying circus to make way for photographers and billionaires.
No discussion of planes would be complete without a mention of our squadrons of fighter jets that we may or may not see in a decade or two. As I have said before, I consider this an enormous waste of money as what we need most are planes that can do humanitarian drops or disaster relief or evacuations or search and rescue. We will not be engaging in dog fights and to waste tens of billions on a training jet to play war games in is a ridiculous waste of resources.
Trains don’t get much of a run with the Abbott government. Despite Infrastructure Australia identifying the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel as a project of national significance and placing it at the top of its priority list (the board was subsequently replaced), despite the Gillard government offering funding for the project that was marked ready to go, Tony Abbott is determined to build roads instead. If states want public transport they will have to sell assets because Tony wants thousands of kilometres of pollution-producing bitumen heat islands to be his legacy.
Australia and Antarctica are now the only two continents in the world where there is no high speed rail project underway, though we have no hope of the discussion to progress under this government even though the reasons for it seem compelling. Traditional rail lines could be opened up for freight and fuel guzzling planes would largely be replaced for the trip between Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane. Regional areas could be revitalised giving the option for people to relocate with an easy commute when necessary without having to queue up at airports or joust with trucks on our congested highways.
Not content with buying himself some new planes, Tony Abbott has also just bought a new fleet of bombproof BMWs. The $6.2 million fleet can withstand AK47 fire, attacks with explosive devices or armour-piercing weapons. I’m just wondering how many AK47s and armour-piercing weapons are in circulation in Australia. I hope they have special resistant paint because they are far more likely to get egged which is a real bugger to get off if you don’t do it straight away.
One wonders why we are paying the money to a German company when Holden won the tender process. Abbott said Holden had not even submitted a bid for the tender, something the company says is incorrect. Abbott’s critics claim opting for BMW was all part of discrediting Holden around the time it announced it would cease Australian operations.
We have been assured that it had nothing to do with Bridget Abbott being given a gig as a “brand ambassador” for the BMW Sydney Carnival in 2012. Just as Louise Abbott got the job in the UN and Frances Abbott got the $60,000 scholarship, she was no doubt chosen on merit. Successful accreditation of courses and extension of fee loans to colleges such as the one that offered Ms Abbott the scholarship are also entirely unrelated events. But I digress into murky waters.
As well as Tony’s new fleet of BMWs, we have the endless use of comcars by MPs. Unless a very ‘helpful’ employee steals your diary and goes to the trouble of matching your movements to your cab dockets going back over several years, who would know what the cars are being used for? Apparently if you need to justify claiming travel and accommodation, just get your photo taken visiting something even if it DOES mean keeping all your colleagues waiting.
I have suggested before how much we could save by building an accommodation wing at Parliament House. Those who choose not to stay there pay for their own accommodation and travel to and from work. Those who make appointments during sitting time for places outside Canberra should also pay for travel out of their generous electoral allowance or use the private vehicle provided to all MPs. Not having free RAAF jets and chauffeured limousines at their disposal might make them a little more circumspect about dashing off for parties and sporting events.
Most of the criticisms I have made in this article could be directed at either of the major parties, though some are unique to Tony. But it is Tony who has been lamenting waste and Labor’s debt and deficit, Tony that has mercilessly attacked the most vulnerable for the sake of a number on a piece of paper, Tony that has been telling us that nothing is free and we all must help to fix the problem.
All of us except Tony, that is.
Share this: Facebook
Twitter
Reddit
Email
Print
LinkedIn
MoreThe alternative minimum tax (AMT) is a supplemental income tax imposed by the United States federal government required in addition to baseline income tax for certain individuals, corporations, estates, and trusts that have exemptions or special circumstances allowing for lower payments of standard income tax. AMT is imposed at a nearly flat rate on an adjusted amount of taxable income above a certain threshold (also known as exemption). This exemption is substantially higher than the exemption from regular income tax.
Regular taxable income is adjusted for certain items computed differently for AMT, such as depreciation and medical expenses. No deduction is allowed for state taxes or miscellaneous itemized deductions in computing AMT income. Taxpayers with incomes above the exemption whose regular Federal income tax is below the amount of AMT must pay the higher AMT amount.
A predecessor "minimum tax", enacted in 1969, imposed an additional tax on certain tax benefits for certain taxpayers. The present AMT was enacted in 1982 and limits tax benefits from a variety of deductions.
The AMT was originally designed to tax high-income taxpayers who used the regular tax system to pay little or no tax. Over the years, however, inflation has caused it to apply to middle-income taxpayers. Congress sporadically raises the AMT's income thresholds to give relief to these taxpayers. The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 indexes these thresholds each year for inflation.[1] Nevertheless, the number of taxpayers subject to it has increased from 200,000 in 1982 to 5.2 million in 2017.[2]
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 raised personal AMT exemption levels and exemption phase-out levels, but eliminated several itemized deductions. The TCJA also indexed the AMT exemptions for inflation in years after 2018. The changes are projected to reduce the number of taxpayers affected by AMT in 2018 and beyond back to the 200,000 who were subject to AMT in 1982.[3]
The TCJA was "scored" to ensure that its cost in lower government revenue was small enough to qualify under the Senate's reconciliation procedure. To improve the scoring, changes to the personal income tax, including to the AMT, expire at the end of 2025.
The TCJA repealed the Alternative Minimum Tax on corporations entirely.[4]
AMT basics [ edit ]
Each year, high-income taxpayers must calculate and then pay the greater of an alternative minimum tax (AMT) or regular tax.[5] The basis for the tax is not taxable income but income subject to a different calculation. Taxes paid over the course of the tax year do not account for AMT; if the AMT is greater than regular tax, the taxpayer will owe additional tax.
The AMT taxes income above an "exemption" level at 26%, up to a second threshold; and thereafter at 28%. Moreover, above still higher thresholds, the exemption from AMT is lost (at a rate of $1 for each $4 of income above that threshold). At another threshold, the high (28%) tax rate begins to replace the low (26%) rate. (These "clawbacks" result in effective marginal tax rates of 32.5% and 35%.) Very high earners are taxed at 28% of their entire income (with no exemption).
A lower tax rate applies to long-term capital gains (and qualifying dividends).[6]
Status Single Married filing jointly Married filing separately Trust Corporation Tax Rate: Low 26%* 26%* 26%* 26%* 20%* Tax Rate: High 28%* 28%* 28%* 28%* 20%* High Rate Starts (2012 and earlier) $175,000 $175,000 $87,500 $175,000 n/a High Rate Starts (2013) $179,500 $179,500 $89,750 $179,500 n/a High Rate Starts (2018) $191,100 $191,100 $95,550 $187,800 n/a Exemption in 2009 $46,700 $70,950 $35,475 $22,500 $40,000 Exemption in 2010 $47,450 $72,450 $36,225 $22,500 $40,000 Exemption in 2011 $48,450 $74,450 $37,225 $22,500 $40,000 Exemption in 2012 $50,600 $78,750 $39,375 $22,500 $40,000 Exemption in 2013 $51,900 $80,800 $40,400 $23,100 $40,000 Exemption in 2018 $70,300 $109,400 $54,700 $24,600 n/a Exemption phase-out starts at (2012 and earlier) $112,500 $150,000 $75,000 $75,000 $150,000 Exemption phase-out starts at (2013) $115,400 $153,900 $76,950 $76,950 $150,000 Exemption phase-out starts at (2018) $500,000 $1,000,000 $500,000 $80,450 n/a No more exemption in 2009 at $299,300 $433,800 $216,900 $165,000 $310,000 No more exemption in 2010 at $302,300 $439,800 $219,900 $165,000 $310,000 No more exemption in 2011 at $306,300 $447,800 $223,900 $165,000 $310,000 No more exemption in 2012 at $314,900 $465,000 $232,500 $165,000 $310,000 No more exemption in 2013 at $323,000 $477,100 $238,550 $165,000 $310,000 Long-term capital gains rate[7] 15% 15% 15% 25% 20%
* For income within the exemption phase-out, marginal tax rates are effectively multiplied by 1.25, which changes 20% to 25%, changes 26% to 32.5%, and changes 28% to 35%.
In addition, corporations with average annual gross receipts of $7,500,000 or less for the prior three years are exempt from AMT, but only so long as they continue to meet this test.[8] Further, a corporation is exempt from AMT during its first year as a corporation. Affiliated corporations are treated as if they were a single corporation for all three exemptions ($40,000, $7.5 million, and first year).[9]
To the extent AMT exceeds regular Federal income tax, a future credit is provided which can offset future regular tax to the extent AMT does not apply in a future year. However, this credit is limited: see further details in the "AMT credit against regular tax" section.
Regular tax used as a basis for computing AMT is found on the following lines of tax return forms: individual Form 1040 Line 44, or corporate Form 1120 Schedule J line 2 less foreign tax credit.[10]
Under the AMT, no deduction is allowed for personal exemptions (other than the AMT specific exemption, which is larger than the personal exemption except for high income taxpayers), nor is the standard deduction.[11] State, local, and foreign taxes are not deductible. However, most other itemized deductions apply at least in part. Significant other adjustments to income and deductions apply.
Individuals must file IRS Form 6251 and corporations must file Form 4626 if they have any net AMT due. The form is also filed to claim the credit for prior year AMT.
Other individual adjustments in computing AMT include:[12]
Miscellaneous itemized deductions are not allowed. These include all items subject to the 2% "floor", such as employee business expenses, tax preparation fees, etc.
The home mortgage interest deduction is limited to interest on purchase money mortgages for a first and second residence.
Medical expenses may be deducted only if they exceed 10% of Adjusted Gross Income, as compared to 7.5% for regular tax.
Inclusion of the bargain element of an Incentive Stock Option when exercised and the stock is not sold in the same tax year, regardless of whether the stock can immediately be sold.
Many AMT adjustments apply to businesses operated by individuals or corporations.[13] The adjustments tend to have the effect of deferring certain deductions or recognizing income sooner. These adjustments include:
Depreciation deductions must be computed using the straight line method and longer lives than may be used for regular tax. (See MACRS)
Deductions for certain "preferences" are limited. These include deductions related to: circulation costs, mining costs, research and experimentation costs, intangible drilling costs, and certain amortization.
Certain income must be recognized earlier, including: long-term contracts and installment sales.
Certain other adjustments apply. Corporations are also subject to an adjustment (up or down) for adjusted current earnings.[14] In addition, a partner or shareholder's share of AMT income and adjustments flow through to the partner or shareholder from the partnership[15] or S corporation.[16]
AMT is reduced by a foreign tax credit, limited based on AMT income rather than regular taxable income.[17] Certain specified business tax credits are allowed.[18]
History [ edit ]
A predecessor "minimum tax" was enacted by the Tax Reform Act of 1969[19] and went into effect in 1970. Treasury Secretary Joseph Barr prompted the enactment action with an announcement that 155 high-income households had not paid a dime of federal income taxes.[20] The households had taken advantage of so many tax benefits and deductions that they had reduced their tax liabilities to zero.[21] Congress responded by creating an add-on tax on high-income households, equal to 10% of the sum of tax preferences in excess of $30,000 plus the taxpayer's regular tax liability.[22]
The explanation of the 1969 Act prepared by Congress's Staff of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation described the reason for the AMT as follows:
The prior treatment imposed no limit on the amount of income which an individual or corporation could exclude from tax as the result of various tax preferences. As a result, there were large variations in the tax burdens placed on individuals or corporations with similar economic incomes, depending upon the size of their preference income. In general, those individual or corporate taxpayers who received the bulk of their income from personal services or manufacturing were taxed at relatively higher tax rates than others. On the other hand, individuals or corporations which received the bulk of their income from such sources as capital gains or were in a position to benefit from net lease arrangements, from accelerated depreciation on real estate, from percentage depletion, or from other tax-preferred activities tended to pay relatively low rates of tax. In fact, many individuals with high incomes who could benefit from these provisions paid lower effective rates of tax than many individuals with modest incomes. In extreme cases, individuals enjoyed large economic incomes without paying any tax at all. This was true for example in the case of 154 returns in 1966 with adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 a year (apart from those with income exclusions which do not show on the returns filed). Similarly, a number of large corporations paid either no tax at all or taxes which represented very low effective rates.[23]
(Top) Comparison of the regular tax on wages only (not taking into account any deductions) in 2000 and 2004 (orange and blue lines respectively) with the tentative minimum tax (AMT before deducting regular tax) (same brown line for both 2000 and 2004) for a married couple who are filing jointly. Two dashed lines show the margins between the tentative minimum tax and the regular tax rates in 2000 and 2004—and how this margin was becoming narrower from year to year. This means that not many deductions are needed before the AMT must be paid. And one needs to claim fewer deductions in subsequent years in order for the parity to be reached, and thus to get into the AMT territory. (The tentative minimum tax is the minimum amount of tax a person will end up paying. If it is less than the usual tax then there is no AMT.)
(Bottom) The same narrowing gap between regular tax and tentative minimum tax is shown in terms of effective tax rates paid on various amounts of AGI in 2000 and 2004. Comparison of the regular tax on wages only (not taking into account any deductions) in 2000 and 2004 (orange and blue lines respectively) with the tentative minimum tax (AMT before deducting regular tax) (same brown line for both 2000 and 2004) for a married couple who are filing jointly. Two dashed lines show the margins between the tentative minimum tax and the regular tax rates in 2000 and 2004—and how this margin was becoming narrower from year to year. This means that not many deductions are needed before the AMT must be paid. And one needs to claim fewer deductions in subsequent years in order for the parity to be reached, and thus to get into the AMT territory. (The tentative minimum tax is the minimum amount of tax a person will end up paying. If it is less than the usual tax then there is no AMT.)The same narrowing gap between regular tax and tentative minimum tax is shown in terms of effective tax rates paid on various amounts of AGI in 2000 and 2004.
The AMT has undergone several changes since 1969. The most significant of those, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, occurred under the Reagan era Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982.[22] The law changed the AMT from an add-on tax to its current form: a parallel tax system. The current structure of the AMT reflects changes that were made by the 1982 law. However both participation and revenues from the AMT temporarily plummeted after the 1986 changes.[24] Congress made other notable, but less significant, changes to the law in 1978, 1982, and 1986.[25]
Further significant changes occurred as a result of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Acts of 1990 and 1993, which raised the AMT rate to 24% from the prior level of 21% and then to 26% and 28% for individual filers with incomes that exceeded $175,000.[26] Now, some taxpayers who do not have very high incomes or participate in numerous special tax benefits and/or activities will pay the AMT.[27]
"Patches" to tax rates and exemptions [ edit ]
For years since then, Congress had passed one-year "patches" aimed at minimizing the impact of the tax. While not automatically indexed for inflation until a change in the law in early 2013, the exemption had been increased by Congress many times. In addition, the tax rate was increased for individuals effective 1991 and 1993, and the tax was limited for capital gains and qualifying dividends in 2003.
For the 2007 tax year, the patch was passed on December 20, 2007, but only after the IRS had already designed its forms for 2007. The IRS had to reprogram its forms to accommodate the law change.[28]
The tax rate and exemption increases are reflected in the following table:
Alternative minimum tax rate and exemption amounts 1986–1990 1991–1992 1993–2000 2001–2002 2003–2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013[29] 2014[30] 2015[31] 2016[32] 2017[33] 2018[34] Individual tax rate 21% 24% 26/28% Married filing jointly 40,000 45,000 49,000 58,000 62,550 66,250 69,950 70,950 72,450 74,450 78,750 80,800 82,100 83,400 83,800 84,500 86,200 Single or head of household 30,000 33,750 35,750 40,250 42,500 44,350 46,200 46,700 47,450 48,450 50,600 51,900 52,800 53,600 53,900 54,300 55,400
The tax rate for corporations has remained 20% and the exemption amount has remained $40,000 since the 1986 changes.
The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 set the 2012 exemption amounts to $78,750 for Married Filing Jointly and $50,600 for Single, and made future exemption amounts indexed for inflation.[35]
AMT details [ edit ]
Alternative minimum tax (AMT)[36] is imposed on an alternative, more comprehensive measure of income than regular federal income tax. Conceptually, it is imposed instead of, rather than in addition to, regular tax.
AMT is imposed if the tentative minimum tax exceeds the regular tax.[37] Tentative minimum tax is the AMT rate of tax times alternative minimum taxable income (AMTI) less the AMT foreign tax credit. Regular tax is the regular income tax reduced only by the foreign and possessions tax credits.[10] In any year in which regular tax exceeds tentative minimum tax, a credit (AMT Credit) is allowed against regular tax to the extent the taxpayer has paid AMT in any prior year. This credit may not reduce regular tax below the tentative minimum tax.
Alternative minimum taxable income is regular taxable income, plus or minus certain adjustments, plus tax preference items, less the allowable exemption (as phased out).
Taxpayers and rates [ edit ]
Individuals, C corporations, estates, and trusts are subject to AMT. Partnerships and S corporations are generally not subject to income or AMT taxes,[38] but, instead, pass-through the income and items related to computing AMT to their partners and shareholders.[39] Foreign persons are subject to AMT only on their income effectively connected with a U.S. trade or business.[40]
The rate of AMT varies by type of taxpayer.[41] Through 2012, individuals, estates, and trusts are subject to the same rate of tax on long-term capital gains for regular tax and AMT.
Exemptions [ edit ]
The deduction for personal exemptions is not allowed. Instead, all taxpayers are granted an exemption that is phased out at higher income levels.[42] See above for amounts of this exemption and phase-out points. Due to the phase-out of exemptions, the actual marginal tax rate (1.25*26% = 32.5%) is higher for the income above the phase-out point. The married-filing-separately (MFS) phase-out does not stop when the exemption reaches zero, either in 2009 or 2010. This is because the MFS exemption is half of the joint exemption, but the phase-out is the full amount, so for MFS filers the phase-out amount can be up to twice the exemption amount, resulting in a 'negative exemption'.
For example, using 2009 figures, a filer with $358,800 of income not only gets zero exemption, but is also taxed on an additional $35,475 that was never actually earned (see "Line 29 — Alternative Minimum Taxable Income" in 2009 Instructions for Form 6251 or "Line 28 — Alternative Minimum Taxable Income" in 2010 Instructions for Form 6251). This prevents a married couple with dissimilar incomes from benefiting by filing separate returns so that the lower earner gets the benefit of some exemption amount that would be phased out if they filed jointly. When filing separately, each spouse in effect not only has their own exemption phased out, but is also taxed on a second exemption too, on the presumption that the other spouse could be claiming that on their own separate MFS return.
Small corporations are exempt from AMT.[8] A small corporation is one with average gross receipts for the prior three years of $7.5 million or less. Once a corporation ceases to be a small corporation for AMT, it is never again a small corporation. This limit is applied to all members of an affiliated group as if they were a single corporation.
Depreciation and other adjustments [ edit ]
All taxpayers claiming deductions for depreciation must adjust those deductions in computing AMT income to the amount of deduction allowed for AMT.[43] For AMT purposes, depreciation is computed on most assets under the straight line method using the class life of the asset. When a taxpayer is required to recognize gain or loss on disposal of a depreciable asset (or pollution control facility), the gain or loss must be adjusted to reflect the AMT depreciation amount rather than regular depreciation amounts.[44] This adjustment also applies to additional amounts deducted in the year of acquisition of the assets. For more details on these calculations, see MACRS.
In addition, corporate taxpayers may be required to make adjustments to depreciation deductions in computing the adjusted current earnings (ACE) adjustment.[14] Such adjustments only apply to assets acquired before 1989.
Adjustments are also required for the following:
Long-term contracts: taxpayers must use the percentage of completion method for AMT. [45]
Mine exploration and development costs must be capitalized and amortized over 10 years, rather than expensed. [46]
Certain accelerated deductions related to pollution controls facilities are not allowed. [47]
The credit allowed for alcohol and biodiesel fuels is included in income.[48]
Adjustments for individuals [ edit ]
Individuals are not allowed certain deductions in computing AMT that are allowed for regular tax.[11] No deduction is allowed for personal exemptions or for the standard deduction. The phase-out of itemized deductions does not apply. No deduction is allowed for state, local, or foreign income or property taxes. A recovery of such taxes is excluded from AMTI. No deduction is allowed for most miscellaneous itemized deductions.
Medical expenses are deductible for AMT only to the extent they exceed 10% of adjusted gross income (this is not unique to AMT, it applies to regular income tax as well).[49]
Interest expense deductions for individuals may be adjusted.[50] Generally, interest paid on debt used to acquire, construct, or improve the individual's principal or second residence is unaffected. This includes interest resulting from refinancing such debt. In addition, investment interest expense is deductible for AMT only to the extent of adjusted net investment income. Other non-business interest is generally not deductible for AMT.
An adjustment is also made for qualified incentive stock options and stock received under employee stock purchase plans.[51] In both cases, the employee must recognize income for AMT purposes on the bargain or compensation element, the employer is granted a deduction for this, and the employee has basis in the shares received.
Circulation and research expenses must be capitalized and amortized.[52]
Adjusted current earnings for corporations [ edit ]
Corporations are required to make an adjustment based on adjusted current earnings (ACE).[14] The adjustment increases or decreases AMTI for 75% of the difference between ACE and AMTI. ACE is AMTI further adjusted for certain items. These include further depreciation adjustments for most assets, adjustments to more closely reflect earnings and profits, cost rather than percentage depletion, LIFO, charitable contributions and certain other items.
Losses [ edit ]
The deduction for net operating losses is adjusted to be based on losses for AMTI.[53]
Farm losses are limited for AMT purposes. Passive activity losses are recomputed for AMT purposes based on income and deductions as recomputed for AMT. Certain adjustments apply with respect to farm and passive activity loss rules for insolvent taxpayers.[54]
Tax preferences [ edit ]
All taxpayers must add back tax preference deductions in computing AMTI.[55] Tax preferences include the following amounts of deduction:
percentage depletion in excess of basis,
the deduction for intangible drilling costs in excess of the amount that would have been allowed if the costs were capitalized and amortized, with adjustments,
otherwise tax exempt interest on bonds used to finance certain private activities, including mutual fund dividends from such interest,
certain depreciation on pre-1987 assets,
7% of excluded gain on certain small business stock.
Taxpayers may elect an optional 10-year write-off of certain tax preference items in lieu of the preference add-back.
Note that in prior years there were certain other tax preference items relating to provisions now repealed.
Credits [ edit ]
Credits are allowed against AMT for foreign taxes[56] and certain specified business credits.[57]
The AMT foreign tax credit limitation is redetermined based on AMTI rather than regular taxable income. Thus, all adjustments and tax preference items above must be applied in computing the AMT foreign tax credit limitation.
AMT credit against regular tax [ edit ]
After a taxpayer has paid AMT, a credit is allowed against regular tax in future years for the amount of AMT.[58] The credit for individuals is generally limited to the amount of AMT generated by deferral items (e.g. exercise of incentive stock options), as opposed to exclusion items (e.g. state and local taxes).[59] This credit is limited so that regular tax is not reduced below AMT for the year. Taxpayers may use a simplified method under which the AMT foreign tax credit limit is computed proportionately to the regular tax foreign tax credit limit. IRS Form 8801 is used to claim this credit.
Stock options [ edit ]
The alternative minimum tax may apply to individuals exercising stock options. Under AMT rules, for incentive stock options at the time of exercise, the "bargain element" or "spread price" (the difference between the strike price and fair market value) is treated as an AMT |
surrounding him..why should he go out like a hero?.. For me personally, that's not for me to decide... Judging from the hundreds of reponses I've gotten..It's evident that 2Pac had a lot of fans.. and folks have a lot to say.. I feel its important for us to have a place where those who embrace a hip hop perspective can have their say.. I can't speak on other areas..but here in the Bay.. there's quite a few news outlets that went out like biscuits.. They were overtly biased in their coverage and in some cases.. absolutely wrong.. Here on this site.. I wanted to provide a forum for those who wanted to reflect on 2Pac and even theorize about his death.. [Who Shot 2Pac?].. They could do this here uninhibited... Enjoy, reflect and take away from his untimely death a positive message and insight which will hopefully help turn the tide for those who've been traveling down a path of violence... Peace to all Davey D
9/16/96
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website
Included in these responses were some pretty incredible tributes. Like the one below, written two hours after Pac’s death.
2pac died in the hospital about two hours ago. whoever shot him should be satisfied in the removal of another strong soldier from the struggle against the powers that be. whoever shot 2pac didn't kill him... it was the muthafukka that gave him the weapon. and who was that u ask... same muthafukkaz that shot Fred Hampton. same muthafukkaz that deaded the Black Panther Party For Self-Defense. same muthafukkaz that watch us kill ourselves every day are responsible for the MURDER of one of our greatest soldiers, though at times he was overspoken, he was still a soldier...and soldiers die. if the revolution kicked off tomorrow, who would u rather have watchin' your back? Tupac, no question. Michael Langford (Griffen) WMAQ All News 670 (a westinghouse station) Chicago, Il.
Or how about this one? Remember when news was spread via radio and not social media?
I was listening to the radio on my way home when the announcement came that 2Pac had passed. Driving to my destination teary eyed and listening to the comentation on this man. Here we have another black male gone. It really saddened me to hear the thoughts of others on someone just passed. Just because one has ways and views different (but not thought of by many others) it is no reason to bash ones antics. I really think one should take a look at the overall life he had, and take a look at the life he had to make for himself.
Davey isn’t the only future hip-hop personality to appear on the site. Ed Lover, of Yo! MTV Raps fame even shared a comment where he talks about being with Pac 15 minutes before his death. Similar to the tribute to Biggie, hearing about Pac's last few minutes gave me chills.
First of all my condolences go out to you and the entire West Coast- Bay Area click on the lost of one of your own. My name is Ed Lover, formerly of Yo! MTV Raps, and currently morning maniac on Hot 97 radio here in NYC. It hurts me alot that Pac has been murdered. I saw him not even 15 minutes before he was killed. First I saw him at the fight with Suge Knight and we exchanged pleasantries from across the room. Next I saw him in the casino on his way out the door. It was quite a shock to learn that he had been brutally shot. I've known Pac since about 1991 or 1992. I first remember meeting him when I went to the set of the movie Juice with my now deceased friend and confidant, Big Stretch from the group Live Squad. Because of the friendship that Stretch and 2Pac shared we all became good friends but they became inseprable. I feel like I’m saying this with each discovery, but this next one is by far the most amazing. Here they were, just days after Pac’s death, and people already had crazy conspiracies and questions as to whether he actually died.
There are so many conspiracies when it comes to Pac's death and I've always viewed them as products of a different era - something that comes up years after - but here, just days after his death, somebody already has a "Tupac is alive" conspiracy.
Is 2Pac's Death A Publicity Stunt? ….I have a few theories of my own. I think this is all a publicity stunt... honestly. If Tupac dies... he gets released of all pending lawsuits. If you try to go to your local record store to buy a Tupac... forget it. Anything by the Tupac is sold out. I was also informed that there was an insurance policy worth $72 million on Tupac. Plus Tupac has just finished recording another album under the name Makevelli. Add this all up... Tupac's death = MONEY. It has been confirmed that Suge is in Florida as we speak. What's he doing in Florida? Could he be sending Pac on a boat to an island or something? Tupac always talked about death and being shot... you could say he was foreshadowing what was to come. He said that he wanted to get out the game... and maybe this is a way to get out of it and still have some serious loot. Or... maybe it is the death of Tupac... only to return as Makavelli (sort of like the man formely known as Prince thang). Imagine if someone to pull something off like this... this would be the publicity stunt of the century! Suge and Tupac would make they're mark in history. One other thing... do some research on Makavelli (Machiavelli)... an Italian military strategists of the 1600s. Machiavelli did some wild sh*t similar to this. Do your research... then you come up with your own theory. PEACE!!!!! PJ
Shit, even active members in the hip-hop community had their theories. Posted on the tribute section was "CHUCK D'S 18 COMPELLING REASONS WHY 2PAC IS NOT DEAD". Here are just a few of the 18.
2Pac died on Friday the 13th... Las Vegas is a payoff City..meaning all sorts of folks have been known to be on the take..that means doctors, press, lawyers etc The white cadillac containing the assailants..was never found... How could this be when Vegas is in the middle of a desert? There's a small Black community on the North side of town.. This strip is only about 8 blocks long.. The attackers were Black.. Where did they go? Where did they hide? The white cadillac containing the gunmen passes a entourage of 2Pac's boys..many of them body guards... No one gives chase..and there are no witness...There were no witnesses on the street... How come? Why not? The name of 2Pac's next album is Machiavelli.. He was an Italian war strategist who faked his death to fool his enemies... Perhaps 2Pac is doing the same thing..
As we all know, Pac is one of the most divisive emcees ever, depending on how you feel he is either a thug/gangsta or an outspoken activist for political and social change; for many he's both. Well, that attitude, that divisive personality, was on display in the tributes. Though most were positive, some were much more critical of Pac and his behavior.
Why are we glorifying him in his death? Why are we making him to be a martyr?? Am I the only one who acknowledges that 2Pac sealed his own fate?? Do we as a community not realize that he WAS NOT a nice person, nor a good role model, nor a model citizen, nor a high school/college graduate????? Why has our community lost its mind????? How quickly we have forgotten that he was incarcerated for sexually abusing a woman on a dance floor at a club! What about his drug abuse and selling? What about his foul language and the way he carried himself???? Wasn't he just shot 5 times a year ago??? Obviously, he didn't learn his lesson. I acknowledge that he has had a rough life, but haven't we all?....
As I was clicking through the tributes and reading Pac’s poems, I stumbled across something else. Now, as you may recall, Davey is from the Bay Area and the site seemed to have a West Coast slant. Naturally, Pac is one of the premier West Coast emcees at the time, their paths crossed and up on the site were two interviews with Pac. One was a “lost interview” from 91, which I managed to find the audio for and can be read here. Thanks to Kendrick, unearthed Tupac interviews are all the rage right now, so this stuff is pretty mindblowing.
As great as that one is, what really floored me was this one from April 1996, just six months before Pac’s death. Honestly, the most chilling, heartbreaking but also funny, moment came with the last question.
Davey D: Five years from now what do you see yourself doing? 2Pac: I see myself having a job on Death Row...being the A&R person and an artist that drop an album like Paul McCartney every five years. Not that I'm like Paul McCartney but there's no rapper who ever did it so that's why I use him as an example... But I wanna do it at leisure. My music will mean something and I'll drop deeper shit. I'll have my own production company which I'm close to right now...I'm doing my own movies. I have my own restaurant...which I got right now with Allanis or Suge or Snoop. I just wanna expand. I'm starting to put out some calendars for charity. I'm gonna start a little youth league in California so we can start playing some east coast teams..some southern teams...I wanna have like a Pop Warner League except the rappers fund it and they're the head coaches. Have a league where you can get a big trophy with diamonds in it for a nigguh to stay drug free and stay in school. That's the only way you can be on the team. We'll have fun and eat pizza and have the finest girls there and throw concerts at the end of the year. That's what I mean by giving back.
This interview is pretty incredible. When he talks about the beef with Mobb Deep it really puts it into perspective what “beef” is today. Reading the interview is great, but hearing it takes things to another level. There is one part where he talks about the future and says “god willing I’m alive.” In my opinion, this is the most incredible artifact I have come across. Now there are some gaps in time and differences between the transcripts and the interviews, but I want to share everything I found, as imperfect as it may be. Decades later, I heard this audio and I felt Tupac’s passion, and I knew I had to share it. [The audio of the interview can't be embedded, so you'll have to listen to it via YouTube.]
That shit right there?! It's incredible that decades later Tupac's voice still has so much power. The passion in his voice, the fire in his gut, it all feels so new, so alive. Still, I can't shake this feeling of being haunted. It really is creepy to hear him speak on the future.
There's nothing that I said in the Biggie piece that can't be said for this Pac investigation, so I'll keep it short - Tupac really was amazing, and reading the real-time reaction to his death has only further made me appreciate his impact. Stick around for some more random yet incredible findings, as well as an interview with Davey himself.BLACKSBURG, Va. — Hockey helmets may be on the verge of a radical makeover, as scientists and engineers at Virginia Tech prepare a rating system that measures each brand’s and model’s ability to reduce the risk of concussion.
“After football, hockey is the sport that produces the highest rate of concussion,” said Dr. Stefan M. Duma, a Virginia Tech professor and the head of the university’s biomedical engineering department. “We want to produce a mechanism to try and reduce that risk of concussion.”
That mechanism is a five-point rating scale called the STAR system, which the Virginia Tech football team began applying to its helmets in 2011. While there is still disagreement on whether concussions can be reduced by improving helmets, the football rating system quickly became influential, leading manufacturers to substantially increase internal padding. Sales for five-star football helmets have soared, and those for low-rated helmets plunged.
Duma and Dr. Steven Rowson, who also teaches biomedical engineering at Virginia Tech and is a co-investigator in the project, have been conducting preliminary tests to perfect their methodology for hockey helmets for more than a year. They hoped to start testing hockey helmets in about a month and to release ratings for about 30 models this fall or winter.Thousands of first-time landlords in Christchurch risk being snared by the tax department for failing to declare extra income from rentals.
More than 40,000 Cantabrians have been cashing in on the pressured rental market as rebuild workers flood into the city and families shift out for earthquake repairs.
With the number of people renting out spare rooms, sleepouts and furnished homes on a short-term basis on the rise, those unaware of their tax requirements could be hit by a significant bill if they fail to declare their rent as income.
Tax-dodgers will face financial penalties for filing late tax returns or failing to declare income.
New Zealand Property Investors' Federation executive officer Andrew King said many Christchurch rental owners were first-time landlords, and some may not be aware they have to pay tax.
Inland Revenue Investigations and Advice group manager Patrick Goggin said there were no exact figures on how many new landlords were on the Canterbury market, but there would be many.
"With 5000 to 10,000 people that are displaced and requiring short-term rentals... we're pretty confident that there's an increase in the number of first-time landlords."
Inland Revenue "have an intelligence office monitoring what's happening" and action would be taken if landlords failed to comply, Goggin said. Inland Revenue was taking a pro-active approach to make landlords aware of their tax obligations before they got hit by big bills, he said.
"People who are thinking of renting out accommodation should find out what tax they'll need to pay so they can include it in their plans. "If landlords have been renting out property for some time and have not saved their tax payments, they may find themselves under some pressure.
People on salaries may not have completed a tax return before and may not even be aware they need to file a return for rental income.
According to Census data, more than 44,000 households were already renting their homes in Christchurch in 2013, and housing demand in the city is expected to reach its peak towards the end of this year.
Rental income from residential properties, rooms in a home, sleepouts, caravans and holiday homes is all taxable at a rate of between 10 and 45 per cent, depending on income levels.
Those renting out rooms to boarders must reach a certain threshold for rent before they need to pay income tax. A single boarder must be paying $250 or more in rent for it to be taxable, and multiple boarders more than $205 in rent each.
Tax returns are due by July 7.BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces on Tuesday deployed tanks and artillery around Ramadi to confront Islamic State fighters who have captured the city in a major defeat for the Baghdad government and its Western backers.
After Ramadi fell on Sunday, Shi’ite militiamen allied to the Iraqi army had advanced to a nearby base in preparation for a counterattack on the city, which lies in the Sunni Muslim province of Anbar, just 110 km (70 miles) northwest of Baghdad.
As pressure mounted for action to retake the city, a local government official urged Ramadi residents to join the police and the army for what the Shi’ite militiamen said would be the “Battle of Anbar”.
The White House said a U.S.-led air campaign would back multi-sectarian Iraqi forces in their attempt to regain Ramadi, whose fall exposed the limits of U.S. airpower in its battle against the radical Sunni Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria.
“The United States will be very supportive of multi-sectarian efforts who are taking command-and-control orders from the Iraqi central government,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in Washington.
The United States is anxious that the Shi’ite militia are controlled by the Iraqi authorities rather than Iranian advisors. It is likewise worried that the fighting in Iraq will become a polarising clash between Shi’ites and Sunnis.
Islamic State fighters set up defensive positions and laid landmines, witnesses said. The Islamists were also going house to house searching for members of the police and armed forces.
The group has promised to set up courts based on Islamic Sharia law, as they had done in other towns and cities they have conquered. They released about 100 prisoners from the counter-terrorism detention centre in the city.
Saed Hammad al-Dulaimi, 37, a school teacher who is still in the city, said: “Islamic State used loudspeakers urging people who have relatives in prison to gather at the main mosque in the city centre to pick them up. I saw men rushing to the mosque to receive their prisoners.”
The move could prove popular with residents who have complained that people are often subject to arbitrary detention.
Sami Abed Saheb, 37, a Ramadi restaurant owner, said Islamic State found 30 women and 71 men in the detention centre. They had been shot in the feet to prevent them escaping when their captors fled.
Witnesses said the black flag of Islamic State was flying over the main mosque, government offices and other prominent buildings in Ramadi.
Jasim Mohammed, 49, who owns a women’s clothing shop, said an Islamic State member had told him he must now sell only traditional Islamic garments.
“I had to remove the mannequins and replace them with other means of displaying the clothes. He told me that I shouldn’t sell underwear because it’s forbidden,” he said.
Islamic State had also promised that food, medicine and doctors would soon be available.
Dulaimi said Islamic State fighters were using cranes to lift blast walls from the streets and bulldozers to shovel away sand barriers built by security forces before they fled.
“I think they (Islamic State) are trying to win the sympathy of people in Ramadi and give them moments of peace and freedom,” he said.
An Iraqi soldier carries a displaced kid from Ramadi on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq May 19, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer
SECTARIAN HOSTILITY
The decision by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is a Shi’ite, to send in the militia, known as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation, to try to retake the predominantly Sunni city could add to sectarian hostility in one of the most violent parts of Iraq.
The Abadi government had pledged to equip and train pro-government Sunni tribes with a view to replicating the model applied during the “surge” campaign of 2006-07, when U.S. Marines turned the tide against al Qaeda fighters — forerunners of Islamic State — by arming and paying local tribes in a movement known as the Anbar Awakening.
But a repeat will be more difficult. Sunni tribal leaders complain that the government was not serious about arming them again, and say they received only token support.
There are fears that weapons provided to Sunni tribes could end up with Islamic State.
When the Iraqi forces beat a hasty retreated from Ramadi at the weekend, they left behind a large amount of military supplies, including about a half a dozen tanks, around 100 wheeled vehicles and some artillery, the Pentagon said.
Asked whether the regular troops should have eliminated such material before quitting the city, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said: “It certainly would have been preferable if they had been destroyed.”
Iraqi ministers on Tuesday stressed the need to arm and train police and tribal fighters. Abadi called for national unity in the battle to defend Iraq.
A spokesman for Iraqi military operations, Saad Maan, said the armed forces controlled areas between Ramadi and the Habbaniya military base about 30 km (20 miles) away, where the militia fighters are waiting.
“Security forces are reinforcing their positions and setting three defensive lines around Ramadi to repel any attempts by terrorists to launch further attacks,” Maan said.
“All these three defensive lines will become offensive launch-pads once we determine the zero hour to liberate Ramadi.”
Slideshow (13 Images)
The International Organization for Migration said 40,000 people had been forced to flee the city in the past four days.
About 500 people were killed in the fighting for Ramadi in recent days, local officials said.
Islamic State gains in Ramadi mean it will take longer for Iraqi forces to move against them in Mosul, where militants celebrated victory in Anbar by firing shots into the air, sounding car horns and playing Islamic anthems, residents said.Back in January, Wizard Entertainment announced the cancelation of Wizard Magazine, which had reigned for almost 20 years as one of the most prominent voice of mainstream comics, presumably so that CEO and self-help enthusiast Gareb Shamus could devote more time to his responsibilities running the International Fight League Black Bull Comics the Wizard World family of comic book and entertainment conventions.
It was a pretty surprising move, and I'll admit that as much as I feel I eventually moved away from Wizard, there was a time when I was a devoted reader, and I've got a stack of back issues from 1996 to 2000 to prove it. With the news of the magazine's cancellation, I decided to go through them and enjoy a little nostalgia, and I've got to admit, there's a lot of really good stuff in there. They didn't just pioneer the irreverent, humorous style that would later be completely embraced by the Comics Internet, but the issues I went through featured original work from creators like Stan Sakai and Evan Dorkin, spotlights on offbeat comics like Rick Remender's Black Heart Billy, and recommendations on back issues that were well worth digging through quarter bins for.
And then there was the rest of it.
As you might expect, it's that "rest" that we're here to discuss today, as we sift through pages upon pages detailing a disturbing fixation on Tia Carerre and so, so many pictures of Spawn to bring you ten of Wizard Magazine's most dubious moments! Gene Simmons Tempts Todd McFarlane With His Sisters ( Wizard #87, November 1998)
Saying that KISS's Gene Simmons has said a lot of crazy things in his lifetime is putting it pretty mildly, but his interview in Wizard #87 alongside action figure designer and occasional comic book artist Todd McFarlane is a veritable gold mine of complete insanity.
It doesn't waste time, either: When presented with an opening question that basically amounts to "so are you guys, like, totally best friends in real life?", Simmons launches right into referring to McFarlane as his lover and then slowly moving into a story of how he curried his favor by showing off his hot relatives.
For me, though, the best part was seeing Simmons claim that he was so inspired by McFarlane walking away from Marvel to do something of his own that he had to get him to create characters that would be wholly owned by KISS.
Kevin Smith Doesn't Get Kirby ( Wizard #86, October 1998)
Speaking of strange things people have said in Wizard interviews, a piece on the newly formed Marvel Knights imprint saw the magazine playing word association with future Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada, writer and inker Jimmy Palmiotti, and filmmaker and comic book writer Kevin Smith, of Jersey Girl, Cop Out, and Batman: The Widening Gyre. After dealing with the hot-button issue of lesbians, it ws revealed that Smith "just never got" what the big deal was with Jack Kirby.
For those of you who aren't familiar with his career, Kirby co-created Captain America and invented the romance comic with Joe Simon, then co-created the Marvel Universe with Stan Lee -- which means he also had a hand in creating modern super-hero comics as we know them. While creating the Fourth World saga at DC in the '70s, he wrote and drew an entire finished comic book every two weeks. He also worked in animation, and literally had so many ideas that he could not drive a car. So it's pretty understandable that someone couldn't see why that would be important.
Smith would later play a character named "Jack Kirby" in the 2003 movie Daredevil.
The New Gods Suck ( Wizard #93, May 1999)
As far as not getting Kirby, though, it looks like Smith wasn't alone: In their annual April Fool's issue, Wizard swapped out their "Famous Firsts" feature for a "Famous Worsts," in which Kirby's opus was ripped on for never inspiring a series that made it more that 28 issues. Incidentally, Battle Chasers was super-hot!!
Now admittedly, even though it's lumped in with soft targets like "Catwoman's Cat-Armor," NFL SuperPro and U.S. 1 (which is actually pretty awesome), there's a strong possibility that this was an elaborate part of the joke. Either that, or someone in the Price Guide department had a hole in their New Gods run that they were trying to fill by driving down demand, but c'mon: Manipulating the back issue market for personal gain? There's no way.
Rob Liefeld Changes Everything Forever For a Year ( Wizard #60, May 1996)
In an interview about the highly anticipated "Heroes Reborn" relaunches of Captain America, The Avengers, Fantastic Four and Iron Man back in 1996, Rob "The Rob Liefeld" Liefeld assured Wizard that there was "not a chance" readers would ever see Cap's familiar "A" on his forehead again.
Needless to say, it was back 13 months later.
Harlan Ellison: "The World's Angriest Fanboy" ( Wizard #97, September 1999)
Speculative fiction author Harlan Ellison is known as having something of a temper (actually, he's known for once mailing 213 bricks and a dead gopher to a publisher's office, but let's just go with "temper" for now), which may have something to do with being an award-winning author who gets referred to in actual headlines as "the World's Angriest Fanboy."
The gem of the piece, though, is the excerpt above, where he complains about how much he hates having his swearing censored, as reported in an article that censors his swearing in exactly the way he's complaining about. Say what you want about Wizard, but at least they were willing to print an article referring to themselves as morons.
A Completely Inexplicable Interview With Raven ( Wizard #97, September 1999)
All right, look: I like comics. I like pro wrestling. I like Raven in both fields -- the issue of Spider-Man's Tangled Web that he cowrote with Brian Azzarello is probably the highlight of the series. But seriously, this may in fact be the worst interview I have ever read.
It's hard to pinpoint exactly where this thing goes off the rails, but it's definitely there by the time that the interviewer gleefully fantasizes about beating Callista Flockhart with a chair, and it just keeps going downhill from there. I mean, they had a long way to go to get past the similar interview with Kevin Nash the previous month where he talked about peeing in the sink on an airplane, but man. They did it.
THE DRAGONMASTER ( Wizard #95, July 1999)
I don't really have a joke for this ad for the Franklin Mint's classiest dragon-related sterling silver ring, I just wanted to point out that this is unquestionably the coolest dude who has ever been seen in the pages of Wizard magazine. He understands the lethal combination of leather jacket, chest hair and faceted genuine hematite. That is what makes him The Dragonmaster, and we can all learn from him.
Now, this ad, on the other hand...
Sailor and the 7 Ballz ( Wizard #100, January 2000)
Friends, that is a full-page ad for Sailor and the 7 Ballz, an allegedly erotic and completely unlicensed fan-made film and video game (not safe for work or sanity) in which one of the Dragon Balls from Dragon Ball Z causes Sailor Moon to grow a penis on her wedding day.
I'm not kidding. That is a thing that exists. In a full-page ad in Wizard's anniversary special.
" Wizard is great!" -- Wizard ( Wizard #97, September 1999)
Speaking of things that were advertised in Wizard, here's an ad in Wizard that quotes Wizard in an attempt to get you to buy something from Wizard.
That's... well, that's completely insane. But at least it's an isolated incident --
Okay, so maybe it happened a couple of times. It's not like they used themselves as a reference in order to shill something they were themselves selling all the time or any--
I could go on, but you guys can see where I'm going with this, right? Right.
Hard-Hitting Interviews ( Wizard #108, September 2000)
You know, I've been poking a lot of fun at Wizard in this article, but you can't deny that every now and then, they did some genuine reporting. They went after the facts and had the courage to ask the questions that no other publications were willing to get the answers no one else wanted to dig for.
You know, like that time they asked Paul Dini how he'd have sex with Harley Quinn if she was real.
So long, Wizard. You certainly were a magazine.Baseball Hall of Famer Wade Boggs discusses the strangest autograph request he's ever received, memorabilia he's kept from his playing career and how often he gets asked about his appearance on "The Simpsons." (5:04)
Golden State Warriors forward Harrison Barnes promises to fill his offseason with staying in shape, playing video games and signing autographs.
Warriors forward Harrison Barnes has implemented an autograph policy for the offseason. David Sherman/Getty Images
Barnes announced on his Facebook page on Friday that he is implementing an autograph policy that will allow his fans to get his signature, free of charge, in the offseason.
"Since I get so many requests for autographs, I bought a P.O. Box for all of you to send items for me to sign," Barnes wrote.
"I'm really excited to sign for everyone who's ever asked me for an autograph. I appreciate all the messages and replies I get on social media. This is my thank you to all of you and a token of my appreciation for not only supporting me as a player but as a person as well."
Barnes wrote that in order for fans to qualify for an autograph, they must write a handwritten letter explaining why they want an item signed and send a photo of them holding the item.
Fans, who are permitted only one autograph per person, also must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope for Barnes to return the item.
"My time is limited because of daily workouts, 'Games of Thrones,' 'House of Cards,' and video games," Barnes wrote. "Items will be sent back as soon as possible."The FDA Seizes Kratom – a Pain Reliever not on DEA Schedule
On August 4, 2016 U.S. Marshals acting under the direction of the FDA seized more than 100 cases of kratom belonging to Nature Therapeutics LLC in Grover Beach, California. The product was worth nearly $150,000. Kratom is not a controlled substance, so possessing it is not against the law in the United States or in California. However, because kratom has been found by consumers who purchase it to have some therapeutic value as a natural remedy, the FDA alleges that it has the right to regulate and impede its distribution and sale.
The FDA Press Announcement from August 4, 2016 reads as follows:
The U.S. Department of Justice filed the complaint, on behalf of the FDA, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that the seized kratom products are unapproved new drugs and misbranded drugs under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
Kratom, whose botanical name is mitragyna speciosa korth, is a tree that grows in tropical regions in Southeast Asia. It is native to Thailand, Malaysia and Myanmar. Kratom has been traditionally used as an herbal drug in Thailand. Farmers and manual laborers chewed on the leaves in order to relieve muscle aches and to give them more energy to do their work. Kratom is not on any controlled substance schedule in the United States, although the Thai government has outlawed its use in Thailand.
According to the DEA Drug and Chemical Evaluation Section, kratom, when consumed in moderation, can relieve pain and increase energy.
Pharmacology studies show that mitragynine has opioid-like activity in animals. It inhibits electrically stimulated ileum and vas deferens smooth muscle contraction. Through actions on centrally located opioid receptor, it inhibits gastric secretion and reduces pain response. Kratom has been described as producing both stimulant and sedative effects. At low doses, it produces stimulant effects, with users reporting increased alertness, physical energy, talkativeness and sociable behavior.
Since kratom is not a controlled substance, Nature Therapeutics LLC is not being charged with its possession. Instead, what is being alleged is that the substance was described to purchasers as having therapeutic effects or as being an effective remedy when it has not undergone regulation through proper channels. In other words, it is not the substance itself that is at issue, but the company selling it is being censured for the way the kratom has been marketed. It is not illegal to possess kratom. It is not illegal to sell it. It is not illegal to buy it. It is just illegal to sell it claiming that it is a remedy. The thing being prosecuted is speech.
Oddly enough, the Nature Therapeutics website seems to have entirely omitted to say what its product is good for. Under the heading of “Why Kratom Therapy?” there is no mention of the use of the product as a drug:
Our Kratom powders originate from organically grown trees. Our growers use no pesticides or insecticides in or around the area of the trees. We insist on strict harvesting and clean packaging practices. We also do regular lab testing on all products before they are offered to our customers.
Very carefully, the site describes its kratom product as pure and of the very best quality, but it does not boast of any therapeutic effects whatsoever. It seems that purchasers must learn about the pain relieving effects of kratom through word of mouth or a careful reading of the description on the DEA website. The DEA is allowed to speak about the therapeutic effects of kratom, but those who sell the product must not.
We live in an age when it is very difficult for ordinary people to get remedies and medical help for the things that ail them. If a substance is on the DEA schedule of controlled substances, then it is illegal to possess it. But if by chance it is not controlled, and yet has a beneficial effect, companies are not allowed to sell it as a remedy, without first going through a costly approval process. On the other hand, you can sell it legally, as long as you don’t tell customers what it is good for. Sell it as fish food, and the FDA will get off your back. So in effect, the law worries more about what you say than what you do. The case against Kratom Therapeutics will hinge on proof of what they might have said to customers about the therapeutic effects of their product. If they said the same thing the DEA has published openly on its website, then they are in trouble.
The real losers when the FDA went after kratom were the ultimate consumers: people who are in pain and looking for an inexpensive, natural and effective remedy.AUSTRALIA'S super rich aren't immune to the property downtown with real estate performance in battler suburbs outstripping the country's wealthiest postcodes.
The property divide between the blue-ribbon belt and struggle street has narrowed significantly as interest rates and homebuyer jitters continue to erode the top end of the market.
Median house prices in prestigious suburbs fell up to 43 per cent since peaking in 2008, according to RP Data figures out today.
Property experts predict that the performance slide in salubrious enclaves could continue for at least three years, as luxury home buyers remain sidelined in what is one of the most overpriced real estate sectors of the world.
And while price slashing may attract bargain hunters, pundits warn that the premium home market is riskier than ever due to the lofty Aussie dollar and volatile share market.
Perth's Mossman Park, crowned Australia’s most expensive suburb last year, now lays claim to the title of hardest hit by the property gloom.
Real estate losses dragged the suburb's median house price down by 43.1 per cent to $1.25 million.
Mortgage stress
Sydney's well-heeled Hunters Hill, which has a mean taxable income of $125,000 a year, suffered a similar fate, with median home prices falling 31.1 per cent to $1.41 million.
Meanwhile, mining boom capital Perth has the unenviable title of holding nine of worst performing council region’s followed by Sydney (7) and Adelaide, Hobart and Melbourne (all with 3).
In contrast to the pointy end of the market, median house prices performed best in cheaper suburbs.
The smallest declines nationally were in parts of Western Sydney, home to some of the country's lowest-income earners.
In Blacktown, Liverpool, and Campbelltown, median house performances run against the grain of recent figures showing rocketing mortgage default rates. None recorded a fall in median price.
Similarly, across the list of 25 best-performing capital city regions, none have a median house price greater than $1 million and more than half have a median house price which is below $500,000.
Perfect storm
RP Data research analyst Cameron Kusher said wealthy suburbs have dragged down Australia’s house values.
"The premium sector is being impacted by a perfect storm of forces such as consumer conservatism, higher interest rates, poorly performing equities markets, unstable global economic conditions and lower levels of business and consumer confidence," he said.
However, he predicts that both ends of the market will remain soft for some time.
"With subdued residential property markets likely to persist over the next year, we anticipate that the premium and most affordable segments will under |
, the amount of space on his hard drive and a list of dozens of programs loaded onto it. He was later arrested, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for financial fraud and identity theft.
“Technology is evolving and law enforcement is struggling to keep up,” said Brian L. Owsley, a retired federal magistrate judge from Texas who was not involved in either case. “It’s a cat-and-mouse game.”
Still searching
Even though investigators suspected that Mo was in Iran, the uncertainty around his identity and location complicated the case. Had he turned out to be a U.S. citizen or a foreigner living within the country, a search conducted without a warrant could have jeopardized his prosecution.
Federal magistrate Judge Kathleen M. Tafoya approved the FBI’s search warrant request on Dec. 11, 2012, nearly five months after the first threatening call from Mo. The order gave the FBI two weeks to attempt to activate surveillance software sent to the texan.slayer@yahoo.com e-mail address. All investigators needed, it seemed, was for Mo to sign on to his account and, almost instantaneously, the software would start reporting information back to Quantico.
The logistical hurdles proved to be even more complex than the legal ones. The first search warrant request botched the Yahoo e-mail address for Mo, mixing up a single letter and prompting the submission of a corrected request. A software update to a program the surveillance software was planning to target, meanwhile, raised fears of a malfunction, forcing the FBI to refashion its malicious software before sending it to Mo’s computer.
The warrant authorizes an “Internet web link” that would download the surveillance software to Mo’s computer when he signed on to his Yahoo account. (Yahoo, when questioned by The Washington Post, issued a statement saying it had no knowledge of the case and did not assist in any way.)
The surveillance software was sent across the Internet on Dec. 14, 2012 — three days after the warrant was issued — but the FBI’s program didn’t function properly, according to a court document submitted in February,
“The program hidden in the link sent to texan.slayer@yahoo.com never actually executed as designed,” a federal agent reported in a handwritten note to the court.
But, it said, Mo’s computer did send a request for information to the FBI computer, revealing two new IP addresses in the process. Both suggested that, as of last December, Mo was still in Tehran.
Julie Tate contributed to this report.ORIGINAL POST (Scroll down for a slideshow of today's protests):
Before she appeared at the American Bankers Association annual convention today, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation head Sheila Bair addressed protesters at the conference.
(Check out HuffPost's coverage of the protests here.)
Bair said she "strongly supports" the creation of a consumer financial protection agency, which would shield Americans from confusing credit card and mortgage offers. Bair also expressed regret that existing regulations hadn't done more to prevent the crisis.
Here's Bair:
"In looking at indecipherable credit card statements and documents, mortgages you can't understand and APRs from payday loans and high overdraft fees, I don't see how anyone can say we've done a good job protecting consumers from financial services."
Bair also added, "It's time to put an end to the 'too big to fail' doctrine... Yes, no more bailouts, no more bailouts!"
WATCH:
UPDATED 10/26 2:34:
Via the Flickr and Twitter accounts of National People's Action, the SEIU and other protest participants, we've compiled a slideshow of various pictures of the scene in Chicago today. Check out the photos below:
(Note the photos also include a protest that occurred yesterday in New York City. The Northwwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition gathered in front of the home of Goldman Sachs CEO, Lloyd Blankfein.)
(Check back here regularly for updates and photos from the protest.)The city of Halifax is under fire over sidewalks that are still clogged with snow and ice and some residents are suggesting the responsibility of sidewalk clearing should be turned back over to homeowners.
It was only last winter the city made the change and took over sidewalk clearing across the entire HRM. Until then, it was a patchwork of some areas of town getting the municipal service and others not.
Judy Howe is one resident not impressed with the job the city is doing.
"I have to get exercise every day because I had surgery last week on my knee," she said.
Howe says her doctor recommended walking as a way to help her heal, but in her area of Halifax, on Queen Street, it's tough.
"Afraid to walk on the sidewalk, afraid to fall and damage what's already been repaired and or break hips or legs or something else," she said.
When homeowners and businesses were responsible for clearing the snow, Howe says she never experienced problems with sidewalks.
She says even though Halifax is now paying contractors to do the work, the work isn't being done.
Not everyone agrees with Howe.
Judy Howe says her doctor recommended walking as a way to help her heal, but in her area of Halifax, on Leppert Street, it's tough. (CBC)
Janet Merrithew owns Sweet Janes and says the repeated storms are difficult to clean up after. Especially with the Valentine's Day rush, she's more than happy to have someone else dealing with sidewalks.
"As a small business owner it's difficult to keep up on things so you want to keep expenses down when you can do so," she said. "I think it's great that the city is able to help us out."
On the other corner of the street, at Atlantic News, it's a different story where staff have cleaned the sidewalk on both sides of their building.
Owner Michele Gerard said they buy lots of salt
"We just keep at it," she said. "We just regularly, consistently keep shovelling while it's snowing. We want customers to come and be able to come in the door. I want them to come in safely and conveniently so we've been very happy to keep it down to the pavement."
The city says they have had only three slip and fall claims so far this winter.
Changing the sidewalk clearing policy required a vote from council. Changing it back would require the same and there's no indication that will happen.A rendering of FOX 5's future home at 7272 Wisconsin Ave. in Bethesda, Maryland. WTTG-TV's move-in date is slated for 2021. A rendering of FOX 5's future home at 7272 Wisconsin Ave. in Bethesda, Maryland. WTTG-TV's move-in date is slated for 2021.
- FOX 5 is excited to announce that we will be moving our news headquarters to Bethesda, Maryland.
WTTG-TV and WDCA-TV have entered into an agreement to pursue a lease at 7272 Wisconsin Ave., which is about 2 miles from our current location at 5151 Wisconsin Ave. in Friendship Heights where we have been located since 1966.
Our operation will be moving into the Carr Properties Apex building, a new and stunning high-tech complex, which will no doubt help to cement FOX 5’s position as the DMV’s news leader for decades to come.
"We are thrilled to move our facilities to Montgomery County, Maryland into what will be a grade A complex developed by Carr Properties and we thank the state of Maryland and Montgomery County for making this possible. This will be a state-of-the-art facility that will keep us in the heart of the Washington, D.C. metro area and allow us to better serve our community," FOX 5 Vice President and General Manager Patrick Paolini said.
“Fox Television’s relocation to Maryland is further proof that more and more great companies are recognizing the tremendous value and advantages of doing business here,” said Gov. Larry Hogan. “This move, which brings approximately 200 employees into the state, is a win for our state and for Montgomery County as we continue to attract growing companies like Fox.”
The massive complex will take a few years to build and plans are underway to map out our future newsroom. FOX 5’s move-in date is slated for June of 2021, but during that time we will continue to be the only station to turn to no matter if you live in Maryland, DC or Virginia.One year ago, the Rangers sent a group of players to take part in the annual Traverse City Prospects Tournament that, quite honestly, largely consisted of non-prospects. While 2012 first rounder Brady Skjei, 2015 second round pick Ryan Gropp, and 2013 fourth rounder Ryan Graves were notable exceptions, the Blueshirts’ roster at last year’s tournament was not representative of the future. To make matters worse, goaltender Brandon Halverson—the club’s top pick in the 2014 NHL Draft and a Traverse City, Mich. native to boot, was injured and could not participate.
Things are quite different this year, though, as nearly all the organization’s top prospects are taking part in the tournament, which finished its preliminary round of play on Tuesday.
The intrigue surrounding this group of Blueshirt prospects—which has fashioned a 2-0-1 record, so far, while playing a trio of one-goal games—is very high because there are players on the cusp of possibly helping the Rangers immediately this season, others that will be beginning their pro careers in the AHL with the Hartford Wolf Pack, and still others that are providing a glimpse of what may be several years down the road.
Broadway-Bound This Season
The Rangers’ top two forward prospects, Jimmy Vesey and Pavel Buchnevich, are both playing in this year’s Traverse City Tournament. That alone is cause for excitement for fans and team management alike.
Both Vesey and Buchnevich are expected to contribute at the NHL level this season. The 23 year-old Vesey won the Hobey Baker Award as college hockey’s top player in 2015-16 and was a finalist for the trophy the year before. As a senior at Harvard, Vesey, the team captain, scored 24 goals and totaled 46 points in 33 games. The season before, in 2014-15, Vesey notched a career-high 32 goals and 58 points.
A bit of a late-bloomer, Vesey turned into an offensive stud in college, and the Rangers are desperate to add scoring punch—especially from young blood on an entry-level contract—to their lineup. The Rangers won the much-hyped battle to sign Vesey as a free agent in August in part because they guaranteed him a roster spot on varsity this fall.
Vesey has not disappointed in Traverse City, leading the tournament with three goals and five points through three games. On Monday, he netted both of New York’s goals in a 2-1 victory over Minnesota.
Prior to Vesey’s signing this summer, the organization’s most exciting prospect up front, hands down, had been Buchnevich, a 2013 third round pick who has decided to play in North America this year after three full seasons in the KHL back home in Russia.
Buchnevich seems to be more of a skilled playmaker than sniper, though he did score 16 goals last season. Like Vesey, he should add offensive flair to the Rangers’ attack, and, given the chance, improve the puck moving on the team’s often-struggling power play.
It is likely that Buchnevich, barring a poor or overmatched training camp, will join Vesey as a rookie on the Blueshirts’ opening-night roster. The big question, though, is if he physically will be strong enough to compete over the grind of an 82-game National Hockey League season. He has played against men at the KHL level since he was an 18-year-old, but even Rangers director of player personnel Gordie Clark admitted to NHL.com’s Mike Morreale that Buchnevich needs to build himself up physically—something he has worked on this summer since arriving in New York.
Though he has been held without a point in Traverse City, Buchnevich has shown flashes while skating on a line with Vesey, and there is no questioning his high-end skill level.
Future Blue
Halverson is healthy and in goal for the Rangers this year in his hometown. He and Gropp are both taking part in this tournament in advance of their rookie pro seasons, likely in Hartford, though Halverson will have to battle incumbents Magnus Hellberg, Mackenzie Skapski and Jeff Malcolm during training camp to earn a spot with the Wolf Pack or end up in the ECHL with Greenville.
Still, the presence of Halverson and Gropp—the latter of whom the Rangers traded up to select in the 2015 draft and who scored 34 goals in the WHL last season—is important at this week’s tournament. They are joined by centers Boo Nieves and Steven Fogarty, Rangers’ draft picks who both have developed slowly, spent four years in college, made their AHL debuts on PTOs last spring upon graduating, and who are ticketed to play big roles in Hartford this year.
Nieves, a second round selection in the 2012 NHL Draft, is an elite skater who has filled out his 6-foot-3 frame nicely.He recorded a career-high 31 points in 35 games at the University of Michigan a year ago as a senior, and has impressed so far in Traverse City. While centering Vesey and Buchnevich and serving as team captain, Nieves has registered a goal and two assists so far, with Clark referring to him as “a monster” in this tournament for his solid all-around play.
Fogarty, captain at Notre Dame last season, is a solid two-way center, projected to likely fill a bottom-six role one day in the NHL. The team’s third round pick in 2011, Fogarty is a player to watch this coming season, as well.
Several other players round out an intriguing group of Blueshirts at Traverse City. Defenseman Sean Day, the club’s top pick this past spring, albeit in the third round, is a high-end talent who has had his moments already in this tournament. Swedish forwards Robin Kovacs (19, third rounder in 2015) and Malte Stromwall (22, undrafted free agent) have also stood out in this tournament after impressing during the team’s prospects development camp in late June/early July.
Stromwall had a pair of goals and a shootout game-winner in Saturday’s 5-4 victory over the Dallas Stars, while Kovacs scored twice over the first two games.A woman was killed and three others were injured in Noida when they were hit by a sports utility vehicle (SUV) allegedly driven by drunk police officers on Wednesday evening.The officers, from Bisrakh police station, allegedly got drunk while celebrating Holi and went on a ride in the SUV, a white Tata Safari.Witnesses said they saw the SUV leave the police station at high speed and hit two women and two children passing by. The vehicle went out of control and rammed into a wall, killing one woman.One of the police officers has been identified as Rajiv and a case registered. "We are investigating if he was drunk," said a police officer. It is not known who the SUV belongs to. The injured have been admitted in hospital.Some of the world’s best Smash Bros. players say they are owed thousands of dollars for their performances in a tournament called BEAST 7 held in Sweden last February.
Adam “Armada” Lindgren, the first place winner in the event’s Super Smash Bros. Melee bracket, tweeted yesterday that BEAST 7 had yet to provide “an explanation of exactly where all the money went,” and that the situation had been “handled in a really unprofessional way. Guess I have to talk to the other winners and see what we will do.”
Ramin “Mr. R” Delshad, who placed first in Smash 4 at BEAST 7, also posted yesterday about his missing winnings. He noted that head tournament organizer Alexander “Lolex” Gabrielsson had not responded to his emails since April, and that the rest of the BEAST tournament organizers had told him “not post anything about Lolex until their official statement.”
Compete reached out to Delshad, Lindgren and Lolex for further details yesterday and today, but did not hear back before press time. But it appears very unlikely that the players will be paid, based on comments other tournament officials have made publicly and to Compete.
Yesterday, BEAST staffer Viktor Johansson acknowledged on Reddit that there was a delay on delivering the prize pool, which totaled €12,720 (or $15,109.13) across six different game tournaments. In the statement, Johansson said he had concerns about Lolex’s financial strategy, even ahead of BEAST 7: “I did not want the money to be handled by Lolex only again, because the feeling that he isn’t the best with numbers was already present.” He added: “The way Lolex handled tournaments is pretty much why we’re in our current situation. ‘Going in blind’ is how I would describe it. He does not want to work with a budget.”
Advertisement
BEAST 7 has produced a string of dire news stories. Shortly after the event, BEAST staffer Anna “Annapower89” Fröderberg came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and financial misconduct on the part of BEAST’s Lolex. Twelve members of the BEAST crew stepped down in solidarity with Fröderberg.
In the Reddit post, Johansson wrote that “Lolex seemed very keen on fixing all of the troubles before AP89's statement, and just recently he has been working with us.” In an emailed statement to Compete, a BEAST tournament representative stated that, “except sporadically,” Lolex has been “unresponsive since March,” which is the same month as Annapower89’s sexual harassment allegations. (UPDATE at 6:05 PM: A previous version of this article misstated BEAST’s tournament representative as having said Lolex had not been in contact at all since March.)
The BEAST representative’s statement to Compete went on to say, “The winnings unfortunately cannot be paid out. The money intended to go to prizes has been spent to pay for the unexpectedly high costs of hosting the tournament. The intent was never to make people forget and move on when delaying the information about the prize money. We were concerned for the health of Lolex and chose to not push him too hard, since we still needed his cooperation.” When pressed about the nature of the concerns about Lolex’s health, the BEAST rep clarified, “His mental health.”
Advertisement
When asked by Compete about other methods for paying out the tournament winnings, the BEAST rep responded: “some form of donation or bailout, which seems highly unlikely.”
While competitive gaming is on the rise, it remains an all too common sight to see players complaining about not getting paid their winnings. In July, we reported that winners of the 2016 CS:GO World Championships haven’t yet been paid, seven months after that event happened. A year ago, esports company Doesplay went out of business and disappeared, still owing thousands of dollars to players in prize money. Last May, several prominent Smash players voiced interest in unionizing in an effort to combat tournament over-scheduling and erratic pay-out timelines.BUFFALO TWP — A senior citizen couple is suing Nationwide Insurance and three Buffalo Township police officers who they say wrongfully ransacked their home looking for marijuana plants that were really hibiscus.
Attorney Al Lindsay held a news conference on Thursday to detail the Oct. 7 ordeal of township residents Edward and Audrey Cramer, who are in their 60s.
In October, according to the lawsuit, a neighbor's tree fell on the Cramers' home and caused damage. The couple contacted their homeowner's insurance carrier, Nationwide, to come and assess the damage.
The lawsuit claims that upon the assessment, insurance agent Jonathan Yeamans asked Edward what was inside of a nearby temporary shed. After Edward left to run errands, the lawsuit says Yeamans “reentered the property and took photographs of the flowering hibiscus plants in the Cramers' backyard.
Yeamans then sent the photos of what he though were marijuana plants to the Freeport police, who forwarded them to the Buffalo Township police.
The lawsuit claims that Audrey explained to police that the plants they were seeking were flowering hibiscus, which vaguely resemble marijuana, but was told by police that her husband had lied to her about raising hibiscus and was actually raising marijuana.
The lawsuit said Audrey, 66, sat in the back of a hot police car for 4.5 hours with her hands tightly cuffed behind her back.
When her husband arrived 30 minutes after police, he had guns pointed at him and was also cuffed and placed into the back of a cruiser, the lawsuit says.
Buffalo police officers then ransacked the house looking for marijuana, causing various damage to the home's interior and causing emotional stress to the Cramers, the lawsuit says.
In addition, the lawsuit claims that the Cramers received notification later in October from Nationwide Insurance saying that marijuana was found on the property, “and if they failed to remove the nonexistent marijuana plants, Nationwide would cancel their insurance policy.”
The complaint filed in county court by the Cramers alleges insurance bad faith, defamation, invasion of privacy, negligent infliction of emotional distress and intentional infliction of emotional distress against Nationwide and Yeamans,
The allegations against Buffalo Township Police Sgt. Scott Hess include invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest and excessive force.
Buffalo Township faces civil rights violations by the police department.CIPHER was initially bootstrapped by the founder and Rs 1 crore was invested. In 2016 an initial Friends & Family round of funding raised Rs 0.75 crore. Currently, Rs 3.5 crores is being raised from angel investors and existing investors to fund the first Cancer Clinics.
Serial healthcare-entrepreneur Sonali Srungaram today announced the launch of her oncology help startup venture ‘Cancer Clinics’ in Hyderabad. “It is the beginning of a lasting commitment” she says, to devote time and effort to make life easier for all those who live in great trauma to face this health challenge.
Cancer Clinics - a first of its class dedicated cancer speciality clinic, provides a set of curated services for cancer patients and their carers to improve well-being through integrative care by a team of highly skilled healthcare professionals.
CEO & Co-Chairperson of Dr Reddy's Laboratories Mr. GV Prasad and his wife Mrs. Anuradha, Co- Founder & Managing Trustee, Dr. Reddy’s Foundation, formally opened the ‘Cancer Clinics’ services to the people amidst a gathering of prominent oncologists and healthcare advocates.
Lauding the CancerClinics initiative GV Prasad said "It is very vital to catch cancer early to reduce the disease burden both for the patients and their carers." Such clinics are the need of the hour."
Talking about what led her to create ‘Cancer Clinics’ Sonali Srungaram – Managing Director of ‘Cancer Clinics’ says she understood the need for ‘Cancer Clinics’ after having started CIPHER Healthcare, which delivers large cancer prevention drives. As some of the early customers uncovered malignant lesions, the team at CIPHER also observed a pressing need to handhold them as they got treated.
‘Cancer Clinics’ follows Sonali’s first Pan-India venture ‘Cancer Helpline’ that exposed her and her team to challenges of navigating the health system for cancer treatment and the anxieties that patients, as well as their carers, felt dealing with cancer.
‘Cancer Clinics’ was born after having served 2,50,000 cancer patients and paying one-to-one attention to over 25,000 of them. “Our aspiration is to solve cancer patients’ needs for integrative care and to ease their struggle to find it.” Sonali expressed.
The patient responsive well designed ‘Cancer Clinics’ situated in Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, offers screening, information, advice on nutrition, relaxation classes, psychologist and nursing support for anyone needing to talk or dealing with the most mind-enduring subjects like being a likely candidate, depression, fear of end, fear of cancer recurring and other issues not easy to address in a hospital setting. The initial set of services includes specialist nursing, nutrition, counselling, physiotherapy and coaching.
"There is a wind of change in the landscape of cancer," she explains, "because more people are able to survive cancer. Those with a recurrence live longer. What is needed is a care centre that eases their burden and that’s how ‘Cancer Clinics’ took birth.
After leaving a well paying job in The United Kingdom, Sonali, with her family, and after returning to India, launched a pan India ‘Cancer Helpline’ that has already benefited thousands of people around the world seeking information about the subject and guidance to experience the joys of everyday living and fighting the fear. Patient-centricity and integrative care with sharp focus on cancer is CIPHER’s distinctiveness.
CIPHER is potentially the first healthcare company to create a cadre of professionals called Coaches, medico-social workers who can guide a patient through the treatment and rehabilitation journey to enhance wellbeing. CIPHER has also created specific protocols for cancer patients for nursing, nutrition, counselling and physiotherapy.
People might want to find out more about screening and their treatment options if diagnosed with the ailment. Sonali knew a heart-warming space was needed to digest even the worst of news for those affected and their near and dear ones and that will be Cancer Clinics’ highest priority.
CIPHER was initially bootstrapped by the founder and Rs 1 crore was invested. In 2016 an initial Friends & Family round of funding raised Rs 0.75 crore. Currently, Rs 3.5 crores is being raised from angel investors and existing investors to fund the first Cancer Clinics.
‘Cancer Clinics’ plans to expand to other cities once the new centre establishes its core goals.Tell me true
Tell me why was America sacrificed?
Was it for this that our patriots died?
Was it you? Was it me?
Did I watch too much TV?
Is that a hint of accusation in your eyes?
If it wasn’t for the Chicoms
Being so good at building doodads
Our factories would still be open with jobs on the climb
And it can’t be much fun for them
In China’s worker’s paradise
With all their employees committing suicide
What have we done?
Obama, what have we done?
What have we done to ourselves?
Should we shout?
Should we scream?
What happened to our post war dream?
Oh, Barry, Barry, what did we do?
You probably recognize those modified lyrics as originating from Pink Floyd’s song The Post War Dream from the album The Final Cut.
I find it interesting that the original prelude into an anti-war album with small modifications would apply so aptly to President Obama as he pushes for a selfless bombing of Syria without losing the original theme or context; well perhaps, I did selfish up the lyrics a bit…Mrs. Thatcher might even call it an improvement or correction. But, would lyricist and bassist Roger Waters agree in the present context?
AdvertisementsUpdated May 26 with final testimony - By this time next month New Life Evangelistic Center could know whether St. Louis will give the downtown shelter a new occupancy permit without the approval of its neighbors. The city's Board of Building Appeals finished hearing testimony Thursday in an appeal requested by New Life. The shelter is also asking for an exemption to continue operating within 500 feet of a school.
The appeal is a follow-up to a December 2014 ruling, when another city board found New Life was a detriment to the neighborhood.
New Life is trying to keep offering shelter to as many as 300 people a night. The city and many of the shelter's neighbors want New Life to reduce its numbers or close.
Rev. Raymond Redlich, New Life's vice president, was the sole witness on the final day of testimony. He said setting a limit on the number of people New Life serves conflicts with his religious beliefs.
"We believe that we are mandated by God to help the poor and the homeless and we would very much be conflicted if we had to turn somebody away when we know that they very well might die on a winter night out there," Redlich said.
Redlich also said other shelters would not be able to take care of all of the homeless in St. Louis without New Life.
After testifying for almost an hour, Redlich was cross-examined by city attorney Michael Garvin and attorney Elkin Kistner, who represents real estate developer Brad Waldrop and several other residents and business owners.
Redlich agreed with Kistner that New Life would not be at the appeals hearing if Waldrop hadn't petitioned the city to take a look at the downtown shelter's effect on the neighborhood.
"The people who, in effect, started this matter, who cared about their neighborhood, should be deprived of the opportunity to weigh in as to whether or not the overnight shelter application permit should be granted for 1411 Locust, that's what you're requesting," Kistner said.
Redlich said New Life wouldn't be asking to skip getting the approval of its neighbors if the neighbors weren't prejudiced against the shelter.
The Board of Building Appeals will hear closing arguments June 16 before deciding whether to grant New Life the exemptions it's requested.
Updated April 28 — Testimony for and against New Life Evangelistic Center continued Thursday in the fifth hearing before the city’s Board of Building Appeals. The city board is tasked with deciding whether the downtown shelter can apply for a new occupancy permit without written support from its neighbors, and despite being next door to a school.
The most significant witness to testify Thursday was Scott Egan, a shelter manager for New Life Evangelistic Center.
In contrast to witnesses for the St. Louis Public Library and Confluence Academy, Egan said the environment immediately surrounding New Life has improved since the city ruled last year that New Life was a detriment to the neighborhood.
“I can’t speak to what goes on at the library or what goes on at Christ Church Cathedral,” said Egan, adding that New Life has hired security guards, and now enforces a no loitering policy. People are only allowed to congregate immediately outside New Life before they are admitted each night.
Asked about photos of people loitering across the street near the school and library, Egan questioned whether the people in the photos were residents of New Life.
“I believe it’s the library district’s responsibility to provide security for the library. I believe it’s the school security’s (responsibility) to provide security in front of the school. And I believe if that’s a problem for the school then that’s something they need to address with the police department,” said Egan.
New Life’s neighbors include the Central Library and Confluence Academy. They hold the shelter accountable for what they say is a dangerous environment.
Egan, like New Life founder Larry Rice, sees serving the homeless as a religious imperative.
“I’m a member of a religious community that’s carrying out a mandate that we feel as Christians was given to us by Christ to fulfill our duty to house the homeless, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit those sick and in prison,” said Egan, referring to a scripture in the gospel of Matthew.
If the city board rules with the city’s building commissioner and denies the shelter’s appeal for an occupancy permit, New Life plans to refile a federal court case arguing that they have a right to operate a shelter on religious freedom grounds.
Updated April 1, 2016 with details from third hearing — New Life Evangelistic Center introduced its first witness Thursday in a city appeals process that will determine whether the downtown shelter can obtain a new occupancy permit.
STL Winter Outreach founder Teka Childress testified that New Life plays a vital role by providing emergency shelter.
“We cannot blame New Life for the fact that we have homeless people downtown. We have homeless people throughout our country, especially in urban areas. And the problem is homelessness and what we need is a community to do more about it,” said Childress. “New Life is part of that continuum of help to offer emergency shelter that cannot be gotten quickly almost anywhere else.”
STL Winter Outreach volunteers comb the streets of St. Louis on cold nights to bring people indoors. Childress also works for BJC Behavioral Health, and began working with the homeless at a shelter called Karen House in the 1970s.
She testified that shelters that serve fewer people than New Life does would be better, but until more shelters are able to open New Life needs to be able to offer as much shelter as necessary.
“Part of the solution is opening a lot of small shelters all over, but it’s very difficult to open a shelter outside of downtown,” Childress said. “My fear is that the homeless would have no place to go if New Life were to close.”
One of the police officers who testified for the city Thursday also said New Life is sometimes the only place for the homeless to go.
Officer Larry Dampier said he and his partner “had to use New Life as our last resort” this winter when other shelters were full.
Dampier and his partner also testified that they see fights break out among people outside of New Life on a regular basis, often over items of clothing or food dropped off for them. They also said they saw often saw residents of New Life drinking alcohol, using drugs and urinating in public.
“We get a high volume of calls because of the gatherings during the [intake and release] times,” Dampier said. “They range from loitering to I think these people are fighting, I think there’s drug sales.”
Dampier also said earlier this week he handled a sexual assault case involving a registered sex offender who regularly stays at New Life.
A teacher and administrator with the charter school located across the street form New Life also testified Thursday.
Business administrator Gloria Willis said she hired security to clear people off the grounds of Confluence Academy Prep before school each morning, and that a New Life resident was recently arrested after approaching a female student.
Teacher Suzy Catarinicchia said that learning is disrupted in her classroom at times when her students are disturbed by what they see out of the classroom windows, which look out on New Life.
“We have seen what appears to be drug usage. We have seen public urination. We have seen acts of oral sex,” Catarinicchia said. “We’ve seen what appear to be drug interactions as far as exchanges. We’ve seen physical fights. We’ve seen verbal fights.”
Catarinichia said her students have also called 911 on their cell phones to get people help on several occasions, including once when a woman left the shelter with a toddler before falling asleep on her luggage and allowing the child to run in the street.
Homeless advocate Teka Childress was the final witness to testify on Thursday. New Life residents and staff are expected to speak at the next hearing scheduled for April 21.
Updated March 24 after second day of testimony -- A downtown homeless shelter continues to draw fire from its neighbors as a city board considers a new permit for the shelter.
Residents and business owners with property near New Life Evangelistic Center testified Thursday in support of the city’s decision to deny the shelter’s request for exemptions.
New Life wants an occupancy permit to house as many as 300 people a night, but the St. Louis building commissioner says it’s against the city’s code to issue a permit within 500 feet of a school or without the written support of its neighbors.
Matt O’Leary was the first resident to testify Thursday. He said New Life has made the neighborhood more dangerous over the past 18 months.
“I stopped taking my children to Lucas Park and to Central Library in the end of 2014 when I forbade my wife and my nanny from taking my children into the vicinity of Lucas Park, Central Library, New Life Evangelistic Center due to the chaos and violence,” O’Leary said.
O’Leary works for real estate developer Brad Waldrop, who initiated a petition process against New Life a few years back. That petition resulted in the city finding that New Life was a detriment to the neighborhood last year.
Residents Lauralyn Parmelee and Howard Wynder also testified against New Life. Parmelee said she no longer feels safe walking down her street and Wynder said he discovered that a man on the sex offender list has stayed at New Life on multiple occasions.
Real estate developer Brad Waldrop and restauranteur Adam Frager testified as business owners with property near the shelter. Frager owns restaurant Blood and Sand. Both men said they’ve witnessed drug activity connected to New Life and that the shelter has had a negative impact on their businesses. Waldrop said one of his lessees is suing him in order to leave his building eearly.
The final witness for St. Louis Public Library, Barry Berry, also testified Thursday. Berry is in charge of the library’s security and custodial services, and said the library pays almost $150,000 a year on those two services.
Witnesses who support New Life are expected to testify on March 31.
Updated March 10 after first day of testimony--New Life Evangelistic Center is back before a city board a year after the St. Louis Board of Public Service declared its homeless shelter was a "detriment to the neighborhood"and ordered New Life to reduce the number of people it houses each night or apply for a new occupancy permit.
The city's Board of Building Appeals is considering New Life's request to for permit exemptions in order to continue housing as many as 325 people a night without getting written support from its neighbors. New Life's location across the street from charter school Confluence Academy is also at issue.
The St. Louis Building Division denied those requests in December. In a letter to New Life, Building Commissioner Frank Oswald wrote that it didn’t seem like New Life had made enough changes to stop being a detriment to the neighborhood and added that he did “not believe it would be sound policy to grant an exemption that would allow (New Life) to simply continue ‘business as usual’ with its shelter operations.”
&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Now New Life is appealing that decision, arguing that the shelter has made changes. The shelter also argues that the city waived its right to prohibit New Life from operating a shelter near a school since New Life was there before charter school Confluence Academy opened across the street.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;In appeal paperwork filed in January, New Life Attorney Todd Lubben also wrote that since New Life has been a homeless shelter |
he thinks he can wave a magic wand and suddenly everything will be great. He is a hopemonger’. It is true I talk about hope a lot and the implication is if you talk about hope you must be naive, your head must be in the clouds…you must not be wise to the world and know what it takes to bring about real change.
“But the critics and cynics do not understand what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism, hope is not ignorance of the challenges that stand between you and your dreams. Hope is exactly the opposite – hope is believing and then working and then fighting for things.”
Stirring, articulate words and ones that came back to me as the final whistle blew in Liverpool’s FA Cup defeat to West Ham earlier this month. Conceding a goal right at the end of extra-time from a free-kick that a) should not have been awarded and b) could have been avoided had Lucas not committed one of his typically needless fouls, was a sickening way to exit the competition, and on the back of the ticket protest at Anfield a few days earlier, I could not have been the only one feeling that being a Liverpool supporter was once again proving to be a trying affair. Fury and frustration in the stands, poor performances and results on the pitch; it was like The Hodge and those two American hucksters had never left. Hope – that’s what I needed, hope that things could and would get better.
And then it came. First through the words of the manager following the loss at Upton Park. “It’s not the most easy season for Liverpool FC, a lot of things happen and nothing is easy from the hand,” he said. “But it’s our situation and maybe the history of Liverpool, how everything started, maybe if we want to see it really positively we are again just at the start point of the future. So, in this moment, we fight for the next step.”
Shortly after there came the news that having witnessed 10,000 supporters leave Anfield early during the 2-2 draw with Sunderland, the owners had decided to retreat from unmoral ground – ticket prices were to be frozen for the 2016-17 season, the offer of £9 tickets was to be increased to 10,000 across the entire campaign and categorisation for away fans was to be abolished altogether. Stunning, splendid news, proof that people protest can have a strong, immediate effect and a little bit more of that much needed thing: hope.
It’s an intangible thing, hope, you can neither touch it or see it, but you know when it’s there, spreading through the atmosphere, giving you reason to believe an upturn is around the corner. They felt it across large sways of America in 2008 and we, as Reds, should feel it is running through our club right now.
There will be many of you who have felt hope ever since Jurgen Klopp became Liverpool manager last October, striding into town with his jeans, black shirt and talking about bring “emotional football” back to the club. It was easy to be seduced, particularly given this smiling German had won back-to-back Bundesliga titles with a team that went from near bankruptcy to breathtaking performances and achievements under his charge. But I for one was not fainting like a teenage girl at a Bros concert (ask your parents, kids) and hailing the new man as the Messiah, because I had been here so many times before – new manager, fresh optimism, ultimate disappointment.
That could prove the case with Klopp, too, but somewhat paradoxically I have a firmer belief in his abilities to make this club of ours great again now then when we arrived amid great fanfare four months ago. The results have been poor but it’s clear he has a plan.
That belief – that hope – is strengthened by what he said after the West Ham game. Klopp could easily have bemoaned his lot after a fourth game without victory for Liverpool (fifth if you include the League Cup semi-final, second leg against Stoke at Anfield that required penalties for the hosts to prevail) and yet another in which his seemingly brainless side conceded from a set-piece. Instead he focused on the positives, drawing on the strength of the collective to put forward a case in believing that the bright future starts now. And well, there could be no brighter start in that context than the owners bowing to the will of the supporters – collective strength 1-0 greed.
That was a huge off-the-pitch victory and this Sunday Liverpool have the chance to secure a huge on-the-pitch one, too. Manchester City may be in a rut right now but they remain favourites to win the League Cup Final, and fair enough given they’re higher than we are in the Premier League and, quite frankly, have better players. But I’ve seen enough of City this season to know they can be beaten, especially if Liverpool play with confidence and energy – in other words, repeat what they did in securing that 4-1 win at the Etihad Stadium last November. The Sky Blues were ripped apart by the Reds inside 32 minutes and whatever Manuel Pellegrini and his men say, the scars will still be sore.
The return of Daniel Sturridge also benefits Liverpool’s attacking play, as seen in the recent 6-0 demolition of Aston Villa. And while that victory was followed by a drab goalless draw at Augsburg, Klopp’s boys are no doubt a more threatening prospect now then they have been for months.
Victory at Wembley would give Liverpool a first trophy in four years, which for a club whose reputation is built on collecting silver pots season in, season out, is important. But more than that, it will fuel the sense that there really is something to get behind here, specifically a manager who can definitely win honours against the odds in this country as well as his own and a group of players who have what it takes to deliver on the big stage.
Some – and I’m looking at you here, Simon Mignolet – should not be allowed to use a winner’s medal as reason to be kept on beyond this season, but for those who remain will come a strengthening of resolve and belief that they can achieve greater success at the club in the years to come. We will have that belief too, that renewed optimism. That hope.
All this may sound like wishy-washy nonsense, but as Obama told those who came to listen to him speak in Providence, hope is not a form of blind ignorance, it does not ignore the challenges ahead, which in Liverpool’s case are plentiful. Hope is instead believing that with a combination of hard work and fight, you can make substantial and significant improvements.
It’s already been achieved at Liverpool this season by a group of supporters who had hope a mass walkout would lead to fairer ticket prices and it can be achieved by a manager who clearly has hope that despite the bad, good is within reach if his players are willing to adhere to his principals. Indeed Klopp has already proved that can be the case in Germany, where he became known as a Menschenfanger; the type of guy who can literally talk people into doing things they did not feel possible.
In case you’ve forgotten, Obama won the 2008 election and went onto introduce the most significant health reform in modern American history. Liverpool can with the 2016 League Cup Final and much more beyond. They – we – just need to have hope.According to a new dialogue on the mobile Facebook website, the company will soon be forcing users of the service to download the native Android Facebook Messenger app in order to even view conversations.
The mobile site has been pushing users to download Messenger for some time, but it in the last few days, Facebook has begun much more aggressively shuffling mobile web users who go to the chat (messages) tab over to the Messenger app. Simply tapping the "messages" tab on the mobile web UI will immediately send you through to the Play Store listing for Messenger without any warning whatsoever. At that point, you can hit back or multitask to the browser, where you'll see the above splash with an ominous message:
Soon you'll only be able to view your messages from Messenger.
The implication here is obvious: mobile web Facebook messaging and conversations are going away. The "x" in the top-right corner can be tapped, revealing your conversation list. But the moment you tap a conversation? You guessed it: back to the Messenger Play Store listing! Hit back again, and the above splash reappears, at which point you can hit the "x" again, finally revealing your selected conversation and allowing you to message normally.
Still, it seems Facebook is making its message on messaging clear: get your conversations out of the mobile web UI and onto the Messenger app, because soon you won't have a choice. There is no reason to believe this will affect the desktop web version of the chat feature.The Iranian-backed attack in Iraqi Kurdistan is nothing short of disastrous for the United States, for U.S. interests and U.S. allies in the region, and for American prestige.
It’s a hockey-style power play by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force commander Qassem Suleymani, and a direct challenge to President Trump, coming just hours after the President announced a new get tough policy on Iran.
A U.S. ally in Baghdad is attacking another U.S. ally in Kurdistan using U.S. weapons, including M1-A2 Abrams tanks, paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars. And they are doing so under the watchful eyes of U.S. and coalition drones and fighter jets, which continue to control the skies over Iraq.
How in the world did we get here?
Even Democrats should be ready to admit by now that the American withdrawal from the Middle East under Obama and the Iran nuclear deal have emboldened the Iranian regime, while removing much of the hard-won leverage over Iran that sanctions had won for us.
Today, if we want to get tough on Iran, we can no longer call on our European allies to shut down Iran’s access to the international financial system. We can no longer impose gargantuan fines on a French or a German bank to punish them for violating those sanctions and to deter them from doing it again.
Today, our main leverage over Iran is military. We can bomb their forces in Iraq. We can intercept their ships. Eventually, we could take out their nuclear weapons production facilities.
If that sounds an awful lot like war, it’s because it is.
As Thomas Jefferson reportedly said in relation to the Barbary Pirates, an earlier jihadi Muslim confederacy that declared war on America: sanctions are the only option between appeasement and war. Obama just removed sanctions. QED.
But the Trump administration is not without blame.
The President instructed his national security team to take a fresh look at our overall strategy toward the Islamic State of Iran early in his presidency. To show how serious the administration was, national security advisor Michael Flynn “put Iran on notice” in an on-record briefing on Feb. 1.
And then, something happened. Rather than continue the “get tough” policy by decertifying the Iran nuclear deal, imposing new sanctions and other measures as Flynn was recommending, the President fired Flynn and other hard-line advisors, and everything turned to mush.
I am not dissing the new Iran strategy the President rolled out on Friday, far from it. My Iranian dissident friends drew much encouragement from the President’s willingness to take an all fronts approach against the Iranian regime, not just focus on its nuclear weapons program. The fact that he mentioned the regime’s dreadful record of human rights abuses and political repression was significant.
But does it really mean the U.S. is finally ready to provide material support to a pro-freedom coalition in Iran to spark a popular uprising against the regime?
Don’t hold your breath. The Deep State would never abide by it.
But Qassem Suleymani wasn’t going to wait to find out. Perhaps assuming – correctly – that the U.S. President was leaning out over his skis, he decided to act decisively to test the President’s resolve.
Want to get tough on the Iranian regime, Mr. President? Then bomb the Iranian-backed militias attacking our Kurdish allies in Northern Iraq and send U.S. special forces to capture Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleymani, a war criminal who has the blood of more than a thousand U.S. soldiers on his hands. (Watch a video of how Iran killed our soldiers in Iraq here).
Because that’s what Suleymani is daring you to do. And he’s betting, you won’t lift a finger to help the Kurds or to threaten him in any way.
In Middle East parlance, that makes Suleymani – not Donald Trump – the strong horse, the one to be feared and respected.
To be fair to Suleymani, he has been advancing his pieces like a brilliant chess player, springing his trap on us at precisely the moment when it would cause us the most damage.
First, in 2014 as ISIS was preparing its assault on Mosul and the Assyrian Christian and Kurdish regions of Northern Iraq, he instructed his puppet, then Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, to order the Iraqi army to withdraw from Mosul ahead of the ISIS advance.
That left Mosul defenseless and accounts for why ISIS was able to take over the city in a matter of hours without a fight.
Maliki fled briefly to Iran after his role in the abandon of Mosul was revealed in the Iraqi media, and was soon replaced by Qassem Suleymani’s new front man, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.
Same puppet-master, new puppet.
Next, he recruited 100,000 Iraqi Shiite fighters into the Hasht-e Shahbi militia, known in English as the Popular Mobilization Units, or PMU. They might be Iraqis, but they are owned by Qassem Suleymani and his Quds Force.
When the U.S. decided to rearm the Iraqi military to join the fight against ISIS, Suleymani positioned PMU units to fill the vacuum when ISIS left.
As I learned in July while on a reporting mission to northern Iraq, the PMU faced off with the Kurdish peshmerga all across the Nineveh Plain and was already threatening to confront them in Kirkuk.
As the U.S.-backed Iraqi army drove ISIS out of Iraq, Suleymani’s PMU raced to the border with Syria, opening a land bridge for Iran into Syria and Lebanon, putting Iran on Israel’s northern border directly for the first time.
Today, Suleymani and his strategy ally, Turkish president Erdogan, want to jerk the leash of Iraqi Kurdish president Massoud Barzani to make him realize who really calls the shots in the region.
Guess what: for all of Donald Trump’s welcome bravoura, it’s not the United States.
One immediate goal both the Turks and Iranians share is to eliminate safe havens in Iraqi Kurdistan for the PKK and PJAK, Turkish and Iranian Kurdish dissident groups. Both have reiterated that demand in recent days.
Beyond that, they want to make Barzani kneel as a vassal to his suzerain, and abandon all hopes for Kurdish independence. That can only happen if the United States drops its support for the KRG.
Barzani himself has made bad moves. He has recklessly endangered his Queen (Kirkuk), while not defending his King (Erbil). And while doing so, he has tweaked the nose of his only committed ally, the United States, and alienated his local rivals, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of former Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, who died on October 3.
Barzani appears to have realized he has overstepped with his ill-timed and poorly-prepared referendum, and has agreed to cede the K-1 airbase and other positions south of Kirkuk to Iranian-backed Iraqi government forces south of Kirkuk.
So far, the Pentagon is pretending that nothing is happening, just a bit of maneuvering among friends.
This is not just embarrassing, it is dangerous, wrong-headed, and will lead to total disaster. We’ve already lost Iraq, thanks to Obama’s withdrawal in 2011. Now we are about to lose the last ally on the ground that we have, the Kurds.
It’s time for the United States to face facts and recognize that an independent, united Iraq ceased to exist several years ago, and that the only way for us to check Iranian domination of the region is to support a united, independent and democratic Kurdistan, with U.S. military bases in Kirkuk and Erbil.
To get there will require a great deal of hands-on diplomacy, because Barzani has shown himself to be reckless, unreliable and undemocratic. We need to working the ground, aligning the players.
We need to be playing chess, not checkers.Over the next week or two I’m going to be doing some requested hero skill builds analysis to fill the time while I finish up something a bit larger. Sniper is the first of these because it turned out to be a lot more interesting than I expected. Some of you won’t be surprised by the results, but this is the most pronounced case of popularity and success being completely inverted. Here are the skills we’ll be looking at:
And here’s how people are skilling him:
In the Normal bracket Take Aim(E) is the dominant Sniper build, maxed first in over half of the games. As we move up to Very High, this dominance declines significantly as Headshot(W) builds gain in popularity. What remains consistent in all brackets is that approximately 66% of all players are maxing both passives before investing anything in Shrapnel(Q). Shrapnel builds are always the distinct minority, though they do become more popular in the upper end of MMR.
And if you’re worried that 2.6% is too small to draw conclusions from, don’t worry (too much). The Normal sample for this test is 22,000 games. Sniper is pretty popular in that bracket. Anyway, moving on to win rates.
So what we have is that Sniper’s most popular skill Take Aim(E) is consistently the least successful in all three brackets, while his least popular skill Shrapnel(Q) puts up his highest win rates. To be fair to Take Aim, it’s at it’s least ineffective in the Normal bracket where it’s only 1% behind Headshot(W) and 3% behind Shrapnel. The 11 point gap between Shrapnel and Take Aim in High might be exaggerated some by sample error, but the 6 point gap in Very High probably isn’t significantly off.
In actuality it’s not that surprising of a trend. Headshot has decent scaling, 15 damage per proc for the first point but 25 damage for each additional point, but at a 40% proc rate that only comes out to an average of 10 extra damage per attack. Sniper’s big weakness is opponent’s negating his range by jumping him, and forcing them to catch you through a 30% slow or sit through up to 480 damage to melee you is a decent little deterrent.
But let’s take it another direction. Pugna is a pretty hot hero in professional Dota in 6.79 with a 7th highest ban rate of all heroes at 37.4%, and he’s largely picked for the pushing power of Nether Blast. Well Shrapnel does a virtually equivalent amount of damage to towers as Nether Blast on a cast-by-cast basis. Of course Pugna is still the better power pusher because Nether Blast has the much lower cooldown (5.5 vs 15) and much better int growth, but Sniper’s ability to attrition outer towers from 1800 units away is a non-negligible advantage of the hero that people just completely ignore.
So yeah, if you actually find yourself playing Sniper, consider saying ‘no’ to the all passive build and maxing Shrapnel first. Oh, and as usual I looked at Sniper’s item choices, but they’re kinda boring so here’s a summary of the most popular big items.
Advertisements
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Like this: Like Loading... RelatedSYDNEY (Reuters) - People living along Papua New Guinea’s coastline fled to higher ground on Saturday after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck east of the Pacific nation, triggering a tsunami warning for parts of its archipelago.
A couple of hours after the quake, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) said the threat had largely passed, although it said government agencies should continue to monitor coastal tides.
“Based on all available data... the tsunami threat from this earthquake has now passed,” the PTWC said in an updated and final alert after the quake, which struck 157 km (98 miles) east of Rabaul.
The major tremor initially triggered a more widespread tsunami warning for the Pacific region, including Indonesia and the Solomon Islands, but that was pulled back after the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) downgraded the magnitude slightly from 8. It also revised the depth of the tremor to 103.2 km from its original estimate of 73 kms.
Many residents in the northern parts of the autonomous region of Bougainville sought higher ground amid warnings that tsunami waves were possible.
“The town residents have vacated the whole place; those in the villages live higher up, so they’re ok, it’s just those near the coast,” local resident Christabel Biasu told Reuters by phone.
Quakes are common in Papua New Guinea, which sits on the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire”, a hotspot for seismic activity due to friction between tectonic plates. There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties after Saturday’s major tremor.
A nurse at Buka General Hospital in Bougainville said the quake was so strong it felt like the building she was sleeping in would topple. She said patients were being moved a few kilometers to higher ground.
“We have about 16 beds,” she told Reuters by phone, declining to give her name. “Most of them are already a suburb up.”
The small Pacific nation of Nauru, where one of Australia’s offshore immigration detention centers is located, had a tsunami warning in place, according to the official government Twitter account.
Related Coverage New Zealand issues tsunami warning after quake off Papua New Guinea
Residents in other parts of Papua New Guinea, including the capital of Port Moresby and Kavieng in the northern tip of New Ireland island, said they had not felt the quake, and no evacuation plans were in place.
New Zealand also canceled an earlier tsunami warning.The official launch date for Knights of the Fallen Empire is October 27, 2015. From that date on, you can begin enjoying all the new expansion for SWTOR has to offer, which will include the first 9 episodic chapters of story. All features will be available at the start of Early Access on October 20, 2015.
Are you looking to get pre-launch reward items? If you have an active subscription from July 31 through October 19, 2015, you will receive your Pre-Launch Reward items via in-game mail at the start of Early Access on October 20, 2015. If you are not eligible for Early Access, you will receive your rewards via in-game mail on October 27, 2015.
You can get the Epic Story XP Boost automatically as an active subscriber. The boost expires October 19, 2015.
Can I still get Knights of the Fallen Empire if I don’t have Rise of the Hutt Cartel or Shadow of Revan? All subscribers will receive access to Rise of the Hutt Cartel and Shadow of Revan starting on October 27, 2015. Knights of the Fallen Empire is not available for pre-order as it is free to all active subscribers. You must be an active subscriber to receive the expansion. So again, if you’re interested in KOTFE, become or remain a subscriber.
Knights of the Fallen Empire will launch with the first 9 episodic Chapters of the story. The remaining chapters will be released monthly starting in early 2016. If you unsubscribe after October 27, 2015, you will keep the first 9 Chapters of Knights of the Fallen Empire, but will not receive any additional Chapters when they are released.
If you subscribe after the launch of Knights of the Fallen Empire, you will receive all the content that has been released up to that date. However, as a subscriber you are eligible for great benefits that you don’t want to miss out on such as a monthly Cartel Coin grant and access to the full spectrum of character species.
Is Outlander a new class? No, Knights of the Fallen Empire keeps the 8 core classes, but your character’s story becomes that of the Outlander, a veteran of the Great Galactic War.
What questions do you have?
(Visited 162 times, 1 visits today)I don't own Frozen. Aesla is god.
Anna woke to the smell of bacon for the first time in three months, eyes fluttering open. She was in her bed up in the Natchitoches. Groaning, she waved her hand around, trying to find the bacon scenter on her bedside table, only to find nothing but bare wood.
"E.J., is the Iphone on your... E.J.?" Anna turned, finding her bed empty. The smell of bacon was joined with the smell of eggs and chocolate syrup. Her stomach growled dangerously. Lifting an eyebrow Anna rose from the bed, wrapping her covers around her and hooding her head to hide and battle down her bedhair.
She walked down the steps into the kitchen, brushing stray red hairs out of her face. The morning sun's glow fell upon her feet and Anna hesitated, as if the columns of light were murky depths she did not want to enter. Everything felt dream-like. She felt vulnerable. She smelled bacon.. and mint. Cautiously, yet happily, the corners of her eyes crinkling, she strode forward.
E.J. was in the kitchen, her hair braided. She was humming. There were no men with guns, no furniture upturned. Her home was just the way she had left it when she went to sleep. They were safe. They were SAFE. Together. Anna thumbed away a tear that threatened to trickle down her cheek.
Safe. Anna grinned crookedly. Comrades, friends. Sisters, lovers. We are.
Anna slipped into the room unannounced and unseen, her protective cloak of comforter dragging behind her. She looked quite silly, shifting with E.J.'s movements, staying behind her and out of sight, trailing an orbit around her. E.J. had been her sun, but now Anna was a sun too, no longer some object caught in E.J.'s gravity. They were Albireo, two suns, she was one half of an equation, and Anna's orbit drew Anna closer to E,J.
My life is brilliant. My love is pure.
When she was certain she wouldn't disturb her cooking, Anna wrapped her arms around E.J. from behind and pressed bare skin to bare skin, fingers curling into alabaster. Anna let out a "rawr!" sound and pulled Jane back into an embrace. E.J. started but stayed put and relaxed backwards into Anna, letting her sister wrap her up in a comforter.
"Ah! You got me. Clever girl." E.J. smiled.
Where do I begin? What am I supposed to say?
"Good morning." Anna whispered to Jane's shoulderblade, resting her head against E.J. such that she could feel the pulsating current of E.J.'s heart.
"Good morning." Jane replied, just as quiet, running one hand over Anna's. Touching her knuckles, her nails, the length of her fingers, tracing paths back towards Anna's palms and sliding fingers between fingers and squeezing. Everything was touching everything.
Physicality.
"You're making breakfast. Bacon... and pancakes." Anna said simply, adjusting her impromptu cloak to envelople E.J's shoulders.
"Mm-hm." Jane didn't move, just relaxing in Anna's grip and embrace, letting the comforter fall over her shoulders and envelop her. "I thought- it would- I wanted to make everything... not.. perfect, but.. comfortable? A little bit of familiar, a little bit of new." She moved the pan off the burner and turned everything off, then turned around in the comforter's embrace. She took A's wrist with her, though, drawing it around her and tightening the knot it created, pressing them together and then letting Anna's hands slide away to E.J.'s back, where they pressed gently against her shoulderblades to pull her in.
"Hey, that's my shirt." Anna breathed in the scent of E.J. in her clothing and rested her hands on E.J.'s back, clasping together.
"I couldn't find mine. I figured you wouldn't mind if I stole one of yours." E.J. said with a cheeky grin.
"So what's with making breakfast? You never did that before."
"I learned." E.J. said simply, as if it were obvious. "I... thought maybe real bacon... waking you up.. ah.." E.J. fumbled over her words, looking a bit distressed. "I meant to practice saying this first..." Anna smiled in her sleepy, genuine Anna way and gently stroked the side of E.J.'s cheek.
"I want to keep you." Anna whispered, and leaned back just far enough that she could give her sister a gentle peck on the lips, an intimate morning sigh into each other, not a flight or a fall but a just existing together kiss, lips touching, muscles relaxed and inviting. Their lips parted but they didn't part from each other, not really. Even when Anna let E.J. go to finish the cooking, they were still together in that kiss. It would last them the morning.
Anna was her girl.
Breakfast was served on the coffee table in front of the couch, and both of them ate quietly, saying nothing, glancing at each other and trying to hide their smiles. Anna rocked gently into E.J. and stole a piece of toast; E.J. stole a kiss and snuck some of Anna's eggs onto her plate.
Anna was laughing when E.J. bit down on her neck like a porcelain tiger, and the playful energy in the room turned into a heat.
Repeatable results.
They didn't pursue the heat, but rather basked in it lazily like lizards in the sun, enjoying the feeling of being together as they finished each other's plates.
There was much to be done, to be said, to be lived.
They had time. They stole the last few hours of morning light for themselves.Javelin Missiles Sales: US Playing Dangerous Games to Provoke Russia
The United States is stepping up its military aid to Georgia, encouraging Tbilisi to continue on its pro-NATO path. The State Department has approved the sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Georgia. The proposed $75 million sale includes 410 Javelin missiles and 72 Javelin command launch units (CLUs), including two Javelin Block 1 CLUs to be used as spares. The proposed sale also includes ten basic skills trainers (BST) and up to 70 simulated rounds.
Tbilisi believes that the approval is a big win. The Javelin has long been at the top of the country’s wish list since 2008 when Georgia attacked South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers, triggering a war with Russia, which it lost. Until the State Department’s approval, the US had been reluctant to encourage Georgian adventurism and escalate tensions with Russia by selling the system. That attitude appears to have changed. The efforts to boost military cooperation with Tbilisi have intensified under the Trump administration. The visit of Vice President Mike Pence in August was seen in Tbilisi as a meaningful gesture toward Georgia.
Starting next spring, around 40-50 US Army officers will begin a three-year program to train Georgian troops. The program is currently scheduled to run for three years and train nine battalions. That will supplement the Georgia Deployment Program, under which about 80 US Marines are based in Georgia to train Georgian troops before they are sent to Afghanistan. The United States holds two large military exercises per year in Georgia, and has begun to replace the Soviet-legacy Kalashnikov automatic rifles with US-made M240.
Despite the ever-receding hopes of joining NATO, Georgia has done everything it could to ingratiate itself with the bloc, including being a significant contributor to US- and NATO-led missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thirty-two Georgian servicemen have died in Afghanistan. “In this sense, Georgia is an example for all,” said US Defense Secretary James Mattis, meeting his Georgian counterpart Levan Izoria at the Pentagon on November 13.
The Javelin is an easy-to-use shoulder-fired anti-tank, guided munition and surveillance weapon system effective against a wide array of targets such as armored vehicles, bunkers and caves. Being a fire-and-forget weapon, it requires no further input after lunch. The crew is free to duck into cover and concealment, rather than being forced to remain fixed in place guiding the missile towards the target. It can be deployed from multiple platforms such as tripods, trucks, light armored vehicles, and remotely piloted vehicles in all weather, day or night operations. The system’s long-wave infrared seeker enables it to engage in obscurants and reduced visibility and resists or minimizes effects of countermeasures. It has been recently upgraded to increase the effective firing range from 2,500 m to 4,750m.
The US Defense Department’s statement says that “This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of Georgia. The Javelin system will provide Georgia with increased capacity to meet its national defense requirements. Georgia will have no difficulty absorbing this system into its armed forces.” The question is how can the proposed sale enhance America’s security, with Georgia located thousands of miles away? How will it strengthen Georgia’s security? Russia will see the deal as a hostile act and take measures.
It should be noted that the Javelin is not the most effective weapon against Russia tanks, which feature several countermeasures. New Relikt and Mechanit explosive reactive armor (ERA) systems feature dual layers of radar-triggered ERA plates designed to defeat tandem charge warheads. The Shtora and the newer Afganit Active Protection Systems can deploy ‘soft kill’ multi-spectral grenades and flares designed to obscure the tank from infrared seekers or divert them to other heat sources. It gives the countries that possess the Javelin no military advantage but the sales of such systems is a provocative step to damage the already spoiled Russia-US relations.
The US National Security Council has approved a $47 million grant package that would send Javelin anti-tank systems, counter-battery radar, and counter-mortar weapons to Ukraine and forwarded its opinion to President Donald Trump for consideration. The decision is taken despite notorious corruption in Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense and the fact that Russia would have to respond. Congress has already authorized him to transfer these designated defensive weapons to Ukraine if he so chooses. This comes in sharp contrast to the previous White House administration, which feared that supplying weapons could escalate the situation and tensions with Russia.
The arms transfers to Georgia and Ukraine will come amid ongoing rearmament and forward deployments in East Europe, the Baltic and Black Sea areas. The Baltic States – Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – and Poland have been fortified with multinational battlegroups provided by NATO states. The US State Department has okayed a $10.5 billion sale to Poland. The sale includes four radar sets, four engagement control stations, 16 launching stations and 208 missiles. This year, the US sent 1,000 troops to Poland to lead the multinational battle group there as part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence, A rotational group of 300 US Marines also arrived in Norway at the start of the year.
US Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has called for more America troops in Europe in coming years. According to Jim Stavridis, a former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, “We need a balanced mix of all military capabilities including increased Army heavy units, increased maritime deployments to the Baltic and Black Seas, joint NATO air patrols over NATO borders, and more attention to the Arctic.”
Intelligence capabilities are to be enhanced greatly. Denmark has announced plans to build a large spy station – a nearly 280-foot-tall listening tower near Ostermarie, on the Danish island of Bornholm – intended to capture Russian communications. Bornholm was liberated from the Nazis by Soviet troops in May 1945. The Soviet Union handed over control of the island to Denmark the following year, but stipulated that other Western forces should never be stationed there. It’s unrealistic to expect that the NATO listening facility will be manned by Danes only.
Everywhere one looks, there are signs of US-led NATO war preparations that Russia watches closely. Not all of the abovementioned facts hit media headlines, but summed together they indicate that the bloc is implementing the plans to encircle Russia and implement its biggest buildup since the cold War. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg assures that the alliance doesn't want a "new Cold War" with Russia. “…having Russia in a friendly posture, as opposed to always fighting with them, is an asset to the world, and an asset to our country, not a liability,” said US President Trump after meeting Russian President Putin at the recent APEC summit. These are nice words but the facts tell otherwise. The sales of Javelin systems are an element of the policy that sees Russia as an enemy and a target.Above is part of the 2013 Santa = Wildman display recently curated at the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Since the Christmas season of 2002, I’ve been mentioning that people might wish to read the LA Weekly’s entertaining and insightful article by artist Jeffrey Vallance. (Here’s another, backup version over at The Fortean Times).
Arriving to be an art professor for a few years ago at Umea University in northern Sweden, Vallance wrote that he “was puzzled by the enigmatic heraldic symbol of Lapland, the Wildman — a hairy, reddish, bestial character dressed in leaves, wielding a gnarled club.”
Jeffrey Vallance (on the right) and Loren Coleman. Taken in June 2006.
He reflected: “To me he looked like a typical prehistoric caveman or the Jolly Green Giant. I collected vague reports of an actual Swedish Wildman (Snömannen), a Yeti-like creature believed to inhabit the remote areas of the forest. One day when wandering through the wilds of Lapland, I beheld an astonishing thing: a colossal statue of the Wildman painted bright red with a snowy white beard. From a distance it looked like Santa Claus. As I stood at the base, staring up at the Herculean statue, it hit me like a hunk of red-hot ejecta from Mount Hekla: Santa Claus, the Wildman and Snömannen must spring from the same ancient source. I determined to find the connections between these enigmatic characters.”
Vallance is a friendly and funny fellow, whom I met for the first time in 2005 |
has shown, it is a very fine line–a line some say is crossed every election.
“The way we finance campaigns is destroying democracy.”
One person who has litigated the issue is Luis Toro, of Colorado Ethics Watch. He has filed suit against two Colorado 527s, alleging that they had crossed the line into direct campaigning for candidates. The courts ruled for the committees.
“Much of the controversy over election spending in Colorado has focused on so-called “527” groups, which refer to political groups that do not meet the definition of a PAC (or “political committee” under Colorado law), because they don’t expressly advocate for or against candidates. The key difference has been that contributions to PACs are limited while contributions to 527s are not,” Toro wrote in a recent Denver Post column.
When a wealthy individual writes a large check to a 527, and then that committee writes a check to another committee which purchases the actual advertising, three things potentially happen, according to campaign finance experts who did not want to be quoted for this article.
1) The money becomes harder to track in a timely manner by reporters, by candidates who are being targeted with negative ads and by attorneys representing campaign finance watchdog groups or representing competing interests.
2) Wealthy, well-known, public-image conscious individuals or companies have some deniability in that they did not give their money to the committee that bought the negative or misleading ads.
3) It might look to the world that more money is being raised and spent than actually is, which can make it easier to raise even more money. For instance, if committee A raises $1 million during a reporting period and gives all the money to committee B, advocates and fundraisers can say that the two committees, which both support similar things, raised $2 million between them, which can make other donors more likely to jump on the bandwagon and spend their own money.
“In most other lines of work, moving money from committee to committee and finally using a brand new committee no one has heard of to buy the ads would be called money laundering,” Inzeo said.
Emphasizing that he thinks Democrats game the system as much as Republicans, Gordon said he thinks Republicans have been especially artful in setting up dozens of committees that routinely transfer funds to each other.
“It is wrong because voters can’t tell who is purchasing political influence. Both sides use whatever means they can to get more influence,” he said.
Jon Caldara, director of the Independence Institute, agrees the system is broken, but he says getting money out of politics is probably impossible. He says campaign finance laws, which limit how much anyone can give to any candidate has driven the money underground.
“Our campaign finance laws have separated candidates from their campaigns,” he said.
With more and more of the money going to PACs and 527s, he said, “You have other people working for or against a candidate, but the candidate has no control over it.”
“Our campaign finance laws have separated candidates from their campaigns.”
Caldara said the answer is to get rid of the limits on how much people can give directly to candidates. “Let the money go straight to the campaigns. Let the candidates run their own campaigns.”
Richard Westfall, a partner at the law firm Hale Westfall and general counsel to the Colorado Republican Party, agreed with Caldara.
“Whether you think these committees are good or bad, they arose out of campaign finance reform laws,” Westfall said. “If you go back twenty years, the messaging was done by the candidates and the parties. Campaign reform, designed to get money out of politics, has instead moved the money to independent expenditure groups,” he said.
Westfall emphasized that he was not speaking in his official capacity with the Republican Party, but instead as a private attorney who is a Republican.
He said all of the 527s and PACs are run by groups who have a special interest. Some are pro-environment, some support traditional energy interests, some support abortion rights while other are against abortion rights, etc.
In the old days, he said, candidates could choose whether to take money from a special interest. Today, the special interests can spend their money without a candidate’s knowledge or approval. Both he and Caldara noted that sometimes committees which intend to support a certain candidate actually harm that person’s campaign by misrepresenting their positions, or making them seem more extreme than they actually are, for instance.
Westfall said the people who pushed campaign finance reform were “all on the left.” He said they were well-intended, but that the results have been disastrous.
“Can anyone argue that campaign finance reform has kept money out of politics?” he asked.
Indeed, the amount of money spent locally, across the state and nationally goes up every election, sometimes almost exponentially.
Colorado Leadership Fund–and its offspring
The Colorado Leadership Fund, which describes its purpose as to “elect Republican candidates” has raised more than $782,000 since December 2010, according to reports filed with the Secretary of State’s office. Contributions came from insurance companies, energy companies, pharmaceutical interests and General Motors among others.
Among big recent donors are Edward McVaney ($100,000); Phillip Morris ($115,000); The Apartment Association of Metro Denver ($103,000); PHRMA ($120,500) and Farmers Insurance ($168,000).
This 527 committee often gives its money to other committees, including the now defunct Colorado Leadership Fund Political Committee and Coloradans for Change among others.
When it was active, the Colorado Leadership Fund Political Committee gave substantial amounts of money to Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government.
Asked why Colorado Leadership Fund would give so much of its money to other committees instead of spending it directly on its own ad buys, registered agent Timothy Gilmore answered succinctly: “I cannot tell you that.”
The Colorado Leadership Fund’s most recent filing says “NA” for cash on hand, but lifetime expenditures are about $622,000 less than lifetime income, so it stands to reason the committee has at least $600,000 in the bank. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office confirmed that committees do not have to include cash on hand in their reports and that simply subtracting expenditures from contributions should tell you how much money the committee has on hand.
Asked what the committee’s plan for this election cycle were, Gilmore answered, “I cannot tell you that.”
Mario Nicolais, a well-known campaign finance attorney at the Hackstaff Law firm, said he represents a number of Republican committees, but he wouldn’t talk about them, except to say, “I am sure that lots of outside interest groups on both sides will be very involved in this election.”
Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government
CCAG seems to be the big daddy of GOP committees in Colorado, and is the recipient of large donations not just from individuals but also from other committees. In 2010, it spent about $1.7 million in Colorado–some of that money going to producing and placing negative ads attacking Democrats.
In October and November of 2010, CCAG received a total of $350,000 from American Justice Partnership. Also in October 2010, it received $300,000 from Colorado Leadership Fund and $145,000 from Senate Majority Fund. It received smaller donations that month from Greg Stevinson and Encana Oil and Gas.
The national Republican State Leadership Committee gave CCAG $515,000 in 2010. Interestingly, Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty recently skipped two days of legislative business in order to hobnob with this same Republican State Leadership Committee.
He made the point then that Republicans need to work extra hard to keep up with Democratic fundraising.
A recent article in a Denver daily once again recounted how Democrats have become formidable in Colorado, and said they have out-raised Republicans by 150 to 1.
Specifically the article said Democrat Super PACs outraised Republican Super PACs $4.24 million to $28,644 over the last election cycle (presumably December 2008 to December 2010), which might technically have been true, but it failed to take into account the fact that Republicans put their money into 527s instead of PACs.
“I can guarantee you, Democrats are not sitting on $150 million right now,” Inzeo said, joking about the purported 150-1 fundraising ratio.
Where did CCAG’s money go in 2010? It went to television and direct mail. In October, 2010 alone, CCAG dished out nearly $323,000 to Targeted Creative Communications of Alexandria, VA for direct mail campaigns. Almost $465,000 went to Rock Chalk Media of Grand Junction for the production and placement of advertising, all according to reports on file with the Secretary of State’s office.
Targeted Creative Communications brags on its website about its success electing Republican candidates. A flashing screen asks the question: What drives votes? Among several answers that rotate through is “Fear.”
527s are known for fearmongering. They aren’t supposed to overtly support any candidate, but nothing stops them from trashing candidates they oppose, and the advertising and marketing firms that work with 527s market that very skill.
Rock Chalk Media was in the news not too long ago, as the company that U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton still owed money to long after he defeated incumbent John Salazar.
CCAG gave $19,500 to Coloradans for Change. Coloradans for Change, like a number of these groups, has as its registered agent Mario Nicolais, of the Hackstaff Law Firm, where SOS Gessler used to work.
CCAG is still raising and spending money, but its heyday (so far anyway) was during the 2010 election cycle when it raised and spent more than a half million dollars. Of course, there is no saying it won’t reach that level again this election season.
With most of CCAG’s money coming from other committees, the question that has to be asked is, “who’s funding those committees?”
In the case of American Justice Partnership, there is no easy answer. As a non-profit 501c4, AJP does not have to disclose its donors. Interestingly, one of the top features on the AJP website is a “follow the money” button where it invites people to see what causes liberals are bankrolling.
Are Republican donors getting their money’s worth? The Republican Party did not return a call seeking comment and no one directly associated with a 527 would discuss it. Inzeo said “I’m not sure anyone putting money into Ken Buck’s (failed) campaign (for U.S. Senate) is feeling very good about it, but they can have a big effect on down ticket races. It was just a few hundred votes that put the State House in Republican control, so you can’t say the money didn’t have an effect.”
The money men
Alex Cranberg, chairman of energy company Aspect Holdings, has given at least $900,000 to GOP causes in Colorado in recent years. Big recipients have been The Trailhead Group, Coloradans for Change, Colorado Republican Committee and Senate Majority Fund. He also gives to individual candidates. The SOS database shows $280,000 as the total given by Alex Cranberg, with the rest of the money given by Alex M. Cranberg and A.M. Cranberg. Cranberg answered a few questions submitted in writing.
That email exchange is here:
1) Why do you give so much, and do you think it has made a difference? Cranberg: I express myself in part through election advocacy because it is my responsibility as a citizen. My goal is to advance effective ways to produce prosperity and freedom for the largest number of people possible. 2) Are campaign finance rules fair? Do they make elections more fair, or do they need to be changed? Cranberg: Campaign finance rules often restrict legitimate expression. Why should any person NOT be allowed such voice as his/her determination, creativity, access and resources allow?
Whose opinion, no matter how many times expressed, should we be afraid of? Which citizens do we need to “protect” from hearing which opinions? Is it unfair for celebrities to replace money with fame to amplify their voice? Going down the road of trying to make each person’s voice have equal influence is to go down a road toward tyranny. 3) Some people say we should eliminate all big donations to committees and get the money out of politics. Others say we should eliminate limits on what someone can give to a candidate as long as it is disclosed. Right now, a person can only give a small amount to a candidate but can give unlimited amounts to a 527, which some say removes the campaign from the candidate and has driven donations essentially underground. How should the system work? Cranberg: I don’t know. I’m in favor of freedom of expression. I understand the benefits of disclosure, but I also believe that people should be able to support causes they believe in without exposing themselves to politically motivated retribution. Thomas Paine wrote and distributed Common Sense which became the largest selling media property to date in American history. He did it anonymously. This tradition should be respected also. 4) A lot of times a person will give money to one 527 which then gives to another. The second committee might give to a third committee that actually just opened, which then buys the ads and closes shop. Is this an abuse of the system or does it serve a legitimate purpose? Cranberg: See above.
Cranberg’s wife, Susan Morrice, has also given more than $25,000 to GOP causes in Colorado over the years, much of it in smaller amounts to individual candidates.
Edward McVaney in 2010 and 2011 gave at least $124,775 to GOP causes in the state, including $100,000 to Colorado Leadership Fund. He also gave $20,000 to school board candidates and donated to the campaigns of Attorney General John Suthers and Secretary of State Scott Gessler. McVaney was the founder of JD Edwards, now owned by Oracle. He has donated millions to the University of Nebraska as well.
Over the years, McVaney and various family members have given around $900,000 to conservative causes in Colorado. Among those contributions: $250,000 to Coloradans for School Choice in 1998; $100,000 to Vote No; It’s Your Dough in 2005; $100,000 to Coloradans for Marriage in 2006.
Somewhat common to big donors, McVaney and his wife use several variations of their names when making contributions.
Dan Ritchie has given at least $128,000 in disclosed contributions to political causes in Colorado since 2010. A large share of that has gone to school board candidates. He has given about $1000 each to the Colorado Democratic Party and to the campaign of John Hickenlooper. He gave $30,000 to the Business Opportunity Fund and $25,000 to the Trailhead Group, both of which have supported conservative causes in Colorado. Variations on his name are even more numerous than with other donors.
Ritchie, former chancellor and chairman of the board at the University of Denver, has given the university millions over the years. As a businessman, he was involved in numerous industries, from banking to Hollywood.
The Coors family and family of businesses have given millions to conservative political causes over the years. Former U.S. Senate candidate Pete Coors has given at least $179,000 to GOP causes in Colorado since 2010, according to the Secretary of State’s database. Of that, $175,000 went to the Trailhead Group. Pete’s brother Joe is currently running for the U.S. House against incumbent Democrat Ed Perlmutter. Joe Coors has not been as obviously generous, but he did give $1000 to Personhood Colorado in 2010. He just gave more than $200,000 to his own campaign to defeat Perlmutter.
Pete Coors was one of the founders of Trailhead, along with former governor Bill Owens and former oilman and current CU Chancellor Bruce Benson. Coors is listed on Wikipedia as the sixth wealthiest politician in the U.S., with a net worth of $750 million.
Greg Stevinson donated at least $100,000 to conservative causes in Colorado in 2010. His largesse was divided among CCAG, Coloradans for Responsible Reforms, Business Opportunity Fund and Senate Majority Fund.
Anheuser Busch has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Colorado political causes over the years, including plenty of money to both up and down ticket Democrats. The company has spent its big money on Republicans, though, giving $41,000 to the Colorado Leadership Fund in 2009-11.
Big Democratic donors that we tracked tended to use only the most commonly known form of their names.
Committees come, committees go
While it is easy enough to look back at which committees raised and spent the most money in a prior election, it is impossible to predict which committees will have the money in 2012’s election.
In addition to the big players from past years, there are a number of other committees that are active today and may or may not be big players this year.
Coloradans for a Better Future has raised and spent about $90,000 over the years, but currently had no money in the bank as of its last report.
Another to keep an eye on is the Committee for the American Dream.
Coloradans for Change is still raising and spending money, but its heyday was during the 2008 election cycle when it raised and spent more than a half million dollars.
One thing is imminently clear, with an election just a few months away, one or more of these committees will see an infusion of cash. If that isn’t true, it will only be because old committees are abandoned and new ones formed–the better to fly below the radar.
One committee to watch is The Senate Majority Fund, a 527 committee set up to support Republicans running for the Colorado Senate, which is sitting on a war chest of more than $500,000 in advance of this year’s election. One of its bigger recent expenses was just over $10,000 to Gessler’s old firm the Hackstaff Law Group.
The Senate Majority Fund was sued unsuccessfully by Ethics Watch. Again, from Luis Toro’s recent Post column:
In 2008, two 527s, the Senate Majority Fund and the Colorado Leadership Fund, ran ads supporting Republican candidates. Each of the ads named a candidate and the office he or she sought, extolled their virtues, directed voters to candidate websites, and in some cases even mentioned endorsements. These 527s were breaking new ground by running ads that were like PAC ads in all respects except one: they never used “magic words” like “vote for” or “elect.” Ethics Watch filed suit arguing that the 527s were illegally operating as PACs. The judge ruled that under Colorado’s Amendment 27, an ad doesn’t expressly advocate for candidates unless it uses “magic words,” thus the 527s were not PACs. Last month the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed that ruling.
Katie Kennedy, registered agent for the Senate Majority Fund, said she is not the person who makes decisions about how to spend the fund’s money. She described herself as being the compliance officer. She said she would have someone call the Colorado Independent, but no one did.
“It is a terrible thing we are doing.”
Gordon says waiting for campaign finance laws to change is a fool’s game. “Campaign finance laws were written by people whose hearts weren’t in controlling money in politics. The laws were written by people inside the system. Congress is against transparency and disclosure, and even if Congress passes a law that would help, the Supreme Court will overturn it,” he said.
“It is a terrible thing we are doing,” Gordon said.
It is impossible to post links directly to a contributor’s report in the Secretary of State’s database. This link will allow you to type in a name and get a report.
(Image of cash in hand: Wikimedia Commons: Psychonaught)The consumer backlash that Sling Media got after it began to run advertising in select free apps has morphed into a lawsuit.
Two Slingbox customers – Mark Heskiaoff and Marc Langenohl – are seeking class action status in a lawsuit filed last week with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York arguing that they were subject to a “bait and switch,” as they began to receive ads without their consent starting in March, noting that they were also under the impression when they bought their Slingboxes that the place-shifting video platform would not be saddled with ads. All of the paid SlingPlayer apps are advertising-free.
“Sling Media failed to disclose that the use of the product would be contingent upon and subject the purchaser to unrequested advertising from Defendant,” they alleged in the lawsuit, according to the Top Class Actions web site (hat tip: ZatzNotFunny). “Since approximately March 17, 2015, Sling Media suddenly began broadcasting such unrequested spam advertisements to users of its Slingboxes.”
They are seeking an injunction against Sling Media to produce and stream future original advertising through Slingbox without prior consent from purchasers. Per Top Class Actions, they’re also seeking restitution and disgorgement of all profits garnered from ads delivered via Sling Media as well as interest and attorneys’ fees.
An official with Sling Media and parent company EchoStar said it’s their policy not to comment on pending litigation.
Sling Media started to apply advertising to its free browser-based app last October, and on March 17, 2015, began doing the same with its more recently-launched (and also free) stand-alone app for PCs and Macs to users of the Slingbox M1, a model launched last summer.
Sling Media has since launched the M2, a $199 flagship model that uses free ad-supported PC and mobile apps, but does let users purchase apps separately if they don’t want ads). Those who do see ads are presented with a pre-roll ad when they launch the apps, and ads will also appear in the app viewing window. However, no ads are placed on top of the video itself, and display ads disappear completely when M2 customers use the apps in full-screen mode.
Following its introduction of ads in its Web and PC/Mac stand-alone apps for the M1, Sling Media, in its defense, reasoned that the decision was necessary in order to offset the costs of ongoing engineering and technology testing requirements.BHOPAL: A CBI officer of the rank of deputy superintendent of police (DSP) being sent as a backup for Vyapam scam investigations to Madhya Pradesh was found unconscious in train Indrashekar Jha, posted in Delhi, was heading towards Gwalior to join the CBI team investigating Vyapam scam when he suffered a brain hemorrhage, said CBI spokesperson in Delhi.“He was not part of the investigation, but was being sent as backup to be put on assignment during crisis,” she said.Jha could not disembark the train at Gwalior and moved on to Jhansi where railway staff called in for medical emergency services and referred him to hospital.He was being sent as a backup for Vyapam scam investigations to Madhya Pradesh. (TOI photo)He has been kept under constant observation and will be shifted to Gwalior for further treatment.NOW this is a tale to tell your classmates on Monday morning: I raced wheel to wheel against Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton.
Hamilton was the star attraction at the Barbados Festival of Speed last weekend, turning a few laps of the Bushy Park circuit aboard one of Mercedes’ V8-powered F1 cars from 2013.
After thrilling the crowd with some noisy burnouts, Hamilton went head to head around the track against British Superbike Chamiponship racer Stuart Easton aboard a race-spec Yamaha R1M.
But the F1 demo wasn’t the end of his seat time for the day.
Going back to his roots, the reigning F1 champ hopped in a go kart and took on local youngsters from the Barbados Karting Association in a race.
Having combined a nice little holiday in with his Festival appearance, it will be a refreshed and relaxed Hamilton that will head to this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix hoping to turn his horror 2016 season around.
Don’t miss a moment of the 2016 Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix. FOX SPORTS has every Formula 1® practice session, qualifying and the race from Barcelona EXCLUSIVELY LIVE in HD.The biotechnology firm Monsanto stands just one FDA approval away from growing soybeans that have been genetically modified to produce those omega-3 fatty acids that doctors are always recommending.
That FDA approval is expected this year, according to Science News.
Monsanto is so despised by environmentalists that Google's first suggested search term for the St. Louis company is "Monsanto evil." Readers of Natural News voted Monsanto the world's most evil corporation in a January poll, giving the corporation a whopping 51 percent of the vote.
BP, by contrast, received 9 percent.
But there may be reasons for even health-loving greens to love "stearidonic acid soybean oil," as Monsanto's new product is called. Among them: depleted fisheries, environmental toxins in fish oil, and a new threat, the scope of which has not yet been fully realized: millions of gallons of radioactive water dumped into the ocean at the Fukushima-Daichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.
The American Heart Association recommends Americans eat two servings of fish per week for the purpose of ingesting omega-3 fatty acids, which health experts say is essential to human health. Even the stodgy FDA agrees that omega-3 reduces risk of heart disease and recommends fish.
Omega-3 fatty acids are also available in whole grains, flax seed, fresh fruits and vegetables, olive oil, garlic, and "moderate wine consumption," according to the University of Maryland Medical Center, but Americans don't eat enough of those. Thus, the fish recommendation. And the "SDA soybean oil."
Monsanto plans to include SDA soybean oil in just about everything: "baked goods and baking mixes, breakfast cereals and grains, cheeses, dairy product analogs, fats and oils, fish products, frozen dairy desserts and mixes, grain products and pastas, gravies and sauces, meat products, milk products, nuts and nut products, poultry products, processed fruit juices, processed vegetable products, puddings and fillings, snack foods, soft candy, and soups and soup mixes, at levels that will provide 375 milligrams (mg) of SDA per serving."
In this weekend's Science News Janet Raloff explained how Monsanto coaxed soybeans to produce the oils:
The commercial ag giant Monsanto inserted genes for two enzymes – one derived from a flower (Primula juliae), the other from a red bread mold (Neurospora crassa) – into a line of soybeans. Although some people object to the biotech manipulation of genes in food crops, this is far from the first genetic manipulation of soy, Deckelbaum observes. Already, he points out, some 70 percent of ordinary U.S. soybeans are genetically modified for some trait or another. The two enzymes Monsanto has just added to soy effectively turn the legume’s oil into a proto fish oil. via Fishy Fat From Soy Is Headed For U.S. Dinner Tables - Science News.
Here's the result, according to the FDA:
The oil is obtained from a bioengineered soybean. Monsanto states that SDA soybean oil is compositionally different from conventional soybean oil. SDA soybean oil contains 15 to 30 percent SDA and 5 to 8 percent gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), neither of which is present in conventional soybean oil. SDA soybean oil also contains slightly higher levels of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) and palmitic acid than conventional soybean oil. SDA soybean oil contains lower levels of oleic acid and linoleic acid (LA) than those present in conventional soybean oil. Monsanto notes that the variability in the oil’s fatty acid composition, notably the SDA concentration, is due to natural variation in growing conditions for the soybean. via Agency Response Letter, Food and Drug Administration
What do you think? Cast your vote in comments. Would you rather derive your omega-3 fatty acids from:U.S. Special Operations forces working with a widening array of partners are slowly tightening their squeeze on Islamic State fighters in eastern Syria — moving toward an eventual assault on the jihadists’ self-declared capital of Raqqa.
The Pentagon’s top priority in the campaign against the Islamic State remains disrupting external operations against potential targets in the United States and elsewhere. Sources say that over the past 18 months, U.S. drone strikes and other direct actions have killed close to 100 Islamic State militants who had made contact with volunteers abroad to plan attacks in the United States or other Western countries.
To gain better intelligence, the United States is seeking to capture Islamic State leaders. An operation last month, reported March 1 by the New York Times, seized an operative who was traveling in northern Iraq. This captive is said to have had information about the Islamic State’s use of chemical weapons, including a mustard gas attack on Kurdish forces in Iraq in August. The captive is being interrogated by the U.S. military but is expected to be transferred soon to Iraqi Kurdish custody.
A similar raid by Delta Force commandos last May seized Umm Sayyaf, whose husband, the director of the Islamic State’s energy activities, was killed in the operation. That assault also harvested laptop computers, cellphones and other intelligence materials. U.S. commanders are planning more such raids in the future, using a 200-person Special Operations forces team now in Iraq that was authorized last year by the Obama administration.
The campaign in eastern Syria is directed by about 50 U.S. Special Operations forces now on the ground there, joined by about 20 French and perhaps a dozen British commandos. They’re working with about 40,000 Syrian Kurdish and Arab fighters dubbed the Syrian Democratic Forces; all but about 7,000 are from the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG.
U.S. commanders hope soon to augment the U.S. ground force in Syria to about 300 troops who can train and assist these fighters. With this broader U.S. base of operations inside Syria, it’s hoped that special forces from other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, could play a role there.
The squeeze on Raqqa tightened last month with the capture of the town of al-Shaddadi, about 90 miles east, by a force of about 6,000, including about 2,500 Arabs. The Islamic State countered by attacking Tal Abyad, along the Turkish border. Overall, the recent battles have killed between 75 and 100 fighters backed by the United States and wounded 250 to 300.
The next stage in the assault may come to the west of Raqqa. Syrian fighters backed by Turkish commandos appear poised to move south from Jarabulus, where the Euphrates River crosses from Turkey into Syria, toward the area around Manbij. Other U.S.-backed forces hold the Tishrin Dam, about 55 miles northwest of Raqqa. The Turkish-led campaign could finally close the gap in its border, through which the Islamic State has maintained its supply lines.
A limited southern push toward Raqqa was begun recently by a small unit of Jordanian and British special forces that captured a former regime outpost in southeastern Syria, close to the Iraqi and Jordanian borders.
The methodical campaign in eastern Syria contrasts with the messy battlefield to the west, where Syrian regime troops backed by Russia confront rebels supported by the CIA, Turkey and Saudi Arabia — all facing jihadists from the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra. U.S. officials describe this confusing layering of forces as “marbling,” and it’s the reason the current cease-fire is so fragile.
As the Islamic State spreads to other countries beyond Iraq and Syria, so has the U.S.-led campaign against that group and al-Qaeda — but so far only in limited, isolated operations.
In Somalia, for example, U.S. drones on Saturday struck an al-Shabab camp, killing an estimated 167 fighters who were about to graduate from training and begin operations. In Libya, U.S. warplanes last month bombed an Islamic State training camp at Sabratha, 40 miles west of Tripoli, killing about 50 militants, including operatives involved in last year’s terrorist attacks on a museum and beach resort in Tunisia.
As the U.S.-led coalition steps up its assaults, the jihadists are trying to strike back, with what sources say are active terrorist plots across Europe.
The Islamic State is gradually being degraded, as President Obama pledged. But it still holds large swaths of Syria, Iraq and now Libya — and it maintains a global terror network and a demonstrated willingness to use chemical weapons.
A big question for the next president will be whether to escalate Obama’s campaign.
Read more from David Ignatius’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.0 Shares
Neville Injury Return Update – Neville fractured his ankle back in March during his match against Chris Jericho on RAW. If you remember, Neville tried to baseball slide under Chris during the match but his ankle got caught. Doctors said he would be out minimum 2-3 months.
Neville was at NXT Takeover The End watching the event live from Full Sail University. During his appearance at the show, he provided fans with an injury return update:
He says that he feels really good right now and he started moving on it this week.
He says he was able to rethink everything during his time off and he is feeling refreshed at the end of the recovery journey.
He says he is looking forward to getting back into the mix.
He says at the end that it won’t be long until we see him back in a WWE ring.
Widget not in any sidebars
Here was the full video from WWE’s Youtube page:
His comments are a bit ambiguous as to when he will actually return. He says he just started moving on it so does that mean he is a couple weeks away still or that he is moving on it in a ring setting getting ready for an immediate return? I am really not sure but I expect to see him within the next couple weeks. If he is close to returning he could return in time for WWE Money in the Bank on June 19th?
Let us know what you think about the Neville injury return and when you think he will be back in the ring. Also how would you book his return? Let us know in the comment section.I warned you guys early this morning that college football fan would lose his mind today when high school football players chose a school to attend for the next four years of his life. In the case of Cade Mays, a five-star offensive tackle out of Knoxville Catholic, he decommitted from Tennessee and signed with Georgia. Yeah, that’s pretty much like your brother sleeping with your wife material. It’s going to stir some emotions in a man.
Cade Mays was considered the #1 recruit in Tennessee and the #2 offensive tackle in the nation. It was a day where he had to break the heart of Vols fans. Business is business. He decommitted on Nov. 7. Vols fans knew this was coming.
“I believe I’m the first person in Knoxville to ever do this,” Mays said of being on ESPN. “It’s an unbelievable feeling.”
And at least one Vols fan couldn’t hold back. He had to let it out.
@bigorange2017 had to tell Mays:
“I can’t wait till we [the Vols] break your fuccing leg fucc you fucc boy”
Big Orange was immediately called out by Vols fans who are just trying to have a calm holiday season after the whole Fire John Currie stuff and the Schiano fiasco.
Fuck that kid. Shouldn’t ever be allowed back in Tennessee. — #TheBattleCaptainIsBack (@Josh65503939) December 20, 2017
https://twitter.com/LibertyVolHawk/status/943585195441250304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Eat shit you fat fuck — Luke The Drifter (@SWMP44) December 20, 2017
Feels great to say Fuck You, Bad Decision, and Go Fuck Yourself! — Mark Hitchcock (@MarkHitchcockGB) December 20, 2017American actress and model
Kimberly Alexis Bledel[1] ( blə-DEL; born September 16, 1981) is an American actress and model. She is best known for her role as Rory Gilmore on the television series Gilmore Girls (2000–2007), for which she received nominations for Satellite, Teen Choice and Young Artist Awards. In 2016, Bledel reprised her role on the Netflix reunion miniseries Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
Bledel made her feature film debut as Winnie Foster in Tuck Everlasting (2002), and has since appeared in Sin City (2005), Post Grad (2009), and as Lena Kaligaris in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants film series. Since 2017, she has appeared in the Hulu drama series The Handmaid's Tale. For her work on the series, she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series and an additional nomination in the Supporting Actress category.
Early life [ edit ]
Bledel was born in Houston, Texas, to Nanette (née Dozier), who worked as a gift processor and flight attendant, and Martín Bledel.[2][3] She has a younger brother, Eric.[1] Her father was born and raised in Argentina.[4][5] Her paternal grandfather, Enrique Einar Bledel Huus, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and was of Danish and distant German descent; Enrique was Vice President of Coca-Cola Latin America and the Coca-Cola Inter-American Corporation. Bledel's paternal grandmother, Jean (née Campbell), was originally from New York and had Scottish and English ancestry.[6][7][8] Bledel's mother, Nanette, was born in Phoenix, Arizona, and moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, at the age of eight; Nanette was raised there and in Mexico City.[9][10][11] Of her parents' upbringing in Latin America, Bledel has stated: "It's the only culture my mom knows from life, and my father as well, and they made the decision to raise their children within the context they had been raised in."[3][9] Bledel grew up in a Spanish-speaking household, and did not learn English until she began school; she considers herself a Latina.[3][12]
Bledel attended Catholic St. Agnes Academy in Houston, as well as Baptist and Lutheran schools.[13] Her mother encouraged her to try community theater to overcome her shyness.[14] As a child, Bledel appeared in local productions of Our Town and The Wizard of Oz.[15] She was scouted at a local shopping mall and given work as a fashion model.[16][17] She went to Page Parkes Center for Modeling and Acting and attended New York University's Tisch School of the Arts for one year.[18][not in citation given]
Career [ edit ]
Career beginnings [ edit ]
Bledel made her television debut in 2000; opposite |
the 100 greatest singers of all time, stating, "Her voice is a mammoth, coruscating cry: Few vocalists could get away with opening a song with 45 unaccompanied seconds of singing, but Houston's powerhouse version of Dolly Parton's 'I Will Always Love You' is a tour de force."[100] Matthew Perpetua from Rolling Stone also eulogized Houston's vocal, enumerating ten performances, including "How Will I Know" from the 1986 MTV VMAs and "The Star Spangled Banner" at the 1991 Super Bowl. "Whitney Houston was blessed with an astonishing vocal range and extraordinary technical skill, but what truly made her a great singer was her ability to connect with a song and drive home its drama and emotion with incredible precision", he stated. "She was a brilliant performer, and her live shows often eclipsed her studio recordings."[296] According to Newsweek, Houston had a four-octave range.[297]
Jon Caramanica of The New York Times commented, "Her voice was clean and strong, with barely any grit, well suited to the songs of love and aspiration. [... ] Hers was a voice of triumph and achievement, and it made for any number of stunning, time-stopping vocal performances."[298] Mariah Carey stated, "She [Whitney] has a really rich, strong mid-belt that very few people have. She sounds really good, really strong."[299] While in her review of I Look to You, music critic Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times writes, "[Houston's voice] stands like monuments upon the landscape of 20th century pop, defining the architecture of their times, sheltering the dreams of millions and inspiring the climbing careers of countless imitators", adding "When she was at her best, nothing could match her huge, clean, cool mezzo-soprano."[291]
Lauren Everitt from BBC News Magazine commented on melisma used in Houston's recording and its influence. "An early 'I' in Whitney Houston's 'I Will Always Love You' takes nearly six seconds to sing. In those seconds the former gospel singer-turned-pop star packs a series of different notes into the single syllable", stated Everitt. "The technique is repeated throughout the song, most pronouncedly on every 'I' and 'you'. The vocal technique is called melisma, and it has inspired a host of imitators. Other artists may have used it before Houston, but it was her rendition of Dolly Parton's love song that pushed the technique into the mainstream in the 90s. [... ] But perhaps what Houston nailed best was moderation." Everitt said that "[i]n a climate of reality shows ripe with 'oversinging,' it's easy to appreciate Houston's ability to save melisma for just the right moment."[300]
Houston's vocal stylings have had a significant impact on the music industry. According to Linda Lister in Divafication: The Deification of Modern Female Pop Stars, she has been called the "Queen of Pop" for her influence during the 1990s, commercially rivaling Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.[301] Stephen Holden from The New York Times, in his review of Houston's Radio City Music Hall concert on July 20, 1993, praised her attitude as a singer, writing, "Whitney Houston is one of the few contemporary pop stars of whom it might be said: the voice suffices. While almost every performer whose albums sell in the millions calls upon an entertainer's bag of tricks, from telling jokes to dancing to circus pyrotechnics, Ms. Houston would rather just stand there and sing." With regard to her singing style, he added: "Her [Houston's] stylistic trademarks – shivery melismas that ripple up in the middle of a song, twirling embellishments at the ends of phrases that suggest an almost breathless exhilaration – infuse her interpretations with flashes of musical and emotional lightning."[302]
Elysa Gardner of the Los Angeles Times in her review for The Preacher's Wife Soundtrack praised Houston's vocal ability highly, commenting, "She is first and foremost a pop diva – at that, the best one we have. No other female pop star – not Mariah Carey, not Celine Dion, not Barbra Streisand – quite rivals Houston in her exquisite vocal fluidity and purity of tone, and her ability to infuse a lyric with mesmerizing melodrama."[303]
Houston struggled with vocal problems in her later years. Gary Catona, a voice coach who began working with Houston in 2005, stated: "'When I first started working with her in 2005, she had lost 99.9 percent of her voice... She could barely speak, let alone sing. Her lifestyle choices had made her almost completely hoarse.'"[304] After Houston's death, Catona said that Houston's voice had been damaged[305][306] by her "extra-curricular activities".
Influence
During the 1980s, MTV was coming into its own and received criticism for not playing enough videos by black artists. With Michael Jackson breaking down the color barrier for black men, Houston did the same for black women. She became the first black woman to receive heavy rotation on the network following the success of the "How Will I Know" video.[307] Following Houston's breakthrough, other African-American women, such as Janet Jackson and Anita Baker, were successful in popular music.[48][49] Baker commented that "Because of what Whitney and Sade did, there was an opening for me... For radio stations, black women singers aren't taboo anymore."[308]
AllMusic noted her contribution to the success of black artists on the pop scene, commenting, "Houston was able to handle big adult contemporary ballads, effervescent, stylish dance-pop, and slick urban contemporary soul with equal dexterity" and that "the result was an across-the-board appeal that was matched by scant few artists of her era, and helped her become one of the first black artists to find success on MTV in Michael Jackson's wake".[309] The New York Times stated that "Houston was a major catalyst for a movement within black music that recognized the continuity of soul, pop, jazz and gospel vocal traditions".[310] Richard Corliss of Time magazine commented on her initial success breaking various barriers:
Of her first album's ten cuts, six were ballads. This chanteuse [Houston] had to fight for air play with hard rockers. The young lady had to stand uncowed in the locker room of macho rock. The soul strutter had to seduce a music audience that anointed few black artists with superstardom. [... ] She was a phenomenon waiting to happen, a canny tapping of the listener's yen for a return to the musical middle. And because every new star creates her own genre, her success has helped other blacks, other women, other smooth singers find an avid reception in the pop marketplace.[311]
Stephen Holden of The New York Times said that Houston "revitalized the tradition of strong gospel-oriented pop-soul singing".[312] Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times referred to Houston as a "national treasure".[291] Jon Caramanica, another music critic of The New York Times, called Houston "R&B's great modernizer", adding "slowly but surely reconciling the ambition and praise of the church with the movements and needs of the body and the glow of the mainstream".[298] He also drew comparisons between Houston's influence and other big names' on 1980s pop:
She was, alongside Michael Jackson and Madonna, one of the crucial figures to hybridize pop in the 1980s, though her strategy was far less radical than that of her peers. Jackson and Madonna were by turns lascivious and brutish and, crucially, willing to let their production speak more loudly than their voices, an option Ms. Houston never went for. Also, she was less prolific than either of them, achieving most of her renown on the strength of her first three solo albums and one soundtrack, released from 1985 to 1992. If she was less influential than they were in the years since, it was only because her gift was so rare, so impossible to mimic. Jackson and Madonna built worldviews around their voices; Ms. Houston's voice was the worldview. She was someone more to be admired, like a museum piece, than to be emulated.[298]
The Independent's music critic Andy Gill also wrote about Houston's influence on modern R&B and singing competitions, comparing it to Michael Jackson's. "Because Whitney, more than any other single artist – Michael Jackson included – effectively mapped out the course of modern R&B, setting the bar for standards of soul vocalese, and creating the original template for what we now routinely refer to as the'soul diva' ", stated Gill. "Jackson was a hugely talented icon, certainly, but he will be as well remembered (probably more so) for his presentational skills, his dazzling dance moves, as for his musical innovations. Whitney, on the other hand, just sang, and the ripples from her voice continue to dominate the pop landscape." Gill said that there "are few, if any, Jackson imitators on today's TV talent shows, but every other contestant is a Whitney wannabe, desperately attempting to emulate that wondrous combination of vocal effects – the flowing melisma, the soaring mezzo-soprano confidence, the tremulous fluttering that carried the ends of lines into realms of higher yearning".[313]
Houston was considered by many to be a "singer's singer", who had an influence on countless other vocalists, both female and male.[100][314] Similarly, Steve Huey from Allmusic wrote that the shadow of Houston's prodigious technique still looms large over nearly every pop diva and smooth urban soul singer – male or female – in her wake, and spawned a legion of imitators.[309] Rolling Stone, on her biography, stated that Houston "redefined the image of a female soul icon and inspired singers ranging from Mariah Carey to Rihanna".[315] Essence ranked Houston sixth on their list of 50 Most Influential R&B Stars of all time, calling her "the diva to end all divas".[316]
A number of artists have acknowledged Houston as an influence, including Celine Dion,[317] Mariah Carey,[100] Toni Braxton,[318] Lady Gaga,[319] Christina Aguilera,[320] LeAnn Rimes,[321] Jessica Simpson,[322] Nelly Furtado,[323] Kelly Clarkson,[324] Britney Spears,[325] Ciara,[326] P!nk,[325] Aneeka,[327] Ashanti,[328] Hayley Williams, Robin Thicke,[329] Jennifer Hudson,[330] Stacie Orrico,[331] Amerie,[332] Destiny's Child,[325][333] and Ariana Grande.[334] Mariah Carey, who was often compared to Houston, said, "She [Houston] has been a big influence on me."[335] She later told USA Today that "none of us would sound the same if Aretha Franklin hadn't ever put out a record, or Whitney Houston hadn't."[336] Celine Dion who was the third member of the troika that dominated female pop singing in the 1990s, did a telephone interview with Good Morning America on February 13, 2012, saying "Whitney's been an amazing inspiration for me. I've been singing with her my whole career, actually. I wanted to have a career like hers, sing like her, look beautiful like her."[337] Beyoncé told the Globe and Mail that Houston "inspired [her] to get up there and do what [she] did".[338] She also wrote on her website on the day after Houston's death, "I, like every singer, always wanted to be just like [Houston]. Her voice was perfect. Strong but soothing. Soulful and classic. Her vibrato, her cadence, her control. So many of my life's memories are attached to a Whitney Houston song. She is our queen and she opened doors and provided a blueprint for all of us."[339]
Mary J. Blige said that Houston inviting her onstage during VH1's Divas Live show in 1999 "opened doors for [her] all over the world".[340] Brandy stated, "The first Whitney Houston CD was genius. That CD introduced the world to her angelic yet powerful voice. Without Whitney, half of this generation of singers wouldn't be singing."[341] Kelly Rowland, in an Ebony's feature article celebrating black music in June 2006, recalled that "[I] wanted to be a singer after I saw Whitney Houston on TV singing 'Greatest Love of All'. I wanted to sing like Whitney Houston in that red dress." She added that "And I have never, ever forgotten that song [Greatest Love of All]. I learned it backward, forward, sideways. The video still brings chills to me. When you wish and pray for something as a kid, you never know what blessings God will give you."[342]
Alicia Keys said "Whitney is an artist who inspired me from [the time I was] a little girl."[343] Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson cites Houston as her biggest musical influence. She told Newsday that she learned from Houston the "difference between being able to sing and knowing how to sing".[344] Leona Lewis, who has been called "the new Whitney Houston", also cites her as an influence. Lewis stated that she idolized her as a little girl.[345][346]
Awards and achievements
Houston was the most awarded female artist of all time, according to Guinness World Records,[25] with two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. She held the all-time record for the most American Music Awards of any female solo artist and shared the record with Michael Jackson for the most AMAs ever won in a single year with eight wins in 1994.[347] Houston won a record 11 Billboard Music Awards at its fourth ceremony in 1993.[348] She also had the record for the most WMAs won in a single year, winning five awards at the 6th World Music Awards in 1994.[349]
In May 2003, Houston placed at number three on VH1's list of "50 Greatest Women of the Video Era", behind Madonna and Janet Jackson.[350] She was also ranked at number 116 on their list of the "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons of All Time".[351] In 2008, Billboard magazine released a list of the Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists to celebrate the US singles chart's 50th anniversary, ranking Houston at number nine.[352][353] Similarly, she was ranked as one of the "Top 100 Greatest Artists of All Time" by VH1 in September 2010.[354] In November 2010, Billboard released its "Top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years" list and ranked Houston at number three who not only went on to earn eight number-one singles on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, but also landed five number ones on R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.[355]
Houston's debut album is listed as one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine[45] and is on Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Definitive 200 list.[46] In 2004, Billboard picked the success of her first release on the charts as one of 110 Musical Milestones in its history.[356] Houston's entrance into the music industry is considered one of the 25 musical milestones of the last 25 years, according to USA Today in 2007. It stated that she paved the way for Mariah Carey's chart-topping vocal gymnastics.[47] In 1997, the Franklin School in East Orange, New Jersey was renamed to The Whitney E. Houston Academy School of Creative and Performing Arts. In 2001, Houston was the first artist to be given a BET Lifetime Achievement Award.[357] Houston is one of pop music's best-selling music artists of all-time, with an estimated 170–200 million records sold worldwide.[358][359] She was ranked as the fourth best-selling female artist in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 55 million certified albums sold in the US,[228][360] and held an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from Grambling State University, Louisiana.[361] Houston was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2013.[362] In August 2014, Houston was inducted to the official Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame in its second class.[363]
Documentaries
On 27 April 2016, it was announced that Kevin Macdonald would work with the film production team Altitude, producers of Amy Winehouse film Amy (2015), on a new documentary film based on Houston's life and death. It is the first documentary authorized by the estate.[364] In 2015, biographical film Whitney premiered on Lifetime directed by Houston's Waiting to Exhale co-star Angela Bassett. Houston was portrayed by model Yaya DaCosta.[365] A 2018 Whitney film premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and was released internationally in theatres on July 6, 2018.[366]
In mid-2017, a television documentary film directed by Nick Broomfield entitled Whitney: Can I Be Me was screened in cinemas.
Discography
Filmography
Tours
World tours
Regional tours
See also
References
Further readingREADER COMMENTS ON
"The George W. Bush Legacy Project"
(21 Responses so far...)
COMMENT #1 [Permalink]
... Tio Wally said on 7/21/2008 @ 10:57 am PT...
While I understand this heartfelt attempt at satire, I believe naming the water treatment plant after someone as odious as the internationally recognized war criminal George W. Bush is wrong for one simple reason: Unlike Bush, the plant actually performs a valuable function. I've wracked my brain for a couple of weeks now trying to figure out some other entity that could be renamed, something that would truly reflect Bush's legacy, but I'm at a loss as to what that might be. Anyone have any ideas?
COMMENT #2 [Permalink]
... Jon Ponder said on 7/21/2008 @ 11:09 am PT...
Tio - It's not about what comes out of the treatment plant, it's about what goes in. In any case, it would be up to the local organizers to decide want to rename in Bush's honor in their communities, so sewage plants and garbage dumps are just a suggestion.
COMMENT #3 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 7/21/2008 @ 11:09 am PT...
Just rename the patch of hair around your anal hole after him, that oughta do it. Now for something else: Family Security Matters a neo-conservative based think tank has published an article advocating that George W. Bush should be a dictator for life. Link
COMMENT #4 [Permalink]
... NewConstitutionalConvention said on 7/21/2008 @ 11:36 am PT...
Tio, you make a good point, the plant is vital and should be respected, unlike Bushbaby. If they did name it after him, there would probably be spills and containment leaks, anything for the Bush Crime Family to continue to shit on the Bay Area. I would suggest then maybe renaming Gitmo after him, but that would be an insult to the Cubans. With all due respect to Dr. Guillotin, perhaps we could rename his invention the Bushwacker after we use it on Chimpy. But, I realize this whole discussion, is WHY Georgie was made President to beging with: he's the perfect Mancherian front man to absorb the praise and scorn of the masses while the real players like Cheney, Addington, Baker, Kissinger pull strings from behind the curtain.
COMMENT #5 [Permalink]
... Bamboo Harvester said on 7/21/2008 @ 12:23 pm PT...
Wilbur ~ I hear that glenn DRECK beck will substitute for Larry King on the Crap News Network...
WTF!... cnn = fox II
COMMENT #6 [Permalink]
... Tio Wally said on 7/21/2008 @ 1:10 pm PT...
Here's a thought: Perhaps we should limit the naming of George W. Bush Legacy sites to Superfund sites. After all, they are extremely toxic and will take forever to clean up. There are currently 1,623 Superfund sites nationwide; 93 Superfund sites in California, with three more proposed. Moreover, one out of two Americans live within 10 miles of a Superfund site. That means half of us can live within biking distance of a George W. Bush Legacy Site! Just imagine: The EPA would be stacked to the rafters with documents headed Gorge W. Bush Legacy Site #00001 through #01623; newspaper articles would be headlined "George W. Bush Legacy Site #00623 Contaminates Aquifer"; etc. Again, just a thought.
COMMENT #7 [Permalink]
... Smithy said on 7/21/2008 @ 2:28 pm PT...
Hows: "The Bill Clinton Center for Raped and abused women." or "The Kennedy abortion plant."
COMMENT #8 [Permalink]
... Troubled Texan said on 7/21/2008 @ 4:23 pm PT...
A little family history. My father worked his way up through the ranks to be a Supervisor who eventially became the Superintendent at a sewage treatment plant in Independence, Mo. He worked there for roughly 30 years. Late in his life, when he couldn't meet the physical requirements, the city hired him as a consultant. I have fond memories, as a child, going to work with dad and being allowed to go out on the settling pond with him. He'd launch a 14 ft boat on the settling pond and we'd go out and stir things up to help the settling. That was many years ago. The one thing I remember most fondly about dad is his since of humour. In those days if you worked at a sewage treatment plant all the other city workers : parks department, transportation department, etc. were gonna kid you and tell jokes about working at a sewage treatment plant. So, I have to ask? Is it fitting for San Fransisco to name one of its largest waste water treatment plants for George W.? I'll answer that myself. That's a freaking excellent idea. So, look at it this way. George W., and his ilk, are the shit pile of the world. Where else would the excretement that he and his ilk produced flow to but a sewage treatment plant named after him. My only question is. Will TurdBlossom have a settling tank named after him? :_) Troubled
COMMENT #9 [Permalink]
... Phil said on 7/21/2008 @ 6:37 pm PT...
I said it before and I'll say it again, the Nancy Pelosi Swamp Preserve. http://img510.imageshack.../3526/projectscumye9.png
COMMENT #10 [Permalink]
... Bamboo Harvester said on 7/21/2008 @ 7:52 pm PT...
Troubled Texan ~ That was touching... I so glad we are in agreement!
COMMENT #11 [Permalink]
... Joan said on 7/21/2008 @ 9:22 pm PT...
#8 Troubled Texan,
Hey that was nice! And also thanks for bringing up the topic of shit! Because I wanted to share with y'all the lyrics to this song I wrote, The Bullshit Song, & I was thinking Hmmm...doesn't really fit in with water treatment plants...but it sure fits the bush boys.
Be better with the melody, but here ya go, for what it's worth... The Bullshit Song What does it for you, what sets your hair on fire the most?
Maybe it's the war, or the fact that our reputation is toast? When you're calling tech support & they're in Bombay
And you can't understand a single a word they say?
Well I know for me it's that every damn day
All we get is BULLSHIT Maybe it's that smirk on his face when the whole damn country's gone to hell,
Or maybe it's the fact that he just can't speak the English language very well. Is it all the good jobs that have just gone away?
Or that filling up the car takes half of your pay?
No, I'd really still have to say
It's the constant BULLSHIT Chorus
Do they think we're stupid? Oh yeah, they do
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain
They want us fat & lazy, and deaf dumb & blind
Yeah, then we won't notice we're hurtin' Does it burn you up that they keep cutting taxes for billionnaires?
You know I seem to recall New Orleans still could use a few minor repairs. The country's so in debt, we're running out of dough,
Can't expect Uncle Sam to help the average Joe,
Oh no ya can't get in the way of the reliable flow
Of all their BULLSHIT Does it make you see red that Watergate now seems like a day at the beach?
Do you pull out your hair when they keep pretending Noo we can't impeach? Is it that what they say is never what they mean?
Or that they're laying waste to the American Dream?
No it's more that reeking & reliable stream
Of never-ending BULLSHIT Chorus
You know our votes are safe, they wouldn't mess with those
Ha! How stupid do they think we are?
They guard 'em carefully until the polls are closed
And then we find 'em in the trunk of a car Does it make you crazy when their laws mean the opposite of what they're called?
(The Clean Air Act...right)
Or when you hear another one's caught with his pants down in a bathroom stall? These are powerful men, got the guns, got the toys
Why can't they just admit, they kinda like boys?
(It's OKAY guys!)
No, they'll cover it up using one of their ploys...
Here comes more BULLSHIT Hey, the economy's great, lookin' strong, gettin' better every day!
And the Constitution, just a piece of paper, we didn't need it anyway! I don't know whose to blame for the fix we're in
But my patience is really kinda wearin' thin
You can call it hype, you can call it spin
Well I call it BULLSHIT
COMMENT #12 [Permalink]
... John said on 7/21/2008 @ 9:37 pm PT...
In general, I like the idea. However, naming ANYTHING after him would be an insult to that thing and an ongoing unpleasant reminder of him and his administration!
COMMENT #13 [Permalink]
... Saint Augustine said on 7/22/2008 @ 4:10 am PT...
Plastic bags used to clean up behind your dog can be Bush Bags.
COMMENT #14 [Permalink]
... Smithy said on 7/22/2008 @ 4:51 am PT...
The Kennedy Institute for Drowning Victims. Or KIDV for short.
COMMENT #15 [Permalink]
... Joan said on 7/22/2008 @ 5:17 am PT...
#13
Ooh I like that. And no more cat boxes. From here on in my cat's using a Bush Box.
COMMENT #16 [Permalink]
... Floridiot said on 7/22/2008 @ 7:19 am PT...
Hey Jon!, Troy King has to purge himself from the voting roles now. [...]the State Legislature clearly defined what those crimes are: murder, rape, sodomy, sexual abuse, incest, sexual torture and nine other crimes mainly involving pornography and abuses against children. At issue in the lawsuit is not the list enacted in law but an expanded “moral turpitude” list developed by the state’s attorney general, Troy King, in 2005. That list includes about a dozen additional offenses, most of them nonviolent, and several including the sale of marijuana. Link
COMMENT #17 [Permalink]
... naschkatze said on 7/22/2008 @ 7:43 am PT...
Tio Wally #6 has the best idea: rename all nuclear waste sites after him. The George W. Bush Nukular Waste Mountain.
COMMENT #18 [Permalink]
... michelle l. said on 7/22/2008 @ 7:55 am PT...
Some Southern Bush Buddies wouldn't like that too much, and neither would networking corporate comrades, particularly the fratboys making money at CCA.
http://www.southerngovernors.org
COMMENT #19 [Permalink]
... Damail said on 7/22/2008 @ 9:50 pm PT...
Here's a re-naming: That south-of-the-border murderous gang called MS-13 should re-name itslf The Gavin Newsome Gang.
COMMENT #20 [Permalink]
... Shirley U. Gest said on 9/24/2008 @ 1:36 pm PT...
The most fitting legacy/memorial for this unarguably worst US President EVER is the large smoking hole in the ground where the US economy used to be. Not only can he not pronounce "nuclear", he is apparently genetically incapable of saying the word "recession". Perhaps he will have an easier time with "depression" instead.
Right now, the most honorable thing he could do is go on a hunting trip with Dick Chaney (this is your chance Dick, don't screw it up.) Then, hopefully, Dick will keel over from the excitement, and Nancy Palosi will have a chance to kick-start the Democrats until Obama takes over in January.
COMMENT #21 [Permalink]
... Shirley U. Gest said on 9/25/2008 @ 9:47 am PT...We’re all familiar with the stereotype of the tortured artist. Salvador Dali’s various disorders and Sylvia Plath’s depression spring to mind. Now new research seems to show why: a genetic mutation linked to psychosis and schizophrenia also influences creativity.
The finding could help to explain why mutations that increase a person’s risk of developing mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar syndrome have been preserved, even preferred, during human evolution, says Szabolcs Kéri, a researcher at Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, who carried out the study.
Kéri examined a gene involved in brain development called neuregulin 1, which previous studies have linked to a slightly increased risk of schizophrenia. Moreover, a single DNA letter mutation that affects how much of the neuregulin 1 protein is made in the brain has been linked to psychosis, poor memory and sensitivity to criticism.
About 50 per cent of healthy Europeans have one copy of this mutation, while 15 per cent possess two copies.
Advertisement
Creative thinking
To determine how these variations affect creativity, Kéri genotyped 200 adults who responded to adverts seeking creative and accomplished volunteers. He also gave the volunteers two tests of creative thinking, and devised an objective score of their creative achievements, such as filing a patent or writing a book.
People with two copies of the neuregulin 1 mutation – about 12 per cent of the study participants – tended to score notably higher on these measures of creativity, compared with other volunteers with one or no copy of the mutation. Those with one copy were also judged to be more creative, on average, than volunteers without the mutation. All told, the mutation explained between 3 and 8 per cent of the differences in creativity, Kéri says.
Exactly how neuregulin 1 affects creativity isn’t clear. Volunteers with two copies of the mutation were no more likely than others to possess so-called schizotypal traits, such as paranoia, odd speech patterns and inappropriate emotions. This would suggest that the mutation’s connection to mental illness does not entirely explain its link to creativity, Kéri says.
Dampening the brain
Rather, Kéri speculates that the mutation dampens a brain region that reins in mood and behaviour, called the prefrontal cortex. This change could unleash creative potential in some people and psychotic delusions in others.
Intelligence could be one factor that determines whether the neuregulin 1 mutation boosts creativity or contributes to psychosis. Kéri’s volunteers tended to be smarter than average. In contrast, another study of families with a history of schizophrenia found that the same mutation was associated with lower intelligence and psychotic symptoms.
“My clinical experience is that high-IQ people with psychosis have more intellectual capacity to deal with psychotic experiences,” Kéri says. “It’s not enough to experience those feelings, you have to communicate them.”
Intelligence’s influence
Jeremy Hall, a geneticist at the University of Edinburgh in the UK who uncovered the link between the neuregulin 1 mutation and psychosis, agrees that the gene’s effects are probably influenced by cognitive factors such as intelligence.
This doesn’t mean that psychosis and creativity are the same, though. “There’s always been this slightly romantic idea that madness and genius are the flipside to the same coin. How much is that true? Madness is often madness and doesn’t have as much genetic association with intelligence,” Hall says.
Bernard Crespi, a behavioural geneticist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, is holding his applause for now. “This is a very interesting study with remarkably strong results, though it must be replicated in an independent population before the results can be accepted with confidence,” he says.
Journal reference: Psychological Science (DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02398.x)Today libvirt reached the symbolic milestone of a 1.0.0 release. This is not because of any particular major new feature compared to the previous 0.10.2 release, but rather we picked 1.0.0 as a way of celebrating our 7th birthday. From the git history we see the first commit 7 years ago today:
commit d77e1a9642fe1efe9aa5f737a640354c27d04e02 Author: Daniel Veillard <veillard@redhat.com> Date: Wed Nov 2 12:50:21 2005 +0000 Initial revision
And today the 1.0.0 release commit:
commit 2b435c153e53e78092025c01ddc43265761b72fa Author: Daniel Veillard <veillard@redhat.com> Date: Fri Nov 2 12:08:11 2012 +0800 Release of libvirt-1.0.0
To commemorate this occasion I have prepared a new animation of libvirt development history using gource.
While I was doing that I figured I would do one for QEMU too, which is coming up to its 10 year anniversary on Feb 18th, 2013.
In both videos it should be pretty easy to spot where the projects switched from using CVS/SVN (respectively) over to GIT, since there is dramatic increase in the number of people committing changes. A large part of this is due to the fact that GIT correctly attributes authorship, but at the same time both projects also saw a significant increase in community size as barriers to contribution were lowered.Adding FW Services
[Edit, as of about an hour ago, we brought the Akidagi Intel Cam online, keeping an eye on the Icho gate. You can view that feed here: http://www.twitch.tv/subsparx]
As we continue to roll toward the factionwarfare.com launch, Subsparx and I are testing other services we plan to provide to all four militias. One of those services is straight from the pages of Mad_Ani: the Cal Mil Intel Cam. If you haven’t checked out Mad_Ani’s twitch.tv stream in the past, I highly recommend it. Good music, intel on staging systems during the slow times, and live coverage of many of the major fights going on in the current nullsec war.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or so they say. I certainly do. Having watched Mad_Ani’s stream, the wheels started turning. What FC (or even general militia member) wouldn’t like real-time intelligence on critical systems to the Cal Mil war effort? Especially if those feeds stay always on, with no delay? Yes please. That’s something I’ve wished for more than once in my decade of EVE gaming.
With my machine at home, we could get two systems streaming at the same time. Three or four would probably be doable, but the test broadcast showed that all four were too small to make out anything in detail. So…two systems. But which two to place the Intel Cams in? That turned out to be the real question. Do we station the cameras in Nenna & Nisuwa to cover two of Gal Mil’s major staging areas? Aki & Kinaka to help screen Cal Mil’s main entrance points to lowsec? Tama? Innia? Vlil?
The answer to one of the systems presented pretty early. A thousand times of day, someone in the Caldari Militia chat channel asks for an update on Tama. “How’s the Nourv gate in Tama?” “Is Tama camped?” “Hostiles in Tama?” Five, ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes later, they’ll get a reply…usually with very outdated intel. “Nope, it’s clear,” someone will say, recollecting on their trip through ten minutes ago, and unaware of the pirates that have since moved in to occupy the gate. Cue another ship explosion that a real-time feed of the Nourv gate would have prevented. So, Tama system, Nourv gate…check.
But what to do with the other Intel Cam? I had to satisfy my inner FC on this one. “Where do many of the Akki/Kinaka gate camps originate from?” “Where do the major Gal Mil fleets stage/reship?” Nennamaila, the answer to both. Not necessarily always from the Nenna station, mind you, but that system is a central hub for traffic to and from Cal Mil controlled areas in Black Rise. The Gallente don’t have to go through there, but they often do. So, Nennamaila, on grid with the station…check.
Direct link to the Cal Mil Intel Cam feed on twitch.tv. It’s still a work in progress. The overlays aren’t great yet. My larger monitor comes in today, which will enable full 1080p streaming. I’ll be adding in more music as well. |
1960s most disk drives used IBM's variable block length format (called Count Key Data or "CKD").[20] Any block size could be specified up to the maximum track length. Since the block headers occupied space, the usable capacity of the drive was dependent on the block size. Blocks ("records" in IBM's terminology) of 88, 96, 880 and 960 were often used because they related to the fixed block size of 80- and 96-character punch cards. The drive capacity was usually stated under conditions of full track record blocking. For example, the 100-megabyte 3336 disk pack only achieved that capacity with a full track block size of 13,030 bytes.
Floppy disks for the IBM PC and compatibles quickly standardized on 512-byte sectors, so two sectors were easily referred to as "1K". The 3.5-inch "360 KB" and "720 KB" had 720 (single-sided) and 1440 sectors (double-sided) respectively. When the High Density "1.44 MB" floppies came along, with 2880 of these 512-byte sectors, that terminology represented a hybrid binary-decimal definition of "1 MB" = 210 x 103 =1 024 000 bytes.
In contrast, hard disk drive manufacturers used "megabytes" or "MB", meaning 106 bytes, to characterize their products as early as 1974.[21] By 1977, in its first edition, Disk/Trend, a leading hard disk drive industry marketing consultancy segmented the industry according to MBs (decimal sense) of capacity.[22]
One of the earliest hard disk drives in personal computing history, the Seagate ST-412, was specified as "Formatted: 10.0 Megabytes".[23] More precisely, the drive contains 4 heads or active surfaces (tracks per cylinder), 306 cylinders, and when formatted with a sector size of 256 bytes and 32 sectors/track results in a capacity of 7007100270080000000♠10027008 bytes. This drive was one of several types installed into the IBM PC/XT[24] and extensively advertised and reported as a "10 MB" (formatted) hard disk drive.[25] The factor of 306 cylinders (rather than 256 or 512, both of which are powers of two) in the calculation causes the capacity to be not conveniently close to a power of 1024; operating systems and programs using the customary binary prefixes[defn. 4] show this as "9.5625 MB". Many later drives in the personal computer market used 17 sectors per track; still later, zone bit recording was introduced, causing the number of sectors per track to vary from the outer track to the inner. Nor are drives required to have a number of active surfaces that is a power of, or even divisible by, two; drives with e.g. three active surfaces are not uncommon. All of these factors reduce the utility of the customary binary prefixes for expressing drive capacity.
Today, the hard drive industry continues to use decimal prefixes for drive capacity (as well as for transfer rate). For example, a "300 GB" hard drive offers slightly more than 300×109, or 7011300000000000000♠300000000000, bytes, not 300 × 230 (which would be about 7011322000000000000♠322×109). Operating systems such as Microsoft Windows that display hard drive sizes using the customary binary prefix "GB" (as it is used for RAM) would display this as "279.4 GB" (meaning 279.4 × 10243 bytes, or 279.4 × 7009107374182400000♠1073741824 B). On the other hand, macOS has since version 10.6 shown hard drive size using decimal prefixes (thus matching the drive makers' packaging). (Previous versions of Mac OS X used binary prefixes.)
However, other usages still occur. For example, in one document, Seagate specifies data transfer rates of some of its hard drives in both IEC and decimal units.[26] "Advanced Format" drives using 4096-byte sectors are described as having "4K sectors."[27]
Information transfer and clock rates [ edit ]
Computer clock frequencies are always quoted using SI prefixes in their decimal sense. For example, the internal clock frequency of the original IBM PC was 4.77 MHz, that is 7006477000000000000♠4770000 Hz. Similarly, digital information transfer rates are quoted using decimal prefixes:
The ATA-100 disk interface refers to 7008100000000000000♠ 100 000 000 bytes per second
bytes per second A "56K" modem refers to 7004560000000000000♠ 56 000 bits per second
bits per second SATA-2 has a raw bit rate of 3 Gbit/s = 7009300000000000000♠ 3 000 000 000 bits per second
bits per second PC2-6400 RAM transfers 7009640000000000000♠ 6 400 000 000 bytes per second
bytes per second Firewire 800 has a raw rate of 7008800000000000000♠ 800 000 000 bits per second
bits per second However, as of 2011, Seagate specifies the transfer speed of some hard disk drives with IEC binary prefixes in addition to decimal units.[26]
Standardization of dual definitions [ edit ]
By the mid-1970s it was common to see K meaning 1024 and the occasional M meaning 7006104857600000000♠1048576 for words or bytes of main memory (RAM) while K and M were commonly used with their decimal meaning for disk storage. In the 1980s, as capacities of both types of devices increased, the SI prefix G, with SI meaning, was commonly applied to disk storage, while M in its binary meaning, became common for computer memory. In the 1990s, the prefix G, in its binary meaning, became commonly used for computer memory capacity. The first terabyte (SI prefix, 7012100000000000000♠1000000000000 bytes) hard disk drive was introduced in 2007.[28]
The dual usage of the kilo (K), mega (M), and giga (G) prefixes as both powers of 1000 and powers of 1024 has been recorded in standards and dictionaries. For example, the 1986 ANSI/IEEE Std 1084-1986[29] defined dual uses for kilo and mega.
kilo (K). (1) A prefix indicating 1000. (2) In statements involving size of computer storage, a prefix indicating 210, or 1024. mega (M). (1) A prefix indicating one million. (2) In statements involving size of computer storage, a prefix indicating 220, or 1048576.
The binary units Kbyte and Mbyte were formally defined in ANSI/IEEE Std 1212-1991.[30]
Many dictionaries have noted the practice of using traditional prefixes to indicate binary multiples.[31][32] Oxford online dictionary defines, for example, megabyte as: "Computing: a unit of information equal to one million or (strictly) 7006104857600000000♠1048576 bytes."[33]
The units Kbyte, Mbyte, and Gbyte are found in the trade press and in IEEE journals. Gigabyte was formally defined in IEEE Std 610.10-1994 as either 7009100000000000000♠1000000000 or 230 bytes.[34] Kilobyte, Kbyte, and KB are equivalent units and all are defined in the obsolete standard, IEEE 100-2000.[35]
The hardware industry measures system memory (RAM) using the binary meaning while magnetic disk storage uses the SI definition. However, many exceptions exist. Labeling of diskettes uses the megabyte to denote 1024×1000 bytes.[36] In the optical disks market, compact discs use MB to mean 10242 bytes while DVDs use GB to mean 10003 bytes.[37][38]
Inconsistent use of units [ edit ]
Deviation between powers of 1024 and powers of 1000 [ edit ]
Computer storage has become cheaper per unit and thereby larger, by many orders of magnitude since "K" was first used to mean 1024. Because both the SI and "binary" meanings of kilo, mega, etc., are based on powers of 1000 or 1024 rather than simple multiples, the difference between 1M "binary" and 1M "decimal" is proportionally larger than that between 1K "binary" and 1k "decimal," and so on up the scale. The relative difference between the values in the binary and decimal interpretations increases, when using the SI prefixes as the base, from 2.4% for kilo to nearly 21% for the yotta prefix.
Linear-log graph of percentage of the difference between decimal and binary interpretations of the unit prefixes versus the storage size.
Prefix Binary ÷ Decimal Decimal ÷ Binary kilo 1.024 (+2.4%) 0.9766 (−2.3%) mega 1.049 (+4.9%) 0.9537 (−4.6%) giga 1.074 (+7.4%) 0.9313 (−6.9%) tera 1.100 (+10.0%) 0.9095 (−9.1%) peta 1.126 (+12.6%) 0.8882 (−11.2%) exa 1.153 (+15.3%) 0.8674 (−13.3%) zetta 1.181 (+18.1%) 0.8470 (−15.3%) yotta 1.209 (+20.9%) 0.8272 (−17.3%)
Consumer confusion [ edit ]
In the early days of computers (roughly, prior to the advent of personal computers) there was little or no consumer confusion because of the technical sophistication of the buyers and their familiarity with the products. In addition, it was common for computer manufacturers to specify their products with capacities in full precision.[39]
In the personal computing era, one source of consumer confusion is the difference in the way many operating systems display hard drive sizes, compared to the way hard drive manufacturers describe them. Hard drives are specified and sold using "GB" and "TB" in their decimal meaning: one billion and one trillion bytes. Many operating systems and other software, however, display hard drive and file sizes using "MB", "GB" or other SI-looking prefixes in their binary sense, just as they do for displays of RAM capacity. For example, many such systems display a hard drive marketed as "160 GB" as "149.05 GB". The earliest known presentation of hard disk drive capacity by an operating system using "KB" or "MB" in a binary sense is 1984;[40] earlier operating systems generally presented the hard disk drive capacity as an exact number of bytes, with no prefix of any sort, for example, in the output of the MS-DOS or PC DOS CHKDSK command.
Legal disputes [ edit ]
The different interpretations of disk size prefixes has led to three significant class action lawsuits against digital storage manufacturers. One case involved flash memory and the other two involved hard disk drives. Two of these were settled with the manufacturers admitting no wrongdoing but agreeing to clarify the storage capacity of their products on the consumer packaging. Flash memory and hard disk manufacturers now have disclaimers on their packaging and web sites clarifying the formatted capacity of the devices or defining MB as 1 million bytes and 1 GB as 1 billion bytes.[41][42][43][44]
Willem Vroegh v. Eastman Kodak Company [ edit ]
On 20 February 2004, Willem Vroegh filed a lawsuit against Lexar Media, Dane–Elec Memory, Fuji Photo Film USA, Eastman Kodak Company, Kingston Technology Company, Inc., Memorex Products, Inc.; PNY Technologies Inc., SanDisk Corporation, Verbatim Corporation, and Viking Interworks alleging that their descriptions of the capacity of their flash memory cards were false and misleading.
Vroegh claimed that a 256 MB Flash Memory Device had only 244 MB of accessible memory. "Plaintiffs allege that Defendants marketed the memory capacity of their products by assuming that one megabyte equals one million bytes and one gigabyte equals one billion bytes." The plaintiffs wanted the defendants to use the traditional values of 10242 for megabyte and 10243 for gigabyte. The plaintiffs acknowledged that the IEC and IEEE standards define a MB as one million bytes but stated that the industry has largely ignored the IEC standards.[45]
The manufacturers agreed to clarify the flash memory card capacity on the packaging and web sites.[46] The consumers could apply for "a discount of ten percent off a future online purchase from Defendants' Online Stores Flash Memory Device".[47]
Orin Safier v. Western Digital Corporation [ edit ]
On 7 July 2005, an action entitled Orin Safier v. Western Digital Corporation, et al. was filed in the Superior Court for the City and County of San Francisco, Case No. CGC-05-442812. The case was subsequently moved to the Northern District of California, Case No. 05-03353 BZ.[48]
Although Western Digital maintained that their usage of units is consistent with "the indisputably correct industry standard for measuring and describing storage capacity", and that they "cannot be expected to reform the software industry", they agreed to settle in March 2006 with 14 June 2006 as the Final Approval hearing date.[49]
Western Digital offered to compensate customers with a free download of backup and recovery software valued at US$30. They also paid $500,000 in fees and expenses to San Francisco lawyers Adam Gutride and Seth Safier, who filed the suit. The settlement called for Western Digital to add a disclaimer to their later packaging and advertising.[50][51][52]
Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc. [ edit ]
A lawsuit (Cho v. Seagate Technology (US) Holdings, Inc., San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. CGC-06-453195) was filed against Seagate Technology, alleging that Seagate overrepresented the amount of usable storage by 7% on hard drives sold between March 22, 2001 and September 26, 2007. The case was settled without Seagate admitting wrongdoing, but agreeing to supply those purchasers with free backup software or a 5% refund on the cost of the drives.[53]
Unique binary prefixes [ edit ]
Early suggestions [ edit ]
While early computer scientists typically used k to mean 1000, some recognized the convenience that would result from working with multiples of 1024 and the confusion that resulted from using the same prefixes for two different meanings.
Several proposals for unique binary prefixes[defn. 2] were made in 1968. Donald Morrison proposed to use the Greek letter kappa (κ) to denote 1024, κ2 to denote 10242, and so on.[54] (At the time, memory size was small, and only K was in widespread use.) Wallace Givens responded with a proposal to use bK as an abbreviation for 1024 and bK2 or bK2 for 10242, though he noted that neither the Greek letter nor lowercase letter b would be easy to reproduce on computer printers of the day.[55] Bruce Alan Martin of Brookhaven National Laboratory further proposed that the prefixes be abandoned altogether, and the letter B be used for base-2 exponents, similar to E in decimal scientific notation, to create shorthands like 3B20 for 3×220,[56] a convention still used on some calculators to present binary floating point-numbers today.[57]
None of these gained much acceptance, and capitalization of the letter K became the de facto standard for indicating a factor of 1024 instead of 1000, although this could not be extended to higher powers.
As the discrepancy between the two systems increased in the higher-order powers, more proposals for unique prefixes were made. In 1996, Markus Kuhn proposed a system with di prefixes, like the "dikilobyte" (K₂B or K2B).[58] Donald Knuth, who uses decimal notation like 1 MB = 1000 kB,[59] expressed "astonishment" that the IEC proposal was adopted, calling them "funny-sounding" and opining that proponents were assuming "that standards are automatically adopted just because they are there." Knuth proposed that the powers of 1024 be designated as "large kilobytes" and "large megabytes" (abbreviated KKB and MMB, as "doubling the letter connotes both binary-ness and large-ness").[60] Double prefixes were already abolished from SI, however, having a multiplicative meaning ("MMB" would be equivalent to "TB"), and this proposed usage never gained any traction.
IEC prefixes [ edit ]
The set of binary prefixes that were eventually adopted, now referred to as the "IEC prefixes",[defn. 5] were first proposed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's (IUPAC) Interdivisional Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols (IDCNS) in 1995. At that time, it was proposed that the terms kilobyte and megabyte be used only for 103 bytes and 106 bytes, respectively. The new prefixes kibi (kilobinary), mebi (megabinary), gibi (gigabinary) and tebi (terabinary) were also proposed at the time, and the proposed symbols for the prefixes were kb, Mb, Gb and Tb respectively, rather than Ki, Mi, Gi and Ti.[61] The proposal was not accepted at the time.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) began to collaborate with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to find acceptable names for binary prefixes. IEC proposed kibi, mebi, gibi and tebi, with the symbols Ki, Mi, Gi and Ti respectively, in 1996.[62]
The names for the new prefixes are derived from the original SI prefixes combined with the term binary, but contracted, by taking the first two letters of the SI prefix and "bi" from binary. The first letter of each such prefix is therefore identical to the corresponding SI prefixes, except for "K", which is used interchangeably with "k", whereas in SI, only the lower-case k represents 1000.
The IEEE decided that their standards would use the prefixes kilo, etc. with their metric definitions, but allowed the binary definitions to be used in an interim period as long as such usage was explicitly pointed out on a case-by-case basis.[63]
Adoption by IEC, NIST and ISO [ edit ]
In January 1999, the IEC published the first international standard (IEC 60027-2 Amendment 2) with the new prefixes, extended up to pebi (Pi) and exbi (Ei).[64][65]
The IEC 60027-2 Amendment 2 also states that the IEC position is the same as that of BIPM (the body that regulates the SI system); the SI prefixes retain their definitions in powers of 1000 and are never used to mean a power of 1024.
In usage, products and concepts typically described using powers of 1024 would continue to be, but with the new IEC prefixes. For example, a memory module of 7008536870912000000♠536870912 bytes (512 × 7006104857600000000♠1048576) would be referred to as 512 MiB or 512 mebibytes instead of 512 MB or 512 megabytes. Conversely, since hard drives have historically been marketed using the SI convention that "giga" means 7009100000000000000♠1000000000, a "500 GB" hard drive would still be labeled as such. According to these recommendations, operating systems and other software would also use binary and SI prefixes in the same way, so the purchaser of a "500 GB" hard drive would find the operating system reporting either "500 GB" or "466 GiB", while 7008536870912000000♠536870912 bytes of RAM would be displayed as "512 MiB".
The second edition of the standard, published in 2000,[66] defined them only up to exbi,[67] but in 2005, the third edition added prefixes zebi and yobi, thus matching all SI prefixes with binary counterparts.[68]
The harmonized ISO/IEC IEC 80000-13:2008 standard cancels and replaces subclauses 3.8 and 3.9 of IEC 60027-2:2005 (those defining prefixes for binary multiples). The only significant change is the addition of explicit definitions for some quantities.[69] In 2009, the prefixes kibi-, mebi-, etc. were defined by ISO 80000-1 in their own right, independently of the kibibyte, mebibyte, and so on.
The BIPM standard JCGM 200:2012 "International vocabulary of metrology – Basic and general concepts and associated terms (VIM), 3rd edition" lists the IEC binary prefixes and states "SI prefixes refer strictly to powers of 10, and should not be used for powers of 2. For example, 1 kilobit should not be used to represent 7003102400000000000♠1024 bits (210 bits), which is 1 kibibit."[70]
Specific units of IEC 60027-2 A.2 and ISO/IEC 80000 IEC prefix Representations Customary prefix Name Symbol Base 2 Base 1024 Value Base 10 Name Symbol kibi Ki 210 10241 7003102400000000000♠ 1024 = 7003102400000000000♠ 1.024 × 103 kilo k[13] or K mebi Mi 220 10242 7006104857600000000♠ 1 048 576 ≈ 7006104900000000000♠ 1.049 × 106 mega M gibi Gi 230 10243 7009107374182400000♠ 1 073 741 824 ≈ 7009107400000000000♠ 1.074 × 109 giga G tebi Ti 240 10244 7012109951162777600♠ 1 099 511 627 776 ≈ 7012110000000000000♠ 1.100 × 1012 tera T pebi Pi 250 10245 7015112589990684262♠ 1 125 899 906 842 624 ≈ 7015112600000000000♠ 1.126 × 1015 peta P exbi Ei 260 10246 7018115292150460684♠ 1 152 921 504 606 846 976 ≈ 7018115300000000000♠ 1.153 × 1018 exa E zebi Zi 270 10247 7021118059162071741♠ 1 180 591 620 717 411 303 424 ≈ 7021118100000000000♠ 1.181 × 1021 zetta Z yobi Yi 280 10248 7024120892581961462♠ 1 208 925 819 614 629 174 706 176 ≈ 7024120900000000000♠ 1.209 × 1024 yotta Y
Other standards bodies and organizations [ edit ]
The IEC standard binary prefixes are now supported by other standardization bodies and technical organizations.
The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) supports the ISO/IEC standards for "Prefixes for binary multiples" and has a web site documenting them, describing and justifying their use. NIST suggests that in English, the first syllable of the name of the binary-multiple prefix should be pronounced in the same way as the first syllable of the name of the corresponding SI prefix, and that the second syllable should be pronounced as bee.[2] NIST has stated the SI prefixes "refer strictly to powers of 10" and that the binary definitions "should not be used" for them.[71]
The microelectronics industry standards body JEDEC describes the IEC prefixes in its online dictionary.[72] The JEDEC standards for semiconductor memory use the customary prefix symbols K, M, G and T in the binary sense.[73]
On 19 March 2005, the IEEE standard IEEE 1541-2002 ("Prefixes for Binary Multiples") was elevated to a full-use standard by the IEEE Standards Association after a two-year trial period.[74][75] However, as of April 2008, the IEEE Publications division does not require the use of IEC prefixes in its major magazines such as Spectrum[76] or Computer.[77]
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), which maintains the International System of Units (SI), expressly prohibits the use of SI prefixes to denote binary multiples, and recommends the use of the IEC prefixes as an alternative since units of information are not included in SI.[78][79]
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) prohibits the use of SI prefixes with anything but a power-of-1000 meaning, but does not recommend or otherwise cite the IEC binary prefixes.[80]
The European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) adopted the IEC-recommended binary prefixes via the harmonization document HD 60027-2:2003-03.[81] The European Union (EU) has required the use of the IEC binary prefixes since 2007.[82]
Current practice [ edit ]
Most computer hardware uses SI prefixes[defn. 1] to state capacity and define other performance parameters such as data rate. Main and cache memories are notable exceptions.
Capacities of main memory and cache memory are usually expressed with customary binary prefixes[defn. 4][83][84][85] On the other hand, flash memory, like that found in solid state drives, mostly uses SI prefixes[defn. 1] to state capacity.
Some operating systems and other software continue to use the customary binary prefixes in displays of memory, disk storage capacity, and file size, but SI prefixes[defn. 1] in other areas such as network communication speeds and processor speeds.
In the following subsections, unless otherwise noted, examples are first given using the common prefixes used in each case, and then followed by interpretation using other notation where appropriate.
Operating systems [ edit ]
Prior to the release of Macintosh System Software (1984), file sizes were typically reported by the operating system without any prefixes.[citation needed] Today, most operating systems report file sizes with prefixes.
Software [ edit ]
As of February 2010, most software does not distinguish symbols for binary and decimal prefixes.[defn. 3] The IEC binary naming convention has been adopted by a few, but this is not used universally.
One of the stated goals of the introduction of the IEC prefixes was "to preserve the SI prefixes as unambiguous decimal multipliers."[74] Programs such as fdisk/cfdisk, parted, and apt-get use SI prefixes with their decimal meaning.
GNOME's partition editor uses IEC prefixes to display partition sizes. The total capacity of the 120×10 9 -byte disk is displayed as "111.79 GiB"
GNOME's system monitor uses IEC prefixes to show memory size and networking data rate.
BitTornado uses standard SI prefixes for data rates and IEC prefixes for file sizes
Deluge (BitTorrent client) uses IEC prefixes for data rates as well as file sizes
Example of the use of IEC binary prefixes in the Linux operating system displaying traffic volume on a network interface in kibibytes (KiB) and mebibytes (MiB), as obtained with the ifconfig utility:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:14:A0:B0:7A:42 inet6 addr: 2001:491:890a:1:214:a5ff:febe:7a42/64 Scope:Global inet6 addr: fe80::214:a5ff:febe:7a42/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:254804 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:756 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:18613795 (17.7 MiB) TX bytes:45708 (44.6 KiB)
Software that uses standard SI prefixes for powers of 1000, but not IEC binary prefixes for powers of 1024, includes:
Mac OS X v10.6 and later for hard drive and file sizes[92][93]
Software that supports decimal prefixes for powers of 1000 and binary prefixes for powers of 1024 (but does not follow SI or IEC nomenclature for this) includes:
4DOS (uses lowercase letters as decimal and uppercase letters as binary prefixes)[94][95]
Software that uses IEC binary prefixes for powers of 1024 and uses standard SI prefixes for powers of 1000 includes:
Computer hardware [ edit ]
Hardware types that use powers-of-1024 multipliers, such as memory, continue to be marketed with customary binary prefixes.
Computer memory [ edit ]
7008536870912000000♠ 536 870 912 byte (512×220) capacity of these RAM modules is stated as "512 MB" on the label. Thebyte (512×2) capacity of these RAM modules is stated as "512 MB" on the label.
Measurements of most types of electronic memory such as RAM and ROM are given using customary binary prefixes (kilo, mega, and giga). This includes some flash memory, like EEPROMs. For example, a "512-megabyte" memory module is 512×220 bytes (512 × 7006104857600000000♠1048576, or 7008536870912000000♠536870912).
JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the semiconductor engineering standardization body of the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA), continues to include the customary binary definitions of kilo, mega and giga in their Terms, Definitions, and Letter Symbols document,[110] and uses those definitions in later memory standards[111][112][113][114][115] (See also JEDEC memory standards.)
Many computer programming tasks reference memory in terms of powers of two because of the inherent binary design of current hardware addressing systems. For example, a 16-bit processor register can reference at most 65,536 items (bytes, words, or other objects); this is conveniently expressed as "64K" items. An operating system might map memory as 4096-byte pages, in which case exactly 8192 pages could be allocated within 7007335544320000000♠33554432 bytes of memory: "8K" (8192) pages of "4 kilobytes" (4096 bytes) each within "32 megabytes" (32 MiB) of memory.
Hard disk drives [ edit ]
All hard disk drive manufacturers state capacity using SI prefixes.[defn. 1][116][117][118][119][120]
Flash drives [ edit ]
USB flash drives, flash-based memory cards like CompactFlash or Secure Digital, and flash-based SSDs use SI prefixes;[defn. 1] for example, a "256 MB" flash card provides at least 256 million bytes (7008256000000000000♠256000000), not 256×1024×1024 (7008268435456000000♠268435456).[44] The flash memory chips inside these devices contain considerably more than the quoted capacities, but much like a traditional hard drive, some space is reserved for internal functions of the flash drive. These include wear leveling, error correction, sparing, and metadata needed by the device's internal firmware.
Floppy drives [ edit ]
Floppy disks have existed in numerous physical and logical formats, and have been sized inconsistently. In part, this is because the end user capacity of a particular disk is a function of the controller hardware, so that the same disk could be formatted to a variety of capacities. In many cases, the media are marketed without any indication of the end user capacity, as for example, DSDD, meaning double-sided double-density.
The last widely adopted diskette was the 3½-inch high density. This has a formatted capacity of 7006147456000000000♠1474560 bytes or 1440 KB (1440 × 1024, using "KB" in the customary binary sense). These are marketed as "HD", or "1.44 MB" or both. This usage creates a third definition of "megabyte" as 1000×1024 bytes.
Most operating systems display the capacity using "MB" in the customary binary sense, resulting in a display of "1.4 MB" (7000140625000000000♠1.40625 MiB). Some users have noticed the missing 0.04 MB and both Apple and Microsoft have support bulletins referring to them as 1.4 MB.[36]
The earlier "1200 KB" (1200×1024 bytes) 5¼-inch diskette sold with the IBM PC AT was marketed as "1.2 MB" (7000117187500000000♠1.171875 MiB). The largest 8-inch diskette formats could contain more than a megabyte, and the capacities of those devices were often irregularly specified in megabytes, also without controversy.
Older and smaller diskette formats were usually identified as an accurate number of (binary) KB, for example the Apple Disk II described as "140KB" had a 140×1024-byte capacity, and the original "360KB" double sided, double density disk drive used on the IBM PC had a 360×1024-byte capacity.
In many cases diskette hardware was marketed based on unformatted capacity, and the overhead required to format sectors on the media would reduce the nominal capacity as well (and this overhead typically varied based on the size of the formatted sectors), leading to more irregularities.
Optical discs [ edit ]
The capacities of most optical disc storage media like DVD, Blu-ray Disc, HD DVD and magneto-optical (MO) are given using SI decimal prefixes. A "4.7 GB" DVD has a nominal capacity of about 4.38 GiB.[38] However, CD capacities are always given using customary binary prefixes. Thus a "700-MB" (or "80-minute") CD has a nominal capacity of about 700 MiB (approx 730 MB).[37]
Tape drives and media [ edit ]
Tape drive and media manufacturers use SI decimal prefixes to identify capacity.[121][122]
Data transmission and clock rates [ edit ]
Certain units are always used with SI decimal prefixes even in computing contexts. Two examples are hertz (Hz), which is used to measure the clock rates of electronic components, and bit/s, used to measure data transmission speed.
A 1-GHz processor receives 7009100000000000000♠ 1 000 000 000 clock ticks per second.
clock ticks per second. A sound file sampled at 7004441000000000000♠ 44.1 kHz has 7004441000000000000♠ 44 100 samples per second.
has samples per second. A 7005128000000000000♠ 128 kbit/s MP3 stream consumes 7005128000000000000♠ 128 000 bits (16 kilobytes, 7001156000000000000♠ 15.6 KiB ) per second.
MP3 stream consumes bits (16 kilobytes, ) per second. A 7006100000000000000♠ 1 Mbit/s Internet connection can transfer 7006100000000000000♠ 1 000 000 bits per second ( 7005125000000000000♠ 125 000 bytes per second ≈ 7002122000000000000♠ 122 KiB/s, assuming an 8-bit byte and no overhead)
Internet connection can transfer bits per second ( bytes per second ≈, assuming an 8-bit byte and no overhead) A 7009100000000000000♠ 1 Gbit/s Ethernet connection can transfer 7009100000000000000♠ 1 000 000 000 bits per second ( 7008125000000000000♠ 125 000 000 bytes per second ≈ 7002119000000000000♠ 119 MiB/s, assuming an 8-bit byte and no overhead)
Ethernet connection can transfer bits per second ( bytes per second ≈, assuming an 8-bit byte and no overhead) A 56k modem transfers 7004560000000000000♠ 56 000 bits per second ≈ 7000680000000000000♠ 6.8 KiB/s.
Bus clock speeds and therefore bandwidths are both quoted using SI decimal prefixes.
PC3200 memory on a double data rate bus, transferring 8 bytes per cycle with a clock speed of 7008200000000000000♠ 200 MHz ( 7008200000000000000♠ 200 000 000 cycles per second) has a bandwidth of 7008200000000000000♠ 200 000 000 × 8 × 2 = 7009320000000000000♠ 3 200 000 000 B/s = 7010256000000000000♠ 3.2 GB/s (about 7000300000000000000♠ 3.0 GiB/s ).
( cycles per second) has a bandwidth of = B/s = (about ). A PCI-X bus at 7007660000000000000♠ 66 MHz ( 7007660000000000000♠ 66 000 000 cycles per second), 64 bits per transfer, has a bandwidth of 7007660000000000000♠ 66 000 000 transfers per second × 64 bits per transfer = 7009422400000000000♠ 4 224 000 000 bit/s, or 7008528000000000000♠ 528 000 000 B/s, usually quoted as 7009422400000000000♠ 528 MB/s (about 7002503000000000000♠ 503 MiB/s ).
Use by industry [ edit ]
IEC prefixes are used by Toshiba,[123 |
of preparation. So, while the chassis cooled in the oven and the motor gently ran itself in on the bench, I trued up a pair of varnished front tyres and Slot.it P6 rears – now, the car is running to our club rules. Reassembled and back on the setup plate, it’s clear that the BMW 320 is wider, especially up front, and I found I could comfortably get a useful 2mm of extra rear track over the Moby Dick without arch clearance problems. All this should make for a nice stable car that takes fast corners really well and, although the guide is closer to the front axle, it is still quite well forwards in the chassis as there’s at least 8mm of extra wheelbase compared to the Porsche.
Those who know me will remember that I do have something of a soft-spot for those 935/78s – my own Ickx car was a regular winner of Gp.5 rounds during the 2015 series – but, I have to admit that I’m expecting these differences will add up to the SW41 BMW 320 being an easier car to drive consistently on the limit.
…extra, extra!
In the past, many racers have resorted to adding tape, hot-glue or even aftermarket motorpods in order to limit unwanted movement and juddering from the rear axle on their Gp.5s – especially those who’ve opted to upgrade their motors. As we know, these BMW 320 models are the first to arrive fitted with the improved Sideways Motor Pod, designed to address that exact problem. The motor now is held much more securely and members ogling my 320 also commented on the new axle supports that offer much more substantial bracing between the bushing carriers and the rearmost chassis fixing points.
And, as usual, a bag of useful extra parts arrives taped under the base – an allen key, revised rear axle supports to adjust the offset/ride-height of the chassis, replacement tabs to allow fitment of FK-130 size motor, and optional components that can be attached to the front of the motor pod so that it can be used in any chassis that accepts a Slot.it AW pod.
So, Sideways appear to have adjusted their ‘collector/racer balance’ a little – and it appears to have worked out in favour of the racer. No complaints here – it’s time to get the Beemer out on track and put it to the test!
…first impressions?
Right out the gate, I was able to produce consistently neat laps that crept towards the benchmark 10.0s laptime for our 38m Carrera circuit. Overall, a much smoother experience through the faster corners than the shorter-wheelbased 935/78 – but ultimately not yet as fast. On meeting tighter bends, the BMW seemed less eager to change direction, so I inspected the guide to find that it was no longer turning very freely.
Bodyshell off, the guide moved without binding and centred perfectly. Body back on, stiff again. Hmm. Turns out that the inner face of that short and upright front end was obstructing the motor wires as they curved and flexed when the guide rotated… fixed easily by pulling a little more of the wire towards the motor so they angled slightly backwards from the guide – not forwards, like in the picture!
…head to head
Back out on track and the car felt much more fluid and lively through the esses. Now able to get into more of a rhythm, the laptimes gradually fell and I soon found myself joined by a clubmate in his IMSA 935 Moby Dick. Small adjustments to loosen off the motor pod and body screws slightly allowed the chassis to flex and do its thing and, as the BMW began to pull closer and closer to the Porsche’s pace, handling differences between the pair became clearer. For one, the wider front track and longer wheelbase do make it a little more stable – and, although the bodies weigh almost exactly the same, you notice the extra height in the 320 in the same way that you notice the extra bulk behind the rear axle of the 935… whether one is preferable to the other is a choice only the pilot can make.
Personally, I’m quite enjoying the taller BMW 320 as, once you get the body-float adjusted to your liking, any weight transfer is spread more equally across both outside wheels rather than creating that ‘pendulum effect’ the Moby Dick is infamous for! Lap after lap went by and, by the end of the session, there wasn’t much in it time-wise – steady 9.8s laps and the occasional 9.7, with the upright and four-square little Beemer looking solid and composed all the way.
In less than 200 laps, I’d managed to get an almost box-standard Sideways SW41b #15 Hans Stuck FALTZ-Jägermeister Team BMW 320 right on the pace of Gp.5 series front-runners. It’s not the fastest car yet, but with time to experiment with ballast and fine-tune tweaks to the setup, there’s no reason it can’t be on the podium at round one, next week… fingers crossed for that, expect a report here at SitC!
…to conclude.
I am very pleased with my latest Sideways purchase. Although there is some issue with the finish, the improved pod system makes up for it. In the past, many racers have reported issues with their Sideways motor pods and suggested hot-fixes and improvements – it’s great to be able to report that the manufacturer made such an effort to develop their product, even better to report that those efforts have been a success.
Thanks for listening, Sideways! Not only have you managed to make a well-considered improvement to an already great slot racing class without overshadowing older models, ensuring that your new motor pod remains backwards-compatible with those older releases was a shrewd move on your part – like many other fans, I’ll continue collecting your new models and will also be upgrading the existing ones in my fleet.
Available in stores: now!
Tags: bmw, championship, club racing, gp.5, sideways, tuning269 Flares Twitter 0 Facebook 102 Pin It Share 166 Google+ 1 Email -- Filament.io 269 Flares ×
A Vegan & Raw Food-Friendly Latte!
The evolution of my raw versions of coffee have been fun, but my husband blew the whistle after his mornings cup of Joe and called it the winning recipe. If you haven’t been following the blog you may not realize my husband, Travis, was a coffee junkie. His addiction was so bad that I, his own personal in-house raw food chef and advocate for alkalizing – threw up my hands in frustration and gave up on weening him from the bean. Depriving him of caffeine was a public safety risk.
Maca F.A.C.A. was the first recipe that actually lured him away from coffee with it’s pleasing, rich flavor and superfood packed energy boost. It satisfied his need for ritual and for energy. He loved it and it empowered him to get off coffee, something he wanted to do to avoid the acidic side effects and extreme dips in energy that followed the highs.
He became a convert, believing in the power of raw foods and super foods. After putting an end to a life long, love/hate relationship with coffee, he spread the word and I posted it here which led to a massive group that has used the recipe to get off the bean.
What’s the new addition? Ashwaganda. It adds a depth of flavor that rivals coffee’s deep richness and it is a powerful superfood that supports your thyroid, your immune system, and your stamina. Try the new healthy, coffee replacement and tell me what you think in the comment section below.
Note that this recipe makes 6 cups and skips the need to make fresh almond milk because it uses the nut milk short cut featured last week. I put links to my sources in case you need to stock your cupboards.
The Perfect Raw Food Latte
Ingredients
5 1/2 cups filtered water
2 tablespoons raw almond butter
1 tablespoon coconut oil
1 teaspoon raw vanilla
2 teaspoons maca powder
2 tablespoons raw cacao
1 teaspoon ashwaganda
dash of Himalayan sea salt
dash cayenne pepper
dash cinnamon
raw honey to desired sweetness
Blend in the Vita-mix for 2 minutes. The mixture will be warm, creamy, and have a frothy latte foam on top. Whenever you make the quick version of almond milk, that foam forms on top. In this case it is perfect! You’ll feel like your own healthy twist on a Barista!Dennis O’Neil has a long history in the comics industry as both a writer and editor. He’s best known for writing Green Lantern/Green Arrow and Batman, through the seventies, Spider-Man in the eighties and for editing Batman-related titles in the nineties. A widely published novelist and screenwriter, he is currently lecturing at the NYU on Writing Comics And Graphic Novels. Bleeding Cool is grateful to receive a taster of the course every week.
I’m about to introduce you to an old colleague of mine: the three act structure. I didn’t call him (it?) that when we first got together when I was a very green writer, and dinosaurs walked the Earth. Nor did I know, until years later, that through he was new to me, playwrights and maybe some screenwriters had been hanging with him for years. No, I was just realizing that with mouths to feed and no other source of income, I’d need to be pretty prolific and I questioned the reliability of my muse. So how the heck could I think about the stuff that had to issue from my typewriter to sort of insure that it was publishable, or at least not embarrassing garbage?
I came up with nothing ironclad. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it’d be swell if there were a story algorithm; a defined process that would result in work that inevitably succeeds. But there isn’t, and that’s why you should consider what appears here as suggestions—signposts, maybe. (Remember the great lines from Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon? “It is like a finger pointing to the moon. Concentrate on the finger and you miss all that heavenly glory.”) What I did come up with, reinventing the wheel, was a three-part division of the story I proposed to tell. As threatened last week, let’s call it O’Neil’s Industrial Strength Can’t Fail Super Homogenized structure for a single-issue superhero story.
Brace for it:
Hook –
Inciting incident.
Establish situation and conflict.
(Major visual action.)
Develop and complicate situation.
(Major visual action.)
Events leading to —
Climax.
You might want to add a quick denouement to tie up loose ends–show your characters’ emotional states or how they were changed by the events of the narrative. But the operative word there is quick. Remember: story’s over. Let’s not overstay our welcome.
A few explanations: Why “major visual action?”
Well…this outline expects you to do a superhero story and visual action is the idiom of that genre, how conflict is often expressed. If you’re not doing superheroes, or at least action-adventure, about a third of the way through your script should spin the story in an unexpected direction. (Syd Field’s book Screenplay is very good on this.)
What is this “hook”?
It’s something to interest reader, get him into the story, something to grab the reader’s lapels. The first line of Hemingway’s story “Light of the World” is a hook: “When the bartender saw us come in he put the cover on the free lunch counter.” Gives you a lot of info in 16 words and presents you with an unstated question that you’ll probably want to answer by continuing to read. Here’s the first line of Chapter 1 of Alfred Bester’s great Stars My Destination: He was one hundred and seventy days dying and not yet dead.” Kinda motivates you to keep reading, huh?
By the way, this is not what the submissions guide that DC used to send out meant by “hook” In that usage, a story hook was a one line summary of what’s good and/or unusual in the piece, something like, “Superman and Batman change places.”
Okay, some of you might be asking why examine a one-issue paradigm? Nobody puublishes one-issue stories anymore. Well, first of all, that’s not true. I’ve written four of them in he last couple of years, and I’m semiretired. And second…you can consider this the place from which we’ll start on a journey to longer stories. We should arrive in about a week.
Dennis O’Neil teaches a ten week course on Writing Comics And Graphic Novels at the New York University. Classes are every Wednesday evening from 6.45pm to 9pm. For further information, please call NYU’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies at Studies at 212 9987200
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
(Last Updated )
Related Posts
None found‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the Bahá’í Faith, arrived in the city of Montreal after an eleven-hour journey from Boston, on the night of August 30th, 1912. His business, far from any material pursuits, was to spread His Father’s message of universal peace, brotherhood and unity. Settling in to the home of Mr. William Sutherland Maxwell and Mrs. May Maxwell, nestled snugly onto the side of Mount Royal, he declared, “This is my home.” A hundred years later, this house is now regarded as a national Shrine, a grace conferred onto the Canadian Bahá’í community that stands unequalled among most of its sister communities worldwide. Montreal was the only Canadian city he visited during his 239-day-long journey, bestowing a priceless spiritual heritage to that city and to the country of Canada—and, at the same time, making an important and profound social statement.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá had ample reason to come to Montreal: the Maxwell family, with whom he had already been acquainted many years earlier and who would develop a unique and special relationship to the central figures of the Bahá’í Faith, had succeeded in raising up a small but active Bahá’í group there, and it was at their invitation that he made the long trek north from Boston rather than simply cutting across the west on his way to California. But beyond being a gracious visit to long-time friends, his visit to Montreal was also, in a way, an example to the early Canadian believers, many of whom came from Anglophone and Protestant backgrounds, and who carried with them, to varying degrees, the prejudices prevailing in society regarding the French Catholics of Quebec. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, known by the Bahá’ís as the Perfect Exemplar, was no stranger to making examples when there were lessons to be learned, especially when it came to social conventions. He it was who insisted on having Louis Gregory, a black American lawyer, sit next to him at the head of the table at a luncheon in Washington, D.C.—an unthinkable act in a society for which racial segregation was just another fact of life.
It can safely be said that racism is the most challenging issue confronting America, as was stated clearly in a 1991 statement by the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of America, The Vision of Race Unity. Canada’s challenges, though slightly more nuanced, are perhaps just as serious. Broadly, it can be said that intercultural prejudice—a combination of racism, nationalistic sentiment and economic and religious prejudice—is Canada’s most challenging issue. This issue was directly raised by the Universal House of Justice in a message to the Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Canada, dated 5 September 1999. As in many parts of the world, the letter explained, Canada is “affected by various social divisions… In Canada’s case, such issues tend to be cultural in nature, particularly those separating peoples of Native and European origin or those between Canadian of French- and English-speaking backgrounds.” These issues, the Universal House of Justice affirmed, are rooted in “long-standing conflicts that weaken the country’s basic social fabric.”
Canada, as a place, was inhabited many centuries prior to European contact. From the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean and all the way into the Arctic, hundreds of tribes had become established, each with its own language, culture, customs, and beliefs. By the time the first European settlers arrived, these tribes had evolved into nations—civilizations with complex social structures that had built expansive settlements, developed agriculture, and created stunning architectural and monumental works. The Europeans, newcomers to a strange and rugged land, turned to these nations for assistance, trading goods and gaining local knowledge that allowed them to survive and flourish.
But the newcomers carried more from the Old World than simply goods for trade. They carried their own languages, cultures, religions and beliefs—and their long-standing animosity towards each other, stoked by centuries of conflict. The French, led by staunchly Catholic kings, established the stronghold known as New France along the banks of the St. Lawrence River; the British, freshly transformed by the events of the Protestant Reformation, had established colonies along the shores of the Atlantic, in an area still known as New England. Eager to gain economic and territorial advantage over the other, the colonies established alliances and trade relations with the various native American tribes they encountered, including members of the Iroquois and Wabanaki Confederacies.
Beginning around the mid-17th century, as the colonial powers pushed further inland and came into more frequent conflict, they repeatedly engaged in more and more destructive wars. These reached a climax with the French and Indian War in 1763, which ended with the defeat of the French and the cession of New France to Britain. Exhausted and indebted from nearly a hundred years of war, Britain sought to placate its new French subjects, granting them the right to free practice of the Catholic religion, and allowing them the limited practice of French customary law and the traditional seigneurial system of land rights in the newly created province of Quebec. Though the end of the war brought a long-needed measure of stability to the Canadian colonies, the divide between English and French, Protestant and Catholic, conqueror and conquered remained.
Although the spectre of the great wars between France and Britain had faded by the time ‘Abdu’l-Bahá set his foot in the New World, Canadian society was still gripped by the long-standing antipathy existing between citizens of French and English extraction. The differences in language, culture and religion had grown into what author Hugh MacLennan would later term the “Two Solitudes”—an unwillingness or inability for English and French Canadians to communicate with each other, each preferring the comfort of their own milieu in a nominally united, but culturally segregated, Canada. Perhaps reflecting this self-imposed segregation, Shoghi Effendi, grandson of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, who praised the Canadian people as being “spiritually-minded”, also characterized them as being “firmly entrenched in their religious sectarianism and strongly attached to their religious doctrines and traditions”.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, of course, was aware of these divisions. In fact, he had been reminded of them on his way to America. As he sailed across the Atlantic on the S.S. Cedric, his companions—presumably Anglophone and Protestant in background—claimed that Montreal’s French Catholics were fanatics who “have not the capability to hearken to the call of the Kingdom of God”, that they were “submerged in the sea of imitations”, and that “should the Sun of Reality shine with perfect splendor throughout that Dominion, the dark, impenetrable clouds of superstitions have so enveloped the horizon that it would be utterly impossible for anyone to behold its rays.” But ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s aim was to challenge those perceptions, which he recognized as the baseless prejudices they were. “Before My departure, many souls warned Me not to travel to Montreal,” he later wrote in his Tablets of the Divine Plan. “But these stories did not have any effect on the resolution of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.”
Disregarding, then, the imaginations carried by those around him, he, in his own words, “turned his face toward Montreal” and “observed all the doors open”. Rather than beholding closed-mindedness and fanaticism, he instead “found the hearts in the utmost receptivity and the ideal power of the Kingdom of God removing every obstacle and obstruction.” Praising Mrs. Maxwell’s superhuman efforts in coordinating the many meetings, addresses, and evening fireside talks, he recalled that “through the effort of the maidservant of God Mrs. Maxwell a number of the sons and daughters of the Kingdom in that Dominion were gathered together and associated with each other, increasing this joyous exhilaration day by day. The time of sojourn was limited to a number of days, but the results in the future are inexhaustible.”
It had been a challenge for the Bahá’ís of the time to engage francophone populations to “bridge the gap”. Not only did the early believers struggle with prejudices of their own, as related by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, but they also struggled against the collective prejudice of both sides of Canadian society—against the Two Solitudes themselves. Mrs. Maxwell, who had accepted the Bahá’í Cause in Paris and while there helped to establish the first Bahá’í group in France, was fluent enough in French to think in it, and would clearly have been interested in attracting francophones to the Faith. Her contacts in Montreal, however, were mainly Anglophone, which was reflected in the speaking engagements she was able to arrange for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: two Protestant churches (the Unitarian Church of the Messiah and St. James’ Methodist Church), and the English-speaking Socialist Club. William van den Hoonard, in his pioneering work The Origins of the Bahá’í Community of Canada, 1898-1948, states that the slow progress of the Bahá’í community in reaching francophones was “not surprising given the fact that the Bahá’ís themselves reflected the more prevailing ethnic makeup of the country, namely Anglo-Saxon and British.”
Aware of their shortcomings, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá emphasized to the small band of Bahá’ís in Montreal the importance of reaching out to French-speaking people, outlining his hope that eventually the city would “become so stirred, that the melody of the Kingdom may travel to all parts of the world from that Dominion.” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, meanwhile, did the most he could to compensate through his talks and personal conversations. On the afternoon prior to his talk at the Socialist Club, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá travelled alone by streetcar out of Montreal’s downtown core to refresh himself; it is thought that he headed towards the city’s east end, an area heavily populated by francophones, spending time in Parc Lafontaine. Few details exist of His actions that day, but one need only look to those souls He befriended throughout His travels in America—souls young and old, of every race, creed, culture, and extraction—to know how brightly His heart burned with loving-kindness for all those He met, regardless of differences.
In His talks, He boldly attacked the Two Solitudes at their foundations. Addressing the Church of the Messiah, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asserted that the major religions “rebuked all things which brought about difference and discord.” Their message was always about “the goodness of God” and they worked “for the solidarity of the [human] race.” However, he continued, “imaginary differences” had been introduced to religious practice throughout history, differences that had “nothing to do with the original teachings of the prophets,” and which merely led to “strife and contention.” These differences he described as “imaginary lines” that had no basis in reality, alluding to the borders between nations. “A river is made a boundary; one side is called France and the other Germany.” he explained. “What a superstition! An imaginary line to become a cause of bloodshed!”
His words must have struck a chord with the Canadians—then still British subjects—who, in 1912, were eyeing the increasing tension in Europe with worry. Relations between France and Germany had gone sour, and an arms race had begun. If Britain went to war, so too would Canadians be called to fight. “Just now Europe is a battlefield of ammunition ready to spark,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had declared in an address months earlier in New York City, “and one spark will set aflame the whole world.” The Great War—now solemnly remembered as World War I—was a mere two years away. Through the waging of war, explained ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, men had become “like beasts of prey engaged in each other’s murder, wiping out homes and laying waste each other’s country.”
The imagined differences—prejudices—between peoples and nations were at the root of conflict, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá asserted. The reason war had become so rampant was that mankind, forgetful of the teachings of God, had “allowed themselves to be governed by racial and religious prejudice, or patriotic and political bias.” In the eyes of God, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, none of these divisions and differences mattered. True reality, he stated, was the unity of all humankind. All of humanity “came from the same elements, all were descended from the same race and all had to live on the same globe.” “Before God,” he unequivocally affirmed, “all mankind is one. There is no Germany and no England, no Frenchman, no Turk and no Persian.”
One hundred years after ‘Abdu’l-Bahá directed his steps towards Montreal, those prejucides remain, and continue to paralyze attempts at progress. As societies everywhere experience profound upheavals, lingering animosity leads to violence, as seen in the aftermath of recent elections in Quebec, in which the premier-elect’s victory celebrations were marred by a shooting death and attempted arson. The nation of Canada, tested in the fire of two calamitous, world-sweeping wars that saw its European forebears brought to ruin—wars which were widely seen as a “rite of passage” by which that nation took its own place on the world stage—continues to this day to be haunted by those “imaginary differences” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá decried so emphatically. “All this enmity and discord is the fruit of ignorance and a lack of mutual understanding,” He had affirmed to the multitudes, English and French, who heard Him speak, or who read of His message on the front pages of English and French papers alike.
The key to progress is the same now as it was one hundred years ago. “Get instruction,” ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, that ignorance, lack of understanding, enmity and discord might be banished. “Drive all this away so that all mankind may become united.” Education, in other words, was the key to mankind’s exaltation, the means by which it could achieve its highest potential. But the education ‘Abdu’l-Bahá referred to was far more than that kind of material education which begins and ends in words. It was a scientific, yet spiritual education, one which affirmed the fundamental oneness of humanity, recognized the essential nobility of man, and resulted in the appearance of solidarity and unity between all the peoples of the earth. Through His words and actions—in Montreal, and everywhere He set foot during His travels—‘Abdu’l-Bahá thus instructed those He met, tearing asunder the veils of superstition and laying bare the foundations of world unity. If the people of Canada would set prejudice aside, investigate attentively the realities of things and seek truth, they would surely realize that they all—First Nations, French, or English, Protestant, Catholic, or otherwise—are members of one family, each equally worthy in the eye of an all-loving Creator. If they could achieve this understanding, ignorance would be banished, and they would be enabled to achieve true reconciliation, to pass from solitude to solidarity, from estrangement to fellowship. Then, achieving unity amongst themselves, the people of that young and noble nation could, as He urged them, arise to champion the “great movement for the peace and unity of the world.”Identifying Participants in the Personal Genome Project by Name
We linked names and contact information to publicly available profiles in the Personal Genome Project. These profiles contain medical and genomic information, including details about medications, procedures and diseases, and demographic information, such as date of birth, gender, and postal code. By linking demographics to public records such as voter lists, and mining for names hidden in attached documents, we correctly identified 84 to 97 percent of the profiles for which we provided names. Our ability to learn their names is based on their demographics, not their DNA, thereby revisiting an old vulnerability that could be easily thwarted with minimal loss of research value. So, we propose technical remedies for people to learn about their demographics to make better decisions.
Sweeney L, Abu A, and Winn J. Identifying Participants in the Personal Genome Project by Name. Harvard University. Data Privacy Lab. White Paper 1021-1. April 24, 2013. (PDF)
PGP Participants | Test your demographics
latanya@mit.edu or follow @LatanyaSweeney on twitter.
People (alphabetical)
Related Projects in the Data Privacy LabWhen you’re developing programs that collect data, you don’t really expect to find any juicy surprises, but it’s certainly welcome when you do, especially when you uncover the clever techniques of children. As I was scraping data online to learn more about self-published titles, authors, and series, I would randomly scrutinize the pages of books in order to validate my results. In scraping data from Amazon and the like, something interesting began to manifest from underneath the covers. I began to notice strange conversations taking place in the reviews section, amid the comments of disappointment or satisfaction. There would be the occasional remark about performing an act of sex or something which mentioned fighting animals. Say, what was this about?
“Puts dic.k vin her pussy and fucks hard and fast”
“No. Three feet of my cck in your ass. ;}”
“He heard the black stallion and galloped across the grassy plain, stopping a good distance away. He reared and whinied challenge.”
As a pattern began to emerge, my interest was suddenly piqued. You can’t expect me to walk past a door that opens to an odd theme park. I’m going to step over the threshold; there are no other alternatives. As I read further, it became apparent that there were two types of activities which were taking place: game roleplaying and virtual sex. The first was fairly innocent, as the writers pretended to be animals. My initial guess was that these review sections were an online sanctuary for furries (and for the first time, I began to feel a bit of sympathy for them). The horseplay was fairly timid, but the cats converged into “clans” and fought wars with each other:
“How long have you been RPing?”
“Yup. I started out at the Hunger Game books, then got locked out of ALL of them. But my friends lead me here…curse them…I hate RP, but I can’t stop.”
“I saw…I tried making GoreClan…But only cats with bad grammar and the wannabe ‘pure black pelt with icy blue eyes’. FAIL”
The virtual sex, on the other hand, was a facetious attempt at being lascivious, and I thought that I might be reading the lost passages of Scrotie McBoogerballs. Who would attempt to reverse engineer a reviews section into a Penthouse Forum? Some kind of bored prankster? I present only one of these choice exhibits:
“Evan started to drink Cat’s pee. Evan pulled off Cat’s shirt and bra. Cat started squirting milk at Evan and her pee stream died down. Evan took one of Cat’s boobs and his tongue drew circles around her nipple. Evan pushed Cat to the ground, spread her legs, and began to lick Cat’s pussy. Cat became wetter and wetter. Her juices flew into Evan’s mouth. Cat let out a scream in delight. Cat sucked all the cum out of Evan’s cock. Evan said, ’Hey Cat. Do you wanna walk home…naked?’ ‘Yes.’ replied Cat. Evan stuffed the trash can with their clothes. Cat walked Evan home, then she walked home. The two texted each other. Evan sent her a video of him squirting cum at the camera. Cat sent back ‘LOL’ and a picture of her boobs sqirting milk. They texted all night and the next day Evan said, [END] PESTORY 4 AT STOP THE WORLD I NEED TO PEE!!!!!”
As I read the “review”, the sophomoric side of me began to chuckle a bit. Boobs…whose inner child doesn’t find something like that amusing? And, more importantly, what child-brained idiot would use such language in an attempt to titillate someone’s loins? And that’s when I began to ponder another possibility. Maybe it’s not a child-brained adult moron. Maybe, it’s just simply a child. As I began to look further at the reviews, I found all the proof that I needed:
“xD Luckeh…and talon, we were talking bout how i was waiting for my mum to take meh to the doc since im sick. Then Slaughter said that….post below yours.”
“What’s gs? That’s a beautiful name Demon. I really like it. I know a girl name [name omitted]. She had a BF, then an 8th grader said that he caught them having se<_>x. Everyone at school said she was pregnant. She was such a sweet girl…I pissed me off to hear what they said about her.”
“If peeps are making fun of you, they must be very immature. What grade are you in? Only second graders would make fun of that. Nobody makes fun of Brad Pitt.”
“DOUBLE FIST PUMP!!!! Hey my sister and I share this [device] so we’ll be posting as SoftShine and Outt. Sorry for the inconvienence, but go ahead and KILL HER!!!!!!!”
And that’s when all the pieces fell into place (especially with certain words being purposefully mangled in order to avoid detection by parental filters). Kids around the world were using the reviews sections of books on a bookseller web site to socialize through their fantasies (whether it be surreal, violent, or sexual). More than likely, I imagine that these children had parents who were trying to protect them in some way, with limited amounts of computer usage and with parental filters put on the eReader device. But anyone who remembers being a kid knows one thing: there’s always ways around an obstacle.
Upon finding their intended forum (i.e., reviews section of a book), the child would create and then update a single review repeatedly, using it as a conduit for conversation. Once they were done, their last entry would be something innocuous, like “Great book!” or “Goodbye!”…and it would be as if the lewd conversation had never taken place. They had found a WiFi detour around their parents’ intentions of sheltering them…just as I and many others had. In a way, you could say that they had done all of us proud. Unfortunately, though, some of us were less proud. As expected, some pious adults took offense to it, and they updated their own reviews in order to scold these bawdy, heretical children:
“Listen, this is very innapropriate. Please stop. I cant live a life of horror and everyone on my [device] saying stuff that you did, [name omitted]. Please stop. I am a daughter of god and i dont need to know that kind of stuff. That was very innapropriate and i can report that. But because i know that when i make a mistake, i can repent, you can fix this.”
And some of the more gentle ranks of the roleplayers were disappointed and frustrated in their sexual peers, vowing to gather and stop their brothers and sisters:
“Do you mean [device] sex? Because that is not how you spell it it is not spelled s-e-c-k-s it is spelled s-e-x. If u do mean [device] sex, dont do it. It is terrible so dont do it and dont support it. If you r against it too, go to star res 11 to help me stop it. My code name is silverleapord.”
I know that some parents might take umbrage with this sort of thing, especially with the concern that devious adults might be interacting with their children. “How can we protect our children from this awfulness? What companies and government agencies can we yell at?” Could companies do something about this issue, by blocking children from the reviews section? Possibly. But what if they actually wanted to review the book and reach others’ thoughts? More importantly, there’s a broader lesson here which should be learned by parents. With something as ubiquitous as the Internet, children will eventually find access to it and will then interact with the rest of the world. It’s only a matter of when…but it will eventually happen.
After spending a few minutes going through these humorous comments, I was generally amused and baffled at this vibrant subculture, likely created through an eReader device. As we get farther from childhood, we forget how isolated and curious children are. In that way, I found it somewhat encouraging that children still sought to push the envelope and explore, in an age where technology encourages them to be passive. Eh, as long as it stays online, who cares? Let kids be kids…hmmm…but wait a minute…then again, what if I was the author? On a more negative point, I realized that authors might not want these kids playing in the reviews of their books, since it might have an adverse effect on sales…if I found myself in that position, my more benevolent stance might suddenly switch to “Get off my lawn, you little bastards”…
…however, context is everything. There might not be a need to stifle these kids. We know that children’s creative energy needs only to be pointed in the right direction. So, let’s do the right thing here. I can imagine a situation where ribald conversations in the reviews section might actually do some good.
“Hey, kids, Uncle Pete knows a spot where all the cool kids hang out. Right over there!” 🙂
Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story and has also been known to be a grumpy bastard on occasion.
AdvertisementsTHE 50 GREATEST DODGER GAMES OF ALL TIME
AVAILABLE NOW VIA RIVERDALE A |
Iron Fist might fix this continuing injustice - and now our hopes are dashed.
They cast ANOTHER British person to do an American superhero - this time it's Game of Thrones' Ser Loras Tyrell, Finn Jones. WHEN WILL IT END?!
The list of Brits playing American superheroes has grown longer and more embarrassing by the year. Superman's being played by the British Henry Cavill. Batman was played by Welshman Christian Bale for nearly a decade. Londoner Tom Holland is portraying Spider-Man (taking the reins from fellow Brit Andrew Garfield!). And Netflix has already committed this sin once before, casting Englishman Charlie Cox as Daredevil.
Why do producers keep going back to the same well over and over? Are there not enough Americans to fill these roles? This lack of diversity in casting superheroes is worrisome - the faux-American accents are always just a littttttttle bit off, enough to affect the overall enjoyment of the final product. Frankly, it's shameful.
We live in a time of record lack of diversity in nerd properties - the two leads in the new Star Wars film trilogy are both British (thankfully only one is stuck faking an American accent), well-known Brit Martin Freeman played Everett Ross in Captain America: Civil War and used a mediocre American accent, and The Walking Dead - possibly THE biggest geek-friendly show on television - has Andrew "So British That He Was In Love, Actually" Lincoln doing a SOUTHERN American accent.
We have all the faith in the world that Finn Jones is a fine actor and will do his very best on Iron Fist. This isn't about him, specifically - his casting is just part of a trend in Hollywood, of ignoring calls for diversity and demanding actual American accents for superheroes. Maybe someday we'll live in a more enlightened and diverse time for entertainment, but not today.
...also mighta been nice to cast an Asian person in the lead role. So long as they had a goddamn American accent.UKRAINIAN VILLAGE — If Whisk's half-pound burger wrapped in a pound of bacon sounds tailor-made for Ron Swanson, well, it is.
The "Parks and Recreation" character has been Whisk's "mascot" since brothers Rick and David Rodriguez opened their "brunch by day, burger by night" joint nearly a year ago. The Ron Swanson bacon-beef mashup debuted as a dinner special last fall and permanently joined the menu in January.
The Ron Swanson: half-pound beef, 1 pound bacon, half-pound bun, 4 ounces of bacon mayo. (DNAinfo/Patty Wetli)
During the month of April, dubbed Bacon Month by the organizers of this weekend's Baconfest Chicago, Whisk, 2018 W. Chicago Ave., will donate 20 percent of all Ron Swanson sales to the Greater Chicago Food Depository. So far, 64 diners have ordered the $18 bacon burger.
Rick Rodriguez, 31, said the creation was inspired by an episode where Swanson eats a turkey leg wrapped in bacon.
See how The Ron Swanson is made. (DNAinfo/Kyla Gardner)
Rodriguez couldn't bring himself to duplicate the dish down to the turkey — "I'm a burger guy," he said — so he made one major adjustment and a couple of minor additions.
It took four or five tries to nail the burger's preparation, with the beef bursting out of its bacon casing during early tests.
It wasn't until David Rodriguez, 26, hit upon a method of basket-weaving the bacon first and then molding it around the patty that the Swanson took hold.
Building the Ron Swanson. A video posted by Patty Wetli (@pwetli) on Apr 16, 2015 at 1:08pm PDT
Oh, and did we mention that the bacon-wrapped burger is deep fried after spending time on the grill?
"It's the only way to cook the bacon without completely destroying the burger," Rick Rodriguez said.
Once it comes out of the fryer, the Ron Swanson is slathered in 4 ounces of housemade bacon mayo and sandwiched between an 8-ounce bun David Rodriguez said is specially made for Whisk by Logan Square's La Farine Bakery.
Rick and David Rodriguez with the Ron Swanson. (DNAinfo/Patty Wetli)
Contrary to the Swanson ethos, where a salad is "the food that my food eats," the burger is decked out with frills like lettuce, onion and tomato.
Asked if he'd calculated the Swanson's calories, Rick Rodriguez smiled and shook his head.
"No," he said. "We don't worry about that here."
Rodriguez estimated that 70 percent of the people who order the Swanson finish the whole thing — he's had it twice himself this month alone.
"For the other 30 percent, it's too much," he said, adding that most take the leftovers home with them.
Not up for the Swanson? Whisk has a bacon-wrapped shrimp on the menu during Bacon Month. At Baconfest, the Rodriguez brothers will be serving mac 'n' cheese bites with bacon and chocolate-covered bacon roses.
"Gotta fancy it up," Rick joked.
Rodriguez, who grew up in Rogers Park and now lives in Lincoln Square, would be the first to admit that his cooking isn't highfalutin.
"We like to bring flavor and make the food fun," he said.
It's the same approach Rick's had since he started working in kitchens when he was teen, and a philosophy he passed along to David, whom he took under his wing when his younger brother reached adolescence. A third brother, Daniel, is a freshman at Amundsen High School, but is "super smart" and more academically inclined than his siblings, Rick said.
Rick and David Rodriguez, owners of Whisk. Though things can get heated in the kitchen — "We're both hard-headed," Rick said — they have their playful moments, too. (DNAinfo/Patty Wetli)
Having his own place and concocting his own dishes "was always a dream since I was 15," Rodriguez said. "Making it happen is surreal."
The only thing that could be more surreal would be watching Ron Swanson eat a Ron Swanson.
Actor Nick Offerman, aka Ron Swanson himself, is aware of Whisk and his namesake burger, Rodriguez said.
A veteran of Chicago's theater scene before hitting it big in Hollywood, Offerman makes frequent visits to the Windy City as a performer and for promotional tours.
When the actor hit town last October, the Rodriguez brothers showered Offerman with a gift that could only be described as Swanson-esque: 3 pounds of bacon, 2 pounds of prosciutto and 2 pounds of French toast.
Offerman returned the favor by signing a copy of Whisk's menu, which is proudly on display at the restaurant.
That's Ron Swanson's signature on Whisk's menu. OK, Nick Offerman's. Same thing. (DNAinfo/Patty Wetli)
Before Offerman's upcoming appearance at the Chicago Humanities Festival in May, Rodriguez said he's been tweeting the actor, hoping to lure him to Whisk.
Asked whether he's concerned about hitching Whisk's wagon to a character in a television series that ended its seven-year run in February, Rodriguez admitted he did have a moment's pause when the show went off the air.
Whisk puts its affection for Ron Swanson front and center. (DNAinfo/Patty Wetli)
But "Parks and Rec"'s die-hard fans light up the second they see the Swanson portraits that dot Whisk's walls, he said.
"He's a character. He's never going to die," Rodriguez said. "Ron Swanson, he lives forever."
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:Spoilers galore ahead; this is a meditation on the last episode of the series
“The Big O” has come under fire by people that initially appreciated it. To quote Wikipedia:
For some reviewers, the second season “doesn’t quite match the first” addressing [sic] to “something” missing in these episodes. Andy Patrizio of IGN points out changes in Roger Smith’s character, who “lost some of his cool and his very funny side in the second season.” Like a repeat of season one, this season’s ending is considered its downfall. Chris Beveridge of Anime on DVD wonders if this was head writer “Konaka’s attempt to throw his hat into the ring for creating one of the most confusing and oblique endings of any series.” Patrizio states “the creators watched The Truman Show and The Matrix a few times too many.” The reviewer at Japan Hero does not think the payoff was worth it, writing “the audience had been waiting on pins and needles for so long, and practically every episode upped the tension and suspense at least a little bit, if not a whole lot, and then we come to the big IT-moment, and… well, there it is. For me, it was honestly a little of a disappointment.”
Any anime/sci-fi work has to be examined in terms of the counterfactuals it develops and the questions it raises. The counterfactuals – “what if” questions – arise from the strangeness in any given story.
1. In “The Big O,” Paradigm City lost its memory forty years ago and seems to be the only viable place left on Earth. Our hero within the city is Roger Smith, a “negotiator” who acts like a lawyer and a private investigator rolled into one. The character is clearly patterned after Bruce Wayne, complete with an “Alfred” type butler, a mansion, and an expensive toy few know he pilots: a giant robot (“Big O”) used to combat threats the military police of the city cannot handle. Roger handles cases for people in tough spots, and is drawn into the quest for the truth of what happened forty years ago only by outside forces, including various memories that come back at the wrong moments with full force and paralyze him.
The technology of the robot determines the entire series. Smaller, regular human-sized androids act – and as we learn through R. Dorothy Waynewright – feel just like people. The larger robots, not just Roger’s but the others that appear throughout the series, we come to realize are sentient, and also struggling with fragments of memory.
Moreover, it is said explicitly by the fascist (literally – he owns the Paradigm corporation that runs the city) ruler, Alex Rosewater, that the power of the robots allows one to determine what is just and enforce that notion. The series continually refers to giant robots having the power of God; the three major robots, Roger’s, Schwartzwald/Gabriel’s, and Rosewater’s, all pass judgment on their owners: “Ye Not Guilty,” “Ye Guilty,” and “Ye Not.” We can assume the robots have some fragmented notion of what is just, at least: in acting with a pilot, they represent something more, even if what they represent is failed or incomplete.
2. The technology of the robots determines everything. If you can create a destroyer of worlds that is sentient, what else can you create? A lot of fans object to the ending of the series, where we discover the world is one big set, and that the reason why people are having hell with memories is that the memories were prerecorded using sets and TV cameras for maybe all of them. It seems like postmodern absurdity: can’t we just get back to big robots fighting? After all, we have a series of Communist robots (3 from the “Union”), a fascist robot (Rosewater’s), one that symbolizes the tyranny of public opinion (Schwartzwald) and is modified later to represent a base desire for power (Gabriel’s). Big O itself is explicitly repaired by a team of Paradigm’s own citizens at the end, and defended by those same citizens when appearing to lose the final battle. Why did we have to get smarter than the political metaphor?
The answer is that Paradigm City is an entirely man-made world, with men having crafted other men. The crudity of just giving people memories – roles-in-life – like you would give trick-or-treaters candy is precisely the point. No amount of human foresight in the series can respect human freedom generally: one of the funniest things about R. Dorothy is her initial disdain for religion, and yet the series continues with religious imagery even up to its final moments. In an entirely man-made world, God matters that much more: the fact people suck at playing God demonstrates His necessity, the fact people can prevent others from destroying everything His Providence.
So the postmodern imagery isn’t postmodern, in my book: the Phoenix, the Big Robot that can do as it will with the template of the whole, is the ideal robot the other ones are shadows of. The generic cast of the series – the city is “Paradigm City,” the characters are intoduced to us in one sequence as “negotiator,” “android,” “butler,” “officer” – makes it clear this is the situation we’re in. We may not have giant robots, but we have nuclear bombs. If we want a civilization to disappear entirely, we can do this. We also have, through mass media, the ability to shape memory however we want.
Roger’s existential crises, which seems to occur at the most annoying times, are the key to unlocking him as a hero. He’s engaging in self-reflection despite the fact he only displays a fairly mindless andreia – being courageous, being a “real man” in Greek – most of the time. Reason is almost exclusively the province of R. Dorothy. But she falls in love with him first: in a world without a history, literally constructed by technology, there is no “nature” to contemplate except through the noble. And Roger, for all his faults, is very noble.
3. The entirely man-made world still has Providence within it because of a memory that all share. The character known as “Angel” is utterly useless, unable to commit any act of violence (save one) even though she’s an agent for the Union. The initial creator of Paradigm calls her a “memory” at the end, and says she’s not human. She ultimately gets to determine what the next city will be, even as Alex Rosewater tries to destroy it all for his own gain.
She’s completely head-over-heels in love with Roger, but it is pretty clear that Roger is in love with R. Dorothy by the point she’s really hitting on him. If she is a memory – and certainly Dastun feels a kinship with her, and the coldness of the Union towards her might consist in its never having truly existed – then she’s in a peculiar situation. Her arising – I submit she is the memory of “being loved,” nothing less – is precisely because Roger and R. Dorothy have feelings towards each other. Yet she has to be spurned because of that very fact. In the final shots of the series, she’s behind a smiling, probably human Dorothy in watching Roger drive away for the day’s work. And yet she truly held the power of God.
Playing God isn’t as much fun as it seems to be for many of us: if you do it right, you don’t get to be anything. If you do it right, what you get is to watch others do right.Oh, look, it's talented film actress Jennifer Lawrence, a young woman whose work you have long appreciated from afar, but — because of your extreme respect for boundaries — you do not overly-relate to. What is she professionally up to now?
In this extended clip of American Hustle (viewable in the special features of the DVD), you can watch the full scene of Jennifer Lawrence (as the highly unstable, beautifully-coiffed Rosalyn Rosenfeld) singing along to Santana's "Evil Ways" with all the fire and anger it deserves.
I would say that Jennifer Lawrence seems like she'd be a lot of fun to go to a concert with, but that would be inappropriate. She is not your BFF. She is an actor who performs in movies, tells empathizing stories on talk shows and you are NOT ALLOWED to wish that you were friends with her, no matter how fun it seems. You are certainly not allowed to talk about how cool you think it would be to hang with her while getting drunk and eating Mexican food because that is a fantasy that can never become a reality. DO YOU HEAR ME, DAVIES READER?
Besides, the proof is in the pudding — we didn't do any of that friend-projection stuff and look at what a nice, creative, non-dry time we had.A A
SEATTLE -- A Seattle man is facing indecent exposure charges following allegations that he was "humping" the window of a West Seattle sandwich shop, to the horror of those inside.
King County prosecutors contend Lydell Coleman approached Sub Shop at Westwood Village Shopping Center shortly after closing on Oct. 24. Coleman, 36, is alleged to have dropped his pants and mashed himself against the glass as employees looked on.
According to charging papers, Colman arrived at the shop, located at 2500 S.W. Barton St., at 9:30 p.m. and started tugging on the locked door. The witnesses told police the evening then took a strange turn.
"At the glass window, Coleman was observed making sexual motions on the glass window that were described as 'humping' and rubbing his genitals against the window," a Seattle detective said in charging papers, recounting statements made by the two women who witnessed the incident.
Told the store was closed, Coleman exposed himself and pressed his bare genitals against the presumably cold glass, according to charging papers. He then fled as security responded to the store.
Coleman has since been identified by the women as their assailant. He has one prior conviction for indecent exposure.
Now charged with felony indecent exposure, Coleman remains jailed on $35,000 bail.Looking for news you can trust?
Subscribe to our free newsletters.
I know, I know: I’m a broken record on the subject of lead exposure in kids and crime rates 20 years later. But there’s lately been a renewed focus on black crime and black incarceration rates, as well as the racial profiling of blacks and Hispanics in New York City’s stop-and-frisk program. Guess what? The lead theory has something to say about that.
For starters, did you know that arrest rates for violent crime have fallen much faster among black juveniles than among white juveniles? They have, as the charts below show. Rick Nevin explains why:
African-American boys disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system were also disproportionately exposed to lead contaminated dust as young children, because black children were disproportionately concentrated in large cities and older housing. In 1976-1980, 15.3% of black children under the age of three had blood lead above 30 mcg/dl (micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood), when just 2.5% of white children had blood lead that high. In 1988-1991, after the elimination of leaded gasoline, 1.4% of black children and 0.4% of white children under the age of three had blood lead above 25 mcg/dl.
In other words, black juvenile crime rates fell further than white juvenile crime rates because they had been artificially elevated by lead exposure at a much higher rate. In the early 80s, black kids had elevated lead levels at 6x the rate of white kids. After the elimination of leaded gasoline, black kids still had elevated lead levels at 3x the rate of white kids, which explains some of the continued disparity in juvenile crime rates, but that still represented enormous progress. Not only was the ratio lower, but the absolute numbers were far lower too.
There have been, and still are, lots of potential explanations for the disparity in violent crime rates between black and white teens: the toxic legacy of racism and slavery; poverty rates in inner cities; gang culture; and many more. But as Nevin points out, none of the popular theories explains the dramatic rise and fall of crime over the past 50 years, nor in particular why black crime declined more than white crime starting in the early 90s. That’s because none of the usual suspects has varied dramatically in the past 20 years. Family structure in black households has been largely unchanged; poverty went down but then went back up; and incarceration rates haven’t increased.
But the number of kids with toxic levels of exposure to lead has decreased steadily throughout the entire period, and it decreased far more among black kids than white kids. It’s true that black juvenile crime rates are still higher than white juvenile crime rates, but they’re nowhere near the levels that caused so many people to live in fear in the 70s and 80s. Nevin wishes more people knew about this:
If the public were more aware of the magnitude of the ongoing changes in juvenile arrest rates, then law-abiding youths might not be unfairly viewed as interchangeable with juvenile criminals….The fact that black children still had disproportionately elevated blood lead in 2007-2010 is an egregious racial injustice. The fact that the news media fails to recognize the magnitude of ongoing declines in juvenile arrest rates creates other injustices, sometimes veiled in a cloak of sympathy, sometimes in the form of an ominous lecture, and sometimes in the form of arrest rate trends for minor offenses.
No one pretends that lead exposure is the only source of crime, or the only source of disparity in crime rates. But it’s a big part of the picture, and the plain fact is that a lot of people are still living in the past when it comes to fear of black teens. Thanks to falling lead exposure, both black and white teens are far less violent than in the past, and the fall has been most pronounced among blacks. If we wanted to, we could produce even further declines by reducing lead exposure among black toddlers to the same levels as white toddlers, but we’re not there yet because blacks still live disproportionately in old housing and in areas where lead dust from nearby highways settled into the soil decades ago. That’s due to the toxic legacy of racism, redlining, poverty, and more. But we could fix it, even if we can’t entirely overcome racism itself.
The bottom line is simple: We poisoned them. We owe it to them to clean up the poison, not just lock up their kids.Toronto city council voted Tuesday in favour of a transit plan with the province to fund Mayor John Tory’s SmartTrack plan.
However, the vote didn’t come without a lengthy debate, in which many councillors raised concerns about how the city will come up with the money.
In a few weeks, city council will debate a series of potential new taxes and levies that could be used to pay for new transit and infrastructure.
Property tax hike needed to fund Toronto transit plan: councillors
Toronto’s city manager said the city is “grinding to a halt” as he presented a joint $7-billion transit plan with the province on Tuesday.
Peter Wallace said the deal, which includes SmartTrack, is what the city needs, adding the province will not renegotiate.
Under the proposal, the cost of the six new SmartTrack stations at Unilever, Liberty Village, St. Clair West, Gerrard, Lawrence East and Finch, will be $1.25 billion. The City will be on the hook for an estimated $834.5 million and the federal government, for some $417 million.
The plan also includes an Eglinton West LRT extension with eight to 12 stops between Mount Dennis and Renforth Gateway, an express Scarborough Subway Extension (SSE), developing the Eglinton East LRT extension; and the first phase of the Relief Line along Pape-Eastern-Queen. Mayor @JohnTory has said property taxes will not pay for "SmartTrack" today he's trying to stick to his guns #TOpoli pic.twitter.com/yYEXwbFl2U — Adrian Ghobrial (@CityAdrian) November 8, 2016 City staff says only the Scarborough Subway and the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension are currently funded, which means a hike in property taxes according to some councillors. “The longer we delay, the longer we wait to build … the more costly it’s going to be, the greater the impact’s going to be on our economic growth, our social growth, our vibrancy in our city,” said Coun. Michael Thompson. “So, we need to at some point … make that decision that yes, there’ll be some amount of property tax increase.” Coun. Gord Perks agreed. “Anybody claiming this doesn’t have an impact on property taxes is just not being straight with Torontonians,” he said. Coun. @gordperks says property taxes are inevitable if the $7-billion transit plan goes through. #topoli pic.twitter.com/XYFAr7fNPo — Adrian Ghobrial (@CityAdrian) November 8, 2016 The province, which is contributing $3.7 billion to the transit plan, has given the city until Nov. 30 to finalize how much money it would commit to the project. The mayor’s executive committee approved the deal last week.
For background on the transit plan, click here.
Related stories:
Executive committee approves cost-sharing transit plan with province
City’s share of transit plan costs could be equivalent to 2 per cent tax hike
Video: $7B transit plan could mean 10 years of constructionWestern nations have backed fundamentalist forces at the expense of secular, nationalist Muslims. With western funding and support, the Islamic fringe has come to occupy the mainstream.
If you are outraged by the spate of terror attacks that have occurred in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, you are entirely justified. However, do not forget that it is western policies in the Middle East that created the conditions for the growth of these extremists.
Before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq there was no al-Qaeda or ISIS. President Saddam Hussein was the enemy of radical Islamists and in his eyes Osama bin Laden was a “zealot”.
Decades prior to Iraq’s descent into chaos, it was Afghanistan that became a focal point for Islamic mercenaries from around the world. It was when the West started destabilising Afghanistan – in order to bait the Soviets – that the Mujahidin, and its later version the Taliban, were born. Afghanistan used to be a country where women wore skirts and it was considered normal, but today Afghan girls are shot dead for going to school or merely talking to boys.
This has happened because western governments – led by the United States – have destabilised secular nationalist leaders, while cosying up to fundamentalist groups. From the extremist Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia to the Egyptian cult of the Muslim Brotherhood, western nations have backed fundamentalist forces at the expense of nationalist Muslims.
In 1999, the year that Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian President uncannily predicted the rise of the Islamic State. In a television interview he referred to Islamist groups backed by the West: “We are up again a very serious enemy, one that is in fact armed and trained abroad....What’s actually happening is that the extremist part of the Islamic world – and only the extremist part, let me emphasise that – has a solid infrastructure in the West, in North America and in Western Europe.”
According to Putin, if Russia surrenders the territories (in its southern underbelly) that these extremists are coveting, it won't be the end of it. “Sure, we can give them the territory, but then we have to be prepared for the fact they’re not going to leave it at that. They will go on to create an extremist Islamic State.”
While individual European governments evade the issue, the European Union has presented a scathing report on how western countries, especially the US and UK, have contributed to the growth of radical Islamic groups – including those that have targeted the West – by ignoring the financing of such groups.
The report warns about the Wahabi/Salafi organisations and claims that “no country in the Muslim world is safe from their operations... as they always aim to terrorise their opponents and arouse the admiration of their supporters”.
The West has a long history of supporting radical Islamists. Let’s explore how three of the leading western government have contributed to the decline of the nationalist and secular forces in the Islamic world while at the same time they have cynically propped up their opponents, the extremists.
Case Study 1: Britain
When it comes to providing a safe haven for hardened terrorists, Britain never fails to rise to the occasion. “The British Empire had an overprotective attitude toward Islam,” writes Nu’man Abd Al-Wahid of the Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar.
Considering that Britain was one of the prime culprits in the destabilisation of Iran in the 1950s and is behind the devastation of Iraq, Libya and Syria in more recent times, one would be tempted to take the view the British are anti-Muslim. But in fact they are only opposed to nationalist Muslims and the moderate middle classes.
Al-Wahid explains: “When the Empire began to consolidate its lordship over the Arab world after World War I, it partnered with Saudi Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. The trends these movements represented were not so much ‘invented’ by the British but favoured and promoted.
“Before the British allowed the Wahhabis to establish themselves in Riyadh in 1901, they were an isolated, exiled cult in the Basra region known as ‘Kuwait’. With further support from the Empire, the Wahhabis expanded into the western part of the Arabian peninsula in 1924 and 1925.”
The British advocated the Muslim Brotherhood brand of Islam rather than the traditional moderate Islam as practised by the oldest university in the Islamic world, Al-Azhar.
“The British Empire...heroically and selflessly defended Islam, even if al-Azhar, the traditional bastion of Islamic learning in the world, didn’t comprehend this urgency. By the time these two major trends of Islamism strategically coalesced in the 1950s to meet the challenge of third world independence and socialism, the Americans had embraced the British Empire’s imperialist strategy.”
“This embrace meant bringing British puppets, such as the al-Saud clan of Saudi Arabia and the Thani clan of Qatar, under its protective umbrella. This American appropriation of the puppets had initially gained doctrinal credibility through the Eisenhower doctrine and extended all the way until the 1980s to support the Islamist mercenaries, or mujahideen, against the Soviets in the 1980s.”
Britain in India
Britain’s infatuation with extremism was evident during its colonial presence in India. In a speech before the British Parliament in 1843, Thomas Macaulay offered a suggestion on how Britain should deal with India’s Hindu majority versus its Muslim minority. Britain, he said, should “take no part in the disputes between Mahometans and idolaters. But, if our Government does take a part, there cannot be a doubt that Mahometanism is entitled to the preference”.
Winston Churchill took Islamophilia to another level. The murderous British politician – who later became Prime Minister – became so interested in the Muslim world that he took to dressing in Arab clothes. In fact, his family feared he might convert to Islam. In 1907 his future sister-in-law Gwendoline Bertie wrote to him: “Please don’t become converted to Islam; I have noticed in your disposition a tendency to orientalise, Pasha-like tendencies, I really have.”
During the Indian freedom movement, Churchill blathered, “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” He, of course, was referring to Hindus. At the same time, he and his ministers were constantly goading the Muslims to demand Pakistan and thereby Balkanise India.
Alex Von Tunzelman writes in ‘Indian Summer’ that although Muslims made up just 35 percent of the Indian Army, Churchill lied that they constituted 75 percent. This was done to buttress the claim that Indian Muslims did not want to be ruled by the “Hindu priesthood”.
Churchill was inspired by Beverly Nichols' 1944 book 'Verdict on India', which argued the British could not quit without creating a separate homeland for the Muslims. Tunzelman explains: "Afterwards, he declared to his wife he was depressed by the scorn with which the Raj was viewed in India and America....'I agree with the book and also with its conclusion – Pakistan.' Churchill's vocal support of Pakistan would be instrumental in creating the world's first modern Islamic state...."
Churchill behaved very much like Ahmad Shah Abdali or Timur, who roused their troops with the promise of plunder and rape in India. In a letter to Muslim leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the pudgy Prime Minister hinted that India would be easy pickings for Pakistan. "Having got out of the British Commonwealth of Nations, India will be thrown into great confusion, and will have no means of defence against infiltration or invasion from the north." According to Tunzelman, Churchill was "implying that a future Pakistan might be able to invade India".
Tunzelman points to Jinnah’s trip to Britain in December 1946. "At Buckingham Palace, he found that the king was in favour of Pakistan; on talking to the queen afterwards, he found her even more in favour; and finally he spoke to queen Mary, who was '100% Pakistan!'"
As you can see, the British royalty, which was required by protocol to be apolitical, was in fact enthusiastically cheering for Jinnah, jehad and Pakistan. The British, cutting across classes, tried to forestall India’s independence by opportunistically supporting Muslim separatism.
Britain: R&R for Terror Inc
The end of empire did not end Britain's dangerous ties with Islam. In fact, they grew stronger. In his landmark book 'Secret Affairs', Mark Curtis reveals the secret history of British collusion with radical Islamic and terrorist groups. It shows how both Labour and Conservative governments have connived with militant groups linked to al-Qaida to control oil resources, overthrow governments and promote Britain’s financial interests.
British collusion with radical Islam is intimately related to its post-war imperial decline. Curtis says Britain has covertly supported radical Islamic groups in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, Indonesia and Egypt.
According to Curtis, Britain had a strategic alliance with the two major state sponsors of radical Islam – Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Two of the most active Islamist commanders carrying out attacks in Afghanistan, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalalludin Haqqani, both based in Pakistan, had close contacts with the UK.
Hekmatyar met Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street when he was a favourite of MI6 and the CIA in the war against the Russians. Thatcher declared that these Islamists were engaged in “one of the most heroic resistance struggles known to history”, as cited in Sandy Gall’s ‘Afghanistan, Agony of a Nation’.
Mission against Moscow
Britain has directed terrorist activity against Russia in a big way. A prominent London-based fugitive is Akhmed Zakayev. A key figure in the rebel Chechen government, he is wanted in Russia for terrorist-related crimes, including murder.
Zakayev has been living a charmed life in Britain since 2002 when English actress Vanessa Redgrave paid $98,000 for his bail.
“I’m Akhmed’s host. I’m his friend, I’m his guarantor,” Redgrave told the British media. “I think there’s a load of people who care...that there should be peace for the Chechen people at last.”
Two years later Chechen terrorists massacred 330 children in the Russian city of Beslan. However, the British, including the likes of Redgrave, refused to have a relook at their special relationship with the Chechen rebels. After all, they were Russian children who were killed.
At the same time, the Chechen connection continues to be useful for Britain. Iranian news agency FARS reports that Britain is pumping London-based Chechen terrorists into Syria via the open Turkish border.
If Britain is hoping the jehadi snakes it is rearing in its backyard would only bite the Russians, Indians or Serbs, then it is sorely mistaken. Kim Sengupta writes in The Independent:
“For years, violent Islamist groups were allowed to settle in Britain, using the country as a base to carry out attacks abroad. This was tolerated in the belief that they would not bomb the country where they lived and that, as long as they are here, the security service would be able to infiltrate them. At the same time mosque after mosque was taken over through intimidation by the fundamentalists. Police and others in authority refused pleas from moderate Muslims with the excuse that they did not want to interfere.
“There was even a name for this amoral accommodation: the ‘covenant of security’. We now know that jihadists will indeed blow up their home country and that the security agencies signally failed to infiltrate the terrorist cells while they had the chance.”
Case Study 2: USA
When the history of terrorism is written, Ronald Reagan's name will stand out. In 1985 the US President received an Afghan mujahidin delegation at the White House with the words: “These gentlemen are the moral equivalent of America's Founding Fathers.”
As if arming the Mujahidin wasn’t enough, the US went on to establish the conditions for the rise of another – more dangerous – scourge, the Islamic State. The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 not only removed President Saddam Hussein from power, it also destroyed the remnant of a proud civilisation. The US then disbanded the entire Iraqi Army and air force, sending highly trained and battle hardened soldiers into the unemployment heap.
According to Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, the US-led invasion of Iraq was a mistake and helped to create the Islamist State militant group. “I was against this invasion and my fears have been founded,” he says. “The break-up of the Iraqi forces poured hundreds if not thousands of disgruntled soldiers and police officers onto the streets.” These men later formed the core of the al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State.
Not many westerners realise they are being attacked by vengeful Iraqis and other Middle Easterners whose countries, neighbourhoods, families and their own lives are wrecked beyond redemption. The illegal invasion of Iraq was savage beyond most people’s imagination. The ‘Coalition of the Willing’ – the group of allied countries in the Iraq War – basically used Iraqis as target practice. Iraqi children were shot dead for fun or raped by British and American soldiers. Without a ray of hope and seeing their country’s entire infrastructure destroyed, many Iraqis turned to terrorism as the only way to avenge their humiliation.
Case Study 3: France
During the Cold War, while most NATO countries blindly toed the American line, France pursued an independent foreign policy. Under President Charles De Gaulle, France had even pulled its military out of NATO. However, under Nicolas Sarkozy Paris pursued a more Washington-aligned foreign policy – no questions asked.
France is the prime culprit in the razing of Libya’s beautiful cities, its free education and excellent health care system. In the spring of 2011, Sarkozy took the lead among European nations |
plain, desperate, and obvious. Her tone, pure shrill. With intensity, urgency, and alarm in her voice, Stapleton described Monegan’s behavior as commissioner as egregious insubordination, full of obstructionist conduct and a brazen refusal to follow instructions. Did Walt Monegan, former Marine, and lifetime crime fighter deserve this? Of course not. But history has proven, get in the way of Sarah Barracuda’s political ambition, and you won’t know what hit you.
In a reasonable political environment, these circumstances would create a genuine feeding frenzy. We have an ethics scandal, involving a candidate for national office who appears to have lied, and who keeps changing her story. We have promises of cooperation, followed by complete and total obduracy. We have powerful Republicans converging to shut down a legitimate investigation.
We have, in other words, a serious political scandal, which a presidential campaign is doing its best to obstruct. Where’s the outrage?Buy Photo The Mackinac Bridge seen from Straits State Park in St. Ignace in July 2014. (Photo: Ellen Creager, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
Little Traverse Bay. Mackinaw City. Mackinac Island. Cheboygan. St. Ignace.
Each could be at risk if the twin pipelines known as "Line 5," carrying some 23 million gallons of light crude oil a day through the Straits of Mackinac ruptures — part of 700 miles of vulnerable Michigan coastline identified in new research modeling 840 spill scenarios. In almost every scenario, Mackinac and Bois Blanc Islands and Mackinaw City — all places at the heart of Michigan's economically significant tourism industry — were damaged.
The research, performed by scientists at the University of Michigan's Water Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, is a grim reminder of the risk posed by the aging Line 5. The pipeline is owned by Canada-based oil transporter Enbridge, the same company responsible for a devastating 2010 oil spill on the Kalamazoo River.
A reminder, because the possible environmental consequences of a failure in the 62-year-old pipeline are well known among Michigan's environmental activists, regulators and state legislators. Enbridge insists the pipeline is in satisfactory condition, but environmental advocates say the company won't make the information to back up its claims public.
Because of strong and complex currents, one researcher has called the straits "the worst possible place for a Great Lakes oil spill." The U.S. Coast Guard has repeatedly raised alarms about its ability to effectively respond to a spill on the Great Lakes, where high seas could make deployment of the ships typically dispatched to such spills unsafe. And watching a set of videos produced by the University of Michigan's Graham Sustainability Institute is like watching an environmental horror film. The videos show how oil spilled in the straits would disperse — spreading, in one scenario, almost to Michigan's thumb.
Suffice it to say, we're convinced: Transporting oil through the straits is too risky — and the Great Lakes are too important to risk. But the possible threat — and the state and nation's questionable capacity to resolve such a spill — haven't spurred many in Lansing to action.
While pipeline safety and capacity are regulated by a federal agency, Gov. Rick Snyder and Attorney General Bill Schuette have the authority to ask a judge to vacate the easement agreement that effectively allows Enbridge to function as an oil transporter. But neither man has done so.
A task force led by Schuette and former Michigan Department of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant (whose agency's role in the Flint water crisis prompted his resignation late last year), concluded in a 2015 report that Enbridge had violated the decades-old agreement by not maintaining the pipeline's support structures.
The task force criticized the pipeline in plain terms: The pipeline could never be built today, Schuette said, and its "days are numbered." But the task force stopped short of recommending a moratorium on flow of oil through the pipeline or phasing its operations out over time. Instead, the task force recommended a third party assess the pipeline risk, review Enbridge's financial assurances, and examine alternatives to the existing pipeline route.
An environmental group has identified existing Midwest pipelines that could replace Line 5, like the "Alberta Clipper" pipeline and Enbridge's Line 6B, which don't run through the Great Lakes.
We understand the need to balance business and the environment, safety and the well-being of Michiganders, many of whom depend on the products Enbridge transports. But care of the Great Lakes trumps all.
The state and federal governments need to bring urgency to the search for an alternative transport scheme before any of the devastating scenarios depicted in the UM/NOAA study make the leap from disturbing simulation to real-world catastrophe.
Read or Share this story: http://on.freep.com/1MEWSVAAstronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2008 May 6
Explanation: Galaxies don't normally look like this. NGC 3256 actually shows a current picture of two galaxies that are slowly colliding. Quite possibly, in hundreds of millions of years, only one galaxy will remain. Today, however, NGC 3256 shows intricate filaments of dark dust, unusual tidal tails of stars, and a peculiar center that contains two distinct nuclei. Although it is likely that no stars in the two galaxies will directly collide, the gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields do interact directly. NGC 3256, part of the vast Hydra-Centaurus supercluster of galaxies, spans over 100 thousand light-years across and is located about 100 million light-years away.Image caption Snipes has been on bail since appealing against his 2008 conviction for failing to file tax returns
Actor Wesley Snipes has been ordered to surrender at a federal prison in the US state of Pennsylvania to begin a three-year sentence for tax evasion.
The star of the Blade films was ordered to report to a prison in the town of Lewis Run on 9 December.
Snipes asked a judge last week to let him remain free on bail while he appeals to the US Supreme Court to overturn his conviction.
The actor, 48, was convicted in 2008 for failing to file tax returns.
Snipes appealed to a court in Atlanta in the US state of Georgia after being found guilty by a jury in Florida. But the court upheld the conviction and sentence.
The actor's lawyers then argued last month that Snipes had a legal right to remain on bail while they prepared a fresh appeal.
Snipes's lawyers also said at hearing in the town of Ocala in Florida last month that jurors should be interviewed about whether they had perjured themselves by stating during jury selection that they did not have preconceived opinions about the actor.
His lawyer, Daniel Meachum, said he had received e-mails from multiple jurors, who claimed others in the jury believed the actor was guilty before the trial began.
At the time of his conviction in April 2008, prosecutors said Snipes had earned more than $37m (£24m) in gross income between 1999 and 2004, but had not filed tax returns or paid any federal taxes.The Olympic Truce is a tradition originating from Ancient Greece that dates back to 776 BC. A "truce" (Ancient Greek: ékécheiria, meaning "laying down of arms") was announced before and during the Olympic Games to ensure the host city state (Elis) was not attacked and athletes and spectators could travel safely to the Games and peacefully return to their respective countries.
In 1998, the International Olympic Committee renewed this tradition by calling upon all nations to observe the Truce during the modern Games. The Truce was revived by United Nations Resolution 48/11 of 25 October 1993,[1] as well by the United Nations Millennium Declaration relating to the world peace and security.[2]
In 1996, the Athens Bid Committee committed to reviving the Olympic Truce and promoting it to the world through the Olympic flame relay.[3] Three years later, the International Olympic Committee announced the establishment of the International Olympic Truce Foundation and the International Olympic Truce Centre in cooperation with Greece.[4] The vision was to protect the interests of athletes and sport, and to promote peaceful principles in modern day. Each host city was encouraged to embrace the meaning and spirit of the Olympic Truce in the planning and staging of the Games.[5][citation needed]
Goals [ edit ]
Through this global and symbolic concept, the goal of the Olympic Truce movement is to:[citation needed]
Mobilize youth for the promotion of the Olympic ideals
Use sport to establish contacts between communities in conflict
Offer humanitarian support in countries at war
Create a window of opportunities for dialogue and reconciliation
Initiatives [ edit ]
1994 Lillehammer Winter Games: the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was allowed to participate in the Games of the XXV Olympiad in Barcelona and the XVII Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer despite ongoing wars. A delegation from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) visited Sarajevo in 1994 to extend its solidarity to the city that had organized the XIV Olympic Winter Games in 1984.
1998 Nagano Winter Games: During a time when tension in the Persian Gulf region was high, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan intervened to seek a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Iraq. In a release from the International Olympic Committee, the Secretary General was quoted, I call upon all nations to observe the Olympic truce. [6]
2000 Sydney Summer Games: During the Opening Ceremony, South and North Korean delegations walked in the stadium together, under the same flag. It was the first Olympic Games event where the two divided countries walked side by side. [7]
2004 Athens Summer Games: The Olympic Truce was promoted through Olympic Flame Relay events. The UN supported the IOC in asking the nations of the world to stop all wars for 16 days during the Games.
2006 Turin Winter Games: During the games, athletes and officials showed support for the Olympic Truce by signing one of the three walls situated in the three Olympic Villages (Turin, Sestriere and Bardonecchia).
2010 Vancouver Winter Games: Truce projects were rooted in an open invitation for people to 'Make Your Peace' which asked individuals to create everyday peace at home, schools, work, and in the community. Projects included: delivering Olympic Spirit Boxes filled with hockey, soccer, lacrosse, baseball, and basketball equipment to 20 Aboriginal communities in Northern Canada;[8] an Olympic Truce Youth Dialogue with Canada's Governor General;[9] and an art installation titled "Room to Make your Peace".[10]
2012 London Summer Games [ edit ]
On 22 April 2011 a Member of the House of Lords - Michael Bates, Baron Bates - began walking over 3000 miles from Olympia to London to highlight the opportunity to bring the Olympic Truce into reality during the 2012 London Summer Games. Walk for Truce, Lord Bates was successful in securing pledges from a number of governments to both sign and implement the Truce, supported on his journey by the British Foreign Office. Lord Bates arrived back in London on February 15, 2012 and continues to lobby for the cause of the Olympic Truce.
The UK promoted the ideals of the Olympic Truce both domestically, and for the first time internationally. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) organised truce activities in the UK including: "Get Set for the Olympic Truce" which encourages young people across the UK to learn about the history of the Olympic Truce, to debate and discuss what the Olympic Truce means to their lives and to undertake an activity to promote peace within their school or community. Materials were promoted to over 20,000 schools registered with Get Set.
Truce Inspire is a ‘truce’ strand of the Inspire programme through which LOCOG specifically looked for projects inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games which use sport or culture to promote conflict resolution, reconciliation and peace. LOCOG approved a number of projects including: a project led by the University of Ulster which uses sport to support conflict resolution across the education sector; a project providing 200 schools with the opportunity to debate the theme of the Olympic Truce at a Model UN conference; and a project which uses sport to bring together young people from London communities affected by gang rivalry. Cultural Olympiad and the London 2012 Festival organised by LOCOG and the NGO Peace One Day is delivering a truce strand of the Film Nation Shorts project through which 14- to 25-year-olds are invited to create films focused on the truce theme. LOCOG has also partnered with Peace One Day to deliver a series of concerts as part of the London 2012 Festival.
International activities were led by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) which together with partners promoted the ideals of the Olympic Truce internationally under the themes of:
"Local solutions to local problems: Preventing conflict and building peace requires the involvement of the local communities who are most affected. We are looking for opportunities to work with host governments, communities, faith groups, civil society and the media to build relationships across boundaries.
Legitimate Politics: Legitimate politics are essential for peace. The most peaceful political systems are accountable, give everybody a voice and are trusted to manage difference and accommodate change. We are seeking to work with Parliamentarians and bodies such as the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and Commonwealth to promote the Truce and encourage public commitments to conflict prevention and peace-building.
Building a 2012 Truce legacy: Through an active public diplomacy programme we have an opportunity to increase international public interest and involvement in conflict prevention and peace-building and to raise the level of ambition for future Olympic Truces".
Speaking about the FCO's work on the Olympic Truce, Foreign Office Minister Henry Bellingham said
As the Minister with responsibility for Conflict Issues, I am delighted to introduce the FCO's Olympic Truce activities. Our staff in the UK and Missions across the world will undertake activities and events to promote the ideals of peace and conflict resolution ahead of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. We want to make the most of this historic opportunity and work with other governments, the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee, National Olympic Committees, the International Paralympic Committee, National Paralympic Committees, NGOs and civil society to promote the principles and ideals of the Olympic Truce.
On 28 May 2012 during the visit of Foreign Secretary William Hague to Moscow, the UK and Russian foreign ministries (in recognistion of their countries shared roles as Olympic Hosts in 2012 and 2014) agreed to work together to promote and support the ideals of the Olympic Truce.
On 12 September 2012 FCO Ministers updated Parliament[11] "It was a real honour for the UK to have the responsibility to promote the Olympic truce message. We worked closely on delivering an international response to the Olympic truce, working with the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic games, the Department for International Development, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Culture Media and Sport".
"We wanted to show that the UN resolution could be translated into international action. Our diplomatic missions across our network and the FCO in London arranged over 70 events and activities which showed how important the contribution of youth, women and those with disabilities is in promoting peace through sport, culture, education and wider public engagement. While activities took place in every continent, we specifically wanted to bring the Olympic truce to life in conflict affected and fragile countries".
"The UK is the first games host to deliver this level of international ambition for the Olympic truce. The UN Secretary-General, in the presence of the International Olympic Committee, recognised the UK’s Olympic truce work on the eve of the opening ceremony of the London 2012 games. Now others are seeking to build on our experience. We are currently sharing our experience with the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser’s Office on sport and development for peace, as well as with Russia, which will next take stewardship of the Olympic truce in 2013, ahead of the Sochi winter games in 2014. This level of international interest, paired with our continued engagement, will help cement our legacy of encouraging future games hosts to promote the ideals of the Olympic truce in their own ways".
Logo [ edit ]
The official Olympic Truce logo is a graphic with three elements: a dove, flames, and the Olympic rings. The meaning behind the logo is as follows:
The Olympic Truce is symbolized by the dove of peace with the traditional Olympic flame in the background. In a world that is plagued by wars and animosity, the peace-dove symbol represents one of the IOC's ideals to build a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal. The Olympic flame has brought warm friendship to all the people of the world through sharing and global togetherness. In the symbol, the flame is made up of colourful effervescent elements, reminiscent of festivities experienced in the celebration of the human spirit. These elements represent people of all races coming together for the observance of the Truce.[12]
United Nations support [ edit ]
Today the Olympic Truce has become an expression of mankind's desire to build a world based on the rules of fair competition, peace, humanity and reconciliation. https://www.un.org/events/olympictruce/background.shtml
The United Nations is in support of the Olympic Truce and before each Summer and Winter Olympic Games, adopts a resolution called "Building a peaceful and better world through sport and the Olympic ideal".[13] UN Member States are asked to observe the Olympic Truce, and work towards the settlement of international disagreements by peaceful and diplomatic means.[14] The United Kingdom was the first ever nation to get all 193 UN Member states to sign the Olympic Truce resolution for the 2012 Olympic Games.
UN Support is mainly shown through the resolution. It is also shown by the Solemn Appeals for Truce made by the UN Secretary General and the President of the General Assembly shortly before the Olympic and Winter Olympic Games. The lead office within the UN system is The United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace or UNOSDP. The current UN Special Adviser on Sport for Development and Peace is Wilfried Lemke from Bremen, Germany. UNOSDP is situated at the UN Office at Geneva plus a liaison office at UN HQ in New York.
On 17 October 2011, the international community pledged to observe the Olympic Truce, individually and collectively.[15] For London 2012, the resolution was officially titled “Sport for Peace and Development: Building a Peaceful and Better World through Sport and the Olympic Ideal” and was introduced by LOCOG chairman Sebastian Coe. “The Truce helps to show the world that peace is a possibility," he said Monday in New York City. "It shows the power that sport has to inspire unity, mutual understanding, and respect among different types of people.” Coe exhorted all member states of the UN to respect the ideals of the Truce. “Countries should feel an obligation to respect the Truce because it holds true to the idea that we can coexist without the need for discrimination and fighting," he urged. “It gives us something to strive towards outside of the Olympics and the arena of sport.”[16]
The United Nations website recognizes the truce as "the cornerstone of the Olympic Games in ancient times" and the "longest lasting peace accord in history".[17]
See also [ edit ]BREAKING NEWS Samsung has denied that Nikon is buying its NX technology, saying that media reports are ‘not true’ in an official statement sent to Amateur Photographer magazine.
Yesterday, there was growing online speculation that Nikon had acquired Samsung’s NX camera technology in a move that would enable Nikon to make a professional compact system camera.
However, in a statement sent to Amateur Photographer (AP) this morning, a Samsung spokesperson said: ‘Media reports that Nikon is allegedly buying our NX technology are not true.’
A Nikon spokesperson yesterday told AP that the company does not comment on rumours, which originated from a report by website Mirrorless Rumors.
Last week, Samsung confirmed that it is set to phase out camera sales in the UK.
The news followed reports that Samsung planned to discontinue the NX1 in Europe.
Samsung’s move to pull out of the UK camera market comes less than a decade after it entered the global DSLR market.
Samsung first announced its own brand of DSLRs in January 2006 following a tie-up with historic camera maker Pentax.
Samsung’s first DSLR was the six-million-pixel GX-1S – its own version of the Pentax *ist DS2.
The 10MP Samsung GX-10 followed later that year, based on the Pentax K10D.
In 2009, Samsung used the PMA Show in the US as the launchpad for its NX series of hybrid-digital cameras.
The NX was billed as a new concept, offering the performance and image quality of a DSLR but with the portability and convenience of a compact point-and-shoot model.
But the South Korean giant has not announced an NX camera since the NX500 in February this year.
More follows…Calligraphy means “beautiful writing.” Calligraphy can be both a delight to the eye and an inspiration to the spirit. Now the appreciation for the art of calligraphy has grown incredibly. Calligraphy fonts are used in creative art to express the elegance, beauty and grace.
I have collected 45 elegant calligraphy fonts which are free to download. Click on the images to download the respective calligraphy fonts.
Installing Fonts to Windows and Photoshop
In order to install the download fonts to your windows, follow the easy steps given below :
Click Start and then select ” control panel “
In control panel, search for Fonts folder
Open the fonts folder and paste the download fonts in the folder
Note : Remember to unzip the zip files before pasting them to fonts folder.
that’s it Now you can see your new fonts available in all text editors like MS Word and also in Photoshop.
Renaissance calligraphy font
Radagund calligraphy font
Mutlu Ornamental calligraphy font
Aquiline two calligraphy font
BreastBomb Calligraphy font
Champignon Regular Calligraphy Font
Marriage Script Calligraphy Font
Deftone Stylus calligraphy Fonts
English Calligraphy Font
Franciscolucas Briosa
Lauren Script Calligraphy Font
Old Script Calligraphy Fonts
Promocyja script calligraphy font
KellyBrown calligraphy Font
Orphiel Demo Calligraphy Font
Adinekirnberg script
ALS script – calligraphy Font
A Charming Font Expanded
A charming Font Extended Italics
A Charming Font Left leaning
Super Expanded calligraphy Font
Allergo Calligraphy font
Balzac Callygraphic Font
Beautiful ES calligraphy font
Pavane script calligraphy font
Chancery Cursive
Chopin Script
Renaiss italic calligraphy font
Cygnet Round
Dopkin Plain calligraphy font
Edwardian Script calligraphic font
Scrypticaly Italic Calligraphic font
FLW script calligraphy font
Free Booter Script Calligraphy font
Gabrielle calligraphy fonts
GESSELE
Adorable calligraphy fonts
OHIO SCRIPT
Quigley wiggly
Saffron Too
Splendid ES calligraphic font
Selfish calligraphic fonts
shardee calligraphy fonts
ibleum calligrpahy font
Wrexham Script calligraphic font
Zothique Demo
These are some of the calligraphy fonts which i like and use in my design works. If you have any other suggestions let me know. I will include them with a link to your siteMIT E-Voting Project To Analyze Experience Of Voters in Election
As the election approaches, a question lingers with increasing urgency on the minds of concerned citizens: to e-vote or not to e-vote?
The question, of course, cannot be defined so simplistically, as electronic voting refers to several types of voting that include electronic means of both casting and counting the vote. These systems both present pluses and minuses, and have been the focus of a public backlash amid growing security problems.
Following the Florida fiasco of 2000, the nation’s recent rush to embrace e-voting has been hampered by controversy over issues of security, reliability, privacy, and cost.
The release earlier this month of a short video by a group of scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara showing how a single person can hack an election on a Sequoia touch-screen voting system undetectably is the latest in a series of such demonstrations over the past two years. The hack demonstration also shows how the so-called “security-seals” placed on such machines after they have been programmed for an election can be easily defeated without detection.
These enormous flaws reinforce the insecurities surrounding the use of electronic voting technology and the need for better technology and legislation.
Amid growing evidence of security flaws and pressure to stop the use of similar systems in American elections, researchers at the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project are hard at work analyzing the security and impact of e-voting systems.
The Caltech-MIT Project
“It’s a general program that studies a lot of issues, including e-voting. One of the issues we are working on is trying to figure out ways that voters can make sure their vote has been counted, without receiving a paper receipt,” said Charles H. Stewart III, head of MIT’s political science department and a member of the VTP faculty. “You don’t want to carry a piece of paper around,” he said in a telephone interview last week.
Established by the California Institute of Technology President David Baltimore and MIT President Charles M. Vest in December 2000 to respond to the need for academic guidance in the wake of the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election, the Caltech-MIT VTP seeks to improve voting in the United States through the use of the latest technologies. Its tasks include evaluating the reliability and administrative practices of existing voting systems, establishing guidelines for their reliability and performance, and proposing standards for the design of new voting technologies.
Judging by the titles of the posts on the initiative’s blog, they still have a lot of work to do. “Plan for the worst,” the Election Assistance Commission urges in its Election Management Guidelines, and “Voter Registration Problems Reported in Michigan,” the blog quotes the Detroit Free Press as saying.
With regards to the upcoming election, MIT is trying to collect as much data as possible through two data-related projects of the Caltech-MIT initiative.
The first one is simply collecting the Election Day returns from the states, so that one can see the difference electronic voting machines made, Stewart said. “All states report information about the machines they use and the problems they encountered.”
The other big data project is the development of the first large-scale public opinion poll of American voters to ask them about their experience with voting on Election Day. “We will sample over 10,000 voters, drawing samples in each state of the country. So, we will be able to gauge not only how well the election went nationally, we will also be able to tell whether particular states offered special problems, or went especially well,” Stewart said.
“Another big project we are working on is trying to understand empirically all the things that are related to voting machines,” Stewart said.
“One thing we are trying to look at is voting machines not recording the votes people have made. As what happened in Florida in 2004 when the votes had to be re-counted, some machines are more prone to break down, more prone to confuse voters. That’s what we study,” he said. “It’s an issue we call ‘lost ballots’.”
Auditing the election — a tricky task
As for whether MIT will try to audit this election, the MIT project is not an auditing project per se, Stewart said. “Some of us on the Caltech-MIT Project will be doing analyses after the election to try and understand the role that voting technologies played in the results of the election, which will have some characteristics of an audit,” he said.
“It’s a term that’s being thrown around a lot,” he added. “What my colleagues are going to do is research nationwide to see if the machines that are set up nationwide are prone to break down. That’s more a statistical task,” he added.
Auditing can at times be theoretical, and at times applied, Stewart said. “The amount of data that is produced is enormous.” Thus, he continued, “it’s physically impossible for a human being to take a look at every single paper ballot,” which is what people usually refer to when they talk about “auditing ballots.”
Ronald L. Rivest, professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a member of the VTP faculty, is doing research on auditing, elections and cryptography — a technology some voting systems use to ensure that votes were cast correctly, detect possible fraud or malfunction, and provide a means to audit the original machine.
Rivest, who is also a member of the technical advisory board of the Election Commission, which regulates voting, is currently working on a system that sample precincts.
In an interview, he stressed that MIT is not doing research on paperless voting systems.
“My own research does not involve paperless voting systems, although paper can be used in a variety of ways to improve a voting system. A purely electronic voting system would typically not be ‘software independent,’ and so you would have to trust that the software is correct and unmodified in order to have confidence that the election result is correct,” he said.
“By and large, paperless voting systems would be ‘software dependent,’ so that an undetected error or change in the software could cause an undetectable change in the election outcome. This would be very undesirable,” he said.
No MIT voting machines
As to whether MIT will one day make its own voting machines, Rivest said, “we do research on voting systems, and may produce prototypes. We don’t produce them for others to use, a vendor would do that.”
Stewart said MIT is not working on building electronic machines, but is studying the impact of electronic voting machines.
“That MIT might be working on its own machines is an idea that dates back to 2001,” Stewart said, “but we are less interested in making our own machines than in providing more technical information and fundamentals in science and engineering.”
As examples of MIT research closely tied to e-voting machines, he cited former Caltech-MIT VTP co-director Ted Selker’s work on electronic interfaces, protocols for securing votes electronically, and on audio systems that could read back votes cast on electronic voting machines. One application of the latter is for blind and visually-impaired people to have a way of having their vote read back to them so they can ensure it has been recorded correctly.
Jonathan Goler ’04, who designed and developed the Caltech-MIT VTP as a UROP, said in an interview earlier this month, “MIT will never produce its own e-voting machine. MIT will probably continue to release concepts for improving the electronic voting process, such as the Low Error Voting Interface and Secure Architecture for Voting Electronically.”
This is the first half of a two-part series on electronic voting. The second half will be published this Friday.Here's Video Of A Captured 'Chupacabra'
What is it going to take for all of you sheeple to finally W A K E UP to the truth about the Chupacabra? Jackie Stock and her husband Bubba have captured the feral creature and have VIDEO and PHOTOS to finally silence you naysayers. Bubba discovered the Chupacabra eating corn on their land. "He called me to come and look, and I said 'Bubba that looks like a baby chupacabra,'" Stock said.
They consulted their neighbor, Arlen Parma, a hunter, to confirm that this beast was in fact not of the Natural Order. "I hunted coons for 20 years with dogs and I ain’t ever seen anything that looks like that right there," Parma told KAVU.
What more PROOF do you DENIERS need?
[h/t Texas Monthly]FontLab Studio 5 is our professional font editor for macOS and Windows. Used by Adobe, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype, Morisawa and almost every other major font foundry in the world, it is the comprehensive solution for font foundries, professional type designers, typographers and graphic design studios, allowing them to design typefaces and create or modify fonts. FontLab Studio 5 offers a complete integrated workflow for professional font creation, from font family management, through multilingual glyph design and accelerated spacing and kerning, all the way to automatic and manual hinting and Python scripting. It supports all major outline font formats, from OpenType and TrueType to PostScript Type 1 and Multiple Master.
FontLab VI
There are a multitude of new features to make designing type easier.
Performance is spectacular. Every function has been re-thought to make your tasks of creating and editing fonts more fun and quicker.
Yet keyboard shortcuts from FontLab Studio were kept wherever possible.
Why are we doing an open, free public preview?
It is nearly feature-complete, but there are many bugs and issues, and we want your input on both user interface and functionality.
The tool is for you, so we want your feedback!
Download at FontLabTo any person who moved to New York City after 1995, abandoned cars—rusty hulks of American steel left to rot on public property—exist almost exclusively as mental set pieces for a diorama of Gritty Seventies New York, or as part of a Gothamist photo gallery. Today, in Manhattan and the tonier edges of Brooklyn—Williamsburg, Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Dumbo—there’s not even space to abandon a jalopy. (Chase Bank branches and bresaola-wielding specialty foods stores have displaced almost every good car-abandoning spot of yore.) But at one point in New York’s history, abandoned cars were a legitimate scourge, each presenting a hindrance to traffic, a danger to children who would play in the wrecks, and a public eyesore. In decades when drugs suffused the city, forsaken cars were used as caches and transaction points. Better quilted velour with a roof overhead than a park bench. According to a contemporary report in The New York Times, in 1979, more than 79,000 abandoned cars were removed from the city’s streets, alleys, and overpasses. But even that wasn’t a comprehensive effort. In 1988, in an act of municipal discipline, agencies buttoned down and removed a total of 148,257 cars from city streets—an average of 406 every day. For decades, auto wreckage was such a reliable fixture of New York City streets, Volvo used a photograph of the area beneath the George Washington Bridge, rife with wreckage, to advertise its heartier, smaller cars. The idea: break the cycle of cars cheaply made, quickly bought, and soon abandoned.
Ben Keeshin/TheDrive.com
Nowadays they’re more rare, but they're there. Under the crumbling Brooklyn-Queens expressway, mostly, but also squatting in Brooklyn’s fast-disappearing empty waterfront lots and, sometimes, just on the street, dusty with a layer of grime and a saucing of neglect. You know, abandoned cars—the least loved automobiles in a city that generally hates the things, anyway.
Don't forget to sign up Your Email Address
The city categories abandoned cars two ways, with the distinction denoting jurisdiction. If a car with license plates accrues more than three tickets, it’s towed by the NYPD and stored at one of several impound lots, accruing towing and storage fees to be paid by the owner once he’s identified. If, after 90 days, no owner has come forward, the car is put up for auction.
Ben Keeshin/TheDrive.com
If a car is truly abandoned—meaning no license plates or identifying features—it becomes the business of the Sanitation Department’s quaintly-named Derelict Vehicle Operations. After six hours on a city street or property, the DVO unit will tag it and remove it within three days. (As a fun note, the Department of Sanitation guidelines make a special classification for luxury vehicles, though they’re treated the same as any other cars. According to the DoS, a luxury car is a “Rolls-Royce, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Porsche, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Lexus or Maserati.” Bentley, Audi, and Pagani owners are doubtless feeling pretty miffed.)
Ben Keeshin/TheDrive.com
And where does a car go when it's removed? To a place like Ken Ben Industries, an unpaved lot and towing operation on Maspeth Avenue, in East Williamsburg. Two attendants there did not know if it was named for one man, “Ken Ben”, or, more likely, two: Ken and Ben. But even of unknown provenance and bearing a one-star Yelp Review, Ken Ben is a magnetic spot, because it sells cars for cheap—so cheap you’ll assume there’s a dead body in the trunk, or that you’ve stepped through a rift in time back to 1972, when it was feasible to get a used car for $200. While I watched, sitting on the back bumper of a beat-up Acura TL bleating its car-alarm like a stuck donkey, a 1999 Lexus GS300 in working order sold for $800, then an intact ‘98 Subaru Legacy Outback for $175. The last car I watched sell was a W126 Mercedes 560SEC, a big luxury coupe that sold in 1988 for a staggering (inflation-adjusted) price of $155,000. At auction, under the hammer of Dennis Alestra, Auctioneer? Five hundred fifty bucks, or about the cost of a 560SEC replacement bumper cover. The reason Ken Ben sells cars so cheaply is because the outfit has bought the right to auction cars in possession of the NYPD Sheriff: those abandoned, parked illegally, or repossessed by creditors. They’re sold entirely as is; as stated five times by the auctioneer, the purchaser has no legal recourse against any party involved in the sale. If there’s a lien on the car you buy and it gets repossessed? Well, that’s part of the reason the cars are such bargains. Risk always brings a discount.
Ben Keeshin/TheDrive.com
The process of buying an abandoned car at auction begins with “inspection.” At 9:50 AM, I walked up to the gates of Ken Ben, identifiable both by its small sign and the many cars spilling beyond the fences onto the sidewalk and street, and melted into an anxious group of people milling before two NYPD officers, who blocked the entryway, arms crossed. Sheets listing the 30 or so cars for sale—year, make, and VIN—were handed out. The final line gestured at the perpetual bounty of seized and abandoned vehicle auctions: " |
and a management shake-up at SMRT.
Ironically, SMRT's network has experienced worse incidents since then, including Oct 7's flooding. Surely, top honchos who are credited when things go right should share the blame when they go awry. In Hong Kong, top MTR executives face pay cuts if rail services are disrupted severely or repeatedly.
On its part, the LTA, as regulator and builder of the MRT system, should stand up and admit that the pump circuitry at Bishan can be improved. (The older lines were built by MRTC, which was one of the predecessors of the LTA.)
There are three pumps, each activated by a float switch as the water level rises and a fourth kill switch that can prevent all three pumps from working. This fourth switch failed that fateful day, along with another component that would have set off an alarm at SMRT's control centre.
The existing design undermines the redundancy and resilience of the flood prevention system. A resilient system would have been more forgiving of human errors.
If Mr Khaw wants SMRT and LTA to be more united, both sides, not just one party, must openly admit to flaws. The Bukit Panjang LRT (BPLRT) is another example of this one-sided relationship.
Even if SMRT is far from blameless for the 18-year-old line's unending woes, the LTA has not admitted openly that the LRT line had design shortcomings.
It took Second Minister for Transport Ng Chee Meng to say in Parliament earlier this month that the BPLRT's design was adapted from an airport inter-terminal transfer system.
With just a tinge of exaggeration, such an adaptation is almost akin to using a baggage carousel system as a travelator. In an airport transit system, the tracks are relatively straight. But in a housing estate, you want the line to serve as many blocks as possible, and so there is bound to be a lot more twists and turns. Hence the trains' power-collecting system for the latter will have to be designed to withstand repeated sharp turns.
It has taken 18 years for this admission to surface.
Would the problems have been fixed earlier if previous leaders had openly acknowledged the design flaw? After all, being able to fix a problem has to start with admitting that it is a problem in the first place.
Of course, not all the problems with the BPLRT are to do with not customising its components for its alignment. Many of them are down to weak maintenance and an inability to spot systemic weaknesses.
On that front, it is now clear there is an engineering deficit in the rail industry here that needs urgent fixing. SMRT says it has beefed up its team of engineers by more than 150 per cent in the last four years, and aims to increase the ranks by another 40 per cent by 2020.
This is commendable. But it is unlikely to solve immediate challenges. These require, first, experienced rail engineers (those with a deep understanding of rail infrastructure, systems and components), and second, a battalion of technicians who actually do most of the heavy lifting in the tunnels.
And because the resource pool for such workers is rather limited here, it makes sense for Singapore to seriously consider having one rail operator. Currently, the pool of expertise is divided between the main rail operator SMRT and SBS Transit, which runs the North-East and Downtown lines.
Again, having one rail operator would be in line with Mr Khaw's call for unity or joint responsibility.
And if we take it one step further, we should adopt the harmonised strategy of having one entity design, build and operate a network. It is the model used in Hong Kong and Taipei, whose sterling metros we want to emulate.
Also in line with the unity theme would be to tap the eyes and ears of commuters who make more than three million train trips a day.
Their feedback on peculiar noises, vibration or smells along their journeys can sometimes be the first tell-tale signs of problems.
Having a convenient way for them to convey their feedback immediately would be a good move. Of course there is no need to look into each and every piece of feedback, but data analytics can pick up patterns of complaints, which can be addressed.
Lastly, the authorities should recognise that the media is not an adversary. We are a vital listening post. And if some of our stories highlighting the frequency of breakdowns appear unflattering or critical, we make no apology.
Despite rosier statistics on rail reliability, the more serious incidents on the MRT continue to test the public's patience and shake its confidence in the system.
Downplaying them does nobody any good.The Washington State Convention Center (WSCC) will present an updated public benefits proposal to the Seattle Design Commission this Thursday, May 18th, 9:00 AM, at Seattle City Hall Room L2-80.
We are a coalition of nonprofits, community organizations, and advocacy groups serving neighborhoods adjacent to the proposed WSCC Addition. We collectively represent thousands of Seattleites dedicated to creating a more attractive, safe, livable and affordable city center.
The WSCC Addition will permanently reshape a large part of Seattle’s urban core. We believe the project’s size, central location, public ownership, and extensive request for public right-of-way compels the WSCC to offer an accordingly large-scale public benefit package for our community. Based on the benefits associated with other recent large development projects in Downtown, we anticipate the WSCC must offer a public benefits package valued in the range of $60-75 million, independent of required fees and environmental mitigation.
Since we first announced the Community Package in February, the WSCC has failed to revise their proposal to be commensurate with the vacation petition. Their current offer remains well short of the expectations of the City and community members. City Council is ready to fight for an appropriate suite of benefits for public parks, safe streets, and affordable housing, but they first need the recommendation of the Design Commission.
RSVP on Facebook to let us know you’re coming! The session runs 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM, but if you can only stay a short time the presentation and public comment period will be early on. We will send a strong message by filling the room with supporters. We’ll be handing out buttons so you can identify yourself as part of the Community Package Coalition, and we ask that you stand with us as we deliver our message that this once-in-a-generation development opportunity should serve the greatest public good.
Can’t make it in person? Please send a message to the Design Commission supporting the Community Package via michael.jenkins@seattle.gov. If you don’t have time to send a personalized message, you can also sign the Community Package petition.
If you believe in fighting for more parks, safer crossings for people walking and biking, and affordable homes for working families, then join us next Thursday to show your support.
Feature image credit to LMN Architects.
We hope you loved this article. If so, please consider supporting our work. The Urbanist is a non-profit that depends on donations from readers like you.Origins and History of Sunglasses
While even in prehistoric time Inuit peoples wore flattened walrus ivory glasses to block harmful reflected rays of the sun, the earliest historical reference to sunglasses dates back to ancient China and Rome. The Roman emperor Nero watched gladiator fights through polished gems.
In China, sunglasses were used in the 12th century or possible earlier. These sunglasses were made out of lenses that were flat panes of smoky quartz. They offered no corrective powers nor they protect from harmful UV rays but did protect the eyes from glare. Ancient documents describe the use of such crystal sunglasses by judges in ancient Chinese courts to hide their facial expression when they interrogated witnesses.
James Ayscough began experimenting with tinted lenses in spectacles around 1752. Ayscough was steadfast in the belief that blue-or green-tinted glass could potentially correct specific vision impairments. Protection from the sun's rays was not a concern at this time.
Glasses tinted with yellow-amber and brown were also a commonly-prescribed item for people with syphilis in the 19th and early 20th century because one of the symptoms of the disease was sensitivity to light.
In the early 1900s, the use of sunglasses become more widespread, especially among Hollywood movie stars.
Inexpensive mass-production of sunglasses started in 1929 when Sam Foster introduced them to America. Foster sold his sunglasses on the beaches of Atlantic City, New Jersey under the name Foster Grant from a Woolworth on the Boardwalk. These sunglasses were made to protect people's eyes from the sun's rays.
Polarized sunglasses first became available in 1936, when Edwin H. Land began using his patented Polaroid filter when making sunglasses.
Sunglasses even played a significant role during the World War II, when Ray Ban created anti-glare aviator style sunglasses, using polarization. Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses became popular with the celebrities and the community in 1937 when they started to be sold for the public.
Today, sunglasses with UV protection has almost become an industry standard, and there are a lot of tints available for sunglasses, and sunglasses styles are changing every year.International architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox has revealed plans for a supertall skyscraper in Miami, which will match Foster + Partners' twin towers at the city's maximum height limit.
One Bayfront Plaza in the Downtown area will rise to 1,049 feet (320 metres) – the recently revised height restriction set by the Federal Aviation Administration, which exists due to the proximity of Miami International Airport.
There are now several towers planned at the height limit, including the The Towers by Norman Foster's firm in the Brickell neighbourhood, which will all become the tallest buildings on America's East Coast outside of New York.
KPF's design will provide a contrast to its largely rectilinear neighbours. Its glass sides will curve up from a triangular base, with the shape accentuated using vertical lines.
The mixed-use tower will house 104,000 square feet (9,660 square metres) of retail space at its base and will connect to a Metromover transit station on the other side of Biscayne Boulevard.
Related story Foster + Partners unveils supertall twin towers for Miami
Over 900 apartments, a 200-room hotel and 532,000 square feet (49,400 square metres) of office space will sit above.
Developer Florida East Coast Realty anticipates a 40-month construction period.
The project is the latest in a string of developments in Miami and nearby Miami Beach, where Zaha Hadid Architects, BIG, Renzo Piano, OMA and more have projects underway or recently completed.
KPF is behind some of the world's tallest skyscrapers, including a design set to become the second-tallest building in New York, which broke ground last year.
Outside the US, the firm has also completed the tallest tower in South Korea, as well as several supertalls – buildings measuring from 980 feet (300 metres) to 2,000 feet (600 metres) – in China.
These include the Ping An Finance Center in Shenzhen, the Shanghai World Financial Centre, the International Commerce Centre in Hong Kong and the CTF Finance Center in Guangzhou – which recently became the country's second tallest building.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span id="selection-marker-1" class="redactor-selection-marker" data-verified="redactor"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;
North Korea is a nation about which most people know very little. There’s information out there but not nearly enough. In 2013, the UN launched a Commission of Enquiry on Human Rights to investigate conditions in the country. While a range of testimonies allowed them to publish a far-reaching and deeply disturbing report, their request for unrestricted access was denied.The result of this opacity is a profound confusion about what life is really like for the twenty four million people living in North Korea. It’s this very confusion – its sources and its risks - that director Álvaro Longoria hoped to address with his new documentary. While by no means the first western filmmaker to venture into the so-called hermit state, his approach is original.The first thing you notice is the quality of the cinematography. The opening minutes abound with images of roller-skating children, lakeside watercolour painting, and Pyongyang’s grand architecture. This is not a film shot undercover, but one filmed in both plain sight and high definition.Speaking to Culture Whisper, Álvaro reveals the thinking behind his method:Interspersed with footage from inside the country are interviews with leading experts on the situation, not least Michael Kirby, chair of the UN’s 2013 enquiry. More often than not, the resultant viewing experience is one of dissonance between the images we are shown and the harrowing reports that we hear.While Álvaro’s tour of the country is by no means unrestricted, he’s allowed more freedom than you might expect. Firstly, and perhaps most remarkably, he’s allowed to interview people on the street. On two occasions, he also makes alterations to the pre-arranged program, the most striking of which is the visit he makes to a church. He reflects on the peculiarity of the situation,Álvaro credits the relative freedom he was afforded to his Tarragona-born guide Alejandro Cao de Benós, the only foreigner to work for the North Korean government.The fact is though that the reality of life remains largely obscure. The film oscillates between what North Korea says about itself and what the world says about North Korea, revealing a huge gulf in the middle. Implicit in this is a call for better communication, one which Álvaro makes explicit when we ask about his hopes for the nation’s future.Set down, the solution looks simple. But you wonder if it’s realistic. Would North Korea be open to negotiation? Yes, Álvaro believes.While these are his hopes for the future, he worries about a rather different outcome.Predictions, of course, ought to be made with caution. Ifteaches us anything, it’s just how difficult it is to talk about North Korea.SYDNEY, Australia — Dozens of Justine Damond’s closest friends and relatives gathered at sunrise on Freshwater Beach in Sydney on Wednesday, with candles and flowers in hand, to commemorate the life of a woman they described as a ray of light.
Horrified and sad, they said they could hardly believe that a woman so calm — a spiritual healer and meditation coach — had been fatally shot on Saturday night by a police officer in Minneapolis, where she was soon to be married.
“None of it makes sense,” said Michael Timbs, who lives in a coastal suburb near where Ms. Damond grew up. “To try and picture the scene and understand how he did that, I can’t get a sense of it.”
He swept his arm at the expanse of beach and glittering ocean. “You stand and look at this peaceful place,” he said, “and you think — it would have never happened here.”Those who advocate for sound, evidence-based research about autism are extremely alarmed about Donald Trump, and for good reason: In addition to Trump’s ties to Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced British doctor whose debunked research helped fuel the false idea of links between childhood vaccines and autism, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a notorious anti-vaxxer himself, told reporters back in January that Trump planned to tap him as chair of a commission on “vaccine safety.” There is no question at this point that Trump has significant connections to a pseudoscientific medical movement that spreads dangerous, disproven ideas.
Today, Trump gave nervous observers yet more reason to worry. It occurred at a White House event in which Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos met with a bunch of educators. Trump seemed to fixate, for a moment, on one educator named Jane (her last name is hard to make out) after she explained that she is the principal of a special education center in Virginia.
The sequence starts at about 5:38 in this video:
After Jane noted that many of her students have autism, Trump asked, “Have you seen a big increase in the autism, with the children?” Jane replied in the affirmative, but seemed to couch her response as being more about an increase in demand for services — she didn’t explicitly agree there’s been a big increase in the overall rate. Trump continued: “So what’s going on with autism? When you look at the tremendous increase, it’s really — it’s such an incredible — it’s really a horrible thing to watch, the tremendous amount of increase. Do you have any idea? And you’re seeing it in the school?” Jane replied — again, in a way that seems a bit noncommittal vis-à-vis Trump’s claim — that the rate of autism is something like 1-in-66 or 1-in-68 children. To which Trump responded: “Well now, it’s gotta be even lower [presumably meaning higher, rate-wise] than that, which is just amazing — well, maybe we can do something.” (Jane had the rate right, and Trump is incorrect that it has crept higher.)
Trump is broadcasting a very inaccurate and misleading claim about autism — one that you often hear from the Kennedys and Wakefields of the world, but which experts flatly disagree with. Purveyors of this claim often point out that autism rates have increased significantly since the early 1990s, but as Steve Silberman, an autism expert and the author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, told Science of Us, that has to do with diagnostic criteria and awareness, not the prevalence of the condition itself.
“There’s no consensus as to whether or not there’s been any significant increase in the actual prevalence of autism, period,” said Silberman. “The real debate is whether or not there has been a small increase, and there are a number of factors that could play a role in that small increase. For instance, it’s well established that older parents have more autistic kids and people are waiting longer to get married and have kids now, so there may be a small increase there. Some people claim that there are some environmental factors — notably, not vaccines — that may be contributing to a small increase. But the consensus is that there has been no huge, startling, ‘horrible,’ as Trump said, increase in autism. And the CDC estimate has been flat for a couple of years, just as they expected it to be, because the major source of the increase that started in the 1990s was broadened diagnostic criteria and much more public awareness of what autism looks like.”
Part of what fuels the anti-vax movement is this misperception: If not too long ago autism wasn’t a “crisis” (advocates for autistic people are not fans of such phrasing, for understandable reasons), but today it is, then it makes sense to look for a scapegoat like vaccines. The data we have suggests this simply isn’t the case. Unfortunately, as Silberman pointed out, influential anti-vaxxers seem to have the ear of the president, and that could be contributing to his false beliefs about autism rates.
It’s bad enough for the president to be trafficking in and helping to spread such dangerous pseudoscience, but Silberman said what’s doubly frustrating is the opportunity cost: Time and attention spent on what are in reality autism nonissues could suck up resources that might otherwise be directed at the many gaps the U.S. has in this area. As Silberman explained, there’s still a great deal public-health researchers don’t know about the adult autistic population in the U.S. “We don’t even know how many autistic adults are out there, trying to get by with no support, because a national prevalence survey of autism has never been done in the United States,” he said.
Once many autistic people are done with high school, they lose access to many vital sources of support, in some cases rendering them effectively invisible. To Silberman, that’s the sort of thing the president of the United States should be focusing on — not bunk claims that we’re in the midst of some sort of scary autism “epidemic.” Unfortunately, the president doesn’t grant much credence to scientific consensus. “Trump tends to listen to people who he thinks are rogues, who are pushing against conventional wisdom, especially at the expense of so-called ‘experts,’” said Silberman. “And just as he does in so many areas of public life, Trump is listening to the wrong people and trusting the wrong people.”CoinSalad.com is a web service dedicated to providing Bitcoin market stats and charting data on some key components of the Bitcoin network such as Bitcoin exchanges. CoinSalad monitors all the major USD-currency based exchanges on the market providing near real-time market data. Listed exchanges have shown to have steady and decent volume. Learn more about CoinSalad or feel free to contact us. Follow us on Twitter @CoinSalad. Charting software courtesy of CanvasJS. CoinSalad.com 2019 ❤ Help support development of this service by CoinSalad.com 2019 ❤ Help support development of this service by making a donation
The data displayed on this chart shows which blockchain is potentially more profitable to mine on when comparing Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin Legacy. Since both chains share the same mining reward system and hashing algorithm, we can compare the two using a simple grading system. We can compare and measure the profitability on both chains by calculating the block coinbase reward / block difficulty * current exchange rate (in USD).By doing this, we can assign each chain points and whichever is higher is potentially the more profitable chain to mine on at the time. This chart was inspired by fork.lol which uses a similar system. To zoom in closer, drag your pointer along the chart. To see more details on Bitcoin Cash, see our Bitcoin Cash blocks page. Want to know more about Bitcoin? Read the Bitcoin FAQ to learn more.County Executive Dan McCoy talks about state mandates while discussing the county budget on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012, at the County Executive's Office in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union) County Executive Dan McCoy talks about state mandates while discussing the county budget on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012, at the County Executive's Office in Albany, N.Y. (Cindy Schultz / Times Union) Photo: Cindy Schultz Photo: Cindy Schultz Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close McCoy budget would privatize nursing home, hike taxes 8.9% 1 / 8 Back to Gallery
ALBANY – Albany County Executive Dan McCoy on Wednesday unveiled his 2013 budget, which calls for privatizing the money-hemorrhaging County Nursing Home and raising taxes by 8.9 percent, well over the state's 2 percent cap.
The $568 million spending plan would mean a $60 hike in the tax bill on a home assessed at $200,000.
"Closing the nursing home is simply not an option," McCoy stated, but the county can also no longer afford the escalating costs of the operation that had a $12 million deficit in 2011.
McCoy, who took office in January after serving as the county legislature's Democratic majority leader, would enlist Upstate Services Group, which operates Hudson Park in Albany, to run the home. If approved by the county legislature and state Department of Health, the proposed transition would take place in the second half of 2013.
Because the budget levy exceeds the state tax cap, passage would require the votes 26 of the 39 county legislators, a two-thirds "super majority." Twenty-nine members are Democrats.
McCoy blamed the need to raises taxes on so-called "unfunded mandates" from the state and federal governments, including Medicaid.
Without the increase, McCoy said, the Crime Victims and Sexual Violence Center, Children's Dental Clinic, Mental Health Substance Abuse Clinic, Children's Mental Health and the entire Aging Department would have to be eliminated.
"It is pragmatic in terms of recognizing the economic difficulties faced by Albany County and is a responsible decision both fiscally and ethically," McCoy stated in his budget message.Nathan Drake voice actor Nolan North is making a mobile game based on his comedy series, Con Man.
According to Eurogamer, North will be a producer on the game, with Canadian studio Frima handling development.
Con Man is a series starring Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk which went through a successful Indiegogo campaign before airing on Vimeo on Demand. In the show, Nolan North plays "Mo-cap King" Jerry Lansing.
"It was a character of my own doing just goofing around as Troy [Baker] and I were talking, called Jerry Lansing," North said to Eurogamer. "I'm bringing him to life and we've just been picked up for season two, so that's shooting in June."
Fillion and Tudyk will also be involved with the game, along with PJ Haarsma and Felicia Day.
We'll be hearing North's voice very soon with the impending release of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End on May 10. Alan Tudyk was originally also going to be lending his voice to the game, however left the project after some disagreements.
Matt Porter is a freelance writer based in London. Make sure to visit what he thinks is the best website in the world, but is actually just his Twitter page.A month after a near-fatal trek through the forest into Canada, an asylum seeker was reunited today with the man he says saved his life: RCMP Const. Bernard Vandal.
Vandal found the 45-year-old man on the side of the road in Quebec near the Canada-U.S. border on March 5, after he had walked for hours when the temperature reached –15 C.
Mamadou, whose family name is being withheld for his safety, suffered from hypothermia and frostbite, Vandal said, and spent a week in hospital recovering from the ordeal.
On Thursday, the pair met again and shared a hug — and relived the drama of that night.
"Thank you for saving my life," Mamadou told Vandal when they met.
Mamadou suffered from hypothermia and frostbite after walking for hours to cross the Canada-U.S. border on March 5. 0:25
The meeting took place at the RCMP's Montreal headquarters, at an event arranged by the Mounties.
An RCMP spokesperson said the police service decided to organize the reunion after learning that Mamadou wanted to meet the officer who saved him.
Life and death
Vandal said he came across Mamadou by chance while on night patrol.
He recalled how, when he spotted Mamadou standing by a fence near Lacolle, Que., on the side of the road, the Ivorian man had trouble speaking and could barely move his legs, which were like a "block of ice."
Vandal said it quickly became clear Mamadou needed emergency medical care. Vandal said he's convinced that if he hadn't found him, Mamadou would have died.
RCMP Const. Richer Dubuc, a husband and father of four, was killed in collision near the U.S.-Canada border on March 6. (RCMP/Canadian Press)
One of the RCMP officers to arrive at the scene was Const. Richer Dubuc, a trained paramedic, who Vandal said helped to treat Mamadou before he was taken to hospital.
Dubuc died a day later in an unrelated accident, when his RCMP squad car collided with a farm tractor. Vandal presented Mamadou with a photo of Dubuc.
"The moral of the story is that life is short, and when we can save a life, we will," Vandal said.
U.S. border pact flawed, critics say
Mamadou's case has attracted the attention of lawyers and human rights activists, who say it points to problems with the Canada-U.S. border pact.
A day before crossing the border illegally, Mamadou tried to make a refugee claim at an official port of entry into Quebec but was refused.
Under the 2004 Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement, asylum seekers who have landed in either the U.S. or Canada may not seek refuge in the other country at official entry points.
They can still, however, make a refugee claim after crossing illegally — as an increasing number have done in recent months — but only if they haven't tried at a legal crossing first.
For that reason, Mamadou is not eligible for refugee status in Canada.
Future in Canada uncertain
For now, Mamadou is living at the YMCA residence in Westmount, near downtown Montreal, where many asylum seekers stay when they first arrive in Quebec.
He was released on conditions from the Laval, Que., detention centre late last month.
Mamadou says it's still too painful to wear shoes after walking through the snowy woods into Canada on March 5. (Jean-Claude Taliana/CBC)
His lawyer, Éric Taillefer, is considering challenging the Safe Third Country Agreement in Federal Court, as a way to keep his client in Canada.
Mamadou said he left New York City, his home for the past 10 years, after immigration officers came looking for him in his Bronx apartment.
He had been living with uncertain legal status in the U.S. after fleeing Ivory Coast, where he said he witnessed rebels fatally shoot his father, a prominent businessman in Abidjan.
He said he fears he will be killed if he is forced to return to his home country.
He is hoping to work as a taxi driver if he finds a way to make a refugee claim and is allowed to stay.FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – The New England Revolution has acquired former United States Under-20 and Under-23 National Team forward Tony Taylor (@TTaylor777) through the a lottery that occurred this afternoon. The Revs were one of two teams who entered the lottery, along with Portland, and New England had a 71.4 chance of winning the draw. He will be added to the Revolution’s roster following the receipt of his International Transfer Certificate.
“Tony is a younger player who will come in and add to the competition already on our team,” Revolution general manager Michael Burns said. “He has some speed and is versatile in that he can play up top or out wide on the right. We’ll look forward to get him in as soon as possible and integrated into the team.”
Taylor, 25, comes to Major League Soccer following a four-year professional career outside of North America. After a two-year collegiate career at South Florida and Jacksonville, he began his professional career with Portugal’s G.D. Estoril Praia and made his debut for the club in April 2010. After scoring twice in five appearances for Estoril in his first season with the club, he doubled his goal tally in his first full season with the club in 2010-11, scoring four times in 20 games in all competitions.
Originally from Long Beach, Calif., Taylor spent the first half of the following season on loan with fellow Portuguese Segunda Liga club Atletico Clube Portugal, scoring three times in 10 matches before returning to Estoril for the second half of the season where he helped the club win the league and earn promotion with two goals in seven games. Playing in the Primeira Liga for the first time, Taylor made 13 appearances for Estoril in the 2012-13 season, scoring once.
Taylor spent the 2013-14 season playing in the Cypriot First Division for Omonia Nikosia. He appeared in 20 games in all competitions, including each of their games in the second qualifying round of the 2013-14 UEFA Europa League. He scored three times in 13 league appearances, with two of the three goals coming in a road win over Doxa Katokopias.
A member of the U.S. squad that played at the 2009 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Egypt, Taylor started and appeared in all three games that Thomas Rongen’s team played in during the tournament, scoring the eventual game-winning goal in a 4-1 win over Cameroon. Overall, he made 11 appearances – all starts – with the U20s, scoring two goals and adding four assists. He was also a member of the U.S. Under-23 squad at the 2012 CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
TRANSACTION: New England Revolution (MLS) – Acquired F Tony Taylor through an MLS lottery
TONY TAYLOR
Jersey Number: TBA
Position: Forward
Height: 6-0
Weight: 170 lbs.
D.O.B.: July 13, 1989 (Long Beach, Calif.)
Hometown: Jacksonville, Fla.
Last Club: Omobio Nikosia (CYP)
Nationality: U.S.
Twitter: @TTaylor777
How Acquired: Via MLS lottery on August 18, 2014MANILA, Philippines — A man who was just supposed to look for additional cash to pay for the hospitalization of his child was apprehended by policemen in Zambonga City and was later on found dead — his body full of wounds and bruises — while in the custody of authorities.
According to the October 5 Facebook post of Rosherl Taburnal Lumpapac, the victim, Eduardo Serino Sr., the husband of Lumpapac’s former house helper, was from Brgy. Lintangan, Sibuco, Zamboanga del Norte. He just went to Zamboanga City to pay for the hospital expense of his child, who figured in an accident.
Lumpapac said that according to Serino’s wife, when Eduardo found out that the cash he brought wasn’t enough to pay for his child’s hospitalization, he decided to go back to Lintangan supposedly to sleep at his house and then look for additional money the following day.
But Serino wasn’t able to go back home. Because he wasn’t familiar with Zamboanga, he lost his way and found himself along the city’s R.T. Lim Boulevard. He was then accosted by policemen, who asked him what was inside his bag.
Fearing that authorities would plant something in his luggage, just like what he saw on TV, Serino refused to let authorities see what was inside it, according to Lumpapac, quoting those who had witnessed the incident.
This prompted authorities to bring Serino to a police station.
Lumpapac said that according to Serino’s wife, only his personal belongings and his Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program ID were inside his bag.
Hours later, Serino’s family received information that he was already dead.
Lumpapac said that when she and her companions went to the wake of Serino, they weren’t able to recognize his gentle face as it was already covered with cuts and contusions.
According to Lumpapac, Serino was a very responsible father and a quiet and shy but helpful and very kind person, who didn’t have any enemies in his community.
“(I)sang napaka responsibleng ama, tahimik, mahiyain, matulungin at napakabait na tao…people of Lintangan can really testify na walang naging kalaban itong taong to..Pumunta lamang s’ya ng Zamboanga City upang ihatid ang perang pang hospitalization ng anak na nadisgrasya,” she said.
‘Self-inflicted’
Serino’s death was “self inflicted,” the police said.
Authorities said that after he was arrested, Serino suddenly went berserk, slapped himself, and banged his head against the wall.
In an interview with Radyo 5, Senior Inspector Edwin Duco of the Zamboanga City police, sai, Serino was able to break free from his handcuffs after he allegedly performed some kind of ritual and then tried to grab a gun from a policeman.
“Bigla siyang pumalag. Natanggal niya ang posas. Nakakahiya mang aminin…parang may ginagawa siyang ritwal ba. Naka-liberate po siya,” said Duco.
Asked by Radyo 5 why Serino would try to grab a gun when he didn’t commit any wrongdoing, Duco said, “Balisa ‘yong taong ito…kaya siya naging bayolente [He was anxious …that was why he became violent].”
The Zamboanga police presented inmates who were with Serino when the incident took place. They said it was Serino who had hurt himself and not authorities. One inmate said Serino even tried to pull a live wire inside the jail.
The police also said Serino was arrested not because he refused to show what was inside his bag but because he tried to stab a policewoman with a barbecue stick.
Click and watch this video report below:This is just a handy spot for me to post an Oral History I wrote once. It has only tangental relevance to the main thrust of my work, but this blog is a handy spot for me to post it to show to a few people as it has been used in a portfolio sort of way a number of times lately.
I just returned from three months without electricity, news, or much outside influence at all. I’m still getting myself back up to date on all of the things that occurred around the globe while I was ‘away’. Soon I plan to have a post discussing a few noticeable trends, as well as updates on my primary research surrounding this site and its associated Twitter account.
SO ANYWAYS….. this is the part where I tell you that this is copyrighted material and that if you want to use any of it for some reason, that’s awesome! Just let me know and please give the appropriate source credit.
Tales From the Trail
Table of contents:
Voices…………………………………………………………………… 3
Introduction………………………………………………………………5
I’ve got to meet her” (Prologue)………………………………………..7
“In fifth grade I was reading this book about hiking” (Inspiration)….…8
“We were walking through the wedding of the world” (Beauty)………10
“I only have a mile left, I’ve got to keep going” (Destination)………..13
“We were able to stay at a fraternity house” (Hanover)….…………….16
“This is definitely the worst day ever” (Challenges)………….….……..19
“You don’t realize how massive those animals are” (Wildlife)…….……23
“You get into a really communal mindset” (Community)………………27
“That, for me, was some real trail magic” (Generosity)………… |
selected so Firefox uses it after the next restart.
Among other minor tweaks: FTP and gopher listings get a better styled and functional page where the list can be sorted by name, size and date by clicking the appropriate header, and a warning is displayed when accessing advanced preferences (about:config).
Security
In the security front, Firefox will check visited sites with a list of known malware sites -provided by stopbadware.org and served by Google- to prevent spyware, rootkits, viruses, dialers and other kinds of malware from even being offered to you.
A rewritten password manager now unobtrusively prompts to store an entered password in the information bar and after trying a logon so you know if it is the correct one or not and avoid cluttering autocomplete lists.
Identifying authentic sites and avoiding fake ones is now easier with the addition of the site button which provides details about the identity of the current web site. While the largest part of the web has no verified identity, financial institutions and similar usually do and it makes the site button in the location bar to change color and size so you can know with a glimpse.
As great as add-ons are they are also a liability and have proved they can become an attack vector. Firefox 3 requires add-ons updates to happen over an encrypted connection (to block malicious sites purporting the update site) or the add-on developer to sign it with a digital signature so updates can be verified to be from the same source. This will prevent middle-man attacks where bad guys could fake an update site address to serve malicious software.
Invalid or expired web site certificates now get an unfriendly treatment that requires adding the site to a white list. This should encourage web site owners to keep their certificates up to date so they can effectively ensure their visitors a more secure experience.
Under the hood
The list of changes for Gecko is not short either and benefit not only Firefox but all “powered by Mozilla” products including Thunderbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Joost, Miro, Songbird and more.
Since Alpha 1, Firefox 3 passes the Acid2 test, a popular test of a browser styling standard compatibility. As of Beta 5, Firefox 3 scores 71/100 in the Acid3 test, behind Opera and WebKit (Safari engine) development releases which achieved both 100% last week. While the value of the Acid3 test was questioned recently by Mozilla’s Mike Shaver, in practice, Firefox is just too close to release to focus on Acid3 compatibility right now.
Firefox 3 supports color profiles embedded on pictures and images to better replicate the original environment conditions as light and focus, thanks to new color management.
Discontinuous selections of text and images are now possible for better control of what you copy or print from a web page.
A biggie: full page zoom can optionally magnify the complete page or just the text, as in previous versions. This is a much requested feature and a must for Mozilla plans for a Mobile Firefox.
Web developers can mark certain web page components such as images and scripts to be available while offline. In practice you could be able to compose emails or write documents though a web service while disconnected from the Internet.
For JavaScript developers, some interesting tricks: the ability to load local files for local use, native JSON support and most notably, FUEL, a library of Firefox programming interfaces that will ease the development of new extensions and ensure better practices (such as memory management) for common Firefox tasks.
Cross site AJAX (XMLHttpRequest) support has been removed in Beta 5 because the specifications changed in the process and Mozilla prefers to avoid an incompatible implementation.
Support for editable content, so a user can change portions of a web page marked by the author.
A new spell checker: The MySpell spell-checking engine has been replaced with Hunspell which does a better job handling complex languages including Asian, Hungarian, Basque, etc.
Real full screen is now available in beta 5. In the past, the full screen mode left the navigation and tab bars visible at all times. Now they are displayed for just a second before sliding under the top edge.
For Gecko 1.9, Mozilla switched to open source Cairo rendering engine for better rendering performance. The change also enables easy PDF printing capabilities but it is only possible through an extension right now though.
More beautiful animated images are possible with animated PNGs (APNG): a full 16 million color palette and partial transparency will hopefully sweep GIF images in the future. While APNG was rejected as a standard PNG extension last year, Opera has announced it will support the format in future versions.
Proprietary TalkBack, the tool for reporting crashes to Mozilla included with Firefox and Thunderbird, has been replaced with open source Breakpad (formerly Airbag).
Users can see their submitted crashes entering about:crashes in the location bar.
Final Lap
No more betas. Next release will be a release candidate, which is basically a final version without that label and still for testing purposes. If everything goes OK, it is just renamed as final and goes live.
What is left? From a user perspective I would say almost nothing besides some retouches here and there to the user interface. Behind the scenes, however, work never ends: performance improvements, web standards compliance and edge cases are still being ironed.
A few issues are not in Mozilla’s hands: for example there’s a problem with Gmail contacts not being displayed because of a Gmail bug. Annoying as hell but out of control. We also have to wait to see if Google and Microsoft make the necessary changes to enable their email services as handlers for mailto: links.
The Extend Firefox 3 contest (now with a music category) should give add-ons Firefox 3 compatibility a boost so they can be ready for users to upgrade to Firefox 3 final, now expected for June.File this under unsurprising, but nefarious nonetheless.
Members of U.S. Congress who vote against mandatory labeling for genetically modified (GMO) products receive three times as much funding from the food and agriculture lobbies as their colleagues, according to new reporting from Open Secrets, a project of the Center for Responsive Politics.
The political finance watchdog group found that the supporters of the anti-labeling bill which passed the House of Representatives last Thursday collectively received $29.9 million from the agribusiness lobby and food and beverage industry during the 2014 election cycle.
At 230 Republicans and 45 Democrats, that averages roughly $108,900 per member to support HR 1599—officially titled the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015 but known by its opponents as the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act. HR 1599 passed with 275 to 150 votes.
Meanwhile, co-sponsors of the anti-labeling bill "received six-figure dollar amounts from providers of agricultural services and products...during the 2014 election cycle. That put them high among the top 20 recipients of funds from the industry," Open Secrets reports.
Among those lawmakers are Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), Mike Conaway (R-Texas), and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), most of whom also sit on the House Agriculture Committee.
As Common Dreams reported last Thursday, HR1599 "was backed by the food industry, including the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Monsanto Company, which have poured money into defeating GMO labeling initiatives."
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts
Open Secrets continues:
Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), two original sponsors of the legislation, were the top two current House members receiving the most money from the Grocery Manufacturers Association in 2014. The grocery manufacturers — who have spent $4.1 million lobbying on all issues so far this year, almost as much as they spent in all of 2014 — have lobbied on the bill more than any other organization, mentioning the measure on 14 lobbying reports this year. After the Grocery Manufacturers Association, PepsiCo Inc ($2.5 million in overall lobbying this year) and Monsanto Co ($2.6 million) have mentioned the bill most frequently.
Food and environmental activists called for the Senate to vote down HR 1599 when it reaches the chamber.
"Passage of this bill is an attempt by Monsanto and its agribusiness cronies to crush the democratic decision-making of tens of millions of Americans. Corporate influence has won and the voice of the people has been ignored," Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety, said last week.
Added Ronnie Cummins, international director of the Organic Consumers Association, "It’s time to hold every member of Congress accountable. Either they stand with Monsanto and Big Food in support of the DARK Act, or they stand with the overwhelming majority of their constituents for truthful labeling and consumer choice."Image: The University of Sydney
Researchers at the University of Sydney just worked out how to solve one of the biggest problems standing in the way for zinc-air batteries to replace lithium-ion batteries as our go-to for modern electronics.
Zinc-air batteries are batteries powered by zinc metal and oxygen from the air. Becasue of how much zinc metal we have around the world (it's a lot), these batteries are much cheaper to produce than lithium-ion batteries, and they can also store more energy (theoretically five times more than that of lithium-ion batteries), are much safer and are more environmentally friendly.
Total win-win.
Now, while zinc-air batteries are currently used as an energy source in hearing aids and some film cameras and railway signal devices, their widespread use has been hindered by the fact that, up until now, recharging them has proved difficult. This is because of the lack of electrocatalysts to reduce and generate oxygen during the discharging and charging of a battery.
The researchers developed a new three-stage method to overcome this problem.
According to lead researcher Professor Yuan Chen from the University of Sydneys Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies, the new method can be used to create bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts for building rechargeable zinc-air batteries - from scratch.
"Up until now, rechargeable zinc-air batteries have been made with expensive precious metal catalysts, such as platinum and iridium oxide. In contrast, our method produces a family of new high-performance and low-cost catalysts."
These new catalysts are produced through the simultaneous control of the composition, size and crystallinity of metal oxides of earth-abundant elements like iron, cobalt and nickel. They can then be applied to build rechargeable zinc-air batteries.
Researcher Dr Li Wei, also from the University's Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies, said trials of zinc-air batteries developed with the new catalysts had demonstrated "excellent rechargeability" – including less than a 10 percent battery efficacy drop over 60 discharging/charging cycles of 120 hours.
"We are solving fundamental technological challenges to realise more sustainable metal-air batteries for our society," Professor Chen added.Signature gifts for the business community from PM @narendramodi. pic.twitter.com/uDWdAxvw5f — Syed Akbaruddin (@MEAIndia) September 29, 2014
Boeing wants to accelerate engagement with India - James McNerney, CEO of Boeing to PM @narendramodi. pic.twitter.com/ha8r43hM0A — Syed Akbaruddin (@MEAIndia) September 29, 2014
Business more than breakfast is on agenda at PM @narendramodi Business Breakfast. pic.twitter.com/EU5mI2dQcp — Syed Akbaruddin (@MEAIndia) September 29, 2014
NEW YORK: Over a power-packed breakfast meeting with captains of 11 large American corporations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday pitched for big-ticket investments to develop India's infrastructure and create more jobs and enhance the quality of life.The Prime Minister is believed to have pitched the India story in his interactions with the top executives, including Indian-origin PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, Google chairman Eric Schmidt and Citigroup chief Michael Corbat. He also discussed steps that can be taken to enhance India's business environment."India is open-minded. We want change. Change that is not 1 sided. Am discussing with citizens, industrialists & investors," the spokesman of the ministry of external affairs Syed Akbaruddin tweeted, quoting the Prime Minister as saying."Infrastructure development is a big opportunity; it creates jobs & enhances quality of life of our citizens," Modi told the CEOs.Significantly, all companies already have considerable presence in India and their chiefs are believed to have expressed intention to further expand their engagements with the Indian government and enhance their business presence in the country.Those present at the breakfast meeting also included Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga, Cargill's president and CEO David W MacLennan, Caterpillar's Douglas Oberhelman, AES' Andres Gluski, Merck's Kenneth Frazier, co-founder and co-CEO of Carlyle Group David Rubenstein, Hospira's Michael Ball and Warburg Pincus's Charles Kaye.The over one-hour-long breakfast meet was followed by one-on-one meetings with six CEOs of Boeing, KKR, BlackRock, IBM, General Electric and Goldman Sachs.This is the first extensive business engagement in the US of the Prime Minister, who will also attend business meets in Washington tomorrow during his second leg of the 5-day visit.Whenever we post a moped it usually polarises our readers. You either love it or hate it, and you never hold back – that’s why we love you guys. And when it comes to mopeds we don’t really know anything about them. To be honest, I didn’t even know what a batavus hs-50 was until I googled it. All I know about mopeds is that when I see one I like, it’s usually a stripped back piece of rolling art. Like this stunning Batavus moped built by Nathan Kiehn and the guys at Motomatic. Their philosophy is pretty simple “we want to build bikes that have the nostalgia of the past, the power and performance of the present with a touch of reliability and style to them.” Sounds like a pretty good combination to me.
Over to Nathan to tell us about the build and a little more about Motomatic… “So I have been into mopeds since 2000 and started working on them for a living in 2006. I had heard about some moped racing going on in San Jose that summer and went to check it out. That day I met Mike Rafter (ex pro skateboarder) and he asked me to build him a moped. It took another year until it was finished and “step your game up” is what I came up with. The bike started out as a batavus hs-50. I made the motor mounts, rear end and seat. At the time I only had an oxy acetylene welder so all of the welding on this bike was done with that. I bent all of the tubing with a vice and torch. There is no body filler on the frame and I did all of the powdercoating also. I built the wheels out of parts from 4 different bikes and trued them myself. The only things I didn’t do on that bike are cover the seat and paint the tank.
Mike and I became friends and we decided to start Motomatic together in late 2007. Moto Matic Mopeds specializes in custom mopeds and hand made moped parts. In June 2011 Mike got a different job and left moto matic so now it’s just me. It can get a bit overwhelming at times but I love building custom bikes and parts. I have always liked small vehicles and there is something about mopeds that appeals to me more than motorcycles. When I build a bike I try to upgrade anything I can and still keep the look of a moped.”
So you like what you see? Got you thinking about buying a little moped as a side project? It’s ok, you can tell us…
[To see more from Motomatic, check out this sweet little vid]Like many, I waited with bated breath for results of the anti-PCSK9 (evolocumab) FOURIER cardiovascular outcome study last week. There have been many interesting commentaries written on the findings. A few of my favorites are listed here (Matthew Herper), here (David Grainger), here (Derek Lowe), and here (Larry Husten), amongst others, with summaries provided at the end of this blog. Most of these articles focused on clinical risk reduction vs. what was predicted for cardiovascular outcome, as well as whether payers will cover the cost of the drugs. These are incredibly important topics, and I won’t comment on them further here, other than to say that the debate is now about who should get the drug and how much it should cost.
In this blog, I want to emphasize key points that pertain to human genetics and drug discovery. And make no mistake: the anti-PCSK9 story and FOURIER clinical trial outcome is a triumph for genetics and drug discovery. This message seems to be getting muddled, however, given the current cost of evolocumab and the observation that cardiovascular risk reduction was less than expected, based on predictions from a 2005 study published by Cholesterol Treatment Trialists (CTT) (see Lancet study here). [Actually, this statement is not entirely accurate, as the 15% risk reduction used in FOURIER is a composite endpoint of cardiovascular (CV) death, myocardial infarction (MI), stroke, coronary revascularization, or hospitalization for unstable angina. The CTT-line is based on CV death, MI, stroke, or coronary revascularization, but not unstable angina. If FOURIER outcomes are limited to heart attacks – which has been the primary genetic link with PCSK9 variants – then risk reduction is 27%, or close to that predicted by the CTT-line.]
The key point here is that I continue to believe that the anti-PCSK9 / FOURIER story provides proof-of-concept for the future of genetic-driven drug discovery. This is no one hit wonder; this is not the “My Sharona” or “Tainted Love” of drug discovery & development. The anti-PCSK9 story reinforces concepts that human genetics can (1) identify novel drug targets; (2) speed pre-clinical development; (3) provide confidence in surrogate endpoints for regulatory approval; and (4) guide dose-response estimates, and therefore target dose for a large and expensive clinical trial.
This does not mean that routine implementation of genetic-drive drug discovery is nigh. Alas, routine implementation will take time (see my recent blog here). But I do think it is worth reflecting on key points of the anti-PCSK9 story leading up to FOURIER, and put these points in context of broader drug-discovery.
(1) Discovering unexpected drug targets. Before the first PCSK9 genetic study was published in 2003 (see here), there was only a single PubMed article published on PCSK9…and that was in the same year by the same group (see here). In other words, nothing was known about PCSK9 before a variant piece of DNA was shown to track with clinical outcomes in a large family. Shortly after the seminal discovery that a gain-of-function mutation raises LDL levels, loss-of-function variants were identified that lowered LDL cholesterol levels (here) and protected from cardiovascular disease (here). Together, these findings provided direct genetic evidence that gain- and loss-of-function mutations in PCSK9 are medically relevant, and therefore that PCSK9 is an attractive drug target.
What is remarkable is that most of the genes identified from human genetics in heart disease cannot be ascribed to known biological pathways (see recent review by Khera and Kathiresan here, figure below). Moreover, even for those genes that can be ascribed to pathways such as inflammation, vascular tone, and cellular proliferation / vascular remodeling, the protein products of those disease-associated genes have not yet been successfully targeted with therapeutic molecules. This raises the intriguing possibility that there are many novel drug targets within the list of disease-associated cardiovascular genes, not to mention the many genes that remain to be discovered.
It may seem obvious that biopharma needs to identify novel drug targets that differentiate from standard of care therapy. After all, there is increasing pressure from regulatory authorities to approve, and payers to pay for, therapies that are unambiguously different from what is available to patients today. However, the scientific tools available to find truly novel targets that differentiate from standard of care are not easy to come by, especially if one relies on targets with a clear link to causal human biology. Human genetics represents one such approach to novel targets.
Big picture: Even though PCSK9 acts through well-established LDL cholesterol pathways for reducing risk of cardiovascular disease, FOURIER provides proof-of-concept that human genetics can discover unexpected and novel targets that differentiate from standard of care therapies (e.g., statins).
(2) Timeline from target discovery to clinical proof-of-concept. It is often cited that a it takes 8-10 years to take an idea and show that it works in humans for the first time. The reality is it takes much longer, as many years of fundamental basic research – often funded by the NIH and done by academics – are required to understand the biology of a putative therapeutic target.
For PCSK9, the unknown biology was unraveled with remarkable speed. A timeline for one of the two anti-PCSK9 monoclonal antibodies, alicrocumab (Praluent), is shown in the figure below. A key scientific advance was the recognition that PCSK9 is secreted from cells and interacts with the LDL receptor on the surface of cells (reviewed here). This observation made PCSK9 targetable with a monoclonal antibody (which can bind to proteins outside of cells) rather than a small molecule (which often work by inhibiting proteins inside of cells).
Once the biology of genetic targets is understood sufficiently to generate a therapeutic hypothesis, this information guides the use of pre-clinical models to test pharmacology and safety and thus shorten the timeline to clinical proof-on-concept. That is, targets rooted in causal human biology have human validation; pre-clinical models are not necessary for efficacy per se (e.g., cardiovascular protection). The purpose of pre-clinical models, therefore, is not to establish evidence of efficacy, but to ensure that the therapeutic molecule is recapitulating human biology and is safe to test in humans. For anti-PCSK9 therapy, pre-clinical animal models were applied to confirm that monoclonal antibodies would lower LDL levels and be synergistic with statin therapy (here). This led to confidence and an expedited path to human clinical trials.
Unfortunately, the timeline from gene discovery to clinical trial is much slower for most genetic targets. This represents the current bottleneck for genetic-driven drug discovery and development. Cystic fibrosis (see YouTube video by David Altshuler, CSO Vertex here) and sickle cell anemia (recent NEJM paper by Bluebird bio here, my blog here) represent two such examples – it took decades from gene discovery to therapeutic invention. Nonetheless, once the biology is understand in sufficient detail to formulate a sound therapeutic hypothesis, pre-clinical development can occur quite quickly, which speeds the time to a human clinical trial.
Big picture: The timeline from target discovery to proof-of-concept in humans was remarkably fast for anti-PCSK9 therapy. Thus, the anti-PCSK9 story offers hope that drug discovery for other genetic targets will speed rapidly through clinical development and demonstration of clinical benefit, once the biology of those targets are also understood.
(3) Applying biomarkers as surrogate endpoints for FDA approval. With the appointment of Dr. Scott Gottlieb as FDA Commissioner, there has been increased talk of using surrogate endpoints for FDA approval (see Endpoints story by John Carroll here). In truth, this has been an active topic for sometime. [Clinical endpoints measure how a patient feels or functions, or whether a patient lives longer. In contrast, surrogate endpoints are biomarkers, such as a laboratory test, radiographic image, or physical signs (e.g., blood pressure) that substitute for clinical endpoints.]
According to the FDA website, approximately 45% of drugs approved by the FDA between 2010-2014 were approved with surrogate endpoints. Similarly, a study in JAMA by Yale cardiologist Harlan Krumholz and colleagues found that 45% of drugs approved between 2005-2012 were approved with surrogate endpoints (see here). Many of these endpoints, however, are clinical in nature (e.g., progression free survival in cancer) or biomarkers used routinely for decision-making in clinical care (e.g., HgbA1C for diabetes, FEV1 for asthma or COPD, viral load in HIV). There is certainly an opportunity to expand surrogate endpoints into those biomarkers that are not part of routine clinical care.
The PCSK9 story provides one of the best examples of a surrogate endpoint for FDA approval, albeit one the is deeply established in patient care. Today, physicians use LDL cholesterol to predict risk of heart disease and target therapy to lower LDL levels based on risk profile. In addition, human genetics and a technique known as Mendelian randomization has established that LDL is causally related to cardiovascular disease. Accordingly, the FDA allowed approval of anti-PCSK9 therapies with the agreement that post-approval cardiovascular outcome studies would be conducted.
My prediction is that as tools such as Mendelian randomization become more established, and as targets are selected based on human genetics, then surrogate endpoints will become even more powerful and effective at predicting clinical outcomes. Moreover, there will be greater comfort using biomarkers not used routinely in clinical care as surrogate endpoints for approval. Such confidence will speed the path from early proof-of-concept clinical trials to regulatory approval.
Towards this end, resources such as large-scale biobanks (e.g., see here the recent GSK/Regeneron news to exome sequence 500,000 individuals in the UK Biobank) and protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) measurements (see recent Nature Communications article here) will create new opportunities for surrogate biomarkers in regulatory approval.
There is a note of caution, however, as a recent study published in JAHA (see here) concluded that nearly half of the positive surrogate trials were not validated in clinical outcome studies. This study is a reminder that much work remains to establish meaningful surrogate endpoints.
Big picture: Anti-PCSK9 therapy provides a compelling example of a biomarker (LDL) as surrogate endpoint to expedite regulatory approval. FOURIER, which represents the cardiovascular outcome trial that was conducted post-approval to demonstrate clinical efficacy, increases confidence that biomarkers based on human genetics and Mendelian randomization will expedite drug development.
(4) Demonstrating dose-response curves based on human genetics. What is the optimal dose for a large, expensive clinical trial such are FOURIER? How low is low enough for LDL-lowering therapies? FOURIER, which included 27,564 patients with cardiovascular disease and LDL levels above 70 mg/dl already receiving statins, lowered LDL levels to an astonishing 30 mg/dl. By why 30…and not 50 or 10 mg/dl?
Human genetics helped guide this choice of LDL goal.
The balance between safety and efficacy is what drives the choice of dose and duration for every drug trial. The original disease-associated LoF variants described by Helen Hobbs and Jonathan Cohen were present in a heterozygous state. A subsequent study found an individual who inherited two inactivating mutations in PCSK9 and had a strikingly low plasma level of LDL-C (14 mg/dL), but was otherwise healthy (here). That is, a precious single individual who had no detectable PCSK9 was just fine, indicating that it should be safe to drive down LDL levels <30 via a PCSK9-mediated mechanism.
What is incredibly exciting is that there are now broad initiatives to catalogue “human knockouts” at an unprecedented scale (see East London Genes & Health, PROMISE cohort as examples). If clinical data for such human knockouts are available, and if individuals have been consented for recall to allow additional phenotyping, then it should be possible to estimate the clinical impact of perturbing targets via human genetics. (For a deeper discussion on this topic, see Nature Reviews Drug Discovery article here.)
Big picture: Human genetics predicted the “maximum tolerated dose” that would also be effective in protecting from cardiovascular events in the FOURIER trial. As catalogues of human knockouts become more available, this approach should become more common.
In summary, it may be convenient to criticize FOURIER as a failure of genetic medicine, as the composite cardiovascular endpoint was less than what many had hoped and the current drug price is high. However, don’t let those two critical issues muddle the importance of the trial itself and the impact on genetic-drive drug discovery.
What I have tried to do here is reminded readers of the bigger picture, at least as that picture pertains to genetically-driven drug discovery and development. The anti-PCSK9 / FOURIER story reinforces the concepts that human genetics can (1) identify novel drug targets that differentiate from standard of care; (2) speed pre-clinical development to test proof-of-concept in humans, but only after the painstaking task of unraveling human biology; (3) provide confidence in surrogate endpoints for regulatory approval, especially for biomarkers that are not routinely used in clinical care; and (4) provide guidance on dose-response curves, and therefore target dose for a large and expensive clinical trial.
Summary of news reports and blogs:
Matthew Herper Forbes blog, key points: (1) background and high-level summary; (2) Lower-than-expected results, but when broken down by specific outcomes (e.g., heart attack), findings were more in-line with predictions (e.g., observed 27% reduction in heart attacks); (3) mortality unaffected, but duration of trial design may not be sufficient to observe benefits; (4) patient vignettes that emphasize how the drug might be prescribed; (5) perspective of payers; and (6) value to patients.
David Grainger Forbes blog, key points: (1) background, trial design, and results; (2) magnitude of the reduction is disappointing (15% observed vs 25-30% predicted lower risk); (3) “stubborn rump” of CV events beyond LDL lowering; (4) mortality benefit likely seen over time, just not in this study of ~2 years duration; and (5) some disappointment because of potential for lower economic returns: “not because of any disappointment with their therapeutic profile, but because the treatment landscape into which they are being launched is very different from when development started and their cost is unavoidably high due to the frequent, large doses that are required for efficacy.”
Derek Lowe Science Translational Medicine blog, key points: (1) high-level background of genetics for drug R&D, including Mendelian diseases and GWAS; (2) importance of druggability, in this case a monoclonal antibody against the circulating PCSK9 protein; (3) value of CV risk reduction to payers; and (4) word of caution about genetic-based drug discovery.
Larry Husten Cardiobrief blog, key points: (1) general background; (2) FOURIER results, including primary and secondary endpoints; and (3) implications, as assessed by experts in the field, noting that “all agreed that that trial represents a remarkable and positive example of the rapid translation of genetic research to clinical therapeutics.”
Harlan Krumholz article on NPR.org, key points: (1) high-level overview of anti-PCSK9 therapy and FOURIER trial; (2) “the trial represents good, tangible evidence that the drug can reduce risk”; (3) “the hope that cardiovascular disease would be eliminated by these drugs is dimmed”; and (4) “study raises the issue of pricing and value”.
Nature N&V, key points: (1) high-level overview of anti-PCSK9 therapy and FOURIER; (2) “rough road” for PCSK9 therapies, including a drug (bococizumab) from Pfizer that was discontinue; and (3) value proposition: “The new results — from a trial with more than 27,500 participants — vindicate the concept that inhibiting PCSK9 can control cholesterol and heart-disease risk. The question now is whether physicians and health-care payers will consider that benefit great enough to warrant the annual price tag of roughly US$14,000.”
NEJM editorial, key points: (1) brief history of PCSK9 discovery and anti-PCSK9 therapies, including summary of pivotal clinical trials that led to FDA approvals in 2015; (2) brief summary of FOURIER results, including efficacy and safety findings; and (3) general implications for health care providers: “It is anticipated that the results of the FOURIER trial will soon be implemented in international guidelines regarding the treatment of high-risk patients, directing clinicians in the use of this new and expensive class of drugs.”Cirque du Solei is the most recent entertainment act to boycott North Carolina over a law passed in the state barring mentally ill men in dresses from peeing in front of your daughter in women’s restrooms.
CdS morally preens ans status whores about opposing “discrimination in any form”, (really? discrimination against necrophiliacs too?), but as Breitbart points out, Cirque du Sogay has no plans to cancel its shows in the United Arab Emirates where open homosexuals are put to death.
Cirque du Sashay is one of many examples of shitlib virtue signaling, in which the conspicuous assertion and indulgence of virtuous feeling is more important than virtuous deed. Boycotting a state for an eminently reasonable law to prohibit cross-dressing men from women’s restrooms while continuing to do business in a country that would throw cross-dressing men off buildings to cheering crowds below is as little virtuous as it is greatly hypocritical. Donning a mantle of virtue to impress friends and win plaudits from similarly signaling virtuomos is not the same thing as actual virtue.
There are three psychological motivations compelling shitlib virtue signaling about tranny “””rights””” (this bullet list can be applied to nearly every shitlib cause du jour).
1. Shitlibs don ‘t really believe Arabs (or blacks/mestizos/gypsies/etc) are as evolved, culturally or genetically, as Western Whites, and therefore can’t be expected to adhere to Western morals. Shitlibs are in truth extremely racist and expect more from Whites and less from nonWhites, which is why they punish (as they see it) minor transgressions by BadWhites more severely than major transgressions by NuminousNonwhites.
2. Shitlibs don’t really give a shit about tranny rights, they just want to act self-righteous and gain social status points with their amygdala-stunted SWPL peers. Their virtue, such as it is, is wholly self-aggrandizing in the pursuit of social benefits that will redound to their (awkwardly androgynous) reproductive fitness.
3. Shitlibs are one group of Whites that hate another group of Whites, and their moral causes are merely weaponized rhetoric to lower the social standing of the enemy Whites best situated to be the group that ousts shitlibs from power. Virtue signaling thus accomplishes two fitness-maximizing tasks for the shitlib: raising their own social status and lowering the social status of their most immediate and capable competitors: nonshitlib Whites and shitlib Whites who may grow a pair and stray off the reservation (taking many others with them to foment revolution against the reigning shitlib order). In this motivation, virtue signaling can as reasonably be called ‘virtue warning’.
As the scope of the battles in which shitlibs can morally posture shrinks, the ridiculousness of their causes approaches lunacy. We are reaching the logical end-game of shitlibbery, and it’s nothing less than wholesale normalization of mental illness. One can only guess what’s next on the shitlib plate, but advocacy for “benign” forms of pedophilia and bestiality are certainly a possibility.In this tutorial we will have a look at the Neo4j graph database and will start to integrate it into our Spring project. We will also query a Neo4j database and perform various operations like:
Create, Read, Update and Delete
Establish relationships
Query on the basis of relationships
Spring framework is an open source Java platform that provides MVC infrastructure support for developing robust Java applications very easily and very rapidly using recommended MVC pattern.
Neo4j
Neo4j is one of the most popular graph databases which stores data in nodes and provides relationships between them. It is written completely in Java.
In Neo4j uses another query language is used called Cypher Query Language (CQL), as opposed to the well know Structured Query Language (SQL). Some of best features of this graph database are:
Open source
Schema free
NoSQL
Graph database
A Graph Database is also known as a Graph Database Management System and is the one which stores data in the form of Graph structures. To establish comparisons between a GDBMS and an RDBMS, let’s compare their terminologies.
Tables become Graphs.
Rows are equivalent to Nodes.
Columns and Data are turned to properties and their values.
Constraints become relationships.
Joins are used as Traversals.
Terminologies
Understanding concepts in Neo4j becomes easier if we can relate them to relational database structures. Let's see the close analogy Neo4j follows with a traditional MySQL system:
A Graph is a collection of nodes and the relationships that connect those nodes.
Nodes and Relationships contain properties to represent data.
Properties are key-value pairs to represent data.
Advantages of Neo4j over RDBMS
The primary difference is that in a graph database, the relationships are stored at the individual record level, while in a relational database, the structure is defined at a higher level (the table definitions).
This has important advantages and disadvantages:
A relational database is much faster when operating on huge numbers of records. In a graph database, each record has to be examined individually during a query in order to determine the structure of the data, while this is known ahead of time in a relational database.
Relational databases use less storage space, because they don't have to store all of those relationships.
The graph data model allows storage of all the connections of the node along with the node, so that there is no additional step in computing connected data apart from reading the node into memory.
Spring Data Neo4j
Spring Data comes in with excellent support for the Neo4j Graph database.
To start, let’s add the required Maven dependency in our project as:
<dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId> <artifactId>spring-data-neo4j</artifactId> <version>4.2.0.RELEASE</version> </dependency>
Let us also add Transaction support provided by the java Transaction API using its maven dependency:
<dependency> <groupId>javax.transaction</groupId> <artifactId>jta</artifactId> <version>1.1</version> |
seven from the opening round of fixtures…
Rovers took their one clear-cut chance
Hoop dream: Danny bagged the winner on his debut Source: Donall Farmer/INPHO
The difficult conditions weren’t conducive to attacking football, so goalscoring opportunities were scarce. So are prolific strikers, but Rovers have a gem in Danny North.
The Hoops were mainly restricted to efforts from distance but when they did unlock the Pat’s defence, North made no mistake.
The visitors had more clear-cut chances and went close, particularly through the always-impressive Ciaràn Kilduff, on a number of occasions. But not close enough. In an even game, North’s neat finish was the difference.
- Paul Dollery
Rogers heroics ensure champions get off to winning start
It was an uncomfortable evening at Oriel as Longford returned to the top-flight Source: Tommy Grealy/INPHO
12 months ago, Dundalk got their league campaign off to the worst possible start with a 4-1 Louth derby defeat to rivals Drogheda at United Park. On Friday night, the Lilywhites claimed an opening night win, but only just. The champions were in control for large spells in the game but their failure to convert chances would have cost them dearly if it wasn’t for two smart saves from Gary Rogers.
Apart from the two late chances, Longford rarely threatened but they were well organised and should have enough experience in their ranks to avoid an immediate return to the First Division.
- Ben Blake
Derry spoil Galway’s party in game of two halves
Premier Division football returned to Terryland Park Source: Donall Farmer/INPHO
Derry were a team of two halves on the banks of the Corrib. In the opening half they looked edgy, created little and were shaky at the back. Missing key players looked to be affecting them as Galway ran at them time and time again.
After the restart, a different Derry emerged no doubt on the back of some stern words from Peter Hutton. They pegged Galway back and reduced the hosts to few sniffs at goal, and showed great patience to find two goals to win them the game and get their season up and running.
- Jason Byrne
Gaynor haunts old club as Cork rescue point
Ross Gaynor came back to haunt his old club Source: Dan Sheridan/INPHO
Cork City have been tipped by many to win the league this year, while Sligo as seen as being a ‘work in progress’. They proved that this was not the case on Saturday night, though, as the visitors struggled in front of goal as result of the strong Sligo defence.
Owen Heary has recruited heavily during the off-season as he looks to return the club to the heights achieved during Ian Baraclough’s reign and despite Ross Gaynor’s late goal, it was a positive opening game for the new manager.
The visitors had three former internationals in their side and while all eyes were on Liam Miller and Alan Bennett on their debuts, it was Gaynor who came up trumps.
It was a tough result for Sligo to take after dominating the second half, but a result they would have settled for before kick-off.
- Jessica Farry
Kavanagh signing a shrewd piece of business by Drogs
Kavanagh's show showed at the Carlisle Grounds Source: Donall Farmer/INPHO
Having showcased his wares in the annual FifPro tournament in January, there were no shortage of interest in Daryl Kavanagh’s services but it was Drogheda and Johnny McDonnell who swooped to bring the midfielder to Louth.
There is no secret he carries a bit of extra baggage but Kavanagh’s ability on the pitch is undoubted. On his United debut on Saturday evening, he stole the show and proved the match winner as the visitors began their campaign with a hard-earned win at Bray.
Having lost Declan ‘Fabio’ O’Brien, Drogheda will be hoping former Ireland international Sean Thornton and Kavanagh can pick-up the mantle and return the club to the upper echelons of the table. They made a good start.
- Ryan Bailey
Limerick’s problems not just off the pitch
Martin Russell faces a big challenge this season Source: Ryan Byrne/INPHO
It’s been a difficult off-season for Limerick and if Saturday’s opening result is anything to go by, it doesn’t appear as if things will get any better for them just yet. A 3-0 home defeat to Bohemians is not the start Martin Russell had in mind as his side were completely outplayed by the visitors.
That the game was being played in Jackman Park, rather than Markets Field, is an indication of the difficulties the club have been afflicted by over the past few months but the start of the season provided not respite.
Conversely, it was a hugely encouraging performance for new Bohs boss Keith Long as his side sit pretty at the top of the standings as the early pacesetters.
Cabinteely start with a bang
It was a dream start for First Division new boys Cabinteely Source: Cathal Noonan/INPHO
There were several eyebrows raised when the FAI granted Cabinteely a licence to join the First Division for the season but life in the League of Ireland couldn’t have started any better for Eddie Gormley’s side.
A narrow win over Wexford Youths made it a memorable night for all involved at the club and with 1,420 people crammed inside Stradbrook, they have already gone some way to silencing the doubters.
The visitors voiced their frustration at the state of the pitch (inevitable given it’s a rugby ground) and while they had a case, to see the league’s newest club attract such a healthy number to their first home game is exactly what the domestic scenes needs – a bit of excitement and innovation.
All of the Airtricity League fixtures and results can be found here.
- This article was originally published at 8 March at 9pmWe know that going down two goals in a two-leg series is not a good thing, but what odds, exactly, do teams face in coming back from that deficit?
After falling behind two goals in their Conference Championship matchups, both FC Dallas and the New York Red Bulls seem to have their backs against their wall heading home. They each have less than a 25 percent shot of reaching the MLS Cup according to Soccer Power Index projections, which are provided by ESPN.
Updated SPI projections to reach and win MLS Cup. Columbus is now the title favorite. pic.twitter.com/RrVdR8N23J — Paul Carr (@PCarrESPN) November 23, 2015
Going back in MLS history, there have been seven instances in which a team has gone down two goals in the first leg and headed home for the second. In just two of those cases has the team down two goals won the series.
One came back in 2003 when the San Jose Earthquakes were down 2-0 to the LA Galaxy. They proceeded to concede two more goals to the Galaxy before scoring five of their own to knock the Galaxy out in one of the most memorable MLS playoff games of all time. The other instance came in 2004 when the then-Kansas City Wizards beat the Earthquakes 3-0 after going down 2-0 in the first leg.
Below you'll find all the times a team has gone down by two goals and headed home for the second leg in the Audi MLS Cup Playoffs.
The difference between these two matchups and six of the seven matchups below is that in this year's playoffs the tiebreaker is away goals. This is different in years previous to 2014, when teams would go to extra time no matter what if they were tied through two legs. This, of course, affects the strategy in which teams played and will play on Sunday.
2003: San Jose Earthquakes vs. LA Galaxy
Leg 1: LA Galaxy 2, San Jose Earthquakes 0 at StubHub Center
Leg 2: San Jose Earthquakes 5, LA Galaxy 2 (AET) at Spartan Stadium
2004: Kansas City Wizards vs. San Jose Earthquakes
Leg 1: San Jose Earthquakes 2, Kansas City Wizards 0 at Spartan Stadium
Leg 2: Kansas City Wizards 3, San Jose Earthquakes at Arrowhead Stadium
2005: San Jose Earthquakes vs. LA Galaxy
Leg 1: LA Galaxy 3, San Jose Earthquakes 1 at StubHub Center
Leg 2: San Jose Earthquakes 1, LA Galaxy 1 at Spartan Stadium
2012: Sporting Kansas City vs. Houston Dynamo
Leg 1: Houston Dynamo 2, Sporting Kansas City 0 at BBVA Compass Stadium
Leg 2: Sporting Kansas City 1, Houston Dynamo 0 at Sporting Park
2012: D.C. United vs. Houston Dynamo
Leg 1: Houston Dynamo 3, D.C. United 1 at BBVA Compass Stadium
Leg 2: D.C. United 1, Houston Dynamo 1 at RFK Stadium
2013: Portland Timbers vs. Real Salt Lake
Leg 1: Real Salt Lake 4, Portland Timbers 2 at Rio Tinto Stadium
Leg 2: Real Salt Lake 1, Portland Timbers 0 at Providence Park
2014: D.C. United vs. New York Red Bulls
Leg 1: New York Red Bulls 2, D.C. United 0 at Red Bull Arena
Leg 2: D.C. United 2, New York Red Bulls 1 at RFK StadiumFrench authorities have found themselves mired in controversy after Le Figaro leaked a government-commissioned report that looked into a safer alternative to fracking for shale gas, banned in France.
The confidential report, which says that France’s shale gas deposits could be easily removed without the well-known method of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, was published by Le Figaro newspaper. Until Tuesday the report was apparently buried by officials, it said.
The paper was reportedly commissioned back in 2013 by then-Minister of Industrial Renewal Arnaud Montebourg, who stood for clean mining for shale gas.
It was completed in 2014 and passed to the government, which repeatedly said that mining for shale was not a possibility.
The potentially game-changing report suggested that the country’s shale gas deposits could be exploited with the use of "clean technology" of non-flammable propane, as thus there wouldn’t be any need for the controversial practice of fracking.
Non-flammable propane has the advantage over water as it can be recovered more easily and be reused. The technology doesn’t require water or additional materials and is more environmentally-friendly.
It points out, in detail, how France could take advantage in terms of growth, employment, industrial competitiveness, energy independence, and advocates a first experiment in micro-drilling in Ile-de-France and in the southeast of the country.
Montebourg confirmed the authenticity of the report to Le Figaro, though reportedly refused to further comment on the matter.
In the meantime, French Ecology Minister Ségolène Royal took to Twitter to respond to Le Figaro’s story, saying that the government had "nothing to hide."
“Shale gas extraction is no longer a valid topic. Let’s do energy transition,” she wrote.
Réponse au Figaro : rien à cacher. Les gaz de schiste ne sont plus d'actualité. Faisons la #transition énergétique. Investissons ENR. — Ségolène Royal (@RoyalSegolene) April 6, 2015
Social media exploded over the leaked report by Le Figaro.
“Another fine example of industrial sabotage environmentalists and lack of courage of [France’s President Francois] Holland!” wrote Agriculture & Environment, a monthly newsletter.
Encore un bel exemple du sabotage industriel des écologistes et du manque de courage de Hollande! http://t.co/iSSl9UKzl1 via @Le_Figaro — A&E (@AEGRW) April 6, 2015
Alpine geologist Charles Lamiraux, who used to work for the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, blamed the “green lobby” for burying the report.
Gaz de #schiste : le rapport enterré par le gouvernement à cause du lobbying vert #EELVhttp://t.co/MHoDdFaLwr via @Le_Figaro — Charles Lamiraux (@FOIL7) April 7, 2015
Political editor of the Le Journal du Dimanche weekly, Dominique de Montvalon, has called the leaked report a “hit by Montebourg” in a Tweet.
Montebourg frappe: voici que surgit, à la Une du Figaro, le "rapport enterré" sur les conditions d'extraction en France du gaz de schiste.! — D. de Montvalon (@demontvalon1) April 7, 2015
France had “technically recoverable reserves of 3.8 trillion cubic metres” in 2013, according to a study by the United States Energy Information Administration.
Fracking was banned in France in 2011 after public pressure. The move was upheld in 2013 following complaints by US-based Schuepbach Energy. The company told French court that the law was unfair after having two exploration permits revoked due to the ban.
READ MORE: 'Don’t compare EU with US': Fracking costs exceed benefits for Europe, study says
Rapport Montebourg sur le gaz de schiste publié par LeFigaro
In March Energy Watch Group, an international network of scientists and parliamentarians, released a report, saying that the impact of fracking on the environment and health in Europe is disproportionate to the gains derived from this drilling method.
“Unlike in the United States, which is the only country conducting fracking at a commercially relevant scale, the method cannot achieve a sufficient result from extraction in Europe,” president of Energy Watch Group Hans-Josef Fell said.
The report warned that according to current estimates there will be a disproportionate amount of money spent on a method that can only supply Europe with energy for a decade.
Fracking includes drilling for fossil fuels using water, sand and chemicals under high pressure through drill holes to blast open shale rock. Opponents argue it has been linked to groundwater contamination, heightened earthquake activity, exacerbation of drought conditions, and a variety of health concerns for humans.When you think politics, the parties that typically come to mind are republicans and democrats, but a third party is growing across Nebraska: The Libertarian Party.
One Nebraska senator describes the Libertarian ideals as promoting as little government interference in everyday life as possible, lower taxes, and a free market.
"I vote for the people who I think are going to do the job, I want them to act on their values," said Trevor Reilly.
Reilly is the chair for the Lancaster County Libertarian Party, but just a few years ago he was in the marines and a registered Republican, then he decided he wanted a change.
"Being a prior Republican I didn't agree with a lot of it, I didn't agree with the Trump media going on, so when I found the Libertarian party, I jumped into the campaign," said Reilly.
Trevor's not the only high ranking Libertarian who is a former member of the Grand Old Party.
Senator Laura Ebke is the only Libertarian senator in the unicameral, and said the political shift is becoming more and more apparent.
"I think that what we are finding is that people, especially young folks, are more and more turned off by the partisan rancor that goes on," said Senator Ebke.
Right now there are less than 13,000 registered Libertarians, but Senator Ebke believes this is only the start.
"I'd like to see it be a competitive party I think that a long ways coming, but I think we can become an influential party," said Senator Ebke.
The latest registered voter numbers show the Libertarian party is growing at a faster rate than the two major parties.
These numbers from the Nebraska Secretary of State show the percentages of registered Libertarians in Nebraska are just a little more than 1% of the almost 1.2 million Nebraska voters, but it's trending upwards.
Party members understand they are still a very small percentage, but there are plans to grow.
"Starting to run people for local elections, city county offices, school board and things like that, so I think that's a win and that's a way you build a party," said Senator Ebke.
And there are now specific benchmarks Libertarians want to hit by the next presidential election.
"Right now the state party's goal is to actually get 50,000 registered Libertarian voters by 2020," said Reilly.
"If we get to 50,000 that's big, for Nebraska, that's a significant amount of the voting population, and we can make a difference in a lot of elections then," said Senator Ebke.Trade Body Says HTC Is Violating Apple Patent, Bans Some Imports
In a closely watched case, the U.S. International Trade Commission on Monday ruled that Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC is violating an Apple patent, and ordered an import ban on some of the company’s products.
The organization found that HTC devices infringed on two claims related to an Apple patent. However, the ban will not take effect until April, the ITC said in a ruling, giving time for carriers to make transition plans and for HTC to demonstrate ways it has avoided infringement (by working around the patent, dropping infringing features or other means).
“Notice is hereby given that the U.S. International Trade Commission has found a violation of section 337 in this investigation and has issued a limited exclusion order prohibiting importation of infringing personal data and mobile communications devices and related software,” the agency said. “The Commission has determined that exclusion of articles subject to this order shall commence on April 19, 2012.”
HTC will be able to import some refurbished products to satisfy repair claims on already sold products, but will not be able to bring new products into the country after April 19, unless the ruling is reversed or it can show its products no longer infringe the patent in question.
The ruling had been delayed several times.
HTC said in a statement that it was pleased the commission reversed a ruling that said HTC infringed on another of Apple’s patents, and that it narrowed the ruling on the patent in which it did find infringement.
“While disappointed that a finding of violation was still found on two claims of the ’647 patent, we are well prepared for this decision, and our designers have created alternate solutions for the ’647 patent,” HTC said.
Apple didn’t comment directly on Monday’s ruling, instead merely reiterating a past statement that “we think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”
Here’s the ruling:
Usitc Ruling Apple HtcOne of the recurring topics on Zero Hedge over the past 3 years has been the relentless increase in student loans which, as a result of their cumulative default and loss severity (including those loans which are "merely" in deferment and forbearance) has surpassed the subprime bubble in terms of size.
In fact, as the following table from the TBAC shows, the actual default risk from student loans is several orders of magnitude above the 9% student loans which the Fed has revealed as currently "in default", as one has to add those 12% of loans in deferment and 11% in forbearance to the entire risk pool. In short: a third of all student loans are likely to end up unrepaid!
Why is this number a problem? Because as the TBAC also forecasts, in its worst economic case scenario for the millennial generation (which sadly, based on recent employment and income trends for America's young adults is more like the base case scenario), total student loans, which currently stand a little over $1 trillion (or more than all the credit card debt in America), is set to triple in just the next decade, hitting a whopping $3.3 trillion by 2024.
From the TBAC: Alternative Paths of Loan Balances
Higher Unemployment and Underemployment: Given the relationship between employment conditions and loan growth, a higher unemployment or underemployment (U-6) rate would be likely to cause lending to grow substantially more than the base case. Specifically, if the unemployment rate were to edge up after reaching a trough in two years and the gap between U-6 and unemployment remains as wide as it is today – in excess of historical norms – the size of the program would be expected to reach roughly $3.3 trillion in 2024, $1.7 trillion more than in the base case.
This is what a tripling in student debt looks like:
And assuming a broad default rate including the tangent categories of 32% as currently, this would mean that over $1 trillion in student loans would ultimately end up in default in just about ten years.
Which, here comes the spin, is great news... if only for the Fed of course: considering that by 2024 Fed Chairman Bullard will have run out of Treasurys, ETFs, single stocks, tractors, and kitchen sinks to monetize, it can just load up the Fed's bad hedge fund balance sheet, which by then will have grown to a few hundred quadrillion, with defaulted student loans... Or any student loans for that matter.
Why? Because the economic recovery will then, like now, be just around the corner.Illustration: Liu Rui
India suffered from British imperialism for two centuries. Unlike in China, where colonial influence was exerted indirectly, the British ruled the country through an established government that exploited peasants and workers through the machinery of rule, sucked agriculture dry of resources through an imposed feudal system, and exported India's resources to Britain to finance its industrial development.
The British imposition of a Western education and government system blocked locals from benefiting from the industrial revolution sweeping Europe.
It is against this background that Indians view foreign investment. Indians are naturally suspicious of the motives of foreign investors and want to proceed cautiously.
The fundamental principle we wish to follow is to accept what is necessary according to what we need and cannot easily produce ourselves. Thus India does not want to globalize blindly.
Unlike most other countries including China, India's households provide more than 85 percent of domestic savings, which make up an overwhelming proportion of investment today. Their contribution may be as high as 35 percent of GDP.
Foreign investment can add to this pool of investment funds, but it comes at a cost. If the foreign investment comes as portfolio investment, with the mobility to enter and exit at short notice, it causes financial instability.
If we allow financial services to be penetrated by foreign firms, then they will recklessly use computer generated derivatives to convert mortgage into liquid funds as we saw recently in the US.
There the financial services wizards shifted and spread risk through derivatives to overload the financial system. As a consequence, a small perturbation in the economic situation caused a huge recession in the US economy and resulted in a worldwide slump.
Foreign portfolio investment with unbridled derivatives can wreck any economy. India therefore has to exercise great caution that, in our open economic system, the winds of financial globalization do not destabilize our future prospects.
At present, there is great agonizing going on in India about foreign direct investment in retail trade and insurance and pension funds. As far as retail trade is concerned, Indian traditional traders work on very small margins, because the cost of capital measured by the prime lending rate of banks over 12 to 18 percent annually, a painfully high rate.
In contrast, for companies like the US giant Walmart, the lending rate is 2 to 4 percent. Hence, the Indian traders, who number in their millions, are agitated, because there cannot be fair competition on a level playing field with Walmart and other US competitors that benefit from favorable policies.
In addition, wage rates will rise if Walmart and similar firms recruit Indian labor, making it even more difficult for Indian traders to face competition.
And why do we need Walmart? What new technologies or techniques will it bring that Indians do not know already?
In China, Walmart's entry is understandable since the decades of the planned economy set back trade as an activity.
Hence when China, under former leader Deng Xiaoping's guidance, undertook economic reforms in the 1980s, China had to fill the trading class void by importing the marketing services of foreign companies.
However in India, we have no shortage of traders and hence this argument does not apply.
If the US was ready to allow Indian companies to take Indian labor to the US to build roads, constructing houses, running textile companies, and setting up software companies, then I would not object to Walmart coming to India.
But we cannot accept the US double standard of bringing in cheap capital to India and use its cheap labor but not allowing Indian companies to bring cheap labor to the US and borrow cheap capital from US banks.
The author is president of India's Janata Party. He received his PhD in economics at Harvard University and is a former Indian Cabinet minister for commerce and law. opinion@globaltimes.com.cnTypes Edit
Prevalence Edit
Mexico is one of the global centers of the child prostitution trade and a source and transit country for large numbers of migrants moving northward from Central America.[13][12][2][11] There are an estimated 16,000 to 20,000 Mexican and Central American children who are trafficked for sex in Mexico.[12] However, data on the number of victims of labor trafficking are not available.[8] Additionally, the number of people trafficking into the United States from Mexico is known to vary widely, as do estimates of how many trafficking victims make such crossings.[8] The vast majority of foreign victims in forced labor and sexual servitude in Mexico are from Central America, particularly Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; many transit Mexico en route to the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada and Western Europe. However, trafficking victims from South America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa are also found in Mexico, and some transit the country en route to the United States. Unaccompanied Central American minors, traveling through Mexico to meet family members in the United States, fall victim to human traffickers, particularly near the Guatemalan border. Mexican men and boys from Southern Mexico are found in conditions of forced labor in Northern Mexico, and Central Americans, especially Guatemalans, are subjected to forced labor in southern Mexico, particularly in agriculture. Child sex tourism continues to grow in Mexico, especially in tourist areas such as Acapulco and Cancún, and northern border cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez. Between 2000 and 2002, approximately 135,000 children in Mexico were kidnapped, presumably for exploitation in prostitution, pornography, or illegal adoption trafficking.[14] It is estimated that there are around 16,000 children engaged in prostitution in Mexico as of 2004.[14]
Structural causes Edit
Poverty Edit Main article: Poverty in Mexico Mexican States by Poverty Rate Mexico is characterized by persistent and extreme income inequality and high rates of poverty.[15] These inequalities, and poverty in particular, can increase trafficking in several ways. Poverty often drives families to make decisions out of desperation and lack of education.[16] For example, in the case of Mexico parents are especially likely to leave their families to go work in the United States and may become victims of traffickers.[17][14][18] Furthermore, many victims of trafficking, especially in the case of sex trafficking, are not fluent in the language of their destination country and are limited in their ability to escape their situation.[6] In addition, victims often accept their positions because they feel that this is the only way that they may send some remittances to their family and their enslaved situations may in some cases still be better than their original impoverished and desperate state.[16] In this manner, poverty can both drive trafficking and prevent its victims from escaping it once they have been trafficked.[16][6] Globalization Edit See also: Globalization The rate of human trafficking has directly increased in correlation with globalization.[19][20] Globalization has increased cross-border trade and the demand for cheap labor; however, migration policies of the U.S. and other countries have not changed with the level of demand for cheap labor, thus forcing people illegally to immigrate.[16] Illegal immigration then creates ideal conditions for organized criminal operations to form trafficking circles.[16] With increased trade of foreign goods to rural areas, import competition in the rural markets has also forced people in poor areas to migrate to industrialized economies for better livelihoods. Their desperate positions often make them subject to exploitation and trafficking into different forms of forced labor to support that economy.[16] Lastly, the technological advances that go hand in hand with globalization have facilitated the ease with which organized crime circles may conduct trafficking operations.[16] Sexual assault Edit During the Central American civil wars throughout the 1980s, widespread sexual assaults of indigenous women were carried out, contributing greatly to the creation of the Mexican sex trafficking industry.[14] Both policy and army personnel raped and assaulted several thousand poor, generally rural women during the El Salvadorean and Nicaraguan civil wars.[14] Many of these women were shamed by their communities and families and chose to migrate to Mexico, leading to a boom in sex trafficking.[14][21] As of 2014, this pattern of marginalization through sexual assault was still widespread.[22] The effect of conflict and ensuing assault on the development of the sex trade is domestic to Mexico as well as foreign. Internal conflict between organized crime and police forces and the military have historically lead to unusually high levels of instability in some areas of Mexico, most notably in the case of the Chiapas Conflict.[23] Similarly to the Central American civil wars, the sexual violence that accompanied this conflict drove many shunned women to turn to sex work and helped jump start the sex trade in those regions of Mexico.[23]
Anti-trafficking laws and policies Edit
Trafficking across the border with the United States Edit
See also EditA group of activists known for, literally, taking dirt to Richmond City Hall, to have politicians clean up their act, are back behind the tractor.
Richmond FarmWatch is hoping the winds of political change will bring better fortune to their cause — eliminating mega mansions and speculation on the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR).
article continues below
Last May, seven city councillors decided to allow for homes twice the size of Ministry of Agriculture guidelines. Although they agreed to review that decision in six months.
Couns. Carol Day and Harold Steves, who are also members of FarmWatch, are expected to table that review for the purposes of debate and a new vote in the coming weeks.
FarmWatch members aim to protect farmland and protest the building of mega mansions on agricultural land. Photo by Graeme Wood/Richmond News
But Laura Gillanders has little faith in council, considering May’s vote and FarmWatch’s last battle — imploring council to beef up its anti-dumping enforcement — has seen mixed results at best.
So, members — who range from small-scale farmers, food security advocates and environmentalists — have gone directly to Minister of Agriculture Lana Popham of the new NDP government.
Popham told the Richmond News she, unlike the past BC Liberal government, will consider legislating house size restrictions on farmland as part of her mandate to revive the ALR.
“A lot of that will be looking at this specific issue; we’re looking at it for sure,” said Popham, who is concerned Richmond farmland is being used as a speculative land bank with mega mansions being used as tools to drive up land value close to $1 million per acre ($50,000 is considered a viable price).
Minister of Agriculture Lana Popham, centre, met with FarmWatch members (from left) Michelle Li, Kelly Greene, Laura Gillanders and John Roston. Photo submitted
“It’s made sure in some areas, such as Richmond, that we’ve guaranteed new farmers cannot afford to own,” said Popham.
In May, Richmond council reigned in a nearly lawless situation that led to an average house size of 12,583-square-feet on the ALR in 2015. At the request of many ALR landowners and farmers, including the Richmond Farmers Institute, council voted 7-2 to double the ministry standard (and city staff recommendation) of 5,382-square-feet under a new bylaw.
What’s at stake is two-fold, according to FarmWatch member and south Richmond farmer Miles Smart, who owns a five-acre farm growing specialty vegetables.
“A, you’re paving over large chunks of good, usable farmland — some of the best in the world. Take into consideration farmland is being paved over all around the world. The other concern of mine is by enabling people to basically build castles, it raises the value of the land quite astronomically,” explained Smart.
An independent report to council by Site Economics indicated about a 4,200-square-foot maximum would keep land values in balance with farmland use.
Speculation is ruining farmers’ ability to function in Richmond, said Smart, who has “chased away several real estate agents in just the past few months.”
The green and brown patches on the map indicate land within the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). The brown patches are areas not being farmed. Approximately 4,993 ha (12,338 ac) of Richmond’s land base, or 39% of the city, is within the ALR.
ALR landowners “will make far more money selling their land than selling their crops,” said Smart.
As a result, as a newcomer “it’s next to impossible to farm in this city unless you’re leasing land. And when you’re leasing land the rug can be pulled out at any time. It doesn’t make sense to invest in infrastructure and equipment,” explained Smart.
Adding to the burden, commodity prices have generally not kept up with other expenses.
To that end, all farmers agree other measures need to be taken to ensure farming is once again viable in Richmond.
Smart said east Richmond requires better drainage for vegetable farming. While other farmers have asked for government assistance, Smart is of the belief it ought to be the farmers doing the investment.
But, to date, many ALR owners in Richmond have chosen to plant blueberries, which are relatively cheap to grow and are marginally profitable.
An aerial shot of Monteith Road near Steveston shows the extent of damage from mansion development on protected agricultural land. Google Maps
“I see Chinese farmers planting (more profitable) Chinese greens because of improvements they’ve made,” he said.
While blueberry prices falter, they still provide enough income to give ALR landowners property and school tax credits. Metro Vancouver has suggested the amount of income generated from farming be raised in order to qualify for a farm tax incentive. The hopes is that speculators would then be less prone to sit on land.
Popham said she’d review the matter as “we need to make sure the tax incentives ensure production.”
Small farm plots are good start-ups for new farmers, as are incubator farms from land trusts, she added.
But, “the biggest barrier is the cost of land. So we’re starting talk of incentives for leasing,” said Popham.
Another mechanism to rid Richmond of ALR speculation has taken hold — a ban on foreign ownership, proposed by the BC Green Party.
But it has its detractors.
Gillanders said FarmWatch supports it but, “a foreign owner is no more speculative than a local investor."
Foreign owners do lease land to make it farmable but there’s “a sense” of a waiting game “so they can move in and develop it,” she said.
Real estate economist Tom Davidoff, from University of B.C., said it’s more than a feeling.
“Of course people will speculate, because they don’t believe the ALR is forever. There is a ton of land and people need homes here.”
As long as people keep moving here, it will be either single-family home neighbourhoods or farmland, he said.
Richmond-Queensborough MLA Jas Johal told the News foreign ownership can be beneficial, such as in the Interior.
“We want to protect farmland... at the same time, private investment is important,” said Johal.
Past BC Liberal Minister of Agriculture Norm Letnick agrees.
He said a provincial ban on foreign ownership could negatively impact productivity, particularly outside the Lower Mainland.
Debate surges over foreign ownership
While other provinces have similar bans, Letnick said B.C. doesn’t need one because it has the ALR. Furthermore, without providing specific data, Letnick said foreign ownership of farms is low in B.C.
But raising the tax incentive threshold is a good start, he noted.
He added that Richmond farmland borders a city and it’s only natural the land will be more valuable.
“If someone wants to farm in areas that have high prices, they may need to look at options such as leases... or move north,” said Letnick.
Disagreeing with Letnick is Kent Mullinix, director, Institute for Sustainable Food Systems at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
“We absolutely need to preclude foreign ownership of all agricultural land,” said Mullinix.
“We also need to eliminate speculative forces, foreign or domestic,” meaning a limit on house sizes, he added.
Mullinix is calling for a full review of the ALR.
“We need to identify the land that is farmable regardless of size and make sure it remains farmable. Then we need to identify lost parcels,” said Mullinix.
Of course, the solutions are not easy and a bigger picture is at work for the local food advocate and critic of neo-liberal economics ad transnational trade in food.
“We want the cheapest food possible, grown around the word regardless of environmental costs, regardless of ethical costs, regardless climate change costs. And in the process we’ve marginalized agriculture, and put most North American farmers in an unfortunate predicament in that the greatest value of their business is their land.
“They don’t make much money producing food, so their money is in their land and ability to cash out. That’s their retirement. This speaks to the need to have a comprehensive examination of what’s going on.”ORLANDO, Fla. (May 19, 2016) – After two straight shutout victories at home, Orlando Pride begins its longest road trip of the season when it travels to face the Houston Dash at 8:30 p.m. ET on Friday night at BBVA Compass Stadium.
Friday’s match, a showdown of the National Women’s Soccer League’s (NWSL) two expansion teams, will be streamed live at orlando-pride.com/live and can be followed on Twitter through the Pride’s official account, @ORLPride.
The match is the second of four meetings between the two clubs, after the Pride came away with a record-setting 3-1 win over the Dash at the then-Orlando Citrus Bowl on April 23.
“We’ve continued to improve as the season has gone on, as have other teams. But we know, if you look at virtually every other game in this [season] so far, there’s been maybe two goals separating teams, at best. So we |
ize the whole city in support of their struggle against the loss of more than 2.000 jobs in the wider urban area. Last Saturday, notwithstanding the heavy rain, more than 3.000 workers, students, football supporters, housing-action activists and common people took to the street in an outstanding march which crossed the city, while most of the small retailers were closed in solidarity with the workers.
The Coordination in Livorno is a self-organized initiative which brings together hundreds of workers, mostly rank-and-file union representatives, from all over the urban area of Livorno. The concept behind this project is as simple as it is powerful: workers have common interests and their struggles are stronger when they are united regardless of who their employer is and which economic sector they are employed in. Despite the fact that the Coordination is only a few months old, it has already been able to put the labor issue at the forefront of the political agenda of the city.
The Livorno experience has proven that grassroots movements of workers, students and common people can be effective and can become the voice of the majority of the population. However, obstacles and enemies are opposing this possible development. A growing racist anger, which tends to divide migrants from the rest of the class, is growing in the suburbs of the Italian metropolises promoted by fascist groups, such as Casa Pound, and xenophobic parties, such us the Lega Nord, all over Italy, as the recent cases of Bologna and Rome demonstrate.
Nonetheless, the days of mobilization of November 14 and 15 open a path to be followed in the “everyday gray labor” in the working places and in the neighborhoods, and at a national level in the coming days of countrywide struggle — such as the general strike called by the CGIL on December 12. The class struggle is back in Italy and will shake our country for some time to come.We’re more than excited to try new Slack features as they appear. Message Buttons were released in July 2016, and provided a new UI opportunity for many exciting Slack apps, including Statsbot. They reduce the number of small yet high-frequency tasks that quietly devour a user’s time. Below, we discuss key advantages and hacks for using buttons in Slack that we’ve discovered.
Readable interface
Have you ever seen a help page that looks more like a what the… page, or a landing/onboarding page that launches an endless dialogue with little-to-no useful information? We’ve been there before.
When you’re onboarding customers, dialogue can be unintuitive. When a user launches a new mobile app, he or she sees an already-familiar interface. When it comes to bots, users must interact with an invisible interface which can be confusing and perhaps even frightening.
Bots have specific commands which need to be communicated to the user in order for it to work. Buttons allow a call to action to be performed in one click, offering up the most popular commands, and allowing the user to identify exactly what they are looking for.
Thanks to buttons, our help and onboarding pages look like applications now.
Buttons helped us to improve the UX of our latest Goals feature. We could hide additional charts with detailed information using a “+Show Details” button. That allowed us to clean up the interface for users who wanted a high-level view. But any time, they can push the button and look at details.
Buttons are available in the Slack API and can be added to any existing app. They allow companies to create a clever and simple user interface, which could function as a quick and cheap MVP of your product. It’s better to test your idea in the place where users spend the majority of their time: in messengers.
Bots are universal and could be capable to replace front-end interfaces. They could function as a landing page, mobile app and personal account with lots of settings at the same time.
Tip: Buttons operate within the message attachments, allowing up to five buttons in a single message. Remember, you can use several rows of messages in one command to get the most out of this feature.Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Mystery In You
Georgia Man
Don’t Give Up On Me Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Want To Go Home Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Sara Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
When The Whiskey Goes Down Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Georgia Man (Reprise) ]
Carolina Chorus
Steps Along The Way
Blue Grass Girl Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.So, this is my analog version of a playful Playstation 2 controller for the PSX project — the one that slows the analog part of the controller down over time so, you know..when I’m playing Katamari Damacy it’s a bit more realistic that the Prince gets tired or during GTA, my guy actually gets tired from running away from liquor store heists and stuff.
I’m looking at two approaches. The first is digital — basically intercepting and modifying the communication between the console and the controller. (I’ve described the protocol, and there’s lots of great, hard-gained information out and about describing how it works.)
It’s a good, playful idea as a kind of theory object, entirely doable, kinda complicated and perhaps a bit of an over-designed solution for a simple idea. What I want is something made (constructed, 3D-printed, wired-up, soldered, fab’d, modeled, fussed-over, troubled-with, a cause of grief, etc.) rather than only just discussed. More than discussing only with words (still the greatest instruments for making things) the object also explicates the tension between physical-digital worlds, or the “real world” and “second life”.
This isn’t something that’s a mass-market product design concept, which should be pretty obvious. (Why is it always assumed that productions from the laboratory are products rather than conversation pieces? I would rather make objects that enter into conversations with a provocation, or enter into discussions, raise questions, help create disruptions by describing new interaction rituals, not making least-common denominator products. These are objects that speak — they create, perpetuate and incite discussions — even inspire new concepts that link 1st life with 2nd life, such as “feeding” characters in games in some fashion, which is closer to the motivation than simply trying to hobble a game character. It’s a theory object. The “theory” embodied in the PSX controller concept here is meant to disrupt the conventional understanding of the relationship between physical activity in 1st Life and virtual-physical-digital activity in 2nd Life digital worlds.)
This is the second, more expeditious design. Basically, I tap right into the PSX controller, putting a microcontroller in between the analog control joysticks and the little FPGA or whatever it is that senses the analog control joysticks. So, my microcontroller determines where the control sticks are and, depending on how long the game’s been played, “dampens” the value, constraining its range.
[ad#ad-4]
It’s a simple “tap” in between, which requires a bit of less-than-elegant de-soldering and pad lifting (or trace cutting) in order to create the cut-in point for the hardware that’ll sense and then spoof the console.
In this case, for testing I used an Arduino, which has enough built-in analog-to-digital converters to sense the positions of the four potentiometers (right-horizontal, right-vertical, left-horizontal, left-vertical) that make up the two joysticks. It also has an I2C/TWI/2-Wire interface that I can use to control four digital potentiometers. The digital potentiometers will appear to be the normal joystick potentiometers only with their values slightly clamped over time to dampen the effects of your normal input.
The joystick potentiometers produce 8-bit values in the interface protocol, and are around 0x80 (or so..) in the middle, when they haven’t been displaced. Here’s a snip from the larger interface protocol showing, from left to right and in the white trace, right-horizontal, right-vertical, left-horizontal, left-vertical. Each value is in the middle range meaning that the joysticks aren’t displaced. If, for example, the right vertical joystick was fully displaced upward, the second value would be 0x00 (full down would be 0xFF.)
I wrote a simple little Arduino sketch below that does a 10-bit analog-to-digital conversion of the right and left vertical potentiometers. Because the PSX controller seems to have a limited, 8-bit range, it’s necessary to dampen the 10-bit value. Just through experimenting, I found that dividing the 10-bit A2D value by 6 (sort of like right-shifting 2 1/2 times), I could get pretty close to what the controller was producing in terms of a range of values. (I don’t quite get to 0, but it’s close enough.)
I then test attenuating the range by using a constraint function built into the Arduino extended library. This function “clamps” the range of a value passed into it, so I can (in another version) gradually constrain the range that the potentiometer can go through.
Effectively, for this example, when either joystick is full up, the range of the digital potentiometer is clamped, so that the value that the controller senses is not quite a full displacement, no matter how far the player pushes it up. (The same works for downward displacement.) In this case, full upward displacement clamps the right vertical to 0x2B (second from left) and the left vertical to 0x36 (fourth from left). (You can see that the horizontal displacements are off-center because the joystick has been moved and isn’t dead-center in the horizontal direction.)
// // Control the Playstation console // by spoofing the PSX controller #include int RY_Pot = 0; int LY_Pot = 1; void setup() { Wire.begin(); analogReference(EXTERNAL); Serial.begin(9600); } int val = 0; int bias = 0; void loop() { // bias runs between about 23 -90 - 155 // read the value from the right vertical joystick val = analogRead(RY_Pot); // transmit to device 0x28 // which is a DS1803 digital potentiometer Wire.beginTransmission(0x28); // prepare to write to potentiometer-1 Wire.send(0xAA); bias = val/6; // Serial.print("RX "); // Serial.print(val, DEC); // Serial.print(" "); Serial.println(bias, DEC); // a bit of fudge.. if(bias < 30) bias -= 10; // sends potentiometer-1 value byte Wire.send(constrain(bias+15, 60, 120)); Wire.endTransmission(); // do the same thing, for the // left vertical joystick val = analogRead(LY_Pot); Wire.beginTransmission(0x29); Wire.send(0xA9); bias = val/6; // Serial.print("RY "); // Serial.print(val, DEC); // Serial.print(" "); // Serial.println(bias, DEC); if(bias < 30) bias -= 10; // sends potentiometer value byte Wire.send(constrain(bias+15, 60, 120)); Wire.endTransmission(); // stop transmitting //delay(100); }Image caption Salva Kiir has apparently faced increasing pressure from government colleagues
South Sudan's president has sacked his entire cabinet, in an apparent power struggle with other senior leaders.
Salva Kiir issued a decree dismissing all ministers and deputy ministers, as well as Vice-President Riek Machar.
No clear reason was given for the sackings, but analysts say Mr Kiir and Mr Machar have been embroiled in a power struggle for months.
South Sudan has suffered from chronic economic problems since it split from Sudan in 2011.
There was tight security outside ministry buildings on Wednesday, while radio broadcasts urged people to remain calm, the AFP news agency reports.
Its stability has been hampered by lingering rows over territory and oil with its northern neighbour.
Recently some of Mr Kiir's colleagues have hinted at discontent with his leadership.
Local reports say Mr Kiir is battling to maintain control of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the former rebel group that now runs the country.
Mr Machar, who had been stripped of some of his powers in April, had hinted that he may stand against Mr Kiir for leadership of the SPLM before the next presidential election in 2015.
Analysis Dissolving the cabinet in South Sudan hints at a wider attempt by the president to restructure not only the government but power and access to power in the country. There have been reports in recent weeks of strained relations within the governing SPLM and the relationship between the president and his deputy are said to be at an all-time low. Although the cabinet restructuring has been a long time coming, its timing is curious and raises suspicions that the president could be using his executive powers to stamp out dissent in the party and disagreement within his government. Whether the sacking of the entire cabinet will succeed in calming the disquiet within South Sudan's political circles remains to be seen -there is also a real fear that this might further divide the country along ethnic lines.
The BBC's Nyambura Wambugu in the capital, Juba, says there is a real fear that the sacking could further divide the country along ethnic lines.
Mr Kiir is from the Dinka community, which is the largest in South Sudan, while Mr Machar is from the second-largest group, the Nuer, some of whom have complained about Dinka domination.
Financial scandal
Under-secretaries have been put in charge of the departments and the government insists it can function smoothly until new ministers are appointed.
Barnaba Marial Benjamin, who had been information minister until Tuesday, characterised the sackings as a "major reshuffle" and said it was part of Mr Kiir's constitutional mandate.
"Some of these people will come back and some will not," Mr Benjamin AFP.
Among the other leaders to be dismissed was Pagan Amum, the top negotiator in peace talks with Sudan.
He was removed from his post as SPLM secretary general and the decree said he would be investigated for mismanaging the party.
Last month Mr Kiir sacked two other senior ministers embroiled in a multi-million dollar financial scandal, a decision reportedly criticised by Mr Amum.
It was unclear whether Tuesday's decree had any link to the scandal.
South Sudanese journalist Nhial Bol said Mr Kiir had probably acted to end the paralysis in his government.
"Things have not been moving in the government because of this internal fighting over who is going to control the SPLM," Mr Bol told Reuters news agency.
South Sudan is rich in oil, but is one of Africa's least developed countries, with few paved roads and poor health and educational facilities.
It gained independence from Sudan in July 2011 after a decades-long civil war.
However, the oil refineries are on Sudanese territory, so the South relies on its northern neighbour to get its product on to the market.Man who escaped death TWICE: Cyclist was scheduled to fly on both MH17 and MH370... but changed his mind at the last minute
Maarten de Jonge, 29, at the last minute changed his mind and decided to fly out of Amsterdam Sunday instead of Thursday
The cyclist had been scheduled to travel aboard the flight that vanished without a trace over Indian Ocean in March
He still plans to take a Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur on Sunday
Dutch cyclist Maarten de Jonge is one very lucky man, having cheated death twice in the past four months.
De Jonge was scheduled to fly aboard Flight MH370, which vanished without a trace in March, and he also had a ticket for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which was downed by a missile this week over the Ukraine - but he changed his travel arrangements at the last minute in both cases.
On Friday, the 29-year-old professional athlete issued a statement on his official site confirming that he was supposed to take the doomed MH17 flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur Thursday, but he pushed back his departure by several days.
Scroll down for video
'World's luckiest man': Dutch cyclist Maarten de Jonge cheated death twice in the past six months by deciding not to fly aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and MH17
Sixth sense: De Jonge, 29, was supposed to be aboard MH17, but at the last minute he changed his travel arrangements and decided to fly out of Amsterdam on Sunday instead of Thursday
'What has happened is terrible, so many victims, that's a horrible thing,' de Jonge wrote in a statement translated from Dutch.
De Jonge told the Netherlands station RTV Oost that despite his second brush with death, he plans to take another Malaysia Airlines plane this week and has no concerns for his safety.
‘I have been lucky twice, that's the third time as well,’ de Jonge reportedly said.
De Jonge, who is part of the Terengganu Cycling Team based in Malaysia, had booked a seat on Flight MH17, planning to return to Kuala Lumpur after taking part in national championships in his native Holland earlier this month, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
But the athlete ultimately decided to take another, cheaper flight with a layover in Frankfurt, Germany, on Sunday.
Calamity: A picture taken on July 18 shows the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 298 people from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur a day after it crashed, near the town of Shaktarsk, in rebel-held east Ukraine
Back in March, de Jonge boarded a different Malaysia Airlines jet instead of Flight MH370, which disappeared somewhere over the Indian Ocean with 239 people on board.
‘I could have taken that one just as easily,’ de Jonge said in the RTV Oost interview. ‘It's inconceivable. I am very sorry for the passengers and their families, yet I am very pleased I'm unharmed.’
In his written statement Friday, de Jonge downplayed his two very close calls, saying that his story is meaningless compared to those of the victims and their families.
He declined to comment further out of respect for the 298 passengers and crew of Flight MH17, at least 189 of them Dutch citizens, who perished in the tragedy.
It is widely believed that a surface-to-air missile shot the Boeing 777 out of the sky over rebel territory on the border between Russia and the Ukraine, but it is not clear who fired it.
On Friday, Malaysia Airlines offered to waive fees for any passengers wishing to delay or cancel their travel plans in the wake of Thursday's disaster.Burning Man is that wild, uproarious desert party that hits the Nevada desert every August. But to call it a party alone is to miss the critical spiritual dimension that grounds much of the festivities.
This spiritual dimension is perhaps best characterized by the temple artists and architects build every year on the playa. The tradition began in 2000 with artists David Best and Jack Haye's Temple of Mind. The temple took on greater significance after one of Best's friends passed away weeks before the festival, setting the tone for what would become an annual space of memorial and contemplation on the playa, or what author and religion professor Lee Gilmore calls the "sacred heart of Black Rock City." (Black Rock City or BRC refers to the temporary town that Burning Man becomes every year.)
Best and the 'temple crew' went on to orchestrate the building of roughly half of the Burning Man temples, and others have been spearheaded by various artists.
"Everyone on the temple crew is so different," crew member Dave Washer told The Huffington Post, "but they all come together to build this thing." Washer began attending Burning Man in 2008 after the tragic loss of his 20-year-old daughter. As a dedicated space for grieving and commemoration, the temple spoke to him.
"There is all kind of loss," Washer told The Huffington Post. "The loss of a child is a huge one, but of siblings, parents, close friends... Everyone has loss and they bring their offerings to the temple."
Every year's temple takes at least two months of building off the playa and a final three weeks on the playa, Washer said. It must withstand the desert's intense winds and semi-frequent dust storms, not to mention the 60,000 Burning Man visitors who will likely make a trip to the edifice at some point during the week. On the Sunday at the end of the festival the temple burns in a solemn ritual.
Washer described the moment to HuffPost: "It is a strange sensation, to watch the temple go up in flames. There are these sparks that twirl upward into the night sky. I always look at them as the prayers and the spirit of all the countless people who have arrived here, of those we love and hold dear, spiraling upwards towards the heavens... You look around you and you see nothing but tears and awe. These are tears of gratitude and wonder. There is astounding empathy and forgiveness for all the heartache in this world in this group. This makes a difference in our world I believe."
If previous years' temples were any indication, the 2014 temple will be just as poignant. The 2014 Temple of Descendants was conceptualized by architect Ross Asselstine, who will work with the temple crew to bring it into being.
The Burning Man temple needs to inspire a "sense of wonder," Asselstine told HuffPost. "I see [spirituality] at the temples on the playa. There are people inside, outside, in the plaza, at the fence and beyond... all having that moment."
A look back at 10 years of Burning Man temples demonstrates the spiritual nature of these awe-inspiring temporary structures:
Temple of Stars, 2004 (David Best and The Temple Crew)
The Temple of Dreams, 2005 (Mark Grieve and The Temple Crew)
The Temple of Hope, 2006 (Mark Grieve and The Temple Crew)
The Temple of Forgiveness, 2007 (David Best, Tim Dawson and The Temple Crew)
Basura Sagrada, 2008 (Shrine, Tuktuk, and the Basura Sagrada Collaboratory)
Fire of Fires, 2009 (David Umlas, Marrilee Ratcliff, and the Community Art Makers)
Burning Man Temple 2009, Reprocessed 2012 by Michael Holden on 500px
The Temple of Flux, 2010 (Rebecca Anders, Jessica Hobbs, Peter Kimelman and Crew)
The Temple of Transition, 2011 (Chris Hankins, Diarmaid Horkan and Ian Beaverstock and the International Arts Mega Crew)
Temple by Ian Brewer on 500px
The Temple of Juno, 2012 (David Best and The Temple Crew)
Temple of Juno by Bobby Pin on 500px
Temple of Whollyness, 2013 (Gregg Fleishman, Melissa Barron, Lightning Clearwater III and The Connection Crew)
Photo by Scott London
For more information on 2014's Temple of Descendants, visit Temple2014.net and Temple2014 on Facebook.
Article amended to include names of temple artists and builders.RoCKIn2015: A glimpse into the future of Europe’s domestic and industrial robotics industry
Over the last 20 years, robot competitions have emerged as a powerful means to foster progress in robotics research and development (R&D). RoCKIn is part a of new generation of scientific robotics competitions that were launched out of the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme.
By combining the scientific rigor and repeatability of experiments with the real-world relevance and spectacle of competitive events, robot competitions are able to offer a highly complementary approach to traditional lab-based R&D. Through competition events and the development of a robust benchmarking methodology, RoCKIn aims to further innovation in the field of industrial and domestic robotics. From the 21-23 November, we will be holding our second and major competition event in Lisbon, Portugal.
Here, within purpose-built domestic and industrial arenas, teams from around the world will compete in tasks designed to be highly relevant to the real-world challenges, all in front of a live audience. For the teams, the event gives them an opportunity to network, share tips and tricks with their peers, learn from seasoned robotics experts, and gain key insights into the strengths and weaknesses of their robotic systems. There are two ‘Challenges’ or streams in which teams can compete in – RoCKIn@Home or RoCKIn@Work.
RoCKIn@Home
This Challenge focuses on assisting the elderly or impaired and is set within the apartment of Granny Annie – an elderly lady who needs some support to keep her healthy, active and safe. Robots are benchmarked on three tasks and three specific functionalities. The tasks include interacting appropriately with known and unknown visitors to the apartment, and helping Granny Annie with everyday actions such as opening and closing the window blinds. These require the robot to correctly understand a set of predefined and recognisable commands, work interactively with other devices (such as security cameras and remotely controllable lights and blinds) and navigate the arena without colliding into anything. The three specific functionalities being tested include how accurately the robots perceive objects.
RoCKIn@Work
This Challenge looks for innovative industrial robots that can help businesses meet increasing demand from their customers. Once again, robots will be benchmarked on three tasks and three functionalities. Set in the RoCKIn & RoLLIn factory, a robot will assist with the assembly of a drive axel – this a component of the robot itself and therefore a step towards self-replicating robots. Tasks include locating, transporting and assembling necessary parts, checking their quality and prepping them for other machines and workers. Ultimately, the robots will be working interactively as personal mobile assistants in a highly flexible and continuously changing production line.
In both Challenges, data is taken directly from the robots and compared with ground truth data captured from specialized infrared cameras set up around the arena that, through marker sets attached to the robots, can accurately determine their true movements within the arena. This data is used not only for evaluation purposes but also allows teams to get detailed feedback on their performance and isolates the areas they need to improve. It also aims to provide the international robotics community with rich datasets and metrics for task and functionality benchmarking.
RoCKIn2015 is open free-of-charge to the public, who will get to see the state-of-the-art robots autonomously perform these challenging tasks. The competition will be held in the ‘Portugal Pavilion’ and Lisbon’s premier science museum – ‘The Pavilion of Knowledge’. The Portugal Pavilion will host the RoCKIn@Home and RoCKIn@Work arenas, where the competition activities and demonstrations will take place. The opening and closing ceremonies, along with various satellite events throughout the three days, will be held in The Pavilion of Knowledge. Both are situated within Parque das Nações, in Lisbon.
The event is currently accepting applications and is open to new teams, as well as seasoned ‘RoCKIans’. Vistors, make sure you save the date and join RoCKIn for the final showdown in November to see what the future could have in store for all of us.
Key dates
Deadline for Applications: 31 August 2015
Decision on Qualified Teams: 8 September 2015
Registration open (qualified teams only): 9 – 30 September 2015
Website: http://rockinrobotchallenge.euWhat is $1 worth around the world? An unlimited rice meal in India, a cup of coffee in Portugal and an hour of street parking in some places in the United States. A bottle of cheap wine is what you get in Italy, a lottery ticket in Australia and half an hour of foot massage in the Philippines. In Turkey, you can treat yourself to a simit and tea — and, as it turns out, you can stage a coup.
One-dollar bills have been found on high-ranking officers involved in the July 15 coup attempt, in what is perhaps the most bizarre of the many oddities to emerge from the massive crackdown on the Gulen community, the accused culprit in the putsch. The $1 bills have been found also on policemen, judges, academics, businessmen, teachers and other civilians linked to the Gulen community, the government’s former ally, which it now calls the Fethullah Gulen Terror Organization (FETO).
The bills are said to denote membership in the secretive group, and their serial numbers are believed to have coded meanings. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag has said the $1 bill “is undoubtedly of some important function within FETO,” while Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has vowed to defeat “the lowlifes who sell their souls for $1.”
Ordinary Turks are also angry, protesting the dollar in various ways. In Istanbul, for instance, a group of shopkeepers threw $1 bills in the sewage, pledging not to deal with dollars again. In the most prevalent reaction, however, the greenback is now banished from wedding parties, where the bride and the groom as well as the musicians entertaining the guests are often sprayed with banknotes. Two days before the coup attempt, for instance, a wedding in Sanliurfa made the headlines for the “shower of dollars” that hailed down on the newlyweds. But, as the media report, “Weddings have ushered in a Turkish lira-era” after July 15.
Spraying dollars at wedding parties may convey an air of affluence and largesse, but it is actually a cost-cutting measure devised by crafty Turks. One dollar is worth roughly 3 Turkish lira, while the smallest Turkish banknote is 5 liras — more expensive while at the same time less cool than the greenback. So, to make a real impression with Turkish currency, one has to be prepared to sacrifice banknotes of at least 10 or 20 Turkish lira.
Others prefer to sacrifice probity instead, using fake $1 bills to reduce further the cost of showing off. This seems to have become a widespread practice, judging by a report from the western town of Nazilli, just a day before the coup attempt. A group of wedding musicians felt so exasperated and humiliated by the rising trend that they called a press conference to display — and then burn — the fake dollars they had been thrown at recent parties, which totaled $5,000 in face value. The musicians said fake dollars were being sold openly at city bazaars and urged police to take action.
Now the main usage area of the $1 bills in Turkey seems to be gone, as no one wants to be associated with the putschists. In currency exchange offices, no one is asking for $1 bills, while those with leftovers from oversea trips are said to be tearing the bills up or throwing them away, with only the bravest turning up for exchange.
One of the exchange offices Al-Monitor visited had accumulated hundreds of $1 bills, with one employee grumbling, “It’s not like before. People are afraid to both buy and sell them.” Another currency dealer said the demand for $1 bills ended “at a stroke” after Gulenists were reported to use them for secret communication. “People have come to see them as criminal tools,” he added. A third shop had done away with the $1 bill altogether. “No $1 bills here,” the dealer said. “Neither buying nor selling.”
Yet, not all $1 bills are of an “incriminating” nature. The serial number matters. According to media reports, a serial number that begins with the letter F denotes that the holder is a top Gulenist leader, while C is for lower-level managers and J for ordinary members. Other reports claim the $1 bills were blessed personally by Fethullah Gulen, the US-based cleric heading the sect, before being distributed to members, and that the serial numbers serve as a sort of ID number, the records of which Gulen keeps at his mansion in Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, others who disposed of the greenback after the putsch did so not out of fear but to make profits. The Turkish currency plunged sharply over the coup attempt, leading many to sell their dollars to buy more of the cheapened lira before it recovered.
Yildirim and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for their part, have praised the sell-off as a display of patriotism, a vantage point that meshes with a widespread conviction among Turks that the United States colluded with the putschists.
In an Aug. 9 speech in parliament, Yildirim said Turks had exchanged $11 billion in 10 days, which helped to fend off a potential crisis at the markets amid fears of an exodus by panicked foreign investors. “The people not only averted the coup but also funneled money to the markets. A nation like this can only be applauded. By converting $11 billion to Turkish lira in the 10 days after the coup, you gave [the country] lifeblood and strength,” Yildirim said.
So the prime minister seems confident that Turks have grown more loyal to their national currency, atop banishing the $1 bill. This should be great news for the wedding bands in particular. The musicians in Nazilli could have never imagined their protest would bear fruit so soon.The media attacks are a sign: a New Democratic Party that takes on inequality and climate change can crack open the country’s political debate
From the headlines screaming outrage on the front pages of Canada’s newspapers, you’d think the New Democratic Party had shuttered their convention doors, armed themselves and made for Edmonton’s solitary hills.
“A hard left turn to nowhere,” blasted the National Post, after NDP members voted to debate the Leap Manifesto in local ridings. “How to Kill the NDP,” Maclean’s exclaimed. Captured by the “loony left,” added the Toronto Star.
Was it passionate concern speaking for the future of Canada’s social democratic party? Hardly. If the NDP’s membership had supported Thomas Mulcair instead of unseating him, if convention debates had proceeded spiritlessly instead of firing up over a bold roadmap, the media and political establishment would have quietly celebrated. Their hysteria is calculated to snuff out what they saw on display: sparks of rebirth in Canada’s political left.
Here’s what they would prefer: a NDP shackled to a political consensus that has gripped countries like Canada for decades. This consensus tells us that we should leave our fate to the market. That millions of us should get up every morning and be satisfied to earn our poverty, to subsidize giant corporations with our tax dollars, and to watch powerlessly while inequalities widen, our debts deepen, and the planet’s climate cooks.
It turns out NDP members may have other ideas: to seize the chance to transform their party into a more grassroots and principled electoral option that full-frontally rejects this status quo. They understand that they missed their chance at power by allowing Trudeau to present himself as a bolder alternative; and they have watched the rise of unapologetic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn in the US and Britain with growing hope and excitement.
If they can help their party shake loose from this consensus, many Canadians will want to join them—or to listen.
Looking for a vision to kickstart debate about an alternative, many NDP members have found it in the Leap Manifesto. The Leap Manifesto is not a party platform. It is not a comprehensive blueprint. It is a new story about the kind of country we could have, if we treat the crises we face with the urgency they deserve—and with the politics they demand.
Like the crisis of climate change, which the manifesto says is not just an existential threat—it is an opportunity to transform our country for the better. If we act according to deep principles of justice, combatting climate change can simultaneously address many other problems: creating hundreds of thousands of good, clean jobs; implementing the land and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples; reducing racial and gender inequalities; welcoming far more refugees and migrants; and localizing agriculture so that people eat healthy.
The breadth of this vision is reflected in the diversity of hands that wrote it: labour unionists, migrant rights activists, food policy experts and feminists, Indigenous leaders and environmentalists and anti-poverty organizers. Would it be unaffordable? Not if we put our hands on the obscene wealth sloshing around in corporate bank accounts and being siphoned offshore. None of this is politically extreme: but it is a break from the well-guarded parameters of “respectable” politics in Canada.
Such a grand transition would not to be easy, but it is scientifically and technologically possible: we could, by mid-century and in every part of the country, be off fossil fuels and powered fully by renewable energy. The workers who now are drilling for oil wouldn’t be abandoned: they could be drilling for clean geothermal energy, retrofitting homes or building public transit.
The notion that getting speedily off fossil fuels would spell economic armageddon serves a specific function: it pit workers against environmentalists, east against west, Indigenous peoples against everyone else. It has been been carefully cultivated to serve the interests of a single group: the corporate and political establishment. It is the politics of fear and division—which only hope and possibility can defeat.
Those insistent that tar sands pipelines are part of our future have an argument not with the Leap. Their argument is with overwhelming majorities in Quebec and British Columbia and First Nations across whom a pipeline will never pass; with an oil glut that has made the export of tar sands increasingly uneconomical; with a renewable energy boom that is outpacing fossil fuel development across the world; and with the hard realities of atmospheric science. Accepting these realities are not just a matter of planetary survival—they can have electoral payoff.
Just look down south, where Bernie Sanders is running on a platform that calls not only for jobs and a challenge to inequality, but for a national ban on fracking and no new fossil fuel leases of any kind on federal lands—far more radical than anything in the Leap Manifesto.
And with that radical platform, Sanders won the Democratic primary in Alaska—an oil state—by a huge margin, against a rival without these demands in her platform. And last weekend, he won the caucus in Wyoming—a major coal exporter—by another large margin.
If Bernie can do this and win enormous political support, then the NDP should be able to have this discussion across Canada—including in Alberta.
Such a party would have new supporters flock to it, especially among the |
and years ahead, if this road is taken, we are apt to hear echoes – particularly in the next presidential election –of the post Vietnam rhetoric that the civilians sold out the military. In short, while this option sounds moderate and “business-like” I believe that it is the worst option for President Obama and, more importantly, for the nation.
Or, fourth, we could Get out.
* * *
Since obviously getting out is my preference, I will now describe how it could be done. In doing this, I want to emphasize that I learned as an official policy planner that a plan is of little value unless it incorporates elements that would make it
* attractive or at least politically feasible for a president;
* foresees a specified allocation of funds to effect it;
* provides a timetable;
* makes clear both benefits and dangers; and
* can be shown to be better than other options.
I begin with the reasons why the President should adopt it:
* Other things being equal, reversing decisions and public statements is not an attractive option for a sitting president. But other things are not equal. I have asserted that the other three options endanger the country and could cost President Obama his job.
* Even if he accepts this evaluation, the president must weigh any potential move in the scale of public opinion: what do the people think? Polls indicate a steady deterioration of support for the war.
But, as any politician knows, the public is fickle and substantial numbers of dedicated and influential people are still strongly in favor of “staying the course” or even getting in deeper. This, of course, is, particularly true of the self-proclaimed military-political strategists (and above all the neoconservatives who are active in virtually all of the “think tanks” and write influential columns in most of the press not to speak of Fox News). They speak to the sentiment of the far right of the Republican Party.
The President, who after all is a Democrat, would be unlikely to be able to win over the Republican far right by any sort of compromise. He must hope that the general public will reach the conclusion that “staying the course” is costly, does not work and is pointless. But, if waits until a course of action is completely evident to everyone, it will be probably be too late to implement easily, cleanly and in command of our principal objectives. Thus, a large part of a president’s responsibility is educating the public. If we have a first lady and even a first dog, he must be our “first teacher.” He must, in short, work to create an environment in which reasonable policies will be understood and accepted.
* Consequently, the president must choose the timing of his action with great care and in doing so he would be wise to recognize and be prepared to deal with his Republican foes and Democratic rivals. The best way he can do this is to do the job quickly and get it over with well before the next election.
* Timing will be influenced not only by the pace of domestic politics but also by foreign opportunity. Fortunately for him, the President now has been presented with an opportunity. Although at terrible cost to Pakistan’s society, its army has undertaken a campaign against the Taliban in the Pashtun areas of Swat and both Waziristans. Why is this an opportunity or rather how could it be an opportunity? At first sight the answer seems paradoxical: it is that the campaign is unlikely to be completely successful: the Taliban are unlikely to be so stupid as to stand and fight. The proper tactic of the guerrilla is to hit and run. So, recognizing that they cannot win, the Pakistani military will soon offer a cease fire and the Taliban will accommodate.
The Pakistanis have a long history with the Taliban, know them intimately, have subsidized them and have sought in the Taliban a barrier against Indian infiltration of their backyard, Afghanistan. That long-term interest remains despite the current conflict. And, at base, the Pakistanis share with the Afghanis, religion, a population of nearly 30 million Pashtuns and the desire to preserve their neighborhood from foreign control. Thus, I believe that in the coming months, they will do what neither the Russians nor we have been able to do — bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. This move would offer a wise American president an opening to begin the process of turning over the war to our ally Pakistan.
To enable such a course of action to become effective and to encompass Afghanistan, we must set a date for ending our part of the war. Before such a date is announced, negotiations are unlikely. But it is important to be clear: It is the setting of the date rather than actually withdrawing that will enable the process to begin.
* * *
Once the date is set, let us say in late 2010 or early 2011, the villages and tribes, particularly in the southern part of Afghanistan but also soon in the center and north, will begin to jockey for position vis-à-vis one another and with whatever larger authority they think likely to affect their lives. This will almost certainly take the form of their holding village assemblies – known in the south as jirgas and in the north as shuras or among the Hazaras as ulus– to sort out local issues.
Little known or appreciated outside of Afghanistan, neither by the Russians in their time nor by us today, the jirga is the quintessential Afghan means of political action. We need to understand it because, whether we like it or not, it will play a major role in the way the war is brought to a close. I must dilate briefly on it.
The jirga is a very old and common Asian way of settling disputes and legitimating ruling authorities. Among the Mongols and Turks, it was known as a quriltai and similar assemblies were held by the Iranians. Probably few Americans realize that a native American people, the Iroquois, had a similar way of dealing with military and diplomatic affairs.
Is this just a historian’s indulgence in dredging up the obscure and the antique?
Fortunately, not. Jirgas are active at the village level all over Afghanistan today. They are called into being either when village headmen, known as maliks, or respected religious figures cannot resolve a dispute or when a new event calls for change of course. The jirga is thus a transient event, not a standing institution. Its procedure is set by custom. And it does not aim to mandate or to impose penalties; rather it is a process that aims to ventilate grievances, to debate alternatives, to dissipate angers and to affect accommodations until, at the end a consensus is reached. Voting is not a part of the process. But when a consensus is reached, it is considered absolutely binding and further opposition is regarded as treason. To oppose the consensus could result in expulsion from the community which, in a tribal society, amounts often to a death sentence.
Since many of the problems of each village depend on actions beyond its locale, the village elders will press for and participate in tribal meetings. In turn these participants will be drawn into regional meetings. At the end of the process will be a grand national assembly which is known as a loya jirga.
Such meetings have been called on great issues of state for centuries. Three were called in the 1920s to approve fundamental laws, establish the Afghan Muslim orthodoxy and legimate the change of rulers. Another was called in 1949 to void existing treaties and establish the frontier with Pakistan. In 1955, a loya jirga composed of some 360 notables from all over Afghanistan assembled to declare support of an independent “Pashtunistan.” Then in 1964, one was assembled to ratify the constitution. Notably, the constitution proclaimed that the loya jirga is Afghanistan’s ultimate authority, being empowered ““to decide on issues related to independence, national sovereignty, territorial integrity as well as supreme national interests” and designated the loya jirga to be “the highest manifestation of the will of the people of Afghanistan.”3
The Russians were, obviously, opposed to the very concept of the loya jirga and managed to by-pass or suppress it. They did so, however, at great cost because without such a legitimating authority, they could not find an Afghan counterpart with which to negotiate an end to their occupation. The puppet government they set up lacked the imprimatur of the loya jirga and was not regarded by the people as legitimate. So the Russians left with their tail between their legs.
As the current Russian ambassador and long-time KBG expert on Afghan affairs, Zamir N. Kabulov, has commented, there is no mistake the Russians made that has not been copied by the Americans. He was right about the way we approached the jirga. In 2002, nearly 2/3rds of the delegates to a loya jirga signed a petition to make the exiled king, Zahir Shah, president of an interim government to give time for the Afghanis to work out their future. An interim government might have avoided the worst of the problems we have faced in the last seven years. But we had already decided that Hamid Kara was “our man in Kabul” and did not want the Afghanis to interfere with our choice. So, as Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason reported,4 “massive US interference behind the scenes in the form of bribes, secret deals, and arm twisting got the US-backed candidate for the job, Hamid Kara, installed instead. [They] then rode shotgun over a constitutional process that eliminated the monarchy entirely. This was the Afghan equivalent to the 1964 Diem Coup in Vietnam; afterward, there was no possibility of creating a stable secular government.” While an Afghan king could have conferred legitimacy on an elected leader in Afghanistan; without one, as they put it, “an elected president is a on a one-legged stool.” Then, as Selig Harrison wrote in the New York Times,5 our proconsul, Zalmay Khalilzad, “had a bitter 40-minute showdown with the king, who then withdrew his candidacy.”
Among the lamentable results of this policy was that outside of the major cities, few Afghanis think of the government as legitimate. Most regard it as a foreign tyranny.
Not understanding or being willing to deal with the concept of a loya jirga, we have sought to legitimate the men we chose to rule Afghanistan by an election. Doing so has produced a great embarrassment to our government. It isn’t only that the recent presidential election was blatantly fraudulent although that is what the press has focused on. Nor was the trumped up competition between Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah important. As a Tajik, there was no way that Abdullah Abdullah could have been a credible candidate. He was just a straw man, put up to make it look like the election was a choice. But even that was not the fundamental flaw: it was simply that elections – the American way of choosing and legitimating a government – is not the Afghan way.
The Afghan way is a loya jirga.
It is my belief that the holding of a loya jirga is the means that offers the best hope to create a reasonably peaceful, reasonably acceptable and reasonably decent Afghan government.
* * *
So the question is how to convene it. The answer to that question is simple: the Afghans have a traditional way to do so. The central authority, in this case the Parliament, can call for a loya jirga.
Will they do it?
Probably not so long as America is willing to pay them off and protect them. So to get them to act, America must set a timetable for withdrawing. Faced with that deadline and the need to protect themselves, the current members of the Parliament will have an interest in espousing what they will see as the national cause, and they will scramble to call for a loya jirga.
Participation is traditional. It is made up by the upward thrust of recognized leaders from the village level to the provincial level to the national level. We will have little or no influence on this process and it would not be wise for us to attempt to exercise any. But, realistically, we must anticipate that a vast majority of the delegates, particularly in the Pashtun area, will be at least passive supporters of the Taliban. I do not see any way that this can be avoided. Indeed, even today while we are in occupation, qualified observers uniformly point out that, except when a large contingent of our soldiers is physically present, the insurgents are in control. At any given time, they control about 70% of the country. That, as I have pointed out, was also the Russian experience.
* * *
So what are the disadvantages and what are the benefits of the policy I recommend? Let me highlight the potential criticisms:
The first criticism is that the Taliban will emerge from the war as the strongest organization in what at best is a coalition. I do not see any way that this outcome can be avoided – indeed, whether it happens soon or not, it is virtually inevitable in the long run.
The longer we delay the process and the harder we try to prevent it, the more certain it is that the Taliban will dominate. This has been uniformly true of insurgencies for the last two centuries all over the world: those who fought hardest against the foreigners took control.
A really free loya jirga and one held soon is the best hope to create a more balanced national government. This is partly because in the run-up to the national loya jirga, local groups will put forward and struggle to enhance or protect local interests. That will constitute a natural brake on the Taliban which will find itself impelled to compromise. And we should remember that despite all the hype about their early victories, much of the Taliban’s success was the result of negotiation. Today, they enjoy the aura of national defenders against us; once we are no longer a target, that aura will fade.
The second criticism: suppose I am wrong. Suppose the Taliban overawes all the village communities and emerges as the sole arbiter of Afghanistan. What will be the danger to the United States?
Recall that our invasion came about because the Taliban was providing a base – the meaning of the word al-qaida – for Usama bin Ladin and his acolytes. Will they come back? Will Afghanistan be a base for terrorism? I don’t think so, or at least not in the same way.
The terrorists who attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 were partly trained in the United States and were based mainly in Europe. Propaganda emanated from Afghanistan, but the real work was done elsewhere. Terrorists can operate anywhere.
As we, the Taliban and Bin Ladin have discovered, Afghanistan is not a suitable base. It is land-locked, has poor communications, little money to give or lend outsiders and has learned how costly it is to give a free rein to terrorists. True, Usama bin Ladin has been given sanctuary by the Pashtun people and/or by the Taliban. For this, they have paid a heavy price. They will not wish to continue to pay such a price. And, more important, there are ways acceptable within the cultural code of the Pashtun people, the Pashtunwali’s imperative of melmastia (protection or refuge) that Bin Ladin and his band can be protected but disabled. A protected guest cannot be turned over to his enemies but he need not be allowed to endanger his hosts. Pakistan, rather than we, should and can take the lead in bringing about this restraint. Pakistan can, indeed, make it a condition for the ceasefire I have mentioned and the ultimate peace it will find to its interest to achieve.
The third criticism that can be directed at this program is that, focused as it must be on the Pashtun community which is Afghanistan’s largest group, it could split the country with the northern Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara areas withdrawing. The fact is that those areas are already effectively separated from the Pashtun south. They are under the domination of independent warlords whom we were instrumental in installing and maintaining. So the calling of a national assembly will not break up the country; it already is split. But if the jirga process begins, I think it is likely to end with a federation which the tribal structure of Afghanistan has always favored.
Even if a sustainable arrangement is not accomplished in the near term, the danger to American interests would be minimal. Indeed, Afghanistan’s neighbors (Pakistan, China, Russia and Iran and perhaps India) would (or could be induced to) take a hand to push toward a modus vivendi as Henry Kissinger among others has pointed out.6
* * *
If we adopt this policy and allow the process to begin, how can we facilitate it? What will it cost? What will it save? How likely is it to enable us to leave Afghanistan as a viable society? What will be the impact on the danger of terrorism? And, what should we avoid while carrying it out?
The first step, as I have argued, is to set a date for withdrawal. Once this is done, a notable transformation will begin in the psychology of the Afghans. Today, even the non-lethal and beneficial efforts our government and non-governmental organizations make are regarded with suspicion or are rejected. General Petraeus perhaps unwittingly explained why: In describing his counterinsurgency program, he proclaimed that “Money is my most important ammunition in this war.”7
The Afghanis of course realize this. As Andrew Wilder and his team found in some 400 interviews, “Afghan perceptions of aid and aid actors are overwhelmingly negative.”8 And, since they regard all the civic action programs as the “weapons” in the war – as indeed they learned years ago from the Russians who similarly mounted large-scale “beneficial” or civic action programs in Afghanistan9 — they have often destroyed schools, roads, bridges and even clinics.
But, when the withdrawal pattern is set, the Afghans will have no reason to continue to do so. At that point, aid programs, preferably administered at least in part by other countries or by international agencies will become acceptable and will help smooth the reconciliation process and encourage participation by the local loya jirgas, who after all are concerned with their neighborhoods’ prosperity and health. They will then eagerly seek what they now dramatically destroy. Their needs are evident and urgent. Afghanistan is a poor, land-locked, dry country with few resources. Its people have suffered through virtually continuous war for 30 years. Many are wounded or sick. Their normal passage through schools into jobs and secure lives have been disrupted or derailed. They hurt and are tired. They need help. It will be hard for them to employ outside help beneficially, much can be done to pick up where a reforming government left off in the 1970s. We can and should be a part of this process.
If we are wise, we will do so subtly rather than, as we often manage our aid efforts, with great fanfare. Through the United Nations family of organizations, the World Bank or a coalition of Afghanistan’s neighbors, we can provide money for reconstruction projects. Such ventures as the building of farm-to-market roads, the opening of clinics, a program of disease prevention, subsidy for food-grain crops, electrification, purification of water, disposal of waste, etc. will be perceived by the village loya jirgas as unthreatening and beneficial once it is clear that they are not weapons in a counterinsurgency.
What will this cost? If we participate, as we should in our own interest as well as for moral reasons, in these activities, we might consider offering (hopefully with matching funds from others), say, $5 billion dollars a year for the period the military and their hawkish civilian advisers propose, ten years. That would amount to roughly $50 billion over a decade.
So what will spending that amount of money save us?
At our current level of activity – before the introduction of more troops – we are “burning” as venture capitalists say, about $60 billion a year. Next year, our direct costs will probably rise to at least $100 billion. And even that figure will surely rise in the years to come. So the Congressionally allocated funds in the coming few years under even the most modest form of “staying the course” would amount to a minimum of $600 billion and more likely to much more. On top of that, we are otherwise harming our economy so that over a 5 to 10 year period of our current policy the real costs we would incur would probably amount to between $3 to $6 trillion.
This is money we don’t have and will have to borrow from overseas. Those who have opposed expanding health care because of the costs should note that the venture in Afghanistan will be more expensive with no compensating benefit.
The degradation of our currency is one effect of such an outlay: during the period of the Iraq war, the dollar vis-à-vis the Euro has fallen from 80¢ to $1.50. And currency traders are betting on a further fall. The fall so far means that sovereign funds (notably Japan and China) that have lent us money have lost heavily; a further fall calls into question our ability to borrow at all. Some funds (led by Kuwait) are considering transferring from the dollar to a basket of currencies while others (including South Korea) have stopped buying Treasury notes. If we attempt to make up our shortfall by printing money, inflation is inevitable and will saddle our grandchildren with our debts.
In short, by getting out, our saving would be immense, indeed perhaps, truly vital.
I have argued that if we get out soon and with held for the transition, the Afghans will find their way back to their traditional way of governing themselves. This will not be exactly our way, of course, but they will recreate a viable society. If we look at what has happened in Vietnam in recent years, we have reason to believe in political evolution. Once the horrors of war receed in memory, the joys of peace become powerful forces. And, in any event, at some point, whether now or years from now, the Afghans will face this challenge; my judgment is that the sooner it happens the more likely and the quicker is achievement of an acceptable degree of success.
What about terrorism? As I have pointed out, terrorists can operate anywhere; they do not need Afghanistan. But they do need the support of people wherever they are. So the more we are seen to be enemies of their religion, opponents of self-determination and supporters of oppressive governments, the greater the danger we face. We cannot completely overcome these charges, but we can blunt or avoid the most blatant and the most unpopular. Three stand out: first, we need to work hard to implement the call President Obama has made for us to recognize that we live in a multicultural world where we must respect the right of others to live their own way; second, we need to repudiate the neoconservative-inspired U.S. National Defense Doctrine that asserted our “right” to preëmptively attack any country anywhere at our sole discretion; and, third, we must stop the dangerous and unproductive “James Bond” games of subversion which we have played for years. Otherwise, there will be a continuing incentive for the weak and angry to find means to attack us. This is not to say that we must let down our guard: there are and will continue to be dangerous, deranged and determined malfactors in other countries – just as there are in ours – so we will need to employ a variety of police measures to protect ourselves. But once we are no longer generally seen to be “the enemy,” such pyschopaths will be far less dangerous because no longer popular.
Finally, we should avoid moves to create an overwhelming military and police force in Afghanistan. That is what we are being told is necessary. I think that would be a very dangerous and self-defeating move. Every time we provide weapons, as independent observers constantly tell us, the newly empowered force uses them against the public to extort money or goods or to kidnap people or rape their wives and children. It is highly unlikely that such forces can be disciplined by the existing government (or by us) for years to come. And even if they were disciplined, they contribute little or nothing to the Afghan economy or society. And, of course, they ultimately pose the danger of a military dictatorship since balancing civil institutions are still and will for years will remain weak.
What we should do is to put our emphasis on the creation of a quasi-military force like our Corps of Engineers which could, under proper supervision and with proper funding, make a real contribution to the country. It would also help alleviate the chronic problem of unemployment. The police force should be kept small, only lightly armed, and subject to some supervision by village and tribal jirgas.
* * *
What follows?
We are indeed at a cross-roads in our history. The step the President takes on Afghanistan is a step on a road that could lead either to catastrophe or to a new period of our prosperity, freedom and security.
In one direction, we will move in the direction signposted by the Australian armchair warrior David Kilcullen, the key adviser and ghost writer for Generals Petraeus and McChrystal, and enthusiastically approved by the neoconservatives. They and Petraeus’s and McChrystal’s new acolytes among junior officers – saw Iraq and see Afghanistan as the first steps in America’s crusade, what they have named the “Long War.”
The Long war would truly be a march out into the wild blue yonder. The neoconservatives and the new military leaders believe it will last generations. Fifty years is already under plan at the Pentagon. The cost, even in economic terms, cannot be predicted – numbers lose meaning beyond 15 or 20 trillion dollars. But the ultimate cost will be the end of America’s position as the world’s leading power. Our standard of living will fall; our sources of borrowing will dry up; and we will stand in danger of the kind of economic implosion that destroyed what in the 1920s was arguably Europe’s leading democracy, the Weimar Republic.
While the monetary and general economic costs are the most obvious, my real worry is about the fundamental beliefs and institutions of our country. I confess that I am very emotional about this: I have inherited through my family both a military and a civic tradition that I see being undermined in the name of patriotism. Patriotism is a blunt instrument and can be wielded by dictators – as Herman Göring observed during his trial at Nurenburg — as often as by democrats. I don’t want to lose the America in which I was born, have served and believe in. So I determined to do what I can to protect and preserve our heritage of freedom, decency and mutual respect. These are the key elements in the social contract you and I share and which we share with our government. To lose that social contact is to descend into chaos. Of course, “it can’t happen here,” but let us not forget the fate of the Weimar Republic.
To the contrary, getting out of Afghanistan, could lead us toward a reassertion of the principles and purposes that have made our country not just respected for its wealth and power but beloved throughout the world. If we make a sincere effort to live up to the message in President Obama’s address in Cairo – that we are willing to live in a multicultural world – much of the fear and danger we perceive today will become a bad memory. Then we can truly turn toward the serious business of educating our children, providing our citizens with adequate health care and again becoming for the world’s peoples “a city on the hill.”
William R. Polk
November 10, 2009
[1] Portside.Org, Sept 11 09 “Foreign Policy in Focus,” Conn Hallinan, “Afghanistan: What are these people thinking?” The field manual on counterinsurgency recommends a ratio of 20 counterinsurgents per 1,000 residents: for Aghanistan, population 33 million, that would be at least 660,000 specially trained soldiers. Also see NYT, Oct 11, 2009, AP “Afghan Outlook Bleak as Taliban Grabs Territory:” ”...a former top commander there, US. Gen Dan McNeill, said in an interview with NPR last summer that ‘well over 400,000 troops’ are needed to tame the country. He then called it ‘an absurd figure,’ because Afghanistan will never see that many troops... More troops would mean more forces driving over increasingly lethal roadside bombs.” The basic government text is The U.S. Army [&] Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Published by the University of Chicago Press in 2007, it has forewords by General David Petraeus and Lt. General James Amos and Lt. Colonel John Nagl.
[2] International Herald Tribune, October 5, 2009, Henry Kissinger, “Afganistan’s cruel options.”
[3] International Herald Tribune, September 16, 2009, Ansar Rahel & Jon Krakauer, “Save Afghanistan, look to its past.” [Rahel, a lawyer, advised King Muhammad Shah’s loya jirga committee.]
[4] Christian Science Monitor, August 20, 09, Thomas H. Johnson(research professor at the Naval Postgrad school in Monterey) and M. Chris Mason (a retired FSO who worked in Paktika province, is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington), “Democracy in Afghanistan is wishful thinking.”
[5] August 17, 2009.
[6] The Nation, Nov 17, 2008, Tariq Ali, “Operation Enduring Disaster” and International Herald Tribune, October 5, 2009, Henry Kissinger, “Afganistan’s cruel options.”
[7] United States Army Combined Arms Center, Leavenworth, Kansas, Handbook 09-27 April 2009. “Center for Army Lessons Learned.” Also see the Department of State, Counterinsurgency for U.S. Government Policy Makers: A work in Progress, October 2007, Department of State Publication # 11456.
[8] International Herald Tribune, Sept 17, 2009, Andrew Wilder [research director at Tufts Univ Center] “Squandering hearts and minds.”
[9] Russian ambassador Zamir N. Kabulov pointed out that during their occupation the Russians spent billions on education, building roads, dams and other infrastructure as well as education and programs designed uplift women, “to no avail.” See New York Times, October 20, 2008, John F. Burns, “An Old Afghanistan Hand Offers Lessons from the Past.”
——-
William R. Polk was the member of the Policy Planning Council responsible for North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia from 1961 to 1965 and then professor of history at the University of Chicago where he founded the Middle Eastern Studies Center. He was also president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. His most recent book is Understanding Iran: Everything You Need to Know, From Persia to the Islamic Republic, From Cyrus to Ahmadinejad (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, October 27, 2009).
End/ (Not Continued)The following was posted by Dor Konforty, Synereo CEO, to the Israeli Bitcoin group yesterday. It has been translated so that all may have access to this information and not fall to the ongoing manipulative attempts to replace Bitcoin with a tightly controlled, centralized currency.
— The Set-up
* It’s easy to mine Bitcoin in China – from chip production to cheap electricity – creating a huge concentration of mining power in its territory.
* This mining power slowly accumulated and concentrated into a few hands, partly due to government intervention. It’s hard to make money in China without the authorities noticing.
* These hands, we’ll call them “Jihan” as a code name also belonging to one of their leaders, decided that with so much mining power, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t have more significant control over the currency itself.
* They created a new currency, Bitcoin Cash, which purportedly deals with one of Bitcoin’s classic pain points – its inability to scale up and support the increasing throughput on the net.
* The way they tried to achieve this relies on a further concentration of mining power and network control – foregoing some of Bitcoin’s defining characteristics as a decentralized currency.
If anyone has any doubt about this move not being cold and cynical, remember this: Bitcoin Cash is not going to be as decentralized as Bitcoin, and its creators know this full well.
— The Propaganda
* After Cash was issued as a split from Bitcoin, Jihan and his friends waited until anyone who wanted to sell and get rid of the currency does so. The price collapsed, and most of the larger crypto community ignored the coin.
* The Chinese miners were instructed to continue mining the coin, even at great financial loss, to support a pretension of value and use, minimally sustaining its life. When the price troughed, those who were in the know about the plan accumulated it in large quantities.
* Our plotting friends waited for the Segwit X2 split. They knew there would be a lot of confusion, that Bitcoin’s mining power would be split between the two networks, and that the scaling and fee debate would be at the front.
* The split did not come, but the machine was already calibrated and ready. The scaling debate raged on, with those who do not understand the mechanisms enabling Bitcoin to work in a decentralized manner accepting Bitcoin Cash as a real alternative – all as part of the planned PR campaign. If “Bitcoin.com” says it’s true, it must be so!
— The Manipulation
* In recent days, since the news of Segwit X2’s demise, the price of Bitcoin was expected to decline. With the value of the S2X coin, previously factored into Bitcoin, priced between $1000-2500 in future contracts, evaporating, it was only a matter of time. To push this along, a timed sale of Bitcoin, from the huge stock available to the conspirators, struck the market in force.
* The people involved have tremendous financial power. Just as it was easy to push the price of Bitcoin down, such was it easy to pump the price of Cash up.
* Concurrently, massive Chinese mining power has switched to work on Cash; at present, hashrate is almost equal between the two networks. Meanwhile, the missing mining power for the Bitcoin network has made it much slower.
* The Bitcoin network is also undergoing a spam attack. Anyone trying to send Bitcoin is forced to wait long hours even using high fees; there’s now a queue of more than 100,000 transactions awaiting approval.
* Many Chinese exchanges are listing BCH, Bitcoin Cash, for trading against Altcoins as the base currency in an attempt to make it the new standard, as BTC has been to date in all exchanges.
* Anyone who sees and experiences the above, all the while seeing the enormous and rapid price change, gets struck with FOMO and hurries to buy Bitcoin Cash.
* The price increases, Jihan and his group of friends cash out making ridiculous profits after having spent many resources on this plan for the better part of 2017, and laugh in everyone’s faces.
A few hours ago, Bitcoin Cash’s mining difficulty increased fourfold; To still be profitable to mine, Cash will need to be priced at a minimum of 40% of Bitcoin. It will be interesting to see what the miners do at this point, with Bitcoin becoming more profitable to mine again. One possibility is that this will mark the end of the pump and everything returns to normal (although it is doubtful that Bitcoin price will continue increasing any time soon), but it is also possible that the strong reaction by the market and community may lead to a situation sustainable enough to lead the manipulators, who perhaps were initially only interested in a masterfully coordinated pump & dump, to try and take the reigns all the way and push their centralized Bitcoin onward. Someone did pay more than half a Bitcoin for a silly clone of it today, after all.
Bitcoin does not have a mechanism for quick mining difficulty adjustments, common today in most of Alts (and soon in Cash). If miners continue abandoning it, the network will be sluggish, or even paralyzed completely, for months ahead and until the next automated difficulty update. This is the nightmare scenario of this attack – a slow death to Bitcoin while a currency that looks like it to most, but is actually controlled by a handful of conspirators (or the Chinese government?.. ) takes the lead.
Our white-horse knights coming to the rescue may be Wallstreet traders, who’ve been looking for a way to enter Bitcoin and financially take control over the currency. They an infinite capacity to buy Bitcoin, and will be happy to take it from anyone lost to the propaganda. They’ll give a fight to the Chinese, and perhaps save the fate of the decentralized currency. And while it’s not clear which of these two forces is more of a bad-guy in our usual stories, at least the Americans will support the real coin.
However, as befits a decentralized currency based on the good will of a community spread worldwide, the real way to prevent this catastrophe is to spread the above information. It is your duty to ensure that everyone understands that this is ugly manipulation, a hijacking of one of the most beautiful things happening in the world in recent times, and to explain in all directions why Bitcoin Cash, is not, and will never be, a real substitute for Bitcoin.Two UK nationals have been arrested at Birmingham Airport after disembarking from a flight from Turkey under the Terrorism Act.
Scotland Yard has confirmed that officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command have arrested two men at Birmingham Airport on Thursday.
Both men, aged 29 and 40, are British citizens and were arrested Thursday morning after disembarking their flight from Istanbul, Turkey.
The 40-year-old was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism under section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
The 29-year-old was arrested on suspicion of belonging to a proscribed organisation, under section 11 of the Terrorism Act 2000, and was arrested under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.
The Met confirmed in a statement that the 40-year-old was taken to a London hospital for a medical assessment, where he currently remains.
The 29-year-old was taken to a London police station and remains in police custody.
More to follow…Image caption Politicians can make an impact on YouTube in different ways
He may not be a household name in British politics but Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan seems to stand head and shoulders above the Westminster village when it comes to users of YouTube.
Mr Hannan became something of a cult figure when he attacked the then prime minister Gordon Brown in a speech in the European Parliament in 2009, describing him as the "devalued head of a devalued government".
That speech, witnessed at the time by only a few hundred MEPs, has been viewed 2.84 million times so far on the video-sharing website.
To put that into context, research for the BBC News website suggests the three-minute address has been watched more often than the five most popular clips of any other UK politician combined.
'Damp rag'
Proceedings in Brussels and Strasbourg are sometimes derided by UK MPs but, for YouTube users |
I won’t argue about whether it’s a Professional lens, but it’s really good, really reliable, and quite expensive. It has a plastic mount despite online claims otherwise.
Panasonic-Leica 45mm. The 4 empty plastic holes are where the bayonet attaches. The 3 screws still in place attach this plastic piece to the next plastic piece in the lens barrel.
Sony 50mm f/1.8 NEX lens. Again, I’m not arguing Professional here, but this one is widely mentioned in the forums as ‘all-metal construction’. It has a metal shell, just like the Olympus 12-40mm, but the support pieces are plastic and the mount screws into plastic, just like the Olympus 12-40mm.
Sony 50mm f/1.8. The 4 hollow plastic posts are where the screws from the bayonet attach.
Canon 14mm f/2.8 Mk II L. I don’t think anyone argues this is a Professional Quality lens at a very professional cost. An ultra-reliable lens, but it certainly has a plastic mount. Not that we ever have to replace them. They never break here despite being far larger than the Olympus 12-40mm.
Canon 14mm f/2.8 II rear barrel showing hollow screw hole in polycarbonate inner barrel where the bayonet attaches.
Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L Mk I. A professional lens released in 2002. It weighs about 2 pounds; far larger than any two micro 4/3 lens combined. It is generally referred to as a tank because it never breaks (it has optical problems, but those occur at the front end, which is, oddly enough, entirely made of metal). The plastic mount never breaks despite holding up 2 pounds of lens. Trust me on that, we’ve carried hundreds and hundreds of these for years and never had a mount break. (As an aside, the Mk II version has a metal mount, despite being lighter. I’m not sure why.)
Canon 24-70 f/2.8 Mk I. That big beast is easily and reliably supported on it’s 4 polycarbonate screw mounts.
The Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 VC lens. I include this one just for completeness, because it’s another large lens and at least one online authority has stated it has a metal mount. Sorry, there’s no metal back there at all.
Lens mount with empty plastic holes that attach the bayonet, and screws remaining in holes attaching this to the next barrel piece.
Attention Fanboys: Just because your favorite lens isn’t shown here doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plastic mounts. Lenses of 70-200 f/2.8 size and up all have metal internal mounts (as best I can recall), but lenses smaller than that may be either metal or plastic. All Zeiss ZE and ZF SLR lenses have metal internal mounts (but not Zeiss-designed lenses for other brands). Nikons are more likely to have metal mounts than other brands, but they have a fair amount of plastic-mount lenses, too. Otherwise, the majority of lenses have internal plastic mounts.
Does it make any difference? I looked at the Lensrentals’ reliability data for the last several years (several thousand repairs), and there’s no higher failure rate with plastic mount lenses. They have, if anything, a bit lower failure rate, but it’s not a significant difference.
When a plastic mount does break, people tend to freak out a bit because the lens is so obviously broken. From a repair standpoint, though, we love them. It takes 15 minutes to replace a broken plastic mount and the lens is as good as new. Metal mount lenses don’t break like that. Instead internal components and lens elements get shifted and bent. It can take several hours to return one of those to optical alignment.
So What Does It Mean?
Absolutely nothing except that internet hysteria is alive and well. By my latest count, during the last two weeks 7,216 internet experts have claimed it is an absolute fact that plastic internal mounts are a new, cheap, poor quality substitute for internal metal mounts. The pictures above suggest otherwise.
The pictures show that for many years lots of very large, very high-quality, professional-grade lenses have had plastic internal mounts. Guess what? They didn’t all self destruct. In fact several of them are widely considered particularly rugged. Looking at 7 years worth of data involving around 20,000 lenses I can’t find any suggestion that plastic mount lenses, in general, fail more than metal mount lenses. Sure, there are certain lenses that fail more than others, but not because they have a plastic mount.
In theory, plastic mounts might be better, worse, or no different than metal as far as reliability goes. There are logical arguments for each.
Obviously a few Olympus 12-40mm lenses have broken at the mount. It may be there was a batch of badly molded mounts. It may be a design flaw. It may just be random chance – a few of everything break. But it’s not just because the mount is plastic.
I do like taking this opportunity to remind everyone that marketing catchwords like ‘Professional Grade’ mean very little. If they say it has 16 megapixels they’ve told you a fact. If they say ‘Professional Grade’ that’s a word with no clear definition. It probably means ‘built better than some of our cheap stuff’.
Speaking of Catchwords
As long as we’re on the subject of catchwords, it’s probably worth tackling ‘Weather Sealed’ or ‘Weather Resistant’ next. Many people seem to believe that means ‘waterproof’. When you take lenses apart all day you find out it usually means ‘we put a strip of foam rubber behind the front and rear elements and scotch tape over the access holes under the rubber rings’.
Strip of foamed rubber that sits behind the front element of a ‘weather sealed’ lens.
Tape over access holes in a weather sealed lens.
It’s better than no weather sealing, certainly. And some (but not all) ‘weather sealed’ lenses also have internal gaskets around barrel joints and other added bits seals. But I haven’t seen one manufacturer yet tell us exactly what weather their lens is sealed against. Snow? Rain? Sunshine? Wind? Well, it can’t be wind because the lenses we spend the most time taking dust out of are mostly ‘weather sealed’.
It’s very different with different manufacturers. You can assume whatever you like, but when you send your lens in for repair, ‘weather sealed’ still means ‘the warranty doesn’t cover water damage’.
The truth is, terms like Professional Grade and Weather Resistant are nearly as vague as ‘innovative technology’ and ‘stylish design’. I’m certain it’s only a matter of time before I see an online post that says, “I bought this camera because the manufacturer said it had stylish design, but it’s butt-ugly. I think we should start a class-action lawsuit for false advertising”.
Roger Cicala and Aaron Closz
Lensrentals.com
December, 2013Eighteen months ago, facing huge pressure to explain why it had given the next two World Cups to the least likely bidders, FIFA asked a former U.S. district attorney to investigate the process.
They released the results of his probe on Thursday. Well, sort of.
The investigator – Michael Garcia – prepared a more than 400-page report. FIFA refused to make that document public. Instead, they issued a 42-page summary prepared by their in-house counsel, Hans Joachim Eckert.
Story continues below advertisement
Before we get into that, let's speak plainly about what FIFA is – a money-laundering operation and a corporate succubus.
FIFA is not a business in the capitalistic sense. It produces nothing. Rather, it encourages other people to produce things – things they don't need and can't afford. In return, they pay FIFA for the privilege of being pillaged. It's a growth industry.
According to Eckert's summary, FIFA made $300-million (U.S.) from the 1998 World Cup. Last summer in Brazil, they made more than $4-billion.
All that's required to make this money is finding clients pliable enough to give you certain ridiculous accommodations – like tax-free bubbles around stadia, and exclusive marketing rights.
The host covers all the bills. Brazil forked over about $11-billion for improvements, including a $600-million stadium up in the middle of the jungle that hosted four games, and is rusting uselessly as we speak. The host also surrenders all opportunities to make money from the tournament.
FIFA – which has no real infrastructure beyond a very post-mod office in Zurich – gets it on both ends.
Very few sensible people are willing to go in for this sort of thing. The ones who still are – kleptocracies and proto-dictatorships – will pay just about anything for a chance to watch themselves in the world's mirror for five weeks.
Story continues below advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
You can see how this might be a fraught process. At this point, FIFA would like you to turn away.
The first problem with Eckert's summary – it's already been rejected by the man who's being summarized.
"Today's decision by the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber [Eckert] contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions detailed in the investigatory chamber's report," Michael Garcia said in a smouldering statement shortly after the summary was released.
This would be news if Eckert's conclusions were completely exculpatory. But in a comic twist only an organization as venal as FIFA could come up with, the attempted whitewash still tends to indict the winning bidders, Russia and Qatar.
Russia will host in 2018. There are widespread accusations that it bribed and colluded to vote rig with other nations.
Two things straight off. Garcia asked Russia for the computers it had used on the bid, and for its e-mail correspondence.
Story continues below advertisement
In the first instance, he was told that the computers had been destroyed. Not sold, or lost, or given away. They destroyed them. As you do.
As for the e-mails, Russia claims to have used a highly secure communications system we all know as Gmail. Gmail! Many of those e-mails have been lost. Russia asked Google to find them, but Google never called back. No, really.
The investigator asked another 2018 bidder, Japan, if they'd colluded with Russia. According to the report, multiple Japanese representatives admitted they had. Eckert then says, "However, no supporting evidence has been found."
(blinking)
Didn't they just admit it to you? Co-conspirator testimony is good enough to put guys on death row. But it's not good enough for FIFA?
The 2022 host, Qatar, is an even more delicious case. Early on, while explaining the bid process, Eckert notes that among nine total contenders, Qatar was the only one evaluated as a "high risk" bid. No one bothers to explain how they won it anyway.
Story continues below advertisement
The key figure in the bid is a disgraced Qatari FIFA executive named Mohamad bin Hammam. Bin Hammam is a vastly wealthy former head of the Qatari Football Assocation, and a former Qatari MP.
He was bribing people left and right – Caribbean FIFA officials, African officials. The report concludes that bin Hammam was buying them for his own run at FIFA president, rather than to win the world's most important sporting event for his native country. The rationale here is that all these small fry aren't on the FIFA executive committee, which casts votes for World Cup hosts. I suppose no one's heard of the idea of a cut-out, but whatever.
It also notes that bin Hammam gave $1.2-million to another disgraced executive, Jack Warner. Warner was on the executive committee.
That figurative brown envelope was delivered Dec. 15, 2010. Deflecting madly, Eckert waves it away. "According to the report, however, that misconduct does not appear related to the Dec. 2, 2010 FIFA World Cup vote."
A million bucks changing hands two weeks after the most unlikely PR coup in Qatar's history? Well, who could see anything strange in that?!
No wonder Garcia has blown a fuse.
Story continues below advertisement
If this is the scrubbed report, what in God's name does the real one look like? Are there photos of bid officials and FIFA execs sitting in hot tubs smoking thousand-dollar bills? Because I'm not sure how this can get any more damning.
Eckert has cleared the Russian and Qatari bids and closed the investigation. It's not yet clear if that was Garcia's intent, but it sure doesn't sound like it.
The most compelling portion of the summary may be its Orwellian conclusion. In essence – bad things happen; they can't be proved; C'est la guerre.
It says, in part, "To assume e.g. that envelopes full of cash are given in exchange for votes on a FIFA World Cup host is naïve."
No, it's even stupider than that. You wire-transfer the money, you 'lose' the e-mails, and when they ask you about it, you say, "What money?"
As an act of political cynicism, all we can say is 'Bravo'. It's almost comforting to know there are villains this cartoonish left in the world.Spatial Analysis
By Daniel McGlone on April 2nd, 2014
Our first opportunity to work with crash data was last summer during our 2013 Summer of Maps Fellowship. Tyler Dahlberg, our fellow working with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, analyzed bicycle crashes in Philadelphia from 2007-2012. The results of his analysis showed bicycle crashes clustering around some of the wider streets in the city — Market Street, Broad Street and Spring Garden to name a few. Any bicyclist in Philadelphia will tell you these are not their favorite places to ride a bike. Tyler also looked at aggressive-driving related bicycle crashes and found significant clustering in University City, specifically around the 38th street area.
This type of crash analysis had never really been done in Philadelphia, at least with the results available to the public. It generated the interest of some of the city’s civic-minded journalists, including blogger-extraordinaire Jon Geeting. Jon contacted Azavea with the idea to do this analysis on all crashes in Philadelphia — with a specific interest around aggressive driving and pedestrian-affected incidents. We typically think of crashes as “accidents”. Jon’s hypothesis, and one that receives large favor in the planning sphere, is that these crashes aren’t really accidents at all. They can be a direct consequence of how our streets are designed. Therefore, if planners can design our streets in a way that favors lower speeds (traffic calming as it’s referred to) and accommodates all kinds of travelers (bicyclists and pedestrians as well as cars), perhaps the crash rate can be reduced. I’ll leave that analysis up to Jon, and you can read some of it here, here and here.
In this blog I’ll share the workflow and tools used in the GIS part of this analysis. To understand where crashes are occurring, first the dataset had to be mapped. The software of choice in this instance was ArcGIS, though most of the analysis could have been done using QGIS. Heat maps are all the rage, and if you want to make simple heat maps for free and you appreciate good documentation, I recommend the QGIS Heatmap plugin. There are also some great tools in the free open-source program GeoDa for spatial statistics.
Getting the Data into ArcGIS
Our source was Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation (PennDOT). They maintain the crash data and sent it as a Microsoft Access 2007 database. I’m not sure how the data is stored internally, but at least with Access we can use SQL to query out just what we need. The database contains 12 tables, each with information about each crash related to a more specific topic. For example, there’s a PERSON table that contains information about all people involved in the crash such as their age, sex, drug and alcohol test results and even where they sat in the vehicle. Clearly there’s a ton of information we could look at and hopefully we’ll see some more analysis of this dataset in the future. For the purpose of this study, we’ll just need one table from the database, the CRASH table, which contains the most important information on the crash such as where, when and item counts (how many people, vehicles, pedestrians, bicycles, fatalities, etc.).
The “where” information on the crash is stored in the degrees, minutes, seconds coordinate format, which ArcGIS doesn’t understand. Therefore, it had to be converted to decimal degrees. There are actually quite a few ways to do this. Starting in ArcGIS 10.0, there’s the handy Convert Coordinate Notation tool, which accepts a wide variety of formats. It’s also possible to do this with a python script or VBscript in the Field Calculator. The PennDOT coordinate data doesn’t seem to be formatted the way ArcGIS’s Convert Coordinate Notation tool prefers, so I went the other way and used a python script. Another way to go about this would be to convert the coordinates to decimal degrees inside Access before exporting it into ArcGIS.
With the properly formatted coordinates, now the crashes can displayed on a map.
Click here for PDF version
That’s a lot of dots (53,260 to be exact). But it’s not a particularly useful map. A couple ways to make the data more useful would be to look at clusters of crashes, such as hot spots, and calculate crash rates on Philadelphia’s streets.
Hot Spot Analysis
With the data full of so many attributes describing the crash, I wanted to identify clusters of specific attributes. I used the ArcGIS Optimized Hot Spot Analysis tool which calculates a Getis-Ord Gi* statistic for each feature. This determines if there are any statistically significant areas of high or low values of that attribute. Basically, it’s identifying crashes that are surrounded by other crashes that have similar values of either high or low (say for crashes, aggressive or not aggressive). The settings here are really important. I used the SNAP_NEARBY_INCIDENTS_TO_CREATE_WEIGHTED_POINTS aggregation method since there were often multiple crashes at an intersection with slightly different geocoded coordinates. The resulting map shows us each feature and whether it is in a neighborhood of statistically significant clustering of high values and cold spots which are statistically significant clustering of low values. I ran the hot spot analysis on the aggressive driving attribute in the crash data. I didn’t include interstate roads in the analysis since I just wanted to look at where the hot and cold spots for aggressive driving were on city streets (a majority of the aggressive driving crashes overall were on interstate roads).
Click here for PDF version
Note on the map above the clusters of hot and cold spots for aggressive driving. The crashes that are not statistically significant are not displayed on the map. Aggressive driving crashes cluster along Roosevelt Boulevard, well-known for its dangerous conditions. Other hot spots appear along City Line Avenue along the western border of the city. There also seems to be quite a bit of hot spot clustering around interchanges along Interstate 676 and the Ben Franklin Bridge. Jon Geeting hypothesizes that this is the result of traffic coming off the interstate and not adjusting to the slower city streets. It’s also interesting to look at the cold spots, or where aggressive driving crashes show a significant level of dispersion. That can be seen in Chinatown, Center City West/Rittenhouse area, and the East Passyunk neighborhood — specifically right along the 9th street market. All three areas have high amounts of pedestrian activity, slower traffic speeds and lots of mixed-use. Could that be a deterrent to aggressive driving?
Click here for PDF version
The downside of course could be increased pedestrian crashes or deaths. However, this map of pedestrian crash hot and cold spots doesn’t necessarily indicate that. Center City appears as one giant hotspot. Since we don’t have any way to normalize the pedestrian data by the volume of pedestrians, it’s hard to say whether that’s just related to the higher amounts of pedestrians in Center City. Two of the neighborhoods that were cold spots for pedestrian crashes; Chinatown and Center City West, are part of the greater Center City area which is all a big hotspot for pedestrian crashes (though neither section seems particularly “hot” compared to the rest of Center City). The East Passyunk neighborhood doesn’t appear to have significant clustering either way. Perhaps this indicates that high pedestrian activity reduces aggressive driving but does not result in increased pedestrian crashes, at least in that area.
Click here for PDF version
There also doesn’t seem to be an unusually high number of pedestrian deaths in either of those neighborhoods, as you can see on the above map. It does appear that Roosevelt Boulevard in Northeast Philadelphia has a high amount of pedestrian deaths. This is especially true considering there’s much less pedestrian activity there than in Center City, due to the wide street and more suburban built environment of Northeast Philadelphia.
Calculating Crash Rates
One of the dangers of mapping without context is we may be accidentally making a map that simply serves as a proxy for population. A map of the total number of crash deaths per state is probably going to look similar to a map of the total number of people. But if we map the crash rate, we can see which states have a higher number of crashes based on the proportion of population. We can do the same thing by mapping the crash rate on each street.
So, how can we determine if crashes are simply happening because there are lots of cars? We know there will probably be more crashes on streets with more traffic, so we needed to normalize the number of the crashes by the traffic on the street. Unfortunately, I could only obtain reliable traffic count information on PennDOT maintained streets in Philadelphia. Therefore, crash rates were only calculated on those streets. First, the crashes had to be summarized by street segment which can be done with a Spatial Join and Summary Statistics. After running those tools, there are now a total number of crashes on each street segment.
A crash rate can be calculated using the following formula, which is often cited in literature and used by state DOTs:
R = (C × 1,000,000) ÷ (A × 365 × N × L)
Where R is the calculated crash rate, C is the number of crashes on the street segment, A is the Average Annual Daily Traffic volume on the street segment, 365 is the number of days in a year, N is the number of years in the study and L is the length of the roadway segment in miles.
What we end up with is a crash rate per one million miles driven on each street segment.
Click here for PDF version
Addition on April 8, 2014: One point about the crash rate calculations. They’re calculated on each segment and while the formula does take into account segment length, it seems as though very short segments tend to show very high rates. This only seems to be an issue on few street segments, but should be taken into consideration when looking at the map.
Shortcomings
One very important note about PennDOT’s crash data. Many have commented that a crash they were involved in (usually these are pedestrian or bicycle crashes) is not on the maps we’ve produced. Here’s one explanation for that: crash data maintained by PennDOT are only “reportable” crashes, defined in Title 75 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, Section 3746(a):
An incident that occurs on a highway or traffic way that is open to the public by right or custom and involved in at least one motor vehicle in transport. An incident is reportable if it involves:
Injury to or death of any person, or
Damage to any vehicle to the extent that it cannot be driven under it’s own power in it’s customary manner without further damage or hazard to the vehicle, other traffic elements, or the roadway, and therefore requires towing.
Since most bicycle and pedestrian crashes don’t do significant damage to a vehicle, it’s easy to see how many of them simply wouldn’t be reported by PennDOT. So, the problem of bicycle and pedestrian crashes could actually be a lot worse than what is actually shown. I’m hopeful that we’ll see more data released, perhaps by jurisdictional police departments, which may shed more light on this. It would also be great to combine this with some sort of crowdsourced pedestrian and bicycle crash map where users could report those minor crashes that don’t necessitate a police report. That could be a great way to further identify the most dangerous streets and intersections for bicyclists and pedestrians.Honda’s FWD ‘Ring King, the new 2018 Civic Type R, has been detailed in a generous new image gallery, as it’s getting ready to hit the assembly lines, in Swindon, UK, this summer.
From their manufacturing facility in Europe’s largest right-hand drive market, the automaker will export it across the continent, and to other markets across the world, including Japan and, for the first time ever, North America.
At its heart, it carries a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine that makes 320PS (315hp) and 400Nm (295lb-ft) of torque, married exclusively to a six-speed stick shift. In this configuration, the 2018 Civic Type R needs 5.7 sec to go from rest to 100km/h (62mph), before topping out at 272km/h (169mph). Average fuel consumption is estimated at 7.7 l/100 km (31 US mpg / 37 UK mpg), and the hot hatch emits 176 g/km of CO2.
Larger than its predecessor, the brand’s compact hot hatch features a sporty body kit that makes it instantly noticeable, compared to the regular Civics, and it also features an assortment of driver assistance systems such as blind spot monitoring, cross traffic monitor, and the brand’s suite of active safety technologies.
In the United Kingdom, buyers will have to pay at least £30,995 ($43,878) for the most affordable Civic Type R, while on this side of the pond, the Civic Type R is expected to cost upwards of $33,900.
PHOTO GALLERY
VIDEOSArt by Victor Mosquera
Reading Naomi Kritzer’s “Cat Pictures Please” which just won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, I was reminded of both John Varley’s 1984 “Press Enter” and Isaac Asimov’s 1956 “The Last Question”, as well as its direct call out to Bruce Sterling’s 1998 “Maneki Neko”. The narrator of “Cat Pictures Please” is consciously aware of its predecessors and engaging directly with them. That’s not to say it isn’t saying anything original. It could have been written at no other time and place and by no other person: it’s an original story by a terrific writer. But it’s adding another voice to an existing dialog, laying another story on the tower of work that precedes it, and in a way that shows how aware Kritzer is of all that preceding work. We’ve had a lot of stories about secretly emergent AI, all written with the technology and expectations of their times. This is one written now, with our technology, a new angle, a wider perspective, and a definite consciousness of what it’s adding to.
There’s a tremendous continuity within science fiction, where the genre constantly feeds on itself, reinvents itself, and revisits old issues in new ways as times and tech change. It’s fascinating to consider how today’s new stories are all things that could never have been written at any earlier time and simultaneously deeply influenced by everything that has come before. The old work of the genre is the mulch out of which the new work grows. A great deal of science fiction is about the future—a future fleshed out in the present, and built on the bones of the past. Every present moment has a different imagination of the way the future might play out, and that gives us constant novelty. But because many of the issues and tropes of science fiction remain relevant, there is also a constant process of reexamination, a replacement of old answers with new answers to the same questions.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s intriguing 2015 Aurora (nominated for this year’s Campbell Memorial award and Locus SF Award) is a book that turns many of the conventions of SF upside down, but yet is also deeply engaged with SF—it’s a voice in the conversation about generation ships that began with Heinlein’s 1941 Orphans of the Sky, and continued through Brian Aldiss’s 1962 Hothouse, Molly Gloss’s 1998 Dazzle of Day and Le Guin’s 2002 Paradises Lost. But it has just as much to say in the conversation about artificial consciousness and what it is to be a person that runs through so much of our genre, from Asimov’s robots to Heinlein’s 1967 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Amy Thomson’s 1993 Virtual Girl and Susan Palwick’s 2007 Shelter, and indeed Kritzer’s “Cat Pictures Please”. One of the most interesting things about Aurora is the way it questions many of the axioms of science fiction—it made me realize and articulate some of my unconscious expectations of what SF is. But it is connecting even there with earlier works that do the same thing, like John Brunner’s 1972 The Sheep Look Up and Thomas Disch’s 1965 The Genocides. In reexamining the assumption that Earth is a cradle we want to grow up and leave for space, Robinson may be anti-space and even anti-technology, but even in opposition, he couldn’t have written the book without it’s predecessors. It’s also possible to see Aurora as what has been called “mundane SF” by Geoff Ryman, and it’s interesting to read it with George R.R. Martin’s story “FTA”.
Neal Stephenson’s 2015 Seveneves, which was Hugo, Campbell Memorial and Locus nominated, and won the Prometheus Award, is also interestingly embedded in this kind of constructive conversation. You can see the influence of David Brin’s 1990 Earth and Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s 1977 Lucifer’s Hammer and most especially Greg Bear’s 1987 Forge of God. There’s a solid continuity running like an evolutionary line of descent between all these books, where Seveneves is a new addition to an existing tradition, a new ring on the tree. It’s doing new things with the same kind of disaster scenario. And while it is in many ways the inverse of Robinson’s anti-space message, with its gung ho view of space as humanity’s only hope of survival, the two books seen together create a very interesting view of what the field is doing.
Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem (2007, 2014 in English, the first volume won the Hugo and was Nebula nominated in 2015) is clearly deeply influenced by a great deal of golden age Campbellian SF and especially by the work of Arthur C. Clarke—and it’s an especially interesting example because it was written in Chinese by an author who had read anglophone science fiction in translation and been influenced by it, as well as by the culture and history and narrative expectations of China. Two traditions come together to create the Three Body trilogy, and reading it made me feel very hopeful that the world may be full of books like this, which will soon be translated and influence anglophone SF in their turn. Similarly, I’ve recently been reading Yoshiki Tanaka’s Legend of the Galactic Heroes, (1981, 2016 in English) which is uniquely itself and very Japanese but also solidly in the tradition of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy (1951-3) and E.E. Doc Smith’s Lensmen books.
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy (2013-2015, the first volume won both the Hugo and Nebula in 2014) are again very much books that could only have been written now. Nevertheless they engage with questions posed by Cherryh and Delany and Heinlein. James S.A. Corey’s Expanse books (2012-2016, first one Hugo nominated in 2012, also now a TV series) are in dialog with Niven and Cherryh and other earlier writers—look, asteroid miners, but zipping around in today’s solar system as revealed by our exploration robots.
You can even look at a novel as exciting and inventive as Ada Palmer’s 2016 Too Like the Lightning, a book that’s about as original as it’s possible for anything to be, but still central to the plot and the worldbuilding are that golden age staple of the field, flying cars. Too Like the Lightning is productively in dialog with many many things, both in and outside of genre, it’s set in a future that extrapolates from today’s technology and social trends, and yet, it couldn’t possibly exist as it is without Bester’s 1956 The Stars My Destination, and Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun (1980-83). (It also contains a shoutout to Heinlein’s 1958 Have Space Suit, Will Travel.) It’s using some of the tropes of golden age SF for its own purposes, to examine a very interestingly different set of questions about the universe. It’s deeply rooted in the mulch that is the field, and sending out its own shoots that will in turn provoke other responses, other reimaginations.
So it’s good news right now for anyone who likes the traditional science fiction. The work is being written and published and getting award recognition. It’s being written in new ways by a wide range of people who bring their own perspectives to the genre, and that’s excellent—nobody wants to stagnate or get caught up circling in endless repetitive doldrums. Today’s science fiction is exciting, innovative, and thought-provoking just the way it always has been, and it’s also and building on what has come before, just as it always has.
Top image: cover of Too Like the Lightning; art by Victor Mosquera.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published a collection of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections and thirteen novels, including the Hugo and Nebula winning Among Others. Her most recent book is Necessity. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here from time to time. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.Nestled among the exhibition reviews and auction reports in contemporary-art journalism last week were scattered items about the Roski School of Art and Design, at the University of Southern California. On Friday, the first-year students in the school’s M.F.A. program announced that they were all dropping out. “All,”_ _in this case, meant seven students: a small number, but, given the difficulty of getting students or artists to do anything together, the action was a feat of organization and solidarity. It was also a brave gesture—not heroic, maybe, but one made at a personal cost and resonant with the larger situation in art right now. The M.F.A. is not only a prerequisite for teaching art but a marker of professional seriousness in the art world: if you want to get your work into the Whitney Biennial, so the conventional wisdom goes, you’re going to need a degree. Abandoning one on principle is no small thing.
In their open letter, posted to an art-education Web site, the U.S.C. Seven (as they were christened on Twitter) detailed the timeline that led to their decision to withdraw from school. Last December, their program director, A. L. Steiner, stepped down, and no replacement was appointed. Frances Stark, another senior faculty member, left shortly thereafter. In January, according to the students, meetings with the school’s new administration (Roski appointed a new dean, Erica Muhl, in 2013) suggested that funding promises made to them during recruitment would not be honored. They would now be competing for the second-year teaching fellowships that they had understood to be guaranteed, and faced a potential doubling of their student debt. Reports of curricular changes in the offing led the students to suspect that Roski’s administration did not intend to retain, in recognizable form, the program that they had enrolled in.
“We quickly came to understand that the M.F.A. program we believed we would be attending was being pulled out from under our feet,” they wrote; prolonged negotiations with the administration had left them feeling “betrayed, exhausted, disrespected, and cheated.” Stark, the Los Angeles artist who left the faculty in December, echoed their sentiments. “The issues that led to this walkout, the lack of transparency or ethical behavior on the part of the U.S.C. Roski School’s upper administration, are precisely the ones that caused me to resign several months ago,” she told me. “I would also say that they are the big-picture elements here. The students felt lied to and mistreated by Roski leadership, and chose to distance themselves from that behavior.” (Muhl issued a statement countering the students' claims, which noted that the Roski M.F.A. program “remains one of the most generously funded programs in the country” and that the school intended to honor “all the terms in the students' offer letters.”)
The U.S.C. Seven’s decision to drop out is a vote of no confidence in the administration of one particular school—which, until the recent overhauls, had been among the most well-regarded graduate art programs in the United States. But is it also a rejection of what art school has become? The M.F.A. is recognized as the terminal degree for artists wishing to teach on the college level. However, as the art historian Howard Singerman has argued, more people now go to M.F.A. programs to learn to be artists than to learn to teach: getting the degree is a way to acquire the conceptual and social skills needed to navigate the professional art world. So, as tuition costs continue to rise and M.F.A.-bearers are produced in higher numbers each year, further outstripping the capacity of either the academic job market or the art market to absorb them, many teachers and students have voiced concerns about the future of the whole arrangement. (Full disclosure: I am a critic in the M.F.A. painting program at the Rhode Island School of Design.) For the U.S.C. Seven, the loss of two revered faculty members and an alleged higher debt load led them to opt out of the system.
The situation at U.S.C. is a small scene in a much larger drama, one concerning the place of art in the new, more corporate university order. Traditionally, art education has been a little too vocational to fit in with the rest of the humanities. But lately it seems that art education isn’t vocational enough. Or, at least, it’s out of step with the pedagogical model to which universities are turning in an effort to make their arts offerings both more alluring and more lucrative. Last fall, the Roski School of Art and Design inaugurated the U.S.C. Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy for Arts, Technology and the Business of Innovation |
drew for a second consecutive match last time out, a 2-2 tie at the LA Galaxy.
DOWNLOAD FULL GAME GUIDE
REFEREE: Ricardo Salazar. SAR (bench): Claudio Badea; JAR (opposite): Peter Manikowski; 4th: Jose Carlos Rivero
MLS Career: 132 games; FC/gm: 26.9; Y/gm: 3.5; R: 40; pens: 50
INJURY REPORT: NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION — OUT: MF Benny Feilhaber (R ankle sprain); MF Marko Perovic (L knee sprain)... TORONTO FC — OUT: MF Elbekay Bouchiba (R knee surgery recovery); DF Adrian Cann (R knee sprain); DF Nana Attakora (R quadriceps strain); QUESTIONABLE: FW Alan Gordon (adductor strain); MF Gianluca Zavarise (adductor strain); MF Jacob Peterson (L hamstring strain); MF Matt Stinson (R calf strain); MF Alen Stevanovic (adductor tightness)
INTERNATIONAL ABSENCES: TOR: Julian De Guzman (Canada); Dicoy Williams (Jamaica)
SUSPENDED: none
WARNINGS:
SUSPENDED NEXT YELLOW CARD: NE: Stephen McCarthy
SUSPENDED AFTER TWO YELLOW CARDS: NE: Shalrie Joseph... TOR: Richard Eckersley, Dan Gargan, Javier Martina, Tony Tchani
HEAD-TO-HEAD
ALL-TIME (9 meetings): Revolution 4 wins, 18 goals... Toronto FC 2 wins, 10 goals... Ties 3
AT NEW ENGLAND (5 meetings): Revolution 4 wins, 14 goals... Toronto FC 0 wins, 3 goals... Ties 1
RETURN MATCH: 10/22: Toronto FC vs. New England Revolution, 12:30 p.m. ET (TSN)
LAST YEAR (MLS)
4/10: NE 4, TOR 1 (Schilawski 47, 51, 58; Nyassi 66 — De Rosario 28)
5/22: TOR 1, NE 0 (Barrett 53)
• The Revolution have never lost to Toronto FC at Gillette Stadium. In five meetings all-time, the Revs have won four, including a 4-1 win last year, with one draw.
• Toronto FC has won the last games at BMO Field vs. New England, after the first two meetings there finished in draws.
• Coaches record: Steve Nicol v TOR: P9 W4 L2 D3... Aron Winter vs. NE: first game
NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION
The New England Revolution lost their fourth consecutive match, falling 2-1 to the New York Red Bulls on Friday evening at Red Bull Arena. The Revolution have 13 points from 14 matches, in eighth place in the Eastern Conference.
LAST MATCH
• The Revolution had a glorious chance to open the scoring in the 33rd minute when defender Stephen Keel got tangled with Lekic in the penalty area. But goalkeeper Greg Sutton saved Shalrie Joseph's attempt from the spot at full stretch.
• It proved costly for the visitors, as just four minutes later, Ryan Cochrane mistakenly knocked the ball into his own net in trying to clear Thierry Henry's centering pass from the right.
• New York scored the eventual winner in the 50th minute. Henry controlled a pass on the left flank and drove into the penalty area before cutting the ball back and firing a shot past Revs goalkeeper Matt Reis.
• The Revs pulled a goal back four minutes later when Chris Tierney served a quality cross from the left that fell perfectly onto the foot of Zak Boggs, who one-timed a shot past a diving Sutton.
• Revolution head coach Steve Nicol made one change to the team that lost 1-0 to FC Dallas at Pizza Hut Park. Pat Phelan came into the midfield for Stephen McCarthy.
• NEW ENGLAND REVOLUTION (4-2-3-1): Matt Reis - Kevin Alston, A.J. Soares, Ryan Cochrane, Didier Domi - Ousmane Dabo (Stephen McCarthy 20), Pat Phelan (Kenny Mansally 56) - Zak Boggs (Sainey Nyassi 85), Shalrie Joseph, Chris Tierney - Rajko Lekic
TEAM NEWS
• Sharlie Joseph missed from the penalty spot for the first time since the 2008 season. He had converted his last four from the spot, including two previous attempts this season.
• "When things are not going for you, that's what happens," Revs coach Steve Nicol said. "We had enough chances to win two games on the night, never mind one game. We gave a couple of chances up but, at the same time, we kind of feel robbed."
• Zak Boggs' goal was the first for the Revolution's from open play in 601 minutes (since April 23). New England's last two goals (over a six-game span) came from a free kick and a penalty kick.
• Boggs' goal also snapped a 168-minute scoreless streak overall, with New England's last goal coming in the 86th minute at San Jose on May 21 from Chris Tierney's free kick.
• "We have a two game homestand against two teams that are struggling in Toronto and Chicago," said midfielder Pat Phelan. "I think we feel like we did some good things (against New York). They're a good side, it's a tough place to play. We could have gotten more out of the game, we should have gotten more out of the game."
• Making his second consecutive start after injuries limited him to one appearances in the first 12 league games of the season, Ousmane Dabo had to leave in the 26th minute due to an apparent leg injury. Stephen McCarthy came on for the French international and was slotted into the central midfield.
• For the final half-hour, the Revolution went to a 4-4-2 scheme when Kenny Mansally entered for central midfielder Pat Phelan and partnered Rajko Lekic in attack.
• "When Kenny (Mansally) came on that was a game changer, and us playing with two forwards at end I think we looked pretty dangerous," midfielder Chris Tierney said. "We had some good hold up play and got some balls wide and created chances."
TORONTO FC
Toronto FC reached a draw for a second consecutive match, this time in dramatic fashion in a 2-2 tie with the LA Galaxy on Saturday evening at The Home Depot Center. TFC has 14 points from 15 games on the season, sitting in a tie for sixth place in the Eastern Conference.
LAST MATCH
• The Galaxy opened the scoring after just two minutes. Freed all alone in the TFC half, Miguel LÛpez slipped a pass to the right side of the box, where an unmarked Chris Birchall raced in fire it home off TFC goalkeeper Stefan Frei.
• But Toronto FC pulled even in the 68th minute. Danleigh Borman placed a perfect cross to the front of the goal from the left and Alan Gordon smashed a header past Josh Saunders.
• As the game turned into stoppage time, from a scramble in the area, a blocked shot deflected up into the air and Juan Pablo Angel stepped into a full-blooded drive from the heart of the box that got through the bodies in the box and into the goal.
• Yet TFC wasn't done. A long ball into the box was headed by Galaxy defender A.J. DeLaGarza -- but fell right to Gordon, and he hit a first-time volley into the upper right corner of the goal to salvage a point for the Canadians.
• TFC head coach Aron Winter made three changes to the team that played to a scoreless draw with Sporting Kansas City at BMO Field. Doneil Henry came into the back four for Nana Attakora, and Jacob Peterson and Nick Soolsma replaced Javier Martina and Joao Plata.
• TORONTO FC (4-1-2-3): Stefan Frei - Richard Eckersley, Ty Harden, Doneil Henry, Danleigh Borman - Nathan Sturgis - Jacob Peterson (Alan Gordon 44), Tony Tchani (Joao Plata 34) - Nick Soolsma (Javier Martina 93+), Maicon Santos, Mikael Yourassowsky.
TEAM NEWS
• While coming back for the stirring draw with the LA Galaxy, TFC is winless in its last six games.
• "At halftime we got together and we needed to come out with some pride, some heart and some fight. It's something that we haven't been doing a lot of lately and we really did it today," Gordon said. "In the second half we played 45 good minutes we now have to now build on that and put together 90 minutes, get some points and move up the table."
• It was the third two-goal game of Gordon's MLS career. His last one came in 2008 against the team to which he would be traded — while playing for the LA Galaxy against Chivas USA.
• When Gordon was traded across The Home Depot Center, he scored for Chivas against the Galaxy in his first SuperCl·sico.
• "It felt good," Gordon said. "I was just telling somebody I think I have 75% of my goals against former teams."
• Doneil Henry, the first graduate of TFC's Academy, made his first career MLS start, coming in at center back for the injured Nana Attakora.
• Big compliments for everybody, also for Doneil Henry, because he defended very well," Winter said. "And, second, for Alan Gordon, because he was away for a while, because he was injured, and today it shows that if he's fit he's a very good striker."
• Winter was forced into two changes before halftime. The first came when Tony Tchani struggled after he was caught in a tackle that earned David Beckham a yellow card in the 29th minute, and came off for Joao Plata five minutes later.
• Jacob Peterson later pulled up after making a run down the wing and Gordon came on for his first appearance since April 30, missing six games with an adductor strain.Army Major Erik Burris, who had been responsible for supervising sexual assault cases by soldiers, was himself convicted Sunday of crimes including rape and forcible sodomy.
Burris was found guilty of two counts of rape, forcible sodomy, four counts of assault, and disobeying an order from a superior officer. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, forfeiture of pay and allowances and dismissal from the Army. Little information was provided by the Army about the case, except that Burris had multiple victims.
Burris, 39, at one time served as the chief of military justice for the 82nd Airborne Division, putting him in charge of other prosecutors handling cases within the division.
Burris was found not guilty on four additional charges of assault, two other alleged rapes, two accusations of forcible sodomy, and two threats made against individuals.
Burris’ conviction means that a soldier found guilty of murder could go free. Clint Lorance, found guilty in the deaths of two Afghan men while deployed in 2012, is appealing his conviction. Part of the grounds for Lorance’s appeal are that Burris was distracted during the prosecution and might have made legal errors.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, Steve Straehley
To Learn More:
Former 82nd Chief of Justice Convicted of Rape, Assault (by Michelle Tan, Army Times)
Ex-Army Prosecutor Found Guilty of Rape at Court-Martial (by Michael Biesecker, Associated Press)
Army General Tried for Rape (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)Improved Pattern Matching in Kotlin
Kotlin doesn’t have true pattern matching, and that’s fine. In order to make matchable classes in Scala, there is an awful lot of overhead required to make it work, and I highly respect Kotlin’s goal of not adding much overhead anywhere. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to make our own way to get something closer to pattern matching.
Using when
Kotlin’s when block is incredibly handy; It has several ways that it can work. The first way is simple equality check:
when (x) { 1 -> print("x == 1") 2 -> print("x == 2") else -> print("x is neither 1 nor 2") }
And cases can be combined using a comma:
when (x) { 0, 1 -> print("x == 0 or x == 1") else -> print("otherwise") }
It can also do is and in checks:
when(x) { in 1..10 -> print("in range") is String -> print("I guess it's not even a number") }
And with the last one, you can see that you can combine any of the previous into one when block. You also don’t need else if you’re using when as a statement instead of an expression. You also don’t need else if the expression version has all possibilities listed (as far as the compiler can tell).
You can also use when without a value on top, so that it simply works like a set of if-else if blocks:
when { a == b -> doSomething() b == c -> doSomethingElse() else -> doThatOtherThing() }
With all these possibilities, do you know which version we’re going to use to build our pattern matching system? Surprisingly, it’s the simplest one with equality checks.
Now, I realize that you can do sealed classes as a sort of union type and is with when to match on those, but that’s has a limited set of use-cases. With the following system, I believe you can cover all use cases.
So How Do We Do It?
First, we realize that equality checks use equals() and that equals() is something we can override. So, we make some sort of Pattern type to use in the when block, and equals() checks if the object is Pattern and proceeds to use the Pattern to calculate “equality”.
Here’s a glimpse at how it loosely looks:
interface Pattern<in Subject> { fun match(subject: Subject): Boolean } class MySubject { … fun equals(other: Any): Boolean { if(other is Pattern<*>) return other.match(this) else … } } class SomePattern { override fun match(subject: Any): Boolean { … } }
And it would be used as follows:
val x = MySubject() … when(x) { SomePattern() -> doSomething() SomeOtherPattern() -> doSomethingElse() } So, you probably get the idea now.
Tweaks
There’s quite a few things that can be done to alter this idea to make it more palatable in different situations.
Shortcutting
First, you can try to make the patterns a little more accessible by shortcutting them on the subject class. If a pattern is parameterized – for example, a List could have a parameterized pattern that checks for a certain length, IsLength which would need to take in a parameter for the length – you can put a shortcut function on the companion object instead of directly calling the class’ constructor. If it’s not parameterized, you can cache an instance of the pattern as a value on the companion object of the subject class.
Lambda Pattern
The Pattern interface only has one method. You know what that means? It’s a functional interface (in Java 8 terms). That means, in Kotlin, Pattern doesn’t even need to exist. Instead of equals() checking if the object is a Pattern, have it check if it’s a Function1<SubjectType, Boolean>. You can obviously still shortcut some built-in patterns, but now you can even put in some on-the-fly lambdas into your when block:
when(x) { {it: Subject -> it.isTheCoolest} -> doSomething() }
This is sadly not all that useful, since type inference won’t be able to determine the type for the input parameter. You need to. At that point, you might as well use the unparameterized when block:
when { x.isTheCoolest -> doSomething() }
That doesn’t mean using lambdas for the pattern is a bad thing. You can still use method references, which makes quick and simple on-the-fly patterns possible (even for properties):
when(x) { Subject::isTheCoolest -> doSomething() }
That’s certainly better than the fully qualified lambda. More complex lambdas can be defined as functions or in values instead:
fun moreComplexCheck(subject: Subject): Boolean { … } val moreComplexCheck2 = {subject: Subject -> …} when(x) { ::moreComplexCheck -> doSomething() moreComplexCheck2 -> doSomethingElse() }
Outro
So, there you have it! Better pattern matching in Kotlin! What do you think? I realize it’s a misuse of equals(), but I think it’s worth it in some cases.Mechanaflux Series Purpose & Synopsis
Mechanaflux is an all-age fantasy comic book series written by me, Shawn Padraic Murphy, and drawn by Ava Berman. This Kickstarter's purpose is to get enough money to pay the artist fees for Issue #4. This issue will come out on Comixology and webcomic form (I will submit the series to publishers upon completion). If I earn enough money through this Kickstarter beyond the main fee, I will be able to print copies for comic book conventions.
Three earth kids fall into the world of Flux, where they meet a sword-fighting princess, the last sorceress, and a near-sighted dragon. Together, they must defeat an evil mechanical being before the entire world is turned into metal.
Issue #4 Synopsis
Issue #4 sees the siblings Cory and Maria (who were separated at birth to grow up in two different realms [Earth & Flux]) become increasingly hostile of each other. Will they be able to work together to save the world?
The sorceress, Darius, has lost her powers, and seeks to regain them, but at what cost? And to do so, she must learn to communicate with the very unusual spirit of her planet and convince it to break the rules.
Mechanalfux #4 is the 4th issue out of a 6 issue mini-series. Once the series is finished, the entire series will be available as a webcomic (on http://www.RealmsOfFlux.com) while also being pitched to other comic book companies to carry.
Characters
Mechanaflux Characters (Jackson, Arad, Cory, Darius, & Maria)
Maria - The princess of Aria, she finds out she's adopted, has a long lost brother, and must save the world. However, she only learns how to save the world in this issue, but needs Cory's aid for it to work. However, she finds that her and Cory might not be on the same page to be able to do so.
Cory - A young boy of Flux who grew up on Earth, he who finds himself needed to activate the amulet capable of saving the world of Flux. He discovers he has a sister, and just when they start to bond, finds himself angry at her attempts to call out a terrible deed he almost performed.
Darius - The last sorceress (yeah, that character sheet is before we turned him into a woman for the series). She just lost her powers, and has the duel risk of trying to communicate to an entire planet and trying to get two teenagers to save the world without fighting.
Arad - The positive and upbeat Arad keeps everyone in high spirits amidst all the danger, but he has yet to feel he has contributed anything to the adventure, and wonders if he even has a purpose in Cory and Maria's quest.
Jackson - Jackson is the eldest of the three earth children, and though he looks like the most carefree of the bunch, he is actually very protective of his friend (perhaps too much).
Gaudra
Gaudra - The evil mecha who conquered Flux and who exists only to destroy. It is still unknown why Gaudra went crazy, and as the comic moves ahead, you will see what caused Gaudra to hate all humans.
Chimera Attacks (And Apologizes)
Chimera - The son of Gaudra created to be like Gaudra, but then was rejected because he was too similar to Gaudra. Chimera is forced into Gaudra's service and abused constantly. He dreams of escape and revenge, but now has a chance to live for something other than vengence when he is reborn from his supposed death last issue.
Redwing In Battle
Redwing - The dragon from another realm who bonded with Darius when she was a child. Redwing and Darius are the only reasons Gaudra has yet to conquer Flux.
How The Funds Are Used
All of the funds raised are for the artist fees. However, the total Kickstarter project amount ($750.00) is half of what I need. I am trying to build an audience and fanbase and don't know if it's feasible to attempt such a high amount yet.
None of this amount will be used for a printed run. I cannot afford a printed run unless I make more funds on this Kickstarter than anticipated. So, only backers will get a printed copy of Issue #4.
Future Projects
I wish to later do a Kickstarter for Issue 5 with 3/4 of the artist fees, and all 100% for Issue 6, should this Kickstarter succeed. But first, I must make sure this Kickstarter succeeds.
The Rewards
See the side for all the comic and art rewards. You can get Digital Copies of just Issue 1 (digital and physical), just Issue 4 (digital and physical), or sets of Issues 1 - 4 (digital and physical). Plus, all who donate $15.00 or more get an exclusive 5x7 Redwing art print.
Redwing - By Shamearts
Stretch Goal #1 - $1,000.00
If I am able to get to the first stretch goal of $1,000.00, anyone who donates $15.00 or more will instantly get a 2nd 5x7 art card! This art print will only be revealed if the goal is reached.
Darius - By Shamearts
Stretch Goal #2 - $1,250.00
If the 2nd stretch goal of $1,250.00 is reached, anyone who donates $40.00 or more will get a beautifully detailed, exclusive 11 x 14 art print of Darius. This print will also be available separately as an add-on reward. I have a brief preview of the sketch of this print below.
Darius Print - By Ava Berman
That's Mechanaflux #4: The Kickstarter. Below is the first page (inside credits).Jurors in the trial of an illegal immigrant charged with the 2015 murder of a 32-year-old San Francisco woman were told to ignore both immigration and gun control. The suspect had been deported from the US five times, but kept returning to the “sanctuary city.”
Opening statements in the trial of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate began Monday at the Superior Court of California in San Francisco. Zarate, 54, is accused of killing Katherine “Kate” Steinle as she sat with her father on San Francisco’s Pier 14 in July 2015.
Zarate, who has also gone by the names Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez and Juan Jose Dominguez de la Parr, had been deported from the United States five times. He also had several prior criminal convictions, including four felonies for possession of heroin and manufacturing narcotics.
He was released from a San Francisco jail for re-entering the US illegally only two and a half months before the shooting. After his release, Zarate was not deported because San Francisco refuses to turn over illegal immigrants to federal authorities, under the so-called “sanctuary” policies. Zarate said that he returned to the US seeking employment, and came to San Francisco because of the protections the city offers to illegal immigrants.
Read more
The case became a flashpoint in the debate about illegal immigration and “sanctuary cities,” an issue emphasized by President Donald Trump during his 2016 election campaign.
However, during jury selection, Judge Samuel Feng told prospective jurors that their political views should not enter into their deliberations. The jury has also been barred from bringing up the politics of immigration and gun control during the proceedings.
The jury, which induces three immigrants, has been instructed to consider only one question in the case: whether Zarate shot Steinle intentionally, or was it an accident?
Zarate has pleaded not guilty to the charges, claiming that the shooting was not intentional. His attorney, Matt Gonzalez, called the shooting a “freak accident,” claiming his client was 90 feet away and the bullet bounced off the pavement before hitting Steinle.
After the shooting, Zarate had told reporters he had found the gun wrapped in a T-shirt near the beach. When he picked it up, the gun accidentally fired three times, Zarate said in an interview with KGO-TV. He then threw the gun into the San Francisco Bay and walked off, not knowing he had shot anyone until he was arrested hours later.
However, Zarate also said that he had taken sleeping pills before the shooting, and that his memory of the events is not clear.
The handgun was issued to a Bureau of Land Management ranger who had reported it stolen from his parked car in San Francisco a week before the shooting occurred. Gonzalez contends that the.40-caliber SIG Sauer P226 was left in hair-trigger mode and had no safety device.
Prosecutors contend that the gun was in a position that would have required a conscious, deliberate action in order to pull the trigger. They also contend that Zarate pointed the gun at people on the pier.
"This was an act of random violence," Assistant DA Diana Garcia said in 2015, according to CNN. "And the defendant claimed to have found this gun shortly before just firing it at somebody at close range, shooting an innocent victim in the back."
The San Francisco district attorney’s office has charged Zarate with second-degree murder, which could carry a maximum sentence of 15 years to life. His trial is expected to take between six and eight weeks.
Trump border wall prototypes go up in California (VIDEO) https://t.co/tcw84mfWoppic.twitter.com/qFXO6IPBRM — RT America (@RT_America) October 20, 2017
In June, Republicans introduced Kate’s Law, a bill that would impose mandatory minimum sentences on illegal immigrants who returned to the United States after previously being deported. The was adopted in the House of Representatives. Trump has called on lawmakers in the Senate to send the bill to his desk for signature.Lindsay Sutton and her wife Laurie missed the boat on buying a home. Both working professionals, they are raising their two young children in a rented one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver's West End. The cost of housing is so out of reach, they say, it's disheartening.
"The idea that we could be forced out overnight scares the death out of me," Lindsay says.
Income and wealth inequality is growing in British Columbia, and it is sweeping up even families like the Suttons, who should be comfortably middle class.
Story continues below advertisement
Read more: B.C. softwood lumber envoy distances himself from Christy Clark's threats
Gary Mason: Why Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver believes change is in the air for B.C.
Paul Fairie: For B.C. and Alberta NDP, a close – and complicated – kinship
In this provincial election, inequality is not the stuff of stump speeches: NDP Leader John Horgan talks about affordability, and Liberal Leader Christy Clark is promising tax breaks for the middle class. But inequality is shaping the campaign in many ways, from the debate around housing costs, to questions about whether the wealthy have an outsized influence on politics through campaign contributions.
The widening gap in income and wealth is not a story exclusive to British Columbia. Inequality is growing across Canada and throughout much of the Western world. But in B.C. in particular, it is not only that the 1 per cent are getting richer faster than anyone else. In B.C.'s urban centres, those who happened to buy a home before the boom are the new class of "haves." Those who did not are struggling with insecure housing, and are increasingly angry about the growing divide.
The BC Liberals and the New Democratic Party offer different paths forward on the issues raised by growing inequality.
The Liberal government under Ms. Clark has made British Columbia an outlier in Canada, as the only province without a formal poverty-reduction plan. On housing, her government has offered a string of initiatives to cool the real estate market in Metro Vancouver, including a foreign buyer's tax and new money to build affordable housing. But she says her jobs agenda is the best way to tackle poverty.
Story continues below advertisement
Mr. Horgan and the NDP say B.C. can do better by helping renters, investing in education, increasing the minimum wage and welfare rates – and tilting the province back to a more progressive tax system. The Liberals attack his platform by saying it is fiscally unsustainable and would deeply plunge the province into deficit.
Why is inequality growing?
The share of market income earned by the top 1 per cent in Canada is now larger than in any decade since the Great Depression in the 1930s, according to a study by Andrew Heisz, assistant director of the Income Statistics Division of Statistics Canada.
Lindsay Sutton, her wife Laurie with their sons, Gavin and Elliot, in their apartment in Vancouver. (BEN NELMS for The Globe and Mail) BEN NELMS/FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL ‘It feels impossible’ Lindsay Sutton and her wife Laurie wanted to pay off their student loans and get settled in their work before buying a home. As a result, “we missed the window,” Ms. Sutton said. “By the time I was established in my career, it was feeling out of reach. Now it feels impossible.” The couple are renting a one-bedroom apartment, and live in fear of a massive rent hike or a so-called renoviction. “You don’t want to feel this vulnerable.” So they adapt. They have two children: Two-year old Gavin and five-month-old Elliot. The boys get the bedroom, while the moms have a bed in the living room, made as discreet as possible with the clever arrangement of book shelves. The couple have lived in Vancouver’s West End for 14 years, and the idea of leaving their community for more space in the suburbs doesn’t appeal. They have a community of friends, a church in which they are active. “We have chosen an urban lifestyle and we are happy with it.” But she is unhappy that the BC Liberal government has offered little in the way of relief – for renters or home buyers. “I have always been a Liberal voter but with the insecurity in housing, I can’t do that again. I don’t think the Liberals see renters as important.”
Mr. Heisz is one of the 27 leading economists and experts who contributed to the 2016 book Income Inequality: The Canadian Story, published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy. In his chapter, Mr. Heisz concluded that the growth in inequality can be traced back to the recessions of the 1980s and the 1990s, but the effect was offset by Canada's tax-and-transfer system. The problems began to be felt when spending on social assistance and employment insurance programs was cut.
The authors found that technology changes and globalization are the common themes driving inequality in OECD countries (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development represents 34 democratic countries with market economies), but the growing gap in market income was offset in Canada, initially, through steady increases in income redistribution by way of taxes and government transfers.
That began to change in the mid-1990s, and Mr. Heisz found that the gap grew more in B.C., Alberta and Ontario than in other provinces. "After-tax income inequality rose accordingly," he wrote.
Story continues below advertisement
Craig Riddell of the University of B.C.'s Vancouver School of Economics was one of the lead authors of the book. While Canadian politicians and advocacy groups have muddled the debate by citing conflicting data, he says the bottom line is that Canada's growing prosperity is not being shared equally.
"The distribution of the gains have been extremely uneven and most of the benefits have gone to the people at the very top," he said in an interview. Between the years 1982 and 2010, the bottom 90 per cent of Canadians counted a total growth in family income of 2 per cent. (That is not an annual increase, but a total of 2 per cent over 28 years.) For the top 10 per cent, family income increased during that span of time by 75 per cent.
The polarization of income earnings is just one measure of inequality. In regions where real estate has skyrocketed, another important factor is hollowing out the middle class.
Helmut Pastrick, chief economist for Central 1 Credit Union, says the inequality gap in B.C. is being fuelled by real estate wealth. "It's primarily about whether you own a home or not," he said. "It's almost a have and have-not division – those who have are doing well, those who have not, have different views."
Jock Finlayson, the Business Council of B.C.'s chief policy officer, said this real estate-fuelled wealth gap is the most troubling.
"In the business community, we are worried about it, it's forcing people to look at living elsewhere. It's forcing people with children to live in accommodations that are not really designed for families," he said. "Those who are established in the market have all enjoyed an unearned windfall in wealth. It's also tax free. How equitable is that, from the perspective of the 30 per cent of renters, or those who bought at top-dollar prices?"
What is wrong with inequality?
For those struggling with poverty – the growing number of families relying on food banks, welfare recipients who have not seen an increase in support rates in a decade, and those earning a minimum wage that is far below the living wage – the problems are obvious. Anti-poverty activists last week called for a formal coroner's review of the deadly impact of homelessness, noting that more people died homeless in 2015 (the most recent statistics available) than in any year on record.
But the 1 per cent at the top have a stake in this, too. A growing inequality gap can spark unrest, it can choke productivity gains and, therefore, long-term economic growth, and it can skew the political landscape.
In 2016, the authors of Income Inequality: The Canadian Story inadvertently predicted the outcome of the U.S. election and the Brexit referendum, warning that an extended stretch of growing inequality can lead to a more polarized society, where fear and protectionist instincts take over.
"People in those campaigns said 'the economy is not working for me' and that led to a lot of political unrest," Prof. Riddell said in an interview. "In both those campaigns, people were able to use that anxiety and alienation and mistrust of elites and fat cats, to generate a lot of political support. That's a concern."
In addition, there is the challenge raised by the lack of income mobility. Income mobility is the promise that if you work hard, you can get ahead, or your children can do better than you if they get a good education. When that mobility is not evident, those who are living at the bottom end of the wealth spectrum have little incentive to pursue a higher education, which is one reason why B.C. employers are looking abroad to find the educated workers they need.
Economic growth, in a provincial economy that is increasingly driven by high technology, is hampered by a skilled labour shortage.
Prof. Riddell and his fellow authors also flagged concerns about the growing ability of the super wealthy to influence political incomes. In the B.C. election campaign, the NDP have attacked the Liberals over political fundraising – the governing party pulled in more than $12-million in 2016, including at private cash-for-access dinners with the Premier worth $10,000 a plate. The NDP raised half of that amount but says it will ban union and corporate donations if it wins on May 9.
"With their increased relative income comes an increased ability to influence policy through lobbying and other means," observe the authors of Income Inequality: The Canadian Story. "The troubling implication is a future in which an increasingly disaffected majority suffers from policies made by and for the few."
What are the solutions?
There is no rolling back the clock on technological change that has computers taking over human work, or the globalization of economic activity where the lowest wages win the race to meet supply.
But there are levers available to federal and provincial governments that can make a difference.
Regulation, such as the minimum wage, can reduce poverty. But the gap between the current pay rate in B.C., and the increase to a living wage, is significant. Minimum wage in British Columbia will rise 50 cents to $11.35 an hour in mid-September, but in Metro Vancouver, the "living wage" that would allow a full-time worker to meet basic expenses is estimated to be more than $20 per hour.
Still, provinces can have a lot of influence over inequality, said Prof. Riddell. "Certainly education, early childhood development, the provinces run those programs." His work has found that more public spending on preschool and public school eduction, particularly for lower-income households, would improve income mobility.
Kathryn Gibbons and Tom Pearce and their children Oliver, 6, and daughter, Linnea, 4 outside of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia on April 27, 2017. BEN NELMS/FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL
‘It's kind of shocking’ The real estate-driven wealth divide captures not just renters, but those who came late to the market. In the past five years, typical condo prices in the Vancouver region have jumped by about 44 per cent. That has caught Kathryn Gibbons and Tom Pearce in a bind. They bought their one-bedroom condo – all 680 square feet of it – in 2010 when Ms. Gibbons was pregnant with their first child. They planned to move into something bigger when they could afford it: Today, they are still there – with a boy and a girl. Oliver is now 6, and Linnea is 4. The kids share the bedroom; mom and dad clear away the toys and pull down the Murphy bed in the living room every night. “It’s a little bit chaotic,” said Ms. Gibbons. “We are living minimally, but my son likes to play sports, and finding places for his sports equipment is a challenge.” The kids have learned they can’t hoard toys or art. But one day, when her daughter was reluctant to part with a craft, she announced: “I hate this house.” Ms. Gibbons knows they need more space, especially as her son and daughter will |
refactors have been assisted by a suite of tests that are easy to write, read, and debug. Those experiences happened to have been in an application written in React.
I hope to think that I’m a minority in my severe opinion on Angular 2+ and some of the difficulties I’ve had. I’d love to have every one of my complaints corrected and redacted. I have, however, spent no small amount of time trying to counter some of them.
And while I’m excited for the results of this year’s “State of JS” survey around React and Angular, last year’s satisfaction results seem to mirror my own: 92% percent of React users would use it again, while only 65% Angular 2 users would use it again (source). It’s a new framework though so hopefully we’ll see an uptick this year! : D
-Ryan Stelly @ryanastellyNewcastle Jets are set to take on Juventus in a friendly behind closed doors in Sydney on Wednesday.
Fresh from a last-minute 3-2 win over the A-League All Stars at ANZ Stadium on Sunday, the Italian champions are understood to want another hit-out before they leave Australia on the next leg of their pre-season tour.
Juventus will tackle the Jets behind closed doors on Wednesday. Credit:Getty Images
They meet Singapore All Stars in Singapore on Saturday. They crushed the Indonesian All Stars 8-1 in Jakarta last Wednesday.
The Jets were the only A-League opposition in the area available. Western Sydney Wanderers and Sydney FC are involved in FFA Cup round of 32 matches tonight while the Central Coast Mariners are in action in the nationwide knockout on Wednesday night.NYJ-NE grades: Brady, Patriots barely challenged by Jets
By Gordon McGuinness • Dec 24, 2016
New England Patriots 41, New York Jets 3
Here are the top-graded players and biggest storylines from New England’s 41-3 win over the New York Jets in Week 16:
Quarterback grade: Tom Brady, 91.9
Brady makes a statement in MVP race
Even with heavy rain early in the game, Brady was sharp from start to finish, hitting 8-of-13 (one was dropped) for 163 yards and three touchdowns on passes thrown at least 10 yards downfield. Perhaps his best throw of the day came on deep pass interference penalty at the end of the half as put a 51-yard pass right on WR Malcolm Mitchell’s hands, but the penalty prevented the completion. Brady took advantage on the very next play with another strike on a corner route to RB James White for a touchdown and New England rolled behind one of Brady’s sharpest outings of the year.
Top offensive grades:
OT Marcus Cannon, 85.1
C David Andrews, 80.1
OT Nate Solder, 79.9
WR Julian Edelman, 75.0
TE Matt Lengel, 74.3
Offensive line makes their mark
One of the biggest stories of the season for the Patriots is the development of the right side of their offensive line as RG Shaq Mason and RT Marcus Cannon have both made major strides and fueled their man/gap running scheme. Saturday was more of the same as they both had success in the running game against a strong New York defensive line. The rest of the line did their part as well as Brady was only pressured on six of his 28 dropbacks.
Top defensive grades:
CB Malcolm Butler, 89.8
CB Logan Ryan, 82.8
CB Eric Rowe, 82.1
S Devin McCourty, 81.8
S Patrick Chung, 78.4
Patriots defensive backfield shuts Jets offense down
Although it helps that they went up against a Jets offense that struggled all game, the strength of the Patriots defensive backfield in this game shouldn’t be understated. Cornerback Malcolm Butler didn’t allow a single pass to be completed into his coverage, but came away with two interceptions, while Patrick Chung, Eric Rowe and Logan Ryan all had pass breakups. No Patriots defender was responsible for more than two catches in coverage over the course of the game.
Quarterback grade: Ryan Fitzpatrick, 48.1
Fitzpatrick fails to make the most of another chance
When Bryce Petty went down early in the game, Fitzpatrick got yet another chance to get into the starting lineup, but it once again ended in disappointment. He completed just eight of the 21 passes he attempted, and had two interceptions. One of those was as a result of a nice play on a tipped pass by Malcolm Butler, but another was a Christmas gift to the Patriots via an underthrown pass. By the time the game was over, Fitzpatrick had completed just one of the five passes he attempted travelling 20 yards or further downfield.
Top offensive grades:
OT Brandon Shell, 80.5
G Dakota Dozier, 78.2
C Wesley Johnson, 77.2
G James Carpenter, 75.3
WR Brandon Marshall, 69.9
Jets offense fails to get going until late
This was always going to be a tough game for the Jets, but the level to which they lost highlights just how much of a struggle this season has been for them. They averaged just 3.9 yards per carry, saw just one pass completed traveling 20 yards or further downfield, and had two dropped passes on just 24 passing attempts. One bright spot was their pass protection, with Bryce Petty and Ryan Fitzpatrick under pressure on just five dropbacks, but ultimately that wasn’t enough to help that generate anything on offense.
Top defensive grades:
CB Buster Skrine, 86.8
CB Juston Burris, 77.5
LB Darron Lee, 76.5
DI Muhammad Wilkerson, 70.8
CB Darrelle Revis, 63.2
Few bright spots defensively for the Jets
Outside of a few red-zone stops, the Jets defense did little to slow down the New England offense, though the poor field position the offense gave them did not help matters. Only pressuring Brady on six of 28 dropbacks was the first issue, as Muhammad Wilkerson was the only Jets player to manage more than one pressure. Rookie CB Juston Burris made a strong impression with two pass breakups though he did have a bad holding call in the end zone. In the end, the lack of pressure made it difficult to cover on the back end and Brady had his way when throwing the ball down the field.
PFF Game-Ball Winner: Patriots QB Tom Brady, 91.1
PFF’s player grading process includes multiple reviews, which may change the grade initially published in order to increase its accuracy. Learn more about how we grade and access grades for every player through each week of the NFL season by subscribing to Player Grades.Advertisement
<firstimage=”//static.makeuseof.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/vim-editor_logo-300×300.png”> If you do any sort of development work on your computer, you’re going to need a text editor every now and then (or all the time). And by “development” I don’t just mean programming; it can be Web development too, or even maintaining and tweaking an existing website.
For years, I’ve tried one text editor after another. You name it, I tried it – jEdit, Notepad++, SciTE, PSPad, Komodo Edit… I’m not just name-dropping here. I used each and every one of these editors for over two months as my primary day-to-day editor. I also had a brief stint with UltraEdit, a venerable (but non-free) editor. Somehow, I couldn’t find an editor that just worked right, and was customizable enough to fit my needs.
That all changed a couple of months ago, when I bit the bullet and started using Vim text editor full-time. Here’s 6 reasons why you should consider giving it a go.
Reason 1: Vim Is Old
In software, we often cultivate the mindset that says “newer is better”. We’re always after the latest browser, the latest OS, the latest game. But there’s a lot to be said for ancient pieces of software that are still actively used by lots of people.
Did you know MS Office was first released in 1990? That’s 21 years ago, and look how far it has come. That’s about the time Vim was first released, too (1991). Only Vim is based on a much older editor, Vi, that got its start in 1976.
That alone should make you wonder; what makes such an ancient piece of software so compelling, that thousands of new users discover it year by year?
Reason 2: Vim Is Free & Has A Vibrant Community
Vim is actually defined as “charityware”, and is free to use and open-source. It does ask you to donate for orphans in Uganda, but there are no nags.
If you go to the Vim webpage, you will find lots of recent news items. I counted nine script updates in one day, for example. The site is constantly updated, and Vim’s main developer, Bram Moolenaar, personally posted an update on April 28.
Reason 3: Vim Is Very Customizable & Extensible
Those scripts I just mentioned? They’re the key to much of Vim’s power. There are scripts for just about anything. In the screenshot above you can see FuzzyFinder, one of my all-time favorites. It’s a script that lets you type partial names of files, commands, help entries, etc. and searches for them incrementally, on-the-fly. You don’t have to type from the beginning of the name, and it’s got a lot of options – and that’s just one script!
Other notable scripts include NERD Tree that implements a file-system “tree”, SuperTab Continued for powerful tab-completion, and snipMate for replicating TextMate’s snippet functionality. There are lots, lots more.
Reason 4: Vim Works Over Telnet & SSH Connections
I sometimes need to manually edit webpages that reside on remote servers. I used to use WinSCP to simulate local editing, but it broke every now and then. A few of the editors mentioned above also have built-in FTP clients, but navigating complex folder trees was always cumbersome and time-consuming.
With Vim Text Editor, I can just open an SSH connection What SSH Is & How It's Different From FTP [Technology Explained] What SSH Is & How It's Different From FTP [Technology Explained] Read More to my Web server and run a remote instance of Vim right on the server. Vim is designed to work with slow terminals, so it actually feels fast. As you can see in the screenshot above, colors work just fine over SSH. Being able to work directly on the server has made a huge difference in my Web development work. Not only is it faster, but I can now search through files right on the server, and use Vim to jump between the results quickly and find exactly what I need to modify with pinpoint precision. Simply awesome.
Reason 5: Vim’s Configuration Is Portable
As mentioned above, Vim is very customizable. That means I had to work quite a bit until I got it “just so” on my Windows system. Having to do all that on my remote server would have been a bit of a drag. Luckily, I simply needed to copy a few directories and one all-important “master configuration” file, called.vimrc.
This basically copied my entire configuration from my Windows computer to the remote Linux server. I then just edited my configuration file and modified a couple of things for the server, and I was basically done. Of course I couldn’t keep myself from tweaking things further, but that’s just me.
Reason 6: Vim Is Thoroughly Documented
Note that nowhere on this list does it say “Vim is intuitive”. That’s because it’s not, really. There is a learning curve when you first start using Vim, and it does require a bit of a commitment. But there are quite a few things that can help. Here are just three examples:
Vim’s own *:help* command leads into a treasure trove of carefully-written documentation. Every script has its own documentations; default key bindings are carefully documented, all of the commands are explained, etc.
command leads into a treasure trove of carefully-written documentation. Every script has its own documentations; default key bindings are carefully documented, all of the commands are explained, etc. Vim also has a wiki with oodles of tips, tricks and helpful code snippets for you to copy and try.
Reason 7: It’s Way Better Than Emacs
OK, so maybe I’m not entirely serious about this last one. As you may have noticed in the introduction, I’ve never actually given Emacs much of a spin (not for two months, at least). According to the scientifically-minded $EDITORs Sucks-Rules-O-Meter, Vim seems to be in the lead in the Editor War, at least for now. But I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. You’re welcome to plead Emacs’ case in the comments.
Speaking of comments: if there are any Vim users in the audience who’d like to share tips or ask questions, I am all ears. I know I’ve barely scratched the surface on Vim in this post, so if you’d like to see more detailed posts about Vim, do share your ideas and wishes.**NEWS! We have one retail trailer looking to be re-imagined for a new business! Contact us for more details.**
Offer your culinary creations out of a turn-key Dub Box mobile food or pop-up retail trailer.
Dub Box is lightweight and easy to move around campus, around town to farmers markets and special occasions. Dub Box is a go-anywhere, year-round mobile food and retail solution.
Financing available through our partner, QuickSpark. Send us an email for an application.
Culinary Trailer Base Model (Standard Equipment Included at No Extra Cost):
Commercial Floor, FRP Walls, Stainless Backsplashes and Counter Tops
Hand Sink with Instant Hot Water
20-Gallon Fresh Water with 25-Gallon Grey Water Capacity
5 Electrical Outlets
2 Dome Lights and 2 Bar Lights
3-speed fans
6-foot Drop-Down Counter and Rear Condiment Counter
Fiberglass Body and Bumpers
3500 lb Spring-Asle with Braking System
Pop-Up Roof Operated by 4 Linear Actuators
Powder-Coated Chassis
2 Bias Tires with Moon Caps
Interior: 5' Wide, 12' Long
Max Head Room: 6'3"
Exterior Length (tongue extended): 16'
Exterior Length (tongue retracted): 14'
Coupler Requires 2-Inch Ball Hitch
Height From Ball to Ground: 14"
7-Pin Wiring Harness
UVW: 2500 lbs
GVRW: 3500 lbs
Upgrade: 3-Part Commercial-Grade Sink (Inquire for Price)
Not Included (Inquire for Price):
Paint (Additional charge for color match or spray out card)
Awning
Graphics
Appliances
Delivery
We look forward to discussing your appliance package and branding concepts to create a business that's uniquely yours.
Want to go mobile with your retail business?
Go with a Dub Box Pop-Up Retail Shop!WWE.comEvery wrestling fan that had the pleasure of living through the late 90's and the early 2000's will always look fondly back on the WWE's Attitude Era. Still today hailed as one of the highest points in professional wrestling this period made superstars out of the likes of The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin, catapulting them into the realm of household names. Many fans insist that wrestling peaked during this period.,that today the WWE is a sham in comparison. A shallow husk of what it once was filled with PG rated stupidity. While it's true that post attitude-era has given us such awful ridiculousness as the bull-rope match where Chavo Guerrero dressed as a cow and a tag team bout in which God was a legitimate participant you can't help but wonder if we aren't looking at the Attitude Era through rose-tinted glasses. Yes it was great but didn't it too have it's own fair share of soap opera oddness? Today we'll be highlighting those moments because while it's fun to reflect on the amazing times, it's more fun to reminisce on the ridiculous.As per my previous post What is Fair Food? the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance has launched its new initiative to create a strong and independent voice for Australian farmers. Fair Food Farmers United will be a platform to connect, support and provide a united voice for farmers feeding Australia fairly.
According to their press release their aims are too
provide a balanced voice to represent farmers who are at the sharp end of the impacts of free trade,
raise awareness about the impacts of cheap imports on farmers
advocate for fair pricing for farmers selling to the domestic markets
connect Australian farmers for farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing
be a voice for farmer-friendly regulations and standards.
Read more on the AFSA website
The majority of people attracted to this initiative in the first instance are farmers who are cutting out the middle man and dealing directly with the public. This gives them a unique insight into consumer images and expectations of farmers and how important it is to meet or exceed those consumer expectations if you want to sell your product at a premium and get a FAIR return for your efforts. As I mentioned in my previous post FAIR means different things to different people. Now is the right time to get into the FAIR FOOD space. As a segment on the Checkout ( See Value for Money – Tuna) last night showed there is a clear rise in the number of people choosing ethics over value and voting with their wallets at the supermarket checkout and farmers markets and the like.
Fair Food Farmer United know that if they want to get real traction now and achieve their aims they must get into the hearts and minds and wallets of consumers aka voters.
I have been a long term advocate of farmers having direct connection with consumers with a strong focus on finding ways to innovatively do this in a way farmers are comfortable with. One of the most successful initiatives is the highly innovative Art4Agriculture programs which include the Archibull Prize and the Young Farming Champions program
I will be the first to admit its pretty scary and a huge responsibility to advocate on behalf of industry and I was reminded the other day that even after 10 years of doing it I am still uncomfortable in this space.
I had a message on my phone from Radio National indicating Bush Telegraph wanted to do a story. So I rang back with butterflies in my stomach as per usual wondering what it was and how long it would take me to prepare to ensure I got the key messages spot on
I was overwhelmed with relief when they didn’t want me. Excitingly in the first instance the ABC reads the Art4AgricultureChat blog and secondly wanted to interview one of our young team of farming champions Danila Marini about her research.
Sheep are smart and so is Danila
Thirdly I was absolutely thrilled how excited she was and didn’t hesitate to say yes. This is a great example of engaging and nurturing the young to build their capacity to sell agriculture’s story with confidence and most importantly build their capacity to do it with charisma and resonate with our key audience.
There is no denying its a given a key issue for agriculture is the continual need to strive for sustainability – but what is sustainable? Having farm systems that ensure the environment and productive capacities can co-exist in the long-term is the standard take on the definition. Like it or not sustainable agriculture is also about creating value for our products in our consumer base, that ensures consistent and long-term demand.
Consumer choice is as big a threat to our industry as climate change/variability, international competitiveness or government policy.
We need to create partnerships right along our supply chain to develop relationships that enable farmers and consumers to make informed decisions about the trade-offs inherent in their choices and our production systems. Consumers have accepted $1 milk and cheap/imported food more generally, so it is up to agriculture to articulate and share why we don’t believe that is a choice that will deliver a sustainable future.
If consumers do not value farm output, then no amount of innovation, productivity gain or government support is going to deliver a sustainable industry into the future.
We need to reconnect with our consumers. Modern supply chains mean farmers have never been so isolated from their end-consumer.
Therefore we need to develop the capacity of our people, so they are knowledgeable and are comfortable in addressing all issues and stakeholders along the entire supply/value chain in order to re-build these relationships.
This will mean farmers and others working in agriculture taking a higher profile role in the lives of our consumers, current and future.
This will mean farmers proactively engaging with processors and supermarkets to develop mutually beneficial relationships ensuring value is delivered at all points along the supply/value chain – including farmers, processors, retailers and consumers.
The last thing we need is another advocacy group cluttering an already overcrowded space but I believe if Fair Food Farmers United get it right they are off to a great start with the key audience then they may just build the partnerships necessary to deliver an advocacy success story for agriculture
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Google
LinkedIn
Like this: Like Loading... RelatedIndia prepares cyber-security strategy
Updated
India is preparing to roll out a new cyber-security system, amid reports it was among the top five countries compromised by US surveillance.
The National Cyber Coordination Centre's primary job is to carry out a real-time assessment of cyber security threats and provide actionable reports.
According to data compiled by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, more than 1,000 government websites, storing critical and sensitive data concerning national security, have been hacked by cyber criminals in the last three years.
In early March, suspected Chinese hackers breached the computers of India's top military organization, the Defence Research and Development Organisation, one of the biggest security breaches in the country's history.
President of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, Subho Roy, says protecting against cyber-attacks is important.
"We should have some framework in place to address cyber attacks on our vital installations...on our government facilities and a host of other things which we think are critical for our country's growth, development and the wellbeing our citizens," he said.
"So I would think this is a very welcome step - a little too late in the day perhaps, but it is better late than never."
Studies show internet usage in India has been rising exponentially.
The country has the fastest internet traffic growth globally - expected to have 348 million users by 2017, up from 138 million in 2012.
Rajesh Chharia, Director and CEO of C J Online, India's first operational private ISP, says with such high targets, internet security will become increasingly critical.
"When lot of people will come to join the internet family, at that time the security for securing the internet user is very important," he said.
"Our government is very aggressively doing that so that no one gets harmed from internet use.
"Definitely we are going to protect our entire critical infrastructure, as well as our general infrastructure, because when everything is moving online and everything is coming on to the internet cloud, it becomes a major responsibility to secure our system very strongly."
Data fears
India's Government is also taking steps to allay fears of misuse, naming the Department of Electronics and Information Technology to oversee the project.
The project follows revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden exposing alarming details of a top-secret US program to collect personal data of millions of web users.
Author Suketu Mehta says this has led to huge concern in India.
"If the American Government wanted to snoop on Manmohan Singh's Gmail account, there is absolutely no legal sanction that would prevent it from doing so," he said.
"So I would be very concerned if I was an Indian, the American Government can find out who you are emailing, who you are calling, who your lovers are, how much you earn, what you think of your country and family."
Subho Roy says state-level spying should not be raising fears.
"I think compromising of individual's citizen data would be a rare case unless there is a specific case against the individual which is being monitored and there are rules for all of this," he said.
The cyber-security challenge is also raising questions over whether India has the required expertise to prevent cyber attacks.
Surveys indicate that the country needs as many as 500,000 professionals in the field within five years.
Currently, there are only about 37,000 cyber security professionals.
Mr Roy says there is a big gap between demand and supply and the new infrastructure requires a lot of trained manpower.
"We do have them, in the sense that we have the largest number of IT producing countries," he said.
"But they need to be trained for a specific task, which is not very easy.
"But this [project] requires training for the same people in a slightly different manner and orientation [and] there is a serious lack of such engineers in our country."
Topics: internet-technology, defence-and-national-security, india, asia
First postedScott Gomez definitely earned a spot on the “nice” list this Christmas. The St. Louis forward gave back to his community of Anchorage, Alaska when his foundation helped save an Anchorage girls high school hockey program which was going to be cut two years ago due to a lack of funding.
Gomez provided necessary funds through his Scotty Gomez Foundation back in 2013 to keep girls high school hockey alive in Anchorage through the 2015 season. But with those funds nearly gone, the program was on the brink once again this year. That's when Dick's Sporting Goods stepped in with a sizable donation to the foundation to help Gomez keep the program alive through at least the 2018 season.
“I’m so excited that these girls get to keep playing,” Gomez said in a press release. “It was a tough situation to realize that these girls may not be able to take the ice next season after all we had done in the past to keep them playing. You never want to let anyone down, especially the people in your hometown.”
Article continues below...
The 35-year-old Gomez is nearing the end of his NHL career, but it is clear that his contributions have helped keep the possibility of a long hockey career alive for many teenagers in Alaska.
(h/t PR Newswire)Abstract Animal studies have linked the estrogenic properties of bisphenol A (BPA) to adverse effects on the endocrine system. Because of concerns for similar effects in humans, there is a desire to replace BPA in consumer products, and a search for BPA replacements that lack endocrine-disrupting bioactivity is ongoing. We used multiple cell-based models, including an established multi-parametric, high throughput microscopy-based platform that incorporates engineered HeLa cell lines with visible ERα- or ERβ-regulated transcription loci, to discriminate the estrogen-like and androgen-like properties of previously uncharacterized substituted bisphenol derivatives and hydroquinone. As expected, BPA induced 70–80% of the estrogen-like activity via ERα and ERβ compared to E2 in the HeLa prolactin array cell line. 2,2’ BPA, Bisguaiacol F, CHDM 4-hydroxybuyl acrylate, hydroquinone, and TM modified variants of BPF showed very limited estrogen-like or androgen-like activity (< 10% of that observed with the control compounds). Interestingly, TM-BFP and CHDM 4-hydroxybuyl acrylate, but not their derivatives, demonstrated evidence of anti-estrogenic and anti-androgenic activity. Our findings indicate that Bisguaiacol F, TM-BFP-ER and TM-BPF-DGE demonstrate low potential for affecting estrogenic or androgenic endocrine activity. This suggest that the tested compounds could be suitable commercially viable alternatives to BPA.
Citation: Szafran AT, Stossi F, Mancini MG, Walker CL, Mancini MA (2017) Characterizing properties of non-estrogenic substituted bisphenol analogs using high throughput microscopy and image analysis. PLoS ONE 12(7): e0180141. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180141 Editor: Wei Xu, University of Wisconsin Madison, UNITED STATES Received: February 1, 2017; Accepted: June 10, 2017; Published: July 13, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Szafran et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability: All relevant summary data are within the paper. All raw and normalized data contributing to the summary figures is included in its Supporting Information files. Funding: This work was supported by NIEHS grants NIEHS R01 (1R01ES023206-01; Cheryl L. Walker, Bert W. O’Malley, M.A.M. and Mark T. Bedford) and NIEHS P30 (ES023512-01; Center of Excellence in Environmental Health, C.L.W.). Further support was provided by the Integrated Microscopy Core at Baylor College of Medicine with funding from the John S. Dunn Gulf Coast Consortium for Chemical Genomics, the Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center (NIH P30CA125123), and the NIH (HD007495, and DK56338). ATS is a K12 Scholar supported by NIH grant K12DK0083014, the multidisciplinary K12 Urologic Research (KURe) Career Development Program awarded to Dr. Dolores J. Lamb. DeepBio, Inc received funds and material support from the Valspar Corporation. Funders do not have scientific or editorial control over the design, conduct, analysis, or interpretation of the data, nor were they involved in the decision to publish or producing this manuscript. DeepBio, Inc provided support in the form of materials and consulting fees for A.T.S., F.S., and M.G.M. and provided salary for M.A.M. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. M.A.M participated in in study design, data interpretation, and final manuscript review, however, DeepBio, Inc did not have editorial control nor was involved in the decision to publish. Competing interests: M.A.M. is a founding scientist and a board member of DeepBio, an organization that provides high throughput screening and novel monoclonal antibody production services. To ensure scientific independence, A.T.S., F.S., M.G.M. performed work as external consultants to DeepBio, Inc. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare by DeepBio, Inc or the authors of this manuscript. The Valspar corporation provided investigational compounds for the project but had no influence study design or data interpretation. The commercial support does not alter our adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.
Introduction The impact of man-made chemicals on human health and the environment is a continuous global concern. Between the thousands of compounds synthesized, chemicals that impact the endocrine system took a central stage as they have the potential to affect whole live cycle of humans through central functions like reproduction and metabolism, while accumulating over time both in the human body and the environment. Probably the best studied endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are the ones with estrogenic or anti-estrogenic activity. Of these, Bisphenol A (BPA) has garnered attention due to its widespread detection in the human population and the environment, observed effects in laboratory animals, and plausible impact on human health. BPA is among the top 2% of organic chemicals produced commercially and is used in a vast variety of applications including many day-to-day products containing polycarbonate plastics and epoxies. When BPA is used to make polymers for lining of cans or bottles, it often leaches out into food or beverages, and is then ingested in microgram quantities [1–3]. Given its prevalence, it is of little surprise that biomonitoring studies detected BPA in most humans [4]. Based on its mode-of-action and results from rodent studies, BPA has been implicated in hormone-dependent cancers (e.g., breast and prostate), metabolic diseases (e.g., diabetes and obesity), developmental defects, and changes in fertility, neurological function, and behavior [5–7]. In light of health and environmental concerns about the safety of BPA, the demand for non-BPA-containing materials is high and the search for viable BPA alternatives has grown dramatically. Unfortunately, bisphenol alternatives such as bisphenol S (BPS) and bisphenol F (BPF) have scant health and epidemiological data; however, they may have a similar mode-of-action to BPA, including endocrine disruption. In fact, a recent systematic review of 25 in vitro and 7 in vivo studies concluded that BPS and BPF have activity and potency that is similar to BPA with estrogen-, anti-estrogen-, androgen-, and anti-androgen-like features [8]. Finding BPA replacements that can be used in commercial applications such as coating material for canned food packaging is challenging since bisphenol polymers have inimitable physical properties that are not available from non-bisphenol materials such as olefins, acrylics or polyesters [9]. Bisphenol-based epoxy polymers are able to maintain integrity for long periods of time across a spectrum of applications, from easy open cans to twist-off bottle closures. Previously, no equivalent to bisphenol polymer chemistry had been found that is equal to BPA for preventing can lining failure and subsequent food contamination, especially with acidic or fatty foods [10]. Multiple cell-based in vitro assays have been developed to measure estrogenic potential of chemicals, with the most common being estrogen-dependent cell proliferation and gene expression. The measurement of estrogenic activity based upon breast cancer cell proliferation (E-screen assay) and luciferase-based reporter gene activation that is under the control of estrogen-responsive enhancer elements (BH1Luc4E2 cell line) has proven to be robust and highly sensitive, resulting in their consideration by multiple agencies (EPA, ICCVAM/NICEATM, and OECD) for national and international estrogenic activity standards [1,11]. However, individually, these assays provide little mechanistic insight to differentiate between similar chemical compounds with potential estrogenic activity. Recently, efforts from NIEHS and EPA has led to the development of mathematical models that incorporate data from 18 different ToxCast in vitro assays that measure ER binding, dimerization, DNA binding, transcriptional activation and cell growth [12]. Importantly, this model was shown to be able to accurately predict the results of the classical estrogenic in vivo mouse uterotrophic assay, thus leading towards a demonstration that in vitro high throughput (HT)/high content analysis (HCA) platforms could be used as a substitute for very expensive and slow animal models. Compounds such as BPA that mimic or antagonize the in vivo or in vitro activity of the hormone 17β-estradiol (E2) are typically described as having either estrogenic (agonistic) or anti-estrogenic (antagonistic) activity. This is largely mediated by interactions with one or both of the estrogen receptor subtypes, estrogen receptor-alpha (ERα) or estrogen receptor-beta (ERβ), which are ligand activated nuclear transcription factors. We previously described the generation of a human cell line containing a stable, microscopically-visible, multi-copy integration of the ER-responsive prolactin promoter-enhancer unit (PRL-HeLa; Supplemental Materials, S1 Fig). This cell line, following expression of GFP-ERα, allows for direct and simultaneous visualization and quantitation of ER DNA binding, recruitment of coregulators, epigenetic mark alterations, chromatin remodeling, and transcriptional regulation in response to ER ligands [13–15]. The PRL-HeLa cell line was further-adapted to high throughput microscopy-based screening by the generation of stable variants expressing either ERα or ERβ translationally-fused with green fluorescent protein (GFP-ERα:PRL-HeLa and GFP-ERβ:PRL-HeLa). When combined with our custom, automated image analysis platform [16], these cell lines were used to discriminate and classify the mechanistic effects of E2, ER antagonists, BPA and 18 closely related BPA analogs on ERα and ERβ, a dataset that has also been included in the EPA mathematical models [12,17,18]. In the present study, we use these ERα- and ERβ-expressing PRL-HeLa, the widely utilized ER-positive MCF-7 breast cancer, and the AR-positive LNCaP prostate cancer cell lines in high content/high throughput assays to characterize and classify seven, less well studied, potential BPA substitutes identified by Valspar during an internal yeast-based in vitro assay (data not published). The molecules that we analyzed include: 2,2’ BPA, bisguaiacol F (BGF), CHDM 4-hydroxybuyl acrylate (CHDM-4-HBA), hydroquinone (HydroQ), tetramethyl bisphenol F (TMBPF), tetramethyl bisphenol F diglycidyl ether (TMBPF-DGE), and TMBFP-ER (Fig 1). PPT PowerPoint slide
PowerPoint slide PNG larger image
larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 1. Chemical structures and identification numbers for compounds analyzed. Each compound is identified by an abbreviation, full name, and a PubChem compound identification (or CAS) number. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0180141.g001
Material and methods Chemicals Structures, abbreviations, and PubChem ID numbers for all compounds used in this study are shown in Fig 1. 17β-estradiol (E2, CAS 50-28-2), 4-hydroxytamoxifen (4HT, CAS 65213-48-1), bazedoxifene acetate (BZA, CAS 198481-33-3), and 2,2-bis(4-hydroxy-3,5-dimethylphenyl)propane (TM-BPA, CAS 227-033-5) were obtained from Sigma. Certified bisphenol A (BPA, CAS 80-05-7) was obtained from Battelle. 2,2’ BPA (CAS 7559-72-0) was obtained from Toronto Research Chemical. BGF (CASN 3888-22-0), CHDM-4-HBA (CAS N/A, PubChem CID 67072027), HydroQ (CAS 123-31-9), TMBPF (CAS 5384-21-4), TMBPF-DGE (CAS 93705-66-9), and TMBPF-ER (CAS 113693-69-9) were obtained from Valspar. These compounds are known reference compounds or investigational compounds previously identified as non-est |
loop will be complete and the value of the
matcher
and
feed
variables will contain values for the last iteration of the loop. This mean the majority if not all of the goroutines will be processing the same values for these variables. This is ok for the
searchTerm
and
results
variables since they do not change.
Conclusion
Luckily we can declare anonymous functions that accept parameters and these types of closure problems can be avoided. In our example above, when each anonymous function is declared within the scope of the
for range
loop, the values of the
matcher
and
feed
variables are locked in by passing them as parameters. The code remains clean and readable by leveraging closures for the remaining variables the anonymous function requires. Before using closures to share a variable with an anonymous function, ask yourself if the value of that variable will be changing and how that affects the function when it is called to run.To learn more details about this piece of code and the entire code sample, please take the time to download and read the Go In Action book. Chapter 2 is available for download hereThe closest thing to playing the Battlefield 3 beta is a well made desktop wallpaper to remind you of the beta. This is the first instalment in our BF3 wallpapers’ series. Keep in mind that all of these in particular are made by the amazing fans of Battlefield.
As a bonus, if you click on the featured image above, you’ll find an official wallpaper made by DICE.
We provided full credit to the artists that created these. If you want to put this on your site, please give credit to hours of work we did here on MP1st to sift through thousands of wallpapers.
There is a naughty one (Mario and Peach in a BF3 theme) that we can’t share here, but it will be on our twitter account when @MPfirst hits 500 followers, so follow away!
Without further adue, here are five amazing Battlefield 3 wallpapers.
Click on images twice to view full size.
1. Enemy Boat Spotted
This is absolutely our favorite.
Made by: K4orta
Artist’s Portfolio
2. Battlefield 3 Dino
How about them dinosaurs in the Battlefield?
Made by: SyntheticParadox
Artist’s Portfolio
3. Battlefield 3
Imagine you’re thrown in the midst of an epic battle with tanks, choppers, and Jets. Yes, this is Battlefield 3.
Made by: SyntheticParadox
Artist’s Portfolio
4. Battlefield Soldier
Red vs. Blue, anyone?
Made by: Cazuar
Artist’s Portfolio
5. Battlefield 3: Dammaku Warfare
Anime, of all things, meets Battlefield 3.
Made by: SSgt-LuLZ
Artist’s PortfolioThe 25-story Herald Towers high-rise apartment building in midtown Manhattan is seen Friday, Aug. 27, 2010, in New York where the Nicole John (inset), the 17-year-old daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Thailand plummeted to her death overnight. Police said Nicole John fell at about 4:15 a.m., apparently from the top floor. An incoming freshman at the Parsons The New School for Design slipped off her shoes and stepped out onto the ledge of a Manhattan high-rise apartment with a camera before falling.
The 17-year-old daughter of the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand slipped off her shoes and climbed out onto a window ledge with a camera Friday at a Manhattan high-rise before plummeting more than 20 stories to her death, police said.
Police say they responded to the luxury apartment building on West 34th Street shortly after 4 a.m. after someone called in a report of an unconscious female.
They say the girl, identified as Nicole John, was found on a third-floor ledge of the building with severe trauma to the body.
Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene. John had apparently been attending a party at the swank Herald Towers, near the Empire State Building, when she tumbled to her death.
Daughter of U.S. Ambassador Dies in Plunge From Midtown High-Rise
The 17-year-old daughter of the U.S. Ambassador to Thailand died after falling from a 25th-story window of a Midtown high-rise during a party early this morning, according to police. (Published Saturday, Aug. 28, 2010)
Ilan Nassimi, the man who lives in the apartment from which John fell, was arrested and charged with unlawfully dealing alcohol to a child. Investigators are also considering charging the 25-year-old with endangering the welfare of a minor, sources said. He was arraigned late Friday and released on his own recognizance. He is due back in court on Nov. 4.
Authorities responding to the 911 call saw indications of a post party clean-up in the apartment, and noted several people were still there.
The Herald Towers, built in the Beaux Arts style, has a 24-hour doorman and concierge, roof deck and a health club.
Top New York News Photos of 2010
Cops are also looking into Tenjune, a nightclub in the Meatpacking District where authorities say John was partying before she headed back to the apartment near Herald Square. John had a fake ID from Brazil saying she was 23, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference.
A Tenjune spokesperson said they carded John Thursday night and even have provided the NYPD of surveillance footage.
On her Tumblr blog -- which has pictures of her partying in clubs around the city and in the Hamptons -- John says that her ID was made in New York City and "it's really good, it's never been rejected."
In Memoriam
John was an incoming freshman Parsons School of Design student and lived on 15th Street in the East Village.
Parsons said in a statement that the university's management team was working to provide comfort and support to those affected.
"Losing a member of the community is extremely difficult for students, faculty and staff just as we begin a new semester," the school said in a statement.
Weird News Photos: Holiday Edition
John's father, Eric John, was named U.S. Ambassador to Thailand three years ago, according to the State Department's website.
Kristin Kneedler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, said they were just getting details and had no immediate comment.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with the John family during this very difficult time," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said. "We ask that you respect their privacy as they mourn the tragic loss of their daughter Nicole."
Copyright Associated Press / NBC New YorkThe study demonstrates that the extract’s shortcomings as a therapeutic are overcome by nanotechnology implementation that delivers the spice extract’s antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties to a target.
"Unique approaches with nanoparticle delivery systems hold promise for treatment”, said Dr Tamarah Westmoreland, senior author of the study and paediatric surgeon at Nemours Children's Health System in Florida.
“We are hopeful that in the future, nanoparticles can be utilized to personalize care to patients and reduce the late effects of therapy”.
Curcumin’s properties mirror those of other botanicals, exhibiting low solubility in water and poor bioavailability and stability, especially at pH values at 6.0 or below.
Researchers have persevered with curcumin, a component of the common spice turmeric, as a wealth of studies in the past have pointed towards a substantial anti-cancer ability without cytotoxic effects.
Study details
The team from the University of Central Florida began by packing cerium oxide nanoparticles with curcumin and coating them with dextran that extend their stay within the host’s circulation system.
These nanoparticles were then test in cell lines of a tumour cell, known as MYCN-amplified, as well as non-amplified tumour cell.
The nanoparticles were found to induce substantial cell death in tumour cells (up to a 2-fold and a 1.6-fold decrease in cell viability for MYCN-upregulated and normal expressing cell lines, respectively).
Equally encouraging was production of minor toxic traces in healthy cells with no toxicity recorded at 100 μM.
‘An effective delivery vehicle’
The use of nanoparticles is a relatively recent cost-effective vehicle approach for the treatment of disease, in particular, the use of cerium oxide nanoparticle (CNPs) with cytoprotective/toxic character.
Nanoparticles, such as CNPs, have the advantage of superior linkage with various small molecules to assist with their delivery to diseased cells.
Additionally, a previous study has also identified treatment with curcumin-complexed nanoceria can induce a further decrease in disease cell viability when compared to dextran-coated CNPs.
Nanotech reservations
The major sticking point in nanotechnology’s use in therapeutic activity centres on the potential risks such nanoscopic material may have on the host.
Certain nanoparticles have shown negative effects on tissues including inflammation and oxidative stress.
Other materials only show toxicity at the nanoscale. One experiment demonstrated that single-walled carbon nanotubes inhibited human embryo kidney cell growth and negatively impact on cell growth and cell turnover.
In 2001, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published its guidance on risk assessment concerning potential risks arising from applications of nanoscience and nanotechnologies to food and feed.
The agency concluded that engineered nanomaterial (ENM) was a field “under fast development”, characterised by “several uncertainties related to the identification, characterisation and detection of ENM”.
Source: Nanoscale
Published online ahead of print: DOI: 10.1039/c7nr02770b
“Nanoparticle delivery of curcumin induces cellular hypoxia and ROS-mediated apoptosis via modulation of Bcl-2/Bax in human neuroblastoma.”
Authors: Irina Kalashnikova, Joseph Mazar, Craig Neal, Amy Rosado, Soumen Das, Tamarah Westmoreland and Sudipta SealAmong the handful of post-war leaders who could always be relied upon to support the United States unstintingly, the name of Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, stands out.
Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate
by email and never miss
our top stories
Blair wasn’t content to merely support U.S. foreign policy. He energetically advocated for American engagement and warned of the negative global consequences of an America in retreat.
In April 1999, at the height of the NATO operation against the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo carried out by Serbian forces, Blair delivered an historic speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, in which he addressed precisely this theme.
“We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violations of human rights in other countries if we want to be secure,” Blair declared, urging his American hosts to “never fall again for the doctrine of isolationism.” By spreading “the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society,” Blair insisted, we ourselves would become safer.
I thought of Blair’s stirring words when I came across an editorial in the latest edition of the liberal Jewish newspaper, The Forward. Entitled “Letting Syria Go,” the editorial was candid in contrasting the “lame” American commitment to the Syrian rebels against the active backing that Bashar al-Assad’s foul regime has received from its allies in Russia and Iran.
According to the Forward editorial, America’s inaction over the Syrian civil war reflects “who we are now.” Obama’s “‘leading from behind’ foreign policy expresses the will of the people,” the editorial stated, because America has been “traumatized” by the combined experiences of intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Jane Eisner, the Forward’s editor, told me via email that the editorial “did not state support for isolationism or interventionism.” Eisner added, “If we accept what is our de facto isolationism, let’s at least also understand and face up to the moral implications. And if we intervene, let’s remember what we have already learned, that such a path is rife with unintended consequences and costly in blood and treasure.”
If Eisner is correct, and we really are faced with this profound choice in our foreign policy, then it’s worth examining the assumptions of those who lean towards isolationism. After all, this is a loose grouping that spans left-wing Democrats, who falsely suggest that there is an irreconcilable contradiction between educating our children at home and defending human rights abroad, and right-wing Republicans, who are quite content to live, to resurrect a term that was popular in the 19th century, in “splendid isolation.”
To begin with, not everyone agrees that Iraq and Afghanistan were traumatic experiences. As Commentary magazine’s Abe Greenwald has pointed out, in both theaters, America “gained the essential skills for counterinsurgency and nation-building.” In Afghanistan, our military prowess resulted in the killing of Osama Bin Laden, as well as the chance for thousands of girls to attend school, in open defiance of the misogynistic Taliban. In Iraq, we got rid of one of the ugliest regimes on the face of the earth, paving the way for peaceful and genuinely free elections in 2009.
Additionally, not every military engagement involves putting thousands of our own troops on the ground. In Syria, we’ve had the option of arming and training the Free Syrian Army, as well as imposing a No Fly Zone, a measure supported by U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) among others.
Yes, yes, the isolationists will say, but beware the unintended consequences of such actions: we will get sucked into a quagmire from which we cannot escape. Well, if avoiding unintended consequences is the primary goal of our foreign policy, then perhaps we should dispense with having a foreign policy in the first place.
Whether we like it or not, regional conflicts are a reflection of the global power balance. In Syria, our fear of unintended consequences has caused us to shrink in the face of Moscow’s aggressive backing of Assad. No wonder that Russian President Vladimir Putin granted asylum to the fugitive traitor Edward Snowden; Putin did so because he thinks we’re weak. He will continue to test that weakness again and again, especially over Iran.
As things currently stand, our failure in Syria has cost more than 100,000 lives in a conflict which, says the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, is the worst since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. In turning our backs on the Syrians, we have also effectively ditched our commitment to the “responsibility to protect,” a concept that emerged from the pained international debate about defending human rights that followed both the Rwandan genocide and the war in Bosnia. And in taking such a stance, we are denying the linkage made by Tony Blair between our own security at home and the development of prosperous, stable democracies abroad.
The question of whether or not to intervene in such brutal conflicts should concern us as Jews, as well as Americans. We remember only too well how outside indifference to the Holocaust aided the Nazis in their program to eliminate the Jews. And we are well aware that Israel’s security can only be enhanced by promoting, in Tony Blair’s words, “human rights and an open society” in the countries neighboring it.
Finally, let’s be honest and admit that isolationism is selective. As practiced by the Obama Administration, it involves shying away from the tough conflicts in favor of focusing on the easier ones, like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because Israel is our closest ally, it is therefore amenable to our suggestions, worries and even pressure..
We don’t have anywhere near that level of clout with the Assads of this world. Yet it is these nasty regimes colluding with our great adversaries, Russia and China, who pose the greatest threat to our security and our values. If we are worrying about unintended consequences, how about this one? A chastened, humbled America universally regarded as having betrayed its founding principles.
Because that’s where isolationism will take us.
Ben Cohen is the Shillman Analyst for JNS.org. His writings on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Ha’aretz, Jewish Ideas Daily and many other publications.The proof of any racing game is in its time trial mode. Just you, your vehicle and the track in communion; nothing to dilute or interfere with the faceted challenge of shaving seconds off your time through skill, ingenuity and courage; and nowhere for the game itself to hide. It has to be fun and interesting to drive for its own sake, or it's sunk.
Assetto Corsa Developer: Kunos Simulazioni
Kunos Simulazioni Publisher: 505 Games
505 Games Platform: Reviewed on Xbox One
Reviewed on Xbox One Availability: Also on PS4 and Windows PC
Judged only on this criteria, Assetto Corsa is the best motorsport game around right now. Arriving on consoles after a successful couple of years on Steam, this release from Italian studio Kunos Simulazioni has already earned a reputation with the PC sim-racing crowd for the excellence of its handling model. Car physics simulations are a surprisingly subjective business, and everyone has their favourite, but few could find fault with the realism, detail and driveability (for want of a better word) of Assetto Corsa. It has a very persuasive weight and will punish mistakes, but it's not jittery or overly severe.
It's so tremendously mechanically articulate that each car in its garage takes on a life of its own. There is no comparison between driving a firmly-sprung, front-wheel-drive Abarth 500 Corse in racing trim - a stubby little hatchback with a punchy, blunt response - and a mid-60s moon rocket like the Lamborghini Miura, which winds up to great speed through its long gears, but needs to be threaded through corners with the utmost delicacy. It's like playing a different game.
In fact, Assetto Corsa's simulation is so good that driving a slow car isn't necessarily easier or less involving than driving a fast one. A BMW Z4 GT3 race car, for example, offers such phenomenal grip and sophisticated traction control that it's unshakeable even north of 150mph, whereas the humble Alfa Romeo GTA's weak brakes, rolling suspension and twitchy rear can make driving the Nordschleife at speeds slower than your daily commute a hair-raising thrill. (One of the game's best features is the "factory" option for traction control and ABS, which sets these assists according to their installation on the real car; this gives you the confidence that you're driving each car as its makers intended, and eliminates such silly anachronisms as driving a modern race car without traction control, or a vintage sports car with it.)
When hotlapping, the game runs at the smooth 60 frames per second this type of game requires, but some race scenarios do challenge the frame-rate. (More on this from DF soon.)
There are harder handling models to get to grips with than Assetto Corsa's, but still, only those interested in engaging with its full realism need apply. It doesn't have much in the way of assists, and those it does have, you don't want turned on. I found the stability control deadened the handling to the point of dullness. In fact, it muted the game's feel so much that it actually made it harder to drive well. I quickly knocked it all the way down to zero. Automatic gears, too, are barely useable, with painfully slow downshifts. On the plus side, though you do need a wheel to get the best of it, it handles very well on a pad - much better than Project Cars or even Gran Turismo.
For purists, then, Assetto Corsa offers a thrilling hotlap that powerfully communicates the mercurial interface of car and driver and road. Unfortunately, stripped of the mod support and the dedicated community that buoy the game on PC, this roughly presented console version rather harshly exposes its shortcomings elsewhere.
The first of these that you'll notice is a scruffy and unceremonious front end that doesn't so much as congratulate you on a race win. The game's most important failing, though, is an aimless and barely functional career mode. Starting you in slow front-wheel drive cars on unfamiliar and tricksy circuits, this ought to be your introduction to the game, but if anything it alienates you from it. The difficulty is poorly tuned - even on 'easy', racing AI is tough to beat, while the arcade-style time attack (which tops up the clock at the end of every track sector) is sometimes so easy that it never ends. Crudely structured and completely lacking in context, the career mode gives you no reason to persevere, since all cars and tracks are fully unlocked in other modes and there is no other form of progression or validation away from the track.
In a genre known for graphical showboating, Assetto Corsa is relatively plain to look at, but it's all about what's going on under the skin.
Special Events are better, offering a wide selection of curated car-and-track combinations to explore, some of which are inspired. It leans on hotlapping, but includes some drift, time attack and quick race events too. This feels like the heart of the game - but with no indication of difficulty and the events presented in seemingly random order, navigating it can be pot luck for newcomers. It's also a crying shame that there are no online leaderboards for the hotlaps, cutting the best part of the game off from its community and from your friends list.
Over in the free-form Drive section of the game, you'll find all the above event styles to set up to your liking, a decent replay viewer and editor, and a welcome "race weekend" option. The latter prepares you for the demanding races with practice and qualifying sessions, and though long-winded it's much more rewarding than Quick Race. Mysteriously, it doesn't seem to be used in the Special Events or Career at all.
Drive is also where you'll find online racing. At present this is rather basic. There are no custom match options; you just pick one from a playlist of track days, drift events and race weekends and go. That's probably for the best, since the community is currently so small it can barely support this playlist, and it doesn't need fracturing any further. I didn't experience any trouble connecting to online races, but I did find that they could suffer from a juddery frame-rate and unresponsive controls. Assetto Corsa attracts a strong community of sim racers on PC, but it's hard to see it gaining traction with the console crowd.
A handy lap delta constantly tracks your performance against your best lap to a thousandth of a second; this game really is about racing yourself.
Kunos is a small studio without the resources of a Codemasters or a Slightly Mad, never mind a Polyphony Digital or Turn 10 - and this kind of game is very work-intensive to produce. So you won't find me complaining about its small selection of cars and tracks, especially when the cars possess such distinct personalities and when the sheer quality of the simulation gives all the permutations of car and track such challenging depth. The understandable local bias towards Italian marques and circuits just serves to give the game a stronger flavour.
Track-wise, the offering is small and completely Euro-centric, but has most of the continent's big beasts bar Le Mans - the Nordschleife, Spa, Silverstone and Monza, the latter even in its free-wheeling, chicane-free 1966 layout - plus some obscure Italian circuits and fan favourites like Imola and Brands Hatch. The car selection is modest, eclectic and seemingly random, with tiny motorsport manufacturers like Scuderia Glickenhaus and Tatuus sitting alongside cherry-picked classics, road cars and race cars from Ferrari, Ford and BMW. But it actually covers all bases impressively well: there are humble production hatchbacks, hybrid hypercars, retro cult favourites, contemporary GT racers and open-wheelers, vintage F1 cars, sports prototype classics and brutish touring cars.
Think of it as a tasting menu prepared by chefs who really know their ingredients, and how to make them sing. It's just frustrating that it takes another enthusiast to appreciate their work because the dishes appear in a random order, the service is perfunctory, and the restaurant is a bare room with hard chairs. Assetto Corsa is the equal of any driving sim behind the wheel. Its authenticity is beyond reproach. It's great for console owners to have access to that, but it has no answer to Project Cars' exciting career mode, Forza's slick multiplayer or Gran Turismo's compulsive metagame of collection. Perhaps it doesn't need them, but in the console game context, it does need to make it easier for players to discover and enjoy its strengths. It deserves to be more than racing fans' best-kept secret.1. Measure Everything
Bartending is closer to baking than savory cooking; it requires precise measurements for the final product to be perfect every time. Most bartenders use counting or jiggers; I recommend getting yourself a set of OXO angled mini-measuring cups for home bartending.
2. Control Dilution
The cocktail itself is defined as containing water, so water is an essential component of your drink. However, there is not one texture or amount of dilution that is perfect, so you must taste and get used to the different amounts of dilution and texture for each drink. Consider the rich, full-bodied texture of the brandy Alexander versus the taut, sleek body of the dry martini cocktail.
3. Taste, Taste, Taste
Good chefs taste their ingredients; so do good bartenders. Get to know the various spirits and mixers. When an ingredient calls for two ounces of London dry gin, you still have a staggering array of product to choose from. In the past I've had friends get together and bring one bottle each. Have a vodka, gin, or Bourbon party. That way learning doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
4. Use Lots of Ice
When you make a drink, don't skimp on the ice. This is where good, hard, dense cubes come in handy. Load up your shaker or mixing glass to the brim with ice. Making sure the cocktail is properly chilled is crucial to a well-made drink.
5. Garnishes Matter
Garnishes don't belong on the side of the drink--they belong in it. They should be working for their board. No lazy garnishes! Use only fresh garnishes that will enhance the drink. The Gin Rickey is a good example, the lime shell, once squeezed goes directly in the drink where the lime peel continues to flavor the drink.
6. Recipes Are a Baseline
I hate to say it, but some of my favorite bar books have recipes I find necessary to tweak and re-tweak before I'm satisfied. This requires a little extra research on your part; fortunately, you get to taste each result! Don't take the recipe for face value.
7. Muddle Softly
You know the saying, "Walk softly and carry a big stick"? Try this: muddle softly and carry a big stick. You needn't muddle limes, mango, or mint with such intensity that you obliterate the fruit or herb. In fact, you'll often draw bitter results. You only need to start the process. Shake and stir, and the alcohol itself will draw out the flavor.
8. Use Fresh Juice
This goes for all culinary endeavors--the fresher the ingredient, the better, more articulated the flavor. Don't believe me? Buy Roses Lime, Santa Cruz Organic 100% lime juice, and Mr. & Mrs. T Sour Mix, and taste them side by side with fresh lime juice. You'll be astounded at the difference.
9. Sweeten it Yourself
Everyone knows that the bright red color in grenadine is the result of the marriage of unnatural and unholy elements. Try making your own! Buy 100 percent pomegranate juice and sugar. Mix two-to-one sugar-to-juice by boiling the juice and adding sugar. You can create many different sweeteners, including cane sugar and Demerara sugar, each with boiled water at equal parts. This will steer you away from any mixture that starts with "high fructose corn syrup."
10. Shaken and Stirred
The principal methods to blend cocktail ingredients are to shake or stir. The rule of thumb that any bartender worth a shake of salt (no pun intended) will tell you is to stir liquors and shake juices, sugar, and egg whites. If the cocktail calls for two or three liquors, take the Manhattan as a prime example: it should be stirred. If it calls for juices and egg whites, like a Pisco Sour, shake vigorously to combine the ingredients.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.CLOSE Walk along with the University of Michigan football team as it tours the Pantheon and other notable spots in Rome. Jeff Seidel, Detroit Free Press
New Big Ten TV deal gives control to the networks and conference, not schools
Michigan Stadium. (Photo: USA TODAY Sports)
The biggest remaining question about Michigan’s football schedule is where the night games will fall.
Yes, plural.
Michigan did not play a home night game last season but could have a number of them, including more than one at Michigan Stadium this year.
“It is a possibility,” U-M athletic director Warde Manuel told the Free Press today. “When the schedules come out, we can have up to two night games.”
Among those under consideration is the Oct. 7 game against Michigan State, a rivalry matchup previously considered off-limits when it was solely up to the schools' administration.
“Could be,” Manuel said of the MSU possibility.
The past hesitation centered around additional security concerns, beyond those for a night game against a different opponent. The game usually has a number of fans at either school who visit and remain outside the stadium tailgating, an addition that is far less frequent at other games during the season.
Related:
“It’s still a concern,” Manuel said. “The only difference is, the Big Ten and television can assign us to a primetime game and it’s not our option. In November, we have the option if we choose to do so. I don’t anticipate that choice being made.”
Which means Ohio State on Nov. 25 is not a consideration.
Following the installation of permanent lights in 2010, U-M has only hosted a few night games in its history – 2011 and 2013 against Notre Dame and 2014 against Penn State.
But that was when the athletic department was able to make its own decisions and tell the television networks it wasn’t interested at times.
Under the terms of the new television deals, which take effect this season, the conference and television partners set the schedule.
“It comes out in terms of we agreed to it several years ago as a part of negotiating the new Big Ten television contract that we would allow up to two games at night,” Manuel said. “Last year for this (2016) football season, we had the option. Next year and moving forward the Big Ten can assign us and television in the Big Ten. In the month of September and October.”
If U-M lands two night home games – Cincinnati and Air Force in September, MSU and Rutgers in October are the possibilities in the first two months – that could make the season very night-heavy. There is no announced kickoff time for the Cowboys Classic season opener against Florida, but it is historically a night game. The Oct. 21 game at Penn State is another likely landing spot as the Nittany Lions designated that their “White Out” game.
None of those plans fit U-M’s preference, but it’s no longer in their control, signed away as part of the deal.
“Jim (Harbaugh) and I have been in lockstep, saying our preference is in the afternoon and not in the evening,” Manuel said. “In this particular case, we have granted the ability for the Big Ten to assign two home games in the evening. That’s where it will go.”
Michigan has non-conference games scheduled through the middle of the next decade, with Notre Dame, Washington, Virginia Tech, UCLA, Texas and Oklahoma holding signed contracts.
But with dates around those remaining unfilled, there could be shifts.
“You’re always looking at scheduling in the out years or we receive calls because others have,” Manuel said. “While it’s set as it is and contracted, there’s always things we’re looking at and will continue to look at into the future.”
One area where U-M knows it will not play a night game is on Fridays. Michigan told the Big Ten that it would not participate in the conference's plan this fall for a series of Friday night games.
Contact Mark Snyder: msnyder@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mark__snyder. Download our Wolverines Xtra app for free on Apple and Android devices!Image copyright Reuters
A meeting of leading oil exporting countries in Qatar, called to address the low level of prices, has run into difficulties.
Reports from Qatar's capital Doha, say the problem is tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
The agenda for the meeting is whether to freeze production levels.
Iran has consistently refused to take such steps but Saudi officials have at times appeared willing to take such action only if Iran were to as well.
The meeting is a response to the fall in prices which began in June 2014. The price is now less than half what it was then, though in the last few weeks it has risen from its lowest levels.
Most members of the exporters' group Opec, together with some other oil producers, are meeting in Doha to discuss freezing output.
No cuts in other words, just a commitment to no more increases.
But even that possibility has given some support in recent weeks to the price of oil. The low it reached earlier this year was about $27 a barrel for Brent crude oil, one of the leading international market prices.
This week it has been very close to $45. That is to a large extent due to traders considering the possibility that some oil producers are close to taking some sort of action to push prices higher.
It's worth emphasising that even at current levels the price of oil is far below where it was as recently as June 2014 - when it reached $115.
The fall has hurt many oil producing countries. Earlier this week, the International Monetary Fund said it had damaged financial stability and the government finances in many of them.
Image copyright EPA
The meeting is not formally an Opec event, though most of the group's members are being represented. There will also be some non-members, notably Russia.
One important Opec member not there is Iran.
As the country emerges from western sanctions, the Iranian government wants to regain the share of the market that it lost as a result of those restrictions on its international sales.
Iranian officials have repeatedly made it clear they have no intention of participating in a production freeze, though they appear happy to support others doing it. Iran has not sent a delegation to the Doha meeting.
This reluctance on Iran's part has led to friction with Saudi Arabia, the word's biggest oil exporter.
Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince has said that a freeze could only happen if Iran takes part. But there are doubts about whether this really is the Kingdom's last word.
The decision to hold this meeting, with a rather unusual group of attendees, reflects the oil exporters' persistent concerns about the level of prices and a feeling that any action needs to involve more than just the members of Opec.
Two of the world's leading producers are not going to be there: the US and China.
Both countries have large oil production industries, but they use nearly all of it themselves, and have to import extra to meet their own needs. Their economies overall tend to benefit from cheaper oil so they don't have a shared interest with those who will be turning up in Doha.
Still, there is more than enough oil production that will be represented there to make a substantial difference to the global market if the participants chose to take strong action.
What many oil analysts say, however, is that they aren't talking about action that is going to achieve much. In the past, Opec has often managed to agree and deliver cuts in production. This time all that's on the table is a potential agreement to refrain from further increases.
Image copyright Reuters
No 'game changer'
Saudi concerns are the key reason why countries outside Opec are involved. Whenever Opec has cut production in the past, Saudi Arabia has tended to make the biggest contribution. This time, they were reluctant to take the loss of market share that would involve.
But it's less of a sacrifice if some other countries take part. The US never would, so Russia is the biggest producer that could be involved.
So if they can agree a freeze, would it make much difference? London consultancy Capital Economics said in a note to clients: "Freezing output at current high levels would simply maintain the excess supply that is now in place and as such would not be a game changer."
Perhaps what would make more difference is the much anticipated decline in American shale oil production which appears to be finally gathering pace, according to the International Energy Agency, an official organisation which monitors the energy situation for its member countries.
In fact one reason for Saudi Arabia's reluctance to take action sooner is widely thought to have been a desire to keep the pressure on its competitors in the US shale business.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Saudi deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman
It's worth remembering that the rise of shale oil in the US has transformed the global market. The increased US supply is one of the key factors that have been bearing down on international oil prices, along with weakness of demand which in turn reflects China's economic slowdown and the failure of the global economy to generate robust growth.
Having said all that, this meeting might turn out to have some symbolic significance. Opec has been very slow to respond to what is a serious problem for its members.
In previous episodes of falling prices, Opec has tended to act more quickly by cutting production, not just restraining further increases.
Not this time. Most recently when the group met in December last year, their final statement surprised many observers when it did not even mention a production ceiling, something they nearly always set out at their regular meetings.
Still the meeting in Qatar could at the very least have some symbolic significance.
Analysts at Barclays Research said ahead of the Doha event: "Opec's December meeting was a failure, but Doha gives the organisation the opportunity to reassert its relevance."
The stakes are high. Abhishek Deshpande, chief oil analyst at Natixis, described this as "the mother of all Opec meetings" which shows the nervousness among oil producers.by Alvin Pang
WE PUBLISH here a reply to MPs who suggested that the public service has lost its heart, which was reported in TODAY.
Public service is hard work. I should know. I’ve worked alongside (and lived with) public officers my whole life. I have relatives who were teachers, counter officers, cleaning staff, and I’ve been in the service myself. I’ve manned hotlines. Written papers. Sat in meetings. Put together events, both public and closed door. I’ve analysed, deliberated, drafted, vetted, edited, planned, soothed, cajoled, compromised |
Like this: Like Loading...Jehan Alain in 1938
Jehan Ariste Alain (3 February 1911 – 20 June 1940) was a French organist and composer.
Biography [ edit ]
Alain was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the western suburbs of Paris, into a family of musicians. His father, Albert Alain (1880–1971) was an organist, composer and organ builder who had studied with Alexandre Guilmant and Louis Vierne. His younger brother was the composer, organist and pianist Olivier Alain (1918–1994), his youngest sister the organist Marie-Claire Alain (1926–2013). Jehan received his initial training in the piano from Augustin Pierson, the organist of Saint-Louis at Versailles, and in the organ from his father, who had built a four-manual instrument in the family sitting room.[1] By the age of 11, Jehan was substituting at St. Germain-en-Laye.
Between 1927 and 1939, he attended the Paris Conservatoire and achieved First Prize in Harmony under André Bloch and First Prize in Fugue with Georges Caussade. He studied the organ with Marcel Dupré, under whose direction he took first prize for Organ and Improvisation in 1939. His studies in composition with Paul Dukas and Jean Roger-Ducasse won him the Prix des amis de l'orgue in 1936 for his Suite for Organ Op. 48, Introduction, Variations, Scherzo and Choral.[1]
He was appointed organist of Saint-Nicholas de Maisons Laffitte in Paris in 1935, and remained there for four years. He also played regularly at the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth synagogue.[1] The only known recording of his playing—a six-minute improvisation—was made in 1938 at that synagogue.
His short career as a composer began in 1929, when Alain was 18, and lasted until the outbreak of the Second World War 10 years later. His music was influenced not only by the musical language of the earlier Claude Debussy and his contemporary Olivier Messiaen (seen in Le jardin suspendu, 1934), but also by an interest in the music, dance and philosophies of the far east (acquired at the Exposition coloniale internationale of 1931 and seen in Deux danses à Agni Yavishta, 1932, and Deuxième fantaisie, 1936), a renaissance of baroque music (seen in Variations sur un thème de Clément Janequin, 1937), and in jazz (seen in Trois danses of 1939). Alain described Le jardin suspendu ("The Hanging Garden") as a portrayal of "the ideal, perpetual pursuit and escape of the artist, an inaccessible and inviolable refuge".[2]
He wrote choral music, including a Requiem mass, chamber music, songs and three volumes of piano music. But it is his organ music for which he is best known. His most famous work is Litanies, composed in 1937.[1] That work is prefaced with the text: "Quand l’âme chrétienne ne trouve plus de mots nouveaux dans la détresse pour implorer la miséricorde de Dieu, elle répète sans cesse la même invocation avec une foi véhémente. La raison atteint sa limite. Seule la foi poursuit son ascension." ("When, in its distress, the Christian soul can find no more words to invoke God's mercy, it repeats endlessly the same litany....for reason has reached its limit; only faith can take one further..."). Deuils ("mourning"), the second of the Trois danses, is dedicated to Odile (Alain's deceased sister) as a "Funeral Dance to an Heroic Memory".[1]
Always interested in mechanics, Alain was a skilled motorcyclist and became a dispatch rider in the Eighth Motorised Armour Division of the French Army. On 20 June 1940, he was assigned to reconnoitre the German advance on the eastern side of Saumur, and encountered a group of German soldiers at Le Petit-Puy. Coming around a curve, and hearing the approaching tread of the Germans, he abandoned his motorcycle and engaged the enemy troops with his carbine, killing 16 of them before being killed himself.[2] He was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre for his bravery,[3] and was buried by the Germans with full military honours.[4]
He left behind his wife, Madeleine Payan whom he had married in 1935, their three offspring and a body of compositions viewed by many to have been amongst the most original of the 20th century.
Henri Dutilleux's Les citations contains a quotation from Jehan Alain's music. Maurice Duruflé wrote a musical tribute to Jehan Alain with his Prélude et fugue sur le nom d'A.L.A.I.N op. 7 for organ.
Chronological catalog [ edit ]
JA stands for Jehan Alain.
1929 – 18 years old – 4 opus
JA 021 – Togo, pour piano [June 1929] JA 007 bis – Berceuse sur deux notes qui cornent, pour orgue [August 1929] JA 003 – Etude sur un thème de quatre notes, pour piano [November 1929] JA 008 – Chanson triste, pour piano [1929]
1930 – 19 years old – 14 opus
JA 009 – Ballade en mode phrygien, pour orgue ou piano [January 1930] JA 002 – Thème et cinq variations, pour piano [February 1930] JA 014 – Lamento, pour orgue [February 1930] JA 001 – Quarante variations, pour piano [April 1930] JA 017 – Des nuages gris, pour deux pianos [June 1930] JA 004 – Ecce ancilla Domini, pour piano [August 1930] JA 029 – Postlude pour l'Office de Complies, pour orgue [August 1930] JA 130 – Adagio, pour piano [12 August 1930] JA 005 – Seigneur, donne-nous la paix éternelle (Choral), pour piano [October 1930] JA 007 – Etude de sonorité sur une double pédale, pour piano [October 1930] JA 010 – Etude sur les doubles notes, pour piano [October 1930] JA 020 – Pour le défrichage, pour piano [December 1930] JA 131 – Variations sur un thème donné de Rimsky-Korsakov, pour quatre voix [December 1930] JA 131A – Variations sur un chant donné de Rimsky-Korsakov, pour orgue [December 1930] JA 131B – Variations sur un thème donné de Rimsky-Korsakov, pour quatuor à cordes [December 1930] JA 129 – Lettre à son amie Lola pour la consoler d'avoir attrapé la grippe, pour piano [1930]
1931 – 20 years old – 12 opus
JA 012 – Petite rhapsodie, pour piano [February 1931] JA 016 – Mélodie-sandwich, pour piano [23 February 1931] JA 006 – Verset-Choral, pour orgue ou piano [March 1931] JA 011 – Lumière qui tombe d'un vasistas, pour piano [April 1931] JA 015 – Histoire sur un tapis, entre des murs blancs, pour piano [May 1931] JA 018 – Canons à sept, pour deux pianos [May 1931] JA 013 – Heureusement, la bonne fée sa marraine..., pour piano [10 August 1931] JA 019 – Nocturne, soir du 22 août 31, pour piano [22 August 1931] JA 022 – En dévissant mes chaussettes, pour piano [September 1931] JA 023 – 26 septembre 1931, pour piano [26 September 1931] JA 024 – Dans le rêve laissé par la Ballade des pendus de François Villon, pour piano [4 October 1931] JA 143 – Pièces d'après François Campion, pour orgue [1931]
1932 – 21 years old – 14 opus
JA 025 – Choral et variations – Mythologies japonaises, pour piano [1932] JA 027 – Variations sur Lucis Creator, pour orgue [January 1932] JA 028 – Fugue en mode de fa, pour orgue ou piano [1932] JA 035 – O quam suavis est, pour baryton [1932] JA 036 – Le rosier de Mme Husson, pour piano [March 1932] JA 037 – Chant donné, pour orgue ou piano [1932] JA 061 – Canon, pour piano et harmonium [1932] JA 079 – Climat, pour orgue [March 1932] JA 030 – Trois minutes : Un cercle d'argent, pour piano ou orgue [1932] JA 031 – Trois minutes : Romance, pour piano ou orgue [1932] JA 032 – Trois minutes : Grave, pour piano ou orgue [August 1932] JA 034 – Cantique en mode phrygien, pour quatre voix mixtes [septembre 1932] JA 077 – Première danse à Agni Yavishta, pour orgue [13 October 1932] JA 078 – Deuxième danse à Agni Yavishta, pour orgue [13 October 1932] JA 033 – Petite pièce, pour orgue [December 1932] JA 038 – Complainte à la mode ancienne, pour orgue [1932] JA 132 – Chant nuptial, pour baryton et orgue [1932] JA 132A – Chant nuptial, pour baryton, basse, violoncelle et orgue [1932]
1933 – 22 years old – 6 opus
JA 026 – Variations chorales sur Sacris solemniis, pour cinq voix mixtes et orgue [January 1933] JA 064 – Premier Prélude profane (Wieder an), pour orgue ou piano [February 1933] JA 064A – Adagio en quintette, pour quintette à cordes [1933] JA 065 – Deuxième Prélude profane (Und jetzt), pour orgue ou piano [6 March 1933] JA 039 – Chanson à bouche fermée, pour quatre voix mixtes [1933] JA 133 – Fugue sur un sujet de Henri Rabaud, pour quatre voix [1933] JA 133A – Fugue sur un sujet de Henri Rabaud, pour orgue [1933] JA 133B – Fugue sur un sujet de Henri Rabaud, pour quatuor à cordes [1933] JA 072 – Première Fantaisie, pour orgue [1933] JA 80A – Prélude, pour quintette à cordes [1933]
1934 – 23 years old – 5 opus
JA 134 – Choral cistercien pour une Élévation, pour orgue [April 1934] JA 066 – Intermezzo, pour deux pianos et basson [June 1934] JA 066 bis – Intermezzo, pour orgue [March 1935] JA 074 – Trois mouvements : Allegretto con grazia, pour flûte et piano [August 1934] JA 074A – Intermède, pour violoncelle et piano [August 1934] JA 074B – Trois mouvements, pour flûte et piano ou violon et piano [1934] JA 073 – Trois mouvements : Andante, pour flûte et piano [January 1935] JA 073A – Trois mouvements : Allegro vivace, pour flûte et piano [1935] JA 074C – Trois mouvements, pour flûte et orgue [1975] JA 071 – Le jardin suspendu, pour orgue [October 1934] JA 069 – Suite pour orgue : Introduction et variations, pour orgue [1935] JA 069A – Andante con variazioni, pour quintette à cordes [1934] JA 070 – Suite pour orgue : Scherzo, pour orgue [1935] JA 070A – Scherzo, pour quintette à cordes [1934] JA 082 – Suite pour orgue : Choral, pour orgue [1935]
1935 – 24 years old – 13 opus
JA 081 – Andante, pour piano [January 1935] JA 081 bis – Largo assai, ma molto rubato, pour violoncelle et piano [1935] JA 047 – Fantaisie pour chour à bouche fermée, pour trois voix mixtes [9 August 1935] JA 057 – Fugue, pour orgue [1935] JA 057A – Fugue, pour piano [1935] JA 058 – Laisse les nuages blancs, pour soprano ou ténor [1935] JA 060 – Foire, pour une voix et piano [1935] JA 062 – De Jules Lemaître, pour orgue ou piano [1935] JA 063 – Fantasmagorie, pour orgue ou piano [1935] JA 067 – Choral dorien, pour orgue [1935] JA 068 – Choral phrygien, pour orgue [1935] JA 075 – Prélude, pour orgue [1935] JA 076 – Nocturne, pour piano [1935] JA 080 – Suite monodique : Animato, pour piano [1935] JA 089 – Suite monodique : Adagio, molto rubato, pour piano [1935] JA 89 bis – Andante, pour orgue [1935] JA 116 – Suite monodique : Vivace, pour piano [1935] JA 116A – Vivace, pour harpe JA 087 – Prélude, pour piano [1935] JA 087A – Prélude et fugue, pour piano [1935]
1936 – 25 years old – 4 opus
JA 086 – Berceuse, pour piano [17 avril 1936] JA 088 – Chanson tirée du "chat-qui-s'en-va-tout-seul", pour soprano [1936] JA 091 – Tarass Boulba, pour piano [October 1936] JA 117 – Deuxième Fantaisie, pour orgue [1936]
1937 – 26 years old – 13 opus
JA 119 – Litanies, pour orgue [August 1937] JA 119A – Litanies, pour deux pianos, transcribed by Olivier Alain JA 084 – Quand Marion..., pour piano [1937] JA 085 – Nous n'irons plus au bois..., pour piano [1937] JA 090 – Complainte de Jean Renaud, pour quatre voix mixtes [1937] JA 092 – Final pour une sonatine facile, pour piano [1937] JA 093 – Suite facile : Barcarolle, pour piano [1937] JA 094 – Invention à trois voix, pour flûte, hautbois et clarinette [1937] JA 094A – Invention à trois voix, pour flûte et orgue [1937] JA 095 – Vocalise dorienne, pour soprano et orgue [March 1937] JA 095A – Vocalise dorienne – Ave Maria, pour soprano et orgue [1937] JA 098 – O salutaris, a cappella, pour deux voix égales [1937] JA 099 – Idée pour improviser sur le Christe eleison, pour piano [1937] JA 100 – Idée pour improviser sur le deuxième Amen, pour piano [1937] JA 118 – Variations sur un thème de Clément Janequin, pour orgue [1937] JA 120 – Trois danses : Joies, Deuils, Luttes, pour orchestre [1937] JA 120D – Sarabande, pour orgue, quintette à cordes et timbales [1938] JA 120 bis – Danse funèbre pour honorer une mémoire héroïque, pour orgue [1938] JA 120A – Trois danses : Joies, Deuils, Luttes, pour orgue [1940] JA 120C – Trois danses : Joies, Deuils, Luttes, pour deux pianos [1944] JA 120B – Trois danses : Joies, Deuils, Luttes, pour orchestre [1945]
1938 – 27 years old – 21 opus
JA 122 – Tantum ergo, pour deux voix inégales (sic) et orgue [18 January 1938] JA 136 – Messe modale en septuor, pour soprano, alto, flûte et quatuor à cordes ou orgue [6 August 1938] JA 135 – Monodie, pour orgue ou piano [8 September 1938] JA 135A – Monodie, pour flûte [1938] JA 138 – Aria, pour orgue [November 1938] JA 138A – Aria, pour flûte et orgue [1938] JA 083 – O salutaris, dit de Dugay, pour quatre voix mixtes [1938] JA 096 – Faux-Bourdon pour le Laudate du VIème ton, pour trois voix égales [1938] JA 097 – Le petit Jésus s'en va-t-à l'école, pour piano [1938] JA 101 – Noël nouvelet, pour trois voix mixtes [1938] JA 101 A – Noël nouvelet, pour orgue JA 112 – Que j'aime ce divin Enfant, pour trois voix mixtes [1938] JA 112A – Que j'aime ce divin Enfant, pour deux voix égales et orgue [1938] JA 113 – D'où vient qu'en cette nuitée..., pour deux voix égales et orgue [1938] JA 113A – D'où vient qu'en cette nuitée..., pour quatre voix mixtes [1990] JA 114 – Le Père Noël passera-t-il?, pour une voix [1938] JA 115 – Transcription du Récit de Nazard de Clérambault, pour flûte et orgue [1938] JA 121 – Marche de Saint Nicolas, pour deux clairons, tambour et orgue [1938] JA 121A – Marche des Horaces et des Curiaces, pour deux clairons, tambour et orgue [1938] JA 124 – Messe grégorienne de mariage, pour une voix et quatuor à cordes [1938] JA 125 – Messe de Requiem, pour quatre voix mixtes [1938] JA 126 – Fragment de la cantate de J. S. Bach Erschallet, ihr Lieder, pour deux trompettes et orgue [1938] JA 127 – Allegro du Concerto en sol majeur (sic) de Händel, pour deux trompettes et orgue [1938] JA 128 – Concerto en si bémol majeur de Händel, pour deux trompettes et orgue [1938] JA 137 – Prière pour nous autres charnels, pour ténor, basse et orgue [1938] JA 137 A – Prière pour nous autres charnels, pour orchestre [orchestrated by Henri Dutilleux, 1946] JA 139 – L'année liturgique israëlite, pour orgue [1938] JA 140 – Tantum ergo, pour soprano, baryton et orgue [1938]
1939 – 28 years old – 3 opus
JA 123 – Tu es Petrus, pour trois voix mixtes [1939] JA 141 – Salve, virilis pectoris, pour soprano, ténor et orgue [1939] JA 142 – O salutaris, pour soprano et orgue [1939]
Undated – 17 opus
JA 040 – Une scie, pour piano JA 041 – Il pleuvra toute la journée, pour piano JA 042 – Sur le mode ré, mi, fa..., pour piano JA 043 – Adagio, pour violoncelle et piano JA 044 – Amen, pour piano JA 045 – Un très vieux motif, pour piano JA 046 – Post-scriptum, pour deux pianos JA 048 – Théorie, pour piano JA 049 – Le gai liseron, pour piano JA 050 – Sonata, pour piano JA 051 – Mephisto, pour piano JA 052 – La peste, pour piano JA 053 – Exposition JA 054 – Sujet JA 055 – Comme quoi les projets les plus belliqueux..., pour piano JA 056 – Le bon Roi Dagobert, pour piano JA 059 – Histoire d'un homme qui jouait de la trompette dans la forêt vierge, pour pianoA gay server was given an unusual reason why she was denied a tip after she waited on a couple and their two children at an Illinois restaurant.
Samantha Heaton, 20, waited on the family at Buffalo Wild Wings in Rockford, Illinois, August 5. When the customers paid their $60.55 tab, she noticed they did not indicate a tip when they signed the credit card receipt.
And the reason for the snub was clear, although the inference was not.
“We can’t tip someone who doesn’t love Jesus! Bad tatoo [sic],” the customer wrote on the check.
The tattoo is a rainbow-colored equality sign on her forearm, artwork Heaton said the couple appeared to notice. Religion or her sexuality never came up in conversation though. Had it been broached, she said she would have informed them that she is openly gay and a Christian, two things Heaton said have no bearing on her ability to wait tables at a popular chain of eateries.
In fact, she said the exchange with the family was cordial; she followed protocol per her training when waiting on them, and expected a customary tip. But it would not be the case even though Heaton says she exceeded the scope of her responsibilities.
“For them to leave that (note) kind of hurt,” she said. “Like, I have bills to pay too.”
But it was more than that for Heaton. Aside from taking home nothing from the table, she was unnerved that the couple’s children, who appeared to be younger than 10, were present during a blatant display of intolerance.
null
“The kids are going to be under the impression that it will be OK to discriminate,” Heaton said.
“As Christian, thou shall judge. No matter how someone looks, you should love them for what’s in their heart and how they treat you—not for what is on the outside. As someone who came out when it was still a battle for the LGBTQ community, that’s just plain rude and uncalled for. What if one day their kids grow up and want to be with the same sex, are they going to disown them? Throw them on the street?”
Buffalo Wild Wings corporate officials have not responded to the incident, but Heaton’s supervisor saw the note and immediately asked the lingering question: “How can they tell that by looking at a tattoo?”
A photo of Heaton’s tattoo and the note has drawn a rash of social media comments. Heaton said she isn’t seeking fame, compensation, or a way to flaunt her sexuality, only an avenue to clarify that not all members of LGBTQ community are non-Christians.
null
As for the tattoo, she makes no excuse for it, but does have one regret about its placement.
“Someone asked me the other day if I would go back in time and get the same tattoo and I said, ‘No I would get it bigger,'” she joked.
According to the Buffalo Wild Wings Code of Ethics, the chain prides itself in maintaining an anti-discriminatory environment.
[Featured Image by Joelle Nicole Maish]Shed housing contributions from Andhra Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir has only 94 cartons.
The drive to collect iron to build the world’s tallest statue, the Statue of Unity, on the Narmada, seems to have fizzled out. The Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd (SSNNL) godown in the Chhani area of Vadodara, which has been the repository for the iron brought from across India, has seen little action over the last two months.
Advertising
The last truck carrying palletized cartons containing the trademark white and orange boxes of farm tools, a bottle of village soil and a satin scroll containing the names of the contributors and a form with details of the village, arrived here on April 24 from Ahmedabad, according to official records.
A laminated white placard hangs on the gate, directing those wishing to hand over “contents” for the Statue of Unity to three representatives of SSNL, whose phones numbers have been mentioned. Inside the compound, the sheds stand locked.
Records at the SSNNL office in Narmada Bhavan in Vadodara show 16 states have contributed zero iron tools to the project, which was an important part of Narendra Modi’s campaign for prime ministership. Some of these states are BJP ruled — Rajasthan, for example, has sent nothing.
Advertising
The entire Northeast — Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Sikkim, Mizoram and Nagaland — has remained aloof, while kits from Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Punjab are “awaited”.
Karnataka has sent only five resource kits, while BJP-ruled Goa has sent 386.
Uttar Pradesh has contributed the largest number of kits — 40,000 — beating Modi’s home state Gujarat to the second place with 33,000 kits. Tamil Nadu sent 12,000; Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Chandigarh 10,000 each.
Sources said the movement to collect iron for the statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, which was compared to the drive to collect bricks for the Ram temple in Ayodhya, fell flat after NGO Citizens for Accountable Governance (CAG) exited in January, after having completed its mandate of designing and rolling out the project’s pan-India outreach and social mobilisation plan.
According to sources, SSNL was entrusted with the implementation of the project three years ago, but for two years, it could not come up with a plan on how to collect iron for the project. It was then, in August 2013, that CAG was roped. It was asked to come up with a plan to reach out to people, ask them to contribute iron and soil for the project, and to build a buzz around it. The CAG website says it conducted “1 regional workshop in each of the South, East, West and North-East regions and 2 workshops in the North region”.
Last December, Modi, as chief minister of Gujarat, flagged off a convoy of trucks that were to travel across India on a drive to collect iron tools from seven lakh villages. The statue was to be 182 metres tall, and was to come up 3.5 km downstream from the Sardar Sarovar dam, soaring nearly 19 over above the height of the dam measured from its foundation.
The CAG’s web site claims that 700 tonnes of used farm iron has already been collected from several states across the country. It says three lakh “Resource Kit Box” had been sent across the country “to collect used farm tools as symbolic contributions towards the construction of Statue of Unity”.
Sources said only 1.26 lakh kits have so far “returned” to the godown.
When the Indian Express team visited the shed shared by Andhra Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir in the SSNNL godown last week, only 94 boxes were marked “J&K”. The boxes, purportedly from J&K, bore transport stickers that read “Uttar Pradesh”, with “Jammu” written by hand on the back of the cover. Like other boxes, they had rusted parts of an old cycle, blades of farm equipment, screws, nuts and bolts.
“The CAG was behind the concept of taking the Statue of Unity to villages to make it an all-India campaign to take Modiji’s name to villages. They created a buzz around it on social media and it became popular. It worked during the election campaign, but now the CAG has taken a back seat, and so has the Statue of Unity campaign,” said a BJP leader.
Sources in CAG, however, blamed the Gujarat government. “CAG had a limited mandate to put together a strategy on how to reach out to people and involve them in the drive to collect iron and soil from across the country. We were also asked to build a buzz around the project which we successfully did. The implementation, collection, etc., was never our responsibility. We ceased to be part of the project from January onwards,” said a senior CAG member.
Another member said the Gujarat government had lost interest in the project because it had served its purpose.
Advertising
According to the Statue of Unity web site, technical bids were to be opened on January 31. Asked about the delay, SSNNL managing director J N Singh said, “We will be opening tender bids in 10 days’ time, and work will start soon”.
(With inputs from Parimal Dabhi)Fifteen years ago, Italy joined the Six Nations with big aspirations. Since then, their record reads 85 games played, 72 lost. A disappointing return not only for Italy, but for the competition as a whole.
There are now calls to include more nations to the Top Tier European competition. The major positive of adding Romania and Georgia to an 8 nation tournament would be to Italy’s win record. Overall, the tournament would lose a huge amount of appeal and their premature inclusion would be a step backwards for European Rugby. However, there should be a clear meritocratic route to the top table for these teams and here’s how:
Scroll to continue with content Ad
The Four Nations x2
Create two four nation tournaments in Europe and schedule home and away fixtures for both competitions. The Top four teams in Europe will compete to be crowned Kings of Europe, while the second group will battle to obtain a play-off match against the bottom placed team in the premier competition. So based on the results of 2016, the competition tables in 2017 could hypothetically look something like this, including bonus points:
England would be crowed champions of Europe, whilst Scotland would be forced into a Play-off game versus France for the right to remain in the Premier competition.
This tournament ticks so many boxes.
It provides a route for Georgia and Romania to enter the elite competition, It creates a fairer top tier competition with Home and Away fixtures and it would promote a higher standard of rugby in the premier competition.
Each year the Six Nations creates some epic encounters and quite often a lot of emotion and controversy is left on the pitch come the final whistle. Imagine being able to back this up with a return fixture a few weeks later!
Story continues
Also, whoever wins the competition would well and truly be the best team in Europe. At the moment “Home” or “Away” fixtures have a huge impact on the results each year.
Based on the above example, the initial losers would be France and Italy and it would be a tough pill to swallow. But ultimately it’s a proposal that would benefit the game by engaging lower tier nations, but also improving the quality of Europe’s Top teams.
Italy for all their passion have not been up to scratch, and adding Georgia or Romania to the competition will not help things.
The best way to create a competitive environment is to give teams the opportunity to prove themselves. Georgia have a bright future no doubt, but they need to earn their inclusion, just like they earned the respect of the All Blacks in this World Cup.
Written by The Rugby Pod - www.TheRugbyPod.comA case of Hasseröder beer currently costs €8.99 in many branches of Kaiser's supermarkets while it used to cost €13. A case of budget brew Sternburg costs €5,55 at Edeka, instead of €7.20. And Feldkrone can frequently be found labelled as buy-one-case-get-one-free.
These are not, the country's brewers association told Bild newspaper, one-off instances, as around 70 percent of beer on German shelves is on sale for a reduced price.
“Competition on the beer market is ruthless,” industry expert Jürgen-Michael Gottinger told the paper. Shops were trying to lure in customers by consistently pushing prices down.
Brewer's association head Peter Hahn called this tactic a “ruinous price war” and said he was worried that it would affect the quality of Germany's world-famous beer. “Something that costs nothing, is worth nothing,” said Hahn.
Market research company Drotax found that the beer industry has quadrupled the number of special offers in the past ten years.
Beer consumption in Germany has been dropping for years, Bild said. In 2012, Germans drank 105.5 litres of beer each year – 20 percent less than a decade ago.
The Local/jcwA mortar shell has landed in the compound of the Russian embassy in central Damascus, injuring three people, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
"On September 22 as a result of shelling by the rebels of the Damascus neighbourhood of Mazzeh, one of the shells exploded on the territory of the Russian embassy in Syria," the ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
"Three employees received non-life threatening injuries. Right now an investigation of the incident is under way."
The statement did not say whether those hurt were Russian or local employees, but it added that the embassy was looking into additional security measures after the attack.
Rebels fighting to overthrow Syria's President Bashar al-Assad have launched several mortar and rocket attacks in recent months into the centre of the Syrian capital, where many embassies and senior Syrian officials are based.
The Russian mission was damaged in February when a car bomb exploded nearby on a busy Damascus highway, killing 50 people.
No one was wounded at the embassy, but that blast blew out windows in the building, Russian officials said.
Sunday's embassy attack comes on the same day that Russia criticised what it said were Western attempts to use a Syrian chemical arms disarmament deal to seek a UN resolution threatening force against Assad's government.
"They see in the US-Russian deal not a chance to save the planet from significant quantities of chemical weapons in Syria, but as a chance to do what Russia and China will not allow, namely to push through a resolution involving [the threat of] force against the regime and shielding the opposition," Interfax news agency cited Sergey Lavrov, foreign minister, as saying.
Lavrov also said Russia, which has used its veto to block Western efforts to use the UN Security Council's clout to pressure Assad's government, was ready to send troops to Syria to ensure the safety of UN chemical weapons inspectors.
Geneva conference
Meanwhile, the president of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, Ahmad Jarba, said on Sunday that he was willing to attend a proposed Geneva conference to end two and a half years of conflict in Syria if it aims to establish a transitional government with full powers.
In a letter to the United Nations Security Council, obtained by Reuters and dated September 19, Jarba said the coalition "reaffirms its willingness to engage in a future Geneva Conference" but "all parties must... agree that the purpose of the conference will be the establishment of a transitional government with full executive powers" as stipulated by an agreement last year by international powers.
It was the first clear commitment by the Western-and-Arab-backed coalition to attend the proposed conference sponsored by the United States and Russia.
The coalition has been dithering on whether to attend, especially after a chemical weapons attack on August 21 that killed hundreds of people in Damascus.Victor Ortiz will be back in the ring on January 25, 2014, facing Luis Collazo at the Barclays Center on FOX Sports 1, in what will be Ortiz's first fight since his June 2012 shocker loss to Josesito Lopez. Ortiz was apparently asked about facing Lopez or Marcos Maidana in rematches, and pretty much dismissed their ability, which is interesting, but very Victorish:
"I would like to go back and destroy them just for the sake of it. They're not on my level and never have been. Not Lopez, not Maidana. None of those guys, man. Mayweather is the only one where I could probably say, 'we are going to be in for a war.' Those other guys, they don't belong. They got me on a bad night, but 9 out of 10 times I [beat them]."
You'll recall that Maidana beat Ortiz back in 2009, which was the Argentinean slugger's breakout fight, and one of the several times that Ortiz has failed to live up to the hype behind him over his career.
Now, let me be clear here: I'm not saying |
follows, then a brief 'welcome home' reception with the local merchants and the visiting Silesian delegation. I've made sure the rest of the afternoon is free until dinner. For both of you."
"Thank you, Ingrid."
"My pleasure, ma'am."
So at least Elsa and I can talk this afternoon. "Um, yeah. Thanks, Ingrid."
"My pleasure, Your Highness."
"Elsa, is she going to be following you around all the time?"
"Well, a lot of the time. I just made her my amanuensis…"
Anna sighed. "That's Greek for 'assistant.' I know."
"Well, you were always better at Romance languages, Anna," said Elsa with a hint of a raised eyebrow. Ignoring Anna's playful glare, she continued. "I couldn't very well take her off the job after one day. People would talk."
They went quiet as the phrase people would talk echoed in all of their minds until they reached the door of Elsa's outer study.
Elsa turned to Anna as she was about to reach for the door handle. "One last thing. Why did you specify citronfromage for dessert?"
"Well..." She glanced at Ingrid for a moment, then whispered in Elsa's ear. "Last night you did say 'tart and creamy' was one of your favourite flavours." She opened the door and shoved Elsa into the room.From Kerbal Space Program Wiki
For the playable Kerbals, see Kerbonaut
Kerbals are the native denizens of the planet Kerbin, and cartoonish in-game analogs for humankind.
Kerbals display no variance in height or weight. They stand roughly 0.75 meters tall (2'5½"). A Kerbal in an EVA suit has a mass of 93.75 kilograms (206.68 lb.), which is 0.09375 in-game Mass units. However, this only counts toward the mass of a craft if seated in an EAS-1 External Command Seat; Kerbals add no mass when in a command pod or PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container or the Mobile Processing Lab MPL-LG-2.
The only Kerbals seen in-game work at Kerbal Space Center or are found in orbit during specific contract missions.
Kerbal astronauts are often called "Kerbonauts".
Biology
Kerbals have massive heads with respect to their bodies with roughly half of their total volume accounted for the head. Kerbal eyes protrude from their heads significantly, as do their corneas from the eyes. Kerbals appear to lack any irises, or they are perfectly black in color. They also possess no eyelids.
Judging by official artwork and in-game models, Kerbals appear to have two large teeth that span the length of their gums, one on the mandible and one on the skull. However, this may be due to the cartoonish art style of the game and not actual fact. One of the load screen arts on the latest (1.x) versions of KSP shows Kerbals with multiple human-like teeth.
Their skin hues appear to range from light green to pale green, if they range at all. Although Kerbals appear mostly hairless, they have notable hair growth occurring on the top of their heads and Wernher von Kerman can be seen to have a mustache.
Kerbals also appear to be warm-blooded, given their ability to sweat.
Kerbals have an awkward, sprawling walk due to their wide pelvis and short legs. A Kerbal's walking speed on Kerbin is about 0.87 m/s, it's running speed is about 2.35 m/s.
Anecdotal statements in the descriptions of the Rockomax HubMax Multi-Point Connector and the RoveMax Model XL3 suggest that Kerbals may die from shock when exposed to unexpected technological innovations. This could also be marketing hyperbole.
Kerbals seem to be in infinite supply, the in-game description of planet Kerbin saying its conditions support a "seemingly undepletable population of the eager green creatures".
Their most prominent personality traits are their Stupidity and Courage, as these are about the only individual traits to be seen beyond a name. Some Kerbals, such as Jebediah Kerman, have the rare "badass" trait, which makes them continually enthusiastic and without fear.
Gender
Artwork of Valentina Kerman
Up until 1.0, all incorporated Kerbals seemed to be male considering their masculine names and general appearance. C7— a developer at Squad— has said that, “There were no plans to add female Kerbals,” also noting that they didn't have any specific sex in mind.[1] Arguments have been made though, that while no gender has been officially expressed, a clear masculine/male gender bias was placed on the models.[2][3][4]
On February 21st 2015, the KSP developer team Tumblr page posted an artwork of the first official female Kerbal named Valentina Kerman. Valentina is a reference to Valentina Tereshkova, who is the first woman to have flown in space.[5]
As of Version 1.0, Female Kerbals (aka Kerbalinas) are available for hire at the Astronaut Complex, and Valentina Kerman is a default kerbonaut.
Speculation
Kerbonauts can be seen to spend years in space without showing any signs of muscle atrophy or other ill effects and can survive for years with vastly less food and oxygen than humans would require. There are various theories why this is possible:
They may enter a state of hibernation to endure long space travels This is unlikely, as they appear always awake when controlling the craft (although they still might hibernate whenever their ship isn't active).
It is also possible that they have the ability to enter a known psychological state which slows their perception of time through utter joy, or adrenalin. Entering a mental subspace if you will. This can explain their constant grin, and why they don't seem to care about being in a tiny capsule for years.
It was previously believed they may also not need oxygen to breathe, as they have no nose and can survive with their mouth closed, but as of 1.6 Kerbals with helmets removed die without oxygen, disproving this theory. However this theory only solved a small part of the problem - the question still remains how Kerbals get energy.
Their green skin may contain chlorophyll allowing them to photosynthesize. They would, like a plant, gather solar energy and use that to convert carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and sugar. The Kerbal could then respire the oxygen and sugar to make carbon dioxide, water and usable energy when needed, allowing the Kerbal to survive entirely on light. However, Kerbals can also survive without light seemingly indefinitely.
Kerbals do eat, but life support simply has not been implemented into the game.
Another theory states that worrying about life support might simply not be considered fun.
By comparing the mass of a Kerbal in EVA to that of the average Apollo astronaut and then removing the weight of the A7L EVA suits one can estimate the weight of the average Kerbal to be around 52.55 kilograms (or 115.85 lbs)
Kerbal eyes may be a vulnerable spot for injuries due to protrusion, size, and lack of eyelids. If Kerbal eyes truly lack irises, their eyes would be very sensitive to bright lights.
Kerbals' awkward, sprawling walk may indicate that their species only recently evolved to the point of bipedal movement.
Language
Kerbals speak backwards Spanish. Their speech can be heard in the Astronaut Complex as well as the end of the credits theme. However, the credits theme is cut-off at the end, so the music file has to be got out of the game files to hear it. In trailers as well, they speak reverse Spanish (aka "loñapsE").[6] However, Wernher von Kerman and Gene Kerman do emit sounds like "a-ha" and disappointed groans during in-game tutorials and at Mission Control. Curiously, they seem to write in modern english, not appearing as backwards spanish.
All kerbonauts have a random generated first name and "Kerman" as the surname. The first name is either a combination of phonetic syllables or chosen from a list of preset names.[1] There are also a few uniquely named Kerbals, most of whom are apparent homages to real-life figures in NASA.
Kerbals refer to their species as "Kerbalkind" in several in-game texts. This parallels with the real-life term "mankind" or "humankind" English-speakers use.
Speculation
Kerbal larynxes would need an interesting structure to be able to pronounce phonemes that humans either cannot or would at least have great difficulty pronouncing. In addition, their language is full of sudden sharp sounds, unmelodic syllables, and impressively difficult pronunciations, owing to its nature of being a reversed human language. Given the cartoonish nature of Kerbals, their language may "simply be" without any realistic explanation for their vocal abilities.
Material culture and technology
Limited observations make things difficult to determine.
The technology and architecture appears to share many similarities with the modernized nations of Earth during the 1960s-2000s. However, currently[outdated] Kerbin has no visible cities, homes, or any buildings other than those related to aerospace (barring a few easter eggs). The text for the EVA Report while flying in the lower atmosphere over Kerbin's Grasslands biome, however, mentions being able to "see my house from here", implying that Kerbals may live in houses visible above ground even though they are none to be seen in-game yet. Additionally, the text for a Temperature Scan while landed in the Grasslands biome says it "is quite pleasant, and would be a nice place to live." Coupled with reference to Kerbals' love of green, it suggests that Kerbals may have a preference for living in Kerbin's grassy plains.
From the humorous descriptions found in-game, it can be assumed that Kerbals are even more foolish and accident-prone than humans. Kerbals have accidentally mistaken planets for dust or smudges on a telescope lens or mistaken how telescopes work entirely.
In a scenario's instructions, Gene Kerman makes reference to an apparent video game called “Galaxy Intruders” which sounds similar to real-world classic arcade game Space Invaders.
“ Asteroids. Awesome to look at and great to have around; not so much when one lands on your house. Today we're going to learn how to keep that from happening. As anyone who has played Galaxy Intruders for more than ten minutes can tell you, it's not about firing at where they are, it's about aiming at where they're going to be. — Gene Kerman, Intro to scenario “Asteroid Redirect Mission, Part 1” ”
A necessarily short list of technologies Kerbals possess includes:
Liquid-fuel, air breathing, and solid-fuel engines, and ion-drives
Electric power generation and storage
Radio communications
Computers
Telescopes and optical instruments
Steel and concrete building construction
Some understanding of atomic technologies (e.g. RTG, LV-N)
In some mods, they even have more advanced technologies than humans do. Interestingly, they still seem to have all kinds of random accidents and totally unsafe components according to the descriptions of some parts in-game.
Speculation
It appears that their culture revolves solely around the process of designing, building, launching, riding (and crashing) rockets and planes, as every structure on Kerbin (excluding a certain Easter Egg) is devoted to either aviation or spaceflight.
One explanation of the scarcity of buildings on Kerbin theorizes that Kerbal civilization may live underground, or underwater, due to some unknown factor. Of course, this may be because KSP is a game that does not necessarily mandate cities, or they are planned but not yet implemented.
Some theories state that Kerbals, if their anatomy and biology resembles plants, can be cloned. This idea could be supported by the fact that all Kerbals have the same surname, and that all of them look alike but have different personalities via artificial memories, meaning that all of them are clones of one original Kerbal with “Kerman” as the surname. This could possibly be Jebediah Kerman, since the "Selection Process" labeled him as #0001. Also, it could be supported more by the fact that at least some Kerbals, Jebediah, Bill and Bob, can respawn or un-die.
Gallery
Kerbalizer's Kerbal example
Bob Kerman on the Mun
KSC staff
See also
Notes(Updates with police)
BAGHDAD, March 31 (Reuters) - A mortar barrage hit Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses Iraq’s government and the U.S. embassy, police said, a day after Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his fighters to stand down.
The Green Zone has come under intense mortar and rocket attack over the past week as Mehdi Army fighters loyal to Sadr have battled Iraqi and U.S. security forces in the capital and in southern Iraq.
On Sunday Sadr ordered the Mehdi Army to stop fighting Iraqi security forces and to withdraw from the streets. But the cleric has previously acknowledged there are rogue elements within the militia that have disobeyed a truce he first called last year.
A siren wailed inside the U.S.-protected compound in central Baghdad and a recorded voice warned people to take cover amid the sound of explosions, Reuters witnesses said.
A dust storm enveloping the city made it difficult to see where the missiles were landing, but police said a volley of at least six mortars had hit the Green Zone. They had no details of any casualties.
A U.S. embassy spokesman was not immediately available for comment. The embassy has ordered staff in the zone to stay under cover where possible and wear body armour and helmets when in the open. (Reporting by Ross Colvin; Editing by Catherine Evans)Android's Smart Lock feature is spectacular -- that is, when it actually works.
Smart Lock has been around since 2014's Android 5.0 era. The basic idea behind it is to make securing your smartphone less inconvenient, thus making it more likely that you'll actually use a pattern, PIN, or passcode to keep your data safe. The sensational headlines about big, bad malware monsters lurking in the dark and waiting to pounce on unsuspecting victims may be scary, after all -- but here in the real world, you're far more likely to suffer from your own self-made security shortcomings than from any sort of theoretical threat.
So, yeah: Smart Lock makes an awful lot of sense -- from both the perspective of an individual consumer and that of a company that wants to minimize the hassle of proper security for its users. The only problem is that one of the most useful Smart Lock options has been broken for way too long.
I'm talking about Smart Lock's Trusted Places feature, which lets you set a specific physical location -- like your home or your office -- at which your phone will automatically stay unlocked. When you aren't at that location, your standard security method will show up and apply.
The feature was fantastic when it first came along, but at some point, it just stopped working consistently. It's something I've experienced with numerous Android devices, including my own current personal phone.
I was excited, then, to see word last week that Google had supposedly fixed the glitch. A message posted by a Googler in an official help forum said an update to Google Play Services was rolling out and would bring proper functionality back to Smart Lock Trusted Places. Huzzah! At last, a solution.
Or so it seemed. The Play Services update was already on my current phone (a Pixel), my old phone (a Nexus 6P), and my wife's phone (a Nexus 5X) -- and yet Trusted Places still failed to work for any of those devices.
Hang on, though: There's a silver lining to this story.
I mentioned my disappointment with Google's ineffective fix on social media, and someone had a suggestion. I gave the proposed workaround a go on all three of the aforementioned phones -- and after a week of testing and observation, I'm here to tell you that it absolutely works.
It doesn't make much sense, mind you, and there's no reason you should have to do this. But if Smart Lock Trusted Places is flaky for you, it's worth giving a whirl.
Here's all you've gotta do:
Head into the Security section of your system settings and find the option for Smart Lock. You'll probably have to enter your security code before moving on to the next menu. Select "Trusted Places," then tap the line for whatever location isn't working properly and select the option to edit it. Tap the map that appears, then slide your finger around to move the red pin to the most accurate location. Even if the location looks right from the get-go, shift it around a teensy bit to force the system to update it. This will likely change the text you see on the screen from a specific street address (which you probably typed in at some point) to a set of latitude and longitude coordinates. Tap the "Update" command at the bottom of the screen, then hit your device's Home key to exit back to the home screen.
That's it -- and nonsensical as it sounds, it should do the trick. At least, it did for all three phones I've been testing in my house, all of which have experienced flawless Trusted Places functionality more or less since the moment I made this change.
For whatever reason, it appears Trusted Places' reliability issue has something to do with locations inputted via a numerical street address -- ya know, the way most people would input them. Once you set a location by physically moving the red pin on the map instead, things seem to go back to normal.
I sure as hell can't explain why this feature is broken in that weird-seeming way, but I can tell you it's spectacular to have it working again.
Sign up for JR's new weekly newsletter to get this column along with bonus tips, personal recommendations, and other exclusive extras delivered to your inbox.
[Android Intelligence videos at Computerworld]Share the Luck
• • • • • • • • • •
St. Patrick's Day
Cookie Cutters
Cookie Cutters For over 30 years, Ann Clark has been the brand of cookie cutters that families and baking professionals have turned to.
NEW SHAPES EASTER WITH RECIPE CARDS CUSTOM
Family Business
The company was founded in 1989, when Ann Clark had the idea to transform her popular pig shape ornament into a cookie cutter. Blending her unique folk art designs and custom hand painted recipes cards, Ann launched her first line and Ann Clark Ltd. was formed. As the business grew, Ann’s children eagerly returned home to Vermont to lend their expertise to the company. Together, The Clark Family transformed the business from a small home business focused on the gift industry to the largest brand and manufacturer of cookie cutters in the United States. Today the company is led by Ann’s son Ben who upholds the The Clark Family’s standards for good design and quality American-Made products.
About Cookie Cutters
Whether you're 7 or 70, baking cookies just isn't the same without a great selection of quality cookie cutters. At Ann Clark, we work hard to continue this baking tradition by bringing you a fantastic selection of quality American-made cookie cutters that are certified food safe. Each cutter that we produce can easily be used for cookie dough, as a pastry cutter or fondant cutter. They can also be used to create fun shapes in soft food such as cheese, sandwiches, fruit or Jello. Many people also enjoy using our products for craft projects, stocking stuffers, decorating or wedding favors.
Getting Started
Need a recipe? No problem. We've built a large library of cookie recipes that include a classic sugar cookie recipe, gingerbread cookie recipe and royal icing recipe as well as a host of other tasty treats. Want some cookie decorating inspiration? We've got you covered. Visit our Image Gallery or watch the professionals work in Decorating Videos. Whatever your need we hope you select Ann Clark whenever you need a cutter.
Featured Products Large Number 1 Cookie Cutter $3.99
Cat Face Cookie Cutter $2.99
Ugly Sweater Cookie Cutter $3.99
Heart Cookie Cutter $2.99
Bow Tie Cookie Cutter $3.99
Superhero of Sweets
We have the tremendous pleasure of collaborating with the most talented cookie professionals around the globe who have seemingly magical abilities to transform their cookies into works of fine art. These cookie artists’ cookie decorating styles are so beautiful, complex and unique — we’ve distinguished them as Ann Clark’s Superhero of Sweets!
Cookie Baking & Decorating ResourcesHere’s a very fun game to play: Take a list of cities with unusual demonyms—that’s the category of words describing either a person from a certain place, or a property of that place, like New Yorker or Italian—and ask people to guess what the demonym is. Here are some favorites I came up with, with the help of historical linguist Lauren Fonteyn, a lecturer at the University of Manchester. It’s tilted a bit in favor of the U.K. for two reasons. First is that Fonteyn lives and works there, and second is that the U.K. has some excellently weird ones. The answer key is at the bottom.
Glasgow, Scotland Newcastle, England Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Liverpool, England Leeds, England Wolverhampton, England Madagascar Halifax, Canada Barbados
Demonyms are personal and vital to our conceptions of ourselves. Few things are more important to our identities than where we’re from. This explains why people invariably feel the need to correct anyone who gets their demonym wrong. “It’s understudied but it’s kind of important,” says Fonteyn, who is originally from Belgium. “I moved to Manchester and had no idea what the demonym was. And if you do it wrong, people will get very, very mad at you.”
The demonym for people from or properties of Manchester is “Mancunian,” which dates back to the Latin word for the area, “Mancunium.” It is, like the other fun demonyms we’re about to get into, irregular, which means it does not follow the accepted norms of how we modify place names to come up with demonyms. In other words, someone has to tell you that the correct word is “Mancunian” and not “Manchesterian.”
A major problem with the entire system of demonyms is that it’s almost entirely ad-hoc, a mess of words cobbled from mostly archaic languages. Typically, though not in every case, the way we turn a place name into a demonym, at least in English, is with a suffix. The suffix -an or -ian, as in “Canadian,” “Mexican,” and “German,” comes from Latin. The suffix -er comes from, linguists think, Proto-Germanic, the Northern European precursor to Germanic languages like English, German, and Dutch. Originally it was something like -ware or -waras, but eventually was turned into the -er suffix we see in “New Yorker,” Londoner,” and “Berliner.”
Other less common ones came from other sources. From Old French we get -ois, as in “Québécois” and “Seychellois.” Also from Old French is -ese, as in “Chinese” and “Portuguese.” Proto-Germanic also gave us -ish, as in “Scottish” and “Swedish.” From Ancient Greek we get -ite, which is found in “Brooklynite” and the somewhat irregular “Muscovite” (that’s someone from Moscow, Russia).
Demonyms usually end in a suffix like that, but there are hardly any rules as to which place names get which suffixes. Sometimes there’s some historical connection with the base language of one of the suffixes—“Venetian,” say, because Venice has Roman and Latin roots—but sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes we pick a certain suffix to make a demonym easier to say, as in “Peruvian,” because nobody wants to struggle to say “Peruer.” Sometimes we don’t! The demonym for Dubai is “Dubaiite.”
And things get way worse than that, because not only does the suffix not necessarily follow any rules, but the actual place name itself often changes, as in Manchester’s switch to Mancunian.
From our list, let’s take Glasgow, which boasts the irregular demonym “Glaswegian.” “That one is formed through something we call analogy,” says Fonteyn. Analogy in the linguistic sense is sort of like your classic SAT question analogy: as A is to B, Y is to Z. Let’s take the words “drive” and “dive” for example. The past tense of “drive” has always been slightly unusual in that it’s “drove.” But the past tense of “dive” is not supposed to be unusual—it’s supposed to be “dived.” But because “drive” and “dive” sound so similar, Americans saw an analogy between those two words, and invented the word “dove.”
Glasgow is similar. The demonym “Glaswegian” comes, linguists think, as an analogy of the Irish city of Galway. “Glasgow” and “Galway” are two fairly similar looking words. And Galway has long had its own analogy with another similar-looking word: Norway. Galway’s demonym is “Galwegian,” as an analogy of “Norwegian.” So “Glaswegian” is a sort of a photocopy-of-a-photocopy of Norwegian. Not something anyone could ever guess!
Other irregular U.K. demonyms come from ancient names of those places. “Mancunian” is a well-known one, but Fonteyn actually played the “guess the demonym” game with me about a weirder one: Leeds. I thought about it, realized I had never heard it, so took a guess. Leedsian?
Nope. It’s “Leodensian,” which comes from an old Celtic language.
Another good one is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, usually just referred to as Newcastle. Newcastle is an extremely interesting demonym place because it actually has two demonyms. A more formal one in the same general spirit as “Leodensian” is the demonym “Novocastrian,” basically a direct Latin translation of “Newcastle.”
But the much more common demonym for people from Newcastle is so wildly irregular that it fits into a totally new section of demonyms. These I have decided to call the reappropriated demonyms. And Newcastle’s is “Geordie.”
Reappropriated demonym is not an official linguistic term, because demonyms, being understudied, are lacking some terminology. But it’s a useful categorization for some of the most fun demonyms out there. “The ones with the really weird demonyms for some reasons tend to originate in places that are talked about with a certain scorn,” says Fonteyn. These are poorer places, or places with large immigrant populations, or places with lower levels of education, or even just places with specific, unique dialects. They are, basically, the places that New Yorkers and Londoners—you’ll note that those are not irregular demonyms—mock.
Once these places are established as somewhere that is mocked, and mocked in a specific way, those terms might get reappropriated. If those jerk elitists in the big city think we’re all dirtbags, by god, we’re going to call ourselves the Dirtbaggers! Dirtbaggians!
The precise history of “Geordie” isn’t exactly clear, but most sources, including the Oxford English Dictionary, pin it to the fact that in 19th-century Newcastle, as the city grew during the Industrial Revolution, there were, um, many people named George. So people outside the city, in stereotyping and generally being rude to the Novocastrians, referred to them as “George.” As the British love to do, eventually it got a diminutive—that “-ie”—added onto the end and the second “g” was inexplicably replaced with a “d.”
Tyne Swing Bridge and the Tyne Bridge, both linking Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead. Henry Hemming/CC BY 2.0
Eventually the Novocastrians reclaimed the demonym and took pride in being called a bunch of Georges. Fonteyn ran a couple of collated searches for me in which she looked at the type of adjective most associated with different demonyms in news stories and on Twitter. What she found was that Geordie, today, is informal, but can be used for both positive and negative things. You can be a “proud” Geordie, or a “true” Geordie, or an “adopted” Geordie. Or you can be “shirtless,” “partying,” or “naughty.” (The word “Geordie” became known worldwide thanks to the U.K.’s Jersey Shore knockoff, Geordie Shore. So it’s not always positive.) But on the whole, says Fonteyn, “tentatively I would say that it’s been properly reappropriated.”
There are examples of reappropriated demonyms all over the world, and usually these are the ones with the best backstories. There’s “Yinzer,” in Pittsburgh: Pittsburghers are one of the many groups to have come up with a solution to English’s lack of a second-person plural. But instead of going with “y’all,” as did the American South, Pittsburghers created their very own: “yinz,” a corruption of “you ones.” The word is so associated with the city of Pittsburgh and nowhere else that Pittsburghers have taken pride in it and become known as Yinzers.
In Barbados, the particular dialect of English spoken in the country also changed the demonym. The regular demonym of Barbados is “Barbadian,” but that’s hardly used at all; instead, they go with “Bajan.” This is not pronounced “bah-han,” as it would be in the Mexican state of Baja California; instead, it rhymes with “Cajun,” and is a corruption of the last three syllables of “Barbadian.” See it? Badian becomes Bajan.
Another example: the people of Liverpool. Most people are probably aware of the formal demonym for people from Liverpool, if only because of the Beatles: “Liverpudlian.” (This seems to have no more complicated root than being sort of a pun. Pool, puddle. It’s not that funny but it stuck around.) But Liverpudlians have their own version of “Yinzer” and “Geordie.” Theirs is “Scouse.”
Scouse comes from a cheap fisherman’s stew of the same name. (The word “scouse” seems to come from a word of unknown origin, “lobscouse.” Scouse does not include lobster.) Liverpool is a working-class fishing town, and scouse is the iconic dish of the dockworkers. In scorn, other people would refer to people from Liverpool as “Scousers.” Eventually it was reappropriated, though not entirely; it is still sometimes used in kind of punny British way. For example, “scouse brows” is a way Liverpudlian women do their eyebrows, plucking out all the hairs and drawing the eyebrows back in with a marker. Scouse, according to Fonteyn’s indexing on Twitter, it is not nearly as reclaimed as “Geordie,” in that it is still often used in a scornful way.
A bowl of scouse, the iconic dish of Liverpudlian dockworkers. Radarsmum67/CC BY 2.0
Even currently non-marginalized cities sometimes have demonyms that come from reappropriation. Ever wonder where the word “Yankee” for a New Yorker comes from? The most likely history comes from New York’s days as New Amsterdam, full of recent Dutch immigrants. At the time, two of the most popular names for Dutch folks in the New World were Jan and Kees. If you wanted to mock those Dutch jerks out in New Amsterdam, you might refer to them—regardless of their actual name—as a bunch of Jan Kees. Jan, of course, is pronounced “yahn,” and was eventually Anglicized into “Yankee.”
One of the most interesting demonym quirks is associated with the Ancient Greek suffix, -ite. Unlike the reappropriated demonyms, the regular ones, like Italian or Welsh, are typically neutral. The word “Italian” carries no positive or negative connotation in itself—it is simply a factual way of describing the people or a property of a place. But -ite is not neutral; it is, weirdly, negative.
“This is extremely puzzling,” says Fonteyn. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the -ite ending as “slightly contemptuous,” and Wiktionary declares it “sometimes pejorative.” I took a look through Twitter myself to see about that.
Tweets using the demonym “New Yorker” are not notably positive or negative. But “Manhattanite” and “Brooklynite,” both of which have no particular reason to mean anything besides “person or property of this place,” are both strikingly negative. Words associated with “Manhattanite” include “wealthy,” “pampered,” “gilded,” “lily white,” and “entitled.” The same feeling of rich snobbery happens with “Londonite.” The more historically working-class -ite places, like Brooklynite and New Jerseyite, take the same forms as the reappropriated demonyms: a lot of words such as “proud,” “true,” and “native.” This does not happen with other regular suffixes such as, say, “Bostonian” or “Parisian,” big cities whose demonyms are primarily neutral.
I have no idea why -ite is weird. But not understanding something about demonyms seems, even after studying them, to be pretty par for the course.
ANSWER KEYDodd was beaten to Asia's single female seat on the FIFA council by Mahfuza Akhter Kiron of Bangladesh, in a vote at the Asian Football Confederation congress in Bahrain on Monday night.
Kiron beat Dodd by 27 votes to 17 after two other candidates withdrew before the ballot.
It means one of the world's most prominent women's football advocates, who had been a member of FIFA's old executive committee, will no longer hold a spot in FIFA's decision-making body.
Critics have already started raising concerns about the election results, while some questioned Kiron's football knowledge, after she struggled to name the current women's world champions in an interview with the BBC's World Service.
Just asked Mahfuza Kiron who women's world champs are. 1st she said NKorea. I clarifiedworld, she said Japan then mumbled USA. 1/2 — Mani Djazmi (@BBC_Mani) May 8, 2017
North Korea didn't even finish in the top 4 at the last Asian Cup. Not a great representative of women in football. 2/2 — Mani Djazmi (@BBC_Mani) May 8, 2017
BBC journalist Mani Djazmi reported that Kiron did not appear to know that the United States are the reigning World Cup champions.
“You gotta be f***ing kidding me,” tweeted Alex Morgan, who helped America claim victory in 2015.
You gotta be f***ing kidding me. https://t.co/jAQCkDRfN2 — Alex Morgan (@alexmorgan13) May 8, 2017
The men who run world soccer are turning FIFA gender reforms into a farce. Moya Dodd losing is best example yet https://t.co/PQhaqHF0WV pic.twitter.com/YZHSZZJnGs — Grant Wahl (@GrantWahl) May 8, 2017
Regardless, Dodd was graceful in defeat.
"Naturally I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to return to the FIFA Council today," the former Matildas vice-captain said on Facebook.
"I had hoped, through my policies and track record at FIFA, to persuade enough voting delegates to give me the job, but clearly that wasn't the case."
Dodd pushed for sweeping changes in FIFA's governance structure after the high-profile arrests and investigations of numerous football executives in 2015.
Facebook
Part of the peak body's reform provisions require at least six women, one from each continent, to serve on the 37-member FIFA council.
"The opportunity to work for good inside the FIFA Council was a rare and precious one," Dodd said.
"I feel satisfied that I have pursued it to the best of my ability."
Football Federation Australia chairman Steven Lowy was equally disappointed but praised Dodd's tireless work.I just want to give Rob Reiner a hug for saying what needs to be said about Michael Flynn, the Trump White House, and treason:
ROB REINER: They certainly have obscured it up till this point. That is certainly their intent. But the truth ultimately will come out. It may take awhile and it is a confusing story. But let's make no mistake about it. This man who is the head of our country is a pathological liar. And everybody around him is lying. There's no way to another way to look at this thing. Not only did we know about Michael Flynn. There were a number of articles, there was a letter written by the House Oversight Committee. It was well-known what Michael Flynn was doing. He was fired by the Barack Obama. So that is clear. And what EJ Dionne said is absolutely true. The one thing that they have been successful at so far is obfuscating the biggest single story that is -- that is permeating this country right now, and that is the invasion of a foreign power, a hostile foreign power into our democracy. And the Michael Flynn story aside from the fact that he was taking money from Turkey, from Russia, from places and clearly that's a criminal behavior, the main part of the story and something that we haven't even talked about is why? Why? With the White House knowing full well that this is who he was, they still appointed him National Security Adviser. And that is why Sally Yates has been kicked off the stage. She'll now come back on and that is she overheard Michael Flynn talking to the US -- the Russian ambassador, Kislyak about getting rid of the sanctions. That's the story. And that's where we have to start thinking about the undermining of our democracy.The Syrian army on Tuesday reached troops trapped for nearly three years by Isil fighters in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, according to state-run media and a monitoring group, breaking one of the longest sieges of the Syrian civil war.
Around 100,000 residents have been holding out |
couldn’t leave off anchovies and salt cod and really any type of pork products. So, lots of favorites!
What trends in the biz do you see on the horizon?
I might have to refer to Gina on this. I would hope that the neighborhood restaurant is the case. It’s amazing how dense Capitol Hill is – and to a degree, the more the merrier up there. People moving to the neighborhoods and eating there – that would be a great trend to visualize.
What trends/fads are played out?
I don’t have an answer – stuffed crust pizza! Bacon flavored vodka [Gina adds from the peanut gallery]
What would you like to see more of coming in from local farmers/growers?
Luckily we have some really good farmers in the area. Without them it would be horrible. We endure the winter months of cabbage, beets and potatoes. A lot of them are really good if you tell them how you want things grown – how to pick squash blossoms when they are just the right size. I think we get a good amount of stuff locally. One thing I’ve notices is that a lot of farmers tend to overgrow beans, peas and other vegetables so they are too starchy and not good to cook with. We work with Frank’s Produce year round. We also just started using Farmer Georgie and we work with Alvarez Farms and Tonnemaker Farm. For meat, we use Cascioppo Bros. meats and their pork is from Carlton Farms in Oregon. With that, we make our own sausage in house as well as other dishes.
If someone invites you to their home for dinner what should they cook?
Whatever they want – really. We just went to a friend’s house for dinner. I don’t know why people say they are nervous to cook for a chef – I wouldn’t care what it is as long as it’s good.
Who is the best chef in Seattle now?
We do eat at Spinasse and Artusi a fair amount. We had dinner at the Harvest Vine last night. And we go to Ma’Ono a fair amount as well.
There are so many good chefs in this town and to name one wouldn’t be right. Jim Drohman from Le Pichet is one of the smartest. He helped me with my business plan for this place. Building a business plan helps to start breaking down everything from a cost perspective and gets you to the point of opening up. That said, I haven’t looked at it since we opened.
What is your last meal?
It would probably be somewhere on the Tyrrhanean sea. I’d start with a big plate of fritti misti. Then we might have our spaghetti con vongole or with lobster and a whole roasted turbot. Then we’re going to drink the last few remaining bottles of the ‘68 Taurasi from Campagna and fall asleep.
[Gina adds] I would have eggs benedict for breakfast. And the most giant cinnamon rolls since I don’t care about how fat I get!
Sounds like a lovely way to go out!
I’ve Got a Fever, And the Only Cure is…
Bar del Corso.
The market for good, affordable food that you can walk to in your neighborhood is there. What is lacking is commercial restaurant space but that can be remedied. People must be willing to invest in retrofitting buildings with the required equipment and costs for things like ventilation hoods and duct work are significant. But when you see people cooking out of buildings that were once homes such as Pair or Maria Hines’ Tilth in Wallingford you know that it’s possible. Imagine the satisfaction of being able to walk down your block to a coffee shop, then on to a small grocery, even a butcher or specialty food shop, and a restaurant or two. It might sound a bit too idyllic or conjure up images of provincial living in the Mediterranean countryside for you as it does for me. But one can dream…
If you enjoyed this interview with Jerry Corso from Bar del Corso then please check out my other articles in the series at Chef Interviews and stay tuned for future conversations with more of your favorite well and lesser known Seattle-based Chefs! Next up, Eric Donnelly of Rock Creek and Dustin Ronspies from Art of the Table coming soon to The Hungry Dog Blog!
A Recipe from Jerry Corso of Bar del Corso Farrotto with Morels Serves 4-6 as a first course Ingredients For the Farrotto 1 cup Pearled Farro (a.k.a. Italian Farro)
Olive Oil (extra virgin)
3 Tbl. Sofritto (see below)
2-3 Tbl. Prosciutto (or Guanciale, pancetta, etc.), diced
Thyme
Rosemary
½ lb. Morel Mushrooms
1 Garlic Clove
1 quart Vegetable or Chicken Stock
A walnut-sized chuck of Butter
½ Lemon
Handful of Reggiano Parmigiano, grated For the Soffritto (this can be made ahead and saved to use for other recipes such as pasta sauce) 1 Carrot
1 Onion, small
1 piece Celery
1 Leek
½ Fennel bulb, small
1 Garlic clove
1 sprig Rosemary
½ cup Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper Instructions: Soffrito Mince all the vegetables and garlic and cook on medium heat until nice and translucent, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Farroto Pre-cook the farro: In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, toast the farro in the olive oil with the 1 Tbl. soffritto, and rosemary for about 5 minutes on medium heat. Add the 1 ¾ cup of the stock and bring to a boil. Once it’s boiling, turn it down to a bubbling simmer and cover. Cook covered for 20 minutes until liquid has evaporated. Spread out on a sheet pan and let cool. In a saucepan or thick-bottomed pan, sauté 1 garlic clove, thyme, 1 Tbl. soffritto, prosciutto and morels in olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. When morels have softened and are flavorful, add pre-cooked farro. Then add stock (heated), one ladle at a time until farro is cooked but still firm and loose. Turn off heat. Add “a knob” of butter, small handful of parmigiano and a squeeze of lemon. Mix and cover for 1 minute. Serve garnished with extra virgin olive oil and more parmigiano.The contents of one of London’s most secretive private museums has gone on display for the very first time.
It hasn’t been called the Black Museum for a very long time, but the name persists and the Met Police’s “Crime Museum” has been a subject of myth and rumour ever since it was founded back in the early 1870s.
Officially, it’s a collection of artifacts that can be used for training new police officers in what to expect, but of course that belittles what it has really become… a repository of the darkest periods of London’s history.
However, where there is crime, there are victims, and this leaves a museum of crime with a delicate act — on one hand gore and voyeuristic fascination, but on the other hand respecting that people died and suffered.
Which is why, apart from the occasional celebrity or journalist, it has never been opened to the public.
Putting some 600 items out of the museum’s 2,000 objects collection on display has therefore been a case of informing, while hopefully avoiding the excesses of the penny dreadfuls.
So, although the request came from the Met Police, it is the Museum of London that has curated the display, which they aim to show off not just the implements of crime, but also remember the victims as well.
It’s not mawkishly sentimental, and in some respects at times, society’s own mistreatment of prisoners is also remembered, but what is a collection of objects has managed to become a wider story of the breadth of crimes in London throughout the ages.
Everything from the heat of the moment use of a kitchen knife to carefully planned bombs and crafted murder weapons are covered. Crimes against material wealth rather than the body are also included, such as counterfeiting equipment, and espionage.
The display is laid out in a few zones, starting with the 19th century as a pastiche of the old Black Museum itself, but the most dramatic room is next, where 24 cabinets of curiosity have been lined up against a wall, each devoted to a single crime.
The mugshots that line the wall are not a rogues gallery, but a mix of criminals, detectives or victims — had it been just criminals, it would have been a wall of 23 men, and one woman.
Each of the cases contains objects from the museum’s collection — sometimes weapons, sometimes court documents, sometimes newspaper clippings.
The Crime Museum is not something which has ever had a specific style to its collection, possibly mirroring the old Victorian gentleman’s collections which were made up of whatever the collector fancied. So the collection here can be obvious, such as the murder weapons, sometimes, seemingly bizarre, such as a collection from a model of living room that featured in a court case.
The display is also laid out, with a mix of cabinets per crime, and elsewhere, zones related to the genre of crime, such as fake guns, or police investigation techniques. Some of the crimes chosen were selected less for their innate barbarity, than for how they marked significant points in criminal detective work.
Not all the weapons are obviously weapons — such as the piece of seemingly random tree branch which was used as an improvised weapon. Elsewhere the dark genius of human ingenuity is on display, in the horrific binoculars which would have blinded the unfortunate person who used them.
Part of the genius of the display though is to bring us who live in the light closer to the dark side of human nature. Some of the artifacts on display should send a shudder through any decent person.
We’ve heard of nail bombs, but such a short phrase belittles the sheer horror of seeing a briefcase packed full, not of domestic nails, but huge industrial nails destined to become lethal projectiles. Carnage on an industrial scale.
Humanity’s ingenuity is shown in the form of poisons, but her who is the real victim? The poisons and implements being for the use by backstreet abortionists. A crime no doubt, but was the woman the criminal, or society for driving women to such ends?
As a display, the thoughts you are left with can be a wide-ranging and bewildering as the collection itself. It’s both a display of the cleverness of humanity to find ever more ingenious ways to secure a personal goal, and also the desperation that some can feel and their desperate attempts to escape a dreadful situation.
We have a tendency to be fascinated by the outrageous, and remember the headlines. We all know who the Krays are, who Jack the Ripper is supposed to be, Dr Crippen, etc., but how many of us can name their victims? The exhibition doesn’t shy away from the criminals, it is after all their implements that are on display, but it seeks to remember the unremembered victims, to put faces to the names we forgot.
And it reminds us that at times, criminals can be as much victims of their circumstances as the people they attack.
The display ends with a thoughtful video from the curators and police on how they put the exhibition together, and a list of victim support helplines.
The Crime Museum Uncovered is open from this Friday, until next April. Entry is from £10. They recommend that you book in advance.
A few photos:“I don’t have time to do that.”
Ever say those words? Whether they come from your own mouth or over a text to a friend, I know I say those often. Too often. Below find my top 5 strategies to get everything done during the 28 hour day of a blogger.
1) Set Goals – I know, you have heard this a million times. but the reason you keep hearing this is that it’s really important. I can’t get through a day without a list of stuff to get done, so why would I think a week or month would be any different. Let me tell you, the rules for setting goals are yours. Do not set crazy goals and deadlines. Start small and achieve, the feeling is addictive. Soon you will be completing yearly and year 5-year plans with ease.
2) Prioritize – If you are like most bloggers or writers in general, you probably have about 20 irons in the fire. Figure out which one is closest to the melting point. In other words, do the most important tasks or part of tasks first. Sounds easy right? Just because it sounds simple doesn’t mean that you know which task matters the most. The trick to this is to see if a certain task or element is needed to complete another element. For example, you need to research a topic before you can write about it and you need to write it before it can be edited.
3) Ask for help – Most bloggers started at home with kids running around and spouses needing this or that. Put them to work. Now that my children are older they have a job to help me every day. Whether it is help with the blog or just around the house, this is a great resource that you shouldn’t be ashamed to tap into. Additionally, if you still work a 9 to 5 like I do, ask co-workers for help. Ask them to help you take on tasks at work to ensure you complete it on time. You could even pick their brain for blog content.
4) Focus on what you can control – You can’t stop the sunset, so why waste time getting upset when things happen that are out of your control? I can’t tell you how many times my internet crashes at home. They are adding to our neighborhood so the line goes down a lot. I have to be hyper-focused on saving my work as often as possible. It still happens though, I get up for a coffee and forget to save, the internet goes down and I have to refresh the page to get it back. Don’t let this distract you from your task and certainly don’t bother getting upset, it will come across in your writing.
5) Relax – This can sound counter-productive but I promise it is just as important as step one. If you do not get enough sleep or time to rest your thoughts, your work will suffer. You are not at your best when you are tired and your readers, family or co-workers will pay the price. Getting 8 hours of sleep at night can be tough with everything on our plates but try to get as close to that as possible. Finding “me” time can be a bit more challenging. I am a mother to three “almost” adults and it is hard. Just hiding away to read a few chapters of a new book or take a bath is a fine art in my house. When my children were small I would take advantage of nap time, these days I make the most of the time they are in school or at work.
Follow these simple steps and you will find yourself producing more content and getting more done both at work and home.
Disclaimer: Loving the Journey does not own or claim to own the media in this post. Photos were used from https://freerangestock.com/. Photos in this post are the property of the artist/photographer.
Like this: Like Loading...I was trying out some stuff on my Xbox One (well technically not mine, but that doesn’t matter). More particularly I was testing out UWP for Xbox One.
One of the first things I wanted to try out was how to get input from the Xbox One controller. And so I hooked up the KeyDown event of the Windows’ CoreWindow.
Hooking up KeyDown event Window.Current.CoreWindow.KeyDown += CoreWindow_KeyDown; 1 Window. Current. CoreWindow. KeyDown += CoreWindow_KeyDown ;
Handling KeyDown event private void CoreWindow_KeyDown(Windows.UI.Core.CoreWindow sender, Windows.UI.Core.KeyEventArgs args) { Debug.WriteLine(args.VirtualKey.ToString()); } 1 2 3 4 private void CoreWindow_KeyDown ( Windows. UI. Core. CoreWindow sender, Windows. UI. Core. KeyEventArgs args ) { Debug. WriteLine ( args. VirtualKey. ToString ( ) ) ; }
As the VirtualKey enumeration, which I get back in the KeyEventArgs and represents the key being pressed, has values like ‘GamePadA‘ or ‘GamePadLeftShoulder‘, I thought that I already found a way to get input from the game controller.
But…
Well, this blogpost is about a ‘gotcha’, so you would have probably guessed that there is a small caveat.
It turned out that when I ran my UWP app on my Xbox One, that pressing any button -except for the B button- nothing would happen. I didn’t see anything appearing in my Output window. Only when pressing the B button, ‘GamepadB‘ was printed out. Strange…
After looking up some things, I found out that by default UWP apps on Xbox One run in ‘mouse mode’. So my controller is more or less treated like a mouse. Hence the ‘pointer’ on my screen:
In order to disable this ‘mouse – or pointer mode’ I had to set the RequiresPointerMode property of my App class to ‘WhenRequested‘. Like this (App.xaml.cs):
Disabling mouse mode this.RequiresPointerMode = ApplicationRequiresPointerMode.WhenRequested; 1 this. RequiresPointerMode = ApplicationRequiresPointerMode. WhenRequested ;
This is, by the way, recommended for a UWP app that needs to run on a Xbox One. Because, you could also control your Xbox with a remote-like controller where you don’t have a thumbstick.
When I start up my application now, I no longer see this mouse pointer. But, when I now press a button on my controller I see that my Output Window is printing out the expected values.
So, now the KeyDown event is triggered every time we press a button on the controller and through the VirtualKey property of the passed in KeyEventArgs we can easily determine which button the user has pressed on his controller.
Having no mouse pointer in your screen, however, means that we should think through our UI when building UWP apps for Xbox One as we now navigate through our app using the controller’s D-pad or left thumb stick, but not as if we are using some sort of mouse pointer. But more on this in a later blogpost.
Summary
When building a UWP app that needs to run on Xbox One, you should set your App’s RequiresPointerMode to ApplicationRequiresPointerMode.WhenRequested. That way the KeyDown event of the CoreWindow is triggered and works as expected. This is the recommended mode in which your app should run on Xbox One.
Extra
Setting the RequiresPointerMode to ‘WhenRequested‘ means that we no longer see a pointer on the screen. However, in some scenarios you might want the user to interact with a particular control using the pointer. For example, on a Custom Control on which you would like the user to interact using ‘mouse controls’, you can set the RequiresPointer and IsFocusAngagementEnabled properties, like this:
Allow Mouse like interactions public MyUserControl() { this.InitializeComponent(); this.RequiresPointer = RequiresPointer.WhenEngaged; this.IsFocusEngagementEnabled = true; } 1 2 3 4 5 6 public MyUserControl ( ) { this. InitializeComponent ( ) ; this. RequiresPointer = RequiresPointer. WhenEngaged ; this. IsFocusEngagementEnabled = true ; }
Now every child in my custom control will be in ‘mouse mode’ as well so the user will see a pointer on the screen when het interacts with my custom control.
I hope this blogpost could be of any help to anyone who’s also been struggling with controller input!
In a later posts I will be discussing things like IsFocusAngagementEnabled, how to efficiently allow the user to navigate through your app (when not in mouse mode), …
Share this: Twitter
Facebook
Print
More
LinkedIn
Reddit
Tumblr
Pocket
Google
Like this: Like Loading...Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have discovered a new signal pathway in the brain that plays an important role in learning and the processing of sensory input. It was already known that distinct glial cells receive information from neurons. However, it was unknown that these same glial cells also transmit information to neurons. The glia release a specific protein fragment that influences neuronal cross-talk, most likely by binding to the synaptic contacts that neurons use for communication. Disruption of this information flow from the glia results in changes in the neural network, for example during learning processes. The team composed of Dr. Dominik Sakry, Dr. Angela Neitz, Professor Jacqueline Trotter, and Professor Thomas Mittmann unravelled the underlying mechanism, from the molecular and cellular level to the network and finally the resulting behavioral consequences. Their findings constitute major progress in understanding complex pathways of signal transmission in the brain.
In mammalian brains glial cells outnumber nerve cells, but their functions are still largely unelucidated. A group of glial cells, so-called oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPC), develop into the oligodendrocytes which ensheathe neuronal axons with a protective myelin layer thus promoting the rapid transmission of signals along the axon. Interestingly, these OPCs are present as a stable proportion -- some five to eight percent of all cells in all brain regions, including adult brains. The Mainz-based researchers decided to take a closer look at these OPCs.
In 2000 it was discovered that OPCs receive signals from the neural network via synaptic contacts that they make with neurons. "We have now discovered that the precursor cells do not only receive information via the synapses, but in their turn use these to transmit signals to adjacent nerve cells. They are thus an essential component of the network," explained Professor Jacqueline Trotter from the Institute of Molecular Cell Biology at Mainz University. Classically, neurons have been considered as the major players in the brain. Over the past few years, however, increasing evidence has come to light that glial cells may play an equally important role. "Glial cells are enormously important for our brains and we have now elucidated in detail a novel important role for glia in signal transmission," explained Professor Thomas Mittmann of the Institute of Physiology of the Mainz University Medical Center.
The chain of communication starts with signals traveling from the neurons to the OPCs across the synaptic cleft via the neurotransmitter glutamate. This results in a stimulation of the activity of a specific protease, the alpha-secretase ADAM 10 in OPCs, which acts on the NG2 protein expressed by the precursor cells releasing a NG2 fragment into the extracellular space, where it influences neighboring neuronal synapses. The neurons react to this in the form of altered electrical activity. "We can use patch-clamp techniques to hear, as it were, how the cells talk to one another," said Mittmann.
"The process starts with the reception of signals coming from the neurons by the OPCs. This means that the feedback to the neurons cannot be seen as separated from the signal reception," explained Dr. Dominik Sakry, joint first author of the study, describing the cascade of events. The role of NG2 in this process became apparent when the researchers removed the protein: neuronal synaptic function is altered, modifying learning and disrupting the processing of sensory input that manifests in the form of behavioral changes in test animals.
The evidence that the communication between the two cell types in the brain is not a one-way system but a complex mechanism involving feedback loops was obtained in a collaborative project involving physiologists and molecular biologists. Participating in the project at Mainz University were the Faculties of Biology and Medicine and the Focus Program Translational Neurosciences (FTN) in the form of platform technology provided by the Mouse Behavioral Unit (MBU). The project was additionally supported by two Mainz Collaborative Research Centers (CRC 1080 and CRC-TR 128) and involved participation of the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology in Magdeburg. Scientists from seven countries participated in the study.Stephen Schork saw prices surging past $110 a barrel and thought it wasn't sustainable. This is how he cashed in.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- For the last several weeks, oil trader Stephen Schork has been betting that prices would fall. Instead, they kept rising. And every day they ticked higher, he lost money.
On Monday his luck finally turned around. Prices started to collapse and have slid 12% in the span of a week. On Friday, oil prices fell 2.6% to settle at $97.18 a barrel, the lowest level since mid-March.
Oil trader, account manager and advisor Stephen Schork.
The sell-off is prompting many analysts to think oil may have peaked. There's simply too much oil on the market and not enough demand, said Schork.
"We looked at the fundamentals, and from a demand point of view, prices had reached a tipping point," he said. "This was more of a speculative rally fostered by the weak dollar. We didn't think that was sustainable."
Oil prices had jumped from less $85 a barrel in mid-February to over $110 a barrel in March as violence swept the Middle East. And prices largely stayed above $110 a barrel...until this week.
"I was short all the way into the rally," said Schork, "Now I'm starting to take profits."
He wouldn't say how much money he's made in his own account over the last few days. But Schork, who also buys and sells oil for wealthy clients, says the average size of a typical client account is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
How'd he do it? Once he decided the fundamentals weren't supporting $100 oil, he began'shorting' oil by selling into the market and taking an aptly named'short position.'
There are also those who bet on the opposite happening and take a 'long position.' Many of those bets are placed by investors such as pension funds, index funds or mutual funds.
These investors have been plowing money into commodities of all stripes over the last few years, sometimes as an inflation hedge, sometimes as a long term investment, or sometimes simply as a means to diversify. It's this category of investor that some blame for artificially driving oil prices higher.
Schork is certainly a speculator, but he's the type that takes both long and short positions. Analysts generally credit these types of speculators as providing "liquidity" in the market, meaning they step in and take positions when there's a gap between the actual producers and consumers of oil.
When Schork started shorting oil, he'd sell a contract for, say, $110 a barrel. This contract -- for 1,000 barrels of oil -- would need to be delivered at the end of the month.
The buyer who's 'long' is hoping that oil will be worth more than $110 by that time, so he'd make money. Schork was betting it would be worth less than $110, thereby costing him less to deliver the 1,000 barrels at the end of the month and letting him pocket the difference.
Of course, in the futures market, speculators rarely take physical delivery of the oil, but rather just even out their accounts at the end of each month by offsetting their long positions with short ones, or vice versa.
Schork has been doing this for two decades. He got his start as a trader for Glencore, the Swiss commodities company, then worked for a bit on the NYMEX floor.
In addition to trading oil and managing accounts, Schork also publishes a daily subscription-based newsletter on the oil markets.
While retail investors can get expose to oil trading through exchange-traded funds, he cautions investors against buying actual futures contracts.
When someone comes to him asking him to manage their money, "the first thing you do is try to talk them out of opening an account," he said. "This is a very risky endeavor. The payoffs can be huge, but so can the losses."Thirty-three years ago, Peter Brosnan heard a story that seemed too crazy to be true: buried somewhere along California’s rugged Central Coast, beneath acres of sand dunes, lay the remains of a lost city. According to his friend at New York University’s film school, the remains of a massive Egyptian temple, a dozen plaster sphinxes, eight mammoth lions, and four 40-ton statues of Ramses II were all supposedly entombed in the sands 150 some-odd miles north of Los Angeles.
“It was an absolutely cockamamie story,” Brosnan says. “I thought he was nuts.” The ruins weren’t authentic Egyptian ones, of course. They were the 60-year-old remains of a massive Hollywood set—the biggest, most expensive one ever built at the time. The faux Egyptian scenery had played the role of the City of the Pharaoh in one of Hollywood’s first true epics, Cecil B DeMille’s 1923 film The Ten Commandments. The set had required more than 1,500 carpenters to build and used over 25,000 pounds of nails. The production nearly ruined DeMille and his studio. When the shoot wrapped, the tempestuous director supposedly strapped dynamite to the structures and razed the whole set, burying it in the sands near Guadalupe, California, to ensure no rival director could benefit from his vision.
Bullshit, Brosnan thought. But then his buddy pointed him to a line in DeMille’s posthumously published autobiography. “If 1,000 years from now archaeologists happen to dig beneath the sands of Guadalupe,” the director teased, “I hope they will not rush into print with the amazing news that Egyptian civilization…extended all the way to the Pacific Coast.”
By 1982, Brosnan had graduated from film school and was earning a living as a freelance journalist, but he couldn't shake his friend's story. The film student in him was enchanted by the idea of uncovering and preserving a forgotten bit of Hollywood’s history. That summer, Brosnan and his friend drove across the country, from New York City to a stretch of coast near Santa Barbara, to see the ruins for themselves. The whole affair, he thought, would make for a hell of a documentary.
“We were young, wannabe filmmakers, and I thought this was golden,” Brosnan says today. “We’ll find some archeologists, we’ll find the set, we’ll dig it up. The story writes itself.”
The City of the Pharaoh was not so much a movie set as it was a monument to the man who built it. DeMille was already a towering star in the early days of Hollywood, but in 1922 he was recovering from a streak of critical flops. He had gained a reputation for his sense of spectacle in films like Joan the Woman and Male and Female, and The Ten Commandments was to be his comeback.
Delivering DeMille’s blockbuster meant deploying a barrage of special effects, at least by the standards of the day. In 1923, set design was the only way to visually transport viewers to the Sinai in the time of Moses. The “desert” DeMille chose for his Israelites to wander, while certainly more convenient than filming on location in Egypt, presented a logistical nightmare. There were no nearby cities, no paved roads, and no place for his cast of thousands to stay. The 22,000 acres of sand dunes that separated the small farming town of Guadalupe from the Pacific Ocean was harsh and desolate. The sharp-grained sand that gives the wind there its added sting is devoid of nutrients, and, combined with constant salt sprays from the sea, makes life a rarity in the dunes. For DeMille, it was perfect.
“Your skin will be cooked raw,” DeMille told his army of 3,500 actors and extras, according to a Los Angeles Times reporter on the scene. “You will miss the comforts of home. You will be asked to endure perhaps the most unpleasant location in cinema history. I expect of you your supreme efforts.”
The costs were mounting even before DeMille arrived in Guadalupe to begin shooting. Preproduction expenses were already approaching $700,000—an astronomical sum in the early days of Hollywood. More than a million pounds of statuary, concrete, and plaster were used to construct the 120-foot-tall, 800-foot-long temple and surrounding structures, and whole plaster sphinxes were sculpted and loaded onto trucks bound for the dunes. Every day on location meant feeding and housing the thousands of workers and animals. DeMille drove his construction team to work faster. Paramount Studios, the film’s backer, began sending DeMille increasingly desperate letters demanding that he cut costs. One receipt, for $3,000 spent on a “magnificent team of horses” for the pharaoh, pushed the studio over the edge, according to Sumiko Higashi, a professor emeritus at The College at Brockport, SUNY, and author of Cecil B. DeMille and American Culture: the Silent Era, a biography of DeMille.
“You have lost your mind,” telegraphed Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount Pictures. “Stop filming and return to Los Angeles at once.” DeMille refused. He took out a personal loan and waived his guaranteed percentage of the movie’s gross to ensure the production continued. “I cannot and will not make pictures with a yardstick,” he wired back to the studio. “What do they want me to do?” he was rumored to have said, according to Higashi. “Stop now and release it as The Five Commandments?”
Despite the warnings, DeMille pushed on. Bugles sounded every morning to 4:30 a.m. to wake the 5,000 workers and actors that populated the 24-square-mile tent city he’d built in the dunes. (It earned the nickname the City of DeMille.) His workers raised the 109-foot-tall Great Gate—an archway covered in intricate busts of rearing stallions—and buttressed it with two 35-foot-tall clay-and-plaster statues of the Pharaoh. They erected a “city wall”—built 750 feet long because DeMille refused to work with painted backgrounds or limit his cinematic choices. Five mammoth sphinxes, weighing over five tons each, lined the entrance to the ersatz Egyptian city.
Filming was done at a madcap pace and condensed into a mere three weeks, according to Scott Eyman’s biography, Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille. But even with the Exodus in the can, one more problem loomed. According to a prior agreement with the landowners, DeMille’s monumental set had to be dismantled before he left. Production costs had already ballooned to over $1.4 million, more than any other film previously made. DeMille considered reneging on the deal, Brosnan says, but likely worried about another issue: If he left is city standing, rival directors from other studios could easily swoop into Guadalupe and produce an epic on the cheap. DeMille would not have that. Rather than pay workers to take the set down, he settled on a faster method. Dynamite was supposedly strapped to the great temple he had built, and the City of the Pharaoh was brought down. According to legend, he ordered bulldozers to mound sand over the scattered remains and quickly left town.
Sixty years later, in 1983, Brosnan arrived at the dunes like the Children of Israel before him—completely lost. He knew the set was buried somewhere, but the dunes stretched nearly 30 miles, across two counties. Looking for clues, he called the Air Force base that occupied much of the coastline. (“Sir,” he says the sergeant on the other end of the line told him, “There is no Egyptian city buried at Vandenberg Air Force Base.”) He haunted local libraries. He hounded municipal politicians. No one could provide hints about the set’s exact location.
Then he stumbled upon an old ranch hand at a local tavern who had run cattle through the dunes for decades. On a cold and dark morning, after a savage storm had rearranged the topography of the dunes, Brosnan and the rancher hiked the sea of hundred-foot-high peaks, making their way a mile toward the pounding surf of the Pacific. Eventually they spied what locals called “the dune that never moves"—the sandy tomb that covered DeMille’s set—and saw a chunk of Plaster of Paris statuary poking through.
The discovery made headlines around the world and Brosnan fielded calls from The New York Times, NBC Nightly News, and People magazine. His documentary idea, which had seemed pie-in-the-sky a few months earlier, looked promising. And his pitch—that the lost city is the oldest existing Hollywood set left; that props from more modern shoots have already been preserved for posterity; that early set design was, in a sense, an American art form—struck a chord in the industry. Brosnan tentatively called his documentary project The Lost City.
Charlton Heston, star of DeMille’s 1956 remake of the film, publicly wished the project well, and local archaeologists volunteered their time to help in the excavation. A curator at the Smithsonian expressed interest in acquiring some pieces, once the dig wrapped. Promises for funding came in from Paramount Pictures and Bank of America. Brosnan moved to Hollywood with the intention of pursuing a career in the ‘biz. But first, he had to start digging.
“This will be a scientific exploration by highly trained personnel,” said a Cambridge-educated archaeologist who signed on in 1983. “Not a case of simply digging up stuff like potatoes. And if we're serious about documenting movie history, then let's do it properly.”
The excavation and documentary progressed, but Brosnan constantly faced two problems: funding and permitting. When he had the money, the county wouldn’t let him touch the environmentally sensitive area. (The western snowy plover, a federally protected species that nests along california’s coast, keeps the dunes off limits to people for half the year during breeding season.) By the time he got permission to dig, seven years later, funding had dried up. In 1990, several organizations, including the Smithsonian and the DeMille Family Trust, agreed to partially fund the project, and Brosnan and an archeologist used ground-penetrating radar to show that much of the set remained intact. But he couldn’t raise enough money to excavate the actual ruins. He needed $175,000 for an archeological dig to recover 60-year-old fake relics. “We don't see this as a fake Egypt,” Brosnan told a reporter at the time. “We see this as real cinema history.”
But by the mid-1990s, Brosnan had been scraping by in the movie business for a decade, writing scripts and directing small projects. Lacking the money, he gave up the dig.
That DeMille’s ruins have |
, let’s try indexing some data in our Elasticsearch instance.
curl -XPUT http://localhost:9200/patient/outpatient/1?pretty -d’
{
“name” : “John”,
“City” : “California”
}’
This command will insert the JSON document into an index named ‘patient‘ with the type named ‘outpatient‘. 1 is the ID here. If we didn’t provide any ID here, it will simply create one for you. Pretty is used to pretty print the JSON response. To replace an existing document with an updated data, we just PUT it again.
By using the above method, we can insert one document at a time.
In order to bulk load the data, we can use Bulk API of Elasticsearch.
curl -XPOST ‘localhost:9200/patient/outpatient/_bulk?pretty&refresh’ –data-binary “@/home/ubuntu/Ex.json”
The above command loads the Ex.json file into the patient index.Sebastian von Gorka may face up to a year in jail after he was caught trying to smuggle a handgun onto a plane at Washington airport.
A senior security adviser in the Trump administration started his West Wing work on Monday, despite awaiting sentencing for attempting to smuggle a firearm onto a plane.
Sebastian von Gorka, 45, was charged with possessing a 9mm handgun at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, in January 2016 after the weapon was spotted by an X-ray operator.
He will be sentenced on February 3.
The deputy assistant to the President of the United States, who is expected to advise Donald Trump on matters related to national security, was arrested on a misdemeanour charge for carrying a weapon in an airport terminal.
It remains unclear if his sentencing will affect his security clearance, though the charge carries a maximum sentence of 12 months in jail and a fine of $2,500.
A US official confirmed von Gorka's arrest to The Wall Street Journal.
The Trump administration recently banned immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations on grounds of perceived security threats.
Von Gorka, himself an immigrant from the UK whose parents fled Communist Hungary as refugees, pleaded guilty to the charge and is not being charged with any terrorist offence.
The senior adviser, who previously worked in the Hungarian Ministry of Defence, was a national security editor at Breitbart News from 2014 before following his boss, Steve Bannon, to the White House. He is the third former Breitbart staffer to take up a role in Trump's administration.
Writing at Breitbart, he claimed that President Obama had helped the Islamic State group, compared Obama's administration with the totalitarian regime depicted in the George Orwell novel 1984, and said that the Muslim Brotherhood had over-run the National Cathedral in Washington DC.
According to the Transportation Security Administration, fourteen weapons were confiscated at Washington Airport in 2016.Actual Police Calls from Fayetteville, Arkansas, as Reported by the Fayetteville Police Department
7:45 p.m. A woman on North Betty Jo Drive reported a woman entered the caller’s house uninvited and stated that she was drawn to the caller’s house because of the wood. When the caller asked the woman where she was from, the woman stated she was from the stars but was now living in “FayetteNam.”
6:22 p.m. A man at 1528 N. Porter Road reported someone placed a sign in his tree that read “vet.” It may be the same person who stole his racecar the previous day, the caller said.
8:04 p.m. A man at 2842 Habberton told the dispatcher he was God’s chosen one and that he wanted to speak to the president. He said he had a biblical map and wanted the world surrendered to him.
10:15 a.m. A woman at 2593 N. College Ave. reported a man in a black jacket and cut-up shorts was apparently drunk, walking around in the parking lot of Arkansas Pools and Spas. The caller reported the man’s shorts were shredded and he was not wearing any underwear.
4:39 p.m. A clerk at 1540 E. 15th St. reported some children have been stealing quarts of oil all day.
12:24 p.m. A man on Arkansas 265 West reported someone put toilet paper all over his yard, hot dogs in all the toilets, and spread macaroni throughout his house.
4:14 p.m. A caller on South Washington Avenue reported a man sitting on the sidewalk, urinating into a bottle.
11:53 p.m. A woman at County Line Road in Bethel Heights reported her neighbors had been partying all night and she was ready to go to bed.
12:16 a.m. A man at 15646 Coose Hollow Court in Rogers reported a helicopter flew over his house and a few minutes later a car with its headlights off drove up and down his driveway.
8:00 p.m. A woman reported children not wearing shirts were at the end of the street at 736 E. Ash St. chanting and some children were hiding because something satanic was coming after them.
1:43 a.m. A caller on West Center Street and South Hill Avenue reported several children outside hollering and making noise by banging trashcans together. They also moved a toilet into the middle of the street, the caller said.
6:29 p.m. A man reported a man in a blue Honda Accord driving recklessly on North Thompson Street. The man had a paper bag on his head and was running people off the road, the caller said.
2:36 a.m. A caller at 2300 N. College Ave. reported a large fight involving about fifteen people. The fight originated, the caller said, because someone spilled a Coke.
11:17 p.m. A caller at the 1500 Block of N. Fieldstone Ave. reported his brother stabbed him with a fork. The two were arguing over pie.
11:41 p.m. A caller on South University Avenue reported two people in his apartment building were smoking marijuana. The caller believed they were college students.
11:08 a.m. A woman at 1764 N. Leverette Ave. reported she was walking by an apartment when the resident opened the door and a cloud of smoke and the smell of marijuana came out.
6:05 p.m. A woman at 11284 S. Harris Drive in Elkins woke up and a woman was in the laundry room claiming to be the mother of Jesus Christ.
1:43 a.m. A man at 4099 N. Sunflower Circle reported someone was trying to get in his front door and was snapping a bullwhip.
6:38 p.m. A woman at 13822 Stephanie Circle in Rogers reported neighbors were burning grass and leaves with a blowtorch.
3:20 p.m. A woman and man at Hilltop Inn at 3601 S. Thompson St. reported that several people come to the hotel several times a month and unload baby formula off of a truck. They have been coming up from Texas once or twice a month for the past year and always drive a white van, stay for a couple days and leave with several cases of Enfamil and other items. The man reported that about six months ago, the individuals left $3,000 under the mattress in the room they stayed in and came back later that day to pick up the money. Two women rented the room on April 6, and on April 7 there were about twelve or thirteen people in the motel room, the callers said. They loaded several cases of Enfamil and other items, and the callers noticed the group was very cautious and seemed very paranoid while loading the items in the van. When the callers looked into the room, there were several items of clothing from Wal-Mart with the price tags still on them and several price tag attachments scattered over the room.In Karma's short history, we've gone through a number of iterations of our checkout process. It might surprise you, given the fact that we only sell one hardware product, and the only additional thing we sell is data service for that hardware product. But if we've learned anything along the way, it's that making something simple and straightforward for a customer is seldom simple or straightforward to create.
We also have the unfortunate challenge produced by the numerous negative and confusing experiences most of our customers have had with other mobile providers: consumers have (rightly) learned not to take anything at face value in this space. To expect hidden surprises on next month's bill and an abusive lock-in relationship. We want to change those expectations, but first we need them to buy Karma.
It's not that our customers don't want to buy data, it's that they don't want to feel forced to buy data
Our original store was simply that: we sold the Karma device, which included a free 1GB of data, and afterwards the customer could buy more data from her account dashboard. A few months later, we decided to sell "Karma packs," which packaged data alongside the device. We pitched the discount of the larger "packs" as a discount on the device — buy the 7GB bundle and the device is 50% off, buy 20GB and the device is free. We soon realized that this was confusing, and that we should instead offer discounts on the data bundles themselves, separate from the basic cost of the device.
And so the iterations continued. We've made a number of missteps: the original version of the shop was a pop-over modal, which required you to sign in with Facebook. We're very sorry about that. We kept improving. A week or so ago we launched the latest version of the store, referred to internally as version 7 but we're not done tweaking. Here's what we've learned so far:
Give people the option not to buy something
In April of this year we made a purchase of 2GB mandatory, in addition to the 1GB bundled with the device. This was a terrible idea. Our reasoning was that you need data to use the device, so we wanted to accustom the customer to buying data up front. The result was a near 34% drop off in sales. It was confusing for someone who expected to pay $99 for Karma to be required to add a minimum of $28 to this purchase before they'd even hit step two in the checkout process.
Add data (or don't!)
However, when we removed the offer of a free 1GB of data with each device purchase, there was zero impact on sales. Now we offer 1GB, 5GB, and 10GB options, in addition to an option to skip data altogether. Most buyers pick the 5GB option. It's not that our customers don't want to buy data, it's that they don't want to feel forced to buy data.
Don't ask people to create an account
As mentioned before, requiring someone to sign in with Facebook before buying Karma was a major misstep. Ultimately, we want to remove all barriers to purchase, and remembering a Facebook login or creating a whole new account can be a major barrier. To use Karma you'll need to have an account, but this doesn't have to happen before you buy a device. After the purchase is confirmed, we give an option to create an account right there, and we also send an email with instructions. Failing that, a customer can sign up for an account the first time they connect to a Karma device, at which point the device is registered to them.
This works because we've oriented our service around selling customers data (gigabytes) they can use with any Karma device, and not the typical carrier model of a single user per device.
One thing we do is ask for an email address early in the checkout process, before even getting a name. People are used to putting in their email address, and it's something we can capture when they continue to the next step. Even if they don't complete a purchase, we could use that address to retarget them later.
Make input fields obvious and intelligent
There are a number of small, but important, things we do to make the input form as simple and straightforward as possible. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is to always show labels for each field. We use the placeholder text to give an additional hint, not as the only indication of what the customer should type.
All you need is zip codes
We auto-populate any field we can. For instance, when you give your name in the Contact Info section, your full name is automatically added to the Shipping Details section. When you enter your zip code, your city and state is automatically selected based on it. When you begin typing your credit card number, the icon switches to your type of card based on the first two digits.
The little things count
We're also forgiving with inputs: spaces are allowed in the credit card number, expiration date can be entered in the customer's format of choice — that's our job to convert, not theirs. We even check if a customer's zip code is outside our coverage area, and offer a (non-blocking) warning about it when they continue to the next step.
No surprises, no inessentials
This isn't the easiest way to build a store
Throughout we want to make sure there are no surprises in the ordering process. With a "single page" design, we display the total price through each step of checkout. When you select a shipping option, we display the exact day you should expect delivery. At any point you can go backward in the process and all your inputs and selections are still there.
We don't display a coupon code field, but instead use referral URLs to auto-add coupons. By default we hide the option to use a shipping address different from the billing address. The large submit button is always in the same spot on the screen, each step of the way.
This isn't the easiest way to build a store. Every little enhancement requires extra work from our developers, and extra thought in the design process. But none of it is rocket science, and the little touches add up.
Feedback, rinse, repeat
At the end of the day, we're successful if people are buying Karma, and if they feel confident in that process. We review any design changes with the whole team to catch problems and gather suggestions. We commission usability studies on a regular basis, to make sure everything makes sense to the uninitiated. We really want to get this right.
And we're always looking to improve. If you have ideas or suggestions for how we could make the ordering process easier, or explain our product better, we'd love to hear from you!
We’d also like to take this chance to thank other hardworking store designers we’ve “borrowed” from along the way: Dollar Shave Club, Virgin America, and Harry’s.If you read this blog, you realize I have no time for those dullards who are obsessed with calling Barack Obama a socialist, arguing he cames from Kenya and engaging all the other ranting you hear from recent converts to what they think is conservatism.
Guess what, boys and girls?
Obama is a typical Beltway insider, right in the mainstream of D.C. politics.
And I'm including the Beltway Republicans in that.
If you think the George W. Bush crowd was any less in favor of big spending and big government than the current crowd, you weren't paying attention.
Ron Paul's supporters were. And they don't get excited by the sort of mindless rhetoric that revs up the tea-party types. Here's a piece from Lew Rockwell's blog by Adam Sparks on what happens when one of these tea-partiers tries to get that nonsense past a Ron Paul rally:
If you're looking to please a crowd of a couple thousand people holding Ron Paul signs in front of the Texas Capital and don't know exactly what to say, here's a start: Don't just stand there bashing Barack Obama. Paul supporters have bigger fish to fry. Last Sunday, Ron Paul was back in Austin headlining a Tea Party rally on the steps of the Capitol. Paul's supporters launched the Tea Party movement back in the 2008 election cycle, but, by the 2010 midterm elections, the Party (or at least a large segment of it) had been co-opted by the traditional right. Amy Kremer, spokesperson for the Tea Party Express – which was organizing Sunday's rally – and one of the emcees for the event, rattled off the traditional Tea Party rhetoric (Obama is evil, Obama sucks, Obamacare is an unconscionable travesty). The crowd was almost comically un-enthused by her tired Republican talking points; by the end of her speech, Kremer couldn't go a minute without the crowd erupting into chants of "Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul!"
Sparks has got some good points about how the small-government tea-party movement was hijacked by big-government Republicans.
He's also got some good points about overenthusiastic Ron Paul fans. Many still believe he's going to win the GOP nomination. He's not.
But that's okay. It's nice to see them retaining their enthusiasm for a campaign that could liven up the Republican convention. In that regard, check the clip below on how Paul's organizing efforts are outflanking the Mitt Romney crowd.On the third floor of the Department of Informatics there is a robotics laboratory which looks like a playroom This is where researchers are testing how their robots can figure out how to move past barriers and other obstacles.
"In the future, robots must be able to solve tasks in deep mines on distant planets, in radioactive disaster areas, in hazardous landslip areas and on the sea bed beneath the Antarctic. These environments are so extreme that no human being can cope. Everything needs to be automatically controlled. Imagine that the robot is entering the wreckage of a nuclear power plant. It finds a staircase that no-one has thought of. The robot takes a picture. The picture is analysed. The arms of one of the robots is fitted with a printer. This produces a new robot, or a new part for the existing robot, which enables it to negotiate the stairs," hopes Associate Professor Kyrre Glette who is part of the Robotics and intelligent systems research team at Oslo University's Department of Informatics, Norway.
Three generations
Even if Glette's ideas remain visions of the future, the robotics team in the Informatics Building have already developed three generations of self-learning robots.
Professor Mats Høvin was the man behind the first model, the chicken-robot named "Henriette," which received much media coverage when it was launched ten years ago.
Henriette had to teach itself how to walk, and to jump over obstacles. And if it lost a leg, it had to learn, unaided, how to hop on the other leg.
A few years later, Masters student Tønnes Nygaard launched the second generation robot. At the same time, the Informatics team developed a simulation program that was able to calculate what the body should look like. Just as for Henriette, its number of legs was pre-determined, but the computer program was at liberty to design the length of the legs and the distance between them.
The third generation of robots brings even greater flexibility. The simulation programme takes care of the complete design and suggests the optimal number of legs and joints.
"We tell the simulation program what we would like the robot to do, how fast it should walk, its size and energy consumption. For instance, we may want the robot to be able to turn around and change direction, climb over boulders and walk on rugged ground," says Kyrre Glette.
In response, the simulation program suggests the optimal solution, including the shape of the body and the number of legs. It simulates thousands of possibilities and produces the best models by means of artificial evolution.
In other words, the computer program comes up with a set of proposals for different robots designed for optimal functionality.
"None of them is intrinsically better than the others. The only difference is their strategies for solving the tasks," says research fellow Eivind Samuelsen.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to arrive at the perfect solution by way of simulation, because our wish-list of what we want the robots to do is becoming increasingly complicated.
Robot trials
Simulation is not enough. In order to test the functionality of the robots, they need to undergo trials in the real world. The robots are produced as printouts from a 3D printer.
"Once the robots have been printed, their real-world functionalities quite often prove to be different from those of the simulated versions. We are talking of a reality gap. There will always be differences. Perhaps the floor is more slippery in reality, meaning that the friction coefficient will have to be changed. We are therefore studying how the robots deteriorate from simulation to laboratory stage," says Mats Høvin to the research magazine Apollon.
The robots are frequently only half as good in real life.
"Practice enables the robots' performance to be improved by 20 to 40 per cent. We hope that gradually, we will be able to double their performance ratings so that they end up being just as good as, or perhaps even better than their simulated counterparts."
The researchers are looking at the robots' ability to learn and practice even at the simulation program stage.
"We then proceed to check whether the robots are able to learn in a real-world setting. One of the tests is to see how the robots react to obstacles," says Samuelsen.
From three to six legs
The robotics team are currently comparing the performance of five robots which in theory should be equally good.
Three of the five robots have four legs, one has three, another has six. The fewer legs, the less energy is consumed. One of the robots is fitted with single-joint legs. The others have legs with two joints.
"It may well be that the best solution would be to use three joints, but this would mean that the energy consumption would be far too high."
Just like in the natural world, the researchers have therefore opted to restrict the number of joints to two.
"Single-jointed legs enable the robot to walk forward efficiently, but it will find it difficult to turn around," Glette points out.
When the researchers are testing the robots, they set up an obstacle course to enable the robots to teach themselves how to pass the hurdles.
The researchers hope that in the future, the robots will be able to give automatic feedback to the simulation program about how well they work, so that the next time around, the computer will be in a position to design an even better robot.
"Once we have further perfected the robots, we will also be testing how they work if printed in a softer material."
3D printers
3D printers make it possible to create sophisticated robots and other objects.
"The explanation is that a 3D printer will construct whatever you want it to, layer by layer. This means that you won't have to bother with moulds, and you can produce seemingly impossibly complicated structures as a single piece. You can replicate perfect shapes and structures which are otherwise beyond the realm of possibility. Our imagination is the only limit."
The 3D printer is also able to print objects with large cavities, such as a ship in a bottle.
"The 3D printout is based on a mathematical model, described as polygons, of whatever it is you want to print," says Mats Høvin, who is currently testing out the technical production limits, like how thin or thick the legs of the robot can be.
There are a number of different types of 3D printers.
"Some produce printouts in steel, titanium and plastic. Others print fabrics. Organ printing has become a hype. Before the surgeons commence an operation, they can print out a copy of the patient to practice on. Oslo University Hospital Rikshospitalet is already employing this technology to design skeletal parts for hip replacement patients."
The printers at the University of Oslo cost between NOK 400,000 and three million. The more expensive, the better the detail.
"NATO want to use the printers to create spare parts for replacing damaged ones during field operations. This would mean same-day fabrication. Some pastry chefs are already making use of 3D printers to bake sophisticated cakes. There are even printers that build houses. This means that the building contractor can set up an enormous crane that will print the entire building, including the cement, the insulation and everything else. Clever! And you won't have to bother about getting the craftsmen in," says Mats Høvin.
Not all 3D printers produce their output layer by layer. Some 3D printers mill the superfluous material off in blocks.
The latest printers are able to combine the milling and layering techniques in the same operation.
"This ensures a higher level of precision."
One of the main benefits for the robotics team at Blindern is the short route from the ideas stage to the robot-testing stage.
"Nevertheless, there are many practical challenges ahead before our robots can be exploited commercially. Our greatest challenge is to develop robust algorithms and a system which is able to make use of imprecise simulations," says Kyrre Glette.“Last week, in San Francisco, our city suffered our own senseless act of gun violence with the killing of Kathryn Steinle, and our thoughts and prayers are very much with her family. Today, we must do more as a nation to prevent dangerous people from getting easy access to guns. And Congress has a moral responsibility to act. What is so unclear? What do they not understand about that? The memory of these victims, the cries of their families deserve action – results, not words. Today, we will say: we will not accept a status quo defined by the daily tragedy and grief endured by so many communities. We will not accept ‘the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon this nation,’ as the President Obama so eloquently stated in Charleston. The American people deserve a vote to finish the job, starting with comprehensive background checks. We’ve had this conversation over and over again. We’ve always said: to us, in Dan’s spirit, it is inevitable that this legislation will pass. To some here, it may seem inconceivable that they will bring a vote to the floor. With 90 percent of the public supporting gun background checks, we must shorten the distance between the inevitable to us and the inconceivable to them, to finish the job.”SNc Channels:
Search
About Salem-News.com
Oct-01-2010 01:46 TweetFollow @OregonNews Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Bill to Reduce Marijuana Penalties in California The new bill changes marijuana possession of less than an ounce to an infraction.
Salem-News.com
(SACRAMENTO) - From California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, on September 30, 2010. To the Members of the California State Senate: I am signing Senate Bill 1449. This bill changes the crime of possession of less than an ounce of marijuana from a misdemeanor punishable only by a $100 fine to an infraction punishable by a $100 fine. Under existing law, jail time cannot be imposed, probation cannot be ordered, nor can the base fine exceed $100 for someone convicted of this crime. I am opposed to decriminalizing the possession and recreational use of marijuana and oppose Proposition 19, which is on the November ballot. Unfortunately, Proposition 19 is a deeply flawed measure that, if passed, will adversely impact California’s businesses without bringing in the tax revenues to the state promised by its proponents. Notwithstanding my opposition to Proposition 19, however, I am signing this measure because possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is an infraction in everything but name. The only difference is that because it is a misdemeanor, a criminal defendant is entitled to a jury trial and a defense attorney. In this time of drastic budget cuts, prosecutors, defense attorneys, law enforcement, and the courts cannot afford to expend limited resources prosecuting a crime that carries the same punishment as a traffic ticket. As noted by the Judicial Council in its support of this measure, the appointment of counsel and the availability of a jury trial should be reserved for defendants who are facing loss of life, liberty, or property greater than $100. For these reasons, I am signing this bill. Sincerely,
Arnold Schwarzenegger _________________________________________
Prohibition | Marijuana | Medicine | Business | Most Commented on
Articles for September 30, 2010 | Articles for October 1, 2010 | Articles for October 2, 2010Facebook has become as essential a tool for businesses as it is for you and your friends, but now the company is doubling down on getting you to go to or buy from local stores, restaurants and events.
First up, the company is making it much easier to poll your friends for suggestions. Now if you write a post looking for advice, you’ll have the option to turn on a Recommendations feature, which embeds business information to comments, and maps out all your friends’ suggestions in one place. You can check out facebook.com/recommendations or the new recommendations bookmark for more information. Second, Facebook is building on its recently-released Events app to make it easier to discover cool things happening around you. Now you can easily view what activities your friends are participating in, and receive tailored recommendations depending based on what your friends are doing or events you’ve been to in the past.
Finally, you’ll no longer have to leave Facebook next time you want to order food or buy movie tickets. The company now allows you to place orders from “any restaurant’s Facebook Page that uses Delivery.com or Slice,” as well as buy movie tickets straight from their pages, via Fandango. You can also now book appointments for your local businesses – say, for a haircut or massage – or get a quote on prices, and the businesses will get back to you via Messenger. These are all welcome features; leveraging like-minded friends seems like an obvious way to get quality recommendations, and being able to interact with a business right on their Facebook page eliminates the extra steps of opening a separate app or website. But of course, for Facebook it means that you have one less reason to ever leave the social network.
The recommendations and business features are starting to roll out in the US today, and the changes to Events will arrive “in the coming weeks.
Getting Things Done With the Help of Your Friends on Facebook
Read next: LinkedIn Endorsements are now marginally less pointlessThe LPC was sponsored by the FSF, Mozilla, Creative Commons and OpenGameArt. Thank you to the donors who gave to the FSF to support this effort! The competition attracted a lot of attention in the free software community, and in fact there were so many submissions that the announcement of winners had to be postponed because judging took so long.
The prize-winning games have just been announced here. The winners of the earlier art-only phase of the competition are here.
And that's the end of the first Liberated Pixel Cup! We'd like to say thank you to everyone who put their passion for free software gaming into art, development and judging. We look forward to seeing further development on these games and, hopefully, more LPCs ahead!
Also see our press release announcing the winners.Yongnuo has had quite a busy few months. In addition to the Canon lens clones that have generated quite a bit of buzz, the company has also quietly created a cheaper version of the Canon 2X III teleconverter.
Here’s what the Canon version looks like:
Yongnuo’s clone also packs 9 lens elements into 5 groups and reduces the lens’ maximum effective aperture by two stops.
Here’s a chart showing the Canon lenses that are compatible with the Yongnuo teleconverter:
Like the recently launched Canon 50mm f/1.8 clone, Yongnuo’s version appears to have pretty decent optical performance. We haven’t tested this product ourselves yet, but here’s what reviewer David Siegfried had to say after giving the teleconverter 5/5 stars on Amazon:
This appears to be a direct knockoff of the Canon 2.0x III Extender which costs 2.5x as much. I tested this against the Kenko 2x Pro 300 teleconverter (which is one of the best) and by comparison this has better corner sharpness and much reduced chromatic aberrations. In fact it basically eliminates the CA near the edge of the frame that you get with most teleconverters. I can’t say for sure that this is as good as the genuine Canon version but it is darn good.
While the Canon version of this teleconverter costs $449, Yongnuo is selling its clone for just $180 over on Amazon.
Yongnuo YN-2.0X III Teleconverter [Amazon via CanonWatch]WinP.cn reports that they have heard from reliable sources that Nokia has just celebrated 2 million activations of the Nokia Lumia handsets in China.
The feat was achieved between December 5th and March 5th, and was hampered in part by the poor availability of the Nokia Lumia 920 handset, with the device frequently out of stock.
The small internal celebration was led by Gustavo Eichelmann, Nokia’s global vice president and head of Nokia China, with pictures of the event above.
It was also revealed that the Chinese version of the Nokia Lumia 520 and 720 should hit shelves within the next few weeks.
If Nokia has indeed sold 2 million of their smartphone in China, the news bodes well for Nokia’s Q1 2013 results, which will need to reach at least 6 million Lumia sales to make up for the absence of Symbian handsets.
Read more at WinP.cn here.
Thanks hengxiang32401 for the tip.OMAHA, Neb. -- Miami never had a chance against Florida, not after that fourth inning.
The Gators tied a College World Series record with an 11-run frame on their way to a 15-3 victory Saturday night that was the Hurricanes' most lopsided loss in their long and proud postseason history.
Editor's Picks Power appears restored at the College World Series Day 1 offered the promise of power as offense returned to Omaha. The new flat-seam baseball helped boost offensive numbers all season, so expect more of the same this year at the CWS.
"Fourth inning says everything about the game," coach Jim Morris said. "Everything that could go wrong went wrong. Ten runs are pretty difficult to come back from. Beforehand I mentioned that if you give Florida an opportunity and put them on base, they'll get after you. That's exactly what happened."
Florida's outburst broke open a surprisingly sloppy game and ended with the Gators having turned a 2-1 deficit into a 10-run lead on nine hits off Andrew Suarez and two relievers.
"We came out a little nervous, and I certainly did not see an 11-run inning in the fourth," Florida coach Kevin O'Sullivan said. "I can't say enough about our approach there. We stayed in the middle of the field. The first few innings we tried to do too much. The big inning certainly was the difference."
Florida (50-16) advanced to a Bracket 1 winners' game against Virginia on Monday night. Miami (49-16) and Arkansas will play an elimination game that afternoon.
"The game's over, pretty much, and we just have to come out strong for Arkansas," Miami shortstop Brandon Lopez said.
Miami, which made the NCAA Tournament for the 43rd straight year and reached the CWS for the 24th time, hadn't been beaten so thoroughly in a postseason game since losing 16-5 to Florida in the 2009 regionals.
Suarez (9-2) pitched 3 1/3 innings in the loss, matching his second shortest outing of the season.
"I just fell behind in the count and they got hits, they found the holes," Suarez said. "But there's nothing I could do about that."
Florida scored 11 runs in the fourth inning, tying a College World Series record. Steven Branscombe/USA TODAY Sports
This was the 241st or 242nd meeting between Florida and Miami -- the schools don't agree on the number -- but the first at the CWS. The Gators took two of three against Miami in February and have won 20 of the last 25 in the series.
Florida is on a nation-best 10-game win streak since losing its opener in the Southeastern Conference tournament, and is batting.338 since the regular season.
The Gators made the most of their 12 singles, two doubles, six walks and two hit batsmen.
"We didn't try for the big at-bat or to hit it out," Josh Tobias said. "We tried to ground out at-bats, keep it up the middle, take walks and add on with each at-bat, string them together."
Florida became only the fourth team in 61 CWS games at the stadium -- and first in 27 games since 2013 -- to score 10 or more runs. Per-team scoring bottomed out at three runs a game the last two years.
Miami capitalized on a couple uncharacteristic mistakes by the nation's No. 1 defensive team to get out to a 2-0 lead.
Suarez balked in a run in the Florida third and couldn't get out of the fourth as the Gators rapped hit after hit following Lopez's fielding and throwing errors on the same play put runners at second and third.
Sam Abrams, superb in super regionals against VCU, couldn't stop the onslaught, and neither could Danny Garcia.
Florida sent 15 batters to the plate in the 40-minute inning.
"It was a long inning," Lopez said. "I was trying to get out of the inning after what happened, put it behind me and keep going."In late December of last year, Blu made headlines for a curious Twitter attack against Alchemist and Evidence, calling the two racist, among other things, and alleging that they support Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Evidence offered a gentle rebuttal, writing, " My people. Blu is not well mentally. We all wish the best for him. Very talented human who is having a hard time with life. Get better!” and “ He’s still one of my fav rappers. Love goes out to Blu.”
While Evidence's claim that Blu was not mentally well fit the apparent narrative at the time, two new Blu tracks produced by Alchemist himself suggest perhaps something else was going on entirely. On "Cobb," Blu skates over Al's elegant keys, while on "Palisades," he's joined by Killa Kali, Big Twins and Planet Asia.
It should be noted that the songs were posted to Alchemist's SoundCloud page with links provided to the producer's limited 45 vinyl series known as Craft Singles. Whether Blu's Twitter tirade was a promotional effort, or he had a falling out with Alchemist after recording these tracks isn't clear, but that Alchemist would release and sell the singles suggests things have been patched up in the time since. Regardless, the new tunes sound nice and are hopefully a sign of what's to come from both Blu and Al.
Listen to "Cobb" up top and "Palisades" just below.Teachers need more money, according to a new survey by the American Federation of Teachers. Noting that teacher salaries last year climbed 3.2 percent, or 0.2 percent less than inflation, AFT president Sandra Feldman said, “Salaries |
Certainly Wicca has evolved into a nature religion over the past five decades. Most of the pieces were already in place and as the public face of Wicca became more accessible and less like a mystery tradition that process accelerated. Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance added an explicitly earthy, nature-loving vibe to Modern Witchcraft and while The Spiral Dance isn’t a text designed for the British Traditional Witch it still had an effect on many of that tradition’s adherents. Had Modern Wicca remained an initiation-only-oath-bound-secret known only to a few thousand people it’s likely that it would still be more mystery tradition than an earth based spirituality, but few Paganisms exist completely in a bubble. Many Wiccan Traditions remain essentially as they were in the 60’s and 70’s, but the people entering those traditions are coming from different backgrounds and levels of experience today, and to many of those individuals Wicca has always been (and will ever be) a nature religion.
Do you like Raise the Horns? Even if you don’t would you be interested in humoring me? Like us on Facebook, and also like Patheos Pagan for more great articles just like this one. Are you a Pagan living in the UK? Jason will be in London and Edinburgh this September and October, send him a message if you’d like to get a cup of tea or a pint of cider. He will also be speaking and teaching in North Carolina this August, click here for more information about that.ROMEROME (Reuters) - Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, marking a formal return to Italy's political stage, laid out his policy priorities on Sunday for the forthcoming election, portraying himself as a pro-European moderate.
Speaking at a meeting of his Forza Italia (Go Italy) party, Berlusconi said he wanted to lead the group into the national ballot, which is expected by next March, promising hefty tax cuts if the center-right regained power.
Subsumed by sex scandals and legal woes, Berlusconi largely vanished from politics after being ousted from power in 2011.
ADVERTISEMENT
But he has emerged from the shadows this year and Forza Italia, with its traditional rightist allies the Northern League and Brothers of Italy, have combined backing of some 35 percent, according to polls, making them the largest single bloc.
"We predict a great victory for the center-right," said Berlusconi, 81, looking thin and fit during a speech near Rome that effectively launched the Forza Italia election campaign.
While his allies have repeatedly denounced the European Union, Berlusconi said he wanted more Europe, not less, calling for common defense, foreign, industrial and fiscal policies.
"I do not think we can leave the euro," he said, further underscoring how the anti-euro rhetoric once heard from many Italian parties is receding as the vote nears.
Berlusconi, who had open heart surgery last year, cannot run for office due to a 2013 tax fraud conviction. But he hopes the European Court of Human Rights overturns this ban when it reviews his case in November.
"I expect that Europe completely restores my honor... But court or no court, I promise you that I will take part in the election campaign," said the four-times premier.
ADVERTISEMENT
If Forza Italia won power, he said he would introduce a flat tax and eliminate inheritance tax, hike minimum pensions, offer pensions to housewives and give more to impoverished families.
Berlusconi dismissed the chances of the ruling center-left, saying the left was in retreat across Europe, and also took aim at the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which polls say is Italy's largest single party, with support under 30 percent.
The 5-Star is expected to chose the 31-year-old lawmaker Luigi Di Maio as its prime ministerial candidate next weekend. Berlusconi dismissed him as a "little political meteorite" with no practical know-how.
Highlighting his own long experience in business and politics, he said he wanted to make a pact with the devil to take 20 years off his life. He joked this his tan, brown hair and slim figure showed a deal might have been struck.
He also looked to swat down the hopes of Northern League leader Matteo Salvini, who has put himself forward as the natural prime ministerial candidate for the center-right.
"We have always had respect for their ideas, but we created the center-right and we have always been the leader to put its program into action," Berlusconi said.
ADVERTISEMENT“For a game that charges this much, the performance is pretty amazing,” said Serkan Toto, a Tokyo-based mobile game consultant. He said even games that charge only a dollar or two for in-game items usually convert fewer than 5% of downloaders into paying customers.
However, some users said they liked the idea of paying $10 to unlock all the game functions, rather than paying $1 or $2 for some functions and constantly being pestered to spend more.
“It made me feel safe to download,” said Taku Ojima, a 24-year-old game fan who lives in Miyagi prefecture north of Tokyo, who said he hasn’t paid for extra functions on other free-to-download games.
Nintendo today rolled out an update to Super Mario Run that includes a collection of feature additions and bug fixes, along with a new "Easy Mode." The relaxed mode turns off time limits for each course and provides players with unlimited bubbles, so they can take as long as they want to complete a course and die as many times as needed to get past tricky sections.The update comes the same day as Nintendo's third-quarter earnings call, where the company announced that Super Mario Run has been downloaded 78 million times globally since its release in December (via The Wall Street Journal ). Although unspecified, Nintendo said that "more than 5 percent" of those users have gone on to pay the full $10 price tag required to unlock all of the content in the game, resulting in more than $53 million in revenue so far.Today's update to Super Mario Run also includes compatibility with Korean, new events, an adjustment to how many toads are lost and gained in Toad Rally, and more. A few days after the game launched last month, Nintendo began surveying some customers and asking their opinions on how much the game should cost, what modes they liked, and if they would play a sequel, suggesting that the company is willing to take constructive criticism regarding the largely negative feedback to the game's pay structure and tweak it for a potential Super Mario Run 2.As reported by The Wall Street Journal, some gamers remain satisfied with Nintendo's decision to lock most of the game's content behind a $10 pay wall.Also taking place during its earnings call today, Nintendo confirmed that Animal Crossing for iOS would in fact not be launching before March 2017 as originally planned, and would be delayed until the following fiscal year. This means that players could see the game launch as early as April 2017, or as late as March 2018. On the bright side, Fire Emblem Heroes launches this Thursday, February 2. Super Mario Run can be downloaded from the iOS App Store for free before requiring the $9.99 price if players are interested in unlocking every level in the game. [ Direct LinkThrough the past 13+ years, the United States has fought a war of choice in Iraq, and has extended its original, fully justified punitive mission in Afghanistan into a war of choice (including a "surge") there. It has the world's most powerful and most expensive military and has won nearly every tactical engagement in each country. Yet in a strategic sense it has lost both wars.
Now it faces the challenge of the indisputably evil and brutal ISIS. Of the desirability of crushing ISIS there is no doubt. But after the previous commitments led to grief, people have looked back and asked, 'How could we ever have thought that [Tactic X] would have worked?'
It's worth trying to ask that question ahead of time with ISIS, as it was worth doing with Iraq. The cover story of our brand-new issue [Subscribe!] is a tremendous, thoroughly reported, vividly told analysis by Graeme Wood of the history, ambitions, strengths, and vulnerabilities of the Islamic State movement. I urge you to read it and think about its implications.
Along with Graeme Wood's story, please consider this shorter assessment by Kenneth S. Brower, a longtime defense analyst. He doesn't agree with Wood on everything, but in the areas both of overlap and of differences I think you'll find these essays clarifying and valuable.
Some Thoughts About Our So-Called "War" on ISIS By Kenneth S. Brower As I see it the Sunni minority in Iraq and the Sunni majority in Syria are under siege by Shia. ISIS is the one successful Sunni group opposing the Shia. A very large portion of Arab Sunnis at least passively support ISIS, not because they support its extreme ideology but because they want the Sunnis to emerge victorious. A subset of the pro-ISIS Sunnis actually support their extreme ideology. What we call the Iraqi military is seen by almost all Arab Sunnis as a Shia army under the influence, if not the control, of Iran. This explains why Turkey maintains open borders, as well as the policy of Jordan, Saudi, and the Emirates. I simply do not understand our strategy, assuming we really have one. If our goal is defeating ISIS's ideology and its support of international terrorism this cannot be done by indirect fire, PERIOD! If [conclusive defeat] is our objective we only have limited choices: either military control of 25 million Syrian/Iraqi Sunnis, which will require a sustained force of 500,000 for decades; or creating conditions whereby the majority of Sunni Arabs will see it in their self interest to subjugate the ideological minority. If our objective is simply to maintain the borders set by colonial powers in 1919, then air power alone will suffice. But the inevitable result will be Shia control of Syria and Iraq and a strengthening of ISIS ideology and terrorism. The use of air power is our only feasible military option, but using air power to liberate urban areas, like Mosul means destroying them! That will only create more enemies. I have come to the conclusion that there is no military solution to this issue that can be generated by the U.S. But I believe there is a political solution. We have to give the Sunnis reason to reject ISIS. That would entail having the U.S. come out against the Sykes-Picot borders, supporting a break-up of Iraq into Kurdish, Shia, and Sunni countries, incorporating most of Syria, while simultaneously and carefully decimating ISIS leadership. I simply cannot understand why it is in the strategic interest of the U.S. to maintain current Middle Eastern borders, which are unsustainable. I see our current approach as guaranteed to fail. Terrorism is murder, whether it is in Paris, Copenhagen, or any U.S. town. Every day about 70 Americans are murdered, most by guns. Unless the victims are famous or cute most are ignored by the media. But a minor terrorist attack gets headlines. A YouTube video of a beheading forces the U.S. president to go to " war" in order to avoid being called weak by his domestic political opposition. That's not leadership! Worse, the so-called hawks push for deeper involvement irrespective of military reality. They live in a fantasy world of U.S. military exceptionalism. To me the issue is not whether we would be better served if the A-10 were being properly employed. Obviously we would be! Ditto [other military-reform concepts], which have always made sense to me. To me the issue is strategy... and as I see it our use of force is currently counterproductive. In Gaza the IDF has been able to assassinate Hamas leaders sometimes layers deep. So what! The occupants of Gaza have seen their society all but ripped apart, and they continue to support Hamas. If 125,000 were still employed in Israel instead of Asians I wonder how much support Hamas would have? If I were a Sunni Arab I would know that when the Syrian Alawite (Shia) used poison gas the U.S. did nothing although thousands were massacred. Yet when two Americans were murdered we bombed Sunnis... and then we expect Sunnis to love the U.S. We have got caught up in tactics, and strategy has been caught up in domestic politics. Military reality is nowhere to be found. I am profoundly worried.
A central argument of my "Tragedy of the American Military" article was that because Americans "honor" their military but don't really take it seriously, we repeatedly send our forces on missions at which they're destined to fail.
The "easy" part of dealing with ISIS is agreeing on its horror. The difficult part is thinking ahead five steps, about what the use of military power can and cannot do. Wood's reporting and Brower's military analysis are valuable steps in that direction.The law firm of Camara & Sibley has decided to take on document-sharing website Scribd in a big way, seeking class action status against the site in a lawsuit filed Friday in a Texas federal court. The charge: like YouTube, Veoh, and other user-generated content sites, Scribd makes it just too easy to upload copyrighted content without permission, and the company should be held liable... and pay up.
What about all those cases (including the recent Veoh ruling) which broadly construe the DMCA's "safe harbor" provisions to protect these kinds of websites so long as they promptly take down content when notified? Hey, those cases are all out in California, baby! It's time for Texas justice.
An egregious infringer?
What's odd about the case isn't that it was brought; given what has happened to most other user-generated content sites, such a lawsuit was probably inevitable. No, what's odd is that the case was brought by Camara & Sibley, the Houston law firm housed in a "custom-built four-story Tuscan building beside Rice University featuring a fourth-floor deck with 360-degree views of Houston and a built-in grill and wine cellar." Remember, these are the lawyers who are:
Defending Apple nemesis Psystar, the company that sells its own computer hardware preloaded with Mac OS X.
Defending Jammie Thomas, the target of the RIAA's first anti-P2P case that went all the way to trial. Currently, the team is arguing that the $1.92 million in damages from Thomas' retrial are "excessive, shocking, and monstrous."
Still (apparently) planning to file a class action lawsuit against the RIAA in order to "get the $100 million that they stole" from people as part of the group's long-running litigation and settlement campaign against file-swappers.
This time out, though, they represent one Elaine Scott, a Houston author who was horrified to find her 1985 book Stocks and bonds: profits and losses available for download on Scribd; someone had apparently taken the time to scan the entire thing and upload it to the site. Scott noticed that the book had been downloaded more than 100 times and grew incensed that her copyright was being violated. So she notified Scribd, which takes works down when it receives a DMCA takedown notice (as do all US-based user-generated content sites that hope to stay in business).
But the fact that Scribd would take down the book was beside the point; it shouldn't have been there in the first place. Echoing a view that is common among rightsholders, Scott and her lawyers argue that it simply can't be the case that the onus for protecting copyrighted works falls completely upon the rightsholder. That is, sites like YouTube or Scribd shouldn't be able to host copyrighted works, profiting from them indefinitely until a copyright holder takes notice and asks them to stop. Such a system puts a terrific burden on rightsholders if they want to keep their works off of such sites, especially if someone else can simply upload another copy.
In the words of Kiwi Camara, Scott's lawyer, "The West coast technology industry has produced a number of startup firms premised on the notion that commercial copyright infringement is not illegal unless and until the injured party discovers and complains of the infringing activity and the infringer fails to respond to such complaints... Scribd, Inc, is one such egregious infringer."
One of the unexpected twists to the complaint is that Scribd has actually developed a copyright protection system. When authors send a takedown letter to the site, Scribd adds the offending document to its system to prevent other people from simply uploading it again. But this itself is another act of copyright infringement, according to Camara; Scribd is copying the text of the book or document in question without permission for use in this system, even though the copyright protection system itself might someday turn out to be worth more money that the document storage side of the business.
As for the DMCA, Camara points out that most such court cases have taken place in the Ninth Circuit, which includes San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Such rulings don't automatically have precedent in Texas, and Camara argues that the Fifth Circuit might well come to different conclusions. He also contends that Scribd isn't a "service provider" at all, but a publisher—which would remove the DMCA immunity—and also that Scribd makes money directly off of infringing works (by showing ads), which could also threaten safe harbor protection.
Camara wants to extend the case to an entire class of authors; this fits with what he told Ars this summer, when he said that when his firm takes cases, "we want to fix a problem for a lot of people, including our client."
As for that client, she's quoted in the complaint, too. "I bring this complaint," says Scott, "because I believe that just as it isn't right for children to steal words, it isn't right for websites like Scribd.com to do it, either... If that behavior is allowed to continue I believe it makes a mockery of the copyright laws of the United States and sets a terrible example for all."
Further reading:Picture this: You’re Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone. You’re riding the high of starring in a movie that, while no Moonlight, was still nice. You’ve acted in a bunch of great films, and somehow managed to look like a totally different person in every single one of them. You used to date Andrew Garfield, and it seems like you two are on good terms. That can be a really hard thing to do. Interpersonal relationships are difficult! Good for you, Emma Stone!
You, Emma Stone, are an accomplished actress, and you’ve made out with Ryan Gosling. So imagine your surprise when a random 17-year-old—a boy who has never met you, and has done nothing—has the audacity to ask you to his high school prom. Would you, Emma Stone, be thrilled and exhilarated at the prospect of putting on a fancy dress and flying to Arizona to spend the evening with a group of random teenagers? No, of course you wouldn’t. You would wonder why a pubescent boy presumed that you have the free time to go on an inconvenient date with a total stranger.
As you may have guessed, this is not a hypothetical situation. Last week, high school student Jacob Staudenmaier went viral when he asked Emma Stone to go to the prom with him. In the past few years, the concerning trend of celebrity promposals has produced increasingly elaborate YouTube videos. Doubtlessly aware that he would have to go big or go home (and, you know, invite an age-appropriate plebeian to his prom), Staudenmaier recreated the opening number “Another Day of Sun” from La La Land. If you thought that La La Land was super white and slightly mediocre, just wait till you see this La La Land-inspired Emma Stone promposal video. Staudenmaier sings about taking Stone to Olive Garden—really, that’s the best you can do?—insisting that, “It will make my night, and maybe yours too.” No, unlimited breadsticks and a high school dance will not make Emma Stone’s night, and frankly, the mere suggestion that it might is quite rude.
As classmates dance in and out of the frame, the 17-year-old crooner begs, “Please don’t let me down.” Presumably, Staudenmaier thinks that Emma Stone owes him something, because he was nice enough to tell her that he likes her and thinks she’s cool. Of course you think she’s cool: You’re 17, and she’s famous and has boobs.
At this point, it’s important to mention that teenage girls also ask male celebrities to prom. However, when a girl asks a famous guy to prom, he’s not under the same sort of gendered pressure to acquiesce. It’s disturbing enough that we live in a society where overconfident boys feel that female celebrities owe them something. To make matters worse, they actually sort of do. When a boy makes a celebrity promposal, his creepy entitlement is routinely interpreted as adorable and sincere, to the point that women are actually expected to respond. As Jimmy Kimmel explained in his riff on the viral promposal, “In fact, this is a hostage situation, because if Emma Stone didn’t write him a letter, she would look like a jerk.”
Additionally, this celebrity promposal trend sends a horrible message to young women. We teach girls that, if they absolutely have to reject someone, they should be considerate and kind about it—even if the proposal was unrealistic, inconsiderate, and frankly not even that well done (yeah, Staudenmaier, I’m looking at you). It’s never too early to learn that if a boy is charitable enough to pay attention to you, you have to go out of your way to be super nice to them. Luckily, Emma Stone is well-liked enough that she didn’t feel the need to attend a 17-year-old’s prom for PR points. She did, however, have to send her would-be prom date a very nice personalized letter, writing, “Jacob, thanks for making the greatest proposal I have ever received… I can’t tell you what an honor that was and how much I smiled through that entire beautifully orchestrated video. I’m in London working, but I hope you have the best time at prom, and I’m grateful you thought of me. Thank you. P.S. I do see Gosling around the eyes. Love, Emma.”
Moral of the story: Every high school boy should have the confidence to ask out random celebrities, because at the very least they’ll receive some forced compliments, which will make them even more confident. And if there’s one problem white men have in America, it’s a lack of confidence. In addition to this letter, Staudenmaier also got his 15 minutes of fame, and even appeared on Good Morning America. In one of his many interviews, the 17-year-old explained that while he “definitely thought it was a total long shot,” he decided to make the video because he’s a “passionate filmmaker.” Staudenmaier continued, “The response from this whole thing has been enough to keep the self-esteem high for a long time.” That’s great news, because the entertainment industry is currently suffering from a dearth of self-assured director-dudes.
Men are horrible in so many ways that it can be hard to spot the insidious ones. While a celebrity promposal video might seem cute—aw, look how much effort he put into pirating Final Cut Pro!—it’s actually a self-serving method of putting an unsuspecting woman in a shitty position. Of course, Emma Stone is not the first celebrity to fall victim to this viral scourge.
In an ABC interview, Staudenmaier cited another celebrity promposal as inspiration—a former student from his very own high school who had asked Miley Cyrus to prom. “She didn’t actually go to prom with him, but he was invited to one of her concerts and got to go up on stage with her, so I think it worked out,” he recalled. So before you feel bad for these love-struck kids, consider the possibility that they are literally trying to get things from strangers. In a world where likability is any woman’s greatest asset, these proto-men are manipulating a sexist system for attention, concert tickets, and free swag.
And the list goes on and on. Vine “star” Cole LaBrant tweeted a promposal at Selena Gomez. When she didn’t respond—as is Selena Gomez’s right—he just kept asking, this time with a music video (because there’s nothing creepy about a guy escalating his advances in the wake of romantic rejection). Then there’s the strange tale of Jake Davidson, a Los Angeles teen who invited Kate Upton to his prom in 2013. While Upton, like Stone, clearly felt enough pressure that she responded personally to the proposal, she ultimately couldn’t make it. So Inside Edition took it upon themselves to make sure that Davidson got the date that he did not deserve, sending in model Nina Agdal. I don’t know what’s more disturbing: the notion that Inside Edition thought this would make a really sweet story, or the fact that Agdal was forced to attend a high school prom as a teenager’s back-up date. Then there’s the entire sub-category of invitations from military men, like when Mila Kunis famously accompanied a fan to the Marine Corps Ball. Of course she had to accept the Marine’s invite—otherwise, she would look like a total unpatriotic dick! This military tactic is weird, manipulative, and remarkably effective.
I get that in the grand scheme of patriarchy, celebrity promposals aren’t a huge deal. But this is why a pimply kid with a celebrity crush and a passing fluency in iMovie production scares me: Boys don’t ask celebrities to prom because they are huge fans of their work or want to get to know them. They’re not putting on song-and-dance numbers because they’re obsessed with the artistry behind La La Land. They’re horny, and they (rightfully) think that having a regulation hot person on their arm will make them look cool and popular. These promposals feed into a young kid’s worst desires: for viral fame and for a date who’s a societally ordained perfect 10. Look, no one is making YouTube videos begging to spend an evening in conversation and formal wear with a groundbreaking female director or a boundary-pushing lady scientist or academic. They want to go on a forced, awkward, barely consensual “date” with someone who made out with Ryan Gosling, because that basically makes them Ryan Gosling. They want to feel superior to their classmates who have age-appropriate, normal-looking dates by showing up with a fully-grown woman with cleavage. And the absolute last thing teenage girls need is another reminder that their Y chromosomed peers would rather be dating skinny, stereotypically beautiful movie stars.
Even non-celebrity prom proposals can be terrifying. More than one American teenager has been killed over a prom rejection. In 2016, 16-year-old Maren Sanchez was murdered by a classmate because she didn’t want to go with him to the high school dance. Putting prom aside, statistics show that an American woman is shot and killed by a current or former partner once every 16 hours. Newspapers and chryons routinely tell the stories of women who are murdered for leaving their partners or rejecting romantic advances. Experts believe that, “Men are more likely to turn to aggressive behavior as a means of navigating rejection.” These phenomena are connected. In a world where boys who just discovered antiperspirant believe that fabulous celebrities at the very least ought to respond to their proposals, of course men are getting disillusioned and violent when “normal” women have the audacity to turn them down. How dare any mean lady refuse to accompany a man-boy to Olive Garden!
Prom proposals are an early rite of passage during which a woman is taught that she needs to be nice to a man just because he’s made an effort. And, naturally, there’s an undertone of “or else.” Don’t be mean or disagreeable, or you’ll be labeled a bitch. Or his friends will say mean things about you, and stop inviting you to parties. Or you’ll be bullied in homeroom or, you know, stabbed to death. So yeah, self-entitled teenage boys scare me.
At the very least, can we stop rewarding their unearned confidence with forced niceties and viral fame?[oldembed src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZXsfEU2Kfps" width="425" height="300" resize="1" fid="21"]
Local 54 of the labor union UNITE HERE filed complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after 21 union members who work at the Tropicana Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., were suspended indefinitely after participating in a peaceful protest against the casino. The union members were among 49 arrested at the protest. In response, casino management suspended the workers indefinitely for "allegedly engaging in illegal activity that interfered with the casino's customers." It seems pretty clear that firing workers for union activity is in violation of NLRB rules. The workers were protesting the lack of a new contract and the fact that the casino is ending its employee pension plan.
UNITE HERE Local 54 has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board in Philadelphia over Tropicana's illegal suspension of 21 workers who engaged a peaceful first amendment protest which included a civil disobedience action.
In a letter to the NLRB accompanying the charges, Local 54's attorney wrote, "Tropicana, however, chose to use this demonstration to restrain, coerce and intimidate its employees by suspending shop stewards and bargaining committee members." The letter continues "It is quite obvious that Tropicana's latest tactic of suspending certain of the employees who engaged in the demonstration is intended to chill employee support for the Union during this critical phase when Tropicana has already made unlawful unilateral changes."
"These workers engaged in a peaceful act of civil disobedience in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. We are asking the NLRB to seek an injunction to stop Tropicana's illegal actions and get these workers back to work so that they can provide for their families. We've done civil disobedience before, and no company has had the audacity to fire its workers over it. This just shows how outrageous Tony Rodio's leadership is," said Bob McDevitt, President of the 14,000 person union.
According to the letter, the workers who were arrested "were charged with two petty disorderly persons offenses under New Jersey law. Petty disorderly persons offenses do not constitute crimes under New Jersey law."For 15 seasons, hockey fans have heard a special version of Tim McGraw’s “I Like It, I Love It” every time the Nashville Predators score a goal. Also for 15 seasons, “I Like It, I Love It” has been followed by Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll, Part 2.” From this sequence, the 303 chants known around the hockey world were born.
During the Development Camp scrimmage on Saturday, however, the Preds seemed to have previewed a different take on the goal song.
In an appropriate change given the team’s color scheme, Nashville’s Game Ops crew has replaced “Rock and Roll, Part 2” with “Gold on the Ceiling” by The Black Keys.
REACTION
Despite being mostly positive, there was a mixed reaction by the fan base. A sampling is below.
@Fang_Faction @Cellblock303 Gold On The Ceiling played after Like It Love It. Nice change IMO — Jason Harrison (@jasnva) July 12, 2014
NEW GOAL SONG GOLD ON CEILING YESSSS #preds — Grey Cotham (@gcotham21) July 12, 2014
@Cellblock303 no and I hope they don’t….that song is part of us — Nana5 (@cinwhileh) July 12, 2014
Well the preds new goal song is ok, not as good as the last one, but ehh oh well. #gopreds — matthew randolph (@mcrandolph18) July 12, 2014
@justinbbradford the Preds just really need to do it & be done.I like it. If people threaten to not come to games over a goal song ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ — Grey Cotham (@gcotham21) July 13, 2014
REASON
Regardless of your opinion on the (probable) new goal song, the fact is that some Preds fans have asked for “Rock and Roll, Part 2” to be removed for years. Even before “Gold on the Ceiling” became a monster hit in 2012.
Gary Glitter is a convicted sex offender. He served four months in prison in 1999 after being found guilty of having child pornography on his computer in 1997. He was then deported from his residence in Cambodia to Vietnam after serving some more jail time for suspicion of child sexual abuse. Then, in 2006, he was arrested yet again, this time for molesting two Vietnamese girls, ages 10 and 11. And if all that wasn’t enough, as recently as last month, Glitter was charged with eight counts of sexual offenses between the years of 1977-1980. The victims were between the ages of 12 and 14.
Nashville isn’t the only sports franchise who has tried to move on from the song popularly known as “The Hey Song.” In 2006, the National Football League asked all of their clubs to nix “Rock and Roll, Part 2.”
EVOLUTION
As far as 303 goes, if the Predators do institute “Gold on the Ceiling,” the arena-wide chanting of “You Suck!” will go away during the post-goal celebration. Unfortunately, it just wouldn’t fit. However, one fan brought up a great alternative.
Instead of taunting the opponent, what if, after the goal song concludes, the 17,000+ inside Bridgestone Arena praised the goal scorer? Instead of “Hey… YOU SUCK!” it would change to a call-and-response “I… I believe… I believe in… I believe in Seth Jones! I believe in Seth Jones! I believe in Seth Jones!”
This would kill two birds with one stone. It would allow for the new goal song while still providing a fun post-goal chant and it would finally give that small sect of people who complain about the word “sucks” something to get behind and support.
CONCLUSION
Sometimes, in life, you have to work with what you’re given. Whether you like the new goal song or not, it will change at some point. The idea is to make the best of out of the situation. We believe that instituting the new chant above does just that. That said, we’d love to hear your opinions and suggestions.
VIDEO CREDIT: Justin Bradford // Penalty Box Radio
PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Fuqua (used with permission)I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system (responsibility of management), 6% special.
Page 315 of Out of the Crisis by Dr. W. Edwards Deming.
the system that people work in and the interaction with people may account for 90 or 95 percent of performance.
Dr. Deming’s quote from the introduction to the Team Handbook
I think, in looking at the total of Deming’s work, that the point he is trying to make is that looking to blame people is not a good strategy for improvement. The impact due solely to a person’s direct action (not including their interaction with the system and with others) is small in comparison to that of the system within which they work. So, Deming (and I) want people to focus on improving the system; which will achieve better results than searching for what people did wrong.
What did Deming want people to take from his statements?
Did he want us just to accept bad results? No. He was not saying it is the system there is nothing we can do just accept that this is how things are. He wanted us to focus on the most effective improvement strategies. He saw huge waste directed at blaming people for bad results. He wanted to focus the improvement on the area with the greatest possibility for results.
Did he want to say people are just cogs in the machine? No. Read or listen to most anything he said at any significant length (a full chapter of this book, a full article he wrote on management, an hour from one of his videos) and it is hard to maintain such a thought.
Did he believe that people were not important? No. He was trying to direct the focus of improvement efforts to look not at the fault with one person but to look at the system. I believe strongly he was correct. If you blame a person as the root cause of a problem, my first, second and third reactions are why? why? why? It is possible the person is to blame and there is no benefit to exploring system improvement instead of settling for blaming the person. But that is rare.
I have written about the importance of developing people to build the capability of the organization. My father wrote about it previously, “American organizations could compete much better at home and abroad if they would learn to tap the potential information inherent in all processes and the creativity inherent in all employees.”
I wrote about the importance of the ideas behind Deming’s quotes here, back in 2006 – Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame
Why did he see it that way, while so many others first inclination is to blame someone? As I see it the issue has to do with what is the effective way to improve. Often if you ask why do we have this problem or defect, people will point to some error by someone. So you can blame that person (there are reasons this is not a very accurate way to view the situation often but even without accepting that premise the blaming a person strategy is not wise). The reason the blaming a person is a bad idea is that your organization will improve much more effectively if you keep asking why. Why did they make that error? Why did the process let them make that error? When you follow the why chain a couple more steps you can find root causes that will allow you to find a much more effective solution. You can then pilot (PDSA) an improvement strategy that doesn’t just amount to “Do a better job Joe” or “that is it Joe we are replacing you with Mary.” Neither of those strategies turns out to be very effective. But investigating a bit more to find a root cause can result in finding solutions that improve the performance of all the workers. What kinds of things? You can apply poka yoke (mistake proofing) concepts. You can institute standard practices so that everyone is using the best methods – not whatever methods they have developed over time. You can rearrange the process to simplify the steps and eliminate chances for errors. These improvement, and many more, are sustainable and can be built upon over time.
There are some who seem to take Deming’s intent (which I believe it was an admonition against so many management system blaming people for things that were out |
season, two prospects appear poised to make serious runs at roster spots.
Center Dylan Strome, whom the Coyotes selected with the third overall draft pick last year, turned in another stellar season playing junior hockey in the Ontario Hockey League. Strome notched 111 points (37 goals, 74 assists) in 56 games for Erie this season.
Meanwhile, center Christian Dvorak, whom the Coyotes drafted 58th overall in 2014, notched 121 points (52 goals, 69 assists) in 59 games playing for London (OHL) this season.
Both Strome and Dvorak are still competing in the OHL playoffs, in a series pitting Erie vs. London.Apparently the women are sold for "parties" on American ships. Picture via WikiCommons
Native women, children, and even babies are being trafficked in the sex trade on freighters crossing the Canada-US border on Lake Superior between Thunder Bay, Ontario, and Duluth, Minnesota.
Next month, Christine Stark—a student with the University of Minnesota-Duluth, who is completing her master’s degree in social work—will complete an examination of the sex trade in Minnesota, in which she compiles anecdotal, firsthand accounts of Native women, particularly from northern reservations, being trafficked across state, provincial, and international lines to be forced into servitude in the sex industry on both sides of the border.
Stark’s paper stems from a report she co-wrote, published by the Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition in Duluth in 2011, entitled, “The Garden of Truth: The Prostitution and Trafficking of Native Women in Minnesota.” Through the process of researching and writing this report, Stark kept hearing stories of trafficking in the harbors and on the freighters of Duluth and Thunder Bay. The numerous stories and the gradual realization that this was an issue decades, perhaps centuries, in the making, compelled Stark to delve further into what exactly was taking place.
She decided to conduct an exploratory study, “simply because we have these stories circulating and we wanted to gather information and begin to understand what has happened and what currently is happening around the trafficking of Native American and First Nations women on the ships” said Stark, in an interview with the CBC Radio show Superior Morning. “Hearing from so many Native women over generations talking about the ‘boat whores,’ prostitution on the ships or the ‘parties on the ships,’ this is something that… was really entrenched in the Native community and we wanted to collect more specific information about it.”
Through her independent research and work with the Indian Women’s Sexual Assault Coalition, Stark interviewed hundreds of Native women who have been through the trauma of the Lake Superior sex trade. The stories she’s compiled are evidence of an underground industry that’s thriving on the suffering of First Nations women, which is seemingly going unchecked and underreported.
In an article written for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Stark describes one disturbing anecdote of an Anishinaabe woman who had just left a shelter after being beaten by her pimp—who was a wealthy, white family man. He paid her bills, rent, and the essentials for her children, but on weekends, “brought up other white men from the cities for prostitution with Native women… he had her role play the racist 'Indian maiden and European colonizer' myth with him during sex.”
“The Duluth harbor is notorious among Native people as a site for the trafficking of Native women from northern reservations.” She continues, “in an ongoing project focused on the trafficking of Native women on ships in Duluth, it was found that the activity includes international transport of Native women and teens, including First Nations women and girls brought down from Thunder Bay, Ontario, to be sold on the ships… Native women, teen girls and boys, and even babies have been sold for sex on the ships.” Christine Stark’s complete research paper will be published in September.
The fact that these horrendous crimes are taking place right under the noses of North American authorities is obviously disturbing and somewhat surprising, considering we have a Conservative government that is oh-so-tough on the commercialization of human beings. However, the word trafficking can often be a blurry one.
I spoke with Kazia Pickard, the Director of Policy and Research with the Ontario Native Women’s Association based in Thunder Bay. Their organization has also been researching this issue. Kazia told me over email: “People assume that trafficking always takes place across international borders, however, the vast majority of people who are trafficked in Canada are indigenous women and girls from inside Canada and sometimes, as we're now starting to understand, across the US border.”
In an earlier interview with the CBC, she also alluded to the possibility that there was trafficking taking place across borders in Southern Ontario as well. She made it clear to me that the image most people imagine when they think about “human trafficking” often isn’t accurate: “The majority of women who are trafficked in Canada are indigenous women and girls. So it’s not that you have people being trafficked across international borders in shipping containers or something like that.”
In most cases it’s a lot more subtle. “Women may say they [have been pulled into it by] a boyfriend, there have been some reports of family members recruiting women into the sex trade… so it doesn’t appear in this sensationalized way that we may [think it is].”
All that said, there are nearly 600 aboriginal women who are currently missing or believed to have been murdered in Canada, a number the RCMP—who are being accused of human rights abuses against aboriginal women on a monthly basis—have publicly questioned.
And while it’s refreshing to hear Canadian Parliament members (particularly Conservative ones) such as Manitoba’s Joy Smith show some honest compassion, on the whole, the government’s attitude and response to protecting vulnerable Native women has been one of indifference. In July, the federal government dismissed calls made for an inquiry into missing or murdered Indian women by the provinces and territories’ premiers.
Christine Stark’s report is one that cannot be ignored. If the government is as serious as they claim to be about human trafficking, they can’t dismiss what’s taking place between Duluth and Thunder Bay the same way that they have regarding the 600 missing First Nations women. To ignore this issue would point to an obvious double standard when it comes to the treatment of Indian women, many of whom are clearly being taken advantage of.
Follow Dave on Twitter: @ddner
Previously:
The Federal Government Is Surprisingly Blasé about Medical Experiments Conducted on Canada's First Nations
Our Government Is Withholding Documents Concerning the Torture of Native Children
The Wildly Depressing History of Canadian Residential SchoolsMs. Moneybags photo via Shutterstock.
Cutting taxes is not an effective way to increase economic growth, according to a report released Thursday by The Hamilton Project.
“This report reinforces the wake-up call we have been issuing about the Republican tax proposals that – in the name of tax reform – would lead to additional tax cuts for the very wealthiest households,” Sen. Sander Levin (D-MI) said. “Republicans would make matters worse with tax proposals that would require scaling back provisions that – as reflected in the report – are vital to middle- and lower-income families, even as they maintain those provisions that benefit the very wealthy, adding to the nation’s deficit.”
Republicans have almost unanimously insisted that reducing tax rates will lead to economic growth, because people will be encouraged to invest their extra dollars and be more willing to start up their own business. However, according to the report, the benefits of tax cuts are only short-term. In the long-term, they can actually hamper economic growth by reducing the amount of money the government can invest in economic activities.
“While the evidence suggests that temporary tax cuts can help combat recessions — temporary tax cuts were an important part of the policy response to the Great Recession — the available estimates of how taxes affect the larger economy suggest that in normal economic times any potential long-run gains from lower tax rates are largely offset if they increase the deficit,” the reported stated. “Instead of increasing saving and investment, tax cuts that result in higher government borrowing reduce funds available to invest in the private sector, reducing growth.”
The reported noted that, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the tax breaks of 2001 and 2003 were estimated to reduce GDP by between $75 billion and $226 billion dollars after ten years. The tax breaks reduced government revenues by more than $200 billion per year by significantly lowering the marginal tax rates for nearly all taxpayers.
“Although these cuts included many provisions to promote saving, investment, and increased incomes, they also included sizable tax breaks for economic activity that would have happened regardless of changes in tax rates,” the report stated. “CBO estimates suggest that the increase in government borrowing to finance the cuts exceeded the benefits of lower tax rates.”
The report also found that the tax code had become less progressive over time and helped to exacerbate income inequality in the United States.
“The very people who have received the biggest income gains in the past three decades have also seen the largest tax cuts,” the report said.
The report was written by Michael Greenstone, Dmitri Koustas, Karen Li, Adam Looney, and Leslie B. Samuels to help “provide a series of facts that can help ground the policy discussion.” The Hamilton Project was founded in 2006 by the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank.
[Ms. Moneybags photo via Shutterstock]WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Monday that prosecutors were looking into whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate political rivals President Trump has singled out for scrutiny, including Hillary Clinton.
The department, in a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee, said the prosecutors would examine allegations that donations to the Clinton Foundation were tied to a 2010 decision by the Obama administration to allow a Russian nuclear agency to buy Uranium One, a company that owned access to uranium in the United States, and other issues.
The letter appeared to be a direct response to Mr. Trump’s statement on Nov. 3, when he said he was disappointed with his beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and that longstanding unproven allegations about the Clintons and the Obama administration should be investigated.
Any such investigation would raise questions about the independence of federal investigations under Mr. Trump. Since Watergate, the Justice Department has largely operated independently of political influence on cases related to the president’s opponents.The deaths, which have been reported by NGOs working with migrants at the border, occurred on the Moroccan side of the border as some 200 people attempted to cross into Spain.
Witnesses said that they had seen at least three corpses floating in the water as Moroccan police attempted to prevent a group of around 200 people scaling the fences to reach Spain's north African enclave.
200 migrantes subsaharianos intentaron cruzar frontera de Marruecos hacia Ceuta pero fueron controlados por policías pic.twitter.com/WOEzaBOs0B — FOROtv (@Foro_TV) January 4, 2016
There has been no official confirmation from the Spanish Civil Guard at the border or their counterparts from the Moroccan side as to how many died.
In addition to the three reported dead, the NGO Caminando Fronteras said witnesses reported seeing several others injured during "very violent" clashes on Sunday night at the Spanish border.
A group of 17 African migrants were picked up by border police on a Ceuta beach early Monday morning having been transported there by an unseen vessel, Spain's Civil Guard confirmed.
The latest incident follows that on Christmas Day when two migrants drowned at 12 others were hospitalized trying to enter Ceuta.It looks like Pirate Bay's legal drama has finally come to a close in Sweden, where the Supreme Court today turned down the site's final appeal. At the center of the case are the file sharing site's founders -- Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström -- who have been battling Swedish prosecutors for quite a few years now. After being convicted of facilitating copyright infringement, the trio was initially sentenced to prison. They appealed the ruling in 2010 and, though they failed to overturn it, managed to see their 12-month sentences reduced by between two and eight months. Today, though, their final attempts were shot down, with the Court's dismissal. The fines and prison terms remain the same: ten months for Neij, eight months for Sunde and four for Lundström. There's also a fourth co-founder involved, Gottfrid Svartholm, who has been absent from several hearings. Under today's ruling, his original 12-month sentence will stand, and the four men will have to pay a total of $6.8 million in damages. Because the case has dragged on for at least five years, however, there's a chance that the sentences could be reduced by 12 months (bringing them down to zero), as is common in the Swedish legal system. The decision on this matter, however, remains with the court. TorrentFreak reports that at least one defendant intends to appeal to the European Court of Justice, though the results wouldn't have any effect on Sweden's decision.Harlan Ellison Returns With A 'Can'tankerous' New Collection
Courtesy of Subterranean Press Can & Can'tankerous by Harlan Ellison Hardcover, 236 pages | purchase close overlay Buy Featured Book Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?
Harlan Ellison is America's weird uncle. He's the angry, elderly cousin at the table — the one who, for weeks before dinner, everyone asks about. Is he coming this year? Is Harlan gonna be there?
They ask because they're worried; Harlan is always starting something. But they'd also be sad if he wasn't there. Ellison is old now, but age hasn't dimmed his anger or taken the edge off his humor. He's our curmudgeon. He's family. With a billion short stories to his credit, a million books and TV scripts and comics and stories, he's as much a part of our combined American consciousness as air and water and death and taxes.
Most important, he's back. A new collection of shorts — annotated, as is his way, with little stories, forewords, afterwords, explanations and interstitial material — is on the shelves, bearing the odd (and oddly Ellisonian) title Can & Can'tankerous.
He's got a lot of stuff in here. A lot of rage, some sadness, more laughs. There's the story (a bit famous now, called How Interesting: A Tiny Man) about the creation of a tiny, perfect man, humanity's irrational fears, and how they can condense into a rain of hatred against anything different. About smallness of form and smallness of spirit both at the same time, but also about reader expectations — deliberately obscuring the color, sex and description of the main character. He does that again in Objects Of Desire In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, only revealing that the bitter, hardboiled cop protagonist is a woman halfway through because he thinks (and explains later) that everybody reads this sort of story in the voice of a man and wanted to subvert that assumption.
The tiny man story also gets two endings, each grimmer (and more inevitable) than the last. But he follows them with Never Send To Know For Whom The Lettuce Wilts, which is the most Ellison-y tale of the lot — goofy, but prescient, cruel and smart, having to do with a curious man, a fortune cookie, and an alien trying to conquer the world through small, demoralizing acts (like wilting lettuce, making nails bend, and inventing the English language). The funniest bit? The alien (small, gnomish and furious) wears a huge yellow button pinned to its breast that reads CONQUEROR. An award it gave to itself.
That's how Ellison rolls. Tired, old, ornery — and yet kind, too. Generous. Giving us stories, and then stories about the stories.
There's a magic shop story in here. A space opera (of sorts) that clocks in as the longest (and weirdest) of the tales. Again, because Ellison is Ellison, there are a bunch of little things, too — complete tales pumped out with superhuman speed and incomparable style. He fronts Weariness by telling the tale of running a workshop at a convention in Washington. A bunch of art pieces handed around as inspiration. A bunch of writers given one hour to compose a complete story.
And then there's Harlan, at the front of the room, with his portable Olympia typewriter, poking away at 120 words per minute (with two fingers and no typos, he brags), feeling sad and tired and coming up with a story about the heat death of the universe which begins: "Very near the final thaw of the universe, the last of them left behind, the last three of the most perfect beings who had ever existed, stood waiting for the transitional moment. The neap tide of all time."
One draft. No idea where he was going with it. Just start hitting the keys and seeing what happens next. That's how Ellison rolls. Tired, old, ornery — and yet kind, too. Generous. Giving us stories, and then stories about the stories. The lettuce story? Inspired by a Chinese dinner with Norman Spinrad in 1956, sold to Amazing Stories that same year for $49.50, then remastered for this collection. Weariness is just a few hundred words long but his afterword is a kind of love letter to Ray Bradbury, and runs for five times the story's length, maybe more. And it is beautiful.
The best moments in all of Can & Can'tankerous are also the saddest, though. Between each story, Ellison has included a few italicized lines describing the stroke he suffered in 2014 — the lead-up to it, the moment of it, what came after. He does this because (like with the forewords, the afterwords, et cetera) he can't not do it. His stories can't exist without the framework of Harlan Ellison explaining why they exist — talking about dinner with Norman or a conversation with Ray or the sensation of one side of his body just quitting on him one day. He's a man who literally can't fall down without writing a story about it.
And because he's Harlan Ellison, the story of him falling down one day is the best, funniest, saddest, sweetest and truest tale of the bunch.
Jason Sheehan is an ex-chef, a former restaurant critic and the current food editor of Philadelphia magazine. But when no one is looking, he spends his time writing books about spaceships, aliens, giant robots and ray guns. Tales From the Radiation Age is his latest book.No NFL team had won as many regular-season games as the Denver Broncos in the past three seasons. No team had scored as many points or gained as many yards. But general manager John Elway wanted more. In the offseason, he set in motion changes he thought would move the organization closer to its first championship since he was behind center 17 seasons ago. Coach John Fox and his coordinators were out. Gary Kubiak and an all-star defensive staff were in.
What would it mean for 39-year-old quarterback Peyton Manning? The stated plan was for Kubiak to recreate the QB-friendly conditions that helped Elway win Super Bowls late in his career, when Kubiak was the team's offensive coordinator. And if the plan didn't work? The Broncos answered that question Tuesday when Kubiak announced backup Brock Osweiler would replace Manning as the starter against Fox's Chicago Bears in Week 11. Manning needs time to recover from various injuries, Kubiak said, but the reality is this move was a long time in the making.
The bottom line for the Broncos is that they appear no closer to winning a championship, even though their defense is sensational. Manning obviously would have been better off had the Broncos kept their offensive system in place, but as the $4 million pay cut he took before the season demonstrated, these changes were much bigger than him.
The switch to Osweiler brings to the fore potential endgame scenarios for Denver, none of which realistically includes Manning in a Broncos uniform next season.What’s the best way to rid your school of deeply conscientious teachers?
Try drafting a restrictive-and-unusually-specific morality clause. Make it so unrealistic that most teachers will have to lie to follow it. Then sit back and watch some of your best educators leave for reasons of conscience, while keeping the liars on the payroll.
It’s hard to blame Catholic-school teachers in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana for choosing to affirm a strict Catholic moral code built into their contracts; after all, their livelihoods are at stake and it’s a tough job market. But at least two professionals affiliated with Our Lady of Fatima, a Lafayette parochial school, have announced their resignation as a direct result of these restrictive clauses.
The clause’s first casualty was Jane Riviere, who taught art at Fatima for thirty years and earned the praise of her students and colleagues before the morality clause came into effect. You see, the clause forbids “homosexual activity,” and Riviere is openly lesbian. She notes that the school did not directly ask her to leave because of her sexual orientation. However, they presented her with a contract she felt she could not honestly sign and asked her to choose between lying and leaving. In some regions, this would have been against the law, but Louisiana offers no protection from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.
But sexual orientation is not the only area of “sin” the morality clause addresses. The document, upon which the Diocese refuses to comment, asks teachers to affirm their opposition to cohabitation, non-Catholic marriage, birth control, abortion, and out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
Note those last three in particular, because they put unmarried female teachers in Lafayette Parish in a particular bind. These unlucky women are unable to prevent pregnancy in any way short of abstinence. If they turn up pregnant for any reason, they are denied the option of abortion… and the option of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, a near-perfect contradiction in terms.
Note also that every single item listed in the morality clause relates to the Church’s overwhelming tendency to police believers’ sexual activity. The clause says nothing about other, non-sexual sins, like greed or sloth… or, for that matter, wearing mixed fibers and eating shrimp.
As far as the Diocese is concerned, though, they’ve covered the important things. Monsignor Curtis Mallet insists they’re being moral, not bigoted:
“We discriminate between right and wrong,” said Mallet. “So it’s all about modeling, modeling the Gospel of Jesus Christ period. That’s the bottom line for us.”
But it’s a good thing the contract doesn’t mention lying, school council president Jaci Russo notes, because she is fully aware of teachers living in violation of the morality clause who signed it, anyway, in order to keep their jobs. She said as much in a letter to the school’s principal:
I believe that the new Diocesan morality clause is flawed in many ways. By listing these “sins”, a number of teachers are forced to either lie about who they are, or deny the things they may have done in order to keep their jobs at Fatima. This is a travesty, as I know there are teachers who have had children out of wedlock and are divorced and remarried without annulment, yet they signed the clause and continue to teach. What does this say about their moral fiber? Is adherence to the clause based on reality, or just what each individual is willing to admit? … In the New Testament, Jesus says, “I did not come to call the virtuous, but the sinners.” If we removed all sinners from our school there would be no faculty left to teach the students and no parents to enroll their children.
Russo’s objection to the morality clause — and its consequences for teachers like Riviere — is so strong, she has resigned from her position with Our Lady of Fatima in protest. Regretfully, she writes, “I cannot in good conscience stand by while we prevent great teachers from doing their jobs at Fatima.”
One would expect parents, concerned with their children’s future prospects, to agree. But the morality clauses are not as unpopular as one would hope with families whose children attend Catholic parochial schools. Conservative Catholics, commenting on the controversy, insist that only teachers who adhere to a specifically Catholic moral code can uphold religious dogma and set a good example for children. “If you don’t like it, get out of the Church!” becomes a common refrain. Even if it means lying, apparently.
Thus, parents and priests work together in the Diocese of Lafayette to sacrifice children’s ability to learn and think on the altar of doctrinal correctness and moral policing. Educators like Russo and Riviere will suffer for it… but the greatest loss, arguably, comes from the wasted young minds stuck in a place where education is, at best, second priority.The challenges of coaching Canada’s men’s rugby team are myriad, on and off the field.
While Tier 1 nations like England have a structure in place that allows them to assemble their top talent for February test matches during the international window, Canadian coach Mark Anscombe is forced to do a delicate dance in choosing his overseas players.
In selecting his squad for the Americas Rugby Championship, the New Zealand native has essentially elected not to summon players from top European leagues to avoid disrupting their club careers.
“We haven’t brought them all back. It’s a balancing act of making sure we’re competitive but looking where players are coming from,” said Anscombe.
He has been able to bring back prop Djustice Sears-Duru of the Glasgow Warriors, backs Taylor Paris and Conor Trainor from their French second-division clubs and Matt Tierney, Matt Beukeboom and George Barton from their French club academy sides.
Anscombe’s 29-man squad for the ARC, which runs Feb. 3 to March 3, contains just six of his starting 15 against Samoa in November as well as six of the reserves from that day.
Injuries are another stumbling block. But given much of the Canadian player pool is amateur, so are work and school.
“It’s very frustrating,” Anscombe said of the selection headaches. “It’s the reality of amateur rugby.
“Where I come from (in New Zealand), if you’re considering someone for an international, he’s a professional rugby player so there’s no question he’s available and he’s going to jump at the opportunity.
“But here the guys are amateur. They play club rugby and they go to school and they work. To take five weeks off to go and do something in a lot of cases is not their No. 1 priority.”
That is one of the reasons Anscombe has selected an extended 29-man ARC squad, which will be trimmed for the final two road games.
Canada, ranked 18th in the world, opens Feb. 4 against a second-tier Argentina ‘A’ side at Westhills Stadium in Langford, B.C., a game that does not have test status.
The next four games for the Canadians are all test matches: against No. 29 Chile on Feb. 11 in Langford, the 17th-ranked U.S. on Feb. 18 in Swangard Stadium in Burnaby, B.C., and road matches Feb. 25 against No. 21 Uruguay and March 4 against No. 36 Brazil.
Anscombe’s squad includes nine uncapped players: Beukeboom, Barton, Cole Keith, Conor Keys, Rory McDonell, Ollie Nott, Reegan O’Gorman, Carl Pocock and Robbie Povey
The 20 other players, who include veterans Ray Barkwill, Nick Blevins, Phil Mack and Pat Parfrey, have a combined 268 test caps.
Canada is coming off a bumpy November tour that saw a best available roster lose to fourth-ranked Ireland (52-21), No. 16 Romania (21-16) and No. 15 Samoa (25-23).
“It’s the old story,” said Anscombe. “We’re close and thereabouts all the time but don’t finish on the right side of the ledger.”
He pointed to a competitive 60 minutes against Ireland, before the bottom fell out.
“The November window, we had 18 domestic players in our squad. Now 18 domestic players playing international rugby takes its toll,” he said. “Each game you’re playing, you’re playing against a full squad of professional players that train and prepare every day. And that in a nutshell is your big difference.
“The U.S.A. is exactly the same. It’s just too big of a gap to go from club rugby to playing international rugby. And we need more of our guys in environments that can challenge them and they can work on it daily because that’s what the rest of the world is in the market we’re playing.
“An amateur can have the odd good day but he’s not going to be consistently performing in it, no matter what sport anywhere … Our challenge is to get our guys playing more competitively at better levels of rugby that’s going to give them preparation to handle international rugby better.”
Until that happens, Anscombe believes both North American teams will be hard-pressed to take the next step against world competition.
Canada’s top domestic players are centralized in Langford. But the lack of a pro league leaves only amateur competition.
The Canadian men are due to host No. 12 Georgia and No. 16 Romania in June with a home-and-away World Cup qualifying series against the 17th-ranked U.S. The loser of that tie gets another chance to qualify.Chief executives and public leaders still ignore the threat of cybercrime to national security. What can be done to lessen the risks?
Late last year, the German Federal Office for Information Security revealed in a report that an unnamed German steel mill had suffered “massive damage” following a cyber-attack.
Hackers had infiltrated the company’s corporate network using an email that tricked employees into opening a malicious attachment known generally as malware. Once the malware was installed, the attackers were able to leap around the steel mill’s IT systems, eventually damaging the production network to the extent that a blast furnace could not shut down, causing significant material damage.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alex Dewdney, director, cyber security and resilience, GCHQ
A digital expert said at the time: “We do not expect a steel plant to be connected to the internet and to be hackable – that is quite unexpected.”
But is that still the case? Although the attack in Germany was rare, the convergence of IT, enterprise technology and operational technology – the hardware and software that controls an organisation’s physical equipment – has gathered pace over the past few years, making such attacks easier than ever before and the threat greater.
Will this increased connectivity expose more operational systems to dangers? Will critical national infrastructure (CNI), such as power networks, utilities and other systems, be exposed? And what can be done to lessen the risks? These were the key questions at a recent Guardian roundtable that asked cybersecurity experts to discuss how best to protect the UK’s critical networks and businesses from cyber-attack. The roundtable was sponsored by Atkins, a design, engineering and project management consultancy, and was conducted under the Chatham House rule, which allows comments to be made without attribution, encouraging a free debate.
Raising the profile of cybersecurity in the boardroom
The discussion got underway with most panellists agreeing that in boardrooms – where the key investment decisions are made – the threat of cyber-attacks hasn’t received the attention it deserves. As one attendee said: “I think cybersecurity is beginning to get on to the board’s agenda, but boards aren’t really accepting the need to invest and are happy to push it out to the chief information security officer for them to deal with. Security should be on the chief executive’s agenda.”
If you want to destabilise a country, take their intellectual property and make it cheaper
To exacerbate the problem, the roundtable heard that many board members were unaware how much IT had permeated every aspect of their business over the past 20-30 years. “One of the real dangers is that many leaders don’t realise their organisations have become digital,” said one attendee. “Many leaders probably started their careers when their business was paper-based, and in their minds that’s how the business still works. They don’t realise how IT has transformed their business.”
Therefore, when chief executives make decisions on whether to invest in cybersecurity, they have no instinct for it, the roundtable heard. Even high-profile cyber-attacks, such as those against Sony and Ashley Madison, have failed to focus minds.
This lack of awareness was of particular concern in relation to larger organisations, including some CNI bodies, said an attendee, as many of them rely on outdated, unsupported software. “I’m not sure there is an understanding of how old the systems are that run our infrastructure – they are very vulnerable.”
Business runs on profit, and security is still seen as a cost, said another participant, so fixing security vulnerabilities often takes a back seat. Cybersecurity is “still seen as protecting against things that may or may not happen … Other people on the board are talking about increasing sales. They don’t want to decrease profits by putting in this extra security.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Emma Philpott, chief executive, The IASME Consortium
So how can an organisation’s leadership team be encouraged to act on cybersecurity? A number of participants suggested the best way to make corporate boards care about cybersecurity was to make customers care. “There is a case for doing more in terms of general public awareness,” said one attendee.
For others, the way in which safety is now taken so seriously by board members offered an example of what could be done to focus attention on cybersecurity.
“If you have a major safety incident, somebody sat at the board level goes to prison,” said one participant, referring to the Health and Safety Offences Act. “If a cyber-incident became an imprisonable offence, how quickly would the chief information security officer find himself sat on the board?”
Cyber-risks caused by employees
Along with a lack of awareness at board level, participants agreed that employees were often the greatest cybersecurity threat facing an organisation, either by accident – for instance by opening malware from an email (as was the case in the Germany steel mill), or using weak passwords – or by intentionally stealing sensitive information.
“In the old days it was the external hackers people used to be worried about, whereas now the internal threat is greater than the external threat,” said an attendee.
“It’s bizarre as you have the Edward Snowdens and the Chelsea Mannings of this world – they’re more of a threat than external people, and they’re the people who have legitimate access.”
But what about those who don’t have legitimate access? Should the UK be worried about attacks from nation states?
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrew Rogoyski, vice-president cybersecurity services, CGI
“If foreign countries have access to critical networks, that might be fine now, but in a different geopolitical context, five years from now, that’s something we should worry about,” said one participant.
The harm that could be done doesn’t have to be physical, either, the roundtable heard. “Information is what now makes countries more valuable than other countries,” said one attendee. “If you want to destabilise a country, take their intellectual property, make it cheaper and push it in other markets.”
However, other participants said that worries over attacks from nation states were misplaced, as this led people to believe hackers had to be highly skilled and therefore almost impossible to repel. “It’s often kids in the bedroom that download [hacking] software,” the roundtable was told. “If you haven’t got the [cybersecurity] basics right, then you can be massively compromised by a little-skilled individual,” said another participant.
How to get cybersecurity right
So how can an organisation get basic security right? A number of resources were mentioned at the roundtable, including: 10 Steps, GCHQ’s guidance on what organisations can do to improve the security of their networks; and Cyber Essentials, a government-backed, industry-supported scheme to help organisations protect themselves against internet-based threats.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nigel Harrison, Non-executive director, Cyber Security Challenge UK
Companies should also be asking for more secure systems from their tech suppliers, the roundtable heard. But organisations shouldn’t “try to make everything perfect”, said an attendee, referring to the procurement of IT systems. “If you can’t specify a really detailed security problem, don’t bother, just say: ‘We’d like it secure.’ Take small steps to make yourself better than you were yesterday.”
“Big names don’t deliver security,” said one participant, sounding a note of caution, and other participants agreed there is a market failure. “That’s my product: take it or not,” is the attitude of the big IT firms, said another attendee. One participant shared a story they knew of a US government department requesting a global tech giant to make one of their products more secure, but the tech firm said no. “If the US government hasn’t got the clout to do this, then who has?”
For many of the delegates, therefore, the most viable option for reducing the risk of a cyber-attack relied upon communication and education. “Don’t just make this about nation states trying to break in and destroy the control network,” said one participant. “It’s not really relevant to a lot of people.” Instead, it was suggested organisations should educate their employees so they know how to protect their personal data and devices, “so when they come to work, they’re used to being secure at home”.
Another attendee agreed: “It’s a lot cheaper to spend money on user training than it is to buy a new firewall.”
Combating cyber security tips
While the threat of cyber-attacks is growing, many organisations struggle to even get the basic safeguards in place to protect their infrastructure and data. Practical security measures that emerged from the roundtable included:
regularly patching firewalls
updating firmware
setting strong passwords
changing the password your Wi-Fi router came with
asking employees who use their own devices at work to install anti-virus software and to switch on firewalls.
There are a number of free security options online, which makes these tips easy to implement.
At a higher level, senior IT professionals should also be encouraged to share information among their peers and competitors, as one participant pointed out: “Security transcends competition.”
Safeguarding networks from cyber-attack debate: at the table
Jane Dudman (Chair) Editor, Guardian Public Leaders, the Guardian
Editor, Guardian Public Leaders, the Guardian Guy Bunker Senior vice-president, products, Clearswift
Senior vice-president, products, Clearswift Alex Dewdney Director, cyber security and resilience, GCHQ
Director, cyber security and resilience, GCHQ Nigel Harrison Non-executive director, Cyber Security Challenge UK
Non-executive director, Cyber Security Challenge UK Emma Philpott Chief executive, The IASME Consortium
Chief executive, The IASME Consortium Geraint Price Lecturer in information security, Royal Holloway University
Lecturer in information security, Royal Holloway University Paul Simmonds Chief executive, Global Identity Foundation
Chief executive, Global Identity Foundation Martin Sloan Group head of security, Drax
Group head of security, Drax Andrew Cooke Client director, Infrastructure, Atkins |
a perimeter, Chaplain Watters noticed that several wounded soldiers were Lying outside the newly formed perimeter. Without hesitation and ignoring attempts to restrain him, Chaplain Watters left the perimeter three times in the face of small arms, automatic weapons, and mortar fire to carry and to assist the injured troopers to safety. Satisfied that all of the wounded were inside the perimeter, he began aiding the medics–applying field bandages to open wounds, obtaining and serving food and water, giving spiritual and mental strength and comfort. During his ministering, he moved out to the perimeter from position to position redistributing food and water, and tending to the needs of his men. Chaplain Watters was giving aid to the wounded when he himself was mortally wounded. Chaplain Watters’ unyielding perseverance and selfless devotion to his comrades was in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army.
Place and Date:
Dec. 06, 1967 – Phuoc-Lac, Bien Hoa Province, RVN
Presented At the White House by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 19, 1968
Citation:
Chaplain Liteky distinguished himself by exceptional heroism while serving with Company A, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade. He was participating in a search and destroy operation when Company A came under intense fire from a battalion size enemy force. Momentarily stunned from the immediate encounter that ensued, the men hugged the ground for cover. Observing 2 wounded men, Chaplain Liteky moved to within 15 meters of an enemy machinegun position to reach them, placing himself between the enemy and the wounded men. When there was a brief respite in the fighting, he managed to drag them to the relative safety of the landing zone. Inspired by his courageous actions, the company rallied and began placing a heavy volume of fire upon the enemy’s positions. In a magnificent display of courage and leadership, Chaplain Liteky began moving upright through the enemy fire, administering last rites to the dying and evacuating the wounded. Noticing another trapped and seriously wounded man, Chaplain Liteky crawled to his aid. Realizing that the wounded man was too heavy to carry, he rolled on his back, placed the man on his chest and through sheer determination and fortitude crawled back to the landing zone using his elbows and heels to push himself along. Pausing for breath momentarily, he returned to the action and came upon a man entangled in the dense, thorny underbrush. Once more intense enemy fire was directed at him, but Chaplain Liteky stood his ground and calmly broke the vines and carried the man to the landing zone for evacuation. On several occasions when the landing zone was under small arms and rocket fire, Chaplain Liteky stood up in the face of hostile fire and personally directed the medivac helicopters into and out of the area. With the wounded safely evacuated, Chaplain Liteky returned to the perimeter, constantly encouraging and inspiring the men. Upon the unit’s relief on the morning of 7 December 1967, it was discovered that despite painful wounds in the neck and foot, Chaplain Liteky had personally carried over 20 men to the landing zone for evacuation during the savage fighting. Through his indomitable inspiration and heroic actions, Chaplain Liteky saved the lives of a number of his comrades and enabled the company to repulse the enemy. Chaplain Liteky’s actions reflect great credit upon himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army.
There is one other Catholic priest that was awarded the Medal of Honor while serving as a chaplain in World War II. His name is Father Joseph T. O’Callahan, USNR. And there have been many others who served and died serving the sheep of Our Lord’s flock. There is also cause for the beatification of Father Emil Kapaun, a chaplain who served during the Korean War. May the Lord bless them and keep them and have mercy on their souls.
Semper Fidelis.The French administrative court has ordered the removal of a cross from a monument to Saint John Paul II in a public square in the northwest of France, saying it violates the secular nature of the state.
Italian media noted the irony of the ruling, remarking that the cross-removal is not taking place “in Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State in Syria, but in Brittany, in the heart of Western Europe.”
The Conseil d’Etat, France’s highest administrative court, ruled last week that the statue of the Polish Pope in Ploërmel, Brittany, could remain but the large cross above the monument must be eliminated.
“Since the cross is a religious sign or emblem within the meaning of Article 28 of the Law of 9 December 1905 and its installation by the municipality does not fall into any of the exceptions provided by this article, its presence in a public location is contrary to this law,” argued the French court.
The law of 1905, which separates Church and State, forbids “raising or affixing any symbol or religious emblem on public monuments or in any public place,” with the exception of museums, cemeteries and places of worship.
The 25-foot high monument was donated to mayor Paul Anselin by Russian artist Zurab Tsereteli in 2006 and erected in a town square. The sculpture depicts Pope John Paul standing in prayer with his hands clasped, with a simple arch above him, surmounted by a cross.
In 2015, the Rennes tribunal had already ordered the removal of the entire statue but upon appeal, the high court allowed the statue to remain, provided the offending cross disappears.
The city of Ploërmel now has six months to eliminate the cross, and must pay €3000 to the National Federation of Free Thought (Fédération nationale de la libre-pensée), which has been leading the legal battle to have the statue removed since 2015.
Over the weekend social networks in France lit up with the viral hashtag #MontreTaCroix (“Show your cross”), with which many Internet users have shared images of crosses taken everywhere around the country. Many have used the campaign to recall France’s Christian roots, calling the symbol inseparable from the history of France.
Gilles Pennelle, the president of the National Front party in Brittany’s Regional Council, pointed out the paradox that “the French court allows burkinis on the beaches but bans a cross over the statue of John Paul II in Ploërmel.”
Le Conseil d’État autorise le burkini sur les plages mais interdit une croix sur la statue de Jean-Paul II à Ploërmel#Bretagne https://t.co/XQCOqRTaMK — Gilles Pennelle (@GillesPennelle) October 25, 2017
For his part, the current mayor of Ploërmel, Patrick Le Diffon, did not rule out bringing the case before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
“The statue is part of the landscape of Ploërmel for twelve years, and it does not disturb the inhabitants,” he said. “On the contrary, it is an undeniable tourist asset for the municipality. The mayor added that “this monument is a work of art and it requires the authorization from the artist to modify it.”
The Polish Prime Minister, Beata Szydło also weighed in on the argument, complaining of “censorship” and saying that if the cross must come down the statue should be transferred to Poland where it will be appreciated.
“The Polish government will try to save the monument of our compatriot from censorship, and we will propose to transfer it to Poland, if French authorities and the local community agree,” she said, adding that Pope John Paul “is a symbol of united Christian Europe.”
Poland may have some competition, however. A Hungarian elementary school has also stepped forward to request the cross if the French remove it.
A Hungarian elementary school wants to adopt the cross a French court ordered to remove from Saint John Paul II Statue ✌✝️ — Hungary4Christians ن (@HUN4Christians) October 30, 2017
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsromeHello there, it's our Burger Friday feature, roused from hibernation in honor of new developments at Burger-Chan in Greenway Plaza, née Kuma Burgers.
The food court kiosk run by chef Willet Feng and his wife, Diane, recently changed its name to dispense with a trademark dispute. (Shades of Habanera and the Gringo, recently rechristened Habanera and the Guero for similar reasons.)
"Chan" is a Japanese diminutive connoting cuteness, the Fengs explain, so they came up with a "smaller, cuter" (and less expensive) burger to celebrate the new name.
HOUSTON INVADES TX: Hometown restaurants are expanding into other markets
(Story continues below.)
Instead of their regular 5-ounce beef patty, two 2-ounce patties get flattened and sizzled on the griddle. Then they're layered with double cheese and a suite of ingredients that add up to Feng's All-American version of a regulation In-N-Out or Shake Shack burger — a departure from his usual Asian-inflected and Houston-specific approach.
More Information Burger-chan
3 Greenway Plaza Ste C220
Concourse Level Food Hub
832-542-3528
Hours: 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m., Monday through Friday
Read More
The result? A burger so nice I ate it twice. Seriously, I felt the urge to return just to double check if I liked the new burger-chan sandwich as much as I thought I did.
That's my story, anyway, and I am sticking to it. Come along to the space-agey underground mall at Greenway Place and see why.
PRICE: $5.50 for the burger-chan; $3.75 for a small (12-ounce) vanilla shake; $1 for a bottled water.
ORDERING: The line forms on the right of the kiosk, where customers check off their choices on mini-clipboard order forms suspended from the wall. As of June 8, the burger-chan was not printed as an option — and, unlike the other burgers, it comes with a standard set of ingredients — so you just tell the cashier you want one. Note: Now is when you want to present your Greenway parking ticket if you want the free 2-hour validation. Pay up and move to the far end of the line to pick up napkins, drinks and await your order to be called, after which you can take it to one of the many sleek tables in the food court and surrounding corridors.
ARCHITECTURE: Salad stuff on the bottom. On a griddled-on-two-sides potato bun goes a swipe of Thousand Island dressing, a sheaf of iceberg ribbons, and a couple thin slices of tomato, followed by two 2-ounce patties layered with thin slices of cheddar cheese. On top sits a crown of caramelized onion.
QUALITY: This is one of those blessed sandwiches in which the ingredients add up to way more than the sum of the parts. It's hard for a skinny 2-ounce beef patty to have much impact, but here, they do: thanks to a good strong sear that manages to leave juices within; and to Feng's trademark umami-bomb glaze, painted on during the precision cooking process.
That bump of browned butter, soy, shiitake, Worcestershire and roasted garlic is what makes the beefiness shine through all else in this burger. Sweet and savory onion, maximally caramelized, cradles the flavors. The crunch of lettuce and the ripe (!) slide of tomato add a fresh note. The melted cheddar gilds and softens without smothering. And the Thousand Island contributes exactly the right note of sweet-and-sour tang.
I loved every moment of this burger, and my only quibble is that afterwards I found myself craving lots and lots of water, even though I wasn't aware of any over-saltiness while I was eating it.
OOZE RATING: Excellent. In fact, the red-and-white-checked tissue paper that wraps the burger will be unable to contain the meat juices. Make sure you have a pile of paper napkins to cope.
GRADE: A-plus.
BONUS POINTS: Good skinny hand-cut French fries with such striking house-made condiments as a pale green scallion aioli, plus a roster of serious milkshakes that includes a subtle, seasonal corn flavor and a delicate, pure vanilla. They're just thick enough, just thin enough to sip through a straw — a balance that is seldom achieved.
LOCAL COLOR: The crowd that queues during the noon hour is a panoply of white-collar Houston. New dining areas lining Greenway Plaza's recently reconfigured underground corridors are pristine white, cool, and calm, while the central food hall is a hive of noise and activity. Walk just a bit further and you can dine at space-age tables and chairs under a clear sci-fi dome, one of the most delightfully eccentric lunch spots in Houston. (I hear Burger-Chan may move down to that end of the court, an outcome devoutly to be wished.)
The clothes-pinned tickets stack up in a solid line around noon, so if you have the option to come a little early, or between 1 and the 2 p.m. close, do so. Still, the line has its pleasures. This week I watched in awe as a teenager who had come to have lunch with her office-worker mom ordered her burger, left the line and returned bearing a sundae procured at the Nestle Toll House kiosk.
She dispatched it just in time to pick up her burger. I liked her style.Last week, the Texas Supreme Court reversed a $1 million award to a former San Antonio Water System (SAWS) employee, who claimed that she was terminated because she confronted a male vice president about his repeated lunch invitations to two female employees outside his department. The Supreme Court in San Antonio Water System v. Nicholas, held that “no reasonable person could have believed” that the lunch invitations constituted sexual harassment in this case.
Under the Texas Commission on Human Rights Act (TCHRA), an employer may not retaliate against an employee who opposes a discriminatory action (such as sexual harassment), makes or files a charge, files a complaint, or testifies, assists, or participates in an investigation, proceeding, or hearing. Tex. Lab. Code §§ 21.051, 055(1). However, the employee’s actions must be based on a good-faith reasonable belief that discrimination is taking place, even if a later investigation shows that no such discrimination actually occurred.
The question in this case was whether Nicholas’s belief that sexual harassment had occurred was a reasonable good-faith belief? If so, then firing her for complaining about the VP’s conduct would have been retaliation and would have violated the TCHRA. However, if her belief that the lunch invitations constituted sexual harassment was not reasonable, then she was not entitled to damages under the statute.
The Supreme Court concluded that Nicholas’s belief that the lunch invitations equaled sexual harassment was not reasonable:
“Flores’s lunch invitations may have been unwelcome, but no reasonable person could believe they constituted sexual harassment actionable under the law. We do not mean to say that lunch invitations can never be a component of a viable sexual-harassment claim, but under the facts of this case the lunch invitations were not so severe or pervasive as to alter the conditions of employment or create an abusive work environment.”
The Court then compared the facts of this case to other instances where offensive but isolated conduct by employees was found to be insufficient to form the basis of good-faith reasonable belief that the law had been violated, and noted that this case “paled in comparison” to the following claims of sexual harassment that the Court had previously rejected:
a single incident of male employee reading aloud sexual innuendo contained in a psychological evaluation, at which he and another male employee chuckled, could not reasonably been seen as violating the law;
a single instance of male employee entering women’s restroom and “gawking” at undressed women could not create objectively reasonable belief that claimants suffered illegal sexual harassment;
a female employee could not reasonably believe she had been sexually harassed when male supervisor commented on her underwear being visible under her uniform;
The Court concluded that because Nicholas could not have reasonably believed that Flores’s lunch invitations constituted an unlawful employment practice, her retaliation claim against SWAS failed.
TAKEAWAY FOR EMPLOYERS: Sexual harassment claims, even those that are baseless, can cause significant business disruption, lower morale, and cost a lot in attorney’s fees. Having the following at your workplace can significantly reduce such claims: (1) sexual harassment training; (2) having a process that allows employees to report their complaints; (3) documenting the complaints and subsequent investigation properly; and (4) reacting to those complaints that have merit.
The above case went all the way to the Texas Supreme Court because the three key persons involved in the investigation – the CEO, the general counsel, and Nicholas – had different memories about what the female employees told them about the lunch invitations. It is possible, that Nicholas’s claim could have been shut down much earlier if the investigation notes contained a uniform and consistent account of what occurred.
TAKEAWAY FOR EMPLOYEES: To make out a statutory sexual-harassment claim, an employee must prove more than that she found the harassment offensive. Sexual harassment is actionable only if it is so severe or pervasive as to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment. Offhand comments and isolated incidents, unless extremely serious, typically will not amount to discriminatory changes in the “terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.”
Leiza Dolghih frequently advises employers on how to handle troublesome employees, assists with responding to EEOC charges and investigations, and litigates employment disputes. For more information, Ms. Dolghih for a confidential consultation at Leiza.Dolghih@lewisbrisbois.com or (214) 722-7108.Share 12 Pin 85 Shares
By Maria Saporta
The Atlanta Dogwood Festival is celebrating its 80th birthday this year.
To mark the occasion, the festival has decided to give a gift to Atlanta. It has commissioned a bronze interactive sculpture of a dogwood branch with blooms to adorn the edge of Lake Clara Meer near the Charles Allen Dr. entrance.
Brian Hill, executive director of the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, was aware that the springtime festival is the third oldest arts festival in the country and the oldest festival in Atlanta.
“What says we are even here?” Hill asked rhetorically. “There’s one bench in Piedmont Park with a plaque. That’s all. It’s time we recognize that we are eight decades old. The festival has survived it all. I wanted to look at doing something memorable. We want to remind people that the Dogwood Festival is there supporting the arts year-round.”
Last year, the board of the Dogwood Festival and the board – working with the City of Atlanta and the Piedmont Park Conservancy – put out a “request for proposals” to Atlanta artists to do an 80th anniversary sculpture.
Atlanta-based Cherrylion Studios was selected, and a proposal by sculptor Martin Dawe is now being put together in a foundry in Utah.
The Dogwood Festival has launched a fundraising campaign for people to contribute to the building and maintenance of the sculpture, which is costing about $100,000. The Festival also has committed to insuring the sculpture and handling all of its long term maintenance costs.
“We are just making sure it’s not a burden on anybody,” Hill said in an interview.
The design of the Dogwood Sculpture will be multi-faceted. It can serve as a bench, as a climbing exhibit for kids and as a picturesque spot for keepsake photos.
“One thing about the piece is that it’s going to be an iconic image of Atlanta because of its placement with the Midtown skyline,” Hill said. “We want it to be interactive. We want it to become a part of the city’s fabric.”
Key donors to the sculpture will get their names on a dedication plaque, and the new attraction will be unveiled at the opening of the 2016 Festival at 5 p.m. on Friday, April 8. The Festival will happen through that Sunday, but the sculpture will remain in place all year long – serving as a reminder of the special joy that the Festival brings each Spring.
In fact, the festival was started in 1936 by retailer Walter Rich. The United States and Atlanta were in the midst of the Great Depression, and Rich thought it would uplift Atlanta to celebrate the blooming of the city’s dogwood trees.
Although the Festival hasn’t yet raised the money for the sculpture, it decided to go ahead a commit to the project by dipping into its reserves until donations came in.
“We’ve been extremely conscientious with our budget, and we have built up reserves,” Hill said. “We would be able to survive a bad year. Often one bad year or two bad years in a row can cause festivals to disappear.”
Back in 2007 and 2008, the Atlanta Dogwood Festival almost became such a casualty. In 2007, the Festival experienced bad weather and rain all weekend, causing it to lose money. Then in 2008, all major festivals and events were moved out of Piedmont Park because of the drought. The 2008 festival was moved at the last minute to the Lenox Square parking lot, which brought on another loss. And then in 2009, the economic recession made it hard to attract a strong staple of sponsors.
“When the economy has been a struggle, the festival has had to be creative to make up a loss in sponsorship dollars with other revenue,” Hill said.
Last year, it started the Mimosa 5k race where runner can enjoy a free Mimosa at the end of the race. About 500 runners participated in last year’s Publix Mimosa 5K, and Hill expects that there will be up to 1,500 runners this year.
For the 75th birthday, the Festival added rides as a way to make that year special. This year, people can buy a wristband and ride all the rides they want on Friday night. There also will be fireworks.
And Hill added that they are bring back hot air balloons to this year’s Festival, and there will be a balloon glow.
Each night also will have its themes. Friday night, there will be a Jimmy Buffett tribute band and a giant “beach party.” On Saturday, there will be a band playing music from the 80s, and people can dress in their best 80s costume.
“We want it to be an extremely memorable year, Hill said. “We want to create new memories. We want to be sure there are some memorable milestones.”Just seven weeks ago, Kevin Owens looked on the verge of being the next big breakthrough WWE Superstar having shocked the world by cleanly defeating John Cena at Elimination Chamber and then trolling him afterwards by giving Cena some "veteran advice" that his time is up and KO's time is now.
Now, it looks like WWE is well on course to blowing Owens' momentum, just like Rusev's and many other hot acts before him, after scripting him to lose cleanly on three straight Network specials, including a humbling tapout loss to Cena at Battleground last night. How can WWE make such a glaringly obvious mistake in cooling off a performer who could have easily been a strong headliner for many months to come off the first Cena win in the space of just a few weeks?
Even though Dave Meltzer was "at a loss for words" over the shortsightedness of Owens losing at Battleground in that manner on his latest subscriber only radio show, he still could explain why it happened. Partially it was a panic move over Cena's merchandise selling at a noticeably slower pace immediately after his Elimination Chamber defeat, which explains why he got his win back over Owens so quickly at Money In The Bank. More disturbingly, Meltzer talked about Machiavellian forces within WWE that are salivating at the prospect of Owens failing and was helping to give him enough rope to hang himself with:
"To again explain this: there were two schools of thought on Kevin Owens from the start and the basic gist was that some people thought that he was going to make it and some people thought he wasn't going to make it, and those who thought he wasn't going to make it made sure that he got every opportunity to make it or else they would be wrong. You know what I mean? I shouldn't say they would be wrong, they wouldn't prove that they were right. So now whether he makes it or he doesn't make it, there is a game going on and we're in the middle of the game."
Although Meltzer protects the name of the devious party out to get Owens, it's not hard to join the dots together to know who he's likely talking about.
Last year, there were rumours that WWE's Executive Vice President of Television Production Kevin Dunn was using Vince McMahon's ear to bury recent NXT call ups like Adam Rose, Bo Dallas and Paige. Dunn's reputation is that he'll bury anyone who is a threat to his position, and it is believed that Paul "Triple H" Levesque and Stephanie McMahon would replace him as soon as they gain complete control of WWE. Thus, it wouldn't be surprising if Kevin Owens is caught in the crossfires of the constant political battle for Vince McMahon's affection between his son-in-law and his long-time confidante.
We'll have more on the corporate games Kevin Dunn has been playing later this week, Cagesiders, so look out for that.Just hours after his suspension expired, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) heavyweight contender Alistair Overeem has already applied for licensure in the state of Nevada for his announced UFC 156 bout against Antonio Silva on Feb. 2, 2013, at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Applying for a fighting license in just the first step in Overeem's journey back to the Octagon, now "The Demolition Man" must appear before the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) on Jan. 8, 2013, to plead his case on why he deserves a license after being suspended for nine-months retroactive to March 27, 2012.
Heidi Fang of MMA Fight Corner first reported news of Overeem's application on Thursday morning.
Overeem was serving a suspension handed down from the NSAC stemming from a random drug test that showed elevated testosterone-to-epitestosterone levels in Overeem's system prior to his scheduled UFC 146 title bout against current heavyweight champ Junior dos Santos.
During the course of Overeem's suspension, the 32-year-old claims to have taken a number of self-imposed random drug tests; although the results of those tests have not been released to a public forum.
The Dutchman has not competed since a Dec. 2011 win over Brock Lesnar in his debut with the organization.
UFC 156: "Aldo vs. Edgar" goes down Feb. 2, 2013 from the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The event headliner will see Jose Aldo put his featherweight strap on the line against former lightweight champion Frankie Edgar. Also on the card will be a light heavyweight affair between Rashad Evans and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira.One of author Ralph Keyes’ axioms of misquotations is “Famous quotes need famous mouths,” and the fulfillment of that need has, for the last several decades, put on the lips of Abraham Lincoln words that were not written until more than fifty years after Lincoln’s death, penned by an obscure personage whose name is unknown to most living Americans.
The Rev. William John Henry Boetcker was a Presbyterian minister and notable public speaker who served as director of the pro-employer Citizens’ Industrial Alliance, a position he held when, in 1916, he produced a booklet of “nuggets” from his lectures, which included maxims such as “We cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong” and “We cannot help the poor by kicking the rich.”
Boetcker’s collection of maxims eventually crystallized as the list of ten now familiar entries (variously known as the “Industrial Decalogue,” the “Ten Don’ts,” the “Ten Cannots,” “Ten Things You Cannot Do, “or the “American Charter”) reproduced above:
* You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
* You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
* You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
* You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
* You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
* You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
* You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
* You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
* You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
* You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
Sources differ on exactly how Boetcker’s decalogue eventually came to be attributed to Lincoln, but the generally accepted explanation is that someone published a leaflet with Boetcker’s list of “cannots” on one side and authentic Lincoln quotations on the other, leading to an inevitable mix-up which resulted in everything printed on both sides of the paper being attributed to Lincoln.
(The leaflet in question is usually claimed to be a 1942 publication by the Committee for Constitutional Government entitled “Lincoln on Limitation[s],” with the confusion in attribution coming about either because one version of the leaflet omitted Boetcker’s name, because the printed credits mistakenly switched Boetcker’s name with Lincoln’s, or because readers glossed over Boetcker’s unfamiliar name and mistakenly assumed all the material in the leaflet originated with the much more familiar figure of Abraham Lincoln.)
Once the runaway train of misattribution got rolling, there was no stopping it. As William Boetcker faded from public memory and Abraham Lincoln grew ever larger in American historical legend, few people had an interest or desire in setting the matter right — in accordance with another principle set forth by Keyes: “If words we like can’t be credited to someone we’ve heard of, they might as well not have been said at all.”
Any chance of genuine history winning out over the faux version in this case was probably set back at least a generation when another U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, stood before a nationwide audience at the 1992 Republican National Convention and delivered a speech in which he also erroneously attributed four of Boetcker’s maxims to Lincoln:× Utah man arrested after damaging over 30 headstones so dead could be ‘resurrected’
PAYSON, Utah – A man is in custody after allegedly damaging more than 30 headstones because he thought it would make it easier for the deceased to be “resurrected.”
Police told KSTU 36-year-old Spencer Robinson was arrested after knocking over more than 30 graves stones at the Payson City Cemetery Monday night.
According to the cemetery, some of the damaged stones are more than 100 years old and may not be replaced.
Police said Robinson had been removed from the cemetery days earlier for moving grave markers.
Officers went to his house where a family member said Robinson told them he was planning to go back to “finish the job.” Police said the relative told them Robinson said many of his friends would be freed for resurrection on Easter.
Authorities found Robinson in the backyard and tried to arrest him but he ran into the house and locked them out.
Officers forced their way into the house and hand to wrestle Robinson to the ground to handcuff him.
Robinson has been booked into the Utah County Jail on a felony charge of damaging property, resisting arrest and criminal trespassing.
Officials said Robinson has a possible mental health condition.It’s time for America to stop stumbling backward into bad trade deals, and instead pursue a trade policy that will benefit our economy, workers, and our planet.
This week, the White House and 11 countries — including Japan, Mexico, and Vietnam — agreed on a secret trade deal called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). If the agreement turns out to be chock-full of sweetheart deals for specials interests and powerful corporations, as we suspect it will be, then Congress must oppose it.
While trade agreements are intended to open markets for U.S. companies, they often further concentrate wealth at the very top. We saw this here in Iowa especially: NAFTA was passed with good intentions, but cost the Iowa economy 10,000 jobs, and our U.S. economy nearly 700,000 more. Iowa saw plants close, saw jobs outsourced — and all for a deal that lowered standards for labor and the environment the world over.
We must learn from the mistakes of the past and ensure they do not happen again. If we don’t get our trade deals right, we put the livelihoods of millions of Americans in peril.
The TPP is not, as some have called it, a “gold standard” deal. Instead, it is a story of winners and losers. Companies that support millions of American families, like those in the manufacturing industry — where good-paying jobs are disappearing at a faster rate than during the Great Depression — will see accelerating job losses and outsourcing.
The TPP is unprecedented in its ambition, size, and scope. Comprising 40 percent of the global economy, it will govern not just international trade in goods — but also labor rights, intellectual property rights, environmental standards, and financial regulations. For the richest companies, which already manufacture most of their products overseas, the TPP is a boon for the corporate bottom-line, making it easier to outsource work and earn bucks abroad. For the middle class, the TPP deal will make it even harder to earn a paycheck at home.
The future of America’s workers, manufacturers, and small businesses depends on our getting this deal right. For that, we need new leadership, with a consistent position, to build up our American economy and give rise to a global middle class.
Not all trade deals are bad. As President, I will support good free trade agreements that uphold our nation’s values, not bad deals that undermine our prosperity.
The TPP was negotiated with corporate interests at heart and thus misses the mark. But in our increasingly global and interconnected world, trade is a powerful and vital tool to expand American influence. Trade deals done well — complete with high labor and environmental standards and carefully crafted rules — can open new markets for U.S. businesses and agriculture, can protect our planet from climate change, and will support a thriving middle class.
That’s why, today, I am releasing a comprehensive trade policy agenda that calls for establishing strong, enforceable rules for fair competition — rules that are in the best interests of American families, workers, and businesses.
First, my plan starts with holding other countries accountable when they cheat the market by manipulating the value of their currency — something the TPP does not do. If a country deliberately tries to manipulate its currency to gain an unfair edge in the global market, the U.S. should cut off privileged access to American consumers.
Companies, just like countries, must also play by the rules. That’s why my plan protects countries against multinational corporations that put their profits above the public interest. In the past, big business has used tribunals to get around environmental, health, and safety protections. No agreement, including the TPP, should allow for corporations to sue for damages in private tribunals.
Instead, we should ensure that trade agreements create greater opportunity for workers and the environment that sustains us. This means guaranteeing workers’ rights to organize and collectively bargain — ensuring that American companies do not suffer a competitive disadvantage because they pay higher wages and respect unions. And when our trading partners destroy the environment and accelerate climate change, we should suspend their benefits under our free trade agreements.
Above all, if America signs a trade deal, it should benefit the American people. My trade plan calls on Congress to ensure that free trade agreements are forged in concert with policies that help the middle class — such as raising the minimum wage, passing comprehensive immigration reform, and making robust investments in our nation’s infrastructure.
If nations want to get privileged access to the U.S. economy, they must also uphold American values. That is the trade policy I will fight for as President of the United States.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT PINTS & POLITICS E-NEWSLETTER A lighthearted look at Iowa political news right to your inbox. I am above 13 years of age, and agree to sending policies. SIGN ME UP Thank you for signing up for our e-newsletter! You should start receiving the e-newsletters within a couple days.
• Martin O’Malley is a former governor of Maryland and a Democrat running for president. Comments: momalley@martinomalley.com2012 Club Season Guidelines Release and Overview
The 2012 Club Season and Series Guidelines have been posted. These guidelines provide detailed information about how the 2012 Club Season and Series will work, including sectional boundaries, registration information, rostering rules, rankings and bid allocation information for the Series. A summary highlighting some of the big changes is provided below.
Additionally, USA Ultimate has posted the bid document containing information and instructions for event organizers interested in hosting an Elite Club Showcase Event as part of the inaugural Club Regular Season. USA Ultimate is planning on partnering with two events to showcase each of the Mixed, Open, and Women’s divisions at their best, by providing resources to highlight events to fans on site and through enhanced online media coverage. The bid deadline is March 23 with announcements planned for March 31.
The following information highlights some of the important areas of change in the Club Guidelines. This is information is solely meant to bring attention to a few specific changes. The Club Guidelines should always be referenced for complete, detailed information about rules and instructions for the Club Season and Series.
Geographic Changes
Regional redraw – Increased from 6 to 8 regions. Goals were to reduce travel time, create regions with multiple viable communities that could support a variety of teams and events, and increase playing opportunities by offering more Regional tournaments. Population centers were considered heavily when determining where to draw boundaries.
Sectional redraw – Many sections stayed the same, with some realignment in order to balance travel considerations with the number of teams needed for viable events. In some areas/divisions, combinations of sections may still be necessary until sufficient growth occurs for areas to be viable alone.
Regular Season Events and Registration
The Regular Season will take place between June 9 and September 3.
Regular season games, where teams’ results can count towards rankings and bid allocations to the Series, may occur at any USAU Competitive-level sanctioned event.
In order to have games count, a team must register for the regular season using the regular season online rostering system, which will be available later this spring. Rostering rules (see below) will apply to all registered regular season teams.
Only games between two registered regular season teams at a sanctioned event will count towards rankings and bid allocations.
Registration will be open throughout the spring and summer, and teams |
give him some additional artist suggestions and maybe one day soon we can have a White House inaugural DJ set.
We wouldn’t have pegged Marco Rubio as a Tiësto fan, but he is.More from Jamie Gangel’s interview with the GOP presidential hopeful: http://cnn.it/1GDhE56 Posted by New Day on Monday, October 26, 2015Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
The Resident Evil series is one of the longest-running franchises in gaming. The reason it has remained popular since its inception in 1996 is because of its "elaborate settings and world," Capcom said in a new feature recalling the origins and predicting the future of the series.
"The secret lies in its elaborate settings and world. Horror is a common entertainment genre around the world, but Resident Evil adopted the setting of epidemic disaster that could be a reality rather than a wild fantasy in order to make the horror convincing," Capcom said. "This sense of realism is smoothly incorporated into the story as well as feeding the fear as horror."
In addition, Capcom said the "attractive" characters featured in Resident Evil games is a significant selling point for the franchise. Players enjoy following a character throughout various games, Capcom said.
"The main characters have made many appearances spanning all the titles and get older and more mature as the series goes on. A character who was a rookie police officer when he debuted is a member of an organization under the direct control of the president in the latest game, and a powerless young girl has matured into a U.S. agent," Capcom said. "Rather than fading away over the 17 years, they have become even deeper characters. This character appeal has also helped to win firm fans."
The third main reason why Resident Evil has remained popular over the span of almost two decades is because Capcom taps different creative talent to lead production on each new title, the publisher said.
"The development team and producers in charge of Resident Evil change for every title," Capcom said. "Therefore, each creator adds their own touch to the strong Resident Evil identity, constantly creating a new Resident Evil just like a relay."
The most recent entry in the series was October 2012's Resident Evil 6, which received mixed review scores. Despite this, the game appears to be a commercial success, having sold more than 5.2 million units globally. Looking to the future, Capcom said the next installment in the series will touch upon "new possibilities" that will appeal to players across the world.
"In the future, [the Resident Evil series] will discover new possibilities and progress as a title that can compete globally without disappointing any expectations," Capcom said.Myanmar is a long way from Eitay Mack’s modest office in West Jerusalem. But on a recent day during the Sukkot or Feast of Tabernacles holiday, while fellow Israelis were vacationing, this self-effacing young lawyer was fretting about the upcoming elections in Myanmar (Burma).
Mr. Mack is dismayed that in September Israel hosted a senior Army delegation from Myanmar, which included a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and visits to leading weapons technology producer Elbit Systems Ltd. and naval and air force bases. The European Union has imposed an arms embargo, and the United States military sanctions, against the Southeast Asian regime because of its poor human rights record.
Mack is concerned that by hosting the visit, Israel has sent a message of support for Myanmar’s military government precisely when the country’s transition to civilian democracy is facing its biggest test following Nov. 8 elections.
“Israel has increased the risk that the transition to democracy will not be successful,” Mack says. If the military maintains a dominant role after the vote, Mack intends to file a lawsuit against the Israeli Defense Ministry demanding that it disclose all of its security ties to Myanmar.
The Defense Ministry declined to comment, saying that it does not respond to queries about weapons sales.
Mack says Myanmar is just the tip of the iceberg. In recent years there have been reports in Israeli and international news media, and from organizations such as Privacy International (based in Britain) and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, of Israel providing weapons to regimes that are egregious human rights abusers without having a prior national discussion.
Now that may be changing, in large part because of Mack’s efforts.
Mack, who wears the kippa, or skullcap, of an observant Jew, is trying to pierce the wall of secrecy around Israeli weapons exports and is pressing for an end to weapons and know-how transfers that he says are helping to fuel conflicts worldwide. He has his sights set on reported Israeli sales of weapons or expertise to South Sudan, Eritrea, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Cameroon, Gabon, and Chad, among others.
Yaacov Havakook, Israel’s Defense Ministry spokesman, declined to comment on whether Israel is equipping these countries nor did he respond to criticism that it is abetting human rights violations.
Mack, who believes he is on a lifesaving mission, does the work on a voluntary basis, although it often takes up most of his time.
“I want to do all I can to stop war crimes and crimes against humanity...,” he says. His office is adorned with the iconic photo of a lone protester facing a column of tanks during a protest in China’s Tiananmen Square. “I am a citizen of the world, and I have global responsibility,” he says.
In December the EU imposed an embargo on weapons sales to South Sudan after that country’s civil war resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of nearly 2 million people. The US, for its part, has halted all military assistance to the South Sudanese government.
But Israel, according to Mack’s information – which he says is based on press reports, or comes from aid workers he has interviewed and other sources he cannot divulge – is providing Israeli-made rifles and training South Sudanese forces. It is flouting the EU embargo, he says, and in June openly hosted a senior South Sudanese delegation at a weapons fair in Tel Aviv.
At the same time the guests were being welcomed in Israel, South Sudanese forces and their allies were winding up an offensive in which they burned villages and carried out scores of rapes and killings, according to Human Rights Watch. It said the regime was guilty of committing war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during South Sudan’s April-to-June military push.
“Israel is prolonging the fighting in South Sudan,” Mack says. (The conflict has continued despite the signing of a peace deal in August.)
Mack has joined forces with a liberal Israeli legislator, Tamar Zandberg, a member of the Meretz party, who demanded that the Defense Ministry cut all Israeli military aid to South Sudan. Mack helped organize several street demonstrations that drew attention to the issue.
The Defense Ministry rebuffed Ms. Zandberg’s request, saying that it couldn’t discuss arms exports to a specific country. “They don’t want a public discussion,” Mack says. “What is most threatening to them is that the public will start to intervene in what they are doing.”
Mack and Yair Oron, an Israeli academic, are also fighting a court battle to obtain the release of all documents related to weapons that may have been provided to Rwanda during its genocide in 1994 and to the Serbs in Bosnia from 1991 to 1995. The Defense Ministry responded by specifying that release of the documents would harm foreign relations and the security of the state.
A lower court has backed the ministry. Mack and Mr. Oron are appealing the decision to Israel’s Supreme Court.
Born near Tel Aviv, Mack acquired his interest in world affairs at an early age. Rather than have a party for his bar mitzvah, the religious rite of passage into manhood at age 13, he persuaded his parents to take him on a trip to China, which he had become curious about from reading National Geographic magazine.
But it wasn’t until he traveled to South America in 2004 that he began to think seriously about Israel’s military role in the world. On that trip he met a traveler from Ireland who was wearing a well-known Israeli brand of sandals. He asked her why she had on Israeli footwear. She explained that she was going into the jungle in Colombia, and that Israelis were training the forces fighting there. She thought that if she wore the sandals she would be protected.
Mack wondered why Israel was involved in Colombia.
“I began to research, and I found that in some cases we are training and arming both the government and the rebels,” he says. “I found out we are supporting many dictatorial regimes and are involved in violent conflicts throughout the world.”
Mack makes a modest living by representing Palestinians who have suffered physical harm or property damage from Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank or from the Israeli army. He does not charge his clients but takes a percentage of the damages if he wins a case.
He refuses to establish a nongovernmental organization to pursue his goals, something that would enable him to seek foreign funding. “I’m independent, and I do what I believe in,” he says. “I’m not subject to donors or agendas. I do what seems right, and what seems right is international law, which I try to apply here in Israel and to the security exports abroad.”
Mr. Havakook, the Defense Ministry spokesman, has also declined to comment on Mack’s activities.
“Eitay Mack is one of the most important human rights activists in Israel today,” says Zandberg, the Israeli legislator. “He is a very rare combination of dedication, commitment to values, and professionalism, with a very strong moral emphasis. Without him, the Israeli public wouldn’t know about these sales and the security establishment wouldn’t be forced to know it has to be accountable. I’m sure his work will lead to operative steps like increased supervision and legislation that we have to work on.”
“What he’s doing is especially hard because it’s a security issue and that’s a holy of holies in Israel,” she adds.
“Many people don’t think civil society and civilians have the right to work on this. They think it should be the domain just of generals and security people. There’s no doubt that what he does is difficult, but that just shows how important it is.”
How to take action
Universal Giving helps people give to and volunteer for top-performing charitable organizations around the world. All the projects are vetted by Universal Giving; 100 percent of each donation goes directly to the listed cause. Below are links to groups that help defend human rights and aid people affected by conflicts:
• Benetech develops innovative, effective technology applications for unmet social needs. Take action: Fund stronger safeguards to protect human rights information.
Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy
• Asia America Initiative promotes peace, social justice, and economic development in impoverished, conflict-ridden communities. Take action: Fund relief for families displaced by conflict in the Philippines.
• Peter C. Alderman Foundation helps to heal the emotional wounds of the survivors of terrorism and mass violence around the world. Take action: Help former child soldiers in Uganda.Theis quite complex but the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. The earliest surviving texts which can definitely be called Italian (as opposed to its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae from the region of Benevento dating from 960-963.During the 14th century the Tuscan dialect began to predominate, because of the central position of Tuscany in Italy, and because of the aggressive commerce of its most important city, Florence. In fact, Florentine culture produced the three literary artists who best summarized Italian thought and feeling of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance: Petrarca, Boccaccio and, specially, Dante Alighieri. Dante was the one who mixed southern Italian languages, especially Sicilian, with his native Tuscan ("supposed" to be derived from Etruscan and Oscan) in his epic poems known collectively as the Commedia, to which Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina.The "question of the language", an attempt to establish linguistic norms and codify the language, engrossed writers of all persuasions. Grammarians during the 15th and the 16th centuries attempted to confer upon the pronunciation, syntax, and vocabulary of 14th-century Tuscan the status of a central and classical Italian speech. Eventually this classicism, which might have made Italian another dead language, was widened to include the organic changes inevitable in a living tongue.In the dictionaries and publications of the Accademia della Crusca, founded in 1583, which was accepted by Italians as authoritative in Italian linguistic matters, compromises between classical purism and living Tuscan usage were successfully effected. The most important literary event of the 16th century did not actually take place in Florence. In 1525 the Venetian Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) set out his proposals (Prose della volgar lingua - 1525) for a standardized language and style: Petrarca and Boccaccio were his models and thus became the modern classics. Therefore, the language of Italian literature is modeled on that spoken in Florence in the 15th century.In fact, the first edition of an official Italian vocabulary, published in 1612 by the Accademia della Crusca, was built on the basis of the following Florentine works: Divina Commedia by Dante, Decameron by Bocaccio and Canzionere by Petrarca. Today, Toscano is still considered the "cleanest" of all Italian dialects as it is the most similar to the original or classical Latin.However, It was not until the 19th century that the language spoken by educated Tuscans spread to become the language of a new nation. The unification of Italy in 1861 had a profound impact not only on the political scene but also resulted in a significant social, economical, and cultural transformation. With mandatory schooling, the literacy rate increased, and many speakers abandoned their native dialect in favor of the national language.It’s rare, but experts say it’s definitely possible to die while sleepwalking. “Of course it’s dangerous,” said Dr. Colin Shapiro, a University of Toronto professor and director of the Youthdale Child & Adolescent Sleep Clinic.
Chris Hyndman was found dead in an alleyway next to the east end apartment where he lived with his on-screen partner and spouse, Steven Sabados. ( TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO ) Chris Hyndman was found dead in an alleyway next to the east end apartment where he lived with his on-screen partner and spouse, Steven Sabados. ( Toronto Star file photo )
“People can essentially do anything,” he said. “They can walk in their sleep, they can talk in their sleep, they can eat in their sleep, they can drive their car in their sleep and they can have sex in their sleep.” And to fall and injure yourself, or die? “It’s definitely possible,” Shapiro said.
Article Continued Below
The plausibility of such a demise has come up in the wake of Chris Hyndman’s death this week. The popular television personality was found dead in an alleyway next to the east end apartment where he lived with his on-screen partner and spouse, Steven Sabados. Hyndman’s mother told the Star she believes her son died in an “unfortunate accident” while sleepwalking. Toronto Police repeated earlier statements on Thursday, with Const. Victor Kwong saying the investigation into Hyndman’s death is still open, but that no other information will be given because there is no suspicious or criminal element to the incident. Though he’s never personally encountered a story of someone dying while sleepwalking, Sunnybrook Hospital sleep neurologist Brian Murray said such accidents have “undoubtedly occurred.” People have been known to fall from ledges or tumble down stairs, and there have been media reports from the U.S. and U.K. of sleepwalkers freezing to death after ambling outside in winter. “We have lots of patients who have injured themselves and then come to us for treatment,” including people with spinal and head injuries, Murray said. “For some people, it’s a real serious concern.”
Murray said it’s not clear exactly how many adults repeatedly sleepwalk, because many people live with the tendency but never report it. The best estimate, he said, is “a few per cent” of the adult population would have episodes of sleepwalking or somnambulation. Two conditions are necessary for someone to sleepwalk, according to Shapiro and Murray. One must be in a deep sleep, and then quickly surface into a period of less profound slumber. This shift to a state between deep sleep and wakefulness is usually caused by what Murray calls an “arousal,” which could be a sudden noise, the jerking of a limb or a breathing irregularity.
Article Continued Below
“It’s that intersection between the two states where trouble occurs,” Murray said. Sleepwalking is also precipitated by several factors that could push someone into a deeper-than-usual state of rest. Sleep deprivation and exhaustion from exercise can contribute, said Shapiro, as well as having a fever. The use of sleep medication or sleeping pills can also lead to sleepwalking. “Anything that increases the depth of your sleep — so that could be sleep medication, that could be alcohol, that could be exercise, that could be staying awake too long,” Shapiro said. Sleepwalking has even entered the Canadian legal framework as a defence for homicide or sexual assault. In a case that was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1991, Kenneth Parks was acquitted of murder after testifying that he was sleeping when he drove to his wife’s parents’ home and stabbed his mother-in-law to death. More recently, Ontario’s top court ordered a retrial last month after a Brockville man appealed a sexual-assault conviction by arguing he committed the act in his sleep. “It’s surprising the level of complexity that can occur,” said Murray. “Depending on the degree to which they tip into the spectrum (of sleepwalking), they could really do almost anything.”On August 18, Disney will release Disney Infinity, its largest-ever video game effort. Infinity does something unheard of in the Disney universe: It brings well-known characters from different Disney and Pixar properties–Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars, Monsters University, etc.–into a single environment.
As Disney and Pixar’s chief creative officer, John Lasseter is the gatekeeper to many of the company’s most beloved characters, and he was deeply involved in Infinity‘s development. Lasseter helped pioneer computer animation at Lucasfilm, and after Steve Jobs bought the studio’s computer graphics division in 1986, he worked closely with the Apple CEO to establish an independent company called Pixar. When Disney acquired Pixar in 2006, he returned as the company’s head creative executive. He has been a producer for 60 films and directed 16 more, including Toy Story and Cars.
Fast Company recently spoke with Lasseter for a story in the upcoming September issue.
John Lasseter
How Steve Jobs Influenced Pixar:
When Jobs bought Lucasfilm’s computer graphics division in 1986, establishing it as an independent company called Pixar, Lasseter became his creative partner. “We were so close he became like a brother to me,” says Lasseter.
Both men admired the other’s work. Jobs liked the idea that stories, unlike technology, didn’t necessarily have a shelf life. “I’ll never forget,” Lasseter says, “Steve Jobs was kind of waxing poetically about things and he said, ‘You know, at Apple when we make a computer, what’s the lifespan of it? Maybe three years. In five years it’s a doorstop. Technology moves so fast. If you do your job right with Toy Story, this thing could last forever.'”
Lasseter, meanwhile, tried to instill his movies with the same quality that Apple built into its products. “Everything I do and everything Pixar does is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period. With Steve Jobs, this is what we had driven the company to be all these years.”The past few years have seen Mercedes-Benz product planners systematically make their way through the lineup, increasing AMG’s role, revamping the top-shelf S-class, and adding entry-level bait in the form of the CLA-class sedan and GLA-class SUV. Until now, they have essentially left the C-class (W204 in Benz-speak) to its own devices. A mild makeover a couple of years back improved its looks but failed to address its primary shortcoming: The BMW 3-series was a better car to drive. The 2015 C-class represents the maker at its Teutonic best, tenaciously addressing previous deficiencies with measured doses of technology and style.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
One look and it’s clear that the seed that flowered into the C-class was collected from the same stock as that of the S-class. The long, sculpted hood, the trademark fascia, and the posterior design have strong S-class cues, although the C-class loses some of the big car’s grace from the C-pillar back. Chalk it up to scale. The smaller, tighter body of the C-class means its highly stylized rump appears a bit less natural than it does on the more generous proportions of the zaftig S-class.
Our drive was in C250 and C400 models—U.S. buyers will see the more powerful C300 in place of the C250. Both cars get a longitudinally mounted 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder that’s a near clone of the sidewinder unit found in the CLA-class. When the C300 hits the States, it’ll arrive packing an estimated 241 horsepower and 272 lb-ft of torque, as well as all-wheel drive; the rear-wheel-drive C250 we drove overseas had its output suppressed to 208 horses and 258 lb-ft of twist. The C400 will arrive in the U.S. as sampled, its 3.0-liter turbo V-6 churning out 329 horsepower and 354 lb-ft of torque, all funneled through M-B’s 4MATIC all-wheel-drive system. A rear-wheel-drive C300 will follow the 4MATIC, and the recently confirmed C350 plug-in hybrid is expected to arrive in the fall of 2015. A diesel is likely on the horizon as well, but it’s our feeling that those committed to the oil-burning lifestyle will have a couple of years to scrounge up the down payment. All U.S.-bound C-class models get a seven-speed automatic transmission.
Advertisement - Continue Reading Below
Son of S-class
We took our first turn at the wheel in a C250, and it was immediately apparent that the S-class vibe continues to the interior. Five round vents dot the dash, the middle three resting atop a one-piece center console that terminates just below the 8.4-inch (seven-inch without the Multimedia package) infotainment screen. The look—even in basic black soft plastic—is cohesive and light-years more refined and harmonized than that of the CLA. When accented by the available wood or aluminum trim and teamed with leather, the atmosphere goes pleasantly, tastefully upscale. We found the switchgear to have the substantial feel typical of premium hi-fi equipment. Those familiar with the Benz’s COMAND infotainment system, however, will be surprised to find a small, ergonomically shaped guard positioned over the COMAND control wheel. Far from a decorative fixture, it houses a touch pad with haptic feedback that permits the operation of all infotainment functions using finger gestures.Fullback Vonta Leach received a lot of credit for boosting the Baltimore Ravens' running game over the last two seasons. He has made the Pro Bowl in both seasons since arriving from the Houston Texans and was recognized by his peers during NFL Network's "Top 100 Players" show.
And he might be looking for work soon.
The Baltimore Sun reported Monday that Leach is expected to be released or traded soon. The sides were unable to reach a compromise on a reduced contract. It previously had been reported that the Ravens were looking for Leach to take a pay cut from his $3 million base salary. It's hard to imagine another team trading for him.
The writing was on the wall in April when the Ravens took Harvard fullback Kyle Juszczyk in the fourth round of the NFL draft. Leach might be the premier fullback in football, but he's 31 years old and is paid a lot for his position. He's a victim of NFL trends that simply don't keep a fullback on the field as anything more than a part-time player. (Leach played in less than half of all the Ravens' snaps last season.)
Still, the Ravens must believe Leach's best days are behind him or they wouldn't make this move.
UPDATE: Leach confirmed via Twitter that he'll be leaving the Ravens, and he expressed his gratitude for the organization and its fans.
Thank @ravens organization for a great two years. I came here and did what we set out to do and that's win the Super Bowl. My time here â VontaLeach44 (@vleach44) June 10, 2013
here is up but what we accomplished, we will be forever linked. Thank the fans for accepting me and my family to Bmore. #newchapter#samegoal â VontaLeach44 (@vleach44) June 10, 2013
Follow Gregg Rosenthal on Twitter @greggrosenthal.I was listening to the radio the other morning and Mase came up. Do you remember Mase? Of course you do, because you are perfect. I love you. And I love Mase too.
There was a moment between 1997 and 1998 when all of rap seemed to orbit around him. He was alley-ooped up into stardom by Puff Daddy as the replacement star for the Bad Boy label following the Notorious B.I.G.’s death. This was back when Puff was sort of ruling rap, so the cosign was truly powerful. Mase became enjoyably unavoidable. He did songs with basically everyone who was important then, glowing most radiantly on Biggie’s posthumous masterpiece, “Mo Money, Mo Problems.”
Mase was a marvel, his charisma a super-magnet. His voice effortlessly echoed, smooth enough to make you like him. And so everyone did. His debut album, Harlem World, which celebrates its 17th anniversary this week, hit no. 1 on Billboard’s pop and R&B chart, selling more than 3 million copies and earning unanimous praise. His place in history can never be denied.
But so the radio thing: He came up during a conversation on “The Breakfast Club,” a nationally syndicated morning radio show hosted by Charlamagne Tha God, DJ Envy, and Angela Yee. Charlamagne was explaining how he and Mase had gotten into a minor confrontation when Mase claimed that he’d been blackballed by the industry (he’s attempted several unsuccessful comebacks in hopes of re-creating his late-’90s run). Charlamagne’s argument to Mase was that there was no ban, nor would there be — people had just stopped caring about him.
While Charlamagne’s is a much more sensible idea than a worldwide shunning of one of rap’s onetime most likable figures, it doesn’t make it any more palatable. I’m sorry, Mase. I never stopped caring for you, but I did stop checking for you. So I’m sorry, Mase. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. You’re an angel. And Harlem World is a revelation.
So, to celebrate: The 24 Guiding Lessons for a Perfect Life tucked away on Harlem World.
1. How to Be the Best at Picking Boats
“On a yacht, n----, fuck a boat that row.” (“Do You Wanna Get $”)
I definitely do not recommend ever getting on a boat. Every movie that I’ve seen that had a boat in it also had death upon death in it. There was a boat in Jaws and people on it were eaten by a shark. There was a boat in Amistad and people on it were tied to a weight and thrown into the ocean. There was a boat in The Perfect Storm and Mark Wahlberg had whatever it is that you call facial hair that’s between a goatee and a beard.
It’s just all bad. So stay off boats. If you have to get on one, however, definitely pick a yacht before you pick a rowboat.
Sidebar: If you were going to liken phases of Mase’s career to types of boats, then I guess back when Harlem World came out he was a yacht and now he is a rowboat. :(
2. How to Be the Best Financial Adviser
“Yo, the reality of it all, everybody can’t ball.” (“Do You Wanna Get $”)
I have a finance lady. She’s super-smart and super-good with money. Our relationship is mostly me asking, “Hey, is there a way I can afford to buy the Spurs, or if not that can I at least buy Manu Ginobili?” and her ask-telling me, “Would you mind not emailing me with these sorts of questions?” Because the reality of it all, is that everybody cannot ball. How very sad.
3. How to Take Pride in Your Personal Appearance
“And brush my waves so I’m handsome when the bitches greet me.” (“Take What’s Yours”)
Sometimes I wear the same clothes to work for a week straight just because. And I probably spend maybe 75 percent of my days with a smear of Cheetos Puffs dust across my shirt. There are very few people excited to greet me.
4. How to Be an Equal-Opportunity Murderer
“We ain’t discriminatin’, even thugs gon’ be killed.” (“Take What’s Yours”)
http://youtu.be/m2OdqYqbmRo
Because you can be a murderer, but one thing you CANNOT be is a bigoted murderer. One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and murder for all, is how that saying goes. Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be murdered, and we will do so without prejudice, is what’s on that plaque on the side of the Statue of Liberty.
5. How to Be the Best at Evading Detection in Your Storm-Bringing, Even by the Weatherman
“The weatherman don’t even know the storm I’ma bring.” (“Take What’s Yours”)
Every time I try to bring a storm, even a very tiny one, it is immediately detected. It’s a real downer. Sometimes I just want to show up like, “Surprise! It’s a storm.” But whenever I’m walking up, there’s always someone that’s like, “Hey. Hey, what’s that behind your back? Is that a storm? That’s a storm, isn’t it? Aw, man. Get outta here with that storm.” Sad.
6. How to Be the Best at Making Thugs Love Me
“Keep a gat by my genitals, thugs love me.” (“Take What’s Yours”)
The problem I was having before I listened to Harlem World was that thugs liked me, but they didn’t love me. But then after I heard this song, I knew what the problem was: I had zero guns by my penis. You want thugs to love you? Put a gun by your penis or vagina. That’s the first place they’re going to look for it. It’s like a secret handshake, except with your genitals. It’s all very complicated.
7. How to Be the Best at Holding a Grudge
“We beef ’89; still watch your back.” (“Will They Die 4 You?”)
God forgives; Mase doesn’t.
8. How to Be the Best at Appreciating Yourself
“I knock my own shit, like I’m on my own dick.” (“Will They Die 4 You?”)
My mom used to always tell me that nobody was going to be on my own dick until I was on my own dick. Moms are very smart. Moms and Mase have all the helpful advice.
9. How to Be the Best at Understanding That People Are Going to Look at You
“Yo, I can’t get mad cuz you look at me / Cuz on the real, look at me.” (“Lookin’ at Me”)
This kind of falls within the same self-dick appreciation parameters as the last principle. It’s just good to reinforce. Mase wants you to love you. That’s too real. What an angel.
10. How to Be the Best at Spending Time With Your Family
“I rent scooters, I’m with my family.” (“Lookin’ at Me”)
There are, like, about 50 different times on Harlem World when Mase says he’s going to kill someone or hurt someone, so what’s fun is to picture him shooting someone in the forehead and then driving to his sister’s house and kicking around outside on a Razor Scooter with those light-up wheels. Bro, have you ever even seen a Razor Scooter with the light-up wheels? Oh, man. One time I was riding my son’s and I did a jump off this ramp and so I was flying through the air and the wheel lights were flickering because the wheels were still spinning and — I am not making this up — when I did the jump I swear to God I saw the Virgin Mary and she was like, “That’s so rad.” The Virgin Mary is a big fan of Razor Scooters. Maybe you’d know that if you tried reading a Bible every once in a while.
11. How to Be the Best at Shopping for Coats
“Buy ’em all minks before December hit.” (“Love U So”)
If you’re planning on buying mink coats (or fur coats, or any coat, really), you’re definitely going to want to do so before winter comes. That’s just good planning.
Sidebar: I’ve worn a fur coat only once in my life. It was a fake. My wife (she was my girlfriend at the time) wanted me to take her to some fancy restaurant. I said I didn’t want to go. She said that she wasn’t asking, that she was going to get in the car and I’d better be in there in 10 minutes and I’d better have on a dress coat because it was the sort of place where guys wore coats. I said fine. I put on a muscle shirt and her fake fur coat. I wore it during the whole dinner. She never asked me to go back there. That’s a good example of winning the battle and the war.
12. How to Have Good Hygiene
“Though I puff trees my teeth never yellow.” (“Love U So”)
If your teeth are the same color as Michael Jordan’s eyeballs, then things aren’t going that great for you.
13. How to Be the Best at Knowing Where You’ve Been Shot
“You be the same cat that I run up on and spit at / Bleedin’ all crazy and don’t know where you hit at.” (“The Player Way”)
This is, low-key, maybe the best rap line of 1997.
14. How to Find a Girl That’ll Make You Happy
“I need a girl that if I ask her handle me and my peeps / Get down dirty, and lick ice down my butt cheeks.” (“I Need to Be”)
Mase: So tell me a little about you.
Woman: Well, I’m 27. I work in marketing. I ha—
Mase: No, no. Not your job. Tell me about you.
Woman: Oh. Um, I’m a happy person, the child of a strong marria—
Mase: I want to hear about you as a person, not your history.
Woman: I’m a little confused. I don’t know how to answer.
Mase: OK. That’s fair. It’s a tricky question.
Woman: Seems so.
Mase: Basically, what I’m asking is …
Woman: Yes?
Mase: Will you lick ice down my butt cheeks?
[Scene.]
Mase was a wild one.
15. How to Be the Best at Handling a Loss
“If I lose I get loc, put a fool in the yoke. Two to his throat, take his jewels and his coat.” (“N----z Wanna Act”)
If every time you take a loss someone gets shot twice in the neck and has his jewels and coat stolen, then guess what: You won’t be taking losses very long. That’s a little thing called good merchandise quantity management. When I was in college I had a part-time job at Abercrombie & Fitch. There was this loss-prevention officer fellow who would hang out at the store every few days. I remember he got fired because he was helping his friends steal clothes. He’s my second favorite loss-prevention officer of all time. Mase is the first.
16. How to Be the Best at Keeping Score
“You kill my man, I kill your bitch, now we even.” (“N----z Wanna Act”)
This sounds fair, but seriously, don’t kill people.
17. How to Be the Best at Managing Her Expectations in a Relationship
“To keep it all real, you come second to my money.” (“What You Want”)
I have to assume that this is a line directed at a woman who is not the woman he loves. My wife, now, she does not come second to my money. She doesn’t come second to anything, except maybe she came second to Kawhi Leonard the night that he blocked Russell Westbrook’s layup in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals last year to send the Spurs to the Finals. I’ve had girlfriends who came second to money. I had one girlfriend who came second to NBA JAM. I had a girlfriend who came second to karate movies on HBO. I had a girlfriend who came second to Will Smith’s “Just the Two of Us” video. Never my wife, though. Priorities.
18. How to Be the Best at Managing Your Own Expectations in a Relationship
“All women flirt, all women cheat.” (“Cheat on You”)
This is only a true thing when it’s a true thing. Not all women cheat. But they will all cheat on you if you, say, put them second to NBA JAM. I’m just saying.
19. How to Be the Best at Using the Last 24 Hours of Life
“I’d even look for my dad that I never knew.” (“24 Hrs. to Live”)
“24 Hrs. to Live” is all about what you’d do with your last 24 hours to live. Mase’s verse is full of this sort of sentiment. He talks about taking black kids out of the ghetto, bringing white kids into the ghetto, helping homeless people, on and on. DMX is on the song, too. His whole |
When we reached the incident site, we found the dead person’s body and five to six-month-old daughter. We immediately rescued the daughter.”
The murderer has two wives according to police.
Police have also arrested his younger wife for investigation.
The dead woman is the elder wife and has three children. The locals even picketed the Area Police Office, Kohalpur last night demanding stringent legal action against the perpetrator.
Beduwa might have murdered his wife after he was fed-up with quarreling with her since he was not providing her with any financial support, Inspector Bhim Karki at the APO said. He added that the alleged murderer had visited the APO several times over disputes with his wife as she was demanding to register for marriage certificate and other rights.
Meanwhile, Beduwa has been charged with murder and remanded in judicial custody at the APO. Further investigation into the incident is underway, said police.
Follow The Himalayan Times on Twitter and FacebookBitcoin Breaking News Brief Wikileaks IMF Leak Validates Crypto Adopter Concerns
2 April 2016 – Wikileaks has published the transcripts of an IMF teleconference detailing a conversation between two top IMF officials. The transcript details plans to manipulate Greece into accepting “Draconian Measures,” in the words of Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, by manufacturing a financial crisis that affects the nation, and the rest of the European Union through the ECB. Aside from the validations of the core concerns of Cryptocurrency adopters, the leak may be shaping up to be the biggest financial scandal of the year.
Read Also: Arcade City AMA Raises Red Flags, Reduces Credibility of CEO
IMF Transcripts Reveal Plans for Manufactured Crises
The transcript reads like a chapter out of the Illuminatus! Trilogy, but the implications of its content are much more severe and far-reaching. It reveals the IMF’s plans not only to manufacture a Greek financial crisis, to achieve their desired numbers in the coming Greek bailout, but want to come to a consensus that Greek does not agree with. Here are some highlights that capture the tone of the conversation:
“THOMSEN: Well, I don’t know. But this is… I think about it differently. What is going to bring it all to a decision point? In the past there has been only one time when the decision has been made and then that was when they were about to run out of money seriously and to default. Right?
VELKOULESKOU: Right!” “VELKOULESKOU: I am hoping it’s going to happen with these debt discussions that are starting in mid April.
THOMSEN: But that is not an event. That is not going to cause them to… That discussion can go on for a long time. And they are just leading them down the road… why are they leading them down the road? Because they are not close to the event, whatever it is.
VELKOULESKOU: I agree that we need an event, but I don’t know what that will be. But I think
Dijsselbloem is trying not to generate an event, but to jump-start this discussion somehow
on debt; that essentially is about us being on board or not at the end of the day.”
…and on the subject of German Acceptance:
“…And the Germans raise the issue of the management… and basically we at that time say “Look, you Mrs. Merkel you face a question, you have to think about what is more costly: to go ahead without the IMF, would the Bundestag say ‘The IMF is not on board’? Or to pick the debt relief that we think that Greece needs in order to keep us on board?” Right? That is really the issue.
VELKOULESKOU: Correct!
VELKOULESKOU: When is that going to happen? I don’t know; I am surprised that it has not happened yet. I would, for the sake of the Greeks and everyone else, I would like it to
happen sooner rather than later. “ “VELKOULESKOU: They are not getting close. What is interesting though is that they did give in… they did give a little bit on both the income tax reform and on the…. both on the tax credit and the supplementary pensions. They are doing something, but it is very small…
THOMSEN: Well, if they come around to give us the 2.5% and not on Mickey Mouse stuff, we should be fully behind them.”
More than the PR nightmare that this will cause for the IMF, the focus should be on the real incentive to adopt cryptocurrency this leak poses. Concerns that attract people to Cryptocurrency are relegated to conspiracy theories no longer. Reliance on centralization like the IMF is endemic to globalized finance, and this centralization brings unchecked corruption into the mix. The leak proves the suspicions of a few central actors manipulating the livelihoods of many to achieve their goals, and an attractive alternative presents itself on the blockchain.
What are your thoughts on the leaked IMF transcripts? Leave them in the comments below!
Images Courtesy of Wikileaks, IMFThe reality of the Phoenix Suns offseason is that a lot of things are going to have to go right for them to make the playoffs. Putting some of the early projections aside, it's a pretty simple fact that the Suns are currently on the outside looking in. As our own Jacob Padilla said on twitter the other day, they are in a "tier" with the Denver Nuggets and New Orleans Pelicans. I am adamantly against the idea of those two teams finishing ahead of the Suns, but the reality of this is that the Suns have to first beat out those two teams before they can even start to look at the likes of the teams projected to finish in the lower seeds of the West like the Memphis Grizzlies, Dallas Mavericks, and Houston Rockets. It's an extremely precarious position for a team looking to continuously be on the rise as just about every team in that West top 8 made a significant addition to their roster.
If you're clueless as to why I bring this all up on a film study regarding Markieff Morris it's because he's the x-factor for the Suns this season. Sure, Isaiah Thomas is quite good at basketball, the Suns will (hopefully) have their two headed monster slashing backcourt, and have both improved and healthy additions on the bench, but the hole left by Channing Frye calls for the sixth man contender to make an even larger contribution to the team next season. There's a lot of things that need to go right for the Suns to truly succeed next season and it's all going to start with how Markieff responds to the starting lineup.
Prepare yourselves for the depth here because a jump like this in a player's role calls for a look at both sides of the ball. There is always a great mystery as to how a terrific bench weapon responds to the starting lineup and that will remain the case for Markieff next season.
Offense
Jumpers
Markieff's offensive game starts and usually ends with a jumper in the post either right off of the catch or fading away. He has an uncanny ability as a scorer to hit this jumper from just about any spot or angle within the deep mid-range, even with a good to great contest on the shot. Markieff likes to size up his opposing defender early in the triple threat position, seeing how much space he can get right off the bat, and taking that jumper right away if the space is there. Once the defenders perk up on this, he goes elsewhere, but more on that later. For now, here are some examples of his makes.
The most encouraging thing about all of these jumpers is that they come from a variety of situations. The face-up jumper is there, but the step-back and fadeaways are also in his arsenal. The level of ballhandling Markieff has mixed with a little bit of agility has him able to create these jumpers quite easily against most opposing power forwards. While this is the most reliable and consistent facet of his offensive game, Markieff can score in plenty of other ways and that's what makes him such an offensive threat next season.
Creativity
The part of Markieff's offensive game that doesn't make him a one-dimensional (you could possibly put Gerald here) player is that he has that "scorer's touch." It's an advanced example, but guys like Jamal Crawford can score just about whenever they want from wherever they want. They have a couple of go to moves, but are creative and savvy when it comes to creating space for other opportunities from all over the floor, including at the rim. Now Markieff is still a little behind because of his inconsistencies from the three-point line (35%, 34%, 32% his first three years), but he can still get it done around other spots.
Markieff is not necessarily agile, but he's quick enough to take power forwards off the dribble and 95% of the time he's going to be flat out faster than his opposing power forward. I'm just making sure you don't take this as him having a "quick first step", which he has, he's just one of the faster power forwards in the league. This has its perks and his ballhandling takes full advantage of that. He has elements of his brother's game in regards to isolation situations. Once again, they aren't particularly glamorous, but he has some crossovers and steps he uses to create space for the jumper or get to the lane. They wouldn't work on a small forward, aka someone who could move well laterally, but they get the job done against most power forwards. The most promising part of these moves is that he uses them for both his jumpers and in getting to the basket and is a solid finisher at the rim. Here's an example against Z-Bo.
Example 1
It's slightly behind this first screenshot, but Goran loves to run action towards Markieff's man and give him enough space to receive the pass and create from there. Markieff doesn't even pump fake here. He takes one dribble to establish his threat to either pull up or move towards the basket.
These sorts of moves don't really translate all that well via screenshot, but Markieff took his second dribble between the legs to add a little more wobble to poor Z-Bo. One of the things that has really helped the art of the pull up jumper is the ability/rule breaking of slightly carrying the ball to add a stutter, head fake, whatever. Markieff does it here with his left hand and it either means he's going to head fake the jumper and drive in, cross over to his right, or pull up. This is sort of a current version of the triple threat when it comes to pull ups that you see all the time.
Markieff chooses the last option and he pulls up. He's deadly on these jumpers, but has the ability to take a much slower Z-Bo to the basket as well so it puts the man who can't jump over a phone book in a conundrum.
Example 2
Our next example here is 20% showing Markieff's ability at the top of the key and 80% to watch his brother Marcus completely obliterate a possession only to have his brother bail him out. There was clearly a mixed signal here or something as you will see in a minute. Marcus is getting some off the ball action here to get a post isolation.
Whoops. Goran was either supposed to stay in the corner or Marcus has completely screwed this up. In the order of spacing and the pass not being there, the two try to separate.
But they both run the same way! Oh no! Goran receives the ball here, but Marcus is literally blocking Goran's right foot from landing on the ground. So much is going on here. With six seconds left on the clock Goran has to try to get somewhere to create and stuck in the corner with his teammate right next to him is not a good look.
In an effort to increase spacing, Goran runs to the left only for Marcus to come along with him. This is amazing.
Also known as "screw this", Goran just takes the ball to the basket and hopes for the best. Mike Miller decided he was just going to follow Marcus I guess, but that part is over. Anyway, we have now arrived at the important part of this clip and that is Markieff. He has slowly drifted towards the weak side and knows once either of his slashing guards starts to penetrate that the entire defense focuses on them.
We now arrive at the Grizzlies closing out Goran with a bold five man closeout. Goran can go anywhere here, but because of Markieff's movement he is going to find a home. Similar to what I said I would like to see Green do next season, Goran uses his athleticism to jump and hang in the air here. It allows himself more time to make the decision and more time for his teammate to get open.
He dumps it off to Markieff who slams this one home easily. Markieff could have stayed at the top of the key, but the amount of time he's played with Goran combined with the rhythm of getting proper spacing got him a free bucket here. It's a nice basketball IQ moment for Markieff.
Example 3
This is a much more simple example that may not look like much, but it provides more evidence of Markieff scoring out of a lot of different situations. Eric Bledsoe strolled into the lane around the elbow, which caused Amir Johnson to come out of his position a little bit on Markieff. The pass comes and Markieff uses a pump fake here.
This is a really quick second or so that Markieff has the ball. Right after the pump fake he rises up with the ball and buries a sort of floater/hook shot. That touch around the hoop is very underrated and the unorthodox bucket goes down.
Example 4
Here is some more unorthodox scoring from Markieff. It's a combination of that solid work off of the dribble and finishing the bucket. Dragic cuts all the way to the basket and Serge Ibaka has to be near the rim as a shotblocker and Markieff also not being a threat from three-point range. Either Markieff or the Suns like to have him at the top of the key a lot because of the slashing guards and the space it gives him to operate. Markieff makes a slight pump fake here and then attacks the basket.
Being the ridiculously good defender that he is, Ibaka has done his job. He's cut off most of the lane access by now and Andre Roberson is also under the basket. Markieff's just simply not a playmaker and he can't hit Frye or Tucker here, so the defense can commit fully to the ball. This screenshot is a slight step ahead, but Markieff has started to create a drop-step here to change his angle on the attack.
Markieff's shot is so odd and fast that Ibaka can barely get up to contest. Markieff takes a sort of fallaway leaner that turns into a one handed finish and it still goes down for the and-1 because Ibaka's late contest fouls Markieff. Yet another example of the weird ways he can finish all over the floor.
Defense
Remember those Z-Bo clips? Markieff got just about whatever he wanted on him. Well, how did it go on the other side? It was the same, but worse. Z-Bo went 15-25 and finished with 32 points compared to Markieff going 11-16 with 24 points. Some might be blurred by the slight point difference and Markieff's efficiency, but Z-Bo is automatic when he gets his post mismatch and Markieff attributes to that. Let's take a look at how Z-Bo did while I try not to gauge my eyes out. By the way, before you derail me for pulling a lot of examples from just one game, the main point to take away here is how easy these buckets are for Z-Bo. I'll get to this later, but the level of competition at the position is going to be pretty similar to Z-Bo anyway. This is pretty consistent and I won't even be touching on the even worst team defense.
Example 1
The key here is where Z-Bo receives the ball. He's on the elbow, and although he's a threat to hit a jumper, you've got to deny him space as much as possible.
Alright. So there's one power dribble down and Markieff has somewhat impeded his path. The dominant left hand allows Markieff to take this sort of position. Not a bad start.
Here's where the problem begins. Instead of taking the bumps and trying to deny something, Markieff just starts backpedaling and allowing Z-Bo to get the space. I'm not saying that Markieff stepping up and sticking his chest out is going to do much against a tank like Randolph, it just makes his job slightly harder and all it takes is the effort. Z-Bo took two baby dribbles here and barely tried to bump into Markieff. It sort of looks like Randolph gets off balance because of how much space he was allowed. Anyway, he picks up his dribble.
I think Markieff realized what was happening and tried to establish some sort of position now. Too late. Z-Bo timed this well enough to take a hook shot here. By the way, here is your first of many bailout steal attempts you'll see.
This is not exactly a "quick release" from Randolph, so Markieff has enough time to get a really good contest off and even get off of his feet for the contest. Markieff stays flat-footed instead and gets off a lazy contest. You can't do this in the NBA. Remember, Z-Bo started this possession at the elbow and you allow him to get off a hook shot on his favorite hand with little to no contest.
Example 2
You're not going to believe this, but the next possession down the Grizzlies isolated Z Bo on Markieff. It looks like Markieff is trying to adjust from his prior mistake here by getting right up on Z Bo. As you can see though, he's doing it with his hands. Ugh.
Z-Bo establishes the position here and Markieff responds with a reach around his body. That's adorable Markieff. Do you really think you'll get a cheap steal on Z-Bo when he's been working kids on the right block since he was five years old? I guess he did. If you've watched basketball before you know what's going to happen next. Markieff buys a little too much into the left-handed business again and Z-Bo picked up on it last possession.
Goodbye! Z-Bo would get a wide-open layup here and that's that. As some would say, that is easy money.
Example 3
We've arrived at the right block again. Z-Bo swings around here to get squared up on Markieff.
During a bunch of neat jab steps, Markieff has decided to keep his distance on Z-Bo because of the PTSD of the prior spin move. The only reason to back off of Z-Bo in that position is when he has his back to the basket from that far out so there's no reason to give him space with what he's doing right now. Z-Bo is surprisingly quick, but so is Markieff. Get physical! I think Z-Bo has run this three move course like 400 times because he knows exactly what he's getting in 0.7 seconds.
Markieff has sagged off juuuuust enough with the jab step marathon and that extra separation allows for this jumpshot to get off. Seriously, look at where Markieff's hand is as the ball is already out of Z Bo's hand. His contests need some serious work and with the amount of guys I mentioned earlier that can hit these mid-range jumpers it will be a nightmare.
Example 4
We are back on the right block again. Here's Markieff using his chest to block Z-Bo's path. It's actually a good start. But then it gets bad. I'm not kidding when I say this; Markieff attempts to steal the ball three times from Z-Bo here in about 1.2 seconds. He's been getting worked like a 9th grader and he keeps trying to steal the ball. Whatever reason Markieff has of doing this allows Z-Bo the leverage of the other side. You can't do these other shenanigans when he's this close to the basket because any slight mistake or moronic decision and he makes you pay. Markieff makes three and then he starts to have flashbacks.
Insert whatever facepalm or hands in the air meme here. Good lord. The spin comes. What does Markieff do now that Z-Bo has a clear layup? Slaps one of his arms of course! A free and-1 is always better than a free layup I suppose. My favorite part is Z-Bo turning around to give Markieff the "I'm definitely putting up 30 on you" look after the foul. I left that out for the sake of Markieff.
Example 5
Look. I have the other half of this game to go but I stopped here. The right block. Markieff is reaching again.
Markieff barely establishes body position and tries to swipe at the ball twice. Z-Bo spins off again and scores. It's really hurting me inside to watch him do this over and over and over and over again. That's literally what is happening! It's false swipes at the ball, failing to establish solid body position, establishing body position and getting the spin move, allowing space for jumpers or hook shots, and failing to get a solid contest in. It's a clear list of syndromes and this is just a little over half of one game I pulled this one from. It spreads out over the season and it doesn't get much prettier. Markieff has had his share of good defensive games, but most of the time they go between below average and this. The Suns are really relying on him to improve.
It's hard to wash away this sort of effort on defense with his offensive skills and that's where I think you should a) take whatever statistics that suggest he is a better basketball player than Taj Gibson and light them on fire while b) giving yourself a slight burn on the finger to remind yourself of your foolishness and c) hope Markieff really works to improve defensively. Yes, Channing Frye was getting scored on by Zach Randolph and everyone else as well, but he was giving the effort required while not making as many silly mistakes. These are flat out elementary moves and buckets that Z-Bo is getting on Markieff. Once again, the power forwards out West are going to absolutely feast on him if he doesn't make some improvements.
So where can these improvement come from? The strange part is that Markieff gives the effort he needs defensively in other areas of the game. A combination of that quickness and athletic ability makes him a threat on both the offensive and defensive glass. He averaged more rebounds a game than Frye and his numbers should go up even more with the increase of minutes. Here's an example of that effort and know how.
Rebounding
Jeff Hornacek would like to run Frye at the 5 and Markieff at the 4 sometimes. With this sort of lineup, the key is wide open for offensive rebounds when Frye is outside shooting. This posession was the result of some very fluid motion around the floor. Whether it's the coaches telling Markieff to crash the glass when Frye is the center and shooting or it's him seeing the space in the key, it's still some great work. Frye is about to release the ball as Markieff sits at the top of the key. This is a step ahead, but Markieff breaks for the basket as soon as Frye looks to release the ball.
It's in the air and Markieff is on the break for the ball. You could blame Amir Johnson here, but usually a body picks up Markieff when he crashes the glass here. It's just a slight miscue and once again the consistent motion probably did some of the job as well.
Credit to Amir for making it back in time (for the sake of crashing your computer I took out the third screenshot of Markieff making the break still along with Amir recovering), but the ball makes a perfect bounce to Markieff.
Markieff jumps at the perfect time and tips the ball in.
That's just one example, but this is my point once again. Markieff shows a lot of effort in other facets of his game so I'd like to see A LOT of that go to defense. There are different ways to approach grabbing clips of Markieff defensively. I could have shown you some of his slightly better efforts (harder to find as well), but the point I want to make here is that it's mostly all effort and knowing what to do in certain circumstances that quite frankly he should understand by now because of how often gets burned. He's still only 24, but he has to be better defensively, especially now that he's entering his fourth season with this much responsibility now.
Conclusion
The end debate here is how much do you trade off his offensive prowess for his lack of defense? There are certainly a lot of great scorers in the NBA that don't play that good of defense that still have high praise in this league. That's not going to be the case for Markieff though and that's because of the conference he's going to be playing in.
Serge Ibaka, Tim Duncan/Boris Diaw, Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge, David Lee, Dirk Nowitzki, Anthony Davis, Carlos Boozer/Julius Randle, Jason Thompson, Randolph, Kenneth Faried, Anthony Bennett, and Derrick Favors are going to be his matchups in the West. Putting a few names aside that's a hellacious lineup. Markieff can't afford to give anything less than maximum effort on defense or else the Suns are going to get destroyed this season. It's a humongous gamble to give him this much responsibility. Markieff is a very good offensive player, but he's not good enough to give some of those names consistently easy buckets on the other end and still end up having a positive impact on the game when it's all said and done. The good news here is that the flaws can be easily corrected and there just needs to be more of an emphasis on it. I'm sure if someone like me can see it then the Suns are already working on it and probably have been since he got drafted.
A 48 win team can't have that kind of defense in the starting lineup though so Markieff needs to make some serious strides next season to improve. Offensively however, his numbers will continue to rise and he will get more inventive with how he goes about scoring. I'm not sure he's going to put up monster numbers given the two big offensive additions in the offseason, but the numbers will go up and he will continue to score. If he could ever be a consistent three-point shooter he could be one of the best stretch 4's in the NBA. For someone like me the concern will always be his defense, but there's no doubt he's going to go out there and score while crashing the boards. He's a solid NBA player and there's a lot more room for his potential if he figures it out on the other end.The host city for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games might as well be decided with a coin toss.
Oslo has withdrawn its bid to host the Games, leaving only Beijing and Almaty as candidate cities.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) put the Norwegians' concerns down to "half-truths and factual inaccuracies," but Oslo is also the fourth city to withdraw in recent months.
Stockholm, Krakow and the Ukrainian city of Lviv also abandoned their bids, while campaigns by St. Moritz, Switzerland and Munich, Germany were dropped earlier after referendums.
So why, exactly, do so few cities want the Games? A list of IOC conditions for an Oslo bid gives us a clue.
Slate translated a list that appeared in the Norwegian media. Here's part of it.
- They demand to meet the king prior to the opening ceremony. Afterwards, there shall be a cocktail reception. Drinks shall be paid for by the Royal Palace or the local organizing committee.
- Separate lanes should be created on all roads where IOC members will travel, which are not to be used by regular people or public transportation.
- A welcome greeting from the local Olympic boss and the hotel manager should be presented in IOC members' rooms, along with fruit and cakes of the season. (Seasonal fruit in Oslo in February is a challenge...)
- The hotel bar at their hotel should extend its hours "extra late" and the minibars must stock Coke products.
But even putting those demands aside, there are exorbitant costs associated with hosting the Olympics. And they often leave cities with venues to gather dust for years after the Games have left town.
Take Greece, for instance, whose venues lie in ruins 10 years after the Athens Games.
As Gizmodo noted, even Sochi looked like a ghost town just six months after its Games wrapped up.
The cost to put on Russia's Olympics has been estimated at around $50 billion.
And though there are questions about the accuracy of that 11-figure estimation, commentators say it's still scaring cities off from the idea of hosting.
The Vancouver Olympics, by contrast, cost over $7 billion, The Globe and Mail reported.
"The whole hosting package is not as enticing as it once was," historian Kevin Wamsley told The National Post.
It's not the first time cities have shied away from Olympic bids.
The Olympics were marked by political unrest throughout the 1970s, and only Los Angeles bid on the 1984 Summer Games, Western University professor Janice Forsyth told the Globe
Interest fell again around 2000 due to concerns about security and rising costs.
Like before, the current trend may only be a temporary phenomenon. But what's clear is that the IOC has a long way to go to convince cities the Winter Games are not too expensive for them to bear.
Like Us On Facebook
Follow Us On Twitter
ALSO ON HUFFPOST:BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A majority of Europeans and Americans strongly oppose their countries intervening militarily in Syria’s 30-month-old civil war, according to a transatlantic poll published on Wednesday.
Protesters from the non-governmental organization Code Pink carry signs against proposed U.S. military action in Syria, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, September 10, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
“Transatlantic Trends”, an annual survey of public opinion in the United States and Europe, also found that China’s image in both continents was deteriorating and most Europeans did not want to see Beijing take strong leadership in world affairs.
The survey, by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a U.S. think tank that promotes cooperation between North America and Europe, and the Compagnia di San Paolo, an Italy-based private foundation, measured public opinion in 11 European Union countries, Turkey and the United States.
The poll found 62 percent of Americans and 72 percent of Europeans believed their countries should avoid military intervention in Syria’s civil war, which has killed more than 100,000 people.
Only 30 percent of Americans and 22 percent of Europeans felt their countries should intervene in Syria.
In Turkey, which borders Syria, 72 percent said their country should stay out, while 21 percent favoured intervention.
In all regions, the survey found a hardening of attitudes against outside intervention, compared with last year.
Opposition to Western intervention in Syria was reflected in the parliamentary defeat British Prime Minister David Cameron suffered last month, when he sought approval for a motion that would have authorised military action in principle.
The United States and Russia agreed last Saturday on a proposal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, averting the possibility of any immediate U.S. military action.
IRAN
On Iran, Europeans and Americans said economic sanctions were the best way to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons.
Very few Europeans but 18 percent of Americans backed military action against Iran when presented with a range of options ranging from offering economic incentives to accepting that Iran could acquire nuclear arms.
Respondents who chose a non-military option for dealing with Iran were asked if they would favour military action if peaceful options failed. In that scenario, 48 percent of the Europeans and 64 percent of the Americans favoured the use of force.
Western powers suspect Iran’s nuclear programme is aimed at developing a nuclear weapons capability, although Tehran insists the programme is peaceful.
The survey found China had a poor image in the West. Sixty percent of Europeans and 58 percent of Americans had an unfavourable view of China, both higher than last year.
The United States and the European Union have both engaged in high-profile trade disputes with China over the past year.
Sixty-five percent of Europeans, 72 percent of Turks and 47 percent of Americans said it would be undesirable for China to take strong leadership in world affairs.
Europeans, Americans, and Turks saw China as more of an economic threat than an economic opportunity. Forty-nine percent of Americans also viewed China as a military threat, although most Europeans and Turks disagreed.
Russia also had an image problem. Forty-six percent of Americans viewed Russian global leadership as undesirable, as did 65 percent of Europeans and 67 percent of Turks. Fifty-nine percent of Americans, 62 percent of Europeans and 68 percent of Turks had a negative view of Russia.
Countries surveyed were France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Britain, the United States and Turkey. About 1,000 people were polled in each country between June 3 and July 2.The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) spacecraft (designed and launched as the International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) satellite), was launched August 12, 1978, into a heliocentric orbit. It was one of three spacecraft, along with the mother/daughter pair of ISEE-1 and ISEE-2, built for the International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE) program, a joint effort by NASA and ESRO/ESA to study the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind.
ISEE-3 was the first spacecraft to be placed in a halo orbit at the L 1 Earth-Sun Lagrangian point.[2] Renamed ICE, it became the first spacecraft to visit a comet, passing through the plasma tail of comet Giacobini-Zinner within about 7,800 km (4,800 mi) of the nucleus on September 11, 1985.[3]
NASA suspended routine contact with ISEE-3 in 1997, and made brief status checks in 1999 and 2008.[4][5]
On May 29, 2014, two-way communication with the spacecraft was reestablished by the ISEE-3 Reboot Project, an unofficial group[6] with support from the Skycorp company.[7][8][9] On July 2, 2014, they fired the thrusters for the first time since 1987. However, later firings of the thrusters failed, apparently due to a lack of nitrogen pressurant in the fuel tanks.[10][11] The project team initiated an alternative plan to use the spacecraft to "collect scientific data and send it back to Earth",[12] but on September 16, 2014, contact with the probe was lost.[13]
Original mission: International Sun/Earth Explorer 3 (ISEE-3) [ edit ]
International Sun/Earth Explorer’s orbits
ICE mission
Top-down view of the orbit of ICE relative to the inner Solar System in and after 2009.
ISEE-3 carries no cameras; instead, its instruments measure energetic particles, waves, plasmas, and fields.
ISEE-3 originally operated in a halo orbit about the L 1 Sun-Earth Lagrangian point, 235 Earth radii above the surface (about 1.5 million km, or 924,000 miles). It was the first artificial object placed at a so-called "libration point", entering orbit there on November 20, 1978,[2] proving that such a suspension between gravitational fields was possible. It rotates at 19.76 rpm about an axis perpendicular to the ecliptic, to keep it oriented for its experiments, to generate solar power and to communicate with Earth.
The purposes of the mission were:
to investigate solar-terrestrial relationships at the outermost boundaries of the Earth's magnetosphere;
to examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere;
to investigate motions of and mechanisms operating in the plasma sheets; and,
to continue the investigation of cosmic rays and solar flare emissions in the interplanetary region near 1 AU.
Second mission: International Cometary Explorer [ edit ]
After completing its original mission, ISEE-3 was re-tasked to study the interaction between the solar wind and a cometary atmosphere. On June 10, 1982, the spacecraft performed a maneuver which removed it from its halo orbit around the L 1 point and placed it in a transfer orbit. This involved a series of passages between Earth and the Sun-Earth L 2 Lagrangian point, through the Earth's magnetotail.[14] Fifteen propulsive maneuvers and five lunar gravity assists resulted in the spacecraft being ejected from the Earth-Moon system and into a heliocentric orbit. Its last and closest pass over the Moon, on December 22, 1983, was only 119.4 km (74 mi) above the lunar surface; following this pass, the spacecraft was re-designated as the International Cometary Explorer (ICE).[15]
Giacobini-Zinner encounter [ edit ]
Its new orbit put it ahead of the Earth on a trajectory to intercept comet Giacobini-Zinner. On September 11, 1985, the craft passed through the comet's plasma tail.[15]
ICE did a flyby of the comet nucleus at a distance of 7,800 km (4,800 mi) of the nucleus on September 11, 1985.[16]
Halley encounter [ edit ]
ICE transited between the Sun and Comet Halley in late March 1986, when other spacecraft were near the comet on their early-March comet rendezvous missions. (This "Halley Armada" included Giotto, Vega 1 and 2, Suisei and Sakigake.) ICE flew through the tail; its minimum distance to the comet nucleus was 28 million kilometres (17,000,000 mi).[17] For comparison, Earth's minimum distance to Comet Halley in 1910 was 20.8 million kilometres (12,900,000 mi).[18]
Heliospheric mission [ edit ]
An update to the ICE mission was approved |
Four students huddle around a table, brows furrowed, playing a co-operative First World War board game called The Grizzled. One plays the final card, and another lets out a triumphant shout. After 12 attempts, the students have finally beaten the game.
“We spent a whole week just trying to play it over and over again – we couldn’t beat it,” said Grade 12 student Jacob Lycan. But the students’ perseverance paid off.
Teachers Mark Biggar and Todd Goodman look on. The Grizzled has been an unexpected hit with their mixed-grade class at Thomas Haney Secondary School, as part of the teachers’ attempts to use board games to engage students.
Games are part of a broader change happening across B.C. schools, thanks to the education ministry’s recent curriculum reform. The changes added “core competencies,” focusing less on specific content that must be covered. As a result, teachers have more freedom to experiment with lesson structure, content and learning materials.
Teachers say board games play a multi-faceted role in the classroom. They serve as a springboard to explore different historical eras, improve students’ critical thinking, and encourage thoughtful communication.
“I think [students] genuinely like the social experience of playing,” Goodman said.
That has proven true in Maple Ridge.
“I was thinking I would run one board game and I usually have about three running now, so that’s been crazy fun,” said Biggar. “It’s been successful in terms of kids engaging with it.”
Graphic: What are B.C.'s core competencies?
The teachers are studying for their Masters in Educational Leadership at Simon Fraser University, looking at how games make students think about thinking.
“[We’re] trying to force the kids to reflect on their experience and make connections between … some of the learning they’ve already done and the mechanics that occurred during the game,” Biggar said.
Curriculum changes give teachers more freedom
Because of the ministry’s new policy, there is more opportunity for educators to try out unconventional materials like mass-market board games so long as teachers can justify their choices as being educational.
The curriculum changes have come into effect for students up to Grade 9. Later grades will follow in the next two years.
“The new curriculum is really about allowing teachers the creative licence to find ways to interest and work with the kids,” said Grant Frend, Haney’s principal.
Creative teaching choices fall under “personalized learning,” a cause that the B. C. Teachers’ Federation has championed since 1968. The BCTF was key to shaping the new changes, but warn that a teacher shortage could hamper successful implementation.
However, many B.C. educators are excited about the changes. Cynthia Hornbeck, a former employee of Fantasy Flight Games and currently completing her bachelor of education at UBC, is one.
“The new curriculum is focused on competencies, on what students can do rather than just what they know,” she said. “Board games are a fantastic tool for teaching those core competencies of social responsibility, communication, and creative thinking.”
Another teacher enjoying the changes is Aaron Cassidy, a West Kelowna teacher-librarian and host of Boards Alive podcast. He said the new curriculum gave educators more flexibility in their classes and allowed for increasingly varied instruction methods.
Board games are big business
The curriculum changes give teachers the chance to bring their passion into the classroom – and board games’ popularity is booming.
“It’s a good coincidence of timing, both politically with curriculum changes, and in the availability and quality of games,” said Biggar. He appreciates the wealth of titles to choose from when building up his historical gaming collection. “It’s like a golden age.”
According to gaming trade publication ICv2, the hobby-games market in the U.S. and Canada was worth US$305 million (C$389 million) in 2016, a 22-per-cent increase from 2015.
Paul Dean, Vancouver-based games writer and co-founder of the prolific board games site Shut Up & Sit Down, attributes the popularity of games to their social aspect and immersive nature.
“When you participate in something, even if it’s something at a very basic level, there’s a little bit of empathy that goes along with it,” he said. “If you take on the role of a character or a company … that in itself gives you a different perspective on history rather than just reading a book.”
Rolling the dice on kids’ learning
But not everyone is convinced by the teachers’ new ideas. Aaron Cassidy, as a teacher-librarian, facilitates other educators’ classes. He initially had problems persuading teachers to let him introduce games to the classroom.
“It’s hard to convince people to do it. It was harder for me to get teachers to buy in,” he said.
However, principal Grant Frend was overwhelmingly supportive of the initiative. He had worked with teachers Biggar and Goodman on other projects and was happy for them to introduce board games as part of a structured learning experience.
“I know them well enough to trust them. When they ask for stuff, I just need to figure out how to fund it,” Frend said.
For Ethan Moon, a Grade 9 student in Biggar and Goodman’s class, board games have made him more invested in history.
“If you were to teach [some students] regularly, they might not like it very much,” he said. “But if they’re engaged in something that they enjoy but it’s learning, it’s better.”
Moon paused before delivering his final verdict.
“It’s learning but it’s fun.”The Republican presidential race has taken on a white-hot intensity here as Minnesotans prepare to caucus Tuesday night, with major candidates scurrying across the state hoping to gain an edge that could reshape the contest.
The caucuses come at a critical point, with several of the candidates jockeying for survival, hoping to once again unseat current frontrunner Mitt Romney.
At a last-minute rally in the Minneapolis Convention Center, more than 1,800 people jammed in to hear Ron Paul. "They call us dangerous," he told the cheering crowd. "We are dangerous to the status quo and to the people who have been ripping us off!"
Earlier in the day, Paul drew more than 900 supporters in St. Cloud.
Rick Santorum kicked off his day in Rochester, telling an overflow crowd at the Kahler Hotel that frontrunner Romney was not only "unqualified" to debate President Obama on health care, but should be "disqualified."
Romney returned fire via a surrogate, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, and in scorching local mailers that savaged Santorum's congressional record in Washington.
Newt Gingrich issued a blistering attack on President Obama, vowing major and immediate change, in his first pre-caucus appearance in Minnesota Monday night.
In a speech to several hundred supporters at the Ramada Hotel in Bloomington, Gingrich was unruffled by hecklers and focused his attack on Obama. He also aimed some shots at Romney, whom he accused of being a moderate who would not undertake the needed changes in Washington.
"The real underlying question in this campaign is whether we want an election that involves real change on a large scale,'' Gingrich told a packed conference room. "Or whether we want an election that has small differences, fighting over who is going to manage the decay.''
GOP horse race
The fiery rhetoric comes as the campaigns take aim in the impossible-to-call Minnesota caucuses.
Dave Nesberg of Rochester grabbed a yard sign on Monday, ready to get more involved in this GOP primary horse race, he said, than he ever has been before.
"I'm not really into politics," he said. "This is very unusual for me. This is the first time I've ever made the effort. The first time in my life."
For the past few years, he said, he's gotten more concerned about government policies, and Santorum's message that power should come from the bottom up, and not the top down, resonated with him.
But political watchers of late are zeroing in increasingly on Paul, who trails in recent polls but who has spent months quietly building a formidable army of supporters that may wield an outsized influence in Tuesday's non-binding poll.
A wide spectrum of Republican strategists now say Paul's passionate and deeply devoted followers could swarm the caucuses, giving the Texas congressman his first win and potentially creating a seismic reshuffling of the GOP field.
National political experts are paying particularly close attention, because the state has a history of embracing quirky politicians, potentially giving Paul his last, best shot.
With Romney piling up impressive wins in New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada, time is running out for an alternative candidate to emerge as a credible threat. Minnesota has become the logical place to take a stand, make headlines and shake up the race.
'You have to do well'
Santorum, who will be campaigning in Blaine on Tuesday, has hit spots from Bemidji to Waconia urging voters to hit "reset" on the race.
"If you're vying for that contender spot, you have to do well this week," said Gary Borgendale, a conservative Christian activist who is helping Santorum in Minnesota. Borgendale was among a fistful of endorsements Santorum released Monday night that included a dozen state senators.
Polls have found Minnesota's caucus nearly impossible to predict.
Only a sliver of GOP voters will turn out for the straw poll, perhaps as few as 60,000. A week ago, one poll showed Gingrich leading. On Sunday, the same polling outfit had Santorum holding a slight lead, with Romney in second, then Gingrich and Paul trailing.
The attention is unusual because Minnesota's caucuses are nonbinding. But in a race this contentious, even bragging rights count.
"Very few people in that next state are going to know how meaningless a caucus is or what it has in terms of bearing in the long term," said national GOP strategist Chris Ingram, who supports Romney.
Pawlenty on Monday filled in for Romney, speaking before a gathering of about two dozen. He challenged Santorum's conservative credentials and accused him of being addicted to government largesse.
In the closing hours before the caucuses, Minnesotans were far from converging on a single candidate.
Jennifer Maki, 24, drove down from Duluth to hear Paul. "He's the only one who will speak the truth about the economy and make the actual real changes that other politicians area afraid to make," she said.
Melanie Stoen, of Austin, showed up to the Santorum event with her seven children in tow.Optimal systems benefit by having an infrastructure that perfectly marries local supply and demand. The generation of energy resources at the site of their use enhances reliability and minimizes waste. It is for this reason that bioengineers are coming up with new ways to power electronic implants using tricks already inherent in the modality of the implant’s operation — or, in other words, devices that are powered by your body.
Implants for vision which use lasers to stimulate the retina might also deliver power for the signal processing circuitry. Defibrillators for the heart, once huge capacitor banks that would take seconds to charge and leave burn marks on the skin, are now replaced with lower power versions that stimulate with optimized waveforms to restart the heart with less energy. They can now be incorporated into internal pacemakers and possibly draw their power with piezoelectric converters that pick up secondary vibrations. In the brain, where each cell’s function is so tightly coupled to its oxygen and glucose supply that consciousness is dimmed within seconds of its cessation, glucose fuel cells might provide local, demand-optimized power for implants.
Energy harvesting has now reached the human ear. The cochlear implant, though hugely successful, requires a bulky external system to deliver both wireless power and the recorded sound signal to the internal stimulator. An intriguing enhancement would be to develop systems so efficient that all the power necessary for reception of a signal is administered through the signal transmission itself. In other words the charging current is modulated with the signal so that a separate channel becomes superfluous.
That concept is still a long way off, but in the meantime researchers have begun seeking ways to extract power from a battery that is naturally built into the machinery of the ear. The inner ear has no local blood supply, as it would interfere with mechanical response as well as introduce a pulsating source of noise to a system attempting to resolve vibrations many orders of magnitude smaller than that noise. Without energy supplied through blood, the ear chamber relies on the small ion pumps in lining of the chamber to, in effect, pressurize it with positive potassium ions. The ions can then later be released to flow down an electrochemical gradient which acts to amplify and transmit the sound signal to the brain.
Konstantina Stankovic, an otologic (ear) surgeon at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and others from MIT, have now built a device that could tap into this source and possibly power implants from the inside. They tested the device in guinea pigs, which possess hearing hardware similar in shape and range of function to humans. Electrodes on either side of a natural membrane in the biological battery picked up a fluctuating voltage, and rectified it with power conversion circuitry that was part of an on-board chip. The chip also had a transmitter which relayed a frequency-modulated signal back out to the researchers which gave accurate indication of the inner ear potential.
It generally would take a minute or two for the device to store enough charge to power a transmission so the signals were relayed in brief snatches. The device is still in its infancy and other breakthroughs are needed before we have fully embedded cochlear implants. Accurate sensing of sounds from internal vantage points in the ear or even the mouth have been explored, and may eventually find application within this framework. As we have seen, doing more with less, and paying the piper as he plays, are the new design philosophies that will help deliver biologically miscible solutions to the restorative and augmentative technologies that await us.
Now read: A bionic prosthetic eye that speaks the language of your brainANNOUNCEMENT!!
The files for this model have been removed from this page, from now on the files can downloaded for free from www.MyMiniFactory.com. This page will be left for legacy purposes and I will still answer questions if posted.
From now on, all my future projects will feature exclusively on www.MyMiniFactory.com.
My profile page is https://www.myminifactory.com/users/lilykill.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
This is the Laserkraftwerk weapon from Wolfenstein - The New Order. Thought this game was awesome and really enjoyed using this weapon. This is not a game rip, I've created the model myself from reference images taken while I played through. The final assembly is roughly 650x150x270mm and will consist of approx. 60 items that will be able to be printed on most bed size.
Currently, the two models to download are a low and high quality STL of the full assembly, I haven't posted the parts as there is still some finishing to be done, but once finished it will be uploaded. There are still a couple things that need to be added but its basically there.
Follow me on twitter @ https://twitter.com/lilykill1, and instagram @ https://instagram.com/lilykill1/ and facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/Lilykill-253119598353137/ where you can stay up-to-date on my current projects and releases.
Enjoy.The US Air Force has updated the old World War II slogan, 'Loose lips sink ships,' for the social media age.
It has created a new poster proclaiming 'loose tweets destroy fleets' and warned soldiers not to leak information about their missions online.
Military commanders are concerned about social media-savvy groups such as ISIS gleaning details about US service members and even upcoming missions.
The US Air Force has updated the old World War II slogan, 'Loose lips sink ships,' for the social media age, proclaiming 'loose tweets destroy fleets' in a campaign to stop airmen revealing too much online.
'Keeping quiet about operational information is vital to ensure military members stay safe on a daily basis,' commanders said in the update.
'Social media can be a useful tool to stay connected to friends, family, and quick entertainment.
'However, there is sometimes a fine line between letting your friends see what you're up to and providing an adversary critical information about your connection to the military and its mission.'
In March, a group purportedly connected to ISIS posted an online 'hit list' of soldiers it said were helping with a US airstrike campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
The list included the names and home addresses of 100 service members, as well as photos of those members.
Defense officials said at the time that the information hadn't been posted as the result of a hack or data breach; rather, it had been compiled from publicly available information the service members had posted on social media networks.
'As social media keeps evolving and there's more and more avenues to let your friends and family know what you are up to, those same avenues can be used by ISIS sympathizers, 'lone wolves,' to track down and hurt our military members outside the safety of the base,' said Capt. Jonathan McDonald, AFCENT Force Protection chief.
'So not only is it important to not post vital mission related information, but it's also important to not post detailed personal information to keep yourself and your loved ones safe.
'It's vital to check your security settings in your social media accounts to make sure that just your friends are able to see what you post and remember to be smart about what you post and share,' McDonald added.
Operations Security is the process of keeping sensitive information away from the enemy.
Information is identified and controlled by various security measures to minimize violations.
'Without OPSEC, our adversaries would be able to freely and easily gather information of our activities and operations; putting missions, resources and members at risk, said Master Sgt. Aaron Miller, AFCENT Information security program manager.
LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS The most famous poster (right) that helped popularize the phrase was created for the Seagram Distillers Corporation by the designer Seymour R. Goff (also known by the pseudonym 'Ess-ar-gee' or Essargee). This type of poster was part of a general campaign of American propaganda during World War II to advise servicemen and other citizens to avoid careless talk concerning secure information that might be of use to the enemy. The British equivalent used variations on the phrase 'Keep mum.' In neutral Sweden the State Information Board promoted the wordplay 'en svensk tiger' (the Swedish word 'tiger' means both 'tiger' and 'keeping silent'). Germany used 'Schäm Dich, Schwätzer!' (which translates as 'Shame on you, blabbermouth!'). US Soldiers were also issued with guidelines proclaiming: 'If violation of protective measures is serious within written communications it is disastrous in conversations. 'Protect your conversation as you do your letters, and be even more careful. A harmful letter can be nullified by censorship; loose talk is direct delivery to the enemy. 'If you come home during war your lips must remain sealed and your written hand must be guided by self-imposed censorship. 'This takes guts. Have you got them or do you want your buddies and your country to pay the price for your showing off. You've faced the battle front; its little enough to ask you to face this 'home front.''
'Ultimately this could impact a campaign or mission and be detrimental to national strategic and foreign policies.'
With OPSEC violation consequences so high, it's important to ensure OPSEC procedures are followed through.
'The best way to keep OPSEC is to look over the Critical Information List and be sure to protect the information on that list and destroy it accordingly,' said Senior Airman Anthony Bolton, 609th Air Operations Center OPSEC manager.SANTA CRUZ >> For 30 years, UC Santa Cruz professor and vaccine developer Phil Berman has been chasing a moving target — the insidious, ever-changing HIV virus — and now, finally, he thinks he has it cornered.
Berman’s lab has developed an experimental vaccine he believes will guard against HIV and AIDS. The model is expected to go to clinical trial within three years.
When Berman was a Genentech scientist in the 1990s, he invented the world’s first vaccine to show any success against HIV. When it was tested with another vaccine in a 2003 to 2009 large-scale trial involving 16,000 people in Thailand, the vaccine combination proved a 31 percent success rate.
But that’s not high enough for regulatory approval, which requires a 60 percent rate, said Berman, and this new model, drawn from his previous work, will prove stronger.
Berman’s approach, like most other vaccines, is to create a decoy by mimicking a protein on the virus’s surface. When this protein is injected into the bloodstream, it spurs the patient’s immune system to create antibodies that recognize and kill it.
Now if the HIV virus were introduced, the patient’s immune system is primed and ready to kill.
The key to his new model, said Berman, is new sugar molecules on the vaccine’s surface. Some of the most potent antibodies are ones that bind to these sugars, which previous models were missing, he said.
“It’s a huge technical challenge to be able to make small fragments that fold up in the right way and incorporate the right kind of carbohydrates, or sugar molecules, in a way that can be manufactured on a large scale,” Berman said.
Creating a successful vaccine is like starting with a model of the Wright Brothers’ propeller plane and redesigning it until you have a space shuttle, he said.
“I think that’s it. You have to start with something simple and then you can make improvements over time,” said Berman. “And then you have to take the concept out of the hangar and see if it will fly.”
Berman said he’s proud that an early model of this vaccine was the first to be sent to large-scale clinical trial to test against HIV, from 1998 to 2003, with 7,500 people in North America and Thailand.
“At the time, people thought it was impossible to do HIV vaccine trials,” he said.
Most thought patients would be too difficult to recruit and retain, immunizations too numerous and ethical, informed consent too challenging.
“All those fears turned out to be unfounded,” Berman said. “Even though those vaccines failed, that trial threw the door open for other vaccine trials.”
The HIV virus is uniquely sinister — as it replicates inside the host, the copies always contain mistakes, called mutations.
“In the course of infection, someone has literally billions of copies of this virus. And one of the things that’s so insidious about HIV is that these copies that have a mistake become immortalized in your DNA,” he said.
HIV creates a library of mutated copies, forever stored in the infected person’s DNA. When the immune system is weakened, the virus activates copies that evade antibodies, Berman said.
“So there’s this race between your immune system, represented by your antibody response, and the virus,” Berman said. “The virus is always changing and your immune system is trying to keep up. The kind of vaccine we’re making is to prevent infection all together, so that the virus never establishes this big library of variants. We’re trying to create complete protection so that the virus never gets a foothold.”Shares
The immune system mistakenly identifying insulin-secreting beta cells as a potential danger and, in turn, destroying them has long been considered the root cause of type 1 diabetes. Now, an international team of researchers led by City of Hope’s Bart Roep, Ph.D., the Chan Soon-Shiong Shapiro Distinguished Chair in Diabetes and professor/founding chair of the Department of Diabetes Immunology, has been able to justify a new theory about the cause of type 1 diabetes through experimental work. The study results were published online yesterday in the journal Nature Medicine.
Type 1 diabetes affects an estimated 1.5 million Americans and is the result of the loss of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas.
Now Roep, along with researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, have found a mechanism in which stressed beta cells are actually causing the immune response that leads to type 1 diabetes.
“Our findings show that type 1 diabetes results from a mistake of the beta cell, not a mistake of the immune system,” said Roep, who is director of The Wanek Family Project for Type 1 Diabetes, which was recently created with gifts from the Wanek family and anonymous donors to support the institution’s goal of curing type 1 diabetes in six years. “The immune system does what it is supposed to do, which is respond to distressed or ‘unhappy’ tissue, as it would in infection or cancer.”
In order to gain a better understanding of why the immune system attacks the body’s own source of insulin — the pancreatic beta cells in the islets of Langerhans — the team took some clues from cancer molecules that are targeted by the immune system after successful treatment of the cancer with immunotherapy.
One of these cancer targets is a so-called nonsense protein, resulting from a misreading of a DNA sequence that makes a nonfunctional protein. It turns out that the same type of protein error is also produced by the beta cells in type 1 diabetes. Therefore, Roep and the other researchers believe it is a ‘wrong read’ of the insulin gene itself that proves to be a major target of the immune system. This error product of the insulin gene is made when beta cells are stressed, Roep said.
“Our study links anti-tumor immunity to islet autoimmunity, and may explain why some cancer patients develop type 1 diabetes after successful immunotherapy,” he added. “This is an incredible step forward in our commitment to cure this disease.”
According to the paper titled, “Autoimmunity against a defective ribosomal insulin gene product in type 1 diabetes,” the findings “further support the emerging concept that beta cells are destroyed in type 1 diabetes by a mechanism comparable to classical antitumor responses where the immune system has been trained to survey dysfunctional cells in which errors have accumulated.”
The results of the study give Roep new insight, he said, for his work in developing new vaccines to desensitize the immune system so that it will tolerate islets again, as well as for research into combining immunotherapy with more traditional diabetes treatments to reinvigorate islets.
“Our goal is to keep beta cells happy,” Roep said. “So we will work on new forms of therapy to correct the autoimmune response against islets and hopefully also prevent development of type 1 diabetes during anti-cancer therapy.”
About City of Hope’s Program
Roep’s program at City of Hope plans to change the entire way we view a “cure,” shifting from a one-size-fits-all method of research and goals to a system of precision medicine; a way to offer individualized and personalized therapies for people with diabetes much in the same way cancer treatment does today.
The program will draw heavily from a biorepository, something Dr. Roep says will save millions of dollars and many years in helping them embrace the concept of diabetes being unique in almost every individual. Armed with that knowledge they will dig back into human clinical studies that may not have succeeded on a mass scale and look to see if they can help patients on a smaller scale.
For instance, if a study failed for 70 percent of the participants, it may have held answers for other 30 percent.
The focus at City of Hope will be threefold: to stop the progression of the disease (something Roep calls the “low hanging fruit” of the effort), get people off injections for good (something he admits is “much more of a challenge but not impossible,”), and preventing, stopping, and reversing complications.
The work described in the Nature Medicine paper was supported by the Dutch Diabetes Research Foundation, the DON Foundation and JDRF.
Source: City of Hope press release.NORTH Korea's state radio station has begun broadcasting mysterious number codes believed to be messages to spies embedded in Western nations like Britain.
Radio Pyongyang - which usually plays non-stop propaganda - started broadcasting apparently nonsense messages just after midnight this morning.
Reuters 2 Power mad Kim Jong-Un has a network of spies across the world
A series of numbers and peculiar gibberish is being relayed over the airwaves of the North Korean station, observers of the secretive state can reveal.
The female radio announcer said: "We give review work in metal engineering to No. 27 expedition agents", the Korea Times reports.
This bizarre phrase has been heard on at least one occasion before.
Since June 24, Kim Jong-Un’s secret service has broadcast 13 encrypted number announcements.
In July the female broadcaster said: "Now we'll begin a mathematics review assignment for members of the 27th expeditionary unit of the distance learning university.
"Turn to page 459, question 35; 913, question 55; 135, question 86."
Related stories KIM BOMB-UN North Korea’s Kim Jong-un vows to ‘send Trump a message’ amid claims he will launch missile within DAYS APOCALYPSE NOW US warned against nuking nutty North Korea because it risked war with neighbouring China Video Keep out North Korean manager and goalkeeper are banned after embarrassing fiasco at under 16 tournament KIM BOMB-UN North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-Un is 'will have nukes capable of striking US within a YEAR'
It is believed the mysterious numbers can be deciphered by North Korean spies who have a special reference book.
The technique dates back to the Cold War when shortwave bands were full of bizarre transmission called “numbers stations”.
But now paranoid spy handlers have resorted to using them again because internet and phone messages can be monitored easily.
Elsewhere numbers station coded messages are being transmitted from secret locations in Ukraine – part of which Russia invaded last year after coup that brought a pro-EU government to power.
Poland is another spot where the messages are being transmitted from and a country now at the centre of row that some fear could spark a war in Europe.
Tensions are already running high on the divided peninsula after North Korea carried out its fifth nuclear test in September.
Reuters 2 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides field guidance during a fire drill of ballistic rockets by Hwasong artillery units of the KPA Strategic Force
And the unsuccessful launching of two Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles was internationally condemned.
It emerged today that the US State Department is urging people not to go on holiday to sanction hit North Korea - because the cash they spend is bankrolling Jong-un’s bid to become a nuclear warlord.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's body is expected to be embalmed and put on permanent display. How do you preserve a body indefinitely?
At the moment, the "Dear Leader's" body is on temporary display as it lies in state in the Kumsusan Mausoleum in Pyongyang. But there is already speculation that Kim Jong-il's body could undergo a long-term embalming process so that it can join his father's on permanent display in the mausoleum.
This has not been confirmed by North Korean officials, and some reports suggest he may simply be buried to save the cost of the long-term maintenance.
Image caption A photograph of Lenin released in 1991 showed a waxy-looking corpse
If it is preserved for the long-term, it will join Russia's Vladimir Lenin, China's Mao Zedong and Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh as former leaders whose bodies remain on display. Joseph Stalin's embalmed body once shared a spot with Lenin in a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square, but it was moved to a tomb elsewhere in the 1960s.
It was Russian experts who are believed to have preserved Kim Jong-il's father Kim Il-sung. Since they prepared Lenin's body after his death in 1924, tales have told of revolutionary scientific techniques, secret preservation recipes, regular baths for the corpse and an electric pump being installed inside the body to regulate humidity.
Ilya Zbarsky, who was a member of Lenin's embalming maintenance team at the Research Institute for Biological Structures in Moscow, told the BBC in an interview in 1999: "Twice a week, we would soak the face and the hands with a special solution. We could also improve some minor defects. Once a year the mausoleum was closed and the body was immersed in a bath with this solution."
The answer Bodies need to be made completely sterile
They are flushed with a strong preservation solution
The body needs regular maintenance and investment in cosmetic procedures
Such was the reputation of the Russians in the field of body preservation that Vietnam's former leader Ho's body was said to have been flown to experts in Moscow every year for a refresh.
So how would one prepare a body so that it will look unchanged for generations to come?
Embalming is the process of preserving the body from decay, and there are two approaches to the process, explains Karen Caney, national general secretary of the British Institute of Embalmers.
The most common approach, used by funeral directors, is to prepare a body so that it lasts until the body is buried.
"The embalming is designed to last literally until the time of the funeral. This is a fairly temporary preservation, so the body looks nice for the family."
Image caption The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum holds the embalmed remains of Ho Chi Minh
What is known as light embalming is carried out. This delays the process of decomposition, preserving the body's tissues long enough for families to pay their last respects.
Embalming fluid - which typically contains the chemical formaldehyde - is diluted with water and injected into an artery, says Ms Caney.
"The sooner this is done the better, she says, as bodies start to alter from the moment someone dies."
After a few weeks, the body's internal bacteria takes over, but by then, the body will have been buried.
Most funeral directors are unlikely to have experience of long-term preservation.
Professor Sue Black, Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, says that anatomy departments - in universities for example - are legally allowed to keep bodies for up to three years for students to work on.
"Fundamentally, the principle of embalming is like pickling - it's the same principle as food," she says. "To preserve a body for the long term, you would need to create a sterile environment."
Major vessels and veins are opened, blood is taken away - it can be a food source for bacteria - and the vascular system flushed with a particular solution.
WHO, WHAT, WHY? A part of BBC News Magazine, Who, What, Why? aims to answer questions behind the headlines
"You have to completely change the chemical composition of the tissues, and get rid of all the bacteria, so that mould and fungus can't grow," says Prof Black.
A large volume of alcohol, glycerol - so you that the body doesn't dehydrate - and formalin, which kills everything off, is flushed around the body.
"Everything fixed, so it can't decompose - these are not very nice chemicals."
Prof Black explains that a pinkish tint is added to the formalin to give the body a realistic look.
"If you want to have a body permanently on display, you will have to address the external aesthetic - for example make up and a wig, because hair falls out."
To keep it in its best condition, you need to invest heavily, she says. Humidity and temperature need to be carefully controlled.
"For example, if a high level of alcohol is used, this can evaporate and the body can dry out, so a moist environment is needed. However you don't want to encourage mould, spores and fungus. And some flies, for example, can live on embalming fluids - so you need to 'keep the environment out and keep the environment in'."
Pictures of Lenin's body released a decade ago, show an illuminated body that looked waxy and strangely shiny. The embalming process, however, has moved on significantly since his original preservation.
"Embalming as an aesthetic has moved on in the past 20 years. But good embalming for long-term preservation is a dying art," says Prof Black.
She reckons the North Koreans will have easy access to the necessary products needed and the skills.
"The Chinese are very adept at anatomy and embalming - they are highly skilled and I think that will have found its way into North Korea."
But Prof Black warns that once it has been done, the body needs regular maintenance.
"When it dries out, you could immerse it for a few weeks to replenish the tissues," she says. "It will need to tended to like a plant on a fairly regular basis."
And then there are the outfits that need to be updated. According to one Russian embalming expert, interviewed in 2003, new clothes, including a trademark white spotted tie, are ordered for the founder of the Soviet state every three years.TV3 has put its Garda-themed soap opera Red Rock into a production hiatus.
The makers are currently completing the next batch of 23 episodes, which now won’t be shown until 2018, and the drama will then cease filming for the time being.
The production is obliged to shortly vacate its set at the old Player Wills cigarette factory site in Dublin, as its lease is coming to an end and the site has been earmarked for redevelopment.
Cast and crew were informed of the move by producers today.
TV3 indicated it was exploring potential new sites for filming the drama, including the possibility of building a set adjacent to its premises at Ballymount in Dublin. However, it is unable to confirm at this stage that more episodes will be made.
TV3 director of programming Bill Malone said a decision about its future would be taken in early 2018.
Although Red Rock is “a great show” that “ticks a lot of boxes for TV3”, its return depends upon the ratings performance of the filmed episodes, TV3’s broader schedule needs and the need for the group to “cut its cloth” to suit the current television market.
“There are a lot of factors that determine why a show is or isn’t recommissioned,” Mr Malone said.
New season
Red Rock will stay off air over the next few months, having originally been scheduled to return to screens in September as part of TV3’s new season of programming, which it launches next Wednesday.
The broadcaster has invested €11 million to date in Red Rock, which is made by Element Pictures, run by Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, and Angel Station, a company run by former EastEnders producer John Yorke.
Created by Peter McKenna, it is Ireland’s most successful television export thanks to deals with Amazon Prime and the BBC, where it airs in a summer lunchtime slot and has won audiences of more than a million.
Audience ratings in the Irish market are modest, especially when compared with RTÉ’s Fair City, and have shown little sign of momentum, but the soap often reaches more than 200,000 people a week and has performed well on-demand.
While these factors largely point in favour of a resurrection at a new filming |
a matter of polities consolidating. Fewer, bigger countries and empires. We're on the cusp of things starting to move in the opposite direction, to the point that it's reasonable to predict that secession will be the most important political idea of the 21st century."
* * *
Now, these monarch-curious folks are still a tiny minority of the American Right. And as I noted, these movements aren't directly related (tech libertarians, for example, probably hate Putin, who — in any event — isn't a "monarch.")
Still, they all have some things in common. First, they are boldly venturing outside the bounds of what would have been considered acceptable shared political opinion just a few years ago. This is, perhaps, indicative of the low level of confidence we have in our system and our leaders, of the atomization and feeling of alienation that is plaguing our nation, and also of the way technology can empower people whose opinions are outside the mainstream to spread what unconventional ideas.
But the other things these movements have in common is that they occur during a time when America looks weak.
Additionally, these movements tacitly accept that conservatism as a political force is utterly incapable of slowing the leftward march of liberalism. By definition, conservatives, who want to conserve the good things about the past, are always playing defense. When you consider that many of my conservative views aren't terribly different from John F. Kennedy's views in 1960, this becomes self-evident.
Some on the Right have given up the belief that they can fix our country by working within the current paradigm. And for a country that got its start by breaking the yoke of monarchy, what these conservatives are proposing is really quite radical.
"No conservative in Europe (outside Switzerland and maybe Venice) can be whole-heartedly anti-monarchical, just as no conservative in America can realistically be a monarchist," says John Zmirak, author, most recently, of The Bad Catholic's Guide to the Catechism. "You conserve what is best in your own tradition; you don't indulge in utopian fantasies of replacing it with something alien and untried."
I guess that means Lorde is right. We'll never be royals.How Much Is Quad Insurance UK?
Hi their…. i know its a hard 1 to answer but on average how much are people paying for quad insurance for road legal quads in the UK…… ive been trying to get quotes from companies but every time i ring them up they put me on hold for like an hour so i hang up i just want to see what people are paying so i have an idea of what prices to look out for……………. I’m 20 & own a 250cc road legal quad……….. but dont want to be paying 700cc prices
ANSWER: I suggest one to try this web page where one can compare quotes from the best companies: http://COVERAGEQUOTES.NET/index.html?src=WP2dekonwasuarest
RELATED FAQS:
I want to know how much the car insurance is going to cost me if i get a peugeot 106 quicksilver or?
a Golf Mark 4 with Pass plus and Without Pass Plus? TY Im 17years old aswell and havent passed yet will do soon
Do I really need home owners insurance?
I couldnt pass the 4 point inspection w/o heating and cooling
I got a speeding ticket in Toronto but did not receive demerit points. Will my insurance rates go up? I am 21.?
I got a speeding ticket in Toronto in the jurisdiction of 4863 2 days ago. I did not receive demerit points as I was only 15 km/h above the limit. Will my insurance rates go up if I plead guilty and pay the fine? I am 21 years old and my parents are currently with Wawanesa. I have a G lisence.
Health insurance question?
will my family health insurance premium skyrocked if I have a debilitating illness, if so what is a person to do about this if they dont want to use their savings.."
How much does motorcycle insurance cost in kansas for a 16 year old driver?
once again, i will say this only once again. I DON’T WANT TO GIVE THEM MY ADRESS OR MY SOCIAL SECURITY. thats why i am wanting someone to tell me how much THEY pay a month. easy as that."
I normally pay $800 a year for car insurance. How much would it cost to insure it for one day?
I normally pay $800 a year for car insurance. How much would it cost to insure it for one day?
Which occupation would be best for car insurance purposes?
I can honestly say Retired"""
New driver car insurance?
This is UK I’m talking about
How much does pet insurance for a rabbit cost?
Sorry, I live in the USA. I don’t have a rabbit yet – I plan to adopt one, probably one in good health."
RED ROBIN INTERVIEW HELP!?
I had my first interview today and the manager told me she would give me a call back for the secondary interview and 30 minutes later she called back with the scheduled interview time for Sunday, did I get the job? Need help on what to expect! Thanks"
Cost of insurance on a mercedes Benz each month?
i have to do a gay project
LIFE INSURANCE QUESTION: Can an ex wife collect from a policy that she is not named on the policy/?
My step-dad passed away a few weeks ago and my mom had taken care of him for a year and a half. They were married for 14 years. He worked for GM for 33 years and had a policy from them as well as a small private policy he took out last year. He was previously married for about 20 years and had two kids but they were adults when my mom and him got together. He got shafted in the divorce and agreed to pay alimony of $200 per week for life. So now my mom gets a call from the insurance company stating it is pending because someone else is trying to claim. My mom is named on all policies as 100% beneficiary. The ex is greedy…does she have any rights to this money????? I really hope the insurance company will see that she doesn’t.
What is the average price (without insurance) for a root canal?
What is the average price (without insurance) for a root canal?
Relief based health insurance in MN…please help?
I am considering garnishing wages of someone that I won a judgement against. The court administrator told me that the person is exempt if they are currently or have recently been a recepient of relief based on need. She could not answer whether or not MinnesotaCare (health insurance) is relief based. The insurance related examples listed on the form she gave me are: Medical Assistance, General Assistance, General Assistance Medical Care, and Emergency General Assistance. I know that Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare are separate things, but can anyone tell me if MNCare is considered relief based??"
"What is the best way in get more horse power from my 3.8L firebird, while still leaving it naturally aspirated?"
I want to squeeze everything possible from this car while still having affordable insurance, and without swapping engines due to the high dollar figure and headaches that come with. I already have a good air intake system, the car is kept in perfect condition, fresh tune up, performance plugs and wires, 3 exhaust. Any other ideas for me?"""
Will deferred adjudication raise my car insurance?
Ok, so a few weeks ago i got my first spee ding ticket (57 in a 45) and im going to ask the judge on Wednesday for deferred adjudication as an option. Im on my parents insurance with USAA, and was wondering if anyone knows if insurance rates will go up? That’s my primary concern."
If i dont have car insurance can i still drive?
i live in VA
Switched my step-children to my insurance.?
I couldn t be insured under my husband, because I am offered insurance through my company. We switched my husband and his step kids to mine so we could all be on one. Now their mother is trying to cause a lot of problem for us. I couldn t find much information on this subject, do I have any legality issues to worry about? She is saying that he is in contempt of the court and that we ll have to pay for all doctor fee’s now. Even though in their court papers all it says is that he needs to provide insurance for the kids. So I don’t understand why we would have to do this. This has added a ton of stress for both our lives and would appreciate any help or insight you could offer. We are in Michigan, is there a website that might help me understand any of this further. Thanks again I would appreciate any help."
Why is my car insurance quote 1700 more if women and men are meant to have the same premium?
After an EU court of justice ruling I believe that male and female insurance is supposed to be the same? I have a quote as a male at 2800 whilst 1100 as a female? these were found on a comparison site. Why is this allowed and what can I do about it? thanks!
Changing car insurance co.?
Still confused. After getting considerably lower quotes from 3 major insurance co.,for the same coverage. Why is it that my current– Allstate– was not able to lower their rates? We have been loyal customers for 10 or more years. No infractions for at least 5 years.Been advised that the lower rates are to lure you in. Then watch out! Dont want to make a change and then regret it later."
Hi I have insurance cover tubal ligation?
Hi I have insurance cover tubal ligation?
Has anyone had experience w/causing a car accident & how much your insurance goes up?
I just got into a car accident & I was at fault. It appeared to be minor, based on the small dent in the other person’s car, but the couple both have soft tissue"" injuries. I have no accidents or tickets on my record. I’m wondering if anyone out there has been in a similar situation as me? How much did your insurance go up? I hope this couple doesn’t lie about their injuries or embellish them and I hope their injuries don’t turn out to be serious. It is too soon to tell. Thanks."""
Insurance Coverage?
My boyfriend and I found out not too long ago that I am pregnant, we plan to marry before the birth. Will I be covered on his insurance once married or will my pregnancy be deemed as a pre-existing condition? Any info is appreciated! Thanks!"
"If you have weight loss surgery in Mexico, will insurance cover the follow ups and complications?"
If you have weight loss surgery in Mexico, will insurance cover the follow ups and complications?"
How much cheaper to own is a motorcycle than a car?
I’m trying to choose between a couple years old honda civic coupe (approx $10k) and a couple year old motorcycle (not sure exactly which one yet, but planning on getting a reliable and affordable bike that is a couple years old). I also will buy a quality helmet, jacket, boots, and gloves. Is insurance more or less expensive? Also take into consideration gas savings, potential medical bills (hopefully not), etc. Specifically, how much cheaper is it?"
How Much Is Quad Insurance UK?
Hi their…. i know its a hard 1 to answer but on average how much are people paying for quad insurance for road legal quads in the UK…… ive been trying to get quotes from companies but every time i ring them up they put me on hold for like an hour so i hang up i just want to see what people are paying so i have an idea of what prices to look out for……………. I’m 20 & own a 250cc road legal quad……….. but dont want to be paying 700cc prices
ANSWER: I suggest one to try this web page where one can compare quotes from the best companies: http://COVERAGEQUOTES.NET/index.html?src=WP2dekonwasuarest
How do I switch home owner insurances?
My dad need helps switching home owner insurance. He had farm bureau, but is switching to state farm, but it has to go through Wells Fargo. How do I contact them to switch it. All I’m hearing is a machine, and our whole family English isn’t very good."
How much would car insurance cost me?
IM 17, have a 3.67 gpa, the car will be a 98 van, and w/ that driver education training thing how much would it be."
Van insurance for 17 year old?
hey guys! im 17 and cannow drive, i want a volkswagen transporter van, any idea of the cost to insure it?"
"40yrs ago I took out 5- $1000.00 whole life 20yr pay"" insurance policies. What is the most money can I get..?"""
today from these policies combined? I literally had fogot about them. They were all paid up in 20yrs, and they have kept them for 20 extra yrs a total of 40+ yrs. What are they worth now every penny if I cash them in today?"
Home Content Insurance?
Thanks carla but read my question.. I cant get at point of sale…. As it was built to order from my m8….:-)
How much will average insurance be for me.?
I am 17, just passed my driving test and I am considering buying a 1997 AUDI A3 1.6 Sport."
Health insurance when there’s an age gap between spouses? Medicare or not?
Thanks, Lucy, for the referral to the AARP website, but the questioner in that case said that her mother didn’t sign up for Medicare when she was supposed to."" The AARP answerer gave good information about penalties but he apparently assumed that the questioner’s mother had no coverage from a full-time job; he should have made clear that the situation is different when a person still has full-time employment."""
Going on parents car insurance!?
Hi i am enquiring here, I have my driving test in 2 weeks 7th July, and i am looking around for cars and while i am getting quotes for car insurance they are quite dear at 19 even with a small engined car, i was wondering can i go on my parents insurance which i know can cut the cost quite a lot, but can i use my own car and add the car and me as the main driver of that car and it still stay relatively cheap? i have read up on the illegal action know as ”fronting” and i want to avoid that happening but don’t want to be forced onto my own insurance and be spending hundreds of pounds a month? any help or advice would be appreciated"
Motorcycle Insurance Fee?
Hi, My name is Johnny. I’m 19 years old and live in Santa Monica, CA. I currently have DL and I know I need to get Motorcycle License to drive Motorcycle. I’ve been driving for 9 months and had no accident at all. Although, I sometimes drive my parents’ cars and have no insurance. I heard that driving motorcycle will cost me less on payment and insurance. I want to buy like, Harley Davidson model from 2006-2008. How much will it cost me for my insurance?"
Registering and insuring a car for a teenager?
This may vary from state to state so for the record the state is Connecticut. When you get a car for your teenager, would you register and insure it in their name or yours? When you call to add the car to insurance, do you add the teenager or just add the car to your own policy? My husband and I are confused about how this works. Our twins who are turning 16 this year were given a car by a friend of ours. We want to make sure it’s all done legal and legit so that if they were in an accident it would be covered. I thought you had to add the teenager to your insurance as in the person is covered not just the car. My husband thinks we can just ad the car to our policy and let them drive it and they will be covered. I don’t think so, Otherwise why wouldn’t everyone do that to save the money they charge when you add a teenager? They will be taking driver’s ed which is supposed to help with insurance cost so that leads me to think even more that you need to add the teenager as someone to be insured and not just insure the car. can anyone help me out here as to what the proper thing to do is to make sure we will covered properly. And who’s name should the car be registered in? Can you have a car registered in your name as a minor or not? thanks"
Do the illegal immigrants now being allowed to get drivers licenses have to have insurance?!!!?
Do the illegal immigrants now being allowed to get drivers licenses have to have insurance?!!!?
Cost of ticket for driving without insurance?
im 16 and i need to get to work tomorow…my stepmom has to work so the only way to get to work is taking my dad’s 2007 toyota tundra. if i get pulled over about how much will the ticket cost? i have my liscense just not insurance. i also live in texas
Which car insurance company is the best? How much do you py for car insurance each month?
Which car insurance company is the best? How much do you py for car insurance each month?
Life insurance payout (taxable income)?
received a life insurance check for 28 grand as a lump sum payout for the 50 grand policy. the original amount without taxes appears to be 33500. It seems like the insurance company deducted the sum of 4800 (14.12%) from the original lump sump (33500). does anyone know what this tax is? (it appears as taxable income). also i like to add that my relation with the deceased person is (friend)
Do I Need A Drivers License To Obtain Car Insurance?
Do I Need A Drivers License To Obtain Car Insurance?
UK Only. How much for an category D insurance write off car?
I have a 2004 Ford Fiesta that I need to sell. When I bought it I was told it was a category D write off shortly after it was first bought, it was repaired and passed every subsequent MOT and has regular services. Roughly how much money off a guide price would you take off when selling it??"
About car insurance a few questions please answer all thanks?
If my aunt was a Co signer on my car but it’s under both of our names does her name have to be put on the insurance? And can I get insurance with my mom’s under her policy? In other works if I’m a partial owner of the car does her name and my name both have to be on the insurance or even any of our names have to be on the insurance?
What are the best life insurance policies?
I want to pay up front for the whole policy to go to my two children and my Love…
Auto insurance claim?
Auto insurance claim?
Where can i get cheap car insurance?
im driving a six years old Saab aero convertible.and on red ‘p’ and im 26yrs old.i was told i have to pay near $5000 a year.is there any other way to get around it?
Will getting married affect me being on my parents car insurance?
My mom knows we are engaged"" my dad won’t even know that until December. My husband and I just got married yesterday but our ceremony is not until August. I realized today I am on my parents car insurance. Am I still going to be on there or are they going to send a letter to them saying I am married or something? He already paid the premium until April 2012 with me on it so I don’t think they can take me off til then? Maybe at the end of the 6 months I should tell them since I am getting married in 4 months I want to get my own car insurance since it wont be the full cycle done before I am married. IDK I just wanna know if the company will say your married daughter cannot be on your insurance??? I am kinda freaked out."""
Money spent on health insurance through work be deducted?
Thanks a lot everybody. I hate this time of year with the taxes.
Can my insurance be cancelled if the vehicles in the policy are garaged at different addresses?
Can my insurance be cancelled if the vehicles in the policy are garaged at different addresses?
"How long, on average, does it take to learn to drive an automatic in the UK?"
I’m a US citizen, with a US driving licence. I’ve relocated to the UK recently, and need to learn to drive fast! I don’t want to drive on my US licence cos the insurance costs too much. I’ve never driven a stick shift and think learning in an automatic will be easier. As I’m already used to driving an automatic and just need to learn the UK roads, how long do you think this will take? Anyone got any experience of this? Thanks for replies in advance!"
Best medical insurance for pregnant women?
what is the best medical insurance for pregnant women i’m currently waiting on medicaid but in need of care right now i went to the er yesterday…
How Much Is Quad Insurance UK?
Hi their…. i know its a hard 1 to answer but on average how much are people paying for quad insurance for road legal quads in the UK…… ive been trying to get quotes from companies but every time i ring them up they put me on hold for like an hour so i hang up i just want to see what people are paying so i have an idea of what prices to look out for……………. I’m 20 & own a 250cc road legal quad……….. but dont want to be paying 700cc prices
ANSWER: I suggest one to try this web page where one can compare quotes from the best companies: http://COVERAGEQUOTES.NET/index.html?src=WP2dekonwasuarestThe following message is an appeal from noted civil rights activist Shaun King. Known widely for his use of social media to promote social causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement, King recently posted a message on social media that offers 25 practical solutions that address police brutality (shown below). He asked that these solutions be shared far and wide. Shaun King is the senior justice writer at the New York Daily News.
Daily, I hear friend and foe alike ask what the SOLUTIONS are to the problems of police brutality. They see our protests and assume that we haven’t thought this through. We have. Here they are. SCROLL DOWN for the whole list.
For the past 6 weeks I have mapped out 25 reasonable, practical, achievable solutions for police brutality and even spelled out HOW we make them a reality.
Below, I have listed the WEB link and the FACEBOOK link for each solution. Read them, share them, refine them, then…let’s plan on getting to work and making them a reality.
We can do this. We WILL do this.
Here’s the introduction to the series
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-introducing-25-part-serie…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1094157720623145
—-
#1: Radically diversify America’s Police Departments
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-brutality-fix-chan…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1096129407092643
—-
#2: Require American Police to have more training than cosmetologists
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-cops-trained-cosmetologis…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1096915633680687
—-
#3: Police must be routinely and randomly tested for steroids and other illegal drugs
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-routinely-tested-d…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1097380140300903
—-
#4: Bad Apples MUST Be Fired – they are toxic and dangerous
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-violent-racist-job-securi…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1098144406891143
—-
#5: Police must be required to earn 4 year degrees – it changes everything
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-officers-required-…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1098787190160198
—-
#6: Policing for profit must become a banned practice. A profit motive must never undergird law enforcement.
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-policing-profit-america-b…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1101066569932260
—-
#7: We must overhaul 911 – particularly for calls made about the mentally ill. It is the rotary phone of emergency services.
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-911-operators-save-lives-…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1101804536525130
—-
#8: Take women from 12% of police to 50% of police – they are more professional, less brutal, and just as effective
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-combat-police-brutality-h…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1102497229789194?match=d29tZW4%3D
—-
#9: Require cops to live in or near the areas they police. It’s too easy to mistreat strangers.
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-cops-live-area-police-art…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1103885226317061?match=Y29wcyBsaXZl
—-
#10: Communities of color actually need less policing. Start by decriminalizing addiction and petty offenses.
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/communities-color-massively-ov…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1105674012804849?match=bWFyaWp1YW5h
—-
#11: American Police must be regularly tested for racial bias
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-american-police-regularly…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1106406346064949?match=cmFjaWFsIGJpYXM%3D
—
#12: American Police must be regularly tested and treated for PTSD
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-american-cops-regularly-t…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1106971526008431?match=cHRzZA%3D%3D
—-
#13: Why we must take bad laws on policing all the way to the Supreme Court
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-brutality-supreme-…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1108710325834551
—-
#14: Good police officers must actually speak out on bad cops
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-good-police-speak-bad-off…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1109507299088187
—-
#15: We must decriminalize mental illness
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-docs-treat-mentally-ill-d…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1112068195498764
—-
#16: We need to unleash the full power of body cameras
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-body-cameras-fail-unleash…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1113638592008391
—-
#17: Police departments must create and enforce reasonable new use of force standards
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-officers-force-mat…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1115188505186733
—-
Here’s SOLUTION #18: Police must always carry 3 less lethal weapons other than firearms
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-officers-weapons-g…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1116266275078956?match=bGV0aGFs
—-
#19: Police must be banned from using violence based on their imagination of a threat
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-violence-based-ima…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1118984044807179
—-
#20: Every city and state in America must ban racial profiling
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-city-america-ban-racial-p…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1120067191365531
—-
#21: Police must be immediately filmed making a statement after each use of force incident
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-cops-record-statements-fo…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1121470467891870
—-
#22: Independent review boards must oversee investigations of police misconduct
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-independent-boards…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1122606474444936
—-
#23: Police misconduct cases must be tried by special/independent prosecutors
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-police-officers-local-pro…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1127405207298396
—-
#24: Police departments which fail to obey the Death in Custody Reporting Act should be cut off from all federal funding.
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-departments-don-report-ki…
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/posts/113241262679#25: We must focus our fight against police brutality on the local and state level
#25: We must focus our fight against police brutality on the local and state level
LINK: https://www.nydailynews.com/…/king-combatting-police-brutali…
Facebook: https://facebook.com/shaunking/posts/1133406260031624BOOM! NSA Director Rogers on POTUS Trump: “I Have NEVER Been Directed to Do Anything Illegal” (VIDEO)
Director of the National Security Agency Admiral Mike Rogers testified before the US Senate today. The NSA chief was grilled on his interactions with President Donald Trump.
Rogers told Democratic Senator Mark Warner:
“I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate.“
Admiral Mike Rogers: "I have never been directed to do anything I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate" " pic.twitter.com/U8Sgf1LW3u — POLITICO (@politico) June 7, 2017
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) also asked the panel if they had been asked to do anything illegal by the current administration.
Rubio: Has anyone asked you to issue a statement you knew to be false?
NSA Dir.: I standby my statement.
Natl Intel Dir.: I do likewise. pic.twitter.com/6qb133nyhu — Fox News (@FoxNews) June 7, 2017As the Justice Department announces an agreement with Cleveland over police use of force, activists in New Mexico caution that promised reforms there have not been finalised months after Albuquerque reached a similar deal
Before Cleveland and Ferguson was Albuquerque: six months after DoJ report, change is far off
Police reform came far too late for Kenneth Ellis, an Iraq war veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder who was shot dead by Albuquerque police in 2010 after he put a gun to his head in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven.
The 25-year-old was one of more than two dozen people shot dead by police in New Mexico’s largest city in the past five years, a torrent of killings that sparked public protests and a 16-month federal investigation. Last October, the Albuquerque police department agreed to make fundamental changes following the investigation, which looked into allegations of systematic brutality, unjustified shootings, incompetence and whitewashed internal investigations.
Cleveland announces historic second settlement over chronic police abuse Read more
With police shootings under national scrutiny since last year’s events in Ferguson, Missouri, a settlement was announced on Tuesday between the US Department of Justice and Cleveland that will see the city’s police department take steps to correct a pattern of abusive behavior by officers, including being scrutinised by an independent monitor.
As with Cleveland, the Albuquerque agreement was prompted by a string of controversial incidents and calls for improvements in how police use force and interact with mentally ill people and the wider community.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cleveland announces ‘a new way of policing’ after reports of chronic abuse.
But more than six months after Albuquerque and the DoJ announced they had reached a deal, and 13 months after the federal agency issued their damning report, activists caution that reforms have not been finalised and a fundamental shift in the police department’s culture remains a long way off.
Months before the agreement was struck between Albuquerque policeand the DoJ, the department committed to providing 100% of its field officers with crisis intervention training within 18 months.
But other changes will take several years, as the settlement’s enforcement is faced with legal and political challenges. The officers’ union mounted a legal challenge to the settlement, arguing they should be allowed to have input in proposed reforms. APD Forward, a group that calls itself a community coalition, is also seeking a stake in the process for civilians. Wrangling among city officials over the pay and accountability of the court-appointed monitor took place as recently as last week.
Will it all ultimately lead to fewer violent encounters between police and citizens? Kenneth Ellis’s father, also Kenneth, is hopeful but sceptical.
“I guess time will tell,” said Ellis, who is now an activist. “It still hasn’t had a chance to prove itself one way or the other … The only catalyst for real reform would be indicting officers that have blatantly committed murder.”
Ellis’s son was shot once in the neck. The family filed a lawsuit and the city agreed to pay nearly $8m to settle the case.
Ellis watched with alarm and disgust as controversies played out in Ferguson, Cleveland and elsewhere across the country. “Before Ferguson there was Albuquerque,” he said. “There needs to be an external accountability mechanism that’s not a man in blue. The police can’t police themselves, that’s obvious.”
Cleveland and Albuquerque: a tale of two cities
The DoJ’s findings in Cleveland bear many similarities to those in Albuquerque, where the police department was found to have engaged in an unconstitutional “pattern or practice of use of excessive force, including deadly force”.
In Albuquerque, most of the 20 officer-involved fatal shootings between 2009 and 2012 were found to be unconstitutional: “Officers used deadly force against people who posed a minimal threat, including individuals who posed a threat only to themselves or who were unarmed.”
They also determined that officers frequently misused Tasers on mentally ill people and that officers were rarely held accountable because of deficient internal procedures. On one occasion, “officers fired Tasers numerous times at a man who had poured gasoline on himself. The Taser discharges set the man on fire, requiring another officer to extinguish the flames.”
After negotiations, the settlement between the city and the Justice Department will see Albuquerque admit no wrongdoing or liability. But the police department will have to overhaul its use-of-force policies with the goal of reducing violent encounters through better training, oversight, accountability and community relations.
Among the protocols designed to ensure police use aggression only when necessary, the settlement called for officers to be banned from firing weapons at moving vehicles in most circumstances; for them to fill out a report if they point a weapon at a suspect even without firing; for neck holds to be prohibited except where lethal force is authorised; for officers to use only department-approved firearms and for Swat members to respond as a unit – not individually.
Peter Simonson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, which is part of APD Forward, said that opinion is split in the city as to whether the federal scrutiny will make a difference. He is cautiously optimistic and believes that outside intervention represents the only chance for real change in a police department that has a long history of brutal conduct.
But he doubts it will be easy to counteract what he called “trends” in US policing: “militarisation, over-use of Swat teams to perform police functions that do not involve inherently dangerous situations, the growing mental health crisis in our community”, he said. “Too many officers have been trained to view the public at large as potentially dangerous, a threat, enemies in the field of combat as it were. I withhold judgment about how much this reform process is going to be able to reverse that culture.”
In January, two months after the settlement, murder charges were filed against two Albuquerque officers in the killing of James Boyd, a mentally ill homeless man whose death prompted protests. That was seen by activists as a positive step, but allegations of excessive force surfaced again one day later, with the shooting of Jacob Grant, an Albuquerque police detective who was shot up to eight times by a fellow officer during an undercover operation.
It was reported last week that Grant may launch a federal civil rights lawsuit.SAMOHI — Members of the Santa Monica High School community are rallying in opposition to news that the controversial Westboro Baptist Church is planning to protest outside of the school at the end of the month.
The church, which has made a name for itself by displaying provocative signs outside of high-profile locations like military funerals, announced its intentions to picket the campus at 7 a.m. on Feb. 25, the day after its planned protest of the Academy Awards.
Seven members of the church plan to teach high schoolers “truth” that their parents, teachers and preachers have denied them, said Stephen Drain, a representative of the church.
“The students at these high schools, they‚Äôve had their moral compasses broken since they were youths,” Drain said. “We know that the students have not been taught the truth, and they‚Äôre just as deserving of it.”
The Samohi community is buzzing with the news, and already counter-protests are being coordinated by on- and off-campus groups.
The campus Gay Straight Alliance held a meeting Wednesday to prepare, and the issue has electr |
Penny Arcade who did a great post on an artist’s perspective of using the Surface Pro’s stylus. Spoiler alert: he likes it a lot. If I illustrated for a living, I probably would too.
Surface Pro 2 inherits the same kickstand and branding decisions as Surface 2. As I mentioned in my Surface 2 review, the new 2-stage kickstand is awesome and a huge improvement over its predecessor. The kickstand now opens at 24 and 40-degree angles, the latter enables more comfortable use when you’re not typing at a desk. The new kickstand also ditches the Windows 8 logo in favor of the Surface logo across the back.
Finally, Surface Pro 2 does get the new 1080p panel from Surface 2 (albeit a brighter implementation). There’s no improvement in resolution compared to the original Surface Pro, but color accuracy is a lot better.
I did notice an odd display corruption issue on Surface Pro 2 when waking up from sleep (pictured above). Resetting the device or sometimes just doing another sleep/wake cycle was enough to fix it. Microsoft tells me it’s aware of the problem and plans to issue an update shortly to address it. We only got review samples a few days prior to the NDA lift, I get the impression that it was a lot of work to get final hardware out the door in time for this launch. Update: Microsoft traced the issue back to a later revision of an Intel graphics driver. After release, a Surface Pro 2 update rolled back to an earlier optimized driver that no longer exhibits the display corruption on wake issue.
Internally we see where Microsoft spent most of its time updating Surface Pro. It all starts with an upgrade to Haswell. Surface Pro 2 features Intel’s Core i5-4200U, a dual-core 1.6GHz 15W Haswell part with Hyper Threading, 3MB of shared L3 cache, and a max turbo frequency of 2.6GHz. Just like last time, I had no issues hitting 2.6GHz on Surface Pro 2. I would see 2.3GHz far more frequently however.
As Surface Pro 2 is rather thick by Ultrabook standards, you get the full performance of the 4200U. I ran a multithreaded Cinebench 11.5 test on Surface Pro 2, comparing it to Apple’s 13-inch 2013 MacBook Air under Windows 8. The two deliver identical performance, just in different form factors:
The 4200U is nearly identical to the base CPU you get in the new 2013 MacBook Airs, the only difference being that you get Intel’s HD 4400 graphics vs. HD 5000. Apple’s obsession with graphics performance explains the difference, although it’s disappointing to see Microsoft not sharing the same obsession. To Microsoft’s credit the difference between Intel’s HD 5000 and HD 4400, when constrained by a 15W TDP, just isn’t very large. The real benefit to going with HD 5000 over HD 4400 has to do with power consumption, since you can get similar performance at lower frequencies/voltages thanks to a doubling of the number of EUs in HD 5000.
It’s not just the CPU that’s changed this time around, Microsoft did extensive work under the hood of Surface Pro 2 to further reduce power consumption. Haswell ULT supports LPDDR3, a feature that Microsoft chose to take advantage of in pursuit of lowering power consumption. All other components on the motherboard are also optimized for power consumption. The result is a device that looks like and is cooled similarly to its predecessor, but is appreciably cooler/quieter in operation. While the original Surface Pro would spin its fans up on a regular basis, Surface Pro 2 is far more hesitant to do the same thing. In what I’d consider to be light to medium tablet use, Surface Pro 2 behaves like a passively cooled device. When the fans do ramp up, they aren’t any louder than before as far as I can tell.
USB3 transfers to an internal mSATA SSD
Just like the original, Surface Pro 2 retains a full SSD rather than an eMMC solution. We’re still dealing with an mSATA based drive here, but Microsoft expanded the available capacity options. The combination of DRAM/SSD/price options are in the table below:
Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Storage Configurations SSD 64GB 128GB 256GB 512GB LPDDR3 Configuration 4GB 4GB 8GB 8GB Price $899 $999 $1299 $1799
The most interesting options are unfortunately the more expensive models. I think the sweet spot is likely the 8GB/256GB version, which also happens to be how my review sample was configured. Unfortunately the LPDDR3 is soldered on board (as with all modern Ultrabooks) so that’s not user upgradeable. The SSD is technically serviceable, but there’s a ton of risk associated with doing so as you have to take apart your Surface Pro 2 to do so. Once again Microsoft refuses to equip Surface Pro with a Thunderbolt port, which would help greatly in dealing with high performance storage expansion concerns. There is still a USB 3.0 port at least.
Surface Pro 2 is compatible with all of the new dock accessories, including the new touch and type covers. I went through the improvements to both of those in our Surface 2 review already, but in short they are great. I still prefer the new type cover as I can type a lot faster on it, but the new touch cover is significantly better than its predecessor. Neither is included in the cost of a Surface Pro 2, so factor in another $119 - $129 depending on which cover you end up with. I noticed the same trackpad disappearing issues on Surface Pro 2 as I did on Surface 2, Microsoft claims a fix is in the works.
Microsoft Surface Pro Comparison Surface Pro 2 Surface Pro Dimensions 10.81 x 6.81 x 0.53" 10.81 x 6.81 x 0.53" Display 10.6-inch 1920 x 1080 w/ Improved Color Accuracy 10.6-inch 1920 x 1080 PLS Weight 2.0 lbs 2.0 lbs Processor Core i5-4200U with HD4400 Graphics (15W Haswell ULT) Core i5-3317U with HD4000 Graphics (17W Ivy Bridge) Cameras 1.2MP/1.2MP (front/rear) 1.2MP/1.2MP (front/rear) Connectivity WiFi WiFi Memory 4GB or 8GB LPDDR3 4GB Storage 64 or 128GB (4GB RAM)
256GB or 512GB (8GB RAM) 64GB or 128GB Battery 42.0 Wh 42.0 Wh Starting Price $899 $799
Surface Pro 2 ships with Windows 8.1 Pro x64. Since there's no connected standby 64-bit version of Windows 8/8.1 yet, Surface Pro 2 ships without the feature. It also continues to behave more notebook like in the sleep/wake sense as a result. There's a delay between when you press the power/lock button and when you'll see the tablet respond as the system comes out of its sleep state. Ironically Surface Pro 2 comes with nothing more than a link to try Office 2013, while Surface 2 comes with a free copy of the Home & Student edition.Before there were icons and logos, there were flags. For centuries, people have been devising simple shapes and colours to symbolize complex ideas.
With hundreds of countries in the world, there are bound to be some oddly coincidental similarities among their flags. Here are some that I found.
There are many others that also have similarities, but this is because they share histories, ethnicities or religions. I haven’t included them.
Thailand and Costa Rica are on opposite sides of the world, yet their flags are the same — with reversed colours.
The flag of Poland is the reverse of Indonesia and Monaco, which are identical. Singapore is also the same except that it has a moon and stars.
The flags of Italy and Mexico are almost the same except Mexico has a decoration in the middle. Ireland is also close except that it ends with orange instead of red. Côte d’Ivoire is the reverse of Ireland.
India and Niger have close to the same colours with a round object in the middle. Hungary is also close, but with a plain centre.
The flags of Romania and Chad are the same. Andorra is also the same except it has an emblem in the middle. Belgium is close — starting with black, instead of blue.
Netherlands and Paraguay are close to the same, with the addition of an emblem for Paraguay.
Ghana and Bolivia have the same colour combination but different embellishments.
Austria and Latvia are red with a horizontal white stripe in the middle. Lebanon is similar but also has a cedar in the middle.
Bangladesh, Japan, Laos, Palau and Greenland all have a big dot.
Somalia, Vietnam and Morocco have a big star on a one-colour background.
Three flags use maps of their territory: Cyprus, Kosovo and Antarctica.
Bhutan and Wales both have dragons.
Basque Country and the United Kingdom have crosses on top of each other.
Malaysia and the United States both have a blue canton and stripes.
And finally we have Nigeria in west Africa and Norfolk Island — a territory of Australia in the direction of New Zealand — with nothing in common except, you guessed it, their flags. That’s an evergreen that distinguishes the Norfolk Island flag.
Credit: Flag icons from GoSquared.
Sharing:President-elect Donald Trump has been dismissing findings about his historically-low approval rating on Twitter lately, so Stephen Colbert used his monologue during Tuesday’s episode of The Late Show to mock the president-elect’s tweets.
“He’s got the lowest approval rating of any incoming president in modern history, but hey it’s not a popularity contest and neither was the election,” Colbert said. On Tuesday, Trump, whose approval ratings recently hit a low of 40%, according to new polls, tweeted “The same people who did the phony election polls and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.”
“Yes, evidently any bad news for Trump is rigged,” Colbert said, referencing the tweet. The host even created a fake Trump tweet of his own in the event of rain on inauguration day. “Fake weather. Clouds are rigged. Apologize!”
Colbert also took on Trump’s tweet attacking Democratic Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis on Twitter Saturday with another parody tweet that lampooned the incoming President’s comments on President Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, this time with an Easter twist.
The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now
“Loser Jesus dead for 3 days and then we’re supposed to believe he just wakes up? Fake news. I like gods who don’t die. Where’s the rebirth certificate?”
Watch the full clip above.
Write to Ashley Hoffman at Ashley.Hoffman@time.com.You can't shoot an arrow on TV these days without hitting a series that was adapted from a comic book, with the majority of the fare falling somewhere beneath the overarching banner of "superhero drama." From Marvel's Daredevil to The CW's Arrow to Fox's Gotham, almost every network has a superhero series, and if they don't, they will soon enough. But how do the different series stack up against each other? We love ranking things on the internet, and so in honor of National Superhero Day (it's a thing, I swear), I've gathered TV's biggest, boldest, and brightest super-powered shows and ranked them from least good to absolute best. Do you agree or disagree? And did I miss a current series that you think should fall under this umbrella?
6. Gotham (Fox)
Gotham is a superhero show in the sense that it exists within the DC Universe and features characters present in the comic books, but there's no dodging the fact the Fox drama is the weakest addition to this list. Ben McKenzie's Jim Gordon was a compelling jumping off point for Gotham, but the Fox drama is populated with too many lifeless characters who take themselves far too seriously for a series that also employs the use of Baby Batman and Baby Catwoman. The Penguin's arc has kept Gotham from being labeled a total trainwreck, but then you remember that Fish Mooney also exists, and so here we are in dead last.
5. Arrow (The CW)
A year ago, Arrow likely would have taken the lead spot on this list, but the battle for Oliver Queen's humanity that has consumed Season 3 is a step down from the wild ride the series presented in Season 2, thanks to the commanding presence of Manu Bennett's Slade Wilson. Ra's al Ghul has failed to live up to the hype in a storyline that's supported by the flimsiest of foundations, while characters like Felicity have been dragged through the mud to service Oliver's ongoing struggle with identity. The lone highlight to this underwhelming season is Oliver's bond with Thea, but that can't carry a series that doesn't seem to care about everything that once made it great.
4. Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC)
After a strong finish to its freshman season, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been consistently entertaining and largely on-point in terms of quality in Season 2. By introducing fun new characters like Bobbi Morse and Lance Hunter, the series has expanded its core cast, while still allowing room for original agents to grow. But as fun as Season 2 has been, the series is still far from perfect. The character responsible for Season 1's exciting end (Brett Dalton's Grant Ward) was largely sidelined, while the introduction of the Inhumans and a second version of S.H.I.E.L.D. led to several episodes of exposition that slowed momentum. Still, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. remains a fun exercise in making a superhero series about the little guys who are super.
3. Marvel's Agent Carter (ABC)
If you're asking why Marvel's Agent Carter is on this list, then you probably didn't watch Marvel's Agents Carter and that's a damn shame. Tight writing, intriguing villains, and a vibrant and self-confident heroine made Agent Carter one of the most exciting series this year. Hayley Atwell's titular character was a unicorn in the 1940s as the lone female agent in the Strategic Scientific Reserve, and Agent Carter stands alone again as the only series on this list to be headlined by a woman. When Peggy wasn't busy kicking ass and solving problems like it was no big deal, she was staring down the sexism of the era and putting her colleagues in their place. In the end, Peggy didn't even need credit for saving the world, which is how you know she was a true superhero.
2. The Flash (The CW)
The difference between the two series at the top of this list probably comes down to a matter of personal taste, because they're equally impressive. The Flash embraces its comic-book origins and uses them to its advantage to showcase a young man who willingly and excitedly throws himself into the role of being a superhero. Barry Allen and The Flash stand out, especially when compared to the tortured existence of say, Arrow's Oliver Queen, by offering a thrilling, lighter look at the genre. The series has also found a way to successfully mesh a compelling overarching plot with episodic elements, like the metahumans of the week, which allows for plenty of fun cameos.
1. Marvel's Daredevil (Netflix)
In contrast to The Flash, the darkness that surrounds Marvel's Daredevil is gripping and often suffocating, but it's also one of the series' greatest strengths. Existing outside the limits of broadcast television not only allows Daredevil to take risks in terms of its stylized violence, but also in its pulpy storytelling. The care that's given to the rise of Charlie Cox's Daredevil is also given to Vincent D'Onofrio's Kingpin, which creates a well-rounded world for the series to play in, and it's one that isn't often explored in a superhero series. An excellent supporting cast, incredible action sequences, and the know-how to successfully incorporate flashbacks, all combine to make Daredevil the best superhero drama on TV.
Okay, now it's your turn. What's the best superhero show on TV right now? And let's see your rankings in the comments.
thekaitling:list:what-is-the-best-superhero-series-on-tv/I'm itching to release this build as it already fixed a lot of issues for quite a few users, but since it includes changes to very sensitive download folder management code I'm a little wary of releasing it just yet. I'm hoping you guys can try it out and let me know if you run into any new problems or whether it works well for you after some time. Changes include:
Remote folder structures with more than one level of subfolders should now be properly recreated locally, and not flattened as before.
By default, the top-level folder for each download is the name of the user the file was downloaded from. Thank you grinsanscat for suggesting this! The behavior can be turned off under Options->File Sharing.
Files with illegal filename characters should now properly download on Windows.
All empty subfolders in the 'downloading' folder are now erased after every download.
Close all searches button. Also thanks to grinsanscat!
Qt 5.9.1 seems to work better for a number of Windows 10 users.
First time using AppImage for the Linux build! Hopefully works on most Linux distributions.
11/21: Rolled back to Qt 5.8 for the Mac build due to a yet unresolved UI bug. Other updates since the 7/29 build include minor fixes discussed in this thread.
Windows: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mpa4oqhr1aeju44/SoulseekQt-2017-11-21.exe?dl=1
Mac: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ruvio22uu1onddi/SoulseekQt-2017-11-21.dmg?dl=1
Linux 64-bit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ru2mvycljfrejcx/SoulseekQt-2017-11-21-64bit.tg...
Let me know on this forum thread!
Thanks, NirSteve Adcock... director of photography: second unit
Bob Akester... still photographer
Tim Atkins... gaffer
Mike Bolan... grip: second unit
Marc Brunelle... lamp operator (as Mark Brunelle)
Terry Calhoun... best boy: second unit (as Terrance Calhoun)
Paul Cunningham... gaffer: second unit
Mike Dubé... best boy (as Mike Dube)
Todd Fairbairn... lamp operator
Douglas R. Field... camera operator: "b" camera, second unit (as Doug Field)
Aris Georgiopoulos... first assistant camera (as Aristidi Georgiopoulos)
Ryan Gillard... second assistant camera: second unit
Gary Hornbeck... lamp operator: second unit
Junichi Hosoi... camera operator (as Jun Hosoi)
Kieran Humphries... first assistant camera: second unit (as Kieran Humphrey)
Michael Iwan... dolly grip (as Mike Iwan)
Stephen Jackson... gaffer: second unit (as Steve Jackson)
James Kantola... grip
Gene Keigher... rigging grip
Regine Klein... grip
John Lambert... director of photography: second unit
Robert Little... best boy: second unit (as Bob Little)
Nelson Martin... generator operator: second unit
Álex Martínez... second assistant camera (as Alex Martinez)
Shawn Milsted... best boy: second unit (as Shawn Milstead)
Robert C. New... director of photography: second unit (as Robert New)
Tara Nicholson... second assistant camera: "b" camera, second unit (as Tara Nicolson)
Paul Prince... first assistant camera: "b" camera, second unit
Douglas Pruss... first assistant camera: second unit (as Doug Pruss)
Mike Sanchez... playback / video assist
Eike Schroter... still photographer (as Eike Schroeder)
Jennifer Sinclair... second assistant camera: second unit
Brian Smith... key grip
Jeff Smith... lead hand grip: second unit
Andrew Spencer-Phillips... best boy: second unit
John Spencer-Phillips... key grip: second unit
Mark Spohr... lamp operator
Rene Spooner... rigging gaffer
Jay 'Sully' Sullivan... grip (as Jason 'Sully' Sullivan)
Jeff Trebenski... generator operator: second unit
Gordon VanHumbeck... best boy (as Gordon Vanhumbeck)
Mark Weinhaupl... camera trainee
Mike West... dolly grip: second unit
Brian Whittred... director of photography: second unit
Ed Willems... lead man set up (as Ed W. Willems)
R. Brock Woodman... grip: second unit (as Brock Woodman)
Kosto Zeviar... generator operatorKarl Stefanovic laughs off appearance in Islamic State propaganda video
Posted
Channel Nine presenter Karl Stefanovic has laughed off his appearance in a new Islamic State (IS) propaganda video, encouraging the terrorist group to tune into the Today show.
The 12-minute video, released on the encrypted Telegram Messenger service, shows chaotic scenes following the San Bernardino shooting and the Paris attacks, both of which were claimed by IS.
Footage of armed soldiers running through the streets and emergency responders carrying a person on a stretcher are shown in the video, which appeals for new recruits.
The narrator praises IS attacks and the video also includes interviews with people who describe an idyllic life under IS.
The video, titled "So we will give him a good life", then cuts to a clip of Stefanovic in a panicked scramble while reporting live outside Le Carillon bar following the Paris attacks.
While Stefanovic was preparing to cross to the Today show, nearby firecrackers caused a stampede to break out on the street behind him.
On Twitter on Thursday, Stefanovic responded to his appearance in the video with humour: "Make sure all you isil bastards tune in Monday. We are giving away heaps of cash and good times."
Twitter users have praised the presenter's response. The Nine Network declined to comment.
IS has featured other well-known figures in previous recruitment videos including US President Barack Obama and former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush.
ABC/AAP
Topics: terrorism, media, australiaThe geoglyphs in the gorge of Santo Domingo in Trujillo continue to face invasion by agricultural invaders The destruction of a 600-year-old geoglyph in Trujillo made headlines in April after agricultural invaders attempted to erase the structure to make room for crops.
Since the incident was discovered investigators have searched the region to find out that hundreds in the area have been destroyed and remain in danger.
El Comercio reported yesterday, two months after the destruction, that the geoglyphs continue to face invasion and threats from agricultural invaders.
On May 21, the Ministry of Culture announced 250 hectares of previously destroyed geoglyphs had been restored.
Despite few advancements, in the district of Laredo in Trujillo, the Santo Domingo gorge is still seeking protection and continues to be invaded.
Residents in the Santo Domingo area told El Comercio that the lands had in fact been sold about four years ago to lawyers. They paid between S/. 3,000 and S/. 4,000 for each lot obtained.
Comments
commentsTAMPA, FL (WFLA) - The City of Tampa passed an ordinance Thursday that will lessen the punishment for possessing marijuana within city limits. The city council passed the measure with a vote of 5 to 1.
People caught with 20 grams or less of marijuana will face a lesser punishment.
"Today we have an opportunity to do what's right and what's good for the citizens in this community," Councilman Frank Reddick said.
The intent of the ordinance is to help young people who make mistakes.
"What we're attempting to do is put a stop to that pipeline to prison that affect so many of our young people, especially our young people of color," Councilwoman Lisa Montelione said.
Before the ordinance, people were charged with a misdemeanor if caught with 20 grams or less or marijuana. You could face jail time or the loss of your license.
Now, those caught with 20 grams or less of pot will instead pay a citation - almost like getting a traffic ticket.
"I don't feel what we did today is different than what a lot of cities are doing and as a country as we're moving nationally," Montelione said.
Mom of three Ellen Snelling said there should be a cap on the number of times someone is caught. She used her daughter's struggle with marijuana as an example.
"Arrest is not the end of the world. My daughter was arrested; she went to juvenile drug court. She's doing great today. She's drug free," Snelling said. "When somebody is using a substance that is addictive and can be abused, just paying a fine is not going to help them."
Under the measure, people who possess 20 grams or less of marijuana will be issued a $75 citation for the first offense and a $150 citation for the second offense. Citations will be $300 or more for additional offenses.
Charlie Miranda was the only council member to vote against the ordinance.Prepare for the merciless action and brutal hand-to-hand combat of FIST OF THE NORTH STAR: KEN’S RAGE.
Put your martial arts skills to the test against masses of bloodthirsty enemies in this no-holds-barred action brawler ripped from the pages of the popular manga classic. A ravaged Earth struggles to survive after a nuclear holocaust has left the world in ruins. Survivors band together in communities and villages, living off what little resources remain. In the wastelands beyond, vicious gangs prey on the survivors for their resources, or sometimes merely for sport.
A mysterious martial artist named Ken, a man with seven scars on his chest and the chosen successor of the legendary assassin’s art Hokuto Shinken (北斗神拳, The Divine Fist of the North Star) has sworn to protect the weak and innocent from the malicious gangs roaming the scorched planet.French photojournalist Mathias Depardon deported from Turkey after month in detention
GAZİANTEP
A French photojournalist detained in May by Turkish police while on assignment in the southeast has been deported, the French President’s Office and activist group Reporters sans Frontieres said on June 9.Mathias Depardon was detained on May 8 while on assignment for National Geographic magazine in Hasankeyf, in the southeastern province of Batman. He has been held since then at a deportation center in the southeastern province of Gaziantep, despite reports he would be deported.Reporters Without Borders (RSF) stated on Twitter that Depardon was on an airplane to Istanbul and would arrive in Paris in the evening.On the same day, the journalist saw his mother for the first time since he was detained in an “emotional” meeting.“It was very emotional for both sides. I saw my son crying because he was so moved,” Daniele Van de Lanotte told AFP outside the detention center after seeing her son, who turned 37 this week.“I am relieved to see him, it is quite a gift,” Van de Lanotte, 66, said. “He looked pretty good.”“We brought him many books, clothes and newspapers,” she added.Two weeks after he was detained, Depardon went on hunger strike, stopping almost a week later when he learned that a consular visit would be allowed.A French consul representative based in Ankara, Christophe Hemmings, was allowed an hour-long visit with Depardon, according to Deloire.The visit may have been granted due to a promise Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made to his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on May 25 during the NATO summit that he would “rapidly” look into Depardon’s case, Macron’s office said.The Turkish authorities have said he was detained over “propaganda for a terror group” - a reference to the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) - and this could lead to a judicial investigation.His mother was accompanied on her visit by Hemmings and RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire.“Mathias Depardon must be released now,” Deloire said.As web designers, it’s easy for us to become myopic and lose sight of the world of design outside of our own niche. However, one of the best ways to grow as a designer is to shift gears and look for inspiration in completely different areas. Today, let’s head south and ditch pixels in favor of an unexpected source of design inspiration – tequila bottles.
It’s easy to dismiss the appearance of a tequila bottle when a margarita beckons us, but the bottle design is definitely worth a second glance. A dedicated observance of Mexican heritage is visually apparent in the packaging of many types of tequila. Made from a plant called blue agave, this beverage is typically distilled in the higher elevations of the Mexican state of Jalisco. A proud Mexican spirit is apparent in the label and bottle design of a number of high-end tequilas.
Inspirational Tequila Bottle Design
Each of the bottle designs featured below integrates a unique aspect; try to think of how you could apply each to your digital designs.
Historical Artwork
Espolón, a premium quality brand, updated their label design in 2010 to represent the celebrated “real Mexico” culture. Ramon the rooster, an iconic symbol of national pride, can be found carrying one of the brave revolutionists on Espolón’s Tequila Blanco label, in the fight for independence from Spain.
The labels are illustrated using the traditional “Dia de los Muertos” (Day of the Dead) style filled with skeletons and skulls, common representations of this Mexican holiday. The use of black and white illustration allows the word Espolón, printed in a brightly colored sans-serif font, to stand out.
In addition to the illustrative nature of the label, the bottle itself is wide and low, setting it apart from other brands. This design decision is also functional in nature – the wide bottle gives the label more surface area, and therefore the prominence that it deserves.
The flawless artistic execution by the package designer makes for a memorable tequila bottle, but the true genius of Espolon’s packaging is the ability to tell an interesting visual story about Mexican history using only a small label as its canvas.
Metallurgy and Textures
Ancestra’s Single Barrel Añejo employs a different approach to its packaging. Although the shape of the hand blown glass bottle is fairly common, Ancestra produces metal “labels” for the front of their bottles in place of a typical adhesive label.
Metallurgy played a large part in Mexican history, dating back as far as 800 AD, so the use of such an important material on a tequila bottle seems appropriate.
The stamped letters give the packaging a tactile quality, while the reflective metal itself lends a glossy aspect to a usually matte surface. The metal tarnishes over time, a reference to the aged quality of the tequila inside. A decorative typeface and simple logo add a bit of ornamentation, offsetting the industrial feel of the hard substance.
The type of material is key here; the packaging would be very ordinary if the label were made of the usual adhesive paper.
Shape, Simplicity and Placement
The use of metallic elements continues with DeLeón Tequila, a relatively new addition to the market. DeLeón uses a combination of classic designs and modern lines in its packaging. Dia de los Muertos-style embellishment sits atop the vessel in the form of a metal bottle stopper, a nod to Mexico’s storied history. The textured aspect of the cap will not go unnoticed, as this is the part of the bottle that the consumer will touch the most.
The front of the bottle is sandblasted with the DeLeón logo, a gothic-style letterform, for a subtle yet memorable brand reminder that does not obstruct your view of the premium spirit inside. The black label on one side of the glass bottle mimics the style used on the ornate metal top – silver on black.
Familiar Artwork
In sharp contrast to the monochromatic DeLeon bottle, the 1800 Limited Edition Essential Artist Series emphasizes the colorful styles of artists such as Chad Shore, SteveOramA and Michelle Villasenor. Chad Shore’s design portrays a 60’s-style inspired woman with a blank face consisting of only a mouth. Although this design does not outwardly refer to Mexican history, the artist is known for drawing inspiration from his own community in Atlanta, Georgia.
Instead of attracting buyers using familiar Mexican imagery, 1800 has decided to take advantage of the fame and familiarity of these artists to lure potential customers toward their brand. It should be noted, however, that 1800 did not change the bottle shape for the limited edition series; by doing so, they were able to maintain a certain level of brand recognition.
Geometry, Ornamentation and Minimalism
Moving from a common household name to a lesser-known high-end tequila, Corzo’s sleek and modern bottle unites perfectly with its simple label. The bottle, developed by renowned perfume bottle designer Fabien Barou, was intended to reflect the strong rectangular shapes often found in modern Mexican architecture. To then contradict this appealing simplicity with an ornate label would seem ridiculous – the sophisticated serif font and bright lettering exist in harmony with the shapely, boxlike glass container.
Even the spout was taken into consideration, unlike many other brands. Corzo has created an offset flat spout with a hidden cork, supposedly shaped to enhance pouring accuracy. A centered spout would have been the easy solution; Corzo took the design a step further though, adding detail at the top of the bottle also.
Preeminence of Form, Sentimental Association
Kah Tequila makes an extreme reference to the Dia de Los Muertos, with an ornately decorated skull-shaped bottle. More than just a marketing ploy, it is inspired by the Calaveras (skulls made of sugar) used during the Dia de los Muertos rituals to symbolize death and rebirth. The Calaveras are given to family and friends who are invited to eat the sugar skulls, hence acknowledging that death is no more than passing from one life into the next. Because of this strong visual parallel, Kah Tequila invokes a powerful sentiment in those who are familiar with this tradition. For those who are not, the uniqueness of the bottle is enough to set it apart from its competitors.
Both the shape of the bottle and its ornate markings make for a memorable drinking experience.
Reference to Source
Milagro’s Unico Tequila stands out from the crowd with a tall, thin bottle and a hand-blown glass agave plant protruding up into the bottom of the vessel. The founders of the brand wanted to develop a product that would represent modern day Mexico City, a place filled with innovative architecture yet also built on a strong traditional foundation. The slim bottle towers over the others on the shelf, accomplishing a metaphorical height over the competition.
Unico, a super premium limited edition blend, even adheres to this juxtaposition of new and old – combining old world distilling traditions with modern innovation. Strategically placing the label at the top of the lanky bottle leads the eye upward from the hand blown glass agave plant all the way to the company’s logo at the very top. This unusual approach sets it apart from the rest of the pack. The label itself is not so much the draw here, as much as its placement and the bottle itself.
Color Appeal
Oro de Jalisco Reposado Rosse Tequila is housed in a uniquely shaped bottle as well; however, this one is short and squat with a shape reminiscent of a pear.
The use of the agave plant as decoration can be seen on this handmade bottle as well, only in this case it is used as a textural element rather than a sculptural one. By placing the agave plants around the bottom of the vessel, it becomes suggestive of a crystal decanter – probably a deliberate choice on the part of the designer.
Metallic text graces this label also, but this time a fancy gold script was the font of choice. The decorative script fits perfectly with the pink hue of the rosse. Speaking of color – the tequila is aged for eight months in French wine barrels, giving it the unique rose shade. Because the bottle is made of clear glass, the color of the tequila actually adds to the design of the overall product, giving it an interesting monochromatic feel.
Nostalgic Association
Here we have a hand-painted bottle, Clase Azul’s blue and white ceramic decanter designed by artist Tomas Saldivar. It takes three hours for local communities to craft each one, numbering them as they go. Because they are handmade, each decanter is slightly different; this offers an air of exclusivity to the brand, giving it that one-of-a-kind quality that consumers often crave these days.
Pottery is a prevalent part of Mexican history, dating back to ancient times. Using clay to create a vessel for Clase Azul’s tequila seems appropriate given the traditional manner in which the alcohol is distilled. In addition to the hand-painted elements, Clase Azul added a metallic agave medallion to the front of the bottle.
The logo, designed by renowned artist Leon Fernandez, lends a bit of modern flair to the overall design.
Conclusion
Although all of these tequilas are very different from one another, they are all in some way rooted in local culture or history. When we go to Photoshop to create our designs for the web, do we have this same awareness of culture and history? In our effort to appeal to a worldwide audience on the web, I think we too often overlook the rich and unique heritage that each of us brings to the table. How can you integrate culture and history into your designs?
There is a certain attention to detail apparent in all of the tequilas listed above; it is fascinating to compare the vastly different marketing techniques used by each company. The taste of the tequila plays a large part in the success of a brand, but sometimes the creativity of the packaging is just as critical. Imagine seeing each of these tequilas together on a liquor store shelf – which one would you pick?
I hope that the creative details on all of these bottles have helped to get your creative juices flowing, so you can approach your designs with some fresh inspiration. If you can create websites that exude as much character as these bottles, you’ll be in good shape!Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
DICE has revealed more details about the next iteration of its social tracking service Battlelog for Battlefield 4.
The |
Since the early 1970s, the federal government has tracked the academic achievement of American 17-year-olds.
The results have been essentially flat despite the fact that per-pupil spending has more than doubled, even after adjusting for inflation.
“ Overall, the correlation between spending and achievement is among the lowest I have ever seen in social-science research: 0.08 on a scale from 0 to 1. ”
Presented with this dismal national picture, many pundits and elected officials protest that their own states have done better.
The trouble is, there’s been no way to verify their claims. State-level test score averages don’t reach back that far, or, as with the SAT, they aren’t taken by a representative sample of all students.
But there’s a way over this hurdle: State-level academic trends can be estimated all the way back to 1972, and the results aren’t pretty. (See the charts that accompany this post).
The average state has seen a three-percent decline in math and verbal test scores, and a 120-percent increase in real spending per pupil.
The few states that improved their scores substantially tended to be those that were well below average to begin with.
Overall, the correlation between spending and achievement is among the lowest I have ever seen in social-science research: 0.08 on a scale from 0 to 1.
But what's the trick to measuring state academic trends when no ready-made test results exist? Back in 1993, a pair of clever education statisticians developed a method for adjusting SAT scores to account for differences in the test-taking population between states.
By extending and enhancing their technique, I was able to draw meaningful trends for all 50 states reaching back 40 years.
What those trends suggest is that every state in America has suffered an education productivity collapse.
Outcomes are generally stagnant or declining despite massive increases in expenditures. In the best cases, verbal and math skills have improved modestly, but those improvements have been outstripped by much more dramatic increases in real spending.
Perhaps even more telling, state achievement trends have proven to be just as unaffected by the rare multi-year periods of declining spending as they have been by periods of rising spending.
In other words, political and education officials keep making the same mistake over and over: spending more and more tax dollars without stopping to ask if it’s doing any good.
Even if taxpayers could afford to keep that up indefinitely, it would be better for America's children to pause for a moment, and look for alternatives — to see if there are other ways of running and funding schools that make better use of scarce education dollars.
As it happens, scores of studies have looked into this question over the past 25 years. They find that when educators’ fortunes rise and fall according to their schools’ thrift, schools are thriftier.
Entrepreneurial schools chosen by families and funded at least in part directly through tuition are consistently more efficient than bureaucratically run, tax-funded schools.
Can anyone honestly be surprised by this?
At the end of the day, educators are people, too. Unless education entrepreneurs are allowed to profit from finding better and more efficient ways to serve parents and students, taxpayers may as well get used to the status quo depicted in these charts.
Andrew J. Coulson directs the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom and is author of the study "State Education Trends: Academic Performance and Spending over the Past 40 Years."A spreadsheet is an interactive computer application for organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form.[1][2][3] Spreadsheets developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets.[4] The program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate and display a value based on the contents of other cells. A spreadsheet may also refer to one such electronic document.[5][6][7]
Spreadsheet users can adjust any stored value and observe the effects on calculated values. This makes the spreadsheet useful for "what-if" analysis since many cases can be rapidly investigated without manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheet software can have multiple interacting sheets, and can display data either as text and numerals, or in graphical form.
Besides performing basic arithmetic and mathematical functions, modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions for common financial and statistical operations. Such calculations as net present value or standard deviation can be applied to tabular data with a pre-programmed function in a formula. Spreadsheet programs also provide conditional expressions, functions to convert between text and numbers, and functions that operate on strings of text.
Spreadsheets have replaced paper-based systems throughout the business world. Although they were first developed for accounting or bookkeeping tasks, they now are used extensively in any context where tabular lists are built, sorted, and shared.
LANPAR, available in 1969,[8] was the first electronic spreadsheet on mainframe and time sharing computers. LANPAR was an acronym: LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random.[8] VisiCalc was the first electronic spreadsheet on a microcomputer,[9] and it helped turn the Apple II computer into a popular and widely used system. Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet when DOS was the dominant operating system.[10] Excel now has the largest market share on the Windows and Macintosh platforms.[11][12][13] A spreadsheet program is a standard feature of an office productivity suite; since the advent of web apps, office suites now also exist in web app form. Web based spreadsheets are a relatively new category.
Usage [ edit ]
A spreadsheet consists of a table of cells arranged into rows and columns and referred to by the X and Y locations. X locations, the columns, are normally represented by letters, "A", "B", "C", etc., while rows are normally represented by numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc. A single cell can be referred to by addressing its row and column, "C10" for instance. This electronic concept of cell references was first introduced in LANPAR (Language for Programming Arrays at Random) (co-invented by Rene Pardo and Remy Landau) and a variant used in VisiCalc, and known as "A1 notation". Additionally, spreadsheets have the concept of a range, a group of cells, normally contiguous. For instance, one can refer to the first ten cells in the first column with the range "A1:A10". LANPAR innovated forward referencing/natural order calculation which didn't re-appear until Lotus 123 and Microsoft's MultiPlan Version 2.
In modern spreadsheet applications, several spreadsheets, often known as worksheets or simply sheets, are gathered together to form a workbook. A workbook is physically represented by a file, containing all the data for the book, the sheets and the cells with the sheets. Worksheets are normally represented by tabs that flip between pages, each one containing one of the sheets, although Numbers changes this model significantly. Cells in a multi-sheet book add the sheet name to their reference, for instance, "Sheet 1!C10". Some systems extend this syntax to allow cell references to different workbooks.
Users interact with sheets primarily through the cells. A given cell can hold data by simply entering it in, or a formula, which is normally created by preceding the text with an equals sign. Data might include the string of text hello world, the number 5 or the date 16-Dec-91. A formula would begin with the equals sign, =5*3, but this would normally be invisible because the display shows the result of the calculation, 15 in this case, not the formula itself. This may lead to confusion in some cases.
The key feature of spreadsheets is the ability for a formula to refer to the contents of other cells, which may in turn be the result of a formula. To make such a formula, one simply replaces a number with a cell reference. For instance, the formula =5*C10 would produce the result of multiplying the value in cell C10 by the number 5. If C10 holds the value 3 the result will be 15. But C10 might also hold its own formula referring to other cells, and so on.
The ability to chain formulas together is what gives a spreadsheet its power. Many problems can be broken down into a series of individual mathematical steps, and these can be assigned to individual formulas in cells. Some of these formulas can apply to ranges as well, like the SUM function that adds up all the numbers within a range.
Spreadsheets share many principles and traits of databases, but spreadsheets and databases are not the same thing. A spreadsheet is essentially just one table, whereas a database is a collection of many tables with machine-readable semantic relationships between them. While it is true that a workbook that contains three sheets is indeed a file containing multiple tables that can interact with each other, it lacks the relational structure of a database. Spreadsheets and databases are interoperable—sheets can be imported into databases to become tables within them, and database queries can be exported into spreadsheets for further analysis.
A spreadsheet program is one of the main components of an office productivity suite, which usually also contains a word processor, a presentation program, and a database management system. Programs within a suite use similar commands for similar functions. Usually sharing data between the components is easier than with a non-integrated collection of functionally equivalent programs. This was particularly an advantage at a time when many personal computer systems used text-mode displays and commands, instead of a graphical user interface.
History [ edit ]
Paper spreadsheets [ edit ]
The word'spreadsheet' came from'spread' in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one large page. The compound word'spread-sheet' came to mean the format used to present book-keeping ledgers—with columns for categories of expenditures across the top, invoices listed down the left margin, and the amount of each payment in the cell where its row and column intersect—which were, traditionally, a "spread" across facing pages of a bound ledger (book for keeping accounting records) or on oversized sheets of paper (termed 'analysis paper') ruled into rows and columns in that format and approximately twice as wide as ordinary paper.[14]
Early implementations [ edit ]
Batch spreadsheet report generator [ edit ]
A batch "spreadsheet" is indistinguishable from a batch compiler with added input data, producing an output report, i.e., a 4GL or conventional, non-interactive, batch computer program. However, this concept of an electronic spreadsheet was outlined in the 1961 paper "Budgeting Models and System Simulation" by Richard Mattessich.[15] The subsequent work by Mattessich (1964a, Chpt. 9, Accounting and Analytical Methods) and its companion volume, Mattessich (1964b, Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program) applied computerized spreadsheets to accounting and budgeting systems (on mainframe computers programmed in FORTRAN IV). These batch Spreadsheets dealt primarily with the addition or subtraction of entire columns or rows (of input variables), rather than individual cells.
In 1962 this concept of the spreadsheet, called BCL for Business Computer Language, was implemented on an IBM 1130 and in 1963 was ported to an IBM 7040 by R. Brian Walsh at Marquette University, Wisconsin. This program was written in Fortran. Primitive timesharing was available on those machines. In 1968 BCL was ported by Walsh to the IBM 360/67 timesharing machine at Washington State University. It was used to assist in the teaching of finance to business students. Students were able to take information prepared by the professor and manipulate it to represent it and show ratios etc. In 1964, a book entitled Business Computer Language was written by Kimball, Stoffells and Walsh and both the book and program were copyrighted in 1966 and years later that copyright was renewed[16]
Applied Data Resources had a FORTRAN preprocessor called Empires.
In the late 1960s Xerox used BCL to develop a more sophisticated version for their timesharing system.
LANPAR spreadsheet compiler [ edit ]
A key invention in the development of electronic spreadsheets was made by Rene K. Pardo and Remy Landau, who filed in 1970 U.S. Patent 4,398,249 on a spreadsheet automatic natural order calculation algorithm. While the patent was initially rejected by the patent office as being a purely mathematical invention, following 12 years of appeals, Pardo and Landau won a landmark court case at the Predecessor Court of the Federal Circuit (CCPA), overturning the Patent Office in 1983 — establishing that "something does not cease to become patentable merely because the point of novelty is in an algorithm." However, in 1995 the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled the patent unenforceable.[17]
The actual software was called LANPAR — LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random.[18] This was conceived and entirely developed in the summer of 1969, following Pardo and Landau's recent graduation from Harvard University. Co-inventor Rene Pardo recalls that he felt that one manager at Bell Canada should not have to depend on programmers to program and modify budgeting forms, and he thought of letting users type out forms in any order and having an electronic computer calculate results in the right order ("Forward Referencing/Natural Order Calculation"). Pardo and Landau developed and implemented the software in 1969.[19]
LANPAR was used by Bell Canada, AT&T and the 18 operating telephone companies nationwide for their local and national budgeting operations. LANPAR was also used by General Motors. Its uniqueness was Pardo's co-invention incorporating forward referencing/natural order calculation (one of the first "non-procedural" computer languages)[20] as opposed to left-to-right, top to bottom sequence for calculating the results in each cell that was used by VisiCalc, SuperCalc, and the first version of MultiPlan. Without forward referencing/natural order calculation, the user had to manually recalculate the spreadsheet as many times as necessary until the values in all the cells had stopped changing. Forward referencing/natural order calculation by a compiler was the cornerstone functionality required for any spreadsheet to be practical and successful.
The LANPAR system was implemented on GE400 and Honeywell 6000 online timesharing systems, enabling users to program remotely via computer terminals and modems. Data could be entered dynamically either by paper tape, specific file access, on line, or even external data bases. Sophisticated mathematical expressions, including logical comparisons and "if/then" statements, could be used in any cell, and cells could be presented in any order.
Autoplan/Autotab spreadsheet programming language [ edit ]
In 1968, three former employees from the General Electric computer company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona set out to start their own software development house. A. Leroy Ellison, Harry N. Cantrell, and Russell E. Edwards found themselves doing a large number of calculations when making tables for the business plans that they were presenting to venture capitalists. They decided to save themselves a lot of effort and wrote a computer program that produced their tables for them. This program, originally conceived as a simple utility for their personal use, would turn out to be the first software product offered by the company that would become known as Capex Corporation. "AutoPlan" ran on GE’s Time-sharing service; afterward, a version that ran on IBM mainframes was introduced under the name AutoTab. (National CSS offered a similar product, CSSTAB, which had a moderate timesharing user base by the early 1970s. A major application was opinion research tabulation.)
AutoPlan/AutoTab was not a WYSIWYG interactive spreadsheet program, it was a simple scripting language for spreadsheets. The user defined the names and labels for the rows and columns, then the formulas that defined each row or column. In 1975, Autotab-II was advertised as extending the original to a maximum of "1,500 rows and columns, combined in any proportion the user requires..."[21]
IBM Financial Planning and Control System [ edit ]
The IBM Financial Planning and Control System was developed in 1976, by Brian Ingham at IBM Canada. It was implemented by IBM in at least 30 countries. It ran on an IBM mainframe and was among the first applications for financial planning developed with APL that completely hid the programming language from the end-user. Through IBM's VM operating system, it was among the first programs to auto-update each copy of the application as new versions were released. Users could specify simple mathematical relationships between rows and between columns. Compared to any contemporary alternatives, it could support very large spreadsheets. It loaded actual financial data drawn from the legacy batch system into each user's spreadsheet on a monthly basis. It was designed to optimize the power of APL through object kernels, increasing program efficiency by as much as 50 fold over traditional programming approaches.
APLDOT modeling language [ edit ]
An example of an early "industrial weight" spreadsheet was APLDOT, developed in 1976 at the United States Railway Association on an IBM 360/91, running at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD.[22] The application was used successfully for many years in developing such applications as financial and costing models for the US Congress and for Conrail. APLDOT was dubbed a "spreadsheet" because financial analysts and strategic planners used it to solve the same problems they addressed with paper spreadsheet pads.
VisiCalc [ edit ]
VisiCalc running on an Apple II
Because of Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston's implementation of VisiCalc on the Apple II in 1979 and the IBM PC in 1981, the spreadsheet concept became widely known in the late 1970s and early 1980s. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet that combined all essential features of modern spreadsheet applications (except for forward referencing/natural order recalculation), such as WYSIWYG interactive user interface, automatic recalculation, status and formula lines, range copying with relative and absolute references, formula building by selecting referenced cells. Unaware of LANPAR at the time PC World magazine called VisiCalc the first electronic spreadsheet.[23]
Bricklin has spoken of watching his university professor create a table of calculation results on a blackboard. When the professor found an error, he had to tediously erase and rewrite a number of sequential entries in the table, triggering Bricklin to think that he could replicate the process on a computer, using the blackboard as the model to view results of underlying formulas. His idea became VisiCalc, the first application that turned the personal computer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool.
VisiCalc went on to become the first "killer application",[24][25] an application that was so compelling, people would buy a particular computer just to use it. VisiCalc was in no small part responsible for the Apple II's success. The program was later ported to a number of other early computers, notably CP/M machines, the Atari 8-bit family and various Commodore platforms. Nevertheless, VisiCalc remains best known as an Apple II program.
SuperCalc [ edit ]
SuperCalc was a spreadsheet application published by Sorcim in 1980, and originally bundled (along with WordStar) as part of the CP/M software package included with the Osborne 1 portable computer. It quickly became the de facto standard spreadsheet for CP/M and was ported to MS-DOS in 1982.
Lotus 1-2-3 and other MS-DOS spreadsheets [ edit ]
The acceptance of the IBM PC following its introduction in August, 1981, began slowly, because most of the programs available for it were translations from other computer models. Things changed dramatically with the introduction of Lotus 1-2-3 in November, 1982, and release for sale in January, 1983. Since it was written especially for the IBM PC, it had good performance and became the killer app for this PC. Lotus 1-2-3 drove sales of the PC due to the improvements in speed and graphics compared to VisiCalc on the Apple II.[26]
Lotus 1-2-3, along with its competitor Borland Quattro, soon displaced VisiCalc. Lotus 1-2-3 was released on January 26, 1983, started outselling then-most-popular VisiCalc the very same year, and for a number of years was the leading spreadsheet for DOS.
Microsoft Excel [ edit ]
Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and then ported[27] it to Windows, with the first version being numbered 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) and released in November 1987. The Windows 3.x platforms of the early 1990s made it possible for Excel to take market share from Lotus. By the time Lotus responded with usable Windows products, Microsoft had begun to assemble their Office suite. By 1995, Excel was the market leader, edging out Lotus 1-2-3,[14] and in 2013, IBM discontinued Lotus 1-2-3 altogether.[28]
Web based spreadsheets [ edit ]
With the advent of advanced web technologies such as Ajax circa 2005, a new generation of online spreadsheets has emerged. Equipped with a rich Internet application user experience, the best web based online spreadsheets have many of the features seen in desktop spreadsheet applications. Some of them such as EditGrid, Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel Online, Smartsheet, or Zoho Sheet also have strong multi-user collaboration features or offer real time updates from remote sources such as stock prices and currency exchange rates.
Other spreadsheets [ edit ]
Gnumeric is a free, cross-platform spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. OpenOffice.org Calc and the closely related LibreOffice Calc (using the LGPL license) are free and open-source spreadsheets.
Notable current spreadsheet software:
Discontinued spreadsheet software:
Other products [ edit ]
A number of companies have attempted to break into the spreadsheet market with programs based on very different paradigms. Lotus introduced what is likely the most successful example, Lotus Improv, which saw some commercial success, notably in the financial world where its powerful data mining capabilities remain well respected to this day.
Spreadsheet 2000 attempted to dramatically simplify formula construction, but was generally not successful.
Concepts [ edit ]
The main concepts are those of a grid of cells, called a sheet, with either raw data, called values, or formulas in the cells. Formulas say how to mechanically compute new values from existing values. Values are generally numbers, but can also be pure text, dates, months, etc. Extensions of these concepts include logical spreadsheets. Various tools for programming sheets, visualizing data, remotely connecting sheets, displaying cells' dependencies, etc. are commonly provided.
Cells [ edit ]
A "cell" can be thought of as a box for holding data. A single cell is usually referenced by its column and row (C2 would represent the cell containing the value 30 in the example table below). Usually rows, representing the dependent variables, are referenced in decimal notation starting from 1, while columns representing the independent variables use 26-adic bijective numeration using the letters A-Z as numerals. Its physical size can usually be tailored to its content by dragging its height or width at box intersections (or for entire columns or rows by dragging the column- or row-headers).
My Spreadsheet A B C D 01 Sales 100000 30000 70000 02 Purchases 25490 30 200
An array of cells is called a sheet or worksheet. It is analogous to an array of variables in a conventional computer program (although certain unchanging values, once entered, could be considered, by the same analogy, constants). In most implementations, many worksheets may be located within a single spreadsheet. A worksheet is simply a subset of the spreadsheet divided for the sake of clarity. Functionally, the spreadsheet operates as a whole and all cells operate as global variables within the spreadsheet (each variable having'read' access only except its own containing cell).
A cell may contain a value or a formula, or it may simply be left empty. By convention, formulas usually begin with = sign.
Values [ edit ]
A value can be entered from the computer keyboard by directly typing into the cell itself. Alternatively, a value can be based on a formula (see below), which might perform a calculation, display the current date or time, or retrieve external data such as a stock quote or a database value.
The Spreadsheet Value Rule Computer scientist Alan Kay used the term value rule to summarize a spreadsheet's operation: a cell's value relies solely on the formula the user has typed into the cell.[33] The formula may rely on the value of other cells, but those cells are likewise restricted to user-entered data or formulas. There are no'side effects' to calculating a formula: the only output is to display the calculated result inside its occupying cell. There is no natural mechanism for permanently modifying the contents of a cell unless the user manually modifies the cell's contents. In the context of programming languages, this yields a limited form of first-order functional programming.[34]
Automatic recalculation [ edit ]
A standard of spreadsheets since the 1980s, this optional feature eliminates the need to manually request the spreadsheet program to recalculate values (nowadays typically the default option unless specifically'switched off' for large spreadsheets, usually to improve performance). Some earlier spreadsheets required a manual request to recalculate, since recalculation of large or complex spreadsheets often reduced data entry speed. Many modern spreadsheets still retain this option.
Recalculation generally requires that there are no circular dependencies in a spreadsheet. A dependency graph is a graph that has a vertex for each object to be updated, and an edge connecting two objects whenever one of them needs to be updated earlier than the other. Dependency graphs without circular dependencies form directed acyclic graphs, representations of partial orderings (in this case, across a spreadsheet) that can be relied upon to give a definite result.[35]
This feature refers to updating a cell's contents periodically with a value from an external source—such as a cell in a "remote" spreadsheet. For shared, Web-based spreadsheets, it applies to "immediately" updating cells another user has updated. All dependent cells must be updated also.
Locked cell [ edit ]
Once entered, selected cells (or the entire spreadsheet) can optionally be "locked" to prevent accidental overwriting. Typically this would apply to cells containing formulas but might be applicable to cells containing "constants" such as a kilogram/pounds conversion factor (2.20462262 to eight decimal places). Even though individual cells are marked as locked, the spreadsheet data are not protected until the feature is activated in the file preferences.
Data format [ edit ]
A cell or range can optionally be defined to specify how the value is displayed. The default display format is usually set by its initial content if not specifically previously set, so that for example "31/12/2007" or "31 Dec 2007" would default to the cell format of date. Similarly adding a % sign after a numeric value would tag the cell as a percentage cell format. The cell contents are not changed by this format, only the displayed value.
Some cell formats such as "numeric" or "currency" can also specify the number of decimal places.
This can allow invalid operations (such as doing multiplication on a cell containing a date), resulting in illogical results without an appropriate warning.
Cell formatting [ edit ]
Depending on the capability of the spreadsheet application, each cell (like its counterpart the "style" in a word processor) can be separately formatted using the attributes of either the content (point size, color, bold or italic) or the cell (border thickness, background shading, color). To aid the readability of a spreadsheet, cell formatting may be conditionally applied to data; for example, a negative number may be displayed in red.
A cell's formatting does not typically affect its content and depending on how cells are referenced or copied to other worksheets or applications, the formatting may not be carried with the content.
Named cells [ edit ]
x & y in 2 resembles Name Manager shows the definitions of x & y. Use of named column variablesin Microsoft Excel. Formula for y=xresembles Fortran, andshows the definitions of
In most implementations, a cell, or group of cells in a column or row, can be "named" enabling the user to refer to those cells by a name rather than by a grid reference. Names must be unique within the spreadsheet, but when using multiple sheets in a spreadsheet file, an identically named cell range on each sheet can be used if it is distinguished by adding the sheet name. One reason for this usage is for creating or running macros that repeat a command across many sheets. Another reason is that formulas with named variables are readily checked against the algebra they are intended to implement (they resemble Fortran expressions). Use of named variables and named functions also makes the spreadsheet structure more transparent.
Cell reference [ edit ]
In place of a named cell, an alternative approach is to use a cell (or grid) reference. Most cell references indicate another cell in the same spreadsheet, but a cell reference can also refer to a cell in a different sheet within the same spreadsheet, or (depending on the implementation) to a cell in another spreadsheet entirely, or to a value from a remote application.
A typical cell reference in "A1" style consists of one or two case-insensitive letters to identify the column (if there are up to 256 columns: A–Z and AA–IV) followed by a row number (e.g., in the range 1–65536). Either part can be relative (it changes when the formula it is in is moved or copied), or absolute (indicated with $ in front of the part concerned of the cell reference). The alternative "R1C1" reference style consists of the letter R, the row number, the letter C, and the column number; relative row or column numbers are indicated by enclosing the number in square brackets. Most current spreadsheets use the A1 style, some providing the R1C1 style as a compatibility option.
When the computer calculates a formula in one cell to update the displayed value of that cell, cell reference(s) in that cell, naming some other cell(s), cause the computer to fetch the value of the named cell(s).
A cell on the same "sheet" is usually addressed as:
=A1
A cell on a different sheet of the same spreadsheet is usually addressed as:
=SHEET2!A1 (that is; the first cell in sheet 2 of same spreadsheet).
Some spreadsheet implementations in Excel[permanent dead link] allow a cell references to another spreadsheet (not the current open and active file) on the same computer or a local network. It may also refer to a cell in another open and active spreadsheet on the same computer or network that is defined as shareable. These references contain the complete filename, such as:
='C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My spreadsheets\[main sheet]Sheet1!A1
In a spreadsheet, references to cells automatically update when new rows or columns are inserted or deleted. Care must be taken, however, when adding a row immediately before a set of column totals to ensure that the totals reflect the additional rows values—which they often do not.
A circular reference occurs when the formula in one cell refers—directly, or indirectly through a chain of cell references—to another cell that refers back to the first cell. Many common errors cause circular references. However, some valid techniques use circular references. These techniques, after many spreadsheet recalculations, (usually) converge on the correct values for those cells.
Cell ranges [ edit ]
Likewise, instead of using a named range of cells, a range reference can be used. Reference to a range of cells is typically of the form (A1:A6), which specifies all the cells in the range A1 through to A6. A formula such as "=SUM(A1:A6)" would add all the cells specified and put the result in the cell containing the formula itself.
Sheets [ edit ]
In the earliest spreadsheets, cells were a simple two-dimensional grid. Over time, the model has expanded to include a third dimension, and in some cases a series of named grids, called sheets. The most advanced examples allow inversion and rotation operations which can slice and project the data set in various ways.
Formulas [ edit ]
A column are entered (10, 20, 30), and the remainder of cells are formulas. Formulas in the B column multiply values from the A column using relative references, and the formula in B4 uses the SUM() function to find the B1:B3 range. Animation of a simple spreadsheet that multiplies values in the left column by 2, then sums the calculated values from the right column to the bottom-most cell. In this example, only the values in thecolumn are entered (10, 20, 30), and the remainder of cells are formulas. Formulas in thecolumn multiply values from the A column using relative references, and the formula inuses thefunction to find the sum of values in therange.
A formula identifies the calculation needed to place the result in the cell it is contained within. A cell containing a formula therefore has two display components; the formula itself and the resulting value. The formula is normally only shown when the cell is selected by "clicking" the mouse over a particular cell; otherwise it contains the result of the calculation.
A formula assigns values to a cell or range of cells, and typically has the format:
=expression
where the expression consists of:
values, such as 2, 9.14 or 6.67E-11 ;
, or ; references to other cells, such as, e.g., A1 for a single cell or B1:B3 for a range;
for a single cell or for a range; arithmetic operators, such as +, -, *, /, and others;
,,,, and others; relational operators, such as >=, <, and others; and,
,, and others; and, functions, such as SUM(), TAN(), and many others.
When a cell contains a formula, it often contains references to other cells. Such a cell reference is a type of variable. Its value is the value of the referenced cell or some derivation of it. If that cell in turn references other cells, the value depends on the values of those. References can be relative (e.g., A1, or B1:B3 ), absolute (e.g., $A$1, or $B$1:$B$3 ) or mixed row– or column-wise absolute/relative (e.g., $A1 is column-wise absolute and A$1 is row-wise absolute).
The available options for valid formulas depends on the particular spreadsheet implementation but, in general, most arithmetic operations and quite complex nested conditional operations can be performed by most of today's commercial spreadsheets. Modern implementations also offer functions to access custom-build functions, remote data, and applications.
A formula may contain a condition (or nested conditions)—with or without an actual calculation—and is sometimes used purely to identify and highlight errors. In the example below, it is assumed the sum of a column of percentages (A1 through A6) is tested for validity and an explicit message put into the adjacent right-hand cell.
=IF(SUM(A1:A6) > 100, "More than 100%", SUM(A1:A6))
Further examples:
=IF(AND(A1<>"",B1<>""),A1/B1,"") means that if both cells A1 and B1 are not <> empty "", then divide A1 by B1 and display, other do not display anything. =IF(AND(A1<>"",B1<>""),IF(B1<>0,A1/B1,"Division by zero"),"") means that if cells A1 and B1 are not empty, and B1 is not zero, then divide A1 by B1, if B1 is zero, then display "Division by zero", and do not display anything if either A1 and B1 are empty. =IF(OR(A1<>"",B1<>""),"Either A1 or B1 show text","") means to display the text if either cells A1 or B1 are not empty.
The best way to build up conditional statements is step by step composing followed by trial and error testing and refining code.
A spreadsheet does not, in fact, have to contain any formulas at all, in which case it could be considered merely a collection of data arranged in rows and columns (a database) like a calendar, timetable or simple list. Because of its ease of use, formatting and hyperlinking capabilities, many spreadsheets are used solely for this purpose.
Functions [ edit ]
Spreadsheets usually contain a number of supplied functions, such as arithmetic operations (for example, summations, averages and so forth), trigonometric functions, statistical functions, and so forth. In addition there is often a provision for user-defined functions. In Microsoft Excel these functions are defined using Visual Basic for Applications in the supplied Visual Basic editor, and such functions are automatically accessible on the worksheet. In addition, programs can be written that pull information from the worksheet, perform some calculations, and report the results back to the worksheet. In the figure, the name sq is user-assigned, and function sq is introduced using the Visual Basic editor supplied with Excel. Name Manager displays the spreadsheet definitions of named variables x & y.
Subroutines [ edit ]
x into y. Subroutine in Microsoft Excel writes values calculated usinginto
Functions themselves cannot write into the worksheet, but simply return their evaluation. However, in Microsoft Excel, subroutines can write values or text found within the subroutine directly to the spreadsheet. The figure shows the Visual Basic code for a subroutine that reads each member of the named column variable x, calculates its square, and writes this value into the corresponding element of named column variable y. The y column contains no formula because its values are calculated in the subroutine, not on the spreadsheet, and simply are written in.
Remote spreadsheet [ edit ]
Whenever a reference is made to a cell or group of cells that are not located within the current physical spreadsheet file, it is considered as accessing a "remote" spreadsheet. The contents of the referenced cell may be accessed either on first reference with a manual update or more recently in the case of web based spreadsheets, as a near real time value with a specified automatic refresh interval.
Charts [ edit ]
Graph made using Microsoft Excel
Many spreadsheet applications permit charts, graphs or histograms to be generated from specified groups of cells that are dynamically re-built as cell contents change. The generated graphic component can either be embedded within the current sheet or added as a separate object.
Multi-dimensional spreadsheets [ edit ]
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, first Javelin Software and Lotus Improv appeared. Unlike models in a conventional spreadsheet, they utilized models built on objects called variables, not on data in cells of a report. These multi-dimensional spreadsheets enabled viewing data and algorithms in various self-documenting ways, including simultaneous multiple synchronized views. For example, users of Javelin could move through the connections between variables on a diagram while seeing the logical roots |
is really solvable. This narrow focus can certainly make Amy seem a little, well, single-minded.
I recently started using Amy, which is currently free, to help schedule some of my own meetings, and it works quite well for basic calendar logistics. I can include Amy on an e-mail to someone and ask that she help figure out when might be the best time to meet up, or I can send a quick e-mail asking Amy to change the time or location of a meeting. I’ve tried all sorts of conversational styles, and Amy isn’t fazed. And if the software isn’t sure about the location of a venue or something else, it will politely ask for clarification.
I tried asking Amy to remind a colleague of mine, Mike, to bring his laptop to a meeting we’d already set up. After a few minutes, she politely told me to go ask him myself. Amy’s reply read:
It doesn’t look like this message is related to scheduling a meeting. I try to only send messages that relate to scheduling your meetings so your guests feel the urgency and importance when an email comes from me. I think your message would have a stronger impact if you sent it directly to the guest.
Fair enough, but is such a basic assistant all that useful? Setting up meetings is clearly a big headache for certain people, but not for everyone. X.ai says it plans to include more sophisticated capabilities in the future, but the inherent difficulty of mastering conversation through software may work against that.
Chris Dyer, an assistant professor of computer science specializing in natural language processing at Carnegie Mellon University, says researchers have tried for some time to build software agents capable of conversing about a narrow subject.“There’s a general feeling in the field that by finding well-circumscribed domains, with rules that can be well captured, fairly effectively, we might make some real progress,” he told me.
But Dyer noted that narrowing the topic of conversation too much can significantly lower an AI’s apparent IQ. “The risk is that it’s hard to find problems in natural language that really are simple enough to make progress on but not too simple, such that they’re kind of ‘toy’ problems,” he said. “And I think there really is a feeling that we haven’t found those quite yet.”
Although I’m far from convinced that Amy will ever be an indispensible tool, I plan to keep using the software for a while longer. Perhaps the remaining limitations of such software agents could at least provide a nice excuse for my own tardiness: if I ever stand you up, you’ll know whom to blame.The legendary fight between two masters, Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man is finally brought to the screen at the tail end of summer 2017.
The pairing of the two masters is one that has been discussed for decades and has never seen a proper translation to the screen. Sadly, for movie goers and fans of Mr. Lee, the subject matter far outweighs the quality of a movie that does little justice for either martial artist and their dueling views on how their art should have been treated. With almost no back story, we are given a Bruce Lee that is presented as an arrogant braggart with a chip on his shoulder and a Wong that throws his old ways to the wind at the first sign of trouble. For a story that's been a point of discussion for years, Birth of the Dragon plays like a low budget made for television or streaming release that needed a much better script treatment. This would have been perfect for Netflix.
I won't lie. I didn't know much about this topic before convincing myself to spend ninety minutes in the theater. However, the real life story was something that piqued my interest. A Shaolin master versus a pre-Hollywood Bruce Lee is an appealing idea that should make for great storytelling and film making. Using a lackluster plot that spends way too much time focused on made up side characters and a romanticized tale of forbidden love, Birth of the Dragon is an elongated soap opera episode that just so happens to feature a couple less than stellar fight sequences. Focusing mostly on a Caucasian character that's fallen in love with an Asian damsel in distress, the entire idea of the showdown between Wong and Lee is straight up wasted for the purpose of creating goofy melodrama and (even worse) a final battle between them and a group of gangsters. Instead of focusing on realism, they've instead created a Bruce Lee movie inside a Bruce Lee movie and it feels dumb.
You will never tell me I look silly in yellow AGAIN!
The infamous martial arts battle between Lee and Wong gets completely sidestepped, although some of the visuals that are used actually look rather cool. Philip Ng doesn't quite look the part of Lee, but he does a damn fine job of grasping the man's swagger, facial expressions, mannerisms, and vocal inflections. He's not a great actor by any stretch. Yet, he does his best to fulfill the contract of playing Bruce Lee to the best of his ability. Yu Xia is the best actor of the bunch, giving the audience a great representation of the confined lifestyle that a monk must lead. Xia is omnipresent in his performance, actually showing up each and every actor around him. He delivers a confidence and self control that plays extremely well for the screen.
So, if you're a Bruce Lee enthusiast or a potential die hard fan, there are some things here for you to like. The fights aren't too drawn out and definitely show the variance between the styles these guys used. The filming here is standard. Nothing really stands out. There's not much in the way of audio design. And the script focuses way too much on characters that shouldn't have even been a part of this movie. Overall, it's a decent little end of summer Kung Fu flick. But, it's not the history lesson that was potentially expected. This is just another piece of revisionist historical work that needed a strong kick to the writer's face that put this thing together. Mediocre.
Share the review before we kick your ass.
Score
-CGIt would be fair to say, in a spirit of understatement, that the First World War served as the occasion for a certain amount of poetry. Catherine W. Reilly, in her groundbreaking English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography (1978), lists the works of thousands of different poets — both combatants and civilians alike — that were written in response to the war. While not all of them have achieved anything like fame, it remains the case that soldier-poets like Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg and Rupert Brooke remain (in the British imagination, at least) some of the war’s most exemplary and iconic participants.
The war, the late historian Richard Holmes lamented, often first enters our minds not as history, but rather as literature. “One of the problems with trying to write about [the war],” he continues, “is that most people have already read Owen and Sassoon, Barker and Faulks, before you get to them” (Tommy xvii). The poets, in particular, are seen as providing a necessary and unmediated conduit between the civilian reader (especially one now separated from the war by an intervening century) and the truth of the war experience. It was this feature that caused Virginia Woolf to heap such acclaim upon Sassoon’s The Old Huntsman and Other Poems in a review in 1917; the unfolding poems, she writes, have
…such loathing, such hatred [accumulated] behind them that we say to ourselves “Yes, this is going on; and we are sitting here watching it,” with a new shock of surprise, with an uneasy desire to leave our place in the audience, which is a tribute to Mr. Sassoon’s power as a realist.
All of this is very conventional, anyway, when it comes to the status now enjoyed by the war’s poetry. Wilfred Owen’s declaration that he wrote of the pity of war, and that the poetry was in the pity, seems to have secured for himself and his poetical colleagues a sort of regard that is difficult to challenge. There is in such searing, open, often brutal poems both a challenge and a warning; one reads them with the sense that they are somehow dangerous, and that they ought to be.
But what happens when someone else takes a crack at it?
I wish to say at once that I have nothing against Sir William Watson (1858-1935). He was a popular and oft-anthologized poet in his time, and on two occasions was seriously considered for the post of Poet Laureate. He had personal demons, and he fought them; he had hard politics, and he expressed them; he had a love for an older style, and wrung out every last drop of it that he could in producing his own works.
Watson was knighted in 1917 — possibly at the urging of David Lloyd George, about whom Watson had written a number of stirringly laudatory poems. One such poem appeared as the title piece in Watson’s The Man Who Saw: and Other Poems Arising Out of the War, which had come out earlier the same year. It’s an astounding piece; a short selection follows to give you a taste of the thing:
…then indeed shall Time
Add yet another name to to those the world
Salutes with an obeisance of the soul:
The name of him, the man of Celtic blood,
Whom Powers Unknown, in a divine caprice,
Chose and did make their instrument, wherewith
To save the Saxon; the man all eye and hand,
The man who saw, and grasped, and gripped, and held.
It’s sensational. John Collings Squire, in a short essay on the collection, drily notes that “this must certainly be the most eulogistic poem ever written about a British politician.”
But it isn’t.
Later in the same volume, Watson offers up a sonnet called “The Three Alfreds.” A footnote somewhat surprisingly declares that “Friends have urged the author not to republish this sonnet. He does so because he believes it to be the truth.”
And so:
Three Alfreds let us honour. Him who drove
His foes before the tempest of his blade
At Ethandune — him first, the all-glorious Shade,
The care-crowned King whose host with Guthrum strove.
Next — though a thousand years asunder clove
These twain — a lord of realms serenely swayed;
Victoria’s golden warbler, him who made
Verse such as Virgil for Augustus wove.
Last — neither king nor bard, but just a man
Who, in the very whirlwind of our woe,
From midnight till the laggard dawn began,
Cried ceaseless, “Give us shells — more shells,” and so
Saved England; saved her not less truly than
Her hero of heroes saved her long ago.
The “Three Alfreds” are King Alfred the Great, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Alfred Harmsworth — that is, Lord Northcliffe, the newspaper baron and propagandist. I have a small portrait of Northcliffe on my desk even as I write this, but even I must concede that it is possible to go too far.
Now, I say “worst” light-heartedly; Watson’s work is very far from the most appalling of the war, and its content is certainly skillfully conveyed even as it astounds. Given the many different metrics that could reasonably be applied, though, I am moved to ask:
Do you have a candidate for a worse poem? What would it be?BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—It’s generally not a good sign for one side or the other when the college basketball coaches begin walking toward each other with the last several seconds running off the clock. Tuesday night at Assembly Hall, Indiana’s Tom Crean and North Carolina’s Roy Williams might as well have executed their ritual handshake with 15:14 left to play.
It took 4 minutes, 46 seconds for IU’s Hoosiers to destroy any last fading notion Carolina had of even being competitive in this game. Indiana led the game by nine points when that sequence began, by 22 when it was finished. We all might as well have gone home at that point. At least no one got hurt in what was left of the game, except the feelings of those UNC fans who ultimately saw their team absorb an 83-59 defeat.
The 286 seconds in question represented only 11.9 percent of the basketball played by the Hoosiers and Heels, and yet they contained the entirety of the difference between the teams—and also a loud declaration of what might be possible for the No. 1-ranked Indiana squad.
Which is to say: Anything.
At the one end, Crean had Indiana pressing hard into North Carolina wings Dexter Strickland and Reggie Bullock, robbing them of any room to maneuver. He sicced 6-6 Will Sheehey on 6-9 pro prospect James Michael McAdoo, who had much room to operate in the first half but suddenly couldn’t access the ball because Sheehey was fronting him in the post and refusing to relent.
At the other end, the Hoosiers relaxed an offense that had been a tad hyperactive in the first 20 minutes—OK, maybe the first 21 minutes, because IU missed four straight to open the second half—and began cycling toward higher-quality shots. They made four of their next six attempts, including a couple of 3-pointers from senior guard Jordan Hulls, as part of their game-breaking 13-0 run.
“The biggest thing was the energy,” IU star center Cody Zeller said. “We just had to keep up the energy, keep pushing it in transition and keep getting after them on defense. We were hoping they’d start missing shots.... That was the biggest thing coming out of the second half: Keep the energy up, keep it where it was at.”
Sheehey was such an integral part of that. He might not even have been on the floor if Crean had fielded his lineup by rote, as so many coaches do: Same starters in the second half as the first. We see this in almost every game. Crean said he liked how Sheehey had defended McAdoo in the final minutes before the break and wanted to see more of it. And surely he did.
McAdoo was 4-of-10 in the first half for 10 points. He was shut out from there on, missing all five attempts, too often having to settle for challenged turnaround jumpers.
“I think the matchup on McAdoo was huge,” Crean said. “Because we told our team they live for that break, but the heart of their team is the post-up, and we needed to do a better job on the post-up. We let them get a little comfortable in the first half.
“Just the fact that Will Sheehey did a phenomenal job on him. We gave up a couple boards, but Will was fighting him. Will was making it hard for him to make catches. We knew they were going to need to go to him to get going.”
Crean remembered having seen North Carolina recover from too many big deficits to feel content with a nine-point edge at halftime. The Tar Heels rallied from 19 down in the 2011 ACC Tournament against Miami. There was the night in 2008 when they wiped out an 11-point Clemson lead in the final three minutes and beat the Tigers in double-overtime. He knew the Tar Heels had to be put far behind for there to be any sense of comfort.
As the Hoosiers pursued that insurmountable lead, they revealed so much of what separates them from other NCAA championship contenders: No other team has such a vast array of capable scorers and such a variety.
There is Hulls’ astonishing accuracy as a deep shooter and surprising inventiveness from closer to the goal. There is Victor Oladipo’s athletic finishing and touch on open 3-pointers. Sheehey has deep range and a high release that makes it hard to stop his pull-up game. Freshman point guard Yogi Ferrell is a dynamic penetrator who shot poorly against the Tar Heels because he took some poor shots, but he still passed for six assists and committed only one turnover.
The most obvious weapon is Zeller, who is nearly 7 feet tall but runs as eagerly into a fast break as any 6-5 wing. He only now is playing healthy, having gained back the nine pounds he lost because of a recent illness. He scored 20 points, grabbed eight rebounds and blocked four shots Tuesday night.
The Hoosiers have so much firepower they can beat one of the nation’s most esteemed programs by 24 on a night when their No. 2 scorer, Christian Watford, shoots 1-of-9 and scores two points.
“The thing I like about them is they are really a team,” Williams said. “They don’t have one guy that beats you up; they beat you up in so many different ways.”
One of those ways, at last, is defense. A year ago IU ranked only 66th among Division I teams in defensive efficiency stats compiled by Kenpom.com. It is, of course, early, but through six games (entering Tuesday’s win) the Hoosiers were seventh in that category, and they did nothing to derail their case in holding the Tar Heels to 37.7 percent shooting, including 10-of-36 in the second half, 0-of-10 during the decisive run.
“I like how hard they play on the defensive end of the floor,” Williams said. “We are not experienced enough or good enough or well-coached enough to get the ball inside and try to hurt them inside.
“They have a little bit of everything. I don’t know that you could say that they have one thing that’s a weakness.”
Williams saw this over and over again, through 40 minutes of basketball. But he saw all he needed to see in that one short stretch of carnage.When Dayna Morales, a restaurant server in New Jersey and former U.S. Marine, claimed a family wrote her a hateful note on a receipt, outrage ensued.
"I'm sorry but I cannot tip because I do not agree with your lifestyle and how you live your life," read the note. Morales, who is gay, posted a photo of the receipt on Facebook.
Morales went on news programs and showed off the receipt with the message. But now, the alleged customers have come forward saying they left no note and did leave the waitress a tip. The note, they claim, is a fake, according to NBC New York.
The family, which wished to remain anonymous, told NBC New York it left Morales a $18 tip. The customers reportedly provided a copy of the receipt as proof as well as a credit card statement "which appears to indicate their card was charged for the meal plus the tip, for a total of $111.55."
The wife told NBC New York that she is left-handed and couldn't have made the slash in the tip section of the receipt. She says it appears like it was made from the right.
"We've never not left a tip when someone gave good service, and we would never leave a note like that," the wife told NBC New York.
The husband said he didn't vote for Chris Christie because of the governor's lack of support for gay marriage.
"Never would a message like that come from us," he said.
Faking a note, he added, is "a disgusting thing to do."
"The restaurant profits from this; obviously Dayna profits from this. It's fraud. It's a scam," he said.
Morales told NBC New York that she didn't receive a tip and repeated that the handwriting on the tip was not hers. The restaurant told NBC New York it is conducting an internal investigation into the incident.You’d think that the world’s biggest smartphone maker is having a blast with the launch of devices like the Galaxy S5, but that’s actually far from the truth. Samsung’s quarter results are in, and instead of making its investors happy, it turns out that the company is actually doing as bad as it had forecasted. Samsung warned its investors that the “weak demand” for smartphones and its increase in marketing expenses could hit the company hard, and so it did.
Samsung announced profits of $6.1 billion (6.25 trillion won) compared to its $6.96 billion (7.7 trillion won) of last year, and which would be its lowest quarterly profit in two years. Historically Samsung’s phone business has been a major contributor to its revenue, but the company admits that the Galaxy S5 hasn’t been as hot as expected, and that’s particularly odd since the iPhone continues to sell like hotcakes, and the entry-level sector was being dominated by companies like Huawei and Lenovo last quarter.
Samsung is also forecasting these same results for next quarter. The company does see a sales hump with the launch of devices like the Galaxy Note 4, but it’s not expecting the same level of success that it has found in previous years. Rumors of a bigger iPhone at times when the smaller one is doing just fine is a key indicator for Samsung’s need to worry.
Do you think it’s time for Samsung to reinvent its smartphone designs, or what would you suggest Samsung do to regain its popularity? Leave us your thoughts in the comments.
Source: Samsung
Via: EngadgetPhoto via Flickr user Kim
The humble onion is a very versatile ingredient, indeed. Onions can make you laugh, make you cry, or, make you lose your fucking mind, which is what allegedly happened to a man eating at All India buffet in Pittsburgh on Wednesday night.
According to a police report obtained by local news outlet Action 4 News, Yuba Raj Sharma got into a heated argument with restaurant staff "because they put onions in his food." And while it would be wrong to blame everything on the onions in this case—Sharma was visibly "drunk" according to the criminal complaint—the vegetable does appear to be at the root (pardon the pun) of a confrontation that concluded in serious charges.
READ MORE: UberEats Driver Shoots Up Restaurant in Argument Over Pizza-Warming Bags
The presence of onions in his food reportedly made Sharma lose his shit, and he threatened to shoot the owner of All India, who was trying to defuse the situation. After gesturing that he had a firearm in his pants, Sharma reportedly pulled down his pants and revealed... well... not a gun.
Sharma allegedly "pulled down his pants exposing his genitals," after the staff called 911, according to the report, and things only escalated when police finally arrived. The owner of All India claimed that they he did not want to pursue criminal charges, but eventually changed his mind when Sharma "continued to shout back toward the restaurant" and ignore police commands, becoming "dead weight" as police dragged him to their cruiser.
Sharma has been charged with misdemeanor counts of terroristic threats, indecent exposure, and resisting arrest, and a summary count of public drunkenness. Much like an onion, the more layers you peel back on this story, the more you want to cry.Germany and a handful of other European states will be allowed to keep their temporary border controls for another three months, the European Union ruled on Friday.
Along with Austria, Denmark, Sweden and non-EU Norway, Germany reimposed partial border controls last year to stem the flow of undocumented migrants travelling through Europe. All the countries are members of the free-travel Schengen area but have been allowed by the EU to introduce border checks along the migrant route as an exceptional measure.
The five countries were scheduled to lift the border checks on November 15. However, the European Council, made up of the heads of the 28 EU member states, approved the proposal put forward by the European Commission. It said the temporary checks are allowed to be extended by "at most three months."
After mid-February, the countries should reinstate unrestricted freedom to travel as soon as possible, said Slovak Interior Minister Robert Kalinak. Slovakia currently holds the rotating presidency in the European Council.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière had advocated prolonging border controls on Germany's border to Austria. In October, he explained that controls could only be loosened when the EU's external border had been fully secured or when the member states had sufficient resources to accommodate all refugees in Europe.
Germany was the first EU member state to reimpose border controls along its border with Austria in September 2015.
Countries in the Schengen Agreement (click to enlarge)
Extension met with backlash
Not all countries welcomed the proposal. Hungary, Slovenia and Greece voted against the extension, while Bulgaria and Cyprus abstained.
The Greek government argued that its own border was sufficiently controlled, making the chance of more migrants crossing Greece into EU states minimal. EU home affairs commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos advised against prolonging the controls once again after mid-February.
Hungary warned that prolonging the internal controls could lead to a "breakdown of the Schengen system." Rather than internal borders, Hungarian officials said the EU should focus on its external border.
The Schengen area incorporates 26 countries, including non-EU members Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. People and goods can normally travel freely without border checks between states that have signed on to the agreement.
dm/rc (Reuters, dpa)Clouds play an important role in Earth’s global climate, both by reflecting the Sun’s radiation back out into space and by holding in thermal radiation. The extent to which clouds affect climate, however, depends on the amount, height, and opacity of the clouds.
Generally, low-level clouds reflect a lot of solar radiation but trap almost no thermal radiation, so they cool the climate. Higher-up, wispy cirrus clouds trap more thermal radiation than whatever solar radiation they reflect back out, whereas thicker clouds reflect at least as much solar radiation as whatever thermal radiation they hold in, such that high-level clouds can either warm or cool the climate system.
Cloud properties change in response to changes in the environment, such as warming air or sea surface temperature, creating a feedback loop. Cloud feedbacks vary greatly among climate models—in fact, this variation is the dominant reason why models disagree about how much global warming will occur in response to elevated carbon dioxide. So it is crucial for scientists to make progress constraining it.
In a recent study Zhou et al. examined how clouds respond to warming temperatures in different regions in order to better understand how and why the strength of global cloud feedback is influenced by the spatial pattern of surface warming. The researchers used the Community Earth System Model (CESM) to conduct an extensive series of experiments, in which sea surface temperatures in individual patches of the ocean experience warming. From there, they calculated how the climate responds to these changes.
They found that when warming is applied to the warmest regions of the tropics where air ascends, low-level clouds increase in remote regions where air descends, thereby cooling Earth. On the other hand, when warming is applied to colder regions, low-level clouds decrease locally, and the planet is heated. The overall cloud feedback strength thus depends sensitively on how temperature changes in each region.
This study provides a unique, new approach to understand how clouds respond to regional surface temperature changes, both locally and remotely. The approach yields key insights into how and why the global cloud feedback depends on warming patterns. (Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (JAMES), https://doi.org/10.1002/2017MS001096, 2017)
—Sarah Witman, Freelance WriterPolice in the UK are allowed to question anyone entering/leaving the country about “terrorism” – without the right to silence. We have spoken to a number of anarchists who have been questioned under these powers, known as “Schedule 7”. Because of a lack of information on the law, most of those stopped have given more information than they had to. This includes people from outside of the UK who have not even heard of “Schedule 7” before. For this reason, we strongly recommend any anarchists travelling to/from the UK read our briefing beforehand – https://bristolabc.wordpress.com/defendant-solidarity/resources-and-advice/schedule-7/.
If you have been questioned under “Schedule 7”, please contact the Network for Police Monitoring, so they can keep track of how the police are using this power. Website: https://netpol.org; Email: info (at) netpol.org
AdvertisementsIf you’ve been paying attention to baseball during the past month, you probably know that J.D. Martinez has been on a pretty good run. That might be an understatement: he’s hit 15 home runs in the past 31 days, four more than the next-best mark (Albert Pujols). If home runs aren’t your thing, he’s also first in wRC+, wOBA, and ISO over that span. Martinez has been out of his mind recently, and he’s been out of his mind in an even more extreme way than we’re used to seeing from him.
Let’s start with a few names. Below is the complete list of right-handed hitters who have hit a home run to either center field or right field at Comerica Park this season:
It’s not an extensive list, because hitting home runs to those areas of Comerica Park is difficult if you’re right handed: the right-field fence is 11 feet tall once you get toward right center, and center field is, quite simply, where fly balls go to die. The names on this list have to possess a lot of raw power, obviously. Exhibit A, Martinez’ first hit of the season:
If we take out the players on the list who have only hit one such home run, we’re unsurprisingly left with only players on the Tigers: Castellanos has two such homers, Cabrera has four, and Martinez? He has ten. Nine of those Martinez home runs have gone to right field. In other terms, he’s accounted for over 55% of the opposite-field homers by righties at Comerica.
This confirms what we’ve been witnessing for just over the past calendar year: J.D. Martinez has huge power to the opposite field. That’s impressive because it’s rare, and also because it’s usually not a fluke. Just for fun, let’s look at the leaders in ISO to the opposite field this season:
Player Oppo ISO J.D. Martinez.644 Bryce Harper.548 Joey Votto.436 Ryan Braun.403 Russell Martin.400 David Freese.393 Mitch Moreland.378 Paul Goldschmidt.371 Luis Valbuena.367 Adam Lind.353
Lots of great names on this list. At number two, we have Bryce Harper, who is having a ridiculous year when going to the opposite field, and then we have Martinez almost 100 points above him. To put this in perspective, Stephen Vogt leads all left-handed hitters with an ISO of.554 to the pull side in 2015. Martinez, a righty, has been 90 points better than the most powerful pull lefty when hitting to that area of the park.
As Jeff laid out last September, the really unique thing about Martinez is not just that he has extreme power to right field, but that he couples it with extreme power to the pull side. Not many hitters exhibit that sort of tendency, and no one did it to the extent that Martinez did last year. How are his pull/opposite splits looking compared to last year? Take a look:
Pull wRC+ Center wRC+ Oppo wRC+ 2014 260 183 291 2015 252 189 283
Last year, we marveled at the adjustments Martinez made to facilitate a true breakout, one that pushed him from a Rule 5 pick to a ceiling as one of the better power hitters in the majors. Like any single-season breakout, we wanted to see his new skills carry to the next season, and so far, they have. The Tigers’ right fielder has now done something absurd for almost a season and a half, which is post opposite-field production greater than an already wildly productive pull side. The reality seems to be that Martinez, despite being very dangerous to the pull side, could be more dangerous to the opposite field.
Eno spoke to Martinez almost exactly a month ago, right as the slugger was beginning on his latest power binge. You should read the entire piece, but one of his quotes was this:
“Now my swing is built to try and get the ball in the air.”
Right on cue, that’s exactly what Martinez has been doing, and in an extreme way. For the past month, 55.6% of the balls he’s hit have been flies, second behind only Chris Carter. If we’re talking the opposite field, that rate jumps to 62.5%. The latter figure is actually lower than his season total, as 80% of the total balls he’s put in play to the opposite field have been flies.
For most hitters, that would be a death wish. For Martinez, who has increased his average fly-ball distance by almost ten feet this season (to 307 feet, 11th-best in the majors), it’s his standard way of operating. You simply don’t see many right-handed hitters with spray charts that look like this:
Source: FanGraphs
In 2015, Martinez has hit most of his grounders to the left side, liners to left and center, and flies to right. It’s a strangely tidy distribution. Fly-ball and power-wise, he’s been the equivalent of a great left-handed power bat. On top of these patterns, his 54.2% hard-hit rate leads over the past month leads all qualified hitters by over seven percentage points. Hit the ball really hard with extreme fly-ball tendencies, and good things generally follow.
Another interesting aspect to this past month — part of the reason why we’re here, in fact — is to talk about the way pitchers are approaching Martinez. How do you pitch to someone who can do this:
But can also do this just as often?
The answer to that seems to be “very carefully.” We know Martinez is prone to swing and miss, and he’s going to account for his share of strikeouts. The place pitchers have gotten him most often this season has been the fastball high and fastball away. Though he has the potential to take pitches on the outer fringes of the plate out of the ballpark, most of his power is actually limited to the inside and central parts of the zone. Take a look at his strikeout map, courtesy of Baseball Savant:
That red blob on the outside corner is mostly fastballs, and he’s also been victimized (as most are) by the slider down and away. It’s easy to assume that a player who can hit to the opposite field with incredible power might also own the outer part of the strike zone, but that’s not always the case, as we can see with Martinez.
At some point, probably soon, this ridiculous power glut from Martinez will end. His general approach isn’t likely to, however: hit the ball hard, hit the ball in the air, and trust in his strength to produce to the opposite field. That carried him to a breakout last year, and it’s continued to carry him through half of this season. Even though he has contact issues at times, a player who is about average with the glove and can hit to all fields with this sort of power rarely comes along. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that Detroit signed him for almost nothing just a year and a half ago. He’s done nothing but hit ever since.Police in Spain believe they have found the body of an American woman who went missing on one of the country’s most popular pilgrimage routes.
Officials are confident that DNA testing on Monday will confirm that remains discovered in north-west Spain on Friday are those of Denise Thiem, the American who disappeared last April while walking the Camino de Santiago route.
Denise Thiem, who went missing in April Photograph: Facebook
A man, Miguel Ángel Muñoz Blas, 39, has been arrested and over Thiem’s murder. He is also being questioned about the attempted kidnapping of two other women on the Camino.
Thiem, 40, disappeared near Astorga in the province of León and, despite interviewing hundreds of people along the famous route, police found no clues of her whereabouts. The suspect now in custody was among those questioned at the time.
Muñoz attracted police attention a few days after Thiem’s disappearance when he changed about $1,000 (£650) into euro in a local bank. He was later identified from the bank’s CCTV footage but then disappeared from his shack in Castrillo de los Polvazares in León. According to police, when he was questioned on Friday the suspect led them straight to the shack where Thiem’s suspected remains were found. Police say her DNA has also been found on a saw belonging to Muñoz.
Modern-day pilgrims beat a path to the Camino Read more
Thiem’s family on Saturday thanked the Spanish police for their “professionalism, skill and dedication” and went on to thank “the Spanish people for their many prayers and heartfelt expressions of hope and concern during this long and painful ordeal of not knowing what happened to Denise”.
The family added in a statement that they hoped the body could be identified quickly so that “their beloved Denise can be returned to the United States without delay so that they and her friends can honour her life and conduct a proper and reverent burial”.
The Camino has been a pilgrimage route since the early middle ages, but until the 1980s only a few hundred people completed the 33-day trek from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain. Now, some 200,000 undertake all or sections of the journey each year. It is popular with Japanese people and, since the release of the film The Way in 2010 made by Martin Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez, a growing number of Americans are walking the Camino.The annual Leonid meteor shower will appear under dark skies in 2015. Yet no one knows for sure what this year’s version has in store for us. Estimates range from a few meteors up to dozens of meteors per hour at the peak.
Predicting meteor rates, particularly for the highly variable Leonid shower, has been difficult for astronomers through the years. But the longer we watch and the more data we collect, the better the estimates get. In 2015, most scientists who research such events expect a rate of 15 Leonids per hour around the peak. Add that to the normal “sporadic” rate from meteors not associated with a shower, and you should see a shooting star somewhere in the sky every three minutes on average.
Although predictions are modest, spikes in activity can occur at any time. The shower’s peak occurs across North America before dawn November 18. The Moon will be a waxing crescent, so it will only interfere if you observe before moonset, around 10 p.m. local time. Even then, bright Leonids should shine through nicely.
The Leonids have that name because if you trace all the meteor trails backward, they would meet within the Sickle asterism (a group of fairly bright stars that resembles a backward question mark) of the constellation Leo the Lion. Astronomers |
from underground train networks to flooded basements to septic tanks. The species has adapted to these habitats by gaining the ability to mate without the need to swarm (a phenomenon known as stenogamy) and by dropping the requirement of a blood meal to develop the first batch of eggs (a phenomenon known as autogeny). You can read about our previously published work on this here.
The Culex pipiens subgroup of mosquitoes includes a number of globally important vectors of disease-causing pathogens but there are distinct genetic and biological differences between these species that influence their role in transmission cycles. There are four member of the Cx. pipiens subgroup in Australia, Culex australicus, Culex globocoxitus, Culex quinquefasciatus and Culex molestus.
The last of these species, Cx. molestus, had not been the focus of substantial research for over 50 years until a research project by the Department of Medical Entomology and University of Sydney commenced in 2010. The project was designed to address the gaps in our knowledge of these species with a view to assisting in the assessment and management of disease risk associated with this species.
This work was primarily undertaken by Nur Faeza Abu Kassim as part of her PhD candidature with generous support from Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia.
How did the mosquito get to Australia?
The most cited theory to explain the introduction of Cx. molestus into Australia is that it was through military movements into Melbourne during World War II. This was based on an absence of this species in Victoria during the pre-WWII period. Our research supported this theory.
There were no reports of this species in Australia prior to the 1940s. A review of distribution records for this species confirmed the presence of the species at over 230 locations confirmed that the mosquito has spread throughout the southern parts of Australia and in coastal regions as far north as Tweed Heads (NSW) and Geraldton (WA). No specimens have been reported from Queensland or Northern Territory.
Molecular analysis of specimens collected from throughout Australia, with reference to specimens from Asia, North America and Europe, indicated that Australian Cx. molestus shared the strongest genetic similarity with specimens from Asia. Perhaps the mosquito hitched a ride from Japan into the Pacific and then, with US military, in Australia?
Buzzing (and biting) about all year long?
One of the interesting findings of our research was that the mosquito was active throughout the winter months around Sydney. Analysis of weekly trapping over a 13 month period indicated that the species does not display diapause. As well as generally being a cool-temperate climate mosquito species, perhaps the subterranean habitats provided a little “insulation” from the cold, keeping water temperatures just a little warmer than above ground pools and ponds?
Most of the other nuisance-biting pests disappear during the cooler months. There will occasionally be a few about, particularly during warmer winter days. However, for most local pest mosquitoes, it seems to be the minimum daily temperatures that drive mosquito activity more than maximum daily temperatures. In the case of Cx. molestus, they soldier on regardless.
What about the public health risks?
One of the last unanswered questions regarding the potential public health impacts of Cx. molestus is in relation to the ability of this mosquito to spread local and/or exotic viruses. While local viruses (e.g. Ross River virus) have been isolated from field collected specimens, there is yet to be a thorough investigation of the ability of this species to transmit endemic pathogens such as Murray Valley encephalitis virus or Kunjin virus.
I was involved in a research project assessing the risks posed in eastern Australia due to potential introduction of West Nile virus. Laboratory investigations and field collections provided some valuable information but, due to prevailing environmental conditions at the time, there were very few Cx. molestus collected during the study. We need to complete some of this work to gain a better understanding on how important a role Cx. molestus may play in local disease risk.
One of the key implications of our research is that it highlights the need for urban planners and engineers to consider the risks posed by above and below ground water storage for creating mosquito habitats. While much of my work previously has concentrated on the creation of wetlands and rehabilitation of other habitats in association with urban development, rainwater and storm water storage structures should be adequately designed to reduce mosquito risk.
The full reference for our most recent paper is below:
Kassim NFA, Webb CE and Russell RC (2013) Australian distribution, genetic status and seasonal abundance of the exotic mosquito Culex molestus Forskal (Diptera: Culicidae). Australian Journal of Entomology 52: 185-198 [online]
ABSTRACT. Culex molestus was probably introduced into Australia in the 1940s and represents a potentially important nuisance-biting pest and vector of disease-causing pathogens in urban areas. The aims of this study were to review the literature to determine the current and historical distribution of Cx. molestus in Australia, analyse the genetic similarity of specimens collected from various locations in Australia with reference to specimens from North America, Asia and Europe, and document the seasonal abundance of this mosquito in the Sydney region. Results showed that Cx. molestus is common in southern Australia, but there was no evidence that this mosquito is found north of latitude 28.17°S. Molecular analysis indicated that specimens from various locations throughout Australia shared strong genetic similarity and that it was most likely introduced from Asia, possibly through multiple introductions over the past 70 years. Analysis of the seasonal abundance of Cx. molestus indicated that the species does not display diapause during the cooler months. Consideration should be given to the unique biology and ecology of this species when assessing the public health risk and the surveillance methods required in the management of Cx. molestus within urban areas of Australia.
You can read a media release from the University of Sydney here. Our research was picked up by the local and international media in the past week or so too. You can read about our work in the Daily Telegraph, Newcastle Herald and Sydney Morning Herald.
Previous publications as part of this research project include:
Kassim NFA, Webb C.E. and Russell RC (2012) The importance of males: larval diet and adult sugar-feeding influence reproduction in the mosquito Culex molestus. Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association 28: 312–316
Kassim NFA, Webb C.E. and Russell RC (2012) Is the expression of autogeny by Culex molestus Forskal (Diptera: Culicidae) influenced by larval nutrition or by adult mating, sugar feeding or blood feeding? Journal of Vector Ecology 37: 162–171
Kassim NFA, Webb C.E. and Russell RC (2012) Culex molestus Forskal (Diptera: Culicidae) in Australia: colonisation, stenogamy, autogeny, oviposition and larval development. Australian Journal of Entomology 51: 67-77Think you can bring the heat at the tailgate? Well now is your time to prove it. The Midnight Riders are proud to announce their first annual Chili Cookoff during the tailgate before the April 12 match before Houston Dynamo!
Participation Guidelines:
You must be a member of the Midnight Riders in good standing to be eligible for the competition.
To participate, you must sign up in advance via the form here. A limited number of walk-up entries may be accepted, but are first-come, first-served. There is no entry fee. Limited to 1 entry per contestant.
“Chili” is defined as any kind spicy stew containing chili peppers, meat, a combination of meats, meat substitute, vegetables and/or beans.
Contestants are asked to provide a name for chili to be printed on the ballot and to indicate any possible allergens and/or dietary considerations.
Contestants are responsible for providing:
A vessel of chili large enough to serve a crowd
A surface, such as a table, from which to serve chili
A serving utensil
A method of maintaining proper temperature for serving chili
A sign with the name of the chili to display at tailgate
The Midnight Riders will provide:
A balloon for each contestant to display from his/her car signifying participation in the contest.
Paper cups for each contestant to serve his/her chili in
Ballots and spoons for each taster/judge
Contestants are asked to arrive and park in the supporters lot no later than 2:45 to check in at the Midnight Riders table and retrieve contest materials. Each contestant will set up his/her own tailgate.
Judging categories will be:
Best Meat Chili Best Vegetarian Chili Most Original Chili Spiciest Chili
Tasting will be open to all, and we encourage everyone to come to the tailgate and help us determine the best chili chefs in the Midnight Riders. Join the facebook event here.A kite the size of a football field will provide most of the power for a German heavy freight ship set to launch in December.
The Beluga shipping company that owns the 460-foot Beluga said it expects the kites to decrease fuel consumption by up to 50% in optimal cases as well as a cutback of the emission of greenhouse gases on sea by 10 to 20%. Interestingly, the ship will be hauling windmills from Esbjerg, Denmark to Houston, Texas.
The company that makes the kite for the German transport, SkySails, has made kites for large yachts but is targeting commercial ships with new, larger kites. And it has the ambitious goal of equipping 1,500 ships with kites by 2015.
The SkySails system consists of a towing kite with rope, a launch and recovery system and a control system for the whole operation. The control system acts like the autopitot systems on an aircraft, the company says. Autopilot software sends and receives data about the sail etc to make sure the sail is set at its optimal position.
The company also says it provides an optional weather routing system so that ships can sail into optimal wind conditions.The kites typically fly at about 1,000 feet above sea level, thereby tapping winds that can be almost 50% stronger than at the surface.
Skysail isn't the only company pioneering kite technology. A US company, KiteShip, in Martinez, Calif., has been building ultra-large kites mostly for the private yachting sector, with plans to expand into cargo and cruise vessels.
Not everyone is sold on the kites however. In an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution today, John Barnes, editor of Marine Engineers Review, a marine engineering magazine in London, said the jury's still out on kite propulsion systems. "This could work, but there is an extra cost entailed, and it won't make much sense if the price of fuel falls back," he said. "It seems to be a practical approach, but we still need to see what the benefits and penalties will be."One hurdle is the costs associated with the hiring of crews to actually tend the kites. Another: drawback: The system obviously won't work in a head wind, the article stated.(Image: Getty)
Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge says veteran Matthew Boyd needs to fix "one or two things" to get his way back into the senior side.
The 290-game veteran was dropped this week, not even making the cut as an emergency.
Beveridge said it was a tough decision to make given Boyd's stature at Whitten Oval.
"It's a really challenging one," he said on Saturday.
"Of all the players historically to have walked the corridors of the Whitten Oval, he's one of the most dignified and respected characters at our football club.
"It's one of the hardest parts of the job, messaging that disappointment, and he's taken it as you'd expect. He's such a stand-up character and leader at our club. He understands why."
Beveridge said Boyd just needs to get a couple of things right.
"He just probably hasn't been anywhere near his best in recent times and it's the same approach for everyone, as far as our assessment of our performances," he said.
"He'll play tonight against Casey and once he gets on top of those one or two things … it's probably just the core phases of the game. Using it and defending, he's just been a fraction off his absolute best.
"It seems a bit strange that an All Australian from 2016 be omitted at this time of year, but it happens and we believe he'll play well at VFL level and get back into the team at some point."In the spiritual geography of San Francisco, Davies Symphony Hall—a glass-and-concrete half rotunda much resembling R2-D2’s neckline—sits between hills steep with layered mansions and the urban basin where the city’s gritty elements now rest. John Adams’s “Harmonielehre” premièred here; so did a recent album by Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks. When the hall opened, in the eighties, it was said to be “dead” and “at war with itself,” but acoustic tinkering perked it up, and today it’s a reminder of the way the urban landscape is perpetually smoothing its sharp edges. Pleasant London plane trees trace the building. A warm, cultivated light glows from inside. On the evening of the Crunchies Awards, one Monday in February, the fog was so low and diaphanous that it appeared only in spotlights by the entrance, pointing grandly toward the sky. The Crunchies are the closest thing that the tech-startup world has to the Oscars. In practice, this means that the Crunchies are a night when techies do not dress as if they just maxed out a Gap card. Women step from Uber cars with heat-set hair and dresses fit for mention in the party pages. Men, of whom there is a surplus, don the local formalwear of blazers, Tokyo denim, bright sneakers, and pressed shirttails in peacock hues. Nearby, a throng of protesters had gathered at a makeshift stage, in front of a Henry Moore bronze, “Large Four Piece Reclining Figure.” Facing the dome of City Hall, they chanted, sang, and danced to mock the industry festivities inside. “Welcome to the Crappies, where we give lots of crap to the tech industry!” one of the protesters, Tommi Avicolli Mecca, shouted into a microphone. He was wearing a sparkly bow tie and Groucho tails over a red T-shirt and jeans; his graying hair sprang in small ringlets from a sequinned top hat. “I’m sure you all know why we’re here, right?” “Right!” A small crowd shuffled into the space before him. Many of the onlookers were middle-aged. One carried a sign, trimmed with Twitter birds, that read, “The Crappies: The Truth in Tech Awards.” “Rents are too damn high, right?” “Right!” “Gentrification is changing all our neighborhoods! Totally destroying the diversity of our city! Totally evicting our elders, the disabled folks, people with AIDS, people of color, poor people, working-class people! The very heart of our city is being tossed out!” “Boooooo!” the crowd responded. Mecca smiled grimly. During the past couple of decades, he has worked as a writer and as an organizer, setting up homeless shelters in the Castro district and performing folk songs of his own invention. Because San Francisco’s real-estate market has grown especially mercenary—no-fault evictions have soared in the past few years—Mecca’s local activism has recently intensified. “The first award is the tax-evader award—can I have a drumroll?” He nodded to Benito Santiago, a sixty-three-year-old special-education teacher who is being evicted from the apartment he’s lived in since 1977. Santiago nodded gravely and began beating on a dumbeck at his waist. “The tax-evader award goes to—” Mecca pantomimed shock. “Oh, my God! Twitter!” The crowd booed. A protester dressed as Dick Costolo, under whom Twitter made a controversial tax-incentivized move to San Francisco’s seedy Mid-Market district, took the microphone. “This is our town, because, you know, we pay for it, we own it. That’s progress, people. That’s—” Three spoken-word artists cut him off. The last of them was Lisa Gray-Garcia, who prefers to be called Tiny. A tall woman in her late thirties, with hair highlighted in alternating blond and auburn streaks, she chanted about “the twenty-first-century missionaries and tech colonizers.” When Tiny was eleven, her mother, a laid-off social worker left by her husband, became homeless. For years afterward, they suffered through poverty; Tiny was incarcerated at one point for sleeping in her car. In a bookstore, as a young adult, she noticed several special-interest magazines—Golfweek, Artforum—but no publication on poverty, so in 1996 she launched POOR Magazine, a hundred-plus-page glossy periodical of memoirs, poetry, and essays which she typeset herself at Kinko’s. Soon after that, she founded MommaHouse, a community home for low-income single parents and their children. In 2010, MommaHouse got hit with a no-fault eviction. Since then, Tiny has been staying with family and friends. Outside Davies Hall, she wore a baseball cap turned sideways that said “POBRE” and, like others, a gray suit jacket silk-screened with a white wood-block logo: “GentriFUKation.”
“Can we put the houselights up a little?” Ron Conway said, standing at the dais inside Davies Hall. He is a barrel-shaped man with a cap of downy white hair and dark eyebrows set in a perpetual arch of mild surprise. He’s known locally as one of the Bay Area’s most successful angel investors; the companies he early-funded include Google, PayPal, Napster, and Facebook. “I’d like to step back to two years ago, when I was standing here,” Conway said. “San Francisco, and the region, was suffering from double-digit unemployment.” Past the theatre doors, the lobby was waiting for the post-awards reception, trimmed with product-information tables and signs saying things like “YAHOO! WEATHER: The Forecast Is Beautiful.” “To meet those challenges, I founded Sf.Citi, a bipartisan nonprofit organization, to represent a collective-policy voice for the S.F. tech community,” Conway went on. He praised its record: “We—the people in this room—cut unemployment in San Francisco from ten per cent to five per cent. We cut it in half.” The audience cheered. But a new challenge had appeared this year. Techies had to “give back to the community,” Conway said. He introduced Theresa Preston-Werner, a former grad student in cultural anthropology (her work focussed on inequality) who is married to a co-founder of GitHub. Last year, she founded Omakase, a nonprofit startup that channelled money from tech to worthy charities. “There’s been a lot of criticism lobbed at the tech community recently,” she said, thumbing through some notes on her iPhone. “We hear about Google buses. You may have seen the protesters out there. People are saying that tech is really closed off, that we’re insulated. Maybe that’s exactly what’s happening here right now.” She looked up at the tiers of Davies Hall. “But I don’t think that’s really our story. I imagine there’s lots of people out here in the audience right now who say, ‘That’s not me. I do my part. I donate. I volunteer. I give.’ ” Conway, she said, had agreed to match the evening’s donations—up to twelve thousand dollars. So would people pitch in? The audience, fairly quiet until then, applauded generously at the thought.
In the folklore of the Costanoan, a native people of the Northern California coast, there is a story about Coyote, the trickster figure from whom all human beings descended. One day, Coyote caught a salmon, but he didn’t want to share, even with his children. As he cooked the fish over the fire, he covered it with ash to hide the meat. When he felt hungry, he plucked up some of the food and ate it. “You’re eating fire!” his children cried. “You’ll be burned!” But when he seemed all right they wanted to eat fire, too. Coyote, still hungry, forbade them. “You’ll be burned,” he said. His children got no fish. Many people in San Francisco today worry that the tech industry is behaving like Coyote, professing to nurture and provide while actually hoarding. San Francisco has a real-estate shortage. Some speculators, looking to capitalize on growing demand, have started circumventing rent control using buyouts: lumps of cash given if long-term tenants leave. Others have invoked a 1986 California law known as the Ellis Act, which permits evictions when landlords want to go out of business permanently. By repeatedly going “out of business” and exploiting a loophole in the local condo laws, speculators have been able to transform rent-controlled buildings into market-value homes. From 1990 to 1997, there were twenty-eight Ellis Act petitions in San Francisco. From 2006 to 2013, there were three hundred and seventy-four. (A California Senate bill that would curb Ellis Act abuses had been heavily championed by the San Francisco mayor and a few tech firms, but it was abandoned in Sacramento by its chief legislative advocate last week.) San Francisco today has the second-highest median income in the United States, but, even using that peg, middle-income San Franciscans can afford less than a sixth of the homes available in town. Every city on the up-and-up must contend with a gap between rich and poor. Yet few have also, like San Francisco, managed to immiserate a relatively well-heeled middle class. That isn’t really the tech industry’s fault, but, then, neither was it Coyote’s fault that he could catch fish. His offense was telling a story of community responsibility to obscure his self-interest. Many Bay Area residents suspect that the same thing is taking place today. “The heads of companies should be communicating with local government, with the tenant community, with tenant advocates,” Rebecca Gourevitch, a protester, said soon after the demonstration outside Davies Hall. “We haven’t heard much of a response.” Instead, they’ve heard declarations of good intent that feel like a substitute for actual remedies. In San Francisco, just about everyone speaks the language of progressive ideals; it is the common ground between the people who are getting evicted and the ones who are motivating the evicting. Is this a problem for liberal thought? It’s certainly one for digital-era culture.
On the chilly morning of December 9th, a group of people dressed in yellow reflector vests got in front of one of the white Wi-Fi buses at a stop at Twenty-fourth and Valencia Streets. It was on its way to the Google campus, in Mountain View. Because the stop was meant for public buses, not private ones, the protesters mounted a mock construction sign that said, “Warning: Illegal Use of Public Infrastructure.” For nearly an hour, they encircled the vehicle, chanting a call and response. “San-Fran-cisco!” it went. “Not-for-sale!” One of the leaders of the protest was Erin McElroy. She is thirty-one, with curly auburn hair, which she wears loosely swept up, and gauged earlobes, from which she hangs a selection of jewelry. The bus protest was intended to draw attention to the preferential treatment that the city gives to large tech companies. Cars that halt at public bus stops get two-hundred-and-seventy-one-dollar fines, but tech buses, for a long time, paid nothing. (It has since been decreed that they will pay a dollar.) When news of the bus block “went viral,” though, McElroy worried that its message had been lost. She helped arrange a second bus protest, on December 20th, but it was on the same day as a more aggressive attack on a bus in Oakland, and the violence got the coverage. By the time McElroy helped organize a third protest, in January, bus blocking had become the nexus of several Bay Area anxieties. There was the affront to public infrastructure: two-tiered Van Hool chariots with tinted windows pulling up to crowded bus stops and taking on board a select few. There was the effect on real-estate prices: according to McElroy, the rents in homes around the tech-shuttle routes are, on average, twenty per cent higher. There was the concern that San Francisco was becoming a commuter suburb of Silicon Valley. “It seemed ironic that a city that has, historically, been hospitable toward marginal communities is suddenly evicting them,” McElroy says. And there was the ascent of tech itself—the first true urban industry, complete with national lobbying power, that San Francisco has seen in its long post-industrial history. The technology business has become an inevitable topic of conversation, cropping up at dinner parties, where sides must be taken; in the aisles of jets descending toward the runway, where flight attendants’ spouses want a job, or got a job, or are leaving a job at a big tech firm; and in Tenderloin-district delis, where proprietors ruminate on a demographic change “from hookers to tech hookers.” Gentrification is a hard thing for middleclass people to complain about in good faith—a city is always in the process of being polished or being scuffed up, and there is no stable midpoint—but few gentrifying cities have a scapegoat as clear, or as slow to accept blame, as tech. In late winter, Google pledged $6.8 million to a program that gives free public-transportation passes to low- and middle-income youths; a few weeks ago, the city asserted a plan to create joint public-and-private bus stops, in some cases probably at the cost of street parking spaces. By then, however, tech protests had spread to other quarters. One January morning, demonstrators blocked the Berkeley driveway of Anthony Levandowski, an engineer working on Google’s self-driving car, and distributed pamphlets that said, “Anthony Levandowski is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation.” A month later, a woman was confronted in a Haight Street bar for filming with Google Glass, and, in April, a Business Insider reporter had the glasses torn off his face as he walked down the street. (Because many Americans find Google Glass inherently amusing, like Segway travel, these episodes, too, drew widespread publicity.) In early April, protesters stood in front of the San Francisco home of Kevin Rose, the Digg co-founder and venture capitalist, distributing more flyers. The group, which called itself the Counterforce, also mounted a Web site, where it demanded that Google donate three billion dollars to “an anarchist organization of our choosing.” The Counterforce explained, “With this three billion from Google, we will solve the housing crisis in the Bay Area and prove to the world that an anarchist world is not only possible but in fact irrepressible.” So far, however, the anarchists have not unveiled many details of their housing-crisis plan.
A few hours before Ron Conway spoke at the Crunchies, I met him at the spacious apartment, on Lafayette Park, where he enjoyed a panoramic view past Alcatraz and toward the hilly northern shoreline of the bay. The walls were painted the color of aged cheese, and a set of high-backed dining chairs abutted the breakfast table where we sat. “The shuttle buses are nothing but a symbol of the issue,” he told me, gazing out at a thin swell of mist over the water. “The buses serve a real useful purpose, and help the environment by not putting people in cars.” Conway, an unofficial adviser, and a generous donor, to San Francisco’s mayor, Edwin M. Lee, agrees that something is going wrong in the city’s socioeconomics. But the solution, he thinks, is to bring more of Silicon Valley north. “In ten years, I would hope that eighty-five per cent of tech workers who live in San Francisco work in San Francisco,” he said. “For every tech job, there’s four support jobs, and we need to make sure those people live inside the city limits as well.” “If He didn’t want us to eat it, why’d He wrap the whole thing in bacon?” Tech’s shift to the city is already under way. Last August, Yahoo caused a stir when it moved into the San Francisco Chronicle building; Square, the credit-card-processing company founded by Jack Dorsey, was already there, and Twitter’s offices are nearby. Conway supports the Mayor’s new “seven-point housing plan,” which calls for thirty thousand low-, moderate-, and middle-income homes. The developments are planned largely for former industrial sites like Candlestick and Bayview-Hunters Points—a wharf neighborhood that has had limited appeal; up to half of the city’s homicides take place there, and it adjoins a shipyard that’s still being cleansed of toxic and radioactive waste. In Conway’s dream, lower- and middle-income families (defined as four-person households earning $145,650 or less) will have a secure place in such housing, while market-rate homes will continue to attract job-creating tech workers. In some ways, this is a puzzling solution to the real-estate crisis. Wouldn’t moving more tech companies into the city drive prices even higher? Conway thought that maybe techies could be induced to put down payments on the homes of their poorer employees. “It’s not building anything, but it’s taking qualified people who can afford housing but not the down payment,” he said. “And that’s probably the least costly.” The effort would have to be conducted in an ad-hoc way in order to get it done—a good-hearted C.E.O. here and there stepping up and launching a project. Yet there’s a broader difficulty in solving San Francisco’s problems through tech growth: the industry, which derives its competitive edge from efficiency, appears to be better at capital accumulation than at job creation. This is one reason, some economists think, that unemployment has remained more or less flat since 2000, even as productivity has continued to increase. An old-line company like Citigroup has some two hundred and fifty thousand employees; Facebook, which is worth more, employs about six thousand, and most tech startups are far smaller. (When WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook, for nineteen billion dollars, it had fewer than a hundred employees.) Tech has brought good jobs to San Francisco, but almost any other industry, charged with similar growth, would have brought many more. This has been no secret to those in power. Nine years ago, Ted Egan, who is now San Francisco’s chief economist, was hired by the Mayor’s Office to plot a long-term economic path for the city. He recommended four measures that would mitigate rising inequality. The city should try to diversify its tech growth away from Internet firms to include industries like biotech, which supplies large numbers of both specialist and nonspecialist jobs. It should work on attracting big companies, which offer residents a range of jobs, rather than only small startups, which rest on the shoulders of a few founders. It should promote tourism more creatively, and focus more intensely on sustaining its blue-collar industries. Egan submitted his report. City Hall appeared to love it. Then, he says, it was filed away.
What’s going on in San Francisco has been called a “culture war,” and yet the values each side espouses can sound strikingly similar. Protesters like those outside Davies Hall have fought for open and eclectic urban life. They want broader social-support systems; they’re angry about the Man’s systemic abuses. These are, at least in theory, values on which tech’s pursuits rest. Techies tend to have strong feelings about immigration barriers (they’re against them), universal health care (for that), and environmentalism (a big deal). In their minds, there’s no industry more closely aligned with the quirky culture of San Francisco—so why now, after decades in the region, are they being attacked as interlopers from the wrong side of the ideological divide? The difference appears to be less one of substance than of style: tech, with its young billionaires and arcane skill sets, does stand apart from the culture of the city. “Tech is where my anger is right now,” Theresa Preston-Werner, the Omakase founder, told me the evening after the Crunchies. When she started her company, she surveyed two hundred and sixty techies, asking whether they had helped charities that year and, if not, why not. Most respondents said they didn’t trust the charity system, or didn’t have enough time. But the third most common reason for not donating was that they thought they didn’t have enough money. Somehow, the industry hadn’t nurtured a broadly munificent culture. (Neither, perhaps, had Omakase: this spring, it emerged that some GitHub employees had felt manipulated, by the Preston-Werners, into doing pro-bono work for Omakase; Theresa Preston-Werner’s husband resigned from GitHub following the internal investigation that ensued, and she subsequently modified the startup’s name and mission. Omakase is now called Codestarter, and focusses on crowdfunding laptops for children.) If people won’t be socially responsible on their own, they have to be eased forward on that path. A popular startup that attempts to do this is HandUp.us, launched by a data manager named Rose Broome. The site gathers profiles of people in need, some hundred and ten so far. There is an essay section—a “story” by the needy person—that elaborates his or her beliefs, plans, and privations. It is a kind of Facebook of the poor. Donors can adopt a homeless person through financial contributions, and receive progress reports on how he or she is doing. According to Broome, more than a thousand donors have made pledges so far, though only about twenty per cent have done so more than once. I asked Broome how much the model could grow. After all, an effort that helps a hundred and ten individuals may not be adequate to the systemic problems that vex a growing city of eight hundred and twenty-five thousand. “There’s too much of a mentality of silver bullets,” Broome told me. She is now trying to expand to other cities. “Having more of these social connections and bridges helps bring more people closer to the problem.” One of the most frequently cited leaders in the industry’s philanthropy is Marc Benioff, the C.E.O. of Salesforce.com, a consumer-relations tech company with nearly five thousand local employees. When Benioff founded it, in 1999, he imposed a mandate that he called the “1:1:1 model”: one per cent of the company’s equity, profits or product, and employee time were earmarked for philanthropy. In March, he helped create S.F. Gives, a fund to be made up of half-million-dollar contributions mostly from tech firms. The money is managed by Daniel Lurie, whose philanthropic startup, Tipping Point, funnels cash, skills, and products from well-heeled industries into good causes. Tipping Point takes care of the research and the follow-through. “We’re doing the homework for these incredibly busy people,” Lurie says. That outsourcing has clear benefits, but it can also mean that those embracing philanthropy are removed from the way that local problem-solving works—or of what, in a mechanistic sense, their money does. I spoke with Benioff one morning, shortly before he set off to meet Ron Conway and the Mayor for lunch. I was trying to understand his hopes for fixing San Francisco. When I wondered how wealth amassed through the 1:1:1 model could be used to solve the city’s problems, he said, “We know every nonprofit and N.G.O. in the city, and maybe in the world.” He told me that he feels an affinity with protesters. “They probably haven’t read my book ‘Behind the Cloud,’ but it talks about my own protests that I’ve led in software,” he said. “I feel very simpatico with them, and I think they’re doing a good job.”
As I met people from all quarters of the so-called culture wars in San Francisco, I found myself struck by the number of very personal, very moving stories I heard: Colin Powell put on this conference in Philadelphia, and had all of these corporate chieftains come. I was in my early thirties, but I was invited to represent Oracle. And they said, “Look, you folks need to give back to America....” I’d just come back from a trip through India. In fact, it was through the trip through India that I’d been invited to this conference, because an incredible philanthropist in New Jersey, named Ray Chambers, was heavily involved with Colin Powell in putting this conference on, and I had met him at Deepak Chopra’s daughter’s wedding. —Marc Benioff, founder and C.E.O. of Salesforce.com I don’t usually talk about my story that much, because I get a little choked up. Hold on. Yeah. So, I moved here in 1988. I moved here with my band.... Me personally, I’m a little worried about having to move out of San Francisco. But I’m more worried about my disabled roommate. I’ve got a large social network, and something will come up for me. My roommate, she’s on a very, very fixed income, and we have no idea where she’ll go. —Tom Rapp, maintenance technician, San Francisco International Airport, facing no-fault eviction from his rent-controlled apartment of fifteen years My fourth day of work was September 11, 2001. I was down there that morning. I heard the whiz and whir of the second plane go by our building.... The Robin Hood Foundation, the next two years, was the perfect place to be to help lift up New York City and to help, specifically, those hardest hit by those attacks—low-income New Yorkers.... It was started by a thirty-three-year-old hedge-fund guy named Paul Tudor Jones, who was just featured on “60 Minutes” recently. He applied business practices and philosophies to philanthropic investing. I liked that. He made it cool and hip and sexy to give back for New York’s well-to-do people. —Daniel Lurie, founder and C.E.O. of Tipping Point Let’s not talk about utopia, but there’s nothing wrong with idealism more than materialism.... I was next to Steve Jobs when he met his wife. And I saw that a different kind of personal enthusiasm was tangible. A different kind of expansion. And that was love. —Bobby Coleman, Stanford M.B.A., 1988, Occupy San Francisco activist The stories were often wildly opposed in their objectives. And yet all were |
to the DD/P, Memorandum for: AC/DPD, Subject: Inspector General's Memorandum on His Trip to the Area, October 17, 1961. Secret.
Source: CREST.
This memo reports on Bissell's "off-the-cuff" reactions to Kirpatrick's letter (Document 1). While he embraced Kirpatrick's comments on security, he had no strong reaction to his comments concerning on-site management, and questioned the proprietary of an inspector general commenting on the issue of OXCART vulnerability.
Document 3: John N. McMahon, Executive Officer, DPD, Memorandum for: Acting Chief, DPD, Subject: Aerial Observation of Area 51, April 6, 1962. Secret.
Source: National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Release.
This memo from the DPD's executive officer to its acting chief discusses the possibility of having Area 51 photographed by either a U-2 or CORONA spy satellite — as a means of estimating what the Soviet Union might learn from its own overhead images of the facility.
Document 4: Robert D. Singel, Memorandum for Chairman, COMIREX, Subject: [Deleted] SKYLAB Photograph, April 11, 1974. Top Secret.
Source: National Reconnaissance Office
This memo from the deputy director of the NRO to the chairman of the Director of Central Intelligence's Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation is the result of a photograph taken by SKYLAB astronauts of Area 51. It discusses some of the issues to be considered in deciding whether to release the photograph.
Document 5: [Deleted], Memorandum for: The Director of Central Intelligence, Subject: SKYLAB Imagery [Deleted], April 19, 1974. Confidential.
Source: CREST.
This memo to DCI William Colby, notes that the SKYLAB photograph of Area 51 was acquired inadvertently and that instructions had been issued not to photograph the facility. It also reports that the photo is the subject of an interagency review and that there was widespread opposition to its release.
Document 6: E.H. Knoche, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, to General David C. Jones, Chief of Staff, United States Air Force, August 26, 1976. Secret.
Source: RG 340 National Archives and Records Administration.
This letter discusses whether the CIA should continue to be responsible for the management of Area 51 or if the Air Force should assume responsibility. It identifies HAVE GLIB — the evaluation of foreign radar and threat systems — as the largest Defense Department project at the site at that time.
Document 7: United States Air Force, Det 3 SP, n.d. Unclassified/For Official Use Only.
Source: Editor's Collection.
This document is widely reported to be a manual for Detachment 3 of the Air Force Security Police, responsible for security at Area 51. It specifies the cover story to be employed by members of the security force to explain their activities.
Document 8: William J. Clinton, Letter to Congressional Leaders on Presidential Determination 95-45, January 30, 1996. Unclassified.
Source: www.gpo.gov.
This letter from President Clinton, notes that his determination exempted the Air Force's operating location "near Groom Lake, Nevada from any Federal, State, interstate, or local hazardous or solid waste laws that might require the disclosure of classified information concerning that operating location to unauthorized persons."
Document 9: George W. Bush, Memorandum for the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Presidential Determination No. 2003-39, Subject: Classified Information Concerning the Air Force's Operating Location Near Groom Lake, Nevada, September 16, 2003. Unclassified.
Source: www.whitehouse.gov
This memorandum reaffirms President Clinton's 1995 presidential determination (Document 8).
STEALTH FUNDAMENTALS
Document 10a, 10b, 10c: P. Ya. Ufimtsev, Methods of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction, 1971. Unclassified.
Source: Air Force Freedom of Information Act Release
Ufimtsev's 1962 work, translated by the Air Force Foreign Technology Division (today, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center), provides the fundamental theoretical/mathematical basis for the F-117.
Document 11: Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, "Reduction of Radar Cross Section of Large High Altitude Aircraft," n.d. (but circa 1975). Classification Not Available.
Source: Air Force Freedom of Information Act Release.
Most of this paper, written by the first head of the Lockheed Skunk Works, who supervised development of the U-2 and A-12 (OXCART), consists of figures related to the brief discussion of the relationship between stealth and aircraft shape.
Document 12: R. W. Lorber, R. W. Wintersdorff, and G.R. Cota, AFAL-TR-74-320, Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical, Low-RCS Vehicle Study, January 31, 1974. Secret.
Source: Air Force Freedom of Information Act Release.
This report describes the research performed by Teledyne Ryan under an Air Force contract on low-radar cross section aerial vehicles as well as some of the results obtained.
Document 13: John D. Kelly, Boeing Aerospace Company, "Configuration Design for Low RCS," September 1, 1975. Secret.
Source: Air Force Freedom of Information Act Release.
This paper discusses the impact on the radar cross section of aircraft of the design of different regions of the vehicle — including the nose, tail, broadside — as well as the impact of skin material. It also discusses the design a low RCS missile.
Document 14: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Stealth Technology Review, 10-14 June 1991, n.d.
Source: www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/Science_and_Technology/Other/263.pdf.
This briefing book consists of five tabs, which concern the value and evolution of stealth, the F-117, the B-2, the F-22, and the advanced cruise missile.
F-117 OPERATIONS
Document 15: Major General Peter T. Kemp, Commander, USAF Tactical Fighter Warfare Center, to TFWC/JA, Subject: Aircraft Accident - F-117, 81-0792, July 11, 1986, January 14, 1987. Secret/Special Access Required. Secret w/att: Report of Investigation (Extract).
Source: Air Force Freedom of Information Act Release.
This extract provides a statement of facts concerning the fatal crash of a F-117A aircraft on July 11, 1986. It covers, inter alia, crew qualifications, the history of the flight, the mission, the briefing and preflight, the flight, impact, rescue, and crash response.
Document 16: Lt. Col. John T. Manclark, 57 FWW/AT, Nellis AFB, N, AFR 110-14 USAF Aircraft Accident Investigation Board, 14 October 1987 - Tonopah Test Range, December 8, 1987. Secret/Special Access Required.
Source: Air Force Freedom of Information Act Release.
This extract is a summary of facts concerning the October 14, 1987 crash of a F-117A that claimed the life of its pilot. As with the report of the on the July 1986 crash (Document 15), it covers — inter alia — crew qualifications, the history of the flight, the mission, the briefing and preflight, the flight, impact, rescue, and crash response.
Document 17: Harold P. Myers, Office of History, 37th Fighter Wing, Twelfth Air Force, Tactical Air Command, Nighthawks over Iraq: A Chronology of the F-117A Stealth Fighter in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, January 9, 1992. Unclassified.
Source: Editor's Collection.
A two-page introduction is followed by a 32-page chronology of F-117A information related to operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, from August 17, 1990 to February 28, 1991. The information include concerns personnel, deployments, administrative matters, exercises, and operations (pp. 8-36).
Document 18: Arthur P. Weyermuller, Stealth Employment in the Tactical Air Force (TAF) - A Primer on Its Doctrine and Operational Use (Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: U.S. Army War College, 1992). Unclassified.
Source: www.dtic.mil
This study focuses on the history of stealth development, the roles and missions of the F-117A and its performance during Desert Storm, and an assessment of how stealth technology fits into Air Force aerospace doctrine. It also discusses next generation stealth aircraft, specifically the F-22 fighter and B-2 bomber.
Document 19: Vincent C. Breslin, 37th Fighter Wing, History of the 37th Fighter Wing, 5 October 1989 - 31 December 1991, Volume 1 - Narrative, May 22, 1992. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
In addition to a chronology of events, this history includes a discussion of the creation of the 37th Fighter Wing (established to replace the covert group established to oversee development of the F-117A while it was still a classified program), the "quest for normalization," F-117 operations in Panama (Operation Just Cause) and Iraq (Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm), and events from the end of Desert Storm to the end of 1991.
Document 20a, 20b: Vincent C. Breslin, 37th Fighter Wing, History of the 37th Fighter Wing, 1 January - 8 July 1992, Closeout, Volume 1 - Narrative, August 11, 1992. Classification Not Available.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
The 37th Fighter Wing (Document 19) at Tonopah Test Range was inactivated on July 8, 1992, with F-117A fighters being transferred to a new unit, based at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. This history contains a discussion of the inactivation, fully redacted sections on mission revision and an operational readiness exercise - as well as treatments of the the employment of the F-117A in airshows, transfer of aircraft to Holloman, and a number of other topics.
Document 21a: Office of Public Affairs, Department of the Air Force, Fact Sheet 93-11, F-117A Stealth Fighter, November 1993. Unclassified.
Document 21b: Department of the Air Force, Fact Sheet, F-117 A Nighthawk, October 2005. Unclassified.
Sources: Air Force Office of Public Affairs, www.af.mil
These fact sheets, issued twelve years apart, describe the mission, features, background, and general characteristics of the F-117A. The second fact sheet contains details of the plane's employment in Desert Storm, the Balkans, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Document 22: Ronald H. Cole, Joint History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Operation Just Cause: The Planning and Execution of Joint Operations in Panama, February 1998 - January 1990, 1995. Unclassified.
Source: www.dtic.mil.
The focus of this history is the involvement of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Joint Staff in the planning and direction of combat operations in Panama. Part of the history discusses the decision to use the F-117A as part of the operation — its first operational use — and its employment.
Document 23: General Accounting Office, GAO/NSIAD-97-134, Operation Desert Storm: Evaluation of the Air Campaign, June 1997. Unclassified.
Source: General Accounting Office.
This study focuses on the use and performance of aircraft and other munitions in Desert Storm, including the F-117, the validity of Defense Department claims about weapon systems' performance (particularly systems using advanced technology), the relationship between weapon system cost and performance, and the extent to which Desert Storm air campaign objectives were satisfied. Among its findings was that while F-117 bomb hit range varied between 41 and 60 percent, which the report characterized as "highly effective," the range was less than the 80-percent rate report after the war by the Defense Department.
Document 24: Gregg S. Henneman and David Libby, 49th Fighter Wing, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 July 1996 - 31 December 1997, Narrative, Volume No. 1, May 28, 1998. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
With the inactivation of the 37th Fighter Wing (Document 20) and transfer of the F-117A fleet to Holloman AFB, they were assigned to the 49th Fighter Wing. This history focuses on mission and organization, operations and training (including operations against Iraqi targets, and partcipation in the Red Flag 97-1 exercise), and aircraft upgrades.
Document 25: Gregory S. Henneman, 49th Fighter Wing, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 January - 30 June 1998, Narrative, Volume No. 1, October 22, 1998. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
As with the history for the preceding eighteen months (Document 24) the main focus of this history is mission and organization and operations and training. In addition to its discussion of F-117A deployment to Southwest Asia in response to developments in Iraq the history also discusses several exercises — Spirit Hawk '98 (described as "the Air Force's first ever low observable combat exercise"), Combat Hammer 98-04 (a weapons system evaluation program exercise) — as well as deployment in support of Fighter Weapons Instructor Course.
Document 26: Gregory S. Henneman, 49th Fighter Wing, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 July - 31 December 1998, Narrative, Volume No. 1, May 19, 1999. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
This history discusses deployments to in support of operations in the Balkans and Southwest Asia. The two Southwest Asia deployments — Operation Desert Thunder and Operation Desert Fox — were in response to Iraqi non-compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions and did not result in combat operations.
Document 27: William P. Alexander and Gregory S. Henneman, 49th Fighter Wing, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 January - 30 June 1999, Narrative, Volume 1, n.d. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
This history follows the standard format for 49th Fighter Wing histories — covering mission and organization, operations and training, and maintenance. The chapter on operations includes a discussion of the F-117A deployment to Europe and its use against Serbian targets.
Document 28: William P. Alexander and Gregory S. Henneman, 49th Fighter Wing, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 July - 31 December 1999, Narrative, Volume 1, n.d. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
In addition to discussing the role of F-117A aircraft in two exercises — Spirit Hawk 99 at Mountain Home Air Base, Idaho and EFX at Nellis AFB, Nevada — the history also contains a discussion of upgrades to the F-117, including an upgrade to the infrared acquisition designation system that "would allow F-117 pilots to 'look' through clouds, greatly increasing the aircraft's capability."
Document 29: William P. Alexander and Tracey S. Anderson, 49th Fighter Wing, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 January - 30 June 2000, Narrative, Volume 1, n.d. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
The primary deployment discussed in this history was a deployment to Nellis Air Force Base, to take part in a "firepower demonstration" called CAPSTONE. It involved two F-117As dropping GBU-10 bombs on specified targets.
Document 30: William P. Alexander, 49th Fighter Wing, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 July - 31 December 2000, Narrative, Volume 1, n.d. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
The history's discussion of operations and training includes examination of two exercises that involved F-117A participation - RED FLAG 01-01 and CAPSTONE. The first is described as "the first low observable (LO) integrated RED FLAG exercise to be flown of Nellis AFB." The latter involved, as did the identically named exercise in the first half of the year (Document 29), F-117A's dropping two GBU-10 bombs on specified targets.
Document 31: William P. Alexander, 49th Fighter Wing, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 January - 30 June 2001, Narrative, Volume 1, January 28, 2003. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
As with earlier 49th Fighter Wing histories, this one discusses mission and organization, operations and training, and miscellaneous activities (including maintenance). While there were no operational deployments, the history reports on the deployment of aircraft, equipment, and personnel to several bases around the United States as well as F-117A involvement in RED FLAG 01-02.
Document 32: History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 July - 31 December 2001, n.d., Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
This history covers mission and organization and deployments of the 49th Fighter Wing.
Document 33: William P. Alexander and Terri J. Berling, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 January - 31 December 2002, Narrative, Volume 1, n.d. Unclassified/For Official Use Only.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release.
Despite its classification this history is heavily redacted, but does discuss F-117A participation in a European theater exercise named Operation Coronet Nighthawk.
Document 34: William P. Alexander and Terri J. Berling, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 January - 31 December 2003, Narrative, Volume 1, n.d.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release
Among the topics examined in this history are F-117A deployments to the Middle East (and subsequent participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom) and South Korea as well as F-117A participation the Foal Eagle (Korea) and Red Flag (Nellis Air Force Base) exercises.
Document 35: Department of the Air Force, Air Force Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures 3 -3.18, Combat Aircraft Fundamentals, F-117, October 19, 2004. Unclassified/For Official Use Only.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release
This manual is intended to provide "aircrew the information need to make the right decisions during any phase of a tactical mission." Its chapters cover mission preparation, formation, aircraft basics and instruments, air-to-surface elements of a mission, air refueling, low altitude operations, night and adverse weather operations, and night systems.
Document 36: Gregg Henneman, Black Sheep Over Iraq: The 8th Fighter Squadron in Operation Iraqi Freedom, November 2004. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release
This study explores the role of F-117A aircraft in the 2003 conflict with Iraq. In addition to an examination of the F-117A background, it examines the orders to deploy the F-117A for combat, the attempted decapitation strike, subsequent combat missions, maintenance, and assessment of F-117 performance, and redeployment.
Document 37: William P. Alexander and Terri J. Berling, History of the 49th Fighter Wing, 1 January - 31 December 2004, Narrative, Volume 1, n.d. Secret.
Source: Air Combat Command Freedom of Information Act Release
This history contains a chronology of 49th Fighter Wing activities, and chapters on mission and organization, operations — including an extensive discussion of F-117A deployment to South Korea and participation the Eagle Flag 2004/0B exercise — and mission capability for the F-117A and other aircraft.
THE SOVIETS AND STEALTH
Document 38: John N. McMahon, Memorandum for: Director, Intelligence Community Staff, Subject: Soviet Stealth Technology, January 10, 1983. Secret.
Source: CREST.
This brief memo from the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence notes that he had asked the Deputy Director for Intelligence (Robert Gates) to produce a paper on Soviet stealth technology.
Document 39: Lawrence K. Gershwin, Memorandum for: Director of Central Intelligence, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Subject: Briefing on Soviet Stealth Efforts, January 30, 1984. Secret.
Source: CREST.
This memo notes that the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council had asked the National Intelligence Officer for Strategic Programs, Lawrence K. Gershwin, to prepare, in conjunction with the Office of Scientific and Weapons Research (OSWR), a briefing for Senator Sam Nunn on Soviet stealth technology.
Document 40: Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, SW 84-10015, Soviet Work on Radar Cross Section Reduction Applicable to a Future Stealth Program, February 1984. Secret.
Source: CREST.
This the two main sections of this assessment cover Soviet radar cross section technology (including the theoretical base, measurement capability, materials, and transfer of technology) and applications (to submarines, reentry vehicles, aircraft, spacecraft, cruise missiles, and ground vehicles). The key judgments section states that the authors "feel certain that the Soviets did not have a Stealth program in the 1970s" but that "the Soviets probably began an intensified research effort in the early 1980s which may have led to a developmental program now under way."
Document 41: Julian C. Nail, National Intelligence Officer for Science and Technology, Note for the Director, Subject: Soviet Low Observable (Stealth) Technology, February 23, 1984. Secret.
Source: CREST.
This note to the Director of Central Intelligence summarizes efforts under throughout the Intelligence Community to produce assessments and other products concerning Soviet stealth technology.
Document 42: Julian C. Nail, Memorandum for: Director of Central Intelligence, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Subject: Distribution of SNIE on The Soviet Reactions to Stealth, July 24, 1985. Secret
Source: CREST.
This memo concerns limiting the distribution of the a special national intelligence estimate on Soviet reactions to stealth. The author suggests that rather than distributing 50 copies the estimate should be disseminated to 37 offices/individuals.
Document 43: Director of Central Intelligence, SNIE 11-7/9-85/L, Soviet Reactions to Stealth, August 1985, Top Secret.
Source: CIA Electronic Reading Room.
This estimate is described as "an effort to assess at the national level the Soviet capability and intention to respond to the US [stealth] challenge." Topics covered in the discussion include the concept of stealth, the counter-stealth potential of current and near-term Soviet systems, future Soviet technical responses, ballistic missile defenses, other defense options, prospective Soviet stealth developments, research facilities, aerodynamic systems, ballistic missile systems, and intelligence gaps.
Document 44: Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, US Stealth Programs and Technology: Soviet Exploitation of the Western Press, August 1, 1988. Secret.
Source: CIA Historical Review Program Release.
This paper examines the intersection of Soviet examination of Western press reports on U.S. stealth efforts and indigenous Soviet work in the area.
CIA STEALTH EFFORTS
Document 45: [Deleted], Director of Scientific and Weapons Research, Memorandum for: Deputy Director for Intelligence, Subject: CIA's Stealth Efforts [Deleted], February 1, 1984, w/att: CIA Intelligence Support to US Stealth Programs, Secret/Noforn.
Source: CREST.
The attachment to the February 1, 1984 memo notes that the CIA's Office of Scientific and Weapons Research had been providing direct support to US stealth efforts since 1980 and provides specific examples. It also describes "several initiatives... to better support policy makers." The February 1 memo outlines that the author believes "we have done well, what we have not done, and recommendations for future support."
Document 46: William J. Casey, Memorandum for: Deputy Director for Intelligence, Subject: CIA's Stealth Efforts, February 2, 1984. Secret
Source: CREST.
This memo is DCI Casey's response to the February 1 and its attachment.
Document 47: [Deleted], Director of Scientific and Weapons Research, Memorandum for: Director of Central Intelligence, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Subject: Implementation of CIA's Stealth Analytical Effort, March 1, 1984.
Source: CREST.
This memo reports on the number of clearances necessary for the CIA to carry out the analytical program concerning stealth suggested by the Director of the Office of Scientific and Weapons Research. It indicates the both the national intelligence and CIA entities that would be involved as well as the specific topics to be investigated.
EXPLOITATION
Document 48: Thomas R. Woodford, National Air and Space Intelligence Center, HAVE DOUGHNUT Tactical Evaluation, n.d. Unclassified.
Source: www.dreamlandresort.com/black_projects, permission of T.D. Barnes
This briefing reports on the 1968 tactical evaluation effort designated HAVE DOUGHNUT - which focused on a MiG-21 aircraft provided to the U.S. by Israel. The purpose of the effort was to evaluate the effectiveness of Air Force and Navy tactical maneuvers against the MiG-21, optimize tactics and develop new ones needed to defeat MiG-21s, and evaluate the design, performance, and operation characteristics of the MiG-21.
Document 49: Rob Young, Project HAVE DOUGHNUT - Exploitation of the MIG-21, n.d. Unclassified.
www.dreamlandresort.com/black_projects, permission of T.D. Barnes
This briefing covers, inter alia, the background of the HAVE DOUGHNUT effort (Document 48, Document 50); data on sorties flown; lessons learned; the positive features, shortcomings, and unique design features of the MiG; and Air Force and Navy responses to the findings.
Document 50: Defense Intelligence Agency, FTD-CR-20-13-69-INT, Volume II, Have Doughnut (U) Tactical, August 1, 1969.
Source: www.scribd.com
This 310-page report, produced by the Air Force Foreign Technology Division, on behalf of DIA, presents the detailed results of the tactical evaluation, the MiG-21 obtained from Israel. The report focused on evaluating the effectiveness of existing tactical maneuvers by Air Force and Navy combat aircraft and associated weapons against the MiG-21. It also was intended to exploit tactical capabilities and limitations of the MiG-21 in aerial combat and help optimize existing tactics and develop new tactics to defeat the MiG-21.
Document 51: Thomas R. Woodford, HAVE DRILL/HAVE FERRY Tactical Evaluation, n.d., Unclassified.
Source: www.dreamlandresort.com/black_projects, permission of T.D. Barnes
This briefing on the 1969 exploitation of a MiG-17 provides weapon system highlights, key statements by Air Force and Navy officials - as well as the evaluation, general conclusions, and recommendations of the Tactical Air Command and Navy.
Document 52: Rob Young, National Air and Space Intelligence Center, HAVE DRILL/HAVE FERRY - Exploitation of the Soviet MiG-17F, n.d. Unclassified.
Source: www.dreamlandresort.com/black_projects, permission of T.D. Barnes
This briefing describes the specifics of the exploitation efforts, designated HAVE DRILL and HAVE FERRY, of two versions of the Soviet MiG-17F fighter plane. It specifies the versions of the plane in the possession of the Foreign Technology Division (now the National Air and Space Intelligence Center), U.S. test equipment, the testing effort, and lessons learned.
ODDS & ENDS
Source: Department of Defense Freedom of Information Act Release.
This heavily redacted instruction from 1979 may pertain to an aircraft or radar testing program (similar to HAVE GLIB, Document 6) at Groom Lake.
Document 54: "Stealth," August 29, 1980. Top Secret.
Source: Record Group 59, PPS Records of Anthony Lake, 1977-1981, August 1980, National Archives and Records Administration.
This memo, found in the Anthony Lake's State Department file for the 1977-1981 years, is an attempt at stealth humor.
Document 55: Walter D. Clark, Northrop Grumman Corporation, United States Patent, No. 7,108,230 B2, Aircraft with Topside Only Spoilers,
September 19, 2006. Unclassified.
Source: www.spacepatents.com/patented_inventions/pat7108230.pdf.
This patent is for a low-observable aircraft with improved roll control characteristics.
Document 56: DARPA Technology Transition (Arlington, Va.: Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, 1997), Unclassified.
Source: www.darpa.mil
These pages from this DARPA history cover the stealth fighter, TACIT BLUE (Document 53) and HAVE BLUE/F-117 programs.
Document 57: EAFB Instruction 31-17, Security Procedures for Inadvertent Tracking and Sensor Acquisition of Low Observable and Sight Sensitive Programs, November 14, 2005. Unclassified.
Source: Federation of American Scientists (www.fas.org).
This instruction from the commander of Edwards Air Force Base in California assigns agency responsibilities "during inadvertent or unauthorized tracking of sight-sensitive and low observable (LO) tests assets within the R-2508 complex located at Edwards." It also notes that "it is strictly forbidden to train tracking sensors... on any LO or sight sensitive assets."
Document 58: National Air Force Museum Fact Sheet, Northrop Tacit Blue, n.d. Unclassified.
Source: www.nationalmuseum.af.mil
This fact sheet provides basic details on the history of the TACIT BLUE surveillance aircraft (Document 51), that flew at Area 51, but was never put into production. It also provides data on the planes specifications and perofmance.
Document 59: U.S. Air Force, Fact Sheet, Boeing Bird of Prey, n.d. Unclassified.
Source: www.nationalmuseum.af.mil
This fact sheet provides a short history of the Bird of Prey aircraft developed by the McDonnell-Douglas Phantom Works (later acquired by Boeing). It provides information on the length of the program, its first flight, the number of flights, and the purpose of the program.
Document 60: U.S. Air Force, Fact Sheet, RQ-170 Sentinel, December 10, 2009. Unclassified.
Source: www.af.mil.
This very brief fact sheet acknowledged the existence and mission, of the RQ-170 drone – which had been spotted in use over Afghanistan and had been referred to as the "Beast of Kandahar."
Notes
[1] Among the non-fiction books on Area 51, are David Darlington, Area 51 - The Dreamland Chronicles: The Legend of America's Most Secret Military Base (New York: Henry Holt, 1997); Phil Patton, Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51 (New York: Villard, 1998); Annie Jacobsen, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base (Boston: Little, Brown, 2011). For a critical review of Jacobsen's book, see Robert S. Norris and Jeffrey T. Richelson, "Dreamland Fantasies," Washington Decoded (www.washingtondecoded.com), July 11, 2011. Also, see Peter W. Merlin, "It's No Secret - Area 51 was Never Classified," available at www.dreamlandresort.com/pete/no_secret.html.
[2] Gregory Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974 (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 1992), p. 56. The history is available at: www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB434, posted on August 15, 2013.
[6] Ibid., pp. 274, 284. The OXCART, KEDLOCK, TAGBOARD, and SR-71 Programs will be the subject of a future electronic briefing book.
[7] For the SKYLAB incident see, Dwayne Day, "Astronauts and Area 51: The Skylab Incident," The Space Review (www.thespacereview.com), January 9, 2006.
[8] Trevor Paglen, Blank Spots: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World (New York: Dutton, 2009), p. 41.
[9] Pedlow and Welzenbach, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance, p. 129-130, 259.
[10] Ben R. Rich and Leo Janos, Skunks Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed (Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), pp. 19-20. Overholser was one of three authors of a patent (5,250, 950) filed on February 13, 1979 (which they assigned to Lockheed) for a low-observable aircraft.
[11] Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Technology Transition (Arlington, Va.: DARPA, n.d., but circa 1998-2000), p. 66.
[12] Rich and Janos, Skunk Works, p. 96.
[13] Use in the Balkans resulted in the loss of one plane, which was turned over to Russia, although the pilot was recovered. See Darrell Whitcomb, "The Night They Saved Vega 31," Air Force Magazine, December 2006, pp. 70-74.
[14] The United States investigated the employment of stealth characteristics in satellites, ships, and missiles - specifically, the MISTY imagery satellite, the SEA SHADOW surface vessel, and the advance cruise missile. See, Jeffrey T. Richelson, "Satellite in the Shadows," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 2005; "Sea Shadow," www.lockheedmartin.com, accessed October 21, 2013; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Technology Transition, p. 115.
[15] Directorate of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, Soviet Work on Radar Cross Section Reduction Applicable to a Future Stealth Program, February 1984, p. iii.
[16] Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services, (New York: Grove, Weindenfeld, 1993), pp. 206-207; John Lowery, "Have Doughnut," Air Force Magazine, June 2010, pp. 64-67; T.D. Barnes, "Exploitation of Soviet MiGs at Area 51," http://area51specialprojects.com/migs_area51.html, accessed November 20, 2010.
[17] Barnes, "Exploitation of Soviet MiGs at Area 51."
[18] "Air Force declassifies elite aggressor program," November 13, 2006, www.af.mil. For histories of the effort see: Gaillard R. Peck, Jr., America's Secret MiG Squadron: The Red Eagles of CONSTANT PEG (Long Island, N.Y. Osprey, 2012); Steve Davies, Red Eagles:America's Secret MiGs (Long Islands, N.Y.: Osprey, 2008).
[19] "Slater Lake," Roadrunners Internationale Monthly House Six News and Gossip, October 1, 2008, p. 8.
[20] For an account of the TACIT BLUE effort, see Peter Grier, "The (Tacit) Blue Whale," Air Force Magazine, August 1996.
[21] For an account of the BIRD OF PREY program, see Bill Sweetman, "Bird of Prey," Popular Science, January 2003, pp. 44-49.Skip to comments.
Im With Her: Hillary Supporters Hired Bearded Hipster from Syphilis Ads as Their New Pitchman
Daily Sheeple ^ | 5/27/2016 | Piper McGowin
Posted on by HomerBohn
The joke practically writes itself here.
As part of the #ManEnoughforHillary campaign, Hillary supporters just hired this guy below to do their new supposed-to-be manly Im with her ads.
The premise here is that hes man enough to vote for a woman so according to the campaign, other men should feel like they arent man enough unless, like this manly bearded man with manly tattoos, they too vote for Hillary.
But this man is also manly enough to appear in giant syphilis ads plastered on public buses all over Portland, Oregon.
Thats right. Hillarys supporters managed to choose the one bearded hipster who is famous for telling Portland to get educated about STDs.
(Watch video at link)
Again, the jokes practically write themselves.
And
(Wait for it )
Hes with her.
TOPICS:
News/Current Events
Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS:
2016election
election2016
hitlery
newyork
trump
youthvote
Hillary is quite familiar with venereal diseases being occasionally with the thing she's welded to for financial purposes. She doesn't worry about contracting them herself as she's a one woman woman.
To: HomerBohn
Hillary’s husband, when he not after trapped 15 year olds,
acts like he has tertiary spyhilis; probably
explaining the connection.
by 2 posted onby Diogenesis ("When a crime is unpun |
a report by Kent University suggests that attainment may be linked to girls’ and boys’ own perceptions of their abilities at a very young age.
The study – being presented to the British Educational Research Association annual conference at Warwick University today – presented pupils aged four to 10 with a series of statements such as "this child is really clever" and "this child always finishes their work" and asked them to link the words to pictures of boys or girls.
It emerged that pupils from all ages were more likely to identify girls as being better behaved and harder working. Even boys were more likely to pick out girls as high achievers, researchers said.
Children were also split into two groups, with the first group told that boys did not perform as well as girls. Both groups completed maths, reading and writing tests.
The study found that girls’ results were broadly similar in both groups but boys in the first performed worse than those in the second.
Bonny Hartley, a researcher from the university’s school of psychology, who led the study, said that adults could contribute to this “self-fulfilling prophecy” by dividing classes into boys v girls or using stereotypical language.
"It is widely acceptable to pitch the boys against the girls or 'harmlessly' divide the class in this way for practical ease,” she said
"In addition, phrases such as'silly boys','schoolboy pranks' and 'why can't you sit nicely like the girls?' are all likely to contribute to the expectation that boys behave worse and under-perform compared to girls.
“These phrases tend to slip off the tongue, yet they may be doing more harm than realised in reinforcing children's perceptions that it is acceptable to judge and evaluate people on the basis of their gender.”Should there be a basic income?
Basic Income UK co-ordinator Barb Jacobson and author and sociologist Francine Mestrum go head to head.
Barb
During my adult life I have been a student, feminist, welfare claimant, waitress, journalist, community organizer, mother – all of them with little income or none. An unconditional basic income would make my life easier even if it came at the cost of my current job – as an independent housing and benefits adviser.
YES: Barb Jacobson is co-ordinator of Basic Income UK. A former member of Wages for Housework, she has been active in community organizations since 1991, mainly around housing and health. She works for the Fitzrovia Neighbourhood Association in central London.
I have been fighting welfare and housing cuts in London since 1981. I am tired of losing.
Some battles have been won: squatters saved much of the Georgian and Victorian fabric of London – later re-privatized; universal child benefit was preserved until just last year; welfare sanctions were delayed until the last Labour administration; a few clinics and hospitals were saved from closure – while the National Health Service (NHS) as a whole was pulled apart.
And the Left are still talking about jobs, regardless of their impact on people’s lives and the environment. Jobs offered by whom? Governments are so corrupt; outside their own cartels, they don’t care about people. Meanwhile, the private sector is determined only to extract profit. This stance is only credible because jobs are most people’s only source of income. It ignores the necessary work outside paid employment that people already do for free.
Advert
Surely it’s better to give people money and let them decide what to do with it, as well as what to do with their time, while freeing them up from stress, overwork, humiliation and bureaucratic nightmares.
Francine
I agree that citizens are doing important work in order to organize communities better, to fight for social rights. I also agree that people without a stable job or income face enormous difficulties. They have income problems, obviously, and difficulties with navigating a complex welfare system.
NO: Francine Mestrum has a PhD in social sciences. Her research concerns social development, poverty, inequality, globalization and gender relations. She is co-ordinator of Global Social Justice and represents CETRI (Centre Tricontinental) in the International Council of the World Social Forum.
But from there, where do we go? You speak of a basic income but I am not sure that this is the best solution. If what we mean by a basic income is an amount of money that should be given to all people, rich and poor, without any conditions, then I cannot agree. There are better solutions, like a minimum guaranteed income for all those who are not active in the labour market.
In other discussions I have had about basic income, I have said that poverty is basically an income deficit. To my surprise, many people have protested and told me: ‘No, no, no; poverty is a multidimensional problem, poor people have so many different and related problems …’ But it is these same people who are now saying ‘please, just give money to the poor’.
I do not believe that in order to eradicate poverty, we should give money to the non-poor. But we have to give money to the poor, enough to allow them to live in dignity.
Advert
I am not sure I correctly understand what you mean when you talk about your job. Would you prefer not to work but to receive an allowance instead?
Barb
That’s just it – how is the question of who is ‘poor’ and who is ‘non-poor’ to be decided? And by whom? Where is that line to be drawn?
Isn’t a person trapped by financial dependence in a marriage with a violent, or even just a boring, partner ‘poor’, no matter how wealthy he or she might be? Isn’t anyone who does a job that is demeaning, dull, socially useless, or physically damaging, in some essential way ‘poor’, no matter how high their actual wage?
Why should jobs that contribute to the general impoverishment of the environment, that damage the wellbeing of the people who do them, or that endanger other human beings be allowed? If we want to get rid of these activities – and we’ll have to somehow if we want to survive as a species – won’t the people who currently do them need to make ends meet while they, and we, figure out less harmful ways to make a living?
In fact, why does anyone need to have a job at all – unless you live off rents or dividends, or in other words, directly off other people’s labour? Wouldn’t it be better to pool this surplus and distribute it more equally, along with work itself? An unconditional basic income, paid to all individuals, would remove the stigma of not earning a wage and would give people time to attend to the things neither governments nor the markets pay for.
You ask if I would prefer not to work any more but rather receive an allowance. What I meant was that my job should not have to exist. While I have no doubt that at the moment I’m doing socially necessary work, I’d be far happier if the social-security system didn’t have to be ‘negotiated’ with other people’s help, and if I had more time to do – and think about – other things. Whether that would be ‘work’ in your eyes or not, I don’t know.
Francine
We both want another economy and another society. We both want to share the work and to share the incomes.
A basic income might solve some problems, but certainly not all. Environmental problems will need a different approach. As will poverty.
A basic income is paid in money, and this money comes from the wealth produced by others. These producers also deserve our respect and should not be asked to pay for the people who do not need it – Francine
People who fall under the poverty line and are not able to engage in the labour market should get a sufficiently high allowance. People above the poverty line may also need help with housing, childcare and education. They should not get a basic income, which, at any rate, will not help with these issues. They do, however, need the social rights and benefits from the welfare state which came about after many years of social struggle. We should not abandon it.
A basic income is paid in money, and this money comes from the wealth produced by others. These producers also deserve our respect and should not be asked to pay for the people who do not need it.
As for jobs: indeed, some should not exist; but all work should be paid, even the work of caregivers. It is vital work and the responsibility for it should be shared. That is where the conditions come in.
Barb
The principle of unconditionality is paramount to making welfare a liberating proposition for those who need it most. It is also the most practical way to provide it.
Every week I see the problems caused by means-testing. There are the barriers to claiming: people’s reluctance to allow bureaucrats to delve into their personal finances and the shame felt by those who need the money. The first is particularly true of pensioners who qualify for a pension top-up. I’ve seen many people ruin all other aspects of their lives – losing family relationships, friendships, their homes – by going into debt before finally claiming the means-tested benefits they were eligible for.
There is the high effective tax rate, so that, if people work and still qualify for benefits, they can only keep 15 per cent of the extra money that they make on top of benefits. There is also the problem of increasingly flexible, precarious contracts that cause people to spend more and more time making and cancelling claims, in turn increasing the burden on the bureaucratic system that administers them.
An unconditional basic income, paid to all individuals, would remove the stigma of not earning a wage and would give people time to attend to the things neither governments nor the markets pay for – Barb
All of this seems to me a huge – and perfectly avoidable – cause of real suffering, to say nothing of an intolerable waste of everyone’s time.
I’m not worried about those people who ‘don’t need’ an unconditional basic income, however you define who they are – they will be taxed on income above this payment anyway. Personally, I would prefer that any income earned by actual work not be taxed at all. Taxes on land value, resource and financial speculation that have been proposed would more evenly balance unearned income collected by the richest with their debt to society. At the moment, at least in Britain, unearned income is taxed at rates several times lower than taxes on earned income.
Of course, people in all income groups will still need collectively organized services like health, education, childcare and housing.
Francine
An unconditional basic income is not possible and is not desirable, because citizenship is a political concept that implies a relationship between the state and its citizens. Citizens recognize the power of the state, and states are responsible for the welfare of their citizens. We cannot allow a state just to give alms to people and then abandon them. We cannot allow citizens to accept money and then ignore the state.
There will always be conditions to social benefits.
If current conditionality is unacceptable – and it is – then it has to be improved, to be made human. Not be abandoned.
Some advocates of basic income pretend that they can pay for it while also preserving the welfare state! Here in Belgium, a basic income of $960 – not a decent income – would cost 24 per cent of our GDP. Our current social security also costs 24 per cent of GDP. How could these two expenditures be combined?
Let’s face it: many people just want to do away with welfare states, and most of all with trade unions. They want to preserve the unjust and unacceptable social and economic structures that are at the root of poverty and inequality.
While we agree on many analytical points, I do not agree with your solutions. I want to re-think social protection in terms of social commons, based on our common humanity, on social and economic rights others have struggled for.
This article is from the April 2014 issue of New Internationalist.
You can access the entire archive of over 500 issues with a digital subscription. Subscribe today »WASHINGTON -- The Detroit Red Wings controlled the puck all night long and outshot the NHL’s highest-scoring team in its own building 46-23.
They held two-time league MVP Alex Ovechkin and the highest-scoring defenseman in the game, Mike Green, without a shot on goal.
They led with less than seven minutes remaining in the third period.
But they left the Verizon Center empty-handed Tuesday, as the Washington Capitals scored two goals in 46 seconds late in regulation and got terrific goaltending from Jose Theodore to pull out a 3-2 victory.
“I feel good because I thought our team played real well, real hard,’’ Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said. “We basically dominated from start to finish. They’re an opportunistic team. They got real good offensive flair and they were able to capitalize.
“Their goalie was outstanding. But I like the way we played. We played fast, we were on top of them. If we continue to play the way we’re playing we’ll be just fine.’’
Brian Rafalski scored with 8:53 to play to give the Red Wings a 2-1 lead. But a tripping penalty to Todd Bertuzzi less than two minutes later shifted the momentum.
Nicklas Backstrom tied the game with a power-play goal at 13:15, making a move around Brad Stuart and whipping a shot past Chris Osgood on the short side. David Steckel then scored what proved to be the winning goal at 14:01, backhanding the puck past Osgood from the slot after a shot by Alexander Semin was deflected in front.
“Stupid, stupid penalty by me. Just careless with my stick at the wrong time,’’ Bertuzzi said. “Then they come back and score another one right away. It’s pretty deflating.’’
Osgood, making his first start since Dec. 20, said, “They scored a nice goal to tie it up, obviously, but then the bounce (on Steckel’s goal), I’m still not sure how it went in.’’
Babcock said Jimmy Howard, who had started the previous 12 games, will start Thursday in Minnesota.
“I just think it was an opportunity for (Osgood) tonight,’’ Babcock said. “I thought we gave him real good support.
“I thought we were tilting the rink. You do good things, normally good things happen. Tonight was one of those few times when you outplay the other team and it didn’t go your way.’’
Red Wings captain Nicklas Lidstrom said his team battled hard for 50 minutes and lamented its inability to score on five power-play chances, including one in the final five minutes.
“I thought it got away from us a little bit in the last 10 minutes,’’ Lidstrom said. “They scored a nice goal to tie it up. The third one I couldn’t really tell from the bench, it was bouncing and then it was in our net.’’
Steckel called it “lucky.’’
“The puck just went to the net. I just happened to be there,’’ Steckel said. “I saw it bouncing. It was just trying to get it on net, just a tip. I thought it went wide at first until I looked back.’’
Detroit’s Dan Cleary opened the scoring at 4:17 of the second period with his 10th goal of the season. He misfired on a forehand attempt while staring at an open net but scored on the second effort, backhanding the puck in off Theodore from a bad angle while falling down.
Matt Bradley tied it at 1-1 with 1:55 to play in the second period, capitalizing on a defensive breakdown to get behind Jonathan Ericsson and beat Osgood.
“We need points right now, that’s what hurts even more,’’ Osgood said. “The way we played, we can take a positive out of that.’’
Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg took little solace in his team’s domination, however.
“You can say we played a good game, but in the end we didn’t score enough goals," Zetterberg said. “We had a lot of chances, we should be able to put more pucks in.’’About 30,000 inmates protest against solitary confinement and other conditions they say amount to torture
An estimated 30,000 inmates in jails across California are participating in a hunger strike to protest against solitary confinement and other conditions they say amount to torture.
Prisoners refused meals for a second day on Tuesday in about two dozen jails, signalling what was thought to be the biggest protest of its kind in California's history.
The campaign is a ramped-up sequel to hunger strikes in 2011, which shone international attention on the state's troubled penal system but failed to wring significant concessions from authorities.
A group of inmates at the maximum security Pelican Bay state prison in Crescent City has organised the protest, saying they will starve themselves unless the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) agrees to meaningful negotiations.
At any one time, California holds about 12,000 inmates in extreme isolation, including some who have been in windowless boxes known as security housing units (SHUs) for decades. They are allowed out for an hour a day to exercise – some in a yard, others in a kennel-size cage.
Supporters say the strike is a legitimate response to cruel and inhumane conditions. "The use of prolonged solitary confinement is a form of torture," said Laura Downton, director for US Policy and Program at the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. "We stand with them in their call for five core demands."
The strikers have issued a number of demands, including the end to group punishment, an overhaul to the policy of identifying suspected gang members, an end to long-term solitary confinement, better education and rehabilitation programmes, and the provision of adequate and nutritious food.
The principal grievance is California's unusual policy of indefinitely putting suspected gang members in solitary and moving them back into the regular jail only if they identify fellow gang members.
The protest has united black, Latino and white inmates, including members of racist gangs. "It's phenomenal. They are coming together because they know in unity is where ultimate victory lies," said Dolores Canales, co-founder of California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement.
"The mood is hopeful, but this also shows how hard things are. They are sacrificing the one thing that is given to them to keep them alive." Many family members on the outside have joined the strike, she said.
The Pelican Bay leaders had defied their isolation, and the supposed mutual loathing between racial groups, to organise the mass protest, said Laura Magnani of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker advocacy group. "Prisoners have to communicate and find ways to do it. They have a grapevine. It's amazing."
Inmates in two-thirds of the state's 33 jails, as well as four out-of-state jails, started refusing meals on Monday, said corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton. Inmates are deemed to be on hunger strike if they skip nine meals. Authorities said that about 30,000 are classified to be taking part on the action.
Meanwhile, around 2,300 prisoners also refused to turn up for work or classes, some citing illness.
At its peak, the 2011 hunger strike, also led by Pelican Bay inmates, drew about 12,000 inmates in about 11 jails. It ended after authorities promised to consider reforms.
The California assembly held hearings, and the gang validation procedure was tweaked so an inmate would be deemed a gang member based on behaviour, not on association with other inmates.
But what inmates saw as insufficient change and follow-up prompted the new protest, which has been planned for months.
"Our decision does not come lightly," said a June 20 letter from the Pelican Bay leaders. "For the past two years we've patiently kept an open dialogue with state officials, attempting to hold them to their promise to implement meaningful reforms, responsive to our demands."
It said its leaders had participated in a mediation session – ordered by a judge in their class action lawsuit – but that authorities acted in bad faith.
"Thus we are presently out of alternative options for achieving the long overdue reform to this system and, specifically, an end to state-sanctioned torture, and now we have to put our lives on the line via indefinite hunger strike to force CDCR to do what's right.
"We are certain that we will prevail … the only questions being: How many will die starvation-related deaths before state officials sign the agreement? The world is watching!"
The start of the protest, though more than double the size of the previous one, has generated some local media attention but not made national headlines as yet.
The use of solitary confinement spread from federal to state penitentiaries, especially in California, which said gang violence behind bars required isolation cells to separate the "worst of the worst".
The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, a union representing 27,400 members, has defended their right to select inmates for solitary confinement and to determine the punishment's duration, saying it helps to tamp down violence.
Downton, of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, said the policy caused psychological harm and worsened violence. "After 15 days in isolation the chemistry of the brain begins to change … leading to increasing rates of hallucinations, paranoia and self-mutilation. It has become a default management tool rather than a tool of last resort."After a disappointing loss to Geelong in last Friday’s semi-final, the attention of the Swans now turns to list management decisions for the 2018 season.
One player who has had plenty of speculation about his future is Kurt Tippett. Despite being under contract for next season.
The 30 year old has had his fair share of injury issues. He will undergo ankle surgery in the off-season and will certainly hope for a better on-field return next year.
Kurt Tippett struggle in 2017
The former Crow has only played nine games in 2017. With his last appearance for the Swans being the round 23 clash with Carlton.
Embed from Getty Images
Football manager Tom Harley said he would be “surprised” if Kurt Tippett did not remain at the Swans and was certainly a required player for next year.
“He’s going to require some surgery on his ankle. He battled pretty manfully to play a couple of those AFL games and certainly in the NEAFL so he’s going to be better for the surgery and the recovery and remains an important part of the team.”
The best 22
There is certainly plenty of competition for spots in the Swans senior team. Kurt Tippett has the flexibility to play both in ruck and as a key-forward. Positions that Sydney is well stocked in currently.
Realistically Tippett will be competing with players such as Dean Towers, Sam Naismith and Callum Sinclair for a position in the senior side next year if he remains.
Embed from Getty Images
The 30 year old has played 74 games in Swans colours. While his best football may be behind him, Kurt Tippett certainly still has something to offer at AFL level if he can remain injury free.
by Liam Sheedy – contributor
Follow on Facebook: Sheedy SaysThe apartment is cavernous, on a high floor of the Dakota, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Huge windows overlook Central Park, 30 feet above the tree line, with the grand residential buildings of Fifth Avenue in the distance. My meetings with Lauren Bacall, who is 86, are at three P.M. in the winter, so the light is silvery blue in the wood-trimmed parlor, where Bacall has set the scene for our sessions. A tall wooden chair, for her, is positioned in the center of the room, near a low, white-and-green-upholstered club chair, for me. A single lamp burns in a distant corner. She is dressed, every time, in a black shirt, black pants, and black orthopedic shoes. She always has with her Sophie, an excitable papillon, and what she refers to as “my friend,” her aluminum walker, with tennis balls on its feet. The “fucking fracture that I’ve got on the hip” is the result of a bathroom fall a few months back, a frustrating how-do-you-do after a life of near-perfect health. “Can you imagine? It’s the only time I have been in the hospital except for the times when I gave birth,” she says. A fighter by nature, Bacall has begun to venture out, supported by her walker, onto 72nd Street, going alone to physical therapy, for the most part unrecognized, just another senior citizen. “People don’t pay any attention to me or the walker,” she says. “The other night I was going into a doctor’s office, and some son of a bitch came out of the building, almost knocked me over. I said, ‘You’re a fucking ape!’—screaming at him. He never even turned around. Couldn’t care less, this big horse of a man.” She hands me a box of Bissinger’s chocolate bark and instructs me to tear off the cellophane. “This is going to be our snack,” she says, explaining that she is the St. Louis-based chocolate company’s spokesperson. “I just said ‘Bissinger’s is the best chocolate’ into a microphone when I was in St. Louis touring with Applause [the Broadway musical, in 1971], and every year the boxes of chocolate keep coming, so I guess I am still their spokesman.” The cellophane is hard to puncture, and she suddenly snaps, “What’s taking you so long to open that box? Get over here and sit down!” “Patience,” Bacall wrote in her memoir, By Myself (1978), “was not my strong point.” “There have always been rumors about me: Oh, she’s very difficult. Be careful of her. People who don’t know me—even some people who do know me—know that I say what I think. Very few people want to hear the truth. Bogie was like that, my mother was like that, and I’m like that. I believe in the truth, and I believe in saying what you think. Why not? Do you have to go around whispering all the time or playing a game with people? I just don’t believe in that. So I’m not the most adored person on the face of the earth. You have to know this. There are a lot of people who don’t like me at all, I’m very sure of that. But I wasn’t put on earth to be liked. I have my own reasons for being and my own sense of what is important and what isn’t, and I’m not going to change that.” There is a pause as I make a note on this aria. “Uh-oh, he’s thinking too much,” she says. “You are going to cut me to ribbons, I can tell. What’s the argument for this story? That I am still breathing? I don’t talk about the past,” she proclaims, taking a piece of Bissinger’s and pushing the rest in my direction. Nevertheless, the past is present everywhere in this room and all over the apartment. It is, in fact, never far from her thoughts. She has lived in great comfort in this place since 1961, when she bought it for $48,000. “I called my business manager in California and said, ‘Sell all of my stock’—what little of it I had—and it’s the only smart financial move I ever made,” she says. The north wall of the parlor, which she faces, is a map of memories in the form of framed photos, drawings, and ephemera, testifying to the fact that she knew the greats from a tender age. “It’s not about me. It’s about all the people who were my friends,” she says. The centerpiece is a vermilion portrait of her as the character Schatze in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) by that film’s director, Jean Negulesco. She was at the height of her beauty then. “My son tells me, ‘Do you realize you are the last one? The last person who was an eyewitness to the golden age?’ Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, ‘Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart?’ ‘Well, yes, I think I was,’ I reply. You realize yourself when you start reflecting—because I don’t live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are—that you can’t ignore it. But I don’t look at scrapbooks. I could show you some, but I’d have to climb ladders, and I can’t climb.” The Prettiest Usher
‘Bogie was 25 years my senior,” she begins. They were married on May 21, 1945, when she was 20 and he was 45, at Malabar Farm, in Lucas, Ohio, the home of Bogart’s great friend the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Louis Bromfield. Bogart liked to refer to himself as “a last-century boy,” having been born in 1899. “I fairly often have thought how lucky I was,” she tells me. “I knew everybody because I was married to Bogie, and that 25-year difference was the most fantastic thing for me to have in my life.” She points to the wall—to signed photos of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Robert Benchley, Clifton Webb, Noël Coward, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, John Gielgud, and Truman Capote—and says with a sigh, “It’s like all the talent’s gone. It’s very sad. “Bogie started in the theater not as an actor but as a stage manager, and he got on the stage by accident, because one of the actors did not show up for a performance one evening, so he went on for him. And he said, ‘O.K., this isn’t too bad.’ I don’t know why he ended up in California, because he was brought up in New York. His mother was an artist, Maud Humphrey. His father was a doctor, Belmont DeForest Bogart. How do you like that for a name? He was Humphrey DeForest Bogart.” There may be some mystery as to how Bogart ended up in Hollywood, but how Lauren Bacall got there, 67 years ago, from her native New York is the stuff of legend. She was born Betty Joan Perske, in the Bronx, on September 16, 1924. Her mother and mother’s mother were Jewish immigrants from Romania. Her father, William Perske, abusive and unfaithful, fled when Betty was six. She took her grandmother’s name, Bacal, at age eight, eventually adding the second l to make it easier to pronounce. The family’s finances were always shaky. Bacall’s mother worked multiple jobs to support her only child. Betty’s dream from her very early years was to be an actress, specifically the second coming of Bette Davis, whom she worshipped, imitated, and literally stalked when Davis was in New York in the early 40s, staying at the Gotham Hotel, off Fifth Avenue. While a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, in Manhattan, Bacall relentlessly pursued a theatrical break: barging into the office of Broadway producer Max Gordon and begging for a part, striking up a friendship with the actor Paul Lukas, selling the casting tip sheet Actor’s Cue outside Sardi’s, going on an age-inappropriate date with the notoriously lecherous star Burgess Meredith, whom she had met while volunteering at the Stage Door Canteen. (Bogart always believed that Meredith had taken her virginity and later confronted him about it. Meredith and Bacall denied it, but, she says, “Bogie didn’t believe him.”) During this period she was also an usher at the St. James Theatre, and she got the first augury of immortality—if you don’t count being crowned Miss Greenwich Village 1942—when the theater critic George Jean Nathan gave her a glowing notice. As she recalled in By Myself: Every year he wrote a page in Esquire appraising the past theatre season and listing merits and demerits. On the merit side of the July 1942 issue was the following: “The prettiest theatre usher—the tall slender blonde in the St. James’ Theatre, right aisle, during the Gilbert & Sullivan engagement—by general rapt agreement among the critics, but the bums are too dignified to admit it.” I really enjoyed that one. Being noticed by someone renowned in theatrical circles—anyone—was something. It wouldn’t get me a part, but it couldn’t hurt and it was better than just disappearing. The day after her 18th birthday, Bacall made her stage debut in a George S. Kaufman play, Franklin Street, which closed after its Washington, D.C., tryout. However, the smoldering good looks that had caught Nathan’s eye landed her in front of Diana Vreeland, then the fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar, for a model casting. She made the cover in March 1943, and that photo of her, standing in front of a Red Cross office door, caught the attention of Nancy “Slim” Hawks, then the wife of movie director Howard Hawks, who suggested to him that he give Bacall a screen test. Her Own Svengali
‘Of course, it was Howard Hawks who changed my life,” Bacall tells me. “Despite all of his great accomplishments—Bringing Up Baby [1938], Scarface [1932], some of the best pictures to that date—his one ambition was to find a girl and invent her, to create her as his perfect woman. He was my Svengali, and I was to become, under his tutelage, this big star, and he would own me. And he would also like to get me into his bed, which, of course—horrors! It was the furthest thing from my mind. I was so frightened of him. He was the old gray fox, and he always told me stories of how he dealt with Carole Lombard and Rita Hayworth, how he tried to get them to listen to him and they didn’t, so they never got the parts they should have gotten, and their careers took much longer to take off.” Hawks and his producing partner, Charles Feldman, put her through Hollywood boot camp. She was in awe, and scared to death. “You can’t imagine how beautiful L.A. was then. Of course, it’s all ruined now,” she says. She aced her screen test, but, as she wrote in By Myself, the Hollywood machine “was so much more complicated than I had thought, so much grander.” Slim Hawks and Feldman’s wife, Jean Howard, both social paragons, took her under their wings and showed her off around town. Elsa Maxwell gave her a 19th-birthday party and invited Hedda Hopper, who wrote about it. Bacall started to appear at Cole Porter’s regular Sunday-night dinners at his house in Brentwood. In By Myself, she recalled: He always had a few soldiers who had no place to go—no home nearby—to dinner and always invited young actresses to dine and dance with them One day I was having lunch at his poolside and was the last to leave. Finally he walked me to the door. At that moment the door opened. Standing there in white shirt, beige slacks—with a peach complexion, light-brown hair, and the most incredible face ever seen by man—was Greta Garbo. I almost gasped out loud as Cole introduced me to her. No make-up—unmatched beauty. It was the only time I saw her at anything but a distance. Studio makeup artists attempted to alter Bacall, putting her in terror as they moved in to pluck her eyebrows, shave her hairline, and straighten her teeth. She thwarted their efforts: “Howard had chosen me for my thick eyebrows and crooked teeth, and that’s the way they would stay.” She insisted on doing her own hair, in the style that would become her trademark: “The wave … on the right side—starting to curve at the corner of my eyebrow and ending, sloping downward, at my cheekbone.” Hawks had been thinking hard about a new name for his discovery. “At lunch in the green room one day,” Bacall wrote, “Howard told me he had thought of a name: Lauren. He wanted me to tell everyone when the interviews began that it was an old family name—had been my great-grandmother’s.” Previously he had asked her what her real grandmother’s name was. “Sophie,” Bacall answered. That, clearly, would not do. Hawks, determined to make her into a sex symbol for every warm-blooded American man, was, she feared, an anti-Semite. “He once made some remark about a Jew and I turned cold,” she noted. “I’m sure I paled visibly I was panic-stricken.” She prayed he would never ask her about her religion. It’s a small irony that she has never been comfortable being called Lauren Bacall. Her friends call her Betty. Bogart and his compatriots called her Baby. On a Saturday morning in 1942, in New York City, Bacall’s mother and her aunt Rosalie had taken her to the Capitol Theatre to see Casablanca. “We all loved it,” Bacall wrote in By Myself. “And Rosalie was mad about Humphrey Bogart. I thought he was good in it, but mad about him? Not at all. She thought he was sexy. I thought she was crazy I couldn’t understand Rosalie’s thinking at all.” That was when Betty Bacall was 18. Now, at 19, Hawks had in mind casting her opposite Bogart or Cary Grant. “I thought, Cary Grant—terrific! Humphrey Bogart—yuck!” she tells me. In the end, Hawks decided to put her in To Have and Have Not, an adaptation of a Hemingway novel, with Bogart. He presented the ingénue to the star one day on the set of the film Passage to Marseille. Howard told me to stay put, he’d be right back—which he was, with Bogart. He introduced us. There was no clap of thunder, no lightning bolt, just a simple how-do-you-do. Bogart was slighter than I imagined—five feet ten and a half, wearing his costume of no-shape trousers, cotton shirt, and scarf around neck. Nothing of import was said—we didn’t stay long—but he seemed a friendly man. The filming of To Have and Have Not was marked by two bombshell experiences for Bacall. The first was her discovery that she was so terrified in front of the camera that she could barely function. No matter what Hawks tried, she couldn’t gather her wits to perform her role as the femme fatale Marie, whom Bogart’s character in the film, Steve, nicknames Slim (in homage to Slim Hawks). She recalls being “ready for a strait |
case of Kate Steinle who was shot in the back while showing her dad the beautiful piers in San Francisco, or whether it was high school football star Jamiel Shaw’s life ending on the sidewalk in front of his house in South Central Los Angeles, California leaders have blood on their hands.
Public safety is the reason I left California at the end of 2012.
As Democrats promoted sanctuary city policies and Gov. Jerry Brown began his early prisoner release program of convicted felons, drug dealers and other offenders, I no longer felt safe as a single female walking home from work in California.
Now in California, 13,500 inmates are released early every month due to overcrowding. That’s an increase of 34 percent over just the last few years, according to the Los Angeles Times.
All of this comes at a time when illegal immigrant criminal activity is drowning the state’s resources. Already, approximately one-fourth of the prison inmate population are illegal immigrants being housed on the taxpayers’ dime.
While liberals often suggest that the illegal immigrant population is relatively low and therefore no threat to public safety, federal crime statistics show that a heavy percentage of inmates, criminal offenders and murderers are illegal immigrants. According to an op-ed earlier this year at The Hill, “a population of just over 3.5 percent residing in the U.S. unlawfully committed 22 percent to 37 percent of all murders in the nation.”
In the Kate Steinle murder case, we knew so little about the violent illegal immigrant offender that he was actually indicted under another name. Initially, he was reported to be Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, but the name under which he was just acquitted last night is Jose Ines Garcia Zarate. It begs the question, if we can’t even verify a person’s true identity, should they really be in our country walking our streets among the public?
The evidence clearly shows that illegal immigrants's criminal activity increasingly places law-abiding American citizens at risk.
That an entire state would allow its residents to be placed beneath the rights of illegal criminal immigrants is a travesty. The fact that liberals even suggest that those who have no legal claim to residence here even have “rights” is a laughable premise to begin with.
The sad news is that with California now becoming a “sanctuary state” this problem will continue to grow, and the public safety will continue to be placed at risk.
When not corrected, history will repeat itself.
So, who will be the next Kate Steinle?
We don’t yet know her name, but you can bet that this scenario will undoubtedly and ever so tragically play out again on the national stage.
Jen Kerns served as the spokeswoman for the California Republican Party. A two-time appointee of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, she went on to serve as spokeswoman and communications director for the victorious Prop. 8 campaign in California, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Americans for Prosperity in California, and numerous rare successful Statewide races as a Republican press secretary. She departed California at the end of 2012 over public safety concerns.The following is a list of mascots of Association football teams, sorted by the country in whose league they appear.
Australia [ edit ]
Brazil [ edit ]
Canada [ edit ]
Colombia [ edit ]
El Viejo Willy (Ol' Willy the Shark) - Junior de Barranquilla
England and Wales [ edit ]
Many now take part in the Mascot Grand National held each year at Kempton Park Racecourse. and at the annual Mascot Olynmpics held in Milton Keynes.
Germany [ edit ]
Greece [ edit ]
Haga (an eagle) - AEK Athens F.C. Leone (a lion) - Olympiacos F.C.
Honduras [ edit ]
India [ edit ]
Italy [ edit ]
Korea Republic [ edit ]
Aguileon – Suwon Samsung Bluewings
Horse - Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma
SSID (Alien) - FC Seoul
Cheetah - Anyang LG Cheetahs
Korean Dragon (seen in the former crest)- Chunnam Dragons
Dragon (current), Astro Boy (former, POSCO Atoms), Megaman-like superhero (former, 1990s), Dolphin (former, POSCO Dolphins) - Pohang Steelers
Bear - Daejeon Citizen
Red-Crowned Crane - Incheon United
Victo (a man of flames) - Daegu FC
Orange - Jeju
Tiger - Ulsan Hyundai Motors
Anthropomorphic Cat and a Winged Car - Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors
Bird - Bucheon FC 1995,
Eagle - Hallelujah FC
Swallow - Kookmin Bank FC
Baekho, the White Tiger - Korea Republic national football team
Mexico [ edit ]
Northern Ireland [ edit ]
Portugal [ edit ]
Scotland [ edit ]
Roary – Scotland National Team
Spain [ edit ]
L'avi del Barça (Grandfather) - FC Barcelona
Clam (one-eyed human figure) - FC Barcelona (former, mascot of the Centenary in 1999-00 season)
Indi (racoon with an Apache hat) - Atletico de Madrid
Locco (a heart with arms and feet) - Sevilla FC
Perico (a parakeet) - RCD Espanyol
Palmerín (a palm) - Real Betis
Super Rat (a bat) - Valencia CF
Leo (a lion with crown and cape) - Real Zaragoza
Pucelo (former, a castle tower) - Real Valladolid (former)
Pepe Zorrillo (a fox dressed as a knight) - Real Valladolid (current)
Groguet (an anthropomorphic submarine) - Villareal CF
Bokeman (a sardine) - Malaga CF
Datigol (a fox) - Elche CF
Winged Bear - Getafe CF
Zete (a bat) - Albacete Balompié
Harrotxu (a lion) - Athletic Bilbao
Atotxo (a superhero) - Real Sociedad
Rojillo (a boy wearing a red and black uniform and a Txapela (the basque berret) - CA Osasuna (former)
Gelu and Gelin (two angels) - Real Oviedo
Granota Boja (a frog) - Levante CF
Tula, the cow - Racing Santander
Pica Pica, the bee - Rayo Vallecano
Babazorro (a fox) - Deportivo Alavés
Celestino - Celta Vigo
El Jabato (a boar) - Mirandés CF
Dimonio (a devil) - RCD Mallorca
Nocho (a duck with a horned helmet) - Celta Vigo (former)
Koki, the crocodile - Cordoba CF
Carmany (a figure based on Charlemagne) - Girona FC
Pio Pio, the canary bird - UD Las Palmas
Ferreret - CD Atlético Baleares
Ruralito (an anthropomorphized wheat plant, based on Caja Rural's logo) - Zamora CF
Romanito (a Roman soldier) - UD Mérida
Pimentin (a white and red pepper) - Real Murcia (former)
Sumi, the submarine - FC Cartagena
Nasticus (a Roman soldier) - Gimnastic de Tarragona
Elio-Doro, the elephant - CD Tenerife
Roelio, the bone - Pontevedra CF
Quillo (a man with Xerez uniform) - Xerez CD
Pepinero, the cucumber - CD Leganés
Eskorpius, the scorpion - Orihuela CF
Gualdy, the wolf - Barakaldo CF
TiVo, the bat - Alcoyano CF
Teo Maximo (an eagle dressed as a Roman soldier) - Gimnástica Segoviana
Akarón, the horse - Narón BP
Balastero, the bear - Palencia CF
Señor Gol (a figure with a football as head and a hat) - CD Logroñés
Goli, the dog - LFP-Liga Profesional de Fútbol (former, lasted 1991-95 seasons)
Estrellito, the star - LFP-Liga Profesional de Fútbol (former, 1998-99 season)
Manolo el del Bombo - Spanish National Football Team (not official)
OBS: Real Madrid, UD Almería, Deportivo La Coruña, UD Salamanca, CF Numancia and Sporting Gijón are the only clubs that don't have an official mascot.
Thailand [ edit ]
Turkey [ edit ]
United States [ edit ]
Major League Soccer
Former (Major League Soccer)
Lower soccer leagues (NASL, USL, etc.)
See also [ edit ]
.
References [ edit ]
Kesu (Elephant) Kerala BlastersAn analysis of dinosaur teeth suggests the creatures may have migrated from flood plains to uplands during the dry season
The largest dinosaurs to walk the Earth may have embarked on seasonal migrations that covered hundreds of kilometres when local watering holes dried up and food became scarce.
Evidence that giant sauropods set off on epic journeys came to light when scientists examined fossilised teeth recovered from the remains of beasts unearthed in Wyoming and Utah in the US.
The analysis of 32 teeth belonging to two species of Camarasaurus, among the most common sauropods found in North America, suggests the creatures migrated during hot, dry summers, from their usual habitats on flood plains in search of food and water in surrounding uplands.
Some return journeys required the dinosaurs to cover distances of around 300 kilometres (190 miles) in each direction. The long-necked herbivores measured 20 metres from nose to tail in adulthood and weighed around 18 tonnes.
The arduous treks pushed the lumbering animals to their limit, and some appear to have died soon after returning to their lowland homes, before the rainy season brought fresh water to parched soils and vegetation flourished once more.
Understanding the ranges and seasonal movements of the animals will help scientists piece together the role of migrations on Jurassic ecology and any bearing this had on the evolution of gigantism among dinosaurs.
"The question of how sauropods got to be so big is one that is still being actively studied. There's evidence that some of the reason is that they didn't have the dental morphology to chew their food, so in order to get enough energy their guts got bigger, and they did more processing in their stomachs," said Henry Fricke, head of geology at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, who led the study which is published in Nature.
"Migration could come into the story of gigantism as a feedback process. Once they started to get big, it would be easier for them to migrate and get more food more consistently, which would help them to grow even more," he added. Moving long distances gets more energetically efficient the bigger strides a creature can take, so it would be highly inefficient for a mouse, for example, but much more efficient for a large dinosaur.
Fricke's team attempted to reconstruct camarasaur migrations by measuring oxygen isotopes (variants of particular elements that have different numbers of neutrons in their nucleus) in their teeth. The work relied on the fact that ratios of two oxygen isotopes differ markedly in the waters of streams and lakes, depending on local environmental conditions, such as how high and arid the landscape was at the time.
The dinosaurs kept an unwitting record of these oxygen isotopes as they roamed the land, because the oxygen in the water they drank became incorporated into successive layers of enamel as their teeth developed.
Most of the teeth, from remains collected at Thermopolis in Wyoming and Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, were worn and retained only a month or two of enamel growth, but others were in far better condition with up to four or five months of enamel still intact.
The scientists analysed oxygen isotopes in the dinosaurs' teeth and compared them with ancient soil samples from their lowland habitats and bordering uplands. From this, they pieced together the dinosaurs' movements over several months of their lives, concluding that the beasts made seasonal migrations to the uplands. Studies of one tooth suggest the dinosaur left its lowland habitat to find food and water in the highlands and returned home within five to six months.
"What was up in the highlands food-wise we don't know, the land is weathered away, but the conditions may not have been as hot and dry, and it may even have rained more continuously at the higher elevations," Fricke said.
"This is a neat example of how we can bring geochemical methods to bear on an issue, how we can learn something about dinosaur behaviour that we can't learn from looking at the morphology of the fossils themselves," he added.Trump’s State Department wants to hear all about visa applicants’ social media game. Getty Images
Courtesy of the Trump administration, visa applicants to the United States will now have to fill out a questionnaire that asks about their social media and biographical information going back years, Reuters reported Thursday.
According to Reuters, the new procedures allow consular officials stationed at U.S. embassies worldwide to demand visa applicants’ social media handles over the preceding five years along with previous passport numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, employment history, travel history, and past addresses stretching back 15 years. The Office of Management and Budget green-lit the questionnaire last month via an emergency approval process that—for now—gives the form a six-month lifespan instead of the typical three years.
Applicants are technically free to withhold the information from U.S. officials at their personal discretion. But the form, which can be viewed here, states that “failure to provide this information may delay or prevent the processing of an individual visa application.”
Visa applicants will apparently be quizzed about their social media game in cases where “such information is required to confirm identity or conduct more rigorous national security vetting,” an anonymous State Department official told Reuters on Thursday. But the department had previously stated that more stringent forms of identification would affect only those “who have been determined to warrant additional scrutiny in connection with terrorism or other national security-related visa ineligibilities,” Reuters reported last month, citing a State Department notice to the Federal Register.
The move comes after a campaign in which then-candidate Donald Trump promised “extreme vetting” of people seeking to enter the United States—without really specifying what those heightened background checks would look like. Members of terrorist organizations like the Islamic State have proven adept at using social media to galvanize attacks, recruit adherents to their cause, and build their global brand. Other assailants like Tashfeen Malik—a U.S. permanent resident from Pakistan who along with her husband killed 14 people in a 2015 ISIS-inspired attack in San Bernardino, California—had previously used social media in ways that suggested terrorist sympathies. Malik’s Facebook activity supporting violence against the U.S. wasn’t caught by State Department officials when she entered the country through the K-1 visa program in July 2014. (Because her activity came mostly in the form of direct messages or posts made under strict privacy settings, however, it’s unclear whether the new procedures asking visa applicants for handles and other public account information would’ve flagged Malik’s sentiments either.)
In January, CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that the fledgling administration was considering “asking foreign visitors to disclose all websites and social media sites they visit, and to share the contacts in their cell phones.” Then, in February, Politico revealed that Trump policy advisers were flirting with mandating similar social media disclosures from Chinese visitors. And as recently as April, the Wall Street Journal reported, the White House was weighing a draconian measure that would’ve forced visitors to the U.S.—including short-term vacationers—to hand over passwords to their social media accounts as well as subjected them to questions about their ideology.
The Obama administration also rolled out an optional provision in its final days asking visa waiver entrants to the country to supply social media account information for platforms including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+, Politico reported last December. But Trump’s form targeting applicants before a visa has been granted is a further step down the path of social media vetting.
The OMB approved the new procedures over the objections of academic groups and educational officials, according to Reuters. Those critics charge that the questionnaire will likely dampen interest among international students—already inconvenienced by Trump’s executive orders restricting foreign travel from several Muslim-majority nations—who might otherwise have chosen to study stateside. More than 50 such groups, representing a spectrum of academic disciplines as well as college admissions administrators, complained that the new procedures would generate “uncertainties and confusion” and “unacceptably long delays in processing” in a letter sent to State Department officials last month. The new form may also discourage scientists from entering the U.S. to work, naysayers worry.
And it remains murky whether the new procedures will actually do much to clamp down on individuals with potential ties terrorism seeking entry into the country. Immigration experts are skeptical. Mostly, they say, the questions will annoy and flummox less savvy visa applicants, potentially deterring individuals from pursuing residency in the U.S. “The United States has one of the most stringent visa application processes in the world,” Babak Yousefzadeh, a San Francisco-based attorney and president of the Iranian American Bar Association, told Reuters. “The need for tightening the application process further is really unknown and unclear.”The word probability has been used in a variety of ways since it was first applied to the mathematical study of games of chance. Does probability measure the real, physical tendency of something to occur or is it a measure of how strongly one believes it will occur, or does it draw on both these elements? In answering such questions, mathematicians interpret the probability values of probability theory.
There are two broad categories[1][2] of probability interpretations which can be called "physical" and "evidential" probabilities. Physical probabilities, which are also called objective or frequency probabilities, are associated with random physical systems such as roulette wheels, rolling dice and radioactive atoms. In such systems, a given type of event (such as a die yielding a six) tends to occur at a persistent rate, or "relative frequency", in a long run of trials. Physical probabilities either explain, or are invoked to explain, these stable frequencies. The two main kinds of theory of physical probability are frequentist accounts (such as those of Venn,[3] Reichenbach[4] and von Mises[5]) and propensity accounts (such as those of Popper, Miller, Giere and Fetzer).[6]
Evidential probability, also called Bayesian probability, can be assigned to any statement whatsoever, even when no random process is involved, as a way to represent its subjective plausibility, or the degree to which the statement is supported by the available evidence. On most accounts, evidential probabilities are considered to be degrees of belief, defined in terms of dispositions to gamble at certain odds. The four main evidential interpretations are the classical (e.g. Laplace's)[7] interpretation, the subjective interpretation (de Finetti[8] and Savage[9]), the epistemic or inductive interpretation (Ramsey,[10] Cox[11]) and the logical interpretation (Keynes[12] and Carnap[13]). There are also evidential interpretations of probability covering groups, which are often labelled as 'intersubjective' (proposed by Gillies[14] and Rowbottom[6]).
Some interpretations of probability are associated with approaches to statistical inference, including theories of estimation and hypothesis testing. The physical interpretation, for example, is taken by followers of "frequentist" statistical methods, such as Ronald Fisher[dubious – discuss], Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson. Statisticians of the opposing Bayesian school typically accept the existence and importance of physical probabilities, but also consider the calculation of evidential probabilities to be both valid and necessary in statistics. This article, however, focuses on the interpretations of probability rather than theories of statistical inference.
The terminology of this topic is rather confusing, in part because probabilities are studied within a variety of academic fields. The word "frequentist" is especially tricky. To philosophers it refers to a particular theory of physical probability, one that has more or less been abandoned. To scientists, on the other hand, "frequentist probability" is just another name for physical (or objective) probability. Those who promote Bayesian inference view "frequentist statistics" as an approach to statistical inference that recognises only physical probabilities. Also the word "objective", as applied to probability, sometimes means exactly what "physical" means here, but is also used of evidential probabilities that are fixed by rational constraints, such as logical and epistemic probabilities.
It is unanimously agreed that statistics depends somehow on probability. But, as to what probability is and how it is connected with statistics, there has seldom been such complete disagreement and breakdown of communication since the Tower of Babel. Doubtless, much of the disagreement is merely terminological and would disappear under sufficiently sharp analysis. (Savage, 1954, p 2)[9]
Philosophy [ edit ]
The philosophy of probability presents problems chiefly in matters of epistemology and the uneasy interface between mathematical concepts and ordinary language as it is used by non-mathematicians. Probability theory is an established field of study in mathematics. It has its origins in correspondence discussing the mathematics of games of chance between Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat in the seventeenth century,[15] and was formalized and rendered axiomatic as a distinct branch of mathematics by Andrey Kolmogorov in the twentieth century. In axiomatic form, mathematical statements about probability theory carry the same sort of epistemological confidence within the philosophy of mathematics as are shared by other mathematical statements.[16][17]
The mathematical analysis originated in observations of the behaviour of game equipment such as playing cards and dice, which are designed specifically to introduce random and equalized elements; in mathematical terms, they are subjects of indifference. This is not the only way probabilistic statements are used in ordinary human language: when people say that "it will probably rain", they typically do not mean that the outcome of rain versus not-rain is a random factor that the odds currently favor; instead, such statements are perhaps better understood as qualifying their expectation of rain with a degree of confidence. Likewise, when it is written that "the most probable explanation" of the name of Ludlow, Massachusetts "is that it was named after Roger Ludlow", what is meant here is not that Roger Ludlow is favored by a random factor, but rather that this is the most plausible explanation of the evidence, which admits other, less likely explanations.
Thomas Bayes attempted to provide a logic that could handle varying degrees of confidence; as such, Bayesian probability is an attempt to recast the representation of probabilistic statements as an expression of the degree of confidence by which the beliefs they express are held.
Though probability initially had somewhat mundane motivations, its modern influence and use is widespread ranging from evidence-based medicine, through Six sigma, all the way to the Probabilistically checkable proof and the String theory landscape.
A summary of some interpretations of probability Classical Frequentist Subjective Propensity Main hypothesis Principle of indifference Frequency of occurrence Degree of belief Degree of causal connection Conceptual basis Hypothetical symmetry Past data and reference class Knowledge and intuition Present state of system Conceptual approach Conjectural Empirical Subjective Metaphysical Single case possible Yes No Yes Yes Precise Yes No No Yes Problems Ambiguity in principle of indifference Circular definition Reference class problem Disputed concept
[2] (p 1132)
Classical definition [ edit ]
The first attempt at mathematical rigour in the field of probability, championed by Pierre-Simon Laplace, is now known as the classical definition. Developed from studies of games of chance (such as rolling dice) it states that probability is shared equally between all the possible outcomes, provided these outcomes can be deemed equally likely.[1] (3.1)
The theory of chance consists in reducing all the events of the same kind to a certain number of cases equally possible, that is to say, to such as we may be equally undecided about in regard to their existence, and in determining the number of cases favorable to the event whose probability is sought. The ratio of this number to that of all the cases possible is the measure of this probability, which is thus simply a fraction whose numerator is the number of favorable cases and whose denominator is the number of all the cases possible. Pierre-Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities[7]
The classical definition of probability works well for situations with only a finite number of equally-likely outcomes.
This can be represented mathematically as follows: If a random experiment can result in N mutually exclusive and equally likely outcomes and if N A of these outcomes result in the occurrence of the event A, the probability of A is defined by
P ( A ) = N A N {\displaystyle P(A)={N_{A} \over N}}
There are two clear limitations to the classical definition.[18] Firstly, it is applicable only to situations in which there is only a 'finite' number of possible outcomes. But some important random experiments, such as tossing a coin until it rises heads, give rise to an infinite set of outcomes. And secondly, you need to determine in advance that all the possible outcomes are equally likely without relying on the notion of probability to avoid circularity—for instance, by symmetry considerations.
Frequentism [ edit ]
in the long run. For frequentists, the probability of the ball landing in any pocket can be determined only by repeated trials in which the observed result converges to the underlying probability
Frequentists posit that the probability of an event is its relative frequency over time,[1] (3.4) i.e., its relative frequency of occurrence after repeating a process a large number of times under similar conditions. This is also known as aleatory probability. The events are assumed to be governed by some random physical phenomena, which are either phenomena that are predictable, in principle, with sufficient information (see determinism); or phenomena which are essentially unpredictable. Examples of the first kind include tossing dice or spinning a roulette wheel; an example of the second kind is radioactive decay. In the case of tossing a fair coin, frequentists say that the probability of getting a heads is 1/2, not because there are two equally likely outcomes but because repeated series of large numbers of trials demonstrate that the empirical frequency converges to the limit 1/2 as the number of trials goes to infinity.
If we denote by n a {\displaystyle \textstyle n_{a}} the number of occurrences of an event A {\displaystyle {\mathcal {A}}} in n {\displaystyle \textstyle n} trials, then if lim n → + ∞ n a n = p {\displaystyle \lim _{n\to +\infty }{n_{a} \over n}=p} we say that P ( A ) = p {\displaystyle \textstyle P({\mathcal {A}})=p}.
The frequentist view has its own problems. It is of course impossible to actually perform an infinity of repetitions of a random experiment to determine the probability of an event. But if only a finite number of repetitions of the process are performed, different relative frequencies will appear in different series of trials. If these relative frequencies are to define the probability, the probability will be slightly different every time it is measured. But the real probability should be the same every time. If we acknowledge the fact that we only can measure a probability with some error of measurement attached, we still get into problems as the error of measurement can only be expressed as a probability, the very concept we are trying to define. This renders even the frequency definition circular; see for example “What is the Chance of an Earthquake?” [19]
Subjectivism [ edit ]
Gambling odds reflect the average bettor's 'degree of belief' in the outcome.
Subjectivists, also known as Bayesians or followers of epistemic probability, give the notion of probability a subjective status by regarding it as a measure of the 'degree of belief' of the individual assessing the uncertainty of a particular situation. Epistemic or subjective probability is sometimes called credence, as opposed to the term chance for a propensity probability.
Some examples of epistemic probability are to assign a probability to the proposition that a proposed law of physics is true, and to determine how probable it is that a suspect committed a crime, based on the evidence presented.
Gambling odds don't reflect the bookies' belief in a likely winner, so much as the other bettors' belief, because the bettors are actually betting against one another. The odds are set based on how many people have bet on a possible winner, so that even if the high odds players always win, the bookies will always make their percentages anyway.
The use of Bayesian probability raises the philosophical debate as to whether it can contribute valid justifications of belief.
Bayesians point to the work of Ramsey[10] (p 182) and de Finetti[8] (p 103) as proving that subjective beliefs must follow the laws of probability if they are to be coherent.[20] Evidence casts doubt that humans will have coherent beliefs.[21][22]
The use of Bayesian probability involves specifying a prior probability. This may be obtained from consideration of whether the required prior probability is greater or lesser than a reference probability[clarification needed] associated with an urn model or a thought experiment. The issue is that for a given problem, multiple thought experiments could apply, and choosing one is a matter of judgement: different people may assign different prior probabilities, known as the reference class problem. The "sunrise problem" provides an example.
Propensity [ edit ]
Propensity theorists think of probability as a physical propensity, or disposition, or tendency of a given type of physical situation to yield an outcome of a certain kind or to yield a long run relative frequency of such an outcome.[23] This kind of objective probability is sometimes called 'chance'.
Propensities, or chances, are not relative frequencies, but purported causes of the observed stable relative frequencies. Propensities are invoked to explain why repeating a certain kind of experiment will generate given outcome types at persistent rates, which are known as propensities or chances. Frequentists are unable to take this approach, since relative frequencies do not exist for single tosses of a coin, but only for large ensembles or collectives (see "single case possible" in the table above).[2] In contrast, a propensitist is able to use the law of large numbers to explain the behaviour of long-run frequencies. This law, which is a consequence of the axioms of probability, says that if (for example) a coin is tossed repeatedly many times, in such a way that its probability of landing heads is the same on each toss, and the outcomes are probabilistically independent, then the relative frequency of heads will be close to the probability of heads on each single toss. This law allows that stable long-run frequencies are a manifestation of invariant single-case probabilities. In addition to explaining the emergence of stable relative frequencies, the idea of propensity is motivated by the desire to make sense of single-case probability attributions in quantum mechanics, such as the probability of decay of a particular atom at a particular time.
The main challenge facing propensity theories is to say exactly what propensity means. (And then, of course, to show that propensity thus defined has the required properties.) At present, unfortunately, none of the well-recognised accounts of propensity comes close to meeting this challenge.
A propensity theory of probability was given by Charles Sanders Peirce.[24][25][26][27] A later propensity theory was proposed by philosopher Karl Popper, who had only slight acquaintance with the writings of C. S. Peirce, however.[24][25] Popper noted that the outcome of a physical experiment is produced by a certain set of "generating conditions". When we repeat an experiment, as the saying goes, we really perform another experiment with a (more or less) similar set of generating conditions. To say that a set of generating conditions has propensity p of producing the outcome E means that those exact conditions, if repeated indefinitely, would produce an outcome sequence in which E occurred with limiting relative frequency p. For Popper then, a deterministic experiment would have propensity 0 or 1 for each outcome, since those generating conditions would have same outcome on each trial. In other words, non-trivial propensities (those that differ from 0 and 1) only exist for genuinely nondeterministic experiments.
A number of other philosophers, including David Miller and Donald A. Gillies, have proposed propensity theories somewhat similar to Popper's.
Other propensity theorists (e.g. Ronald Giere[28]) do not explicitly define propensities at all, but rather see propensity as defined by the theoretical role it plays in science. They argued, for example, that physical magnitudes such as electrical charge cannot be explicitly defined either, in terms of more basic things, but only in terms of what they do (such as attracting and repelling other electrical charges). In a similar way, propensity is whatever fills the various roles that physical probability plays in science.
What roles does physical probability play in science? What are its properties? One central property of chance is that, when known, it constrains rational belief to take the same numerical value. David Lewis called this the Principal Principle,[1] (3.3 & 3.5) a term that philosophers have mostly adopted. For example, suppose you are certain that a particular biased coin has propensity 0.32 to land heads every time it is tossed. What is then the correct price for a gamble that pays $1 if the coin lands heads, and nothing otherwise? According to the Principal Principle, the fair price is 32 cents.
Logical, epistemic, and inductive probability [ edit ]
It is widely recognized that the term "probability" is sometimes used in contexts where it has nothing to do with physical randomness. Consider, for example, the claim that the extinction of the dinosaurs was probably caused by a large meteorite hitting the earth. Statements such as "Hypothesis H is probably true" have been interpreted to mean that the (presently available) empirical evidence (E, say) supports H to a high degree. This degree of support of H by E has been called the logical probability of H given E, or the epistemic probability of H given E, or the inductive probability of H given E.
The differences between these interpretations are rather small, and may seem inconsequential. One of the main points of disagreement lies in the relation between probability and belief. Logical probabilities are conceived (for example in Keynes' Treatise on Probability[12]) to be objective, logical relations between propositions (or sentences), and hence not to depend in any way upon belief. They are degrees of (partial) entailment, or degrees of logical consequence, not degrees of belief. (They do, nevertheless, dictate proper degrees of belief, as is discussed below.) Frank P. Ramsey, on the other hand, was skeptical about the existence of such objective logical relations and argued that (evidential) probability is "the logic of partial belief".[10] (p 157) In other words, Ramsey held that epistemic probabilities simply are degrees of rational belief, rather than being logical relations that merely constrain degrees of rational belief.
Another point of disagreement concerns the uniqueness of evidential probability, relative to a given state of knowledge. Rudolf Carnap held, for example, that logical principles always determine a unique logical probability for any statement, relative to any body of evidence. Ramsey, by contrast, thought that while degrees of belief are subject to some rational constraints (such as, but not limited to, the axioms of probability) these constraints usually do not determine a unique value. Rational people, in other words, may differ somewhat in their degrees of belief, even if they all have the same information.
Prediction [ edit ]
An alternative account of probability emphasizes the role of prediction – predicting future observations on the basis of past observations, not on unobservable parameters. In its modern form, it is mainly in the Bayesian vein. This was the main function of probability before the 20th century,[29] but fell out of favor compared to the parametric approach, which modeled phenomena as a physical system that was observed with error, such as in celestial mechanics.
The modern predictive approach was pioneered by Bruno de Finetti, with the central idea of exchangeability – that future observations should behave like past observations.[29] This view came to the attention of the Anglophone world with the 1974 translation of de Finetti's book,[29] and has since been propounded by such statisticians as Seymour Geisser.
Axiomatic probability [ edit ]
The mathematics of probability can be developed on an entirely axiomatic basis that is independent of any interpretation: see the articles on probability theory and probability axioms for a detailed treatment.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]For many young players in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization, this season is just getting started. The Toronto Marlies, for example, are flying high and within striking distance of the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs. Tonight, however, their friends on the Orlando Solar Bears bowed out of the ECHL playoffs, falling 1-0 to the Florida Everblades in Game 6 of the opening around.
The Series
The Solar Bears came into this one as underdogs, finishing 21 points back of the third overall Everblades in the regular season standings. As for how it went? Well, it was an interesting series to say the least.
Despite a thirty save performance by Garret Sparks and a pair of assists from Brad Ross, the Leafs prospect that stuck out the most in Game 1 was a former one. Nicolas Deschamps picked up the game’s opening and closing goals, which pushed the Everblades to a 3-2 victory. Game 2 started off well, with Brett Findlay opening up the scoring, but a less than exemplary effort by Sparks meant than four goals sailed the wrong way in just fifteen shots. While Maxime Clermont stepped in to relieve him of his duties, the Bears weren’t able to turn things around in time and fell behind by two games.
Orlando took a complete 180 degree turn in Game 3, breathing new life into the series with a victory that they probably shouldn’t have had. Florida’s Allen York surrendered four goals on eighteen shots, and Sparks rebounded with an insane 48 save performance that anchored the 5-2 victory. The momentum was carried into the following game, as Brady Vail picked up a pair en route to a 4-2 series-tying win.
That was as close as it got though. The Everblades outshot the Solar Bears once again on Saturday night, and while Orlando picked up four goals, the forty five shots on net were just too much to handle. This put their backs against the wall tonight, and while Sparks was unbeaten for 72:39, a goal by Alex Aleardi sent the team packing in an overtime heartbreaker.
Veteran John Mc |
* height_ )
{ }
Image ( const Image & i ) : width_ { i. width_ }, height_ { i. height_ }, data_ { i. data_ }
{ }
Image ( Image && i ) : width_ { i. width_ }, height_ { i. height_ }, data_ { std :: move ( i. data_ ) }
{ }
~Image ( ) = default ;
Image & operator = ( const Image & i ) {
if ( this! = & i ) {
width_ = i. width_ ;
height_ = i. height_ ;
data_ = i. data_ ;
}
return * this ;
}
Image & operator = ( Image && i ) {
if ( this! = & i ) {
width_ = i. width_ ;
height_ = i. height_ ;
data_ = std :: move ( i. data_ ) ;
}
return * this ;
}
size_t idx ( unsigned x, unsigned y ) const noexcept { return y * width_ + x ; }
bool operator ( ) ( unsigned x, unsigned y ) {
return data_ [ idx ( x, y ) ] ;
}
friend std :: ostream & operator << ( std :: ostream & o, const Image & i ) {
o << i. width_ << " x " << i. height_ << std :: endl ;
size_t px = 0 ;
for ( const auto & e : i. data_ ) {
o << ( e? Image :: BLACK_PIX : Image :: WHITE_PIX ) ;
if ( ++ px % i. width_ == 0 )
o << std :: endl ;
}
return o << std :: endl ;
}
friend std :: istream & operator >> ( std :: istream & in, Image & img ) {
auto it = std :: begin ( img. data_ ) ;
const auto end = std :: end ( img. data_ ) ;
Image :: pixel_t tmp ;
while ( in && it! = end ) {
in >> tmp ;
if ( tmp! = Image :: BLACK_PIX && tmp! = Image :: WHITE_PIX )
throw "Bad character found in image" ;
* it = ( tmp == Image :: BLACK_PIX )? 1 : 0 ;
++ it ;
}
return in ;
}
unsigned width ( ) const noexcept { return width_ ; }
unsigned height ( ) const noexcept { return height_ ; }
struct Neighbours {
// 9 2 3
// 8 1 4
// 7 6 5
Neighbours ( const Image & img, unsigned p1_x, unsigned p1_y )
: img_ { img }
, p1_ { img. idx ( p1_x, p1_y ) }
, p2_ { p1_ - img. width ( ) }
, p3_ { p2_ + 1 }
, p4_ { p1_ + 1 }
, p5_ { p4_ + img. width ( ) }
, p6_ { p5_ - 1 }
, p7_ { p6_ - 1 }
, p8_ { p1_ - 1 }
, p9_ { p2_ - 1 }
{ }
const Image & img_ ;
const Image :: pixel_t & p1 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p1_ ] ; }
const Image :: pixel_t & p2 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p2_ ] ; }
const Image :: pixel_t & p3 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p3_ ] ; }
const Image :: pixel_t & p4 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p4_ ] ; }
const Image :: pixel_t & p5 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p5_ ] ; }
const Image :: pixel_t & p6 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p6_ ] ; }
const Image :: pixel_t & p7 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p7_ ] ; }
const Image :: pixel_t & p8 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p8_ ] ; }
const Image :: pixel_t & p9 ( ) const noexcept { return img_. data_ [ p9_ ] ; }
const size_t p1_, p2_, p3_, p4_, p5_, p6_, p7_, p8_, p9_ ;
} ;
Neighbours neighbours ( unsigned x, unsigned y ) const { return Neighbours ( * this, x, y ) ; }
private :
unsigned height_ { 0 } ;
unsigned width_ { 0 } ;
std :: valarray < pixel_t > data_ ;
} ;
constexpr const Image :: pixel_t Image :: BLACK_PIX = '#' ;
constexpr const Image :: pixel_t Image :: WHITE_PIX = '.' ;
class ZhangSuen {
public :
// the number of transitions from white to black, (0 -> 1) in the sequence P2,P3,P4,P5,P6,P7,P8,P9,P2
unsigned transitions_white_black ( const Image :: Neighbours & a ) const {
unsigned sum = 0 ;
sum + = ( a. p9 ( ) == 0 ) && a. p2 ( ) ;
sum + = ( a. p2 ( ) == 0 ) && a. p3 ( ) ;
sum + = ( a. p3 ( ) == 0 ) && a. p4 ( ) ;
sum + = ( a. p8 ( ) == 0 ) && a. p9 ( ) ;
sum + = ( a. p4 ( ) == 0 ) && a. p5 ( ) ;
sum + = ( a. p7 ( ) == 0 ) && a. p8 ( ) ;
sum + = ( a. p6 ( ) == 0 ) && a. p7 ( ) ;
sum + = ( a. p5 ( ) == 0 ) && a. p6 ( ) ;
return sum ;
}
// The number of black pixel neighbours of P1. ( = sum(P2.. P9) )
unsigned black_pixels ( const Image :: Neighbours & a ) const {
unsigned sum = 0 ;
sum + = a. p9 ( ) ;
sum + = a. p2 ( ) ;
sum + = a. p3 ( ) ;
sum + = a. p8 ( ) ;
sum + = a. p4 ( ) ;
sum + = a. p7 ( ) ;
sum + = a. p6 ( ) ;
sum + = a. p5 ( ) ;
return sum ;
}
const Image & operator ( ) ( const Image & img ) {
tmp_a_ = img ;
size_t changed_pixels = 0 ;
do {
changed_pixels = 0 ;
// Step 1
tmp_b_ = tmp_a_ ;
for ( size_t y = 1 ; y < tmp_a_. height ( ) - 1 ; ++ y ) {
for ( size_t x = 1 ; x < tmp_a_. width ( ) - 1 ; ++ x ) {
if ( tmp_a_. data_ [ tmp_a_. idx ( x, y ) ] ) {
auto n = tmp_a_. neighbours ( x, y ) ;
auto bp = black_pixels ( n ) ;
if ( bp >= 2 && bp <= 6 ) {
auto tr = transitions_white_black ( n ) ;
if ( tr == 1
&& ( n. p2 ( ) * n. p4 ( ) * n. p6 ( ) == 0 )
&& ( n. p4 ( ) * n. p6 ( ) * n. p8 ( ) == 0 )
) {
tmp_b_. data_ [ n. p1_ ] = 0 ;
++ changed_pixels ;
}
}
}
}
}
// Step 2
tmp_a_ = tmp_b_ ;
for ( size_t y = 1 ; y < tmp_b_. height ( ) - 1 ; ++ y ) {
for ( size_t x = 1 ; x < tmp_b_. width ( ) - 1 ; ++ x ) {
if ( tmp_b_. data_ [ tmp_b_. idx ( x, y ) ] ) {
auto n = tmp_b_. neighbours ( x, y ) ;
auto bp = black_pixels ( n ) ;
if ( bp >= 2 && bp <= 6 ) {
auto tr = transitions_white_black ( n ) ;
if ( tr == 1
&& ( n. p2 ( ) * n. p4 ( ) * n. p8 ( ) == 0 )
&& ( n. p2 ( ) * n. p6 ( ) * n. p8 ( ) == 0 )
) {
tmp_a_. data_ [ n. p1_ ] = 0 ;
++ changed_pixels ;
}
}
}
}
}
} while ( changed_pixels > 0 ) ;
return tmp_a_ ;
}
private :
Image tmp_a_ ;
Image tmp_b_ ;
} ;
int main ( int argc, char const * argv [ ] )
{
using namespace std ;
Image img ( 32, 10 ) ;
istringstream iss { input } ;
iss >> img ;
cout << img ;
cout << "ZhangSuen" << endl ;
ZhangSuen zs ;
Image res = std :: move ( zs ( img ) ) ;
cout << res << endl ;
Image img2 ( 58, 18 ) ;
istringstream iss2 { input2 } ;
iss2 >> img2 ;
cout << img2 ;
cout << "ZhangSuen with big image" << endl ;
Image res2 = std :: move ( zs ( img2 ) ) ;
cout << res2 << endl ;
return 0 ;
}
Output:
32 x 10.................................#########.......########........###...####.....####..####.......###....###.....###....###.......###...####.....###..............#########......###..............###.####.......###....###.......###..####..###.####..####.###...###...####.###..########..###.................................. ZhangSuen 32 x 10..................................#######.........######..........#.....#........##...............#......#.......#................#.....#........#................#####.#........#.....................##........#......................#....#...##....##...#............#.........####......................................... 58 x 18...........................................................#################...................#############.........##################...............################.........###################............##################.........########.....#######..........###################...........######.....#######.........#######.......######...........######.....#######........#######.........................#################.........#######.........................################..........#######.........................#################.........#######.........................######.....#######........#######.........................######.....#######........#######.........................######.....#######.........#######.......######.........########.....#######..........###################.........########.....#######.######....##################.######..########.....#######.######......################.######..########.....#######.######.........#############.######........................................................... ZhangSuen with big image 58 x 18........................................................................................................................#.##########.......................#######.................##........#...................####.......#................#..........#.................##...........................#..........#................#.............................#..........#................#.............................#..........#................#.............................############...............#..............................#..........#...............#..............................#..........#................#.............................#..........#................#.............................#..........#................#.............................#............................##...........................#.............................############..................................###..........................###.......................................................................................................................
This uses the module from the Bitmap Task. And it performs no heap allocations.
import std. stdio, std. algorithm, std. string, std. functional,
std. typecons, std. typetuple, bitmap ;
struct BlackWhite {
ubyte c ;
alias c this ;
static immutable black = typeof ( this ) ( 0 ),
white = typeof ( this ) ( 1 ) ;
}
alias Neighbours = BlackWhite [ 9 ] ;
alias Img = Image! BlackWhite ;
/// Zhang-Suen thinning algorithm.
Img zhangSuen ( Img image1, Img image2 ) pure nothrow @ safe @nogc
in {
assert ( image1. image. all! ( x => x == Img. black || x == Img. white ) ) ;
assert ( image1. nx == image2. nx && image1. ny == image2. ny ) ;
} out ( result ) {
assert ( result. nx == image1. nx && result. ny == image1. ny ) ;
assert ( result. image. all! ( x => x == Img. black || x == Img. white ) ) ;
} body {
/// True if inf <= x <= sup.
static inInterval ( T ) ( in T x, in T inf, in T sup ) pure nothrow @ safe @nogc {
return x >= inf && x <= sup ;
}
/// Return 8-neighbours+1 of point (x,y) of given image, in order.
static void neighbours ( in Img I, in size_t x, in size_t y,
out Neighbours n ) pure nothrow @ safe @nogc {
n = [ I [ x, y - 1 ], I [ x + 1, y - 1 ], I [ x + 1, y ], I [ x + 1, y + 1 ], // P2,P3,P4,P5
I [ x, y + 1 ], I [ x - 1, y + 1 ], I [ x - 1, y ], I [ x - 1, y - 1 ], // P6,P7,P8,P9
I [ x, y - 1 ] ] ;
}
if ( image1. nx < 3 || image1. ny < 3 ) {
image2. image [ ] = image1. image [ ] ;
return image2 ;
}
immutable static zeroOne = [ 0, 1 ] ; //**
Neighbours n ;
bool hasChanged ;
do {
hasChanged = false ;
foreach ( immutable ab ; TypeTuple! ( tuple ( 2, 4 ), tuple ( 0, 6 ) ) ) {
foreach ( immutable y ; 1.. image1. ny - 1 ) {
foreach ( immutable x ; 1.. image1. nx - 1 ) {
neighbours ( image1, x, y, n ) ;
if ( image1 [ x, y ] && // Cond. 0
(! n [ ab [ 0 ] ] ||! n [ 4 ] ||! n [ 6 ] ) && // Cond. 4
(! n [ 0 ] ||! n [ 2 ] ||! n [ ab [ 1 ] ] ) && // Cond. 3
//n[].count([0, 1]) == 1 &&
n [ ]. count ( zeroOne ) == 1 && // Cond. 2
// n[0.. 8].sum in iota(2, 7)) {
inInterval ( n [ 0.. 8 ]. sum, 2, 6 ) ) { // Cond. 1
hasChanged = true ;
image2 [ x, y ] = Img. black ;
} else
image2 [ x, y ] = image1 [ x, y ] ;
}
}
image1. swap ( image2 ) ;
}
} while ( hasChanged ) ;
return image1 ;
}
void main ( ) {
immutable before_txt = "
##..###
##..###
##..###
##..###
##..##.
##..##.
##..##.
##..##.
##..##.
##..##.
##..##.
##..##.
######.
......." ;
immutable small_rc = "
................................
.#########.......########.......
.###...####.....####..####......
.###....###.....###....###......
.###...####.....###.............
.#########......###.............
.###.####.......###....###......
.###..####..###.####..####.###..
.###...####.###..########..###..
................................" ;
immutable rc = "
...........................................................
.#################...................#############.........
.##################...............################.........
.###################............##################.........
.########.....#######..........###################.........
...######.....#######.........#######.......######.........
...######.....#######........#######.......................
...#################.........#######.......................
...################..........#######.......................
...#################.........#######.......................
...######.....#######........#######.......................
...######.....#######........#######.......................
...######.....#######.........#######.......######.........
.########.....#######..........###################.........
.########.....#######.######....##################.######..
.########.....#######.######......################.######..
.########.....#######.######.........#############.######..
..........................................................." ;
foreach ( immutable txt ; [ before_txt, small_rc, rc ] ) {
auto img = Img. fromText ( txt ) ;
"From:". writeln ;
img. textualShow ( /*bl=*/ '.', /*wh=*/ '#' ) ;
"
To thinned:". writeln ;
img. zhangSuen ( img. dup ). textualShow ( /*bl=*/ '.', /*wh=*/ '#' ) ;
writeln ;
}
}
Output:
From: ##..### ##..### ##..### ##..### ##..##. ##..##. ##..##. ##..##. ##..##. ##..##. ##..##. ##..##. ######........ To thinned: ##..### #.....# #.....# #...### #...#.. #...#.. #...#.. #...#.. #...#.. #...#.. #...#.. #...#.. #####......... From:.................................#########.......########........###...####.....####..####.......###....###.....###....###.......###...####.....###..............#########......###..............###.####.......###....###.......###..####..###.####..####.###...###...####.###..########..###.................................. To thinned:..................................#######.........######..........#.....#........##...............#......#.......#................#.....#........#................#####.#........#.....................##........#......................#....#...##....##...#............#.........####......................................... From:............................................................#################...................#############..........##################...............################..........###################............##################..........########.....#######..........###################............######.....#######.........#######.......######............######.....#######........#######..........................#################.........#######..........................################..........#######..........................#################.........#######..........................######.....#######........#######..........................######.....#######........#######..........................######.....#######.........#######.......######..........########.....#######..........###################..........########.....#######.######....##################.######...########.....#######.######......################.######...########.....#######.######.........#############.######............................................................. To thinned:..........................................................................................................................#.##########.......................#######..................##........#...................####.......#.................#..........#.................##............................#..........#................#..............................#..........#................#..............................#..........#................#..............................############...............#...............................#..........#...............#...............................#..........#................#..............................#..........#................#..............................#..........#................#..............................#............................##............................#.............................############...................................###..........................###..........................................................................................................................
ELENA 3.4 :
Translation of: Java
import system'collections.
import system'routines.
import extensions.
import extensions'routines.
const image = (
" ",
" ################# ############# ",
" ################## ################ ",
" ################### ################## ",
" ######## ####### ################### ",
" ###### ####### ####### ###### ",
" ###### ####### ####### ",
" ################# ####### ",
" ################ ####### ",
" ################# ####### ",
" ###### ####### ####### ",
" ###### ####### ####### ",
" ###### ####### ####### ###### ",
" ######## ####### ################### ",
" ######## ####### ###### ################## ###### ",
" ######## ####### ###### ################ ###### ",
" ######## ####### ###### ############# ###### ",
" ").
nbrs = ((0, -1), (1, -1), (1, 0), (1, 1), (0, 1),
(-1, 1), (-1, 0), (-1, -1), (0, -1)).
nbrGroups = (((0, 2, 4), (2, 4, 6)), ((0, 2, 6),
(0, 4, 6))).
extension<Matrix<CharValue>> zhangsuenOp
{
proceed(r, c, toWhite, firstStep)
[
if (self[r][c]!= $35)
[ ^ false ].
int nn := self numNeighbors(r,c).
if ((nn < 2) || (nn > 6))
[ ^ false ].
if(self numTransitions(r,c)!= 1)
[ ^ false ].
ifnot (self atLeastOneIsWhite(r,c,firstStep iif(0,1)))
[ ^ false ].
toWhite append:{ x = c. y = r. }.
^ true.
]
numNeighbors(r,c)
[
int count := 0.
0 till(nbrs length - 1) do(:i)
[
if (self[r + nbrs[i][1]][c + nbrs[i][0]] == $35)
[ count := count + 1. ].
].
^ count.
]
numTransitions(r,c)
[
int count := 0.
0 till(nbrs length - 1) do(:i)
[
if (self[r + nbrs[i][1]][c + nbrs[i][0]] == $32)
[
if (self[r + nbrs[i + 1][1]][c + nbrs[i + 1][0]] == $35)
[
count := count + 1.
].
].
].
^ count.
]
atLeastOneIsWhite(r, c, step)
[
int count := 0.
var group := nbrGroups[step].
0 till:2 do(:i)
[
0 till(group[i] length) seek(:j)
[
var nbr := nbrs[group[i][j]].
if (self[r + nbr[1]][c + nbr[0]] == $32)
[ count := count + 1. ^ true ].
^ false.
].
].
^ count > 1.
]
thinImage
[
bool firstStep := false.
bool hasChanged := true.
var toWhite := List new.
while (hasChanged || firstStep)
[
hasChanged := false.
firstStep := firstStep inverted.
1 till(self rows - 1) do(:r)
[
1 till(self columns - 1) do(:c)
[
if(self proceed(r,c,toWhite,firstStep))
[ hasChanged := true ].
].
].
toWhite forEach(:p)[ self[p y][p x] := $32. ].
toWhite clear.
].
]
print
[
var it := self enumerator.
it forEach(:ch) [ console print(ch," ") ].
while (it next)
[
console writeLine.
it forEach(:ch) [ console print(ch," ") ].
].
]
}
public program
[
Matrix<CharValue> grid := MatrixSpace::
{
int rows = image length.
int columns = image[0] length.
getAt(int i, int j)
= image[i][j].
setAt(int i, int j, object o)
[
image[i][j] := o.
]
}.
grid thinImage.
grid print.
console readChar
]
Output:
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
Translation of: Ruby
defmodule ZhangSuen do
@neighbours [{-1,0},{-1,1},{0,1},{1,1},{1,0},{1,-1},{0,-1},{-1,-1}] # 8 neighbours
def thinning(str, black \\?#) do
s0 = for {line, i} <- (String.split(str, "
") |> Enum.with_index),
{c, j} <- (to_char_list(line) |> Enum.with_index),
into: Map.new,
do: {{i,j}, (if c==black, do: 1, else: 0)}
{xrange, yrange} = range(s0)
print(s0, xrange, yrange)
s1 = thinning_loop(s0, xrange, yrange)
print(s1, xrange, yrange)
end
defp thinning_loop(s0, xrange, yrange) do
s1 = step(s0, xrange, yrange, 1) # Step 1
s2 = step(s1, xrange, yrange, 0) # Step 2
if Map.equal?(s0, s2), do: s2, else: thinning_loop(s2, xrange, yrange)
end
defp step(s, xrange, yrange, g) do
for x <- xrange, y <- yrange, into: Map.new, do: {{x,y}, s[{x,y}] - zs(s,x,y,g)}
end
defp zs(s, x, y, g) do
if get(s,x,y) == 0 or # P1
(get(s,x-1,y) + get(s,x,y+1) + get(s,x+g,y-1+g)) == 3 or # P2, P4, P6/P8
(get(s,x-1+g,y+g) + get(s,x+1,y) + get(s,x,y-1)) == 3 do # P4/P2, P6, P8
0
else
next = for {i,j} <- @neighbours, do: get(s, x+i, y+j)
bp1 = Enum.sum(next) # B(P1)
if bp1 in 2..6 do
ap1 = (next++[hd(next)]) |> Enum.chunk(2,1) |> Enum.count(fn [a,b] -> a<b end) # A(P1)
if ap1 == 1, do: 1, else: 0
else
0
end
end
end
defp get(map, x, y), do: Map.get(map, {x,y}, 0)
defp range(map), do: range(Map.keys(map), 0, 0)
defp range([], xmax, ymax), do: {0.. xmax, 0.. ymax}
defp range([{x,y} | t], xmax, ymax), do: range(t, max(x,xmax), max(y,ymax))
@display %{0 => " ", 1 => "#"}
defp print(map, xrange, yrange) do
Enum.each(xrange, fn x ->
IO.puts (for y <- yrange, do: @display[map[{x,y}]])
end)
end
end
str = """
...........................................................
.#################...................#############.........
.##################...............################.........
.###################............##################.........
.########.....#######..........###################.........
...######.....#######.........#######.......######.........
...######.....#######........#######.......................
...#################.........#######.......................
...###############...........#######.......................
...#################.........#######.......................
...######....########........#######.......................
...######.....#######........#######.......................
...######.....#######.........#######.......######.........
.########.....#######..........###################.........
.########.....#######..#####....##################.######..
.########.....#######..#####......################.######..
.########.....#######..#####.........#############.######..
...........................................................
"""
ZhangSuen.thinning(str)
str = """
00000000000000000000000000000000
01111111110000000111111110000000
01110001111000001111001111000000
01110000111000001110000111000000
01110001111000001110000000000000
01111111110000001110000000000000
01110111100000001110000111000000
01110011110011101111001111011100
01110001111011100111111110011100
00000000000000000000000000000000
"""
ZhangSuen.thinning(str,?1)
Output:
################# ############# ################## ################ ################### ################## ######## ####### ################### ###### ####### ####### ###### ###### ####### ####### ################# ####### ############### ####### ################# ####### ###### ######## ####### ###### ####### ####### ###### ####### ####### ###### ######## ####### ################### ######## ####### ##### ################## ###### ######## ####### ##### ################ ###### ######## ####### ##### ############# ###### # ########## ####### ## # #### # # # ## # # # # # # # # # ############ # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ## # ############ ## ### ######### ######## ### #### #### #### ### ### ### ### ### #### ### ######### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### #### #### ### ### #### ### ######## ### ####### ###### # # ## # # # # # # ##### # # ## # # # ## ## # # ####
' version 08-10-2016
' compile with: fbc -s console
Data "00000000000000000000000000000000"
Data "01111111110000000111111110000000"
Data "01110001111000001111001111000000"
Data "01110000111000001110000111000000"
Data "01110001111000001110000000000000"
Data "01111111110000001110000000000000"
Data "01110111100000001110000111000000"
Data "01110011110011101111001111011100"
Data "01110001111011100111111110011100"
Data "00000000000000000000000000000000"
Data "END"
' ------=< MAIN >=------
Dim As UInteger x, y, m, n
Dim As String input_str
Do'find out how big it is
Read input_str
If input_str = "END" Then Exit Do
If x < Len ( input_str ) Then x = Len ( input_str )
y = y + 1
Loop
m = x - 1 : n = y - 1
ReDim As UByte old ( m, n ), new_ ( m, n )
y = 0
Restore'restore data pointer
Do'put data in array
Read input_str
If input_str= "END" Then Exit Do
For x = 0 To Len ( input_str ) - 1
old ( x,y ) = input_str [ x ] - Asc ( "0" )
' print image
If old ( x, y ) = 0 Then Print "." ; Else Print "#" ;
Next
Print
y = y + 1
Loop
'corners and sides do not change
For x = 0 To m
new_ ( x, 0 ) = old ( x, 0 )
new_ ( x, n ) = old ( x, n )
Next
For y = 0 To n
new_ ( 0, y ) = old ( 0, y )
new_ ( m, y ) = old ( m, y )
Next
Dim As UInteger tmp, change, stage = 1
Do
change = 0
For y = 1 To n - 1
For x = 1 To m - 1
' -1-
If old ( x,y ) = 0 Then'first condition, p1 must be black
new_ ( x,y ) = 0
Continue For
End If
' -2-
tmp = old ( x, y - 1 ) + old ( x + 1, y - 1 )
tmp = tmp + old ( x + 1, y ) + old ( x + 1, y + 1 ) + old ( x, y + 1 )
tmp = tmp + old ( x - 1, y + 1 ) + old ( x - 1, y ) + old ( x - 1, y - 1 )
If tmp < 2 OrElse tmp > 6 Then'2 <= B(p1) <= 6
new_ ( x, y ) = 1
Continue For
End If
' -3-
tmp = 0
If old ( x, y ) = 0 And old ( x, y - 1 ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p1 > p2
If old ( x, y - 1 ) = 0 And old ( x + 1, y - 1 ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p2 > p3
If old ( x + 1, y - 1 ) = 0 And old ( x + 1, y ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p3 > p4
If old ( x + 1, y ) = 0 And old ( x + 1, y + 1 ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p4 > p5
If old ( x + 1, y + 1 ) = 0 And old ( x, y + 1 ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p5 > p6
If old ( x, y + 1 ) = 0 And old ( x - 1, y + 1 ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p6 > p7
If old ( x - 1, y + 1 ) = 0 And old ( x - 1, y ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p7 > p8
If old ( x - 1, y ) = 0 And old ( x - 1, y - 1 ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p8 > p9
If old ( x - 1, y - 1 ) = 0 And old ( x, y - 1 ) = 1 Then tmp += 1'p9 > p2
' tmp = 1 ==> A(P1) = 1
If tmp <> 1 Then
new_ ( x, y ) = 1
Continue For
End If
If ( stage And 1 ) = 1 Then
' step 1 -4- -5-
If ( old ( x, y - 1 ) + old ( x + 1, y ) + old ( x, y + 1 ) ) = 3 OrElse _
( old ( x + 1, y ) + old ( x, y + 1 ) + old ( x - 1, y ) ) = 3 Then
new_ ( x, y ) = 1
Continue For
End If
Else
' step 2 -4- -5-
If ( old ( x, y - 1 ) + old ( x + 1, y ) + old ( x - 1, y ) ) = 3 OrElse _
( old ( x, y - 1 ) + old ( x, y + 1 ) + old ( x - 1, y ) ) = 3 Then
new_ ( x, y ) = 1
Continue For
End If
End If
' all condition are met, make p1 white (0)
new_ ( x, y ) = 0
change = 1'flag change
Next
Next
' copy new_() into old()
For y = 0 To n
For x = 0 To m
old ( x, y ) = new_ ( x, y )
Next
Next
stage += 1
Loop Until change = 0'stop when there are no changes made
Print'print result
Print "End result"
For y = 0 To n
For x = 0 To m
If old ( x, y ) = 0 Then Print "." ; Else Print "#" ;
Next
Print
Next
' empty keyboard buffer
While Inkey <> "" : Wend
Print : Print "hit any key to end program"
Sleep
End
Output:
.................................#########.......########........###...####.....####..####.......###....###.....###....###.......###...####.....###..............#########......###..............###.####.......###....###.......###..####..###.####..####.###...###...####.###..########..###.................................. End result..................................#######.........######..........#.....#........##...............#......#.......#................#.....#........#................#####.#........#.....................##........#......................#....#...##....##...#............#.........####.........................................
FOR ALL (i = 2:n - 1) A(i) = (A(i - 1) + A(i) + A(i + 1))/3
A ( 2 : N - 1 ) = ( A ( 1 : N - 2 ) + A ( 2 : N - 1 ) + A ( 3 : N ) ) / 3
FOR ALL ( I = 2 : N - 1, J = 2 : M - 1 )
WHERE ( DOT ( I,J ). NE. 0 ) DOT ( I,J ) = ADJUST ( DOT,I,J )
With F90 came standardisation of |
Income Tax is needed. If all houses are taxed the same as a bank deposit, that would provide a strong incentive to make sure the housing stock is used efficiently.
The issues facing Queenstown Lakes District are certainly difficult, but they are not that different to those we face in the rest of the country. However, we have to get them right there, otherwise we risk exposing our 100% Pure brand. Solving these problems will require some innovative thinking, but not everything is within the hands of the local people. The Government will either have to step in, or grant the local authorities more powers over the issues they face.
You can hear more from architect Timothy Hill, one of the speakers at the Queenstown seminar over the weekend here: https://soundcloud.com/findinginfinity/timothy-hill-on-transformation-the-sherwood-queenstown-new-zealand
Queenstown – 100% Purely full was last modified: by
Queenstown – 100% Purely full was last modified: byAndrew Robb to retire at federal election, Warren Truss expected to follow
Updated
Federal Trade Minister Andrew Robb will retire from politics at this year's election, and Nationals Leader Warren Truss will reveal his future plans today, as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull prepares to reshuffle his frontbench.
Key points: Trade Minister Andrew Robb to retire from politics at federal election
Robb could stand down from ministry tomorrow
Warren Truss also expected to announce retirement tomorrow
Barnaby Joyce likely to assume Nationals leadership
"I'm 64 and in excellent health, I feel I've got another career left in me" Mr Robb told 7.30 last night.
"There's things I want to do, particularly in the private sector and some in the mental health space, and I didn't want to leave that too late.
"After 12 fulfilling and eventful years I feel the time is right."
Mr Robb, who said he made his decision at Christmas last year, said he had been approached by Mr Turnbull to remain in the trade portfolio for the time being.
"He has said to me that he would like me to stay on for some time, some months, perhaps, so that I can try and complete a couple of important areas of business that I have got to a fairly advanced stage," he said.
Mr Robb has sealed trade deals with China, Japan and South Korea, and signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement in New Zealand last week.
"I will leave politics in the comfort of knowing that both the Turnbull Government and the Coalition are in great shape," he said.
"I have been given some wonderful opportunities to serve our country by both Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, and for that I will be eternally grateful."
Mr Robb, who took a three-month break in 2009 to seek treatment for depression, said the area of mental health needed more attention in the community.
"Mental health is, I think... probably the area that's had the least focus on it in the whole area of health for decades," he said.
Mr Robb said while the stigma of mental health was being broken down, there was still a long way to go.
"It's not satisfactorily dealt with yet, but we have made a lot of progress," he said.
In a statement, Mr Turnbull said he had been "the most successful trade minister in the country's history".
"These agreements are driving and securing strong economic growth into the future," he said.
"Andrew is engaged in ongoing free trade negotiations with important trade partners, which we hope to bring to a successful conclusion in the not too distant future."
Mr Robb was viewed as a strong performer in both the Abbott and Turnbull ministries.
He was head of the National Farmers' Federation and a previous federal director of the Liberal Party before being elected to the Victorian seat of Goldstein in 2004.
Environment Minister Greg Hunt praised Mr Robb's achievements.
"I don't think anyone has done as good a job as trade minister for Australia," Mr Hunt told Melbourne radio station 3AW.
"My view is Andrew has earned the right to stay as long as he wants. All praise to Andrew, I mean what a career."
Truss also expected to retire at next election
Mr Truss is also widely expected to retire from Parliament at the next election and will announce his future plans today.
There has been speculation for months Mr Truss would step aside as leader.
His move is expected to trigger a series of changes within the Nationals, with Barnaby Joyce tipped to replace him as leader.
The regional party is also pushing for another seat in Cabinet, arguing their numbers in the Coalition partyroom entitle them to four positions.
Mr Truss was elected as member for the Queensland seat of Wide Bay in 1990 and has led his party since 2007.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion, who is also a member of the Nationals, said he would be sad to see Mr Truss move on.
"If it's the case that Warren Truss will make a decision shortly, that he'll leave, it'll be a great loss. He's made a wonderful contribution to public life," he said.
But he said movement was good for government.
"From time to time you do get movement and it's like a footy team, a strong footy team. You've got young people coming up, but eventually you've got to go and make that move," he said.
"We're very lucky in the Coalition that we have such a depth of talent.
"I think if anything it'll have a positive effect on government."
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said the changes were indicative of a "Cabinet in chaos".
"It's only a matter of time before Malcolm Turnbull stands in his courtyard to tell Australians that 'good government starts today'," he said.
"Malcolm Turnbull should be focused on Australian jobs, but he is completely paralysed by ministers who are only worried about their own."
The shake-up follows former cities minister Jamie Briggs' resignation from the frontbench last year after an incident with a public servant in Hong Kong, and Mal Brough standing aside as special minister of state while federal police investigate the Peter Slipper affair.
The future of Human Services Minister Stuart Robert is also uncertain, with a review underway into a controversial trip to China in 2014.
Mr Robert maintains it was a private visit, despite meeting with senior Chinese officials, as well as witnessing a mining deal with a major Liberal Party donor.
Topics: government-and-politics, federal-government, parliament, federal-parliament, truss-warren, australia, canberra-2600
First postedSummer of Sleaze is 2014’s turbo-charged trash safari where Will Errickson of Too Much Horror Fiction and Grady Hendrix of The Great Stephen King Reread plunge into the bowels of vintage paperback horror fiction, unearthing treasures and trauma in equal measure.
Books win awards. Books drink white wine. Books are discussed in hushed tones by earnest scholars. Books are genteel, books are mellow, books are housed in libraries where there is no talking. It’s hard to remember that books can be a punch in the nose, a bottle of beer broken over the head, a gob spat in the eye. Amiri Baraka’s in-your-face plays, Tom Wolfe’s go-go new journalism, Kathy Acker’s punk poetry. These writers set literature on fire and readers could either get on board or fuck off. James Herbert was one of them.
By the time he died last year he was a mainstream success, but his two earliest books are nasty, mean, angry pieces of anti-establishment sleaze torn straight out of his id, redeemed by Herbert’s complete conviction to Go There. That conviction is what keeps these two books in your hands long after you might otherwise throw them across the room. Read Herbert and you’re like a baby gripping a 10,000 volt cable, hands smoking, unable to tear them away even as your brain turns to cinders.
James Herbert is the UK’s most successful horror novelist, with 54 million books sold world wide, and while he went on to write ghost stories, and alternative histories, and thrillers, his first two books are proto-punk ragers: The Rats (1974) and The Fog (1975). Stephen King says they have a “raw urgency” and if by “raw” you mean, “totally flayed of skin” and if by “urgency” you mean, “gripping you by the collar and screaming in your face” then yes. In his non-fiction history of horror, Danse Macabre, King writes “If The Rats, with its scenes of gruesome horror and its blasted East End landscape, is not a literary version of ‘Anarchy in the UK,’ what is?” But the Sex Pistols are too consciously commercial for that comparison to ring true. Herbert is pub rock, the pre-punk, primal pushback against glam rock that was all hairy knuckles, screamed lyrics, two-chord thrashers, and no-future thinking. Pub rock’s raw fury burnt out fast, but so did Herbert’s. In fact, it only lasted for two books.
First up was The Rats, which is a blockhead of a book. What is The Rats about? Rats. What do they do? Eat everyone. Martin Amis, reviewing for The Observer, wrote that it was, “Enough to make a rodent retch, undeniably, and enough to make any human pitch the book aside.” But even back then no one cared what Amis had to say, and the initial 100,000 print run sold out in a couple of weeks. Why was it a success? Because rats. They eat everything.
By chapter three they’ve eaten a puppy and ripped the flesh off a baby. There’s stream of consciousness narration as people are eaten alive. “Rats! His mind screamed the words. Rats eating me alive! God, God help me.” The rats eat tramps. “Mary tried to stir, but she was too weak from blood already lost, the rat now biting deep into her vocal chords.”
The only thing the rats don’t eat is Harris, a MAN OF ACTION (caps required). A no-nonsense east London art teacher who comes complete with Jude, his dress designer girlfriend, Harris is practical and tough and suspicious of so-called experts. The city of London hires exterminators and Harris scoffs. Wearing protective suits, the pros go to an estate with rat gas and “The huge rat flew out at him without warning and bit deep into the flesh of his cheek…With all his strength he pulled the rat away from him, tearing a gaping hole in his cheek, but he couldn’t hold the powerful, wriggling body and it fell upon him once more.” Professionals? Harris laughs at your professionals.
Next, Harris encounters the under-secretary of the Ministry of Health, Mr. Foskins. The clammy bureaucrat gets the military to gas the rats and they disappear. Problem solved! Not so fast, says Harris…and he’s right again! The rats come swarming back, overrun a train and eat an assortment of Londoners, “…the baby left in his pram in the morning sun, laughing at the black creatures, to be dragged out and killed; the priest saying his morning devotions, alone in his church…” Only Harris proves inedible, saving his school from the rodents by punching them to death. Next up are ultrasonics, and London is evacuated to prepare for the great rat kill-off. Harris thinks gas is for girls, ultrasonics are stupid, and the only evacuation he participates in is of his bowels. Instead, he grabs an axe, drives over a carpet of living rats, and finds the gigantic two-headed rat boss. “Its body popped like a huge balloon filled with dark red blood.” The end.
Herbert writes from the glands, and his books are full of sex, but whereas Graham Masterton writes bouncy, erotic sex scenes, Herbert is made of sleazier stuff. Harris licks his lips over the breasts of his 14 year-old students and reminisces about the gangbangs he used to participate in as a teen. Good times! Sex is scary in Herbert World. One of his tramps became an alcoholic because she’s a nymphomaniac. Another became an alcoholic because he was gay. But it’s not just tramps who are two-dimensional. In Herbert’s books men are made up “of many layers.” Women get just one: neurotic.
In The Fog Herbert’s MAN OF ACTION is John Holman, who works for the Department of the Environment. He’s investigating a military chemical weapons site when a fissure opens in the earth and a toxic gas sprays out that drives everyone insane. It forms a cloud and drifts across England, turning cows into psychopaths, making schoolboys castrate their gym teachers, causing pigeons to peck people to death, and a pilot to fly a loaded passenger plane into the GPO Tower. In one of its most famous scenes, memorialized by Stephen King in Danse Macabre, 148,820 people commit suicide by walking into the sea.
The gas turns out to be the work of a bacteria called a mycoplasma that has grown to enormous, world-challenging size, but Holman could give a flip. He’s going to blow it the hell up, regulations be damned. Scientists, cops, and government officials try to stop him but inevitably they return, faces red. “Erm, it seems we might owe you an apology, Holman,” they stammer. Damn straight! An apology for being 5% men and 95% babies! Holman, on the other hand, is 100% man, complete with a girlfriend named Casey who works in an antiques shop and has daddy issues. Fortunately, she’s affected by the gas soon after the book begins and Holman has to punch her in the face and strap her to a bed while he does man things.
The fog drives the entire population of London into a kill crazed frenzy, Holman plays football with a severed head, drives a Devastation Vehicle over some religious fanatics, and saves the day (after machine gunning a crowd of berserk bus drivers) but it’s not over yet. A detective inspector has been giving him a hard time throughout the book and in the last five pages the officious jerk tries to rape and kill Casey, not necessarily in that order. Holman gouges out his eyes, throws him down the stairs, blows out his brains, then cuddles Casey and swears to bring all the bastards in government down. The end.
Herbert isn’t the stylist that Ramsey Campbell is, his characters don’t feel lived in the way Stephen King’s do, his ideas aren’t as complex as Thomas Tryon’s are, and his plotting is lead-footed compared to someone like Ira Levin. But Herbert can take one idea and execute it with total and complete conviction, good taste be damned, and he’s willing to Go There in a way few writers dare. And Herbert doesn’t just Go There, he Goes There, lights it on fire, and sells hotdogs.
Grady Hendrix is the author of Satan Loves You, Occupy Space, and he’s the co-author of Dirt Candy: A Cookbook, the first graphic novel cookbook. He’s written for publications ranging from Playboy to World Literature Today and his story, “Mofongo Knows” appears in the anthology, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination.Nominations are open for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and Tor.com has had the honor of publishing some eligible works from fantastic creators in 2011.
The Hugo and Nebula Awards are presented each year to outstanding works of science fiction, fantasy, horror, or related fiction genre published during the previous year.
Hugo winners are selected by the members of Worldcon, but the list of nominees is voted on by Worldcon members. Voting for nominees requires a supporting membership for Chicon 7, although members from last year’s Worldcon are also eligible to nominate. You can download nomination forms here.
The deadlines for Hugo nominations is March 11, while the deadline to purchase a nominating membership is January 31. The rules are here and you may nominate up to five works in each category.
The Nebula Awards are voted on by active members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA for short). Nebula nominations are open through Wednesday, February 15, and the form is here; you must be a SFWA member, and logged in, to nominate. Here is a detailed description of how the voting works.
Novellas
“Shtetl Days” by Harry Turtledove “The Night Children” by Alexander Gordon Smith
Novelettes
Short Stories
Short Stories (Reprints)
These are stories that first appeared in other markets this year, but are eligible for 2011 awards and deserve some signal-boosting!Mr. Frank tried and failed to do so once before, in 2007. But advocates of liberalization think they might get a friendlier hearing in Washington this time around. President Barack Obama, they note, boasted of his poker prowess during the election campaign. And the Democrats, who are seen as less hostile to Internet gambling than the Republicans, have tightened their grip on Congress.
A study by PricewaterhouseCoopers says the U.S. government could raise more than $50 billion over 10 years from taxes on legalized online gambling.
“I’d be amazed if it didn’t happen over the next two or three years,” said Clive Hawkswood, chief executive of the Remote Gambling Association, a trade group based in London. “It’s just a question of what exactly the regulations will say.”
Some analysts say that may be getting a little bit ahead of the game. Opponents of a repeal, including the Christian Coalition of America and the National Football League, have vowed to fight any new effort to end the ban.
Michele Combs, a spokeswoman for the Christian Coalition, said the group was gearing up for a “massive campaign” of letter-writing and lobbying to try to prevent any loosening of the law.
“We’re not saying people shouldn’t go to Las Vegas,” she said. “But when it’s in your home, it’s too easy. It breaks up families.”
U.S. sports leagues, meanwhile, worry that the ease of online betting increases the chances of game-fixing. Even the most bullish advocates of online gambling acknowledge that Internet sports betting — as opposed to poker or casino games — is highly unlikely to be legalized.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
“There’s a better chance now for some sort of gaming legislation to be approved,” said Nick Batram, an analyst at KBC Peel Hunt, a brokerage firm in London. “But it took longer than expected to put anti-gaming legislation in place, and it will probably will take longer than expected to remove it.”
Photo
Since the 2006 law was passed, North America, once the biggest market, has been passed by Europe and Asia, according to figures from H2 Gambling Capital. The law makes it illegal for financial institutions to handle payments to online gambling sites. But enough people have found ways around it, some by using overseas payment processors, to ensure that online gambling remains a thriving business. H2 says online gambling generated revenue of $6 billion last year in North America, more than a quarter the global total of $22.6 billion, up from $17.6 billion in 2006.
Pulling out of the United States cost PartyGaming about three-quarters of its business. Its position as the biggest online poker provider has been taken over by PokerStars, a privately held operator based on the Isle of Man.
This month, PartyGaming agreed to a $105 million settlement with the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, involving the period before 2006, when it acknowledged that its activities had been “contrary to certain U.S. laws.” In turn, the U.S. authorities agreed not to prosecute the company, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, or its executives.
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.
The agreement fueled speculation that PartyGaming might be trying to position itself for a return to the U.S. market, if online gambling were legalized.
Analysts say one possibility for European companies like PartyGaming, should the ban be lifted, would be to form partnerships with American casino operators. That would allow the European companies to share their online expertise. Operating alone, they might struggle to obtain licenses, given their history of run-ins with U.S. law enforcement, analysts said.
“It’s my feeling that even if the market were opened up, the U.S. government, in a palatable way, would probably find a way to give local companies a favorable position,” Mr. Batram said.
So far, Las Vegas executives have maintained a cautious stance about legalization of online gambling. Steve Wynn, chief executive of Wynn Resorts, said in an e-mail message that he thought it would be “impossible to regulate.”
“Even though it would be a benefit to our company, we are strongly opposed,” he said.
But speculation that Las Vegas casino operators were looking into the possibilities was fueled by recent reports that Harrah’s Entertainment, which owns Caesars Palace and other casinos, recently hired Mitch Garber, former chief executive of PartyGaming, for an unspecified role. Harrah’s did not return calls.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
Mr. Ryan said that PartyGaming planned to focus on acquisition opportunities to increase its market share in Europe and elsewhere, something that was difficult as long as investors were worried about the U.S. litigation. “We think Mr. Frank’s efforts are quite meaningful to the sector,” he said.
Several other online gambling companies whose shares are traded in London, including 888 Holdings and Sportingbet, are still in talks with the U.S. Justice Department. Analysts expect them, along with companies like Bwin International, whose stock is traded in Vienna, to be involved in a round of consolidation in the industry — along with a possible eventual move back into the United States.
As they await developments in Washington, online gambling companies are looking for growth in Europe and Asia. Under pressure from regulators in Brussels, several European Union members, including France, Italy, Spain and Denmark, have been moving to legalize some kinds of online gambling, turning it into a regulated and taxed business. Britain was the first big European country to do so, in 2005.
Other countries, like Germany, Greece and the Netherlands, continue to hold out, though, in what the European Commission sees as an effort to protect government-sponsored gambling monopolies from private competition.
The commission in March published a report arguing that the United States was violating World Trade Organization rules by keeping out European online gambling companies, given that online betting on horse racing is permitted in the United States. But the commission said that it favored negotiations, rather than legal action, to end the dispute.
Also in March, however, the European Parliament adopted a separate measure supporting the right of individual E.U. member states to make their own rules on online gambling.
“It’s interesting that the European Commission is telling the U.S. it’s persecuting European companies when it can’t even get its own house sorted out,” Mr. Batram said.OPINION:THE TAOISEACH has announced that Ireland is going to have a “constitutional convention”, which will examine the options for reform on a range of issues: review of the electoral system; reducing the presidential term to five years and aligning it with local and European elections; giving citizens abroad the vote in presidential elections; same-sex marriage; amending the clause on women in the home and encouraging their greater participation in public life and politics; removing blasphemy from the Constitution; and reducing the voting age to 17.
Drawing on comparative experience, Ireland’s “constitutional moment” is an ideal opportunity to promote public participation in the process, renew a commitment to democratic engagement by citizens, as well as a national conversation on the kind of Ireland citizens want to live in.
International comparative experience indicates that there is no blueprint for making or reforming a constitution.
But, there is much to be learned from over two decades of experience of other states. From Afghanistan to South Africa, Iceland to Kenya, a study of the underlying principles used to guide reform processes provides insights into the aspirations, accommodations and expectations involved. Insights that can help to guide decision-makers around pitfalls to be avoided when designing their own processes.
International analysts as well as constitution-makers and the UN have argued that the process of making the constitution is as important as the content of the reforms, and have identified several important principles underlying meaningful constitutional reform. They include the need to promote greater public participation, meaningful representation and inclusion, particularly among vulnerable people on the margins of society, to construct an open and transparent process and to foster a sense of national ownership in the project as a whole.
A truly inclusive approach draws all key stakeholders in. Efforts must be made to engage meaningfully with more marginalised sectors of society including women, young people, people with disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities, disadvantaged groups, migrants and non-citizen actors.
Over the last two decades, the forms of participation in constitution-making processes have gone beyond the traditional methods of voting for representatives or in a referendum. Official participation opportunities now include civic education and public information campaigns; widespread public consultation, which can occur at several stages of the process; the serious consideration of the views of the public; the promotion of national dialogue; and implementation efforts post-adoption of the constitution.
With regard to representation, some recent constitutional processes have undertaken special measures for minorities or other groups – some legal frameworks ensured that women were represented by at least 25 per cent in constitutional bodies, while Afghanistan’s constitutional Loya Jirga even set aside three seats for Sikhs.
Transparency is key to the process – a significant contrast with the making of constitutions behind closed doors by elite elements that was common even into the 1970s and 1980s. A transparent process enables the public and civil society to participate by establishing a clear legal framework for the process and a roadmap for how it will operate. In such a scenario, the public is informed about how the process will be conducted, the modes of appointment and election of their representatives, the adoption process and their role in the process.
Transparency may also involve media access to various parts of the process and codes of conduct for constitution-makers.
Building trust and confidence in a constitutional reform process takes time and the political will to provide civic education, promote widespread engagement and actively facilitate the marginalised to participate in the process. Politicians and decision-makers have to foster dialogue, encourage diverse views and meet face to face with the people to ensure they hear their voices first hand.
The depth and creativity of South Africa’s participatory process in 1996 has inspired many other constitution-makers to commit to highly participatory processes over the last two decades.
The globalisation of ideas and experiences has also led to growing awareness in many countries of this trend toward direct participation in constitution-making.
Today, if a government does not commit to meaningful public participation in the process and partner with civil society to achieve this, it may expect public discontent to grow.
Comparative experiences of many countries suggests this can manifest itself in the establishment of “shadow” or rival consultation processes; public disengagement; boycott; and ultimately rejection of proposals for reform. The result can be disconnect and ultimately disaffection among stakeholders, including among those most immediately engaged in the process at the outset.
Efforts to build consensus must therefore begin with the adoption of a strong and coherent set of guiding principles to inform the framework for deliberations and to reaching out to civil society to discuss how to achieve these principles.
International experience is that national ownership of a constitutional reform process is key. Those designing the Irish process should seize this constitutional moment to promote genuine public engagement and consider how civil society and the public can participate to create a more legitimate outcome. Members of the convention should meet the public face to face, these views should be carefully analysed, the public should receive feedback about how their views were considered and they should be consulted on the draft reforms before they are put to a referendum.
This will ensure that the public meaningfully participates, and will give life to the programme for government’s call for a renewed relationship between citizens and government.
Michele Brandt, a US-based lawyer, expert on constitutional reform and co-author of Constitution Making and Reform: Options for the Process, gave the keynote address at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties’ symposium on Ireland’s constitutional convention.Belgium doesn't exist, only Flanders and Wallonia as Dutch and French communites live apart. By Ian Traynor in Brussels
The language divide at the heart of a split that is tearing Belgium apart
Twenty minutes north of Brussels, in Belgium's medieval royal seat of Mechelen, there's a science playground, just the place for the kids on a boring, wet Sunday afternoon.
Technopolis is stuffed with interactive gadgets and games, making education fun. There is also another message. When entering the complex, the paving stones are inscribed with a simple, direct statement. The message is in Dutch only, the language of Flanders, the bigger northern half of the country. You are told the size of Flanders in square kilometres and its population density.
There is no mention of Belgium. That does not exist. You are in a country called Flanders. That does not exist either, but if many of the politicians running this divided society get their way it is only a matter of time.
"Long live free Flanders, may Belgium die" was the battle cry ringing out in Belgium's federal parliament on Thursday as the 150 elected deputies cleared their desks and returned home to prepare to fight an early election next month, triggered by the latest collapse of the national government.
Following the last election in 2007, Belgium went without a government for six months because of the divisions and squabbling between Dutch-speaking Flanders to the north and French-speaking Wallonia in the south. Three years later, the same conflict has brought down the government again.
In most countries of western Europe, the third prime ministerial resignation in three years would be cause for alarm. In Belgium, the latest resignation – of Yves Leterme, the Christian Democrat prime minister – after only five months has instead been greeted with shrugs of indifference and expressions of relief.
"We are incredibly lucky to be here; this is one of the luckiest countries in the world," says a senior government official. "We are very successful." Which is true in many respects. But the political class running this wealthy state of 10.5 million people gives a very good impression of caring little for a country called Belgium.
"I'm Flemish, not Belgian," says Willy De Waele, mayor of the small Flemish town of Lennik, just south of Brussels. "There's no loyalty to a country called Belgium. There has never been a country that has lasted so long in conditions like this."
Only a few miles to the east, but on the other side of the language barricades, Damien Thiéry, a French speaker, is more sorry than angry, but similarly pessimistic. "We've been arguing about this for 30 years. I'm not sure we will ever find a solution."
Language is the fundamental flaw at the core of Belgium's existential crisis, taking on the role that race, religion, or ethnicity play in other conflict-riven societies. The country operates on the basis of linguistic apartheid, which infects everything from public libraries to local and regional government, the education system, the political parties, national television, the newspapers, even football teams.
There is no national narrative in Belgium, rather two opposing stories told in Dutch or French. The result is a dialogue of the deaf.
"When I was studying in Brussels in the 1970s," says a Flemish former deputy prime minister, "I knew all the Walloon colleagues because we were on the same campus. But then they split the universities and now there's no contact."
Indeed, the two sides seldom interact. Intermarriage between Flemish and Walloons is low. Nor do they clash. They keep themselves to themselves.
The big exception is Brussels and its outlying districts, where the two cultures rub up against one another. Leafy, suburban, middle-class Brussels, a million miles from resembling a war zone, has become the frontline of the language conflict.
The city of two million is home to the EU and Nato, with tens of thousands of affluent foreign professionals and a large immigrant underclass of Turks, Moroccans and Africans living cheek by jowl with the natives. But Brussels is French-speaking, surrounded by Dutch-speaking municipalities. It is here that the language battles are fiercest. It is here that governments rise and fall.
"We won't fall into madness, like Serbia and Croatia," says Jeroen Vermeiren, a Flemish bookseller just outside Brussels. "But it creates great emotions on both sides."
"It's surreal, absurd," says Thiéry. "And it's not democratic." He sits at the very heart of the conflict, in the town hall of Linkebeek, a comfortable town that is home to 5,000 and sits astride the city limits. He is a French-speaking Walloon, born and bred in Linkebeek, who has been elected mayor with 66% of the local vote in a town that is 85% francophone.
But Linkebeek is in Flanders, not Brussels. The Flemish interior minister has barred him from being mayor because he sends out election literature in French to French-speakers, and not in Dutch, as required.
Linkebeek's municipal life is consumed by petty challenges, demonstrations and taunts. Separatists deface bilingual street names. The language police show up at monthly meetings of the local council. If the proceedings are conducted in French – 13 of the 15 councillors are French-speakers – the session is deemed invalid.
At the local primary school, French-speaking kids are downstairs, Dutch-speakers upstairs. The curriculums are different. The public library is denied Flemish government funding unless 55% of the books are in Dutch.
There are six such small towns on the fringes of Brussels, all with large francophone majorities, all in Flanders, three of them without mayors who defy the rules, three of them with French-speaking mayors who toe the line.
The problem is the result of urban sprawl. As middle-class professionals grow older, marry and have children, they move out of the city to the suburbs for a bigger house, a garden, a different quality of life. In Brussels, that means French-speaking couples "colonising" Flemish territory and upsetting the language balance in small Dutch-speaking communities.
"This is not a conflict where people will get killed," says the former deputy prime minister. "But it has the same structure as most big international conflicts – the clash of the rights of the traditional population with the rights of incomers."
This makes suburban Brussels the battleground, for the capital is the only officially bilingual bit of Belgium. For electoral purposes it has been connected with 35 Flemish surrounding districts, which means that francophones can vote across the language barrier for French-speaking parties in Brussels. The Flemish living in Wallonia cannot do the same. The constitutional court has ruled this illegal. And the politicians cannot fix it.
It is a question of political will, a problem of the repeated failures of Belgium's political elites. There are 11 parties in Belgium's federal parliament in Brussels. There are another five parliaments and governments in the regions and language communities.
"We have 600 elected deputies in this country of 10 million," says De Waele. "It's ridiculous. There's no future for a country with this construction."
In this crowded political scene, there is only Flemish and Walloon politics, no Belgian. Over the decades, the politicians have contrived to create a system where there is no unifying institution, barring the royal palace and King Albert II.
There are no national political parties, no national newspaper, no national TV channel, no common school curriculum or higher education. There is, however, the national debt, running at 80% of GDP. Like a couple trapped in a loveless marriage, eyeing divorce but unable to agree on the mortgage liabilities, the Flemings and the Walloons may be stuck together because of the cost of splitting up.
But the frustrations run deep. The main francophone newspaper, Le Soir, was bitter when the government fell: "Is there any sense in maintaining a country when there are no more men, women, or systems capable of reaching the compromise essential for Belgium to continue?" it asked.
Broadly speaking, the Walloons vote for the left, the Flemish for the right. Flanders is prospering, Wallonia is depressed, with twice the unemployment rate of the north. Flemish leaders are increasingly strident in demanding greater autonomy, while the Walloon leaders retreat to their bunkers and refuse to negotiate. Flemish separatism was once the stronghold of the extreme right: it is now much more mainstream.
If push came to shove, the preferred option would be velvet divorce as in Czechoslovakia, rather than Yugoslav violence. But Brussels sucks in tens of thousands of commuters from both sides and makes a negotiated unravelling of Belgium virtually impossible.
"Do we want to live together?" says Thiéry. "That is the question we have to ask ourselves."Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used a private email to communicate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, leaked emails reveal.
Emanuel, a former House lawmaker who served early on in the Obama administration, sent an email to Podesta asking him to consider Brian DeSplinter for a position with Clinton’s campaign. Emnauel sent the email from the address “mayor_re@rahmemail.com.”
The email address is still active, according to Mailtester.com, and is run through Google’s Gmail service. This is unlike Clinton who used a private email server based out of her Chappaqua, New York home.
WikiLeaks published the email chain online Friday in its latest tranche of emails from Podesta’s hacked Gmail account. It’s long been suspected Emanuel used a personal email to conduct official city business.
The Chicago Tribune has been locked in a lengthy legal battle with Emanuel’s office for private emails and texts the mayor used to conduct government business.
The Tribune’s lawsuit claimed “the mayor’s office in recent years has been uncooperative with FOIA requests,” the paper argued. Emanuel’s “use of private phones and personal email allows the mayor to conduct city business out of public view and contributes to a ‘lack of transparency.’”
In May, a Cook County judge ruled in favor of the Tribune, saying Emanuel’s emails were not exempt from public records laws simply because they were done on a personal account.
“There is no merit to defendants’ argument that the mere storage of communications pertaining to the transaction of public business on personal electronic devices… categorically shields those communications from the FOIA,” Judge Kathleen Pantle wrote in her opinion.
The mayor’s office vowed to continue fighting the case, |
missing Sunday’s game with a concussion. Also back this week is running back Mike Davis, who was out against the 49ers with a groin injury.
And even with some of their top defensive players like Chancellor, Avril and Sherman out for the season, Carroll noted that the Seahawks are getting healthier in a lot of other areas. Left guard Luke Joeckel returned Sunday from a five-game absence, marking the first game he and recently-acquired left tackle Duane Brown had played together. With Davis coming back, the Seahawks will be as healthy at running back as they have been in a long time and overall they’re healthy on offense other than the concussion sustained by Luke Willson on Sunday.
“I’m fired up because we’re healthier now than we’ve been,” Carroll said. “That sounds crazy, but we’re healthier now than we’ve been up front. The running backs are going to be OK, the receivers are OK, we’ll see if Luke can get back this week, but he’ll be coming back to us.”
Willson’s was the most significant injury to come out of Sunday’s game, and as is always the case with the concussion protocol, his status won’t be known until later in the week.
Running back Chris Carson remains on injured reserve, but could be back before the end of the season.Family of missing St. Joseph Co. mother speaks out days after her disappearance
ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - The St. Joseph County Sheriff says that a missing mother has been located and is safe.
Again, Kayla Gates-Vaillancourt has been located. Details of what happened have not been released.
PREVIOUSLY:
ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - A mother of two went missing from St. Joseph County, and tonight, the family of Kayla Gates-Vaillancourt is opening up to Newschannel 3 about why her last communication with them is extremely concerning.
Kayla was last seen in Sturgis nine days ago. And her family says her final texts shortly after her disappearance have them on edge.
A text she sent her cousin last Monday reads: "emergency call now. Seriously 911."
A few other family members also received texts that day. And that's the last anyone's heard from her.
The St. Joseph County Sheriff's Department is investigating this as a missing persons case.
The undersheriff says Kayla borrowed a car--a red Blazer--and never returned.
The family believes she may be in danger, adding that she is a diabetic and does not have insulin with her.
"Scared mostly. I would really like to know what happened to her, where she is and what state of mind she's in," said Allen Dodson, a cousin of Kayla's who received a text message.
Kayla is 29 years old, 5'4" tall, with brown hair, and has been missing now for nine days.
If you know anything, contact the St. Joseph County Sheriff's Department, or Silent Observer, right away.New SQL on Hadoop implementations are available for big data processing. While working on a large data problems, we decided to pick up Impala and Presto to see what do they offer.
While both the implementations bypass map-reduce (to prevent a lot of associated I/O) and directly perform distributed processing on underlying storage, there are some differences due to some inherent design differences among the systems, which we would explore in this article.
Introduction
Impala – As per Cloudera “Impala is a fully integrated, state-of-the-art analytic database architected specifically to leverage the flexibility and scalability strengths of Hadoop – combining the familiar SQL support and multi-user performance of a traditional analytic database with the rock-solid foundation of open source Apache Hadoop and the production-grade security and management extensions of Cloudera Enterprise”.
We used Impala on Amazon EMR for research.
Presto – Presto is an open source distributed SQL query engine for running interactive analytic queries against data sources of all sizes ranging from gigabytes to petabytes. Presto was designed and written from the ground up for interactive analytics and approaches the speed of commercial data warehouses while scaling to the size of organizations like Facebook.
We used Qubole’s cloud based Presto as a Service for Performance evaluation and also built our own Presto cluster to understand it’s various components and their respective Installation and configuration.
Administration
Impala – It is very easy to setup and configure impala cluster. There are web interfaces available to view cluster, individual nodes resource usage, configuration, query profiles, etc.
Issue – we observed that sometime cluster gets corrupted after restarting any node.
Presto – It is very easy to setup and configure Presto cluster. It also provides web interfaces to view cluster information.
Caching
Impala – It uses HDFS caching which is available in latest version of CHD but it did not improve performance. We did some research and also checked on forums and found that it’s a recently added feature and there is implementation issue (the way it interacts with HDFS cache), expectedly it will be fixed in the next version.
Presto – By default does not have caching but Qubole distribution provides on-disk file caching.
Storage
Impala – It uses HDFS for storage and stores data in Text and Parquet storage format. Parquet format is columnar format and stores data as compressed. Parquet gives better results in terms of performance (timing) comparatively because of compression and columnar support.
Presto – Presto can work upon various data file formats like: ORC, RCFile etc. that are typically stored on HDFS or in Amazon S3 using the HIVE metastore service.
It can also connect to other data sources like MySQL, Cassandra etc.
In case of Presto, we evaluated the use of various file formats stored on S3.
Query Execution
Impala – Impala agent runs on each data node and execute query locally (on local data) and returns result back to main node where user executed query. So when we add more nodes performance increases as execution distributes.
Since it can load table data in memory it is advised to have high memory configuration data nodes for better performance.
Presto – In Query execution the main components involved are: Co-ordinator and workers.
The co-ordinators main responsibilities include SQL parsing, Query planning and execution planning. Presto prepares the best fit Distributed query plan based on DAG.
Workers are the components that in reality execute the tasks assigned.
Overall Presto converts the SQL Query into group of stages, tasks and drivers wherein the workers execute the tasks in parallel. and the individual tasks operate only on small part of the data viz. data chunks. As we increase the number of worker nodes the performance increase is expected subject to the problem in question.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCFile
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/LanguageManual+ORC
http://www.cloudera.com/content/cloudera/en/products-and-services/cdh/impala.htmlA totally new way to play the game. Add abilities using cards, ala Gems or System Direction. Abilities include Parry, Assist Super Armor, XFactor Blowback, Dizzying Attacks, Projectile Invincibility, Special cancels into Specials, Invisibility, etc. Over 100 cards, equip 3 at once, 1.12 million total combinations.
Mode playable online. Battle online as clans in one-week events. Earn cards playing offline. Mode is free DLC post-launch. Howard the Duck is a card. We'd like to speculate that Vita players will be able to trade cards, since "additional Vita functionality" was teased but not announced.
All DLC shared across PS3, Vita.
Q: DLC characters?
A: No plans now.
Q: Next event/reveal?
A: Before too long.
Q: Is Mega Man poster a troll?
A: Yes.
Q: Why remove blocking during airdashes?
A: Makes zoning more effective. You have to commit to airdashes now.
Q: New endings for old characters?
A: A few have been changed, many are the same.
Q: Is Galactus playable?
A: Yes.Canadian Pacific’s Hunter Harrison was the top-paid CEO in Calgary in 2015, hauling in $19.9 million in total compensation for the year, according to the Herald’s annual survey of the city’s largest publicly traded companies.
The outspoken 71-year-old railroader — who was also Calgary’s top-paid CEO in 2014 — earned a base salary of $2.8 million in fiscal 2015, with most of the remaining $17.1 million coming in the form of stock or option-based awards and annual or long-term incentives. As part of his overall pay package, Harrison also receives a number of other benefits, including a club membership, a housing allowance and personal use of company aircraft. (Harrison’s personal use of company aircraft in 2015 was valued at $1.1 million).
Canadian Pacific acknowledged in its annual information circular that Harrison’s compensation is much higher than his peers, but said “the return to shareholders during his tenure is equally impressive.” In an email, CP spokesman Martin Cej said Harrison has created more than $14 billion in shareholder value since his arrival at the railroad in 2012, and added CP’s share price outperformed the S&P/TSX Composite index by 120 per cent through the end of 2015.
Database: See how much Calgary’s top executives raked in last year
Infographic: Calgary’s top-end executives are still pulling in millions
Cej noted the initial target when Harrison joined CP was to achieve an operating ratio — a measure of railroad efficiency, where a lower number is better — of 65 per cent within four years. CP surpassed that goal in less than two years, and in the first quarter of 2016 boasted an operating ratio below 60 per cent.
“Under his leadership, CP has transformed from the worst-performing Class 1 railroad to one of the industry’s very best,” Cej said.
But, like the overwhelming majority of the 100 publicly traded companies included in the Herald/Global Governance Advisors survey, CP’s performance took a hit in 2015 due to the economic downturn caused by the global collapse in oil prices. The railroad’s net income declined 8.4 per cent year-over-year, while its one-year total shareholder return declined 20.4 per cent.
And CP’s performance improvements during Harrison’s tenure have not come without a price — the company has reduced its employee head count by more than 6,000 since mid-2012, mostly through attrition. Approximately 1,800 positions were eliminated in 2015 alone.
Canadian Pacific’s say-on-pay vote was narrowly defeated at its annual general meeting in April, with only 49.9 per cent of the shares voted in favour of the company’s executive pay policy. Arden Dalik — senior partner with Global Governance Advisors, the consultancy that helped compile this year’s survey — said it’s a sign “the bloom is off the rose” at the railroad.
“He (Harrison) got a significantly longer honeymoon period than a lot of other CEOs get … He’s a very charismatic and brilliant individual and he bought himself a lot of time, but now the realities are coming to bear,” Dalik said. “The honeymoon’s over, and it’s about time to have a really tight connection on pay and performance here.”
After Harrison, the second-highest-paid CEO in Calgary in 2015 was Shaw Communications Inc.’s Bradley Shaw, who earned total compensation of $13.1 million. According to the Herald/GGA survey, the top five executives at Shaw — founder JR Shaw, Bradley Shaw, Peter Bissonnette, Steve Wilson and Jay Mehr — were paid a total of $60.4 million in 2015.
JR Shaw’s total compensation for 2015, almost $13.2 million, ranked second among all executives.
Shaw Communications has a dual-class share structure, where the voting shares are controlled by the Shaw family and other insiders. Michelle de Cordova, director of corporate engagement and public policy for NEI Investments, said generally speaking, she is “not comfortable” with dual-class share structures because holders of voting shares get to control the company but pass most of the financial risk to holders of the subordinate shares.
“The board may be entrenched, the company may be underperforming, pay may be excessive and the subordinate shareholders will lack the voting power to address these issues,” de Cordova said.
In Shaw’s annual information circular, the company says its compensation program is designed “to attract, retain and motivate the executive team,” and also recognizes the growth and success of the company. Over the past five years, annual revenues at Shaw have increased 48 per cent to $5.5 billion, and operating income has increased 35 per cent to $2.4 billion for fiscal 2015.
Third among CEOs on the Herald’s list for 2015 is Suncor Energy’s Steve Williams, who earned $12. 2 million, while Encana Corp.’s Doug Suttles was fourth with total compensation of $11.2 million.
The fifth-highest ranking CEO was Agrium Inc.’s Chuck Magro, who earned $10.4 million and leaped up the rankings from 2014, when he earned $6.7 million and placed 19th overall. Magro received a significant increase in his annual bonus and long-term incentives due to Agrium’s strong performance in 2015, as well as a 26 per cent increase in his base salary as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to transition to market median pay levels.
Imperial Oil Ltd.’s Rich Kruger was sixth among CEOs, rising from 18th in 2014 due in part to a large tax equalization payment in 2015. Kruger earned $9 million in 2015.
Patrick Carlson, chief executive at Seven Generations Energy Ltd., was seventh, and 12th among all executives, earning $8.9 million, while Enbridge Inc.’s Al Monaco came in eighth among CEOs — also at $8.9 million. Carlson, who received a large payment related to share warrants last year, and Monaco, who received a large increase in share-based awards, were ranked 71st and 21st respectively in 2014.
The ninth-highest paid CEO in 2015 was Crescent Point Energy Corp.’s Scott Saxberg, at $8.8 million, while 10th place went to TransCanada Corp.’s Russ Girling, also at $8.8 million.
The highest-paid female CEO in 2015 was TransAlta Corp.’s Dawn Farrell, who earned $4.5 million.
In all, the median total CEO compensation among the 100 companies surveyed was down 7.6 per cent year-over-year. While the median CEO base salary was 11.6 per cent higher than in 2014, many companies — particularly in the energy services sector — reduced or eliminated bonuses as a reflection of market conditions. The median CEO annual bonus fell 49.1 per cent from 2014.
astephenson@postmedia.comAvailable carbon budget is half as big as thought if global warming is to be kept within 2C limit agreed internationally as being the point of no return, researchers say. Climate News Network reports
Fossil fuel use must fall twice as fast as thought to contain global warming - study
Climate scientists have bad news for governments, energy companies, motorists, passengers and citizens everywhere in the world: to contain global warming to the limits agreed by 195 nations in Paris last December, they will have to cut fossil fuel combustion at an even faster rate than anybody had predicted.
Joeri Rogelj, research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, and European and Canadian colleagues propose in Nature Climate Change that all previous estimates of the quantities of carbon dioxide that can be released into the atmosphere before the thermometer rises to potentially catastrophic levels are too generous.
Instead of a range of permissible emissions estimates that ranged up to 2,390 bn tons from 2015 onwards, the very most humans could release would be 1,240 bn tons.
Available levels
In effect, that halves the levels of diesel and petrol available for petrol tanks, coal for power stations, and natural gas for central heating and cooking available to humankind before the global average temperature – already 1C higher than it was at the start of the Industrial Revolution – reaches the notional 2C mark long agreed internationally as being the point of no return for the planet.
In fact, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change summit in Paris agreed a target “well below” 2C, in recognition of ominous projections − one of which was that, at such planetary temperatures, sea levels would rise high enough to submerge several small island states.
The Nature Climate Change paper is a restatement of a problem that has been clear for decades. Carbon dioxide proportions in the atmosphere are linked to planetary surface temperatures and, as they rise, so does average temperature. For most of human history, these proportions oscillated around 280 parts per million.
The global exploitation, on a massive scale, of fossil fuels drove the expansion of agriculture, the growth of economies, a sevenfold growth in human population, a sea level rise of 14cms, and a temperature rise of, so far, 1C.
To stop temperatures increasing another 3C or more and sea levels rising by more than a metre, humans have to reduce fossil fuel emissions. By how much these must be reduced is difficult to calculate.
The global carbon budget is really the balance between what animals emit – in this context, the word animals includes humans with cars and aeroplanes and factories – and what plants and algae can absorb. So the calculations are bedevilled by uncertainties about forests, grasslands and oceans.
To make things simpler, climate scientists translate the target into the billions of tons of carbon dioxide that, ideally, may be released into the atmosphere from 2015 onwards. Even these, however, are estimates.
There is general agreement that a limit of 590 bn tons would safely keep the world from overheating in ways that would impose ever greater strains on human society. The argument is about the upper limit of such estimates.
Dr Rogelj says: “In order to have a reasonable chance of keeping global warming below 2C, we can only emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide, ever. That’s our carbon budget.
“This has been understood for about a decade, and the physics behind this concept are well understood, but many different factors can lead to carbon budgets that are either slightly smaller or slightly larger. We wanted to understand these differences, and to provide clarity on the issue for policymakers and the public.
“This study shows that, in some cases, we have been overestimating the budget by 50 to more than 200%. At the high end, this is a difference of more than 1,000 billion tons of carbon dioxide.”
The same study takes a closer look at why estimates of the “safe” level of emissions have varied so widely.
One complicating factor has been, of course, uncertainty about what humans might do, and another has been about the other more transient greenhouse gases, such as methane and the oxides of nitrogen.
Although short-lived and released in smaller quantities, some of these are potentially far more potent than carbon dioxide as an influence on planetary temperatures.
Complex calculations
But Dr Rogelj and his colleagues found that a significant cause of variation was simply a consequence of the different assumptions and methodologies inherent in such complex calculations.
So the researchers have re-examined both the options and the approaches, and have worked out a global figure that, they suggest, could be relevant to “real-world policy”.
It takes into account the consequences of all human activity, and it embraces detailed outlines of possible low-carbon choices. It also offers, they say, a 66% chance of staying within the internationally-agreed limit.
“We now better understand the carbon budget for keeping global warming below 2C,” Dr Rogelj says. “This carbon budget is very important to know because it defines how much carbon dioxide we are allowed to release into the atmosphere, ever.
“We have figured out that this budget is at the low end of what studies indicated before, and if we don’t start reducing our emissions immediately, we will blow it in a few decades.”Blog
A Saturday Night and its motion capture components have been released! Now the burndown for 0.6.0 begins. Check out the GitHub tracker. You’ll spy some juicy features in there. After 0.6.0, we’ll have some big projects in store.
One end of the Metaverse. A huge multiuser #webvr public space by 3D Artist @J_Ostrem https://t.co/kcnFeGJX7y pic.twitter.com/0u6p78hBnj
Work in progress integrating a VR edit mode in the #aframevr inspector with pan/scale/rotate camera controls and selection #webvr :) pic.twitter.com/JBQUqgYz6F
Grand opening of the Metaverse's first dance club! Show off your best moves on our latest #aframevr #webvr demo https://t.co/l9Pm0Enoa8 pic.twitter.com/3ypA9Z7QOq
Get off the struggle bus 🚌, enter the @aframevr School 🎒! Interactive lessons for learning #webvr. For all ages! https://t.co/ui3swhj984 pic.twitter.com/yx564kEdhV
Record-and-replay motion capture @aframevr components. Automate 6DOF VR dev., record animations, do a little dance. https://t.co/XahfoBbGU4 — A-Frame (@aframevr) April 3, 2017
Showcasing @aframevr Registry components. Little bobbing ball in the ocean + rain with four HTML elements. https://t.co/BLZCc0VbUB pic.twitter.com/D82nKmja50 — Kevin Ngo (@andgokevin) April 1, 2017
.@aframevr is such a beautiful framework - powerful & simple - this is about 10 lines of html pic.twitter.com/VOioizzpiG — alexjmackey (@alexjmackey) March 29, 2017
I made a thing: Easily embed multiple 360° photos into your webpages using the power and simplicity of @aframevr 👨💻https://t.co/fDOd95pvHN — Mark Lee (@thatmarklee) March 30, 2017
Want to learn to load a city with flying spaceships in a line of HTML? Enroll in https://t.co/NyWcT6FEoO today! https://t.co/D3WSDwy5Nq pic.twitter.com/Rvky7VUMHl — Kevin Ngo (@andgokevin) March 28, 2017
Release notes for @aframevr-@reactjs v4. Full test coverage, performance improvements, all filed bugs fixed. https://t.co/nG6sivhPxr — Kevin Ngo (@andgokevin) March 28, 2017
Expanding the musical galaxy on my @aframevr project. Visit Gemini, a twin planet and its playlist on @googlechrome https://t.co/cpO8G2Sy98 pic.twitter.com/fU4doPwLGi — (bash~bash) (@bvshbvsh) March 31, 2017
i-frame's work really well for showing off multi-user @aframevr. Adding this as an example to networked-aframe. pic.twitter.com/6ZnwE223PX — Hayden Lee (@HaydenLee37) April 2, 2017
Again in @aframevr #WebVR on a diff project. Ambient Occlusion working ok. More work to be done in Blender I think pic.twitter.com/MytYQ6Z2gl — Mo Kargas (@mokargas) March 31, 2017India, which has raised its solar power capacity target five-fold, could see annual investments in solar surpassing those in coal by 2019-20 with commitments worth about $35 billion from global companies already in hand, a Deutsche Bank report said.
With its increased focus on solar power, India could become one of the largest renewable energy producers in the world, matching China’s target of 100GW (gigawatt) or 100,000MW (megawatts) capacity by 2020, the report released on Sunday said.
India has raised its 2022 solar energy target to 100GW from 20GW as part of Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s efforts to lower dependence on coal-fuelled electricity. The country needs to invest about $200 billion to meet this target and to set up around 60,000MW of wind power capacity by 2022.
Global companies, including the US renewable energy firm SunEdison Inc, Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank Corp, Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology, and China’s photovoltaic module maker Trina Solar Ltd, have announced multi-billion dollar investments in Indian companies to set up solar power projects.
Russia’s OAO Rosneft, the world’s largest publicly-traded oil company, is exploring a huge investment in India’s solar energy sector with capacity ranging between 10,000MW to 20,000MW, Mint reported last week.
Indian power companies such as Adani Power Ltd, Reliance Power Ltd and State-run NTPC Ltd have already made inroads with their solar energy projects. Aditya Birla Nuvo Ltd has also announced plans to bid for solar power projects.
“Private sector interest is decisively moving towards solar from coal power, and we foresee numerous opportunities of fund-raising, yieldco structuring and M&A activity," Deutsche Bank analyst Abhishek Puri wrote in his report.
Falling tariffs would also help in aiding growth of solar power adoption. Tariffs have dropped about 60% over last four years, from ₹ 14.90 per kWh (kilowatt-hour) in 2010 to almost ₹ 5.75 per kWh in 2015, rivaling with prices of conventional power sources.
India’s per capita electricity consumption reached 1010 kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2014-15, compared with 957 kWh in 2013-14, according to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), but continues to among the lowest in the world with several households in the interiors of the country having little or no access to electricity.
India plans to award solar contracts for the supply of 15,000MW this year. In 2014-15, the cumulative solar power capacity in India was about 3,744 MW, accounting for about 10.5% of the total renewable energy generated in the country.“You just asked about house arrest; well, house arrest is irrelevant in comparison with what is going on in our country,” he said in a brief phone interview with the Echo of Moscow radio station as he walked along. “It’s not about my brother, my family or myself, or any other concrete person. It’s about the disgusting, mean things happening now, happening for years now, because we have just been sitting at home.”
He was seized by the police outside the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Tverskaya Street, which he had just joked that his supporters should take by storm because it would be more comfortable than where he would probably spend the night. In the end, though, the authorities seemed equally determined to avoid further confrontation and returned him to his apartment, though they posted five officers outside the door.
Not long after he was seized, the riot police moved in to disperse the rally on Manezh Square, where the crowd had dwindled to about 1,500. More than 200 people were arrested, but there were no reports of violence.
The Kremlin’s relatively cautious treatment of Mr. Navalny may have been reinforced lately by the country’s mounting economic problems. Although the annexation of Crimea last spring pushed Mr. Putin’s popularity to stratospheric heights, the ensuing Western sanctions and a simultaneous worldwide drop in oil prices have battered the Russian economy — and the fortunes of average Russians, whom the Kremlin is anxious not to antagonize.
Larger economic and geopolitical concerns may have also factored into the decision to keep Mr. Navalny out of jail, to avoid yet another point of contention with the West.
The suspended sentence will keep Mr. Navalny out of prison, but under Russian law, his felony conviction makes him ineligible to seek public office for 10 years after the sentence is completed. And even if he intended to make a swift return to the political arena, his actions would now be shadowed by fear of harm befalling his brother in prison.The next time you're about to scold your kid—or spouse—for spending too much time playing videogames instead of enjoying the sunny weather, consider this: They could be preparing for a career in motorsports. That's a possibility Nissan and Sony have created with their "GT Academy," a worldwide contest to find skilled racing gamers and make them into skilled racing drivers, then send them to the big leagues.
Becoming a professional athlete is hard. Aside from receiving a healthy dose of God-given talent, aspiring athletes need to put in huge amounts of practice, then be discovered by someone in a position to get them to the big leagues.
In sports like baseball, football, and basketball, the practice part is pretty easy. Find an open field and pick up the relatively inexpensive equipment, or join a local team. The talented rise to the top, gain attention, and can make their way to the major leagues with million-dollar paychecks.
Motorsports isn't like that. There aren't youth leagues kids can join for a few bucks. No varsity driving teams for motivated high schoolers. Most towns don't have a local circuit, and if they do, getting track time isn't like hopping on a basketball court.
GT Academy
By the time an aspiring race car driver reaches a top-tier racing league, where they might get paid (drivers in lower leagues sometimes pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a spot on the team), they might have put in more than a million dollars—or even more. Some F1 drivers (or their sponsors) actually pay teams to race for them, rather than the other way around. Unfortunately, this means that it's likely the most talented drivers out there, the ones born with the talent and ability, might never find themselves behind the wheel of a race car.
That's why Nissan and Sony partnered up in 2008 to create GT Academy. It's one part publicity-generating contest, one part top-to-bottom racing academy.
Spotting Talent
In GT Academy, players of the popular PlayStation franchise Gran Turismo can drive a virtual Nissan 370Z around a track, looking to set the best time.
I always wanted to race. But I didn't have the traditional opportunities. Bryan Heitkotter, 2011 GT Academy champion
The top competitors (the number varies by year) get an in-person tryout, and the winner gets a paid sponsorship to race with Nissan, in real leagues. In real cars. Where the newly minted drivers go first depends on their skill level and where they'll best develop. They mostly stay local—Americans race in America, Europeans race in Europe, etc. All of the 16 winners selected in the past seven years are still racing, a testament to the program's success.
"I always wanted to race. It's all I ever really wanted to do," says Bryan Heitkotter, the 2011 champion from the United States. "But I didn't have the traditional opportunities [to get into racing]. By my late 20s, I started to think that the dream was never going to happen."
Heitkotter had always played videogames, spending countless hours in front of Gran Turismo on his PlayStation, complete with a racing wheel, pedals and seat. Unlike playing the Madden or FIFA sports videogames, which can help you learn football or soccer strategy but has very little in common with the physicality of the actual sports, racing in a videogame with a wheel and pedals is surprisingly realistic. Videogame racers still have to manage the driving line, trail braking and accelerating through corners, and driving and passing in a pack of cars. They still have to know the track.
All that's missing are G-forces and a loud and hot car.
"You have the visuals, the feedback through the steering wheel," says Heitkotter. "You develop muscle memory for oversteer and understeer. Learn the racing line, how to pass and how to defend."
It's up for debate whether driving videogames can create talent, but it certainly can develop existing talent and then help it get discovered through a totally non-traditional path.
The Back Door
"Just because these guys don't have those opportunities doesn't mean they don't deserve it," says Darren Turner, who drives for Aston Martin Racing in the World Endurance Championship. "Motorsport is expensive to get started in. [GT Academy is] great. It's an opportunity for these guys to find a way in."
"They learned to drive using PlayStation and learned all the basic techniques—the same things the kid in the go-kart has to learn. They just get there in a different way."
Heitkotter says one of the biggest things he learned in his living room was the mental aspect of driving. He took his Gran Turismo racing seriously, especially on longer races (some "endurance" events can go for several hours). "Going from gaming to the real car, you have that concentration right away."
Since 2008, GT Academy has graduated 19 drivers. This year alone, nearly 300,000 gamers entered the contest, including 43,870 from the US. From that huge pool, just three champions were crowned from three different regions (Europe, Asia, and International).
To win, drivers need more than talent. They're paid representatives of their teams and their sponsors, and they need to be able to talk to the press and to fans like any other professional athlete would.
When you have something like GT Academy, it's 'We'll take you. Rich or poor, we don't care.' It takes out some of the unfortunate built-in elitism for motorsport. Paul Gerrard, racing driver and instructor
In addition to videogame and on-track racing challenges, finalists go through a public relations challenge to see how well they can talk with (potentially hostile!) reporters. There are physical competitions, too, since racers need to be in excellent shape. Driving a car for hours on-end is physically taxing thanks to G-forces, hot conditions, and being strapped in to a seat so tightly that you can't move.
But, if they can make it through the gauntlet of challenges, it's the opportunity of a lifetime. And for Nissan, the sheer number of people applying means it'll find more talent than it does through traditional means, simply because it's looking at so many people, including those not lucky enough to be born rich.
"Who's the best driver that's ever lived? Perhaps Senna or Fangio or Schumacher," says Paul Gerrard, a professional racing driver and instructor. "But, if you look at them, they all had a very privileged upbringing to get them to that level." It's more likely that the greatest driver of all time, or even alive today, is someone who simply never had the opportunity to race.
"It's awesome for racing. When you have something like GT Academy, it's 'We'll take you. Rich or poor, we don't care,'" said Gerrard. "It takes out some of the unfortunate built-in elitism for motorsport—no one ever put there and decided to be elite, but it's just expensive."
GT Academy
Heitkotter calls it "a back door into motorsports. Kind of a shortcut." This year, Heitkotter won his class several times, and finished on the podium this month at a Pirelli World Challenge race in Utah. He was just promoted to the GT-Pro class. Naturally, he's driving a Nissan, the GT-R Nismo GT3 car.
Other grads have gone further. Three of them, Lucas Ordóñez of Spain (the first GT Academy champion), Jann Mardenborough of Great Britain (2011), and Mark Shulzhitsky of Russia (2012), raced for Nissan at the 24 Hours of Le Mans this year in the wacky, top-tier LMP1 class.
Between racing for real and mentoring GT Academy hopefuls every year, Heitkotter doesn't play much Gran Turismo. "I don't have the time anymore," he says. "One of the main reasons I played my whole life was to play a racing driver. It was my only way to race. My escape. My way to be a racing driver."
He'll just have to settle for the real thing.The three-dimensional structure of the 81-residue mercury transporter MerF determined in liquid crystalline phospholipid bilayers under physiological conditions by Rotationally Aligned (RA) solid-state NMR has two long helices, which extend well beyond the bilayer, with a well-defined interhelical loop. Truncation of the N-terminal 12 residues, which are mobile and unstructured when the protein is solubilized in micelles, results in a large structural rearrangement of the protein in bilayers. In the full-length protein, the N-terminal helix is aligned nearly parallel to the membrane normal and forms an extension of the first transmembrane helix. By contrast, this helix adopts a perpendicular orientation in the truncated protein. The close spatial proximity of the two Cys-containing metal binding sites in the three-dimensional structure of full-length MerF provides insights into possible transport mechanisms. These results demonstrate that major changes in protein structure can result from differences in amino acid sequence (e.g., full-length vs truncated proteins) as well as the use of a non-native membrane mimetic environment (e.g., micelles) vs liquid crystalline phospholipid bilayers. They provide further evidence of the importance of studying unmodified membrane proteins in near-native bilayer environments in order to obtain accurate structures that can be related to their functions.Visit Ada Palmer's Website Here
Fantasy Book Critic is extremely excited to welcome debut author Ada Palmer to our blog today. Ada Palmer is the author of the futuristic science fiction novel, Too Like the Lightning, which was released May 10, 2016 by Tor Books.
Ada Palmer stops by today to writing in a different question palette. She shares amazing insight into her novel and the writing process.
About Too Like the Lightning:
Tor Books is proud to launch the first novel in a new political science fiction series, Too Like The Lightning by debut novelist Ada Palmer. Palmer’s unique vision mixes Enlightenment-era philosophy with traditional science fiction speculation to bring to life the year 2454, not a perfect future, but a utopian one, described by a narrator writing in an antiquated form to catalog the birth of a revolution. The result is The Iliad meets I, Claudius mixed with the enthusiasm of The Stars My |
4061, qld
First postedIn November 1991, an advert appeared in the Evening Standard inviting interested parties to a meeting of the Campaign for an Independent Britain at Westminster Central Hall, a short walk from the Houses of Parliament. Among the few hundred attendees was a 29-year-old commodities trader called Nigel Farage. He was impressed, but he felt he was too busy to really get involved. So he wrote the organisers a cheque for £50 and, as he puts it in his autobiography, "popped it in the post on the way to the pub".
Nearly 22 years later, Nigel Farage was back at Westminster Central Hall, but this time, he was a rather more central figure. The Campaign for an Independent Britain ultimately spawned Ukip, and Farage had somehow become its leader. With the party edging ahead of the Liberal Democrats in the polls and drawing more support than ever from disgruntled Conservatives, the conference, he explained later, was the most important in the party's history. "It was the most delegates we'd ever had," he said. "And there was a very marked change in the type of person there. The big idea was to launch new people and for me... not to take a back seat, exactly, but maybe not to emerge quite as dominant."
Farage's speech was scheduled for Friday morning. In the minutes before he entered the hall, a crowd of photographers and cameramen jostled for position at the edge of the stage, and there was a sharp change in the atmosphere. He walked in to a thumping and incongruously continental techno accompaniment, waved to the whooping delegates, and checked that his ancient Nokia was switched off. The speech that followed was warmly received by its audience, the only downside being a Nixonian sweat under the lights that made Farage, oleaginous at the best of times, look as if he'd just got out of the bath.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
One of the loudest cheers came for Godfrey Bloom, the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, who had recently caused something of a stir with a derisive reference to "bongo-bongo land". "I had the most blistering row with Godfrey in a Strasbourg restaurant the other day," an indulgent Farage told his audience. "He wants to fight for his beliefs and I was saying that we need to stick to the big messages." But, he added, "be in no doubt: we must be the party of radical alternatives and free speech."
Farage left the venue and set off on a publicity blitz. A bit later, travelling between studios, he switched on the radio to hear the one o'clock news. His speech was the first item. Thinking it over in Ukip's headquarters a couple of weeks on, a wistful look came over his face. "I thought, yeah, I've nailed this," he said, snapping his fingers for emphasis. "And then it all went wrong."
As Farage crisscrossed the city, Bloom was at the Cinnamon Club restaurant, speaking to a fringe meeting on women in politics. In an ill-considered joke, Bloom called some of the women present "sluts". He then sailed outside to be confronted by a group of reporters. One of the group kept calling him Mr Godfrey, a perfectly calculated tactic to wind him up. As he strode away, he was pursued by Channel 4 News's Michael Crick, who he proceeded to thwack over the head with a copy of the conference programme. > The ensuing media furore was immediate, gleeful, and extensive, and by the teatime news, Nigel Farage's speech was very far from the top of the bulletin.
It was a crisis that summarised Ukip's controlling paradox: the closer their idiosyncratic brand of anti-politics gets them to the promised land of real influence, the more obstinately it stands in their way. Certainly, as he surveyed the wreckage a fortnight later, Farage had reason to reflect ruefully on his paean to the "party of free speech". "Of course I was annoyed with Godfrey," he said. "We've had a whole summer of these distractions. What I had told him at that restaurant was that we've got to focus."
The problem, I suggested, is that by insisting on that sort of discipline, you risk alienating the very people who have brought you the success you've had so far. "Look," said Farage, drumming his fingers impatiently on the table as he spoke.
"It comes down to this. What is Ukip for? What is it for? There are a lot of people in Ukip who think that it's for saying things, for providing opposition, for providing an alternative narrative, maybe shocking a little bit. I've done plenty of that over the years. But New Ukip, if I dare to call it that, is about fighting elections. It is about putting together election-winning machines. That's what I'm trying to bring."
But this approach is not always popular. "This is the third most popular party in Britain now," complains one insider, "and yet it's incredibly centralised, it's run from an inner core of Nigel and his sycophants, Nigelistas around him, people who've been given advances and promotions and jobs, and it's very unhealthy how much control he's got for a democratic party. He doesn't wield the knife himself, he's always got others to do it for him. The danger for Nigel is he has some very keen people around him for whom he can do no wrong."
By the end of Friday's conference, Bloom had lost the party whip – not at Farage's instigation, he insisted, but at that of the party chairman. However much of a mess the day had been, Farage took the optimistic view that it had not been entirely unhelpful. "On a bad day, Ukip was a bit like the rugby club coach on the annual trip to the seaside," he said. "Fun though that is, I think that image probably has been left behind. The way it was handled, it may well be looked back upon as the moment that Ukip decided to take life a bit more seriously."
Such an assertion, his supporters say, would have been anathema to the 29-year-old who wrote that cheque and then set out for another night on the piss. The standard narrative of Farage is of a reluctant public figure, a straightforward sort of chap forced into politics by patriotism. "I'm sure he longs for the freedoms of the old days," says Mark Daniel, a novelist and former Ukip media officer who has known Farage for more than a decade. "But he also recognises that if he is to attain what he set out to attain, this is what it takes."
Farage has just finished three years in his second stint as leader. He is a veteran, and if he is to have a time, it must be now. There is no room for error any more: the success or failure of his bid to wrangle the party into some sort of order, and the potentially apocalyptic consequences for the Conservatives if he does, will be central to the outcome of the next general election. Even if he can't become an MP, he can set the agenda for the Tory party, in itself a glittering prize. And yet the lure of the old days – and the abiding strangeness of his party – are very hard to escape. When he finishes a day's work at the European Parliament in Brussels, he goes back to a flat that he still shares with his former Defence Spokesman: Godfrey Bloom.
Nigel Farage has nearly died at least three times. The first, according to his boisterous autobiography Flying Free, was in 1985, when he was a 21-year-old broker on the London Metal Exchange. Walking home from the station after a heavy night's drinking, he was hit at a pelican crossing by a VW Beetle, and left with broken ribs, a leg that almost had to be amputated, tinnitus, and a hangover that had his mouth "feeling like Queen Nefertiti's gusset". On the plus side, he fancied one of the nurses, Clare Hayes, who would become his first wife, and with whom he would have two sons.
Even after a second brush with the eternal, a diagnosis of testicular cancer a few months later, he quickly bounced back. "The first time I met my oncologist, in this hospital bed, I had the racing on, and a phone line open to a bookmaker, and I had a fag on the go and a glass of something and I'd had the operation [to remove the cancer] 24 hours before. And he came in and sort of stared at me, and he said, well, Mr Farage, after an experience like this, many of my patients spend the rest of their life drinking carrot juice, and some go the other way. And I suspect you're a member of the latter category." He grins at me and lets out his surprisingly endearing laugh, a sort of spluttering hiss that sounds like a steam train leaving the station.
To a journalist from what Farage sees as a hostile mainstream media – albeit a segment of it that he is shortly to join, with a column in The Independent from next week – there's an interesting challenge to this warmth: his friendliness seems to bristle against the ridicule to which his party has so often been exposed. When I ask him about one of the more controversial planks of his speech, a diatribe against an anticipated influx of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants that was predicated on dubious statistics about those who are already here, he counters brightly: "We're not what you expect! We're not what you want! 1950s Britain, albeit with the stocks back on the green – that's what you expect to find. But it's not what you find."
The cancer anecdote is, in a curious way, similarly defensive. Likeable though he is in the telling, like most of Farage's stories about himself, this one comes with a defiant swagger: it makes a fetish of the stiff upper lip, and in doing so acts as an implicit rebuke to the perceived feebleness of the modern mainstream, the Elf'n'Safety PC Brigade who want to straighten our bananas.
This brisk sensibility is hard-wired. Consider, for example, Farage's view of the effect of the early exit of his father, Guy, on his childhood. "People get divorced," he says shortly. (He did so himself, and is now married to his second wife, Kirsten Mehr, with whom he has two daughters; their union has survived a News of the World report, strenuously denied, that he had sex seven times in one night with a Latvian woman called Liga who he met in a pub in Biggin Hill.) "That's the way life is. I suppose I think we can over-analyse some of these things."
The other side of this trenchant outlook is a knee-jerk resistance to conventional wisdom. This, too, was visible in Farage from his school days, when he became a devotee of Enoch Powell and – according to a contemporaneous letter unearthed by the vexing Michael Crick – was considered a "racist" and "neo-fascist" by some of the teaching staff. Farage, for his part, says that while he was a "troublemaker", he was certainly no racist.
It is, perhaps, unsurprising that he dispensed with university altogether, instead leaping straight into a job in the City. "I couldn't wait to get cracking," he says. "I don't want to be a scruffy student, I want to be out there." He seems to have had a fine time as a broker, notwithstanding the occasion he lost a silver warrant worth £90,000, and to have invented himself in a Thatcherite world that suited his attitude to life down to a tee. "To me, he was a Tory," says David Campbell Bannerman, a former Ukip deputy leader who has now defected to the Conservatives. "He always comes across as a Tory – a City man, very energetic." (Indeed, several people I spoke to saw him as a natural Tory backbencher.)
Despite his hesitance about the Anti-Federalist League, Farage was soon on board with Ukip, and widely recognised as one of the party's best public speakers. But, he insists, he had no designs on the top job. "I was always a reluctant leader, really," he says. "I had no intention of ever getting involved in politics. I saw myself making a lot of money, and certainly by this age being retired."
The question of when that started to change is a fraught one. For most politicians, of course, ambition would be an acknowledged part of the package; but Farage's personal brand is predicated on not being like other politicians. He himself suggests that both of those spells as leader have been for want of a better alternative, and certainly Ukip's senior figures have not shone brightly in the past. Mark Daniel, who wrote a history of Ukip and is thanked effusively in the acknowledgements of Farage's autobiography, says that the standard of candidates "worried me considerably, because there didn't seem to be anyone who was capable. I think Nigel would have liked to find others to step into his shoes."
But another version of events casts Farage as far more Machiavellian than he would admit. "He was always the power behind the throne," says one insider. "He just preferred to pull the strings." And Nikki Sinclaire, a long-time party official who became an MEP in 2009, scoffs at the idea that he was dragooned into office. "It's absolute rubbish," she says. "He wanted it, but he didn't want it too early. He wanted to be seen as the peacemaker who was getting on with the job. He only wants to be leader when he thinks the party can be successful."
One piece of evidence for this theory comes in that curious split in Farage's terms in office. He stood down as leader, the official version goes, in order to better concentrate his energies on his own doomed general election battle in 2010 against the House of Commons Speaker, John Bercow.
A more sceptical analyst might say that he saw that the party's chances of doing well were small, and consequently moved to absolve himself of responsibility for the failure, thereby setting up a glorious second coming. "You do get the feeling that he is there for his own good," says Craig Mackinlay, another former Ukip deputy leader who has defected to the Conservatives. "Ukip is only there for the convenience of Nigel and very little else." David Campbell Bannerman, likewise, says that there is "a bit of the showman to Nigel. He likes to be asked back, for his people to beg him to return".
Then there is the suggestion that Farage's leadership style has failed to adapt to the party's newly broader base of talent. Another disgruntled MEP who has left the party, Marta Andreasen, says that he can be "autocratic", and "personally ruthless with people". One example, Nikki Sinclaire says, can be found as far back as 2004, when Robert Kilroy-Silk joined the party, and posed a threat to Farage's dominance in the media.
When he was searching for a political adviser, Farage, it is claimed, recommended Tony Bennett – not, to be clear, the crooner, but a researcher who had already been censured for circulating a pamphlet in which he suggested the prophet Muhammad was a paedophile. "Farage set Kilroy-Silk up to fail because he had become the darling of the party," said Sinclaire. Another member of the campaign remembers Farage's plaintive complaints that he would no longer be invited on Question Time.
Farage says that he can take no big decisions without the support of the elected National Executive Committee. Indeed, he adds, he is "often frustrated at the lack of real power I have within Ukip". And in a later email he scoffs at the idea that he was jealous of Kilroy-Silk, saying that he was the one who got him to join in the first place. "It is very nice of people to compare me with Machiavelli," he writes, "but it > is simply not true. I do not want to do media seven days a week and would welcome other high-profile figures."
All of this comes against a background of endless recrimination: few of the people who understand Ukip come without an agenda. Although it refers to events of some years ago, a dark reference in Flying Free to "a splinter group under the influence of Rowan Atkinson's brother Rodney" seemed to summarise the party's intense, if miniature, rivalries.
Most of those who speak against Farage today could be seen as having an axe to grind: Nikki Sinclaire, for example, was expelled after she refused to sit with European allies who she viewed as extremists. (She has also been arrested over expenses claims; and, to further complicate things, went on to win a sex discrimination case against the party, largely because whoever was supposed to file their defence missed the deadline for doing so.) MacKinlay and Campbell Bannerman also had fallings out of one sort or another. As well as members of the rank and file, Farage has rowed publicly with four of his six predecessors as party leader.
Farage, for his part, yearns for the simplicity of his previous life. "In business," he harrumphs, "when you sack people or you get sacked, you're cheesed off. And then a year goes by, and you meet them in the street, and you say come on, you silly old bugger, let's go for a drink. You move on. Politics is different, because there's no way back. So you pay your membership fee and you join the bitter-and-twisted club."
Is he difficult to work with? "I genuinely don't think I am. I would say this to you: I'm one of the most trusting people you'd ever meet. I trust everybody until they let me down. And then I never speak to them again."
Since Ukip's troubled conference, as Godfrey Bloom has chuntered on, accusing Farage of being out of touch, his erstwhile leader has tried to look ahead. Work is afoot on plans for a stunt, in the event that he is excluded from the debates that will precede the next general election, as Sky News seems determined to ensure that he will be; there are, meanwhile, rumours that a seat has been selected, South Thanet, for a challenge to Europhile Tory incumbent, Laura Sandys.
It should be a thrilling time for Farage. So why does he seem a little... tired? Partly, it's because he works so hard, regularly working weekends and putting in shifts worthy of a cabinet minister. But, he says, it may also have to do with the third time he nearly died: the plane crash on the eve of the last general election. The crash itself was bad enough; more frightening still was the moment afterwards when he thought that the plane's engine was about to explode, and burn him to death before he could get out.
If his previous scares somehow made him more energetic, this one took it out of him. "Healthwise, this job is absolutely bonkers," he says matter-of-factly. "I may have to rethink it a bit. Maybe I'm going to have to box a bit more clever as time goes on. I've been a bit smashed up, you know. I used to be like the Duracell bunny. I used to work all day, drink all evening, not bother with sleep at all and then do it all again. But I'm not as strong as I used to be."
Politicians are not supposed to admit this sort of thing, and it is hugely to Farage's advantage that he is willing to do so, particularly when it so goes against his personal brand of Tiggerish enthusiasm. There's something else curious about it, too: in a funny way, being a little tired might make him better at his job, a more convincing, sober politician for the real world than he has been able to show himself before. Knackered though he is, he still believes he can take his party forwards. The question is: do they want to go with him?
A few Farage facts
Peak golf handicap: 4
Estimated sum received in expenses over a decade as MEP: £2m
Hours allegedly spent in Strasbourg strip club on 'inadvertent' visit: 3
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 now.Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Jay Riley from Litherland:
International break is always inconvenient and the main hope is that none of our players pick up injuries whilst away on duty.
Daniel Sturridge, Jordan Henderson and Emre Can all received knocks, but hopefully none are serious and it won’t interrupt our preparation for Villa.
It will be great to see Mario Balotelli make his Anfield debut for the club but also Adam Lallana will be returning from injury too and I’m just as keen to see him in a red shirt as well.
It’s important that we can carry on from where we left off at Spurs and get another three points against a Villa side who have started the season well but nobody expects them to stick around in the top four.
They have caused us problems in the past, but there’s no Christian Benteke this time, so I’m hoping for a comfortable win.
Mark Baker from Huyton:
Dejan Lovren for me was the best centre half in the league up until Christmas last season and then suffered a massive decline which he has carried into his early season displays.
The best defenders hit the ground as a last resort and yet twice Lovren was left on his backside at the hands of Adebayor, trying to defend on the front foot far too often.
The lack of positional sense for Chadli’s chance was alarming. Mamadou Sakho can look cumbersome in possession but this diverts from excellent pass completion and I have no doubt this matched with his strength and ability to cover ground will develop him into a fine centre half, but his partner is a massive worry in terms of his impetuous need to anticipate danger and sacrifice his defensive position, which will cost the side.
Steve Moorhouse from Aigburth:
After the international break, we host high flying Aston Villa at Anfield on Saturday. Villa had a poor season last year but have made an excellent start this season and are unbeaten. However, buoyed by a superb 3-0 victory at Tottenham, we must look to beat Villa.
Our performance against Spurs echoed many of those from last season. Furthermore, the new additions gave the side a refreshing look. Mario Balotelli gave the forward play a focal point and show glimpses of his immense talent. Whilst the new fullbacks added skill and pace down the flanks. Hopefully with more game time they will improve.
Expectations are high as always, but if this ‘new’ side can improve on last season we are in for exciting times. However, one thing never changes Anfield must be a fortress once again.
Martin Latham from Woolton:
A home game against Villa on the back of an impressive win at Spurs sounds like an easy win for Liverpool.
Anyone thinking that needs to cast their mind back to last season when the Reds had to fight back from 2-0 down to get a 2-2 draw. We’ll need to be better in midfield and defence against Villa’s quick breaks to get another clean sheet.
If Daniel Sturridge is unavailable and others have long journeys after internationals, we could see a different starting line-up. Adam Lallana might just make his long awaited debut and Lazar Markovic looks an exciting prospect. In the meantime, we’ve had to make do with watching England, with Reds players providing most of the high points.
Steven Gerrard has had to drag a mediocre England through matches for years – now he’s gone it seems the same is expected of Raheem Sterling.
*More on LFC today: Brendan Rodgers has been critical of England's treatment of Daniel Sturridge and you can watch LFC youngster Jake Brimmer score two wonderful free-kicks for Australia under-16s.Thirty years since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
30 December 2009
In the press coverage of President Barack Obama’s recent decision to deploy more US troops to Afghanistan, a historical milestone has gone curiously unmentioned—the 30th anniversary of the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan, which began on December 27, 1979.
An examination of the circumstances of this event undermines Obama’s claims that American policy in Afghanistan is motivated by a “war on terror,” revealing instead the imperialist aims behind US policy.
At the time, President Jimmy Carter seized on the Soviet intervention—which aimed to suppress mujahadeen rebels fighting the Soviet-backed regime of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)—to undo a decade of détente and escalate tensions with the USSR. This critical decision unleashed a conflict that would ultimately devastate Afghan society.
It emerged only years later that the Soviet invasion was itself a response to a deliberate US attempt to set up a new military front against the USSR in Afghanistan. Even before the Soviet invasion, Washington was secretly assisting the mujahadeen, with the aim of provoking a Soviet intervention and trapping the USSR in a bloody quagmire. The US foreign policy establishment’s ultimate goal in pursuing this policy was to destroy the USSR and promote an expansion of US power in strategically located, oil-rich Central Asia.
In his 1996 memoir From the Shadows, Robert Gates, the current US secretary of defense, recalls US deliberations in the winter and spring of 1979. He describes a March 30, 1979 meeting: “Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Newsom stated that it was US policy to [demonstrate] to the Pakistanis, Saudis and others our resolve to stop the extension of Soviet influence in the Third World… Walt Slocombe, representing Defense, asked if there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, ‘sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire?’”
On July 3, 1979, President Carter authorized the CIA to fund and carry out propaganda for the Afghan rebels. The CIA reportedly sent its first shipments to the mujahadeen that summer.
The Kremlin Stalinists, guided by purely military and nationalist calculations, fell squarely into the trap set by Washington. The Soviet leadership thought that Afghan President Hafizullah Amin, from the PDPA’s Khalq faction, was negotiating a separate deal with Washington to halt US aid to the mujahadeen. Moscow feared that a pro-US regime in Kabul might let the US deploy Pershing missiles to Afghanistan, where they would be aimed at the USSR.
It also feared that the US would use Afghan Uzbeks and Tajiks for national-separatist propaganda aimed at Soviet Central Asia. Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (now one of the main mentors of Barack Obama) publicly advocated an ethnic carve-up of the USSR.
As Soviet forces invaded, KGB commandos assassinated Amin. In his place, Moscow installed Babrak Karmal, leader of the conservative Parcham wing of the PDPA, as president. This was a signal to the ruling classes that the PDPA would abandon its partial land redistribution and other reform measures. The Kremlin’s strategy was to arrange a deal with Afghanistan’s tribal elites, while crushing resistance to the PDPA regime with mass bombing raids.
Washington’s policy towards the Soviet-Afghan war was marked by unsurpassed cynicism. It unleashed a barrage of sanctimonious protests against an invasion it had helped promote, including organizing a boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. As it sent billions of dollars in weaponry to the mujahadeen, it publicly denied that it was giving the rebels any assistance.
Though Washington proclaimed that its Afghan proxies were “freedom fighters,” the mujahadeen and their international backers were social reactionaries. With the assistance of right-wing Muslim regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the US promoted Islamic fundamentalist warlords within the resistance. Washington turned a blind eye as they exterminated competing mujahadeen factions and funded themselves through large-scale opium sales.
When the mujahadeen proved incapable of organizing attacks on Kabul and strategic roadways, the CIA armed and trained international Muslim recruits to launch terrorist attacks and suicide bombings. The young Saudi billionaire Osama bin Laden oversaw these global recruitment networks, which later formed the core of Al Qaeda.
These networks gathered together recruits from the Muslim Brotherhood, those influenced by extremist Saudi Islam, and all the forces in the Muslim world that had historically been mobilized against the powerful socialist traditions of the Middle Eastern workers and intellectuals, including in Afghanistan.
Rising losses and popular discontent in the USSR prompted Moscow to withdraw its forces in 1989. This was followed by the Soviet collapse in 1991 and the 1992 collapse of the PDPA regime, as leading PDPA officials passed into the service of competing mujahadeen warlords. Afghanistan descended into civil war.
The architects of US policy in Afghanistan have recorded their callous indifference to the consequences of their policies. Asked in 1998 if he felt remorse about the Afghan tragedy, Brzezinski replied bluntly: “What’s more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”
The world still faces the consequences of this eruption of US imperialist influence into Central Asia. Great power competition—unleashed by the Afghan civil war—for dominant influence over Afghanistan, strategically located at the center of the Eurasian land mass, initially saw an attempt by the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to unify Afghanistan under the fundamentalist Taliban militia in the mid-1990s. It culminated in 2001 in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan—carried out under the fraudulent banner of a “war on terror”—against the same forces Washington had supported in the 1980s and 1990s.
As it seeks to use its position in Afghanistan to enforce its hegemony over an unstable Asian continent, Washington faces the toxic political results of its policy in 1979: Afghan narco-warlords, international terrorist networks, ex-Soviet republics socially devastated by the collapse of the USSR, and the general poverty of the region.
The catastrophes of the present emerge from crimes committed in the past. The history of US imperialism’s first major push into Central Asia must be understood in order to assess the consequences the current US escalation will have for the region and the world.
Alex Lantier
Alex LantierMicrosoft Marketing Strategy: Why Bill Was Better Than Steve
Microsoft
This article will not beat about the bush, mentioning what Steve Ballmer Doesn’t have that Bill Gates had in terms of marketing but rather a bitter truth about the difference between their marketing strategies. Two persons can neither be same nor think in exactly the same way. Thus there is going to be a difference between the two persons.
The computer industry focused on hardware in the early 1970s.This was the era when the software was given less importance and the PC software did not exist at all. It was Bill Gates and Paul Allen who had a vision of making the software reign supreme to make the personal computers an all purpose machine. In fact Bill Gates and Paul Allen wanted to build software industry when it never existed and by 1990 not only did the software industry exist but Microsoft became the undisputed leader of the software revolution. The margin of profit in the software industry was huge in comparison to that of hardware. Moreover the competition in the software industry was not as intense as that in the hardware industry.
Microsoft grew to be valued over $7 billion with the gross income going over $1 billion annually. The personal worth of Bill Gates was more than $2 billion but this sky rocketed to $7 billion in 1992 making him the richest person in the USA. The profits of the company stood at $7.79 billion in 1999 while its work force was more than 31,000. The growth slowed down in the year 2000. This was because of anti-trust proceedings and heavy spending on the Research and Development.
It was in this year of 2000 that Steve Ballmer came into limelight by being appointed as the Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft. Steve Ballmer joined the Microsoft in 1980. Bill Gates hired him as the first business manager at Microsoft. He has headed nearly all the Microsoft division including operating systems developments, operation, support and sales. He was made the president of the company in 1998 but promoted to CEO in 2000.
There are basically two views about the comparison of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. With reference to marketing some say that Bill Gates was better while some say that Steve Ballmer is better. Some even go to the extent of saying that Steve Ballmer has always played a second fiddle to Bill Gates and that is why he is the current CEO of Microsoft. What either one lacks depends on one’s own perception.
Some say that the marketing style of Bill Gates was of persuasion and analysis style. On the contrary the marketing style of Steve Ballmer has been of the arrogant and crazy style. This view is correct to some extent because Steve Ballmer has been very aggressive at taking over Yahoo. Microsoft headed by Bill Gates has been known to practice the principle of being genuine, effective and powerful by the strategy of “embracing and extending.” All through those years Microsoft was known to be Humble but dangerous. On the other hand there are some who do not line the aggressive taking over strategy of Steve Ballmer.
Steve Ballmer strictly believes and sticks to the discipline of organizational management. Bill Gates has given a free rein to Steve Blamer to handle the Microsoft in what ever manner Steve Ballmer wants. Steve Ballmer has the right to handle the sales, finance, marketing products and the strategic planning as he wants.
With Steve Ballmer as the captain of the Microsoft ship, a new era has begun. Microsoft is undergoing reconstruction. While Bill Gates was a visionary founder, Steve Ballmer is proving himself to be a perfect leader. He is aiming at a long lasting company.
The new mission of Microsoft as announced by Steve Ballmer focuses on enabling people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. This mission and its scope are far beyond the realms of what Bill Gates has thought. This is the first time that Microsoft does not just harp about technology. This mission is about overall marketing aimed at improving the relationships with the customers and others in the industry. Steve Ballmer wants the employees of Microsoft to act on these principles and this mission.
Steve Ballmer seems to have struck the heart of marketing by targeting to bridge the gap between the sales and product development divisions of the company. Ballmer has broken from the traditional practices of Microsoft by empowering the second tier of executives to run their businesses with less of supervision. Earlier during the reign of Bill Gates each and every important decision was being taken by either Bill Gates himself or Steve Ballmer. He has ordered the sales force, engineers, and the mangers to improve the quality of the services and products to get rid of the frustration of corporate customers.
Ballmer is bringing drastic changes in the way decision is taken. The employees now have to provide feedback to Microsoft though reporting that includes grading of the supervisors, ranking and filing the employers and even the accounting system for managers. This helps in weighing trade offs and quantifying the contributions of each employee in the organization. This also helps in taking decisions faster. Now the corporate values are a part of the annual performance review of every employee.
Ballmer has put a lot of stress on regain the trust of the industry and customers. According to him the integrity, honesty and respect must be exhibited through partners, customers and the overall industry.
The basic difference between Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates is exhibited by the former being obsessive about understanding each and every detail of the business such as all the details of sales, costs and marketing and each and every factor affecting it.
Ballmer wants his employees to be accountable and respectful to each other as well as outsiders.
One thing that is not liked by people is Ballmer’s tendency to get rid of people who he thinks do not fit in the organization. Some of the employees find him liberating but for some a tough boss.
Ballmer has made the factor of customer trust and customer complains the prime concern in the company, which in a long run is good. Isn’t it?
(10 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)
votes, average:out of 5) Loading... Loading...
Leave a Reply– A woman allegedly believed that her ex-boyfriend “put a curse on her” so she stabbed him to death.
Amanda Lopez told police investigators that she had thought about killing Larry Lee Fryar for over a year, News13 reported. The 26-year-old woman told police that Fryar had “done something to her” and that the only way to free herself from the supposed curse was to kill him.
Fryar was found in an apartment on Lake Tivoli Boulevard with stab wounds. The 57-year-old man was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died.
She was arrested Monday in Orlando trying to catch a bus to New York.
Lopez has been charged with first-degree murder and was moved from Orange County to the Osceola County jail without bond on Tuesday.
The autopsy report showed that Fryar had eight stab wounds, News13 reported.
Updates From Our Radio Stations:
Follow us on Twitter – @CBSTampaBay and like us on Facebook
Get our daily email with news, sports and more – CLICK HEREOn a humid afternoon this past November, I pulled off Interstate 75 into a stretch of Florida pine forest tangled with runaway vines. My GPS was homing in on the house of a man I thought might hold the master key to one of the strangest scholarly mysteries in recent decades: a 1,300-year-old scrap of papyrus that bore the phrase “Jesus said to them, My wife.” The fragment, written in the ancient language of Coptic, had set off shock waves when an eminent Harvard historian of early Christianity, Karen L. King, presented it in September 2012 at a conference in Rome. Listen to the audio version of this article: Feature stories, read aloud: download the Audm app for your iPhone.
Never before had an ancient manuscript alluded to Jesus’s being married. The papyrus’s lines were incomplete, but they seemed to describe a dialogue between Jesus and the apostles over whether his “wife”—possibly Mary Magdalene— |
declined to comment on Swan's email to Morse.
The slur allegedly was made about Ward 2 City Councilor Anthony Soto, who has clashed with Leary over the years. Leary at the time was president of Holyoke Fire Fighters Association, Local 1693, International Association of Fire Fighters.
The video was made in August 2012 when Leary was off duty and went to Hampshire Towing, of South Hadley, to meet with that company's owner, William Johnson. Johnson said in a February 2013 phone interview signs were visible on the company property stating that audio- and video-taping take place.
"While we are aware that Mr. Leary's reprehensible remarks were made in private and not while he was on duty, his actions violated public trust, which is essential for those who serve the public," Swan said.
"His blatant disrespect for Councilor Soto, the significant Latino population of Holyoke and residents of Holyoke in general is only surpassed by his arrogance in refusing to apologize for his imprudent behavior," he said.
With about half of Holyoke's population of 40,000 Hispanic, Swan questioned the effectiveness of a public servant who made remarks that "so abrasively disrespected" half the city.
Residents have petitioned the Fire Commission to rescind the provisional appointment of Leary to lieutenant, but without success. The commission is a three-member board of volunteers appointed by the mayor. The commission is responsible for the hiring, promotion and discipline of all Fire Department employees, including the chief.
Chairman Christopher Hopewell and member Yasser Menwer were involved in the promotion of Leary. The promotion was made before Morse appointed Patricia C. Devine, a former city councilor, to the Fire Commission.
Hopewell and Menwer criticized the use of the slur Leary made in the video, but said Leary was promoted to lieutenant provisionally on March 27 because he was the most qualified of the 14 candidates considered.
As the official who appoints the Fire Commission, Swan said, "I urge you to weigh in on the matter and not sit on the sideline enjoying the safety of obscurity.
"Holyoke residents deserve to know, in no uncertain terms, that their chief executive along with other elected officials will speak clearly and concisely regarding matters of racial bias and will take strong action in order to send a clear message that the city of Holyoke does not condone racial stereotyping."
Morse said Latinos deserve the same fairness and respect owed to everyone in a community.
"When the video in question surfaced two years ago, I condemned Mr. Leary's remarks in no uncertain terms, and made very clear that such language has no place in the city of Holyoke. That remains so today," Morse said.
"Such comments erode the very foundation of our shared community: fairness, equality, and a respect for the dignity of all persons. Surely people in positions of power, such as Mr. Leary, should be held to this standard, and our leaders should always strive to reflect what is best about our city," he said.
The city has moved to help Latinos from feeling excluded, he said, but obviously more work is needed.
"To Holyoke's Latino community, I want to affirm that I hear your voices. I understand your frustration. And I will do everything in my power to continue making Holyoke a safe, inclusive place for everyone," Morse said.
In December 2012, Fire Chief John A. Pond disciplined Leary for the slur in the video, by placing a letter of reprimand in his personnel file and ordering that he get sensitivity training. Leary filed a grievance over Pond's discipline. The Fire Commission voted 2-1 on Feb. 13, 2013 to deny the grievance and Leary took the matter to the American Arbitration Association, which vacated the discipline.
In a Sept. 22 ruling in Scituate, Arbitrator Bruce Fraser said, "I take it as a fact that Leary made a racial slur about Soto at the meeting in August (2012)."
As offensive as the remark was, Fraser said, the fact it was made did not bring discredit on the Fire Department.
"The public was not present and there was no expectation on Leary's part that his remark would ever leave the room," Fraser said.
That the video was distributed and made public was not due to Leary's actions, Fraser said.
Lawyer Terence E. Coles, representing Leary, argued that the discipline was unjustified for two reasons. First, whatever transpired was a private conversation Leary had while off duty, he said.
Also, Coles said, Leary didn't give his consent to be taped and under state law that means the video cannot be used in a legal way against him.
Following is the Aug. 7 letter from the Rev. Talbert W. Swan II, president of the Greater Springfield NAACP, to Holyoke Mayor Alex B. Morse about provisional Fire Department Lt. Timothy Leary:
Dear Mayor Morse, The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination. The vision of the NAACP is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race. The Greater Springfield Branch was chartered in 1918 and has worked toward this mission for over ninety years. Currently, in the absence of an active branch, the Greater Springfield Branch handles concerns from our constituents in Holyoke and other communities throughout the Pioneer Valley. It has come to our attention that firefighter Timothy Leary made racist remarks about City Councilor Anthony Soto, which were recorded on video. While we are aware that Mr. Leary's reprehensible remarks were made in private and not while he was on duty, his actions violated public trust, which is essential for those who serve the public. His blatant disrespect for Councilor Soto, the significant Latino population of Holyoke and residents of Holyoke in general is only surpassed by his arrogance in refusing to apologize for his imprudent behavior. The Holyoke Fire Commission recently informed residents that submitted a petition requesting that Leary's provisional appointment to lieutenant be rescinded on the basis of his ill-advised commentary, that despite his doltish behavior, Mr. Leary was the most qualified applicant for the position. We question the wisdom of considering qualifications to a supervisory position in a department that serves the public without considering whether the candidate has the public trust. How effective is a public servant who does not command the respect of a considerable portion of the public he serves or the men and women he supervises? Massachusetts has one of the highest concentrations of Puerto Ricans in the country and nearly half of Holyoke's residents are Latino. Elected officials and those who work in the public sector should take pride in the fact that Puerto Ricans have contributed to the development, defense and prosperity of the United States since 1898 when the Island was ceded to the United States at the end of the Spanish-American War. Mr. Leary’s racist remarks were not only offensive to Councilor Soto and residents of Holyoke, but to citizens throughout the Commonwealth and the nation. Mr. Leary's actions, which breached the public trust, disqualify him from supervising the men and women he has so abrasively disrespected and from being a ranking member of a department that serves the very residents he has shown such little regard for. As the mayor of the city and the person who appoints the Fire Commission, I urge you to weigh in on the matter and not sit on the sideline enjoying the safety of obscurity. Holyoke residents deserve to know, in no uncertain terms, that their chief executive along with other elected officials will speak clearly and concisely regarding matters of racial bias and will take strong action in order to send a clear message that the City of Holyoke does not condone racial stereotyping. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely GREATER SPRINGFIELD NAACP Rev. Talbert W. Swan, II President
The following is Morse's response:Wheat thing a guest Aug 26th, 2013 368 Never a guest368Never
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 5.32 KB //Wheat Slot 1-3, BREAD rest //Goes north-south do; if(%XPOS%!=-4168); LOOKS(180,90,1); keydown(forward); #cz=90909; do; if(%#cz%!=%ZPOS%); key(attack); wait(2t); key(use); #cz=%ZPOS%; endif; //for loops are mega fucked up in macro mod for some reason unsafe(0); GETSLOTITEM(1,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(1); endif; GETSLOTITEM(1,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(2); endif; GETSLOTITEM(3,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(3); endif; GETSLOTITEM(4,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(4); endif; endunsafe; until(%ZPOS%=3162); keyup(forward); keydown(back); wait(2t); keyup(back); //Throw Excess Items looks(180,0,1); keydown(sneak); wait(10t); GUI(inventory); FOR(#s,1,35); GETSLOTITEM(%#s%,#i); IF((#i=296)); wait(5t); SLOTCLICK(%#s%); wait(5t); SLOTCLICK(-999); wait(5t); ENDIF; NEXT; gui(); looks(90,0,1); GUI(inventory); FOR(#s,9,35); GETSLOTITEM(%#s%,#i); IF(#i=295); wait(5t); SLOTCLICK(%#s%); wait(5t); SLOTCLICK(-999); wait(5t); ENDIF; NEXT; gui(); LOOKS(180,90,1); if(HUNGER<15); do; pick(297); //GET BREADED key(use); until(HUNGER>15); endif; keyup(sneak); wait(5t); keydown(right); #cx=%XPOS%; do; key(use); until(%#cx%!=%XPOS%); keyup(right); keydown(back); #cz=9001; do; if(%#cz%!=%ZPOS%); key(attack); wait(2t); key(use); #cz=%ZPOS%; endif; unsafe(0); GETSLOTITEM(1,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(1); endif; GETSLOTITEM(1,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(2); endif; GETSLOTITEM(3,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(3); endif; GETSLOTITEM(4,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(4); endif; endunsafe; until(%ZPOS%=2962); keyup(back); wait(5t); if((%XPOS%!=-4168)) keydown(right); #cx=%XPOS%; do; key(use); until(%#cx%!=%XPOS%); keyup(right); endif; wait(5t); else; keydown(back); keydown(left); do; until((%XPOS%==-3968)&&(%ZPOS%==2962)); keyup(back); keyup(left); endif; loop;
RAW Paste Data
//Wheat Slot 1-3, BREAD rest //Goes north-south do; if(%XPOS%!=-4168); LOOKS(180,90,1); keydown(forward); #cz=90909; do; if(%#cz%!=%ZPOS%); key(attack); wait(2t); key(use); #cz=%ZPOS%; endif; //for loops are mega fucked up in macro mod for some reason unsafe(0); GETSLOTITEM(1,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(1); endif; GETSLOTITEM(1,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(2); endif; GETSLOTITEM(3,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(3); endif; GETSLOTITEM(4,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(4); endif; endunsafe; until(%ZPOS%=3162); keyup(forward); keydown(back); wait(2t); keyup(back); //Throw Excess Items looks(180,0,1); keydown(sneak); wait(10t); GUI(inventory); FOR(#s,1,35); GETSLOTITEM(%#s%,#i); IF((#i=296)); wait(5t); SLOTCLICK(%#s%); wait(5t); SLOTCLICK(-999); wait(5t); ENDIF; NEXT; gui(); looks(90,0,1); GUI(inventory); FOR(#s,9,35); GETSLOTITEM(%#s%,#i); IF(#i=295); wait(5t); SLOTCLICK(%#s%); wait(5t); SLOTCLICK(-999); wait(5t); ENDIF; NEXT; gui(); LOOKS(180,90,1); if(HUNGER<15); do; pick(297); //GET BREADED key(use); until(HUNGER>15); endif; keyup(sneak); wait(5t); keydown(right); #cx=%XPOS%; do; key(use); until(%#cx%!=%XPOS%); keyup(right); keydown(back); #cz=9001; do; if(%#cz%!=%ZPOS%); key(attack); wait(2t); key(use); #cz=%ZPOS%; endif; unsafe(0); GETSLOTITEM(1,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(1); endif; GETSLOTITEM(1,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(2); endif; GETSLOTITEM(3,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(3); endif; GETSLOTITEM(4,#id,#ss); if(%#ss%>10); slot(4); endif; endunsafe; until(%ZPOS%=2962); keyup(back); wait(5t); if((%XPOS%!=-4168)) keydown(right); #cx=%XPOS%; do; key(use); until(%#cx%!=%XPOS%); keyup(right); endif; wait(5t); else; keydown(back); keydown(left); do; until((%XPOS%==-3968)&&(%ZPOS%==2962)); keyup(back); keyup(left); endif; loop;If you’re a numbers person, Xiaomi is killing it in India. Last month, the company announced it had sold more than 500,000 smartphones in less than three days between October 1 to 3, an industry-first milestone. Later in the month, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun published a note on Xiaomi India’s Facebook page announcing the company’s latest milestone having sold 1 million smartphones in just 18 days as the online retailers in the country went on an overdrive for the festive season.
India is an extremely important market in Xiaomi’s globalization strategy and their largest market outside of mainland China, and per Lei Jun’s post, Xiaomi aims to capture the largest market share in India within 3-5 years.
Yet, all is not well. My Twitter and Facebook timeline is full of rants against what are great devices. Poor after-sales support experience, non-availability of spare parts, and long wait times for getting devices serviced have hurt customer experience and brand reputation. In an informal poll I did on Twitter asking about issues with Xiaomi in India, ‘after-sales service’ garnered over 40% of votes.
According to a Xiaomi spokesperson, the company is transitioning the most critical parts of our after-sales operations in-house, aiming for a significant improvement in the service. As part of this transition, Xiaomi is updating its processes further to ensure the quick resolution of complaints, and has already initiated a dedicated spare parts warehouse in Bangalore.
“We believe that this will result in a significant increase in customer satisfaction. We have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in our India business and we have never been shy in acknowledging that a significant portion has been dedicated to after-sales. Within two years of operation, the company has more than 100 service centers in the country, of which 70+ are exclusive service centers. I am positive that all our efforts will result in a much better after-sales and customer care experience to our users in the next few weeks.”
One of the constant cribs about Xiaomi comes from geeky audience who keeps a tab on global news and trends. A lot of Xiaomi devices never make it to India despite generating a lot of buzz. Not just smartphones, Mi Band and Mi Air Purifier are the only two smart home products from the Chinese company to be officially launched in India. Incidentally, a lot of that annoyance is caused by the regional media. Because it’s a popular brand, publications in India are happy to cover devices launched in China knowing well that they are not making their way to India. By privileged access, a lot of us acquire those devices and publish features around them generating interest amongst Indian consumers.
The Xiaomi spokesperson clarified that the company has a strategy of launching one flagship per year and this year it is Mi 5 and next year they will have another flagship phone. The flagship phone market in India is still very small and they intend to keep flagship portfolio very tight in India.
“Xiaomi is still new and learning in India with a small team and we need to plan our portfolio very cautiously. In our home market – It is extremely well known and quite popular and we are able to launch a diverse portfolio of devices.”
But the ‘availability’ issue is not just limited to limited devices being launched in the country, but also getting your hands on one of their devices after you’ve made the buying decision. Xiaomi entered the Indian market in July 2014 with a unique ‘Flash Sale’ model with Flipkart. While the entire stocks got sold out in seconds, and the company sent gloating press releases about it, it increasingly became hard to buy a Mi smartphone. The flash sales evolved into open sales, and Xiaomi extended its partnership with Amazon and Snapdeal as well, but limited stocks and no offline availability irks a lot of potential buyers. For people like me, it’s hard to recommend a device to a reader or a friend that is hard to procure.
Even in their home country, Vivo and OPPO recently edged out Xiaomi as China’s top phone makers. The former top smartphone maker, Xiaomi has dropped down to number four with a market share of 10.6 percent.
“Xiaomi needs a hero flagship device in premium to drive mindshare to compete with much more focused R&D and manufacturing driven brands such as Oppo, Vivo, Apple and Huawei. Also, lack of presence in offline space has been one of the determinants for Xiaomi’s slowing growth as its e-commerce driven business model has hit a ceiling.” – Meng Zhang, Senior Analyst, Counterpoint Research
Despite the popularity of Xiaomi smartphones in India, and in other markets, a lot of users aren’t too happy with MIUI, the company’s proprietary Android customization. It’s a well thought out UI, and packs in a lot of neat utility features and advanced capabilities, but the Android layer underneath isn’t updated as quickly as users would like. There are a lot of MIUI fans, mind you, and the company does a better job at custom skin than most smartphone manufacturers, but MIUI lives on a dated Android version far too long than one would like.
With grand visions for the Indian market, and upcoming entry into the unforgiving US market next year, Xiaomi needs to iron out these issues if they want to build a brand and not just be contented with sales numbers. It’s a crowded market out there, and people are happy to jump ships for better value and experience, and rightly so.First, navigate to " steam/steamapps/common/Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer/bin", find " hammer.exe " and open it.
Next, go to Tools > Options
In the window which opens, click the edit button next to the Configuration dropdown. In the following window which pops up, click add and set the name as " Team Fortress 2 Classic ".
Close the Edit Game Configurations window and hit "Add" next to the game data files section. Navigate to your TF2C folder in " steam/steamapps/sourcemods " and select tf2c.fgd.
Now under Game Executable Directory click browse and set the directory to the SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer folder. Set the Game Directory to your tf2classic folder and your Hammer VMF Directory to tf2classic/maps. You can set the Hammer VMF Directory to wherever you'd like, but I have it set to the tf2classic/maps folder.
Now switch to the Build Programs tab at the top, make sure Team Fortress 2 Classic is selected in the configuration dropdown, and then set the Game Executable to " hl2.exe " which can be found in the SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer root folder.
Set each of the BSP, VIS and RAD executables to " vbsp.exe ", " vvis.exe " and " vrad.exe " respectively. These executables can be found in the /bin folder of the SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer folder.
Now set the " place compiled maps in this directory before running the game " directory to your tf2classic/maps folder.
You can now hit OK and should probably restart Hammer just to be sure everything's settled. Now you should be set up to start mapping.
If you have any questions please post them here.
Yes - you have to set up Hammer for use with Team Fortress 2 Classic. Unlike regular TF2, there isn't a hammer.exe in the tf2classic/bin directory. Instead, we use the hammer.exe within the Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer's files.In the late 1950s into the early 1960s, the nation was transitioning from an alphanumeric telephone number system that relied on exchanges to the all-number calling method we know today.
But during the rollout, the "new" system was met with vicious opposition that gave rise to organizations like the Anti-Digit Dialing League. That group was made up of thousands of members opposed to the all-number system, believing that people wouldn't be able to memorize more than four or five digits.
And though that may seem amusing to some today, that is how Verizon officials view the opposition it is receiving from many government officials in South Jersey who are banding together to hold the company accountable in maintaining their traditional copper landline telephone systems.
South Jersey officials believe Verizon is allowing copper infrastructure to erode to push customers onto alternative platforms like wireless and Voice Link -- a wireless-based home telephone service -- both of which they say are insufficient and subject to outages during storms. And towns unable to get Verizon's premium fiber-optic service (FiOS) believe copper is the only reliable option, especially in the case of emergencies.
But Verizon New Jersey spokesman Lee Gierczynski has called this "misplaced fear" resulting from "misinformation and misunderstanding about copper networks, fiber networks and the reliability of those networks."
"This is a classic example of how some people fear new technology so they reactively reject it instead of accepting it, no matter how irrational that fear may be," Gierczynski said.
He added: "I think people are going to look back and laugh at people... just like who were a part of the Anti-Digit Dialing League."
Much of the anger stems from an agreement reached earlier this year between the state Board of Public Utilities and Verizon, exempting the telecommunications company from certain regulations for traditional copper.
RELATED: Deptford officials say Verizon neglected calls for remaining storm repairs
State Assemblyman Sam Fiocchi (R-1) and BPU Chairman Richard Mroz recently met with South Jersey officials over the persisting frustration.
The BPU did not return a call for comment.
Hopewell Township Committeeman Greg Facemyer said there are roughly 50 municipalities throughout South Jersey coming together to try and address the problem.
"It is not just one small community in South Jersey that has poor service-quality issues," Facemyer said. "It is demonstrative that our neighborhoods in our entire region of South Jersey have been neglected by the corporate decision-making of Verizon."
Towns in Cumberland County have been sparring with Verizon over broadband Internet and telephone service for years.
But Facemyer said the problem extends into Salem, Gloucester, Camden and Burlington counties and beyond.
In Newfield, Mayor Don Sullivan said poor wireless service is potentially creating a safety hazard.
"More and more people don't have a landline, and this becomes more and more of an issue," said Sullivan, who noted the increasing use of wireless among 911 emergency personnel.
Though Facemyer admits copper is becoming increasingly antiquated, he said the alternatives are still less reliable than copper, especially during storms.
But Gierczynski refuted the claim, saying that wireless is "statistically more reliable than copper-based services" during bad weather.
But according to the Federal Communication Commission's website, copper landline service holds up during power outages because "it provides its own power" -- unlike modern alternatives that the FCC says "usually need backup power to keep operating."
RELATED: Storm leaves Verizon Wireless customers in South Jersey without service, report says
Before the BPU and Verizon had reached its agreement in May, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 827 issued a complaint to the BPU in opposition of the accord claiming it would "force many consumers to migrate to wireless" thereby leaving them without landline service.
Stefanie Brand, director of the New Jersey Division of Rate Counsel, claimed that in certain parts of the state, Verizon is forcing customers to transition from their copper landline systems to fiber, or otherwise risk losing their service altogether.
"In northern New Jersey, the problem is that Verizon has been running fiber, and they are trying to force people off copper and... are actually cutting people off who don't want to go," Brand alleged.
She claimed a customer contacted her office and said that Verizon had cut her service off because she did not make an appointment with the company to get fiber within 30 days.
Gierczynski said Verizon sends multiple notifications to customers before transitioning them from copper to fiber.
"But if we don't get a response to them then they could be at risk of having their service suspended until making arrangements to move over to the fiber network," Gierczynski said.
Gierczynski said all Verizon is doing is providing the same service and the same rate, only a much better product.
The FCC recently adopted rules to ensure customers have "information and tools necessary to maintain landline home telephone service during emergencies," according to a news release from the FCC.
Going forward, it's not exactly clear what the next steps will be for South Jersey officials. Facemyer said it could take the form of a petition that seeks an investigation into Verizon as to whether the company, in fact, has abandoned its responsibility in overseeing copper systems. He said legal avenues may also be pursued.
Right now, Facemyer said, it's about "corralling the troops."
Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook.Oakland Raiders new interim coach Tony Sparano will have to try and alter the team's course without the help of one of his top pass-catchers.
The evolution of the NFL:
Take a look at how the NFL has evolved from its humble roots, and the efforts being made to ensure it continues to grow.
The team announced Thursday it placed receiver Rod Streater on the injured reserve -- designated to return list. The third-year pro will be eligible to return to the playing field prior to the team's Week 13 matchup up the St. Louis Rams.
The 26-year-old injured his foot in a Week 3 loss to the New England Patriots and had foot surgery last week. He was expected to miss four-five weeks, so the designation allows him an additional mandated three weeks to get healthy.
The loss of Streater, who had nine receptions for 84 yards and a touchdown before leaving early in Week 3 saps the Raiders of one of their more talented receivers. Andre Holmes should see more burn alongside James Jones and the inconsistent Denarius Moore.
The latest Around The NFL Podcast previews every Week 5 game and explains why Sammy Watkins is now a favorite for Rookie of the Year.Are YouTube creators entertainers? Are they artists? Celebrities? Five years ago, the answer would’ve been that they were mildly "Internet famous"—that weird kind of fame where a person is known to their Twitter followers and channel subscribers but no one else. Today? YouTube stars are celebs. They make millions of dollars, have agents, and get movie deals.
"We can walk down the street of Toronto now and people are like, 'Oh, you’re the AsapScience guys!' and want to take a picture. We’re not at Beyoncé’s level, we can still walk down the street comfortably. But I do know a lot of YouTubers for whom there’s a much bigger perception that people know who they are and that they're a personality on the Internet," says Mitchell Moffit, the co-creator of the YouTube channel AsapScience. "That’s the threshold we’ve crossed over."
So now that YouTube stars are, indeed, Big Deals, the Internet naturally has questions about them. So we decided to ask. During last weekend’s VidCon convention, we pulled together folks from a wide variety of YouTube channels—AsapScience, Rooster Teeth, the Slow Mo Guys, etc.—and had them do Google Autocomplete interviews to answer the web’s most pressing inquiries. Want to know if YouTubers think they’re revolutionizing entertainment? Watch the video above to find out.Judge denies Aaron Schock’s request to move case to Peoria
SPRINGFIELD — A federal judge in Illinois has refused to move Aaron Schock’s corruption case from Springfield to Peoria at the former congressman’s request.
The 35-year-old Schock is accused of using government and campaign money to subsidize a lavish lifestyle, as well as pocketing thousands of constituents’ dollars. The (Peoria) Journal Star reported Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough said in her opinion that keeping the case in Springfield doesn’t hurt Schock, but that it could delay other cases she is hearing.
Schock requested the move last month, arguing that the Peoria court was more convenient and appropriate. Prosecutors didn’t want the case moved.
Prosecutors say the disgraced Republican hosted Washington tours and meet-and-greets, charged a fee and kept some of the cash.
Schock is to be arraigned Monday.In the later stages of a hardware startup, consumer companies spend the vast majority of their time figuring out how to market their product to drive sales. Enterprise/B2B companies turn their attention to optimizing costs, namely of logistics and supply chain management. This is not to say that consumer companies don’t care about logistics or B2B businesses can slouch on marketing, but the focus of the organization typically polarizes towards one.
Moving cargo around the world is an endlessly fascinating industry. It’s also something founders of hardware companies tend to forget about until the last minute. Setting your expectations about costs and time can save a ton of unnecessary headache during the planning process.
If you’ve never seen a container ship in real life, do yourself a favor and drive down to your nearest port to take a look. They will blow your mind in sheer scale (each one of those boxes is the back of an 18 wheeler). The vast majority of the world’s freight moves around the globe on these ships. Most Chinese goods bound for the US leave from Hong Kong or Shenzhen and arrive in Long Beach or Los Angeles. The journey takes 4 to 5 weeks. Make sure to buy insurance as containers (or “cans” as they’re commonly referred) sometimes fall overboard in a strong storm.
Moving a single can across the pacific typically costs around $2,100 but can vary depending on contents, weight, time of year, and value of goods. Be sure to spend time thinking about how the can is packed to maximize space utilization. The vast majority of the cost of ocean freight is moving the can regardless of how full it is. Companies that ship lots of product actually design their gift boxes, master cartons and pallets to fit perfectly inside of a 40' HQ container.
Many startups are frustrated by the 4 or 5 weeks it takes to move a container across the Pacific ocean so they explore shipping their product by air freight instead. While it does shave off a lot of transit time, the cost is typically so much higher than ocean freight that it rarely makes sense. Exceptions to this rule include customized products that are drop-shipped (things like configured laptops) and high-value per cubic inch products like smartphones. Otherwise, expect to spend 10x more than sea freight.
Another oft-forgotten expense: duty and customs fees (depending on where it’s from and where it’s going). It varies but you’ll often pay somewhere between 3% and 5% duties of your BOM to the customs office. Not a huge fee but something you should keep in mind.
You’ll always want someone to help with 3rd party logistics (3PL) and freight forwarding. I can say from experience, managing it yourself is a massive nightmare and isn’t worth the few bucks you wind up saving. 3PL providers manage all steps and paperwork involved in moving cargo from CM to cargo ship to warehouse to land freight to warehouse until the distributor/retailer/end customer receive the product.
Different firms specialize in different parts of the process but the two biggest things to have managed are inter-continental transit (moving between countries, with a company like Flexport) and order fulfillment (including pick and pack, with a company like Shipwire). These two parts of the process tend to be exceptionally painful when more than 1k units are in transit. Be prepared to spend 2% to 5% of BOM cost on logistics providers.
Once your product is processed by customs, it’s now your job to move it by land freight (trucks) to wherever it needs to be stored. Moving a single pallet of your product will usually cost around $1k and take 4 or 5 days to move from California to New York (although most warehouses are in the west and midwest). Keep in mind: moving smaller and smaller parcels costs more and more per unit. As you break cans into pallets and pallets into master cartons and master cartons into gift boxes, each unit becomes more expensive to move.
Many distributors and big-box retailers will require that you agree to hold your product in something called backstock. This means a retailer may sign a PO for 10k units, but will require another 5k units be sitting in a warehouse they control ready to ship at a moments notice. This is to ensure their stores don’t run out of stock too quickly if your product turns out to be a big hit. Some startup-friendly retailers don’t care too much about this (Brookstone) while others will require you double your stock (Walmart). If managed poorly, this can have disastrous effects on a small company’s cash.
Once your product arrives in a store and is purchased, there’s a chance that the customer brings it back. If this happens, you are responsible for taking the product back, moving it somewhere out of the retailer’s control, and figuring out what went wrong. This entire process is called reverse logistics and can be quite costly because of how variable it can be. There’s an old adage: “it’s better to not have a customer than to have one that buys your product and returns it.” You’ll spend far more money and time taking a product back than selling it, so be careful of high returns. In the early days of your product, expect return rates to be high (10% max). 2% is reasonable after you’ve worked out the kinks of the product.CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Young Democrats are gravitating toward Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a self-described democratic socialist, a new poll indicates.
Sanders' appeal among millennial progressives -- between the ages of 18 and 29 -- can be attributed to his democratic socialism, according to a new poll by the Harvard University Institute of Politics. Twenty-four percent said they were more likely to vote for him because of it, while 9 percent found it to be a deterrent. Sixty-six percent said it made no difference to them.
Forty-one percent of voters who give themselves a 50/50 chance of voting in the Democratic primary say they would choose Sanders to be the next president of the United States. That's a sharp rise from the 1 percent who preferred him when the poll was taken earlier this year. Around that time, 47 percent said they would vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, however this time around that number has dropped slightly to 35 percent. Less than 1 percent chose former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.
More than half of the respondents who support Sanders are in college, while 19 percent of college students polled support Clinton.
RELATED Rand Paul may not qualify for CNN debate
Among conservative respondents, Donald Trump won out with 22 percent, followed closely by Ben Carson with 20 percent. The poll was conducted in late October, before Carson's drop in national polls and Trump's controversial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
The poll was conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 9, and surveyed 2,000 people between the ages of 18 and 29 with a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
RELATED Team of 17 Utah Republicans throw support behind FiorinaSouth Africa was one of the many countries around the world that didn’t get BMW’s original E30 M3. Customers there weren’t entirely left behind: BMW’s South African arm decided to create its own performance-oriented E30, dubbed the 333i.
In many ways, the 333i embodied the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. The biggest aesthetic difference between it and a more mundane 323i was a set of aerodynamic body parts borrowed from BMW’s M division. These included a front lip spoiler, a deep air dam, side skirts, and a discrete trunk-mounted spoiler. The 333i also had dual exhaust tips, and a specific emblem that featured the M division’s trademark colors.
Customers ordering a new 333i could pick between four exterior colors: aero silver, henna red, ice white, and diamond black. Metallic paint |
DOWN FOR VIDEO
Speaking anonymously, the assistant at Trois Pommes, in Zurich, Switzerland (pictured) said it is 'absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds' Ms Goetz said: 'Everyone wants to sell a crocodile bag. It’s a misunderstanding' and insisted her saleswomen put customers first and try to be 'kind' The shop assistant said she only sells a £25,000 handbag a few times a year and said the racist claims are 'absurd'
The saleslady went on: 'This is not true. This is absurd. I would never say something like that to a customer. Really never. Good manners and politeness are the Alpha and the Omega in this business.
'I don't know why she is making these accusations. She is so powerful and I am just a shop girl.
'I didn't hurt anyone. I don't know why someone as great as her must cannibalize me on TV.
'If it had all taken place as she claimed, why has she not complained the next day at the wedding of Tina Turner with Trudie Goetz, my boss? She was there also at the Turner wedding as a guest. I don't understand it.
'I spoke to Oprah Winfrey in English. My English is okay but not excellent, unfortunately.
'I didn't know who she was when she came into the store. That wouldn't have made any difference if I had.
Miss Winfrey said of the encounter: 'I could have had the big blow-up thing and thrown down the black card and all that stuff. But why do that?'
Shop owner Trudie Goetz holds up the handbag (right) that Winfrey wanted to see
Girls' weekend: Oprah Winfrey and best friend Gayle King ahead of Tina Turner and Erwin Bach's wedding celebrations in Zurich, Switzerland
'We work really hard to greet all the people who come into the store with the same level of respect and treat them all equally.
'If someone asks me whether he or she can see an article, I always present these. Because that person is a potential buyer. And my job is to sell it.
'I'm glad if I can sell an article. It is a reward for me, if I can sell a nice piece. This means that I'm good at my job.'
She has worked in the store for five years, says 50 per cent of the clientele come from abroad and that a bag costing nearly £25,000 is sold 'only a few times a year.'
Asked what she would say to Oprah now she added: 'I would apologize and say it was all a misunderstanding. I surely did not intentionally want to insult Ms. Winfrey. I hope this nightmare ends soon.'The Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) of the Polish Sejm submitted a draft resolution to the Parliament in view of increasing nationalist tendencies in Ukraine, Tadeusz Iwiński, Deputy Chairman of the Seimas of the International Affairs, told RIA Novosti
Is Poland finally starting to realise that the Ukraine putsch government they have championed from the start is in fact infested by an ideology that glorifies the actual extermination of Polish citizens in what were horrific war crimes carried out during WW2?
The politicians of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) of the Polish Sejm submitted a draft resolution to the Parliament after noticing (a year and some change later), that Ukraine is celebrating (some might even say glorifying) the national holidays of...
Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych and other Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) 'Heroes of Ukraine'...
Stepan Bandera torchlight marches
...who are responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia.
Poland's current government is funding and propping up a Ukraine government that celebrates the deaths of Poles during the Second World War. Makes perfect sense...as Poland's government seems to have lost its logic, while falling deeply in love with the United States of America. Love is, indeed, blind.
If current events unfolding in Yemen are any indication, we can't help but wonder when all the US/EU weapons being poured into Ukraine will suddenly be turned, not East toward Russia, but West toward Poland, as the UPA Bandera army (currently being trained by Washington boots on the ground) decides to rekindle its animosity towards its Polish neighbours.
No doubt another Obama foreign policy win is in the making — right in the heart of Europe.
Via Sputnik News Agency, as reported by RIA Novosti...
The "Polish Sejm expresses concern over the Ukrainian state authorities’ nationalist traditions associated with ideas of Dmitri Dontsov and political practice of Stepan Bandera. Also the glorification of those responsible for the crimes committed against the Polish nationals,” the document read. The draft resolution notes that "The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine recently honored the death anniversary of Roman Shukhevych, commander in chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), who was responsible for the death of 100,000 Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. The Ukrainian Parliament also adopted a resolution to hold public events in connection with the anniversary of Peter Dyachenko, a commander of the Ukrainian military units who took part in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising and the destruction of Polish villages in the district of Lublin. Since President Poroshenko’s decision, the anniversary of the formation of the Ukrainian Army is celebrated as the Day of Defender of the Fatherland.” "The Polish society is seriously concerned over these facts. For the sake of memory of the victims of World War II, the Polish Sejm calls on Ukrainian authorities to abandon the admiration of persons and organizations responsible for the crimes against the Poles," the document says. Twenty-nine members of parliament from the faction of the Democratic Left Alliance have signed the document. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army has been the armed wing of the Ukrainian nationalists since the 1940s. During the World War II, the UPA acted against the Soviet partisans. After the restoration of the Soviet power, the UPA fought against the Red Army on the side of the Nazi Germany. According to the Polish historians, ethnic cleansing in the south-west of Ukraine was conducted by the UPA under the leadership of the Organization of the Ukrainian Nationalists (Bandera faction). Polish historians estimate that the number of Polish civilian casualties was in the tens of thousands. Some 300-400 thousand ethnic Poles fled to the west. Similar actions were taken by Ukrainian nationalists in 1943 in Volhynia. The glorification of army commander Roman Shukhevych, one of the leaders of the UPA and Bandera, draws criticism from many World War II veterans and politicians.
References:
http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150325/1020009189.htmlIt’s election year in the USA and, I suppose, that we can only expect even less statesmanship than normal to be coming from President Obama. However, his statement in the dying months of last year that he was withdrawing United States troops in their entirety from Iraq because the country was now, ‘…stable and sovereign,’ is risible. I suggest, that Western involvement in Iraq has been nothing short of disastrous both for the people and for the Allies who tried to set the place to rights. If we concentrate on Britain, this ill-starred adventure not only brought down a government but it also caused very serious questions to be asked about the probity and efficiency of the British Army – an institution that many of us hold dear. On top of all this, of course, can the long list of widows, mothers who have lost sons and broken families find solace in the state that Iraq has been left in today?
You have to look carefully, but every day there is one or another crisis in Iraq. You have to look carefully because most of the news from that part of the world is dominated by the looming crisis with Iran. And it is important to understand just what Iran’s intentions are towards her close neighbour. First, we got used to hearing about the infamous ‘Sunni Triangle’ during the Western invasion of Iraq. A casual observer could have been forgiven for thinking that the country was dominated by Sunnis who were by far and away the most troublesome and dangerous minority. But that cloaks the constant involvement of Iran with the Shias inside the country, as Iran is Persian rather than Arabic and largely Shia.
But, as Iraqi friends of mine say, secular Iraq has now been replaced by sectarian Iraq, based on the widely accepted misconception that Shia Muslims form the majority of the Iraqi population. In fact, there are no reliable statistics on the number of Sunni or Shia Muslims in Iraq as the indigenous birth certificate simply states whether the holder is Christian, Jewish or Muslim, without any differentiation within that creed. In fact, the truth hardly matters, for the perception is that Iraq is now a Shia country which, perfectly logically, leans towards her Shia neighbour Iran. Also, crucially, it musn’t be forgotten what a very long shadow the 1980s war Iraq and Iran still castes.
Ask anyone of an age in Tehran what the impact was of that fatal struggle and a dark, bitter story emerges. The casualties ran into the millions and the fact that weapons of mass destruction (chemical and biological weapons) were used throws some light on why Saddam Hussein continued to be so well prepared for that type of warfare in the future. It also exposes why Iran is so single minded about her quest for nuclear power. I don’t believe her rhetoric that she would only use such power for domestic purposes – Iran knows better than any other country what WMDs can do. And on top of her nuclear brinksmanship she is turning Iraq into something that is not better than a client state of hers or even a colony.
It might be worth looking at President Obama’s claim in a bit more detail. First, just how sovereign a country is Iraq now that US and Allied troops have left? Remaining are more than a hundred and fifty thousand contractors who are principally American. These people are American troops by any other name although their duties are meant to be defensive and protecting commercial interests rather than fighting for any national cause. However, a hundred and fifty thousand is still considerably larger than the entire British Army and their presence hardly underlines the nation’s sovereignty.
Then there are Iraq’s own troops. The footage of them showed smartly uniformed, well armed and apparently disciplined units who, at a brief glance, looked more than ready to take over from their American mentors. They were certainly dressed and equipped like those who had taught them. But, the three quarters of a million ‘soldiers’ who have now been brought into existence are very far from the unified army that a sovereign state should possess. The reality is that they are a disparate bunch of militias almost all of whom owe their loyalty to tribal heads and then to Iran rather than to the state of Iraq. Added to that, the country is now effectively configured as 18 self-governing regions. There appears to be no central government control of any of its resources. Again, how does any of this sit with the concept of sovereignty?
Second, turning to stability, the country still has to cope with 4.5 million refugees, 1.5 million dead, 1.2 million displaced internally, 2 million orphans and slightly less than 1 million widows. Clearly, a country that has been wrecked by a series of wars isn’t going to recover quickly. However, the West led by America has done very little to cope with this level of turbulence and within that turbulence lie the seeds of further dissatisfaction. Look, for instance, at travel insurance. If you want to go to any of the world’s hotspots and you need to be insured, you’ll find that Iraq costs you more to visit than any other part of the world, including Afghanistan. But, when the number of killed each month still averages out at about five hundred, which is far greater than the numbers dying in Syria or Somalia, then it becomes clear that Iraq, far from being a ‘stable’ state, has yet to emerge from being a failed one.
Then there are the country’s finances. The US Federal Audit Office cannot account for $12bn of US aid that was sent to Iraq whilst $1.5bn of frozen Iraqi assets flown from Iraq to the US now appears to have been lost. Meanwhile, UNICEF has reported that the Iraqi education system is now less than half as effective as it was under Saddam Hussein. And UNICEF, of course, is in a unique position of being able to judge these things. Two decades ago, it also gave Iraq the prize five years running for the most effective eradication of illiteracy.
How alarmist is it to suggest that Iraq, now that the US troops have finally gone, is on the brink of a coup? In October last year the Shia Government arrested two thousand people in an attempt to emasculate any intellectual opposition. For example, Tikrit University was almost completely denuded of staff through a programme of arrests targeted at professional people. It was alleged that these were all Baathists who were combining to oppose the Government. Three months on, many of these individuals remain under arrest whilst the university and similar institutions are still not functioning properly.
It is also interesting to see how many of Iraq’s new generation of MPs are Iranian by birth. Some would suggest it is as many as 60%. On top of that, the intelligence apparatus inside the country now seems to be almost entirely dominated by the Iranian Al Quds Brigade. Much of the media is fed from this source and little of the government rhetoric can be divided from that of Iran. In short, President Obama’s ‘stable and sovereign’ country now looks little better than an Iranian satellite.
To put this in perspective, it’s got to be remembered that US viceroy Paul Bremer dissolved the Iraqi national forces without a UN resolution or international authority, only adding, some would say, to the charges of illegality that surround the whole intervention in Iraq. This, combined with almost palpable US anxiety to get out of Iraq and so minimise the political damage to Obama’s administration, has meant that the country has effectively fallen into the clutches of an aggressive and jingoistic Iran with not just the tacit approval of the USA but with the physical help of that country.
Another aspect of this sorry tale is the breaking of UN sanctions against Iran via Iraq with the full knowledge and connivance of that country’s government. Many prohibited imports that are entering Iran from Iraqi soil are, it is widely believed, being paid for by oil that is siphoned off from Iraqi pipelines.
Britain’s part in the future of Iraq is crucial. Not only does she have the legacy of her imperial past there and the symbol of so many young lives having been sacrificed there over the past decade, she also has a degree of influence with the Iranian regime that far exceeds her size and clout. When I’ve visited Tehran, I’ve always been surprised at how pivotal Iranian officials believe British thinking and policy-making to be. It’s almost as if Britain is seen as the intellectual master of the USA and the West. Whilst this may not be wholly accurate, it is a club that the British Government should not be slow to wield, and a club that must be used to help Iraq return not just to prosperity, democracy and real freedom but also to true stability and sovereignty. Patrick Mercer, OBE MP, is a retired Colonel who severed in Sherwood Foresters (Notts & Derby Regiment), the British Army. He is Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom, representing the constituency of Newark in Parliament, and a former BBC journalist. This article is published jointly with The London Magazine.Old Nags February (142) January (152) December (156) November (144) October (142) September (147) August (146) July (138) June (141) May (142) April (149) March (187) February (118) January (156) December (146) November (137) October (169) September (172) August (165) July (175) June (152) May (155) April (155) March (132) February (160) January (144) December (151) November (165) October (188) September (196) August (185) July (197) June (177) May (134) April (176) March (179) February (146) January (105) December (94) November (159) October (122) September (141) August (172) July (140) June (134) May (164) April (119) March (124) February (110) January (129) December (111) November (94) October (100) September (108) August (115) July (130) June (115) May (105) April (74) March (117) February (97) January (122) December (115) November (91) October (126) September (89) August (132) July (147) June (112) May (140) April (137) March (79) February (109) January (119) December (114) November (110) October (60) September (104) August (123) July (159) June (124) May (146) April (107) March (120) February (95) January (83) December (84) November (112) October (51) September (61) August (90) July (115) June (116) May (130) April (95) March (132) February (116) January (118) December (113) November (123) October (128) September (95) August (89) July (100) June (112) May (102) April (103) March (101) February (80) January (98) December (110) November (92) October (88) September (61) August (106) July (106) June (86) May (96) April (101) March (98) February (98) January (107) December (119) November (126) October (93) September (121) August (207) July (149) June (122) May (128) April (65) March (100) February (92) January (102) December (105) November (70) October (87) September (98) August (97) July (93) June (79) May (106) April (61) March (96) February (92) January (83) December (99) November (89) October (116) September (110) August (111) July (125) June (131) May (86) April (113) March (76) February (78) January (64) December (54) November (56) October (49) September (49) August (61) July (23) June (17) May (16) April (8) March (14) February (14) January (29)Here’s an interesting query: If you were a general manager of local CBS affiliate and you noticed a great deal of Internet traction concerning steps the US government is trying to take in its efforts to eliminate online piracy, how would you cover the story? What if the general public’s reaction was largely negative, how would you cover the story? Lastly, what if the company that owned your station — CBS, Fox, NBC, ABC — was a listed supporter of a bill that’s being trashed by just about every tech writer in the land, how would you cover the story?
Another question, would your station cover the subject at all?
According to findings by the Media Matters group, the answer is no, your station would not even pay lip service to the topic, at least when SOPA/PIPA is concerned. Because SOPA has been the topic of discussion on many online outlets, Media Matters investigated whether or not the network news channels — not just local affiliates, either; CNN, Fox News and MSNBC were included in their study — were covering the topic. The answer, once you consider which companies support the bill, is not surprising.
While the online outlets of these news properties have indeed offered SOPA articles with regularity, the televised broadcasts continue to neglect the subject, almost to the point of willfully ignoring it:
Despite all of this, the response from American television news outlets has been to almost completely ignore the story during their evening programming. The lone exception was a segment on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer in December, during which CNN parent company Time Warner’s support for the legislation was not disclosed. (Though Fox News Channel has apparently not touched the story during evening programming, conservative/libertarian host Andrew Napolitano has run several segments vocally opposing SOPA on his program, which runs on the separate Fox Business Network.)
Does the fact that the companies that own these broadcast news outlets are listed supporters of SOPA play a part in the coverage? Perhaps. Media Matters also points out the ownership dilemma in their findings:
ABC and CBS are listed as supporters of the bill on the House Judiciary Committee website, along with Comcast/NBCUniversal (which owns MSNBC and NBC News), Viacom (CBS), News Corporation (Fox News), and Time Warner (CNN). Disney Publishing Worldwide, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Corporation, which owns ABC, is also listed as a supporter, as are other Disney properties such as ESPN and Hyperion publishing.
The question is, how would these companies cover SOPA/PIPA if they were opposed to the bills? Would all the Internet chatter concerning the bills influence the positions these companies would take if they didn’t have a vested interest in seeing the bill(s) passed?
Considering the abject lack of coverage, especially for a topic that’s getting so much traction online, such a conclusion doesn’t require a massive leap in logic to reach.
Lead image hat-tip.The military is known for engaging in top-secret, expensive, high-tech projects. These range from new vehicles and planes to weapons and armor. You may be surprised then to hear of the US Army’s latest project. Taking to task the horrible taste of Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), the Army has finally cracked the code of the sandwich.
Gone will be the days of bland peanut butter, flavorless crackers, and freeze-dried meatloaf. This sandwich has meat, cheese, and lettuce inside delicious bread. If you’ve ever seen a Hot Pocket, this is similar. It may not be from a five-star restaurant, but soldiers like it.
Shelf life is the cornerstone of any MRE, and this sandwich fits the bill: it stays fresh for two years. For food to rot, you usually need oxygen and water. MREs that eliminate water have great shelf-life, but horrible taste. The two-year sandwich doesn’t shy away from moist ingredients, but it uses preservation techniques to keep the H2O in check.
When jams — which have high water content — are stored, they stay fresh because a) sugar locks in the moisture and b) the container is air-tight. These are the exact ingredients in the two-year sandwich. It has sugar, and a packet of iron fillings shares the vacuum-sealed wrapping. The iron draws in excess moisture, converts it into rust, and traps it.
A sandwich preserved with this method won’t last forever, but two years will suffice for the Army. Considering the bile that soldiers are used to eating, a year less of shelf life will be a welcome tradeoff.
via BBC and PopsciHousing affordability: Inquiry that made no recommendations a 'waste of money', Labor says
Updated
A parliamentary inquiry established nearly two years ago to investigate housing affordability has made no recommendations, drawing strong criticism from the Opposition.
Key points: Planning Minister Rob Stokes said colleagues were falling prey to "a Canberra culture that promotes opposition over consensus"
Labor said the report was full of rhetoric, lacked substance
Young people are "getting screwed" and the Government refuses to admit there is a problem, Adam Bandt says
The committee report came after a lengthy debate on negative gearing during the election campaign and amid skyrocketing house prices in Sydney and Melbourne.
Last month, NSW Planning Minister Rob Stokes called for changes to negative gearing and accused his federal counterparts of falling prey to "a Canberra culture that promotes opposition over consensus".
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Treasurer Scott Morrison promptly ruled out changes to negative gearing, claiming land supply was the key influence on housing affordability.
The committee, chaired by Liberal MP David Coleman, did not support changes to negative gearing and described the policy as a key feature of the Australian tax system for most of the last century.
The committee argued against increases to capital gains tax on housing, claiming it would likely have a negative impact on the housing market and the broader economy.
A majority of submissions found stamp duty taxes were inefficient and outdated, although no formal recommendation was offered as the Federal Government does not have jurisdiction over land taxes.
"However, the committee would support any future cross-government discussions on possible changes to these taxes," the report said.
The committee found the introduction of a broad-based land tax would be a major change to the tax system and should only be considered as part of a broader reform package.
"State and territory governments need to do more to adequately address land supply and ensure that existing policies and processes are not unnecessarily causing an undersupply," the report said.
The inquiry was placed on hold at the last federal election but was reinstated by the Turnbull Government in November, with much of the evidence already compiled.
Young people 'getting screwed': Greens
In a dissenting report, Labor MPs described the report as "a complete waste of taxpayers' money" that was full of rhetoric but lacked substance.
"The government members' report is a remarkable document in that it offers no recommendations to Government," Labor's report said.
"It should be entitled The Claytons Report — the report you have when you are not having a report."
Instead, Labor called for negative gearing to be limited to new housing and capital gains discounts to be halved.
Greens MP Adam Bandt said the report was a wasted opportunity and young people were "getting screwed".
"Reading the Government's report is like being transported into a parallel universe," he said.
"The Government refuses to admit there's a problem, let alone take any steps to make housing more affordable."
Federal Liberal MP John Alexander, who was chair of the House Economics Committee before the election, said politicians needed to ensure stability in the housing market.
Mr Alexander said the inquiry would not be a waste of money if the evidence in the report was turned into positive policies.
"Political debate gets us nowhere — there is too much negativity in our discussions," he said.
"We need a contest of ideas."
Topics: government-and-politics, housing, housing-industry, australia
First postedAmazon claimed to have sold millions of the new $50 Fire Tablet since it was released a few months ago. Over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping holidays this device was heavily discounted and many people in the United States and Kingdom Kingdom paid around $39. This has resulted in limited availability for new orders and an estimated shipping date of the end of December. Some people who bought this tablet don’t want the Amazon bloatware or live in countries where Prime Music and Instant Video simply do not function. The folks at Cyanogenmod have just released a new rooting package that gives you a plain vanilla Android Lollipop experience, giving you the option to install Google Play.
The Amazon App Store is the default app downloading system that is installed on the $50 Fire Tablet. One of the drawbacks is not many apps that compete with Amazons core business, so if you like e-books, magazines and newspapers you have limited options. It is safe to say that Google Play enjoys the largest market share and most app developers submit their content to that platform, rather than Amazon.
Rooting your Fire is not a super straight forward process, but the video below makes it easy. In the video description are links to all of the files you need.The Microwave Miracle Of Cooking In Mugs
toggle caption Maggie Starbard/NPR
Lunchtime is around the corner, and your tummy is rumbling. If you've got a microwave, a mug and a few basic ingredients, you can cook up a meal right in the office.
Morning Edition's David Greene recently started microwaving scrambled eggs in a mug for those early mornings on hosting duties. It led him to wonder about the other possibilities of this culinary art.
So he turned to Washington Post Food and Travel Editor Joe Yonan for help expanding his mug menu. "The mug gauntlet was laid down in front of me, and so I picked it up and decided to do a mac and cheese," says Yonan, who writes the "Cooking for One" column.
When he joined Greene in the NPR offices to demonstrate his recipes (below) for mac and cheese and brownies, the steps were pretty straightforward: Put some things in a mug, nuke for a bit, add more things, stir, and finish nuking.
It doesn't get much easier than that, folks.
toggle caption Maggie Starbard/NPR
But whatever you decide to whip up, there's one thing you need to remember: Things get really hot in the microwave.
"They're not just getting heat from the surface that they're in contact with, like a pan would on the stove. They're heating from the inside out," Yonan explains. "All their molecules are all excited, and the whole thing is kind of exploding inside, so you have to be careful."
Also, don't cook anything with fish. Do that, and you might get kicked out of the building because the smell will seep into every corner.
Yonan says a lot of people think microwaving is a lesser form of cooking. There are plenty of people who just reheat things and make popcorn, "but the microwave is incredibly versatile, and I think people have realized that."
So go wild and experiment with whatever happens to be in the fridge today. Just don't steal somebody else's lunch.
Recipe: Mac And Cheese With Mushrooms In An Office Mug (based on a recipe on the Kitchn)
1/2 cup macaroni pasta
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons dried shiitake mushrooms, crumbled (optional)
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons whole milk
1/4 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons roasted tomato salsa (or your favorite store-bought salsa)
1 teaspoon flour
Combine the pasta, water and salt in a large microwave-safe mug.
Set it on a paper towel and microwave on high in 2-minute intervals, stirring in between, until the pasta is just short of tender (al dente. This should take 4 to 8 minutes, depending on the wattage of your microwave. (The water will foam up and possibly spill slightly over the mug, but the pasta and mushrooms should stay put.) If the mug dries out before the pasta is cooked, add another 2 tablespoons of water before continuing to microwave until the pasta is al dente.
Stir in the milk, cheese, salsa and flour. Microwave on high in 30-second intervals, stirring in between, until the cheese has melted and a creamy sauce has formed. Let cool slightly and eat.
For something more basic, leave out the mushrooms. You can also take it in the other direction and add all sorts of other ingredients, depending on what's in your office fridge: pesto, leftover meat, Sriracha, kimchi. From Washington Post Food and Travel editor Joe Yonan.
Recipe: Brownie In An Office Mug
This is Washington Post Food and Travel editor Joe Yonan's tarted-up take on the many microwave-brownie-in-a-mug recipes circulating on the Internet, and it results in a fudgy, deeply chocolate flavored confection that would be improved only by a little ice cream. To make something more stripped down, you can leave out the instant espresso, dried cherries, chocolate chips and almonds and still get an excellent, if less sophisticated, result.
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon almond butter (may substitute peanut butter or Nutella)
2 tablespoons whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons natural unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (optional)
1 tablespoon dried cherries (optional)
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon bittersweet chocolate chips or pieces of a chocolate bar (optional)
1 tablespoon slivered almonds (optional)
1 tablespoon slivered almonds
Combine the butter, almond butter, milk and vanilla in a large microwave-safe mug, and microwave on high until the butter melts, 30 to 60 seconds. Stir with a fork to break up the almond butter and thoroughly combine. Sprinkle in the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, instant espresso, cherries and salt, and stir to combine. Sprinkle chocolate chips on top. Microwave on high for about 1 minute, until the butter has firmed up on top and the chocolate has melted. Sprinkle with almonds, let cool slightly, and eat.[button link=”#” target=”_blank” color=”default” shape=”rounded” size=”small” align=”center”]Nothing to Disclose[/button]
I have some gold swatches from Fyrinnae today that are great for creating an antique gold look for the Fall! Also check out my other Fyrinnae swatches here and here.
Equal Rights Shine– I used a lot of this on my inner corners. This could even be worn alone and stick out on it own!
Mischievous Siche– I used this on my outside V. This one alone is probably the most like an antique gold, a little rusty and a little shimmery!
Book of the Dead– I used this one to help blend some areas. This color is less bright like the others and could be worn for a more toned down gold shadow.
Gilded Wings– This is my favorite out of these colors! Its so dark and shiny and awesome! I used this on my outer V too.
I am excited for all the Fall trend this yer but I am VERY excited to sport the antique gold look more! There are so many eye shadows that you can mix and match to create the perfect antique gold look.
Do you think you will be into the antique gold trend this Fall?tech2 News Staff
Chinese smartphone giant LeEco has reportedly laid off 85 percent of its staff in India. Senior officers have also left the company and it is looking to downsize its Bengaluru operations.
The smartphone maker made a big splash in India last year when it launched a range of smartphones, TVs and content services alongside a lavish advertising campaign. By some estimates, that campaign cost LeEco Rs 80 crore a month.
The Economic Times, which first reported the layoffs, has spoken to LeEco and industry sources and concluded that the situation does indeed look grim for the company.
In an email sent to LeEco’s employees last year, company co-founder and head Jia Yueting spoke about how the company had emptied its coffers in an attempt to grab market share and expand its businesses at too rapid a pace. He stated his intention to make the company profitable again, but this would also mean drastically scaling back on expenditure.
Following the email, layoffs in India were expected, but it’s now come to light that Atul Jain, COO of Smart Electronics at LeEco has resigned, as has Debashish Ghosh, COO of Internet Applications, Services and Content. Jain and Ghosh were prominent members of LeEco’s India operations.
LeEco apparently told ET that they’re not exiting the country and that they’re scaling back operations inline with their profitability and revenue targets for the year. Industry insiders, however, state that LeEco is quitting the country and that it’s already ceased its offline retail operations.
Reportedly, the sales slump following demonetisation affected the company very badly.
Other Chinese smartphone makers have found success in India through various means. Oppo and Vivo, which are very big in India’s offline space, have survived, nay, are thriving, owing to their investments in manufacturing and an extensive offline retail network in India.
Xiaomi, on the other hand, offers unmatched value for money and of course, Hugo Barra’s star presence. This company has since suffered a slight sales slump and lost Hugo Barra, and is now regrouping to figure out a path for the future.
Huawei has also invested in its offline presence in the country.
While we don’t know whether, and how much, LeEco invested in strengthening its offline presence in India, we do know that the company spent an inordinate amount on advertising and that it wanted to develop a content ecosystem for India. Unfortunately, it appears that the company didn’t have the means to make a dent in India’s cutthroat smartphone market.
If LeEco is indeed exiting the country, its presence was certainly a very brief one. The company officially entered India only in February last year, almost exactly a year ago.
The ET report indicates that LeEco will exit the country in the coming months.
Tech2 is now on WhatsApp. For all the buzz on the latest tech and science, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Tech2.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Typhoon smashes storm-weary Philippines
Updated
Typhoon Mirinae smashed through the Philippines overnight, killing 11 people and worsening floods in areas that were struggling to recover from recent deadly storms, officials said.
The typhoon, packing winds of up to 185 kilometres an hour, was the third major storm to hit the Philippines' main island of Luzon in just five weeks, with the previous two claiming more than 1,100 lives.
In Manila, areas that have been flooded since Tropical Storm Ketsana struck in late September were hit with more heavy rain, while residents in other districts were forced onto their roofs to escape rising waters.
"We need help because the waters have risen," the Mayor of Santa Cruz, Ariel Magcales, said.
"We need rubber boats and choppers.
"Some people are on the roofs of their houses."
Military and police rescue boats worked to save people who were trapped by a flash flood, officials said.
One man was found dead and his one-year-old baby was missing after they were washed away while trying to cross an overflowing creek in a rural area on the outskirts of Manila, the military said.
Three people were reported dead and five others were missing in Laguna province just south of Manila, the local disaster monitoring office said.
Seven people died in the Bicol region, south of Manila, mostly from flash floods, local disaster monitoring officials said.
Another man was missing from a Manila slum district after his hut was washed away, while two others were missing in Batangas province south of Manila after their car fell into a river when a bridge collapsed, civil defence spokesman Ernesto Torres said.
However, Mr Torres said more than 115,000 people had been evacuated from vulnerable regions before the typhoon hit, which likely prevented more deaths.
The typhoon caused power outages and knocked down trees across many areas of Manila, a sprawling city of 12 million people.
It also forced flights to be suspended on Saturday morning from Manila's international airport.
Ferries, a popular form of transport in the south-east Asian archipelago, were also cancelled, ruining travel plans for many who were hoping to head to their hometowns for the All Saints' Day long-weekend public holiday.
- AFP
Topics: storm-event, disasters-and-accidents, storm-disaster, weather, philippines
First postedOtto Warmbier, the US student released by North Korea in |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.